The Watchtower — December 1, 1950

Does Papal Encyclical Resist Compromise?

AUGUST 21 marked the release of the official English translation of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis (Of Mankind). Its target was those Catholic churchmen who, in the interests of unity and of forming a solid religious front against atheism, would compromise on or set aside differences in dogma.

But was it the principle of compromise that the pope really objected to? In countries where she is powerful the Catholic Church declares that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are pernicious errors to be stamped out, but in democratic lands where the Church is a minority her spokesmen champion such freedoms. Is that not compromising her principles?

The Catholic Encyclopedia says, “Union with the Church is not merely one out of various means by which salvation may be obtained: it is the only means.” Papal bulls and Church catechisms have said the same, and in this latest encyclical the pope lamented, “Some reduce to a meaningless formula the necessity of belonging to the true church in order to gain salvation.” Yet when four Catholic teachers in Catholic schools in Boston protested that Jesuit Keleher, president of Boston College, taught heresy in saying there was salvation outside the Church, the teachers were fired. Their appeals to the Vatican were futile, for the Vatican knew that its doctrine of no salvation outside the Catholic Church would not be popular in the United States democracy. Was not the Vatican compromising?

And is it not in an effort to compromise with science that the Catholic Church says that God may have made man’s body by evolution, and then created a soul to go into that evolved body? The Catholic Encyclopedia states, “That God should have made use of natural, evolutionary, original causes in the production of man’s body, is per se not improbable, and was propounded by St. Augustine.” And again the pope in his recent encyclical echoes this view when he declares that studies in evolution must be limited to “inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God”.

In his encyclical the pope acknowledged “the word of God as contained in the sacred scripture as the foundation of all religious teaching”; yet this compromise with evolution cannot have foundation in the Scriptures. Why not? Because souls existed long before man was created. When making water animals God said, “Let the waters swarm with an abundance of living soul.” Again, “God created the great sea-monsters, and every living soul that moveth.” As to land animals, “God said, Let the land bring forth living soul after its kind, tame-beast and creeping thing and wild-beast.” (Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, Ro) Hence living souls were in existence before “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”. (Gen. 2:7) Numbers 31:28 shows that animals are souls. Ecclesiastes 3:18-20 shows the close similarity between men and beasts in death, and Ezekiel 18:4 proves that human souls die. No scripture even intimates that God implanted in man’s body an immortal soul.

If the pope is concerned over compromise that contaminates the faith, why limit concern to modern trends? Why not cleanse the Catholic Church of the pagan teachings it embraced at the time of Emperor Constantine, in the fourth century? From that time forward the Church has opened its arms to such paganisms as trinity, purgatory, eternal torment, prayers for the dead, use of rosaries and images, cross worship, and many others. In defense of adopting such paganisms Cardinal Newman said the Church did “transmute the very instruments and appendages of demon-worship to an evangelical use” and added that they “are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church”. (Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine) Such hierarchy reasoning, however, collides head-on with 2 Corinthians 6:14-16: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?”

Actually, it is not so much compromise that the pope opposes. Catholic Church history reeks with many kinds of compromises. What the pope fears are the compromises of priests made independent of the Church. He fears their drift from papal control, and that is why his encyclical repeatedly hammers home the assertion that the Church is the “teaching authority”. But is the Catholic Church the “teaching authority”, the “faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season”? (Matt. 24:45) No organization that provides pagan doctrines as spiritual “meat in due season” could be, for 1 Corinthians 10:21 states: “Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.”

Nor can the Catholic Church pass as the teaching authority on the basis of her claim to be built on Peter. There is no proof that she is founded on him. He would not accept money for divine favors; the priests do. (Acts 8:20) He would not allow another man to kneel at his feet; the popes have men kiss theirs. (Acts 10:26) Moreover, the true church of Christ is not built on Peter, but on Christ. He is the one the Jews rejected as cornerstone for the spiritual temple, not Peter. He is the one Peter himself identified as the Chief Cornerstone, and added that other anointed Christians are living stones built up as a spiritual temple on Him. As for Peter, he claimed no infallibility, was corrected and taught by Paul, and was spoken of as only one of the twelve apostolic foundation stones.—Isa. 28:16; 1 Pet. 2:4-8; Gal. 2:11-14; 2 Pet. 3:15, 16; Rev. 21:14.

In view of all these conflicts between the Catholic Church and the Bible, we can understand this papal encyclical’s lament concerning men now turning to the Bible: “It is a matter of regret that not a few of these, the more firmly they accept the word of God, so much the more do they diminish the value of human reason, and the more they exalt the authority of God and revealer, the more severely do they spurn the teaching office of the church.”

An Open Letter to the Catholic Monsignor

Oct. 11, 1950.

To Matthew Smith,

Monsignor of the Roman Catholic Church in America,

c/o The Register,

Catholic Press Soc., Inc. Denver, Colo.

Before us is a copy of The Catholic Telegraph-Register, Section Two, dated Friday, August 18, 1950, containing an article signed by you. It occupies parts of three columns in the lower left-hand corner of page one and continues on page four for two full-column lengths, and is entitled: “Listening In,” with the subheading, “Sect Rewrites Parts of Bible to Fit Beliefs.” Also before us is a copy of the identical article by you appearing in The St. Louis Register of the same date, from which fact is to be gathered that your article was published quite generally in the 32 Diocesan editions of The Register published in as many cities. Your article therefore gained nation-wide publicity.

You open and close your article with a reference to the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, released at Yankee Stadium, Wednesday, August 2, the fourth day of the International Assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses there. During the remaining four days of which Assembly 85,850 copies of this new translation were placed with the conventioners. We being the printers who have come into possession of the publication rights of this translation, we feel the obligation of making some answer to your article. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the general public who read your adverse article is expecting a published reply from us, and we do not want either to disappoint these or to fail in our obligation to the Most High God and his recorded Word.

Your article appears to be based entirely on what the news reporters had to say about the speeches and releases offered at the Yankee Stadium Assembly, and not upon a personal examination of the literature that was released. For instance, your remark (¶ 17): “All this will be wholly different from the perpetual earthly happiness promised by the Witnesses. Their idea, if the newspapers are correctly quoting their leaders, is closer to a Mohammedan idea than to a Christian one.”

Hearsay (“Listening In”) is a very unreliable foundation on which to make such an assertion in the public press in criticism of a group of Christians, who, though a minority, have circulated their literature around the earth in more than 90 languages in excess of half a billion copies of bound books and booklets, besides hundreds of millions of free tracts and magazines.

Your article admits that in his public address of August 6 on “Can You Live Forever in Happiness on Earth?” the Watch Tower Society’s president N. H. Knorr answered the question in the affirmative. Following his lecture 250,000 copies of his speech, in a 32-page booklet, were distributed free to all in attendance, numbers taking many copies each, so that what Mr. Knorr said was freely available in print. You, with your Catholic means of obtaining information, could easily have procured a copy of this booklet. Those who heard or read this speech know that it has no resemblance to Mohammedanism but is based wholly upon the inspired Scriptures and the modern-day fulfillments of prophecy.

You say, “The idea of a perpetual reign of the saints on earth is repulsive to the majority of Christians,” “Heaven will not be a glorified earth,” and, “It is to be hoped, therefore, that Jehovah’s Witnesses will not place all their faith in the absurdity of an earthly kingdom that will never die.” (¶¶ 15, 16, 22) In none of their speeches or publications have Jehovah’s witnesses taught that ‘heaven will be a glorified earth’; but it is you, Monsignor, and your religious system that teach that people of your faith will take their earthly bodies to heaven.

Jehovah’s witnesses, however, adhere strictly to the inspired Scriptures and believe what the apostle John says about those of the “little flock” of Christians who will go to the heavenly kingdom: “Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God; and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know, that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him: because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2, Douay Version) We believe with the apostle John in a distinction between heaven and earth, and we accept his vision of the future in which he says: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more.” (Apocalypse 21:1, Douay) Certainly that new earth is to be populated with creatures of the earth, earthy, for Isaias 45:18 declares that the Lord God did not create the earth in vain: “he formed it to be inhabited.”

It is useless for you to counter with the argument that the apostle John saw only an apocalyptic vision. Not only the prophet Isaias speaks also of a new heavens and new earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22), but so does the apostle Peter. He describes the destruction of the present heavens and earth in which injustice dwells and then says: “But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises, in which justice dwelleth.”—2 Peter 3:13, Douay.

In harmony with the infallible Scriptures, Jehovah’s witnesses teach that Christ’s footstep followers who overcome this world will reign with him, not in the “new earth”, but in the “new heavens”; and obedient mankind on the “new earth” will be blessed by the invisible, heavenly reign of Jesus Christ and his glorified followers, his bride. (Apocalypse 2:26-28; 3:21; 20:4-6) If this is “repulsive”, it is repulsive to the majority of professed Christians who do not accept God’s Word but who have been indoctrinated with religious traditions of men contrary to God’s Word. (Matthew 15:1-9, Douay) Your hopes, therefore, that we will not place our faith “in the absurdity of an earthly kingdom that will never die” are ill-founded and are needless. We do not hope for such a thing, but preach “the kingdom of HEAVEN” as the rightful government for all the universe. Modern events fulfilling sacred prophecy prove that this heavenly kingdom is at hand and will remove the Devil’s rule of earth; and because of this fact we can assure people of good will that they can live forever in happiness on earth under the heavenly kingdom of Christ and his glorified congregation. Then, in answer to the Lord’s prayer, God’s name will be hallowed and his will will forever be done on earth as it is done in heaven.

NO REWRITING OF PARTS OF THE BIBLE

Your article (¶ 2) states: “Newspaper accounts indicated that the ‘translation’ changed the texts to fit Witnesses’ doctrines.” Then, to make it appear that Jehovah’s witnesses are mutilating the Christian Greek Scriptures, you quote the New York Times’ report as saying: “Rejecting the idea of the Holy Trinity, the Bible society translation replaces the phrase ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ used frequently throughout the King James version with ‘the spirit and the water and the blood’ (1 John v. 7).”

First of all, the newspaper report errs in saying that the phrase “the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” is used frequently throughout the King James Version. It is not so used even in the Catholic Douay Version. The one place in the Scriptures where the phrase does occur, namely, at Matthew 28:19, the New World Translation renders the verse: “Go therefore and make disciples of people of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit.” In a corresponding passage, namely, 2 Corinthians 13:14, this translation reads: “The undeserved kindness of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the sharing in the holy spirit be with all of you.”

