We are told by Shoghi Effendi that two great processes are
at work in the world: the great Plan of God, tumultuous in its progress,
working through mankind as a whole, tearing down barriers to world unity and
forging humankind into a unified body in the fires of suffering and experience.
This process will produce, in God's due time, the Lesser Peace, the political
unification of the world. Mankind at that time can be likened to a body that is
unified but without life. The second process, the task of breathing life into
this unified body of creating true unity and spirituality culminating in the
Most Great Peace is that of the Bahá'ís, who are labouring consciously, with
detailed instructions and continuing divine guidance, to erect the fabric of
the Kingdom of God on earth, into which they call their fellow-men, thus
conferring upon them eternal life.
The working out of God's Major Plan proceeds mysteriously in
ways directed by Him alone, but the Minor Plan that He has given us to execute,
as our part in His grand design for the redemption of mankind, is clearly
delineated.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a letter dated 8 December 1967 to an individual believer; compilation ’Holocaust, the Greater
Plan of God, and the Destiny of the Jewish People’, prepared by the Research
Department of the Universal House of Justice; also in ‘Messages from the
Universal House of Justice 1963-1986)