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The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh
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Pages 17-18
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The Onslaught of All Peoples and Kindreds
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We have only to refer to the warnings uttered by `Abdu'l-Bahá
in order to realize the extent and character of the forces that are
destined to contest with God's holy Faith. In the darkest moments
of His life, under `Abdu'l-Hamíd's régime, when He stood ready to
be deported to the most inhospitable regions of Northern Africa, and
at a time when the auspicious light of the Bahá'í Revelation had only
begun to break upon the West, He, in His parting message to the
cousin of the Báb, uttered these prophetic and ominous words:
"How great, how very great is the Cause! How very fierce the onslaught
of all the peoples and kindreds of the earth. Ere long shall
the clamor of the multitude throughout Africa, throughout America,
the cry of the European and of the Turk, the groaning of India and
China, be heard from far and near. One and all, they shall arise with
all their power to resist His Cause. Then shall the knights of the
Lord, assisted by His grace from on high, strengthened by faith,
aided by the power of understanding, and reinforced by the legions
of the Covenant, arise and make manifest the truth of the verse:
`Behold the confusion that hath befallen the tribes of the defeated!'"
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2 |
Stupendous as is the struggle which His words foreshadow, they
also testify to the complete victory which the upholders of the Greatest
Name are destined eventually to achieve. Peoples, nations, adherents
of divers faiths, will jointly and successively arise to shatter its
unity, to sap its force, and to degrade its holy name. They will assail
not only the spirit which it inculcates, but the administration which
is the channel, the instrument, the embodiment of that spirit. For as
the authority with which Bahá'u'lláh has invested the future Bahá'í
Commonwealth becomes more and more apparent, the fiercer shall
be the challenge which from every quarter will be thrown at the
verities it enshrines.
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