No parts of the Bible have been rewritten in this New World Translation to fit the beliefs of Jehovah’s witnesses, as you blatantly assert. The Translation Committee did not construct its own Greek text of the Christian Scriptures. No; but on page 8 of the Foreword it notifies us that the Committee used the 1948 Macmillan Company edition of the Westcott and Hort text of 1881, besides S. C. E. Legg’s editions of Matthew and Mark, and that it also took into consideration “other texts, including that prepared by D. Eberhard Nestle and that compiled by the Spanish Jesuit scholar José María Bover and that by the other Jesuit scholar A. Merk”. Concerning the same Greek text mainly used by the Committee, E. J. Goodspeed says in his Preface in “An American Translation” (1939): “I have closely followed the Greek text of Westcott and Hort, now generally accepted. Every scholar knows its great superiority to the late and faulty Greek texts from which the early English translations from Tyndale to the Authorized Version were made.”

So the New World Translation has rewritten no part of the Greek text, not even 1 John 5:7 which is cited in your article as a place where Jehovah’s witnesses clash with the trinitarian doctrine. Does the New World Translation here replace the phrase “the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” with the phrase “the spirit and the water and the blood”? No! How could the latter phrase be used as a replacement when it is already there in the Greek text? But it is the former phrase that is not there.

The New World Translation of 1 John 5:7, 8 reads: “For there are three witness bearers, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement [margin: are for the one thing].” This is a literal translation of the Greek text by the above-named Augustinus Merk, S.J., in his Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine; it is also a literal translation of the Greek text by the other Roman Catholic scholar, Joseph M. Bover, S.J., in his Novi Testamenti Biblia Graeca et Latina; as well as of Nestle’s Novum Testamentum Graece and of the Westcott and Hort Greek text. So you see that even those Jesuit scholars do not include in their Greek texts the words, “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. And there are three that give testimony on earth.” (Douay) Those words are now recognized by all genuine scholars as spurious to the authentic Greek text. Your own precious Vatican Manuscript No. 1209 of the early 4th century does not contain the words, but brands them spurious.

The French Catholic Bible by Canon A. Crampon puts those words in brackets and says in the footnote: “The words put in brackets are not found in any Greek manuscript prior to the 15th century, nor in any manuscript of the Vulgate prior to the 8th.” The Catholic German translation by P. Johann Perk of 1947 puts the words in parentheses and explains in a footnote. It is true that the Jesuit scholars Merk and Bover show the words in their parallel Latin text, but, please, note this: Bover and Cantera do not include the words in their Spanish translation of 1947. Also, the words do not appear in the Latin text of the Novum Testamentum Latine by J. Wordsworth and H. J. White of 1911, and which is rendered according to St. Jerome’s edition. Their footnote says they print the Latin text without the disputed words, in harmony with the Latin manuscripts Amiatinus, Armachanus, Fuldensis, Sangermanensis, and the original Vallicellanus, these manuscripts being of the 6th to the 9th centuries. The footnote adds that the words appear in the Latin manuscripts Cavensis, the revised Vallicellanus, of the 9th century, and the Sixtine and Clementine editions of the Vulgate of the 16th century.

Please note other Roman Catholic translations that omit the words: The Spanish translation of 1948 by Nácar and Colunga; the French translation by Canon E. Osty, of 1949, and the French Catholic Bible of 1949 by the Monks of Maredsous; and the Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures by Rev. Cuthbert Lattey, S.J., of 1948. These read like the 1950 New World Translation.

Thus on the main text that is cited for charging Jehovah’s witnesses with rewriting parts of the Bible to fit their beliefs you are proved false. The New World Translation stands vindicated, and it will remain so against any future attacks from any quarter.

THE DIVINE NAME

The last four paragraphs of your article are grouped under the heading “Jehovah Not Correct as God’s Name”. Here you open by saying: “Something of the shallow scholarship in the sect in adopting the word Jehovah as part of its title is shown by the Catholic Biblical Encyclopedia’s treatment of this word: . . . .” And your closing paragraph says: “We fear that all the other scholarship of the Witnesses, including what they have done in their translation of the New Testament, is on the same basis as their use of the word Jehovah.”

Thank you for this opportunity to present some facts to you and to the public. We do not say that “Jehovah” is the correct pronunciation of God’s name. For that matter, neither is “Jesus” the correct pronunciation of Christ’s name. But according to the Aramaic language which Christ and his apostles spoke, his name was pronounced “Yeshuʹa” (the a representing a gutteral ending). But “Jesus” is only our colloquial way of pronouncing his name, and we do not find fault with you for using it instead of Yeshuʹa. However, if you call it shallow scholarship for the Committee to use the word Jehovah in the New World Translation, then you will have to admit that it is due to the shallow scholarship of the Roman Catholic clergy of the thirteenth century, for in that century the word historically appears among them.

Your quotation from the Catholic Biblical Encyclopedia says Jehovah was the incorrect pronunciation given to the Hebrew tetragrammaton JHVH in the 14th century by Porchetus de Salvaticis (1303). But let us say: The origin of the word Jehovah used to be attributed to Petrus Galatinus, a Franciscan friar, the confessor of Pope Leo X, in his De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis, published in 1518. But the latest scholarship has proved he was not the one to introduce the pronunciation Jehovah, and neither was your aforementioned Porchetus de Salvaticis. As shown by Joseph Voisin, the learned editor of the Pugio Fidei (The Poniard of Faith) by Raymundus Martini, Jehovah had been used long before Galatinus. Even a generation before Porchetus de Salvaticis wrote his Victoria contra Judaeos (1303), the Spanish Dominican friar Raymundus Martini wrote his Pugio, about 1278, and used the name Jehovah. In fact, Porchetus took the contents of his Victoria largely from Martini’s Pugio. And Scaliger proves that Galatinus took his De Arcanis bodily from Martini’s Pugio. Galatinus did not introduce the pronunciation Jehovah, but merely defended it against those who pronounced the Hebrew tetragrammaton Jova.

In 1557 Jehovah became established in John Forster’s New Hebrew Dictionary, and Marcus Marinus admitted Jehova in his Lexicon Arca Noae of 1593. Sebastian Muenster uses the name Jehova in his text of his Latin translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (1534), and in his notes on Exodus 3:15 and Ex 6:3 he uses the name as though it were well known. Also in 1557, in bringing out Pagninus’ Latin version of the Hebrew Scriptures, Robert Stephanus used Jehova uniformly for the Hebrew tetragrammaton. In a note on Psalm 2:1 he remarked that substituting Adonai for it was to be rejected as a Jewish superstition.

Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetanus in his Commentary on the Pentateuch, of 1531, regularly used Jehova. In his translation of Genesis 2:4 he has “Jehova Elohim”; and in his note on Exodus 6:3 he says: “Jehovah the God of your fathers appeared to me (Iehova Elohe patrum vestrorum visus est mihi).” To be consistent, you should call that “shallow scholarship” on the part of your cardinal, what?

But that such “shallow scholarship” is not limited to Roman Catholic clergy of the 13th to the 16th centuries, please be apprised that in an edition of the French Catholic Bible by Abbé A. Crampon of 1905 he used Jehovah in his text; this has since been amended to read “Yahweh” according to our copy of the 1939 edition. But note also the following.

You are also doubtless acquainted with the magazine The Grail, published in St. Meinrad, Indiana. Well, in the February, 1949, issue of this magazine appeared the article “Jona, God’s Problem Prophet” by Philip Dan Stack. In it we read: “Now the word of Jehovah came unto Jona the son of Amittay* [Footnote*: ‘All quotations from Sacred Scripture in this essay are from The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scripture, edited by The Rev. Cuthbert Lattey, S.J.; this accounts for the unusual spelling of certain proper names.’], saying, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and denounce it; for their wickedness is come up before me.’ (Jona 1:1-2) . . . A fine chance he, an insignificant prophet from Gath-hefer, would stand in forcing penance upon the fabulous Ninevites, who did not even know his own God’s name.” From page 54 to page 58 the name Jehovah is used 30 times, twice being spelled Jahve, and the version from which it is quoting is, mind you, the Westminster Version by a Jesuit Reverend! Was that not quite “shallow scholarship” to set before Catholic readers? Does it not make you blush to be confronted with such “shallow scholarship” on the part of Roman Catholic publications and authors in this twentieth century?

The pronunciation Jahweh, usually credited to John L. Ewald of the 18th century, goes back farther, to the 16th century. Ten years before Ewald was born (1747), Jahveh was found in Eichhorn’s Simonis, the Lexicon in most general use in Germany. F. H. Gesenius adopted the pronunciation Jahveh when Ewald was still defending Jehovah.

Why, then, does the New World Translation use the name Jehovah 237 times in its main text? Is it due to “shallow scholarship”, as you insinuate? No. In the Foreword, from page 10 to page 25, the Translation Committee explains its basis for using this name so many times. In addition to the 19 Hebrew versions, it cites versions of the “New Testament” in 38 languages besides English and Hebrew where the translators use a vernacular form of the Hebrew tetragrammaton. But in its 2nd last paragraph the Translation Committee says: “While inclining to view the pronunciation ‘Yah·wehʹ’ as the more correct way, we have retained the form ‘Jehovah’ because of people’s familiarity with it since the 14th century. Moreover, it preserves, equally with other forms, the four letters of the tetragrammaton JHVH.” And in its footnote⁠^a of page 36, on Matthew 1:20 where “Jehovah’s angel” appears, it says: “Jehovah’s, or, Yahweh’s.”

At the Yankee Stadium, when giving his speech introducing the New World Translation, the Society’s president said: “But, while recognizing the merits of the pronunciation ‘Yah·wehʹ’, the translation committee has used the form ‘Jehovah’ because of its familiarity and because it preserves the four original letters of the Hebrew name. In God’s own time when He reveals the correct pronunciation of his holy name, we will gladly make the accurate correction.”—See The Watchtower, September 15, 1950, page 317 ¶ 14.

The true scholarship behind the New World Translation will make itself known, not by the disclosure of the names of the translating committee, but by the faithfulness of the translation to the Greek text and by the reliable help it gives toward understanding God’s written revelation to men. We are not troubled, therefore, by your thrust: “Albeit the identity of the translators is being withheld at their own request—they are not likely to make much impression on either Catholic or Protestant scholars. It is no wonder that the translators wish to remain unknown.” (¶ 7)

Not praise from the scholarship of this fading world, but the true service of God and the education of the people in his Word, is what we are after. The honesty, courage and firm foundations of this translation will commend it to honest seeking hearts. Already the fact that the universally known Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society publishes this New World Translation has been more of a recommendation to lovers of God’s Word than the mere scholarship of Christendom.

We are releasing this letter for publication in The Register, in fair play, as our answer to your article. Regardless of whether any of the affiliates of The Register publish this answer in whole or not, the Watchtower magazine will gladly publish it and thus it will reach its way to the public to whom it is due.

Sincerely,

WATCH TOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY

Happy are you when people reproach you and persecute you and lyingly say every kind of wicked thing against you for my sake. Rejoice and leap for joy, since your reward is great in the heavens; for in that way they persecuted the prophets prior to you.—Matt. 5:11, 12, NW.

