The Watchtower, September 1, 1943
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“DEFEAT OF PERSECUTION" TESTIMONY PERIOD
With this Testimony Period during the entire month of October the new book “The Truth Shall Make You Free’’ will be released for public distribution. This will be offered in combination with the new booklet Freedom in the New World, on a contribution of 25c. As this Testimony Period will be observed world-wide, where the Kingdom publishers are not supplied with this new literature they will proceed with their intensified testimony work using the latest book and booklet on a contribution to correspond. Our readers and all persons of good-will are welcomed to a part in this mighty educational movement, fearless of persecution, because it is only through past “defeat of persecution” by obedient and courageous proclamation of the Kingdom message under opposition that this announced Testimony Period can be carried out, by God’s grace. This period therefore represents a triumph for God’s truth and cause, and all wishing to share therein we are ready to put in touch with the proper organized group of Jehovah’s witnesses, upon request. All due preparation for this world-wide testimony should go forward now, as to your supplies, territory and time. Then you will have special results to report at the month’s close, either direct to us or to the company with which you associate in field service.
CORRECTION
In paragraph 26 of the article “Assembly for Peace and Prosperity”, in our issue of August 15, 1943, it should read “Back in 745 B C.”, instead of the date 869 B.C.
“THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE”
With great gratitude to the “God of truth” the Society here announces this new publication “The Truth Shall Make You Free’’. The release of the publishers’ edition of this book was a loudly applauded feature of the “Free Nation’s” Theocratic Assembly held simultaneously in August in more than 100 cities. The truths set out in unbroken sequence in the 384 pages of this book, illustrated with art work in color, will amaze and delight you and equip you unto the present fight for freedom. The book is in violet cloth binding, with gold-stamped title and relief design, and contains instructions as to how to study and also a complete index of all Scripture texts cited therein. “The Truth Shall Make You Free" is now offered on a contribution of 25c a copy, mailed postpaid to any address. Release of the book for general distribution world-wide is announced elsewhere.
“THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" QUESTIONS BOOKLET
This 64-page booklet has been prepared to serve the great educational campaign with the new book “The Truth Shall Make You Free’’. All students of the book, whether privately or in group study, will advantageously use this booklet It contains a foreword, "Education in Freedom,” giving instructions for conducting group studies. Then follow well-framed questions, with supporting Scripture references, covering each chapter and paragraph of "The Truth Shall Make You Free’’. A new feature is a complete Scripture index of all such corroborative texts, seven pages thereof. This booklet, with a neat, durable cover, is offered to all students on a 5c contribution per copy.
Vol. LXIV September 1, 1943 No.17
GOD OF THE FREE
"Jehovah, who liberateth prisoners." - Ps. 146:7, Rotherham.
JEHOVAH only is free in the absolute sense. When he was alone, that is, before he began his work of creation throughout the universe, he carried no weight of responsibility for any creatures. Of his own free will and good pleasure he began his creative work and made things animate and inanimate. Yet he is responsible to none of his creatures. None of such can rightfully make complaint to God for the station he occupies among the Creator’s works. “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it. Why hast thou made me thus?” (Rom. 9: 20) “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands? Woe unto him that saith unto his father. What begettest thou? or to the woman. What hast thou brought forth? Thus saith the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.”—Isa. 45:9-11.
2 All of Jehovah’s faithful sons are free. He created none of his children unto bondage. Their freedom, however, is relative; it does not exist apart from their Father, Jehovah. Their freedom lies in living and acting in harmony with the laws and conditions which He has made to apply to them and which allow them to give the fullest expression to their lives with good to themselves and all about them, and to the glory of their Creator, God. Jehovah God is the Supreme One, the great God of freedom, and the only one such. Freedom originates with Him. It can come from no other one.
3 Any opposer of Jehovah and his will can not be a true advocate of liberty. The great adversary of God can be nothing else but the foe of freedom and must be and is the wicked oppressor. Satan the Devil is the god of slavery. Any effort to be independent of the Lord Jehovah does not bring absolute freedom to the self-willed creature, but means only loss of liberty into the servitude of the Devil. Such enslavement leads to sorrow and death. True freedom is enjoyed only in the pathway to everlasting life.
1 Who only is free in the absolute sense, and how is this proved?
2. What creatures are free, what is the source of their freedom, and how is their freedom relative?
3. Who is the chief foe of freedom, and what does any effort to be independent of Jehovah God bring, lead to or mean?
4 The unchanging goal of the great adversary Satan is to bring all of God’s creatures into bondage to himself. For this reason the foremost issue to be settled is universal domination; that is, Shall the universe of creatures live free in Jehovah, the Creator of all things good? or shall it exist slave to the Devil? The issue must be settled sometime; and it will be, shortly. The universe cannot exist forever part slave and part free, as at present. The universal creation was never meant to be slave to selfishness and unrighteousness. Of the outcome of this long continued controversy there can be no doubt, and it was long ago foretold. The cause of freedom will win the eternity of peace. Freedom is the proper element in which Jehovah’s faithful creatures can live. Those who live and serve him forever must do so out of their own willing choice, and joyfully.
5 Satan’s strikeaway from Jehovah and for independence of action uncontrolled by God did not win a new and larger freedom for that rebellious one. His desire to be responsible to no one but himself, and his effort to exist apart from the universal organization of the great Creator and Life-giver and its regulations, was not the course of selfliberation. He was merely overcome by his own passion to have world domination and to be worshiped and served like Jehovah God. The only effect was to make him the victim and slave of his own selfishness, which is sin. Hence it made him the child of death, utter destruction. “Whosoever committed sin transgressed also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. . . . There is a sin unto death: . . . All unrighteousness is sin.” (1 John 3:4, 8; 5: 16, 17) Said the Son of God, who came as the deliverer from bondage: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant [of sin] abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” (John 8: 34-36) Being himself in the thraldom of sin, Satan the Devil is the great deceiver when he offers liberty to others. Those who hearken to him he takes captive and brings them into bondage to his will. — 2 Tim. 2:26.
