Jehovah’s Witnesses Endure for His Sovereign Godship

“Look! We pronounce happy those who have endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome Jehovah gave.”—Jas. 5:11.

 1, 2. (a) How and why does hostility due to the Godship issue continue into our time? (b) What does it mean that Babylon the Great fell in 1919, and how does this enable a rescue work to take place?

JESUS CHRIST, as the Greater Job (or “object of hostility”) of his day, proved Satan’s accusation involving Jehovah’s universal Sovereign Godship as utterly false. He had withstood all the Babylonish religious pressures brought against him. Victoriously Jesus endured and his outcome was a happy one at the hands of the true Sovereign God, Jehovah. The Devil, wanting still more of an answer to his challenge against Jehovah, has kept up a campaign of hostility and false accusation against Jesus’ true anointed footstep followers down through the centuries.

² In fact, at the very time that Christ Jesus was being enthroned as King of the heavenly kingdom in 1914 (Dan. 7:13, 14), Satan was permitted to enforce a grueling ‘Babylonish-like captivity’ upon the anointed remnant on earth from 1914 to 1919.a The Kingdom’s establishment in 1914 immediately brought war between its enthroned King, Christ Jesus, called Michael, and the opposer Satan with his wicked angels. This resulted in Satan’s complete defeat by 1918, when he and his wicked forces were ejected from the heavenly realm to be cast downward into the vicinity of the earth. (Rev. 12:7-10) Like kings Darius and Cyrus of old, the conquerors of ancient Babylon, the “kings from the rising of the sun,” Jehovah God and Christ Jesus, followed up the heavenly victory by taking adverse judgment action against Satan’s earthly masterpiece of false religion, Babylon the Great. (Rev. 16:12) Without a fight Christ Jesus as the Greater Cyrus gained the upper hand over Babylon the Great. This meant bringing about her encirclement, her fall from seeming heavenly favor, her initial fall into Christ’s superior hands of surveillance. (Rev. 14:8; 18:2) The ensuing period of surveillance continues, pending Babylon the Great’s complete destruction later at Jehovah’s time of choosing. (Rev. 17:15-18) During this mercifully extended time of encirclement from 1919 onward, Christ Jesus has painstakingly and lovingly delivered the true Christian remnant out of the control of their earlier Babylonish captors. (Rev. 18:4) Actually the merciful process of delivering continues to this very time of 1966 whereby a vast crowd of other lovers of righteousness are rescued from Babylon the Great. (Rev. 7:9, 14) After his being thrust out of heaven Satan now finds himself a ‘stool for Christ’s feet,’ a somewhat restrained “god” of a Babylon the Great under Christ’s encirclement. (Ps. 110:1, 2; 2 Cor. 4:4) Nevertheless, Satan is permitted since 1919 to continue his heat of Babylonish hostility not only to reproach the anointed remnant of Christ’s followers but also to reproach the many others who now flee Babylon to share as refugees in championing Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship.—Rev. 12:13-17.

 3. Apply Proverbs 27:11 to the situation today.

³ So, as in the case of ancient Job and as experienced by the Greater Job, Jesus Christ, the modern Job-like group of Christian witnesses of Jehovah has had to furnish God an answer for Satan all these years even after Satan’s fall from heaven, that Satan may have no grounds for reproaching Jehovah in their case. Their heavenly Father Jehovah now says to them: “Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.”—Prov. 27:11.

BABYLONISH APOSTASY OF CHRISTENDOM

 4, 5. (a) Who are the “object of hostility” today, and why? (b) What two-pronged campaign of apostasy developed, and from what source?

⁴ Our study of the fulfillment of the prophetic drama of Job now shifts from Jesus’ day to that of this twentieth century. The faithful anointed ones, being footstep followers of Jesus, as a group become the modern Job, the major “object of hostility.” As jointly persecuted ones along with Jesus they have suffered as did he for holding fast their integrity to the true God, Jehovah, and for withstanding all manner of Babylonish religious hostility. (John 15:20) A brief historical sketch of Jehovah’s anointed witnesses bears out all this very vividly as background information. (See Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, published in 1959, for further details.)

