²⁵ For such a command to be issued and to be acted upon, it required first that Great Babylon should fall, and that her Conqueror, the Greater Cyrus, should issue his decree of liberation. Great Babylon has fallen! That is why the anointed remnant of Zion’s seed began turning away from her since the year 1919 and the full number of them have now been gathered. They do not want to touch the unclean thing or be in the midst of it anymore. They want to keep religiously clean, in order to practice pure, undefiled, acceptable worship in the sight of Jehovah their God. They have carried with them, not the Babylonish religious practices and traditions and doctrines of demons, but the pure utensils of Jehovah’s worship, pictured by the sacred utensils that the Babylonians stole from Jehovah’s temple in 607 B.C. when Jerusalem was destroyed. They have left Great Babylon, not wildly and in confusion like the radical elements of this world, but in theocratic orderliness, under divine guidance. Jehovah their God has gone before them! Although the enemy has dogged their rear, Jehovah God has been a rear guard to them. That is why today they are out of Great Babylon! They are here, serving as free messengers of liberation, here in 1964!

26. Who have now joined the liberated remnant, and what are they doing to show their desire to serve God freely?

²⁶ But they are now not alone! Because they have fearlessly preached the good news of God’s kingdom of liberation, “all the ends of the earth” have seen the salvation of God in behalf of Zion and the remnant of her spiritual children. Just as, away back in 537 B.C., there were upward of 7,537 slaves and professional singers that got out of the midst of Babylon with the Israelite remnant, so there is something similar today. A “great multitude” of persons located in “all the ends of the earth” have observed Jehovah’s salvation of the faithful remnant of spiritual Israelites, and in adoration they have turned to the worship of this glorious God of liberation. They have followed the remnant of spiritual Israelites out of Great Babylon and purified themselves from all her defilements and courageously dedicated themselves to the pure, holy worship of Jehovah God. (Ezra 2:64, 65; Neh. 7:66, 67; Rev. 7:9-17) They have entered into the enjoyment of their religious freedom. They have offered themselves to serve with the remnant as messengers of liberation, and God has been pleased to send them forth.

27. How much longer will the work of liberation continue, and for whose sake is the work done?

²⁷ The fallen Great Babylon is now approaching her terrible destruction. Those who remain in her will be charged with a share in the responsibility for her sins and will be destroyed with her. Till her destruction at hands of Jehovah God, against whom she has sinned, there is a work of liberation to be done for the sake of all persons yet in her who long for religious freedom to worship the one living and true God. Their eyes yearn to see the comely feet of messengers of good news. The time is now short. To the work, then, all you free messengers of liberation!

“Unyielding Courage”

Speaking of Jehovah’s witnesses, the book God Is a Millionaire by Richard Mathison makes this observation: “During the Korean War, the products of easy Protestantism, of our military schools and our better colleges cracked by the score. . . . A Pentagon study of the problem brought forth a red-faced conclusion: Those few Jehovah’s Witnesses who ended up as prisoners of war, . . . withstood to a man the scientific, psychological efforts to convert them to Communism—better than a number of patriotic West Pointers.”