3. Who in our century experienced God’s “rage” mentioned in Isaiah 27:4?

³ Even though we are decades removed from the specific events, we do well to examine briefly certain developments during the years of World War I. At that time Jehovah God had valid reason for feeling “rage” against the nations of Christendom because of their engaging in that blood-spilling conflict. (Compare Isaiah 27:4.) They did that rather than yield their national sovereignties to the Most High God when his Kingdom was set up in the heavens in 1914 in the hands of his glorified Son, Jesus Christ. They added fuel to his rage by persecuting the remnant of spiritual Israel, deliberately hindering these devoted Christian Bible Students from proclaiming freely his established Kingdom. But many of the remnant of spiritual Israel did, in fact, yield to the worldly pressures, thus coming short of their responsibility as chosen people taken out from this worldly system of things. They did not then see the issue of absolute neutrality toward the conflicts of this world, so they came under some bloodguilt, and for a time they merited a degree of God’s “rage” too.

4. How did God’s “rage” affect his Christian servants, and what lesson might we learn from this?

⁴ Had you lived back then, how do you think you would have reacted to those wartime pressures? You should consider such things, for by doing so you may firm up your resolve as to what you would do in the face of any future pressures. Back then it might have seemed to be a time to desist from Kingdom proclamation and to lie low. Many tended in that direction, feeling that they should simply wait for their early glorification to be with the enthroned Jesus Christ. (Luke 22:28-30) However, receiving some of Jehovah’s “rage” was a disciplinary experience that was not lost on true Christians of the period, and so it was not fruitless.

6, 7. (a) What in modern times became like “thornbushes and weeds”? (b) What can we expect regarding them in the future?

⁶ When in the year 1919 the remnant of spiritual Israel enthusiastically resumed their Kingdom preaching, it was the time for Jehovah to say:

“There is no rage that I have. Who will give me thornbushes and weeds in the battle? I will step on such. I will set such on fire at the same time.”​—Isaiah 27:4.

⁷ After the close of World War I, the League of Nations was set up in rejection of the Kingdom of God by Christ. We can liken this to “thornbushes and weeds” placed in the pathway of Jehovah God, as an obstruction or deterrent. Now the United Nations organization has replaced that League. By the United Nations the various member nations disclose their determination to hold out against the proclaimed Kingdom of Christ and their purpose to preserve their own world sovereignty. In “the war of the great day of God the Almighty” at Har–Magedon, he will figuratively step on all “thornbushes and weeds,” crushing them and finally setting them on fire, as it were, to reduce them to mere ashes. He thus will demonstrate who really is the Universal Sovereign. You can, then, see that even if you were not alive among the anointed Christians back around World War I, you may be affected​—for good or for bad—​in the final results of events paralleling Isaiah 27:1.​—Revelation 16:14-16; 17:1–18:4.