4. (a) What foremost issue has the adversary's goal raised, and why must this issue be settled shortly? (b) What will be the outcome of this settlement, and in only what proper element will faithful creatures live?
5. As to Satan, what was the effect to him of his breakaway from God for independence of action, and why is he a deceiver in offering liberty to others?
6 He who practices sin can never release himself from its penalty. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom. 6: 23) The way of righteousness and of keeping one’s obligations to Jehovah God may appear to be a narrow way, but the creature who loosely abandons himself to the motions and pleasures of sin finds at last only the narrowness of the pit and grave. Despite the broadness of the way thither, it is not a free way and its end is the loss of all movement and activity. “For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matt. 7:13, 14) Satan the Devil has turned the whole world into the broad way, and those who are walking in the narrow way to life everlasting must hold fast to their course and turn neither right nor left.
7 God made his creatures free moral agents, with the liberty to choose either to live subject to His perfect and righteous will or to forget and deny their relationship to their Maker and to become a law unto themselves. No creature desires to lose his liberty. It is solely his loss of understanding that could cause the creature to forsake the will of the One who created him and gave him life to enjoy. Therefore the wicked enslaver, Satan, must present himself as a liberator in order to induce other creatures to forsake the laws of Jehovah God and to cast in their lot with God’s opposer. It is well stated, at 2 Corinthians 11: 14,15: “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” To put across his scheme Satan the Devil and his ministers must misrepresent Jehovah as being the God of oppression, cruelty and darkness. This means to say that Satan and his servants must use religion in order to deceive and to turn men away from the true God and to make men forfeit their God-given freedom. “Use religion”? Yes; for religion is that which misrepresents Jehovah God and leads creatures to disobey him. Consequently religion is not the truth, but is darkness. It blinds the creature and brings him into the bondage of error and sin, with death as the end thereof. Satan is the author of religion.
6. From what can the practices of sin never release themselves, and why is not their broad way a free way?
7. To induce others, why must Satan present himself as a liberator to those created free moral agents? and what means of deception, therefore, must he use?
8 In the garden of Eden, when the righteous world in which the first man and woman lived was new and young, Satan introduced religion. He did so by lying concerning Jehovah God and stirring up false hopes in the woman Eve. He spoiled her correct understanding and enticed her with a seemingly good thing into overstepping the bounds which God had marked. He persuaded her that outside those bounds was liberty. Yes, by leaning to her own understanding and ignoring the word and commandment of God she could defy Him, eat what she chose and create a new, better and larger world for herself and Adam, so the Serpent argued. Eve had the warning of death for disobedience, but by the practice of religion she thought to gain the prize of immortality and expand her knowledge beyond the limits of what she then knew. So she acted on the word of this “angel of light” and contrary to the known word of God.
9 Adam joined his wife in the practice of religion by accepting and eating the prohibited fruit at her hand. It was not because he was deceived, but because he wanted to please himself by taking his stand on her side and sharing the consequences with her and thus keeping her for himself. He did not fear God; for if he had exercised such godly fear, he would have avoided any act or deed that would displease God. Rather than be a server of God by obedience, he chose to be a server of self, and thereby became the servant or slave to selfishness, which is sin. He pleased the creature rather than the Creator, and this he did because he lost understanding and faith in God. “[For] without faith it is impossible to please him.” (Heb. 11: 6) Religion is a lack of understanding one’s relationship to God and a lack of faith in his word. Adam and Eve did not stand fast in the freedom in which God had made them. They came into the bondage of sin and death by abandoning faith and obedience and by taking up religion.
10 Instead of continuing within the boundaries of the garden of Eden, they were now turned loose into the broad, unlimited earth outside, with plenty of room for the play of their own wills. But though thus given the run of the earth, were they free? No; they were no longer the children of God or members of his household. The "law of sin and death” was now operating within their members; and from that law they could not get free until at last the execution of God’s sentence of death upon them brought them back to the dust from which they had been taken. Jehovah was no longer their God. Their god was the one whom they had chosen to obey. As it is written: “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to "obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Rom. 6: 16) They had yielded themselves to Satan the Devil. They did not love God, for the love of God is to keep His commandments. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”—Matt. 6: 24; 1 John 5: 3.
8. When and by what persuasive arguments did Satan Introduce religion, and with what thought did the victim take up religion?
9. How did Adam then show neither fear nor faith toward God, and into what did he and his wife thereby come?
10. How were they then given the “run of the earth", and why were they nevertheless not free nor lovers of God?
11 By his course Adam brought great reproach upon God’s name. Had he determined not to side in with his wife but to stand faithful to God, cost what loss of Eve might, he would have stopped, at the very start thereof, the reproach and misrepresentation against God. He would have proved the Devil a liar and would have vindicated the name of his Creator. By his lack of love, devotion and consideration for God and His name, and by ungratefully and willfully taking his stand with the religionist Satan and his dupe Eve, Adam brought destruction upon himself. The new, better and unconfined world did not materialize. In reality it became a religious world, a corrupt and dead world, a world doomed to destruction. Satan the Devil became its god, who is a god of lying and rebellion, a god of robbing Jehovah’s sons of their liberty, a god of religion and antagonism to Jehovah's rule, law and word.
