Assembly Opens in New York, Closes at Milwaukee

SUNDAY, July 7, the “Everlasting Good News” Assembly opened at Yankee Stadium in New York with delightful weather, blue sky and a teeming crowd of conventioners. Sunday afternoon the Watch Tower Society’s vice-president, F. W. Franz, reported to the assembly that he had just come from Milwaukee, where, on July 6, the crowd of conventioners rose to 53,112. This was the largest attendance for any convention of Jehovah’s witnesses in Milwaukee and for any crowd to occupy the stadium in Milwaukee.

Franz’ talk, “The World—God’s Field of Work,” was an absorbing study of the Greek words usually translated “world” and how each Greek word has significant meanings. Proper understanding of the words aión and kósmos will be of great help in understanding many Bible texts, including the identifying of the time referred to in them as “the founding of the world.” At the close of Franz’ talk it was announced, amid loud applause, that a crowd of 67,266 had been present to hear this most enlightening information.

The Society’s vice-president further delighted this large audience by telling them he would soon be in telephonic communication with the Society’s president, N. H. Knorr, to inform him of the fine attendance at the opening of the New York assembly. When the call was made, the Society’s president, in turn, informed Franz of the outstanding attendance in Milwaukee for the public talk “When God Is King over All the Earth.” This was a record 57,055 persons, who thrilled and applauded as President Knorr declared: “God, not world politicians and statesmen, will determine when this ‘time of the end’ shall close. Shortly the clock of universal time will strike the hour, and the ‘war of the great day of God the Almighty’ will break out, not by accident or by human miscalculation, but because God has had enough of mankind’s opposition and ignoring of him . . . Only men and women, like Noah and his family, who are in favor and support of God’s kingdom by his Son Jesus Christ will survive.” In New York 107,483 heard the same talk the following Sunday.

When the New York assembly concluded, this talk was still scheduled to be given in twenty-two other cities around the world this summer.