Transcript:Ian Semple/Speaking at World Congress 1963

Transcript of: Speaking at the Bahá’í World Congress in London  (1963)  by Ian Semple

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[00:00] Beloved friends. I'm very sorry that the reason why I have the honor and pleasure of speaking to you today should be the ill health of Mr. Ioas. But this perhaps brings home to us even more than we may have before realized the tremendous sacrifices which the Hands of the Cause have made in these last years. Those of us who have had the bounty of being in the Holy Land since the election of the International Council, can testify the complete self-sacrifice of the Hands of the Cause of God.

[00:51] This religion is the first one in human history which has spread following the passing of its founder under the continuing guidance of God. We have not been left to work out, as well as we could, the way of bringing this message to the world. At every step in our history, we have been guided. We have been shepherded. We have been inspired by messages from on high. We can learn, I believe, a very great deal for use in our own lives and for our use in our own administering and teaching of the Faith by studying the way that our beloved Guardian tackled the tasks that lay before him when, as a very young man, he found himself called upon by the Master to shoulder the responsibilities of this Cause.

[02:30] We all know how, in the early years of the Guardianship there were many believers who expected Shoghi Effendi to call then and there the election of the Universal House of Justice or to implement immediately the provisions of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's Divine Plan. And we all know now, looking back on those years, how the implementation of both of these tasks depended upon many years of patient and detailed building. We have heard Mr. Estal describing how for the first 16 years of the Guardianship, our beloved Guardian addressed himself to creating those instruments with which, at a later date, the Divine Plan of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá could be put into effect. The building of those instruments did not cease with the starting of the first Seven Year Plan in the United States.

[04:00] You may say that the growth of the Cause is rather like the growth of a plant. It is an organic thing. When the first shoots of the plant pushed through the ground, we find a few small leaves. Later, the flowers and the fruits appear, but the leaves continue to grow and new leaves continue to be put forth. So with the Cause of God, the tasks that we begin at first do not cease when we take up the next stage in our work. Mr. Estal also spoke to you of the many plans which were started in different parts of the world following the initiation of the first Seven Year Plan. If we look at them, we can see how one by one, the beloved Guardian called into the same battle the forces which were being marshaled in different parts of this world. Now we stand at a time of great victory. But when that immense task was first undertaken at the beginning of the first Seven Year Plan, the prospects for the Cause of God seemed very dark.

[05:42] I would like to read you some brief passages from The Advent of Divine Justice written by our beloved Guardian, which described the conditions of those days:

"A world, torn with conflicting passions, and perilously disintegrating from within, finds itself confronted, at so crucial an epoch in its history, by the rising fortunes of an infant Faith, a Faith that, at times, seems to be drawn into its controversies, entangled by its conflicts, eclipsed by its gathering shadows, and overpowered by the mounting tide of its passions. In its very heart, within its cradle, at the seat of its first and venerable Temple, in one of its hitherto flourishing and potentially powerful centers, the as-yet unemancipated Faith of Bahá’u’lláh seems indeed to have retreated before the onrushing forces of violence and disorder to which humanity is steadily falling a victim. The strongholds of such a Faith, one by one and day after day, are to outward seeming being successively isolated, assaulted and captured. As the lights of liberty flicker and go out, as the din of discord grows louder and louder every day, as the fires of fanaticism flame with increasing fierceness in the breasts of men, as the chill of irreligion creeps relentlessly over the soul of mankind, the limbs and organs that constitute the body of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh appear, in varying measure, to have become afflicted with the crippling influences that now hold in their grip the whole of the civilized world... The one chief remaining citadel, the mighty arm which still raises aloft the standard of an unconquerable Faith, is none other than the blessed community of the followers of the Most Great Name in the North American continent."

[08:27] If Mr. Ioas had been able to address you this morning, I know that he would have spoken to you of his experiences in serving our beloved Guardian in the Holy Land. Alas, I had no such experiences. But I did have the privilege of once meeting our beloved Guardian on pilgrimage. And one among the many qualities of Shoghi Effendi which impressed me at that time was his characteristic of seizing upon the qualities that he could use in those individuals that were with him. Of course, every experience of every pilgrim is a very personal thing. It is limited by the capacities of that pilgrim. But I had the feeling in meeting our beloved Guardian that he was fully aware of every shortcoming of a person that stood before him. But he was not interested in them. He was interested only in whatever small virtues that person might possess; these he would seize, these he would foster, these he would encourage. This I believe is what he has done with the whole Baháʼí world. From the beginning of this dispensation, we have not been the illustrious ones in this earth. We have been culled out from the generality of mankind. And first Bahá’u’lláh, then ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, then our beloved Guardian have seized those souls that have come to the banner of the Most Great Name and with them have begun the task of building anew the whole world.

