Consolation, March 31, 1943
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Contents
Whither, 0 British Commonwealth of Nations? 3
Independence from Papal Rome
Rise of Bible Societies
Final Judgment of Commonwealth Is On! 8
The Dark Continent
Last of All Britain Succumbs
World-wide Hunger Blockade of Christians 14
“Walking in the Rear of the Lord”?
Civilization anti the Missions
Winning the Heart of China ,
Praise from Youth
Must Practice What They Preach
“Suffer Little Children to Come”
Pood Restrictions in the Netherlands
Expelled from School for Being Conscientious 22
Religion in the Public Schools
The Parochial School
‘Versed in Schemes of the Devil'
The Church and Education
Gradually Undermining the Schools
Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”
Theocratic Tactfulness
Take Care of Your Rubber
The Negro Question
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Ashamed to Mention the Creator
♦ Man dearly loves life for the many things that make it desirable. With admiration he gazes at the rugged grandeur of the wild places of the earth, at the imposing mountain rearing its inaccessible peaks to the skies, at the tempestuous and foaming sea. By the banks of a stream which winds its shining course through the willow trees and meadows he finds keen joy in disporting himself amid the tender grass. In impassioned terms he speaks of the intoxicating scent of the forest, of the thousand rustlings of life which stir in the branches of the trees, and under the carpet of leaves. And the greater part of these fervent admirers of the marvelous wonders of creation are ashamed to pronounce the name of the great God who has so generously lavished these numberless blessings on man. Through His prophet the Lord said of Israel, ‘T have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.” Is not this representative of the attitude of practically the whole human race to the loving Creator?—From French Consolation (now suppressed).
All Nations of One Blood
♦ Working at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two scientists have discovered that all human creatures have in their skins five pigments, two forms of hemoglobin (which is the coloring matter of the blood), carotene (which is found in carrots), melanin, and melanoid. Difference in skin color is simply the different proportions in which these five pigments occur. Whites have the least melanin, and then Japanese, Hindus, mulattoes, and Negroes, in the order named. More women than men are blondes because more women have more carotene, and very blonde persons do not tan, but burn, because of that fact.
CONSOLATION
"And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, A.R.V.
Volu/naXXIV Brooklyn. N. Y., Wednesday, March 31, 1943 ’ ’ Number 614
Whither, O British Commonwealth of Nations?
WHITHER walks the British Commonwealth of Nations? On February 11 Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the House of Commons declared the joint resolve of Britain and America to make the Nazis “burn and bleed” on other fronts Resides the Russian. Then he added: “Great Britain and the United States . . . are now warrior nations, walking in the fear of the Lord, very heavily armed and with an increasingly clear view of their salvation.” That is Bible language, immediately calling to mind Acts 9: 31. It shows that the prime minister is acquainted with the Holy Bible. It reflects that from earliest times the English people have been associated with the Sacred Scriptures and keenly interested therein. It harks back to the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great, of the ninth century, who saved England for the English. Not only was he a great warrior, but he devoted himself to advancing the intellectual interests of his people. As part of this task he translated into English over one-third of the book of Psalms, namely, Psalms one to fifty-five, inclusive.
This same England is the site of the Magna Charta, of June, 1215, which was an early but important step toward the constitutional form of government which the nation has enjoyed. It should not be forgotten, though, that just two months thereafter Pope Innocent III published a bull which declared Magna Charta null and void, because it had been extorted from King John by force; and the pope followed this up by excommunicating the barons who had obtained it. In the autumn of that year war followed between king and barons, but Magna Charta survived. Its Chapter LXIII repeats the promise of freedom to the English church and of their rights and liberties to all. From that document dates definitely the great struggle between the Romish arm and the secular arm, and between the aristocratic and the popular rights, which struggle has characterized English history so markedly.
The following century brought forth the noted John Wycliffe, who has been called “the morning-star of the Reformation”. An eminent scholar and preacher, he was the first translator of the entire Bible into English, making his translation, however, from the Latin version thereof. Forty-four years after his death, it far from displayed the spirit of Christianity and rather magnified the contemptible conduct of religion :when the Roman Catholic Council of Constance, which on May 5, 1415, had condemned Wycliffe’s doctrines, had his remains dug up in 1428 and had them burned and then had his ashes cast into the adjoining Swift river.
A hundred years after Wycliffe’s death William Tyndale was born, destined to become a martyr for his persistent efforts at translating and circulating the Holy Scriptures. He declared it was “impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue”. This moved him to translate and print the “New Testament” in the familiar spoken English of his day. He had declared he would produce a version that a plowboy could read and understand. Because of the power and influence of Boman Catholicism in England Tyndale was obliged to leave the country and do his work on the „ continent of Europe. Copies of his trans* Ration of the “New Testament” from the Original Greek early found their way into England. In 1526 the Boman Catholic bishop of London thundered out his prohibition of them. In 1528 a number of copies of this “New Testament” version were collected, yes, some copies of which had been purchased by the Hierarchy just to be destroyed, and were burned at St. Paul’s Cross, in London. Cardinal Wolsey was dreadfully enraged ; and Sir Thomas More, whom the Vatican has in recent years canonized as a saint, was employed to denounce Tyndale. Still the printed English “New Testament” continued to enter England and find its way to eager hands and readers. Beligion failed to suppress God’s Word.
Tyndale also translated the first four books of Moses and put copies in circulation. His educational work was interrupted by his betrayal, imprisonment and martyrdom, in 1536. While being fastened to the stake, at which he was first strangled and then burned, he cried out: “Lord, open the eyes of the king of England.” The work on the English Bible went ahead, however, and in 1535, while Tyndale was in prison, Miles Coverdale put out the first printed English Bible. Its printer’s name being unknown, nobody knows where it was published, apparently not in England, because of the religious powers there. Coverdale made use of the work Tyndale had done, translating the rest of the “Old Testament” from the best German and Latin versions at hand, thus producing a complete English Bible.
