August 31. On this date in 1987, the Universal House of Justice wrote "The Faith advances, not at a uniform rate of growth, but in vast surges, precipitated by the alternation of crisis and victory."

 

August 31. On this date in 1987, the Universal House of Justice wrote "The Faith advances, not at a uniform rate of growth, but in vast surges, precipitated by the alternation of crisis and victory."

"The Faith advances, not at a uniform rate of growth, but in vast surges, precipitated by the alternation of crisis and victory. In a passage written on 18 July 1953, in the early months of the Ten Year Crusade, Shoghi Effendi, referring to the vital need to ensure through the teaching work a 'steady flow' of 'fresh recruits to the slowly yet steadily advancing army of the Lord of Hosts,' stated that this flow would 'presage and hasten the advent of the day which, as prophesied by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, will witness the entry by troops of peoples of divers nations and races into the Bahá'í world.' This day the Bahá'í world has already seen in Africa, the Pacific, in Asia and in Latin America, and this process of entry by troops must, in the present plan, be augmented and spread to other countries for, as the Guardian stated in this same letter, it 'will be the prelude to that long-awaited hour when a mass conversion on the part of these same nations and races, and as a direct result of a chain of events, momentous and possibly catastrophic in nature, and which cannot as yet be even dimly visualized, will suddenly revolutionize the fortunes off the Faith, derange the equilibrium of the world, and reinforce a thousandfold the numerical strength as well as the material power and the spiritual authority of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh.' This is the time for which we must now prepare ourselves; this is the hour whose coming it is our task to hasten." (31 August 1987, Universal House of Justice) [39]