ing armies of invasion whose goal was to seize the
natural resources of neighbour states--or simply to satisfy an appetite for
conquest. During this same period, Shoghi Effendi was mobilizing the
painfully small band of pioneers available to him, and dispatching them to
the teaching goals of the Plan he had created. Within a few short years,
the vast battalions of aggression would be shattered beyond recovery,
their names and conquests erased from history. The little company of
believers who had gone out with their lives in their hands to fulfil the
mission entrusted to them by the Guardian would have achieved or exceeded
all of their objectives, objectives that soon became the foundations of
flourishing communities.(87)

In appreciating this undertaking, it is helpful for Baha'is to understand
not only the role that planning plays in the life of the Cause, but the
unique nature of this instrumentality in its Baha'i expression. The
systematic identification of objectives to be achieved and decisions as to
how to achieve them does not mean that the Baha'i community has assumed
the responsibility of "designing" a future for itself, as the concept of
planning customarily implies. What Baha'i institutions do, rather, is to
strive to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process
they see steadily unfolding in the world, a process that will ultimately
realize its purpose, regardless of historical circumstances or events. The
challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence
allows, Baha'i efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God,
because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause
by Baha'u'llah bear their fruit. That the provisions of the Kitab-i-Aqdas
and the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha ensure the success of the
efforts of the Baha'is is dramatically demonstrated in the unbroken series
of triumphs that fulfilled the plans created by Shoghi Effendi.

By August 1944, Shoghi Effendi was able to celebrate the completion of the
first Seven Year Plan. The Guardian marked the moment with a gift to the
Baha'is of the world that represents one of the greatest achievements of
his life. The publication, in 1944, of _God Passes By_, his comprehensive
and reflective history of the first hundred years of the Cause, threw open
for believers a window on the spiritual process by which Baha'u'llah's
purpose for humankind is being realized.

History is a powerful i