A world,
- dimmed by the steadily dying-out light of religion,
- heaving with the explosive forces of a blind and triumphant nationalism;
- scorched with the fires of pitiless persecution, whether racial or religious;
- deluded by the false theories and doctrines that threaten to supplant the worship of God and the sanctification of His laws;
- enervated by a rampant and brutal materialism;
- disintegrating through the corrosive influence of moral and spiritual decadence;
- and enmeshed in the coils of economic anarchy and strife—
such is the spectacle presented to men’s eyes, as a result of the sweeping changes which this revolutionizing Force, as yet in the initial stage of its operation, is now producing in the life of the entire planet.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Advent of Divine Justice’)