Mobsters Break Up Assembly in Missouri

JEHOVAH’S witnesses arrange for a three-day circuit assembly of Christian people, September 1-3, in Kennett, Mo. This is a little town of six or seven thousand located in the southeastern corner of the state. The Blue Room above the Palace Cafe is obtained, preliminary preparations are completed, and the Friday evening session is peaceably held.

Early the next morning the witnesses are on the streets extending to the good citizens of the community knowledge and information which will enable them to chose the way of life that leads to God’s glorious kingdom, the new world of righteousness long ago promised. In fact, the public lecture scheduled to be given the next afternoon, and to which the people are invited, is entitled “Choose Life that You May Live”.

At first a few sneering voices are heard, then threats of violence are hurled, and finally, by late afternoon the whole atmosphere is filled with the nasty storm clouds of mob violence. A bully by the name of Coy Bannister goes from one barroom to the next tanking up on alcohol, and at the same time tries to get a mob organized. He is joined by a couple of other rogues, Paul Patton and “Buck” Estes, and the three form the nucleus of a mob that swells until it numbers 100 or 150. They mill around the streets, rip placards from the backs of helpless witnesses, pounce on lone witnesses, beating up those they are able to overpower.

Meantime, the mayor of the town, apparently an honest and upright man, does everything in his power to avoid bloodshed. But how helpless he is! There are only six men on his police force. He calls the governor of the state. He calls the state police. It is now late afternoon when he and the sheriff, the prosecuting attorney, the owner of the hall, and several others come to see the besieged witnesses at the hall and lay plans for their deliverance. It being impossible to hold any kind of public lecture the next day in this mob-infested town, it is agreed by all that evacuation must be made Saturday night. “While you’re in session,” the mayor says, “we will make all arrangements for your removal.”

Around six o’clock the evening program gets under way, while the limited police force guards the two entrances. Kingdom songs are sung, Jehovah’s direction is asked and the entire meeting is put in his hands. Field experiences are related, and, needless to say, there are many interesting ones. The crowd outside cannot understand how the witnesses can remain so cool, and many of them will long remember the beautiful songs that are sung to Jehovah’s praise. Even the state police, the mayor and other officials marvel at the coolness of these Christians in the face of so much opposition. During the meeting an attempt is made to cut the light wires, and at one time the mob charges the back door trying to force entrance. The state police stationed there draws his gun and holds them off.

It is now about 9 p.m., the meeting is over and the National Guard is prepared to evacuate the witnesses. Martial law is declared. The crowd outside, now numbering upward of 2,000, is ordered to the opposite side of the street. The iron door to the hall is opened and down come the witnesses. Steel-helmeted guardsmen with fixed bayonets now patrol the sidewalks maintaining law and order. Truly it is a strange sight, for one now sees among the guardsmen some of those who only a short time ago were among the mobsters. Ordered into uniforms they are now forced to act as protectors of the very Christian men and women they sought to destroy. It reminds one of how Jehovah turned the tables on wicked Haman.—Esther 6:4-13.

And as in that ancient case, so here in Kennett, many people are very much opposed to this violent outbreak of devilish mob spirit. The “sheep” are thus divided from the “goats”. (Matt. 25:31-46) In conclusion this eyewitness account, as related by the circuit and district servants, tells how the broken-up assembly was moved a hundred miles away to Cape Girardeau for the final day’s sessions. There, eleven were baptized and about 200 attended the public lecture.

Simeon Realizes His Heart’s Desire

IN EDEN God foretold the coming of the One who would bruise the serpent’s head. Later, to Abraham, God identified that One as he who was to bless all the families of the earth. Under inspiration Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, when on his deathbed, foretold the coming of that One, Shiloh, to whom the people would gather. Moses prophesied of the coming of that One, and that he would be a prophet greater than Moses. David, king and poet, sang of the glories of His kingdom. Isaiah foretold that he would be born of a virgin, and Micah recorded that that One would be born in Bethlehem. Such are but a few of the many prophecies that pointed forward to the One who by common consent of the Jews was referred to as the Messiah, the Son of David.

These prophecies were now hundreds of years, yes, one of them even four thousand years old. The Israelites had seen a seventy-year captivity in Babylon coupled with the complete desolation of their beloved homeland and since then they had experienced five hundred more years of subjection to Gentile rulers. Still no Messiah! still no Son of David! How the faithful, God-fearing Jews yearned and prayed for his coming—he that was to restore Israel, free it from the galling Gentile yoke; the One who was to bless all the families of the earth.

Among such righteous and reverent Jews who longed and prayed for the Messiah’s coming was a faithful old servant of Jehovah by the name of Simeon who lived in Jerusalem. God had placed on him his holy spirit and rewarded him with the revelation that he would not see death until he had laid eyes on the one who was to be the Christ of Jehovah. Days, months, years were fleeing by, Simeon was aging, he had not much longer to live. When would he see this one?

Then one day, toward the end of 2 B.C., a young couple with a baby came to the temple from Bethlehem in Judea. The holy spirit revealed to him that this was the day he was waiting for and moved him to go to the temple, and there he would see the one of whom all the prophets had written. Hurrying there as quickly as his aged frame will permit him, he sees Joseph, Mary and the child. With what joy Simeon takes the child Jesus in his arms! This was the One who would be the promised Messiah, the Son of David! Though himself too old to hope to see this One fulfill his earthly mission, yet even to see him as a babe, to realize that salvation for Israel was that near, that God had again remembered and visited his people, that all that had been written regarding him by the prophets was now at long last beginning to have fulfillment—what ecstasy all this must have brought to the aged Simeon! Now he was content to sleep in death until the latter end, until God would call him forth in the resurrection. Lifting his voice in praise to God we hear him say: “Now, Sovereign Lord, you are letting your slave go free in peace according to your declaration; because my eyes have seen your means of saving that you have made ready in the sight of all the peoples, a light for removing the veil from the nations and a glory of your people Israel.”—Luke 2:27-33, NW.

See now how his face lights up as he blesses Joseph, the foster father, and Mary, the mother of Jesus! Then his face suddenly becomes serious, as, directing his remarks to Mary alone, he adds: “Look! this one is laid for the fall and the rising again of many in Israel and for a sign to be talked against (yes, a long sword will be run through the soul of you yourself), in order that the reasonings of many hearts may be uncovered.”—Luke 2:34, 35, NW.

Under the influence of the holy spirit Simeon here was applying a number of prophecies to Jesus. See Isaiah 52:10; 40:5; 42:6; 49:6; 8:14, 18. The Christian Scriptures and the physical facts have since borne out that the Messiah, Christ Jesus, is indeed the light of the nations, the One to remove the veil of darkness from the faces of men and the One that brings them salvation.

We have good reason to believe that before long Simeon himself will share in the blessings that he foretold that Christ Jesus would bring to the peoples. (Rev. 11:17, 18) With what joy he will enter on his privileges in the new world under Jehovah’s king, the Son of David!

Gehenna, a Place of Eternal Punishment

OUTSIDE of the small number of serious students of the Bible there are very few people who know what Gehenna really is. The vast majority of people are totally ignorant on a subject they should be very much concerned about. This is a pity, because, for the most part, they are not responsible for their ignorance. Hundreds of years ago creed-bound men mistranslated into the many Bible versions certain Greek words. This is one reason for the general misunderstanding on the subject of what the eternal punishment of the wicked is. Another reason is the fact that the clergymen of Christendom, although many of them know the truth of the matter, have done very little to inform the people concerning Gehenna’s true nature.

To the west and south, and immediately outside the ancient city of Jerusalem, was a valley first known in Hebrew as gey ben [b’ne] hinnom, “the valley of the son [or, sons] of Hinnom.” Later it was just called gey hinnom, “valley of Hinnom,” or in the Greek tongue, Gehenna. It was a rather deep and narrow gorge, with steep rocky slopes, situated not far from the great temple and palace of Solomon. One portion of this valley was later called Topheth, and it was here, some believe, that a music grove was located where Solomon’s royal singers and musicians gathered to fill the valley with songs of praise to Jehovah.—Josh. 15:8; 2 Ki. 23:10; Jer. 19:2, 6.

However, in his old age, when Solomon’s heart was turned away from serving the only true God, he built abominable altars in this ravine to the pagan gods and goddess of Molech, Baal, Chemosh and Ashtoreth. (1 Ki. 11:5-7) It is said that a monstrous idol of brass was here erected which was heated from within, and into whose red-hot arms the idol worshipers cast alive their sons and daughters. As a consequence, this valley that once resounded with Jehovah’s praise was filled with the screams of little children who were offered up as sacrifices to the fire-god Molech.—2 Chron. 28:3; 33:6.

In due time, faithful King Josiah stamped out this fiendishness, and in order that the practice might not spring up again he polluted the valley by defiling it with dead men’s bones. (2 Ki. 23:10, 14; 2 Chron. 34:4, 5) From that time on Gehenna became the common cesspool for the city’s sewage, a place where all of Jerusalem’s garbage and filth were dumped. Here the bodies of dead animals and executed criminals were thrown. It was the city’s incinerator, and to keep the fires burning sulphur or brimstone was added. The sides of the cliffs were jagged and some of the refuse thrown over clung to the rocks, and as putrefaction set in worms or maggots consumed the fleshy parts rather than the sulphurous fires below. To the Jewish mind Gehenna became a vivid symbol of destruction and an abomination, an abhorrence to the eye, and a stench to the nostrils.

What a fitting example and illustration Gehenna was for Jeremiah to use! When that prophet of God pointed to that defiled place as an example of what Jehovah purposed to do to that rebellious nation they got the point. They knew that Almighty God purposed to destroy them as completely as anything thrown into the literal Gehenna was annihilated. “Thus will I do unto this place, saith Jehovah, and to the inhabitants thereof, even making this city as Topheth: and the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah, which are defiled, shall be as the place of Topheth.” “Therefore, behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that it shall no more be called Topheth, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of Slaughter.”—Jer. 19:12, 13; 7:32, 33, AS.

And so it was when Jerusalem was finally destroyed A.D. 70. According to the Jewish historian, Josephus, between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 inhabitants died of famine or disease or were killed by the Romans, and it appears that many of their dead bodies were thrown into Gehenna after that terrible struggle.

Now then, in view of what Gehenna was, literally and symbolically, what better illustration or symbol could the Great Prophet, Christ Jesus, use when telling Jews what was in store for the wilfully wicked? When he said certain ones were liable to wind up in Gehenna, his listeners two millenniums ago knew exactly what he was talking about. They knew that if the sulphurous fires did not consume their dead bodies, the ever-present maggots would. In either event, they knew full well that to be cast into Gehenna meant they were criminals unworthy of either a burial or a resurrection, only annihilation.

