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Keeping Watch for 100 YearsThe Watchtower—1979 | July 1
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Charles Darwin had espoused the theory of man’s evolution, doing so in his 1859 work Origin of Species. As time passed, evolution, higher criticism of the Bible and the like presented a challenge for champions of God’s inspired Word.
The Watch Tower has always endeavored to meet the challenge of changing attitudes. For example, the March 1885 issue contained an article entitled “Evolution and the Brain Age.” Of course, the evolution theory has often been proved false in the pages of this journal.
But what about other critics of the Bible? Some contended that the prophet Isaiah erred in naming Sargon as king of Assyria, since secular history had not mentioned him. (Isa. 20:1) But the Watch Tower of January 1886 pointed to discoveries proving the Bible right.
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Keeping Watch for 100 YearsThe Watchtower—1979 | July 1
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After that global conflict, the League of Nations was proposed, and among its enthusiastic supporters were the Church of England and Canadian churches. On December 18, 1918, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America (composed of representatives of various Protestant denominations) sent United States President Woodrow Wilson its adopted Declaration stating: “Such a League is not a mere political expedient; it is rather the political expression of the Kingdom of God on earth.” But from 1919 onward The Watch Tower boldly showed that the League of Nations would fail.
With the commencement of World War II in 1939, the League of Nations went into inactivity. That terrible conflict was raging with full force in 1942, when witnesses of Jehovah met in assembly and heard the thought-provoking public address “Peace—Can It Last?” “As the speech progressed,” reported The Watch Tower, “the audience saw with mental vision a word-picture drawn according to Revelation chapter seventeen, and saw the identity of the scarlet beast that now ‘is not’ but saw it ready to ascend out of the bottomless pit to become the ‘beast that was, and is not, and shall again be present’, this time with the Babylonish religious harlot dangling her legs over its back. But only for ‘one hour’ in the future this, and then the harlot is unseated and destroyed, and ‘the King of kings and Lord of lords’ destroys this . . . ‘peace beast’ with its seven heads and ten horns.” Even before the League reappeared as the United Nations in 1945, The Watchtower courageously declared that no such man-made organization, but God’s kingdom alone, will establish lasting peace.
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