Dear Friends,
We send you our warmest greetings and deepest love.
Your conference coincides with the Counselors' Conference which has drawn 78 Counselors from the five continents to the Holy Land for discussions with the International Teaching Center concerning the provisions of the next global teaching and consolidation plan to be launched at Ridván 1996. You may well draw inspiration from this coincidence as you take advantage of your togetherness to contemplate during the next few days the opportunities available to the Bahá’í youth both to bend their efforts towards great achievements in the teaching field during the remaining months of the Three Year Plan and to ensure through such achievements a fitting initiation for the new Plan, which will be in operation during the closing years of the unique Twentieth Century.
The threat of disintegration and chaos, on the one hand, and the promise of unity and peace, on the other, flash intermittently as prospects at this time of great transition for the entire human race. Unity and peace will triumph, we know; but until then humanity will surely experience trials and turmoil. Amid these can be found the countless opportunities to teach those, especially among your peers, who seek understanding and hope. The perspective which enables us to see clearly during this time of great perplexity is provided in the Sacred Writings of our Faith and in the life and deeds of our true Exemplar, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; these are abundant resources to which the followers of the Blessed Beauty, young and old alike, can turn time and again for knowledge, inspiration and assurance.
May your collective and individual capacity for action increase as you take occasions such as this conference both to obtain a deeper understanding of your purpose and goal in life and to mobilize your efforts, in word and deed, to spread the glad tidings and demonstrate the revolutionizing effects of the appearance of the Lord of Hosts. Being among the ones who will increasingly be shouldering the responsibilities for the evolution of the Order of Bahá’u’lláh, the very pattern of future society, you, like the Bahá’í youth in every other land, can do no less than consider seriously what each and all of you will do now towards victoriously meeting the challenges and opportunities of these troubled but dynamic times.
We shall continue to pray ardently in the Holy Shrines for your success in every respect.
The Universal House of Justice
(Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1986-2001)