But some may ask: ‘When or where did Jesus speak of Gehenna? In our Catholic Douay and Protestant King James Bibles we do not find the word Gehenna.’ Quite true. This is the point made earlier, that those men who translated the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek and from the Latin Vulgate into English in the early seventeenth century were so mentally bound up and constrained by man-made creeds of “eternal torment” and “hell fire” they were not free to make even an honest translation. Consequently, at the twelve places in the Christian Greek Scriptures, commonly called the “New Testament”, where the name Gehenna occurs, they translated it “hell”, which English word they also used to translate the Hebrew word Sheol and the Greek words Hades and Tartaros.

All modern translators of any repute, both Catholic and Protestant, have been forced to make note of and apologize for the gross blunder in the following texts: Matthew 5:22, 29, 30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6. The English Revised, American Standard, Revised Standard, Catholic Confraternity, Spencer’s (Catholic), Young’s, Rotherham’s, Weymouth’s, Moffatt’s, Emphatic Diaglott, the New World Translation, and many other modern versions, either correct the error in the text or make note of it in their footnotes.

NO TORMENT IN GEHENNA

‘What is that? No eternal torment in the never-dying fires of Gehenna?’ That is correct even though contrary to popular opinion. The general idea held by organized religionists is that Gehenna is just another name for the fantastic ecclesiastical firepool so fanatically taught by the clergy. Simply carrying over the Greek word Gehenna into English Bibles means nothing if the clergy continue to deceive the people into believing that Gehenna is a place of eternal torment. As the Encyclopedia Americana (1942 ed., v. 14, p. 81) observes: “Much confusion and misunderstanding has been caused through the early translators of the Bible persistently rendering the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades and Gehenna by the word hell. The simple transliteration of these words by the translators of the revised editions of the Bible has not sufficed to appreciably clear up this confusion and misconception.”

There is a vast distinction between eternal torment and eternal destruction. Gehenna symbolizes the latter, a place of everlasting destruction. There was no thought of torment in the ancient Gehenna outside the walls of Jerusalem, for nothing alive was cast therein. To be tormented it would have to be alive! Hence, Gehenna cannot possibly symbolize torment or torture, either temporary or eternal.

On this point, it is well to consider what modern translators have to say. The footnote of Matthew 5:22, in the Catholic Confraternity translation of 1941, does not say that criminals were cast alive into Gehenna to be tortured in its fire and brimstone, but rather it was the place “where the bodies of criminals were burnt after execution of sentence”. Commenting on this same text, the Roman Catholic Dr. F. A. Spencer, in his translation of 1937, says that when King Josiah desecrated the valley of Gehenna “the Jews thereafter used it as a dumping place for all kinds of refuse and the bodies of dead animals and criminals. To prevent infection, fires were kept always burning there; and the place became a type of the state of punishment of the lost”. You see, there were fires in the literal Gehenna all right, but they were not used to torture even the worst criminals, criminals whose dead bodies were thrown there because they were considered unworthy of a resurrection.

After giving a brief history of the place, the appendix, page 891, of Benjamin Wilson’s Emphatic Diaglott (1864), declares: “Gehenna, then, as occurring in the New Testament, symbolizes death and utter destruction, but in no place signifies a place of eternal torment.” To which can be added the following significant paragraph found in the appendix, page 767, of the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (1950): “No living animals or human creatures were pitched into Gehenna to be burned alive or tormented. Hence the place could never symbolize an invisible region where human souls are tormented in literal fire and attacked by undying immortal worms for ever and ever. (Isa. 66:24) Because the dead criminals cast here were denied a decent burial in a memorial tomb, which symbolizes the hope of a resurrection, Gehenna was used by Jesus and his disciples to symbolize everlasting destruction, annihilation from God’s universe, or ‘second death’, an eternal punishment. Hence to be sentenced to have one’s dead body cast into Gehenna was considered the worst kind of punishment. From the literal Gehenna and from its significance the symbol of the ‘lake burning with fire and sulphur’ was drawn, at Revelation 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8.”

“Fire” is a symbol of utter destruction. Consequently, Revelation says in symbolic language that those who do not get life are hurled into the fiery lake which is the “second death”. Likewise Jude 7 says that Sodom and Gomorrah are punished with “eternal fire”. This is not literal fire, for those cities are now under water on the bottom of the Red sea. Jesus says in the parable that the “sheep” receive everlasting life, but the “goats” the opposite, “everlasting cutting-off” in destruction. (Matt. 25:46, NW; ED) The narration of the rich man and Lazarus at Luke 16:19-31 is just a parable, hence not literal. There is not one scripture that supports “eternal torment” or “everlasting torment” when correctly understood. What the Devil and his followers justly receive is everlasting cutting-off from life in annihilation.

Bringing Forth Fruit for Eternal Life

“As for the one sown upon the right kind of soil, this is the one hearing the word and getting the sense of it, who really does bear fruit and produces, this one a hundredfold, that one sixty, the other thirty.”—Matt. 13:23, NW.

JEHOVAH takes pleasure in fruitfulness, especially where it results in everlasting life. Where there is fruit there is life, and what bears good fruit deserves to live. Every farmer feels joy and satisfaction in the productiveness of land under his cultivation. Not less true is this of the greatest farmer of them all, and he is Jehovah God. It was on the third day of creation that this great Cultivator of all the earth issued the fiat: “Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth.” You see, he had not created this earth to be a waste. Days later, before he made man and woman, “Jehovah God planted a garden eastward, in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made Jehovah God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 1:11; 2:8, 9, AS) To this perfect man the great Cultivator let out the earth for him and his future family to till it and look after it, extending the garden of Eden all around the globe to make it a paradise of pleasure. The great Cultivator will yet realize this paradise purpose of his, that obedient mankind may enjoy eternal life in a happy home. Their eating of the perfect fruits of this earthly paradise will sustain their lives forevermore.

² The adversary of God and of man sowed the seeds of doubt and distrust in the heart of the woman in Eden. They took root in her and brought forth fruit in the form of disregard of her husband’s headship and disobedience to God. Through the woman the adversary sowed in her husband’s heart the seeds of love of wife more than the love of Jehovah God, which was, in effect, a love more of himself than of God. Such seeds of selfishness rooted themselves in his heart and brought forth under his wife’s cultivation fruit in the form of willful violation of Jehovah’s law against eating the forbidden fruit. The fruitage thus brought forth by Adam and Eve met with God’s disapproval, for it showed obedience to the will of the adversary, Satan the Devil, rather than God’s will. And so it was a fruitage that led to death and destruction, and not to everlasting life in the paradise of pleasure. God sentenced the disobedient pair to death and drove them from the garden of Eden, out of reach of the “tree of life”, that they might not “eat, and live for ever”. (Gen. 3:1-24) When pronouncing sentence upon the adversary who, like a serpent, had schemed to lead mankind into disobedience, Jehovah God declared his purpose to set up a new government for the vindication of Him as the universe’s Sovereign whom all mankind ought to obey. He declared his purpose to bring this government forth from the womb of his heavenly universal organization and to have it break up the works of the Serpent.—1 John 3:8, NW.

³ The heavenly universal organization loved God. Hence she had no love for the Serpent. So, too, the new government to which God’s womanlike organization would give birth was certain to love God and hate the Serpent. God determined to test and prove the loyalty of this government by letting the Serpent wound the heel of its chief member, its King, the Seed of God’s woman. Then by this proved loyal government God purposed to destroy utterly the Serpent and all the wicked offspring which the Serpent would bring forth. In this way God purposed to bring back all the earth and its inhabitants under the universal sovereignty of God and to restore paradise and make it earth-wide. All this is included in his cryptic words to the Serpent, Satan the Devil: “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt wound his heel.” (Gen. 3:15, Le) Four thousand years later God’s Son from heaven, Jesus Christ, suffered the heel wound and was raised from the dead and returned to heaven to become King. Then his apostle Paul wrote to the King’s faithful followers: “For his part, the God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.” (Rom. 16:20, NW) The time is very short now till Satan and his seed are crushed and paradise is afterward restored on earth.

⁴ When suffering the wounding of his heel by dying on the torture stake at Calvary Jesus Christ gave promise of the restoring of paradise to earth. The evildoer hanging alongside him had just said sympathetically: “Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom.” Jesus showed the resurrection hope which was set before this evildoer and all mankind in their graves by saying to him: “Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42, 43, NW; Ro) This evildoer had not been a follower of Jesus Christ and so could hope only for paradise as the place for him to gain everlasting life. However, during the three and a half years of Jesus’ teaching campaign among the Jews he had invited believers to become his footstep followers, forsaking this world. He held before them no earthly paradise hope, but a heavenly hope. He told them of his returning to heaven to receive the kingship in the government of a new world, and he invited them to prove themselves worthy to share with him in his heavenly kingdom. To this end he told them many parables or illustrations and explained the meaning of these to them. Among other requirements, they must be fruitful to the praise of God and his kingdom. Fruit of this kind results in eternal life for the fruitbearer, whereas the fruit that Eve and Adam brought forth in Eden resulted in death for us all. To illustrate this, Jesus, in the second year of his public lecture campaign, gave his parable of the sower of seed. Life seekers will be interested in studying it in the article that next follows.

Parable of the Sower

1. How does Matthew introduce the parable of the Sower?

THE parable of the sower is found in the gospel accounts of the disciples Matthew, Mark and Luke. Matthew’s history of Jesus Christ introduces it this way: “On that day Jesus, having left the house, was sitting by the sea; and great crowds gathered to him, so that he went aboard a boat and sat down, and all the crowd was standing on the beach. Then he told them many things by illustrations, saying: ‘Look! a sower went out to sow: and as he was sowing, some seeds fell alongside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell upon the rocky places where they did not have much soil, and at once they sprang up because of not having depth of soil. But when the sun rose they were scorched, and because of not having root they withered. Others, too, fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them. Still others fell upon soil that was right and they began to yield fruit, this one a hundredfold, that one sixty, the other thirty. Let him that has ears listen.’”—Matt. 13:1-9, NW.

2. When and how was seed then sown, and what does the parable of the Sower illustrate?

² In Jesus’ home country the sowing season commences in October. About the first of that month Jesus was born in Bethlehem and was baptized thirty years later in the Jordan river. The latter half of October the winter rains begin, but they are not so continuous as to prevent farmers from sowing seed for next year’s crop. The sowing season continues during this rainy period until the end of February. Before the beginning of January the wheat was planted, and after the first of January the barley was planted. But the barley ripened first, by passovertime. The wheat was harvested after the feast of weeks, or Pentecost, some fifty days later. The sower of those days held the basketful of seed with his left hand. With his right he scattered the seed, “drawing it out” or scattering it along the furrows of his plowed land. (Ps. 126:5, 6; Amos 9:13, margin) The illustration of the sower was given by Jesus, not to illustrate the general Christian harvest at the world’s “time of the end”, but the fruitfulness of his faithful followers and the unfruitfulness of others who come in touch with the Kingdom news during the so-called “Christian era”. The fruitful class gains life in the new world; the unfruitful class fails to do so. Why, we shall see.

3, 4. Who is the sower? What is the seed?

