The ages of its infancy and childhood are past, never again
to return, while the Great Age, the consummation of all ages, which must
signalize the coming of age of the entire human race, is yet to come. The
convulsions of this transitional and most turbulent period in the annals of
humanity are the essential prerequisites, and herald the inevitable approach,
of that Age of Ages, “the time of the end,” in which the folly and tumult of
strife that has, since the dawn of history, blackened the annals of mankind,
will have been finally transmuted into the wisdom and the tranquility of an
undisturbed, a universal, and lasting peace, in which the discord and
separation of the children of men will have given way to the worldwide
reconciliation, and the complete unification of the divers elements that
constitute human society. (Shoghi Effendi, ‘The Promised Day Is Come’)
