The Watchtower — September 15, 1955

Secular Progress and Spiritual Sloth

THE weeds of spiritual sloth tend to thrive in the sunlight of secular progress. Little wonder that this modern world confuses technical knowledge with wisdom. It assumes that secular or worldly progress automatically raises intellectual and spiritual standards. The opposite is generally true. Secular progress has promoted the weedlike growth of intellectual immaturity and spiritual sloth, a dearth of true wisdom and a vacuum in spiritual vitality. Secular progress has deceived people into believing that happiness and life result from the things they possess. At the same time secular progress has blinded people to the widespread spiritual sloth, which, in turn, leads to perils of far-reaching consequence.

One of those perils was described recently by Dr. Arthur Clinton, director of the New York city Bureau of Attendance, who explained that the luxuries of secular progress have so preoccupied parents that they tend to neglect the spiritual lives of their children with a disastrous result: child crime. This is because a spiritually slothful home, explains Dr. Clinton, is just as much a breeding ground for delinquency as a home physically broken by divorce.

Agreeing with this is the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. Speaking from thirty years’ experience he said: “Invariably when you analyze the reasons for criminal actions, certain facts stand out, stark and revealing—the faith of our fathers, the love of God, and the observance of His Commandments either have been thrust aside or they never existed in the heart of the transgressor. The secular way of thinking must give way to the spiritual, if our nation is to stand. What we need most in this country are the things unseen . . . spiritual development, moral power.”

Those words of F.B.I. chief Hoover were quoted in Pennsylvania’s Altoona Tribune of March 25, 1955, after which the newspaper editorial went on to say: “In short, we, as a people, simply are ignorant in matters of the spiritual. We are incompetent. We do not know how to go about it! We acknowledge the vital importance of the spiritual, as attested by the vast and increasing church membership in this country. We superficially, perhaps, accept and practice certain religious precepts. But, how pitiful is the sum total of our spiritual knowledge and development as compared with our secular progress!”

If spiritual sloth, nourished and camouflaged by secular progress, is dangerous to children, it is deadly for adults. Yet myriads of people today make financial security their final goal in life. Others make their life consist of a futile quest for happiness through possessions. Where nations produce abundantly, few persons are able to lift themselves above the vacuous mental state of a nation of shoppers. Subtle advertising induces moderns to believe that the highest virtues are the pursuit of pleasures and material possessions. Advertising creates a promised land to be gained by alert purchases and prompt installment payments. And so moderns push zestfully toward their goal of a gadgeted Utopia of streamlined, plasticized beauty in which there need be no human effort except to be worthy of the bright new mechanical perfections.

It is a delusion, this belief that possessions and the blessing of financial security will more than adequately compensate for spiritual losses. Many persons allow the delusion to mushroom into a Frankenstein that destroys all spiritual life; others let it dictate their lives till they think that real living means keeping up with one’s neighbors in the possession of gadgets and that parental duty requires protecting one’s children, not from the danger of spiritual sloth, but from the sense of inferiority certain to follow the selfish retention of last year’s car. It is a deadly delusion. Many will not find this out until it is too late.

Certainly the Founder of Christianity never taught that possessions brought spiritual enrichment, happiness or life. Rather he taught that, unless one places God’s kingdom first, possessions can lead to loss of life, losing out on the hope of everlasting life in God’s new world. So Jesus’ warning applies with protective force in this day when secular progress fosters the growth of spiritual sloth: “Be on the alert and on guard against every kind of covetousness, because even when a person has an abundance his life does not result from the things he possesses.”—Luke 12:15, NW.

Preaching by Seven-Year-Old Bears Fruit

It happened in a country school in Italy. When asked by his schoolteacher to write on a religious theme, a certain young minister of Jehovah would always write about the true worship of Jehovah God. At times he would come home with tears in his eyes because his teacher had torn up his essay. At Christmas time this young minister was required to memorize a poem about Christmas. However, when it came to reciting it in class, before a miniature manger, he stood his ground, giving as the reasons for refusing to do so quotations from Psalm 115 and Exodus 20. The teacher, upon looking up these texts in his Bible, was surprised to note that what this young minister had told him was indeed the truth. Interested in knowing more about this strange religion, the teacher visited the parents, who were only too glad to answer his many questions. He continued to take in knowledge concerning Jehovah and his purposes and as he progressed he overcame the obstacles presenting themselves because of fear of man. Before long he took his stand and dedicated himself to Jehovah and was baptized. Today, not only are he, his wife and his child regular attenders at the congregational meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses, but both he and his wife are zealously preaching the good news from house to house; the fruits borne by the preaching of a seven-year-old.

Who or What Is the Holy Spirit?

The general opinion in Christendom is that the holy spirit is a person, “the third person of the Trinity,” coequal and coeternal with God. Does the Bible show the holy spirit to be a person? If not, then what is it?

MOST persons in Christendom have a rather vague idea about the holy spirit. They may remember that the holy spirit appeared as a dove at the time Jesus was baptized and in the form of tongues of fire at Pentecost, but that is all. While they may feel certain the holy spirit is a person, the fact remains that “there was some indistinctness in the teachings of Justin Martyr and others of the early church fathers concerning the spirit,” as to being a person.

To understand a Scriptural subject it is always well to begin by going to the original tongue. Thus in the Christian Greek Scriptures the word “spirit” with two exceptions translates the Greek word pneuma, from which we get the words pneumatic and pneumonia. Pneuma, however, is translated not only “spirit” 288 times, but also “ghost” 91 times, “wind” once, “life” once, “spiritually” once and “spiritual gift” once. (King James Version) That “ghost” is a mistranslation is generally recognized.

The Greek word pneuma literally means “wind” and it will help us to understand our subject when we note that in all the various ways in which it is used it is like the wind in that it is invisible and powerful, showing itself in visible effects. Thus it is used to refer to invisible persons: “God is a Spirit.” Christ Jesus “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” at his resurrection. Angels are “all spirits for public service.”—John 4:24; 1 Cor. 15:45; Heb. 1:14, NW.

“Spirit” at times describes the invisible and impersonal life force in man and animals: “So they entered . . . two and two of all flesh wherein was the spirit of life.” At death this life force or invisible “spirit returns to God who gave it.” “Spirit” is also used to refer to our mental disposition: “He who rules his spirit [is better] than he who takes a city.”—Gen. 7:15, Ro; Eccl. 12:7; Prov. 16:32, RS.

However, the use of “spirit” that specially interests us is where it is usually translated by capitals and used in relation to God and Christ as “Spirit” and “the Holy Spirit.” In these instances is a separate person indicated or does it refer to something impersonal as “spirit of life” and “the spirit of man”?

IMPERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

If in such instances a separate person is referred to, then many texts of the Bible simply do not make sense. For example, Jesus was to baptize with holy spirit and with fire, just as John had baptized with water. Persons can be baptized with water and with fire but can they be baptized with a bodily person? Can we imagine a person splitting himself up and distributing himself bit by bit to the one hundred and twenty disciples present at Pentecost and then filling each one of them? Can we think of Jesus receiving from his Father this holy spirit “person” and then shedding or pouring forth, like liquid fire, this person upon those disciples? Is that reasonable?—Matt. 3:11; Acts 2:1-4, 17; 11:16, NW.

Further, Christians are told not to quench the spirit. Not quench a person? God’s servants of old were said to have been enveloped or clothed by his spirit. Enveloped by a person? More such examples could be given but these should suffice to show that it simply does not make sense to attribute personality to “spirit” in such instances. Then what is this holy spirit? It is God’s active force, not just God’s power residing in him, but that power in action.—Judg. 6:34, NW; 1 Thess. 5:19.

What has helped to obscure this truth is that translators have twisted their versions according to their religious prejudices, as in their unwarranted rendering of pneuma as “ghost” and as in their capitalizing holy spirit. To make holy spirit seem to be a person they have also added the definite article “the” in 105 instances before the words “spirit” or “holy spirit,” where the original does not have it. Either the original writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures were extremely negligent or disrespectful of the “Holy Spirit” in leaving out the definite article or else those who attribute personality to the holy spirit are sadly mistaken.

Throwing light on this subject are the words of Jesus: “Every kind of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. For example, whoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the holy spirit, it will not be forgiven him, no, not in the present system of things nor in that to come.” Jesus’ words here defy explanation if the holy spirit is the third person of a coequal trinity, but they do make sense when we consider it as God’s active force. By means of this active force Jesus had cast out demons, and his opposers, in attributing this manifestation of God’s holy spirit or active force to the Devil, were blaspheming the holy spirit. Sins against God and Christ can be forgiven because such could be due to ignorance, but sins against a manifestation of God’s holy spirit are willful, deliberate and malicious, and so for such there is no forgiveness.—Matt. 12:31, 32; Heb. 10:26, NW.

CONSIDERING OBJECTIONS

Perhaps by now someone will object, saying, Did not Jesus use personal pronouns in referring to the holy spirit? True, but only when personalizing the holy spirit in its role of paraclete, comforter or helper, which nouns are in the masculine gender in Greek. It was in this capacity that the holy spirit was poured out upon them at Pentecost, they thereby receiving comfort, help, power and understanding for the work they were to do. Many times in the Scriptures impersonal things are personalized, and so Jesus in this connection used the personal pronouns because he had personalized the holy spirit as a helper or comforter.—John 14:26; 15:26.

However, he also used impersonal pronouns in referring to this “spirit of truth” which he would not have done had it been a person. “The spirit of the truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither beholds it nor knows it. You know it, because it remains with you and is in you.” While some use the personal pronouns in this text, the fact that both Rotherham and Goodspeed, eminent Greek scholars, also use impersonal pronouns indicates that the use of personal pronouns is due to religious bias.—John 14:17, NW.

But do we not read of the holy spirit’s speaking, guiding and leading, and do not such terms indicate personality? Not necessarily. God’s invisible active force can do all these things even though not a person. To illustrate: By means of radio, city officials can keep in touch with all police patrol cars, instructing, guiding and advising them, but that does not mean that the radio is a separate person, does it? Again, the chief of state makes a speech and a news commentator quotes him over the radio. It would be equally correct to refer to it as something that the radio said, that the news commentator said or that the chief of state said, depending upon the viewpoint.

The same is true regarding the Scriptures. Concerning the prophecies we are told that God spoke, that the spirit of Christ testified and that the holy spirit caused them to be uttered, all of which is correct, for all things are of the Father, through the Son and by the holy spirit.—Zech. 4:6, AS; 1 Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:11, margin; 2 Pet. 1:21, NW.

Because all things are of the Father, through the Son and by the holy spirit, we repeatedly find them linked together as at Matthew 28:19 and; 2 Corinthians 13:14. Such linking together, however, does not prove that all three are persons or that they must be equal. How could they be equal when we read that the Father sent the Son and the Son sent the holy spirit? The sender is always superior to the one being sent.