Independence from Papal Rome
Before Tyndale’s death things changed in England, now under King Henry VIII, upon whom religious intrigue bad-forced a Spanish wife incapable of bearing child. Unlike other political rulers of today both within and without the British Commonwealth of Nations, Henry VIII had the rare courage to defy the pope and his screeching bulls of excommunication, and to explode the papal claim that abject submission to the Ro- . man papa is absolutely indispensable to salvation of humans, whether British or of other nationalities. The Anglican church, or “Church of England”, resulted.
Henry VIII avowed as reasons for supporting the Protestant reformation “the desire of removing usurpations, establishing the ancient -rights of the church and the crown, correcting abuses prejudicial to true religion”. Hence the English church could not refuse to take into consideration the subject proposed for examination nor refuse to sanction proper reforms. Whether the liberty from papal bondage resulting from Henry’s bold move was beneficial to the British nation let every impartial observer judge from its history thereafter. This makes pertinent the question, Shall now Britain and her sister nations return to that bondage in the coming postwar world?
Before Parliament dissolved on July 18, 1536, to end its six-year term under which Henry VIII had carried out his innovations, one of its last acts was "to petition the king that a new translation of the Scriptures be made by authority and set up in the churches. Since Henry’s reign Britain has been one of the sturdy bulwarks of Protestantism. Hence it was that, at the coronation on May 12, 1937, at Westminster Abbey, London, King George VI declared himself “a faithful Protestant”. To the question put to him by the archbishop of Canterbury, “Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion estab* lished by law!” the king replied: “All this I promise to do.” After his crowning there followed a rite first introduced at the crowning of the Protestant William and Mary in 1689, namely, the presenting of the Bible. The words accompanying this presentation were: “Our gracious King, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing the world affords. Here is wisdom. This is the royal law. These are the lively oracles of God.” Upon this Bible the king put his right hand, and he kissed it before signing the oath and thereafter declaring himself a Protestant who will maintain the Protestant accession to the best of his power, according to law.
Such procedure cannot be brushed aside lightly, even if but a ritual of longstanding tradition. Why not! Because it is openly done in the name of God and before His sight. It therefore entails a heavy responsibility upon H. M. King George VI, from which he cannot escape before God. It put him in a peculiar position with respect to certain events of 1942, as we shall shortly see.
Not by the pope’s indulgence was it that, four centuries after Henry VIII, a monarch of Britain could take the above oath. To keep their necks free of the Vatican’s yoke the British have had to put up a valiant fight. In 1588, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, came the Spanish armada of King Philip of Spain, “blessed” by the pope; but the hardy, resourceful British stood it off and defeated it. Not less so in the epic struggle of 1940 did their descendants hold out under the devastating 'attacks of the Nazi air armada of another “sword of the pope”, namely, Adolf Hitler. In both instances the pope lost out, and so many of the British owed so much to so few. During the reign of the virgin queen Elizabeth the British Empire w’as born, when she chartered the English India Company, in A. D. 1600. Within seven years after the beginning of the empire, to wit, May 13, 1607, the first permanent settlement of the British was made at Jamestown, Virginia. This marked the beginning of the thirteen colonies of the British Empire in America. For 169 years thereafter these colonies were an integral part of the British Empire.
It was that same England that gave to these colonies such men of tolerance as William Penn, who refused to take off his hat even to the king but nevertheless was spared alive to. found, later, Pennsylvania; and also Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island and who has been called the “pioneer of religious liberty”. Before his death in 1684 Williams had organized and built up a political community with absolute liberty of religion as its chief cornerstone. To this Britisher and colonist more than to any other man is due the American system of a “free church in a free State”.
Rise of Bible Societies
Early in the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, King James I, that most beloved and popular book was produced, the translation of the Holy Bible known as the “King James Version” or “Authorized Version”. Even to this day it is the best seller. It was based mainly on Tyndale’s translation. It is the version from which primarily the scripture quotations are made in all publications of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, whose books and booklets on the Bible since 1920 have gained a circulation of over 400,000,000 copies, in 88 languages; which circulation is exceeded only by that of the King James Version Bible itself. Despite its popularity with Christians, which has continued for three centuries, this Bible has been and is condemned by the pope. and his hierarchy. Such is exactly as foretold in the dedicatory foreword of the Bible, which is addressed to King James and which says concerning popish disapproval (paragraph 5): “Humbly craving of Your most Sacred Majesty, that since things of this quality have ever been subject to the censures of illmeaning and discontented
persons, it may receive approbation and patronage from so learned and judicious a Prince as Your Highness is, whose allowance and acceptance of our labours shall more honour and encourage us, than all the calumniations and hard interpretations of other men shall dismay us. So that if, on the one side, we shall * be TRADUCED BY POPISH PERSONS AT HOME or abroad, who therefore will malign us, because we are poor instruments to make God's holy Truth to be yet more and more known unto the people, whom they [the Popish Persons] desire still to keep in ignorance and darkness; . . . ”
It was in the stronghold of Protestantism, in London, that the great educational organization was founded on March 7, 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society. Its attention was first turned to Wales, where the demand for God’s Word was then extremely urgent, and 25,000 Bibles and Testaments were printed in Welsh and distributed. Since then and down to the close of 1928 it has published and circulated Bibles to the number of 385,000,000 copies. From England it turned its energy to Continental Europe, where great quantities of Bibles were put in the hands of the spiritually hungry people. Bible Societies were soon formed on the Continent. In India the Bible Society found a permanent foothold. In the western English-speaking world the New York Bible Society was founded in 1804; the Philadelphia Bible Society in 1808; the American Bible Society in 1816; and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in 1884.
