Consolation, August 30, 1944

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Contents

In Brief

The President in Time of War

Swift, Aggressive, Powerful

Congress Almost Abdicated 4

The Rush Toward Totalitarianism

The Four Milestones

Too Much Bureaucracy

Common Sense at the White House

* Supposed to Color the News

The Revived League of Nations

“Freedom from Want” ‘

No Hierarchy or Legion Methods Wanted 10

“Freedom of Religion”

Soenes in Persia, Sent by One of

Uncle Sam’s Boys

Pope' Congratulates Hitler on Escape

The Hamburg and Berlin Preludes

Berlin Turned to a Madhouse

Bombings All over the Country

“Thy Word Is Truth”

Identifying the Messiah

A Few Fish Facts

What Is Ordination?

Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”

Composing Sentences

Pamphilus—One-Man Bible Society

It Pays to Be Decent -

At the Australian Convention

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Jehovah’s witnesses in Germany

♦ It has been reported that the Bible Students in Germany are ‘ringleaders of prayer and study groups' and subject to Gestapo raids. The Christian Science Monitor, published in Boston, Massachusetts, revealed in its issue of June 29, 1943, the following:

The arrests seem to have been made chiefly among working folk, among whom this religious movement is most widespread. One newspaper spoke of the arrest of a smith, a butcher, a baker, a teamster, and a wood chopper, all of whom seemed earnest adherents of the sect’s teachings.

These simple folk seem most .firm in their faith. Recently, seven of them were executed. The executions were marked by the unusual sight of the condemned men’s wives begging them not to sign a renunciation of their faith which might have brought them a pardon.

“They are growing up like mushrooms," is an expression frequently heard.

In a radio broadcast of a few months ago-it was stated:

Before Rudolph Hess made his still rather mysterious flight to England, it was his task to suppress these Bible Students [speaking of Germany]—rather as in Biblical days Paul delighted in persecuting the Christians, until his sudden change and acceptance of Christianity. But since Hess left Germany the increasingly irritated Nazis have found no one who can cope with this secret religious group. True, they have just arrested a number of its adherents in the Black Forest region and elsewhere, but they have found no way to shake the faith of the unassuming working folk mainly involved. . . .

A large number of Germans who are not sympathetic with the Bible Students themselves, however, do not approve of Nazi tactics of suppression. They are inclined to defend the members of the group as martyrs for conscience, and to believe that the arrests and executions are a sign of Germany’s rapid progress toward the abyss.

■—1944 Yearbook of Jehovah’s witnesses.

CONSOLATION

“And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, A.R.V.

Volume XXV Brooklyn, N. V., Wedne«day. August 30, 1944 Number 651

The President in Time of War

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT has a hard job and stands up to it man, fully. Most of his critics would fall in a heap if they tried to do half his work. And he has a kindly heart, too, and a sense of justice and benevolence. At Elizabeth, Pa., is a boy who was born with deformed feet. His parents could not afford the operation necessary to make them normal. When the boy got to be 12 he wrote to the president about it, and the president did the fine thing. He got the Children’s Hospital, in Pittsburgh, to take the boy in and perform the operation. They did, and now he skates, swims, walks and dances like other boys. And everybody is glad, from the president down to the boy inclusive.

No man can keep up a personal correspondence with 130,000,000 people, and probably the president did not see the letter written to him by one of Jehovah’s little witnesses, Lorraine Connell, of Lodge Forest school, Sparrows Point, Md. She wrote to him direct, explaining that she and her brother had been expelled because of their conscientious stand on the flag salute question. She asked him, “Isn’t there a way that I can love and serve the Lord and continue my education as well?” She was referred back to the state authorities. But if he had seen the letter and taken a courageous poke at this new-fangled flagwaving hysteria, he would have done a lot to bring some Americans back to their senses.

He stood up for the alien workers in A-l shape. What American can fail to thrill at this, his rebuke to the narrowminded :

I am deeply concerned over the increasing number of reports of employers discharging workers who happen to be aliens or even foreign-bom citizens. This is a very serious matter. It is one thing to safeguard American industry, and particularly defense industry, against sabotage; but it is very much another to throw out of work honest and loyal people who, except for the accident of birth, are sincerely patriotic. Such a policy is as stupid as it is unjust, and on both counts it plays into the hands of the enemies of American democracy..

On the bicentennial of the birth of Thomas Jefferson, he drew the attention of all to the words of the “Sage of Monticello” :

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

A Proposed New "Bill of Rights”

The president has proposed a new Bill of Rights which may be briefly stated as (1) the right to work, (2) the' right to adequate pay and (3) food, clothing, shelter and medical care; (4) the right to social security, (5) the right to live in a system of free enterprise, (6) the right to come, to go, to speak, to be silent, (7) the right to equality before the law, (8) the right to education, and (9) the right to rest, recreation and adventure. Those are all good.

The Atlantic Charter is an imaginary thing, because, theoretically, the American people are the lawmakers, not the president, but it voiced a high ideal when the president himself said:

All states, great and small, victor or vanquished, must have access on equal terms, to the trade and to the' raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.

X The president recognizes the burdens * that rest upon the poor. In one of his messages, not generally quoted in the press, he said:

It is too easy to act on the assumption that all consumers have surplus purchasing power and that the high earnings of some workers in munitions plants are enjoyed by every worker’s family. This easy assumption overlooks the 4,000,000 wage workers still earning less than 40 cents an hour, and millions of others whose incomes are almost as low. It ignores the fact that more than 4,000,000 families have not had an increase of more than 5 percent in their income during the last 18 months. It further ignores the millions of salaried, white-collar workers whose salaries have remained low, but whose living standards are being cruelly and inequitably slashed by higher food prices.