Does the fact that the holy spirit is said to appoint servants in the Christian congregation, as at Acts 13:2 and Ac 20:28, prove that it is a person, as some claim? Not at all. In that the men who made such appointments, as Paul instructed Titus, were filled with the holy spirit and motivated by it, we can say that such appointments were made by the holy spirit.—Tit. 1:5, NW.

But surely the statement that “the spirit searches into all things, even the deep things of God,” proves that it has personality, others claim. Not necessarily. Since what we ourselves do with help of God’s active force can be said to have been done by it, we can say that it searches, meaning that the holy spirit helps us in our searching of God’s Word. A similar thought is found in the statement that “the spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children,” meaning that God’s spirit or active force by aiding in the understanding of his Word bears witness with the mental disposition of those composing the body of Christ that they are indeed sons of God.—1 Cor. 2:10; Rom. 8:16, NW.

To hold that the holy spirit is not a person is not belittling, disparaging or slighting it, but giving it its just due, for, look where we will in the Scriptures, we do not find it treated as a person. Repeatedly Jehovah’s servants had visions of heaven, such as Daniel, Stephen and the apostle John; each time they saw representations of Jehovah God and of his Son, the Son of man, the Lamb of God, but did they ever see a representation of the holy spirit as a person? The very fact that it appeared as a dove and as many tongues of fire indicates that it is not a person.

Yes, all the Scriptural testimony explicitly shows that either the holy spirit is not a person or it is of such nature that it can be harmonized with impersonality. It is Jehovah’s active force, invisible and powerful, sent forth to accomplish his purpose.

Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.—Rom. 3:4, NW.

Part 5—Visiting Jehovah’s Witnesses in Central America

IT IS a short but pleasant flight from Maracaibo to Aruba, Netherlands Antilles. Just before leaving the mainland you see the many oil derricks out in the lake pumping “black gold” into tankers that ply the Caribbean over to Aruba, there to be taken to large refineries and then transported to all parts of the world.

When the Society’s president, N. H. Knorr, landed at Aruba many were there to greet him; and though there for only a few hours, he was whisked away to a new Kingdom Hall being built in Oranjestad. The windows were not even in, nor the porch fixed up, but the brothers had cleaned it, brought in chairs and tastefully decorated it with flowers and wanted him to make the first speech there. Pleasant it was to talk to forty-four of them, and seemingly all understood English, so no interpreter was needed. Excitement prevailed, because that very afternoon a chartered plane was to fly from Aruba to Curaçao with some forty Kingdom publishers who were going to the general convention for the Netherlands Antilles.

But before any got away Brother Knorr was taken to a radio station where an interview was held and broadcast.

The days from December 31, 1954, to January 3, 1955, were busy ones in Curaçao. The program called for four lectures and these had to be given through interpreters. Meetings with missionaries and pioneers, checking over the branch office and answering mail that was waiting for his arrival kept the president busy.

The assembly hall was within walking distance of the center of town. With 181 in attendance, the convention got off to a very good start, but the first sessions (New Year’s Eve) were carried on through a noisy time. There was no cause for the noise in the convention hall, but outside were the folks of the Netherlands Antilles who like to celebrate New Year’s Eve with firecrackers. There everybody was celebrating and it was rather dangerous to be out on the streets because one never knew when some large firecracker would be exploding at his heels. A custom of Willemstadt’s people seems to be to assemble on Brionplein (the plaza) near the pontoon bridge. Here, just before midnight on the year’s last day, thousands congregate. As the new year comes in the real noise starts. It is deafening, including not only firecrackers but, at the stroke of twelve o’clock, all ship sirens, all bells, all whistles unitedly sound off. Then, too, the cannon on the fort across the inlet is fired and everyone around town starts yelling “Bon Anja” (“Happy New Year”). At height of this commotion the Roman Catholic bishop appears on his balcony, overlooking the plaza. From that second-story balcony he blesses the great crowd, the more religious ones of which crowd kneel before him. Not a thing he says can be heard by any of them because of the terrific noise, but they assume that they have been blessed.

So Christendom brings in its new year with gunfire, firecrackers and overwhelming noise. Some think that by shooting off firecrackers they scare away demons, but it appears from this occurrence that what happens at the opening of the new year is what such celebrators try to keep on doing during the rest of the year—shooting bullets, cannons, dropping bombs and, instead of using little firecrackers, using large ones that kill and destroy. So one might think, from all of this turmoil and fuss, that that is the way the world likes to have it for the rest of the 365 days of each year; and in many instances that is just the way they get it, and the people suffer.

On January 1, while the majority of the people in town were getting over their New Year’s Eve nightmares, Jehovah’s witnesses were conducting an early morning immersion service, eight persons being baptized. The convention went on with real enthusiasm, thinking only of praising Jehovah’s name and announcing his kingdom. It was a pleasure to observe the fine distribution of magazines throughout the Netherlands Antilles. Two missionaries had placed over 2,000 magazines each during 1954. Generally, distribution of magazines throughout this territory by all publishers has been very good.

Sunday night 302 persons assembled for the public talk. On January 4 this same talk was given in the Kingdom Hall in the Papiamento language to an audience of 70. This brought to a close a blessed assembly.

The Netherlands Antilles branch office of the Society reports good progress. In February there were 103 publishers afield praising Jehovah’s name; and it is believed many more persons of good will in Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, the territory under this branch, will grow in knowledge, understanding and appreciation of their responsibilities.

JAMAICA

Scattered all over this beautiful island in the Caribbean Sea are many of Jehovah’s witnesses. They are preaching the good news of the Kingdom and they continually find many more who desire life.

Here a stop was made by the Society’s president to enable him to check some branch matters. While there, arrangements were also made for him to speak to the congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses. To a public meeting at 7 p.m. 3,120 came, a race-track grandstand being used. It was packed out. People were seated in chairs set on the ground just in front of the grandstand and many others stood. In Jamaica there are a number of brothers who have been in the truth for many, many years, and these have seen the fine growth of the New World society. It gladdens the heart now to see thousands in the organization where some years ago there were only hundreds. Much remains to be done to bring the new associates to maturity so that they, too, can take on the whole load of responsibility. Brothers in the city of Kingston have co-operated very well in building Kingdom Halls, and they have a number of congregations scattered at convenient places throughout the city, each having its own Kingdom Hall. The halls are beautifully designed and well equipped. The president’s stay was much too short for a three-day convention or for traveling to other parts of the island. His work here being accomplished, he had to hasten away to Havana, Cuba.

CUBA

When it became known that the president of the Society would visit Cuba January 7-9, to attend a three-day assembly, enthusiasm ran high. In the brothers’ minds the big question was, Where shall we hold the convention? A number of places were visited but it was not until they got in touch with the Havana Greyhound Kennel Club that final arrangements were worked out. The place is known as the Cinódromo, used for dog racing. It has fine facilities. After talking with the local operators, Jehovah’s witnesses in Cuba became aware that an American organization in Miami, Florida, had this place under contract. So the branch office got in touch with them and word came back that if an organization like Jehovah’s witnesses wanted it they could have it. The brothers immediately got to work fixing up the place for the convention.

Of course, the Cuban brothers wanted to make this a big event, so they printed two-color handbills for announcing the public talk “This Good News of the Kingdom.” The branch has a small printing plant that turned out 200,000 handbills, 2,500 window signs and 2,500 placards used by the publishers in advertising. Special letters of invitation also were prepared, and large signs (6 feet by 70 feet) also were made and put up at different places. There were special arrangements for rail travel, and chartered buses to bring delegates from all parts of Cuba to Havana. Advertising was done in theaters, radio announcements were broadcast, interviews arranged, and newspapers gave excellent publicity. A goodly number of the brothers came in early Thursday and they inquired as to the time of arrival of the president of the Society, and many of them came out to the airport to meet him. In fact, twenty buses were rented by them to bring out the crowd. It was estimated that 800 to 1,000 brothers were on hand to greet the Society’s president. Quite a few newspaper reporters and movie news cameramen also were on hand to interview Brother Knorr. The airport has a powerful radio station, with studios in the Air Terminal building; and as soon as the president got through immigration and customs he was hurried to the studios of this station for a personal interview. A clear, to-the-point description of the work of Jehovah’s witnesses was given, being immediately interpreted into Spanish. A number of newspapers came out with articles about Jehovah’s witnesses, four radio stations granted time for interviews, and television showed excellent scenes of the president’s arrival as well as Sunday afternoon’s sessions at the time the public meeting was on.

As far as Cubans were concerned the convention of Jehovah’s witnesses was general knowledge and the people showed real interest in it. The Cinodrome itself was not big enough to handle all the crowd expected, so 1,000 chairs were rented and placed in the shade under the grandstand. With these extra chairs a total seating capacity of about 4,500 was provided. When the public talk was delivered Sunday afternoon the attendance was 4,574. The people very much appreciated the plain, simple and clear-cut statements given, extemporaneously, first in English by N. H. Knorr, a sentence at a time, and immediately its interpretation into Spanish by Brother R. M. Gonzalez, a member of the branch office in Havana. The sound equipment was excellent and the lecture was well heard in all parts of the stands.

It seemed that this convention was excitement from the time that the president arrived until the entire event was over. Everything moved fast. There were many high points, one of which was the arrival of the Society’s vice-president. Brother Franz came in a few hours after Brother Knorr, flying specially from New York for this convention. He was on the program several times and gave an excellent report on his November trip to Scotland, where he was principal witness on behalf of the Society in a court case. He also gave very helpful admonition and the brothers were greatly pleased because Brother Franz could speak Spanish, requiring no interpreter, whereas Brother Knorr, speaking only English, always had an interpreter.

A very fine cafeteria having been established, the brothers’ physical needs were exceptionally well cared for besides their being fed well spiritually. Speakers at the convention included also a number of the circuit and district servants and those of the branch office.

The local authorities at the Cinódromo voiced surprise at the tremendous amount of publicity that Jehovah’s witnesses were given in the newspapers. They were amazed at the orderliness of all the brothers, for such had never before been seen at that place, a race track frequented by people of all walks of life, having no love for one another. But, of course, Jehovah’s witnesses do have love for their neighbors. Then, too, each day the grounds were being kept so clean that at the convention’s end there was not a speck of dirt. Indeed, some workmen of the race track who were assigned there during the convention worked right along with the brothers, co-operating excellently and to the fullest extent. The baptismal service, too, was a high light, 83 (34 men and 49 women) symbolizing their dedication to Jehovah God.

