# Forewords and Preface to Tablets of the Divine Plan

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Horace Holley, Forewords and Preface to Tablets of the Divine Plan, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Preface to the 1974 Edition *
> 
> Revealed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during the period of the first World War, the Tablets of the
> Divine Plan were not received until after the Armistice when communication with the Holy
> Land was restored. Each Tablet, as indicated in the text, was addressed either to the Bahá’ís
> of the United States and Canada as one body, or to five regional areas of North America. In
> view of the fact that these Tablets designated the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada as
> a teaching agency chosen for an international mission, later editions were published under the
> title America’s Spiritual Mission.
> The most notable responses made to these Tablets were the unique services of Martha
> Root in Latin America, Europe and the Orient, by Mr and Mrs Hyde Dunn in Australia, and
> by Mrs. H. Emogene Hoagg and Marion Jack in Alaska. The great services of Alma
> Knobloch in Germany and Fanny Knobloch in South Africa were rendered before the Tablets
> had been revealed.
> From 1922 until 1936 the North American Bahá’ís were immersed in an effort to develop
> the institutions of the Administrative Order. It was in 1937 that the Guardian conferred upon
> America the mission of the first Seven-Year Plan, followed by the Second Seven-Year Plan
> in 1946. The Ten-Year World Crusade inaugurated in 1953 established an intercontinental
> teaching plan involving all the existing National Spiritual Assemblies of East and West. The
> Guardian had also made it clear that the Tablets of the Divine Plan constituted the Charter
> which conferred upon him the authority and obligation to establish these teaching plans.
> While the American Bahá’ís have been endowed with primacy in the work of the World
> Crusade, the restrictive title America’s Spiritual Mission is no longer appropriate for the
> Master’s Tablets, and therefore beginning with this edition the original title is resumed.
> 
> —Horace Holley
> 
> ____________________
> *   See details at bahai-library.com/marks_banani_divine_plan
> Foreword to 1977 edition
> 
> In several letters and in God Passes By Shoghi Effendi has left us moving accounts of the
> circumstances in which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá revealed the Tablets of the Divine Plan as well as
> profound insights into the continuously emerging significance of these Tablets which he has
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> characterized as the “mandate” and the supreme “Charter for the teaching”. A perusal of
> such passages from the writings of Shoghi Effendi leaves no doubt that the Tablets of the
> Divine Plan were a direct consequence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to America and a final link in
> the chain of love and care which bound Him to the friends on this continent. It is entirely
> appropriate and enormously helpful, therefore, to preface this edition of Tablets of the Divine
> Plan with the words of the beloved Guardian:
> The seeds which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ceaseless activities so lavishly scattered had endowed
> the United States and Canada, nay the entire continent, with potentialities such as it had
> never known in its history. On the small band of His trained and beloved disciples, and
> through them on their descendants, He, through that visit, had bequeathed a priceless
> heritage—a heritage which carried with it the sacred and primary obligation to arise and
> carry on in that fertile field the work He had so gloriously initiated. We can dimly
> picture to ourselves the wishes that must have welled from His eager heart as he bade
> His last farewell to that promising country. An inscrutable Wisdom, we can well
> imagine Him remark to His disciples on the eve of His departure, has, in His infinite
> bounty singled out your native land for the execution of a mighty purpose. Through the
> agency of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant I, as the ploughman, have been called upon since the
> beginning of my ministry to turn up and break its ground. The mighty confirmations
> that have, in the opening days of your career, rained upon you have prepared and
> invigorated its soil. The tribulations you subsequently were made to suffer have driven
> deep furrows into the field which my hands had prepared. The seeds with which I have
> been entrusted I have now scattered far and wide before you. Under your loving care,
> by your ceaseless exertions, every one of these seeds must germinate, every one must
> yield its destined fruit. A winter of unprecedented severity will soon be upon you. Its
> storm clouds are fast gathering on the horizon. Tempestuous winds will assail you
> from every side. The Light of the Covenant will be obscured through my departure.
