What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER XIII

Fall to Idolatry and Recovery

OWING to demon religion, the world today is filled with idolatry. This is just as true of Christendom as of that part of humanity which she calls "heathendom". This is leading on to world disaster, just as it led to disaster in the case of the nation of Israel. It was for solemn reasons that John, the last of Christ's twelve apostles, ended his letter with the words: "Little children, guard yourselves from idols." —1 John 5:21, NW.

² The second of the Ten Commandments forbade idolatry in Israel. When the glorious temple was built at Jerusalem by David's son Solomon, no image was made to represent Jehovah nor any set up in the Most Holy to be worshiped. The ark of the covenant was put into the Most Holy, and Jehovah was said to dwell between the two golden cherubim which surmounted the golden lid of the ark. Israel's high priest did not worship these golden cherubim, but from between them Jehovah by his invisible angel communicated messages at times to the high priest, the only one allowed to

enter the Most Holy. Jehovah did not actually dwell in that temple, but it was at most a footstool for him. The temple was, as David spoke of it, "a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of Jehovah and for the footstool of our God." "Thus saith Jehovah: The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool." —1 Chronicles 28:2 and Isaiah 66:1, Da; AS; 2 Chronicles 5:2-10.

³ In harmony with the covenant which Jehovah made with David for the everlasting kingdom his son Solomon, whose name means "peaceful", built the temple in seven and a half years' time. "And Solomon began to build the house of Jehovah at Jerusalem on mount Moriah, where he appeared to David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. And he began to build on the second of the second month, in the fourth year of his reign." (1 Kings 6:37, 38; 2 Chronicles 3:1, 2, Da) Israel's kings counted the years of their reign from Nisan, the first month of the year, in the spring. Consequently, if Solomon began reigning in the fall of the previous year to fill out the remainder of that year for his father David, it was really about three and a half years after Solomon began reigning that he came to the temple work.

⁴ When the priests had carried the ark of the covenant into the Most Holy and deposited it there and came out, the account tells us, "the cloud

filled the house of Jehovah, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud; for the glory of Jehovah filled the house of Jehovah." Then Solomon prayed worshipfully and said: "But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded!" So Solomon asked that Jehovah would nevertheless respect and hear prayer that was made at this temple. He asked that even a non-Israelite foreigner who turned with faith and good will to Jehovah as God and prayed there might be heard; "Hear thou in heaven thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the foreigner calleth to thee for; that all the peoples of the earth may know thy name, to fear thee, as doth thy people Israel, and that they may know that this house which I have built is called by thy name." (1 Kings 8:3-43, AS) This request of Solomon gives hearty assurance today to people of good will who turn to Jehovah and worship and pray to him as the living, true God. Said Jehovah, and Jesus Christ centuries afterward quoted his words: "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples."  —Isaiah 56:7, AS; Mark 11:17.

⁵ Visible evidence was given that the Most High God had sanctified this house to his service and that its altar was an acceptable place to offer sacrifice. For, when Solomon had ended praying, "the fire came down from the heavens and con-

sumed the burnt-offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of Jehovah filled the house. And the priests could not enter into the house of Jehovah, because the glory of Jehovah filled Jehovah's house." The Most High God put his name upon this house. He did not authorize many such temples to be built either at Jerusalem or also in other cities nor many altars to be made, to correspond with the hundreds of churches, for instance, in Rome, with their hundreds of altars for the celebration of the sacrifice of the mass. The true God had only one temple and one altar, at the holy city where he had put his name. So, too, now he has only one spiritual temple and one altar where the one acceptable sacrifice has been made by his Christ. It was at this one temple in Jerusalem that the Israelites were commanded to assemble three times a year for the feasts, and at this altar alone the day of atonement was celebrated.  —2 Chronicles 7:1, 2, Da.

⁶ How glorious the beginning of Solomon's reign, but how sad its end! For not sticking strictly to the divine instructions respecting kings of Israel Solomon in his old age was turned to idol worship, to please his wives. According to the promises in the Kingdom covenant with David, the royal line was not cut off but ten tribes were cut off from the rule of David's line. This split occurred early in the reign of Solomon's son Rehoboam. A northern kingdom of the ten seceding

tribes of Israel was set up with its own king and capital; and only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, together with the Levites, remained loyal to David's line. Not themselves taking to heart the cause of this national calamity, apostate religion, the northern kingdom of Israel turned to idolatry to hold its people away from Jehovah's worship at the foreign capital Jerusalem. National ruin may have been 257 years in coming, but that was because of the merciful interest and patience of Jehovah God. Just the same, it came unavoidably, and the northern kingdom of Israel fell before the Assyrians, the royal capital Samaria was destroyed, and the surviving Israelites were deported and transplanted in provinces of Assyria. Read 2 Kings 17:1-23 and learn the ruinous cause  —apostate religion!

