A Closed Church and a New Calling
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When in Bahá'í history
Howard Colby Ives struggled for several months to understand the reality of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's message. He was the pastor of the Brotherhood Church in Jersey City. He had organized the church in mid-1911, but by late 1912, the church was in financial trouble and he was forced to close it. Ives wrote to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá about this and about his growing interest in the Faith. The Master turned Ives's anxiousness about the failure of his church into opportunity: "In brief: be thou not unhappy. This event has happened so that thou mayest become freed from all other occupations, day and night thou mayest call the people to the Kingdom; spread the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh; inaugurate the Era of the New Life; promulgate the Reality, and be sanctified and purified from all save God. It is my hope that thou mayest become as such."
Source: Earl Redman, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Their Midst, p. 67; the Tablet (New York, 14 November 1912) is in Howard Colby Ives, Portals to Freedom, ch. 9.
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