The Tablets of the Divine Plan Unveiled

In the spring of 1919, with communication with the Holy Land reopened after the war, nine new Tablets from 'Abdu'l-Bahá reached the Bahá'ís of America.

'Abdu'l-Bahá had revealed the fourteen Tablets now known as the Tablets of the Divine Plan between March 1916 and March 1917. He addressed them to the Bahá'ís of the United States and Canada: some to North America as a whole, others to its regions, the Northeastern, Southern, Central and Western States, and Canada. Five of the 1916 Tablets had reached America and been printed in the Star of the West in September 1916. The rest could not be sent while the war lasted.

The nine new Tablets were unveiled at the Eleventh Annual Mashrekol-Azkar Convention and Bahá'í Congress, held at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City from the 26th of April 1919. 'Abdu'l-Bahá had cabled: "Let this be the Convention of the Covenant." The Star of the West of May 17, 1919 wrote that the significance and power of the Tablets "dazzled the spiritual sight of all who attended those never-to-be-forgotten meetings." The Tablets were read day by day at the sessions, and over the following months the Star printed them together with the talks given at the Congress.

The first of the new Tablets to appear, revealed in Haifa on February 2, 1917, was addressed to the Northeastern States. It began:

All the regions in the estimation of the True One are one region and all the cities and villages are ideally equal and similar to each other.

Two others, one revealed in the garden beside the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh at Bahjí on April 8, 1916, and the other in Haifa on March 8, 1917, called on the believers of the United States and Canada to carry the teachings to Alaska, Mexico, Central America, South America and the West Indies. Of Alaska the Master wrote that one maidservant of the Merciful had already gone there, serving as a librarian in the public library and teaching the Cause as she was able, but that the call of the Kingdom had not yet been raised through that spacious territory.

Some of the friends answered soon. Martha Root set out in 1919 on a teaching journey through South America, the first of the journeys that would carry her around the world, and in 1921 Leonora Holsapple went to Brazil.

A retelling based on the Star of the West, Volume 10 (1919), reports of the Convention of the Covenant and the Tablets of the Divine Plan, with Volume 11, No. 7 (1920) and Volume 12, No. 4 (1921). For the fuller account, see the original.

Editors, S. O. T. W.. (1919). *Star of the West*. Bahai News Service. https://bahai.works/Star_of_the_West/Volume_10/Issue_4/Text