“The wilderness and the waterless region will exult, and the desert plain will be joyful and blossom as the saffron.

23. (a) When did the prophecy regarding beautification of the land have its miniature fulfillment? (b) When did the larger fulfillment of the prophecy begin to take place, and what parallel is evident in a comparison of the land of ancient Israel and the spiritual estate of the remnant of spiritual Israel?

²³ It was after the exiled Jews returned from Babylon in 537 B.C.E. that the prophecy of the beautification of the Judean “wilderness,” “waterless region” and “desert” had a miniature fulfillment. The larger and final fulfillment, the spiritual fulfillment, began to take place upon the remnant of spiritual Israelites after they returned from their exile from God’s favor in Babylon the Great in the year 1919 C.E. Besides suffering the ill effects of the religious and political influence of Babylon the Great prior to the first world war, the spiritual estate of the spiritual Israelites was reduced to a desolate wilderness and desert by World War I, for which Babylon the Great was primarily responsible and which war she used against the remnant of spiritual Israelites. But when Almighty God Jehovah began conducting his remnant of worshipers out of Babylonian bondage in the year 1919, what a transformation of their spiritual estate on earth set in!