NOT POLITICAL PROPAGANDA,but THE TRUTHfor your comfort!
COPYRIGHT, 1943AND PUBLISHED BYWATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY, INC.International Bible Students AssociationBrooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A.
Made in the United States of America
FREEDOMin the New World
THE FREE WORLD comes only from the hand of Almighty God. It is at the door, and no power in heaven or in earth can turn back the hand of the all-powerful Creator from building it and offering it in all its glory to worthy creatures. It is to be a world totally of sons of God, wherein the Fatherhood of God will be true toward all creatures of good-will. His household is a family of free creatures, each one in the image of their life-giving Father, who is in the bondage of slavery to none. True freedom in its fullness is and ever will be that of the sons of God. Their almighty Father will make this earth free for the eternal life and enjoyment of his children. It is not his will that his sons should be subject to tyrants or dictators, but that all should be members of his free organization, all acknowledging the universal domination of the Most High God.
The free world God creates does not come without the cost of blood, the precious blood of the greatest freedom-lover that ever trod this earth. That price paid makes the new world a sure prospect, though there be yet many and mighty enemies in the way. The world of perfect freedom will come, therefore, though not with-
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out the din of a gigantic battle and the shedding of yet more blood, the blood of all human enemies of freedom, in the "battle of that great day of God Almighty", the war that ends all wars.
This present world is not free. What wonder, then, that the whole creation groans! In desperation it struggles to make itself free by its own exertions and schemes, but to this day all such have come to nought. The oppression upon the entire race grows heavier. As thoughtful persons observe the long path of human history strewn with the broken promises of politicians, the false, unsatisfying comfort of religion which always goes along with the politicians, and the continual blocking and overreaching of all man's attempts at human reform and betterment, they turn their hopes away from men of clay. In their despair they trust that there is a God of righteousness and that he sees conditions and will act in vindication of righteousness and will bring in lasting relief.
A man who was a champion of the liberty of the sons of God and who had a part in the writing of that great Book of Freedom and Charter of Liberty, the Bible, aptly described the long experience of human creation when he wrote: "Indeed, the earnest expectation of the creation longs for the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was made subject to frailty, (not voluntarily, but by him who placed it under;) in hope that even the creation itself will be emancipated from the slavery of corruption, into the FREEDOM of the glory of the children of
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God. For we know that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together till the present time."1 Not all men are in such expectation and longing for that free world, because not every man believes in emancipation for all men that live; nor does every man yearn from the heart for a righteous world, because not all men desire to practice righteousness. A great many prefer that the present world should continue, for their own self-satisfaction. Such haters of liberty and righteousness must and will be cleared out. Despite them, the day is near when earthly creation shall cease its groaning, because the glorious freedom of the sons of God will have been brought in.
The very fact that world statesmen and lovers of democracy speak incessantly about the "Four Freedoms" for all nations proves that the world is in fetters. Make no mistake, however. The freedoms of worship and of speech, and the freedoms from fear and want, are not all that is necessary to create a free world where righteousness dwells. It will take vastly more than this global war and the postwar international setup to establish even those four desirable things. It is not the voice of pessimism and defeatism to say that human hands cannot bring in that quartet of freedoms world-wide and cannot bring in a millennium of peace for all men and nations. It is the voice of courageous faith in God and his purpose. It is the voice of
1 Quoted from Paul's epistle to the Romans (8:19-22), according to the Emphatic Diaglott version. See also Moffatt's translation.
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knowledge of His truth; for such knowledge makes one free from the follies and vain imaginations of ignorant men. To no men will go the credit for the building of a new world and for the globe-girdling freedom which will then be enjoyed by men of good-will. Men who imagine they can accomplish these things with credit to themselves and their political party and religious sect do in reality put themselves in the way of God's purpose. In spite of all their good intentions, if any, they become opposers of Almighty God, and the greatest hindrances to lasting human welfare.