³ The fulfillment of the parable had its beginning with Jesus Christ, who earned the title “the Son of man”. As stated in his explanation of another parable, “the sower of the right kind of seed is the Son of man.” (Matt. 13:37, NW) He is the one to whom the great Cultivator, Jehovah God, entrusts the seed to be sown. The seed is a message: “the sower sows the word.” It is no message of human origin, but is one of heavenly origin and which men on earth were inspired to give. “The seed is the word of God.” (Mark 4:14, 15 and Luke 8:11, NW) It is particularly the message of God’s kingdom exercised through Christ. This message shows the opportunity for his followers to gain a place in the Kingdom with him by their complete faithfulness to God. This is indicated by Jesus’ expression, “Where anyone hears the word of the kingdom.”—Matt. 13:19, NW.

⁴ It is true that John the Baptist proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near,” but his proclamation did not reveal the sacred secret that the followers of God’s anointed King would have the opportunity to enter into the kingdom of the heavens with him to rule as kings. Jesus, and not John the Baptist, was the one who uncovered the secret: “Unless anyone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. . . . Unless anyone is born from water and spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3, 5, NW) So Jesus is primarily the sower, and God gave him the seed of the Word of the Kingdom to sow. But Jesus takes his faithful followers into the sowing work with him, and through him they receive the Word of the Kingdom to scatter. That is why the apostle says to them: “Now he that abundantly supplies seed to the sower and bread for eating will supply and multiply the seed for you to sow and will increase the products of your righteousness.” (2 Cor. 9:10, NW) Since A.D. 1914, the year when the “appointed times of the nations” ended, the seed has been the message of God’s kingdom as born or set up.

5. That the parable illustrates four kinds of soils shows what?

⁵ Jesus’ illustration of the four kinds of soils shows the four general kinds of persons who receive the seed of the Word or who come in touch with the Kingdom message. This seed is sown in their hearts or minds. Those who receive it and make faithful use of it in the proper way come under special cultivation by Jehovah God. No matter what man or men have to do with sowing the seed and watering it in the hearts of the receivers, these receivers do not become sectarians or followers of human religious leaders. No; they belong to God as his property, for he supplied the seed of the Word and it is his Word that they accepted. To such ones with whom the Word of the Kingdom was sown the apostle wrote: “You people are God’s field under cultivation, God’s building.” (1 Cor. 3:9, NW) But in the course of scattering the seed, all kinds of persons as represented by the four kinds of soils get a witness to the Kingdom. The natural Jews were first to get it through Jesus in their midst. Three and a half years after his death and resurrection and his ascent to heaven the people of all the non-Jewish nations were privileged to receive the witness, yes, people of all classes, high and low. This fits in with the purpose of God: “This is right and acceptable in the sight of our Savior, God, whose will is that all kinds of men should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, a man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a corresponding ransom for all—this is what is to be witnessed to at its own particular times.”—1 Tim. 2:3-6, NW.

THE SOIL ALONGSIDE THE ROAD

6. Why are those like soil alongside the road not saved?

⁶ Are you a farmer interested in different kinds of soil? No? Still you are concerned about living in a perfect new world and you want to produce fruit that will entitle you to life in that world, whether in its heavenly government or in its paradise earth. You want to avoid what will prevent your being fruitful in that direction, for you want to be just as fruitful as you can. You will therefore be interested in the illustration which Jesus gave of how you can do these things. So there are three types of soil that you do not want to be like. The first type Jesus explained to his disciples in this way: “You, then, listen to the illustration of the man that sowed. Where anyone hears the word of the kingdom but does not get the sense of it, the wicked one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart; this is the one sown alongside the road.” (Matt. 13:18, 19, NW) Soil alongside a road would likely be hard-packed, like the road itself over which the regular traffic passes. This hard surface condition would not let the seeds sown sink in but would make them lie exposed where the wild hungry birds could see them and pick them up. The seed never takes root or shoots up even a blade. For the seed of the Kingdom truth to take root in us and bear fruit it must sink into our hearts or minds, for it is with the heart that a person exercises faith for righteousness. Without faith we can never be saved; which is why Jesus said: “Those alongside the road are the ones that have heard, then the Devil comes and takes the word away from their hearts in order that they may not believe and be saved.” (Luke 8:12, NW) We must bear fruit in order to be saved.

7. With what prophetic description did Jesus compare the roadside hearers?

⁷ The roadside hearers of God’s Word who lose even what they had Jesus compared with Isaiah’s description at Isaiah 6:9, 10. Jesus said to his disciples: “To you it is granted to understand the sacred secrets of the kingdom of the heavens, but to those people it is not granted. For whoever has, more will be given him and he will be made to abound; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. This is why I speak to them by the use of illustrations, because, looking, they look in vain, and hearing, they hear in vain, neither do they get the sense of it; and toward them the prophecy of Isaiah is having fulfillment which says: ‘By hearing, you will hear but by no means get the sense of it; and, looking, you will look but by no means see. For the heart of this people has grown thick, and with their ears they have heard with annoyance, and they have shut their eyes; that they might never see with their eyes and hear with their ears and get the sense of it with their hearts and turn back, and I heal them.’”—Matt. 13:11-17, NW.

8. Who are the parable’s birds, and how do these act?

⁸ That kind of hearers are those who listen without understanding or who do not seek an understanding. They can thus be easily robbed of the life-giving information that was sown on their hearts. Only a wicked person would want to rob them of this seed of God’s Word instead of cultivating it in their hearts. That wicked one Luke’s account says is the Devil. Mark’s account says he is Satan, which name is another designation of that same wicked one. (Mark 4:15) We can be sure he is ever alert and watches wherever the seed is sown and follows it up with his assaults to commit a robbery. He sends out his “birds”, whether they are invisible demons who work at the mind or are men and women. His birds hate the pure Word of God, whether by that is meant a faithful translation of the Bible or the explanation of the “faith that was once for all time delivered to the holy ones”. (Jude 3, NW) Like hungry birds which are not interested in the producing of food for mankind, Satan’s agents are on the hunt for such seed sown. How many reports we receive of clergymen, nuns and priests that follow up the distribution of the printed Word by Jehovah’s witnesses and demand that its obtainers either hand over such printed material or else burn it up if they do not surrender it to such religious “birds”! They will attack and oppose such printed Word, in harmony with the wicked one’s name “Satan”. Or else they will misrepresent it and slander and malign the ones sowing such spiritual seed, in harmony with the wicked one’s name “Devil”. In this way they show they are his children.—John 8:44.

9. How have roadside hearers yielded to such birds?

⁹ Those who do not seek understanding will yield to opposers, slanderers and intimidators. Many such kind have thus contributed the literature they obtained toward the pile that has been collected and burned publicly to the glee of the clergymen who set the match to it. We do not have to go so far back in mind as the time when copies of William Tyndale’s printed translation of the Holy Scriptures were burned at St. Paul’s cross in London, England. Early in his dictatorship the Nazi fuehrer in true Hitlerian style had as many as 50,000 copies of the literature of Jehovah’s witnesses burned in Germany. But an understanding person or one who does want understanding and who prizes it will not be like a roadside hearer. He will hold onto the seed sown with him and will refuse to part with it on the demand of enemies.

10. How have many obtainers of literature been like roadside soil?

¹⁰ Over a half billion copies of bound books and booklets, besides Bibles, have been distributed by Jehovah’s witnesses since A.D. 1918 alone, not to mention the additional hundreds of millions of copies of magazines, free tracts, and announcements also passed out. Why, on the very day, August 6, 1950, that the public lecture “Can You Live Forever in Happiness on Earth?” was delivered at their international assembly at Yankee Stadium, New York city, a quarter of a million copies of the speech in print in a handsome 32-page booklet were distributed free right afterward to the 123,707 in attendance. But as for all the literature distributed till now, many possessors have not studied it thoroughly or at all, and many readers have not understood or not sought further understanding, and the religious clergy have not helped them understand. The religious agents of Christendom have discouraged the reading of such Bible material and have tried to capture the interest and attention of the people away from such literature.

11. Why have the birds been able to snatch so much seed away?

¹¹ Much Bible literature as well as Bibles themselves have thus lain idle, like seed that chanced to fall on hard-packed, wayside ground. The matter has largely to do with the mind and with the condition of the heart, as to whether it yearns for truth and understanding. So that, even if the Kingdom message is presented in a verbal way by a public lecture or by a more direct personal presentation at the doorstep or elsewhere, the message received will lie dormant on the surface of the heart or mind and be as good as dead, allowing the demons and others who make attacks on the mind to snatch away what has been sown there. The Sower has been along their way, but they did not understand him or his work or his message delivered by word of mouth or by the printed page. Not hungering for truth and righteousness, they do not care to understand. So the seed is snatched away by the foes of the Word before ever it has a chance to take root. In consequence of all this, what appalling Bible illiteracy there now is!

12. Aware of all this, what can we do about the situation?

¹² We, who have our eyes open to what is going on and who are aware of the enemy’s tactics, what can we do about the situation? We can put forth more efficient efforts to reduce the great Bible illiteracy. We can continue to spread the “word of the kingdom” and can beat off the wicked one’s “birds” and prevent them from snatching God’s Word from those not yet understanding it. Yes, we must even try to beat those “birds” to it. How? By making calls without delay upon those who express interest after hearing the message or who hand in their names at a public lecture, or by making return visits upon those in whose homes we place the literature. So doing, we can anticipate the action of the greedy “birds” and can help the receivers of the Word to understand it and to develop an appetite for more of it. We can make our regular visits back progressively helpful by instituting a Bible study there, using one of our Bible helps as a guide to the material studied.

13. In what way must we not be mere book peddlers?

¹³ We are not mere book and Bible peddlers, who spread a lot of printed matter for the sake of the financial intake and who run away from the territory where we spread the literature, afraid to go back and face again the people with whom we placed literature, but seeking, instead, a new territory in which just to place books. True, the printed page can take the place of the oral sermon. But the apostle Paul and Barnabas stayed a whole year in Antioch in order to teach the people. It was not because Paul and Barnabas did not have much, if any, printed or hand-copied literature to put out on a contribution for their support. No; but because the verbal message sown on the heart or mind can be snatched away by Satan’s birds just as easily as, if not more quickly than, a printed message. Hence the need for Paul and Barnabas to stay in the territory to forestall the coming and activity of the “birds”. Jesus, too, moved around from place to place, but he did so within his territory. He had to reach all his territory and had only three and a half years in which to do so and he made return trips over the different parts of his assignment. He also did follow-up work after his apostles.—Acts 11:25, 26; Luke 8:40; John 11:7; Luke 10:1.