12 To this date the human family has not escaped the bitter fruitage of Adam’s religious course of action. It is written: “The whole world lieth in wickedness”; or, more literally translated: “The whole world in the wicked one is lying.” (1 John 5: 19, Auth. Ver. and Roth.) “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: ... by one man’s offence death reigned by one; ... by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; ... by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,... sin hath reigned unto death.” (Rom. 5: 12, 17, 18, 19, 21) There is no denying or escaping these facts by any member of the human family today, regardless of his nationality. Those denying are blinded by the mighty one who keeps them under his power and prevents their finding the way of escape and availing themselves of it. “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, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” (2 Cor. 4: 4) Seeing, then, that bondage to the Devil and to sin and death have come upon the entire humankind, how can we get free, if possible? More important still, having gained freedom, how can we stand fast for it?
11 How did Adam by his course bring great reproach upon God's name and destruction upon himself?
12 What scriptures emphasize that the human family has not escaped the fruitage of Adam’s course, and what questions therefore arise to freedom-lovers?
TRUTH MAKES FREE
13 Jehovah God foreknew that there would be born men and women who would desire to be delivered from such bondage, not that they might please self and thus repeat what Adam did in Eden, but that they might worship and serve the only true and living God, their gracious Creator. Jehovah God is the great Liberator, and he mercifully held forth the promise of deliverance that all lovers and seekers of liberty might have hope and might live according to it. Read the Bible, God’s Word, and you will find a continuous record of the promises and acts of deliverance by Jehovah, which shall culminate shortly in a new world of freedom evermore under a Government of liberation. Properly to him the prayer is addressed by those under religious oppression: “Thou art my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob. Through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us. For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us. In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever.” —Ps. 44:4-8.
14 Complete deliverance comes with the establishment of that Government by God and its action against all oppressors of man and all blasphemers of God’s name, by destroying them at the “battle of that great day of God Almighty”. But even before that grand consummation of his deliverances at Armageddon there is a release from subjugation to this present evil world that is possible for men to enjoy. How? By means of the truth, truth which delivers from the fears, fetters and blindness of religion. The fatal event in the garden of Eden makes it clear that truth and religion are opposites. There has been a struggle between truth and religion ever since, and the overwhelming majority of the world have fallen for religion and opposed the truth and truth-tellers. Said the greatest truth-teller on earth, and he was speaking to the most ardent religionists of the world: “If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. . . . Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” (John 8: 39-47) That truth-teller was Jesus Christ, who said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”—John 14: 6.
13 Why Is Jehovah the great Liberator, and why did he bold forth the promise of deliverance?
14When does complete deliverance come, how is there possible any release from subjugation to this world now, and between what two opposite things, therefore, has there been a struggle since Eden?
15 Likewise Jehovah God told the truth to the religionists in the garden of Eden just before their expulsion therefrom, when he pronounced sentence of destruction upon the Serpent of deception in this symbolic language: “And enmity will I put between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; he shall crush thy head, but thou shalt crush his heel.” (Gen. 3:14,15, Roth.) That pronouncement of truth was the first declaration of deliverance. It foretold the coming of the Seed, or the One from the womb of God’s organization, who would bear the new and righteous Government upon his shoulder. He would triumph over all persecution at his heel and would crush the Devil and his persecutor seed to the death. Not for the sake of Adam and Eve did God utter that word of truth, because they were beyond redemption, but for the sake of those of their offspring who should hear of God’s word and who would handle the word of God differently from their first parents. Adam and Eve, being now religious, would continue “handling the word of God deceitfully’, deceiving themselves and many of their offspring as to its meaning. (2 Cor. 4:2) Thus they would religiously do with the things of God’s word, “things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” (2 Pet. 3:16) The first victim of this was Cain, their first son. He became a religionist. The one who was first to experience release from condemnation and deliverance from religion and from bondage to Satan the Devil was their second son, Abel.
15. (a) What was the first declaration of deliverance, and for whose sake was it made? (b) How would Adam and Eve continue to handle God’s word, who was the first victim of this, but who was first to experience a release?
16 How did Abel get free? What made him free? It was the truth of Jehovah’s word, which truth Abel did not wrest selfishly to justify himself. He accepted it with faith and trust as a guide to his worship and his course of life. He confessed himself a born sinner, unable to redeem himself. Yet he also expressed belief in the truth that by the Seed, who would be bruised at the heel by the Serpent, Jehovah God would provide the sacrifice that would ransom Abel and all other believers from sin and death. As to Abel’s justification by faith from inherited condemnation it is written: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh.” (Heb. 11: 4) Sin lay at Cain’s door, and he hated his righteous brother. Hatred made Cain a murderer of the righteous worshiper of Jehovah God. His works were evil, and he was in bondage to the wicked one Satan. His murder of Jehovah’s first witness on earth did not emancipate him from servitude, whereas by God’s resurrection power Abel will be brought forth to life and liberty in the righteous New World.
16. (a) How did Abel set free, and what made him free? (b) Why did Cain's course not emancipate him from servitude?
STANDING FAST FOR FREEDOM
"For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.’’—Gal. 5:1, Am.Rev.Ver.
TWO thousand years after Jehovah's promise in Eden another powerful truth foretelling the coming deliverance of mankind was given, to Abraham, “the friend of God.” It revealed that the Liberator would come through the line of that man of faith. Not far from Abraham’s birthplace religion had been re-established on earth and organized, at Babel, or Babylon, shortly after the flood of Noah’s day. Also dictatorship or totalitarian rule had been set up there, with religion as the means to make such oppressive rule of the people palatable to them as if being according to heaven’s wish and purpose. Bloody aggression and greedy commercialism followed. Abraham came out from under such worldly bondage. He came out and no longer lived as a part of this world of religion, commerce and politics, and thereafter wandered loose and disengaged therefrom, living in tents wherever God led him, and looking forward to the ushering in of a world absolutely rid of such things, including their originator, Satan the Devil.
