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Contents
Supreme Court Reverses Itself to
The Limited, Balanced, Government of the U. S. A. '
“Thy Word Is Truth” '
Hitler, the Slave-Driver, and His “God”
The Mimic God Is Back of Hitler
Doorstep Setup Presentation of “Good News” 26
Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”
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Still There Is Tolerance in Places
♦ Editor, News-Press: Concerning the recent controversy in which four children were expelled from school because of their religious differences, I might say that there are still those of us in the good old U.S.A, who still believe tolerance is an essential factor in holding together democracy.
Naturally, preceding every conflict, we find flag-waving, soapbox orators, bands playing stirring inarches, etc. People who ordinarily are sensible individuals are found to be swayed by propaganda. They forget the principles upon which democracy was founded. Political and religious ideas that are different from their own become dark and foreboding in their minds. Thus we find such an example in this case of the Jehovah’s witnesses. Perhaps some of us do not understand their beliefs. But does that entitle us to thrust them out of our society? If we believe in the Almighty ourselves, we should not disregard His teachings of tolerance.
A love of God and a love of our country is not measured by the amount of flag-. waving we participate in, nor how much of a hypocrite we can be, but rather is measured by how well we treat our fellow man. Although I believe most heartily in saluting the flag, there is no reason for anyone to be compelled to do so. This only defeats the purpose that “Old Glory" stands for. Let us remember that from those who put patriotism above all else come our Fascists and Communists, and not from those who put [God] first in their minds.—Herb Fred-lund, in the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press. ''.
Those who chisel away the guaranties of the constitutional rights undermine their own, liberties—Selected.
He whodmows only his own side of the case knows little of that.—John Stuart Mill.
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“And in His name shall the nations hope.”—Matthew 12:21, A.R.V.
Volume XXIV Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, June 9, 1943 Number 619
Supreme Court Reverses Itself to Sustain Free Worship
AS MILITARY battles rage on distant shores, the fight for liberty on the home front continues unabated. A signal victory, after long battle, was won on this vital front when the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision upholding the most precious of all freedoms—the right to worship God according to the dictates of your own conscience. To do so it was necessary for the court to take the rare action of reversing itself. On June 8,, 1942, the court ruled that cities could rightfully tax the distribution of religious literature. Approximately eleven months later, on May 3, 1943, the high court vacated that erroneous decision and restored to its high, constitutional plane the liberty to worship God freely. That day will go down in history as one of triumph for constitutional rights.
This timely victory was made possible by the unflagging zeal and integrity of Jehovah’s witnesses, who, though an unpopular minority, are the foremost sentinels of freedom on the home front. When ruled against a year ago they did not give up the fight. Man-made laws that conflict with God’s law are not obeyed by them, for God’s law is perfect and right, and obedience thereto results in harm to no one. They believe, in such eases, as did the apostles, "We ought to obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) Their steadfastness, despite fierce persecution, to that divinely given instruction made possible the revival of the licensetax issue in the Supreme Court and the subsequent victory of May 3. The right-JUNE9, 1943
ness of that Godly principle to which they strictly adhered regardless of the erroneous judgment of men has now been vindicated before all by the high court’s reversal and pushing back of encroachments against freedom. The death of the pernicious license tax on freedom to worship the Almighty is a God-given victory for His witnesses. All freedomlovers will reap its benefits.
Judgments Reversed
Eleven cases involving this issue were before the Supreme Court: the three original ones from Arkansas, Arizona and Alabama, which were up for rehearing, and eight new ones from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Chief Justice Stone handed down the decision on the three wherein the court reversed itself, and assigned the reason therefor as being the same as that expressed in the court’s opinion killing the Pennsylvania ordinances. Justice Douglas wrote that 5-4 majority opinion of the court, and said, in part:
The hand distribution of religious tracts is an age-old form of missionary evangelism —as old as the history of printing presses. . . . It is more than preaching; it is more than distribution of religious literature. It is a combination of both. Its purpose is as evangelical as the revival meeting. This form of religious activity occupies the same high estate under the First Amendment as do the worship in the churches and preaching from the pulpits. It has the same claim to protection as the more orthodox and conventional exercises of religion. It also has the same claim
as the others to the guarantees of freedom, of speech and freedom of the press. . . . The way of the religious dissenter has long been hard. But if the formula of this type of ordinance is approved, a new device for the suppression of religious minorities will have been found. This method of disseminating religious tfeliefs ean be crushed and closed out by the sfceer weight of the toll or tribute which is exacted town by town, village by village. The spread of religious ideas through personal visitations by the literature ministry of numerous religious groups would be stopped. . . . The judgment in Jones v. Opelika [the Alabama license-tax case] has this day been: vacated. Freed from that controlling precedent, we can restore to their high, constitutional position the liberties of itinerant evangelists who disseminate their religious beliefs and the tenets of their faith through distribution of literature. The judgments are reversed.
This straightforward and unbiased reasoning can be clearly understood by every American, and it has his approval. In sharp contrast thereto are the virulent and bitterly phrased dissenting opinion's of Justices Reed, Frankfurter and Jackson. Their reasoning is vague, their expounding of the constitutional principles involved is unsound, and the arguments they advance betray religious prejudice and discrimination against petitioners.
The Worship That Is Free
Justice Reed, the writer of the court’s erroneous opinion of 1.942, which is now reversed, dissents, and once more the outstanding characteristic of his argument is “words, words, words”. The substance thereof is found in his statement, ’ “The simple answer is that if there had been any purpose of Congress to prohibit any kind of taxes on the press its knowledge of the abominated English taxes would have led it to ban them , unequivocally.” In other words, he argues ' that if taxes were to be banned they would have been specifically named in the First Amendment, and, not being named, the court therefore may not hold them to be burdensome and an abridgment of freedom. He would require the amendment to definitely name every danger, and hence his reasoning becomes more absurd than ever. The phraseology of the amendment is sweeping and all-inclusive in its prohibitions against abridgment of these freedoms and was intended to have construction broad and general in scope placed upon its words Riat protection from any and all unforeseen, future dangers might be assured.
Justice Reed’s personal and arbitrary definition of what constitutes the religion to be protected by the amendment is as follows: “The rites which are protected by the First Amendment are in essence spiritual—prayer, mass, sermons, sacrament—not sales of religious goods.” Prayer, including the repetitious mumbling of them over beads, that Jesus condemned (Matthew 6:7), mass, high or low depending upon the sum of money paid, sermons, oral ones from a pulpit, and sacrament, including the drinking of wine by only a priest and eating of wafers by the laity, these “spiritual” things are what Mr. Reed would have the amendment protect, and not the house-to-house preaching of the gospel as was done by Christ Jesus and His apostles. In contending that the distribution of printed sermons does not come under constitutional protection, he would overrule the worship of God in spirit and in truth by Christians by their obedience to Christ’s command, at Mark 13:10: “The gospel must first be published among all nations.” In thus setting up his own definition of what constitutes religious worship Justice Reed intrudes himself upon the individual’s conscience. Following the standards he sets up for ministers would be disastrous to Jehovah’s witnesses, for those standards are not nearly high enough to meet the righteous requirements of Jehovah God.
Freedom for a Price
Justice Frankfurter dissents in typical professor-of-scienee fashion and walks
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a mental “tightrope” that no one can follow without "becoming unbalanced. He. can see no difference in the dissemination of printed matter from selling goods, wares and merchandise. In his opinion he stated; “It cannot be said that the petitioners are constitutionally exempt from taxation merely because they may be engaged in religious activities or because such activities may constitute an exercise of a constitutional right.” In other words, he held that one could properly be forced to pay for the inalienable right of freedom to worship, and if not able to pay that right must be surrendered. The incomprehensible argument of Frankfurter was that if “recognized” clergymen paid income taxes or taxes on their cars and telephones, then Jehovah’s witnesses should pay to distribute printed sermons. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion strikes down this insipidity by the common-sense statement: “It is one thing to impose a tax on the income or property of a preacher. It is quite another thing to exact a tax from him for the privilege of delivering a sermon. . . . The power to tax the exercise of a privilege is the power to control or suppress its enjoyment.”
Mr. Frankfurter takes the attitude that the rights under the Constitution are granted bythe government, and that the state has “given something for which it can ask a return”. He says, in effect, that if the state can grant a right, the state can also tax it. This is an amazing ideology brought forward by Mr. Frankfurter. Schoolboys know that the right to freely worship God in accord with one’s conscience is an inalienable and inherent right, granted by Jehovah God, and that the government was created to protect and guarantee its free exercise. Furthermore, the forefathers did not intend that the government be supported by the taxation of the privileges safeguarded by the Bill of Bights. To sustain such a tax is like shackling these cherished freedoms and abandoning them in
JUNES, 1943 .
the path of the totalitarian monstrosity.
Jackson’s Sermon
The dissenting opinion of Justice Jackson could not be distributed in the heretofore “license tax” towns without paying $1.5.0 per day to do so, for it was a printed “sermon” on religion. His “text” was a new, strange, fantastic doctrine, namely, the “right to be let alone”. He contends this “freedom” is equally as sacred as the freedom to preach. Like the proverbial ostrich, he wants to keep his head in the sand. Jesus told His followers to ’let them alone”, meaning the religious “goats”, but the “sheep” do not wish to be “let alone” by God’s ministers. It is necessary to call on all persons to determine who are the “sheep” and who are the goatish ones. The “goats” would phss laws to cause the “other sheep” of the Lord to be let alone’ without proper spiritual food and force them to feed on religious husks. This is ‘framing mischief by law’ and ‘fighting against God’.—Matthew 15:14; John 10:16, 26-29; Psalm 94:20; Acts 5:38, 39.
Mr. Jackson crusaded in the field of private religious opinion and betrayed much religious prejudice and discrimination against Jehovah’s witnesses. He complained of the orderly and systematic manner in which the witnesses worked, and their going “by twos and threes”, just as Christ Jesus sent out His apostles. (Mark 6:7) He was greatly disturbed by the message itself, and the resulting expose of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. He quotes at length from the phonograph recording “Snare and Racket” and the books Religion and Enemies to show how the poor Hierarchy monster is “abused” by having the truth told about it. As these excerpts were read many in the packed court chambers smiled and nodded in agreement with the message read. Obviously the statements fitted the pestilential and political Hierarchy. Jackson would protect this “sacred cow” that drove the founding fathers to this country to escape its totalitarian besti-
5
ality. He then shows discrimination in its baldest form, stating: “To put them [Jehovah’s witnesses and their activity] on the same constitutional plane [with 'recognized’ churches] seems to me to have a dangerous tendency towards discrediting religious freedom.”
