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(Cont. from Page
16/10/94E).
The Bible
Students wished to receive accolades for their neutrality as they also declared
their unswerving loyalty to the United States Government: "We are not against
the Government in any sense of the word. We recognize the Government of the
United States as the best government on earth. We recognize that governments,
being political and economic institutions, have the power and authority, under
the fundamental law, to declare war and to draft their citizens." [Watchtower,
1917, p.6221] ...When none of this served to keep their leaders out of prison,
the Bible Students, at a convention in Pittsburgh on January 2-5, 1919,
unanimously passed a resolution attesting to "their loyalty to the government
and people of these United States." The Watch Tower instructed its readers to
honour President Wilson's designation of May 30, 1918, as a day of national
prayer and supplication for the success of the American war effort. [Watchtower,
June 1, 1918]... Jehovah's Witnesses now acknowledge that they "did not," during
World War 1, "display the proper neutrality of the Christian." [Jehovah's
Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, p.92]... Their spiritual error, as they later
saw it, was to misread Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher
powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of
God." They, like the orthodox churches, had understood the Apostle Paul's words
to apply to governmental authorities. Their error, they say, was in not
recognizing that the "higher powers" were in fact Jehovah God and Christ
Jesus... As the Witnesses became less and less a threat to the established order
and the status quo in America, they performed another 180-degree turn: in the
1960s, without apology or embarrassment and with their customary aplomb, they
once again reversed themselves and pronounced human governmental authorities as
the "higher powers." And so they readopted the reading of Romans 13
By 1927, the
pressure for all Bible Students to become door-to-door preachers and to turn in
weekly activity reports to headquarters had become so intense that many of
Rutherford's followers dropped away. (There is a very high turnover among the
Witnesses. One sees disproportionately few elderly people at Watchtower
conventions.) The departure of many Bible Students in 1927 was no doubt hastened
by the fact that Rutherford, who was as mathematically adroit as his
predecessor, had led the Bible Students to believe that 1925 marked the time for
Christ's anointed followers to go to heaven and for "the faithful men of old" to
be resurrected to rule as princes on the earth. Some Bible Students made
preparations for the resurrection of their loved ones in that year Needless to say, they were again disappointed. As to the "princes" of the "new earth", they will be the descendants of Spirit anointed ones. (Isaiah 61:8,9. 65:17). And as for the resurrection, it is not that our Creator is unable to resurrect the dead to another earthly life, but that according to His written Word it is not His Will to do so. All resurrections are to heavenly life in the spirit realm of God. Lazarus was resurrected back to earthly life solely "for the glory of God, in order that the Son of God may be glorified through it." (John 11:4. 1 Cor 15:42-49). (Cont. on Page 16/10/94G).
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