All this has not been without great opposition from fanatical religionists; and the sanctimonious ruler of the Vatican has denounced them as “pestiferous Bible Societies” and has made it a religious sin for children of the Roman Catholic sect to have in possession or to read the Bibles thus issued. After 1817 the operation of the Bible Society in the Austrian empire, homeland of Adolf Hitler, was rendered illegal by restrictions enforced by the Roman Catholic government. Where the Vatican has been unable to prevent the circulation of the Bible it has viciously opposed, hindered and tried to suppress the distribution of literature explaining the Bible. The latest proofs thereof will be forthcoming in this article.
With the spread of the British Empire the circulation of the Bible has spread. The title “Empire” officially dates from 1876, when Queen Victoria became Empress of India. By the so-called “Statute of Westminster” the British Empire nominally came to an end on November 26, 1931, being superseded by a federation of self-governing British states or commonwealths, and the Parliament of 'Westminster at London ceased to be the Imperial Parliament. Thus the British Commonwealth of Nations came into being. All commonwealths, together with the colonies and protectorates, have as their binding tie their joint fealty and allegiance to the king of Britain. This erstwhile “Empire” is the largest body of land and people found under any onex jurisdiction on earth. It takes in about one-fourth of the earth’s surface, with more than one-fourth of the estimated number of the human family. Vast portions of it lie in each of the five grand divisions of the earth, in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australasia. Its organization differs entirely from that of any other empire in history.
Control by the central government in Britain over the outlying parts runs from autocracy to a merely nominal control. In such a way Britain is .the heart of a vast world-power or imperialism, which has belted the globe. It has long stood as a barrier to world domination by its traditional enemy, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, whose heart lies at Vatican City. It must be remembered that it was the London treaty of 1915, made with the kingdom of Italy, that barred the pope from having any part in the negotiation of the peace treaty of World War I, the pope’s connections with the Teutonic allies having been so notorious. It is all too evident, therefore, that the non-Catholic British Empire, or Commonwealth now, has ever been a thorn in the side of the Papacy, whose ambition has been for a “total” Catholic globe or earth, with headquarters at the Vatican.
Being of such earth-embracing dimensions, the British imperialism has therefore been the foundation and backbone of a civilization independent of Roman Hierarchy domination, for three centuries, The scheme of the Papacy has been and yet is to break up that liberal, constitutional, non-Catholic world power. Failing in this, it then aims by crafty means and subtle to cast a spell and weave an entangling net of control about it and to victimize it to do its bidding. Which method shall it now be? In that anguished year of 1940 it appeared for a time as if the Papacy, by its concordat partners, Hitler and Mussolini, would tear the very heart out of the British Commonwealth of Nations; but the courage of the British again bore them up and the Island fortress held out under assault by air and sea.
Now, in this year 1943, it seems that the pope’s conquest by direct onslaught has been blocked for a long time to come. He sits on his artificial fence of loudly-advertised “neutrality” waiting for more definite developments to guarantee that victory shall go to the United Nations in order that he may shine up to the sure victors and snatch a victory out of their victory. His own “voice”, the Catholic press, declares that he is “for Victory after victory”. Said a distinguished monsignor of his over a nation-wide broadcast from America’s capital during “The Catholic Hour”, January 3, 1943, while speaking on “War and Revolution”:
A far more important question than “Who will win the war?” is the question: “Who will win the revolution?” In other words, what kind of ideologies or philosophies of life will dominate the world when this war is finished? . . . Pray for victory? Yes! We will win that, there is not doubt! But the peace, the restoration of the moral law, a new order based on God’s justice—that will come only by a return to the mind and spirit of the Church during the first few centuries. ... We have a war to win; and we have a revolution to win. A war to win by overthrowing the power of the enemy in battle; a peace to win by making ourselves worthy to dictate it. ... This is the true revolution! All the other revolutions of the twentieth century have been from without; this time we want a revolution from within.
This planned Catholic revolution therefore means they will henceforth work from within the British Commonwealth, to capture control of both it and America. The Hierarchy is doing so now, notably since 1940, and will do so more energetically in the postwar “new order”. It is already dictating to all parts of the British Commonwealth and its colonies and protectorates. The situation is too critical now for prejudice to cause you to disregard this warning. Read the substantial evidence given below. Face the facts. Act!
Dominating the earth for these three hundred years past by a control over 13,000,000 square miles of the earth’s surface and 500,000,000 of its inhabitants, the British Empire or Commonwealth bears a heavy responsibility before Almighty God, earth’s Creator. Who is He? The King James Version of the Bible, at Psalm 83:18, answers for men wanting to know: “That men may know that thou, whose name alone is JEHOVAH, art the most high over all the earth.” Furthermore, at Psalm 24:1,2 it is written: “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.” Not to the pope, then, but to the Lord, Jehovah, must the British Commonwealth, and particularly Britain its seat, render an account for the way she handles the earth and the seas whose vast waters her ships ply.
The British Commonwealth, long attached to the Holy Bible, is unavoidably answerable to the “Most High over all the earth” for her treatment of the peoples in her territories as well as those who come under her sphere of influence. Having assumed imperial dominance t over such multitudinous populations, ishe makes herself liable to God for the ^education of such peoples in that knowledge which is essential to their eternal salvation, to wit, the knowledge of Jehovah God and the Kingdom of His Son. (See John 17:3.) Such knowledge includes not merely the text of the Bible, which British Bible Societies have published to the millions of copies, but also the explanation of the Bible that the peoples may understand the meaning of the text. In this year 1943 is the British Commonwealth advancing such knowledge? or suppressing it as Hitler did?
Final Judgment of Commonwealth Is On!
From world events since 1914 and from the Holy Bible it can clearly be proved that the judgment of the nations, and particularly of “Christendom”, has been on since 1918, when World War I ended. The British Commonwealth is the outstanding part of “Christendom” and cannot escape the judgment. Jehovah’s King, Christ Jesus, is on His heavenly throne as Rightful Ruler of the New World and as Judge. Through the proclamation of His established Kingdom from and after 1914 by His witnesses, all nations have been gathered before Him for judgment, and not one of the Commonwealth nations, colonies and protectorates is hid from His judicial scrutiny. His division of the people as “sheep” and “goats” with respect to God’s Kingdom is proceeding irresistibly, as described in the parable of the end of the world, at Matthew 25:31-46. How does the British Commonwealth of Nations stand in the judgment? Can she justify herself to a prolonged existence? Will her “salvation”, of which she has an “increasingly clear view”, be unto endless world domination in a postwar “better world” of human creation? Her acts now must determine.