Swift, Aggressive, Powerful

The Roosevelts (Theodore was uncle of Eleanor, and fifth cousin of Franklin Delano) think and act with incredible speed; they are aggressive; they understand human nature, and they have been entrusted with more power than any other White House occupants ever had. If anyone thinks he can gain anything by the claim that the family originated with the Rossoeampo (Jewish) family expelled from Spain in 1620, and that their name has been in turn van Rosen-velt and Roosevelt, let him go right ahead and receive in return the contempt he deserves. God “hath made of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17: 26), and in America there is the greatest mixture of races and peoples found on the face of the earth. There are plenty of people not slow to say that the real reason for America’s astounding productive power lies in that very mixture.

But Eleanor slipped when sh^re-ferred to the president as the “elected ruler”, and the newspapers reminded her of it right away. In America the people rule, and their most honored servant is their president, their chief executive, the commander in chief of their army and navy, but not their ruler; not by a long shot. Eleanor has the family traits. Like her husband she is progressive and aggressive. She suggested family restaurants, family laundries, day nurseries, and the transportation to school of the older children, so as to lighten the burdens of the women engaged in war industries. This would pretty nearly dispose of the home, but perhaps it is the best that can be done for such workers and their families.

That President Roosevelt himself is to the last degree swift, aggressive and resourceful is well stated in the following, taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 19, p. 536:

The 99-day session of the 73rd Congress which began March 9,1933, witnessed the most daring presidential leadership in American 'history. Congress, dazed and planless, found itself subjected to a carefully timed bombardment of bills. Mr. Roosevelt sent a rapid succession of presidential messages, sufficiently spaced to avoid confusion; followed each message by a bill to implement it; and thus dealt with the agricultural crisis, banking crisis, relief crisis, and a dozen other problems with amazing speed. The fact that Congress was passing laws to order was never concealed ... In a time when conflict of opinion was violent, his way of zigzagging between “right” and ‘left” perhaps gave him a maximum of public support. ... A political precedent as old as the republic was broken July 18, 1940, when Mr. Roosevelt was nominated by the Democrats for a third term. [And now,x July 20, 1944, for a fourth term.—£d.J

Congress Almost Abdicated

Fifty-five years ago, in the second volume of Studies in the Scriptures, the first president of this Society (page 263) suggested that "it would not be surprising if a ‘strong government’, a monarchy, would some day replace this present Great Republic”; and there are some who seem to think that goal has almost been attained by President Roosevelt. One of his bitterest critics, the Chicago Tribune, in an editorial entitled “Unlimited Autocracy”, put it this way:.

The Ameriean system of representative government is at the present moment only an empty shell out of which a fully organized system of autocracy, controlled by one man, has grown. This autocracy already is as absolute as any in Europe. We have found, just as the Germans found, that a national legislature can vote away protections and guarantees and thereafter be unable to regain them. In reality our Congress has abdicated. Mr. Roosevelt by deertie and executive order can take over the industrial plant of the country. By penalties and subsidies he can control agriculture. He can say how the resources of the country shall hip used. He can decree who may obtain materials and who may not. He can close a factory premises. He can fix prices. He can take a plant over if the management doesn’t obey him or doesn’t satisfy his demands on it. He can order the search of private premises. He can draft men. He can control communications. He is the absolute master of shipping. He can curtail the manufacture of consumers’ goods and deprive citizens of them.

The foregoing was printed in the spring of 1941.,.before America entered the war. Since then the president’s powers have been greatly increased. There are now at least 1.72 acts of Congress (the people) granting the president special powers. Of these, 11.4 grant him specific additional powers in times of emergency, and the remaining 58 specifically broaden his power in time of war. In actual practice, in wartime, the president’s powers are without limit or definition, other than that he is commander in chief of the army and navy and of the militia of the several 'states when called into actual service of the country as a whole. The state of war now existent automatically makes President Roosevelt a potentially complete dictator, with a power over capital, labor, the press, the radio and private individuals such as no other president has ever had, and in the full exercise of Which powers he is now showing Mr. Hitler that he is merely a beginner at getting things done. The row about patting Mr. Avery, of Montgomery Ward & Company,. out on the sidewalk was a mere circumstance, and actually amounted to nothing at all. The Louisville CourierJournal, reviewing the whole incident, said, “It is difficult to see how the president could have acted otherwise.”

The Rush Toward Totalitarianism

The rush toward totalitarianism is on, all over the earth, and it is hopeless to attempt to halt it, but one may stand aside and look at it. And it is not a pleasant thing to see. Here is how the Newport News Times-Herald puts it:

Some of flic columnists and commentators are awakening to the fact that democracy appears to be on the way out in the United States. One group complains that the president wants too much power, and another that Congress makes too much of a habit of legislating for special interests. Why, we wonder, have these gentlemen been so tardy in awakening to what was going on. The president tipped his hand with the New Deal and with his demand for power to pack the Supreme Court. Congress has been tipping its hand every time any special interest with votes behind it demanded special treatment. As far back as dune, 1937, Walter Lippmann said:

“I fee), let us hope mistakenly, that he (President Roosevelt) really does have a plan and that he is determined to execute it. It is a plan, as I see it, to gather together an irresistible power over the economic life of this country and to consolidate the power in the; hands of his own following. The desire, of the president to assume control of the economic life of the nation was manifested long before 1937. And some of his New Deal boys talked out of turn in the early days of

the New Dea] and openly admitted that the Administration was desirous of socializing the country. The war has resulted in the president’s being given more powers than any other president ever had. He is virtually a dictator—so much so that he recently ' threatened to abrogate an act of Congress unless his demands for anti-inflation legislation were met. There have been vast changes I in our economic and political structures dur* ing the past ten years or so. And at the end of the War democracy as we have known it since this nation was founded will be a thing of the past.

