Though the obstacles confronting the followers of Bahá’u’lláh in the American continent in their efforts to completely emancipate their fellow-Bahá’ís on the one hand, and to speedily rehabilitate the fortunes of their fellow-men on the other, be in the main unsurmountable, such impediments cannot as yet be said to exist that can frustrate their efforts to fully discharge the second duty now incumbent upon them in the inter-continental sphere of Bahá’í teaching. The field, in all its vastness and fertility, is wide open and near at hand. The harvest is ripe. The hour is over-due. The signal has been given. The spiritual forces, mysteriously released, are already operating with increasing momentum, unchallenged and unchecked. Victory, speedy and unquestioned, is assured to whosoever will arise and respond to this second, this urgent and vital call. In this field, as in no other, the American believers can most easily evince the full force of their latent energies, can exercise in their plentitude their conspicuous talents, and can rise to the highest level of their God-given opportunities.
Fired by their zeal, their love for and faith in Bahá’u’lláh; armed with that Holy Charter, wherein ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s mandate investing them with their world mission is inscribed; piloted through the instrumentality of those agencies which a divine, a smoothly functioning Administrative Order has providentially placed at their disposal; disciplined and invigorated by those immutable verities, spiritual principles and administrative regulations that distinguish their religious beliefs, govern their individual conduct and regulate their community life; aspiring to emulate the example of those heroes and martyrs, the narrative of whose exploits they have admired and pondered, it behooves all members of the American Bahá’í community to gird themselves as never before to the task of befittingly playing their part in the enactment of the opening scene of the First Act of that superb Drama whose theme is no less than the spiritual conquest of both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Their immediate task, under the Seven Year Plan, the object of which is the establishment of a minimum of one Bahá’í center in each of the Republics of Middle and South America, has now been gloriously ushered in through the settlement of one pioneer in most of the Central American Republics, and bids fair to be recognized by posterity as the original impulse imparted to an enterprise that will go round the world. That impulse must, as time goes by, communicate itself to the farthest extremities of Latin America, and must be reinforced in every manner, by as many of the American believers as possible. The broader the basis of this campaign, the deeper its roots, the finer the flower into which it shall eventually blossom. That its call may be heeded, that its implications may be recognized and its potentialities progressively unfold, is my earnest prayer, and the supreme longing of my heart.
July 28, 1939
IMPERILLED HUMANITY
Shades of night descending on imperilled humanity are inexorably deepening. American believers, heirs of Bahá’u’lláh’s covenant, prosecutors of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Plan, are confronted by supreme opportunity to vindicate indestructibility of their faith, inflexibility their resolution, their incorruptibility, sanctity for appointed task. Anxiously, passionately entreat them, whatever obstacles the march of tragic events may create, however distressing barriers predicted calamities raise between them and sister communities and possibly Faith’s World Center, to unwaveringly hold aloft torch whose infant light heralds the birth of the effulgent World Order destined to supplant disrupting civilization.
Cablegram August 30, 1939