⁷ Because the national organization was married to Jehovah like a wife to a husband, this forsaking of his worship and turning to idols and demon gods was spiritual adultery. So Jehovah divorced the northern kingdom of Israel and let her be taken captive by Assyria in 740 B.C. But, then, what about the kingdom of Judah with her kings of David's line and her temple of Jehovah? Would she, too, deserve to be divorced for spiritual adultery and turned over to her foes whose gods she preferred to Jehovah? Or would she profit from the warning lesson furnished by her sister kingdom of Israel and remain faithful to the clean

religion in harmony with Jehovah's revelation? Solomon had caused irreparable damage to the national interests by his lapse into demon worship. After him came nineteen kings of the line of David, with a continual battle to keep that kingdom of Judah from being overwhelmed by devil religion. Despite the temporary recovery to Jehovah's worship in the days of good King Josiah, Jehovah gave notice that Judah's national bent toward apostasy had leaned over far enough and that its existence as an independent kingdom was doomed.

⁸ Forty years before the grievous calamity fell Jehovah sent his prophet Jeremiah for a final witness. Hear him describe the situation: "The LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king: 'Have you seen what apostate Israel did, how she went up every high mountain and under every spreading tree, and played the harlot there? I thought, "After she has done all these things, she will return to me"; but she did not return. And though her faithless sister Judah saw that, for all the adulteries that apostate Israel had committed, I put her away, and gave her a writ of divorce, yet her faithless sister Judah was not afraid, but likewise went and played the harlot, polluting the land with her wanton harlotry, and committing adultery with stones and blocks of wood. In spite of all that happened, her faithless sister Judah did not return to me in sincerity, but in sheer

hypocrisy,' is the oracle of the LORD. So the LORD said to me, 'Apostate Israel has proved herself more in the right than faithless Judah.'" (Jeremiah 3:6-11, AT) Judah's marriage with Jehovah God was now under strain.

⁹ The foresighted God of heaven knew that the nation of Judah would not turn back. So it was principally for the benefit of a faithful remnant of Jews who would repent and turn to him that he inspired Jeremiah to continue on with these words: "Return, O backsliding [or, apostate] children, saith Jehovah; for I am a husband unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion. And I will give you shepherds according to my heart, who shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. ... At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I gave for an inheritance to your fathers." —Jeremiah 3:14-18, AS.

¹⁰ As suggested in this very prophecy, the destroyers of Judah and Jerusalem came out of the north, out of Babylon. In Jeremiah's day Baby-

lon had become the dominant world power under Emperor Nebuchadnezzar, having overthrown Assyria in 632 B.C. and then defeated the hosts of Egypt at the battle of Carchemish in 625 B.C. (Nahum 3:7,18; Jeremiah 46:1,2) Babylon, the seat and mother of devil religion from the days of Nimrod, was Satan the Serpent's rival against Jerusalem, the seat of Jehovah's worship. Hence Satan the Devil moved Babylon's king to want to ascend the heights of Jerusalem, destroy her temple, show himself superior to her royal stars or princes, and display himself as a match for Jehovah, and so be like the Most High God. —Isaiah 14:4,13,14.

¹¹ In the sixth year before Jerusalem's end came the prophet Ezekiel saw by vision the desecrations committed in God's temple at Jerusalem. In vision he was brought to the north gate leading to the temple's inner court, where the apostates had set up an image of resentment that caused divine resentment. "So I raised my eyes to the north, and lo! north of the altar-gate, at the entrance, stood this image of resentment. Then he said to me, 'O mortal man, do you see what they are doing? Do you see the great abominations which the house of Israel are doing here, forcing me away from my sanctuary? You shall see still greater abominations than these.'" Then Jehovah showed him an inner temple chamber where depicted on the walls were all kinds of detestable forms of reptiles and beasts, and before them

seventy older Israelites of influence were burning incense. Shocking, such a thing in Jehovah's nominal temple? But look over there at the northward gate of his temple. Listen to those women sitting there weeping for that Babylonian god, Tammuz, Nimrod deified under another name.

¹² Now into the temple's inner court, please! See those twenty-five Israelites between the temple vestibule and the bronze altar. With their backs toward Jehovah's temple, they are facing the sun in the east and worshiping it, like regular Babylonians and Egyptians. (Ezekiel 8:3-16, AT) Those apostates never asked themselves Paul's question: "What agreement does God's temple have with idols?" If Jesus Christ had been there he would have said as he did respecting the defiled temple of Jerusalem in his day: "Your house is abandoned to you." It was no fetish which could save Jerusalem from destruction. —2 Corinthians 6:16 and Matthew 23:38, NW.

¹³ For a third time now Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against Jerusalem and laid siege to it. In 607 B.C., in the eleventh year of wicked Zedekiah's reign, Jerusalem fell and was destroyed, together with her gorgeous temple. The sacred implements of worship were carried from it and deposited in the temples of Babylon, and the surviving Jews were carried off into exile. Those that tried to stay on in the land finally fled down to Egypt. Now for seventy years the land of Judah and Jerusalem lay desolate without man or domes-

ticated beast. With that year 607 B.C. the theocratic kingdom in Judah was overturned, and a king of David's line no longer sat on the "throne of Jehovah". So that year the "appointed times of the nations" began, seven of them, amounting to 2,520 years, which makes the entire period end in the fall of 1914 (A.D.). We do not digress here to call attention to the significance of the date 1914. Millions of this present generation are painfully aware of World War I, which broke out that year and since which year this world has never been the same. The point not to forget is this: What caused the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple and the slaughter and exile of her people in 607 B.C. was apostate religion. Jehovah God does not let himself be mocked with it, no more now than he did back there. —2 Kings 25:1-26; Luke 21:24, NW; Daniel 4:16,23, 25, 32.

