opagated through
the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa and of Australasia, and as
far as the islands of the Pacific, this community will find itself
securely established upon the throne of an everlasting dominion. Then will
all the peoples of the world witness that this community is spiritually
illumined and divinely guided. Then will the whole earth resound with the
praises of its majesty and greatness."

What greater reward can crown the labors of that community, now launched
on the second stage of its world mission, than that the consummation of
the second Seven Year Plan should coincide with the celebrations
commemorating the centenary of the "Year Nine," the year which alike
marked the termination of the Babi Dispensation, and signalized the birth
of Baha'u'llah's prophetic Mission? It was at a time when the Faith for
which the Bab had suffered and died was hovering on the brink of
extinction, when Baha'u'llah lay wrapped in the gloom of the Siyah-_Ch_al
of Tihran, His feet in stocks, His neck freighted with chains, and
surrounded by vile and wretched criminals, that the auspicious year 1269
A.H., acclaimed by the Bab as the "Year Nine," dawned upon the world,
ushering in the most glorious and momentous stage in the Heroic Age of the
greatest religious Dispensation in the spiritual history of mankind. To
that year He had referred as the year in which "the realities of the
created things" will "be made manifest," the year in which mankind "will
attain unto all good," in which the "Bayan," as yet "in the stage of
seed," will manifest "its ultimate perfection," in which the "embryo of
the Faith will attain the station of 'the most comely of forms,'" and in
which "a new creation" will be beheld. It was in that same year that the
"third woe," as anticipated by St. John the Divine, quickly succeeded the
second. To that same year _Sh_ay_kh_ Ahmad-i-Ahsa'i, who had heralded the
Faith of the Bab, had alluded as the year "after Hin" (68), when,
according to his written testimony, the "mystery" of the Cause of God
would be "manifested," and the "secret" of His Message "divulged." It was
in that same year that, according to Baha'u'llah Himself, "the requisite
number of pure, of wholly consecrated, and sanctified souls" had been
"most secretly consummated."

It was in such dramatic circumstances, recalling the experience of Moses
when face to face with the Burning Bush in the wilderness of Sinai, the
successive visions