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Divine Will International Assembly of Jehovah’s WitnessesThe Watchtower—1959 | February 15
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of how God accomplishes his will the Assembly applauded the president’s announcement of the title of the beautiful new 384-page book, “Your Will Be Done on Earth.” The distribution of 228,000 copies into their hands by the next few days bespoke the yearning they felt for the unfolding of the prophecies of Daniel and of other holy inspired men that this book offered them.
GOD’S KINGDOM DAY
For both heaven and earth the final Sunday afternoon was a happy time. Certainly the great King of heaven, Jehovah God, and his reigning Son, Jesus Christ, rejoiced together with the holy angels to have God’s kingdom preached by one mouthpiece to the largest visible audience on one occasion. From heaven they looked down on an audience of more than a quarter of a million persons, 253,922 by count, occupying all seats in the two Assembly stadiums, thousands standing in close formation out on the baseball outfield behind the speakers’ platform in Yankee Stadium, all seats in the overflow tents being occupied, and thousands standing listening on the walks outside the stadiums and tents. The challenging subject of the public address, so widely advertised over the weeks, was “God’s Kingdom Rules—Is the World’s End Near?” Showing a fine grasp of his subject, the speaking witness of Jehovah, the Society’s president, proved by Scripture and by prophecy fulfilled since 1914 that God’s kingdom by Christ has ruled in the heavens since that date. This unavoidably denotes that the end of this political, commercial, religious world is near. No vacuum will follow its complete end at Armageddon, for God’s everlasting new world of righteousness will glorify heaven and earth after Armageddon, and forever His will shall be done on earth in a paradise state as it is done in the holy heavens above.
This was indeed something for this overwhelmingly great audience to hail, and hail it they did, with a finale of applause that was really a tribute to the Kingdom message. During the intermission that followed they gladly accepted the proffered two free copies apiece of the booklet containing the full text of the speech, half a million copies of which had been printed and brought to the stadiums for this exalted occasion. Judging from the big audience of the preceding Friday afternoon, we believe that about 60,000 of the invited public had turned out and joined the Assembly in listening to this glad message of God’s now ruling kingdom.
Many of those 60,000 must have remained in response to the invitation to hear shortly the closing remarks of the president, the public speaker, for the final attendance was 210,778, the second-largest attendance of the entire Assembly. What they heard proved to be amply rewarding. It vividly revealed that over all the earth God’s kingdom was on the march toward victory and that his visible organization was planning, preparing and arranging for greater expansion by the enlarging of the physical facilities of the New World society and by the use of these facilities in a widening program for training the servants of the organization.
At the start of these closing remarks came the final release of the assembly, the ninety-first. Yes, there had already been ninety releases of books and booklets in various languages, post cards and sixteen-page convention reports. But this final one, a post card giving the architect’s conception of the new twelve-story building to be erected in 1959 on Columbia Heights opposite the present Brooklyn Bethel home, conveyed a thrill of its own. A copy was handed free to each adult before the Society’s president commented on its significance. He branched out from this onto many other provisions that were to be made for feeding Jehovah’s sheep under Jesus Christ with the latest spiritual food and for producing better organizational servants and for making better ministers out of all of Jehovah’s dedicated witnesses. More than fifty applauses punctuated these fascinating closing remarks.
After such a review of all the grand things of the Assembly and after the setting forth in grand array of all our theocratic purposes for the future, the immense congregation could join in singing heartfelt the song, the first line of which reads, “Great God, we thank you for the part we have in making glad your heart.” With reverent and grateful hearts they could bow their heads as the Society’s president offered the closing prayer. With hearts filled with the joy of having something noble to live for in the service of God’s kingdom, in obedience to the divine will, they gradually disbanded, the spirit of Jehovah God accompanying them. A great ineffaceable sign and wonder to Jehovah’s lasting glory had been wrought by this Divine Will International Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
DIVINE WILL ASSEMBLIES IN OTHER LANDS
Now, in harmony with the divine will, this great sign and wonder was due to be viewed by people in all parts of the earth. The delegates returned to the 123 lands from which they had come as living witnesses of the Assembly, and within a few weeks Divine Will assemblies were held throughout Central and South America, Europe, Africa, the Orient and the islands of the sea, providing small-scale copies of the mammoth gathering in New York. To the delight of the audience, on October 4 and 5 Brother Knorr was present at Leicester, England, and on Sunday he delivered the public lecture to 9,872 gathered at this final assembly in the series of four in the British Isles. From there he went on to Stuttgart, Germany, where he spoke to an enthusiastic audience of 16,563. This trip also afforded him opportunity to inspect the construction of the Society’s new Branch offices in England and France and Germany.