If you read after Ray Tucker or Harry Hopkins you know that the president can now place munition contracts with “any individual, firm, association, company, corporation or organized manufacturing industry” with a penalty of three years in prison and $10,000 fine for refusal to comply. And according to Hopkins it may come to it shortly that any man can be sent anywhere; train rides, telegrams and telephone calls will be restricted; high school courses shortened ; the jobless must go to work; people with spare rooms will have to rent them; there will be few goods in cans; shoes and clothing will be standardized ; home conveniences and machinery will cease; mails' may be delivered but once a day; domestic servants will be.a luxury; all metal and rubber goods must be surrendered; etc. Some of these things have come to pass since he wrote, in 1942.

The Four Milestones

It is a'pretty raw picture of the president that United States Senator Harry F. Byrd, of Virginia, presents in his paper entitled “Four Milestones to Totalitarianism”. He says, in part:

For ten years now, the U. S. has been alternately cajoled, threatened, wheedled, promised and finally pushed down the path to dictatorship. The first milestone was the control of government. He [the president] first attempted to “pack” the U. S. Supreme Court by increasing the membership with new appointments. He asked for the abolition of the comptroller general, the government’s only independent auditing office; sought control over the Civil Service Commission, which, in effect, would have endangered our entire merit system. As every one knows, the real power of Congress over.the executive departments is the control of the purse, the power to give or to deny appropriations. The New Deal has overcome this handicap by creating government corporations which, once a blanket authorization has been secured, are allowed to issue bonds and disburse public funds as the president sees fit. There are 57 of these corporations [this seems a modest statement; there seem to be 104, with initials as follows: AAA, AMA, AOA, BCD, BEW, BIRT, BP A, BWC, CAA, CCC (1), CCC (2), CCS, CEA, CES, CFB, CMB, CPA, CPRB, CRMB, CSAB, CWA, DLC, DPC, DSC, EHFA, EIBW, EPCA, FCA, FCC, FCIC, FDIC, FFC, FHA, FIC, FNMA, FPA, FPHA, FRC, FREB, FSA (1), FSA (2), FSCC, FWA, HOLC, LOPM, MRC, NAC, NHA, NTIfC, NIC, NIRA, NIRB, NMB, NPPC, NRA, NRPB, NWLB, NYA, OBCCC, OC, OCD, OCIAA, ODHWS, ODT, OEM, OES, OLLA, OPA, OPCW, OSRD, OWI, PAW, PCD, P1WC, PRA, PRP, PRRA, PWA, PWRCB, RA, RACC, REA, RRB, RRC, SA, SCS, SEC, SMA, SSB, SSS, SWPC, TNA, TV A, UNRRA, USES, USHA, USMC, wdc, wepl, wmc, wpa, wpb, WRA, WSA—Ed.], and the $30,000,000,000 which they have spent, many times involving important controversial appropriations, has never been authorized by Congress. It has never even been audited by the comptroller general. Supplementing this detour of legislative authorization, the president has resorted to another method of executive lawmaking, that of executive order. In 10 years he has issued 3,490 executive orders, many of legislative or quasi-] legislative content. These are not laws passed by Congress; they are laws passed by a single bureaucrat. Nor is this all. In the stress of the national crisis, the president was granted an emergency fund of over $500,000,000. While only a small portion of this sum has been spent, all of it has been allocated to various agencies. In effect, it places tremendous power in the hands of the president, power which the Constitution, formerly reserved to the Congress.

The second milestone was the control of business. In the past three years, the government has spent $25,000,000,000 in building plants and facilities for industrial production. There is not a single field of private endeavor in the whole country that is not tethered to the post of administrative directive.

The third milestone was control of food, the creating of federal agricultural bureaus and agencies which are competing with private enterprise.

The fourth milestone was control of the people. It is axiomatic that if control can be established over the shape of the ideas which go into a man’s head and the amount of money which Hows into his pocket, there is little to fear what will come out of his mouth. In just these ways totalitarianism is being foisted on the people of America. The number as well as the shape of these ideas may soon be rationed if the propaganda specialists have their way. The creation of OWI was a step in that direction.

Too Much Bureaucracy

When a politician gets into a good government job it is natural for him to want to stay there, to bring in his friends and to pay them well. When they get inside of some one of the 104 bureaus, they start to do the same thing. Their motto is always more workers and more money. President Roosevelt condemns this. Shortly before he was elected in 1932 he said:

I accuse the present [Hoover] administration of being the greatest spending administration in all our history. One which has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission. Bureaus and bureaucrats have been retained at the expense of the taxpayers. The people in America demand a reduction of federal expenditure. It can be accomplished by reducing the expenditures of existing departments, by abolishing many useless commissions, bureaus and functions, and by consolidating many activities of government.

Writing on this subject, and in full harmony with the president’s own ideas as above expressed, Mr. E. M. Biggers, printer, 100 Sabine street, Houston 10, Texas, said in his letter to a southern congressman:

It has been my information that no two of these bureaucrats have ever been able to agree on how they want anything handled. An attempt was made to liquidate the NYA. The War Manpower Commission was created with McNutt in charge, and, according to newspaper reports, the first thing he-did was to piek up the NYA bodily and carry it over to the new board—not a day lost, not a cent saved the taxpayers; another board took care of the faithful 1 We see every day where some defeated New Dealer is placed in a betterpaying government job than his home'voters ousted him from. *

I would prefer a system that allowed me to buy that for which I did not have the money to pay, to a system that forbade me to buy that for which I did have the money to pay. I object to regimentation; object to being ruled by a bunch of fan-tailed theorists who are attacking everything that has made America .great, even the geography, the calendar, the clock, and the unchangeable law of supply and demand. It is easy to rebuild our lost fortunes, but liberties and human rights once taken away arc not easily recaptured.

I note you arc chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, and as I have been long active in that line, am making some observations: I objected then and I object now to the slaughtering of some 6,200,000 pigs; hundreds of thousands of brood sows; more than 800,000 dairy cows, not even allowing the hides to be saved because that would lower the price of leather, when at that time shoes were so high most people could not afford a new pair. I objected to destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of growing farm products, the essentials and-necessities of life. Somehow I feel that God will punish those who do such foolish things.