The Bible, which King George VI kissed at his coronation, sets out the rule of judgment. At Psalm 9:17 it is written; “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” As shown in the English Revised Version Bible “hell” here is Sheol, which Hebrew word means the death state'and hence national extinction for all God-forgetting nations. You will say, “Surely the British Commonwealth has too many Bibles to forget God; why, in Britain there is one in practically every home.” Well, then, turn to Proverbs 10:27 and read: “The fear of the Lord prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.” Note that, at Acts 9:31, the churches of the early Christians are described as “walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the holy ghost”, and hence being “multiplied”.
Prime Minister Churchill, you told the House of Commons that 'Great Britain and the United States are now warrior nations, walking in the fear of the Lord’. We now ask, Which “lord”? You must know that Roman Canon Law addresses one pontiff as “Our Lord God the pope John XXII”; and that Pope Boniface VIII, in the bull Unum Sanctum, declared: “What can you make of me but God?” And Pope Leo XIII, who died in 1903, declared: “We hold upon this earth the place of Almighty God.” And his predecessors in office, such as Innocent III of Magna Charta days, and Leo X, Alexander VI, Pius VII, and Pius X, all claimed to be God on earth. Are you sure, Mr. Churchill, whether Britain together with her sister nations of the Commonwealth is walking in the fear of the pope as lord rather than in the fear of Jehovah God Almighty? Not words spoken in Parliament, but the acts of Government committed in the Lord God’s sight must be let speak, in order to get at the naked truth. Probe honestly and calmly into the facts, because times are too serious to deceive self.
The Judge of all men, Christ Jesus, knows the facts fully and cannot be deceived. He lays the judgment to this rule: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” ‘’Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew *12:30; 25:40) Note that He judges by what is done even to “the least” of His brethren. Who, then, in “Christendom’s” eyes, rates as the “least”? The British Government took knowledge of such “least” ones in its White Paper (Cmd. 6120) issued October 30, 1940, and entitled “Treatment of German Nationals in Germany”. Mark the following extracts from that report compiled by Sir Neville Henderson, former ambassador to Berlin, concerning those in Nazi concentration camps:
Thera were 1500 Jews and 800 Ernste Bibelforscher (International Bible Students) . . . Each man wore a badge—Jews yellow with the star of David, Bible Students violet, etc. . . . Jewish prisoners wrote and received letters twice a month. The Bible Students were allowed no communication with the outside world, but, on the other hand, their rations were not cut down. Herr X spoke with the highest respect of these men. Their courage and religious faith were remarkable, and they professed themselves ready to suffer to the uttermost what they felt God had ordained for them. [Page 10]
The next group were the “Bib el for sober”, a religious sect taking its doctrine from the Bible and having a considerable membership in every part of the country, but proscribed by the Gestapo since its members refuse military service; these unhappy people were almost as badly treated as the Jews. [Page 35]
In Brit ain and America these International Bible Students are known as “Jehovah’s witnesses”. From the very rise of Hitler to power by papal intrigue these Jehovah’s witnesses have refused to “heil Hitler” or salute his swastika or exalt the State above Jehovah God. Immediately after Hitler signed his concordat with Pope Pius XI in 1933, just as his Axis partner Mussolini had done in 1929, Hitler banned Jehovah’s witnesses, seized their property, dissolved their organization, and burned their books, 50,000 on one occasion. Finally he rounded up 6,000 of them and subjected them to unusual treatment in concentration camps. Many were shot, beheaded, and tortured to death. Can Hitler be said to be walking in the fear of the Lord in such treatment of these faithful Christians, Jehovah’s witnesses? He is indeed walking in the fear of the pope in the discharge of his concordat, but not in the fear of the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah, nor of His Son, Christ Jesus.
Not alone in Nazified Europe and Japan are these Jehovah’s witnesses despised and downtrodden, but in all “Christendom” they are harried and oppressed. This agrees fully with Jesus’ prophecy to His faithful followers concerning the “end of the world”: “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.” (Matthew 24: 9) Are you skeptical that “Christian” Britain and her sister nations are included in those “all nations” manifesting such hate of Christ’s followers? It is proudly said that “the sun never sets upon the British Empire”. Follow now the sun’s course as it throws light upon the things done in the British Commonwealth of Nations with respect to Jehovah’s witnesses. Let us also see -who is back of these things since Nazism gained control in Germany in 1933 and deployed its “fifth column” throughout the earth.
Australasia
In Australia the International Bible Students, or Jehovah’s witnesses, have been active for more than forty years, distributing the literature published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, including its magazine The Watchtower, which announces Jehovah’s Kingdom and Christ’s presence as His King and Judge. In the spring of 1938 the president of the Watchtower Society visited that “land down under”. The religionists under the lead of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and its religious press sought to prevent even his being permitted to land. The Society’s branch at Sydney (Strathfield) had arranged 1 for him to speak at the Town Hall on * the subject “Warning”. Before he arrived, the city council canceled the engagement for the Hall, and the author* ities refused other halls; the postmastergeneral’s department refused to supply land wires and facilities for-the broadcasting of this Bible lecture, and insisted on censorship of the speech lest there be any expose of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. Finally, the speech was delivered in the open air, at the Sydney Sports Ground, where 25,000 attended, which was six times as many as the Town Hall could have accommodated. Thereafter Jehovah’s witnesses in Australia and New Zealand circulated the booklet Freedom, or Romanism? which included the speech “Warning” and other data of interest.
