Dear Baha'i friends,
Our Ridvan message this year called attention to the
impending fiftieth anniversary of the passing of 'Abdu'l-Baha, "an event
which signalized at once the end of the Heroic Age of our Faith, the opening of
the Formative Age and the birth of the Administrative Order, the nucleus and
pattern of the World Order of Baha'u'llah."
We now call upon all National Spiritual Assemblies to
formulate and implement plans designed to educate the friends everywhere in
their understanding of the significance of the Formative Age of our Faith. As
an aid to this programme we attach extracts from the writings of the beloved
Guardian on this general theme, and we suggest that these and similar excerpts
from the Writings be studied and expounded at the forthcoming Summer Schools,
at special sessions of Teaching Institutes, at conferences of the friends, and
indeed on any occasions which you may deem suitable.
We leave it
to you to use the wonderful material bequeathed to us by the beloved Guardian
on this theme in whatever manner you deem best for your own communities. The
study and understanding of this subject will immensely strengthen the faith of
the believers as well as their ability to present the message to a waiting
world.
With loving Baha'i greetings,
The Universal House of Justice
Extracts from the Writings of Shoghi Effendi on the
Significance of the Formative Age of our Faith
April 1971
The passing of 'Abdu'l-Baha, so sudden in the circumstances
which caused it, so dramatic in its consequences, could neither impede the
operation of such a dynamic force nor obscure its purpose. Those fervid
appeals, embodied in the Will and Testament of a departed Master, could not but
confirm its aim, define its character and reinforce the promise of its ultimate
success.
Out of the pangs of anguish which His bereaved followers
have suffered, amid the heat and dust which the attacks launched by a sleepless
enemy had precipitated, the Administration of Baha'u'llah's invincible Faith
was born. The potent energies released
through the ascension of the Centre of His Covenant crystallized into this
supreme, this infallible Organ for the accomplishment of a Divine Purpose. The
Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha unveiled its character, reaffirmed its
basis, supplemented its principles, asserted its indispensability, and
enumerated its chief institutions. ... ("America and the Most Great
Peace" -- 21 April 1933, The World Order of Baha'u'llah: Selected Letters, rev. ed. [Wilmette:
Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1982], p. 89.)
With 'Abdu'l-Baha's ascension, and more particularly with
the passing of His well-beloved and illustrious sister the Most Exalted Leaf --
the last survivor of a glorious and heroic age -- there draws to a close the
first and most moving chapter of Baha'i history, marking the conclusion of the
Primitive, the Apostolic Age of the Faith of Baha'u'llah. It was 'Abdu'l-Baha
Who, through the provisions of His weighty Will and Testament, has forged the
vital link which must for ever connect the age that has just expired with the
one we now live in -- the Transitional and Formative period of the Faith -- a
stage that must in the fullness of time reach its blossom and yield its fruit
in the exploits and triumphs that are to herald the Golden Age of the
Revelation of Baha'u'llah.
Dearly beloved friends!
The onrushing forces so miraculously released through the agency of two
independent and swiftly successive Manifestations are now under our very eyes
and through the care of the chosen stewards of a far-flung Faith being
gradually mustered and disciplined. They are slowly crystallizing into
institutions that will come to be regarded as the hallmark and glory of the age
we are called upon to establish and by our deeds immortalize. For upon our
present-day efforts, and above all upon the extent to which we strive to
remodel our lives after the pattern of sublime heroism associated with those
gone before us, must depend the efficacy of the instruments we now fashion --
instruments that must erect the structure of that blissful Commonwealth which
must signalize the Golden Age of our Faith. ("The Dispensation of
Baha'u'llah" -- 8 February 1934, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 98.)
'Abdu'l-Baha, Who incarnates an institution for which we can
find no parallel whatsoever in any of the world's recognized religious systems,
may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened the
one in which we are now labouring. His Will and Testament should thus be
regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him Who is
the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity of the three
ages that constitute the component parts of the Baha'i Dispensation. The period
in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly germinating is thus intertwined
both with the one which must witness its efflorescence and the subsequent age
in which that seed will have finally yielded its golden fruit.
The creative energies released by the Law of Baha'u'llah,
permeating and evolving within the mind of 'Abdu'l-Baha have, by their very
impact and close interaction, given birth to an Instrument which may be viewed
as the Charter of the New World Order which is at once the glory and the
promise of this most great Dispensation.