⁵ After the death of the last of the apostles at the turn of time into the second century C.E., growing numbers of those who practiced the true Christian religion defected or became apostate. Subtly the old enemy Satan was out to defile the true worship of Jehovah by means of a two-pronged campaign. Firstly, by means of introducing untheocratic forms of church government he would defile the original clean temple structure of organization as set by Jesus Christ. (Eph. 2:19-22) Secondly, by means of introducing pagan teachings and pagan holiday celebrations he would defile the right public declarations or ‘sacrifices of praise’ (Heb. 13:15) offered by the temple class of anointed Christians. All this apostasy stemmed from the same general Babylonish source as did the influences that had produced apostate Judaism in the centuries before Jesus’ day. Babylonized Hellenism again was the force used by Satan to inundate and overwhelm an increasing number of those who claimed to be Christians.

 6. Present some wrong practices that began to be accepted.

⁶ Gradually some of the overseers and elders of the congregations were induced to consider themselves as rulers over the flock. Thus in time a clergy class began to dominate over a laity class, quite contrary to Jesus’ set order: “One [Christ] is your teacher, whereas all you are brothers.” (Matt. 23:8) Pagan holidays such as Christmas and Easter came to be celebrated festivals. Birthdays of secular rulers became honored. Sometime in the third century the divine name, Jehovah, was taken out of all copies of the sacred Greek Scriptures including that of the Greek Septuagint.b The title Lord (kýrios) was substituted for the personal name Jehovah. As may be remembered, the apostatized Jews had done the very same thing after their Babylonish captivity of the sixth century B.C.E. At that time they followed the custom of the Babylonians, who no longer called their chief god Marduk by his personal name but came to prefer the title Bel (Master or Lord) instead. This made it possible for the general title Bel to become more acceptable to the other religiously sensitive peoples.

 7. (a) Name some Babylonish-originated doctrines that crept in. (b) What happened to the “weeds” and “wheat” mentioned in Jesus’ illustration? (c) What is the “man of lawlessness” mentioned by Paul? Describe its rise.

⁷ The Babylonish-originated doctrine of the immortality of the soul likewise crept in through pagan Greek religious influence. In this way also the Greek (Hellenistic) conception of hades or hell as a place of conscious torment for the souls of the wicked became an unbiblical matter of belief. Exactly in harmony with Jesus’ prophecy the “weeds” or apostate, imitation Christians with their “sibboleth” (Judg. 12:6) teachings of Babylonish Christianity began to obscure from historical view the true “wheat” or anointed ones with their “shibboleth” teachings of true Christianity. (Matt. 13:24-30) Paul confirms this prophesied rise of organized apostasy by adding that a powerful “man of lawlessness” would develop to be “set in opposition” and to sit “down in the temple of The God.” (2 Thess. 2:3-8) By 325 C.E. this “man of lawlessness” class of apostate leaders came to be recognized by pagan Rome under Emperor Constantine as religious rulers of a new Roman state religion, a fusion of Christian apostasy with Roman paganism. What is now known as Christendom came into being to become the dominant part of Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion. From that time the “man of lawlessness” class has been the collective group of Christendom’s clergy from its many sects that had at that time become wholly Babylonized as an integral part of Babylon the Great. Thus in the sixteen centuries that have followed 325 C.E. the clergy of Christendom have dominated the world stage of false religion and as the “man of lawlessness” have cultivated symbolic “weeds” or false Christians.

WHEATLIKE CHRISTIANS REAPPEAR

 8. How did the wheatlike Christians reappear?

⁸ True to the same above prophecy of Jesus, the “wheat” or true Christians did again become apparent historically to stand apart from the “weeds” or apostates as the time of the “harvest” approached at the “conclusion of a system of things.” (Matt. 13:37-43) So it turned out to be after the 1870’s that a small group of sincere, anointed ones came together to form eventually the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society under the presidency of Charles Taze Russell. Those anointed ones later embraced the name “Jehovah’s witnesses.” To this day in 1966 they appear as such Christian witnesses on the world stage.