> These mighty blasts, this wintry desolation, shall however pass away. The dormant
> seed will burst into fresh activity. It shall put forth its buds, shall reveal, in mighty
> institutions, its leaves and blossoms. The vernal showers which the tender mercies of
> my heavenly Father will cause to descend upon you will enable this tender plant to
> spread out its branches to regions far beyond the confines of your native land. And
> finally the steadily mounting sun of His Revelation, shining in its meridian splendor,
> will enable this mighty Tree of His Faith to yield, in the fullness of time and on your
> soil, its golden fruit.
> 
> “… His mandate embodied in the Tablets of the Divine Plan.” Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 255.
> “… the Tablets of the Divine Plan … are the Charter for the teaching of the Faith.” From a letter written on
> behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 29 September 1977, Lights of Guidance,
> no. 1628, p. 488 (1994).
> The implications of such a parting message could not long remain unrevealed to
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s initiated disciples. No sooner had He concluded His long and arduous
> journey across the American and European continents than the tremendous happenings
> to which He had alluded began to be made manifest. A conflict, such as He had
> predicted, severed for a time all means of communication with those on whom He had
> come to place such implicit trust and from whom He was expecting so much in return.
> The wintry desolation, with all its havoc and carnage, pursued during four years its
> relentless course, while He, repairing to the quiet solitude of His residence in the close
> neighborhood of Bahá’u’lláh’s hallowed shrine, continued to communicate His
> thoughts and wishes to those whom He had left behind and on whom He had conferred
> the unique tokens of His favor. In the immortal Tablets which, in the long hours of His
> communion with His dearly beloved friends He was moved to reveal, He unfolded to
> their eyes His conception of their spiritual destiny, His Plan for the mission He wished
> them to undertake. The seeds His hands had sown He was now watering with that same
> care, that same love and patience, which had characterized His previous endeavors
> whilst He was laboring in their midst.
> In God Passes By Shoghi Effendi tells us that during the Great War ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> felt acutely the virtual stoppage of all communication with most of [the] Bahá’í centers
> throughout the world. Agony filled His soul at the spectacle of human slaughter
> precipitated through humanity’s failure to respond to the summons He had issued, or to
> heed the warnings He had given. Surely sorrow upon sorrow was added to the burden
> of trials and vicissitudes which He, since His boyhood, had borne so heroically for the
> sake, and in the service, of His Father’s Cause.
> And yet during these somber days, the darkness of which was reminiscent of the
> tribulations endured during the most dangerous period of His incarceration in the
> prison-fortress of ‘Akká, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, whilst in the precincts of His Father’s Shrine,
> or when dwelling in the House He occupied in ‘Akká, or under the shadow of the Báb’s
> sepulcher on Mt. Carmel, was moved to confer once again, and for the last time in His
> life, on the community of His American followers a signal mark of His special favor by
> investing them, on the eve of the termination of His earthly ministry, through the
> revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, with a world mission, whose full
> implications even now, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, still remain
> undisclosed, and whose unfoldment thus far, though as yet in its initial stages, has so
> greatly enriched the spiritual as well as the administrative annals of the first Bahá’í
> century.
> The first eight of these Tablets were penned between March 26 and April 22, 1916.
> History records this period as one of awesome bloodletting in Europe. It is truly breathtaking
> to contemplate the devising of the Divine Strategy for the redemption of the planet in the
> midst of the din and destruction of the old order. The transforming vision of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> spreads before us the plans for the spiritual conquest of the globe. The final six Tablets were
> revealed between February 2 and March 8, 1917, barely a month before the entry of the
> 
> Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 86–7.
> Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, pp. 304–5.
