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Posthaste “to the Mountains!”The Watchtower—1953 | September 15
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destructions during Armageddon our various physical properties, homes, Kingdom Halls, and material possessions may be destroyed, but under heavenly protection from Jehovah’s executional hosts we shall survive with what we need, chief of all of which will be his approval for holding fast our integrity to him and his kingdom.
18. How and with what expectation should we now conduct ourselves as a New World society, and in accord with this what has Jehovah provided for us through his New World society?
18 Looking forward to living endlessly together after Armageddon, the big thing now is knowing how to live together and serve God unitedly. Let Jehovah’s spirit have free and unimpeded operation among us that we may be kept from being fashioned according to men’s ideas and schemes and that he may make us into something for his everlasting use. While the old-world society wails, howls, starves and thirsts religiously and hastens to a fiery destruction, let us continue rejoicing, singing and feasting together spiritually, always remembering the words of Peter: “There are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to his promise, and in these righteousness is to dwell.” (2 Pet. 3:13, NW) In full accord with our expectation, and for our further feasting together and working together as a New World society, the happy God Jehovah has provided for us through his New World society this new 384-page book in English, entitled “NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH”
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Admissions of FailureThe Watchtower—1953 | September 15
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Admissions of Failure
The Living Church (Episcopal) said last November 23: “Not long ago a survey was published of religious beliefs held in a distinguished parish of our Church. It was appalling to note how little some people actually believed, in spite of the fact that supposedly they stand up and recite the Creeds every Sunday in church. It was correctly pointed out that in most instances this rather depressing weakness of faith was due to lack of definite teaching. Nevertheless . . . a layman who goes through the motions of saying a Creed he does not believe, or, indeed, who joins a Church which professes a Faith he does not believe, is just as blameworthy as a clergyman who fails to teach orthodox Christianity to his flock.”
Further shortcomings of much of today’s religion were shown at the Annual Assembly of the Congregational Union of England and Wales in London’s Westminster Chapel, in May, 1950. There Chairman Lovell Cocks, principal of Bristol’s Western College, sizzled forth: “Can faith as halting as ours outrun the fierce dynamism of the Marxist creed? Can we hope to beat the Communists until Christians know their stuff as well as the Communists know theirs? Till we do the Communists need not be afraid of us.” As to the big ill-attended churches, he said: “These fellowships have come to believe that the cause of the kingdom means keeping these buildings going, and everything else is sacrificed. . . . May it not be that what Christ really wants them to do is to sell out, to get rid of their buildings, and hire a room over a shop—an upper room, and begin all over again in an apostolic way.”
No knowledge, no belief, a halting faith, worship of buildings, the fire of true Christianity gone—that is Christendom. Its dynamism has been extinguished with the poisonous gas of human theories, political and social meddling and false doctrine. It has dulled the senses to real Christian belief and action. You have a choice—the world’s apathy or the firm, dynamic faith of true Christianity. Which will you choose?
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