THE WORKINGS OF TWO SIMULTANEOUS PROCESSES

How could it forfeit its birthright or mar its heritage, when the country
from which the vast majority of its members have sprung, the great
republic of the West, government and people alike, is itself, through
experiment and trial, slowly, painfully, unwittingly and irresistibly
advancing towards the goal destined for it by both Baha'u'llah and
'Abdu'l-Baha? Indeed if we would read aright the signs of the times, and
appraise correctly the significances of contemporaneous events that are
impelling forward both the American Baha'i Community and the nation of
which it forms a part on the road leading them to their ultimate destiny,
we cannot fail to perceive the workings of two simultaneous processes,
generated as far back as the concluding years of the Heroic Age of our
Faith, each clearly defined, each distinctly separate, yet closely related
and destined to culminate, in the fullness of time, in a single glorious
consummation.

One of these processes is associated with the mission of the American
Baha'i Community, the other with the destiny of the American nation. The
one serves directly the interests of the Administrative Order of the Faith
of Baha'u'llah, the other promotes indirectly the institutions that are to
be associated with the establishment of His World Order. The first process
dates back to the revelation of those stupendous Tablets constituting the
Charter of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan. It was held in abeyance for
well-nigh twenty years while the fabric of an indispensable Administrative
Order, designed as a divinely appointed agency for the operation of that
Plan, was being constructed. It registered its initial success with the
triumphant conclusion of the first stage of its operation in the republics
of the Western Hemisphere. It signalized the opening of the second phase
of its development through the inauguration of the present teaching
campaign in the European continent. It must pass into the third stage of
its evolution with the initiation of the third Seven Year Plan, designed
to culminate in the establishment of the structure of the Administrative
Order in all the remaining sovereign states and chief dependencies of the
globe. It must reach the end of the first epoch in its evolution with the
fulfillment of the prophecy mentioned by Daniel in the last chapter of His
Book, related to the year 1335, and associated by 'Abdu'l-Baha with the
world triumph