A special session was arranged for circuit and district servants and this was conducted principally by the Society’s president, who answered their questions. A fine meeting was held with pioneers, 270 being present. In Cuba there is a big field for pioneering, just as in all other parts of the world.

So much favorable comment had been caused by this convention that even the owner of another large arena, The Stadium Tropical, telephoned the branch office, saying that should their stadium be wanted for the big assembly in 1955 it ought to be applied for some time in March to get in their schedule. They were very anxious for Jehovah’s witnesses to come in and use their facilities.

In talking with the brothers it was observed that they were strengthened by what they had heard, the good counsel and heart-cheering Bible information greatly encouraging all. Everyone was happy because of having come to this assembly. All seemed determined to return to their respective congregations and to fight harder for the truth, maintain their integrity and joyfully give a greater witness for Jehovah’s kingdom.

The Cubans very much appreciate the good news and they, along with all of Jehovah’s witnesses world-wide, will continue to show their gratitude to Jehovah God. They want to make the name of Jehovah widely known and to preach the good news of his kingdom in all their land.

Brother Knorr and Brother Franz were very grateful that they could visit with their Cuban brothers, and they believed this convention would mark a big forward step in the Cuban work.

CONCLUSION

This trip by the president, through Mexico, Central America, part of South America and some of the Caribbean islands, brought much joy to his heart. A number of years ago he visited some of these countries. Many of them he has visited three and four times, some twice; but when he reflects, looking back to 1942 when no missionaries had been sent out and when only a few pioneers and a few part-time ministers were preaching in some of these countries, it certainly warms the heart now to see the grand increase. For example, in 1942 the publisher’s chart said: Honduras, one publisher; Colombia, two; Netherlands Antilles, one; Nicaragua, two; Venezuela, one.

During the two months he was away on this trip of 1954-1955 the president visited thirteen countries in this area. In 1942 there were 3,005 publishers. Now, just thirteen years later, in the 1955 service year, there are 30,363. So in thirteen years those thirteen countries combined have ten times as many publishers, a 900 per cent increase. What an increase! It shows that it pays to send out missionaries, and when these stay in their assignments, working hard and gathering together the “other sheep,” such in turn also will become good ministers and the work will further multiply by leaps and bounds. Jehovah’s spirit is upon his people. Now is the time when this good news of the Kingdom must be preached in all the world for a witness, and Jehovah’s witnesses know that. So with joy, with growing gladness, they courageously press on, not only in this part of the earth but everywhere, happy in these days of the “Triumphant Kingdom.”

Modern History of Jehovah’s Witnesses

Part 18—Second World War’s Christian Neutrals in British Commonwealth

IN THE “Battle of Britain”—including its terrible ordeal of air war—less than a dozen of the more than 12,000 witnesses of Jehovah then residing in the British Isles lost their lives. True, many witnesses suffered injury and lost their homes and Kingdom Halls in the Nazi air “blitz”; nevertheless, they kept right on in their way of worshiping Jehovah, the living God. House-to-house preaching they maintained at a high level. Congregational meetings had to be transferred to Sunday afternoons to avoid dangers of night air attacks, but all such were regularly held. The great preaching campaign, which kept on operating and expanding even in those war years, brought much comfort and hope to thousands of honest-hearted ones.

Large zone assemblies were held right on schedule as if no war existed, some sessions even being held during actual bombing raids. In a night raid Manchester’s large Free Trade Hall was demolished just after Jehovah’s witnesses had completed their 1940 national convention in that city. Most amazing was the convention held at Leicester, September 3-7, 1941, where some 12,000 witnesses assembled for a five-day theocratic festival amid war’s intense heat. In the face of unfriendly forces, almost insurmountable obstacles at every turn had to be overcome—as to feeding, accommodation and transportation—to assemble such a vast number. The recordings of Judge Rutherford’s principal lectures at the St. Louis convention the month before in the United States had been sent by air mail to London just in time for the censors to clear for this British convention. What a spiritual lift this assembly proved to be! What a spirit of unity and loving cooperation was manifested! It strengthened all to endure the trials of the war years.a

An embargo was placed on receiving shipments of literature from Brooklyn. Then ensued a struggle for paper supplies to enable the Society to undertake and carry forward fairly large printing operations inside Britain, for keeping up the flow of publications into the field where a large band of active pioneers was serving many thousands who realized their spiritual need. Later, importation of the Watchtower magazine was banned as sent to subscribers in the British Isles. However, local printing of a form containing the main study articles of The Watchtower was not prohibited, and thus there came to be no interruption of the monthly spiritual-feeding program for hundreds of weekly Watchtower study meetings; the British brothers being spiritually kept fully abreast with their American associates. Several pioneer homes were supported in various large cities to keep the pioneer service operating in areas where congregation publishers were few.

Military exemption was refused to the brothers by many of the judges at the tribunals. This meant that 1,593 convictions followed, with total prison-sentence time exceeding six centuries. Of these, 344 were convictions of women who, equally with men, were required to spend time in prison for failing to accept national direction to perform war duties.b In Britain there was total regimentation of both males and females. Prior to the war many witnesses had fled as refugees from Poland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and, finally, France. These refugees had become pioneers in Britain, but later, when the war intensified, the government interned them in a camp on the Isle of Man for the duration of the war. Also American and Swiss nationals of the witnesses were deported from the British Isles.

So, despite heavy restrictions and war limitations, Jehovah’s witnesses in Britain maintained their neutrality, keeping their integrity to their God. The fight for freedom to worship Jehovah did not subside or die out in Britain. Rather it was waged more intensively than ever before.

In Canada, too, the story of the exploits of Jehovah’s witnesses became truly thrilling. In earlier years of the Society the work in Canada developed under the Brooklyn office along with the American congregations. Eventually, in 1918, a separate branch office was established in Winnipeg.c Then after the close of World War I, and shortly after removal of the ban against the witnesses in Canada January 1, 1920, the Society’s Canadian office was transferred to Toronto.d In 1925 the charitable corporation named INTERNATIONAL BIBLE STUDENTS ASSOCIATION OF CANADA was organized, it becoming the owner of the branch headquarters property.e The work advanced fairly well through the years but, due to the deflection of some, administrative changes were necessary in 1936. Better spiritual conditions resulted, with a greater forward movement in the witness work.f All along, in Catholic Quebec strong opposition was encountered, including continued arrests. However, the real “Battle of Quebec” came to be reserved for oncoming postwar years, as we shall later see.

On July 4, 1940, at the peak of Hitler’s European conquests, the then Canadian minister of justice Ernest la Pointe, a Quebec Catholic, passed an order in council that placed a total ban on the activities of Jehovah’s witnesses and their Canadian corporation, the I.B.S.A. of Canada.g With war reversals at their peak for the democracies, Jehovah’s witnesses were made easy scapegoats. A modern Inquisition followed. Spying upon neighbors was encouraged, homes were raided, private libraries seized, Bible meetings broken up, Memorial celebrations interrupted, and even copies of the well-known King James Version of the Bible were confiscated and ordered destroyed. The press was bitter in its attacks. These outrages swept from one end of the country to the other.h While all this took the Canadian witnesses suddenly by surprise, they by no means took it lying down. There soon followed the build-up of an extensive efficient underground system that enabled them to meet in small groups for Bible study and to carry on their preaching activities. Though men had placed a ban upon them these zealous preachers of the kingdom of Jehovah were convinced that He, the living God, had placed no ban on their worship of Him and their sincere efforts to do His will. Therefore, in obeying God rather than men they were following a course pleasing to their heavenly Father even though it meant suffering punishment at the hand of earthly authorities who presumed to interfere with man’s free worship of Almighty God. (Acts 5:29) At length some five thousand publishers got back on their feet again, carrying on back-call and Bible study work. One morning in November, 1940, these “locusts” rose early and flooded the country from one end to the other in a “blitz” witness placing hundreds of thousands of copies of a special booklet under the doors of the homes, entitled “End of Nazism.” This display of courageous activity terrified their enemies. The opposers were able to arrest only ten. As the war years progressed other such daring exploits continued to keep up the flow of spiritual food to persons of good will.i

For nearly two years Jehovah’s witnesses suffered in silence, gagged so far as opportunity of lodging formal protest and making any defense was concerned. Then, in June, 1942, opportunity was granted to them to make representations to a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Defense of Canada Regulations. The committee unanimously recommended that the ban be lifted on the legal corporations of Jehovah’s witnesses, but the minister of justice refused to recall his banning order. Opposition to the ban began to be widespread, not only among units of the liberal press, but also in debate in the House of Commons. Finally, on October 15, 1943, the ban on the unincorporated society of Jehovah’s witnesses was lifted, but not the ban on their legal corporations. This partial removal of the ban still made it impossible to reopen the Toronto Bethel branch headquarters.j In June, 1944, a national petition was circulated, to which 223,448 signatures were obtained, requesting the removal of the ban on the I.B.S.A. of Canada. However, before the petition was presented the government decided to remove the corporation ban on June 13, 1944.

From the partial removal of the ban in October, 1943, the Canadian brothers made a rush to engage Kingdom Halls and advertise them as in preban days. In 1940, when the ban was placed upon the Canadian work, there was an average of 6,081 publishers, but when the ban was lifted three years later in June, 1944, there were 10,345 workers participating.k Truly a sizable increase during days of restraint, showing that worship of Jehovah cannot be stamped out. Persecution rather stimulates theocratic increase. The growth of the New World society in Canada continues to be remarkable, impressive and healthy. They are well able and ready to withstand any opposition.

In Australia religious leaders began to encourage political action against the energetic witnesses, also, from July, 1940, onward. On January 16, 1941, Prime Minister Menzies prematurely announced in Parliament his government’s proposal to ban Jehovah’s witnesses. The next day, January 17, the Order-in-Council was gazetted restraining the activities of the Society and its legal corporations, including the Adelaide Company of Jehovah’s witnesses which owned a Kingdom Hall building that the government soon took over. The Bethel headquarters were also taken and occupied by the government.l It is regrettable to report, however, that during the period of the ban many of the witnesses did not carry out a strict course of Christian neutrality. Rather, many of them participated in enterprises that gave aid to the nation’s war effort. Later the brothers realized their error and repented.a

A test was made of the government’s action to ban the activities of the Adelaide Company of Jehovah’s witnesses, Inc., which finally was heard in the High Court of Australia. The court gave a four-to-one victory to the witnesses. It held that the Order-in-Council, banning Jehovah’s witnesses in Australia, was illegal and ultra vires. The court ruled that the witnesses were not engaged in any seditious enterprise or engaged in publishing or printing literature that was seditious within the meaning of the criminal law of Australia. Further, the court said that they were not prejudicial to the official prosecution of the war.b Thus the brothers “down under” were also released from their restraints, to take up again their preaching activities. They, too, were victors in their fight for freedom to worship Almighty God against religious opposers.