 9. Present the false and then the clarified understanding as to certain basic teachings.

⁹ Early this group of anointed ones cleared away many of the false Babylonish beliefs that had encumbered their Christian way. Some of the clarifications were that man does not have an immortal soul but that man is a living soul (Gen. 2:7); that Christ Jesus the Ransomer was not half man and half God but that he was completely human (1 Tim. 2:5, 6; 1 John 4:2, 3); that in the resurrection there is no “resurrection of the body” but a resurrection of the dead “soul” or individual (John 5:25-28); that there is no such mystery as a “trinity” but that Jehovah is supreme and exclusive in his Sovereign Godship. (1 Cor. 8:4-6) They turned ‘the hose on hell’ to put out the false fires of Hellenistic teachings that the wicked are being roasted in a hades or hell.c (Acts 2:31) In time the very name Jehovah was restored for use at their congregational meetings, reappeared in their Biblical publications and was even restored 7,198 times in their New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures.d

HOSTILITY FROM THE SECTARIAN CLERGY

10, 11. (a) Who today are prefigured by Job’s three false companions? (b) How have some religious writers expressed themselves about Jehovah’s witnesses?

¹⁰ Right from the 1880’s this Job group of gathering anointed ones drew fire of religious hostility from the “man of lawlessness” class, Christendom’s clergy now divided into numerous sects. So these Job-like anointed ones came to have “false companions” to argue against them even as did the ancient Job with his three and Jesus with the religious sectarian pressure groups. Again, “three” in being a number indicating emphasis well stresses the all-out, united opposition that Christendom’s sectarian clergy have been hurling against the modern Job-like ones. It is a matter of history that, as Job and Jesus were considered “outcasts” of their day, so Jehovah’s witnesses are found to be unwanted, smelly outcasts of Christendom.—Job 2:7, 8.

¹¹ For example, the Witnesses are not considered “respectable” or “regular” when spoken of in connection with the weedlike sects of Christendom.

“At all events, whether they are liked or disliked, approved or disapproved, they [Jehovah’s witnesses] continue their witness not only in America but in many foreign lands with a vigor and persistence which one could wish were more often found in one’s own and other eminently respectable ‘regular’ churches.”e (Italics ours)

By the well-to-do religious leaders the “wheatlike” Witnesses are branded as an “unorthodox cult” of ‘poor and uncultured’ ones.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses belong to one of those unorthodox religious cults . . . which prosper among those burdened with everything except worldly possessions and cultural graces.”f (Italics ours)

Also, these “outcast” Witnesses are referred to as ‘deviationists.’

“Many observers of the Jehovah’s witnesses have concluded that it is a ‘Christian deviation’ in that its system of doctrine imitates, and at the same time distorts the essential Christian beliefs.”g (Italics ours)

Lastly they are considered “odious” and “fanatical” by the clergy.

“A curb upon the propagandist activity of the odious sect—unless it can be shown to be a definite peril to society—is a potential attack upon the liberties of all citizens. Jehovah’s Witnesses are, in our judgment, a particularly odious and fanatical sect, but the truth or falsity of their teaching is not at issue and no charge of antisocial tendencies was involved in the case upon which the Supreme Court rendered its [unfavorable] decision.”h (Italics ours)

BABYLONISH WAYS REMOVED

12. What early ways of Christianity were reinstituted after the 1880’s?

¹² From the 1880’s onward the modern Job-like anointed ones additionally had reinstated the early ways of Christianity. This enabled all to serve as ministers together, shining to the public as “the light of the world.” (Matt. 5:14-16) This was done by reinstituting the house-to-house witness work and the making of private return visits to homes as did even Jesus and the apostles in their day. Furthermore, all forms of ritualism were rejected at their congregational assemblies and, instead, their meetings were of an educational nature, making an intellectual appeal by means of Bible study, rather than of an emotional, ritualistic nature. This group of anointed ones also shared in a wide distribution of Bibles, Biblical literature and tracts, numbering into the hundreds of millions.

