“The winds of despair,” Bahá’u’lláh wrote, “are, alas,
blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the
human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos
can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably
defective.” This prophetic judgment has been amply confirmed by the common
experience of humanity. Flaws in the prevailing order are conspicuous in the
inability of sovereign states organized as United Nations to exorcise the
specter of war, the threatened collapse of the international economic order,
the spread of anarchy and terrorism, and the intense suffering which these and
other afflictions are causing to increasing millions. Indeed, so much have
aggression and conflict come to characterize our social, economic and religious
systems, that many have succumbed to the view that such behavior is intrinsic
to human nature and therefore ineradicable.
- The Universal House of Justice (‘The
Promise of World Peace, October 1985)