As the Catholic-Nazi-Fascist war drive stampeded throughout Europe, bans, imprisonments and legal restrictions came upon our European associates in France, Spain, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Finland, Denmark and Norway. The continent of Africa, too, was affected, where restraints were placed upon the witnesses in Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Nigeria and the Gold Coast. What happened in Europe was duplicated in Asia and the Pacific area when the Japanese steam roller was set in motion in 1941. Bitter persecution of the witnesses and bannings ensued in Japan itself, the Philippine Islands, Burma, Malaya, Straits Settlements, Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia), Fiji, New Zealand, India and Ceylon. This represented a veritable global demon attack on the witnesses. In each of these countries the story is one of their Christian courage in standing firm for neutrality and continuing in Jehovah’s worship, even though underground. Upon the winning of the war in 1945 by the democracies (the symbolic “earth”), the “river” of Catholic-Nazi-Fascist world conspiracy to destroy theocratic freedom was fully swallowed up in total defeat. Truly the “earth” helped God’s people. (Rev. 12:16, NW) This enabled the surviving witnesses to return to their “aboveground” public activities in performing their ministry of comfort to mankind and reconciliation with God.c

(To be continued)

[Footnotes]

Part 2—What Do the Scriptures Say About “Survival After Death”?

In Part I of this three-part serial the reader was shown that in past and present centuries psychic or mediumistic occult practices have been seriously recognized and adopted by high military, civic and religious leaders of Christendom and heathendom, thereby startling some of the common people on their learning of such conduct by those leaders. History, both secular and Biblical, proves that even in most ancient times leaders of men seriously relied upon unseen spirit forces for comfort, advance information or guidance. Such spiritistic phenomena baffle modern scientists who, with their sensitive instruments, have carefully investigated. The rapidly spreading modern religion, Spiritualism, insists such unseen forces really are ‘immortal souls’ of men, women and children who lived and died of earth. Flatly contradicting such claim of spiritualists, the Bible consistently and uniformly teaches that the human soul dies.

1. What scriptures say in so many words that the human soul dies?

BUT where are the scriptures that say in so many words that the human soul dies? At Numbers 23:10 (NW) the prophet Balaam is inspired by Jehovah God to say: “Let my soul die the death of the upright ones, and let my end turn out afterward like theirs.” Other verses (NW) on soul death read: “You must deliver our souls from death.” “Our souls are to die instead of you people!” (Josh. 2:13, 14) “Zebulun was a people that scorned their souls to the point of death.” (Judg. 5:18) “His soul got to be impatient to the point of dying. . . . Samson proceeded to say: ‘Let my soul die with the Phi·lisʹtines.’” (Judg. 16:16, 30) “And he [the prophet Elijah] began to ask that his soul might die and to say: ‘It is enough! Now, O Jehovah, take my soul away, for I am no better than my forefathers.’” (1 Ki. 19:4) Also: “Their soul dieth in youth, and their life among the defiled.” (Job 36:14, Yg; Da; Ro; Le) “To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.” (Ps. 33:19) “He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence.” (Ps. 78:50) “Thou hast delivered my soul from death.” (Ps. 116:8) “He hath poured out his soul unto death.” (Isa. 53:12) “Will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your lies?” (Ezek. 13:19) “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”—Ezek. 18:4, 20.

2, 3. (a) Why are the terms “dead soul” and “deceased soul” accurate and Scriptural? (b) Is human-soul death consistently taught in the Christian Greek Scriptures (or “New Testament”), and how?

² But did you ever hear of a dead or deceased soul? Here is where the Bible uses such an expression: “You must not make cuts in your flesh for a deceased soul.” (Lev. 19:28, NW) “For a deceased soul no one may defile himself among his people. And he should not come to any dead soul.” (Lev. 21:1, 11, NW; also Le 22:4) “All the days of his keeping separate to Jehovah he may not come toward any dead soul.” (Num. 6:6, NW; also Nu 5:2; 6:11; 9:6, 7, 10) “Anyone touching the corpse of any human soul must then be unclean seven days.”—Num. 19:11, also 13, NW; see also Haggai 2:13, where nephʹesh (“soul”) is generally translated “dead body.”

³ The Bible does not contradict itself. With all those verses plainly speaking of soul death, no wonder you do not find any that says that the human soul cannot die or has immortality. But someone might remark, All those Bible verses are from the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, but is the mortalness of the human soul taught in the Christian Greek Scriptures? For, in Matthew 10:28, did not Jesus say: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul”? Yes, but Jesus also said: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:34) “They did not love their souls even despite the danger of death [or, souls until death].” (Rev. 12:11, NW, margin) “And a third of the creatures that are in the sea which have souls died.” (Rev. 8:9, NW) “And every living soul died in the sea.” (Rev. 16:3) Also Jesus’ disciple James wrote: “He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death.” (Jas. 5:20) So Jesus and his disciples did believe in our soul’s mortalness.

4. Why, usually, do Christendom’s clergymen omit quoting the last half of Matthew 10:28?

⁴ The usual way that clergymen try to uphold the teaching of the immortalness and indestructibleness of the human soul is by quoting only the first half of Matthew 10:28. Why? Because in the last half of the verse Jesus goes on to say: “But rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” That is to say, fear Almighty God who can destroy the human soul as well as the human body, in Gehenna. This is the Greek word mistranslated “hell,” it not being the same Greek word as haiʹdes and tarʹta·ros, which words the King James Version also translates as “hell.”

5. How, in Jesus’ case, was Jehovah’s prediction written by his prophet Isaiah (53:9) fulfilled, and with what symbolic significance?

⁵ Jesus at death went to Haʹdes or mankind’s common grave, but not to Gehenna, for his body was buried in the grave of Joseph the rich man of Arimathea. He was not pitched like a cursed criminal unworthy of a resurrection into Gehenna or the valley of Hinnom to the west and south of the walls of Jerusalem. (Acts 2:27-32, AS; NW) Had Jesus’ religious enemies gotten ahold of his dead body first, they might have hurled it over Jerusalem’s walls into Gehenna to be burned up there in the continual fires mixed with sulphur or to fall on a projecting ledge and be consumed in the warmth of that fire by worms or maggots that would not die till they had left only his inedible skeleton. Those religious enemies certainly did not want Jesus to be resurrected from Haʹdes, which was why they had Governor Pontius Pilate seal the stone-closed tomb and post a soldier guard there to prevent Jesus’ body from getting out. But, to symbolize that he was deserving of a resurrection from the dead, Jesus was fittingly laid in a memorial tomb; whereas people whose soul as well as body Almighty God destroys in Gehenna will never have a resurrection from the dead and hence will not live again as souls in God’s righteous new world. God destroys their soul in that he hopelessly destroys all opportunity for those in the Gehenna state to enjoy life anywhere again by any means. God does not apply the benefits of Jesus’ sacrificial death to them.—Matt. 27:57-66; 28:1-4, 11-15; Acts 4:1, 2; Isa. 53:9; Mark 9:43-48, NW; Yg; Mo.

6. Destructibility of the human soul was also clearly declared in what reported statements of Jesus, Peter and Paul?

⁶ Jesus taught that the human soul is mortal and therefore destructible, killable. He said: “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do a good deed or to do an injury, to save or to kill a soul?” (Mark 3:4 and Luke 6:9, NW) “Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to keep his soul safe for himself will lose it, but whoever loses it will preserve it alive.” (Luke 17:32, 33, NW; Ro, margin) “He that is fond of his soul destroys it, but he that hates his soul in this world will safeguard it for everlasting life.” (John 12:25, NW) The apostle Peter showed that Moses foretold Jesus, at Deuteronomy 18:15-19, and said: “Indeed, any soul that does not listen to that Prophet will be completely destroyed from among the people.” (Acts 3:22, 23, NW) And at Hebrews 10:39 (NW) we read: “Now we are not the kind that shrink back to destruction, but the kind that have faith to the preserving alive of the soul.”

7. As further showing that the human soul can be destroyed by Almighty God, what other typical passages in the Hebrew Scriptures exactly harmonize with declarations Jesus, Peter and Paul made?

⁷ In talking of the soul that way, Jesus and his disciples were in accord with the Hebrew Scriptures, where we read how Israel’s judge Joshua acted as Jehovah’s executioner of the pagan inhabitants of the Promised Land, as follows: “And Joshua captured Mak·keʹdah . . . As for its king, he devoted him and every soul that was in it to destruction. . . . Jehovah gave [Libʹnah] also and its king into Israel’s hand and they went striking it and every soul that was in it with the edge of the sword. They did not let a survivor remain.” (Josh. 10:28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39; 11:11, NW) Moses also said to the Israelite soldiers after they executed the enemy Midianites in war: “Everyone who has killed a soul and everyone who has touched someone slain, you should purify yourselves.” (Num. 31:19, NW) The wise man said: “Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.” (Prov. 6:32) Other scriptures might be quoted, but enough have been quoted here to prove that both the ancient Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures agree that the human soul is subject to destruction at the hands of Almighty God and his executioners.

8. How can we Scripturally convince bereaved persons about the falsity of spiritualism’s proffered comfort?

⁸ What great fact now stands out beyond all contradiction? It is this: There is no survival of the human soul after death. That is why the apostle Paul said that, if there were no resurrection of the dead beginning with Jesus Christ, then “those who fell asleep in death in union with Christ perished. If in this life only we [Christians] have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. However, now Christ has been raised up from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. For since death is through a man, resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:18-22, NW) There is a difference between “survival after death” and resurrection. In fact, it is because there is no survival after death that there must be a resurrection of the dead. Since there is no survival after death, there being no immortality of the human soul and there being no personality to the spirit in man, the dead in the graves are dead and, to live again in God’s new world, they need to be resurrected from the dead. Thus the very foundation of spiritualism must be false and there can be no such thing as communication between the living and the dead. Spiritualism therefore offers a false, misleading comfort to bereaved ones. It subjects them to a deception. It endangers them, for it denies the fall of man into sin, it denies death as the penalty for sin, it denies the need of Christ’s ransom sacrifice to remove mankind’s sin and gain God’s forgiveness of sins, it denies the need of God’s kingdom to destroy this wicked system of things and to resurrect the dead and aid them to attain to everlasting life under God’s kingdom in the earthly paradise of his righteous new world.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

9. Admitting the reality of spiritualists’ experiences in communicating with unseen persons, why do such experiences not prove the human soul’s “survival after death”?