LOSS OF LIBERTY
Liberty of the human children of God vanished first from the earth six thousand years ago, due to the aggressions of a wicked schemer for universal domination, Satan the Devil. Adam "was the son of God". (Luke 3: 38) Jehovah God established a free world for this "son of God", then gave him a wife, and laid upon them both the divine mandate to multiply their kind and fill the earth with a free and righteous offspring. At once Satan the Devil grasped after the absolute control of the human race from its fountainhead on. To do so he must take away their liberty as God's children and make them his subjects. Their freedom and very existence were conditioned upon their perfect obedience to the Theocratic law of their Creator. Making them lawbreakers like Satan would of itself force them out of the family of God's children
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and onto the Devil's side. Deceit must therefore be employed. Appearing as an angel of light the Devil promised them greater freedom than they had. By what means? Read and study the account of the temptation, in Genesis, chapter three, and you will see that it was by means of religion. The acceptance of that which denies the word of God, and then acting thereafter in disobedience to the word and command of God, is religion. The Devil introduced religion to Adam and Eve to make them, as he said, 'wise and godlike'; but their taking up with religion resulted otherwise. Because the issue of universal domination was here raised, Jehovah God did not deprive Adam and Eve of freedom of religion and of speech which reproached Jehovah's name. Our first parents did lose immediately freedom from fear and from want, being driven out from the paradise garden of Eden as religionists and rebels, followers of Satan, 'the father of lies.'
Measure now how great a loss of freedom the entire human family suffered. Our first parents bartered away cheaply far more than the freedom from fear and want. They sustained the loss of that which is impossible for the political, commercial and religious powers of this modern age to replace or restore. They parted with freedom from sin and its penalty, namely, death, with its attendants of imperfection, passion, sickness, fatigue, accident, old age, and the grave. They forfeited the service of God within his free organization and became the servants
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of sin and of man's greatest oppressor, the adversary of God. Cocksure of his grip on humankind, Satan reproached God as being unable to put a man on earth who under the test at Satan's hands would choose to serve Jehovah God and remain faithful to Him. Such a challenge foreboded the exercise of religious intolerance by Satan and his religious dupes on earth, and that they would deny, as far as possible, the freedom of anyone to worship Jehovah God in spirit and in truth. The first victim of religious intolerance was Abel, who died as Jehovah's first witness.
A corrupt world was then built up. Man's invisible overlord, Satan, drew other spirit creatures to his side and organized them into a powerful body of demons to fight against Jehovah's universal rule and to aid Satan in controlling the human race. In the third generation from Adam religion was organized, when men began calling themselves or false gods by the name of the Lord. Demonic interference in human affairs followed; race contamination was introduced; ungodliness increased with gross self-indulgence in eating, drinking, marriage and other activities, and indifference was shown to the message of Jehovah's witnesses. A reign of violence spread over the corrupt earth. Human power was wholly inadequate to break the oppression of the demon heavens upon the earth. No human liberator could deliver any savable portion of mankind from that ungodly old world and transfer them into righteous conditions and peace. Only the destruction of that
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world by the almighty power of God gave humankind a new birth of freedom. Just eight persons were accounted as righteous in God's sight and not in the service of Satan and religion. Those eight, Noah and his household, were carried alive through the end of the "world that then was". — 2 Peter 2: 5; 3: 6.
That old world was about sixteen hundred and fifty-six years of age when the mighty Flood put an end to its corruptness and violence and defamation of the name of Jehovah God. Another world followed. Has it been any improvement on the former? Today it is older in human degeneracy. It is longer in its record of religion allied with politics and commercialism, forty-three centuries having passed since the Flood. From many lips the cry now goes up for freedom and for a finer and better world. To whom is the cry directed? To the political leaders of the nations, to the religious clergy, and to the commercial and economic wizards. To mere men, in all cases! Said one prominent clergyman of New York city recently as to the postwar needs: 'The war-weary world is waiting for RELIGION "to start something"; presumably a modern-world crusade.' — New York Times, June 14, 1943.