13. As to 1914, what was heralded? How zealous were the anointed, and what reflections were being cast upon the clergy?

¹³ They particularly heralded that the year 1914 was a marked year for the ending of “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24, AV) and for the time of the establishment of Christ’s kingdom in heaven. All of this proved to be true and was verified by the beginning of World War I with its associated events among the Gentile nations. Their Christian work being conducted on a wide scale in many lands remarkably brought the anointed ones onto the world stage of religious history. Their zealous religious works put to shame the “man of lawlessness” class of sectarian clergy. Such members of the clergy should have been taking a more careful interest in their teaching the Word of God to their flocks instead of offering their parishioners a poisonous diet of Babylonish doctrines. Thus it was that this small minority of anointed ones began to manifest an integrity toward Christ Jesus and toward God that cast guilty reflections upon Christendom’s Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical clergy.

PREOCCUPATION WITH PERSONAL DEFENSE

14. Describe how deeply the anointed became preoccupied with self-defense.

¹⁴ Similar to the case of Job of old, these modern witnesses were vilified and misrepresented by the religious clergy and leaders of Christendom, who were foreshadowed by Job’s three companions who turned out to be poor comforters and false friends. They were called by all sorts of degrading names, such as “no-hellers,” “soul sleepers,” “Russellites,” “Rutherfordites,” “Millennial Dawnists,” “unpatriotic pacifists,” “twisters of the Scriptures,” “unordained preachers,” etc. Their ministry of the Word of God was challenged as being fraudulent, deceptive, not ordained by God, and carried on under different names or titles such as Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, International Bible Students Association, People’s Pulpit Association, in order to confuse and conceal the fact that they were “Russellites.” They were looked upon as being false Christians, as in fact no Christians at all, as being “false prophets,” anti-Christian, and having no standing with God at all. Against such religious accusations of being an unorthodox sect of religious hypocrites, Jehovah’s anointed remnant had to defend themselves, just as Job had to do, in an endeavor to prove their integrity as true Christians, their being the “real thing,” and their really being in harmony with God and his Word and having God’s favor and being true Christian ministers ordained by God and not by religious institutions of religious clergymen. There thus arose a great controversy between the religious clergy and God’s anointed, ordained remnant, just as Job got involved in controversy with Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad. Thus, like Job, the anointed remnant became especially preoccupied with themselves and their personal standing with God. They failed to give full appreciation to God’s name Jehovah and to see that the vindication of God’s name and universal sovereignty was the chief thing, so that they should be his witnesses with that chief issue in view. Their getting to heaven was not the main thing.

ELIHU’S RIGHT ESTIMATION

15, 16. (a) What corresponds to Elihu today, and how so? (b) How is The Watchtower used to present right estimations?

¹⁵ Who, then, was it that finally made a right estimation of these basic matters and published such for the attention of the anointed ones to set matters straight? (Isa. 1:18; 2 Tim. 3:16) As it was young Elihu that made the right assessment as to elderly Job in Job’s day so it was the modern young Elihu who brought about the reproving of the 1,900-year-old Job-like anointed ones. Against ancient Job, Elihu’s “anger blazed over his [Job’s] declaring his own soul righteous rather than God.” (Job 32:2) The modern Elihu seems well to comprise the spiritual governing body of the anointed remnant of Christ’s body always closely associated with the directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.i This governing group of anointed ones having become a working unit since the 1870’s makes it young historically in comparison to the 1,900-year-old “faithful and discreet slave,” collectively made up of the faithful anointed ones alive on earth at any given point of time. (Matt. 24:45, 46) The Elihu governing unit has been responsible since 1879 for publishing the Watchtower magazine.

¹⁶ When the Elihu of today gained the right estimation of matters it used its instrument, the Watchtower magazine, to counsel the anointed ones progressively. It was The Watchtower that first published that the vindicating of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty was more important than the vindicating of any individual man. In the giving of its advice, like young Elihu of Job’s day, the historically youthful governing group showed more of a youthful reliance upon the spirit of God in rendering spiritual counsel than in looking to age-old human wisdom and philosophy as the clergy were doing. For this reason the modern Elihu through The Watchtower could further take the lead in exposing the 1,600-year-old “man of lawlessness” class, the sectarian clergy. With Christian boldness since 1919 The Watchtower could maintain with a right estimation that Christendom’s clergy have “proceeded to pronounce God wicked” by their agelong preaching of things that were based on anti-Jehovah, Babylonish teachings. (Job 32:3) In this way a right assessment and the correct estimation of religious developments become progressively available to all righteously inclined individuals by means of The Watchtower.

