MORE BLESSINGS DESPITE PERSECUTION

Opposition came from the clergy. One drunken black-robed priest threatened to run us out of Silver City, New Mexico, and then had us arrested. But we found Jehovah’s promise true: “‘Any weapon whatever that will be formed against you will have no success, and any tongue at all that will rise up against you in the judgment you will condemn. This is the hereditary possession of the servants of Jehovah, and their righteousness is from me,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.” (Isa. 54:17) Several years later, instead of just two Christian sisters with us for the Memorial, there were over forty persons present. In the fall of 1969 there were two congregations​—one Spanish and one English-speaking in that same territory, and on a visit it was my privilege to speak to a hundred Witnesses.

Persecution came in 1940. Hatred and suspicion broke out nation wide. There were threats, arrests, slander and intense opposition in almost all our territory. Jail sentences were handed out to innocent full-time ministers, the public officials often cooperating with the clergy, who instigated the persecution. My life was threatened on a number of occasions. The demons, through misled humans, engineered a flood of intense persecution against Jehovah’s Christian witnesses and their ministry.

Under intense pressure I made an error in judgment and wrote the Society that ‘I wasn’t born with courage.’ The reply was one that I will never forget: “Courage comes from knowing that Jehovah is backing you up.”