Religious opposition to Jehovah’s witnesses increased as their numbers and activities' increased. The next year the total war began and Australia entered. The religionists, who honeycomb the government offices and strategic places of power, sought to use the war emergency as a pretext for crippling and suppressing Jehovah’s witnesses. The premier of New South Wales led in the fight against them. In October, 1940, he caused the public press to publish many unfounded allegations against these Christians and made the threat that as the federal government had not taken action, the state would set in motion the necessary legal machinery giving them power to act against Jehovah’s witnesses.
On January 16, 1941, Prime Minister Menzies prematurely announced in parliament that he proposed to ban Jehovah’s witnesses, his last job before leaving for London. On January 17 an order in council was gazetted wherein the governor-general declared to be unlawful those “organizations known as Jehovah’s witnesses or the Witnesses of Jehovah; the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society; The International Bible Students Association; The Adelaide Company of Jehovah’s witnesses; and Consolation Publishing Co.” Previous to this, on January 8, the naval department had ordered the four radio stations used by Jehovah’s witnesses for broadcasting God’s Kingdom message to shut down. Now seizures and arrests followed the ban, even murder being attempted against Society representatives. But with what result? Have these witnesses stopped witnessing for Jehovah God and His Kingdom? No; they obey God rather than men. Although stocks of the Bible held by the Society were confiscated and locked up, these Christians, these ‘least of Christ’s brethren’, have gotten other supplies locally and have concentrated on witnessing to the people with the Bible alone. Despite the official ban and persecution, this work has not come to nought. It is increasing, and Australia and the Hierarchy’s tools there are learning joltingly that this work is not of men and ^annot be overthrown, but that the religionists are found to be, not “walking in the fear of the Lord”, but fighting against God.—See Acts 5: 38, 39.
■ In all Australasia eight lands have now outlawed Jehovah’s message and the messengers of His Kingdom. New Zealand preceded Australia and banned them as a “subversive organization”, on October 21,1940, so naming them for the purposes of the Public Safety Emergency Regulations, and allowing them no chance to prove Jehovah’s witnesses are not subversive. Their conviction without trial was in direct violation of Clause 30 of the Magna Charta, the basis of British justice. Due protest was made by cable to King George VI at London. Then Malaya, or the Straits Settlements, banned the Lord’s message, on January 17,1941, and was followed by Burma on May 26; this was before the Japanese invaded the land, on January 18, 1942. Even the Netherlands East Indies caught the spirit and proscribed the work of Jehovah’s witnesses, in March, 1941. The British Crown colony of Hong Kong also ordered out Jehovah’s witnesses, and thereafter fell to the Nipponese. The British possession of the Fiji Islands has allowed no shipments of Watchtower literature to Jehovah’s people in that colony since 1936. British-held India has likewise prohibited importation of spiritual food for the Lord God’s servants there.
The Dark Continent
Swinging westward with the sun to the vast continent of Africa, we note the Hierarchy’s black hand in operation there, particularly since the Copper Belt rioting in Rhodesia in 1935. At the investigation held thereon by a Royal Commission there was no evidence whatsoever to connect Jehovah’s witnesses with the trouble. Nevertheless, although the ringleaders were all Roman Catholics, no mention was made of this fact by the British government. In Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia there is now a total ban on importation and distribution of the Kingdom message of the Most High God.
The Union of South Africa imposed its total prohibition of importation of Watchtower literature in 1941, having withheld the Watchtower and Consolation magazines already from October, 1940, onward. West Africa likewise took adverse action in 1941, whereas in Gold Coast there has been a prohibition since 1936. Nigeria distinguished itself in similar anti-Jehovah fashion beginning February 4, 1941. .
The Americas
What, now, does the sun disclose as it beams down upon the Americas? Nought but the same God-defying action in lands adhering to the British Crown. In 1936, in Trinidad, the governor in Executive Council issued a proclamation under the “'Seditious Ordinance” prohibiting the importation into this British colony of all Golden Age [Consolation'] and Watchtower publications. Jamaica began banning Watchtower literature in 1940 and then enacted a total prohibition in September, 1941. British Guiana took like action in January, 1941.
In the Dominion of Canada, which trembles under the shadow of Catholic Quebec and its Francophile Cardinal, the Hierarchy early got in its work, using as its tool a Quebec Catholic, Ernest la Pointe, then Minister of Justice. In that northern land nobody has exposed the schemes of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy for world domination and subjugation of the British Empire as have Jehovah’s witnesses; and it was the witnesses the Hierarchy were after. Immediately after the arrival of the new governor-general from England into Canada, they dealt a swift blown Their lackey, using his high Dominion post, caused to be passed, on America’s Independence Day, July 4, 1940, an order in council declaring illegal the “Jehovah’s Witness Organization”. This was meant to sound the death knell of God’s witnesses who are “walking in the fear of the Lord” in Canada. The fact that these Christians still continue to carry on their witness wmrk with only the Bible, which is “the sw'ord of the spirit”, and the further fact that their numbers and wrork increase^ does not relieve the Canadian authorities and the vexed Hierarchy of guilt in fighting against God, whose work they are unable to overthrow in Canada. The anti-Jehovah ban continues there to date. Condign punishment at Jehovah’s hands w;aits to be meted Out upon such unrepentant forgetters of God in the terrible “battle of that great day of God Almighty”.—Revelation 16: 14.
Without w’arning another blow’ was struck against those w'ho feed at the table which the great Shepherd Jehovah spreads for His sheep in the midst of their enemies. (Psalm 23:1, 5) This time it was off-shore from the United States,
namely, in the Bahama islands. On September 8, 1942, this Crown colony placed all Watchtower publications under ban, not merely for the duration ‘ of the global war, but perpetually. Protest was cabled from America to the governor-general, the former King Edward 1 VIII, who abdicated the throne to * “marry the woman I love”; hut without avail. The ban will doubtless continue to stand, but not perpetually; at the longest only till the execution of .Jehovah’s judgment at the battle of Armageddon.
