Jehovah Taunted by Babylonish Hostility Against Anointed Witnesses

“Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.”—Prov. 27:11.

 1, 2. (a) Who is being taunted, by whom and how? (b) In what way will the parallel experiences of today be demonstrated with those of Job’s time?

LIKE the taunting from wicked King Sennacherib of ancient Assyria, so today Satan keeps up his taunting of the true God Jehovah by speaking abusively of His anointed witnesses. (Isa. 37:21-33) By their faithfully enduring the Babylonish hostility against them, the Job-like anointed ones enable Jehovah, as He says, to “make a reply to him [Satan] that is taunting me.” (Prov. 27:11) In the meantime, in their championing Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship on earth they bear up under much reproach. “With murder against my bones those showing hostility to me have reproached me, while they say to me all day long: ‘Where is your God?’”—Ps. 42:10.

² To demonstrate the full extent of the modern parallel of the experiences of Jehovah’s witnesses today with those of ancient Job, we will now highlight cases of Babylonish hostility of the clergy against the anointed witnesses on each of the taunts made against ancient Job by his three Babylonized companions. This will be done by taking each of the speeches of Job’s companions in turn and showing how the clergy of Christendom have spoken in the same sibboleth fashion as those ancient agents of Satan. (Judg. 12:6) As this develops it will be observed that the sectarian religious statements have the same ring of hostility as the pronouncements of ancient Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad. By them the Job-like anointed ones continue to be branded as the world’s No. 1 Religious Badmen to be avoided like poison.—Job 22:5.

FALSE CHARGE OF BIAS

 3. What false charge of bias has been made, and by whom? How does this parallel Job’s day?

³ In the frame of thinking of Eliphaz, the clergy claim in effect that it is the religiously unclean, the sinners, the biased ones that bring upon themselves merited reproach and divine punishment. (Job 4:2-8) A Roman Catholic monsignor writes in a nationwide Catholic newspaper in the United States a harsh condemnation of the Bible Society of Jehovah’s witnesses.

“Rejecting the idea of the Holy Trinity, the Bible society translation [the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, 1950] replaces the phrase ‘the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ used frequently [once] throughout the King James version with ‘the spirit and the water and the blood.’ (1 John 5:7) . . . Something of the shallow scholarship in the sect in adopting the word Jehovah as part of its title is shown by the Catholic Biblical Encyclopedia’s treatment of this word.”a (Bracketing ours)

 4, 5. What defense have the Witnesses made (a) as to biased translation and (b) for their use of the name Jehovah? (c) How has this been in accord with Job 6:10?

⁴ Making a proper defense not only of their own rightness but also of the Sovereign Godship of Jehovah as did ancient Job, the modern Witnesses say: “I have not hidden the sayings of the Holy One.” (Job 6:10) In an open letter dated October 11, 1950, a printed six-page reply was published by Jehovah’s witnesses in their Watchtower magazine of December 1, 1950. (Pp. 469-474) There overwhelming evidences were published proving beyond doubt that Jehovah’s witnesses not only are not biased in their New World Translation, but have honestly reproduced the sense and wording of the original-language texts. Note the above Watchtower answer to the charge of biased tampering with the Bible.

“The New World Translation has rewritten no part of the Greek text, not even 1 John 5:7 which is cited in your article as a place where Jehovah’s witnesses clash with the trinitarian doctrine. . . . This is a literal translation of the Greek text by the above-named Augustinus Merk, S.J. . . . it is also a literal translation of the Greek text by the other Roman Catholic scholar, Joseph M. Bover, S.J. . . . Your own precious Vatican Manuscript No. 1209 of the early 4th century does not contain the words, but brands them spurious.”

Thus was crushingly demonstrated the authentic nature of the New World Translation and the falsity of the charge against the anointed witnesses.

⁵ In addition The Watchtower vindicated its use of “Jehovah” this way:

“Why, then, does the New World Translation use the name Jehovah 237 times in its main text? Is it due to ‘shallow scholarship,’ as you insinuate? No. . . . In addition to the 19 Hebrew versions, it cites versions of the ‘New Testament’ in 38 languages besides English and Hebrew where the translators use a vernacular form of the Hebrew tetragrammaton [Hebrew occurrence of the divine name].”