⁹ This is not saying that spiritualists do not get in touch with an unseen, spirit realm. This is not saying that they do not have authentic phenomena, such as messages received from the invisible, predictions come true of future things, disclosures of knowledge not gained by ordinary means, supernatural movements of objects, and the shaping of ectoplasm from the bodies of mediums into human forms, and other experiences, upon which they chiefly base their belief and teaching. Admittedly such experiences and observed phenomena are a proof of something. Of what? Of an invisible realm with intelligent spirit creatures, but decidedly not of “survival after death” or of communication between the dead and the living. In this respect spiritualism is a case of mistaken identity. By this we mean that spiritualists mistake the identity of the individuals in the spirit realm with whom they communicate by mediums and other means. They think these are human souls once alive on earth but now departed. For their own purposes the spirits do not reveal their true identity but assume an identity that is not theirs.

10. Who are the unseen persons pretending to be souls of dead humans that communicate with spiritualists?

¹⁰ Who, then, are these spirits who communicate with spiritualists? They cannot be immortal souls or spirits of humans who have died. So since they pretend to be the invisible, living souls of the human dead and thus work a fraud and a deception, they must be lying spirits. They must be demons or devils, who are responsible for what the Bible calls “lying divination” and “lying signs and wonders.”—Ezek. 13:6, 7, 9; 2 Thess. 2:9, NW.

11-13. The Bible report of rebellious King Saul’s visit to the spirit medium in En-dor reveals what facts?

¹¹ But, objects the spiritualist, the Bible itself gives an account of communication between the dead and the living, between the faithful prophet Samuel and King Saul of Israel before the battle between the Israelites and the enemy Philistines.

¹² In order that we may examine the objection of the spiritualist with all the facts before us, we here publish the entire Bible account as given in the New World Translation:

“Now Samuel himself had died and all Israel had proceeded to bewail him and bury him in Ra’mah his own city. As for Saul, he had removed the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events from the land.

“Subsequently the Phi·lisʹtines collected together and came and pitched camp in Shuʹnem. So Saul collected all Israel together and they pitched camp in Gil·boʹa. When Saul got to see the camp of the Phi·lisʹtines he became afraid and his heart began to tremble very much. Although Saul would inquire of Jehovah, Jehovah never answered him, either by dreams or by the Uʹrim or by the prophets. Finally Saul said to his servants: ‘Look for a woman who is a mistress of spirit mediumship for me and let me go to her and consult her.’ Then his servants said to him: ‘Look! there is a woman who is a mistress of spirit mediumship in En-dor.’

“So Saul disguised himself and clothed himself with other garments and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night. He now said: ‘Employ divination, please, for me by spirit mediumship and bring up for me the one whom I shall designate to you.’ However, the woman said to him: ‘Here you yourself well know what Saul did, how he cut off the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events from the land. Why, then, are you acting like a trapper against my soul to have me put to death?’ Immediately Saul swore to her by Jehovah, saying: ‘As Jehovah is alive, guilt for error will not befall you in this matter!’ At this the woman said: ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ To this he said: ‘Bring up Samuel for me.’ When the woman saw ‘Samuel’ she began crying out at the top of her voice, and the woman went on to say to Saul: ‘Why did you trick me when you yourself are Saul?’ But the king said to her: ‘Do not be afraid, but what did you see?’ And the woman went on to say to Saul: ‘A god I saw coming up out of the earth.’ At once he said to her: ‘What is his form?’ to which she said: ‘It is an old man coming up, and he has himself covered with a sleeveless coat.’ At that Saul recognized that it was ‘Samuel,’ and he proceeded to bow low with his face to the earth and to prostrate himself.

“And ‘Samuel’ began to say to Saul: ‘Why have you disturbed me by having me brought up?’ To this Saul said: ‘I am in very sore straits, as the Phi·lisʹtines are fighting against me and God himself has departed from me and has answered me no more, either by means of the prophets or by dreams, so that I am calling you to let me know what I shall do.’

“And ‘Samuel’ went on to say: ‘Why, then, do you inquire of me, when Jehovah himself has departed from you and proves to be your adversary? And Jehovah will do for himself just as he spoke by means of me and Jehovah will rip the kingdom away from your hand and give it to your fellow man David. As you did not obey the voice of Jehovah and you did not execute his burning anger against Amʹa·lek, that is why this is the thing that Jehovah will certainly do to you this day. And Jehovah will also give Israel with you into the hand of the Phi·lisʹtines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. Even the camp of Israel Jehovah will give into the hand of the Phi·lisʹtines.’

“At that Saul quickly fell down his full length to the earth and became very much afraid because of ‘Samuel’s’ words. Also there happened to be no power in him, because he had not eaten food the whole day and the whole night. The woman now came to Saul and saw that he had been greatly terrified. So she said to him: ‘Here your maidservant has obeyed your voice and I proceeded to put my soul in my palm and obey the words that you spoke to me. And now, please, you, in turn, obey the voice of your maidservant, and let me set before you a piece of bread, and you eat, that power may come to be in you, because you will go on your way.’”—1 Sam. 28:3-22, NW.a

¹³ ‘There now,’ says the spiritualist, ‘the Bible says that it was Samuel that appeared after he died.’ But is that what the Bible does say? No! It shows that King Saul did not see anything at this séance. It was the spirit medium that saw something by her occult powers. Saul merely yielded himself mentally to her that the séance might be successful. ‘But,’ says the spiritualist, ‘what the medium saw and described King Saul himself identified as being Samuel.’ True, but Saul wanted to believe that it was Samuel and he was willing to be deceived by appearances, by resemblances.

14-16. (a) What identity problem do even skilled investigators admit as remaining unsolved? (b) How, in King Saul’s case, are sound Bible principles applicable for solving this problem?

¹⁴ Resemblances do not, however, establish exact identity. Other important things have to be taken in account. In his article “A Case for ESP, PK and PSI” published in the magazine Life in 1954, the well-known researcher into psychic things, Aldous Huxley, had this to say, on page 108:

“Another problem for the psi researchers of the future will be that of human survival after death. . . . Disquieting cases of mistaken identity turn up from time to time in the law courts. . . . Passports, social security cards and even fingerprints can be faked. And somewhere in the world practically everybody has his or her double. (Stalin and Hitler are said to have employed half a dozen or more.) If it is so difficult, even here and now, to prove scientifically that I am I and you are you, how much harder must it be to demonstrate that the person speaking through the mouth of a medium is in fact the person he says he is, and not a projection of information acquired by means of ESP [extrasensory perception] and dramatized, more or less convincingly, by a dissociated part of the medium’s subconscious mind.” And then, under a picture of former U.S. president Harry S. Truman alongside that of his theatrical stage doubler Irving Fisher, the article says: “WHO IS WHO? . . . Since physical identity can be counterfeited, Author Huxley points out, it is doubly difficult to assess claims that specific dead people have been heard from in seances through mediums.”

¹⁵ To author Aldous Huxley and other psychic researchers these are “old and still unsolved problems.” But if we accept the full Word of God, the Bible, this case of King Saul and the medium is no unsolved problem. King Saul had previously killed off, not Jehovah’s prophets, but the spirit mediums and professional foretellers of events from the land of Israel. Just as he tricked the spirit medium into practicing her unlawful business, so the spirit that caused the spirit medium to see a god coming out of the earth tricked her and also Saul by counterfeiting the dead Samuel’s former living appearance. Samuel at his death left behind the sleeveless coat he used to wear or was buried in. So where did the spirit get the sleeveless coat? The spirit counterfeited that coat as well as Samuel’s oldness. That invisible spirit working through the medium knew how Samuel dressed in life and what he had said to disobedient King Saul on former occasions and how he had refused to see King Saul any more till his own death and what he looked like at his death. (1 Sam. 15:35) So the spirit could easily counterfeit all that, and he did. Whether it was the next day, or “tomorrow,” that the Israelite army were delivered to the Philistines in defeat and Saul and his sons with him on the battlefield died, the Bible account does not plainly show. The spirit’s expression “you and your sons” meant not necessarily all of Saul’s sons but those in the camp with him; one of Saul’s sons, Ish-boʹsheth, did not die in that battle but ruled as Saul’s successor for a while. (1 Sam. 31:1-7; 1 Chron. 9:39; 10:2-6) The spirit knew that Jehovah was against Saul and that Saul had displeased Jehovah further by consulting a spirit medium and was condemned to death for that and would not be favored by help from Jehovah in battle. So the spirit could reasonably predict defeat for Saul and death to him and his sons.

¹⁶ Whether the spirit’s prediction came true or not, the spirit was a “lying spirit,” for it made a prediction from a counterfeit or fraudulent background by pretending to be Jehovah’s faithful Samuel and enacting the lie that the dead are not dead and that it is possible for the living to talk with the dead. Samuel was then a dead soul with the hope of a resurrection in God’s new world. He had refused to communicate with Saul any longer after Jehovah had definitely rejected him for disobeying Jehovah in the matter of executing all the Amalekites and their livestock. Samuel had also refused to have anything to do with spirit mediums. Certainly, then, no condemned spirit medium could force Samuel to do after death what he had refused to do during life. Furthermore, the lady medium could not raise the dead. The only one that can do this is “God, who makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were.” (Rom. 4:17, NW) “Jehovah is a Killer and a Preserver of life, a Bringer down to Sheʹol [mankind’s common grave], and He brings up.” (1 Sam. 2:6, NW) He did not accommodate a condemned medium and bring back Samuel for her.

17, 18. What other right conclusions may we draw from Saul’s experience and spiritists’ vain attempt to use it for proving “survival after death”?

¹⁷ For rebelling against obeying Jehovah’s command King Saul was the same as one practicing spiritism, as Samuel said to him: “Rebelliousness is the same as the sin of divination, and pushing ahead presumptuously the same as [using] uncanny power and teraphim. Since you have rejected the word of Jehovah, he accordingly rejects you from being king.” (1 Sam. 15:22, 23, NW) But now by consulting a spirit medium he was directly resorting to spiritism and deserved to die. By the medium he got in touch with a lying spirit but not Samuel. Consequently 1 Chronicles 10:13, 14 (NW) says: “Thus Saul died for his unfaithfulness with which he had acted faithlessly against Jehovah concerning the word of Jehovah that he had not kept and also for asking of a spirit medium to make inquiry. And he did not inquire of Jehovah. Consequently he put him to death and turned the kingship over to David the son of Jesʹse.”

¹⁸ The attempt by spiritualists to use Saul’s experience as a proof from the Bible that there is survival after death and that the departed ones can communicate from the realm of the dead with those living on earth by spirit mediums miserably fails therefore.

19-21. What testimony of renowned spiritists accurately identifies the questionable and deceptive communications they falsely claim to be from the souls of dead humans?

