ge, over which the national elected
representatives of this privileged community are presiding, will prove to
be the harbinger of still greater victories, I have been impelled to
transmit, through my special representative, who will participate on my
behalf in the proceedings of this conference and act as my deputy at the
official dedication of the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, a reproduction of the
portrait of Baha'u'llah Himself, made in the prime of His life, whilst an
exile in Ba_gh_dad, as a token of my admiration for this community's
unflagging and herculean labors, and as a benediction and inspiration for
those who, whether officially or unofficially, are participating in the
proceedings of a conference that will go down in history as the most
momentous gathering held since the close of the Heroic Age of the Faith
and will be regarded as the most potent agency in paving the way for the
launching of one of the most brilliant phases of the grandest crusade ever
undertaken by the followers of Baha'u'llah since the inception of His
Faith more than a hundred years ago.

[May 3, 1953]

All-America Intercontinental Conference--Second Message

On the occasion of the launching of an epochal, global, spiritual,
decade-long crusade, constituting the high-water mark of the festivities
commemorating the centenary of the birth of the Mission of Baha'u'llah,
coinciding with the ninetieth anniversary of the declaration of that same
Mission in the Garden of Ridvan, and synchronizing with both the
convocation of the All-American Intercontinental Teaching Conference in
Chicago, and the fiftieth anniversary of the inception of the holiest
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the Baha'i world and its dedication to public
worship--on such a solemn and historic occasion I invite His followers, the
world over, to contemplate with me the glorious and manifold evidences of
the onward march of His Faith and of the steady unfoldment of its
embryonic World Order both in the Holy Land and in the five continents of
the globe.

This infinitely precious Faith, despite eleven decades of uninterrupted
persecution, on the part of governments and ecclesiastics, involving the
martyrdom of its Prophet-Herald, the four banishments and forty-year-long
exile suffered by its Founder, the forty years of incarceration inflicted
upon its Exemplar, and the sacrifice of no less than twenty thousand of
its followers, has succeeded in firmly establishing itself in all the