1 Two thousand years after Eden, to whom was another powerful truth of deliverance given, and bow did such one come out from under worldly bondage?
2 How did Abraham gain his freedom? By the truth of Jehovah’s word, mixed with faith and with works of faith on Abraham’s part. To what truth Abraham already knew, from and after God’s revelation of purpose at Eden, Jehovah now added the further truth concerning the Seed and said: “In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” “Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: ... So shall thy seed be.” (Gen. 12:3; 15:5) So “[Abraham] believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness”; and thereby Abraham pleased the Lord God and was relieved of condemnation. — Gen. 15:6.
2. How did Abraham gain his freedom, and what is the Scripture testimony as to bis relief from condemnation?
3 Abraham’s wife Sarah continued barren up to seventy-five years of age. In anxiety she offered Abraham her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to act for her in bearing a child to him that thus he might have a seed for God's service, if that pleased God. Abraham took this bondwoman Hagar, and she became the mother of a son named Ishmael. But Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman, was not the one chosen of Jehovah God to be the promised “seed of Abraham'’. Fifteen years later, when Abraham was a hundred and Sarah ninety years old, Jehovah's miraculous power worked through this aged pair to give them the son in whom the seed should be called, and which son was named Isaac. Isaac was the son of the freewoman, Sarah.
4 When he was weaned, Ishmael, the son of the Egyptian bondwoman, mocked and persecuted Isaac, and showed he was a bondservant to the Devil and not possessed of the faith of Abraham. Therefore, according to God's will and command, the bondwoman and her son were cast out or dismissed from Abraham's tents and let go whither they would, serving whom they chose. Abraham's son by the freewoman was to be the sole and undisputed heir of his father. Like his father he must be servant to none on this earth, but should stand fast in the freedom in which he was born. This he must do by exercising faith like his father Abraham's, accepting God's word, believing in its truth and keeping God’s commands.—Gen. 16:1-16; 21:1-21; 25:5-11.
ALLEGORY
5 These historical developments were recorded in God’s Word of truth because they serve as an allegory. That is to say, they were the acts of a great prophetic drama performed by living actors and shadowing forth greater things to come, things of great interest and importance today to those who desire to be free. To those who against their best interests desire to be under religion and its ceremonies and observances the apostle Paul writes: “Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. [The other covenant was that made with Abraham concerning the seed through whom all families of the earth should be blessed.] For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.” — Gal. 4: 21-26.
3 How did it come that Abraham had a son by a bondwoman and a son by the freewoman?
4 Why were Ishmael and his mother dismissed from Abraham's tents, and what must Isaac, as Abraham’s sole heir, properly do?
5 How were such things of history an allegory, and what, therefore, did the apostle Paul write to the Galatians who wanted to be under religion and its ceremonies?
6 The Jerusalem of Paul’s day was occupied by the Jews who were by birth “after the flesh” the descendants from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were “Jews by nature”. Jacob and his twelve sons went down into Egypt and there became a great people. Then, because they were the chosen people of Jehovah God, the Devil caused the Egyptians to hate, oppress and enslave them. God had not chosen his people to be slaves, to serve men, but to be unencumbered to serve the Most High God. He raised up Moses as their liberator. By the hand of Moses he led them forth out of the house of bondage and out of the furnace of iron, and destroyed their persecutors, the Egyptians. Thereby Jehovah made a name for himself and he made the Israelites or Jews to be his witnesses. He brought them to himself at Mount Sinai. There he inaugurated a covenant with them and gave them the law of the Ten Commandments and related ordinances and statutes. This law covenant was four hundred and thirty years after Jehovah’s covenant with Abraham concerning the seed of the promise. When God formed the nation of Israel under the law covenant, did that mean the promised seed could and would come only by their self-efforts in the flesh according to the law covenant? No! If not, why was it added to the covenant made with Abraham?
7 It was to keep the Israelites or Jews independent of all nations and clean and separate from all religion till the promised seed should arrive. Then they could join that one, just as they had followed Moses. (Gal. 3:19,24-29) Thus they would become Abraham’s seed indeed, not by reason of natural descent as “Jews by nature”, but by virtue of faith in Jehovah and in the Seed whom He brought forth. Having inlierited imperfection and sinful propensities and inclinations, they were disposed toward sin and its subtle form which is religion. Hence God warned them against being unequally yoked with religionists, because their nation could not exist free and at the same time be allied with religion’s slaves. God’s law said: “Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.” (Ex. 23:32,33; 34:12-16) “And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee. The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God.”—Deut. 7:16, 25.
6. How did the forefathers of Jerusalem's children come into bondage? how were they liberated, and what did God thereafter add to his covenant made with Abraham?
7. Why was this law covenant added to God’s covenant with Abraham? and what warnings against religion did it include, and why?
8 Time and again the nation of Israel forsook the law of Jehovah to indulge in religion, worshiping things made by creature hands and entering into treaties and alliances with the religionists round about them. God's law is the “law of liberty” from sin, religion and Devil. If the Israelites thought they were not free in being under the law to serve Jehovah God, then when they rebelled against his Theocratic law and rulership and attached themselves to religion, they always found it led them into sore bondage to the Devil and his demons and to his religious dupes and agents on earth. Without exception religion proved to be a snare to catch them into bondage. They came under great oppression. Repeatedly Jehovah God displayed himself as the God of freedom by liberating them from religion and religionists. He raised up to them deliverers, and in this role all of these pictured the coming seed of Abraham, the Seed of God’s “woman” who must bruise and crush the Serpent’s head.—Judg. 2:11-19, 3.
