Insight on the News
Why Is Venus Different?
● After America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched Pioneer Venus 1 earlier this year, the magazine “NASA Activities” declared that it and its sister craft Pioneer Venus 2 “may shed new light on some of the most puzzling questions in planetary science, such as:
“Why do two planets—Earth and Venus—of about the same mass, probably formed from similar materials and situated at comparable distances from the Sun, have atmospheres that have evolved so differently?
“Why is the surface of Venus baked by a searing heat, while Earth luxuriates in a climate conducive to life?”
Scientists’ inability to answer these two perplexing questions may well lie in a wrong assumption—that the atmospheres of both planets evolved on their own. However, earth’s climate reveals the attention of a loving Creator in specially preparing earth to support life, while he has not, at least until now, developed the atmosphere of Venus to this extent.—Gen. 1:1-31.
Mozambique—A Nun’s Insight
● Unswerving adherence to principle can stir up admiration even in persons whose own views may differ. A Roman Catholic nun writes in the Portuguese Catholic missionary periodical “Andare alle genti” concerning her experience with Jehovah’s Witnesses in Mozambique. The nun, Dalmazia Colombo, noted that the Witnesses “are even sent into mass exile because of their refusal to become involved in certain political organizations.” She continues:
“In fact, in 1972 when I was at Mecanhela (in the Lichinga diocese) I saw ten thousand of them who had been expelled from Malawi and were seeking some way of settling in Mozambique. I can still well remember how they arrived in groups, worn out and poorly clothed, their children with them, carrying just a few household implements and their Bibles. I can still see them sitting under the trees for days on end, patient, calm . . . waiting for the authorities to allow them to have a piece of land to start life over again.”
“Several years have gone by since then and once more times have been hard on Jehovah’s Witnesses. At the moment, in these new ‘Gulag’ [concentration] camps for reeducation installed in [Mozambique], 25,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses from Malawi and Mozambique have been imprisoned together.”
“There is truth in many of the things they say and they are worthy of our admiration . . . How different the world would be if we all woke up one morning firmly decided not to take up arms again, whatever the cost or the reason, just like Jehovah’s Witnesses! . . . What would happen if all believers in God were willing because of their faith to collect up their worldly belongings into one single suitcase and wait with their wives and children at the side of the road until the Gulag truck came along to pick them up (this has happened here under my very eyes); would there be any sense in further religious persecution? Certainly the world would not be turned into a concentration camp but, rather, a recruiting center open to the nonviolent volunteers for Christ’s own school.”
Terrorism in the Name of God
● The world’s churches have always supported one or both sides in military conflicts. Similarly, the World Council of Churches recently granted $85,000 to a guerrilla movement known to engage in terrorism and murder. A London “Daily Express” editorial cartoon illustrated this with a picture of the Devil jovially telephoning God, declaring: “My take-over bid for the World is going very well, and the World Council of Churches has defected from your side to mine!”
Such actions in the name of Christianity certainly do bring reproach on God and Christ, as also noted by the Los Angeles “Herald Examiner”: “It strains our credulity to believe that a group of churchmen, gathered in the name of the Prince of Peace, could sponsor” the guerrillas. But Jesus anticipated such conduct by churchmen who would use his name, and he prophetically rebuffed their appeals for judgmental mercy with the words: “I never knew you! Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness.”—Matt. 7:22, 23.