14. How must we be like a farmer who wants to reap?

¹⁴ Remember: a farmer, if he wants to reap, cannot leave his fields, letting them go uncultivated after a sowing. He must work at his sown fields and keep off the destroyers of crops, and must show patience, waiting long for his crop. (Jas. 5:7) We who are privileged to sow God’s Word must do the same thing in a spiritual way. The graduates of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead who were sent as missionaries into the province of Quebec (Canada), which is plagued with many “birds”, had to hang on fast and hard to their territory and fight off the “birds”. Now their eyes and hearts rejoice over the fruitage which they see from the seed sown. So, too, it has been in other parts of the world. Hence we must not leave it all to those with whom the Word is sown as their responsibility, but must stay close by the seed sown and try to improve the soil thus seeded and help it become fruitful and help to counteract the invasion of Satan’s “birds”.

15. How are the “roadside soil” hearers responsible, suffering the consequences of their hardness?

¹⁵ Of course, those who receive the Word by hearing it or by getting reading matter have a responsibility if they do not seek an understanding of it, keeping their minds hard and unreceptive like much-trodden soil. They suffer, too, the consequences of their indifferent hardness by suffering robbery from the “birds”. So they remain unfruitful, because never coming to a belief of the seed sown. They are no better than the open road itself. What they once had is taken from them. They become seedless soil, and stay barren, because the rain of God’s blessings has nothing to work on. They are a disappointment to the Sower. Their faithless unfruitfulness gains no salvation. If, then, we love eternal life in happiness, we do not want to be that kind of soil to the great Sower. In our own case we have to beware of the adversary’s “birds” as well as soften our own hearts and minds toward the Kingdom message. “Subject yourselves, therefore, to God; but oppose the Devil, and he will flee from you.” (Jas. 4:7, NW) Do not let your minds be the Devil’s roadway and let him harden you.

ROCKY SOIL

16. To what are the quitters likened? To what does quitting lead?

¹⁶ To prove worthy of everlasting life, especially life with Jesus Christ in the heavenly kingdom, we must show decision for the right and then stick to it with endurance down to the end. Quitters will never gain eternal life; and that fact holds true also for those persons of good will who now entertain hopes of surviving the world catastrophe of Armageddon into the “new earth”. This vital point is made by Jesus when he explains whom the soil with a rock-layer underneath pictures: “As for the one sown upon the rocky places, this is the one hearing the word and at once accepting it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself but continues for a time, and after tribulation or persecution has arisen on account of the word he is at once stumbled.” (Matt. 13:20, 21, NW) And Luke 8:13 says: “They believe for a season, but in a season of testing they fall away.” (NW) Such stumbling and falling away leads to destruction!

17. Why does not such “soil” bring forth fruit to perfection?

¹⁷ One thing is sure: If you accept the truth, you are going to be persecuted and suffer tribulation for it. You cannot escape it in this world, and especially in this “time of the end”. The apostle Paul writes: “In fact, all those desiring to live with godly devotion in association with Christ Jesus will also be persecuted.” (2 Tim. 3:12, NW) Well, then, are you going to prove like the soil with a rock-shelf beneath? Such soil does not have much depth and hence cannot hold much of the moisture which the rains deposit upon it. It does not hold moisture long, because the rock-shelf underneath is reached by the sun’s heat and warms the soil above and helps hasten its evaporation. The shallow depth of the soil also does not let the roots strike deep in search of plant food and moisture. How, then, can such soil bring forth fruit abundantly and to perfection? Jesus shows it cannot.

18. How do the “rocky soil” hearers accept the “seed”, and why does a “season of testing” come upon them?

¹⁸ It is a joy to receive God’s Word, and especially the message that his kingdom by Christ was established in the heavens A.D. 1914 and so the righteous new world is near. The people of the rocky-soil kind do “accept it with joy”. (Mark 4:16, NW) Because of its own goodness the “word of the kingdom” ought to be accepted with joy, and that joy ought to be a strength to us to go through whatever may follow. But the rocky-soil persons let their joy quickly evaporate. At first they overflow with joy and manifest a great zeal both to gain knowledge and to share it with others yet in ignorance. And then something happens! This Word sets before them the supreme issue of God’s universal sovereignty, an issue upon which both angels and men are obliged to decide each for himself. To be right they are obliged to line up on the side of Jehovah’s rightful sovereignty by his kingdom. To do this by associating with Jehovah’s witnesses and by publishing the Kingdom message exposes the rocky-soil persons to reproach, tribulation and persecution. Thus that “season of testing” comes upon them. The solar heat beats down upon them. Then what?

19. How and unlike whom do they act under such “heat”?

¹⁹ The seed of divine truth has sprouted in them, but now they feel scorched and they weakly wither away. The tribulations met with in their service of God and the persecutions they must undergo for preaching the Word dry up their fruit-bearing possibilities. They are stumbled by this fiery tribulation and persecution and take offense at it, rather than being convinced that such an experience marks the right side and proves that they are on the right side. Unlike the apostles, they do not come through the tribulation and persecution “rejoicing because they had been counted worthy to be dishonored in behalf of his name”. In ancient time believers at Thessalonica, Greece, who accepted the Word through Paul, “accepted the word under much tribulation with joy of holy spirit, so that [they] came to be an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.” (Acts 5:41; 1 Thess. 1:6-8, NW) They were not stumbled either by the persecutions upon the apostle Paul who sowed the seed among them or by the persecution they themselves now suffered. But not so the rocky-soil receivers of the Word. They do not view things as Paul and so do not believe that “to you the privilege was given in behalf of Christ, not only to put your faith in him, but also to suffer in his behalf”. (Phil. 1:29, NW) They stop growing. They fall away.

20. What words of Jesus do they forget?

²⁰ What is wrong with them? They forget that Jesus foretold that tribulation and persecution would come upon them for faithfully copying him and his apostles. To his apostles he said: “I have spoken these things to you that you may not be stumbled. Men will expel you from the congregation. In fact, the hour is coming when everyone that kills you will imagine he has rendered a sacred service to God. But they will do these things because they have not come to know either the Father or me. Nevertheless, I have spoken these things to you that, when the hour for them arrives, you may remember I told them to you.”—John 16:1-4, NW.

21. Why does this class stumble and take offense?

²¹ But the rocky-soil class do stumble, despite this forewarning. God’s Word proves to be not deeply rooted in them. Its seed-roots do not take deep hold on their hearts, so as to bring forth a public confession from a heart abounding with truth and to maintain that confession under heat of persecution and tribulation. God’s blessings have rained down upon them with a refreshment that should last, but they have not stored up enough of such refreshment to withstand the heat of a blazing enemy sun. (Luke 8:6) They prove shallow-minded, weak-hearted. They have not overwhelmingly convinced themselves of the genuine quality of the truth sown in them. They let the Word go in only so far and then let some impenetrable thing like a rock-layer prevent its roots from going down deeper and pulling good qualities of courage and faithfulness to the surface. Under the test they betray themselves as double-minded, lukewarm, not consumed with zeal for God’s house. They think the cost is too great: the persecutions and tribulations cost more than the seed of God’s Word and his rain of blessings are worth. So the “season of testing” sifts them out from the loyal.

22. How could they be happy, and thus be like whom?

²² What an opportunity they miss to brand the Devil a liar in charging that Almighty God could not put on earth a man in his image and likeness who would keep his integrity toward God under persecution and tribulation by the Devil! How happy inwardly, yes, how happy eventually, they would be if they availed themselves of this opportunity to keep integrity under persecution! They have plenty of ancient examples for doing so. “Take as a pattern of the suffering of evil and the exercising of patience the prophets, who spoke in the name of Jehovah. Look! we pronounce happy those who have endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome Jehovah gave, that Jehovah is very tender in affection and compassionate.” (Jas. 5:10, 11, NW) Let us remember that the approved apostles stuck with Jesus in his trials and for their faithfulness they were taken into the covenant for the heavenly kingdom with him. For leaving everything and following him they took the persecutions along with the heavy rain of blessings a hundredfold. They endured the great contest under sufferings. They never drew back either when faced with persecution or when in the heat of it. They knew that to shrink back meant destruction, but to have faith meant the preserving alive of the soul.—Luke 22:28, 29 and Mark 10:30 and Hebrews 10:32-39, NW.

23. What privilege do they not act on? What do they fall to gain?

²³ As in that first century, tribulation and persecution can scatter the faithful disciples. It scatters them to be preachers or sowers of the Word elsewhere, over a broader field. But the rocky-soil class are scattered by persecution as runaways hunting cover. They do not have the apostle’s conviction that nothing trialsome now or yet to come will be “able to separate us from God’s love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”. Since they do not act on their high privilege to suffer with Christ, they miss out forever on reigning with him in glory. (Rom. 8:35-39, NW; 2 Tim. 2:11, 12) For proving unfruitful, they fail to gain new world life.

24. Foreseeing tribulation coming, what should we do toward those on whom we sow seed? How does this affect the number of witnesses?

²⁴ Seeing, then, that tribulation and persecution are certain to come upon those among whom we sow God’s Word of the Kingdom, we should forewarn and prepare them for its coming. When it does come upon them in their early days before the message has had time to take deep root and be fruitful, we should stand loyally by them under it. Help them to endure it, watering them with the rain of God’s blessings that they may withstand the “heat”. We cannot do so by forsaking them to themselves, refusing to make return visits upon them, discussing the Bible or holding a regular study of it with them, taking them to our meetings and also out in the field service with us to show them how we ourselves endure tribulation encountered in the field. The rocky-soil class who at first raise great hopes in us turn out painfully disappointing to us. But we are glad that in all our sowing of Jehovah’s Word many are demonstrating that they are not of the rocky-soil kind there in countries behind the communistic “iron curtain”, yes, too, in Greece, in the Dominican Republic, in Argentina, in Quebec, and elsewhere. Instead of withering away under the heat, their roots are drawing on the moisture of God’s truth, blessing and spirit, and they are fruitful in obedience to his supreme commands. They are defeating the wicked intent of the enemy persecution and are making Jehovah’s heart laugh at the frustrated enemies. The “faithful and discreet slave” organization devotedly sticks with them under persecution, getting food to them. (Matt. 24:45-47, NW) Hence the number of His witnesses keeps increasing.

THE DANGER OF PROVING LIKE THORNY SOIL

25. How is the course of the thorny-soil class described?

²⁵ “As for the one sown among the thorns, this is the one hearing the word, but the anxiety of this system of things and the deceptive power of wealth choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.” That is the way Jesus gave the warning according to Matthew 13:18-22 (NW). But Mark 4:19 says the desires for the rest of the things join in making inroads upon his selfish heart. Luke names another factor, saying: “As for that which fell among the thorns, these are the ones that have heard, but, by being carried away by anxieties and wealth and pleasures of this life, they are completely choked and bring nothing to perfection.” (Luke 8:14, NW) This system of things may be at its consummation, but it is still with us. While it lasts, there are its anxious cares, its wealth-getting opportunities, and the pleasures of this life. So we all need to take heed to the warning picture Jesus gave.