Are men crying for the destruction of this present evil world and its politics, selfish commerce and religion? Not at all; but simply for the "transformation of this old world beyond recognition", as one says. Will such man-made transformation bring to humankind the freedom of the sons of God? Will a veneered old world
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escape or ward off the destruction to which it is doomed? Mere human reasoning as based on man's past history must answer No! With still greater conviction, faith in God, whose Word gives the correct explanation of man's present predicament and the only remedy, answers No! A man-made "new world order" with its alluring promises of humanly guaranteed freedoms will prove to be a deception. It will simply put men more completely under the power of the "god of this world", Satan, and will throw them off guard against the most destructive catastrophe ever to visit the earth. Said the Son of God, who is the One that shed his blood for the New World and who is its sure Foundation: "As the days of No'e were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that No'e entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." — Matthew 24: 37-39.
In the days before the deluge men persuaded themselves that the religious, social and governmental constitution of things was fixed and permanent. So they scoffed at the warning of the end of the world as delivered by Jehovah's faithful witness, Noah, and his companions, his household. History will repeat. In the "new order" after this total war, the official propaganda that will go forth from the backers of the postwar arrangement will persuade the com-
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mon people that the better, finer world has then been ushered in to stay; that human hands have created it, and that human hands will preserve it, with an international police force. Great will be the prospects of world freedom that will be held forth, and religion will claim that this is the new world of which men have long dreamed and that it has religion's blessing and must endure. But pause and ask yourself: Why have the blare and propaganda for a new world created by politicians and religionists suddenly broken forth since, particularly, A.D. 1918? and who is back of it?
When the Fascist and Nazi dictators had concluded their concordats with the religious head of Vatican City in 1929 and 1933, respectively, they launched their joint program of world aggression by declaring their purpose to be the establishment of a new world order, to last a thousand years. The Roman pontiff also prayed that a new order of things should be set up, which prayer the Axis powers accepted as meaning that the religious pontiff understood their aspirations and aims. (November 24, 1940) The aggressions of the Axis powers led to global war. The powers valiantly resisting the aggressors have rallied together under a counter-slogan: the building of a new world in which the Four Freedoms will sway the earth. The propaganda for such a democratic world is pushed amid the heat of total war, and by it the mobilized people are spurred into an all-out effort for a victory that will win the peace to follow. The
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prophecy of Daniel, chapter eleven, foretold this world conflict waged by the totalitarian "king of the north" and his allies against the democratic "king of the south" and his united nations. The inspired prophecy declares that this proves the world is in its "time of the end", an end which includes the destruction of all totalitarian rule, from Satan and his demons on down to men.
PLAYING WITH MAN'S FREEDOM
You notice that "Christendom", because in a crisis, has lifted up the standard of liberation for the people by a man-made world of a new pattern. Will the aroused hopes of the people be realized? Sacred history, which was written aforetime for the learning and guidance of men of faith upon whom the end of the world should come, answers with a warning example. Religious "Christendom", in this "time of the end", exactly reflects ancient Jerusalem at the time when Jehovah's vengeance against her religious hypocrisy was being declared against that unfaithful city, and her doom was sealed and her end was in sight. King Zedekiah made a desperate effort to appease the people and hold them to him. He "made a covenant with all the people which were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty unto them". This denoted no inward heart change in the rulers and religious and economic masters of the people. Why not? Because, shortly following that release, which was due the people according to God's law, the rulers "turned, and caused the servants and the hand-
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maids, whom they had let go free, to return, and brought them into subjection for servants and for handmaids".
That was an act of treachery against the people's interests and committed in God's name by the religious, political combine. Therefore Jehovah God, by his witness Jeremiah, sent this message to them: "Thus saith the LORD, Ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother, and every man to his neighbour: behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the LORD, TO THE SWORD, TO THE PESTILENCE, AND TO THE FAMINE; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. . . . I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life." (Jeremiah 34:1-22) Hypocritical, religious Jerusalem deceived the Jews with her freedom program, but in vain. Shortly she was destroyed completely for the vindication of Jehovah's holy name and righteousness.
