Unfurling the Divine Standard

... As the world passes through its darkest hour before the dawn, the Cause of God, shining ever more brightly, presses forward to that glorious break of day when the Divine Standard will be unfurled and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its melody. The Universal House of Justice.

This book of vignettes about the lives of the Hands of the Cause of God unfolds the divine standard of service and sacrifice. The individuals were praised by 'Abdu'l-Bahá as '...such blessed souls that the evidence of their sanctity and spirituality will be felt in the hearts of people.' And 'that people may turn their faces towards them for their qualities and resplendent signs.'

In challenging the Bahá'ís to manifest the one thing that would assure the triumph of the Faith of God, the beloved Guardian Shoghi Effendi would appoint during his lifetime 42 of these blessed souls who through their dynamic force of example would unfurl the divine standard of Bahá'u'lláh.* He wrote that this one thing rested on '...the extent to which their own inner life and private character mirror forth in their manifold aspects the splendour of those eternal principles proclaimed by Bahá'u'lláh.'

* Bahá'u'lláh named the first four Hands of the Cause, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá referred to four outstanding believers posthumously as Hands of the Cause; thus, rounding the total known appointees to 50.
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