26. How do they let thorny things choke their productivity?

²⁶ People today who are like the thorn-infested soil receive the seed of the Word and could be just as fruitful as others. But they do not rid themselves of the thorns and thistles. They are too concerned about tomorrow and its needs and so do not uproot such thorny things by fully trusting Jehovah according to his promises. Then, too, they are deeply enmeshed in this present system, making themselves slaves of it, and they seek to preserve their souls according to present standards of living. What they lack is godly devotion with contentment. Hence what they do is seek to be rich in this world’s goods, thus stabbing themselves all over with many pains. Somehow they never get undeceived. So their selfishness never allows them proper time to be rich in good works or to bring forth fruit in God’s service. Their selfish anxiety does not let them give attention to this. And if they do have time, they must spend it in the “pleasures of this life”. For relief from anxiety and boredom they feel they must turn to such pleasures. What wonder, then, that God’s Word which was sown in them has its productive power completely choked!

27, 28. What action must the thorn-infested ones take? Otherwise, what will be their end?

²⁷ Do we find ourselves infested with such thorns and thistles and correspondingly poor in the good works of God? Then we need to burn off those sticky, thorny growths so as to allow the seed of his Word in us to grow, leading to fruit bearing. Otherwise, we cannot be rich in right works which will leave a record that will survive our death. We cannot treasure up a right foundation for us to attain real life, eternal life in the new world. (1 Tim. 6:6-10, NW) Look at Jesus. How heavenly rich he was! And yet how comparatively poor he became, even to the point of being poor in earthly material goods! To do this, he sold all he had and at last he submitted to a sacrificial death. Now he has become supernally rich. Unless we copy him, his word will not dwell in us richly, making us also abound in fruit.—Col. 3:16.

²⁸ Thorny, thistly ground is rejected by the cultivator and is near to being cursed because of not producing life-giving food in response to the rain that falls upon it. It ends up with being burned. If that is so, then the thorny-soil class have a similar end. (Heb. 6:7, 8) They waste God’s undeserved kindness to them and let worldly things combine to choke off their fruit bearing. This results in fiery destruction to them.

29. What can we do to help them and also do in our own interest?

²⁹ We may see some who are in our congregation or some whom we have sown with the seed tending to let thorny-like obstructions invade their lives and hearts and choke their spiritual productiveness. We can warn them. When the young man let his love of deceptive wealth choke off his fruit-bearing possibilities as a Christian, Jesus warned his disciples: “It will be a difficult thing for a rich man to get into the kingdom of the heavens.” Timothy, as a young overseer in a congregation, was instructed by the apostle Paul to warn the rich and those inclining to the love of money. (Matt. 19:23, 24; 1 Tim. 6:17-19, NW) We want to help others now to get free of entanglements and worldly preoccupations and to seek, instead, the Theocracy’s increase now when it is due. (Isa. 9:6, 7) We want to avoid letting this thorn-infested condition overrun the soil of our own hearts and minds. In harmony with such an effort within ourselves we should lovingly help others to do so. It is most timely to keep before us Jesus’ words: “Pay attention to yourselves that your hearts never become weighed down with overeating and heavy drinking and anxieties of life, and suddenly that day be instantly upon you as a snare. For it will come in upon all those dwelling upon the face of all the earth. Keep awake, then, all the time making supplication that you may succeed in escaping all these things that are destined to occur, and to hold your position before the Son of man.”—Luke 21:34-36, NW.

“THE GOOD SOIL”

30. How do those like the “good soil” act toward the seed sown?

³⁰ Who, then, are the ones like the “good soil” upon which the seed fell, so that, “after sprouting, it produced fruit” manyfold? (Luke 8:8, NW) Ah, these are the ones who have right and good hearts into which to receive the seed of the Word. On hearing the Word, they get the sense of it. If not getting it just at the time, they afterward seek an understanding of it through God’s spirit and organization. They hold onto the Word and do not hardheartedly yield it over to the robber birds of the Devil.

31. How did Jesus illustrate such ones, showing what they do?

³¹ Describing the “good soil” class, Jesus said: “As for the one sown upon the right kind of soil, this is the one hearing the word and getting the sense of it, who really does bear fruit and produces, this one a hundredfold, that one sixty, the other thirty.” (Matt. 13:23, NW) Jesus’ words according to Luke’s account show just why such a hearer of the Word gets the sense of it and why he brings forth fruit so manyfold, saying: “As for that on the right soil, these are the ones that, after hearing the word with a right and good heart, retain it and bear fruit with endurance.” (Luke 8:15, NW) First of all, these have a right and good heart condition. Once receiving the Word, they retain it as precious, just like the good, loamy, thorn-free soil that has been plowed up and that can let the seed sown sink deep down and be covered over, because it has great, moisture-retaining depth, with no rock barrier beneath. Their heart stores up treasures of good things, because it fixes its affections upon such. When God’s ministers of the new covenant come along with the seed of his Word, they let God by his Word and spirit write his law upon the fleshly tablets of the heart, so that from then on they do God’s will from the heart, by the power of his spirit. They guard their hearts with all vigilance, for out of it flow the wellsprings of life. (2 Cor. 3:3-6, NW; Prov. 4:23) How we do enjoy going with the seed of God’s Word to persons with such hearts!

32. What is the fruit that such hearts bear?

³² What, then, is the fruit that such hearts bear? Well, seeds of the various grains produce other seeds, each variety of seed producing its own kind. The seed which the great Sower broadcasts is the Word of God’s kingdom. So, then, the fruit it produces must be witness-bearing or Kingdom testimonies to others. A Kingdom seed brings forth its own kind in Kingdom preaching.—1 Cor. 15:36-38.

33. Why must the “good soil” person produce such fruit?

³³ With the heart the “good soil” person receives the seed of the Word and believes it for righteousness, but it is with the mouth that he fearlessly makes public declaration for salvation. It is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth is bound to speak. Having been favored to receive the Kingdom message into right and good hearts, we must “always offer to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips which make public declaration to his name”. (Rom. 10:10; Matt. 12:34, 35; Heb. 13:15, NW) So, when we receive the seed and it takes root in us because we retain it and get the sense of God’s Word, we have thus lodged with us a commission to preach, and we must fully accomplish it in order for others to hear the Kingdom tidings. That seed of God’s Word is not dead, but is a living force. It has power to bring preaching abilities and activities to the surface, so causing a crop of Kingdom proclamation to be reaped by the great Sower. By the divine Word and spirit within us God creates the fruit of our lips. (Isa. 57:19) The “good soil” heart with the living seed implanted in it is deeply stirred and it moves the vocal cords and tongue and lips into action to “preach the word”. The fruitage thus produced is proof that the person is of the “good soil” class and that he is in very fact a minister of God’s Word. His producing Kingdom fruit wins the great Sower’s approval and makes it possible for the Sower to scatter more seed upon other hearers. Thus through his followers he continues sowing the precious seed.

ENDURANCE FOR GREATER PRODUCTIVITY

34, 35. (a) Like a farmer, what qualities must we exercise? (b) How must we help other “good soil” persons?

³⁴ We have to exercise endurance in order to produce Kingdom fruit in praise of God, just as a farmer has to exercise patience and show good endurance when he cultivates the soil and the growing crop. As he works, he must wait upon God to make things grow. “In this way the kingdom of God is just as when a man casts the seed upon the ground and he sleeps at night and rises up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows tall, just how he does not know. Of its own self the ground bears fruit gradually, first the grass-blade, then the stalk-head, finally the full grain in the head. But as soon as the fruit permits it, he thrusts in the sickle, because the harvesttime has come.”—Mark 4:26-29, NW.

³⁵ A person must trust in God to make him grow into a preacher of the Word, fully competent to present the message in all places and under all outward conditions. By displaying endurance he proves his trust in God. In turn, God increases the seed yield of the enduring one that this seed may be scattered about by Kingdom-preaching. “In every way we recommend ourselves as God’s ministers, by the endurance of much, by tribulations, . . . by long-suffering, . . . by truthful speech, by God’s power.” We do not wither and fall away under the blazing sun of persecution and tribulation. (2 Cor. 6:4-7, NW) Being ourselves strengthened by God’s power to endure, we must help others to endure. It is oh so necessary for us to assist others personally, encouraging them, praying for them, setting them the right example, taking them along with us or accompanying them in the field service of preaching the Word. God’s visible organization is endeavoring to help all receivers of the seed to be fruitful to the limit of their productiveness. And so it continues to promote the cultivation work upon those whose hearts are of the right kind of soil.

36. How is our yield determined, and why do some bring forth thirtyfold?

³⁶ Jesus indicated there would be a difference of seed yield among those with whom God’s Word is sown, some bringing forth as high as a hundredfold. Since the quality of the soil and the amount of cultivation given to it largely determine the yield, our own amount of fruitfulness can be determined considerably for each of us by like things. However, a person who brings forth only thirtyfold is making a commendable yield. His opportunities may be limited through imprisonment, exile, isolation, underground restrictions, and confinement because of illness, infirmity or old age. But he has a right and good heart, and so he is sincere and zealous and puts forth unselfish efforts. Hence his yield of Kingdom publication whether by word of mouth or by printed page is good.

37. How do others bring forth sixtyfold?

³⁷ Bringing forth sixtyfold denotes larger opportunities and a corresponding taking advantage of them. Those who answer the invitation into the full-time service or pioneer service enter into larger privileges and enjoy greater opportunities than the ordinary company publisher does. They have a wider sphere of action and larger possibilities. They must measure up to these. Of course, our length of time in the truth and our living to an active old age, as in the cases of the apostles Paul and John, can allow for more fruitage. But we must do more than have mere length of term in God’s service. We have to pack it full of positive effort and activity in order to be above the thirtyfold yield.

38. What does producing a hundredfold denote, and how do we make for it?

³⁸ Yielding a hundredfold is outstanding. But it does not denote perfection of service in the case of any of us imperfect ministers. It denotes our trying to live up fully to the opportunities that present themselves or that we can clear the way for. We must be vigilantly watching against the intrusion of any thorns of worldly anxieties, money love, and pleasures. Among Jesus’ apostles, Paul, while he lived, “labored in excess of them all.” (1 Cor. 15:10, NW) Not that we are to make comparisons among ourselves, either to blow ourselves up with pride or to make excuses for our underproduction. Such a course is not wise for us. But we can note and rejoice in the increase which God gives in varying amounts in this one’s case and in that one’s, and we can study the reasons for it to our own profiting. We all have room for growth in productivity. None of us can ever equal the great Sower himself in bearing fruit to God. The Christian who sows the Word sparingly will reap sparingly. But those who zealously expend themselves will have God make them abound with the righteousness of spreading his life-giving Word. (2 Cor. 9:6-12; Ps. 112:9) Bringing forth fruit a hundredfold is a worthy goal to strive for.

39. Why especially do we rejoice over the productiveness of the “good soil” class today, and what does it mean for all such fruitful ones?