I protested to our congressman when two new' post offices were erected in this county— right in the midst of cheap gas, cheap and abundant fuel oil—and the heating plants were designed and installed requiring hard coal from Pennsylvania and other states. John L. Lewis was in the saddle, and the railroad boys were whooping it up for more rail tonnage. The New Deal party graciously complied. Was it right, sensible or honest?

I have in my possession a list of large landowners in Texas who were paid $5,000 and more per year for not producing crops. , Many of them are big ranches, insurance I companies, and corporations that never did produce .crops. Others were paid more for allowing their land to remain idle than they could have made by working it. The tenants went to the cities and got on relief, the land grew up in Johnson grass and weeds; and thousands of rich bottom farms are now ruined for all time, a high price the landowner paid for New Deal relief.

At the very time our cotton industry was at its lowest ebb, the largest cotton concern in the world (Anderson, Clayton company, of Houston) began erecting modern gins (electric), oil mills, compresses, and great cotton plantations in Mexico and South American countries, taking away America’s cotton business because we were paying a bonus for not producing while foreign countries were paying a bounty to produce. Another indictment that the New Deal Party paid a premium on laziness and put a penalty on thrift.

I fear the confusion, turmoil and strife now prevalent is for a sinister purpose, and that it has been'deliberately planned by those who brought forth such bureaus as the NYA, the USES, and others equally vicious. There may be those who want things to get out of control so that martial law can be invoked. That will be the final step to a dictator.

Meantime, so the student of affairs is informed, “by July 1 [1944] the debt [of the United States] will equal the entire capital wealth of the nation, its factories, mines, farms, railroads, forests, etc. By the war’s end it will probably equal if not exceed the total wealth of the nation, including its homes, bed sheets, and wedding rings. It is obvious that existing wealth which is constantly wearing out cannot pay the debt. It will be paid only out of wealth created by future production, work and sweat.” So says S. B. Pettengill, author of Jefferson the Forgotten Man.

Commpn Sense at the White House ♦ When the country was of small population the president had to expend considerable of his time and strength signing and countersigning documents which, it was incorrectly supposed, only the president should be able to sign. For instance, the president had to countersign the will of every Indian with whom the government dealt; he had to sign every order that permitted a government employee to stay in the service after retirement age; he had to make a personal examination of hundreds of orders adding to or withdrawing a few acres from the public domain; be had to . sign every act of Congress appropriating small sums for claims. Some of these burdens have now been taken from his shoulders.

Two White House clerks, 70 and 73 years of age, each of whom has been on duty at the White House more than 44 years, have just been asked by the president, in personal notes in his own handwriting, to stay on indefinitely in their present positions. An act of grace and kindness and common sense.

Supposed to Color the News

♦ In one of his press conferences President Roosevelt told the reporters that he knew that some reporters are required to color the news; if they do not they are liable to lose their jobs; that he personally knew of a lot of cases right in the room at the time where reporters had to write in accordance with orders. He thought this a tough situation, and intolerable to many people. And so it is. The president did not need to say that every reporter is

1 supposed to mention the Roman Catholic Hierarchy only in terms of praise, no matter how much, in his heart, he despises the whole tyrannical outfit.

The Revived League of Nations

THE Scriptures seem to clearly indicate that ‘the beast that was and is not and shall again be present’ is the League of Nations revived, as was so clearly presented by President Knorr of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in his broadcast from Cleveland, Ohio, September 20, 1942. One can but wonder how it will all come about, and whether, as is predicted by the London Observer, Franklin Delano Roosevelt will be its first president.

To be sure, the suggestion that Mr. Roosevelt might be made the first president of the world was only a one-man suggestion, made by the Washington correspondent of the Observer, but it might be correct. He is just the type of man to aim for that kind of job, and it is a dead certainty that no man will get it who doesn’t desire it, or who doesn’t think he can handle it. The Observer man did not put it quite as bluntly as above stated. What he said was:

Mr. Roosevelt will be, of course, the party’s choice if he wants a ■ fourth term but the president, it is said, may remove all speculation by taking up some office higher even than the American presidency in connection with world organization after the war.

In the fall of 1943, at the White House, 44 nations signed up for the United Nations' Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, or the UNRRA as it is called for short. The nations for which 44 responsible officials signed their names were given as Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Ei Salvador, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Canal Zone, not named.

“Freedom from Want”

At that conference the principal address was by President Roosevelt. He considered it a historic occasion of great importance. He stated the signers had “a common determination to build for the future a world of decency and security and, above all, peace”. He said, “We mean business in this war in a political and humanitarian sense, just as surely as we mean business in a military sense.” He drew attention to the fact that in a year from the time the Allies landed in French Africa that part of the world had been able to supply all its own needs, and that the next day, at Atlantic City, the UNRRA would begin its first formal conference and make the “first bold steps toward the practicable, workable realization of a thing called freedom from want”. Surely, never before in human history this side of the days of Joseph in Egypt has any one man had the assurance to announce that he has plans which he intends to carry out and which will free the whole world from want.

Referring to the diabolical robberies perpetrated by the Nazis, the Fascists and the Japanese militarists on the peoples they have conquered, the president had previously said:

ft is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

It may not be true, as charged by Representative Stephen A. Day (Republican, Illinois), in the Chicago Tribune, that Mr. Roosevelt plans a one-nation world, but then again it may, and there are some things that give color to the idea. It may have been mere chance that

on Churchill’s 69th birthday (November 30, 1943) Mr. Roosevelt said to him, ‘‘May we be together for many years” (when he knew his own term as president would expire in 1944); and it may be also that Mr. Roosevelt had no big ideas of world domination in mind when he pre. sented his homestead at Hyde Park to ithe government, but it looks very much «as if he intended that home to become a ■ ‘ shrine. Why J

No Hierarchy or Legion Methods Wanted

Mr. Roosevelt knows very well that his dickerings with the pope and the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, resulting, as they did, in the destruction of the Spanish Republic, are very objectionable to millions of the American people. They did not think well of his' appointing a personal representative of himself to be his own private ambassador to the Vatican. Why should he have such an ambassador, when other American presidents have been free from such entanglements? Nor did they think well of his sending Archbishop Spellman to Spain to gloat over the return of slavery and ignorance to the common people of that unhappy land.

