Emergency Teaching Campaign
Greatly encouraged by the splendid progress of the tremendous drive initiated in response to my appeal. The zero hour is inexorably approaching. Nineteen additional settlers can and must be provided. Praying with increasing fervor for total success, complete victory.
[April 6, 1948]
Marvelous Acceleration
[FIRST MESSAGE TO 1948 CONVENTION]
I am moved to share with assembled delegates of the fortieth American Bahá’í Convention the following facts and figures testifying to the present status of the World Faith of Bahá’u’lláh and disclosing the marvelous acceleration in the double process of the extension of its range and the consolidation of the institutions of its Administrative Order in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres in the course of the first four years of the second Bahá’í century.
The number of countries opened to the Faith total ninety-one. Bahá’í literature is translated and printed in fifty-one languages. Representatives of thirty-one races are enrolled in the Bahá’í World Community. Eighty-eight assemblies, national and local, are incorporated. The number of localities where Bahá’ís have established residence has been raised to over thirty in Australasia, to over forty in Germany and Austria, over sixty in the Dominion of Canada, over eighty in the Indian subcontinent and Burma, over one hundred in Latin America, over seven hundred in Persia and to over twelve hundred in the United States of America.
The value of international Bahá’í endowments in the Holy Land and the Jordan Valley is estimated at over six hundred thousand pounds. National Bahá’í endowments on the North American continent are valued at over two million dollars. The area of land dedicated to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in Persia is approximately four million square meters. The value of the national Hazíratu’l-Quds in the capitals of India and Persia respectively is six hundred thousand rupees and fifty thousand pounds. The area of land dedicated to the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in South America is ninety thousand square meters. The number of pieces of Bahá’í literature sold and distributed in the course of one year in North America is over eighty thousand pieces. The record of the number of visitors to the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár in America in one year is over seventeen thousand and the total number of visitors since its erection is over one quarter of a million. The number of states in the American Union formally recognizing Bahá’í marriage certificates is now eight. The number of national assemblies functioning in the Bahá’í world is raised to nine through the formation of the first Canadian National Assembly, to be shortly reinforced through the constitution of two additional assemblies in South and Central America and the West Indies.