[10:46] So in those dark days in 1937 when the world was on the threshold of the Second World War, the beloved Guardian turned to the chief one remaining citadel in the Faith: the Baháʼís in the Western Hemisphere. The community to which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had entrusted the Tablets of the Divine Plan and with them began the inauguration of the work of that plan. We know now how it progressed, how it flourished until the time came in 1950 when the work of the Faith ended upon a new phase. The Local and National Assemblies had been built up and the international work of the Faith began to be developed. At that time, the British Baháʼí Assembly was operating the Two Year Plan. One part of which was the Africa campaign, and this campaign was the initial stage in the coordination of the activities of National Assemblies throughout the world. And of that work, our beloved Guardian wrote:

"On the success of this enterprise, unprecedented in its scope, unique in its character and immense in its spiritual potentialities, must depend the initiation, at a later period in the Formative Age of the Faith, of undertakings embracing within their range all National Assemblies functioning throughout the Bahá’í world."

[12:49] Now, looking back we can see this was foreshadowing the Ten Year Crusade. Undertakings constituting in themselves a prelude to the launching of worldwide enterprises destined to be embarked upon in future epochs of that same age by the Universal House of Justice that will symbolize the unity and coordinate and unify the activities of these National Assemblies. Indeed, the birth of this African enterprise in the opening decade of the second Baháʼí Century, coinciding as it does with the formation of the International Baháʼí Council should be acclaimed as an event of peculiar significance in the evolution of our beloved Faith. Both events will no doubt be held by posterity as simultaneous and compelling evidences of the irresistible unfoldment of a divinely appointed administrative order and of the development on an international scale of its subsidiary agencies, heralding the establishment of the supreme legislative body designed to crown the administrative edifice now being laboriously erected by the privileged builders of a divine order.

[14:22] The Africa campaign was successful to an extent which could never have been imagined at the beginning of those two years. I will remember in the local community in which I then was, one of the believers who had volunteered to pioneer in Africa. That year he was elected to the convention of the British Islands as a delegate for that community. And he said how happy this made him because he knew now he was pioneering to Africa. And therefore probably never again in his life would he be in a position to attend a national convention. He is now a member of the National Spiritual Assembly of one of the largest Baháʼí communities in the world. This is a measure of the way the achievements of this Crusade have eclipsed anything that any of us could have imagined.

[15:28] At the very beginning of the Ten Year Crusade, our beloved Guardian called upon the believers to disperse to every corner of the world. This was one of the most thrilling times, I think, in the lives of any of us who were in the Faith at that time. How the believers arose and scattered to remote islands, to new countries, to places whose language they did not know, to countries whose customs were strange to them. These were the Knights of Bahá’u’lláh who we see here before us today. Some of them laid down their lives in the countries to which they went, but they are surely also with us in spirit on this day, rejoicing.

[16:26] Following this great dispersal, the process of upbuilding and consolidation began. Here again, I think we can draw a great lesson. There is a natural human tendency to want to do one thing at a time and to want to do the last thing first. We see the goal we wish to achieve, and we try to go straight at it. Two things I think we can learn from the study of the unfoldment of the work of the Divine Plan under the infallible guidance of Shoghi Effendi. That is the patience with which he took the first steps first, the way he built up the foundation, and also the insistence with which he never lost sight of the other jobs which had to go on at the same time. I know in 1953, many of the national communities had just completed other plans. They were tired, they were victorious, but they desperately needed consolidating. We might have thought that Shoghi Effendi would have said, "Wait, build what you've already got and then later in the Crusade, we'll attend to these new territories." But no, the first thing he said was disperse to the new areas. Looking back now we can see the wisdom of this decision.

