Ridvan Message

Note on the UHJ Ridvan Message for 166 BE, 2009, CE

You can read the latest Ridvan Message at:

http://info.bahai.org/ridvan-2009.html

And you can see reaction shots to the first reading of the message at:

http://news.bahai.org/2008convention/photographs/ridvan-message/

For those readers who are not familiar with this institution, you can read more on what the Universal House of Justice is at:

http://info.bahai.org/universal-house-of-justice.html

The passage that struck me was the following:

“What an extraordinary contrast did its coherence and energy
provide to the bewilderment and confusion of a world caught in a spiral of crisis! This, indeed, was the community of the blissful to which the Guardian had referred.” From the 166, B.E. UHJ Ridvan Message

This is a possible reference to:

“For upon our present-day efforts, and above all upon the extent to which we strive to remodel our lives after the pattern of sublime heroism associated with those gone before us, must depend the efficacy of the instruments we now fashion -- instruments that must erect the structure of that blissful Commonwealth which must signalize the Golden Age of our Faith.” (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 98)

Or:

“My chief concern is not with the happenings that have distinguished the First, the Apostolic Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation, but rather with the outstanding events that are transpiring in, and the tendencies which characterize, the formative period of its development, this Age of Transition, whose tribulations are the precursors of that Era of blissful felicity which is to incarnate God's ultimate purpose for all mankind.” (Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, p. 171)

Or, perhaps most likely, this (note the reference to "world polity"):

"The civilization," writes Bahá'u'lláh, "so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men... If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation... The day is approaching when its flame will devour the cities, when the Tongue of Grandeur will proclaim: 'The Kingdom is God's, the Almighty, the All-Praised!'"

"From the moment the Suriy-i-Ra'is (Tablet to Ra'is) was revealed," He further explains, "until the present day, neither hath the world been tranquillized, nor have the hearts of its peoples been at rest... Its sickness is approaching the stage of utter hopelessness, inasmuch as the true Physician is debarred from administering the remedy, whilst unskilled practitioners are regarded with favor, and are accorded full freedom to act. The dust of sedition hath clouded the hearts of men, and blinded their eyes. Erelong they will perceive the consequences of what their hands have wrought in the Day of God."

"This is the Day," He again has written, "whereon the earth shall tell out her tidings. The workers of iniquity are her burdens... The Crier hath cried out, and men have been torn away, so great hath been the fury of His wrath. The people of the left hand sigh and bemoan. The people of the right abide in noble habitations: they quaff the Wine that is life indeed from the hands of the All-Merciful, and are, verily, the blissful."

“Who else can be the blissful if not the community of the Most Great Name, whose world-embracing, continually consolidating activities constitute the one integrating process in a world whose institutions, secular as well as religious, are for the most part dissolving?

They indeed are "the people of the right," whose "noble habitation" is fixed on the foundations of the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh -- the Ark of everlasting salvation in this most grievous Day. Of all the kindreds of the earth they alone can recognize, amidst the welter of a tempestuous age, the Hand of the Divine Redeemer that traces its course and controls its destinies.

They alone are aware of the silent growth of that orderly world polity whose fabric they themselves are weaving.

(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha'u'llah, pp. 193-194)