There are millions of Americans who do not approve of their president’s con- eerning himself with the control of the American Legion, the plain history of which is that it is under the control of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, is not composed of the veterans that did the actual fighting, and has absolutely the worst record of contempt for American laws of any organization in the land. Munitions paid for by the American people have been turned over to the American Legion, and there was at one time a serious effort to make this organization a private army of the president; and the attempt almost succeeded. Premature publicity, and the courage and patriotism of one honest Maryland man, delayed the job.

The American people do not like to i have colossal projects sprung upon them without warning. They did not like it in 1931 when Japan invaded Manchukuo without warning; nor in 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia without warning; nor in 1938 when Germany invaded Austria without warning; nor in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland without warning; nor in 1940 when Germany invaded Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg without warning; nor in 1940 when Italy attacked France, Albania and Greece without warning; nor in 1941 when Germany invaded Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Greece and Russia without warning and Japan attacked the United States, Thailand, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies without warning. President Roosevelt did right when he drew public attention to these acts of injustice and unwisdom, and he should ponder the principle involved. In other words, he should cease trying to stampede Uncle Sam into making Congress a mere "yes man” to every idea he gets in his head. Uncle Sam picked him out to serve, not to boss.

Mr. Roosevelt did his plain duty when he officially notified Japan, on the basis of authentic information from China, that, having used poison gas -in sixty authenticated attacks on Chinese troops and cities, such attacks must cease, and if they do not cease the United States will retaliate in kind and in full'measure. It is to be hoped that gas warfare will not become general before the present war is ended; but who can prophesy what will be done before this war is ended? It is still true, as it was in the days of John the apostle, that "the whole world lie th in wickedness” (1 John 5:19), and it is still true as it was in the days of the apostle Paul that humanity are in “the snare of the devil” and “are taken captive by him at his will”. (2 Timothy 2: 26) There is only one way out of the dilemma, and that is not in a new League of Nations (no matter what its new name, or who its president), but in the Kingdom for which Jesus taught His

followers to pray and which is of God and from heaven, and not of or from any earthly rulers, no matter how capable or how popular or powerful.

In the broadcast mentioned in paragraph one hereof, the speaker said:

The prophecy shows that when the (fbeast" comes out of the abyss at the end of this total war it comes out with the woman “Babylon” on its back, or she climbs upon its back as soon as it gets out. That means that “organized religion”, and this time the religious organization with headquarters at Vatican City, will ride and exercise guiding influence over the League beast. . . . The pope’s five-point program calls for the Vatican’s free action without interference as one of the requirements of his “new order founded on moral principles”. Likewise the United Nations opposing the totalitarian powers voice their pledge of freedom of religion as one of the four freedoms to be secured when peace comes. The repeated cries and demands of politicians and religionists for f*More religion!” make certain that religion will ride the peace beast. The personal envoy sent by the president of the nation to the Vatican to work together with the religious chief for peace is another forerunner of the courtesy and deference that will be paid to the “woman” named Babylon when the total war ends.

“Freedom of Religion”

RESIDENT ROOSEVELT announces his belief in “freedom of religion”, by which he means every individual has a right to connect up with any one of the 256 sects doing business in the United States, or to go it alone, in the way that suits him best, even as an atheist.

He says that “the German army has used the Holy City of Rome as a military center”. There is nothing said in the Scriptures about Rome as being a holy city. On the contrary, it is more than hinted at that it stands as a monument of unholiness, a monument of the Devil rather than a monument of the Lord. He has suggested that, after the war, Germany should furnish the labor and material to rebuild the Benedictine monastery-at Cassino. Is there anything particularly holy about the tunnel, far underground, that connected the monastery with the hotel at its foot? If anything is to be rebuilt by the Germans, let them restore the homes of the poor, who had all their possessions blown to the four winds.

The president voiced a great truth when he said, “There is no Joshua in our midst,” arid also when he said, “Perhaps not since the fathers of the Constitution established freedom of religion have our people had greater need for a return to the teachings of the Master.” The .president has surely had it drawn to his attention that Christian worship and religion are different; the first is true, is Scriptural; the second is tradition, and is false.

At the launching of 14 cargo ships he is alleged to have said, “There shall be no death for America, for democracy, for freedom!” but he cited no scripture to support his hope. The word of the Lord is that, at a set time, and that time is just ahead, the God of heaven will break in pieces and consume all the ' governments of the world, and that by His Theocracy, which shall abide forever. (Daniel 2:44) The Theocracy is not a democracy; it is a kingdom. The King that Jehovah has selected is Christ Jesus, and when the president prays the Lord’s prayer, and prays that God’s will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven, he prays for something that he knows in his heart is still future, and is not limited to the United States or to any past or future league of nations. He should speak a little more modestly about his knowledge of what is ahead for America and for democracy. As for freedom, God makes it plain that the spirit of the Lord is one of liberty to do right. That is true freedom, and is not obtainable in any great degree in any part of the world just now.

(1) Daniel’s tomb. (2) Susa, with tomb in distance. (3) From across the river Karkheh. (4) Government building at Susa. (5, 6) Views of the Mohammedan mosque at Susa.

