What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER XXIII

Christendom Rejects the Kingdom of the Seed

IN HIS sermon on the mount Christ Jesus told his disciples to pray this way: "Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will come to pass, as in heaven, also upon earth." In harmony with this he instructed his disciples in the same sermon to put the kingdom of the heavenly Father ahead of everything else. Do not be like the pagans or heathen who worry and seek after selfish material things of this world, but do this: "Keep on, then, seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you." (Matthew 6:9,10,33, NW) He sent his disciples out on home missionary work among the people, with these orders: "As you go, preach, saying, "The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.'" (Matthew 10:7, NW) His own parables were illustrations about the Kingdom. On the night of his last passover with them before his death he handed his faithful apostles the Memorial cup and said: "From now on I will not drink again from the product of the vine until the kingdom of God arrives."

² After the Memorial celebration he said to them: "You are the ones that have stuck with me in my trials; and I make a covenant with you,

just as my Father has made a covenant with me, for a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel." (Luke 22:18,28-30, NW) God's coming kingdom was His government by the enthroned Seed of his "woman". This was the theocratic government they were to preach and prepare for. They must not meddle with worldly kingdoms.

³ Since Constantine's time Christendom, or that part of the world which makes a pretense of Christianity, has not done this. On "Christmas Day" of the year 800 the pope crowned the blood-stained Charles the Great (or Charlemagne) emperor of what the pope called "The Holy Roman Empire". This religious pontiff, who claimed to be Christ's vicegerent, undertook to crown the political rulers of Western Europe. Then, to make the subjects believe it was their religious duty to render unquestioning obedience to such rulers, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy taught the doctrine of the "divine right of kings". This doctrine they based on the apostle's words at Romans 13:1, "Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God." (Dy) Scripturally these words now apply to the heavenly "superior authorities" of God's theocratic organization and not to worldly political powers like Nimrod and other totalitarian rulers. —NW.

⁴ By thus crowning political rulers and teaching their divine right and so causing a union of the church (so called) and the state, the Roman Cath-

olic Hierarchy were rejecting the kingdom of the Seed of God's woman. Contrary to Jesus' example in the mountain of temptation the pope and his hierarchy were accepting control over the governments of this world at the price of falling down and worshiping Satan, who from Nimrod's time had sought and had gained world control. They forfeited their souls for worldly control.

⁵ When the Protestant Reformation came in the sixteenth century, did it discontinue this alliance of church and state? No! Roman Catholic authorities call it, not a reformation, but a "rebellion". Judged by the facts, it was indeed more a sedition against the Roman pontiff than a true reformation. The great religious explosion was touched off when the Roman Catholic priest Martin Luther objected to the selling of papal indulgences for early release of human souls from "purgatory" and posted his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg, Germany, at midday of October 31, 1517. From his revolt there developed not only the Lutheran church but also the many other sects of the Protestant movement.

⁶ The spiritual authority of the pope over a large part of Christendom was now broken. Many independent-minded persons took courage to establish religious organizations of their own, generally around some personal leader. To put down this rebellion against papacy the Hierarchy carried on religious wars and pushed the inquisition more vigorously than ever. From larger Protestant groups new sects broke off and generally suffered persecution from the parent organization.

The land of America became the haven for many who were suffering religious persecution to flee to. In this land many new sects arose, especially in the nineteenth century, so that in the year 1951 there were listed in the United States about 265 different sects. These religions acted as a great divisive force. They could not stand for true Christianity. The apostle Paul asked: "Does the Christ exist divided?" No; but Christendom today is a great religious confusion and disunity. It is another Babylon or Babel. —1 Corinthians 1:13, NW.

⁷ That the Protestant movement was more a rebellion against the religious supremacy of the pope than a real reformation and a return to primitive Christianity is manifest from this fact: These new sectarian religious systems carried away with them the fundamental religious teachings of the mother organization, for example, the immortality of the human soul, punishment of souls in a hell of fiery torment under the care of red devils, the trinity, the celebration of Christmas, Easter, Lent, etc., the division of the people into a titled, paid clergy and the laity, the idolizing of heroes religious, political, military and athletic, and many other things of Babylonish religion.

