See what Thomas Paine wrote a hundred years before Abdu'l Baha:
“We have it in our power to begin the world over again…The birthday of a new world is at hand.” (Common Sense, 1797)
There was nothing new about declaring a new world at hand at the beginning of the 20th century, it happened at the beginning of the 19th (as Paine's remark indicates), the 18th - Newton's Principia (1687) bringing Nature's secrets into the
The coming of a new world was also prophesied to happen by Return of Christ:
I quote Revelation 21:
1Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”
a for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.
3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.
4‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’
b or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
5He who was seated on the throne said, “
I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
In Baha'i View this Prophecy was fulfilled by God through Manifesting Bahaullah:
"Soon will the present-day order be rolled up, and a newone spread out in its stead. Verily, thy Lord speaketh the truth, and is the Knower of things unseen."
"Erelong shall We bring into being through thee exponents of new and wondrous sciences, of potent and effective crafts, and shall make manifest through them that which the heart of none of Our servants hath yet conceived. Thus do We bestow upon whom We will whatsoever We desire, and thus do We withdraw from whom We will what We had once bestowed. Even so do We ordain whatsoever We please through Our behest."
"THE world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed."