The Watchtower — September 15, 1966

There Is Much for Which to Be Grateful

TRULY, we are living in an era when complaints and causes of complaint are multiplying, and when multitudes are unthankful just as the apostle Paul foretold for these critical times. (2 Tim. 3:1, 2) Yet there is still much for which we can all be grateful, many gifts that come to us daily, things that are really satisfying and refreshing as long as we do not permit the spirit of selfishness and ingratitude to creep in and take control of our thinking.

The fact that many of the gifts that come to us each day are shared with all others of humankind is no reason to view them as though they were due us. All of God’s provisions for imperfect, sinful creatures should be viewed as undeserved kindnesses, and duly acknowledged as such. There are, for example, the sun and the rain that Jehovah God sends alike upon those who love him and those who deny him; also, the air we breathe and the fruits of the ground, all made available by a loving Creator.—Matt. 5:45; 2 Cor. 9:10.

How wonderful to be able to step out into the warmth of the sunshine and then later retreat into the cool shade of trees, or step from stuffy indoors into the fresh air outside! We have all enjoyed such experiences, not once but many times. But, are we grateful to God for them?

Think of the many things that delight the eye, with rest on one hand, and with stimulation on the other. The green velvet of a grassy slope or the colorful display of the sunset. Perhaps you have stretched out on the grass in some quiet glade and taken note of the way the foliage filters the sunlight with a sort of dappling effect. Then, too, there is the sight of snow-white clouds drifting lazily across the blue sky. You may even have seen the effects of a light wind drawing patterns on a field of uncut grain. How beautiful all these sights! Surely they should call forth thanksgiving to the One who made them all possible!

Sounds, too, can be so delightful, if we but give them attention. Not the raucous, artificial noises of industry, but the gay laughter of children at play, the rustle of leaves in the forest, the murmur of a brook, the patter of rain on the roof, the soft whisper of wavelets upon the beach, the chirp of a cricket, the wild laugh of a loon on some remote lake. All these and a multitude of other sounds communicate to the listener a variety of pleasant moods. Together with the gift of hearing, they are all generous provisions of Jehovah for our listening pleasure.

And is it not a fine thing that we have been equipped with a taste mechanism with which we can delight in all the subtle flavors of food? How different had we been made sensationless as to taste! Mealtime then would be just like stoking a furnace. Instead, the taste buds on our tongue detect and communicate to the mind a variety of sensations that so refresh and satisfy the physical body. Surely there is every reason to offer thanks to the Provider, not only for the things we eat, but also for the pleasure of eating he has made possible for us!

In the field of human relations we find many causes for gratitude. Is it not a grand thing that the Creator did not stamp out each human creature in the same mold, with the same appearance and the same personality? Instead, we note that each has his characteristic personality, never intended to be lost in the drab uniformity of a regimented mass. Genuine gratitude to the Creator on this score is demonstrated by those who take into account personality differences, and who do not expect others to conform to their own personal view in every matter.

In the home a grateful spirit can produce great happiness. When a husband comes home from work he does not have to note immediately the things his wife has failed to accomplish. Surely it is much more conducive to peace and relaxation in the home when he expresses gratitude and commendation for the things she has done, however small they may be! And she will be encouraged to do more. Certainly for wife and children a smile or some happy words are so much more upbuilding than a frown or a grunt.

Likewise with the wife. Is it not far better to offer the home-coming husband a warm, pleasant greeting, than to launch immediately into a long story about the day’s reverses and troubles? Surely the wife who appreciates her husband wants him to be glad to get home. Then certainly she will not pile up problems on top of those with which he has had to contend during the day. Why not first speak to him about the good things of the day?

Parents can also be grateful for children. Why view them as just a nuisance to be tolerated, when they are, in fact, an inheritance from Jehovah? (Ps. 127:3) Gratitude for such a legacy is demonstrated by those who rear and train their children with love, striving to inculcate in them also the spirit of gratitude. So, at mealtime for instance, the head of the household will give an excellent example to the children in expressing appreciation for the food served, even when some part of the meal is not up to his expectation. Complaints and sharp criticisms will only hurt, whereas expressions of appreciation and gratitude spur to better efforts.

Rather than permitting the mind to dwell upon the petty disappointments, the mistakes of others, the failure of plans, how satisfying and exhilarating to ponder the good and pleasant things that surround us and make some expression about them! Let us not put gratitude into a straitjacket by waiting to express it only when someone does us some special favor. Acknowledge the small services too. Be generous with commendation.

Truly, there is much for which we can be grateful even amid this selfish system of things. The grateful spirit, properly cultivated, will help us avoid the negative, the complaining and the critical attitudes and bring us great happiness and satisfaction in life.

Is the World Bloodguilty Before God?

THERE are three ways of becoming bloodguilty before God. One of them is by committing murder, bloodshed. (Gen. 9:5, 6) Another is by drinking or eating blood, or by improper use of it. (Gen. 9:4; Acts 15:20, 29) The third way is by failing or refusing to warn those who we know are in danger of losing their lives through taking a course of action against God and his Word.—Acts 20:26, 27.

In God’s law covenant with Israel the penalty for drinking blood was death. (Lev. 17:10, 14) On the other hand, water is essential for life. If, then, the sources of drinking water were turned into blood it would mean death for the drinkers thereof.

This very thing happens, symbolically, in the third plague of Revelation, chapter 16. God uses the illustration to reveal the state of affairs as regards his principle on blood and what results to mankind from it. We read: “And the third [angel] poured out his bowl into the rivers and the fountains of the waters. And they became blood.” (Rev. 16:4) This plague reminds us of the first plague that came upon ancient Egypt by means of God’s prophet Moses. Because of it the Egyptians’ sources of water, the Nile River, the reedy pools and the impounded waters of the land became blood, which the Egyptians could not drink and in which the fish died and stank. (Ex. 7:14-25) This bowl, like the other six of Revelation, chapter 16, was poured out from the heavens and down into the earth, so it could not affect the heavens, where Jehovah, the Source of living waters, resides. Therefore, it could not affect God’s spiritual water supplies to his true worshipers. Jehovah being the source of life, the waters he provides sustain life. (Ps. 36:9; Jer. 2:13; 17:13) What then are the water fountains and rivers of this earth that are turned to blood?

WHAT THE “FOUNTAINS” AND “RIVERS” ARE

Just as servants of Jehovah, true Christians, look to Jehovah through Christ Jesus for life, and just as he supplies them with His Word, which is pure, like living waters, so the people of this old system of things have sources to which they look for life. They have bypassed the Bible to a great extent because of their religious clergy and have preferred to look to water from other sources, from worldly political, commercial and religious systems. Particularly have the people looked to religious systems because they have felt that these contained the truth and the way to life, but actually they have been greatly deceived. The religious systems, instead of teaching the Bible, have taught traditions, performed ceremonial rites and upheld many conflicting doctrines that blaspheme God. They have made these appear to contain refreshing, life-giving water. They have demanded that their flocks accept their doctrines in blind credulity instead of with intelligent faith based on inspired Scripture.

Those who claim to serve God and who at the same time go to these worldly sources for waters of life are like the apostate Israelites who preferred to drink from the Nile River along which Egypt was located and from the Euphrates River along which Assyria was situated. (Jer. 2:17-19) Those Jews “rejected the waters of the Shiloah that are going gently,” which waters correspond with the “river the streams of which make the city of God rejoice, the holiest grand tabernacle of the Most High.”—Isa. 8:6, 7; Ps. 46:4.

Besides the false doctrines and the theories and teachings of philosophy and ideas from human, earthly origins, these worldly “rivers” and “fountains” have gushed forth programs, plans and arrangements for solving mankind’s problems. By drinking from these the people have been led into an activity contrary to God’s Word and have come under the condemnation of his laws. Some have not willfully and deliberately done so, but share community responsibility for supporting the spilling of blood in wars. They have been led to use blood wrongly in other ways, some by drinking it, others by transfusions and variously misusing it. They have had and are having opportunity to know God’s requirements, for they have heard the good news of God’s kingdom established in the heavens preached since 1919 by Jehovah’s witnesses. If they listen and repent of this course they can get forgiveness and life-giving waters from God. But the clergy of Christendom, Jewry and pagandom have united in supporting and advocating misuse of blood. At the same time they have ignored Jehovah, the great Fountain of life, his provision through Christ’s ransom and his Messianic kingdom for imparting life to believing, obedient mankind. Moreover, they have rejected and opposed the good news, thereby blocking others from hearing, bringing bloodguilt upon them in this way.

WHY WATERS BECOME BLOOD

John hears the angel’s expression of gratification over the work done: “And I heard the angel over the waters say: ‘You, the One who is and who was, the loyal One, are righteous, because you have rendered these decisions, because they poured out the blood of holy ones and of prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. They deserve it.’” (Rev. 16:5, 6) So God is entirely just in dealing with them in this way. Those drinking from the contaminated worldly sources have been led into fighting against God’s holy ones and prophets, Jehovah’s Christian witnesses. Especially have they been egged on to do so by Babylon the Great, the false religious empire over the peoples of earth. (Rev. 17:6, 18) Jehovah cannot approve of their blood-spilling course of action. He is loyal to his faithful witnesses and is righteous in executing his judicial decision upon those who violently pour out the blood of his servants. God judges them this way only after they show themselves unworthy of life and fully deserving of letting their drink be blood, which means that their punishment is death.

Now an unexpected and amazing thing happens: “And I heard the altar say: ‘Yes, Jehovah God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judicial decisions.’” (Rev. 16:7) What is the “altar”? The altar in the tent of meeting in Israel was God’s arrangement upon which sacrifices were to be offered to him. The “altar” is God’s symbolic altar-like arrangement for Jesus’ sacrifice. God provided his Son as a sacrifice, arranged for him to come to earth as a man, die here, be resurrected and appear in heaven with the value of his sacrifice to buy life rights for sinful mankind. Such arrangement was undeserved kindness on God’s part. Faithful footstep followers of Jesus Christ, his spiritual brothers, have followed closely in his steps. (1 Pet. 2:21) All of them die his kind of death, that is, as a sacrifice, not that their shed blood has any part in sin atonement, but that they might experience Jesus’ kind of resurrection. Many have been literally martyred by those who drink from the fountains and water sources of this world.

How does the altar “speak”? According to Revelation 6:9, 10, the altar has underneath it the souls or lives of those “slaughtered because of the word of God and because of the witness work that they used to have.” Their souls or lives resided in their blood, and their blood was poured out at the base of the altar. That is why their souls are pictured as being down there and crying out for divine vengeance in the way that martyred Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. (Gen. 4:8-11; Lev. 17:11-14) So the altar of sacrifice symbolically speaks or has something to say about this judgment and it fully agrees, because of the many things it has witnessed, that Jehovah is true and righteous when he gives death-dealing blood to the worldly opposers of his people.

DECLARING THE THIRD PLAGUE

The third plague is very tormenting and painful to those who have drunk from the worldly water sources, for the drink has not really been satisfying to them and it has caused much death all around them. In order that many who may feel the plague and who desire life-giving waters to drink may do so, Jehovah’s witnesses have been busy proclaiming the meaning of this third plague to the best of their ability. At Columbus, Ohio, at a convention of Jehovah’s witnesses on July 25, 1924, an outspoken declaration in this connection was made in a resolution entitled “Indictment.” Two days after the resolution was adopted, namely, on Sunday, July 27, the president of the Watch Tower Society gave the public address entitled “Civilization Doomed” to an audience of about 35,000, emphasizing these facts. In harmony with the angelic pouring out of the third bowl the speaker said:

“Jesus Christ is the great Prince of Peace. He said: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ He taught his disciples and his followers to refrain completely from the use of carnal weapons. Yet the clergy, who claim to be teachers of his doctrines, have sanctified war and made it a holy thing. They have delighted to have their portraits and statues exhibited side by side with those of bloody warriors. They have hailed the greatest warriors as the greatest heroes of all time. [Like Constantine and Charlemagne]

“ . . . The nations are all mustering their forces for the great conflict foretold; for God purposes to overthrow Satan’s organization through his beloved Son, Christ Jesus. . . . ”

In further warning mankind that they are bloodguilty by being under the influence of the false religious system of Babylon the Great, the book entitled “Creation,” published in 1927 by the Watch Tower Society, said, on page 103, under the subheading “Everlasting Covenant”:

This covenant is the first expression of God’s will concerning the sacredness of human life. The will of God is his law. All life proceeds from Jehovah; and since no one can give life to another except by Jehovah’s arrangement, no one has a right to take away life except by Jehovah’s permission. After the terms of this covenant the law that must for ever govern the human race is that no man can take the life of another with impunity. . . .

. . . The terms of the everlasting covenant have been broken by every people and every nation of earth, and some day God will require at the hands of the responsible ones a full account thereof.

The clergy claim to be the representatives of the Lord, and assume to teach his Word; yet they have openly advocated the killing of human beings in war without just cause or excuse.

REACTION TO PROCLAMATION ABOUT PLAGUE

Not having learned the lesson not to trust in worldly sources for plans, schemes and propaganda, the world went on heedless of these warnings from Jehovah’s witnesses. Under German Nazism and Roman Fascism the blood of thousands of Jehovah’s witnesses was poured out as martyrs in the heart of Christendom. Then World War II came on with the greatest destruction of human life to date. (Rev. 12:13-16) Because so many were wounded, blood transfusions increased.

To clarify thoroughly what is God’s will on use of blood, Jehovah’s witnesses made a special Scriptural study, the results of which appeared in the July 1, 1945, issue of The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. The leading article of this issue discussed Psalm 16. On pages 198-201 it discussed the attitude of King David toward taking the blood of others into his human system when he said, in Psalm 16:4 (AV): “Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.” This article quoted page 113 of Volume 4 of The Encyclopedia Americana (1929 edition), which said:

Transfusion of blood dates as far back as the time of the ancient Egyptians. The earliest reported case is that practiced on Pope Innocent VIII in 1492. The operation cost the lives of three youths and the Pontiff’s life was not saved.

Disregarding what was clearly God’s law, medical men used transfusions on a mass scale during the Korean War, and now in Vietnam, and blood is used in some foods and other products. In fact, blood, which contains the life of the creature and which belongs to God, has been misused by men as though the life belonged to them. The religions of Christendom and Jewry completely reject what Jehovah’s witnesses clearly show is God’s viewpoint on blood. They make all kinds of excuses nullifying God’s law, to give a clean appearance to those who violate it. Until now the controversy rages, many of Jehovah’s witnesses suffering great persecution because they refuse to take blood in any form. They are often denied medical and surgical help. In some cases, through court orders, transfusions have been forced on them. Jehovah takes notice of all these atrocities committed against his people.

Jehovah’s witnesses are concerned primarily with what God’s law is on blood, not the medical aspect. However, it is true that a great spread of diseases, such as hepatitis, syphilis and malaria, and many deaths have resulted from the practice of transfusions—evidence of the practical wisdom of God’s law. To help reasonable persons to give full consideration to this vital subject, Jehovah’s witnesses circulate a 64-page booklet entitled “Blood, Medicine and the Law of God,” which was released on June 22, 1961, at the international assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses in Yankee Stadium, New York city. It provides a well-documented treatment of the subject, highlighting what God’s Word says about it. If you want to avoid being bloodguilty with the world and becoming as the worldly ones are, “drunk with their own blood,” you will listen to the Source of the true waters of life and get away from the plague that is on all those drinking from the bloody, worldly fountains and rivers.—Isa. 49:26.

For a discussion of the first and second plagues of Revelation, chapter 16, see the two preceding issues of this magazine. Plagues four to seven will be discussed in succeeding issues, or see the book “Babylon the Great Has Fallen!” God’s Kingdom Rules! by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Brooklyn, New York.

Jehovah’s Witnesses Endure for His Sovereign Godship

“Look! We pronounce happy those who have endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome Jehovah gave.”—Jas. 5:11.

1, 2. (a) How and why does hostility due to the Godship issue continue into our time? (b) What does it mean that Babylon the Great fell in 1919, and how does this enable a rescue work to take place?

JESUS CHRIST, as the Greater Job (or “object of hostility”) of his day, proved Satan’s accusation involving Jehovah’s universal Sovereign Godship as utterly false. He had withstood all the Babylonish religious pressures brought against him. Victoriously Jesus endured and his outcome was a happy one at the hands of the true Sovereign God, Jehovah. The Devil, wanting still more of an answer to his challenge against Jehovah, has kept up a campaign of hostility and false accusation against Jesus’ true anointed footstep followers down through the centuries.

² In fact, at the very time that Christ Jesus was being enthroned as King of the heavenly kingdom in 1914 (Dan. 7:13, 14), Satan was permitted to enforce a grueling ‘Babylonish-like captivity’ upon the anointed remnant on earth from 1914 to 1919.a The Kingdom’s establishment in 1914 immediately brought war between its enthroned King, Christ Jesus, called Michael, and the opposer Satan with his wicked angels. This resulted in Satan’s complete defeat by 1918, when he and his wicked forces were ejected from the heavenly realm to be cast downward into the vicinity of the earth. (Rev. 12:7-10) Like kings Darius and Cyrus of old, the conquerors of ancient Babylon, the “kings from the rising of the sun,” Jehovah God and Christ Jesus, followed up the heavenly victory by taking adverse judgment action against Satan’s earthly masterpiece of false religion, Babylon the Great. (Rev. 16:12) Without a fight Christ Jesus as the Greater Cyrus gained the upper hand over Babylon the Great. This meant bringing about her encirclement, her fall from seeming heavenly favor, her initial fall into Christ’s superior hands of surveillance. (Rev. 14:8; 18:2) The ensuing period of surveillance continues, pending Babylon the Great’s complete destruction later at Jehovah’s time of choosing. (Rev. 17:15-18) During this mercifully extended time of encirclement from 1919 onward, Christ Jesus has painstakingly and lovingly delivered the true Christian remnant out of the control of their earlier Babylonish captors. (Rev. 18:4) Actually the merciful process of delivering continues to this very time of 1966 whereby a vast crowd of other lovers of righteousness are rescued from Babylon the Great. (Rev. 7:9, 14) After his being thrust out of heaven Satan now finds himself a ‘stool for Christ’s feet,’ a somewhat restrained “god” of a Babylon the Great under Christ’s encirclement. (Ps. 110:1, 2; 2 Cor. 4:4) Nevertheless, Satan is permitted since 1919 to continue his heat of Babylonish hostility not only to reproach the anointed remnant of Christ’s followers but also to reproach the many others who now flee Babylon to share as refugees in championing Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship.—Rev. 12:13-17.

3. Apply Proverbs 27:11 to the situation today.

³ So, as in the case of ancient Job and as experienced by the Greater Job, Jesus Christ, the modern Job-like group of Christian witnesses of Jehovah has had to furnish God an answer for Satan all these years even after Satan’s fall from heaven, that Satan may have no grounds for reproaching Jehovah in their case. Their heavenly Father Jehovah now says to them: “Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.”—Prov. 27:11.

BABYLONISH APOSTASY OF CHRISTENDOM

4, 5. (a) Who are the “object of hostility” today, and why? (b) What two-pronged campaign of apostasy developed, and from what source?

⁴ Our study of the fulfillment of the prophetic drama of Job now shifts from Jesus’ day to that of this twentieth century. The faithful anointed ones, being footstep followers of Jesus, as a group become the modern Job, the major “object of hostility.” As jointly persecuted ones along with Jesus they have suffered as did he for holding fast their integrity to the true God, Jehovah, and for withstanding all manner of Babylonish religious hostility. (John 15:20) A brief historical sketch of Jehovah’s anointed witnesses bears out all this very vividly as background information. (See Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, published in 1959, for further details.)

⁵ After the death of the last of the apostles at the turn of time into the second century C.E., growing numbers of those who practiced the true Christian religion defected or became apostate. Subtly the old enemy Satan was out to defile the true worship of Jehovah by means of a two-pronged campaign. Firstly, by means of introducing untheocratic forms of church government he would defile the original clean temple structure of organization as set by Jesus Christ. (Eph. 2:19-22) Secondly, by means of introducing pagan teachings and pagan holiday celebrations he would defile the right public declarations or ‘sacrifices of praise’ (Heb. 13:15) offered by the temple class of anointed Christians. All this apostasy stemmed from the same general Babylonish source as did the influences that had produced apostate Judaism in the centuries before Jesus’ day. Babylonized Hellenism again was the force used by Satan to inundate and overwhelm an increasing number of those who claimed to be Christians.

6. Present some wrong practices that began to be accepted.

⁶ Gradually some of the overseers and elders of the congregations were induced to consider themselves as rulers over the flock. Thus in time a clergy class began to dominate over a laity class, quite contrary to Jesus’ set order: “One [Christ] is your teacher, whereas all you are brothers.” (Matt. 23:8) Pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter came to be celebrated festivals. Birthdays of secular rulers became honored. Sometime in the third century the divine name, Jehovah, was taken out of all copies of the sacred Greek Scriptures including that of the Greek Septuagint.b The title Lord (kýrios) was substituted for the personal name Jehovah. As may be remembered, the apostatized Jews had done the very same thing after their Babylonish captivity of the sixth century B.C.E. At that time they followed the custom of the Babylonians, who no longer called their chief god Marduk by his personal name but came to prefer the title Bel (Master or Lord) instead. This made it possible for the general title Bel to become more acceptable to the other religiously sensitive peoples.

7. (a) Name some Babylonish-originated doctrines that crept in. (b) What happened to the “weeds” and “wheat” mentioned in Jesus’ illustration? (c) What is the “man of lawlessness” mentioned by Paul? Describe its rise.

⁷ The Babylonish-originated doctrine of the immortality of the soul likewise crept in through pagan Greek religious influence. In this way also the Greek (Hellenistic) conception of hades or hell as a place of conscious torment for the souls of the wicked became an unbiblical matter of belief. Exactly in harmony with Jesus’ prophecy the “weeds” or apostate, imitation Christians with their “sibboleth” (Judg. 12:6) teachings of Babylonish Christianity began to obscure from historical view the true “wheat” or anointed ones with their “shibboleth” teachings of true Christianity. (Matt. 13:24-30) Paul confirms this prophesied rise of organized apostasy by adding that a powerful “man of lawlessness” would develop to be “set in opposition” and to sit “down in the temple of The God.” (2 Thess. 2:3-8) By 325 C.E. this “man of lawlessness” class of apostate leaders came to be recognized by pagan Rome under Emperor Constantine as religious rulers of a new Roman state religion, a fusion of Christian apostasy with Roman paganism. What is now known as Christendom came into being to become the dominant part of Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion. From that time the “man of lawlessness” class has been the collective group of Christendom’s clergy from its many sects that had at that time become wholly Babylonized as an integral part of Babylon the Great. Thus in the sixteen centuries that have followed 325 C.E. the clergy of Christendom have dominated the world stage of false religion and as the “man of lawlessness” have cultivated symbolic “weeds” or false Christians.

WHEATLIKE CHRISTIANS REAPPEAR

8. How did the wheatlike Christians reappear?

⁸ True to the same above prophecy of Jesus, the “wheat” or true Christians did again become apparent historically to stand apart from the “weeds” or apostates as the time of the “harvest” approached at the “conclusion of a system of things.” (Matt. 13:37-43) So it turned out to be after the 1870’s that a small group of sincere, anointed ones came together to form eventually the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society under the presidency of Charles Taze Russell. Those anointed ones later embraced the name “Jehovah’s witnesses.” To this day in 1966 they appear as such Christian witnesses on the world stage.

9. Present the false and then the clarified understanding as to certain basic teachings.

⁹ Early this group of anointed ones cleared away many of the false Babylonish beliefs that had encumbered their Christian way. Some of the clarifications were that man does not have an immortal soul but that man is a living soul (Gen. 2:7); that Christ Jesus the Ransomer was not half man and half God but that he was completely human (1 Tim. 2:5, 6; 1 John 4:2, 3); that in the resurrection there is no “resurrection of the body” but a resurrection of the dead “soul” or individual (John 5:25-28); that there is no such mystery as a “trinity” but that Jehovah is supreme and exclusive in his Sovereign Godship. (1 Cor. 8:4-6) They turned ‘the hose on hell’ to put out the false fires of Hellenistic teachings that the wicked are being roasted in a hades or hell.c (Acts 2:31) In time the very name Jehovah was restored for use at their congregational meetings, reappeared in their Biblical publications and was even restored 7,198 times in their New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.d

HOSTILITY FROM THE SECTARIAN CLERGY

10, 11. (a) Who today are prefigured by Job’s three false companions? (b) How have some religious writers expressed themselves about Jehovah’s witnesses?

¹⁰ Right from the 1880’s this Job group of gathering anointed ones drew fire of religious hostility from the “man of lawlessness” class, Christendom’s clergy now divided into numerous sects. So these Job-like anointed ones came to have “false companions” to argue against them even as did the ancient Job with his three and Jesus with the religious sectarian pressure groups. Again, “three” in being a number indicating emphasis well stresses the all-out, united opposition that Christendom’s sectarian clergy have been hurling against the modern Job-like ones. It is a matter of history that, as Job and Jesus were considered “outcasts” of their day, so Jehovah’s witnesses are found to be unwanted, smelly outcasts of Christendom.—Job 2:7, 8.

¹¹ For example, the Witnesses are not considered “respectable” or “regular” when spoken of in connection with the weedlike sects of Christendom.

“At all events, whether they are liked or disliked, approved or disapproved, they [Jehovah’s witnesses] continue their witness not only in America but in many foreign lands with a vigor and persistence which one could wish were more often found in one’s own and other eminently respectable ‘regular’ churches.”e (Italics ours)

By the well-to-do religious leaders the “wheatlike” Witnesses are branded as an “unorthodox cult” of ‘poor and uncultured’ ones.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses belong to one of those unorthodox religious cults . . . which prosper among those burdened with everything except worldly possessions and cultural graces.”f (Italics ours)

Also, these “outcast” Witnesses are referred to as ‘deviationists.’

“Many observers of the Jehovah’s witnesses have concluded that it is a ‘Christian deviation’ in that its system of doctrine imitates, and at the same time distorts the essential Christian beliefs.”g (Italics ours)

Lastly they are considered “odious” and “fanatical” by the clergy.

“A curb upon the propagandist activity of the odious sect—unless it can be shown to be a definite peril to society—is a potential attack upon the liberties of all citizens. Jehovah’s Witnesses are, in our judgment, a particularly odious and fanatical sect, but the truth or falsity of their teaching is not at issue and no charge of antisocial tendencies was involved in the case upon which the Supreme Court rendered its [unfavorable] decision.”h (Italics ours)

BABYLONISH WAYS REMOVED

12. What early ways of Christianity were reinstituted after the 1880’s?

¹² From the 1880’s onward the modern Job-like anointed ones additionally had reinstated the early ways of Christianity. This enabled all to serve as ministers together, shining to the public as “the light of the world.” (Matt. 5:14-16) This was done by reinstituting the house-to-house witness work and the making of private return visits to homes as did even Jesus and the apostles in their day. Furthermore, all forms of ritualism were rejected at their congregational assemblies and, instead, their meetings were of an educational nature, making an intellectual appeal by means of Bible study, rather than of an emotional, ritualistic nature. This group of anointed ones also shared in a wide distribution of Bibles, Biblical literature and tracts, numbering into the hundreds of millions.

13. As to 1914, what was heralded? How zealous were the anointed, and what reflections were being cast upon the clergy?

¹³ They particularly heralded that the year 1914 was a marked year for the ending of “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24, AV) and for the time of the establishment of Christ’s kingdom in heaven. All of this proved to be true and was verified by the beginning of World War I with its associated events among the Gentile nations. Their Christian work being conducted on a wide scale in many lands remarkably brought the anointed ones onto the world stage of religious history. Their zealous religious works put to shame the “man of lawlessness” class of sectarian clergy. Such members of the clergy should have been taking a more careful interest in their teaching the Word of God to their flocks instead of offering their parishioners a poisonous diet of Babylonish doctrines. Thus it was that this small minority of anointed ones began to manifest an integrity toward Christ Jesus and toward God that cast guilty reflections upon Christendom’s Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical clergy.

PREOCCUPATION WITH PERSONAL DEFENSE

14. Describe how deeply the anointed became preoccupied with self-defense.

¹⁴ Similar to the case of Job of old, these modern witnesses were vilified and misrepresented by the religious clergy and leaders of Christendom, who were foreshadowed by Job’s three companions who turned out to be poor comforters and false friends. They were called by all sorts of degrading names, such as “no-hellers,” “soul sleepers,” “Russellites,” “Rutherfordites,” “Millennial Dawnists,” “unpatriotic pacifists,” “twisters of the Scriptures,” “unordained preachers,” etc. Their ministry of the Word of God was challenged as being fraudulent, deceptive, not ordained by God, and carried on under different names or titles such as Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, International Bible Students Association, People’s Pulpit Association, in order to confuse and conceal the fact that they were “Russellites.” They were looked upon as being false Christians, as in fact no Christians at all, as being “false prophets,” anti-Christian, and having no standing with God at all. Against such religious accusations of being an unorthodox sect of religious hypocrites, Jehovah’s anointed remnant had to defend themselves, just as Job had to do, in an endeavor to prove their integrity as true Christians, their being the “real thing,” and their really being in harmony with God and his Word and having God’s favor and being true Christian ministers ordained by God and not by religious institutions of religious clergymen. There thus arose a great controversy between the religious clergy and God’s anointed, ordained remnant, just as Job got involved in controversy with Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad. Thus, like Job, the anointed remnant became especially preoccupied with themselves and their personal standing with God. They failed to give full appreciation to God’s name Jehovah and to see that the vindication of God’s name and universal sovereignty was the chief thing, so that they should be his witnesses with that chief issue in view. Their getting to heaven was not the main thing.

ELIHU’S RIGHT ESTIMATION

15, 16. (a) What corresponds to Elihu today, and how so? (b) How is The Watchtower used to present right estimations?

¹⁵ Who, then, was it that finally made a right estimation of these basic matters and published such for the attention of the anointed ones to set matters straight? (Isa. 1:18; 2 Tim. 3:16) As it was young Elihu that made the right assessment as to elderly Job in Job’s day so it was the modern young Elihu who brought about the reproving of the 1,900-year-old Job-like anointed ones. Against ancient Job, Elihu’s “anger blazed over his [Job’s] declaring his own soul righteous rather than God.” (Job 32:2) The modern Elihu seems well to comprise the spiritual governing body of the anointed remnant of Christ’s body always closely associated with the directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.i This governing group of anointed ones having become a working unit since the 1870’s makes it young historically in comparison to the 1,900-year-old “faithful and discreet slave,” collectively made up of the faithful anointed ones alive on earth at any given point of time. (Matt. 24:45, 46) The Elihu governing unit has been responsible since 1879 for publishing the Watchtower magazine.

¹⁶ When the Elihu of today gained the right estimation of matters it used its instrument, the Watchtower magazine, to counsel the anointed ones progressively. It was The Watchtower that first published that the vindicating of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty was more important than the vindicating of any individual man. In the giving of its advice, like young Elihu of Job’s day, the historically youthful governing group showed more of a youthful reliance upon the spirit of God in rendering spiritual counsel than in looking to age-old human wisdom and philosophy as the clergy were doing. For this reason the modern Elihu through The Watchtower could further take the lead in exposing the 1,600-year-old “man of lawlessness” class, the sectarian clergy. With Christian boldness since 1919 The Watchtower could maintain with a right estimation that Christendom’s clergy have “proceeded to pronounce God wicked” by their agelong preaching of things that were based on anti-Jehovah, Babylonish teachings. (Job 32:3) In this way a right assessment and the correct estimation of religious developments become progressively available to all righteously inclined individuals by means of The Watchtower.

JOB-LIKE TESTING

17. Describe the Babylon-like captivity experience that came upon the anointed ones from 1914 to 1919.

¹⁷ Now a special Job-like time of testing came upon the few thousand anointed ones from the autumn of 1914 to the spring of 1919. A period of Babylon-like captivity came to be forced upon them. Ridicule was heaped upon them by the clergy. During World War I they were slanderously branded as “security risks.” This brought governmental opposition upon them in Canada, the United States and other countries. Their publications became subject to ban. Those taking the lead among them came to be imprisoned. Finally their organized public witness work was crippled by the summer of 1918. Their headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, had to be shut down, with temporary offices maintained back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Places of their religious meetings were raided and closed. Yes, a spiritually destitute, forsaken condition came upon them. To the faithful anointed ones questions came as to what all this meant and why Jehovah was permitting all this open hostility. Had they not in the name of God and Christ been undertaking a great public witness work among the nations in the thirty-some years before 1914? Did not Jehovah seem to favor that work by granting it continued growth before 1914? The Job-like ones wanted to know: Why now all this adversity and hostility?—Matt. 24:9, 10.

18. What corresponded to Job’s children taken away and his sickness?

¹⁸ Many who, like spiritual children, had looked to them for spiritual guidance and help now abandoned their association. All together, it was a time of destitution as to “spiritual children” and means for religious worship. Considered by the sectarian clergy as outcasts and spiritually diseased ones who were to be loathed and shunned, the anointed ones were left by 1918 to ponder their sad spiritual state, present and future. (Rev. 11:7-10) A state of spiritual unhappiness had been enforced upon them by Satan and all his earthly forces. But again and again the Job-like anointed ones asked in their prayers: Why, O why is Jehovah allowing all this?

19. Describe the set course today of those prefigured by Job’s three companions.

¹⁹ While the anointed endured this low state the modern ‘three false companions,’ the collective group of Christendom’s clergy, stepped up their burning hostility upon the remnant. Unloving in their thinking and hearts, the religious leaders put to use all their Babylonish tactics and arguments. They pretended to worship the God of the Bible but in fact were out “to pronounce God wicked.” (Job 32:3) Jehovah God found them untruthful in their arguments and attacks, whereas the anointed ones were found to be truthful. (Job 42:7, 8) The doctrines and traditions of the clergy are those that have come down through the ages from Babylon and not from the Bible. From 325 C.E. to the present, Christendom’s clergy have been the most powerful part of Babylon the Great. They have been and are now the worst persecutors of Jehovah’s witnesses. These modern ‘three false comforters’ in their bitterness will continue to be, figuratively speaking, ‘after the hide’ and ‘on the necks’ of the true witnesses right down to the very ruinous end of Babylon the Great.

DELIVERANCE INTO SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY

20. Describe the restoration the anointed ones have had, and since when has it been?

²⁰ As Job was made happy in his outcome of a restoration, so the modern anointed ones came to experience a spiritually paradisaic restoration from 1919 onward. This restoration has meant great spiritual prosperity and happiness for them in Jehovah’s royal Kingdom service. To add to their joy, a vast crowd of sheeplike persons has been directed to flee from Babylon the Great and to come over into their realm of spiritual favor. Actually in 1934 the “other sheep” were told to get dedicated and baptized and to become the happy spiritual children of the anointed remnant.j But it was not until 1942 that the fulfillment in complete force of the bringing forth of Job’s ten new children began to take place.k From then on by the hundreds of thousands the figurative “ten children” have come to the aid of the modern Job, the anointed remnant.—Isa. 2:2, 3; Zech. 8:23.

FORMER CLERGYMEN NOW WITNESSES

21, 22. (a) How does Job 42:8, 9 have application today? (b) What course have such repentant ones followed, according to modern experiences?

²¹ In Job’s day of restoration, Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad took Jehovah’s advice to repent of their false religious stand, to accept the priesthood services of Job so that no “disgraceful folly” should come upon them. (Job 42:8, 9) Also after Jesus’ restoration by resurrection and exaltation to heaven, his effective priesthood services were accepted as “a great crowd of priests began to be obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7) Has there been a parallel development in these last days? Yes! In the decades of restoration since 1919, right-hearted clergymen of various religious sects in different parts of the earth have repentantly accepted the priesthood services of the anointed remnant of Job-like ones by becoming rebaptized and ordained as true ministers of Jehovah.l Even clergymen in prominent places have made this about-face, including one priest who had formerly been a Greek Orthodox bishop. No longer seeking worldly fame, these many reformed ministers now zealously preach the good news of the Kingdom right in the same places where they had functioned as sectarian clergymen. But instead of preaching from a pulpit in a church building they now have the doorstep as their right pulpit.

²² What has resulted to these former clergymen for following this right and humble course? From their former clergy “friends” they get much Babylonish hostility and reproach, which they have courageously and faithfully endured. From the Sovereign God Jehovah they get goodwill for worthily bearing the divine name, making known Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship from house to house even as Jesus Christ did. After years of right preaching activity, several of these former clergymen have become appointed as presiding ministers of local congregations of Jehovah’s witnesses. They, in turn, have had the privilege of attending the Watchtower Society’s Kingdom Ministry Schools for further ministerial training. Here, then, is another merciful reason for Jehovah’s permitting Babylon the Great to exist a while longer so that more of such humbled, right-hearted, captive clergy individually may follow the lead set by these earlier ones and get out soon before “disgraceful folly” comes upon all who are left in Babylon the Great.

CLERGY HOSTILITY STILL PERSISTS

23, 24. Explain why clergy hostility still persists as pictured in (a) Joseph’s case in Egypt and (b) a parable of Jesus.

²³ But why is it that the modern Job still experiences increasingly bitter hostility from the unrepentant Babylonish clergy, if this is the time of the restoration and ascendency for the anointed ones? The situation is similar to the antitypical seven years of famine and seven years of prosperity in Egypt during Joseph’s administration.a (Gen. 41:29-32) In their present-day application those two antitypical seven-year periods run concurrently. Upon Christendom’s land or realm there is great spiritual famine for the hearing of the Word of God. (Amos 8:11) While upon the land, realm or situation of the true anointed ones there is great spiritual abundance.

²⁴ Such concurrent fulfillment is confirmed in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. (Luke 16:19-31) Here the condition of both the “rich man” or the clergy class and that of the “Lazarus” group, the anointed remnant, takes place at the same time, namely, from 1919 to the present. The physical facts abundantly show that since 1919 the anointed witnesses of Jehovah have enjoyed spiritual prosperity as to their ministry while during the same time the clergy have been experiencing increased frustrations and spiritual failures as to their ministries. All this bears evidence of their “torment.” Earlier in this article there was presented another confirmation in that while Babylon the Great fell under the encircling power of Christ Jesus in 1919, it is permitted to exist with all its spiritual corruption and hostility until the rescue of her captives is concluded, at which conclusion she will then be totally destroyed.—Rev. 18:4; 17:15-18.

25. (a) What is another purpose for Jehovah’s permitting Babylonish hostility to continue in our time? (b) What can be expected in the next Watchtower article?

²⁵ In Jehovah’s wisdom he has permitted this continued Babylonish hostility to persist for another purpose. Why? Because it now gives the “great crowd” of the “other sheep” also an opportunity to support the anointed ones in giving an answer to Satan as to his tauntings and challenges concerning Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship. With all this background information, we are now ready to consider the physical evidences of the great religious controversy that has been raging between the anointed ones championing Jehovah’s Godship on the one hand and the Babylonish clergy of Christendom on the other hand. How remarkably the detailed experiences and arguments against Job in his day and against Jesus in his time are being duplicated in printed form today on an enlarged scale of hostility against the modern Witnesses!

[Footnotes]

Jehovah Taunted by Babylonish Hostility Against Anointed Witnesses

“Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.”—Prov. 27:11.

1, 2. (a) Who is being taunted, by whom and how? (b) In what way will the parallel experiences of today be demonstrated with those of Job’s time?

LIKE the taunting from wicked King Sennacherib of ancient Assyria, so today Satan keeps up his taunting of the true God Jehovah by speaking abusively of His anointed witnesses. (Isa. 37:21-33) By their faithfully enduring the Babylonish hostility against them, the Job-like anointed ones enable Jehovah, as He says, to “make a reply to him [Satan] that is taunting me.” (Prov. 27:11) In the meantime, in their championing Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship on earth they bear up under much reproach. “With murder against my bones those showing hostility to me have reproached me, while they say to me all day long: ‘Where is your God?’”—Ps. 42:10.

² To demonstrate the full extent of the modern parallel of the experiences of Jehovah’s witnesses today with those of ancient Job, we will now highlight cases of Babylonish hostility of the clergy against the anointed witnesses on each of the taunts made against ancient Job by his three Babylonized companions. This will be done by taking each of the speeches of Job’s companions in turn and showing how the clergy of Christendom have spoken in the same sibboleth fashion as those ancient agents of Satan. (Judg. 12:6) As this develops it will be observed that the sectarian religious statements have the same ring of hostility as the pronouncements of ancient Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad. By them the Job-like anointed ones continue to be branded as the world’s No. 1 Religious Badmen to be avoided like poison.—Job 22:5.

FALSE CHARGE OF BIAS

3. What false charge of bias has been made, and by whom? How does this parallel Job’s day?

³ In the frame of thinking of Eliphaz, the clergy claim in effect that it is the religiously unclean, the sinners, the biased ones that bring upon themselves merited reproach and divine punishment. (Job 4:2-8) A Roman Catholic monsignor writes in a nationwide Catholic newspaper in the United States a harsh condemnation of the Bible Society of Jehovah’s witnesses.

“Rejecting the idea of the Holy Trinity, the Bible society translation [the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, 1950] replaces the phrase ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ used frequently [once] throughout the King James version with ‘the spirit and the water and the blood.’ (1 John 5:7) . . . Something of the shallow scholarship in the sect in adopting the word Jehovah as part of its title is shown by the Catholic Biblical Encyclopedia’s treatment of this word.”a (Bracketing ours)

4, 5. What defense have the Witnesses made (a) as to biased translation and (b) for their use of the name Jehovah? (c) How has this been in accord with Job 6:10?

⁴ Making a proper defense not only of their own rightness but also of the Sovereign Godship of Jehovah as did ancient Job, the modern Witnesses say: “I have not hidden the sayings of the Holy One.” (Job 6:10) In an open letter dated October 11, 1950, a printed six-page reply was published by Jehovah’s witnesses in their Watchtower magazine of December 1, 1950. (Pp. 469-474) There overwhelming evidences were published proving beyond doubt that Jehovah’s witnesses not only are not biased in their New World Translation, but have honestly reproduced the sense and wording of the original-language texts. Note the above Watchtower answer to the charge of biased tampering with the Bible.

“The New World Translation has rewritten no part of the Greek text, not even 1 John 5:7 which is cited in your article as a place where Jehovah’s witnesses clash with the trinitarian doctrine. . . . This is a literal translation of the Greek text by the above-named Augustinus Merk, S.J. . . . it is also a literal translation of the Greek text by the other Roman Catholic scholar, Joseph M. Bover, S.J. . . . Your own precious Vatican Manuscript No. 1209 of the early 4th century does not contain the words, but brands them spurious.”

Thus was crushingly demonstrated the authentic nature of the New World Translation and the falsity of the charge against the anointed witnesses.

⁵ In addition The Watchtower vindicated its use of “Jehovah” this way:

“Why, then, does the New World Translation use the name Jehovah 237 times in its main text? Is it due to ‘shallow scholarship,’ as you insinuate? No. . . . In addition to the 19 Hebrew versions, it cites versions of the ‘New Testament’ in 38 languages besides English and Hebrew where the translators use a vernacular form of the Hebrew tetragrammaton [Hebrew occurrence of the divine name].”

Then The Watchtower proceeded to identify a long series of Catholic authorities and their usages of the name Jehovah down through the centuries, such as Thomas Cardinal de Vio Cajetanus in his Commentary on the Pentateuch. Who, then, displays bias—the Catholic clergy or Jehovah’s witnesses? You decide.

DEMON INFLUENCE

6. What parallel is there to Job 4:15 as to appealing to demon influence and the result?

⁶ From ancient Babylonish times, religious leaders like Eliphaz have appealed to emotional influences obtained from invisible spirits or demons to build up their religious posture rather than build faith based on the Bible. (Job 4:12-17) Recently one of the Pentecostal sects emotionally belittled the Bible knowledge of Jehovah’s witnesses and their associates.

“I wish it were possible for everyone in the Watchtower Society, more than a million and one half ministers and over fifty million brain washed followers, to feel what I am feeling, and sense what I can sense. . . . If they can do it [their worldwide work] with power that is not of God, what can we do if we are anointed by the Spirit of God . . . I want you to pray with us, ‘Lord, find the Kingdom Halls and pour out your Spirit until they are filled. Tear them up. . . . Shake them up like they’ve never been shaken before!’”b (Italics ours)

Here the religionists appeal to “feeling” and a “sense” of something unseen and indefinable. The result? They exhort violence and hostility, “tear” and “shake.” But Jesus said, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”—Matt. 22:39.

DENOUNCED FOR THEIR OBEDIENCE

7. Describe the parallel as to Job 4:18.

⁷ The Eliphaz-like religious leaders also revel in independency from God and Christ. (Prov. 3:5) They infer that God does not take special note of the obedience and faithfulness of his servants to Him. (Job 4:18; Matt. 17:12, 13; 24:45) One German religious writer reproaches Jehovah’s witnesses for holding to a unity of thought and organization in their Christian way. (Isa. 55:8; Prov. 12:15) He writes:

“The members of the organization [of Jehovah’s witnesses] are obligated to unconditional obedience. This obligation includes the duty of accepting the word of God only in the interpretation offered them by the Brooklyn publications. The Watchtower Society has divine authority and hence also possesses a monopoly on the truth and on the proper proclamation of the Gospel. It is forbidden to nourish oneself from other sources or to think one’s own thoughts.”c (Italics ours)

8. How have the Witnesses replied to the denouncement?

⁸ In reply Jehovah’s witnesses contrast their unified source of spiritual abundance with the spiritually sickening table spread by the clergy in their “independence.”

“What orthodox religious organization in Christendom provides new spiritual food for these critical times? Are not the fundamentalists still offering the same dry husks, still prattling the same centuries-old creeds, and monotonously repeating again and again their few basic doctrines borrowed from paganism? Truly, ‘their religion is a mockery, a mere tradition learned by rote.’ (Isa. 29:13, Mo) The modernist churches have brought forth new teachings to fit the times, but their new offerings are not fit for gospel-preaching. Instead, they scuttle the Bible, dismissing it as myth and legend, at best only good literature, and offer science and evolution, psychology and psychiatry, in an endeavor to be popular with a materialistic civilization. God bluntly says Christendom’s ‘tables are full of vomit.’ [Isa. 28:8] Among them spiritual famine reigns supreme. What a contrast between the condition of their followers and that of Jehovah’s witnesses!”d

Let the “independent” clergy still advocate what leads to spiritual anarchy but Jehovah’s unified witnesses will still stick to the one vinelike channel.—John 15:5, 6.

REPROACHED BY SECTARIAN TRADITIONALISTS

9. How have the Witnesses been reproached in accord with Job 8:8?

⁹ It is well known that many of the “man of lawlessness” class of clergy are pillars and champions of orthodoxy, holding tenaciously to early, Babylonish wisdom of the “former generations” and from the “fathers,” like Bildad of old. (Job 8:8) Down from the heights of Babylonish traditions they look condescendingly upon the Bible-trained witnesses of Jehovah. Hear what a Catholic Jesuit weekly magazine had to comment about Jehovah’s witnesses in international assembly.

“It [the assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses] was an impressive demonstration of the hold that primitive—and perverted—religion exercises on simple minds in a hour of humanity’s confusion. It was an illustration also of the compelling power of a few ideas strongly held.”e (Italics ours)

10. What has been the answer by the Job-like ones?

¹⁰ Following is the answer the Job-like anointed ones gave in reply to the clergy thrust against them for their rejection of tradition:

“In substituting ancient paganisms or modern philosophies for the truths contained in the Bible, Christendom’s religions match backsliding Israel who professed to be Jehovah’s people: ‘The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people shows no understanding.’ (Isa. 1:3, AT) They put themselves in position for stinging condemnation, which they cry out against [us] as intolerant. But does not God himself here say they have less sense than the ox and the ass?”f

These masters of tradition, sectarian traditionalists, charge that the religion of Jehovah’s witnesses is “primitive” and “perverted,” yet the whole focal point of the Witnesses’ Bible-based religion centers on upholding Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship. (Job 8:3) Yes, they brand the “sons” or associates of the anointed ones as being “sinners” (‘simpleminded’) who have “revolted” (‘perverted religion’) against traditions of the apostate sects, in a time of world confusion, a confusion largely brought about by the clergy themselves.—Job 8:4, 9, 10.

DENOUNCED FOR SEEKING ACCURATE BIBLE KNOWLEDGE

11. Present an experience that parallels the charge at Job 11:7.

¹¹ Many sectarians of Christendom like Zophar feel the exposure made by the “multitude of words” or religious instruction accurately published by the Job-like witnesses. (Job 11:2-4) They denounce them for going beyond the early translations of the Bible to “find out the deep things of God” accurately by means of more recent translations of the Scriptures. (Job 11:5-8) Note how a religious publication of an American sect makes an attack:

“But the most significant of the things attempted by the ‘Witnesses’ is their undertaking to make a new Bible. They have announced through Nathan H. Knorr that they are getting out a ‘new translation’ of the Scriptures, seeing the present translations do not suit them. . . . When a teaching becomes . . . outlandishly anti-God, it needs a ‘new translation’ of the Bible. That is, it needs another ‘Bible.’ The one God gave us is not adequate to set forth the new religion.”g

12. Give some points from the Witnesses’ reply.

¹² Part of the prompt reply made by the Witnesses is as follows:

“Which Bible do you mean by your expression ‘the one God gave us?’ Certainly when your paper quotes from the American Standard Revised Version, you are not using ‘the one God gave us.’ Or are you naïve enough to imagine that God really gave us that Version? The Bible God gave us is the one he inspired and which was written in Hebrew, Aramaic and common Greek, which are today practically dead languages. If to produce a ‘new translation’ in modern speech and according to the latest findings on the Bible means to ‘make a new Bible,’ ‘another “Bible”,’ then tell us this: Why is it that the American Committee of Revision, which produced the American Standard Version from which your paper mainly quotes, brought forth in 1946 the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament and will shortly bring forth also a revised Old Testament? Will you level against their Committee the charge of ‘making a new Bible?’ Have they ‘become so outlandishly anti-God’ as to need a new translation that they might set forth a new religion?”h

Let the clergy think like Zophar if they wish. As for Jehovah’s witnesses, they will continue to seek for increased accuracy of the Divine Word.

DENOUNCED AS “HERETICS” ON THE RESURRECTION

13. Present background information as to a Bible doctrine on which the anointed ones have been denounced as “heretics.”

¹³ Job was a believer in the resurrection of the individual. (Job 14:13, 14) Likewise the Greater Job, Jesus Christ, was the greatest teacher as to the resurrection of the dead soul. (John 11:25; Matt. 12:40; Acts 2:25-35) Never does the Bible speak of the ‘resurrection of the dead body.’ Yet the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were believers in a ‘resurrection of the body.’i Similarly today the clergy still teach the sibboleth or unbiblical view upholding ‘resurrection of the body.’ An associate professor of Systematic Theology in a Calvinist seminary denounces the Witnesses as “heretics” on this point.

“In the history of the Christian church, people who taught that the ‘resurrection’ was a non-physical one were branded as heretics. The early fathers [in his footnote he refers to Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras and Irenaeus] vigorously defended the resurrection of the body (in a physical sense) as a distinctively Christian doctrine. . . . Yet today Jehovah’s Witnesses claiming to be listening to Scripture alone, are again reviving this ancient heresy!”j (Italics ours)

14, 15. (a) How did the Witnesses reduce this to an absurdity? (b) Who in fact are the heretics, and why?

¹⁴ In addition to giving the full Scriptural support for the fact that the resurrection of Jesus and the others does not involve taking physical bodies to heaven, the Watchtower of April 15, 1963, (pp. 237, 238) also reduced this clergy view to an absurdity as follows:

“Just suppose that Jesus has his earthly human body in heaven. Since clergymen who insist that Jesus has his human body in heaven teach that he is also God himself, then we know what God looks like. He looks like Jesus when down on earth; he is possibly six feet tall, has a Jewish nose, possibly a beard, has man’s sex organs, and seems to weigh two hundred pounds. . . . If Jesus had his human body in heaven, then he has the entire digestive system, including the mouth and the stomach; and his faithful disciples, on going to heaven, would have the same things. . . . Think of it! Since the arrival of human bodies, there now have to be draught houses in heaven, toilets, both private and public, with separate ones for men and women. And now and forever Jesus, who the clergymen say is very God himself, has to use a heavenly toilet, something that he never had to do in heaven before he became a man! (1 Ki. 18:27) This has to be true if we carry arguments to their logical conclusions!”

¹⁵ In view of the foregoing, just who is the heretic? Jehovah’s witnesses who uphold the Sovereign Majesty of Jehovah God as being spirit and utterly different from man and above man, or the clergy of Christendom with their “early fathers” who in effect assert that the Most High God is like puny man? (Num. 23:19) Clearly the taunt of “heretic” made by the clergy against the Job-like witnesses recoils to strike and brand them like the Pharisees as being against the true teachings of the Bible and hence as “heretics.”—Matt. 15:3.

PEOPLE ADVISED TO AVOID THE WITNESSES

16. According to Job 15:10, why has advice been given to avoid the Witnesses, and by whom?

¹⁶ Leaders of the older religious sects brand the Witnesses as being full of “windy knowledge.” (Job 15:2-6) Like Eliphaz they claim the Job-like ones have swelled heads with too much Bible knowledge. Such condemn the Witnesses because they do not listen to the experience of the older religious organizations. (Job 15:7-10) A Catholic Jesuit magazine in the United States gives the following advice:

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses are specialists in their own peculiar way. In general they know more about the Bible than most Catholics. Since they insist on carrying on all discussions on the basis of the Bible, a Catholic involved with them will be forced to meet them on their own grounds. While the Witnesses’ view of the Bible is a distorted one, the deplorable lack of knowledge that a Catholic is likely to have of the Holy Scriptures puts him at a serious disadvantage. It would be well to advise unprepared Catholics to avoid them, for they will accomplish little and may endanger their own faith. Only well-instructed Catholics can cope with them.”k (Italics ours)

So it is only the “gray-headed” and “aged one” (Job 15:10) of the Roman Catholic Church, those steeped in Babylonish traditions, that might properly discuss religion with the anointed witnesses!

CLAIM WITNESSES HEADED FOR REAL HELLFIRE

17. What evidence is there that the clergy retaliate on the exposure of their hellfire doctrine?

¹⁷ Adamant in their stand for the Babylonish doctrine of hell-torment, the Bildad-like modern religious spokesmen continue to retaliate against the plain exposures made by the Witnesses proving that their teachings are not Biblical. For instance, it has been pointed out that men are souls and beasts are souls and that the same eventuality befalls both categories, “as the one dies, so the other dies.” (Eccl. 3:19-21) In the face of plain Bible statements the clergy complain against the Job-like witnesses in the words of Bildad: “Why should we be reckoned as beasts and be regarded as unclean in your eyes?” (Job 18:3; 2 Pet. 2:12) Hear now what some who are teaching that souls are roasting in hell have to say:

“‘Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ 70,000 strong, have just had a convention in New York [1950], making a great noise. Their [Society’s president] Nathan H. Knorr, has promised them extremely interesting things for ‘the near future,’ among which is the abolition of Hell as set forth in the Scriptures. . . . But they do not discern that the offer is made them in terms the exact opposite to the language God employs. God tells them that there is such a place as Hell, and it is not Hades or the grave. Their leaders tell them that such a place does not exist. This is plainly anti-God and brands the ‘Witnesses’ as having the ‘mark of the beast.’ God says the wicked ‘shall go away into eternal punishment’ (Matt. 25:46); but the ‘Witnesses’ say there is no such place. But in so saying, they are preparing themselves to go there!”l (Brackets and italics ours)

18. What reply did the Witnesses publish?

¹⁸ In their printed four-page reply the Witnesses plainly put it:

“Out of your own mouth you condemn yourself. You say, ‘the offer is made them in terms the exact opposite to the language God employs.’ How can this be? The New World Translation does not use the Old English word ‘hell,’ but uses the very words God gave us in his original Bible, namely, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. Certainly this is not making another Bible, a Bible different from the one God gave us, but is using the exact language God employs. You are far-fetched, therefore, in branding this as ‘plainly anti-God’ and as having ‘the mark of the beast.’ Jehovah’s witnesses are not abolishing Gehenna, but are putting it back into the Scriptures where it belongs. . . . Jesus warned his opposers with the admonition: ‘By your words you will be vindicated, and by your words you will be condemned.’ (Matt. 12:37, NW) By your words against Jehovah’s witnesses your paper The Vindicator stands, not vindicated, but condemned before God and all men of good will.”a Once again the reader can judge who is in the right as to this teaching of the clergy on hellfire.

DESCRIBED AS FANTASTIC

19, 20. (a) What sect charged that the New World Translation is “fantastic,” and how? (b) How did the anointed witnesses reply?

¹⁹ The Zophar-like clergy continue to hear what they call “an insulting exhortation” from the Job-like witnesses. (Job 20:3) They still maintain that the Witnesses are the world’s No. 1 Religious Badmen. (Job 20:5) In this frame of mind The Baptist Record in one of its editorials branded the New World Translation, as fantastic in this manner:

“Another sample of their fantastic translation . . . ‘cross’ . . . omitted in favor of ‘stake.’ There is absolutely no authority for translating the cross as stake.”b

²⁰ The Watchtower of November 15, 1950, printed a five-page answer wherein the anointed witnesses put up a conclusive defense of the New World Translation on each point attacked by The Baptist Record. Here, in part, is their reply to the above charge:

“Your heading says, ‘The cross is not a stake,’ and your paragraph four says it is fantastic to use ‘stake’ instead of ‘cross.’ . . . If you had not been so foolish as to blurt out before investigation but had gotten a copy of the New World Translation and read what pages 768-771 of the Appendix say on Matthew 10:38 and ‘torture stake,’ you would have been more restrained in your editorial. You would have learned that the instrument of torture which the Greeks called staurós, and the Latins crux, was originally only a stake without a crossbeam at any angle. . . . Evidently you, in your reading of the Bible, have failed to attach due significance to the fact that the apostle Peter speaks of it only as a ‘tree’ (Acts 5:30; 10:39; 1 Pet. 2:24), and the apostle Paul speaks of it also as a ‘tree,’ at Acts 13:29 and Galatians 3:13. It was easy for you to assert that it was not a simple stake upon which Jesus died, but your editorial fails to provide a shred of proof or argument that the New World Translation is fantastic, incorrect and unscriptural on this point.”c

The Baptist Record was invited to publish in its columns the Watchtower reply to its editorial, to correct the gross misrepresentation of the New World Translation and thus remove the hindrance to the cause of Bible truth. The response? More clergy hostility to the Job-like witnesses as a taunt against Jehovah.

WILD ACCUSATIONS OF BADNESS AND ERRORS

21-23. (a) How have the clergy tried to make Job 22:5 apply today? (b) What has been the answer by the Witnesses?

²¹ Orthodoxy continues to be confounded by the crushing replies of Jehovah’s witnesses when the clergy wildly accuse them of every sort of badness and error. Like Eliphaz of old, in their final round of the controversy they in effect say: “Is not your own badness too much already, and will there be no end to your errors?” (Job 22:5) This sort of unjustified attack is exemplified by a “National Catholic Monthly for the Family” entitled the “Home Messenger” in its issue of August 1955, in an article: “They Call Themselves the Witnesses of Jehovah.” The writer was exposed in publishing thirty-five lies, falsehoods and misstatements in his base attempt to prove the Witnesses as bad ones.

²² The Awake! magazine of April 8, 1956, (pages 17, 18) publishes the Witnesses’ full reply under the heading “The Hypocrisy of Men Who Speak Lies.” (1 Tim. 4:1-3) A few extracts from the reply will reveal the baseness of this clergy attack.

“The article further claims that Jehovah’s witnesses believe that ‘Christ is floating around in the air,’ and that they expected Christ to come visibly in 1874, and then in 1914, when nothing had happened in 1874, and upon being disappointed in 1914 they ‘came up with the dandy that Christ did come in 1914 but invisibly.’ The fact is that Jehovah’s witnesses from the very beginning understood that Christ’s second presence was to be invisible. . . . Next the reader is assured that ‘Jail seems to be the proper background for the witnesses. Their “Judge” Rutherford was in jail when their founder “Pastor” Charles Taze Russell died in 1916,’ and that he was sent there because of sedition and obstructing the draft. However, everyone knows that the United States did not have any sedition or draft act in 1916. The facts are that Judge Rutherford was not sentenced until 1918, more than a year and a half after Pastor Russell had died, and that this conviction was later reversed in court and acknowledged as unjust.”

²³ With these evidences of a lying spirit by the shepherds of Christendom, just who is it that stands convicted of badness and error? Is it any wonder, then, that the crime wave of Christendom is skyrocketing along with Christendom’s increases in church attendances?

APOSTATES URGE CONFORMITY AND STAR READINGS

24, 25. (a) What evidence of parallels is there today as to conformity and resorting to star readings? (b) Give some points of reply made by Jehovah’s servants.

²⁴ Like ancient Bildad, modern religious leaders humanly reason that God’s holiness is beyond man’s copying and attainment. (Job 25:4) They argue that the Job-like anointed ones should give in on their steadfast course of separateness and integrity in holiness to Jehovah. (2 Cor. 6:17; 7:1; 1 Pet. 1:15, 16) Furthermore, Bildad of old betrays his Babylonish leanings by observing human activities with respect to the movement of the stars. (Job 25:5) Today, too, the apostates seem to prefer star readings of Babylonish astrology to the safe counsel of the Bible in their arguments against Jehovah’s witnesses. Note their view of matters:

“I saw a cleric jostle a Watchtower Witness and exclaim, ‘Damn you . . . ’ We clamped them into prisons because of their views on military service and their stubborn refusal to submit to the draft. . . . We lectured them publicly about their attitude toward the American flag and the American way. We took them to task for their opposition to blood transfusions. . . . We preached against them and warned our people about them. . . . I have done no horoscopy on this, but since the startling Witnesses are here to stay I can only hope that it is in the stars that they will also modify their incredible stand against saluting the American flag, cooperating with the government and respecting other churches . . . ”d (Italics ours)

²⁵ To this Babylonish plea to the stars for conformity Jehovah’s witnesses published their answer in The Watchtower of 1958, pages 83, 84. In part it said:

“The modern history of steadfastness to God’s truth in spite of opposition and persecution during years just past certainly gives no indication that the future will see an abandonment of Jehovah’s requirements by his people. As to the future course of action by Jehovah’s witnesses, this is not ‘in the stars’; it is not to be seen by scanning the starry creation of Jehovah. In fact, attempts to foretell events by the stars or anyone’s trusting in claimed ‘influence’ of the stars is contrary to Jehovah’s Word. Not to the stars in the visible heavens, but to the God in the heaven of heavens do we look for our future.”—See Isaiah 47:1, 13.

APOSTATES AVOID USING DIVINE NAME

26, 27. (a) What pattern is still followed by the apostates as to the use of the divine name? (b) How have the anointed ones been alert in defending Jehovah’s name in a recent experience?

²⁶ As has already been presented, religious leaders influenced by Babylonish ways have in all ages avoided referring to the true God by his warm, personal name, commonly used today as Jehovah. This was so as to Job’s three false comforters, it was so on the part of the Jewish sectarians in Jesus’ day and it is abundantly so on the part of the “man of lawlessness” class, Christendom’s clergy, in these last days. Apostate leaders have Babylonishly pressured Bible translators to take out the divine name. Observe the following unfair attack upon Jehovah’s witnesses made by a Presbyterian seminary professor, accusing them of being inconsistent in their restoration of the divine name in their New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. He charged they were of “Arian theology” (antitrinitarian) and thus colored their translation in an antitrinitarian way when they restored Jehovah in some texts where the Greek word kýrios (Lord) appeared without a definite article and not at other places.

²⁷ Jehovah’s witnesses published a three-page reply to this hostility.

“In view of the above we wonder why the faculty member of the Princeton Theological Seminary quoted only partially from page 9 of the above-mentioned Foreword, but left unquoted to you all the above information in the Foreword concerning how the translators determined upon the fitness of putting the divine name back into the Christian Scriptures. . . . The New World Translation is consistent, and it violates no general rule of action set forth in its Foreword when it renders the expression in 1 Corinthians 12:3, as well as in Philippians 2:11, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ not ‘Jesus is Jehovah.’ So the translators are not to be charged with being influenced by the theology of the antitrinitarian Arius for doing so. . . . It is very easy for a trinitarian theologian of Christendom to carp at a Bible translation that does not agree with his trinitarian doctrine. But when he does so by concealing the basis upon which the criticized translation makes its consistent rendering, is he fair and scholarly?”e

Once again a Babylonish habit of rejecting the Sovereign Godship of Jehovah has been exposed by the alert Job-like anointed ones.—Job 6:10.