Then The Watchtower proceeded to identify a long series of Catholic authorities and their usages of the name Jehovah down through the centuries, such as Thomas Cardinal de Vio Cajetanus in his Commentary on the Pentateuch. Who, then, displays bias—the Catholic clergy or Jehovah’s witnesses? You decide.

DEMON INFLUENCE

 6. What parallel is there to Job 4:15 as to appealing to demon influence and the result?

⁶ From ancient Babylonish times, religious leaders like Eliphaz have appealed to emotional influences obtained from invisible spirits or demons to build up their religious posture rather than build faith based on the Bible. (Job 4:12-17) Recently one of the Pentecostal sects emotionally belittled the Bible knowledge of Jehovah’s witnesses and their associates.

“I wish it were possible for everyone in the Watchtower Society, more than a million and one half ministers and over fifty million brain washed followers, to feel what I am feeling, and sense what I can sense. . . . If they can do it [their worldwide work] with power that is not of God, what can we do if we are anointed by the Spirit of God . . . I want you to pray with us, ‘Lord, find the Kingdom Halls and pour out your Spirit until they are filled. Tear them up. . . . Shake them up like they’ve never been shaken before!’”b (Italics ours)

Here the religionists appeal to “feeling” and a “sense” of something unseen and indefinable. The result? They exhort violence and hostility, “tear” and “shake.” But Jesus said, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”—Matt. 22:39.

DENOUNCED FOR THEIR OBEDIENCE

 7. Describe the parallel as to Job 4:18.

⁷ The Eliphaz-like religious leaders also revel in independency from God and Christ. (Prov. 3:5) They infer that God does not take special note of the obedience and faithfulness of his servants to Him. (Job 4:18; Matt. 17:12, 13; 24:45) One German religious writer reproaches Jehovah’s witnesses for holding to a unity of thought and organization in their Christian way. (Isa. 55:8; Prov. 12:15) He writes:

“The members of the organization [of Jehovah’s witnesses] are obligated to unconditional obedience. This obligation includes the duty of accepting the word of God only in the interpretation offered them by the Brooklyn publications. The Watchtower Society has divine authority and hence also possesses a monopoly on the truth and on the proper proclamation of the Gospel. It is forbidden to nourish oneself from other sources or to think one’s own thoughts.”c (Italics ours)

 8. How have the Witnesses replied to the denouncement?

⁸ In reply Jehovah’s witnesses contrast their unified source of spiritual abundance with the spiritually sickening table spread by the clergy in their “independence.”

“What orthodox religious organization in Christendom provides new spiritual food for these critical times? Are not the fundamentalists still offering the same dry husks, still prattling the same centuries-old creeds, and monotonously repeating again and again their few basic doctrines borrowed from paganism? Truly, ‘their religion is a mockery, a mere tradition learned by rote.’ (Isa. 29:13, Mo) The modernist churches have brought forth new teachings to fit the times, but their new offerings are not fit for gospel-preaching. Instead, they scuttle the Bible, dismissing it as myth and legend, at best only good literature, and offer science and evolution, psychology and psychiatry, in an endeavor to be popular with a materialistic civilization. God bluntly says Christendom’s ‘tables are full of vomit.’ [Isa. 28:8] Among them spiritual famine reigns supreme. What a contrast between the condition of their followers and that of Jehovah’s witnesses!”d

Let the “independent” clergy still advocate what leads to spiritual anarchy but Jehovah’s unified witnesses will still stick to the one vinelike channel.—John 15:5, 6.

REPROACHED BY SECTARIAN TRADITIONALISTS

 9. How have the Witnesses been reproached in accord with Job 8:8?

⁹ It is well known that many of the “man of lawlessness” class of clergy are pillars and champions of orthodoxy, holding tenaciously to early, Babylonish wisdom of the “former generations” and from the “fathers,” like Bildad of old. (Job 8:8) Down from the heights of Babylonish traditions they look condescendingly upon the Bible-trained witnesses of Jehovah. Hear what a Catholic Jesuit weekly magazine had to comment about Jehovah’s witnesses in international assembly.

