Who Preach an Unreasonable God?

IN THE January, 1957, issue of The Diocesan magazine, official organ of the Church of England in Newfoundland, appears an article by cleric R. F. Palmer. Under the subject “What to Say to Jehovah’s Witnesses at the Door,” this clergyman writes: “I admire your zeal in trying to forward your beliefs. I am sure you are a sincere person. But I cannot accept your literature. You preach a cruel and unreasonable god who is going to sweep most of his children away in a horrible battle of Armageddon while you witnesses stand aside and look on. . . . I want nothing to do with such a god.”

But who really is it that preaches a cruel and unreasonable god? Who is it that preaches a god that punishes persons in a literal torment of unquenchable fire forever? Who is it that has always been ready to read a christening service over a warship? Who is it that has always been ready to pray to God for destruction of national enemies, even though those enemies profess the same religious belief as those praying for their destruction? Yes, who is it that has supported the unrighteous wars of this world—wars that have failed to settle anything permanently—and then at the same time deny God the right to fight a righteous war to wipe out wickedness for all time? It is the clergy of Christendom themselves!

Jehovah’s witnesses, on the other hand, are preaching the God who has purposed a righteous new world, the God who has determined to destroy this wicked system of things, putting the wicked, not in a literal hell of eternal torment, but out of existence forever, at Armageddon, “at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings due punishment upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. These very ones will pay the penalty of everlasting destruction from before the Lord.”—2 Thess. 1:7-9.