1934: “the tumult which the birth of this mighty Organ of the Religion of Bahá’u’lláh has cast into the world”: - “will grow in scope and in intensity”

•  The catastrophic fall of mighty monarchies and empires in the European continent, allusions to some of which may be found in the prophecies of Bahá’u’lláh; 
• the decline that has set in, and is still continuing, in the fortunes of the Shí‘ih hierarchy in His own native land; 
• the fall of the Qájár dynasty, the traditional enemy of His Faith; 
• the overthrow of the Sultanate and the Caliphate, the sustaining pillars of Sunní Islám, to which the destruction of Jerusalem in the latter part of the first century of the Christian era offers a striking parallel; 
• the wave of secularization which is invading the Muhammadan ecclesiastical institutions in Egypt and sapping the loyalty of its staunchest supporters; 
• the humiliating blows that have afflicted some of the most powerful Churches of Christendom in Russia, in Western Europe and Central America; 
• the dissemination of those subversive doctrines that are undermining the foundations and overthrowing the structure of seemingly impregnable strongholds in the political and social spheres of human activity; 
• the signs of an impending catastrophe, strangely reminiscent of the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, which threatens to engulf the whole structure of present-day civilization

—all witness to the tumult which the birth of this mighty Organ of the Religion of Bahá’u’lláh has cast into the world—a tumult which will grow in scope and in intensity as the implications of this constantly evolving Scheme are more fully understood and its ramifications more widely extended over the surface of the globe. 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘The Dispensation of Baha’u’llah; included in ‘The World Order of Baha’u’llah’)