, If the courts are permitted to say that a particular practice is not religious, nor an act of worship, because it does not harmonize with the orthodox religions, then that would be a permanent limitation upon free worship. The court is supposed to be neutral in the field of _ religious doctrines and tenets of faith.
He frets because the Watchtower Society offers no balance sheet of financial matters to prove it is charitable. The fact that handsomely bound books of 384 pages are left with the people on a maximum contribution, not a minimum price, of 25c, to partially defray publishing and distributing costs, and that annually millions of copies of books and-booklets are given free, does not prove to Justice Jackson its charitable nature. "Doubtless he is convinced, without seeing a balance sheet of the fabulously wealthy Roman Catholic Hierarchy, that the sale of “blessed” medals and other trinkets turned out in mass production for a fraction of a cent to a few cents at most, and then .these images sold for a sum of dollars under false representations of “spiritual” benefits, is not commercialism, but beautiful “charity”. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that the setting of a price on literature does not disqualify it for inclusion under the freedom of speech and of press clauses of the Constitution. It is a ridiculous stalemate to hold that one must “go bankrupt” by forced “free” A distribution to enjoy constitutional rights.
Mr. Jackson states: “The First Amendment grew out of an experience which taught that society cannot trust the conscience of a majority to keep its religious zeal within the limits that a free society can tolerate.” He infers that the Witnesses, by exercising the right of freedom of worship, do not keep their zeal within the limits that a “free” society can tolerate. His inference misconstrues the purpose of the First Amendment and would defeat the object of the amendment. The ones who made it had fresh in mind the suppression and physical tortures and restrictions placed by the majority Hierarchy on helpless minorities that would not bow to the pope’s autocratic rule. It was this Hierarchy “religious zeal” as evidenced by the Inquisition that was to be limited and forbidden if a free society were to exist. Jehovah’s witnesses do not deny others their rights, but favor freedom of speech and worship for all. It would be incongruous to call any other kind of society a “free” one. The victories relating to civil liberties won by Jehovah’s witnesses are equally beneficial to all. Mr. Justice Jackson opposes obedience to God and the witnesses’ fight for freedom, saying that the Watchtower publications advocate “obedience to the law of God instead of the law of man, and an interpretation of the law of God as they see it”. How else should. they believe in a country where democratic principles still hold and there is freedom of worship? As lie, sees it’? or as the Roman Catholic Hier-* archy 'sees it’? If Jehovah’s witnesses had not continued obeying God’s law to preach, but rather closed down because of the prohibitive unrighteous licensetax law made by man, as sustained by the Supreme Court a year ago (1942), this latest victory for freedom would never have been won.
Nature of Message Irrelevant
The clear-visioned decision of the court, written by Justice Douglas, strikes down completely the unsound doctrine of Justice Jackson as to the message contained in the literature, and the objection that it was “sold” as raised by all the dissenters.
The mere fact that the religious literature is “sold” by itinerant preachers rather than
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“donated” does not transform evangelism into a commercial enterprise. If it did, then the passing of the collection plate in church would make the church service a commercial project. The constitutional rights of those spreading their religious beliefs through the spoken and printed word are not to be gauged by standards governing retailers or wholesalers of books. The right to use the press for expressing one's view's is not to be measured by the protection afforded commercial handbills. It should be remembered that the pamphlets of Thomas Paine were not distributed free of charge. It is plain that a religious organization needs funds to remain a going concern. But an itinerant evangelist, however misguided or intolerant he may be, does not become a mere book agent by selling the Bible or religious tracts to help defray his expenses or to sustain him. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion arc available to all, not merely to those who can pay their own way. ... ■
Considerable emphasis is placed on the kind of literature which petitioners were dis-tributing—its provocative, abusive, and ill-mannered character and the assault which it makes on our established churches and the cherished faiths of many of us. . . . But those considerations are no justification for the license tax which the ordinance imposes. Plainly a community may not suppress, or the state tax, the dissemination of views because they are unpopular, annoying or distasteful. If that device were ever sanctioned, there would have been forged a ready instrument for the suppression of the faith which any minority cherishes but which does not happen to be in favor. That would be a complete repudiation of the Bill of Rights.
Doorbells to Be Used
This victory in eleven cases involving the license tax was not the only one on May 3. A twelfth case, in which Jehovah’s witnesses also figured, was decided in favor of liberty. The city of Struthers, Ohio, had an ordinance that*made it unlawful to ring a doorbell or knock on doors by persons distributing literature. Appellant, one of Jehovah’s witnesses, contended that the law abridged freedom of worship as applied against the distribution of Bible literature, and that on its face and as applied it destroyed free speech and press by denying the right of distribution from house to house. According to this law a minister could not call at a home and knock to leave literature with one of his church members ; the postman could not ring the doorbell to leave printed matter he thought should be delivered direct to the householder.
The same division of justices existed in the disposition of this case as in those involving the license tax: Justices Stone, Murphy, Douglas, Black and Rutledge Jr. forming the majority which killed the unconstitutional ordinance; Reed, Roberts, Frankfurter and Jackson making up the dissenter ranks. Justice Black wrote the opinion of the court. In that decision the following logic was presented :
For centuries it has been a common practice in this and other countries for persons not specifically invited to go from home to home and knock on doors or ring doorbells to communicate ideas to the occupants or to invite them to political, religious, or other kinds of public meetings. Whether such visiting shall be permitted has in general been deemed to depend upon the will of the individual master of each household, and not upon the determination of the community. In the instant case, the City of Struthers, Ohio, has attempted to make this decision for all its inhabitants. ...
We are faced in the instant ease with the necessity of weighing the conflicting interests Of the appellant in the civil rights she claims, as well as the right of the individual householder to determine whether he is willing to receive her message, against the interest of the community which by this ordinance offers to protect the interests of all of its citizens, whether particular citizens want that protection or not. The ordinance does not control anything but the distribution of literature, and in that respect it substitutes the judg-
ment of the community for the judgment of the individual householder. It submits the distributer to criminal punishment for annoying the person on whom he calls, even though the > recipient of the literature distributed is in fact glad to receive it. . . .
The federal government, in its current war * bond selling campaign, encourages groups of * citizens to distribute advertisements and circulars from house to house. Of course, as every person acquainted with political life knows, door to door campaigning is one of the most accepted techniques of seeking popular support, while the circulation of nomination papers would be greatly handicapped if they could not be taken to the citizens in their homes. . . .
Freedom to distribute information to every citizen wherever he desires to receive it is so clearly vital to the preservation of a free society that, putting aside reasonable police and health regulations of time and manner of distribution, it must be fully preserved.
Modern-Day Gamaliel
As shown by this cogent argument, such a law allows the municipal officials to set up their rule as a total state, to control the minds of the people by saying who may and who may not call on its citizens and disseminate opinion. Justice Murphy, in a splendid concurring opinion, reminds one of the wise Gamaliel of apostolic times. (Acts 5: 29-40) He stated: '
I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one’s religious convictions. The right extends to the aggressive and disputatious as well as to the meek and acquiescent. The lesson of experience is that —with the passage of time and the interchange of ideas—-organizations, once turbulent, perfervid and intolerant in their origin, mellow into tolerance and acceptance by the community, or else sink into oblivion. . . . ‘If a religious belief has substance, it can survive criticism, heated and abusive though it may be, with the aid of truth and reason alone. By the same method those, who follow false prophets are exposed. Repression has no place in this country. It is our proud achievement to have demonstrated that unity and strength are best accomplished, not by enforced orthodoxy of views, but by diversity of opinion through the fullest possible measure of freedom of conscience and thought. . . .
The primary concern is with the act -of canvassing as a source of inconvenience and annoyance to householders. But if the city can prohibit canvassing for the purpose of distributing religious pamphlets, it can also outlaw the door to door solicitations of religious charities. . . . Freedom of religion has a higher dignity under the Constitution than municipal or personal convenience. In these days free men have no loftier responsibility than the preservation of that freedom. A nation dedicated to that ideal will not suffer but will prosper in its observance.
Constitution Outmoded?
All the dissenters start out with professions of the need for freedom and the necessity to guard against abridgment thereof, and then proceed to laboriously pick their way through a vague line of reasoning to justify their abridgment of those freedoms in the case at bar. Americans find it impossible to follow. Mr. Justice Frankfurter dissented by saying in effect that the Constitution is an antiquated document and needed to he revamped by the modern-day construction and .understanding of things as viewed by him. He said:
The habits and security of life in sparsely settled rural communities, or even in those few cities which a hundred and fifty years ago had a population of a few thousand, cannot be made the basis of judgment for determining the area of allowable self-protection by present-day industrial communities. The lack of privacy and the hazards to peace of mind and body caused by people living not in individual houses but crowded together in large human beehives, as they so widely do, are facts of modern living which cannot be ignored. ’
Justice Reed fell into the same snare of reasoning, saying, “Changing condi-CONSOLATION
tions have begotten modification by law • of many practices once deemed a part of the individual’s liberty.” In this dis-sent Reed was joined by Jackson and Roberts. They all must feel the Constitution to be out of date. Reed speaks of this unconstitutional ordinance of the city of Struthers as a “trivial police regulation”. A violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions cannot be regarded as of trivial consequence. Each case of denial of rights to an individual or to a small minority may seem to be relatively unimportant, but the real fighters for liberty know that callousness and disregard for the rights of such minorities is merely the opening wedge that will eventually split wide open the defense of cherished freedoms and lead to their complete destruction unless checked at the very outset, trivial though that beginning may seem to be.
Let the people of this nation consider the profound expression made by Mr, Justice Sutherland, dissenting, in Associated Press v. N.L.R.B., 301 U.S. 103, 141: “Do the people of this land—in the providence of God, favored, as they sometimes boast, above all others in the plenitude of their liberties—desire to preserve those so carefully protected by the First Amendment: liberty of religious worship ... ? If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it 'was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.” Jehovah’s witnesses may be an unpopular minority; the Lord’s servants always have been. But remember, if you permit and wink at the building of legal “gallows” for i the ‘stringing up’ of Jehovah’s witnesses, in the end you will find yourselves swinging from that very scaffold. It has happened before.—Esther 7: 9,10.
Public Reaction
In these decisions, disposing of eleven JUNE 9,1843 cases involving either the issue of license fax or of anti-doorbell ringing, the Supreme Court was sharply divided, and, from the tenor of the dissenting opinions, debate must have been very heated. Not so, however, was public reaction, as reflected in the press. In 1942 the press was almost unanimous in its condemna- . tion of the court decision authorizing a license tax on literature; now it is unanimous In acclaiming the reversal of that pernicious “stamp tax”. The four dissenters stand alone in their favoring of constitutional liberties for a price. You will read with interest the following editorial comments made in variouh papers from widely separated parts of the country. It is a representative crosssection of the nation’s reaction.