¹⁹ Even the spiritualists themselves admit that the spirits with whom they have contact lie and deceive. On page 162 of his book and under the heading “Intrusion by Undesired Spirits” Rishi confesses:

“In our endeavours to converse with our spirit-friends, we occasionally come across undesired entities, who interfere while others are communicating and even impersonate them. This is a great stumbling block in the way of some experimenters who are at times greatly harassed by annoying intrusions from the other world. For want of a good guide in the unseen regions they are much handicapped and feel helpless in the matter. It seems that these earnest persons are anxious to get rid of the undesired visitors, but no argument or prayers have any effect upon such denizens of the next world, whose intrusions are usually meant to harass those through whom they are communicating their thoughts.”

²⁰ But the late British psychic researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is even more blunt as to the inclination of the spirits to lie. On page 72 of his book The New Revelation Sir Doyle said this concerning the spirits themselves:

“We have, unhappily, to deal with absolute cold-blooded lying on the part of wicked or mischievous intelligences. Every one who has investigated the matter has, I suppose, met with examples of wilful deception which occasionally are mixed up with good and true communications.”

²¹ Expressing his fear as to the real identity of the spirits, an Egyptian spiritualist named Aly Abdel Galil Rady, professor of physics at the Faculty of Science in Ibrahim University, Cairo, has this to say on pages 277, 287-289 of his book The Invisible World, as translated from Arabic:

“The spirits who appear can be troublemakers, liars, and perhaps from demons who can skillfully act as the spirits of the dead humans and can speak with their voice, appear in their image and materialize in their form. . . . I can say, therefore, that all the opinions made known by the spirits at their apparitions are questionable. It is true that some of them are right but the majority are wrong. . . . We should not forget that science is full of deceptive phenomena such as the mirage to which the thirsty person runs thinking it is water. Why, then, do we not investigate about the truth regarding the spirits speaking to us. I presume they are demons. And neither I nor those spiritists are sure.”

22. For gaining a true understanding of spiritualism’s claims, what basic lie and what basic truth must we remember?

²² Thus out of the mouths or from the pens of prominent spiritists themselves comes the damaging evidence or testimony. It is useless to try to defend spiritualism with the weak argument that there are good spirits and bad spirits and the intention of spiritualism is to get in touch with the good spirits. Spiritualism is founded on a great untruth, the lie of survival after death and of the immortality of the human soul. Therefore all spirits that would be willing to communicate with spiritualists on the foundation of that lie and try to make that lie appear true must be bad spirits, demons that try to give the lie to God and his Word. The Christian apostle Paul writes: “Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.” (Rom. 3:4, NW) That statement includes every man that is a spiritualist and that gets in touch with these proved lying spirits.

WAS THE TRANSFIGURATION A MATERIALIZATION?

23-25. Why was the transfiguration not a spiritistic materialization of Moses and Elijah, and what actually was it?

²³ Still attempting to play all his cards in the game, the spiritualist will say: ‘But was not the transfiguration of Jesus on the high mountain a return of Moses and Elijah from the dead and did not Jesus therefore use his three apostles Peter, James and John as mediums in their sleepy condition to bring about the materialization of those dead prophets?’ To answer this, turn to the authentic record, as given at Luke 9:28-36 (NW): “He took Peter and John and James along and climbed up into a mountain to pray. And as he was praying the appearance of his face became different and his apparel became glitteringly bright. Also, look! two men were conversing with him, who were Moses and Elijah. These appeared with glory and began talking about his departure that he was destined to fulfill at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those with him were weighed down with sleep; but when they got fully awake they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. And as these were being separated from him Peter said to Jesus: ‘Instructor, it is fine for us to be here, so let us erect three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah,’ he not realizing what he was saying. But as he was saying these things a cloud formed and began to cover them protectingly. As they entered into the cloud, they became fearful. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying: ‘This is my Son, the one that has been chosen. Listen to him.’ And as the voice occurred Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet and did not report to anyone in those days any of the things they saw.”

²⁴ This was no materialization of the dead prophets Moses and Elijah by means of producing ectoplasm. There was no ectoplasm extruded from either Jesus or Peter or James or John. They were conscious and observed what was going on, for they were to be made witnesses of this transfiguration so as to make more firm the prophecies of the Bible, not the predictions of spirit messages. As Peter himself confesses, saying: “No, it was not by turning aside to follow artfully contrived false stories that we acquainted you with the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it was by having become eyewitnesses of his magnificence. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when words such as these were borne to him by the magnificent glory: ‘This is my son, my beloved, on whom I have set my approval.’ Yes, these words we heard borne from heaven while we were with him in the holy mountain. Consequently, we have the prophetic word made more firm, and you are doing well in paying attention to it.” (2 Pet. 1:16-19, NW) This could not be a spiritistic materialization of Moses and Elijah, for they were both dead souls, and the time for their resurrection from the dead has not even yet arrived.—Heb. 11:23-29, 32, 38-40.

²⁵ This was a vision, like the vision that the apostle John had about sixty years after he witnessed the transfiguration and which vision was so real that John talked with those appearing in the vision. (Rev. 1:1, 2; 5:4, 5; 7:13, 14) Jesus himself pronounced it a prophetic vision, in which Moses and Elijah served as symbolisms of the offices that Jesus was to hold in order to do certain works. The apostle Matthew proves that the transfiguration was a vision when he writes: “And as they were descending from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, ‘Tell the vision to no one until the Son of man is raised up from the dead.’” (Matt. 17:9, NW) The spiritualists are therefore authoritatively barred from using the transfiguration of Jesus in support of their teaching.

26, 27. Why is the expelling of demons by Jesus and his faithful disciples no proof of the claims of spiritualism?

²⁶ Immediately after coming down from the mountain of transfiguration Jesus healed a demon-possessed, lunatic boy. Concerning this we read: “Then Jesus rebuked it, and the demon came out of him; and the boy was cured from that hour.” (Matt. 17:14-18, NW) This adds to the proof that the transfiguration had nothing to do with spiritism, which is carried on by the demons.

²⁷ Jesus was not a spirit medium. He never yielded to the influence of demons or unclean spirits. His religious enemies accused him of being possessed by an unclean spirit, a demon. (John 7:20; 8:48, 49, 52; 10:20, 21) But Jesus himself cast out demons and he empowered his disciples also to cast out demons. (Matt. 10:1, 8; Luke 9:1; 10:17-20) His enemies said he cast out demons by the power of the “ruler of the demons,” Be·elʹze·bub. But Jesus said that this would mean that Satan was divided against himself so that his kingdom could not stand. Well, then, does that mean that when spirit mediums and priests of false religion exorcise demons God is using them to cast out demons? No, but Satan is using them to do so. In his use of these Satan is not divided against himself, because these spirit mediums and false priests are on his side and are upholding his kingdom by the wonderful thing they are performing, and they are giving seeming support to Satan’s religious lies. And so their expelling demons, even in Jesus’ name as a magical name, does not prove that such mediums and false priests are not “workers of lawlessness” against God. (Matt. 7:21-23, NW; Acts 19:11-16) But Jesus himself was not on Satan’s side. He was Satan’s greatest foe an earth and what he taught and preached was directly against Satan’s lies and kingdom. So Jesus’ casting out demons was a proof that he was doing it by Satan’s enemy, by the “finger of God,” and it gave support to God’s truth and kingdom. (Matt 12:22-30) His faithful disciples likewise expelled demons by God’s power, not by the Devil’s. Power to do so back there in the first century was a miraculous “gift” of the holy spirit. But since Christ’s twelve apostles died that gift has ceased among his faithful followers and is not possessed or exercised by them today.—1 Cor. 13:8-11.

28. Why are various reported acts of Jesus wrongly described as “spiritistic levitations”?

²⁸ Jesus had nothing in common with the demons, and the demons themselves admitted that fact. One of them shouted out: “What have we to do with you, Jesus you Nazarene? Did you come to destroy us? I know exactly who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus “reproved it, saying: ‘Be silent, and come on out of him!’” Jesus would not let the demons testify concerning him, as we read: “He expelled many demons, but he would not let the demons speak, because they knew him to be Christ.” (Mark 1:23-25, 34, NW) Jesus’ walking once on the Sea of Galilee to reach the storm-tossed boat of his disciples was no act of spiritistic levitation. (Matt. 14:24-32) When Jesus was baptized and then filled with God’s holy spirit and spent forty days in the wilderness, Satan the Devil tried to induce Jesus to perform a levitation to mystify the Jews and win them over at the temple of Jerusalem. On a temple battlement the ruler of the demons said to Jesus: “If you are a son of God, hurl yourself down from here; for it is written: ‘He will give his angels a charge concerning you, to preserve you,’ and, ‘They will carry you on their hands that you may never strike your foot against a stone.’” But Jesus refused, quoting the scripture: “You must not put Jehovah your God to the test.” (Luke 4:1, 9-12, NW) His ascension from Mount Olivet forty days from his resurrection from the dead was no spiritistic levitation. It was his return to heaven and his entry into the presence of his heavenly Father with the value of his human sacrifice for the sake of sinful mankind.—Acts 1:9-12.

THE SCRIPTURES FALSELY ACCUSED

29, 30. Mediums and others who engaged in spiritism of any kind were how denounced in Jehovah’s instructions to ancient Israel?

²⁹ The Scriptures are therefore falsely accused of offering support to the claims of spiritualists. For mankind’s protection and safe guidance into the truth the Scriptures expose spiritualism to be what it actually is, spiritism or demonism. Hence the law of Jehovah God to the Israelites forbade their having anything to do with spirit mediums who pretended to put the living in touch with the dead. It commanded: “Do not turn yourselves to the spirit mediums, and do not consult professional foretellers of events, so as to become unclean by them. I am Jehovah your God.” Those Israelites who resorted to spiritism of any kind were to be killed. “As for the soul who turns himself to the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events so as to have unfaithful intercourse with them, I shall certainly set my face against that soul and cut him off from among his people.” Spirit mediums were to be stoned to death. “As for a man or woman in whom there should prove to be a mediumistic spirit or spirit of prediction, they should be put to death without fail. They should pelt them to death with stones. Their own blood is upon them.”—Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27, NW.

³⁰ “There should not be found in you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, anyone who employs divination, a practicer of magic or anyone who looks for omens or a sorcerer, or one who binds others with a spell or anyone who consults a spirit medium or a professional foreteller of events or anyone who inquires of the dead. For everybody doing these things is something detestable to Jehovah, and on account of these detestable things Jehovah your God is driving them away before you. You should prove yourself faultless with Jehovah your God. For those nations whom you are dispossessing used to listen to those practicing magic and to those who divine, but, as for you, Jehovah your God has not given you anything like this.” Hence to indulge in such things would be certain to turn them away from the coming Messiah, the Greater Moses, who is Jesus Christ.—Deut. 18:10-19, NW.

