Dearly loved friends,
The decline of religious and moral restraints has unleashed
a fury of chaos and confusion that already bears the signs of universal
anarchy. Engulfed in this maelstrom, the Bahá'í world community, pursuing with
indefeasible unity and spiritual force its redemptive mission, inevitably
suffers the disruption of economic, social and civil life which afflicts its
fellowmen throughout the planet. It must also bear particular tribulations. The
violent disturbances in Persia, coinciding with the gathering in of the
bountiful harvest of the Five Year Plan, have brought new and cruel hardships
to our long-suffering brethren in the Cradle of our Faith and confronted the
Bahá'í world community with critical challenges to its life and work. As the
Bahá'í world stood poised on the brink of victory, eagerly anticipating the
next stage in the unfoldment of the Master's Divine Plan, Bahá'u'lláh's heroic
compatriots, the custodians of the Holy Places of our Faith in the land of its
birth, were yet again called upon to endure the passions of brutal mobs, the
looting and burning of their homes, the destruction of their means of
livelihood, and physical violence and threats of death to force them to recant
their faith. They, like their immortal forebears, the Dawn-Breakers, are
standing steadfast in face of this new persecution and the ever-present threat
of organized extermination.