12 CONSOLATION

Scenes in Persia, Sent by One of Uncle Sani's Boys

LESS than two hundred miles north of the mouth of the river Euphrates, and one of the principal stations on the railway that traverses the country from north to south, i^ the modern city of Susa, Persia. It was here that Nehemiah was sad in the presence of. Artaxerxes, here he quickly prayed to Jehovah that he might be able to answer wisely the demand to know why he was sad; and it was from here that he went out to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. (Nehemiah 1:1; 2:1-9) Jt was here that Esther took the place of Vashti, the queen of Ahasuerus (Esther 1:2,5; 2:8,17); here Haman paraded down the street leading Mordecai seated on the king’s horse, and here he was hanged by the neck until he was dead. (Esther 6:10,11; 7:10) Here, in the reign of King Belshazzar, Daniel had his vision of the cleansing of the sanctuary (Daniel 8:1,2) and had it explained to him by the angel Gabriel. Susa and Shushan, Shush and Sus are all names given to the ancient and modern city.

McClintock & Strong’s Cyclopedia, in an interesting four-page article on this important winter capital of Elam’s ancient kings, says: ,

On this site there are extensive ruins, stretching, perhaps, twelve miles from one

extremity to the other, and consisting, like the other ruins of this region, of hillocks of earth and rubbish covered with broken pieces of brick and colored tile. At the foot of these mounds is the so-called Tomb of Daniel, a small building erected on the spot where the remains of that prophet are locally believed to rest. It is apparently modem; yet nothing but the belief that this was the site of the prophet’s sepulchre could have led to its being built in the place where it stands, and it may be added that such identifications are of more value in these parts, where occasion for them is rare, than among the crowded “holy places” of Palestine. *

One of Uncle Sam’s boys, Private-V. M. Ottignon, sent us a letter from Shushan or Susa or Shush, which passed all the censors and came through in 17 days. He sent the pictures which you will see on the opposite page, and with them this letter:

Just a line to inform you I am somewhere in Persia or Iran and the weather is fine, like autumn in New York. I am enclosing three pictures of Daniel’s tomb (1, 2, 3) and two of the mosque at the holy city. I have had the pleasure of reading this month the booklet Peace—Can It Last! and Consolation of August 18, 1943, and Watchtower of August 1, 1943, and the fine book The New World.

Pope Congratulates Hitler on Escape

THE pope was quick to congratulate

Hitler on his escape in the recent attack upon the Nazi fuehrer’s life. Pacelli was the first potentate to send such a message and knew it must get out that he did so. What to 'do. First the “semi-official” Vatican News Service acknowledged that it “understood” such a congratulatory message was sent. But it was only “formal”, which means, it would appear, that it meant nothing after all. Then “well-informed Vatican sources pointed out that such telegrams were part of the Holy See protocol”. In other words, the pope couldn’t help himself; but still the congratulations did not mean anything, not a single thing. Also, the “spiritual state” (Vatican City) is neutral in political matters. This also is “understood”. A gentleman of integrity . reported that “nothing that issues from

Vatican City can be believed”.

The Hamburg and Berlin Preludes

IT WOULD be quite natural for’those who believe earthly rulers are “the higher powers” to explain in the following manner two of the passages in the Psalms t

Upon the wicked he shall rain [from the * planes over Hamburg, Berlin, and other Nara cities] snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest. (Psalm 11: 6)

The wicked [Hitler and his comrades in crime] shall see it, and he grieved; he shall gnash with his teeth, and melt away: the desire of the wicked shall perish. (Psalm 112:10)

JThe immediate objection to such an explanation would be that Stalin has done the Reich more harm on the ground than has thus far been done it from the air, and .nobody has yet advanced the explanation that he is Almighty God’s avenging angel. Thus clearing the air of misconceptions, an opportunity arises to consider these phenomena of the greatest of earth’s wars to date.

The Obliteration of Hamburg

From various sources comes the information that the preliminary attacks bn Hamburg were so intense that many people, on emerging from the shelters, no longer recognized their own district. A couple of months later (in June, 1943) conditions were so bad that' Belgian workers, engaged in attempted repair work, could not part with any clothing, even to have it washed, and expect to recover it*

By another month (July, 1943) 5,000 tons of bombs were being dropped in a single night; the glowing cauldron was visible for 200 miles; the smoke was risr ing three to five miles. By the end of the month 14,000 of the residents of the city had been killed; 400,000 of the city’s 1,500,000 residents had fled and every available vehicle had been pressed into service to carry them away. The next month, August, the Hamburg tunnel under the Elbe river was hit and the 18,000 citizens that had taken refuge in it were drowned like rats in a trap. It was two months before the full story reached the outside world. This is the tale as finally told:

Almost no one escaped in the heavily populated area of many square kilometers on which the Allied planes planted a “carpet” of hundreds of thousands of explosive and incendiary bombs. A phenomenon resulted in which the fire drew the oxygen from the surrounding air, forming a constantly increasing “air chimney” in which the flames mounted higher and higher, increasing in violence and finally forming a compact roof of fire. The movement of air was comparable to a typhoon, a gigantic force pumping air from all directions, and the streets serving as conduits, with flames ' rushing through them to meet the offered oxygen. A life and death struggle ensued between the flames and the people, the latter inevitably losing. The fire consumed the last bit of oxygen in cellars and finally exhausted that in air raid shelters, which at the same time were subjected to unbearable heat. At the, start of the bombing, when there was still time, the people did not dare leave the shelters to face the hail of flaming bombs. Only a minute percentage of the population 'that dared flee when the attack started, escaped. A few minutes later the attacked area was encircled by fire from which not even the widest streets and public squares could afford refuge. Those who remained in the shelters, where at least 20,000 persons perished, were reduced to ashes. The authorities were quoted as saying that the heat surpassed that of incinerators. One doctor observed that the combustion of bones was more complete than in normal crematories. There were no traces for identification.

Information reaching Sweden was that only two buildings were left standing in Hamburg and 50,000 perished in a single night.

