Urgency of the Hour

----- Original Message -----

From: "Haynes" <haynes@ctc.com.na

To: "Farzin Aghdasi" <farzin.aghdasi@attbi.com

Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 4:20 AM

Subject: Question 36 ...

To question 36, was able to compile a few from writing of Shoghi Effendi on "urgency". There are literally hundreds more from writings of Universal House of Justice. If you wish me to, I will compile a file of such quotes, just on urgency ... just from Shoghi Effendi and the UHJ.

36.So early in His revelation Baha'u'llah urges the reader to "[m]ake haste, O my brother, that while there is yet time our lips may taste of the immortal draught." and warns that "[t]he day will surely come when the Nightingale of Paradise will have winged its flight away from its earthly abode unto its heavenly nest." Why is there such a sense of urgency? Can you cite similar urgent calls in the Writings of Shoghi Effendi and the statements of the Universal House of Justice?

1) We need but glance at the Words of Baha'u'llah and the Epistles of Abdu'l-Baha to realize the great privilege of teaching the Cause, its vital necessity, its supreme urgency, and its wide-reaching effects. These are the very words of Abdu'l-Baha: -- (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 37)

2) This is our duty, our first obligation. Therein lies the secret of the success of the Cause we love so well. Therein lies the hope, the salvation of mankind. Are we fully conscious of our responsibilities? Do we realize the urgency, the sacredness, the immensity, the glory of our task? I entreat you, dear friends, to continue, nay, to redouble your efforts, to keep your vision clear, your hopes undimmed, your determination unshaken, so that the power of God within us may fill the world with all its glory. (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 70)

3) However desirable these steps may be, it is evident that they are secondary in their importance and urgency to the pressing and ever-increasing issues that vitally affect the spread and the consolidation of the work which you are called upon to perform, and which it is my privilege to assist in and serve. I am enclosing a preliminary list of Baha'i centers throughout the world, (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 85)

4) Fully alive to the gravity of the occasion, and realizing the urgency of my sacred duty, I have, upon the receipt of the news, transmitted telegraphically through the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Persia a special message addressed in the name of the Baha'is of every land to the supreme authority in the State, expressing our profound horror at this outrageous act as well as our earnest entreaty to inflict immediate punishment on the perpetrators of so abominable a crime. (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 104)

5)Grave and manifold as are the problems confronting the struggling Faith of Baha'u'llah, none appear more significant, nor seem more compelling in their urgency, than the incredible sufferings borne so heroically by our down-trodden brethren of the East. (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 106)

6) I have urged her to direct her energies to this lofty purpose, and by the aid of her most valuable letters arouse both the East and the West to a fresh consciousness of the significance and urgency of the object you have set yourselves to achieve. (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 108)

7) Indeed, how chastening to our pride, how challenging to our enthusiasm, if we but pause for a moment amidst the world's many distractions and ponder in our hearts the vastness, the compelling urgency, the ineffable glory of what still remains unachieved. (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 111)

8) I direct my appeal with all the earnestness and urgency that this pressing problem calls for to every conscientious upholder of the universal principles of Baha'u'llah to face this extremely delicate situation with the boldness, the decisiveness and wisdom it demands. I cannot believe that those whose hearts have been touched by the regenerating influence of God's creative Faith in His day will find it difficult to cleanse their souls from every lingering trace of racial animosity so subversive of the Faith they profess. How can hearts that throb with the love of God fail to respond to all the implications of this supreme injunction of Baha'u'llah, the unreserved acceptance of which, under the circumstances now prevailing in America, constitutes the hall-mark of a true Baha'i character? (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, p. 129)

9) Urge stress for entire community extreme urgency to reinforce promptly, at whatever cost, however inadequate the instruments, the number of volunteers, both settlers and itinerant teachers, whom posterity will rightly recognize as vanguard of torch-bearers of Baha'u'llah's resistless, world-redeeming order to despairing millions of diversified races, conflicting nationalities in darkest, most severely tested, spiritually depleted continent of globe. (Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 1)

10) Such remarkable multiplication of dynamic institutions, such thrilling deployment of world-regenerating forces, North, South, East and West, endow the preeminent goal of the Second Seven Year Plan in Europe with extraordinary urgency and peculiar significance. I am impelled to appeal to all American believers possessing independent means to arise and supplement the course of the second year of the Second Seven Year Plan through personal participation or appointment of deputies, the superb exertions of the heroic vanguard of the hosts destined, through successive decades, to achieve the spiritual conquest of the continent unconquered by Islam, rightly regarded as the mother of Christendom, the fountainhead of American culture, the mainspring of western civilization, and the recipient of the unique honor of two successive visits to its shores by the Center of Baha'u'llah's Covenant. (Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, p. 4)

11) I am, I can assure you, acutely conscious of the stringency of the circumstances with which you are faced, the embarrassments under which you labor, the cares with which you are burdened, the pressing urgency of the demands that are being incessantly made upon your depleted resources. I am, however, still more profoundly aware of the unprecedented character of the opportunity which it is your privilege to seize and utilize. (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 67)

12) This fourfold challenge faces us at the very time when the world is in the midst of an economic crisis and is overshadowed with threats of war and other disasters. These conditions, far from daunting the followers of Baha'u'llah, can only drive home to us the urgency for our response. (The Universal House of Justice, A Wider Horizon, Selected Letters 1983-1992, p. 13)