Last of All Britain Succumbs
The above anti-Theocratic movements of the enemies of divine truth in the periphery of the British Commonwealth of Nations, finally left the Island fortress of Britain standing isolated as the sole surviving region where the printed message of Jehovah’s Theocratic Gov-eminent could be freely circulated and enjoyed by Christians and by all persons of good-will w’ho hungered for truth and righteousness.
But sinister forces were at work. Like Hitler, who first attacked the weak territories such as Poland, Norway, and others, and then closed in on the core of resistance, Britain itself, so now these same forces, under central control from the Vatican, closed in on the main and strongest Commonwealth stronghold. Although the “Catholic population” of Britain numbers only 2 percent of the entire population, yet prominent members thereof occupy influential and strategic positions in the Government. To shield these, Cardinal Hinsley, of Westminster cathedral, has been playing up to the Government with great protestations, and has set in motion the so-called “Sword of the Spirit” movement to round up all religious denominations and to lull them to sleep in the arms of the evil-designing plotters for world domination. Certainly with his knowledge and approval the London Catholic Herald published the editorial, as of July 12, 1940, shortly after the French Republic fell with a “stab in the back” from Hitler’s fellow warrior. From that religious editorial the following is quoted:
It is not impossible, as the well-informed Diplomatic Correspondent of the Observer suggested last Sunday, that something in the nature of a Latin-Catholic bloc, comprising France, Spain and Italy, may shape itself on the Continent. This bloc would endeavor to act on the Catholic populations of Germany and Austria in the hope of at least diminishing the influence of the anti-Christian elements in the Reich so that ultimately an antiBolshevik Christian-authoritarian bloc may be formed in Western Europe in opposition to the Liber al-Si: cun a rist-Pro test a nt-Fro nt TENDENCIES OF GREAT BRITAIN, AMERICA, Russia, and even Prussia.
Ever since Canada, New Zealand and Australia proscribed the activities of Jehovah’s witnesses, the opposition forces in Great Britain have caught up the false charges and cried out that the witnesses are “subversive” to the interests of the state and should therefore be controlled or muzzled. On Sunday, January 19, 1941, two thousand Londoners, being gathered together, passed and published a resolution exposing the said false charges; and “that as Jehovah’s witnesses we commend the stand of the British Government against the religious-totalitarian combine and appreciate their kindness in permitting us t6 faithfully carry forward our Christian work of preaching the Gospel and in continuing to grant us the right of the freedom of assembly and worship; that as Jehovah God’s servants we champion His name”. Copies of this Resolution were sent to the governments of Canada, New’ Zealand, Australia, and to the Home Office, London.
Thereafter millions of copies of the paper Kingdom News were distributed, issue No. 8 thereof being entitled “Jehovah’s Mandate to His Servants—Witness Against Papal Rome-Nazism-Fascism Enemies of Christianity”. The booklet Conspiracy Against Democracy was also widely circulated, and the book
let Theocracy. In January, 1941, the Government’s Import Licensing Department refused the London Branch office of the Watchtower Society any more import licenses, thereby cutting it off from its source of supply in Brooklyn, N. Y., while at the same time the Government at Whitehall granted priorities for the shipment under convoy of millions of quarts of beer 18,000 miles from Canadian breweries around to northeast Africa. Along came the May 28, 1941, issue of the magazine Consolation (No. 566), with a leading article on "Hitler’s Eeligion”. A prohibition was at once clamped down on this Watchtower publication ; but after appeal the ban proved to be just temporary.
Then there was a shift in the Government’s Ministry of Information, and complaint made itself vocal that a Protestant had been turned out of office to make way for a Catholic as Information Minister. Much dissatisfaction has followed his taking office. In a long article headed “Writers See Harm by London Censor”, the New York Times, as of January 24, 1943, says concerning criticism by the Council of the Empire Press Union in its annual report:
It was the opinion of the council, representing correspondents in London from all parts of the British Empire, that the remedy proposed by Brendan Bracken, Minister of Information, was worse than the abuse it was designed to eure. What the Empire correspondents regarded as legitimate expressions OF OPINION HAD BEEN CURBED Since last March 26 [1942] when Mr. Bracken announced in the House of Commons his decision empowering cable censors to prohibit the cabling of dispatches fealeulated to produce ill feeling between the United Nations or between them and a neutral country. The council pointed out that the Empire correspondents, like the Americans, protested that the retention of such a rule would undermine confidence in the war effort and create mistrust even in the actual news given out in this country.
Shortly after the Minister of Information’s obnoxious decision of March, 1942, MARCH 31,1943 official efforts were made to cripple the personnel of the London Branch office of the Watchtower Society. Then the Branch manager, an American who is an ordained minister of the gospel and who had been managing the British branch since 1937, was ordered to go back to the U. S.A., and that with no reason being assigned by the London Government. Finally, after vigorous but vain efforts to remain at his post of Christian service there, this American was served with a deportation order. His appeal to Mr. Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary of Britain, was refused. Finally, he was arrested, jailed, forcibly put on a ship and sent back to America through submarine-infested waters. All of which caused a Scotland paper, The Vanguard, to feature in its October, 1942, issue a full-page article headed “Has the Pope Got Morrison? The Deportation of a 'Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Official”.
As to the magazine The Watchtower, of vThich more than 800,000 copies are printed each month in America, it is a magazine devoted exclusively to discussion and explanation of God’s Holy Word and is now in its sixty-fourth year. Beginning with the August 15, 1942, issue featuring the article "Atonement for the New World”, The Watchtower failed thenceforth to reach its British subscribers, although mailed out. It was evident that the Minister of Information’s censors were on the job. Then, on November 2,1942, the Minister of Information caused to be published the government order that “no person shall send or convey, or have in his possession for the purpose of sending or conveying” and “no person shall despatch by post from the United Kingdom to any destination outside” the Watchtower publications, namely, The Watchtower, the Kingdom News, the Informant [instructions for home missionary work], and Consolation.