When news reached the Eastern Zone of Germany that an assembly had been planned for Berlin, the Communist police began to visit the homes of the brothers to warn them not to try to attend, taking away their personal identification cards to prevent them from traveling. When the brothers went to the railroad station to purchase their tickets, they found that their names were on special lists of persons who were to be refused. In spite of these obstacles 15,418 were present in the Deutschlandhalle in West Berlin to adopt the Resolution, and for them its words carried special meaning: “. . . and even when persecution may get more intense and we may be scattered physically or be driven underground or deprived of our Bible-study literature, we will keep on obeying God rather than men and will preach the good news of the Kingdom . . . by use of our Bibles alone, if necessary, or by just that divine Word stored up in our hearts.”
By early December, ninety-one Divine Will assemblies had been held. The attendance had now swollen from 253,922 present to hear the public talk at the Assembly in New York to a total of 562,955. This was backed up with the delivery of that same talk, “God’s Kingdom Rules—Is the World’s End Near?” at all the congregations of Jehovah’s witnesses worldwide on October 5, followed by the distribution of millions of copies of it in The Watchtower. The 7,136 who symbolized their dedication by water baptism in New York have since been joined by 10,638 more at these further assemblies, bringing the total to 17,774.
One of the outstanding features of all these ninety-one assemblies was the wholehearted endorsement of the Resolution exposing the delinquency of the clergy of Christendom, spotlighting the kingdom of God as the only real hope for mankind, and declaring the determination of the witnesses faithfully to continue to serve Jehovah God. At the final count to date this Resolution has been publicly endorsed by 405,720 gathered in assemblies. And hundreds of thousands more have demonstrated that they too are in heartfelt accord with it by participating in the distribution of the Resolution contained in The Watchtower as of November 1, 1958, to millions of persons, including the rulers of the lands, the clergy and other prominent individuals. And on December 1 the world-wide distribution of 70,000,000 copies of this plain-spoken Resolution in fifty languages in tract form began, in what may well prove to be the greatest publicity campaign to date, making clear to the people of all nations the divine will as expressed in God’s own Word, the Holy Bible.
These assemblies and the Kingdom publicity now going on have attracted the attention of men of all national, racial and religious groups, and those who are of good will toward Jehovah God are gathering with his people to give him exclusive devotion.
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Part 8—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”The Watchtower—1959 | February 15
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Part 8—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”
In order that his will might be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Jehovah God started off the human family in a sanctuary. This holy place was the garden of Eden or Paradise of Pleasure in which Adam and Eve had fellowship with their God and heavenly Father. It was at this Paradise sanctuary that a heavenly spirit son of God rebelled and transformed himself into Satan the Devil. Using the serpent he tempted the woman Eve into sin by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. She in turn induced her husband Adam to eat and willfully break God’s law. Their presence in the Edenic Paradise sanctuary now became defiling. God came upon the guilty trio and pronounced the sentence of destruction upon the great Serpent, Satan the Devil, by means of the seed of His woman. He also pronounced the death sentence upon Adam and Eve and cleansed the Paradise sanctuary by driving the sinful couple out and barring their return in any attempt to eat of the tree of life in order to live on earth forever.
23, 24. What fact showed sin had passed on to Adam’s children born outside Eden, and in what two respects was Cain a murderer?
23 Sin, together with its condemnation to death, passed on to Adam’s children born outside the sanctuary of Paradise. This fact is plain from what happened to his very first son, Cain. This son became a cultivator of the cursed ground outside the Edenic sanctuary. His younger brother Abel became a shepherd. Cain and Abel brought
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