9 The last such deliverance from bondage to their enemies was after the seventy years of desolation of the city of Jerusalem and captivity in Babylon. Then freedom of worship in their own homeland was granted them, and King Cyrus permitted all those “whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem”. (Ezra 1:1-5) Thereafter Jerusalem and her people never again fell to the worship of idols and heathen gods. Nevertheless, Jerusalem and her children did not stand fast for freedom. She again came into bondage through the snare of religion. But how? you inquire. By departing from the truth of God’s written Word. She took up with the precepts of men and with human traditions of teachers who put their own and other men’s interpretations and philosophies above and before God’s Word and commandments. This blinded the Jews to the true sense of God’s Word and laws and led to the development of a clergy class among them, including scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and lawyers. Said Jesus to them: “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition! . . . Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. . . . But in vain they do worship [God], teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”—Matt. 15:1-9.
8. In the case of the Israelites, how was God's law demonstrated to be the “law of liberty”, and how did God display himself to be the God of freedom?
9. When was the last such deliverance from bondage, and yet how did the Jews again come into bondage through the snare of religion?
10Such form of worship came to be known as “the Jews’ religion”, or “Judaism”, and Saul of Tarsus said that “the most straitest sect of our religion" was to live as a Pharisee. He said further: “Ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: and profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.” — Acts 26: 5; Gal. 1:13, 14.
11Jerusalem and her children came into bondage, and that because of religion. Hence God’s law given to the Jews by Moses at Mount Sinai did not serve as a schoolmaster to lead the religionists to Christ Jesus. In the grand allegory of Abraham and his free wife and his bondwoman, that “friend of God" served as a prophetic figure of Jehovah God himself. His wife Sarah served as a picture of God’s "woman" that produces the “seed”, namely, God’s holy organization universal. The "seed of Abraham”, then, which is also the seed of God’s “woman”, is Christ Jesus. He is the Son of Jehovah God and is brought forth from the body of God’s universal organization. He has been separated unto God’s special purpose as Vindicator of His name and as King of the New World of freedom, the glorious Emancipator who brings 'deliverance to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound’. — Gal. 3: 16.
12The heavenly organization of God’s sons is free, because it is united to Jehovah God as the freewoman Sarah was to Abraham. The beloved Son of God, Christ Jesus, is free. He makes those free who accept him and hear the truth at his mouth and follow him. But religious Jerusalem and her children on earth did not become free. Jesus showed why, when he said to her: “0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” (Matt. 23:37,38) She and her children chose to stay in bondage to her religion at the temple house, and she rejected the Deliverer who would have made her free. It was to her religious children that Jesus said, “Ye are of your father the devil,” and the works of their father they did in killing Christ Jesus and in choosing the heathen Caesar as king. Forty years thereafter Jerusalem was wiped out by the armies of Caesar. The inducing cause and the whole responsibility therefor are to be assigned solely to religion!
10. What did such form of worship come to be called, and what was the straitest sect thereof?
11. (a) Why did God’s law covenant not serve to the Jewish religionists as a guide unto Christ? (b) In the grand allegory, whom did Abraham, Sarah, and her son, picture?
12. Why is God’s organization of sons free? and why did earthly Jerusalem and her children not become free?
13 Hundreds of years prior to that, when Jerusalem was faithful to Jehovah God and when his anointed king, David, reigned upon her Mount Zion, Jerusalem was a typical picture of God’s organization above. King David was a type prophetic of Jehovah’s anointed Son, Christ Jesus the King. One sabbath day Jesus preached in the synagogue at Nazareth and he read and applied to himself the prophecy of Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim glad tidings to the poor; he has sent me to publish a release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to dispense freedom to the oppressed; to proclaim an era of acceptance with the Lord.”—Luke 4: 18, 19, Diaglott reading.
14 Jesus exposed religion and declared the truth to the people concerning the kingdom of God to show them the way of release from religion, sin, and Devil. Those Jews who came to him in faith and became his disciples and continued in his word of truth were made free. They became free even from the law of Moses, which required of them perfection of righteousness. Such requirement they could not meet, and therefore the law showed them always their bondage to sin, imperfection and death. In due time Gentiles, or non-Jews, received the truth of Christ Jesus and accepted and believed in him as the Seed of God’s “woman”, the Seed of Abraham in whom all families of the earth should be blessed. These were likewise liberated from sin and its condemnation, and from bondage to the Devil, and from religion, which is demonism. Christ Jesus did not bring such Gentiles, or non-Jewish believers, into subjection to the law of Moses from Mount Sinai, for even the Jewish believers Jesus relieved of obligation to that law covenant of Sinai. To all such believers, whether Jew or Gentile, Christ Jesus opened the way to come to Jehovah God the Father. Jehovah begot them with his spirit, or invisible force of life, and they were adopted and made a part with Christ Jesus of the seed of Abraham. A remnant of such are on earth today.
MADE FREE FOR FREEDOM
15 To this day the religionists resent it when one breaks loose from religion and enters into the liberty of a true follower of Christ Jesus. They use craft and make sly efforts to entrap and bring the delivered one back again into bondage. In apostolic days the sticklers for the Jews’ religion sought to do that very thing. They induced some believers to be circumcised in the flesh and to “observe days, and months, and times, and years”, and to try to justify themselves through, works of the flesh according to Moses’ law rather than through faith in the perfect redemptive work of Christ Jesus the Liberator.—Gal. 1:16; 4:9,10; 5:2-6; 6:12,13.
