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This Decisive Hour · Shoghi Effendi · 581 words
I was deeply stirred by the news conveyed in your recent cable. The abiding assurance I derived from its contents eases the burden of my cares and fortifies me in my tasks. The illustrious community of the American believers, contemptuous of risk or peril, is driving ahead, relentlessly and with its whole vigor, towards the dual goal which the Seven Year Plan has set before it. The virtual completion of the contract for the gallery section of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, the inauguration of the First Story Construction Fund, the signature of the contract for the models of the Main Story, the prompt response to the Fund newly associated with the memory of the Greatest Holy Leaf, the consequent placing of a further contract for the construction of the molds, the acceleration of pioneer teaching activity and the resultant penetration of the Faith into practically every state and province in the United States and Canada—all these have, in the course of the second year of the Seven Year Plan, followed in amazingly swift succession. With dramatic swiftness, with unyielding resolve, with uncompromising fidelity and superb courage, the community responsible for such a unique demonstration of Bahá’í initiative and enterprise is overcoming the barriers, whether material or moral, that threaten to interfere with the execution of its declared purpose.
The task regarded as an essential preliminary to the crusade destined to embrace the whole of Latin America is now in full swing and is being rapidly carried out. A further step, designed to hasten the conclusion of the final phase of the ornamentation of the Temple, has also been taken. As the days roll by, as the perturbations of an imperiled civilization are more alarmingly manifested, the potentialities of God’s creative Plan correspondingly unfold, and the valor and heroism of its intrepid supporters are more widely and convincingly demonstrated. With every successful effort to muster its young and scattered forces, to perfect its methods, to extend the range of its operations, to deepen its spiritual life and to scale loftier heights of individual heroism, there will, I cannot but feel confident, be granted to this community a greater opportunity to prove its worth, and a fuller measure of celestial strength to enable it to re-enact, on the soil of the United States and Canada and throughout the entire Western Hemisphere, those stirring exploits that have shed such luster on the Apostolic Age of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Though much has thus far been achieved, yet the processes now set in motion through the evolution of the Plan are still far too rudimentary to permit even a faint glimpse of the brilliancy of the epoch in which ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá’s own Plan must come to fruition. Not ours to attempt, at the present moment, a survey of the distant scene, or to seek to visualize its glories, or to dwell on the consequences of the eventual attainment of an as yet far-off goal. Ours is the solemn, the inescapable duty to labor faithfully and unremittingly to ensure that no opportunity is being missed, that no avenues are left unexplored, that might, however indirectly, contribute to the furtherance of those tasks that claim so insistently our immediate attention. That those into whose hands this dynamic Plan has been entrusted are aware of the essential character of their obligations and will discharge worthily their duties no one, viewing the range and quality of their achievements, can entertain the slightest doubt.