The New York Times, May 4:
It is a gross understatement to say that Jehovah’s witnesses are not popular in this country. Their beliefs are their own concern, but their methods of urging them upon other people are annoying. Almost everywhere they have gone they have stirred up antagonism. Hence the local ordinances intended to drive them out or at least discourage them. But their case is just another illustration of the old truism that moderate and popular groups seldom have to fight for free speech. It is always the extremists who get themselves kicked around and raise the issue. Yet if we permit extremists of an unpleasant sort to be deprived of their rights it is hard to tell where the line can be drawn and who is to be deemed secure. We think the rights of all Americans are a little safer because Jehovah’s witnesses have had their second day in court.
The Washington Post, May 5:
The question of whether the guarantees of religious freedom embodied in the First Amendment—and, incidentally, incorporated into our war aims—are absolute or limited has been raised several times within the past few years by the behavior of members of the sect called Jehovah’s witnesses. Both the tenets and the evangelical practices of the Witnesses are distinctly unpopular with many
Americans in many sections of the country. The question, however, is not whether the Witnesses have invited persecution but whether religious liberty can be said to exist where the suppression of any sect, however fanatical, is given a legal sanction. . . . Last Mondays ■. action by the Court is of tremendous historical ^importance. It riot only reaffirms the traditional American concept of the relationship of church and state but it is counter to the tendency of all modern states to extend their control over all human activity, physical and spiritual.
New York World-Telegram, May 7
We welcome this reversal. Religious tolerance means nothing if it is limited to popular doctrines. The sincerity with which we fight for freedom is tested by our willingness to extend to those with whom we disagree, and whose teachings we may even detest, the same rights we claim for ourselves.
The Baltimore Sun, May 4:
The almost chaotic state which has characterized the law on the civil liberties of certain aggressively evangelistic religious groups like Jehovah’s witnesses is illustrated by two decisions of the Supreme Court yesterday. Happily, these decisions in themselves go far to restore order in this field and on a basis which will appeal to laymen interested in the widest maintenance of religious freedom. . . . Certainly these are times in which religious liberty must be granted every protection fairly suggested in the Constitution.
The Kansas City Star, May 4:
This seems a sensible view, entirely in accord With American tradition. Probably the vast majority of Americans do not agree with several of the fundamental tenets of the faith to which the Jehovah’s witnesses subscribe. Moreover, their method of propagating that faith may at times annoy a good many of us. But the Constitution is clear. Neither Congress nor any other legislative body may enact a law “respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. These local ordinances did so by subterfuge. If they were allowed to stand, a precedent would have been set equally applicable in the future to other churches and other faiths.
Samuel Grafton, writing in the Philadelphia Record, May 5:
Last year the Court ruled that Fort Smith, Ark. (and other communities), had the right to impose a tax on the sale of pamphlets. The tax in Fort Smith happened to be $10, which meant that if you had only $9.99 to spend you did not have the right of free press, but that if you had one penny more, the Constitution would be allowed to protect you.
That decision (with Mr. Justice Frankfurter, shockingly, on the majority side) would have allowed each local community to set up a kind of juridical Sears, Roebuck catalogue, so much money needed to enjoy free press, so many dollars for free speech, and so on. The doctrine would have had the Constitution reserve its favors for those with the price, a very immoral thing.
Now there has been a reversal. (With Mr. Frankfurter still on the wrong side.) It makes me proud of my profession to note that the American Newspaper Publishers Association, practically every member of which has $10, nonetheless joined in fighting this curious concept, that you have the right of free press so long as you are sound asleep in bed, but if you want to get up and use the right, it will cost you money. The implications of the reversal are vast. Isn’t the poll-tax the same kind of business, a local fee set gn the exercise of a basic right 1 So we had this sudden, liberal turn this week.
St. Louis Star-Times, May 4:
When the constitutional history of the present era is written, not the least important chapter may tell how, despite the strains and stresses of war, the people’s civil liberties were saved, and in that chapter this second Opelika decision may be deemed a decisive turning point. ... It [the license tax] was the very antithesis of the great doctrine of the late Justice Holmes—“freedom for the thought you hate.” . . . The propaganda scattered by Jehovah’s witnesses is, as all justices have agreed, frequently ‘provocative, abusive and ill-tempered.’ We are at wax, when emotions run high and tensions are severe. It is in such a situation that our constitutional liberties often are subject to
strain—but it is just such a situation whicjj they are designed to meet. That is the whole meaning of the right of minorities to freedom from majority suppression. . . . The reversal of the high court’s 1942 judgment is a notable victory for the people’s bill of rights.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5:
The first two of President Roosevelt’s four freedoms—-freedom of speech and freedom of religion—have been stanchly bulwarked in the United States by the Supreme Court in the reversal of its sorely mistaken Opelika decision of last June 8 [1942], . . . The plain fact is that .this reversal is made possible only by the substitution of the Rutledge vote for religious freedom in the place of the Byrnes vote against it. The lineup is still 5 to 4. Justices Roberts, Reed, Frankfurter and Jackson stand where they stood last year. Justice Rutledge has tipped the scales on the side of the cherished freedoms of the Bill of Rights. In his first few weeks on the court, the former dean of the Washington University Law School has enabled the final tribunal to clear its conscience and to make judicial history. . . . The country can only regret that, having become established in nationally recognized error,. Justices Roberts, Reed, Frankfurter and Jackson are unchangeable. . . , Be that as it may, Opelika is vacated after a life of less than eleven months. May this striking record shine out as a warning signal if the Supreme Court is again tempted to whittle away the Bill ■of Rights.
The Chicago Sun, May 6:
The majority position is simple. It is that a tax laid upon the exercise of a right restrains the right and can be used to destroy it; also that the religious activities of Jehovah’s witnesses do not lose constitutional protection merely because they are unusual and, to many, distasteful.
Indeed, the guarantee of religious freedom in its origin was partially intended to protect certain unpopular minorities of the 18th century, including the Methodists and Baptists, who certainly are not unpopular today. It is the most elementary principle of liberty JUNES, 1943 ' that the rights of all are most surely lost when taken away from an unpopular minority. These latest decisions of the Supreme Court are therefore ground for rejoicing by all believers in liberty, however repugnant certain ideas of minority groups may be to them.
The Arizona Daily Star, May 7:
Just because some activity is bothersome to some people is no reason why it can be forbidden or taxed out of existence. Part of the price of freedom constitutes what many of us consider annoyances or nuisances. What we must learn as a principle of government is to tolerate such nuisances rather than establish legal precedents wrhich can at a later time be used to curb the freedom we expect for ourselves. . . . Indeed, if the views of those so-called ‘liberal” justices, Frankfurter, Reed, Jackson and Roberts, had been upheld, municipalities would have had nearly the same power to restrict religious liberty that the officials of Palestine had back in the days of Christ. Christ, it might be remembered, was quite a nuisance to some of the people of His time.
The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, May 5:
By a 5 to 4 decision which, in our opinion, deserved to be unanimous, the United States Supreme Court Monday vacated its 5 to 4 decision of June 8, 1-942, which upheld three municipal ordinances under which the taxing power was used to obstruct or lay heavy burdens on the distribution of religious literature by the Jehovah’s witnesses sect. . . . The Virginian-Pilot, which regarded this whole series of restrictive Supreme Court decisions, since and including the Gobitis decision [compulsory flag saluting], as they are now regarded by [he Court which is reversing them one by one, welcomes this return to the principles of the Bill of Rights. The decisions now in the process of accelerated junking encouraged an obnoxious authoritarian effort to arm the ruling majority with the power to trespass on minority rights of religious self-determination. When the Court vacates the Gobitis decision—a reversal now clearly foreshadowed—we shall be back on the soljd ground of the Bill of Rights after spending three'unpleasant years in a wilder-
ness of our own legislative and judicial making. ' .
Frauds magazine, La Crescenta, Calif., under the very fair headlines "Jehovah’s 'witnesses Win Freedom for You”, states:
Say what you will about the followers of . Jehovah’s witnesses, but individually and * collectively they have done more for freedom of the press and freedom of worship than any other group. They have been beaten, robbed, attacked, framed, and jailed in hundreds of cities. They have undergone the same treatment that the Nazis render to the Jews. Yet these religions fanatics, stalwarts or whatever you wish to call them have caused the If. S. Supreme Court to finally decide that America shall have free speech, free religion, and free press, regardless of narrow, bigoted, flag-waving and religious nuts of other sects. And the "fanatics” among other sects (Catholics, Protestants, Jews) are more guilty of movements to destroy the things for which the nation is fighting. If you are an honest individual you’ll salute the true Jehovah witness for obtaining guarantees for three of the four freedoms—and they obtained these freedoms by fighting!
It is truly heart-warming to Jehovah’s faithful servants to see that at least one publication has the fairness and honesty and courage to express its appreciation for the liberties .won by Jehovah’s witnesses to the benefit of all. Most papers, while agreeing with the rightness of the decision, make it a special point to disclaim any sympathy toward the Witnesses, and never express appreciation of the fight they wage, fearing what others may think of them. This last write-up, from Frauds magazine, is as a refreshing cup of cold water to Christ’s followers in the heat of battle, for, be it known, the fight for liberty on the home front must continue on. During the month of April Jehovah’s witnesses began a distribution of upward of 12,000,000 booklets entitled Fighting for Liberty on the Home Front. The pamphlet details the battle being waged for freedom by Jehovah’s witnesses. It recounts victories won. Now, one month later, new triumphs are added to the list, and this only after a long and hard uphill fight. The faithful witnesses in the ‘ field who call at your door are the ones that made possible the raising of these issues in the high court, and their God Jehovah gave them the victory in reward for their integrity and steadfastness in His service under enemy fire.
Precarious State of Liberty
Befleet, the decision was 5-4. Just one man could have turned victory into defeat, and lost religious freedom for the entire nation. This should rouse everyone to the sinister peril hovering over democracy right here on the home front. The fight must be pushed with unrelenting vigilance. On this very point the Chicago Daily Tribune, May 5, expresses its deep concern:
The court upheld this and like holdings by a five to four vote. The narrow margin is a matter for apprehension. The case of the Jehovah’s witnesses was a hard one for local authorities to meet. The sect is a cantankerous one whose members, in promulgation of their own beliefs, have indulged in vicious attacks on other groups of Christians. With laymen who passed local ordinances these circumstances, no doubt, bore weight, but their extraneous character should have been apparent to judges trained in the law and familiar with the necessity of protecting minorities, even tho they be unpopular. It is not comforting to find so close a vote on such vital questions of liberty in a court seven of whose nine members have been the appointees and the expounders of the philosophy of an administration that pretends to make human liberty its first concern.
