Need to study history in meetings

Study classes to explain and elucidate history

"Amongst other things is the holding of the meetings for teaching so that blessed souls and the old ones from amongst the believers may gather together the youths of the love of God in schools of instruction and teach them all the divine proofs and irrefragable arguments, explain and elucidate the history of the Cause, and interpret also the prophecies and proofs which are recorded and are extant in the divine books and epistles regarding the manifestation of the Promised One, so that the young ones may go in perfect knowledge in all these degrees."

('Abdu'l-Bahá, Tablets of the Divine Plan, p. 54)

Institutes to cover Bahá’í history

“The subjects taught usually consist of Bahá’í History, Laws and Teachings, and the Administrative Order.”

(From “Suggestions on Operation of Teaching Institutes”, enclosure in a letter dated December 24, 1964 from the Universal House of Justice to the National Spiritual Assembly of Guatemala: Centres of Bahá'í Learning, no. 45)

Study classes to memorize incidents in Dawn-Breakers to use them in teaching (in demonstrating the Faith’s motivating spirit)

“Shoghi Effendi would advise the friends in Rostock to hold regular study classes and read that book with great care, committing its salient facts to memory, so that while teaching the Cause, they may be able to show the motivating spirit of the Faith by referring to some incidents of those early days.”

(On behalf of Shoghi Effendi, Light of Divine Guidance, vol. 2, p. 24)

Dawn-Breakers to be used in teaching, as textbook, arts inspiration, and preliminary to pilgrimage

“Feel impelled appeal entire body American believers to henceforth regard Nabíl’s soul-stirring Narrative as essential adjunct to reconstructed Teaching program, as unchallengeable textbook in their Summer Schools, as source of inspiration in all literary and artistic pursuits, as an invaluable companion in times of leisure, as indispensable preliminary to future pilgrimage to Bahá’u’lláh’s native land, and as unfailing instrument to allay distress and resist attacks of critical, disillusioned humanity.”

(Shoghi Effendi, cablegram dated June 21, 1932, Messages to America, p. 1)

Note:

“Certainly, the Guardian cannot have intended, when he commended Nabil’s Narrative to the friends as a source of inspiration, that there were not other sources by which their imagination could be stimulated.”

(On behalf of the Universal House of Justice, email dated 10 February 1998 to an individual believer)

Use “God Passes By” in study classes

“He is pleased to hear that the friends are intensively studying 'God Passes By', as it is most essential for them to gain not only a fuller knowledge of their Faith's history but also to see how persistently it has been attacked by enemies who once held high positions in its ranks. Indeed he hopes a perusal of this book will help not only friends and observers of the Cause to see Ahmad Sohrab in his proper colours, but also believers who are not familiar with the defections of those who were far more highly placed and who turned against the Faith in the days of Bahá'u'lláh and the Master.”

(16 October 1944, to participants at Louhelen Summer School, August 1944, quoted in the compilation “Studying the Writings of Shoghi Effendi” on-line at https://bahai-library.com/compilation_studying_writings_guardian#12 )