JOB-LIKE TESTING

17. Describe the Babylon-like captivity experience that came upon the anointed ones from 1914 to 1919.

¹⁷ Now a special Job-like time of testing came upon the few thousand anointed ones from the autumn of 1914 to the spring of 1919. A period of Babylon-like captivity came to be forced upon them. Ridicule was heaped upon them by the clergy. During World War I they were slanderously branded as “security risks.” This brought governmental opposition upon them in Canada, the United States and other countries. Their publications became subject to ban. Those taking the lead among them came to be imprisoned. Finally their organized public witness work was crippled by the summer of 1918. Their headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, had to be shut down, with temporary offices maintained back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Places of their religious meetings were raided and closed. Yes, a spiritually destitute, forsaken condition came upon them. To the faithful anointed ones questions came as to what all this meant and why Jehovah was permitting all this open hostility. Had they not in the name of God and Christ been undertaking a great public witness work among the nations in the thirty-some years before 1914? Did not Jehovah seem to favor that work by granting it continued growth before 1914? The Job-like ones wanted to know: Why now all this adversity and hostility?—Matt. 24:9, 10.

18. What corresponded to Job’s children taken away and his sickness?

¹⁸ Many who, like spiritual children, had looked to them for spiritual guidance and help now abandoned their association. All together, it was a time of destitution as to “spiritual children” and means for religious worship. Considered by the sectarian clergy as outcasts and spiritually diseased ones who were to be loathed and shunned, the anointed ones were left by 1918 to ponder their sad spiritual state, present and future. (Rev. 11:7-10) A state of spiritual unhappiness had been enforced upon them by Satan and all his earthly forces. But again and again the Job-like anointed ones asked in their prayers: Why, O why is Jehovah allowing all this?

19. Describe the set course today of those prefigured by Job’s three companions.

¹⁹ While the anointed endured this low state the modern ‘three false companions,’ the collective group of Christendom’s clergy, stepped up their burning hostility upon the remnant. Unloving in their thinking and hearts, the religious leaders put to use all their Babylonish tactics and arguments. They pretended to worship the God of the Bible but in fact were out “to pronounce God wicked.” (Job 32:3) Jehovah God found them untruthful in their arguments and attacks, whereas the anointed ones were found to be truthful. (Job 42:7, 8) The doctrines and traditions of the clergy are those that have come down through the ages from Babylon and not from the Bible. From 325 C.E. to the present, Christendom’s clergy have been the most powerful part of Babylon the Great. They have been and are now the worst persecutors of Jehovah’s witnesses. These modern ‘three false comforters’ in their bitterness will continue to be, figuratively speaking, ‘after the hide’ and ‘on the necks’ of the true witnesses right down to the very ruinous end of Babylon the Great.

DELIVERANCE INTO SPIRITUAL PROSPERITY

20. Describe the restoration the anointed ones have had, and since when has it been?

²⁰ As Job was made happy in his outcome of a restoration, so the modern anointed ones came to experience a spiritually paradisaic restoration from 1919 onward. This restoration has meant great spiritual prosperity and happiness for them in Jehovah’s royal Kingdom service. To add to their joy, a vast crowd of sheeplike persons has been directed to flee from Babylon the Great and to come over into their realm of spiritual favor. Actually in 1934 the “other sheep” were told to get dedicated and baptized and to become the happy spiritual children of the anointed remnant.j But it was not until 1942 that the fulfillment in complete force of the bringing forth of Job’s ten new children began to take place.k From then on by the hundreds of thousands the figurative “ten children” have come to the aid of the modern Job, the anointed remnant.—Isa. 2:2, 3; Zech. 8:23.

FORMER CLERGYMEN NOW WITNESSES

21, 22. (a) How does Job 42:8, 9 have application today? (b) What course have such repentant ones followed, according to modern experiences?