Berlin Turned to a Madhouse

Hitler had intended to make Berlin the capital of the world. Plans had been made for avenues and buildings to rival those of earth’s most beautiful city, Washington, D.C., and some work had been done in the way of constructing them. But no city today is safe from attacks by air. The Allies had decided to do to Berlin what they did to Hamburg, and what German airmen had previously done to Coventry and London, Section by section the city was marked for destruction and night by night and day by day tons of bombs turned the streets into an inferno. In many places the asphalt on the pavements boiled and people in near-by areas collapsed from the intense heat. Fire‘brigades were called from Stettin, Leipzig and other cities to fight walls of flame a half mile long. The Nazi radio itself proclaimed:

Berlin has been covered with a carpet of bombs and has suffered the greatest destruction ever wreaked upon a city.

Twenty percent of the 5,000,000 residents of the city were conscripted to fight the fires, and to aid in rescues and salvage work. Gas, electricity and water were cut off from some parts of the city, and passengers for other cities had to walk five miles to railroad stations outside the bombed area. On some of the worst days Berlin was cut off by telephone and telegraph from the rest of the world. On a single night there were more than a thousand fires; Hitler’s balcony went like Mussolini’s. The zoo was smashed and elephants and other animals roamed the streets. The acrid smoke of the burning city was noted in Sweden, 300 miles distant. Entire blocks of ten to a dozen squares became masses of fire which were entirely out of control. Subways and elevateds could not function in many parts of the city. On one occasion 350 two-ton bombs were dropped in the course of half an hour. The bombing crews could see the lights of the fires 100 miles away, and two hours after the bombings whole streets were outlined in dull red through the thin clouds.

- Even Hitler Squawked

When the big bombings were shifted from Hamburg to Berlin, even Hitler squawked. Shoved into his present job by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy and Germany’s Big Business crowd, he must have suspected all was not well when he said:

Providence is making no gift to our nation in the struggle for freedom and the future. Everything must be fought for by the toughness of German soldiers at the front as well as by the homeland in a most severe test of endurance. Even the last German soldier must be imbued with the conviction that this cruel struggle, which the enemy desired, which he imposed on us and for which he bears the responsibility, cannot be ended except in victory. The nation that loses will have ended its existence because it is madness to expect anything else of this battle but victory or perdition.

From photographs which they took the RAF calculated that of 8,000 acres of buildings which they bombed 1,360 acres, or 17 percent, had passed out; but where the government offices were located 60 percent were destroyed. The German government thereupon moved its headquarters to Breslau, 150 miles to the southeast. The city (Berlin) has kept going, after a fashion, but it took five hours to find a store, open, that could supply an ordinary writing pad for making business notes. Every store may shut two days a week. Everybody in the city looks worn out.

Goering, one of the German “big shots”, is described as follows:

He stands outside his villa in the Berlin suburbs, gazing vacantly at the sky, utterly bewildered by the strength of the Allied aerial blows.

News from Belgium reports a Belgian businessman who said he attended a Berlin movie. Hitler was shown on the screen; there was a derisive whistling, whereupon the newsreel was interrupted, and the manager called for the Gestapo, who fired shots at random into the auditorium. Three of these shots hit the Belgian in the arm; he went to a physician to have his arm dressed and the doctor advised him to get out of Berlin as quickly as possible, as the situation vyas getting out of hand.

Bombings All over the Country

The bombings have been persistent all lover Germany. Among the places named as having been ruined are Augsburg, Cologne, Aachen, Essen, Hanover, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Kiel, Dresden, Wilhelmshaven, Dusseldorf, Renscheid, Cre-feld, and Barmen-Elberfeld. A traveler through Augsburg two days after it was bombed said:

We stayed at the station for a half hour at 11:30 at night. Here’s what we saw: the whole city, population 200,000, in complete flames. Not a person to be seen in the town. At the station thousands and thousands of Germans, men, women and children, their possessions under their arms, in complete panic. They tried to get into our coaches, climbing through the windows. They had to be pushed away.

The London Times said that the damage at Frankfurt is such that nothing is left of the government and business section of the city. (In the same issue it also took pains to say that in the retreat of the Germans from Russia they did not forget to steal all the factory equipment they could manage to carry away with them.) Thousands of families of Essen, described as the “most bombed city in the world” because it is near the Krupp plant, fled the city but were warned that in so doing they forfeited all rights to return at any time to claim their properties. Swedish engineers returning from Germany to their own land estimated that 8,000,000 Germans arc homeless.

With 10 percent of the people homeless, so many of the women are without addresses in some of the principal centers that 40 percent of them, called up for war industry, failed to present themselves. Women can endure only about so much. At Munich, when pictures of the Russian front were shown, the police were called to suppress a riot started by sobbing women. At Berlin the police were helpless when, on a train returning from the front, weeping, screaming women discovered paper bandages on severely wounded men.

The German labor front announces that in the five years of the war 650,000 homes have been built, or offices turned into homes or otherwise made available for human occupancy. The bungalows are two-room affairs; there is no plumbing. Meantime, as a result of the bombings, many go insane, children are struck dumb, and thousands of bodies of bomb victims are buried in mass graves.

The “super-race” bunk is being gradually exploded, as may be judged from the two paragraphs which follow:

[a] A person whose nervous system is defective cannot stand heavy aerial bombardments. Thus, aerial bombardments will help us to discover the neurasthenics and remove them from social life.

[b] We mourn not only the death of our fellow citizens, but those shocks which all residents of Essen have to suffer. Bombardments inevitably affect the nervous system, and how many sensitive natures have been crippled for ever by the barbarous raids ? How many talented adolescents, how many frail German women have been affected with nervous ailments, frequently incurable?

The first of these was published in a Nazi periodical in 1938, and the second was published in Goering’s own newspaper, the National Zeitung, July 18, 1943, and shows that Goering, at least, has begun to see a few things from “gazing vacantly into the sky”. He doesn’t see Armageddon; not yet. That’s future. But he sees what might be called the prelude to it, like the little click of an alarm clock shortly before the alarm itself wakens the sleeper.

