h the glorious Declaration of His Mission in Baghdad; with His second
and third banishments to Constantinople and Adrianople; with the grievous
rebellion of His half-brother; with the proclamation of His own Mission;
with His fourth banishment to the desolate and far-off penal colony of
Akka in Syria; with the revelation of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy
Book; with His ascension in the Holy Land; with the establishment of His
Covenant and the inauguration of the Ministry of Abdu'l-Baha, His son and
the Exemplar and authorized interpreter of His teachings.

These opening stages in the evolution of His Faith in the Asiatic
continent were followed, while the first and Apostolic Age of His
Dispensation was drawing to a close, by the opening of the Islands
situated in the Pacific Ocean, Japan in the north, and the Australian
continent in the South. To these memorable chapters of Asian Baha'i
history another was soon added, on the morrow of the ascension of the
Centre of Baha'u'llah's Covenant, and during the initial epoch of the
Formative Age of the Faith, distinguished by the rise of the
Administrative Order and the erection of its pillars in the cradle of that
Faith, in Iraq, in India, Pakistan and Burma and in the Antipodes. This
memorable episode in its development in that vast continent was succeeded
by the initiation, during the second Epoch of that same Age, of a series
of Plans in those same territories in support of Abdu'l-Baha's Divine Plan
and as a prelude to the opening of the recently launched world-embracing
Spiritual Crusade.

The hour has now struck for this continent, on whose soil, more than a
century ago, so much sacred blood was shed, in whose very heart deeds of
such tragic heroism were performed, and in many of whose territories such
brilliant victories have been won, to contribute, in association with its
sister continents, to the progress and ultimate triumph of this global
Crusade, in a manner befitting its unrivalled position in the entire
Baha'i world.

The various Baha'i Communities dwelling within the borders of this
continent and those situated to the south of its shores in the Antipodes,
which include the oldest and most venerable among all the communities of
the Baha'i world, and whose members in their aggregate constitute the
overwhelming majority of the followers of Baha'u'llah, are called upon, in
close association with four other Baha'i communities in the Western
Hemisphere, to underta