The Asiatic continent, the cradle of the principal religions of mankind; the home of so many of the oldest and mightiest civilizations which have flourished on this planet; the crossways of so many kindreds and races; the battleground of so many peoples and nations; above whose horizon, in modern times, the suns of two independent Revelations--the promise and consummation of a six thousand-year-old religious Cycle--have successively arisen; where the Authors of both of these Revelations suffered banishment and died; within whose confines the Centre of a divinely-appointed Covenant was born, endured a forty-year incarceration and passed away; on whose Western extremity the Qiblih of the Bahá'í world has been definitely established; in whose heart the City proclaimed by Bahá'u'lláh as the "Mother of the World" is enshrined; within whose borders another City regarded as the "cynosure of an adoring world" and the scene of the greatest and most glorious Revelation the world has witnessed is embosomed; on whose soil so many saints, heroes and martyrs, associated with both of these Revelations, have lived, struggled and died--such a continent, so privileged among its sister continents and yet so long and so sadly tormented, now stands, at the hour of the launching of a world-encompassing Crusade, on the threshold of an era that may well recall, in its glory and ultimate repercussions, the great periods of spiritual revival which, from the dawn of recorded history have, at various stages in the revelation of God's purpose for mankind, illuminated the path of the human race. (Shoghi Effendi)
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