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The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh
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Pages 168-169
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Pangs of Death and Birth
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Dearly-beloved friends: Though the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh
has been delivered, the World Order which such a Revelation must
needs beget is as yet unborn. Though the Heroic Age of His Faith
is passed, the creative energies which that Age has released have
not as yet crystallized into that world society which, in the fullness
of time, is to mirror forth the brightness of His glory. Though the
framework of His Administrative Order has been erected, and the
Formative Period of the Bahá'í Era has begun, yet the promised
Kingdom into which the seed of His institutions must ripen remains
as yet uninaugurated. Though His Voice has been raised, and the
ensigns of His Faith have been lifted up in no less than forty countries
of both the East and the West, yet the wholeness of the human
race is as yet unrecognized, its unity unproclaimed, and the standard
of its Most Great Peace unhoisted.
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"The heights," Bahá'u'lláh Himself testifies, "which, through
the most gracious favor of God, mortal man can attain in this Day
are as yet unrevealed to his sight. The world of being hath never
had, nor doth it yet possess, the capacity for such a revelation. The
day, however, is approaching when the potentialities of so great a
favor will, by virtue of His behest, be manifested unto men."
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For the revelation of so great a favor a period of intense turmoil
and wide-spread suffering would seem to be indispensable. Resplendent
as has been the Age that has witnessed the inception of the
Mission with which Bahá'u'lláh has been entrusted, the interval
which must elapse ere that Age yields its choicest fruit must, it is
becoming increasingly apparent, be overshadowed by such moral
and social gloom as can alone prepare an unrepentant humanity for
the prize she is destined to inherit.
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Into such a period we are now steadily and irresistibly moving.
Amidst the shadows which are increasingly gathering about us we
can faintly discern the glimmerings of Bahá'u'lláh's unearthly sovereignty
appearing fitfully on the horizon of history. To us, the
"generation of the half-light," living at a time which may be designated
as the period of the incubation of the World Commonwealth
envisaged by Bahá'u'lláh, has been assigned a task whose high privilege
we can never sufficiently appreciate, and the arduousness of
which we can as yet but dimly recognize. We may well believe, we
who are called upon to experience the operation of the dark forces
destined to unloose a flood of agonizing afflictions, that the darkest
hour that must precede the dawn of the Golden Age of our Faith
has not yet struck. Deep as is the gloom that already encircles the
world, the afflictive ordeals which that world is to suffer are still in
preparation, nor can their blackness be as yet imagined. We stand
on the threshold of an age whose convulsions proclaim alike the
death-pangs of the old order and the birth-pangs of the new.
Through the generating influence of the Faith announced by Bahá'u'lláh
this New World Order may be said to have been conceived.
We can, at the present moment, experience its stirrings in the womb
of a travailing age--an age waiting for the appointed hour at which
it can cast its burden and yield its fairest fruit.
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"The whole earth," writes Bahá'u'lláh, "is now in a state of
pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have yielded its
noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees,
the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings. Immeasurably
exalted is the breeze that wafteth from the garment of thy
Lord, the Glorified! For lo, it hath breathed its fragrance and made
all things new! Well is it with them that comprehend." "The onrushing
winds of the grace of God," He, in the Súratu'l-Haykal,
proclaims, "have passed over all things. Every creature hath been endowed
with all the potentialities it can carry. And yet the peoples of
the world have denied this grace! Every tree hath been endowed
with the choicest fruits, every ocean enriched with the most luminous
gems. Man, himself, hath been invested with the gifts of understanding
and knowledge. The whole creation hath been made the
recipient of the revelation of the All-Merciful, and the earth the repository
of things inscrutable to all except God, the Truth, the
Knower of things unseen. The time is approaching when every created
thing will have cast its burden. Glorified be God Who hath
vouchsafed this grace that encompasseth all things, whether seen or
unseen!"
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"The Call of God," `Abdu'l-Bahá has written, "when raised,
breathed a new life into the body of mankind, and infused a new
spirit into the whole creation. It is for this reason that the world
hath been moved to its depths, and the hearts and consciences of men
been quickened. Erelong the evidences of this regeneration will be
revealed, and the fast asleep will be awakened."
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