⁸ For example, the Lateran Council of 1513, under Pope Leo X, pronounced the soul's immortality to be an orthodox article of Catholicism and adopted the following rule: "Whereas, some have dared to assert concerning the nature of the reasonable soul, that it is mortal; we, with the approbation of the Sacred Council, do condemn and reprobate all those who assert that the intel-

lectual soul is mortal, seeing that the soul is not only truly and of itself and essentially the form of the human body, as is expressed in the canon of Pope Clement the Fifth, but likewise immortal; and we strictly inhibit all from dogmatizing otherwise, and we decree that all who adhere to the like erroneous assertions shall be shunned and punished as heretics." But Martin Luther in his Defense, proposition 27, "Adversus Execrabilem Antichrist Bullam," published in 1520, said: "I permit the Pope to make articles of faith for himself and his faithful —such as 'the soul is the substantial form of the human body,' 'that the soul is immortal,' with all those monstrous opinions to be found in the Roman dunghill of decretals." It was in the 27th of his 95 theses that Luther thus denied immortality of the human soul, but his followers slashed it out together with another one, and then divided two others in two so as to keep the number of these theses up to the original 95.  —Caranza, page 412, 1681, and Luther's Works, Volume 2, folio, pages 106,107, Wittenberg, 1562.

⁹ Though independent of the pope, the Protestant systems are still in bondage to Babylonish religion. They did not manifest the uncompromising course that the Israelites on being led by Jehovah into the Promised Land were commanded to take toward the demon gods, idols and religious practices of the pagan inhabitants of the land, lest they be ensnared by false religion. Protestants were only partial in their religious renovation and sought to keep their respectability with this world. They, too, allied themselves with the political pow-

ers and in some instances established new unions of church and state. They upheld the clashing political states by taking up murderous weapons and participating in mortal combat, and made themselves the handmaids of the state, obeying man rather than God. To justify themselves, they declared they would set up Christ's kingdom by Christianizing the worldly political systems.

¹⁰ This was no true reformation. This was not a return to the primitive Christianity of the apostles and the early Christian congregation. The original Christians refused to hold political office or worship the state as represented by the deified emperor. Hence they were regarded as anarchists hoping to destroy the state, guilty of hating the human race. On this matter a standard school textbook says: "The early Christians were ready to die for their faith. They refused to worship the gods of the pagan Romans. Since they believed in peace, they would not serve in Rome's imperial armies. They openly condemned evil deeds. . . . The Roman emperors who wanted to restore the belief in the Roman gods did not look with favor upon the teachings of the Christians. ... It was easy for Roman officials to believe that the Christians in their secret meetings everywhere were hostile to the government. Did they not stubbornly refuse to worship the spirit of the Emperor? Did they not speak of Christ as their King? The government charged that in their meetings the Christians plotted treason against Rome. Accordingly, throughout the empire officials punished and persecuted Christians at various times."  —From the Old World to the New, Colligan-Littwin, 1932, pages 88-91.

¹¹ People of various religious cults in Rome would unite in common worship to the spirit of the emperor, swearing a common allegiance to it. But, to quote The Book of Culture (Peyser, 1934, page 549), "The Christians, however, strong in their faith, would take no such oath of loyalty. And because they did not swear allegiance to what we would to-day consider as analogous to the flag, they were considered politically dangerous." Those Christians were quiet and orderly and paid their taxes, and thus rendered to Caesar what was Caesar's, but to Jehovah God they rendered their lives and worship, the things which were God's.  —Matthew 22:21.

¹² When Christendom's religious systems, Catholic and Protestant, meddle in the political affairs of the world, allying themselves with the state and fighting its controversies, it is outright spiritual adultery, harlotry! It has made Christendom a pornocracy, not a theocracy. The religious systems claim to be the "bride" promised to Christ in marriage and obligated to wait for his second coming in glory. Referring to Christ, John the Baptist said: "He that has the bride is the bridegroom." (John 3:29, NW) Likening Jesus to the Bridegroom, the apostle Paul wrote: "Husbands, continue loving your wives, just as the Christ also loved the congregation and delivered up himself for it, that he might sanctify it, cleansing it with the bath of water by means of the word, that he might present the congregation to himself in its splendor, not having a spot or a wrinkle or any of such things, but that it should be holy and with-

out blemish. This sacred secret is great. Now I am speaking with respect to Christ and the congregation." Expressing his concern for her continued loyalty, Paul wrote: "I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, for I personally promised you in marriage to one husband that I might present you as a chaste virgin to the Christ. But I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent seduced Eve by its craftiness, your minds might be corrupted away from the sincerity and the chastity that are due the Christ." —Ephesians 5:25-27,32 and 2 Corinthians 11:2, 3, NW.