ANGLICAN BISHOP ADMITS GOD HAS A NAME

28. What does an Anglican bishop admit as to God’s name?

²⁸ An Anglican bishop admits that the Babylonian practice on the part of the clergy of avoiding the personal name of the Deity and taking it out of Bible translations has been wrong. He writes:

“If the Deity had no proper name, no name more indicative of personal character than the generic name God, we should have no reason to suspect that the Deity loves us and requires our love in return. If we were told that we must love God, we could do no better than pretend to love him. . . . To Israel God made himself known as a person, by the proper name Jahveh. (Ex. 3:15) The name Jahveh occurs in the Psalms alone about 665 times. . . . It has already been remarked that in the King James Version of 1611 and in the (English) Revised Version of 1885 the word Jehovah occurs only four times, instances in which, for one reason or another, it was embarrassing to omit the Name. But in the Revised Standard Version of 1952 the word Jehovah does not appear at all. . . . I have never had the pleasure of meeting a member of the enthusiastic sect called Jehovah’s Witnesses. . . . It seems that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.’ And I can discover some reason for their hatred of the Revised Standard Version and the authors of it.”f (Italics his)

Note this bishop still mildly reproaches Jehovah’s witnesses for having a ‘zeal without knowledge’ even though they have been right in this matter of restoring the divine name all along.

JEHOVAH UPHOLDS HIS ANOINTED ONES

29, 30. (a) Contrast what has been revealed in the parallel reports just considered. (b) What sympathies and inclinations are demonstrated on the part of the clergy? (c) How has Jehovah upheld his witnesses?

²⁹ The exchanges just presented have set forth the striking parallels between the Job drama of old and the drama on the worldwide stage today revolving around Jehovah’s witnesses. (1 Cor. 4:9) In each case the Babylonized agents of Satan have had to resort to lies, half-truths, concealment of facts, slander, emotionalism, astrology and have argued from plain ignorance of the Bible. On the other hand, Job-like witnesses have responded with truth, restraint, Christian love, setting forth of Scripture, adhering to facts and reasoned from a position of a thorough and accurate knowledge of the Scriptures, always championing the truth of the Bible and the Sovereign Godship of Jehovah. Now it can be appreciated why many of the clergy sympathetically claim to understand and quote from the arguments of Job’s adversaries rather than those presented by Job himself. One authority says: “The words of his [Job’s] friends . . . are more acceptable than many of the rasher utterances of Job.”g

³⁰ It has now been clearly shown that those of Babylonish thinking can only understand the sibboleth of apostasy and, therefore, such sectarians can never appreciate the shibboleth sayings of the true worship of Jehovah as anciently championed by Job, then by Jesus Christ and his apostles and now by Jehovah’s modern witnesses. Though taunted for ages by Satan and his Babylonized agents, the true God Jehovah has been vindicated by his true servants on earth. Jehovah himself has shown which side has proved to be right. To the modern sectarian apostates Jehovah says: “My anger has grown hot against you . . . for you men have not spoken concerning me what is truthful as has my servant Job.” (Job 42:7) Happy are Jehovah’s anointed ones today who in their Job-like restoration since 1919 continue to endure Babylonish hostility directed against them as they faithfully support Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship as the Grand King of Eternity. “Now to the King of Eternity, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”—1 Tim. 1:17.

[Footnotes]

A Family Moves to Tropical West Africa

AS THE plane taxied slowly along the runway at Gatwick Airport, London, and steadily increased speed, my wife and I wondered what kind of adventure we were embarking upon. We were leaving behind all our friends and relatives and were winging our way toward tropical West Africa!

What had made us decide to move to Africa, particularly as we have two small children? Since I had five years’ teaching experience behind me, my wife and I decided that we could use this to the best advantage in a different part of the world, where the need for preachers of the Kingdom good news was greater. We were both in good health, with two healthy children, and had a teaching appointment to go to in Africa, which offered suitable accommodation and the security of a contract.

We knew that there would be many adjustments in our lives to meet the new situation, but as the official in London had said during my interview for the post, “a missionary spirit is needed to accept a teaching post in Africa.” Little did he realize that this was the most important reason that influenced us to take this step! Our primary desire was to help African people understand more about God and his purposes toward all mankind.

We arrived in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, in the middle of the rainy season. We were soon to learn that it rains more in one day here than in several weeks in England. However, one soon grows accustomed to it, and at least it is warm rain! The rain seemed to make everything grow in profusion, with palm trees, orange trees, banana plants and paw-paw trees in abundance. We were struck by the amount of greenery, in all its different shades, such a pleasant contrast to the edge of the Sahara Desert we had flown over previously.

There were tall, modern buildings in Freetown, but on our journey by land-rover up-country to our new home we found most villagers living in mud-walled, thatch-roofed houses, some round, others square. For the most part they were clean dwellings. The town where we now live and work is 130 miles northeast of Freetown in more open country, where rice is widely grown as the main part of the local diet.

Perhaps the most striking thing we noticed was the friendliness of the local people of the Temne tribe. We noticed this especially when we spent time helping them to understand more about God’s Word, the Bible. They are very cheerful and friendly in spite of the rigorous life they lead. Most hospitably provide a seat when we visit them in their homes. Many times they share what fruit they have with us without any thought of payment, even though they do not have very much of this world’s wealth.

There is much superstition and tradition among the West African people, as indeed there is in most other countries, only in different forms. Thus, when visiting the local villages in our preaching work we try to point out the way God wants us to live our lives, as shown in his Word. By constantly calling back on those who show interest in God’s promises, we try to help them to worship him openly and in spirit and truth.

Many men and women who have come to believe in God have overcome great difficulties in order to be able to worship him in accordance with his Guidebook for clean living. Most people openly practice polygamy, which is still widely accepted in West Africa. Yet upon learning of the Christian standard of one man, one wife, many have shown their sincerity by keeping only their senior legal wife and putting the others away. Others have made complete breaks with superstition and tradition, again showing the firmness of their faith. After more than one year here, we find that the vast majority of Africans are God-fearing people who respect God’s Word the Bible, delighting to hear of the promises God makes for perfect peace and happiness among all the races of mankind, here on this earth.

Looking back over the past months in tropical West Africa, we realize now that most difficulties disappear as one grows accustomed to the new life. No longer do we hesitate in going to talk to Africans in their natural surroundings, as we realize more and more how anxious they are to be helpful, especially when one is able to use even just a few words of their native language. This makes them feel that someone is taking an interest in them.

Our fears about our health and safety are certainly no greater than they were in England. By being a little more careful over personal hygiene, we find we have less illness than before coming here! Our two small children are extremely healthy and seem to thrive on the sunshine, which is almost year-round except during the height of the rainy season. Even the extremely hot temperature is bearable. In fact, it amazes us how the human body can adapt itself so well and in so short a time.

Our children have plenty of space in which to run around and have had a much wider variety of pets than they could possibly have had in England. Some of the animals we have had during the past year include a baby deer, three monkeys, chickens and ducks, a dog, rabbits, a goat and even a small iguana-like creature, which fortunately left us before it had a chance to grow too big!

Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties in moving to a far-off country is leaving former friends and relatives. We have overcome this to some extent by the use of tape-recorded messages. Also, we have learned how to develop and print our own films, which help to provide a visible account of Africa and its peoples to our friends in England.

There is a minority group of white people here, but one has to be careful not to allow these associations to encroach on one’s time for preaching God’s Word, attending congregation meetings, conducting home Bible studies and making return visits to persons who show an interest in the Bible’s message. We are in Africa to give a helping hand to those thirsting for knowledge, particularly the knowledge of God found in his Word, the Bible. And working with our loving fellow African Witnesses, attending the same congregational meetings and Bible assemblies and studying with them helps us to lead a very full and enjoyable life, offsetting any feeling of loneliness.

In conclusion, one might ask if there is any advice we could pass on to others contemplating a move to another country such as we have made. A vital thing for anyone with family responsibilities would be to obtain employment first, preferably covered by a sound contract. One should be reasonably healthy and ready to adapt oneself to meet the challenge that a country like Africa brings to those not raised there. One should be prepared to forego some of the luxuries of this modern world. But in doing so he will gain the inner satisfaction of doing a worthwhile work, and along with it, too, the realization that there is more happiness in giving than in receiving. That is what we have found in tropical West Africa.—Contributed.

Youths, Parents and the Christian Congregation

AS YOU young folks well know, you are often confronted with situations that call on you to make decisions. Some of you have also observed that, if the decisions are wise, the outcome will usually be good. On the other hand, if the thinking that underlies the decisions is not sound, a person may mar his entire life. Now, where can you get the help that is so badly needed to meet in a successful way the challenging situations in your life? Parents, what can you do to help? Lovingly, Jehovah has outlined in the Bible provisions that will protect and lastingly benefit each one of us.

Even though you may have read it before, consider the wise admonition found at Proverbs 6:20-22, remembering that it may well be the solution to the problems you face: “Observe, O my son, the commandment of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother. Tie them upon your heart constantly; bind them upon your throat. When you walk about, it will lead you; when you lie down, it will stand guard over you; and when you have waked up, it itself will make you its concern.”

So, God has not left you young folks on your own, to find out by trial and error what life is all about. Wisely he arranged for you to come into the world in the protective shelter of a family arrangement. Your parents, who have already faced many of the problems with which you will be confronted, are there to give you guidance. If you do as the Bible says, keeping close to your heart the counsel of your parents and obeying their instructions, this will guide you in coping successfully with the problems of life. Particularly is that so if your parents are devoted to Jehovah God.

In thus showing deep respect for your earthly parents you lay the foundation for a proper relationship with our heavenly Father Jehovah God and his motherly organization. If you are obedient to your human parents, “this is well-pleasing in the Lord” because it is in harmony with his will.—Col. 3:20.

You parents, also desiring to be well-pleasing to the Lord, do well to make it a point, not only to pass on to your children your own observations on life, but also to inculcate in them an accurate knowledge of God’s Word and a deep appreciation of it. Particularly do you fathers bear the primary responsibility in this matter, because you are the ones designated by God’s Word as head of the house. Ephesians 6:4 pointedly states: “You, fathers, do not be irritating your children, but go on bringing them up in the discipline and authoritative advice of Jehovah.”

This takes time and effort on your part, in cooperation with your wife. It requires regular discussion of God’s Word in the home and patient repetition to be sure that points are remembered. (Deut. 6:4-7) It calls for you as a father to help your children to understand just what the Bible means when it says to “flee from the desires incidental to youth,” and why it says that, “if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (2 Tim. 2:22; 1 John 2:15) Yes, you need to help each member of the family to see how to apply Bible principles to the specific situations in life with which he is confronted. Where this is done, the result is a strong family unit, one that is pleasing to Jehovah. On the other hand, where the father fails to shoulder his responsibility, problems multiply.