> United States into the war. Of the first group, five Tablets had actually reached America and
> been published in the September 8, 1916, issue of Star of the West. After that all
> communication with the Holy Land was severed, and the remainder of the Tablets were kept
> in a vault under the Shrine of the Báb on Mt. Carmel for the duration of the war. They were
> dispatched to America at the end of the war where they were unveiled in befitting ceremonies
> during the “Convention of the Covenant” held at Hotel McAlpin in New York City on April
> 26–30, 1919.
> Although exemplary individuals like the Dunns and Martha Root had given immediate
> response to the call of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for “souls who will illumine this dark universe and
> quicken to life this dead world”, the full implementation of the Plan began in 1937 when
> Shoghi Effendi conferred on the North American Bahá’í community the mission of the First
> Seven Year Plan—“The first stage of that enterprise, which had been held in abeyance, for
> well-nigh twenty years, while the administrative institutions of the Faith were slowly taking
> shape and were being perfected.”
> The spiritual conquest of the Western Hemisphere—completed by 1944, the centennial of
> the birth of our Faith—was not the only fruit of that First Seven Year Plan. It served as a
> working model of the systematic process by which the beloved Guardian was guiding the
> Bahá’í world toward the realization of the Master’s vision. Regional plans of pioneering
> were entrusted to the friends in the East even before the end of the Second World War.
> The Second Seven Year Plan spanning the years 1946–1953 gave the valiant North
> American Bahá’í community the task of the spiritual revitalization of Europe, ravaged once
> more by the devastation and desolation of war.
> The grand stage in the unfolding realization of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan was ushered in
> by the beloved Guardian in 1953, the eve of the hundredth anniversary of Bahá’u’lláh’s
> prophetic revelations in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán, with the inception of the Ten Year
> Crusade. Although several national Bahá’í communities had already undertaken pioneering
> plans of their own before 1953, now for the first time the entire Bahá’í world was given a
> share in the fulfillment of the goals of the Master’s Plan by being woven into one mighty
> Crusade for planting the banner of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh on the entire planet.
> The Nine and the Five Year Plans (1964–1973; 1974–1979) of the Universal House of
> Justice may be seen as the successive steps in the inexorable and triumphant march of the
> *
> armies of Bahá’u’lláh to the call sounded in the Tablets of the Divine Plan. During all these
> momentous accomplishments, and the epochs yet to come, the loving voice of the Master
> heard so movingly in the prayers which accompany these Tablets, shall remain as our source
> of inspiration and confirmation.
> 
> Amin Banani
> October 1976
> Star of the West, VII:10, pp. 87–91.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of the Divine Plan, p. 80.
> Shoghi Effendi, This Decisive Hour, pp. 117–8.
> *
> The Seven Year Plan (1979–1986), the Six Year Plan (1986–1992), and the Three Year Plan (1993–1996)
> continue the process.—Ed.
> Foreword to 1993 edition
> 
> During the sixteen years since last impression of Tablets of the Divine Plan the Bahá’í
> international community has undergone [a] dramatic transformation. Notable external
> indices of growth include the completion of the Seat of the Universal House of Justice; the
> dedication of Bahá’í Houses of Worship in India and Samoa; the inauguration of radio
> stations in Ecuador, Peru, the United States, Bolivia, Panama, and Liberia; the rapid
> expansion of the Faith in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union following the collapse of the
> iron curtain; and the enrolment of large numbers of people, with some countries enlisting
> many thousands and others hundreds of thousands, bringing the Faith’s worldwide
> membership to at least five million in 1993.
> Internally, the capacity of the Bahá’í community to implement the Bahá’í teachings in
> daily life has enlarged substantially. Bahá’ís have increasingly become involved in the
> promotion of world peace, environmental causes, literacy, the work of the United Nations and
> its agencies, and projects designed to improve social and economic conditions. Bahá’í youth
> in growing numbers have participated in periods of extended service, and Bahá’í scholarship
> has emerged as a force contributing to a fuller understanding of the Bahá’í teachings. All
> betoken a greater ability of Bahá’ís to apply their religious beliefs to the world around them.
