In one of the most
remarkable Tablets revealed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, passages of which have already
been quoted on previous occasions, written in the evening of His life, soon
after the termination of the first World War, He anticipates, in succinct and
ominous sentences, the successive ebullitions which must afflict humanity, and
whose full force the American nation must, if her destiny is to be
accomplished, inevitably experience. “The ills from which the world now
suffers,” He wrote, “will multiply; the gloom which envelops it will deepen.
The Balkans will remain discontented. Its restlessness will increase. The
vanquished powers will continue to agitate. They will resort to every measure
that may rekindle the flame of war. Movements, newly born and world-wide in
their range, will exert their utmost effort for the advancement of their
designs. The Movement of the Left will acquire great importance. Its influence
will spread.”
The agitation in the Balkan
Peninsula; the feverish activity in which Germany and Italy played a disastrous
role, culminating in the outbreak of the second World War; the rise of the
Fascist and Nazi movements, which spread their ramifications to distant parts
of the globe; the spread of communism which, as a result of the victory of
Soviet Russia in that same war, has been greatly accelerated—all these
happenings, some unequivocally, others in veiled language, have been forecast
in this Tablet, the full force of whose implications are as yet undisclosed,
and which, we may well anticipate, the American nation, as yet insufficiently
schooled by adversity, must sooner or later experience.
(Shoghi Effendi, from a
letter dated June 5, 1947; ‘Citadel of Faith’)