“It [the assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses] was an impressive demonstration of the hold that primitive—and perverted—religion exercises on simple minds in a hour of humanity’s confusion. It was an illustration also of the compelling power of a few ideas strongly held.”e (Italics ours)

10. What has been the answer by the Job-like ones?

¹⁰ Following is the answer the Job-like anointed ones gave in reply to the clergy thrust against them for their rejection of tradition:

“In substituting ancient paganisms or modern philosophies for the truths contained in the Bible, Christendom’s religions match backsliding Israel who professed to be Jehovah’s people: ‘The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people shows no understanding.’ (Isa. 1:3, AT) They put themselves in position for stinging condemnation, which they cry out against [us] as intolerant. But does not God himself here say they have less sense than the ox and the ass?”f

These masters of tradition, sectarian traditionalists, charge that the religion of Jehovah’s witnesses is “primitive” and “perverted,” yet the whole focal point of the Witnesses’ Bible-based religion centers on upholding Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship. (Job 8:3) Yes, they brand the “sons” or associates of the anointed ones as being “sinners” (‘simpleminded’) who have “revolted” (‘perverted religion’) against traditions of the apostate sects, in a time of world confusion, a confusion largely brought about by the clergy themselves.—Job 8:4, 9, 10.

DENOUNCED FOR SEEKING ACCURATE BIBLE KNOWLEDGE

11. Present an experience that parallels the charge at Job 11:7.

¹¹ Many sectarians of Christendom like Zophar feel the exposure made by the “multitude of words” or religious instruction accurately published by the Job-like witnesses. (Job 11:2-4) They denounce them for going beyond the early translations of the Bible to “find out the deep things of God” accurately by means of more recent translations of the Scriptures. (Job 11:5-8) Note how a religious publication of an American sect makes an attack:

“But the most significant of the things attempted by the ‘Witnesses’ is their undertaking to make a new Bible. They have announced through Nathan H. Knorr that they are getting out a ‘new translation’ of the Scriptures, seeing the present translations do not suit them. . . . When a teaching becomes . . . outlandishly anti-God, it needs a ‘new translation’ of the Bible. That is, it needs another ‘Bible.’ The one God gave us is not adequate to set forth the new religion.”g

12. Give some points from the Witnesses’ reply.

¹² Part of the prompt reply made by the Witnesses is as follows:

“Which Bible do you mean by your expression ‘the one God gave us?’ Certainly when your paper quotes from the American Standard Revised Version, you are not using ‘the one God gave us.’ Or are you naïve enough to imagine that God really gave us that Version? The Bible God gave us is the one he inspired and which was written in Hebrew, Aramaic and common Greek, which are today practically dead languages. If to produce a ‘new translation’ in modern speech and according to the latest findings on the Bible means to ‘make a new Bible,’ ‘another “Bible”,’ then tell us this: Why is it that the American Committee of Revision, which produced the American Standard Version from which your paper mainly quotes, brought forth in 1946 the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament and will shortly bring forth also a revised Old Testament? Will you level against their Committee the charge of ‘making a new Bible?’ Have they ‘become so outlandishly anti-God’ as to need a new translation that they might set forth a new religion?”h

Let the clergy think like Zophar if they wish. As for Jehovah’s witnesses, they will continue to seek for increased accuracy of the Divine Word.

DENOUNCED AS “HERETICS” ON THE RESURRECTION

13. Present background information as to a Bible doctrine on which the anointed ones have been denounced as “heretics.”

¹³ Job was a believer in the resurrection of the individual. (Job 14:13, 14) Likewise the Greater Job, Jesus Christ, was the greatest teacher as to the resurrection of the dead soul. (John 11:25; Matt. 12:40; Acts 2:25-35) Never does the Bible speak of the ‘resurrection of the dead body.’ Yet the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were believers in a ‘resurrection of the body.’i Similarly today the clergy still teach the sibboleth or unbiblical view upholding ‘resurrection of the body.’ An associate professor of Systematic Theology in a Calvinist seminary denounces the Witnesses as “heretics” on this point.

“In the history of the Christian church, people who taught that the ‘resurrection’ was a non-physical one were branded as heretics. The early fathers [in his footnote he refers to Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras and Irenaeus] vigorously defended the resurrection of the body (in a physical sense) as a distinctively Christian doctrine. . . . Yet today Jehovah’s Witnesses claiming to be listening to Scripture alone, are again reviving this ancient heresy!”j (Italics ours)

14, 15. (a) How did the Witnesses reduce this to an absurdity? (b) Who in fact are the heretics, and why?