Informed persons who have followed the history of the persecutions of Jehovah’s witnesses are aware of the fact that their enemies who engineer such persecution are also "home-grown” enemies of the Bill of Bights. Those persecutors are the enemies of every person who cherishes liberty. While mechanized armies lock in deadly battle to determine if these liberties stand or fall, there continues to be a persistent internal aggression against the four freedoms on the home front. Whether the prosecutors of such internal sabotage realize it or not, they are blindly attempting, to “pull the house down” upon Jehovah’s witnesses, in utter disregard of the fact that in so doing they are destroying the whole structure of democracy. Justice Brandeis very aptly states: “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding.”
This nation claims to be Christian. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Corinthians 3:17) Let the physical facts prove the claim true. The people should rally and safeguard their liberties. The judges of courts should deal wisely with Jehovah’s witnesses, and .stand firm for freedom. (Psalm 2:10-12) As for Jehovah’s people, they will continue to ‘stand fast in the liberty to freely worship that Christ has given, and not be entangled with the yoke of bondage’. (Galatians 5:1) They will fight for freedom, not only for themselves, but will continue to diligently “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”. —Leviticus 25:10; Isaiah 61:1,2.
The Limited, Balanced, Government of the U. S. A.
IN WHAT ways is the power of our government limited?
First, it is limited as to purposes. Second, as to the ways by which it fulfills these purposes. Third, by the spheres of liberty which are reserved to individuals. Fourth, by its dependence on the people, on the voters. Firth, by the fact that each set of governing, authorities is held in check by the powers and ambitions of other sets. This is the American system of checks and balances.
The Constitution gives federal authorities the power to tax, to raise and support armed forces, to wage war, to regulate foreign and interstate commerce, and to do many other things in the interest of the Union. Undoubtedly these are great powers. But they are not the limitless powers of despotism. When war is raging, freedom of press may be abridged; freedom of speech may be curtailed, but it cannot be blotted out. The Constitution forbids this; and as long as enough people are devoted to the theory and practice of limited government, such suppression cannot happen here.
Besides being restricted in purpose, government in the United States must follow pre-established ways of fulfilling these purposes. No branch of govern-JUNE9, 1M3
ment—federal, state, or local—can do just as it pleases.
For example, all legislatures have the power to tax, but none of them can single out individuals, Jew or Gentile, and impose higher taxes on them than on others. The power of Congress is unlimited as to the amount of money to be raised by taxation. This is necessary in the national interest, for the amount of money needed to defeat enemies is not within the control of Congress or the people. But the way in which taxes are imposed and collected is decidedly limited. Taxes, for instance, must be uniform throughout the United States. Congress cannot tax the same brand of cigarettes at five cents a package in Maine and ten cents a package in Missouri. The $5,000 salary of one person cannot be taxed at $500 a year and the $5,000 salary of another person at $2,000 a year.
Again, Congress can pass acts imposing penalties for crimes, but it cannot provide that persons accused of nonmilitary crimes shall be tried secretly. They must be tried openly in courts of law, and the accused is protected by a long list of rules designed to assure him a fair hearing.
On the power of Congress and of all
states and local legislatures are imposed two special restraints that are precious to human liberty.
No legislature can pass a “bill of attainder’’. That is, no American legislature can charge any person with a crime xand condemn him to fine, prison, or fleath. In ages past the British Parliament sometimes resorted to bills of attainder and, amid tumults of passion and debate, condemned individuals to death. N o such thing can be done in the United States.
No legislature can pass an ex post facto law. That is a law which makes a crime out of an act that was not criminal when it was committed. Owing to this restraint, every citizen can feel sure that what he does today lawfully and innocently will not be made a crime tomorrow by a legislature.
Moreover, there are reserved to the people great spheres of liberty. People have the right to choose their own religion or none at all and to be wholly free from the dictates of any established church. Congress can make no law “respecting the establishment of religion”.
Once police officials felt free to break into anybody’s house at will and do about as they pleased. The Fourth Amendment preserves the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. No search warrants shall be issued except when supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized by federal officers. Similar rules restrain state officers.
In the United States no one can be secretly thrown into prison and kept there indefinitely. The humblest of the accused is entitled to the writ of habeas corpus, which gives him a quick hearing before a judge, testing whether there are just grounds for holding him for trial. At his trial, which must be public, he is entitled to have counsel, to compel the attendance of witnesses on his behalf, 14
to confront his accusers, to be heard in his own defense, and to receive impartial treatment at the hands of the presiding judge. Unnumbered millions in other countries sigh for such privileges.
The quartering of soldiers in private homes was among the grievances which led to the American Revolution. The Third Amendment to our Constitution provides that no soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war except in a manner prescribed by law.
Government is power. The holders of power—executive, legislative, and judicial—might, theoretically, combine against the people from whom they derive their power. The framers of the Constitution knew and feared that possibility. Indeed they believed that it would come to pass unless restraints were devised to prevent it.
Consequently they pitted the powers of office and the ambitions of men in office against one another, while allowing for the co-operation of public authorities in the discharge of their duties. If men were angels, it is written in The Federalist, there would be no need of government; this may be “a reflection on human nature. . . . But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” Election by the people is “the primary control” over the arrogance of officials, but “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions”. Here is a list of the chief precautions that appear in the Constitution;
The legislative, executive, and judicial powers are vested in three distinct departments so interconnected that they act as checks on one another.
The president has the power of veto over acts of Congress. Although he is the chief executive, he cannot execute anything until Congress has provided the money. The president is independently elected, but Congress,, by the process of impeachment, may remove him
CONSOLATION
or any of his administrative agents.
Federal judges are nominated by the president The Senate, however, passes upon his nominations and may approve or reject them. These judges are “independent”, but Congress, by the impeachment process, may remove them, too. Congress has the legislative power, but the federal courts may'set aside acts of Congress as contrary to the Constitution.
While Congress is set against the executive and the judiciary, it is also divided against itself. The members of the House are elected for two years and the senators for six years. All members of the House, unless re-elected, lose their office at the end of the two-year period. Only one-third of the senators are retired biennially. ■
It may be said that the people, in whom all power is vested, may in a great passion and uproar one day resort to a tyranny. Many despotisms in history have sprung from popular unrest and have been swept into power by popular approval. That of the first Napoleon did. So did the tyranny of the third Napoleon, and of Hitler.
So long as the Constitution prevails, this cannot happen in the United States. Under the Constitution the voters at no single election can, by a mere majority or plurality vote, choose all executive, legislative, and judicial authorities and thus force the J enactment of any law they please, either in the states or throughout the Union. Only in making amendments to the Constitution of the United States is the power of the voters limitless, and for this high act special processes and extraordinary majorities are necessary .—Char les A. Beard, in Liberty, February 6, 1943.
Helicopters
THE helicopter is a kind of air machine that does not require the use of air fields, runways or catapults. It can land slowly and vertically without injury on any chosen point—field, street, housetop, ship deck, body of water—and ascend with the same ease. It has proved to be a practical plane, as shown in this account by Henry Hazlitt, in TheNation:
This type of machine is not a mere inventor’s dream. It is not a mere set of engineer’s blueprints. It exists. It exists in the helicopter, impressive flights of which were made in April a year ago by the noted airplane designer, Igor Sikorsky. Mr. Sikorsky has been constantly improving his machine.-You do not have to take his word regarding what it can do. He has shown colored motion pictures of its remarkable feats. In these you can see him rise vertically from land, water, and marsh. You can see him rise a foot or two above the water, skim over it at this level, or hover stationary at the same level, and alight like a feather, without even a splash. You can see him eirele around a lake, come to a dead stop in front of a dock, hover in the JUNES, 1943
air at the height of a man’s shoulder while a man on the dock hangs a suitcase on the helicopter; then you can see Mr. Sikorsky circle around the lake a few times with the suitcase hanging on, and stop dead again (in the air) in front of the dock, while the man lifts his suitease off. You can see Sikorsky’s helicopter come to a sudden stop in midair from a high speed. You can see the helicopter stop in midair at the height of a man’s shoulder, while an assistant takes hold of one of the wheels and pulls the machine with him, which is made to- follow docilely by the man at the controls like a great floating camel.
Sikorsky also explains that the helicopter is extremely easy to fly. You can learn to fly it indoors, in a moderate-sized auditorium. It seems to be at least as easy to master as an automobile. A striking comparison suggests itself here. Suppose one had to start learning to drive an automobile at a minimum speed of sixty miles an hour? How many people would learn to drive automobiles? Yet this is the situation with regard to the airplane. But with a helicopter you can start as slowly as you like.
THyWORD is Truth’
Foregleams of Deliverance
TO FORESHADOW the coming deliverance of those who will enjoy life everlasting in the new world of righteousness, the great Builder of the new world caused certain types or prophetic patterns to be made by His chosen people.
For about a century the Hebrews, the children of Israel, had been subjected to slavery in ancient Egypt. On the night that Jehovah their God led them out of the land of Egypt He caused a lamb to be slain and its blood to be sprinkled upon the doorposts of their houses and His people to eat that lamb. He arranged that at midnight the death angel should pass through all Egypt and smite the firstborn of every house where the blood did not appear upon the doorposts. Israel’s firstborn, who were passed over and spared, pictured the “church of the firstborn” under Christ Jesus their Head and who are saved firsfrbefore the divine blessing comes to men of good-will in general. (Hebrews 12:23) The lamb pictured that One who should be the ransomer or redeemer of humankind, namely, Christ Jesus, and the lamb’s blood pictured His life poured out to provide a redemptive price.—Exodus 12:3-17. .
When Jesus appeared in Palestine, at the age of thirty years, John the Baptist, pointing to Him, said: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” (John 1: 29) And we read concerning Jesus, at Revelation 13:8, that he is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. These scriptures and others show that the sacrifice of the passover lamb foreshadowed the sacrifice of the great One who should become the redeemer of humankind and take away the sin of those gaining life in the new world.
A few days after this passover in Egypt, the Israelites were completely delivered from the Egyptians when God commanded Moses to smite the waters of the Red sea and they passed over on dry land; and when the Egyptians attempted to follow by the way through the sea they were swallowed up in its waters and drowned. The deliverance of Israel here pictured the deliverance from the great enemy, Satan and his organization, of Jehovah’s covenant people and His “men of good-will” at this end of the world.