Do you not agree that it is also pleasing to the Lord for your family to attend and participate in the meetings of the local congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses and to share in its program of field service, not just occasionally, but on a regular basis? Possibly this has already strengthened your family spiritually and drawn them together. As you have seen, it helps to keep each one aware of his responsibilities to God, to members of the family group and to others of his fellowmen. By availing yourselves of these provisions for spiritual upbuilding you facilitate the flow of God’s spirit in your household and, all together, are thus enabled to manifest the pleasant fruitage of that spirit. In this way, too, your family is fortified against succumbing to the works of the flesh, with the resultant loss of Jehovah’s approval.—Gal. 5:19-24; Rom. 8:8.

WHO MAKES THE DECISIONS?

You young people who have been raised in harmony with such a fine Christian pattern of life are thus protected against being unwittingly enticed by others into immoral and delinquent conduct. Having been taught the Scriptural principle of headship, you know that, as long as you are a minor, your father has the final say on what you may do and what you may not do. (Prov. 4:1) When problems arise, you know that you should turn to him for advice and then act in harmony with the counsel given. It may be that children in other families are permitted by their parents to do certain things that you are not, and you probably know youngsters who use this to try to change their own parents’ minds. But it shows a wholesome Christian outlook on your part if, instead, you willingly submit to the decisions of your parents, appreciating that this is God’s arrangement for your good.

Of course, in those homes where the wife is a dedicated Christian and the husband is not, the situation becomes more complex. But the Bible principle still applies, that the husband and father is head of the house and the primary responsibility for the children lies with him. (Col. 3:18;1 Pet. 3:1) Children in such a home should not ignore their father’s wishes; while they are minors, they are under his jurisdiction. At the same time, they do well to copy their mother’s example of godly devotion, going with her to the meetings of the Christian congregation and building up strong faith in Jehovah God and his righteous ways. Even in those cases where the father may not permit them to go to these meetings, young folks who desire to please Jehovah can listen attentively when their mother talks to them at home and can inquire of her as to Bible principles that ought to govern their desires and their conduct.—Acts 16:1, 2.

WHEN PROBLEMS ARISE

Raising children in this modern-day world, filled as it is with influences toward unrighteousness, parents need to keep in constant touch with the activities of their children to guide them in the right way. But what if one of your children, in spite of your efforts to guide him aright, got into bad company and shared in doing things that just do not befit a Christian? What should be done about it?

Since he is a minor, the best thing for him to do is to talk to you as his parents and tell you exactly what happened. Do your children feel that closeness to you, so that they readily come to you and discuss problems when they arise? Probably, if he had listened to your advice in the first place, he would not have gotten into the difficulty. But some young people have to get a severe jolt before they appreciate that their parents are really trying to help and protect them, and that they are not just trying to keep them from having a good time.

If, on hearing what happened, you as parents feel that steps ought to be taken to make amends for what your child did, then it is up to you to supervise the matter to see that it is done. If you feel that apologies are in order or that restitution for damage should be made, then it is your responsibility to see that it is done. It is your job as parents to handle the situation, and if you feel that certain firm restrictions need to be put on the child to prevent a reoccurrence of the situation, that is something for you to work out.—Heb. 12:9.

It is not the responsibility of the mature brothers making up the committee in the local congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses to take over the raising of the children and to reprimand and correct them if they get into difficulty, and that is true even if those children are dedicated and baptized members of the congregation. The responsibility rests with the parents, particularly the father. If the child’s conduct put the congregation of Jehovah’s people in a bad light, then the parents should tell the congregation committee what they have done to handle the situation. But as long as they are shouldering that responsibility, the committee is not to step in and try to do the job. However, if parents let their dedicated children run wild and engage in loose conduct and do little or nothing to keep them in check, the congregation committee may inquire into the situation. Principally, however, they will endeavor to do this through the parents, since they are the ones responsible for the children. Yet, if the parents continue to fail to take firm hold of the situation, even after loving counsel has been offered to them, then the congregation committee may take what steps are needed in connection with the children to keep the congregation clean. Similarly, if a dedicated and baptized minor persists in serious wrongdoing, refusing to submit to probation imposed by his parents, the congregation will take action to disfellowship the persistently sinning youth.

But that spiritually disastrous situation need never arise. The principles of the Bible and the efforts of the congregation are directed, not toward congregation intervention in family affairs, but toward the strengthening of family ties. If you are a father, why not organize the affairs of your household now to give the needed attention to the spiritual welfare of each member of the family, so they will be strong in faith and conduct themselves in a way that will glorify God? If you are a young person, why not make it a habit to keep your parents informed on the things you do, seek their counsel and then obey it, not just when it pleases you, but all the time, because this is “well-pleasing in the Lord”? In this way youths, their parents and the Christian congregation will be maintaining a high standard of conduct that will move others, too, to glorify God.—1 Pet. 2:12.

Questions From Readers

● Revelation 19:7 mentions rejoicing “because the marriage of the Lamb has arrived and his wife has prepared herself.” What is this marriage and when does it take place?—T. H., U.S.A.

The Lamb is Jesus Christ and “his wife” is made up of the 144,000 anointed followers of Christ who become his Bride. (John 1:36; 3:28, 29; Rev. 14:1-5; 21:2, 9-14) These, who include Jesus’ faithful apostles, share in his sufferings, submit to a death like his and have a similar resurrection, one to spirit life in heaven.—Phil. 3:8-11; Rom. 6:5; Eph. 5:25-27.

The faithful apostles and other early Christians were the first members of the Bride to be selected. Only a remnant, the final number of this class, remain on earth today. For centuries members of Christ’s Bride class have been traveling to meet their heavenly Bridegroom, just as Rebekah journeyed a great distance to become Isaac’s wife. (Gen. 24:59-67) Happily, though, for the vast majority of the Bride class that journey has ended. But when?

The marriage of the Lamb began to be consummated in 1918 C.E. At that time Jesus Christ accompanied Jehovah God to His spiritual temple. (Mal. 3:1) Anointed followers of Christ who had been sleeping in death were then resurrected to heavenly life. (1 Thess. 4:15, 16) However, the Lamb’s marriage is still in progress, inasmuch as there are still prospective members of the Bride of Christ on earth. They must yet prove faithful until death in order to receive the crown of life and become united with Jesus Christ in heaven. When these die in faithfulness, they are immediately resurrected as spirit creatures.—Rev. 2:10; 14:13; 1 Cor. 15:51-53.

The order of events foretold in the book of Revelation, chapters 18 and 19, indicates that Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, must suffer destruction before the Lamb’s marriage in heaven is fully consummated. At Revelation 19:1-5 Jehovah is praised for executing judgment on this “great harlot.” Then the apostle John was inspired to write: “And I heard what was as a voice of a great crowd and as a sound of many waters and as a sound of heavy thunders. They said: ‘Praise Jah, you people, because Jehovah our God, the Almighty, has begun to rule as king. Let us rejoice and be overjoyed, and let us give him the glory, because the marriage of the Lamb has arrived and his wife has prepared herself. Yes, it has been granted to her to be arrayed in bright, clean, fine linen, for the fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the holy ones.’ And he tells me: ‘Write: Happy are those invited to the evening meal of the Lamb’s marriage.’”—Rev. 19:6-9.

Though Jehovah certainly took power and began to rule when the Messianic kingdom was established in heaven in 1914 C.E., the destruction of Babylon the Great marks a new epoch in God’s rule. Revelation 19:6, regarding Jehovah’s beginning to rule as king, appears to be associated with the destruction of the world empire of false religion, which will occur in this very generation. Only after this notable event will the marriage of the Lamb come to completion. (See “Babylon the Great Has Fallen!” God’s Kingdom Rules!, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, pages 616-622.) Yet, not immediately thereafter will the Lamb’s marriage be completed. The war of Armageddon, wherein Christ serves as God’s Chief Executioner of the wicked, follows Greater Babylon’s destruction. (Rev. 16:14, 16; 19:11-21) After Armageddon Satan and his wicked angels will be abyssed. (Rev. 20:1-3) Some time after that the marriage feast with the complete Bride will take place.

The Scriptures tend to show that a remnant of the Bride class will live for a time here on earth after the end of this system of things and the abyssing of Satan and the other demons. For example, Noah’s wife, who pictured the anointed remnant, survived the Flood. Also, as Elisha lived through the destructive work of Jehu of old, so too some of the anointed Elisha class of today will evidently survive the destructive activity of the Greater Jehu, Jesus Christ. These Biblical pictures indicate that some members of the Bride of Christ will live for a time here on earth during the early part of Christ’s thousand-year reign.

Consequently, the feast or evening meal of the Lamb’s marriage will remain in progress until the very last member of the Bride class dies in faithfulness and is united with Jesus Christ in heaven. How long the marriage feast will continue in heaven after the binding and abyssing of Satan and his wicked angels is unknown to the Bridal remnant today.

The Bible—“Real People and Real Events”

◆ In reference to archaeological projects at Shechem and other cities mentioned in the Bible, Dr. G. Ernest Wright, archaeologist and curator of the Harvard University Semitic Museum, said: “We are not looking for monuments or treasure. In what archeologists of the past might have considered rubble, we are assembling the true facts of our past—the day-to-day life as it was lived five thousand years ago. And it is exciting and rewarding to find that the Bible is not merely a testament of faith, but a testament that arose in relation to real people and real events in the country that is the bridge between Asia and Africa.”—Popular Mechanics, April 1964, page 230.

Announcements

FIELD MINISTRY

God’s truth, as set forth in the Bible, cannot be compromised, even though it may be unpopular, plaguing those who try to ignore God. Moved by love for God and for those who seek righteousness, Jehovah’s witnesses will continue to speak the truth boldly during September. As they do so they will offer to conduct a free home Bible study, on a regular basis, with any persons showing interest and they will leave helpful Bible literature, on a small contribution, with those who desire it.

“GOD LIVES! HOW WE KNOW IT”

Why do you believe in wind? in electricity? or in the law of gravity? Have you ever seen them? No man has ever seen God either, but is that a sound reason to deny God’s existence? or to say that “God is dead”? “God Lives! How We Know It” is the opening chapter of the internationally popular book “Things in Which It Is Impossible for God to Lie.” Not only does this book prove that God exists but it proves he is a God of purpose, then opens the Bible to help you understand that purpose. You owe it to yourself to find your place in God’s purpose. Send for this book and receive free the timely booklet God’s Way Is Love. Send only 50c.

“WATCHTOWER” STUDIES FOR THE WEEKS

October 9: Jehovah’s Witnesses Endure for His Sovereign Godship, ¶1-16. Page 553. Songs to be sung: 13, 42.

October 16: Jehovah’s Witnesses Endure for His Sovereign Godship, ¶17-25, and Jehovah Taunted by Babylonish Hostility Against Anointed Witnesses, ¶1-10. Page 558. Songs to be sung: 17, 29.

October 23: Jehovah Taunted by Babylonish Hostility Against Anointed Witnesses, ¶11-30. Page 564. Songs to be sung: 57, 12.