y _Sh_i'ih clergy and the shameless falsehoods concocted and
spread by their Christian counterparts, to systematic efforts at
suppression by various totalitarian regimes, and, finally, to violations
of their commitment to Baha'u'llah on the part of the insincere, the
ambitious or the malevolent among its professed adherents. By every human
standard, the Cause should have succumbed to a barrage of opposition
without parallel in recent history. Far from succumbing, it flourished.
Its reputation rose, its membership vastly increased, its influence spread
beyond the dreams of earlier generations of its followers. Persecution
served to galvanize its supporters' efforts. Calumny drove believers to
seek a more mature understanding of its history and teachings. And, as
both the Master and the Guardian had promised, violation of the Covenant
washed out of its ranks persons whose behaviour and attitudes had dampened
the faith of others and inhibited progress. If the Cause could bring no
other testimony to the powers that sustain it, this succession of triumphs
alone should suffice.

* * * * *

Three years before his passing, Shoghi Effendi took advantage of the
acquisition of the last plot of land needed for the erection of the
International Archives Building to describe for the Baha'i world the
nature and significance of the building project on the slopes of Mount
Carmel that the Master had inaugurated and that he himself was pursuing:

These Edifices will, in the shape of a far-flung arc, and following a
harmonizing style of architecture, surround the resting-places of the
Greatest Holy Leaf ... of her Brother ... and of their Mother.... The
ultimate completion of this stupendous undertaking will mark the
culmination of the development of a world-wide divinely-appointed
Administrative Order whose beginnings may be traced as far back as the
concluding years of the Heroic Age of the Faith.(157)

The current stage of this ambitious enterprise was brought to its
successful conclusion in the final year of the century. An outpouring of
resources from believers throughout the world had responded to the vision
of Baha'u'llah for this sacred spot, announced in His Tablet of Carmel:
"Rejoice, for God hath in this day established upon thee His throne, hath
made thee the dawning-place of His signs and the dayspring of the
evidences of His Revelation." In the complex of majestic buildings spread
out along