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
THE SEVEN YEAR PLAN
Viewed in the perspective of Bahá’í history, the Seven Year Plan, associated with the closing years of the First Bahá’í Century, will come to be regarded as the mightiest instrument yet forged, designed to enable the trustees of a firmly established, steadily evolving Administrative Order to complete the initial stage in the prosecution of the world mission confidently entrusted by the Center of the Covenant to His chosen disciples. The Divine Plan, thus set in operation, may be said to have derived its inspiration from, and been dimly foreshadowed in, the injunction so significantly addressed by Bahá’u’lláh to the Chief Magistrates of the American continent. It was prompted by the contact established by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself, in the course of His historic journey, with the entire body of His followers throughout the United States and Canada. It was conceived, soon after that contact was established, in the midst of what was then held to be one of the most devastating crises in human history. It underwent a period of incubation, after His ascension, while the machinery of a divinely appointed Administrative Order was being laboriously devised and its processes set in motion. Its initial operations were providentially made to synchronize with the final years of a century that witnessed the birth and rise of a Faith of which it is the direct consequence. The opening stage in its execution has been faced by, and will survive, the severe challenge of a crisis of still greater magnitude than that which baptized its birth. The conclusion of the first phase of its tremendous and irresistible unfoldment is now approaching. The hopes and aspirations of a multitude of believers, in both the East and the West, young and old, whether free or suppressed, hang on its triumphant consummation. The Temple itself, that fair incarnation of the soul of an unconquerable Faith, and the first fruit of the Plan now set in motion, stands in its silent beauty, ready to reinforce the strenuous endeavors of its prosecutors. Towering in grandeur and resplendent in its majesty it calls aloud incessantly for a greater, a far greater number of pioneers who, both at home and in foreign fields, will scatter to sow the Divine seeds and gather the harvest into its gates. The Author of the Plan Himself, looking down from His retreats above, and surveying the prodigious labors of His defeatless disciples, voices, with even greater insistence, the same call. The time in which to respond to it is relentlessly shortening. Let men of action seize their chance ere the swiftly passing days place it irretrievably beyond their reach.
May 26, 1942