Cable advice to the above effect reached the president of the Watchtower Society at Brooklyn, November 28.
Forthwith the following cablegrams were sent that afternoon:
Nov. 28, 1942 His Royal Highness King George VI London
Government Order banning Watchtower magazine deprives thousands Britishers j necessary spiritual food. Does your Govern* ment wish to take responsibility before God?
Consider Psalm Two verses Ten to Twelve. We pray Your Majesty will countermand Order in behalf of Christianity.
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Hon. Winston Churchill
Prime Minister
London
Government Order banning Watchtower magazine violates Atlantic Charter and will cause millions of American Christians to protest against un-Christian action. We petition you use good office for revocation of Order, thereby providing British Christians necessary spiritual sustenance.
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society,
World-wide Hunger Blockade
of Christians
' Neither have these cablegrams been acknowledged by those appealed to, nor has any action of relief been extended, to this day. Is not this matter of higher importance than to deserve such disdainful treatment before the Lord God? Behold! the powers of the British Government have now joined the other members of the Commonwealth in encircling these Christian Jehovah’s witnesses, ''the least of these my brethren,” with a spiritual blockade to starve them into submission to the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, if that were possible. These Christian brethren of Christ must now go hungry. But what about those who deny them the spiritual food and drink? Let all the Commonwealth governments and the Colonial governments take notice that Christ Jesus, Jehovah’s Judge, denounces those responsible for this spiritual hunger and terms them goats, unto whom He says: “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the deVil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in [but deported me]: ... in prison, and ye visited me not. . . . Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.” (Matthew 25: 41-45) Be warned, you rulers of the earth; you are not dealing with but a mere organization of humble, inoffensive, Christian men and women, but with representatives of Jehovah God of hosts and with Christ Jesus, the “King of kings and Lord of lords”.
“Walking in the Fear of the Lord’*?
In the face of such overt acts against Jehovah’s covenant people, where is this vaunted “walking in the fear of the Lord” on the part of Great Britain! Is this deprivation of the witnesses of the Most High God an act in keeping with the best traditions of Britain for toleration, free worship of God, and free Bible instruction of a distraught people! Nay; it is a surrender to Vatican City, and to the fear of man. Solemnly sounds the warning of God’s Word: “The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord [Jehovah] shall be safe.” (Proverbs 29:25) Britain’s conduct now follows the example of the Nazis, who burned the Watchtower publications; but Britain’s is on a wider scale, for what the British Commonwealth does extends over a vaster territory than Nazified Europe and affects Christians throughout the world.
, In 1942 the prime minister was reported as saying: “What we have we hold. I did not become th6 King’s first minister to liquidate the British Empire.” However, full freedom of worship and freedom from spiritual want have not been held, though included in the “Four Freedoms” and backed up by the Atlantic Charter, They have hebn sacrificed by yielding to the religious grudge and malicious designs of the Vatican. Does any government official of the British
Commonwealth think, since such unChristian restrictions upon Jehovah’s witnesses, that for such reason victory over the totalitarian enemy is now certain? During the terrific Nazi blits against Britain from September, 1940, to May, 1941, did the Island fortress of Britannia fall because the witnesses of Jehovah were free to offer Watchtower publications from house to house and on the streets? Was not British morale strengthened rather by their quiet courage under air alarm and attacks? Why restrict them now at this late date, at a time of round-the-clock air raids on the Nazi-Fascists?
Though military victory over the totalitarian foes outside be gained, yet true victory must mean also triumph over the totalitarian enemies within and who are the fifth-column agents of that foreign power, the Vatican, the most totalitarian power of all time. Military victory may be won, but not peace with the Lord. There can be no peace with God as long as His witnesses are hated of all nations of “Christendom” and oppressed; there can be only wrath.and destruction in store, awaiting the outbreak, in Jehovah’s due time, of His “battle of that great day of God Almighty”.
Read Revelation, chapters 13 and 16, and ask yourself, “Is the British Commonwealth delineating itself as the symbolic ‘two-horned beast’ there described? Is London, the heart of the Commonwealth, proving and marking itself as ‘the seat of the beast’?” “We cannot escape history,” said President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. And the British Commonwealth cannot escape the history written in advance in the symbologies of The Revelation, which must have fulfillment in those who conform to the exact descriptions therein given. It is time for the prophets of Four Freedoms and of a “much better world” beyond the total war to beware. This is no trivial matter simply because Jehovah’s witnesses are few. It is most important, MARCH 31, 1943 because destruction everlasting is prescribed for the modern-day “beast” and the “false prophet”, in Revelation 19:19, 20.
Not only Jehovah’s witnesses are damaged, but all the British people, and all freedom now and for the postwar period is jeopardized. By restricting Jehovah’s witnesses, who are staunch, uncompromising foes of all Hierarchy totalitarianism and world domination, the Commonwealth governments are clearing out of the way the last obstacle to being overreached by the Hierarchy of that “god on earth”, the pope. The Hierarchy deals with dictators and authoritarian governments. By its Jesuitic methods it is relentlessly building up all nations to that desired condition where the people’s rights are nil and the dictator decides and makes deals without popular approval or consent, and pays off his obligations to his backers. Revelation 17:1-14 foretells beyond fail that the Babylonish harlot of “organized religion” will ride the “beast” in the postwar federation of nations. She will drive you to your destruction at the hands of God.
Fighting against Jehovah’s witnesses is antagonizing Jehovah God himself. It is all part of the Devil’s scheme to get all nations of “Christendom” lined up against the Theocratic Government of Jehovah under Christ His King. Then nothing will prevent the liquidation of the British Empire; all will be lost. The Devil’s scheme is to blind the people and keep them ignorant of God’s righteous New World and His way thereto, and so bring about their destruction at Armageddon. Governments, particularly those of so-called “Christian nations”, stand specially responsible to Almighty God Jehovah and His King for acts against His witnesses whereby the people are spiritually starved and kept in darkness concerning His kingdom of life and peace unending. You are -walking, yes, but whither, 0 British Commonwealth of Nations?
