Bahá’u’lláh’s residence in Akká, the scene of severe crises in the course of the ministries of the Founder of the Faith and the Center of His Covenant renovated and furnished, are added to the Holy Places already opened to the steadily swelling number of visitors both local and foreign.
A significant step was taken by the City Governorate of Cairo presaging the eventual recognition by state authorities of the Bahá’í laws of personal status, already codified and submitted to the central government by the Egyptian National Assembly.
Bonds binding the Bahá’í world community to United Nations strengthened by Bahá’í participation in regional conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Geneva and Istanbul.
Preliminary steps taken in preparation of final design for the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár on Mount Carmel by President of the International Bahá’í Council, specifically appointed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to be its architect.
Process of the unfoldment of the ever-advancing Administrative Order accelerated by the formation of the International Bahá’í Council designed to assist in the erection of the superstructure of the Báb’s Sepulcher, cement ties uniting the budding World Administrative Center with the recently established state, and pave the way for the formation of the Bahá’í Court, essential prelude to the institution of the Universal House of Justice.
I hail particularly the brilliant victory won by the American Bahá’í Community in meeting the financial requirements for the completion of the interior ornamentation of the Temple and eliminating the deficit in the Victory Fund, exploits doubly meritorious owing to the added responsibilities courageously assumed to assist enterprise in the African field, and construction of the Báb’s Sepulcher in the Holy Land.
I am thrilled by the multiple evidences of the simultaneous prosecution of Bahá’í national plans, East and West, and the rise and steady consolidation of the World Center of the Faith, constituting the distinguishing features of the second epoch of the Formative Age whose inception on the morrow of the Second World War coincided with the inauguration of the second Bahá’í century, and which bids fair to eclipse the splendors of the preceding epoch, which posterity will associate with the birth and rise of the embryonic World Order of Bahá’u’lláh.
—Shoghi
[Cablegram, April 25, 1951]