"Japan will turn ablaze! Japan is endowed with a most remarkable capacity for the spread of the Cause of God!”

Despondent and sorrowful, though I be in these darksome days, yet whenever I call to mind the hopes our departed Master so confidently reposed in the friends in that Far-Eastern land, hope revives within me and drives away the gloom of His bereavement. As His attendant and secretary for well-nigh two years after the termination of the Great War, I recall so vividly the radiant joy that transfigured His Face wherever I opened before Him your supplications as well as those of Miss Agnes Alexander. What promises He gave us all regarding the future of the Cause in that land at the close of almost every supplication I read to Him! Let me state, straightway, the most emphatic, the most inspiring of them all. These are His very words, that still keep ringing in my ears; -- "Japan will turn ablaze! Japan is endowed with a most remarkable capacity for the spread of the Cause of God! Japan, with (another country whose name He stated but bade us conceal it for the present) will take the lead in the spiritual reawakening of the peoples and nations that the world shall soon witness!" On another occasion, -- how vividly I recall it! -- as He reclined on His chair, with eyes closed with bodily fatigue, He waved His hand and uttered vigorously and cheerfully these words in the presence of His friends: -- "Here we are seated calm, quiet and inactive, but the Hand of the Unseen is ever active and triumphant in lands, even as distant as Japan."

My dear and steadfast friends! Now if ever is the time for you and for us to show, by our unity, service, steadfastness and courage, the spirit that the Master has throughout His lifetime so laboriously, so persistently kindled in our hearts. Now is the time for us to prove ourselves worthy of His love for us, His trust in us and His hopes for us. Japan, He said, will turn ablaze. Let us not, in any way, whatsoever, retard the realization of His promise. Nay, let us hasten, through our service, cooperation and efforts the advent of this glorious day.

The bereaved Ladies of the Holy Household, receive with comfort and refreshing gladness any news that may come to them from that wonderful and distant land. They all know what the Master has graciously spoken about the future of the Cause in that land. They all expect from it a rapid transformation, a spiritual transformation even more sudden and startling than its material progress and advancement, for the Power of God can achieve wonders still greater than those the brilliant minds of the Japanese can achieve. This they firmly believe, for more than once, the Master has spoken of the spiritual potentialities hidden in the nature of these capable people. They all await with eagerness the joyful-tidings that your letters to them shall bear in future.

(Shoghi Effendi, excerpt from a letter written to the Baha’is of Japan, dated January 26, 1922; ‘Japan Will Turn Ablaze’, pp.  58-59) (To see the entire letter, please visit Messages to the Baha’i World)