March 29, 2020

1985: 150,000 new believers have joined the Baha'i Faith in India

In India alone, over 150,000 new believers have joined the Baha'i community… 
- The Universal House of Justice  (From a message dated 3 January 1985 to the followers of Baha'u'llah in every land; ‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963-1986’)

March 23, 2020

The “marked improvement in the conditions surrounding the pilgrimages” during 1844-1944

…we can even bear witness to the marked improvement in the conditions surrounding the pilgrimages performed by its devoted adherents to its consecrated shrines at its world center—pilgrimages originally arduous, perilous, tediously long, often made on foot, at times ending in disappointment, and confined to a handful of harassed Oriental followers, gradually attracting, under steadily improving circumstances of security and comfort, an ever swelling number of new converts converging from the four corners of the globe, and culminating in the widely publicized yet sadly frustrated visit of a noble Queen, who, at the very threshold of the city of her heart’s desire, was compelled, according to her own written testimony, to divert her steps, and forego the privilege of so priceless a benefit. 
- Shoghi Effendi  (‘Preface to God Passes By’)

March 16, 2020

The “appreciable advance in the rise” of the institutions of the Faith during 1844-1944

We can likewise discern a no less appreciable advance in the rise of its institutions, whether as administrative centers or places of worship—institutions, clandestine and subterrene in their earliest beginnings, emerging imperceptibly into the broad daylight of public recognition, legally protected, enriched by pious endowments, ennobled at first by the erection of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of ‘Ishqábád, the first Bahá’í House of Worship, and more recently immortalized, through the rise in the heart of the North American continent of the Mother Temple of the West, the forerunner of a divine, a slowly maturing civilization. 
- Shoghi Effendi  (‘Preface to God Passes By’)

March 10, 2020

1984: The Pacific region and the Baha’i Faith – a brief summary by the Universal House of Justice

In reviewing the religious history of the Pacific during the Baha'i Dispensation we recall that it was only a short time prior to the Declaration of the Bab that the Teachings of Christ spread throughout these islands; that the Teachings of Baha'u'llah were first proclaimed there when the Hand of the Cause Agnes Alexander arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in December 1901; that at the beginning of the World Crusade in 1953 only a handful of islands had had any contact with the Faith; and that at Ridvan 1959 when the first regional National Spiritual Assembly of the South Pacific was established in Suva there were in its area but twelve Local Spiritual Assemblies in nine island groups. Witness now what has happened in the quarter century since 1959.
  • The first reigning monarch in the world to embrace the Faith of Baha'u'llah is the Head of State of Western Samoa whose official residence is near the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar.
  • There are now a total of thirteen National Spiritual Assemblies in the homelands of the Polynesians, the Melanesians and the Micronesians.
    • The Caroline Islands
    • Fiji
    • The Hawaiian Islands
    • Kiribati
    • The Mariana Islands
    • The Marshall Islands
    • New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands
    • Papua New Guinea
    • Samoa
    • The Solomon Islands
    • Tonga
    • Tuvalu
    • Vanuatu