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Questions From ReadersThe Watchtower—1953 | June 15
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of illustrations, because, looking, they look in vain, and hearing, they hear in vain, neither do they get the sense of it; and toward them the prophecy of Isaiah is having fulfillment which says: ‘By hearing, you will hear but by no means get the sense of it; and, looking, you will look but by no means see. For the heart of this people has grown thick, and with their ears they have heard with annoyance, and they have shut their eyes; that they might never see with their eyes and hear with their ears and get the sense of it with their hearts and turn back, and I heal them.’” (Matt. 13:13-15, NW) The selfish people were not interested in God’s message, not even enough to inquire into the meaning of the illustrations Jesus used. So by putting the message in this form such unworthy ones were weeded out, and only the meek ones anxious to learn of God remained to question Jesus on the meaning of the illustrations. In this way Jehovah both kept some spiritually deaf, dumb and blind and made others see, hear and speak with spiritual enlightenment.
Some just have no love for truth, and “for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie”. Modern translation brings out the meaning more clearly, showing that Jehovah does not deliberately delude them but merely allows Satan to delude them, since they take more pleasure in lies and unrighteousness than in truth and salvation: “The lawless one’s presence is according to the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and wonders and with every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth that they might be saved. So that is why God lets an operation of error go to them that they may get to believing the lie, in order that they all may be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thess. 2:9-12, NW) In spiritual matters Jehovah allows Satan the god of this world to mentally blind them.—2 Cor. 4:4.
Just as Jehovah makes some deaf and dumb and blind spiritually, so others he lifts out of spiritual deafness and dumbness and blindness. As Isaiah foretold of this time of spiritual enlightenment: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.” (Isa. 35:5, 6) Spiritually, he now allows these defects to remain upon the proud and arrogant, and lifts them from the meek and lowly.
Hence we see that in ways both physical and spiritual Exodus 4:11 is fulfilled by Jehovah God, but not in a way that makes him responsible for all the physically deaf, dumb and blind in the earth.
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The Bible—but Only the Desirable PartsThe Watchtower—1953 | June 15
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The Bible—but Only the Desirable Parts
● The clergy of Christendom have long been guilty of rejecting what parts of the Bible they do not want. Even the fundamentalists do this regarding its statements that the soul dies and that Jesus and his Father are not one in a trinity. (Ezek. 18:4, 20; Acts 3:23; John 14:28) Now the tables have been turned upon them, for the Communists are doing the same thing. The January 14 Christian Century reported a sermon by Ch’ieng Ch’u Ku published in the October 16 New Church that said the new heaven and the new earth have already been realized in the new China, thanks to land reform. “More than 4 million farmers now own their own land, build their own houses, eat the fruit of their harvest.” This included also the river projects, railways and church reform. “We are masters of our own church. We shall never again be confused by the imperialistic vision of the end of the world. . . . We must arise and work, demonstrating that the people are the masters of the new heaven and the new earth.” What egotism! Men the masters of both the church and heaven! No need to see what God expects, or to see what he has said he alone can do. This clergyman flings God into the class of imperialists anyway, since His Word tells of the end of the world; the end of democracies and Communistic governments alike, of the entire wicked system of things and the establishment of righteousness and peace to remain forever. But Ch’ieng Ch’u Ku does not care about that. He is concerned more with political propaganda in the same way that the clergy of the West push their brand; both taking only what they want of God’s Word and rejecting the rest.
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