"Christendom," like that Jerusalem, claims to be in relationship with God. In place of keeping covenant with him by measuring up to his law and commandments set out in the Bible, the true Book of Freedom, "Christendom" practices religion. She pays and supports religion for its blessing upon her plans for world domination. Jehovah's witnesses have long proclaimed to her that the time of the Kingdom era of freedom for the people of good-will is here, according to God's law and appointment. The present global war, and the preceding World War and
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its famines, pestilences, earthquakes and persecution of Jehovah's witnesses, prove that. Why? Because it fulfills the prophecy of the Son of God and testifies that the final end of oppressive "Christendom" and all of Satan's organization is near. The destruction thereof will come from the hand of the glorious God of Freedom, Jehovah, to clear the way for his New World with Christ Jesus as Theocratic King. Why, then, should "Christendom", which claims to represent God, work up her own program of a man-made new world with liberation of the people from their oppressors? It is in order to keep the hope of the people pinned to men, men who have failed, and to blind the people further and hold them away from the 'new heavens and new earth' which Almighty God promised in his Word long before this global war. — Jeremiah 34:1-22.
Like King Zedekiah and his nobles under war pressure, the proposed new world order, concerning which many attractive promises are now made, will begin with some actual efforts and arrangements for the freedoms of humankind. But as certain as Satan is "the god of this world", a free world by man's hand will not materialize. God's Word plainly serves notice that the postwar international creature that will arise will not bring freedom from Satan's demon organization. His organization is symbolized by "Babylon", and is visibly represented on earth by "Christendom's" spiritual adviser, "organized religion." From Eden on religion has
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been the adversary's tool for holding the people in bondage to sin and death. When the "new order" creature makes its debut at the close of international hostilities, then organized religion will "start something". According to her present plans she will seat herself as mistress on that scarlet-colored creature. There is one religious organization that dominates all organized religion of the earth. With the craft and skill born of centuries, that one will use its influence for the making of the new order a total one. Revelation, chapter seventeen, foretells this; and it will not fail, for God's Word shall not return unto him void and unfulfilled.
Religion and her political and commercial allies will attempt to extend indefinitely their domination of the earth, in defiance of the New World of righteousness which it is Jehovah God's appointed time to establish. Nothing else awaits the peoples who trust in the new order than to be brought into greater bondage to the "god of this world" and to sin, which means opposition to Jehovah God. The expected freedoms will not be realized nor endure, because that abominable makeshift for God's kingdom by Christ will not have Jehovah God's blessing. The only freedom that He will proclaim for it is, as stated, "a liberty for you, saith the LORD, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine"; which was ancient Jerusalem's appalling fate. Then woe betide religion! Revelation's prophecy is now understandable, that before the final end of the postwar order, the political, mili-
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tary and commercial ruling elements will awake to the realization that organized religion has been a deadly snare to them and has drawn them in her noose toward destruction at Armageddon. In bitterness and contempt they will turn upon organized religion and will expose her and tear her sanctimonious organization to pieces. Madly they will continue their fight against Jehovah and his King of the New World. All peoples, except the comparatively few who believe Jehovah's promise and look to him for the New World of life and freedom, will be regimented into war against the world's Rightful Rulers, Jehovah God and Christ Jesus. None of such opposers of the Theocratic New World will survive. Mindful of that sure end of the backers of the man-made new order, let men of good-will take heed to their own way now. — Revelation 17:12-18; 19:19-21.
THE ONLY DEPENDABLE PROMISE
In the distant past the Lord God foretold the building of the New World and its blessed freedoms, and men of faith believed in its coming. They did not feel that God was slow about fulfilling his promise. They did not assume that his promise therefore authorized them to take matters into their own hands and set up the. promised world themselves and take the glory, praise and credit for it unto themselves. No; they waited for God's appointed time when he will build it. In the meantime they lived in preparation for that glorious world of right-
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eousness and acted as Jehovah's witnesses in bearing testimony to its coming. Among such were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and concerning them it is written: "By faith [Abraham] sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare "plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city." — Hebrews 11: 9,10, 13-16.
The apostle Peter was another who was not deceived by the alluring promises that men make concerning this world for the reform and improvement of which they claim to be working. Calling attention first to the fate of the former world that perished in the Flood, and then to the destiny of this world, and finally to God's promised new world, the apostle writes: "Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are
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