³⁹ Lift up your eyes, sweep them east and west, north and south, and behold the faithful witnesses of the Most High God bearing fruit like “good soil” thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold, both behind the “iron curtain” of totalitarian dictatorships and outside it. How the great Sower must rejoice! What especially makes us also rejoice with him over this is that it means an ever-increasing praise to the living, true God. The great Sower said: “My Father is glorified in this, that you keep bearing much fruit and prove yourselves my disciples.” (John 15:8, NW) Our heavenly Father rejoices to see us fruitful. He is pleased, therefore, to bestow everlasting life upon us in the new world. It is for gaining this life that we receivers of his Word must be fruitful now before Armageddon. But not only is our own new world life involved with our productivity. Through our fruit bearing Jehovah God is also pleased to confer life upon others upon whom he uses us to scatter the seed and who likewise become fruitful manyfold to God’s glory and vindication. Though the coming battle of Armageddon will wipe out and uproot every ungodly plant which our heavenly Father has not planted, it will not destroy the precious fruits of our righteousness in preaching his Word and advancing the interests of his kingdom by Christ. Oh, then, in the time yet remaining before Armageddon may He continue to cultivate us as his ministers and constantly renew our strength to endure and bring forth more fruit for his vindication and our own everlasting life in his new world! “Let him that has ears listen.”—Matt. 13:9, NW.

“Preach the Word”

“JEHOVAH has made preaching the most important work any of us could do in this world.” So stated The Watchtower, issue of December 15, 1949, which considered in detail the subject “Preach the Word”. This preaching work has to do with the permanent rescue of obedient persons from the death-dealing effects of the first man’s fall.

Why did the greatest man who ever lived quit his secular employment in the prime of life? To preach! What did that One, Jesus Christ, instruct his associates to do? Preach too! And what did he tell those outside his circle of apostles? Preach also! (Luke 9:1, 2, 6, 59, 60) Furthermore, after his death and resurrection, Jesus again laid upon his followers the obligation of being his witnesses among all nations to the uttermost parts of the earth. Preaching of this message therefore became not only a work of great importance but also one of world-wide consequence.—Matt. 28:19, 20; Acts 1:8.

Opposition and persecution were not to stop this preaching work. Saul of Tarsus, in fact, became acquainted with it during raging fires of hate in the days after preacher Stephen was taken out and stoned to death. But this did not prevent this man Saul from becoming Paul the apostle, who later wrote: “Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16) Paul’s preaching work took him far afield. Under all kinds of hardships, trials and afflictions he carried on. He never quit his preaching. He fought a good fight. And when his course was about over, and while lingering in prison, he was well-qualified to counsel his friend and companion Timothy. (Rom. 8:35-39; 2 Cor. 11:23-28; 2 Tim. 4:6, 7) Wrote Paul: “I earnestly beg you before God and Christ Jesus, who is destined to judge the living and the dead, and by his manifestation and his kingdom, Preach the word.”—2 Tim. 4:1, 2, NW.

Paul thus made his charge and appeal to Timothy as strong as possible, before God and Christ, the “higher powers”. (Acts 10:38-42; 1 Ki. 22:14; Dan. 3:17, 18; Acts 4:18-20; 5:29, 32; Rom. 13:1) Let no human court, political power or religious system presume upon God and Christ, or attempt to countermand the apostles, by interfering with or forbidding the preaching work of Jehovah’s witnesses today in this time of “his manifestation and his kingdom”. And because this command to preach does not originate with men or the “Watchtower Society”, but with Almighty God, His witnesses put the gospel-preaching ahead of everything else in their lives, and, if the need be forced upon them, are willing to go to a Hitler or Communist slave camp and there die a slow death.

What, how, where, when, and why preach? Paul says “preach the word” of God, which should be studied and used to teach, reprove, correct and train others. (2 Tim. 3:14-17) By example, Paul showed how and where this preaching was to be done: “In public and from house to house,” in conformity with the pattern cut out by Christ.—Acts 20:20, 21, 25, RS; Matt. 4:12-17, 23; Luke 8:1; 9:1, 2; 10:1.

And when is it possible to preach? “Be at it urgently in favorable season, in troublesome season,” Paul admonishes. (2 Tim. 4:2, NW) You may be all tired out from the day’s work, or you may be languishing in a filthy jail, and yet the occasion is a very “favorable season” for the listeners. You therefore preach. You do this in order to save life. We are living in a critical time. This world’s end is upon us. There is no time to lose. Your life and the life of others is at stake. So “preach the word”!—1 Tim. 4:16.

Questions From Readers

● Was the gift of tongues in the early church always manifested in languages used by men, or was it sometimes evidenced in tongues foreign to all men?—L. S., New York.

Paul wrote: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but do not have love, I have become a sounding piece of brass or a clashing cymbal.” (1 Cor. 13:1, NW) Here Paul made a distinction between the tongues of men and the tongue of angels, and certainly the latter would not be understood by men. Yet it is evident that the gift of tongues by the spirit sometimes enabled men to speak in the tongue of angels. It is possible that at the time of Pentecost when the spirit was poured out some spoke in the tongue of angels, which because of its strangeness to human ears brought forth the charge that the Christians were intoxicated. Certainly drunkenness could not be used to explain the sudden ability to speak in various human languages, though it might be cited by scoffers as inspiring speech that was unintelligible to all human ears. (Acts 2:1-13) Without the gift of interpretation, it would edify no man, but would be as “a sounding piece of brass or a clashing cymbal”.—1 Cor. 12:10.

● Were not the gifts of tongues, healing, etc., to continue after the time of the apostles, according to Jesus’ words at Mark 16:17, 18?—A. J., Pennsylvania.

The authenticity of these verses is questionable, since Mark 16:8 ends with verse 8 in the old and reliable manuscripts Vatican 1209 and Sinaitic, though Mr 16 verses 9-20 do appear in the Alexandrine and other ancient manuscripts and versions. However, even these questionable verses cited in the above question do not say such things would continue after the apostles, but only after Jesus. These gifts to the early church could not have continued long after the death of the apostles, for it was only through the apostles that such gifts were passed on to others. (Acts 8:7-21; 19:6) Paul specifically said such gifts would not continue on: “Whether there are gifts of prophesying, they will be done away with; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will be done away with.” (1 Cor. 13:8, NW) The gist of Paul’s reasoning in the remainder of this chapter is that such miraculous gifts of the spirit were given to establish the early church while in its infancy, but that once established and mature it would no longer need such gifts of tongues, healing, etc., to maintain or bolster it up.

● If there is to be no resurrection of the wicked, why did The Watchtower quote Acts 24:15 from An American Translation, which reads: “There is to be a resurrection of the upright and the wicked”?—An Ohio reader.

We see no reason to be disturbed over the use of “wicked” in connection with the resurrection. We cannot be held down to one meaning and one application by the word “wicked”. It all depends upon whether the wickedness is deliberate and persisted in right along or whether it is done otherwise.

For example, Ephesians 6:16 speaks of the “fiery darts of the wicked”, and uses the Greek word ponerós; in fact, 1 John 2:13, 14; 3:12; 5:18, 19 all speak of the “wicked one”, using ponerós and meaning Satan the Devil. And yet in addressing his disciples in the sermon on the mount Jesus said to them: “If ye then, being evil [ponerós], know how to give good gifts unto your children,” etc. (Matt. 7:11; Luke 11:13) He also said God made his “sun to rise on the evil [ponerós] and on the good”. (Matt. 5:45; Luke 6:35) Colossians 1:21 tells us that we were once enemies of God “in your mind by wicked [ponerós] works”. Also Ezekiel 18:21, 23 says: “But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?”

So we see that those who wrote the Bible used the words meaning wickedness or to be wicked in a general way sometimes, to include those who can be recovered to righteousness and spared from Gehenna. So An American Translation has committed no grave doctrinal error in speaking of a “resurrection of . . . the wicked”, neither The Watchtower in quoting that translation. Certainly here could not be meant deliberately wicked ones beyond the point of reformation, as referred to by Psalm 145:20: “All the wicked will he destroy.”

● In view of what Deuteronomy 4:15-23 has to say about the making of any graven image, would it be considered Scripturally correct to make photographs of individuals for display purposes of any sort, or for other uses?—P. S., Indiana.

The prohibitions as to the making of images had to do specifically with the making of images for the purposes of worship. The Israelites were not prevented from making images for other purposes, but since image-making in those times was almost invariably of an idolatrous nature, there was little image-making among the Israelites. However, there were images or likenesses of cherubim in the tabernacle, both on the hangings and on the cover of the ark. Solomon made images of oxen to support the laver for the temple, and images of lions for his throne. It would be far-fetched to connect the taking of photographs for any purpose, other than worship, of course, with the making of idols. Photography, painting and sculpturing can serve useful or artistic purposes in accurately depicting persons or things. Pictures are often educational, and it is said that a picture tells more than a thousand words.

Announcements

SHARING IN THE FINAL WITNESS

Shortly before he was impaled Jesus counseled his apostles, “This good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness to all the nations, and then the accomplished end will come.” The time for the accomplished end of this wicked system of things is very near, and the servants of God are giving the final witness in every corner of the earth. What a privilege it is to have a share in this momentous work! Since you have now learned something of God’s gracious provisions for those who act in harmony with his will, wouldn’t you like to share in spreading this good news? For January Jehovah’s witnesses have as their service theme, Sharing in the Final Witness (Matt. 24:14, NW). During this month they will offer a year’s subscription for this Christian journal, The Watchtower, on a contribution of $1.00. Why not share in the final witness by calling the attention of your neighbors to the significance of the times in which we live and offer them a subscription for The Watchtower to aid them further to learn of God’s requirements? The local company of Jehovah’s witnesses will be glad to assist you; or write to us and we will furnish you with additional instructions and forms for reporting your activity.

1951 YEARBOOK OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

Of the increase of God’s government and peace there will be no end. This Scriptural truth is convincingly proved by the report of the 1950 service year as presented by the president of the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society in the 1951 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In addition to this annual report covering more than 100 regions, the Yearbook contains the president’s comment on the yeartext for 1951 and a daily text and comment for each day of the coming year. Those associated with a group should send in combined orders, as through the servant of a company, to save time and expense. A remittance of 50c per copy should accompany each order. Your 1951 Calendar may be ordered at the same time; price: 25 cents each or five to one address for $1.00.

1951 ASSEMBLIES

The big convention of the year 1951 is planned for London, England, August 1 to 5 inclusive. Brethren in America and other countries can now make plans for vacation periods and traveling to England to attend this gathering of Jehovah’s witnesses.

If possible, other assemblies will be held in France from August 9 to 12 inclusive and in The Netherlands from August 17 to 19 inclusive. Other European assemblies will be announced later.

The principal convention will be at London. Details and travel announcements for American brethren will be published soon. Please do not write the Society until you read these.

“WATCHTOWER” STUDIES

Week of January 7: Parable of the Sower, ¶1-19.

Week of January 14: Parable of the Sower, ¶20-39.