13 Of whom were King David and the Jerusalem of his day types, and at Nazareth what prophecy did the antitypical David apply to himself?
14 (a) Why were Jesus’ Jewish disciples made free from Moses' law? and from what were the non-Jewish disciples made free? (b) How were all such made part of the “seed of Abraham”?
15 To this day what do religionists resent and attempt to Induce delivered ones to do, as in apostolic days?
16 Such reasoning and philosophizing upon the law of God through Moses is not according to Christ Jesus or his inspired apostles. It is not according to the great Spirit, Jehovah God. It is according to religion and its traditions of men, men who reject Jehovah as God, Christ Jesus as King, and Jehovah’s kingdom by Christ Jesus as the only means of emancipation for humankind. They desire rather to show what they can do in the flesh and what they can create by their own hands guided by religion. Such men are not children of a free organization, but of Satan’s organization of world oppression. With words fitly spoken, in his epistle to the Galatians, Paul cries out triumphantly to God’s adopted sons, who are part of the seed of Abraham with Christ Jesus the Greater Isaac: “But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a handmaid, but of the freewoman. For freedom did Christ set us free: stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.”—Gal. 4: 26, 28, 31; 5:1, Am. Rev. Ver.
17 Isaac of old was a witness of Jehovah. Christ Jesus, the Greater Isaac, by his faithful testimony concerning Jehovah and his kingdom, earned the shining title “The Faithful and True Witness”. (Rev. 3:14) Jehovah’s witnesses of today, who are the adopted and anointed sons of God, are the remnant of the body of Christ, the Greater Isaac and Seed of Abraham. They are children of the free organization, the heavenly Jerusalem; they are no part of this world which is in bondage to the “god of this world" and his religion and wickedness. Although in the world, they are not of it. (John 15:19; 17:14, 16) They advocate and belong to the Theocratic Government of the righteous New World, which world is at hand with freedoms such as men have never known for six thousand years. Not only are these free, but all persons of good-will who forsake religion, accept the truth, consecrate themselves to God, and become the companions of Jehovah’s witnesses, even all these “other sheep” of the Lord are equally free with them. Who has made them free, and for what purpose? “For freedom did Christ set us free!” Therefore to us the apostle’s exhortation is directed: “Stand fast therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage.” Being at the threshold of the New World, there is every inducement and reason to “stand fast”. None who are bondservants of the things opposed to God will enter into that new world. Only the free will enter through its gleaming portals.
16. (a) According to what ta such reasoning and philosophizing, and of what kind of organization are such ones children? (b) In contrast, what does the apostle Paul cry out to God’s adopted sons?
17. (a) In what capacity did Isaac and the Greater Isaac act, and how are suchlike ones today children of the free organization and so acting? (b) Who else are now free with them, for what were they made so, and why are they exhorted to stand fast therein?
YOKE OF BONDAGE
18 There should be no uncertainty as to what the “yoke of bondage” is. It is religion, which is demonism. At this crucial stage of world history Jehovah’s free people stand in a time of decision like that of the man and woman in Eden when confronted with the temptation of the Serpent the Devil. The New World of God’s building is before us. Inasmuch as the announcement of it has gone forth and continues to go to all the nations of the old world, the wily adversary and counterfeiter again tries to appear as an “angel of light”. He assures humankind that he wants to see men happy and all their burdens and fears lifted off them. Who does not know of the Nazi and Fascist political propaganda concerning a “new order founded on justice and morality"? And besides that: Not to be outdone by the dictators, other leading figures in the world come forward, and in all sincerity no doubt. To meet the crisis they come with plans for a postwar global organization in which, by liberal-minded arrangements, there are to be provided a fullness of earth's bounties for all; a strongly guarded peace; security in one's rights, privileges and property; ample room for self-expression and self-development; removal of ail grounds for fear; and the fullest toleration of every one in his own manner of worship. All these brilliant ideas of a new. finer and better world are to be realized if man will simply stretch forth his hands and create it according to the religious, political, commercial and social pattern drawn for him by world leaders; and all credit for the attainment of such transformed world is to be given to men, its creators. Man is at last to be justified, vindicated, by the “works of the flesh", the creation of his own hands.
19 No one questions the eminence and worldly wisdom of the men and women who endorse and push such programs for the man-made new world order. No one doubts, either, that Jehovah’s witnesses are hated and persecuted by all nations. Nonetheless, Jehovah’s witnesses can not and will not forego their right and obligation before God Almighty to proclaim The Theocratic Government and the world of righteousness which He will establish without any human assistance. They know that the worldly- wise proponents of an improved, re-made world are deceived by the “god of this world”, and are being used of him to turn the attention and desire of the human race away from Jehovah God's promised world to Satan’s disappointing substitute and counterfeit. It is merely a last, desperate effort of the Devil to maintain his domination of the world, and under him it can not and never will be a free world, any more than the world for millenniums past has been such.
18 What is the “yoke of bondage", and why are Jehovah’s free people in a time of decision now like that of man and woman in Eden?
19 Despite what circumstances, and why, will Jehovah’s witnesses not forego their right to proclaim God’s Kingdom and Righteous World?
20“Christendom” of 1943 was foreshadowed by unfaithful Jerusalem and her children. All of them, both mother and children, were in bondage to religion, and therefore rejected the real Deliverer and King in favor of Satan’s domination of the world by his visible agent, Caesar. So, too, “Christendom" has rejected the rightful King of the world and offers a gawdy, gilded makeshift which will never bring what its designers promise. Jehovah's witnesses are not deceived, because they are enlightened by God's Word and do not lean to the understanding of men. They appreciate it that they have been granted favorable decisions in the Supreme Court of the United States in behalf of their rights and liberties as Christians and ministers of God’s Word. They appreciate it that the High Court of Australia has exonerated Jehovah’s witnesses and ruled that they are not a “subversive” association and hence are not an “illegal organization” subject to being banned. Despite this, Jehovah’s witnesses know that these favorable facts do not guarantee their freedom for the postwar epoch, nor their security against worldwide persecution and encroachment. The Word of God has opened their eyes to see who are the real rulers of this old world and why, therefore, their fight is not with human creatures, or “with flesh and blood”.