Identifying the Messiah

iS THE one who on earth nineteen centuries ago bore the name “Jesus” the Messiah ? It is, of course, important to be able to answer this question from the inspired Scriptures where the Messiah is described, and to have the decision on the matter so clearly fixed that there cannot be any doubt as to the correctness of the answer. It is necessary to examine the many prophecies concerning this important personage, and then to determine from historical facts upon whom such identifying prophecies have been fulfilled.

An early prophecy relating to the Messiah is at Genesis 49:10: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” The here-mentioned “Shiloh” is the Messiah. Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be. It therefore conclusively follows that he who is the Messiah must be the great Deliverer of obedient humankind. The prophet Moses, whom Jehovah God used in the deliverance of the nation of Israel from Egypt, was a type of the Messianic Deliverer; for Moses said by inspiration of God: “The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” (Deuteronomy 18:15,18) The Messiah must be a prophet greater than Moses.

The identification of the Messiah has long been in doubt in the minds of millions of honest persons, both Jews and Gentiles. Those who are Jews at heart believe what Moses and the other prophets of God testified. Concerning those who are merely Jews according to the. fleshly descent from Abraham Paul, a one-time zealous practitioner of “the Jews’ religion”, has written, saying: “Their minds were blinded.” (Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 3, verse fourteen) The genuine identification of the Messiah would necessarily bring gladness to the hearts of those who believe the honest facts. It would be good news to such, that is, gospel, for gospel means “good news”. Now writes this same exreligionist concerning the good news of the Messiah: “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ [or Messiah], who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”—2 Corinthians 4: 3, 4.

Satan the enemy, “the god of this world,” has caused the blindness which came upon the Jews and which has likewise come over the major portion of the Gentiles. Divers means he has used to accomplish this; anything to blind them to God’s purpose and to keep their minds turned away from God and His means of deliverance of. humankind. For our enlightenment let us examine the prophecies.

“Messiah” means “Anointed (0ne”; “Christ” means the same thing. “Anointed” means the one who is clothed with authority to act in behalf of the one who does the anointing. Jehovah God, who caused the prophecies concerning the Messiah or Anointed One, is He that does the anointing. The Messiah, therefore, is clothed with authority from Him to act as the great executive officer of Jehovah God. We should expect to find sufficient in the prophecies that will enable us to determine who is the Messiah and that would agree with other evidence relating to this vital matter.

In this case prophecy is the foretelling long in advance, by hundreds of years in fact, the events that will take place in the future. No man can truly foretell future events. But God, who knows the end from the beginning as respects His specific purposes, can foretell future events. In times past He used various human agencies as instruments to utter and make record of His prophecies. The invisible energy of Jehovah God, namely, His holy spirit, working through the minds of holy men of old, caused them to make record of events that would come to pass in the future. Those men did not understand what they then prophesied. It was the, prophecy of Almighty God; and these men or prophets merely wrote down the things prophesied under the direction of the holy spirit.—2 Peter 1:21.

The'Jewish writer Peter, an apostle of the Messiah, testifies that the holy prophets did not understand the things concerning which they prophesied. (1 Peter 1:11, 12) Why did they not understand? Because it was not yet God’s due time for these things to be understood by men, and because the holy spirit or active force of God had not yet been given to men to serve to that end.

Now is the due time in which those prophecies may be better understood; and those who have devoted themselves wholly to the Lord and who seek to understand He permits to understand the deep things of God as set down in His Word. (1 Corinthians 2: 9,10) Anyone of devoted mind who reads the sacred prophecies prayerfully and sees facts to correspond with them may understand the prophecies.

But how may we know when we have the proper understanding of a prophecy? Thus: If we find God foretold that certain things would come to pass, and thereafter we see actually taking place the very things that He foretold, then we may be sure that such is in fulfillment of divine prophecy and is not private interpretation. An instance of this is the prophecy at Daniel, chapter twelve, verse four, reading: “But thou, 0 Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” And indeed, in this time of disturbance since 1914, Jehovah’s consecrated people have been and are running to and fro in diligent search through the pages of the Holy Scriptures and by reason of the illumination which the Author thereof sheds upon those pages the knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures has been increased to His faithful people and they are engaged in an educational campaign among all nations to aid others to come to this same knowledge. Persecution has not stopped this.

Prophecy can be understood only after its fulfillment, or while in the course of fulfillment. When it is fulfilled, then we properly speak of the fulfillment as the “physical facts”; that is to say, the facts which stand out as silent witnesses testifying to the taking place of certain events, which events had been foretold. With this rule in mind, let us here make a beginning of noting some of the prophecies recorded in the Bible concerning the Messiah, and then see if the despised “Jesus of Nazareth” fulfilled those prophecies. Only if the testimony of the facts proves beyond a doubt that He did fulfill them would this be conclusive proof to identify Him as the great Messiah of whom Moses was a type.

Let us begin with the prophecy of Isaiah by which God foretold this: “Therefore will the Lord himself give you a sign: behold, this young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and she shall call his name ’Immanuel, (God with us).” (Isaiah 7:14, Leeser’s translation) The original Hebrew word here translated “young woman” is translated at Psalm 68:26 “maidens”, and at Canticles 1: 3 “maidens”, and at Exodus 2: 8 “maiden”. Its occurrences also at Genesis 24: 43 and Proverbs 30:19 and Canticles 6:8 combine with the foregoing occurrences to show that “young woman” means specifically a “virgin”. At Matthew 1:18-25 the Jewish writer, when quoting the prophecy, uses the Greek word specifically meaning “virgin” and tells how Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus, conceived by the power of God’s holy spirit and in due time gave birth to the child Jesus, in clear fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. The Greek Septuagint Version of the Hebrew Scriptures, which version was made by Greek-speaking Jews, also uses the same word parthenos (nagflews) at Isaiah 7:14 as Matthew 1:23 uses.

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