The Will may thus be acclaimed as the inevitable offspring resulting
from that mystic intercourse between Him Who communicated the generating
influence of His divine Purpose and the One Who was its vehicle and chosen
recipient. Being the Child of the Covenant -- the Heir of both the Originator
and the Interpreter of the Law of God -- the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha
can no more be divorced from Him Who supplied the original and motivating
impulse than from the One Who ultimately conceived it. Baha'u'llah's
inscrutable purpose, we must ever bear in mind, has been so thoroughly infused
into the conduct of 'Abdu'l-Baha, and their motives have been so closely wedded
together, that the mere attempt to dissociate the teachings of the former from
any system which the ideal Exemplar of those same teachings has established
would amount to a repudiation of one of the most sacred and basic truths of the
Faith.
The Administrative Order, which ever since 'Abdu'l-Baha's
ascension has evolved and is taking shape under our very eyes in no fewer than
forty countries of the world, may be considered as the framework of the Will
itself, the inviolable stronghold wherein this new-born child is being nurtured
and developed. This Administrative Order, as it expands and consolidates
itself, will no doubt manifest the potentialities and reveal the full
implications of this momentous Document -- this most remarkable expression of
the Will of One of the most remarkable Figures of the Dispensation of
Baha'u'llah. It will, as its component parts, its organic institutions, begin
to function with efficiency and vigour, assert its claim and demonstrate its
capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New
World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind.
("The Dispensation of Baha'u'llah -- 8 February 1934, The World Order of
Baha'u'llah, pp. 143-44.)
Dearly beloved friends:
Though the Revelation of Baha'u'llah 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
Baha'i Era has begun, yet the promised Kingdom into which the seed of His institutions
must ripen remains as yet uninaugurated. ...
"The heights," Baha'u'llah Himself testifies,
"which, through the most gracious favour 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 favour will, by virtue of His behest, be manifested unto men.”
For the revelation of so great a favour 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
Baha'u'llah 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...
As we view the world around us, we are compelled to observe
the manifold evidences of that universal fermentation which, in every continent
of the globe and in every department of human life, be it religious, social,
economic or political, is purging and reshaping humanity in anticipation of the
Day when the wholeness of the human race will have been recognized and its
unity established. A twofold process,
however, can be distinguished, each tending, in its own way and with an
accelerated momentum, to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the
face of our planet. The first is
essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally
disruptive. The former, as it steadily
evolves, unfolds a System which may well serve as a pattern for that world
polity towards which a strangely disordered world is continually advancing;
while the latter, as its disintegrating influence deepens, tends to tear down,
with increasing violence, the antiquated barriers that seek to block humanity's
progress towards its destined goal. The
constructive process stands associated with the nascent Faith of Baha'u'llah,
and is the harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong
establish. The destructive forces that
characterize the other should be identified with a civilization that has
refused to answer to the expectation of a new age, and is consequently falling
into chaos and decline.
A titanic, a spiritual struggle, unparalleled in its
magnitude yet unspeakably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is being waged
as a result of these opposing tendencies, in this age of transition through
which the organized community of the followers of Baha'u'llah and mankind as a
whole are passing. ...
It is not my purpose to call to mind, much less to attempt a
detailed analysis of, the spiritual struggles that have ensued, or to note the
victories that have redounded to the glory of the Faith of Baha'u'llah since
the day of its foundation. My chief
concern is not with the happenings that have distinguished the First, the
Apostolic Age of the Baha'i Dispensation, but rather with the outstanding
events that are transpiring in, and the tendencies which characterize, the
formative period of its development, this Age of Transition, whose tribulations
are the precursors of that Era of blissful felicity which is to incarnate God's
ultimate purpose for all mankind. ("The Unfoldment of World Civilization"
-- 11 March 1936, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pp. 168-71.)
The moment had now arrived for that undying, that
world-vitalizing Spirit that was born in Shiraz, that had been rekindled in
Tihran, that had been fanned into flame in Baghdad and Adrianople, that had
been carried to the West, and was now illuminating the fringes of five
continents, to incarnate itself in institutions designed to canalize its
outspreading energies and stimulate its growth.