> As always in the advancement of the Cause of God, victory and crisis are locked in close
> embrace. In 1979 the Islamic revolution in Írán engulfed the mother community of the
> Bahá’í world in a firestorm of persecution. The execution of hundreds of Bahá’ís, many of
> whom occupied key positions of service at both local and national levels; the demolition of
> the House of the Báb in Shíráz; the seizure of holy places, properties, bank accounts, and
> pension funds; the dismissal of many Bahá’ís from their jobs; and the banning of Bahá’í
> administrative institutions were elements of a systematic campaign aimed at eradicating the
> Bahá’í community. However, the pressure of world opinion, aroused by the efforts of
> Bahá’ís throughout the world, induced a relaxation of overt persecution, although the Bahá’í
> Faith in Írán continues to be outlawed and its members denied basic human rights.
> Indeed, the crisis into which the Bahá’í community was thrown in 1979 proved an impetus
> to the victories that have marked the last fifteen years of growth. While presenting the case
> of the Iranian Bahá’ís to the United Nations, heads of state, parliaments, the media, and the
> public, Bahá’ís rose to a higher plane of organization and dedication. Deeply moved by the
> plight of their fellow believers, they widened the scope of their efforts and channelled their
> energies into actions worthy of the sacrifices of the Iranian Bahá’í community.
> Correspondingly, worldwide recognition of the Faith reached a new level.
> From a broader vantage point the victories of the Bahá’í community over the past sixteen
> years may be seen as further unfoldments of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan. Revealed to the
> Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada in 1916 and 1917, these remarkable documents
> elaborate on the call sounded by the Báb to the “‘peoples of the West’” to “‘issue forth’ from
> 
> From Writings and Utterances of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í Publishing Trust, New Delhi, India. 2000.
> their ‘cities’ and aid His Cause” and on intimations made by Bahá’u’lláh to the glorious
> destiny America would attain in the future and to the “‘signs of His dominion’” that would
> appear in the West. In the Tablets of the Divine Plan ‘Abdu’l-Bahá fashions in broad outline
> a master plan for the spiritual regeneration of the world and entrusts its execution to the
> Bahá’ís of North America, whom He urges to arise to propagate the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh
> throughout the planet and thereby set in motion the redemptive forces released by
> Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation.
> The task of implementing the Divine Plan fell to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s grandson, Shoghi
> Effendi, whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá appointed Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith in His Will and
> Testament. Shoghi Effendi envisioned the Divine Plan as a “laborious and tremendously
> long process” involving the establishment of the Bahá’í Administrative Order “in all the
> newly opened sovereign states, dependencies and islands of the planet, as well as in all the
> remaining territories of the globe ….”        The process began in 1921 with a “period of
> incubation” during which Shoghi Effendi introduced principles of Bahá’í administration
> and established an initial contingent of local and national spiritual assemblies. In 1937 he
> formally launched the Divine Plan with the first in a series of plans designed to carry out its
> provisions to progressively fuller degrees, a pattern the Universal House of Justice continues
> today.
> Shoghi Effendi saw the Divine Plan as consisting of epochs and stages. The first stage of
> its first epoch began with a Seven Year Plan (1937–1944) assigned to the Bahá’ís of North
> America. The second stage comprised another Seven Year Plan (1946–1953) undertaken by
> Bahá’ís of the United States and plans of varying duration pursued by the Bahá’ís of the
> British Isles; of Canada; of Central America; of South America; of Australia and New
> Zealand; of India, Pakistani, and Burma; of Germany and Austria; of Írán; of ‘Iráq; and of
> Egypt and the Sudan. The third and final stage of the first epoch was the Ten Year Crusade
> (1953–1963), which Bahá’ís throughout the world pursued in a common undertaking. The
> second epoch of the Divine Plan began in 1964 under the guidance of the Universal House of
> Justice and consists of stages marked by the Nine year Plan (1964–1973), the Five Year Plan
> (1974–1979), the Seven Year Plan (1979–1986), the Six Year Plan (1986–1992), and the
> Three Year Plan (1993–1996).