After the children of Israel were on the other side of the Red sea, they marched on in the desert; and when they came to Mount Sinai God confirmed with them the covenant which had been made operative by the blood of the passover lamb. In connection with this law covenant animals were sacrificed. This covenant was instituted at the hands of Moses as a mediator between Jehovah God and Israel. Moses here wTas a type of Christ Jesus, who in due time inaugurated the new covenant on behalf of spiritual Israel. .
In connection with the law given to the Israelites at this time, God instructed Moses to 6reet in the wilderness a tabernacle, which was to be used by the Israelites in connection with their ceremonies of sacrifice. One day of each year was known as the “atonement day”. What was done on that day particularly foreshadowed the great sin-offering to be made on behalf of humankind.
The tabernacle was constructed of two parts. It was 45 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 15 feet high, built of boards and then covered over with a tent of three thicknesses of material. The first division of the tabernacle was called the Holy. It was 15 feet wide and 30 feet long. The second, or rear compartment, was known as the Most Holy, and was 15 feet long, 15 feet wide, and 15 feet high, an exact cube. The tabernacle was situated inside, of a court, or yard, which court was 75 . feet wide and 150 feet in length. The fence enclosing this court was made of linen curtains, suspended from hooks' which wTere fastened on wooden posts, the posts being set in copper sockets at the base.
On the atonement day the high priest took a bullock, which must be ‘without spot or blemish. Inside of the court he killed the bullock, took its blood in a vessel, went from the court into the Holy and from there into the Most Holy, and, after burning the incense in a golden censer, he sprinkled the blood before the Mercy Seat of the ark, which was in the Most Holy. Then he went back and slew a male goat, which likewise must be without defect, and did the same thing with its blood. These two constituted the atonement sacrifice. After them a scapegoat, over whose head the sins of all the children of Israel were confessed, was let go into the wilderness as a sin-bearer. The atonement offering for sin foreshadowed the great sin-offering for the sin of the world.
The apostle Paul plainly tells us that the things there done foreshadowed “good things to come”, better things. (Hebrews 10:1) God required in the law covenant that the Jews should keep this day of atonement and offer these sacrifices through the high priest once each year. You will remember that God had promised the patriarch Abraham: Tn thy seed shall all families of the earth be blessed? (Genesis 12:3; 22:18) So the apostle Paul says that the law was added thereto 430 years later; why? “Because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:19,24) In other words, Jehovah was teaching the chil-dren-of-Israel concerning the great sin-offering that must be made on behalf of humankind for their redemption, and He was using the Israelites to make living ; pictures in accordance with their law covenant with God. The inspired record of the events concerning the Israelites has enabled all students of the Bible since to see how Jehovah foreshadowed the redemption and deliverance of mankind from the bondage of sin and death. To foreshadow means to foretell the outline of something coming. This shows how important the great ransom and, particularly, God’s Theocratic Government of tM new world are for mankind’s deliverance, inasmuch as God took so much time and went into so much detail to teach the people by such ancient living pictures. Hence this should encourage us to study the subject earnestly, that we might see, understand, and appreciate it.
The Lord God has anointed His Son Christ Jesus to be the High Priest who makes atonement that obedient men may live in the new w'orld' and never die. The foundation of that new world has been laid. The establishment of that world of righteousness is sure, and it shall be a “world without end”. What the scheming builders of a “new order founded on moral principles” may try to set up on earth beyond this total war will not rest upon the only Foundation that Jehovah God had laid. Their “new order” structure will be no part of the new world for which Jehovah’s High Priest has made atonement. Hence such man-made arrangement will fail and be suddenly destroyed in the coming world disaster of the battle of Armageddon. Only those who align themselves alongside Jehovah’s Theocracy and who seek the atonement through its High Priest will survive to see the new wrnrld and live happily therein.
WAosoeuer shall call on the name of JEHOVAH shall be delivered; for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those that escape, as Jehovah hath said, and among the remnant those whom Jehovah doth call.—Joel 2:32, A.R.V.
17
JUNE B, 1943
Hitler, the Slave-Driver, and His “God”
STRANGE and deplorable as it may seem, it is nevertheless true that men in all ages and in all lands have called upon “God" to back up their course of t action, regardless of how far from justice i such course may have strayed. They
* have sought to demonstrate that “God”
was or is on their side, and have made claims to that effect, and have not rather sought to determine whether they were on the side of the eternal God, whose name alone is Jehovah.
Hitler, whose entire course of action belies his claims, does not hesitate to dramatize himself as an instrument of a "God” whose chief concern seems to be to aggrandize Hitler and the German race, while enslaving and degrading every other race and people. While Jehovah, the God of. the Bible, holds forth the promise of using His Servant, that in Him ‘all the families, nations and kindreds of the earth shall be blessed’, Hitler’s backer, of sinister purpose, shows an opposite spirit altogether. Those who serve that invisible one have his spirit, and by their fruits show what he is. Like him, they pride themselves in their wickedness and boast of their unholy power to inflict pain and suffering upon untold numbers of afflicted humanity.
In an address to the Reichstag (bereft of its powers) Hitler, in April, 1942, made the following blasphemous claim:
It is my sole pride that Providence has chosen me at so great a time to lead the German people. I will bind my name and my life unconditionally with the fate of the German people. I have no more requests to make to the Almighty than that he should watch over us in the future as he has done in the past, and that I may live as long as is necessary in his eyes for the fateful struggle of the German people.
In another address, a little prior to the one just mentioned, he was making a war speech, containing threats as to what he would do to Britain, when he interjected the expression, “God help me." Of course, as far as the one and only true Almighty God (the personification of wisdom, justice, love, and power) is concerned, He would have no ear for the impious prayers of such a one as Hitler, the demonized. Those prayers must therefore go to another "god”.
In, a third address, styled a "Memorial Day speech”, that man of blood made this further attempt to identify himself with God:
May God give us all strength to continue to carry out what duty demands from us. With this prayer we bow our heads in reverence before the great heroes and their sorrowing relatives and all other victims of this war.
And finally, in'a fourth statement (and he has doubtless made many others), Hitler said, “God Almighty will not deny victory to His bravest soldiers.” He can leave the Almighty out of it. God Almighty does not listen to the prayers of a willful murderer. “Even his prayer shall be abomination.”—Proverbs 28: 9.
Hooking Up with the God Odin
It will be conceded that the “god” worshiped by Hitler is the one that is being advertised over the Berlin radio. This instrument of the Nazis has declared that the Japanese are real Aryans, the same as the Germans, and that this comes about through the god Odin, or Woden, the god of battle and agriculture. This ‘Woden”, or “Odin”, or his finish, is memorialized in the name of the fourth day of the week in the English, Swedish and Hollandish calendars. He is described as tall, lean, one-eyed, foxy, lecherous, cruel, merciless, conceited, and reprobate. Also, he is in close cahoots with the demons, of whom he is, in fadt, one. The Berlin radio identified this “god” with the Japanese god of the sun and the winds, and claims that he is watching over the military spirit of both countries. As no man can serve two gods, and Hitler’s course as well as his propa-
ganda identifies him with the demon Woden, evidently the god he serves is the Devil, referred to in the Scriptures as ‘the god of this world [who] hath blinded the minds of them that believe not’.—2 Corinthians 4: 4.
This fact is further shown by the prelude to the “new order” which Hitler sponsors, and of which the vrell-known General Smuts, of South Africa, in his address to Parliament said:
In spite of the specious promises of a “New Order” and the alluring appeals to the idealism of youth, actual events have in the last three years revealed the true nature of the Nazi ideology. We now know beyond all doubt what Hitler’s “New Order” means. Persecution, domination, suppression, enslavement of the free spirit of man, aye, extermination; these are the dominant features of the new ereed as practiced in the occupied countries. It is' written in the blood and tears and nameless suffering of vast numbers of innocent men and women of all ages and conditions ... this foul obsession, now resuscitated from the underworld of the past.
True it is that Hitler has called up and put into effect all that was worst in the past history of Europe, as will he shown in what follows. Everything he and his minions have done and the spirit they have shown and do show prove that Hitler’s “God” is not the God of the Bible; and that is certain, in spite of the alleged fact that officials of the German concentration camps have permitted 150,000 Bibles to be distributed to Russian soldiers in those camps. Christians in the Nazi concentration camps in Germany itself are, on the other hand, deprived of their Bibles.
People in general seem not to realize that when the Scriptures say “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20: 3) they plainly imply that there are other gods; dr that when the people are warned that all gods except the true One will be a snare unto God’s people, the warning is pregnant with meaning (Deuteronomy 7:16); or that there is such a thing as going “a whoring after other gods” (Judges 2:17); or that when it says that “the gods of the nations are idols” it means just that. —Psalm 96: 5.
Bastardy was so much discouraged among God’s typical people that of the bastard it said, “Even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the
Loud.” (Deuteronomy 23: 2) Yet in Hitler’s ‘New Order’ unmarried girls are encouraged to become pregnant, even by men whose names they do not know. Concerning this devilish destruction of German womanhood, Archibald Mac-Leish, librarian of Congress, in an address at Northampton, Massachusetts, said:
Other nations have used the captured women of their enemies for the purposes the Nazis use their own. But never before in history has any nation made its girls the brides, the indiscriminate and undiserimin at -ing brides of the state itself. And never before
in history has any nation made a virtue of the necessity of denying to any woman, of its own or of another race, the central, the essential woman’s right to be mistress of. herself.
’ Much of Jesus’ work on earth was the healing of the mentally sick; yet up to t June, 1941, the Euthanasia Commission t had destroyed 37,000 persons in Ger* many, and it was then planned that in twenty years there would be no further need of insane asylums, as the mentally defective would be gradually murdered off instead of being healed.
One of the ten commandments of Almighty God is “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15), and it means what it says; but every German soldier in Belgium is charged to that poor country at $4,000 a year; and what is that but stealing on a most tremendous scale? and who but Hitler is responsible for it? And it is so all over Europe.
When they raced over Europe the Nazis took out of it almost every fine thing there was in it. For instance, Bommers men in Africa had, among other things, immaculate clothing, superb footwear, silk and wool underwear, face powder, face cream, scented soap, mattresses covered with fine French linen, one-piece tents with asbestos stoves in one end, etc., etc.
The way in which the stealing is done is perfectly understood, but nothing can be done about it. The money with which everything is bought is commonly called ‘monkey money’. The technical name is “occupation marks”. The storekeeper has to part with everything he has for worthless printing-press money. One of the most recent countries to be taken to the cleaners by this subterfuge is Denmark.