31. Why were people of ancient Israel warned by Jehovah to ignore and reject certain prophesyings and predictions?

³¹ What, though, if spirit mediums or fortunetellers or astrologers or users of Ouija boards or planchettes make predictions and those predictions come true? Still this does not prove spiritism or spiritualism true, the right religion. Why not? Because this goes contrary to Jehovah God’s commandments and it turns those who rely on such spiritistic things away from God’s approved means of giving hidden knowledge and of prophesying concerning the future. It also works in support of the great lie concerning Jehovah’s Godship and concerning the dead, and so leads into error. God’s law commands: “In case a prophet or a dreamer of a dream should arise in your midst and he does give you a sign or a portent and the sign or the portent does come true of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us walk after other gods, whom you have not known, and let us serve them,’” what then? “You must not listen to the words of that prophet or to the dreamer of that dream, because Jehovah your God is testing you to know whether you are loving Jehovah your God with all your heart and all your soul. . . . And that prophet or that dreamer of the dream should be put to death, because he has spoken of revolt against Jehovah your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt and has redeemed you from the house of slaves, to turn you from the way in which Jehovah your God has commanded you to walk, and you must clear out what is evil from your midst.” (Deut. 13:1-5, NW) A prediction that comes true but that is used to turn you from Jehovah the only living and true God is a false disguise to throw you off your guard and to mislead you away from the divine source of life and truth. It is meant to bring you under the power of the “father of the lie,” Satan the Devil, the “ruler of the demons.”—John 8:44, NW.

32. Why is man’s belief in both wicked and righteous invisible spirit creatures reasonable and Scriptural?

³² Jehovah God knows who these demons are. He knows their methods of operation and the destruction they cause to their victims. In his written Word he therefore warns his people and those who want salvation against these unseen wicked intelligences. To believe in the existence of demons is not superstition. It is not only Christian but also scientific to believe in the existence of demons and to believe in a spirit realm, for there is where the invisible Creator, God, who is spirit, dwells and he is certainly not alone in that vast, immeasurable spirit realm. Unknown time before he created our 4 1⁄2-billion-year-old visible universe Jehovah God made his first creation. It was a spiritual creation, namely, his beloved “only-begotten Son,” the “firstborn of all creation,” who in due time came to earth and became the “man Christ Jesus.” (John 3:16; Col. 1:15, NW; 1 Tim. 2:5) Then by him Jehovah made other intelligent creations also spiritual ones, namely, all the glorious, perfect, holy angels, and it was these spirit “sons of God” that “shouted for joy” at the creation of our earth for mankind’s everlasting home. (Ps. 104:4; 103:20; Job 38:4-7) Thus the spirit realm existed before ever our material universe came into being. The marvelously designed, visible material creation testifies to the existence, power and intelligence of the great Spirit Creator, Jehovah God. Materialistic scientists are without excuse for their unbelief toward him. “For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are understood by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable.”—Rom. 1:20, NW.

33, 34. Why should our belief about a spirit realm and its inhabitants rightly be kept unmixed with spiritualism’s theory of “survival after death”?

³³ Mankind has not had to wait upon the rise of spiritualism for proof that the spirit realm exists. What spiritualism has really tried to foist upon mankind is the belief that the spirit realm is inhabited by the spirits or so-called “immortal souls” of the human dead and that there is survival for mankind after death. Such a belief may have come from the Orient or the East, but it has not brought any enlightenment to mankind. Rather it has bedarkened their minds to the truth. The Occident or the West has come under such darkness and so has no light to give. The teaching of “survival after death” is not light, and Shaw Desmond is unfortunately mistaken when he, in his book entitled “We Do Not Die,” says: “Spiritually starved, Europe no longer looks to the East for light, for light no longer comes from the East but from the West. The East is still, though it will not always be indifferent to the light which it once gave to a darkened world, that light of the World, which in its ultimate analysis may be called the light of ‘Survival.’” Spiritualism, with its doctrine of “survival,” has only come into existence since the flood of Noah’s day in 2370 B.C.

³⁴ The first man Adam knew the existence of the spirit realm and realized he was a product of it, and he taught his wife Eve so in the garden of Eden. Both Adam and Eve knew that the spirit realm existed, because Jehovah God talked with them out of the invisible, making his will known to them. They heard his voice, not by means of any spirit medium either, and they talked with him also. They knew they were not talking with any dead and “departed” person. Before Adam and Eve there were no dead humans. They talked, not with the dead, but with the living in the spirit realm, until they were driven from the paradise of Eden. Noah and his family of seven human souls survived the global flood, and they knew of the existence of the spirit realm. It was out of the invisible spirit realm that instructions came to Noah to build the ark of survival and to go into it just in time. It was out of the spirit realm that God spoke to them after the flood and blessed them and gave them instructions. Instead of discovering or explaining and proving the spirit realm, spiritualism has twisted the facts about it and misled men into the clutches of the demons.—Gen. 5:32 to 9:17.

WHO MADE THE DEMONS?

35-37. (a) How and when did lying spirits or demons originate? (b) Who was the first demon and how did he act in defiance of Almighty God?

³⁵ Here now comes up a question with some readers. At Deuteronomy 32:4 (NW) Moses sings of Jehovah God, saying: “The Rock, perfect is his activity, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice; righteous and upright is he.” That being so, he could not be the creator of demons. How, then, did demons come into existence? The very next verse of Moses’ song gives us the clue, saying: “They have acted ruinously on their own part; they are not his children, the defect is their own. A generation crooked and twisted.” (Deut. 32:5, NW) That is to say, those now demons made themselves such, and this defect is their own and they are no longer God’s children. The Bible also calls them “unclean spirits.” (Matt. 10:1; 12:43; Mark 1:23, 26, 27; Luke 4:33, 36; Acts 5:16; 8:7) But Jehovah God created them as clean spirits, his heavenly sons, members of his spirit family. They were not created immortal, but mortal, yet with the opportunity to live everlastingly by continuing to be clean, holy, spirit sons of God. Otherwise, now that quite a number of these have become demons, they could not be destroyed from the universe.

³⁶ The first one to make himself a demon became the “ruler of the demons,” for he had other angels or spirits to make themselves like him. (Matt. 12:24 and Mark 3:22, NW) Because he was first in opposing God, in slandering or lying about God, in using deceit and in swallowing up his victims like a dragon, he was branded with four special titles, Satan, the Devil, the original Serpent and the Dragon. (Rev. 12:9; 20:2, NW) This third title links him with the talking serpent in the paradise of Eden. “The serpent seduced Eve by its craftiness.” (2 Cor. 11:3, NW) It was Satan the Devil that obsessed that serpent and caused it to talk and seduce Eve, for a mere serpent could not talk and act out a seductive course of action itself. It was under invisible control. The invisible one that directed the serpent made himself Satan the Devil by the course of opposition and slander against God that he caused the serpent to take. This invisible spirit had been created a perfect, holy, spirit son of God. Being put in touch with the paradise garden of Eden and its human inhabitants, he saw an opportunity to make himself a mimic god and to capture control over mankind. (Ezek. 28:13-17) Rebelling in his own heart against his very Creator, he mapped out his plan of action. He did not himself materialize, but used a serpent in Eden. By it he talked, not to the man Adam, but to the woman Eve, to turn her into rebellion against God and to use her to work on Adam to do the same thing.

³⁷ “So it began to say to the woman: ‘Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree of the garden?’ At this the woman said to the serpent [and thus to Satan the Devil]: ‘Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But as for eating of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden [the tree of the knowledge of good and bad], God has said, “You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it for fear you may die.’” At this the serpent said to the woman: ‘You positively will not die. For God knows that in the very day of your eating from it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.’”—Gen. 3:1-5, NW.

38, 39. What resulted from the serpent’s lying communication to Eve about her Maker, Jehovah?

³⁸ By this statement Satan lied. He called God a liar, a deceiver, not almighty, so unable to carry out the punishment for the breaking of His law. Satan did not here promise Adam and Eve immortality after death, but said they would not die in the flesh as a result of eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. It in itself would not kill them and God would not or could not enforce the death penalty. Instead, they would be bound to be like God, not after death by a survival after death, but while alive in the flesh. They would be like God, not as to immortality, but as to knowing good and bad by their own increased knowledge to decide for themselves what is good and bad without following God’s ruling or decision. So, not with any idea of dying and entering the spirit world and knowing more there than she ever did before in the material paradise of Eden, but with the idea of continuing to live in the flesh with increased knowledge and with independent self-determination, Eve listened to the Serpent rather than to the true God. She ate. Then she used her influence to induce her husband Adam to eat. They did get their eyes opened, but to see their own naked shame. They did not feel like a God of superior knowledge, but they feared Jehovah God and tried to hide from him. Instead of looking forward to living endlessly, everlastingly, in the flesh in the earthly paradise, they received God’s sentence of dying without survival and were driven out of the Edenic paradise.

³⁹ Not only were they sentenced to death, but the rebel spirit Satan the Devil the original Serpent was also sentenced to die, with his head crushed under the foot of the Seed of God’s chosen woman. This showed that holy angels, such as Satan had been up till his rebellion, are not immortal, indestructible, but their living forever is hinged upon their perfect obedience to God. Thus a human’s communicating with the spirit realm is no proof of the immortality of either spirit creatures or of human souls.—Gen. 3:15.

40. Which, if any, of the demons are immortal, and why?

⁴⁰ The wicked spirit Satan the Devil lived on after Adam and Eve died. He has lived till now by God’s permission, looking to the settlement of the big question in dispute, Who rules the universe? Jehovah God will show that He runs the universe and dictates its laws and determines and decrees what is good and bad. To the Christian followers of the Seed of his woman God has said: “The God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.” (Rom. 16:20, NW) Jesus Christ his glorified Son is the one whom God will use to crush Satan the original Serpent and his seed, for this faithful Son is the one whom the Serpent bruised at the heel when he became blood and flesh like the children of Abraham. In proof of this it is written: “Therefore, since the ‘young children’ are sharers of blood and flesh, he also similarly partook of the same things, that through his death he might destroy the one having the means to cause death, that is, the Devil, and might emancipate all those who for fear of death were subject to slavery all through their lives. For he is really not assisting angels at all, but he is assisting Abraham’s seed.” (Heb. 2:14-16, NW) God healed the bruised heel of his woman’s Seed by resurrecting him from the dead, restoring him to the spirit realm, but rewarding him with the prize of incorruptibility and immortality. (1 Tim. 6:15, 16) But Satan the wicked spirit still remains mortal.

41. (a) What additional Bible testimony first identifies the chief demon by name? (b) How does the Bible warn humans who indulge in spiritistic practices?