¹⁴ In addition to giving the full Scriptural support for the fact that the resurrection of Jesus and the others does not involve taking physical bodies to heaven, the Watchtower of April 15, 1963, (pp. 237, 238) also reduced this clergy view to an absurdity as follows:

“Just suppose that Jesus has his earthly human body in heaven. Since clergymen who insist that Jesus has his human body in heaven teach that he is also God himself, then we know what God looks like. He looks like Jesus when down on earth; he is possibly six feet tall, has a Jewish nose, possibly a beard, has man’s sex organs, and seems to weigh two hundred pounds. . . . If Jesus had his human body in heaven, then he has the entire digestive system, including the mouth and the stomach; and his faithful disciples, on going to heaven, would have the same things. . . . Think of it! Since the arrival of human bodies, there now have to be draught houses in heaven, toilets, both private and public, with separate ones for men and women. And now and forever Jesus, who the clergymen say is very God himself, has to use a heavenly toilet, something that he never had to do in heaven before he became a man! (1 Ki. 18:27) This has to be true if we carry arguments to their logical conclusions!”

¹⁵ In view of the foregoing, just who is the heretic? Jehovah’s witnesses who uphold the Sovereign Majesty of Jehovah God as being spirit and utterly different from man and above man, or the clergy of Christendom with their “early fathers” who in effect assert that the Most High God is like puny man? (Num. 23:19) Clearly the taunt of “heretic” made by the clergy against the Job-like witnesses recoils to strike and brand them like the Pharisees as being against the true teachings of the Bible and hence as “heretics.”—Matt. 15:3.

PEOPLE ADVISED TO AVOID THE WITNESSES

16. According to Job 15:10, why has advice been given to avoid the Witnesses, and by whom?

¹⁶ Leaders of the older religious sects brand the Witnesses as being full of “windy knowledge.” (Job 15:2-6) Like Eliphaz they claim the Job-like ones have swelled heads with too much Bible knowledge. Such condemn the Witnesses because they do not listen to the experience of the older religious organizations. (Job 15:7-10) A Catholic Jesuit magazine in the United States gives the following advice:

“The Jehovah’s Witnesses are specialists in their own peculiar way. In general they know more about the Bible than most Catholics. Since they insist on carrying on all discussions on the basis of the Bible, a Catholic involved with them will be forced to meet them on their own grounds. While the Witnesses’ view of the Bible is a distorted one, the deplorable lack of knowledge that a Catholic is likely to have of the Holy Scriptures puts him at a serious disadvantage. It would be well to advise unprepared Catholics to avoid them, for they will accomplish little and may endanger their own faith. Only well-instructed Catholics can cope with them.”k (Italics ours)

So it is only the “gray-headed” and “aged one” (Job 15:10) of the Roman Catholic Church, those steeped in Babylonish traditions, that might properly discuss religion with the anointed witnesses!

CLAIM WITNESSES HEADED FOR REAL HELLFIRE

17. What evidence is there that the clergy retaliate on the exposure of their hellfire doctrine?

¹⁷ Adamant in their stand for the Babylonish doctrine of hell-torment, the Bildad-like modern religious spokesmen continue to retaliate against the plain exposures made by the Witnesses proving that their teachings are not Biblical. For instance, it has been pointed out that men are souls and beasts are souls and that the same eventuality befalls both categories, “as the one dies, so the other dies.” (Eccl. 3:19-21) In the face of plain Bible statements the clergy complain against the Job-like witnesses in the words of Bildad: “Why should we be reckoned as beasts and be regarded as unclean in your eyes?” (Job 18:3; 2 Pet. 2:12) Hear now what some who are teaching that souls are roasting in hell have to say:

“‘Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ 70,000 strong, have just had a convention in New York [1950], making a great noise. Their [Society’s president] Nathan H. Knorr, has promised them extremely interesting things for ‘the near future,’ among which is the abolition of Hell as set forth in the Scriptures. . . . But they do not discern that the offer is made them in terms the exact opposite to the language God employs. God tells them that there is such a place as Hell, and it is not Hades or the grave. Their leaders tell them that such a place does not exist. This is plainly anti-God and brands the ‘Witnesses’ as having the ‘mark of the beast.’ God says the wicked ‘shall go away into eternal punishment’ (Matt. 25:46); but the ‘Witnesses’ say there is no such place. But in so saying, they are preparing themselves to go there!”l (Brackets and italics ours)

