Questions From Readers

● Deuteronomy 30:13 is referred to on page 117, paragraph 14, of the book You May Survive Armageddon into God’s New World. What is the full application of that scripture to the paragraph?—P. S., United States.

The paragraph in question, which deals with the condition of Jehovah’s people in 1918, reads, in part: “And when they have finished their witnessing [thus in sackcloth], the wild beast [Satan’s visible organization of nations] that ascends out of the abyss [the sea] will make war with them and conquer them and kill them.” “(Revelation 11:7-10; 13:1; Romans 10:7, NW; Deuteronomy 30:13)”

To appreciate why Deuteronomy 30:13 is cited we must first note how Revelation 13:1 (NW) reads: “And I saw a wild beast ascending out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, and upon its horns ten diadems, but upon its heads blasphemous names.” The context of this prophecy indicates that this wild beast and the sea out of which it came are the same as the wild beast and the abyss mentioned at Revelation 11:7 and quoted in the preceding paragraph.

Deuteronomy 30:13 and Romans 10:7 are cited because the latter, by the apostle Paul, quotes from the former but uses the term “abyss” instead of “sea.” Thus these two scriptures support the fact that the “abyss” and the “sea” are the same and are cited for that purpose. McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia shows that these two terms were used interchangeably because it was thought that the seas or oceans were without a bottom, which is the literal meaning of abyss. The Septuagint uses the Greek word abyssos at Genesis 1:2 in referring to the primeval ocean or the “surging waters” of the New World Translation. See footnote c. So Deuteronomy 30:13 and Romans 10:7 combine to prove the correctness of the paragraph in using “the sea” and “the abyss” interchangeably.

“Made Me Ashamed”

THE Word and Way, the “Missouri Baptist Journal,” of August 23, 1956, had a brief article in it entitled “She Sent Me Back to My Bible.” It was written by D. R. Bledsoe, a clergyman in Kansas City, Missouri, about his encounter with one of Jehovah’s witnesses.

“Many times we sit quite complacent and smug with our statement that we are Baptists and take all of the Bible. We must not be too satisfied that we are the only group who use the Bible. There are those who do so with sincerity and with much more fervor and dedication to their cause than we do.

“The Lord led me into one of our Sunday School homes recently where a ‘Jehovah’s Witness’ witness was propounding a ‘Bible Lesson’ to a searching young mother, a displaced Baptist. I’m sure the ‘Pastor’s Study’ sign in our front yard has protected me from such an encounter before but inasmuch as I was there the guns were turned on me. I pray I am not boasting when I say that I was and am quite confident in my systematic theology and scriptural understanding, but this 40-year-old Jehovah’s Witness housewife made me ashamed of my limited scriptural acumen . . .

“I learned very quickly that 90 percent of my ‘average’ church membership would stand refuted and fouled up in such an entanglement. I learned that my people had to be indoctrinated and that beyond devotional sermonettes.

“You will probably smile and maybe laugh out loud at my experience, but brother, all you need to bring you out of shock and shake you to your consciousness is a contact like I had and you’d be sent back to your Bible.” Truly the words of Isaiah 56:10 about Israel’s watchmen loving to slumber apply to the spiritual watchmen of Christendom!