[18:09] This is a lesson which it is hard for us to learn, to realize really profoundly in our inmost beings the wisdom of the instructions which we receive, both in their detail and in their timing. For the letters we received from Shoghi Effendi with the commands of God to his army, it is God who is uniting the world. It is God who was implementing the great plan, and it is He who was instructing us in our part in His work. He knows the work we have to do, and he knows when it must be done. And this we can see again and again, looking back on the instructions of our beloved Guardian and seeing the fruits which result from obedience to those instructions.

[19:18] The growth of the Faith since the beginning of the Guardianship is something that staggers the imagination. I've culled a few statistics, not too many because it is difficult to hold those in one's head, but just a few to give some idea, not only of the speed of development but of the acceleration in this development. For example, in the languages into which Baháʼí literature has been translated: in 1921 there was Baháʼí literature in eight languages, by 1947 in 48, by 1953 in 71, by 1962 in 296, and now in at least 309. [Applause] The countries in which Baháʼís resided: in 1921, only 35; by 1947, 88; by 1953, 128; by 1962, nearly 260. And we're still about there because now we've got to the point where there are very few more countries to go to. [Applause] The incorporation of our assemblies also, this process to which our beloved Guardian attached such great importance, this formulation of the constitutions of our bodies and their legal recognition. In 1921 there were no incorporated National Assemblies. By 1947, there were five National Assemblies and 77 Local Assemblies. In 1953, 9 National Assemblies and 105 Local Assemblies. By 1962, 21 National Assemblies and some 300 Local Assemblies. Now, 41 National Assemblies and over 386 Local Assemblies. [Applause]

[22:04] We in this hall, being used to such small gatherings of Baháʼís as we find in our local communities, seem to ourselves to be a vast multitude. But what is 6,000 in a city of 10 million? And what is a city of 10 million in a country of 50 million? And what is even that in comparison with the teeming millions of India and China and the rest of the world? We are still but a small handful, a few devoted servants resting in the hand of God. But our numbers are not in themselves a prime importance. It is where we are that is so important. That is one reason I am sure why the beloved Guardian spoke always of the places where Baháʼís lived and not of the numbers of the believers in those places. And there we find also a phenomenal increase in the numbers. In 1912, there were Baháʼís in about 40 localities. By 1937, in some 300. In 1944, over 1,000. In 1950, some 2,250. By 1962, over 7,500. And in the one year since then, to this time the number has risen to nearly 13,000. [Applause] When I was getting these statistics together, I was using the pamphlet which has just been produced in Haifa, but I'm happy to say that that is now obsolete. [Applause] Mr. Haney has handed me a cable from India which was sent to the convention in the Holy Land which I would like to read to you now:

Extend heartiest Riḍván greetings, Hands, delegates, assembled Holy Land. Stop. Grace Bahá’u’lláh. Number believers: 89,008. [Applause] Assemblies: 833. [Applause] Groups: 1,945. [Applause] Isolated: 876 [Applause] Totaling 3,654 centers. Beseech prayers, Holy Shrines, assistance, guidance, progress Cause. [Applause]

[25:31] This is one of the latest pieces of news of the confirmations of Bahá’u’lláh from India. Sorry, these figures are from India, I should explain, [laughter] which has come to us. Therefore friends, few though we be, we are now established in unassailable positions throughout this world. The bases from which the next surges forward will begin are now fixed. And we can begin to look forward to victories which will eclipse even those of this tremendous Crusade. And I would like to read to complete this very brief survey of the work of our beloved Guardian the words which the Báb addressed to those 18 souls, the Letters of the Living, when at the very beginning of this dispensation he sent them forth to inaugurate the Cause of God.

[26:43] "Scatter throughout the length and breadth of this land, and, with steadfast feet and sanctified hearts, prepare the way for His coming. Heed not your weaknesses and frailty; fix your gaze upon the invincible power of the Lord, your God, the Almighty. Has He not, in past days, caused Abraham, in spite of His seeming helplessness, to triumph over the forces of Nimrod? Has He not enabled Moses, whose staff was His only companion, to vanquish Pharaoh and his hosts? Has He not established the ascendancy of Jesus, poor and lowly as He was in the eyes of men, over the combined forces of the Jewish people? Has He not subjected the barbarous and militant tribes of Arabia to the holy and transforming discipline of Muhammad, His Prophet? Arise in His name, put your trust wholly in Him, and be assured of ultimate victory."

[Applause]