⁴¹ In the Scriptures Satan the Devil is not named before the flood of Noah’s day. He is first named in the life account of Job, which appears to have been written by the prophet Moses centuries after the flood. Spirit mediums together with inquiring of the dead are mentioned as first existing after the flood, God’s law through Moses warning against these agents of wicked spirits: “There should not be found in you . . . anyone who consults a spirit medium or a professional foreteller of events or anyone who inquires of the dead.” (Deut. 18:10, 11, NW; also Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27) After the flood these forms of demonism began with the city of Babylon founded by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah. (Gen. 10:8-10) To Babylon the prophet Isaiah said: “These two things shall come upon thee in a moment, in one day, loss of children and widowhood; they shall come upon thee in full measure for [or, in spite of] the multitude of thy sorceries, for the great abundance of thine enchantments. Stand now with thine enchantments and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured [from when?] from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to turn them to profit, if so be thou mayest cause terror. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the interpreters of the heavens, the observers of the stars, who predict according to the new moons what shall come upon thee, stand up, and save thee.” (Isa. 47:9, 12, 13, Da, margin) The last book of the Bible foretells why modern Babylon must yet fall like ancient Babylon, saying: “Because your merchants were the top-ranking men of the earth, for by your spiritistic practice all the nations were misled.”—Rev. 18:23, NW.

42-44. When and how was the first or chief demon first joined by other disobedient spirit persons?

⁴² When did the other demons under Satan the “ruler of the demons” come to exist? There is no Bible record that any of the holy angels rebelled with Satan at the garden of Eden or shortly afterward. But the Bible record does show when other spirit creatures did become disobedient to God and thus become demons, imitators of Satan or the “seed” of the Serpent. When was that? At least in the last hundred and twenty years before the flood of Noah’s day. The inspired record by Moses says: “Now it came about that when men started to grow in numbers on the surface of the ground and daughters were born to them, then the sons of God began to notice the daughters of men, that they were good-looking, and they went to taking wives for themselves of all whom they selected. After that Jehovah said: ‘My spirit shall not act toward man indefinitely in that he is also flesh. Accordingly his days shall amount to a hundred and twenty years.’ The Nephʹi·lim proved to be in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God continued to have relations with the daughters of men and they bore sons to them, they were the mighty ones who were of that world, the men of fame. Consequently Jehovah saw that the badness of man had become great in the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the time.”—Gen. 6:1-5, NW.

⁴³ Those “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” were spirit sons of God such as had sung together and shouted for joy when God laid the foundations for creating the earth. (Job 38:4-7) “For who in the skies can be compared unto Jehovah? Who among the sons of God is like unto Jehovah?” (Ps. 89:6, AS, footnote 2)b So Moffatt translates Genesis 6:2, 4 as follows: “The angels noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any one of them that they chose. (It was in these days that the Nephilim giants arose on earth, as well as afterwards whenever angels had intercourse with the daughters of men and had children born to them; these were the heroes who were famous in the days of old.)” Here in Genesis 6:4 the Alexandrine Manuscript of the Greek Septuagint Version also reads “angels of God” instead of “sons of God.”

⁴⁴ This explanation of who these “sons of God” were has nothing to do with the Slavonic version of the spurious Book of Enoch.

45, 46. How did those disobedient spirit persons act among earth’s inhabitants, and what resulted?

⁴⁵ To marry the daughters of men and have sex relations with them those “sons of God” had to materialize as humans, as men. To live with their wives and enjoy their company night and day and raise their offspring those “sons of God” or angels had to remain materialized in the flesh for as long as they took part in such married life. The evidence is that they continued in this materialized state without interruption until the Flood. During all this time they were neglecting their God-given duties in the spirit realm, in order to enjoy the satisfaction of the passions of the flesh. This was disobedience to God, not only in this respect, but also in the mixing of what is spiritual or angelic with what is human for breeding purposes. The Creator Jehovah God purposed that the human race should be purely human, not a hybrid race by an unequal yoking of angels and women. That was the reason why he made Adam’s wife Eve out of a rib from Adam’s side. As regards all earthly creatures, God fixed it for each family kind to remain inside its own family boundaries. (Deut. 22:9-11; Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25) Those disobedient sons of God were thus causing unnatural confusion and working contrary to God’s law respecting mankind. Jesus Christ gives us to understand that, in the spirit realm, “neither do they marry nor are they given in marriage” nor do they thus produce angelic children.—Matt. 22:30, NW.

⁴⁶ The natural result was that the offspring of such unnatural marriages were freakish hybrids called “Nephʹi·lim.” The Israelites compared them to the giants of Canaan, in fact, calling the giants of Canaan “Nephʹi·lim.” (Num. 13:33, NW) Being sons of disobedience, they were wicked. Being hybrids without power to reproduce, they made a name for themselves, not by raising families, but by violent deeds, setting an example for men in general to fill the earth with violence and to have the inclination of the thoughts of their hearts only bad all the time. They were called “mighty ones” or Gibborim and were worldly, “of that world.”—Gen. 6:4, NW.

(To be concluded in our next issue)

[Footnotes]

[Picture on page 568]

SCRIPTURES EXPOSE SPIRITUALISM

New World Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures

New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures

Questions From Readers

● Why does Matthew 27:9 attribute the words about the thirty silver pieces for Jesus’ betrayal to the prophet Jeremiah, when, actually, Zechariah recorded the words, at Zec chapter 11 verse 12 of his prophecy?—N. F., United States.

The name Jeremiah is omitted in some later manuscripts. Some say it was a copyist’s error. Others say it was just a slip on Matthew’s part, saying Jeremiah when he meant Zechariah. None of these explanations seem adequate. We may view as correct the New World Translation’s rendering of Matthew 27:9, 10: “Then what was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled, saying: ‘And they took the thirty silver pieces, the price upon the man that was priced, the one on whom some of the sons of Israel set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, according to what Jehovah had commanded me.’”

A more probable explanation is this. The order of the prophetic books, as received by the Jews in Matthew’s time, was Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah and the twelve minor prophets. It is so found in the Babylonian Talmud, also at present in the manuscripts of the French and German Jews. The Jewish Encyclopedia, under “Bible Canon,” shows that at one time Jeremiah preceded Ezekiel and Isaiah in the listing of the prophets and that it was later that Isaiah went ahead of Jeremiah. So in Matthew’s time Jeremiah stood first in the listing of the prophets, and since it was the practice of those times to call an entire division of the Bible by the name of the first book in that division, Matthew could say Jeremiah and mean the division that it headed, and which division included the book of Zechariah.

Jesus showed that this was the practice, to call an entire division by the first book in that division, when he said, at Luke 24:44 (NW): “All the things written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms about me must be fulfilled.” When he said Psalms he did not mean just that one book, but all the writings or Hagiographa, of which collection or division Psalms was the first book. And when Jesus said the Prophets he meant that entire division, but sometimes they used the name of the first book in that division to mean the whole section, and then the section would be called just Jeremiah. So in this sense Matthew could refer to Jeremiah and yet mean Zechariah’s words, since Zechariah’s prophecy was in the division that opened with the book of Jeremiah.

Announcements

HOLDING FAST TO PUBLICLY DECLARING OUR HOPE

Why keep still when you have a wonderful hope and know that others may share the joy it brings by learning of it and accepting it? There is no reason why, you reply, and properly so. On that account, as well as because it is a responsibility laid upon them, Jehovah’s witnesses persist in telling others about their hope that a new world of righteousness is at hand. To have the things to tell correctly in mind they are commanded to attend congregation meetings regularly and then to use the information they learn teaching others. (Heb. 10:23, NW) Because of deep appreciation of the truth they treasure, they rejoice to pass it out in every possible way. During October they will do so by means of obtaining subscriptions for the helpful, Scriptural magazine Awake! A year’s subscription will be offered to the people at their doors, together with three booklets on absorbing Bible subjects, at the rate of $1. All persons of good will toward God are invited to share in this Christian activity. Write for details.

YOU MAY SURVIVE ARMAGEDDON INTO GOD’S NEW WORLD

Billions of dollars are being spent on collective security. Millions of people are being trained in civilian defense. Yet not one penny will profit, nor any such program provide safety in the final all-out war just ahead. Security with peace of mind is a priceless possession. It is possible! It can be yours! Where and how it is to be found is the engrossing subject of the new 384-page book entitled “You May Survive Armageddon into God’s New World.” Pointing to the unmistakable evidence of the guilt of all creatures before Jehovah God, this book then opens the door to God’s own inspired Word and leads to the Bible’s promise of refuge from the storm of Armageddon’s war. It presents assurance for the future in a new system of things now being provided by the Maker of the new world, Jehovah God. Send for your copy on a contribution of 50c and learn how You May Survive Armageddon into God’s New World.

NOTICE OF ANNUAL MEETING WATCH TOWER BIBLE & TRACT SOCIETY

The Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society will hold its annual meeting of members on Saturday, October 1, 1955, at ten o’clock in the forenoon at the registered office of the Society, which is located at 4100 Bigelow Boulevard, comer of Parkman Avenue, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The members of the corporation will receive the usual letter of notice advising them of the meeting and sending them proxy forms. We should like to have all the proxies returned to the office of the secretary of the Society not later than the 15th of September. Each member should complete and return his proxy promptly whether he is going to be at the meeting personally or not. Members of the corporation should be certain that the secretary’s office has the proper addresses to which to mail the notices of the annual meeting.

“WATCHTOWER” STUDIES FOR THE WEEKS

October 23: What Do the Scriptures Say About “Survival After Death”? ¶1-22. Page 560.

October 30: What Do the Scriptures Say About “Survival After Death”? ¶23-46. Page 567.

Check Your Memory

✔ What wrong condition modern secular progress has promoted? P. 547. ¶1.

✔ What has obscured the real truth about the holy spirit? P. 550, ¶2.

✔ Whether it is belittling the holy spirit to contend that it is not a person? P. 551, ¶6.

✔ What tremendous increase has been shown by Jehovah’s witnesses in Central America? P. 555, ¶9.

✔ What changes the “Battle of Britain” made in the lives of Jehovah’s witnesses living there? P. 556, ¶1.

✔ What religious Inquisition occurred in modern, freedom-loving Canada? P. 557, ¶4.

✔ Where, in so many words, the Bible says that the soul dies? P. 560, ¶1.

✔ How to convince bereaved persons that spiritualism’s “comfort” is false? P. 562, ¶8.

✔ What punishment Saul received for dabbling in spiritism? P. 565, ¶17.

✔ Whether the Israelites were allowed to have anything to do with spirit mediums? P. 569, ¶29.

✔ How the demons came into existence? P. 571, ¶35.

✔ How to explain Matthew’s attributing the prediction about Jesus’ betrayal to Jeremiah instead of to Zechariah? P. 575, ¶3.