The
Signs of Impending Chaos
Never indeed have there been such widespread and basic upheavals,
whether in the social, economic or political spheres of human
activity as those now going on in different parts of the world.
Never have there been so many and varied sources of danger as
those that now threaten the structure of society. The following
words of Baha'u'llah are indeed significant as we pause to reflect
upon the present state of a strangely disordered world: "How
long will humanity persist in its waywardness? How long will injustice
continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men?
How long will discord agitate the face of society? The winds of
despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife
that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing.
The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned,
inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective."
The
disquieting influence of over thirty million souls living under
minority conditions throughout the continent of Europe; the vast
and ever-swelling army of the unemployed with its crushing burden
and demoralizing influence on governments and peoples; the wicked,
unbridled race of armaments swallowing an ever-increasing share
of the substance of already impoverished nations; the utter demoralization
from which the international financial markets are now increasingly
suffering; the onslaught of secularism invading what has hitherto
been regarded as the impregnable strongholds of Christian and
Muslim orthodoxy - these stand out as the gravest symptoms that
bode ill for the future stability of the structure of modern civilization.
Little wonder if one of Europe's preeminent thinkers, honored
for his wisdom and restraint, should have been forced to make
so bold an assertion: "The world is passing through the gravest
crisis in the history of civilization." "We stand,"
writes another, "before either a world catastrophe, or perhaps
before the dawn of a greater era of truth and wisdom." "It
is in such times," he adds, "that religions have perished
and are born."
Might
we not already discern, as we scan the political horizon, the
alignment of those forces that are dividing afresh the continent
of Europe into camps of potential combatants, determined upon
a contest that may mark, unlike the last war, the end of an epoch,
a vast epoch, in the history of human evolution? Are we, the privileged
custodians of a priceless Faith, called upon to witness a cataclysmical
change, politically as fundamental and spiritually as beneficent
as that which precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire in the
West? Might it not happen - every vigilant adherent of the Faith
of Baha'u'llah might well pause to reflect - that out of this
world eruption there may stream forces of such spiritual energy
as shall recall, nay eclipse, the splendor of those signs and
wonders that accompanied the establishment of the Faith of Jesus
Christ? Might there not emerge out of the agony of a shaken world
a religious revival of such scope and power as to even transcend
the potency of those world-directing forces with which the Religions
of the Past have, at fixed intervals and according to an inscrutable
Wisdom, revived the fortunes of declining ages and peoples? Might
not the bankruptcy of this present, this highly-vaunted materialistic
civilization, in itself clear away the choking weeds that now
hinder the unfoldment and future efflorescence of God's struggling
Faith?
Let
Baha'u'llah Himself shed the illumination of His words upon our
path as we steer our course amid the pitfalls and miseries of
this troubled age. More than fifty years ago, in a world far removed
from the ills and trials that now torment it, there flowed from
His Pen these prophetic words: "The world is in travail and
its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards waywardness
and unbelief. Such shall be its plight that to disclose it now
would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue.
And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear
that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then and
only then will the Divine Standard be unfurled and the Nightingale
of Paradise warble its melody." (Shoghi Effendi: World
Order of Baha'u'llah, Pages: 32-33)