Triumphant Clean Worship
TODAY Communists, atheists and other materialistically-minded persons scoffingly hold that all gods are imaginary. Such scoffers, however, must admit that the worship of gods is a very real and potent factor in the lives of men and nations.a Christians know that there is but one true God, Jehovah, and one Lord, Christ Jesus, that there is a false (but not imaginary) ‘god of this system of things’, Satan the Devil, and that he has associated with him lesser gods, demons.—1 Cor. 8:4-7; 10:20; 2 Cor. 4:4, NW.
The true God Jehovah challenges all the gods of this world on the question, Whose worship will triumph? Satan boasted in the beginning that God could not keep his worship free from contamination. To make good his boast he has used his own false worship to bring reproach and pressure to bear upon the true worship, seeking to make it compromise for the sake of self-gain, thereby hoping to so corrupt it that God would have to wipe it out, thus making Satan and his worship to triumph.
To guard against this danger God throughout his Word warned his people Israel against having anything to do with false worship. Failing to heed these warnings Israel so corrupted its worship that God permitted it to be taken into captivity in 607 B.C., and finally broken up A.D. 70. In each instance, however, there was a remnant whom Satan and his devotees of false religion failed to corrupt.
Ever since the second century A.D. Christendom has compromised with paganism in doctrine and practice for the sake of gaining popularity and in the fourth century she bartered away her freedom and virtue for the sake of gaining temporal power. Such spiritual adultery will gain for her an adulteress’ death.—Mal. 3:5; Jas. 4:4, NW.
Judging from numbers it would seem that the Devil has won out in causing those who profess to worship God to corrupt their religion. But not so. He has not succeeded in wiping out true worship entirely. Just as a remnant of true worshipers survived the desolation of Jerusalem to return in 537 B.C.; and as a remnant of Christians survived Jerusalem’s destruction A.D. 70, so again today Jehovah has a remnant whom the Devil has not been able to corrupt or to destroy.
It was in the final quarter of the last century that this remnant began to form. During World War I these servants of Jehovah were forcibly taken over by their religious and political enemies. Victory over them, however, was short-lived, for Jehovah released them from captivity to modern Babylon so that they could carry on the true worship.
Since the deliverance of Jehovah’s people in 1919 Satan has tried to corrupt and destroy them by bringing against them the violent forces of fascism and nazism, the military pressures of World War II, and now the forces of international communism. But all of Satan’s efforts down to this year of 1952 have failed and will continue to fail. Jehovah’s clean worship has triumphed; his servants have been preserved, delivered, and their worship has been purified, and now the great crowd associating themselves with this remnant give further proof of that triumph. At Armageddon that triumph will be complete.
Let all who would enjoy the blessings of clean worship in Jehovah’s new world now visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and keep themselves unspotted from the world.—Jas. 1:27.
[Footnotes]
a For details see The Watchtower, November 1, 1951.