The Father of Lies
Christ Jesus referred to “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4) as “a liar, and the father of it”. (John 8:44) In other words, the Devil was the first liar. His children, among whom are to be listed the big politicians, big financiers, 20
and big religionists, have done their very best to improve on his initial lie to mother Eve, but Hitler has put all the others to shame with the efficiency he has shown in making use of falsehoods. In one of his presidential messages President Roosevelt touched on this:' ’
Every move up and down and across Europe, and into Asia and into Africa has been conducted according to a time schedule utilizing in every ease an overwhelming superiority not only in material but in trained men as well. Each campaign has been based on a preliminary assurance of safety or nonaggression to the intended victim. Each campaign has been based on disarming fear and gaining time until the German government was fully ready to throw treaties and pacts to the winds and simultaneously to launch an attack in overwhelming force.
Hitler makes it plain in Mein Kampf that he is no small-time liar. He is a big one. He should have boasted that he is Jesuit-trained, and then those initiated into the fast-disappearing records of history would know how he came to be so expert. -
The men that are with him show the same expert misuse of the truth and of the properties and workmen that in bygone years made Germany such a great workshop. Thus Hermann Goering, but a little while ago a small-time gangster, now has in the various Hermann Goering works, scattered throughout the Reich, more than a million men on the pay rolls, and in four years the capitalization has been jumped from 5,000,000 reichsmarks to (hold your breath) eight hundred times that amount, as country after country and business after business has been swallowed up by the Jesuit monster. Goering is now one of the earth’s wealthiest men.
Do you remember who it was that took Jesus up into a high mountain and showed Him everything in the world that was worth while, and then assured Him that if He would fall down and worship him He could have the whole works? Well, that is Goering’s god.
CONSOLATION
It is a vicious, malicious god that caused Greece to be cleaned out so thoroughly that bread sold at $22.40 a loaf and eggs sold at $27 a dozen. Some other prices paid in the winter of 19421943 were $34 for a pound of round steak, $22.50 for a pound of sugar, $14,25 for five pounds of potatoes, $14 for a pound of rice, $37.50 for a pound of macaroni, and $11 for a cake of soap. At these prices, children starved to death, as a matter of course.
In the News from Belgium (published in New York) is the account of a happening at Charleroi. Four children were playing near a railroad crossing which was guarded by German soldiers. One of the soldiers kicked a little girl of 5. A boy of 10 protested. The soldiers grabbed him, put him against a tree, and, without bothering to bandage his eyes, shot and killed him. At that time (March, 1942) the hospitals were filling up with people dying of hunger. Sometimes, after admission, they lived but a day or two. Begging was increasing, and in Antwerp and Brussels child beggars abounded. The bread, made of mixtures of wheat, rye and potato flour, was indigestible. Fish and meat were Unobtainable. Seven hours after the seizure of Antwerp everything edible or of value to industry was loaded on trucks and started for Germany, At Liege a Belgian was executed in the presence of his wife and child, who had been summoned to the place of execution on the promise that the prisoner would be freed.
The same publication tells that at the Breendonck concentration camp, near Mechelen, Belgium, the ill-fed and (often) aged prisoners sometimes fall from fatigue. They are given exactly three minutes to rise; if they cannot, they are dragged to a corner and set to work breaking stones; if really ill, they must care for themselves, as there are no doctors or infirmary in the camp. Sometimes men are set to work pounding futilely on an iron rail with a heavy hammer. Prisoners are not allowed to
JUNE?, 1943
change into dry clothes on rainy days, but must work their thirteen hours with the damp clothing clinging to their emaciated bodies. After fifteen days a prisoner is allowed a spoonful of marmalade every four days. One day a prisoner waved to his wife, who had approached the camp fence to catch a glimpse of her husband. The poor man was immediately shot, and the prisoners were compelled to file past his body as an act of discipline. -
The Crusaders* Idea ,
There was never a more vicious lot of more ignorant fanatics loose in the world than there were during the Crusades. They committed every kind of crime known to the human family. No woman was safe, no man was safe, no property was safe; nothing was safe. Cannibalism in the most revolting forms was common, with other crimes too horrible to mention. But the Jesuit crusaders into Russia (Hitler’s armies) are a close match to those of the thirteenth century.
A Soviet soldier named Yezersky, who escaped from a German concentration camp in the occupied area of the Ukraine, known by the soldiers under the name “Uman Hole”, rejoined his regiment in Russia. Describing the Hole, he stated that it is a vast pit in a clay quarry; that when names are called out to line up to Wall No. 2 all the men so lined up are shot without pretext; that men are shot faster than graves can be dug for their bodies; and that, for amusement, the Nazis at times lower savage dogs into the pit and set them upon the prisoners. This story was published in PM.
The Russian government has formally protested to the Allied Nations that in some cases Red army prisoners have been tortured with red-hot irons, their eyes have been poked out, and their fingers, ears and noses cut off; their stomachs have been ripped open and they have been tied to tanks and crushed.
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In one Ukrainian village four Russians were found nailed by the hands and legs to a beaut, and their bodies branded with the swastika. Tn one village a Red army soldier was burned at the stake. Some prisoners were forced at the point of the bayonet to drive munition transports. Some wounded soldiers were stripped of their warm clothing. Seventeen wounded men were tied to telegraph poles. Women doctors and nurses wore assaulted. In one German prison camp (unnamed) the sick and wounded were kept outdoors day and night, in the cold, and in the early morning were roused by blows with sticks and clubs. “Tn one day in the Cheriiiiskhinsk camp in the Ukraine ninety-five prisoners were shot.’’ The German high command and food ministry had ordered that Soviet prisoners should be given worse and less food than the prisoners of other countries. When protest was made at a camp in Byelorussia (by writing to the commandant) live were shot on the spot.
A Cunning and Merciless One
The Devil is cunning, ami he is merciless; and so is Hitler. In his initial campaign for forming an army of 2,000,000 men in the countries he has overrun, Hitler showed great cunning. Ue wanted to use 2,000 Netherlands army officers; so he first had them all arrested. Then they were ordered to assemble in the barrack square for registration. When all had arrived the gates were closed behind them, and redoubled guards, armed with hand grenades, surrounded the place. The Hollanders were the same day marched to the railroad station and transported to Nureinburg, Germany.
The methods by which Hitler ruins a country are now well known. They are summarized as follows by Paul 1. Wellman, in the Kansas City Times:
The collapse and annihilation of a European country is usually preceded by a movie. The German ambassador invites the members of the government to which he is accredited to a private showing of either “Baptism of Fire” or “Victory in the West”, documentary films intended to impress the audience with Germany’s invincibility. They are blueprints in effect. The steam roller follows, or did follow until Hitler met Russia. And the plans of Hitler for Europe are now clear.
Nazism plans to create three categories of European peoples: first, the fighting slaves; second, the toiling slaves; third, the doomed nations destined to extinction. The German technique of oeetipation follows a well-tried pattern, with three unvarying principles: first, the people get immediate reassurances that their national independence will be respected. Second, the new masters get hold of strong bargaining weapons—the classic example being the retention of 1,800,000 French prisoners in German camps, to use in blackmail for collaboration and for discouraging resistance. Third, the disintegration of the people’s spirit is promoted by stirring up every latent hatred between sections. But always, where these things work, there stalks the great three-tined fork of German horror, the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the hostage system. The terroristic practices of Germany are not haphazard. In no war in the history of humanity have torture, fear and despair been used so ruthlessly and so cunningly and so universally as in this war.
Belgian workers, hired to work in a German factory, found the conditions so intolerable that they did as they would have done in their own country: they went on strike. Promptly they were inarched off to a forced labor camp, where they had to work from dawn to dusk, with hardly any food, and were constantly beaten. You can imagine what feelings are smoldering in the bosoms of those men, and how, if they get the chance, they will repay it all with interest. Such is humanity.
The decision was made to swallow Luxemburg. An opportunity was given the citizens to say whether they were French, Italian, or German, but 96 percent in the towns and 99 percent in the country stated that they were “Luxembourg”, though no opportunity to thus vote had been presented to them. Ger-
many then grabbed the country anyway, and the men were conscripted into the German army. There was a general strike in protest, but the leaders of the strike were killed and the men were hustled off into the army as if they had voted to do so.
In the summer of 1942 there were 170,000 Netherlanders working in Germany; but they were not enthusiastic. In a ■ single factory at Schweinfurths, out of 180 workers, 100 were sent back to Holland, 50 were imprisoned for sabotage, and only 30 were retained for work. Factors in the dissatisfaction of workers have been the razing of Dutch buildings, where houses and churches have been torn down all over the country to get materials to restore bombed buildings in Berlin. Also, when Queen Wilhelmina’s palace was seized (to be used as a hospital), the furnishings were treated as loot and sent to Germany.
Another example of Nazi, ruthlessness is the shooting of all the workers in one department of the great Skoda arms factory in Czechoslovakia, together with their families.
Alfred Rosenberg, German spokesman, says that the citizens of occupied countries have ill-rewarded “the magnanimity” of the Germans and have not taken their share in the “common European war effort”, the Hitler erqsade.
The Netherlanders are in a bad way. The Gestapo claim that one-third of them must move to Occupied Russia, and some 30,000 have already had to leave their homes, out of a total population of 8,728,569. At last reports tea was selling in the Netherlands at $31 a pound, coffee at $16 per pound, and oatmeal at $6.25 per pound. Experiments are being made with shoes at $4 to $5 per pair that have rush soles an inch thick. The soles wear poorly, as the rush frays. At Rotterdam is a store where children’s shoes may be exchanged. Parents go to this store again and again, hoping to find shoes that their children may be able to use.
In one week after the seizure of the Netherlands, Germany had nine-tenths of her butter stock, and quickly thereafter seized woolen and fur goods, leather, coal, gasoline, rolling stock, barges, and even fire engines. On one occasion, in Amsterdam, 680 young Jews were rounded up and sent to work in the mines, and within nine months over 400 of them were dead. Mass deportations of Jews to Poland and Russia are under way; and disobedience means sudden death. ■
A Slave-driving Program
In Germany today all the men from 16 to 65 and all the women from 17 to 45 must render compulsory labor service; and what is that but slavery? To get more men for the army, some 120,000 stores have recently been closed, besides the unknown number previously discontinued.