18. What reply did the Witnesses publish?

¹⁸ In their printed four-page reply the Witnesses plainly put it:

“Out of your own mouth you condemn yourself. You say, ‘the offer is made them in terms the exact opposite to the language God employs.’ How can this be? The New World Translation does not use the Old English word ‘hell,’ but uses the very words God gave us in his original Bible, namely, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus. Certainly this is not making another Bible, a Bible different from the one God gave us, but is using the exact language God employs. You are far-fetched, therefore, in branding this as ‘plainly anti-God’ and as having ‘the mark of the beast.’ Jehovah’s witnesses are not abolishing Gehenna, but are putting it back into the Scriptures where it belongs. . . . Jesus warned his opposers with the admonition: ‘By your words you will be vindicated, and by your words you will be condemned.’ (Matt. 12:37, NW) By your words against Jehovah’s witnesses your paper The Vindicator stands, not vindicated, but condemned before God and all men of good will.”a Once again the reader can judge who is in the right as to this teaching of the clergy on hellfire.

DESCRIBED AS FANTASTIC

19, 20. (a) What sect charged that the New World Translation is “fantastic,” and how? (b) How did the anointed witnesses reply?

¹⁹ The Zophar-like clergy continue to hear what they call “an insulting exhortation” from the Job-like witnesses. (Job 20:3) They still maintain that the Witnesses are the world’s No. 1 Religious Badmen. (Job 20:5) In this frame of mind The Baptist Record in one of its editorials branded the New World Translation, as fantastic in this manner:

“Another sample of their fantastic translation . . . ‘cross’ . . . omitted in favor of ‘stake.’ There is absolutely no authority for translating the cross as stake.”b

²⁰ The Watchtower of November 15, 1950, printed a five-page answer wherein the anointed witnesses put up a conclusive defense of the New World Translation on each point attacked by The Baptist Record. Here, in part, is their reply to the above charge:

“Your heading says, ‘The cross is not a stake,’ and your paragraph four says it is fantastic to use ‘stake’ instead of ‘cross.’ . . . If you had not been so foolish as to blurt out before investigation but had gotten a copy of the New World Translation and read what pages 768-771 of the Appendix say on Matthew 10:38 and ‘torture stake,’ you would have been more restrained in your editorial. You would have learned that the instrument of torture which the Greeks called staurós, and the Latins crux, was originally only a stake without a crossbeam at any angle. . . . Evidently you, in your reading of the Bible, have failed to attach due significance to the fact that the apostle Peter speaks of it only as a ‘tree’ (Acts 5:30; 10:39; 1 Pet. 2:24), and the apostle Paul speaks of it also as a ‘tree,’ at Acts 13:29 and Galatians 3:13. It was easy for you to assert that it was not a simple stake upon which Jesus died, but your editorial fails to provide a shred of proof or argument that the New World Translation is fantastic, incorrect and unscriptural on this point.”c

The Baptist Record was invited to publish in its columns the Watchtower reply to its editorial, to correct the gross misrepresentation of the New World Translation and thus remove the hindrance to the cause of Bible truth. The response? More clergy hostility to the Job-like witnesses as a taunt against Jehovah.

WILD ACCUSATIONS OF BADNESS AND ERRORS

21-23. (a) How have the clergy tried to make Job 22:5 apply today? (b) What has been the answer by the Witnesses?

²¹ Orthodoxy continues to be confounded by the crushing replies of Jehovah’s witnesses when the clergy wildly accuse them of every sort of badness and error. Like Eliphaz of old, in their final round of the controversy they in effect say: “Is not your own badness too much already, and will there be no end to your errors?” (Job 22:5) This sort of unjustified attack is exemplified by a “National Catholic Monthly for the Family” entitled the “Home Messenger” in its issue of August 1955, in an article: “They Call Themselves the Witnesses of Jehovah.” The writer was exposed in publishing thirty-five lies, falsehoods and misstatements in his base attempt to prove the Witnesses as bad ones.

²² The Awake! magazine of April 8, 1956, (pages 17, 18) publishes the Witnesses’ full reply under the heading “The Hypocrisy of Men Who Speak Lies.” (1 Tim. 4:1-3) A few extracts from the reply will reveal the baseness of this clergy attack.