²¹ In Job’s day of restoration, Eliphaz, Zophar and Bildad took Jehovah’s advice to repent of their false religious stand, to accept the priesthood services of Job so that no “disgraceful folly” should come upon them. (Job 42:8, 9) Also after Jesus’ restoration by resurrection and exaltation to heaven, his effective priesthood services were accepted as “a great crowd of priests began to be obedient to the faith.” (Acts 6:7) Has there been a parallel development in these last days? Yes! In the decades of restoration since 1919, right-hearted clergymen of various religious sects in different parts of the earth have repentantly accepted the priesthood services of the anointed remnant of Job-like ones by becoming rebaptized and ordained as true ministers of Jehovah.l Even clergymen in prominent places have made this about-face, including one priest who had formerly been a Greek Orthodox bishop. No longer seeking worldly fame, these many reformed ministers now zealously preach the good news of the Kingdom right in the same places where they had functioned as sectarian clergymen. But instead of preaching from a pulpit in a church building they now have the doorstep as their right pulpit.

²² What has resulted to these former clergymen for following this right and humble course? From their former clergy “friends” they get much Babylonish hostility and reproach, which they have courageously and faithfully endured. From the Sovereign God Jehovah they get goodwill for worthily bearing the divine name, making known Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship from house to house even as Jesus Christ did. After years of right preaching activity, several of these former clergymen have become appointed as presiding ministers of local congregations of Jehovah’s witnesses. They, in turn, have had the privilege of attending the Watchtower Society’s Kingdom Ministry Schools for further ministerial training. Here, then, is another merciful reason for Jehovah’s permitting Babylon the Great to exist a while longer so that more of such humbled, right-hearted, captive clergy individually may follow the lead set by these earlier ones and get out soon before “disgraceful folly” comes upon all who are left in Babylon the Great.

CLERGY HOSTILITY STILL PERSISTS

23, 24. Explain why clergy hostility still persists as pictured in (a) Joseph’s case in Egypt and (b) a parable of Jesus.

²³ But why is it that the modern Job still experiences increasingly bitter hostility from the unrepentant Babylonish clergy, if this is the time of the restoration and ascendency for the anointed ones? The situation is similar to the antitypical seven years of famine and seven years of prosperity in Egypt during Joseph’s administration.a (Gen. 41:29-32) In their present-day application those two antitypical seven-year periods run concurrently. Upon Christendom’s land or realm there is great spiritual famine for the hearing of the Word of God. (Amos 8:11) While upon the land, realm or situation of the true anointed ones there is great spiritual abundance.

²⁴ Such concurrent fulfillment is confirmed in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. (Luke 16:19-31) Here the condition of both the “rich man” or the clergy class and that of the “Lazarus” group, the anointed remnant, takes place at the same time, namely, from 1919 to the present. The physical facts abundantly show that since 1919 the anointed witnesses of Jehovah have enjoyed spiritual prosperity as to their ministry while during the same time the clergy have been experiencing increased frustrations and spiritual failures as to their ministries. All this bears evidence of their “torment.” Earlier in this article there was presented another confirmation in that while Babylon the Great fell under the encircling power of Christ Jesus in 1919, it is permitted to exist with all its spiritual corruption and hostility until the rescue of her captives is concluded, at which conclusion she will then be totally destroyed.—Rev. 18:4; 17:15-18.

25. (a) What is another purpose for Jehovah’s permitting Babylonish hostility to continue in our time? (b) What can be expected in the next Watchtower article?

²⁵ In Jehovah’s wisdom he has permitted this continued Babylonish hostility to persist for another purpose. Why? Because it now gives the “great crowd” of the “other sheep” also an opportunity to support the anointed ones in giving an answer to Satan as to his tauntings and challenges concerning Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship. With all this background information, we are now ready to consider the physical evidences of the great religious controversy that has been raging between the anointed ones championing Jehovah’s Godship on the one hand and the Babylonish clergy of Christendom on the other hand. How remarkably the detailed experiences and arguments against Job in his day and against Jesus in his time are being duplicated in printed form today on an enlarged scale of hostility against the modern Witnesses!

[Footnotes]