¹⁴ One of the most outstanding features of later Bible prophecy is that a faithful remnant would return from exile and captivity to the place where God had placed his name and would there serve him again in unbreakable devotion. Over a century before this the prophet Isaiah had foretold the Jews' exile in Babylon and said: "Unless the LORD of hosts had left us a handful of survivors, we should have become like Sodom, we should have resembled Gomorrah." Sodom and Gomorrah had been wiped out long ago by a rain of fire and sulphur from the skies. In further assurance that

a little group would stay faithful and be restored to the Promised Land Isaiah said: "A remnant will return—the remnant of Jacob—to the Mighty God. For though your people, O Israel, be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. ... On that day will the LORD once more raise his hand to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria and from Egypt, from Pathros and from Ethiopia, from Elam and from Shinar, from Hamath and from the coast-lands of the sea. He will raise a signal to the nations, and will gather the outcasts of Israel; and the scattered daughters of Judah will he assemble from the four corners of the earth." —Isaiah 1:9; 10:21,22; 11:11,12, AT; also Micah 2:12; Zephaniah 3:13.

¹⁵ It was foretold that Judah and Jerusalem would lie desolate seventy years, and so it was foreknown just when this devoted remnant would be set free from Babylon. This oppressive government itself would not let its prisoners go free, and hence it was necessary for Jehovah to bring about Babylon's overthrow. He did so, and by the very conqueror whom he had foretold, Cyrus the Persian: "Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, ... he shall build my city, and he shall let my exiles go free, not for price nor reward, saith Jehovah of hosts." (Isaiah 45:1-13, AS) Cyrus and his uncle, Darius the Mede, overthrew Babylon in 539 B.C.; and in 537 B.C.

Cyrus let the Jewish remnant return to Jerusalem to rebuild Jehovah's temple and renew his worship there. Then was the time for the remnant, restored to their beloved land, to fulfill this prophetic command by Isaiah:

¹⁶ "Thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the nations! And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God [Judah's kings who sat on the 'throne of Jehovah']; and I will sit upon the mount [Zion] of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to Sheol [the grave], to the uttermost parts of the pit. They that see thee shall gaze at thee, they shall consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms; that made the world as a wilderness, and overthrew the cities thereof; that let not loose his prisoners to their home?" —Isaiah 14:4,12-17, AS.

¹⁷ Thus seventeen centuries after Nimrod its first king, Jehovah God vindicated himself against Babylon and demonstrated his universal sovereignty. He broke the power of that seemingly in-

vincible third world power over his people. To the remnant in Babylon he said: "Thus saith Jehovah, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, wherewith I have put her away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities were ye sold, and for your transgressions was your mother put away."

¹⁸ Their national organization, their mother, had been put away, not because of Jehovah's breaking his covenant and starting divorce proceedings, but because of the iniquities and transgressions of her children against the Law covenant. Hence the honest-hearted remnant repented and turned to Jehovah the great husband of their organization. They prayed for a renewal of his husbandly relations with them in their homeland. So at the end of the seventy years of desolation Jehovah's prophetic command applied to their mother organization: "Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit on thy throne, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bonds of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus saith Jehovah, Ye were sold for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money." Then, telling them to leave Babylon and its contaminations, he said: "Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; cleanse yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of Jehovah. For ye shall not go out in haste, neither shall ye go by flight: for Jehovah will go before you; and the God of Israel

will be your rearward." —Isaiah 50:1 and 52:2, 3, 11,12, AS.

¹⁹ For his own name's sake Jehovah restored his people. At the end of the seventy years' desolation in 537 B.C. about 50,000 Jews departed from Babylon with the vessels which Babylon had robbed from Jehovah's temple at Jerusalem. Their return was primarily to restore his worship at the place where he had chosen to put his name. Realizing now the chief importance of pure religion in the life of the nation, the Jews, together with proselytes of good will, at once went to rebuilding the temple of God their Deliverer on its old location. The altar was first set up in the inner-court space and, as it was the seventh Jewish month, the joyous feast of tabernacles was celebrated for the seven days of it. Then, after considerable interference by their enemies over many years, they finally brought the entire temple to completion under their Jewish governor Zerubbabel and in the sixth year of the reign of the Persian king Darius. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah greatly encouraged them to this successful conclusion. —Ezra 2:64 to 3:13; 6:14,15.

²⁰ All this interests us today, for it foreshadowed the restoring of a faithful remnant from mystic Babylon and the renewal of the pure worship of Jehovah God in these modern days.