“The article further claims that Jehovah’s witnesses believe that ‘Christ is floating around in the air,’ and that they expected Christ to come visibly in 1874, and then in 1914, when nothing had happened in 1874, and upon being disappointed in 1914 they ‘came up with the dandy that Christ did come in 1914 but invisibly.’ The fact is that Jehovah’s witnesses from the very beginning understood that Christ’s second presence was to be invisible. . . . Next the reader is assured that ‘Jail seems to be the proper background for the witnesses. Their “Judge” Rutherford was in jail when their founder “Pastor” Charles Taze Russell died in 1916,’ and that he was sent there because of sedition and obstructing the draft. However, everyone knows that the United States did not have any sedition or draft act in 1916. The facts are that Judge Rutherford was not sentenced until 1918, more than a year and a half after Pastor Russell had died, and that this conviction was later reversed in court and acknowledged as unjust.”

²³ With these evidences of a lying spirit by the shepherds of Christendom, just who is it that stands convicted of badness and error? Is it any wonder, then, that the crime wave of Christendom is skyrocketing along with Christendom’s increases in church attendances?

APOSTATES URGE CONFORMITY AND STAR READINGS

24, 25. (a) What evidence of parallels is there today as to conformity and resorting to star readings? (b) Give some points of reply made by Jehovah’s servants.

²⁴ Like ancient Bildad, modern religious leaders humanly reason that God’s holiness is beyond man’s copying and attainment. (Job 25:4) They argue that the Job-like anointed ones should give in on their steadfast course of separateness and integrity in holiness to Jehovah. (2 Cor. 6:17; 7:1; 1 Pet. 1:15, 16) Furthermore, Bildad of old betrays his Babylonish leanings by observing human activities with respect to the movement of the stars. (Job 25:5) Today, too, the apostates seem to prefer star readings of Babylonish astrology to the safe counsel of the Bible in their arguments against Jehovah’s witnesses. Note their view of matters:

“I saw a cleric jostle a Watchtower Witness and exclaim, ‘Damn you . . . ’ We clamped them into prisons because of their views on military service and their stubborn refusal to submit to the draft. . . . We lectured them publicly about their attitude toward the American flag and the American way. We took them to task for their opposition to blood transfusions. . . . We preached against them and warned our people about them. . . . I have done no horoscopy on this, but since the startling Witnesses are here to stay I can only hope that it is in the stars that they will also modify their incredible stand against saluting the American flag, cooperating with the government and respecting other churches . . . ”d (Italics ours)

²⁵ To this Babylonish plea to the stars for conformity Jehovah’s witnesses published their answer in The Watchtower of 1958, pages 83, 84. In part it said:

“The modern history of steadfastness to God’s truth in spite of opposition and persecution during years just past certainly gives no indication that the future will see an abandonment of Jehovah’s requirements by his people. As to the future course of action by Jehovah’s witnesses, this is not ‘in the stars’; it is not to be seen by scanning the starry creation of Jehovah. In fact, attempts to foretell events by the stars or anyone’s trusting in claimed ‘influence’ of the stars is contrary to Jehovah’s Word. Not to the stars in the visible heavens, but to the God in the heaven of heavens do we look for our future.”—See Isaiah 47:1, 13.

APOSTATES AVOID USING DIVINE NAME

26, 27. (a) What pattern is still followed by the apostates as to the use of the divine name? (b) How have the anointed ones been alert in defending Jehovah’s name in a recent experience?

²⁶ As has already been presented, religious leaders influenced by Babylonish ways have in all ages avoided referring to the true God by his warm, personal name, commonly used today as Jehovah. This was so as to Job’s three false comforters, it was so on the part of the Jewish sectarians in Jesus’ day and it is abundantly so on the part of the “man of lawlessness” class, Christendom’s clergy, in these last days. Apostate leaders have Babylonishly pressured Bible translators to take out the divine name. Observe the following unfair attack upon Jehovah’s witnesses made by a Presbyterian seminary professor, accusing them of being inconsistent in their restoration of the divine name in their New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures. He charged they were of “Arian theology” (antitrinitarian) and thus colored their translation in an antitrinitarian way when they restored Jehovah in some texts where the Greek word kýrios (Lord) appeared without a definite article and not at other places.