Civilization and the Missions
ONE of the first dispatches that came from the Philippines after the ' attack on Pearl Harbor was the news that two Catholic priests had been appre-'hended for fifth-column work, sending t signals to the Japanese, to assist them * in, seizing the islands. Through a fluke, this somehow got by the Catholic censor employed on a San Francisco paper and was there published. Probably the man responsible for letting, this cat escape out of the bag lost his job thereby. Men should be more careful.
It was probably to offset this correct bit of news that within a very short time thereafter the “Reverend” Thomas B. Cannon, director of the Jesuit Philippine Bureau, was granted the privilege by the Columbia Broadcasting System (February 8,1942) of telling his listeners about the great things the Jesuits are doing in the islands. It would help to take the taste out of the mouth of those who chanced to see that San Francisco item, which, by the^vay, was reproduced in photostat form m Consolation.
Anyway, “Father” Cannon got on the air, with no *cost to the wealthiest “chubch” organization in the world, and, through the kind intercession of Hon. Martin J. Kennedy, of New York, his speech found its way into the Congressional Record of March 4, 1942. There isn't anything that a Boman Catholic congressman would not do to please a Jesuit and get a few lines of publicity for the greatest possible enemy the United States could have. Mr, Kennedy quotes “Father” Cannon as having said, in part:
, Ever since the beginning of the war in the Philippine Islands .1 have been constantly called upon, as director of the Jesuit Philippine Bureau, to supply information concerning the safety of our 251 Jesuit missionaries now laboring in that vast archipelago. And, of course, the news has been very scarce. What little news we have had up to now, we are happy to say, has been good news; and we 16 hope for further good news from time to time. The spotlight of the world press is on these missions of the Philippines today. [It certainly was when that dispatch was. published in that San Francisco paper.] The war has served to call attention to a work too easily forgotten, because it is so far away. I am anxious, in this brief talk, to explain the essential value to the world, apart from a strictly religious value, of our Christian missions. [In the item in question, this involved betraying the noble, kind, generous, uplifting work of the people of the United States in behalf of the people of the Philippines, into the hands of the ignoble, cruel, selfish, degrading totalitarianism of the Japanese military megalomaniacs.] I say to you members of the radio audience, whoever you are, and however preoccupied you may be with the affairs of the day—whatever your creed or occupation in life—that you cannot ignore the missions of the Catholic Church. [He said something that time.] Today more than ever before in history, strange though it may seem to say this, the missions of the Catholic Church are of primary importance to the world. [How else can all the republics of the world be overthrown and the “abomination that makethdesolate” set up?] I propose a rather startling thesis: The missions of the Catholic Church have civilized the world.
One really appreciates what the Catholic missions are doing when one gets the inside news from Japan that every Catholic priest and every Catholic nun in Japan contributes to the Japanese war chest, and the Protestants were run out who would not go along with the scheme to civilize China by butchering some millions of its population in war and disposing of other millions by pushing the sales of opium in the same way as it has been pushed by other civilizers elsewhere. And in China too, in years gone by. Do you know who first shoved opium upon China at the point of the bayonet?
<cReverend Father” Cannon, S. J., and Hon. Martin J. Kennedy and the Congressional Record take time off to refer
CONSOLATION
to “the adoring of idols of brass and stone as practiced by the overwhelmingly pagan population of China”. That’s good. Suppose some time you visit Barclay street, New York city. It is on the north side Of the United States post office and ■runs from' Barclay street ferry to Broadway. You can’t miss it. And when you get up opposite the post office you will see the greatest assortment of idols of brass and stone or terra cotta, or wood painted to look like something expensive, that ever your eyes were set upon. There is usually a “Virgin Mary” and a “Baby . Jesus” in every window, and enough more in the back of the store to fill a freight car. It is the American center for “church” goods, or, as one might say, if he dared, “idols of brass and stone as practiced by the overwhelmingly pagan population of China,” Vatican City.and other places north, south, east and west.
Then follow three columns of fulsome self-praise, which is the first, greatest and only valuable asset of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, and then this reference to the infamous bigot, Hilaire Belloc:
Hilaire Belloc, the great historian, wrote a scholarly book, Europe and the Faith, proving this one point: his last words sum it up completely : 'The faith is Europe, and Europe is the faith.’ He shows that the Roman Empire never really perished but was transformed. In the full maturity of the Empire it accepted the Catholic Church, and the Church has caused the Empire to survive in a finer and better form. In this we have the secret and soul of western civilization. Without the church, therefore, there is no understanding of this civilization of ours.
Now, kind reader, you know why all is so sweet and lovely in Europe and in the rest of the world. It is because “the Church has caused the Empire to survive”. Look at Otto Hapsburg. Isn’t he something? Doesn’t he survive! Look at the pope. How* about him! He survives, too. And so, believe it or not, i. e., believe the “Reverend Father” Cannon, S. J., director of the Jesuit Philippine Bureau, MARCH 31,1M3
and Hon. Martin J. Kennedy of New York, and the Columbia Broadcasting System, and the Congressional Record, that—
Like it or not, we must admit that our civilization, the civilization we worry about today, is that Christian, Catholic civilization built up by the work and the worry and study and sweat and blood and tears of Catholic missionaries [and Japanese and German and Italian soldiers]. No matter how far afield you may go, you will, if you are honest, get back to this fact as an axiom: The missions of the church have civilized the world.
And that, kind reader, explains just why the world is in such a fix. It is because this old Roman Empire that Jesus refused to accept from Satan even as a gift has revived in the form of a “church”. If you don’t believe it, get the morning paper and see the oodles of free advertising that the Singing Harlot has handed to her on a silver platter.
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