¹³ The very apostasy to Christ the Bridegroom that Paul feared, the religious systems have committed in Christendom. Based on their claims of being betrothed to Christ Jesus the Bridegroom, they have committed spiritual fornication by unscriptural connections with the political state and by selfish friendship with this world of which Satan the Devil is the god. "Adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God." —James 4:4, NW.

¹⁴ Under God's law through Moses, virgins who committed harlotry while promised in marriage to an Israelite man were condemned to be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 22:17-21,23, 24) Since the Mosaic law contained a shadow of things to come, let the religious systems know that a violent end like this is in store for them at God's hands. They have rejected Christ's kingdom, by not waiting to be taken into his established kingdom but run-

ning ahead for worldly political protection, support, honors and power and allying themselves with the corrupt governments of this world. "You have begun ruling as kings without us," says Paul.  —1 Corinthians 4:8, NW.

¹⁵ But Christendom's flat rejection of the real kingdom of the Seed of God's woman has come in our own critical world period beginning with A.D. 1914. That year the time came for God's woman, his loyal heavenly organization, to bring forth the Seed in the role of enthroned reigning King. Why so? Because 2,520 years before that date, namely, in 607 B.C., Jehovah God used Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon as his executional servant to destroy Jerusalem and thus overthrow the typical kingdom of God, as he had said: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: this also shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." (Ezekiel 21:24-27, AS) The One whose right it is to rule in the everlasting kingdom of God is Christ Jesus the Seed of God's woman, the Permanent Heir of the covenant for the Kingdom. Since the seven "appointed times of the nations" began in 607 B.C., they must end A.D. 1914, and at that date is the time for the Heir with the right to it to be given the Kingdom. At that time the Kingdom was due to be born.

¹⁶ In sign language the last book of the Bible pictures God's woman, his wifely heavenly organization, at the crucial date A.D. 1914. The apostle John there says: "A great sign was seen in heaven, a woman arrayed with the sun, and

the moon was beneath her feet, and on her head was a crown of twelve stars, and she was pregnant. And she cries out in her pains and in her agony to give birth. And another sign was seen in heaven, and look! a great fiery-colored dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems; and its tail draws a third of the stars of heaven, and it hurled them down to the earth. And the dragon kept standing before the woman who was about to give birth, that, when she did give birth, it might devour her child. And she gave birth to a son, a male, who is destined to shepherd all the nations with an iron rod. And her child was caught away to God and to his throne." —Revelation 12:1-5, NW.

¹⁷ Jesus said that when a woman has given birth she forgets all her birth pangs because of the joy that a son has been born. (John 16:21) So did God's woman rejoice at the birth of this symbolic male child who was snatched from the dragon's jaws and elevated up to God's throne to rule the nations with a rod of iron? John says Yes: "And I heard a loud voice in heaven say: 'Now have come to pass the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ.'" (Revelation 12:10, NW) This joyous exclamation by God's woman or heavenly organization proves that the birth of the male child pictures God's giving the Kingdom to the Seed whose right it is to have it. Again we read: "Loud voices occurred in heaven saying: The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will rule as king for ever and ever.' And the twenty-four persons of advanced

age who were seated before God upon their thrones fell upon their faces and worshiped God, saying: 'We thank you, Jehovah God, the Almighty, the one who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and begun ruling as king.'"

¹⁸ But now the question is, Did the religious systems of Christendom exult with God's woman at the birth of her royal Seed as King? The elderly ones in heaven who thanked God for taking his power and ruling by his Christ foretold that they would not do so, saying: "But the nations became wrathful, and your own wrath came, and the appointed time ... to bring to ruin those ruining the earth." (Revelation 11:15-18, NW) Not in heathendom, but in the heart of Christendom was where World War I began in 1914, the birth year of the Kingdom. Of the many nations which became embroiled in that war for world domination practically all were so-called Christian nations. For his clearly demonstrated favoritism toward the Teutonic powers the pope of Rome was barred from the peace negotiations. But all the religious systems of Christendom favored one or another of the nations according to the national ties of such systems, but none God's newborn kingdom. Had they sided with God's kingdom, the rightful government of earth, the war would never have flamed into a world conflagration, with its aftermath of international distress that is with us to this day. That is what worldly, apostate religion has done for mankind! The actions of the religious systems during World War I spoke deafeningly to say, Christendom has rejected God's kingdom.