21 The apostle Paul exposes who are the behind-the- scenes fighters against real liberty and against whom true Christians must stand. He says to them: “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil [the prince of the demons]. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:11,12, marginal reading) It is the invisible demon principalities, powers and world rulers who are dominating the earthly situation and all selfish moves made by men of this world. Therefore the proposed human order beyond this total war can not be free; not with wicked spirits higher than men maneuvering all the nations into opposition to Jehovah God and his Son’s righteous Government. Satan the prince of demons and all his wicked angels have been cast out of heaven and are now confined to the earth’s vicinity. They are in great wrath. They well know that shortly they face a final, showdown fight with the victorious organization of God and his King which fought and hurled them out of the heavens. Therefore they are bent on organizing a line-up of all humankind against God. This will hardly allow, no, not at all allow for any real liberty. All men who are not free from Satan's organization and who do not stand fast for freedom from it will be regimented onto the side of the enemy of Jehovah and the New World of righteousness.
20. How was “Christendom” of 1943 foreshadowed by unfaithful Jerusalem and her children’ and what legal decisions do Jehovah’s witnesses appreciate, but what do they nevertheless know and see?
21. Whom does the apostle Paul expose as the hidden fighters against real liberty, and why will this fact now not allow for any real future liberty for those not standing fast on God’s side?
22What if human totalitarian dictators were to be eliminated? Yet with the real and more powerful dictators still on top and men underneath and without the “full armour of God", what actual progress and what real gains for liberty will the leaders of mankind make? None. Therefore Jehovah’s witnesses and their companions know that in the revamped order after the present conflict for world domination they cannot relax their vigilance: more than ever they will have to stand firm for freedom. Mindful of the Scripture prophecies, they look for an association of nations to be formed which will constitute a supernational organization for world security, law and order. That will be higher than any present national government, and the nations in this association will be obliged to yield up some of the national sovereignty. But, let them build it as high as the tower of Babel, God’s Word yet stands true that only Jehovah God and Christ Jesus his reigning King are "the Higher Powers’’, to whom all Christian souls must be subject for conscience’ sake. By their covenant with the Most High Sovereign and his King they are obliged to “obey God rather than men ”.
23 Encroachments against Christian obedience to God’s law and against Christian proclamation of the truth will continue, because religion, which is demonism, will hold the world in its grip with a death clutch. Let freedom-lovers never drop their guard. Keep in mind the prophetic warning of Revelation, chapter 17, that the “great whore’’ of organized religion will prosecute her fornication with the rulers and merchants of the earth who cry, “What the world needs is more religion!’’ She still claims and she will gain a seat on top of the postwar “collective security” creature. As a result the “beast” and its “ten horns”, which receive power and give their strength unto the "beast” for “one hour”, will then “make war with the Lamb”, who is “Lord of lords and King of kings”. That means a final campaign of religious war against Jehovah’s witnesses and their companions who “follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”.
22 Though human-dictators should be eliminated in the postwar period, why will Jehovah’s people have to stand for freedom more than ever?
23 Why will encroachments against Christian obedience and service continue, and what does Revelation 17 show in warning thereof?
24 Jehovah’s witnesses are not unaware of how religion fights. At hand is a letter dated “Port of Fort Erie, Ontario, March 15, 1943”, and from “National Revenue, Canada”. It is addressed to the Watchtower Society, which was decreed by Royal Order in Council in 1940 to be an “illegal organization” in Canada, which Dominion professes to be a Christian nation and to hold the Word of God in high regard. The letter reads: “Gentlemen: I beg to advise that I have forwarded you via Railway Express Agency one package containing 7 Bibles which had been left at our office by various parties, as all Bibles published by your firm are prohibited entry into Canada. Yours truly, [signed] Collector of Customs and Excise.” Only organized religion could be responsible for such direct action against these Bibles, which are the authorized King James Version reproduced unchanged. Giving us further foregleams of what is in store for the truth in the postwar era is the Resolution adopted last May in the closing session of the Catholic Press Association of the United States convention in Toledo, Ohio; and which Resolution reads, in part: “We regret what seems to be a systematic and sustained attack upon the Catholic church on the part of certain periodical magazines in America. . . . The Catholic Press Association expresses its abhorrence of all attacks upon religion and the church, especially at this critical moment when collaboration of all moral and spiritual forces is imperatively necessary.” (Toledo Times, May 22, 1943)
25 A relentless effort will be made to bring conditions to where organized religion and her political and commercial consorts can cry “Peace and safety!” Not, of course, with reference to the servants of Jehovah and “men of good-will” toward his Kingdom. Regardless of the adverse oppressive action of men in high places of power now and in the future, Jehovah’s covenant people are guided by the inspired declaration: “For freedom did Christ set us free.” They will refuse to sacrifice this freedom to worship and praise the Lord God and his New World. To yield would mean to bow in bondage to Satan’s organization and to demonism, which is religion. It would mean becoming bondservants to the sin of rebellion against God and of treason against his universal domination. Christ Jesus, by his ransom sacrifice and by his truth revealed since coming to the temple in A.D. 1918, has made us free, but not that we might choose again the bondage of religion and of sin and thereby relapse back under the power of Satan and his demons and his doomed world. Jehovah God, by his Liberator Christ Jesus, made us free to remain so forever as the devoted people of the Most High.