> The Divine Plan will continue to evolve throughout the Formative Age and into what
> Shoghi Effendi called the "vast reaches of time stretching into the Golden … Age …", the
> third and crowning age of the Bahá’í Dispensation. The Golden Age will witness the
> flowering of a world civilization that is “the offspring and primary purpose” of the Most
> Great Peace—the Kingdom of God on earth—the establishment of which is the object of
> Bahá’u’lláh’s revelation.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi, This Decisive Hour, p. 116.
> ibid.
> Shoghi Effendi, Messages to the Bahá’í World: 1950–1957, p. 153.
> Shoghi Effendi, This Decisive Hour, p. 73.
> Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith: Messages to America 1947–1957, p. 114.
> Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith: Messages to America 1947–1957, p. 7.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Tablets of the Divine Plan, together with His Will and Testament,
> constitute the greatest legacy He left to posterity and thus occupy a pre-eminent position
> among Bahá’í sacred scriptures. As we move farther and further away from their date of
> revelation, we witness with amazement the transforming effects that these documents exert in
> the world and return with fresh and eager eyes to glean from their lines the manifold
> meanings that hold the key to the world’s salvation.
> 
> Geoffrey W. Marks
> Publisher’s foreword to 1993 edition
> 
> Five of the fourteen Tablets in Tablets of the Divine Plan were published in Star of the
> West on September 8, 1916, before World War I severed communications between the United
> States and Palestine. After World War I all fourteen Tablets, which were translated by
> Ahmad Sohrab, were shared with the Bahá’í convention in New York City and published in a
> small volume together with comments made on the occasion by Ahmad Sohrab. The cover
> bore the title Unveiling of the Divine Plan, and the title page, the words Tablets, Instructions
> and Words of Explanation Revealed by Abdul Baha Abbas for the Assemblies and Meetings
> of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada.
> In 1936 the Bahá’í Publishing Committee brought out a small volume containing only the
> Tablets of the Divine Plan and bearing the title America’s Spiritual Mission. It was reprinted
> in 1948.
> In 1959 the Tablets were reissued under the title Tablets of the Divine Plan and were
> subsequently reprinted seven times, with corrections being made to the prayers in 1971 at the
> request of the Universal House of Justice.
> In 1977 a new edition was published, printing the Tablets in chronological order and
> including information from the Tablets on when and where they were revealed. Many
> passages translated by Shoghi Effendi replaced earlier translations.
> The 1993 edition, the first one to be made available in a pocket-size format, is designed to
> make the book available to more readers. At the request of the Universal House of Justice, a
> number of changes have been made to ensure accuracy and consistency: Several passages
> translated by Shoghi Effendi replace earlier translations; one passage and a few words have
> been retranslated to correct errors; direct quotations and paraphrases from the Qur’án and the
> Bible have been clarified; punctuation, capitalization, and lowercasing have been made
> consistent; several typographical errors have been eliminated; and footnotes are provided for
> verses from and allusions to the Qur’án and the Bible.
> To facilitate references to any edition of Tablets of the Divine Plan, the Tablets and all the
> paragraphs in the Tablets have been given numbers. This numbering system, first adopted by
> Bahá’í Verlag in its 1987 edition of Tablets of the Divine Plan, will, as it is adopted by
> publishers world-wide, enable readers to locate and refer to passages in virtually any edition.
> The paragraph numbers in Tablets 6 and 8 differ by one number from those used in the
> German edition of Tablets of the Divine Plan, for the word “Supplication”, which is part of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s text, is given a separate paragraph number in the U.S. edition.
>
> — *Forewords and Preface to Tablets of the Divine Plan (Used by permission of the curator)*