Besides the German slaves in Germany there are estimated to be 6,000,000 aliens, one-half of them prisoners of war, ojie- > third of the remainder Poles, and the rest mostly Czechoslovakians, Netherlanders, Belgians, and Danes. It, is almost impossible for any of these to get away. Without a labor passport none can get a job, and without a meal card he can get no food. If he gets back home he must register at his home labor office in order to get work, and is then liable to be shipped right back to Germany.
The workers in the factories do their work under the muzzles of machine guns. Their wages are taxed 15 percent. The news gets around and discontent spreads. Current headlines are “Hitler Demands Million Slaves” (from the occupied countries), and “French Shanghaied by Germans for Work in Reich War Factories”. Seizures of the French factory workers are made while they are at work, and sometimes as many as 35 percent of the workers in a factory are grabbed and rushed off to Germany at one time.
Saving is made compulsory. No one may throw away a button, a piece of string, a piece of paper, or a can. More than 1,000 metal articles, from mousetraps to casket hardware, are forbidden. All dishwater is salvaged for the fats. Vegetables are often distributed in untinned cans made of lacquered iron plates and marked with notices of how soon they must be used or will spoil.
Owing to poor bandaging material and limited quantities of disinfectants, most abdominal wounds of German soldiers are fatal. Amputations of limbs are increasing, as the surgeons dare not risk long treatments. Ersatz stockings are atrocious. One woman declares that she wore out two dozen pairs in six weeks; every time she bent her knee a thread broke.
The Russians found that German engines of war are lubricated with olive oil, thus showing that reserves of lubricating oil are dwindling. Some vehicles are run on street gas; they carry huge bags on top, with enough gas to run twenty miles. There are six types of bottled gas on the market, sold by fifty filling stations. Six other types of gas used for driving trucks or cars are made respectively from acetylene, garbage, artichokes, sewage, ammonia, and hydrogen.
Communal kitchens are in full blast; they are efficient in the handling of food, and save the time of cooks and waiters. These are set up in fields and factories; eating at them is compulsory, and nothing is wasted.
Every householder is required to make ready for bombing. He must equip his stairway with a stirrup pump, two buckets, fire-beaters, chemical dampers, shovel, axes, a ladder, water-filled basins, a sandbox or fifteen sandbags. The morning after a bombing windowpane setters remove and replace all broken glass, and carpenters, masons and plumbers get at their jobs as soon as possible. Areas are roped off or boarded up, and in jig time most traces of the air raids are removed. Bombing repairs take precedence over all others.
A Murderous, Hateful Anti-God
Alfred Rosenberg, German spokesman, is now saying that this war that was started by Hitler and Pacelli may become another Thirty Years’ War. See what this war has done to Poland. The Nazis executed 145,000 of them, murdered or tortured to death other 760,000, and drove 2,000,000 from their homes. How many of Germany’s 17,000,000 men under arms have been slain, wounded or captured is unknown, but must be appalling.
Even though it may have been the Lithuanian police (as now claimed) that shot the 60,000 Jews at Vilna, yet such would not have been possible without the war to give the murderers a chance to do their evil deeds. Just now the Negroes are being registered in Germany, and this doubtless means that they are marked for destruction. In September, 1942, the exiled governments in London had an authentic record of 207,373 Nazi executions, but this is only a portion of those known to have certainly taken place.
The treatment accorded the Jews is horrible beyond words. Imagine having always to wear (even when in your own yard) a yellow and black star bearing the word “Jude” so that you might be the more easily maltreated by thugs. Imagine Jewish women compelled to do the most degrading work in the armament factories, and forbidden to speak to or associate with other workers. Hitler has openly stated that it is his intention to see that the Jews of Europe are exterminated. The story of the extermination of 3,000 Jews at Chehnno (near Zagarov) is too horrible to be published. Killed with gas in airtight trucks, the corpses were robbed of rings, lockets and teeth and were then laid head to feet in alternate rows so that they would occupy the least possible room in the common grave dug for them. The full story was
published in the CIO News of August 10, 1942, ' ' .... '
In the Warsaw ghetto half a million Jews were jammed into a space occupied by half that population before the. war. They average 3£ persons to each window. Deaths are nine times as numerous as births. But nobody likes to die, and those poor ghetto unfortunates, in the hot weather of 1942, grew vegetables and flowers in courtyards and window boxes to increase their food and to sweeten the air of their vast prison-house.
A Boastful One, in Mortal Terror
Every Nazi, from Hitler down, is making money by the barrel, and is living in mortal terror of what will happen when the jig is up. Goebbels recently tried to revive the Bolshevist scare which was worked by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy for decades. When Goebbels talks it has happened that a voice over what appears to be his radio says, “In one minute you will hear Herr Goebbels' lying neWs; we point out to our listeners beforehand that the figures given by the high command are all lies.” Imagine how Goebbels must feel to receive such an introduction and not to know how to locate the speaker.
The underground newspapers make life a torment for these gangsters. Most famous is La Libre Belgique, which the kaiser tried to suppress for four years. Editor after editor was shot, but out came the paper as it comes out now. On one occasion, after months of effort, the entire staff of La Libre Belgique was arrested and condemned to death. The governor of Brussels watched the executions, stepped back into his office, and found neatly folded on a corner of his desk a new issue of La Libre Belgique. The agents had missed the editor’s wife. This was too much for the governor, and he had a mental breakdown. Tyrants the world over are scared to death at the activities of Jehovah’s witnesses, the most'* harmless and most courageous truth-tellers in the whole world. They are first to be arrested, everywhere, by the dirty cowards that depend on gangster methods.
The German people have been induced to believe that Hitler is a demigod. Thus Goering, in one of his addresses, said of him:
In Germany everything is subordinate to the Fuehrer. Every gun, tank and ship is submitted to him, and every order given by him. There is only one Fuehrer. I have seen the Fuehrer explaining to his generals in the Reich Chancellery all the plans for the campaign in the west down to every detail, and then I saw and witnessed this campaign and saw how every detail that had been arranged weeks ago was fulfilled in practice.
Hitler’s chauffeur carried a revolver in each of his seven pockets and was insanely devoted to his leader. Contracting an abscessed jaw, on a day when he was scheduled to drive his chief from Berlin to Munich, instead of going to a hospital he went into the garage, tpok a screw driver from his tool case, gouged and scraped the infected tooth, broke open an abscess covering four teeth (amidst horrible pain), tried to pull the worst tooth with a pair of pliers, started to Munich with a temperature of over 100, delivered his boss where he wished to be taken, and then himself died of the infection.
The Mimic God Is Back of Hitler
Though some are now bitter at the idolatry of which Hitler is the center, and which has ruined Germany, yet for the most part the people still do as idolaters have always done: they go along with whatever plans the Devil may have in mind for them. The general feeling, expressed by one of the Dresden newspapers, is that in Germany none may weep for the dead whom Hitler, by his insane course, has caused to be slain in battle. Indeed, the government has forbidden the wearing of mourning habiliments.
Yes, a god is back of Hitler. But what a god! What a fraud! This is the god of whom the apostle wrote when he said:
“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 Corinthians 4: 4.
It is the god of whom Jesus spoke when He said:
“The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.”—.John 14: 30.
He mentioned him again when He referred to the great truth impending today with even greater force:
“Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.”—John 12:31.
There are millions in the world who think they are worshiping Almighty God, when, as a matter of fact, like Hitler, they are worshiping the Devil himself. Have you never read that ‘the whole world lieth in the wicked one, and they are taken captive by him at his will’? It is the truth. That is why mankind needs the New World, and its Ruler, Christ Jesus. How plain it all is, the thing that is the matter with Hitler and with almost all humanity! But there are some who are of good-will toward The Theocracy and hate all this Devil’s stuff like the poison that it is. Hence, says the apostle:
“And you bath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air [the Devil], the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”—Ephesians 2:1-3.
Doorstep Setup Presentation of “Good News”
WELL, why shouldn't someone come to your door and ask you politely to listen to an important message, important enough to be carefully presented by way of recording and the portable phonograph? Anyway, that is being done, everywhere, anywhere, the world over. And the people listen, too, with the attention that is due a message of such importance and comfort as is that presented by Jehovah’s witnesses in this manner. Witness the picture page herewith. (1) Listening attentively to the “good news” of the Kingdom in Wisconsin. (2) All ready for the presentation of the Theocratic message, in Springfield, Massachusetts. (3) Three months before this Pekin, Illinois, Theocracy publisher sat for this picture he had no knowledge of the work of Jehovah's witnesses. (4) Noel Hendrix, 16, of Plano, Texas, lets the portable automatically operated phonograph deliver an introduction to knowledge and understanding. (5) A call at this Georgia cabin resulted in a subscription for The Watchtower and Consolation, and an arrangement for a regular Bible study. (6) Delivering the Kingdom message at a cattle ranch in the Black Hills, South Dakota, and (7) in a picturesque section of Stratford, Connecticut ; also (8) on a turkey farm in Wyoming, and (9) through a gate telephone in California. The guardian of the estate came out and obtained some literature for further consideration. (10) Witnessing to the oppressed at Venice, Illinois. The man in the background has just obtained the booklet Hope. (11) No, your eyes do not deceive you. This witness is proclaiming the message on the housetop. The man who was repairing the roof did “not come down” in this case. The witness came up instead. That’s the way they do things in Big Timber, Montana, sometimes. (12-14) A Sunnyvale, California, witness arrives, publishes the Kingdom message by phonograph, leaves the printed message with one of good-will, and departs with her unique conveyance.
JUNE #. 1S43
Doorstep setup presentation of “good news”
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What They Teach at Oberlin
0BERLIN COLLEGE, Oberlin, Ohio, . is one of America's most famous institutions of religious education. It is a sample of other institutions, simi-■ larly intended for the training of preach-1 ers and missionaries. Time magazine, in its issue of January 13, 1941, gives a remarkable insight into the blasphemies there taught, in total disregard of the Bible, but under the guise of religion. Time makes the following statement, which speaks for itself. Needless to say, it is a direct contradiction of the evident truths of the Scriptures, which anyone may prove for himself. Time says:
Highlight of a colloquium on The Idea of God in the Ancient Near East was the assertion by Herbert Gordon May of Oberlin that the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs differed widely from that of Moses, and that Moses himself probably changed Gods during the Children of Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness during the Exodus. In Genesis the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is regularly referred to as El, and Professor May thinks he was akin to the Canaanite Ba'al. With Moses the Hebrew Bible begins referring to God as Yahweh (Jehovah) more often than as El, and when the Jews invaded Palestine with Yahweh as their God they undertook to exterminate the Canaanites among whom Abraham, worshiping El, had spent his life in peace.
