As we enter the final year of the Seven Year Plan,
confidence of victory and a growing sense of the opening of a new stage in the
onward march of the Faith must arouse in every Baha'i heart feelings of
gratitude and eager expectation. Victory in the Plan is now within sight, and
at its completion the summation of its achievements may well astonish us all.
But the great, the historic feature of this period is the emergence of the
Faith from obscurity, promoted by the steadfast heroism of the renowned, the
indefatigable, dearly loved Baha'i community of Baha'u'llah's and the Bab's
native land.
This dramatic change in the status of the Faith of God,
occurring at so chaotic a moment in the world's history when statesmen and
leaders and governors of human institutions are witnessing, with increasing
despair, the bankruptcy and utter ineffectiveness of their best efforts to stay
the tide of disruption, forces upon us, the Baha'is, the obligation to consider
anew and ponder deeply the beloved Guardian's statement that "The
principle of the Oneness of Mankind -- the pivot round which all the teachings
of Baha'u'llah revolve -- ... implies an organic change in the structure of
present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced."
Intimations in the non-Baha'i world of a rapidly growing
realization that mankind is indeed entering a new stage in its evolution
present us with unprecedented opportunities to show that the Baha'i world
community is not only "the nucleus but the very pattern" of that
world society which it is the purpose of Baha'u'llah to establish and towards
which a harassed humanity, albeit largely unconsciously, is striving.
