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Messages to America

  • Author:
  • Shoghi Effendi

  • Source:
  • US Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1947 edition
  • Pages:
  • 110
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Page 55

IMPELLED TO DEPUTIZE FIVE MEMBERS

Message to 1942 Convention
Last phase of Seven Year Plan so auspiciously begun, so vigorously prosecuted, is opening. The first Bahá’í Century is fast running out. The agonies of a travailing age are culminating. The Báb’s stirring, unique injunction, directing the peoples of the West to leave their cities to insure the triumph of the Divine Cause was recorded a century ago in the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá. Bahá’u’lláh’s significant summons calling upon all the Presidents of the Republics of the western hemisphere to champion the Cause of Justice was issued seventy years ago in His Most Holy Book. The broad outlines of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s matchless design, conceived twenty-five years ago for the benefit of the North American believers, was transmitted to posterity in the Tablets of the Divine Plan. The Seven Year Enterprise, regarded as the initial stage in the execution of a World Mission, has been already launched. The gigantic Temple undertaking, constituting the major obligation of this enterprise, has been virtually consummated. The vast Intercontinental Teaching Campaign is visibly yielding first fruits in every Republic of Latin America. Upon the crucial year ahead hinge the fortunes of this historic crusade. From Alaska to Chile, the Americas are astir with the leavening influences of the rising Order of the newborn Revelation. The great Republic of the West is inescapably swept into the swelling tide of the world tribulations, presaging the assumption of a preponderating share in the establishment of the anticipated Lesser Peace. Invisible hosts are marshalled, eager to rush forth and crown every effort, however humble, however belated, exerted to speed the unfinished tasks. Again I renew plea for closer communion with the Spirit of Bahá’u’lláh, for more passionate resolve, for more abundant flow of material resources, and for wider dispersion, intenser concentration, by a still greater number of pioneers, settlers and itinerant teachers to insure for the Plan a termination commensurate with and wondrous as the exploits marking the opening decade of first Bahá’í Century. Myself deprived of personal participation in the task allotted to the prosecutors of the epoch-making Plan, I am impelled to deputize five members of the American Bahá’í community to help fulfill in my behalf whatsoever pioneer field is most vital to its urgent requirements. Pledging five thousand dollars for accomplishment of this purpose.

Cablegram April 26, 1942