²⁷ Jehovah’s witnesses published a three-page reply to this hostility.

“In view of the above we wonder why the faculty member of the Princeton Theological Seminary quoted only partially from page 9 of the above-mentioned Foreword, but left unquoted to you all the above information in the Foreword concerning how the translators determined upon the fitness of putting the divine name back into the Christian Scriptures. . . . The New World Translation is consistent, and it violates no general rule of action set forth in its Foreword when it renders the expression in 1 Corinthians 12:3, as well as in Philippians 2:11, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ not ‘Jesus is Jehovah.’ So the translators are not to be charged with being influenced by the theology of the antitrinitarian Arius for doing so. . . . It is very easy for a trinitarian theologian of Christendom to carp at a Bible translation that does not agree with his trinitarian doctrine. But when he does so by concealing the basis upon which the criticized translation makes its consistent rendering, is he fair and scholarly?”e

Once again a Babylonish habit of rejecting the Sovereign Godship of Jehovah has been exposed by the alert Job-like anointed ones.—Job 6:10.

ANGLICAN BISHOP ADMITS GOD HAS A NAME

28. What does an Anglican bishop admit as to God’s name?

²⁸ An Anglican bishop admits that the Babylonian practice on the part of the clergy of avoiding the personal name of the Deity and taking it out of Bible translations has been wrong. He writes:

“If the Deity had no proper name, no name more indicative of personal character than the generic name God, we should have no reason to suspect that the Deity loves us and requires our love in return. If we were told that we must love God, we could do no better than pretend to love him. . . . To Israel God made himself known as a person, by the proper name Jahveh. (Ex. 3:15) The name Jahveh occurs in the Psalms alone about 665 times. . . . It has already been remarked that in the King James Version of 1611 and in the (English) Revised Version of 1885 the word Jehovah occurs only four times, instances in which, for one reason or another, it was embarrassing to omit the Name. But in the Revised Standard Version of 1952 the word Jehovah does not appear at all. . . . I have never had the pleasure of meeting a member of the enthusiastic sect called Jehovah’s Witnesses. . . . It seems that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.’ And I can discover some reason for their hatred of the Revised Standard Version and the authors of it.”f (Italics his)

Note this bishop still mildly reproaches Jehovah’s witnesses for having a ‘zeal without knowledge’ even though they have been right in this matter of restoring the divine name all along.

JEHOVAH UPHOLDS HIS ANOINTED ONES

29, 30. (a) Contrast what has been revealed in the parallel reports just considered. (b) What sympathies and inclinations are demonstrated on the part of the clergy? (c) How has Jehovah upheld his witnesses?

²⁹ The exchanges just presented have set forth the striking parallels between the Job drama of old and the drama on the worldwide stage today revolving around Jehovah’s witnesses. (1 Cor. 4:9) In each case the Babylonized agents of Satan have had to resort to lies, half-truths, concealment of facts, slander, emotionalism, astrology and have argued from plain ignorance of the Bible. On the other hand, Job-like witnesses have responded with truth, restraint, Christian love, setting forth of Scripture, adhering to facts and reasoned from a position of a thorough and accurate knowledge of the Scriptures, always championing the truth of the Bible and the Sovereign Godship of Jehovah. Now it can be appreciated why many of the clergy sympathetically claim to understand and quote from the arguments of Job’s adversaries rather than those presented by Job himself. One authority says: “The words of his [Job’s] friends . . . are more acceptable than many of the rasher utterances of Job.”g

³⁰ It has now been clearly shown that those of Babylonish thinking can only understand the sibboleth of apostasy and, therefore, such sectarians can never appreciate the shibboleth sayings of the true worship of Jehovah as anciently championed by Job, then by Jesus Christ and his apostles and now by Jehovah’s modern witnesses. Though taunted for ages by Satan and his Babylonized agents, the true God Jehovah has been vindicated by his true servants on earth. Jehovah himself has shown which side has proved to be right. To the modern sectarian apostates Jehovah says: “My anger has grown hot against you . . . for you men have not spoken concerning me what is truthful as has my servant Job.” (Job 42:7) Happy are Jehovah’s anointed ones today who in their Job-like restoration since 1919 continue to endure Babylonish hostility directed against them as they faithfully support Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship as the Grand King of Eternity. “Now to the King of Eternity, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”—1 Tim. 1:17.

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