pled in the spiritual history of
mankind, and which will synchronize with two no less significant
developments--the establishment of the Lesser Peace and the evolution of
Baha'i national and local institutions--the one outside and the other
within the Baha'i world--will attain its final consummation, in the Golden
Age of the Faith, through the raising of the standard of the Most Great
Peace, and the emergence, in the plenitude of its power and glory, of the
focal Center of the agencies constituting the World Order of Baha'u'llah.
The final establishment of this seat of the future Baha'i World
Commonwealth will signalize at once the proclamation of the sovereignty of
the Founder of our Faith and the advent of the Kingdom of the Father
repeatedly lauded and promised by Jesus Christ.

This World Order will, in turn, in the course of successive Dispensations
of the Baha'i Cycle, yield its fairest fruit through the birth and
flowering of a civilization, divinely inspired, unique in its features,
world-embracing in its scope, and fundamentally spiritual in its
character--a civilization destined as it unfolds to derive its initial
impulse from the spirit animating the very institutions which, in their
embryonic state, are now stirring in the womb of the present Formative Age
of the Faith.

Advise share this message with the Hands of the Cause and the members of
the National Spiritual Assemblies throughout the Baha'i world.

--Shoghi

[November 27, 1954]

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES BUILDING AND DESIGN FOR TEMPLE IN PERSIA

On the occasion of the Naw-Ruz Festival marking the opening of the
auspicious year being celebrated by the followers of the Faith in
approximately sixteen hundred centers in the Western Hemisphere, above
eight hundred in Asia, well nigh three hundred in Africa, more than two
hundred in Europe and over one hundred in the Antipodes, I joyfully
announce the commencement of the excavation for the foundations of the
International Archives heralding the rise of the first edifice destined to
inaugurate the establishment of the seat of the World Baha'i
Administrative order in the Holy Land.

I announce moreover the selection of the design submitted by the Hand of
the Cause, Mason Remey, for the projected Mother Temple in Baha'u'llah's
native land, paving the way for the construction of the third
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the Baha'i world.

Urge followers of the Faith in Eastern and Western Hemispheres t