“We must reckon with the possibility,” said Dr. May, “that the exodus from Egypt was under the aegis of the snake deity of the Levite tribe, Nehushtan.” Moses’ rod turne'd into a serpent when God told him to east it down (a miracle later performed by Aaron before Pharaoh) and the snake rod was later used by Moses to bring the ten plagues on Egypt. “The people led by Moses from Egypt were led directly to Kadesh Barnea, where under Moses’ instigation a union of tribes under Yahweh, the deity of the Judean tribes, was consummated. . . . Yahwism was made the sole official cultus. . . . Nowhere is it affirmed that Moses maintained that Yahweh alone existed.”
LOSING A LINK BREAKS THE CHAIN
DON’T let missing an issue of CONSOLATION magazine break the chain of thought and instruction that it conveys to you. Contrariwise, obtain and read every issue, for it is priceless light and truth in this dark, confused world. This you may do by having CONSOLATION magazine coming to you in your mail every other Wednesday as a subscriber for this journal. Many people make a serious mistake in putting off subscribing for tlfts factual magazine during these perilous times. But here is your opportunity to secure this aid: use the coupon below and obtain CONSOLATION magazine for a
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Presenting “This Gospel of the Kingdom”
Need for Argumentation
IN THE life of every thinking person there comes a time when, for his own welfare, it is necessary for him to present clearly the result of cogent thinking so as to cause others to act as he wishes or recommends. Herein is found the need of argumentation for all men, Jehovah’s witnesses, in the carrying out of their covenant ‘to preach this gospel in all the world for a witness’, have a much greater need for training in the principles of argumentation, because of the controversial nature of their message. The Lord commands, ‘Speak the truth though it make all men liars.’—Romans 3: 4.
Argumentation is the practice of attempting to produce in the mind of another the acceptance of the ideas held true by the persuader, and of the necessity of acting on such. If is not wrangling, face-to-face calling of names, or arbitrary contention. Many have misunderstood argumentation to mean arousing contention and unrest among the people, such as the rabble-rousing, prejudicial rantings of the partisan speaker often heard in the legislative halls, in the courts, and in the common stump speech. '
All such the Christian will avoid in presenting the gospel of the Kingdom. Remember the words of Jesus, to wit, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither east ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” —Matthew 7:6.
No good discourse is effective without argumentation. Without it the presentation falls flat, inducing sleep instead of inspiring attention and action. The delivery of effective argument requires of one the ability to think on his feet, a frqnk, unembarrassed manner, preparation, faith, and belief in and a knowledge of the subject matter. One must show confidence in announcing his convictions and have a sincere desire to persuade JUNES, 1943 others of their trueness and the necessity of acting in harmony therewith. As it is in speaking, so in writing, if it is prose, it must contain argumentation to be effective.
Argumentation is as old as the human race. The Bible, containing the history of man from the time of his creation, contains the finest argumentation. The apostles argued daily in favor of the Kingdom. It is -written: “Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market [places] daily with them that met with him.” (Acts 17:17) Paul persuaded others in things concerning the Kingdom. (Acts 19:18) Argumentation gets its best use where there is freedom of speech, a necessity in order that the listener may have an opportunity to choose intelligently and act accordingly.
The essential purpose of argumentation is that it offers to the hearer or reader an explanation of facts, theory or policy that is more rational, more thorough, or more for his personal advantage than that which the listener or somebody else has maintained. Argument is based on persuasion that aims to prepare the w’ay for a process of conviction and to produce agreement and action. It involves the element of establishing certain facts by a process of analysis of proof, and reaching a definite conclusion. The best expert on the subject stated it much simpler and in another way, to wit: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:18) Jeremiah said, “Let me reason the case with thee.”—Jeremiah 12:1, margin.
An argument has three divisions: (1) the introduction, (2) the argument proper, and (3) the summary or recapitulation. The introduction should get over to the listener or reader the heart of the case oy contention. It should state clearly the question or questions in dispute. In other words, a short, simple, impressionistic sketch of the case or sub-
jeet should be given as soon as possible, The argument proper consists in giving evidence or proof connected with per-■ suasion by appeal to reason, common * sense, interests of the listeners, and sometimes their prejudices.
The argument can proceed on the I ■ above matters of proof in terms of facts, * analysis of contentions and issues, admissions, definitions, citations, analysis of fact, and other forms of proof and persuasion. It is important to avoid at all times the elaborate, intricate and stumbling statement of facts, long quotations and the use of terms or facts understood only by an expert. At all times, speak the language of the common people, using terms familiar to them.
The summary or recapitulation should bring the argument to a full and complete stop at the appropriate point and time. Knowing when and where to stop is essential to a mastery of argumentation. Nat knowing when to stop results from ignorance of correct principles of argumentation or of the subject matter, also from following wrong principles or from self-absorption, as is often the case. When the height of the main point aimed at or climax is reached don’t forget to apply the brakes without skidding the tires. This can be done in the form of a fast summary of the points proved and the action recommended that the hearer take and its results.
Some fundamentals that should never be forgotten are: (1) Tie all minor argument points or proofs onto an admitted or irrefutable fact, if possible, so as to start an agreement of the minds. This is necessary before persuasion begins. (2) Do not begin argument proper with a discussion of things on which you differ, but cite as many things as possible on which you agree. In other words, stalk the prey into an inescapable trap ■ before striking. (3) Strike to make an “instant sure kill” on your subject, and retreat to a stopping place as soon as possible. (4) The nature of the audience, whether hostile, friendly or neutral,
should be determined in advance, if possible, and plan of attack outlined accordingly. .
In formal speeches or written argument it is possible to follow throughout a prearranged outline, but in the majority of cases -wherein Jehovah’s witnesses need to apply the principles of argumentation detailed previous preparation will not be possible, nor could a rigid outline be strictly adhered to if constructed. In preaching the gospel from door to door and at back-calls, and in testifying before boards or courts, it would not be possible to follow through to the letter a previously prepared outline, although one should be arranged for general guidance. In such instances one cannot foreknow the questions that may confront him, yet he must be prepared to answer those that do arise. For this reason the minister must thoroughly understand not only his side of the argument on the proposition at issue, but must also know his adversary’s side of the case. The outline of his arguments must be elastic and adaptable, so that he can turn aside to answer questions or objections that may be raised in the course of his presentation, and then make an understandable comeback to the point of departure from his outline. Questions arising in the course of field witnessing that are out of order need not even be answered. Before courts and boards, however, they must usually be met.
This type of argumentation, which cannot be rigidly outlined in advance, is the most difficult, and, it being the kind most often used by ministers of the gospel, the importance of their acquaintance with the principles of argumentation is doubly great. The first requisite is that they know their subject thoroughly. This calls to mind the exhortation, given hundreds of times in recent years, to study continually and meditate day and night on God’s Word, to regularly attend the studies arranged by the Lord God for His people and be prepared to participate therein. In this manner each
one equips himself to make a proper presentation of the issues of The Theocracy to the people, and thus discharges his responsibility as one of Jehovah’s witnesses. Almighty God gives the increase as His servants proclaim His new-world, and each creature is forced to take his stand for one side or the other on the greatest subject of argumentation ever known, The Theocracy. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve.” —Joshua 24:15.
Water and Health
WATER is an internal ingredient in every organic fluid in all living structures, animal and vegetable.
About three-quarters of the human body is water. It is just about the most important substance concerned in the vitality of the body, , ‘
Have you ever stopped to think that the only difference between a smooth and firm peach and a small, wrinkled, dried peach is that the dried peach has had most of its water content removed by dehydration? Young people have more water in their systems than older people, and while water drinking in increased quantities will not keep one eternally young, it is nevertheless worthy of consideration if one desires to postpone the wrinkled appearance of old age as long as possible. .
Water is the great carrier that conveys nutrient material from digestive organs to every tissue of the body.
In the blood water holds in suspension red globule, the fiber, the albumen, and the other organic substances, out of which all tissues are formed.
' Water also bears away waste matter of the system.
Water’ is the leading factor of all the changes that take place in the process of nutrition and decay. When used freely water causes an increased action of the kidneys and other depurating organs, thus aiding in the expulsion of effete matter from the entire system.
Water, by perspiration and evaporation, tends to equalize the temperature of the body. ~
Water is one of the most important "foods” in existence. Without it one
JUNE9.1943 could not live. If one does not care for a particular food, there are others that may be substituted. There is, however, no substitute for water.
Water is vitally necessary in maintaining the health of all the organs as well as the beauty of the body. One cannot have a clear, fresh skin without it. One cannot expect to have the radiance that comes with good health without water.
Poor digestion and assimilation may come about through lack of sufficient drinking of water. Waste matter is not efficiently removed, the blood stream becomes sluggish and the complexion dull, and a general shrinkage of the body, with its attendant wrinkling of the skin, sets in.
Some persons believe that the water they drink in various beverages, coupled with the water content of foods, is sufficient for'their needs; but this is not the case. Considering the fact that three-fourths of the body itself is water and that all of the excretory organs are constantly eliminating water from the system, it is of vital importance to replenish the supply adequately. Several quarts of water a day are said to be necessary to do this, and where the apartment in which one lives is overheated and dry, as is often the case, this does not seem an exaggeration. Water fills out the tissues and consequently prevents that shrinkage which is evidenced in wrinkles and dry skin. Doubtless people generally do not drink enough water and would be benefited by giving attention to increasing the amount they use. The result is improved health, better looks, and more vitality.—Selected.
WHO WILL MAKE ALL THINGS NEW?
Peace-loving people now in the grasp of the turmoil of this world desire and look for a righteous, glorious new world, wherein all things will be made new.—
The earth abideth for ever." - Ecclesiastes 1:4.
Such a world God has promised in His infallible Word. Do you wish to learn of and gain further knowledge pertaining to this NEW WORLD? You may, as the information is now available in the new 384-page Bible-study aid entitled
, THE NEW WORLD
Obtain and read this informative book. You will do so with great profit.Tt will be mailed to you postpaid upon receipt of a 25c contribution.
With your copy of THE NEW WORLD you will receive free, as a premium, the new and timely 32-page booklet FIGHTING FOR LIBERTY ON THE HOME FRONT, which sets forth facts as to who are actually fighting for this new world of liberty and peace.
..........Trilli . i:.................................T dll -.............................................................1- ........................................I-HI I. T.................JHi:i. ;....................................... I,ui'ni;i,i:|JIHI
WATCHTOWER, 117 Adams St., Brooklyn, N.Y.
Enclosed is my contribution of 25c for which please mail to me the book The New iVorld, and the booklet Fighting for Liberty on the Home Front.
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32
CONSOLATION