24 What recent action by the Canadian Revenue Department shows how religion fights, and bow does the recent Catholic Press Association Resolution show what is yet in store for the truth?
25What effort toward security will the worldly elements make? and by what inspired declaration will Jehovah's people be guided, and why so without any relapse?
26 Not for a selfish purpose will the liberated ones “stand fast for freedom” and fight against being “entangled again with the yoke of bondage”. They must use their favored position to do lasting good to the people according to God's will and commandment. To them it is written: “Now, brethren, you were invited to Freedom; only take care lest this freedom become an occasion for the flesh; but through love be you subservient to each other. For the whole law is fully set forth in this single precept: 'Thou shait love thy neighbor as thyself.'" — Gal. 5:13,14, Diaglott reading.
27 The brethren will therefore hold fast their liberty in Christ, using it to show love for the Lord’s “other sheep” who have been scattered by organized religion’s shepherds. They will obey God’s commandment to go forth and carry the spiritual food to these starving sheep and show them the way of escape from religion and to the spiritual well-being and prosperity under Jehovah’s Theocratic organization. No time remains now to fight one another, to bite and devour one another in disunity; for that is a way to consume one another as the Devil, the Dragon, would have us do. Voluntarily we must sink all things of selfish concern and unite in the common cause against the enemy, doing so for the advancement of the Kingdom interests against the aggressions of demon-controlled men.—Gal. 5: 15.
29 It is not the time for us to try to please men of the world with our message. Says the apostle Paul: “Is it man's favour or God’s that I try to gain? Or am I seeking to please men? If I were still a manpleaser, I should not be Christ’s servant. I must tell you, brethren, that the gospel which I preach bears no human impress.” (Gal. 1: 10,11, Weymouth) Not according to this world and its works of the flesh will we walk, but we will walk after and according to the great Spirit Jehovah by keeping his law. We desire to be filled with his spirit; for it is written: “Uphold me with thy free spirit.” (Ps. 51:12) “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Cor. 3:17, Diaglott) Not for a moment will we yield room to false brethren, members of the “evil servant” class. They seek to spy out our liberty and then to devise subtle schemes and arguments to lead the unsuspecting and unaware back into bondage to dreams of perfecting character-development, respectability with the world, religious formalisms, man worship, and suchlike.—Gal. 2: 4, 5.
26 Will they “stand fast for freedom’’ selfishly, or for what purpose?
27. How will they use their fast-held liberty, and why is there no free time to fight one another?
28 (a) Why is it not the time to please worldly men with our message? (b) According to what or whom will we walk, and why never yield to false brethren for a moment?
29 We cannot go back into the world and fall in with its schemes of reforming the world and building it up for a long time to come; “for if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor,” said the apostle. (Gal. 2:18) Such would be the course of self-enslavement; whereas Christ Jesus did not deliver us for such a choice. “Be not ye the servants of men,” ye for whom Christ died. To maintain our standing in him we must keep up the fight for freedom; we must continue to obey the truth and to proclaim it to others, that the Lord’s “other sheep” may gain the liberation which it brings. In view of the certainty of further and increasing aggressions of the enemy who envy and begrudge Jehovah’s people their liberty in Christ, the best resistance is to steadily press the offensive against the forces of demonism, which is religion. Christ Jesus, our Leader, is not on the defensive, but is on the march to victory. The armies which are in heaven follow him, and his remnant on earth do likewise, whithersoever he leads.
30 The remnant, with their companions in arms, must keep up the offensive against demonism in these closing days of the Elisha work of the church of God in Christ Jesus. Remember the counsel of the prophet Elisha when on his deathbed, at which time the demon-worshiping Syrians were carrying on their aggressions against the nation of Israel. Under the pressure the king of Israel, the grandson of King Jehu, came down to the sick Elisha and wept over him. “And Elisha said unto him, Take bow and arrows.” The king did so. Then Elisha said: “Put thine hand upon the bow.” “And he put his hand upon it: and Elisha put his hands upon the king's hands.” Then Elisha had the king open the window eastward in the direction of Syria, the land of the enemy religionists. “Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And [Elisha] said, The arrow of the Lord’s [Jehovah’s] deliverance, and the arrow- of deliverance from Syria: for thou shalt smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed them. And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed. And [Elisha] the man of God was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.”—2 Ki. 13: 14-19.
29. Why cannot we fall in with the schemes to reform the world? and to maintain our stand what resistance is best, and why?
30. In what work is the church of God now engaged, and what was the Instruction and conduct of Elisha on his deathbed to the king of Israel?
31 Unlike the king of Israel, let Jehovah’s representatives on earth of His kingdom not stay the offensive nor slack the hand. Clad in the full armor of God, they will in the remaining action of the Elisha work carry on the offensive against demonism without letup. Let them take the arrowshaft of Theocratic truth and shoot against the land of demonism; it is “the arrow of Jehovah’s deliverance!”. So take the arrows of truth, and bundle them together into a strong, unbreakable, invincible union of truth. Then smite the earth, or visible part of demonism, therewith, not once, nor twice, nor thrice, but as with a continuing smiting until Almighty God puts it into the mind of the “beast” and its “ten horns” to rid themselves of the ‘great harlot’. Then, to complete matters, the conquering King of kings and Lord of lords will destroy every last escaping one of organized religion. Thereafter, when religion’s estranged allies turn upon Jehovah’s covenant people and seek to kill them off, the King will also destroy the “beast” and its “ten horns”.
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