The Age that had witnessed the birth and rise of the Faith had now
closed. The Heroic, the Apostolic Age of
the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah, that primitive period in which its Founders
had lived, in which its life had been generated, in which its greatest heroes
had struggled and quaffed the cup of martyrdom, and its pristine foundations
been established -- a period whose splendours no victories in this or any
future age, however brilliant, can rival -- had now terminated with the passing
of One Whose mission may be regarded as the link binding the Age in which the
seed of the new-born Message had been incubating and those which are destined
to witness its efflorescence and ultimate fruition.
The Formative Period, the Iron Age, of that Dispensation was
now beginning, the Age in which the institutions, local, national and
international, of the Faith of Baha'u'llah were to take shape, develop and
become fully consolidated, in anticipation of the third, the last, the Golden
Age destined to witness the emergence of a world- embracing Order enshrining
the ultimate fruit of God's latest Revelation to mankind, a fruit whose
maturity must signalize the establishment of a world civilization and the
formal inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth as promised by
Jesus Christ Himself. ...
The last twenty-three years of the first Baha'i century may
thus be regarded as the initial stage of the Formative Period of the Faith, an
Age of Transition to be identified with the rise and establishment of the
Administrative Order, upon which the institutions of the future Baha'i World
Commonwealth must needs be ultimately erected in the Golden Age that must
witness the consummation of the Baha'i Dispensation. The Charter which called into being, outlined
the features and set in motion the processes of, this Administrative Order is
none other than the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha, His greatest legacy to
posterity, the brightest emanation of His mind and the mightiest instrument
forged to insure the continuity of the three ages which constitute the
component parts of His Father's Dispensation. ...
The Administrative Order which this historic Document has
established, it should be noted, is, by virtue of its origin and character,
unique in the annals of the world's religious systems. ...
The Document establishing that Order, the Charter of a
future world civilization, which may be regarded in some of its features as
supplementary to no less weighty a Book than the Kitab-i-Aqdas; ... (God Passes
By, rev. ed. (Wilmette: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1987), pp. 324-28.)
The first seventy-seven years of the preceding century,
constituting the Apostolic and Heroic Age of our Faith, fell into three
distinct epochs, of nine, of thirty-nine and of twenty-nine years' duration,
associated respectively with the Babi Dispensation and the Ministries of
Baha'u'llah and of 'Abdu'l-Baha.+F225
This Primitive Age of the Baha'i Era, unapproached in spiritual
fecundity by any period associated with the mission of the Founder of any
previous Dispensation, was impregnated, from its inception to its termination,
with the creative energies generated through the advent of two independent
Manifestations and the establishment of a Covenant unique in the spiritual
annals of mankind.
The last twenty-three years [1921-44] of that same century
coincided with the first epoch of the second, the Iron and Formative, Age of
the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah -- the first of a series of epochs which must
precede the inception of the last and Golden Age of that Dispensation -- a
Dispensation which, as the Author of the Faith has Himself categorically
asserted, must extend over a period of no less than one thousand years, and
which will constitute the first stage in a series of Dispensations, to be
established by future Manifestations, all deriving their inspiration from the
Author of the Baha'i Revelation, and destined to last, in their aggregate, no
less than five thousand centuries. ...
During this Formative Age of the Faith, and in the course of
present and succeeding epochs, the last and crowning stage in the erection of
the framework of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Baha'u'llah -- the
election of the Universal House of Justice -- will have been completed, the
Kitab-i-Aqdas, the Mother-Book of His Revelation, will have been codified and
its laws promulgated, the Lesser Peace will have been established, the unity of
mankind will have been achieved and its maturity attained, the Plan conceived
by 'Abdu'l-Baha will have been executed, the emancipation of the Faith from the
fetters of religious orthodoxy will have been effected, and its independent
religious status will have been universally recognized, whilst in the course of
the Golden Age, destined to consummate the Dispensation itself, the banner of
the Most Great Peace, promised by its Author, will have been unfurled, the
World Baha'i Commonwealth will have emerged in the plenitude of its power and
splendour, and the birth and efflorescence of a world civilization, the child
of that Peace, will have conferred its inestimable blessings upon all mankind.
("The Challenging Requirements of the Present Hour" -- 5 June 1947,
Citadel of Faith: Messages to America
1947-1957 (Wilmette: Baha'i Publishing
Trust, 1980), pp. 4-6.)
(‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice, 1963-1986’)
