What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER XXIV

The Remnant Restored from Mystic Babylon

AFTER giving birth to the royal Ruler in 1914 God's woman brought forth the final remnant of her seed. They are today the special target of the Serpent, Satan the Devil. Who are they? The fact that the Wicked One has deceived the whole world makes it certain that they are unpopular.

² Matching God's woman, Satan the Devil has his own woman. It is by her that he produces the seed of the Serpent with which the Seed of God's woman is at enmity. We have seen that God's woman is his heavenly theocratic organization of which the true Christian congregation are spiritual children. So Satan's woman is his own organization. The disobedient angels, the sons of God who rebelled against Jehovah's universal sovereignty, are the invisible and dominant part of the organization. In Noah's day they filled the earth with violence. Today by their undetected influence they are lining up all earthly kings and their hosts to the field ominously called "Armageddon" for the universal war, "the war of the great day of God the Almighty." These superhuman, unseen spirit forces under Satan their ruler form the symbolic "heavens" of his organization.

³ The Serpent also has a visible earthly seed. Jesus said that the "weeds", the imitation Christians, whom the Devil sowed in among the wheat, are the "sons of the wicked one". But all the "children of the Devil" are evident by their practice of unrighteousness and murderous hatred of God's people, like Cain who slaughtered his brother Abel. (Matthew 13:38,39 and 1 John 3:10-12, NW) These visible agents and servants of the Devil among men form the symbolic "earth" of his wicked organization.

⁴ Together, these heavens and earth make up the world of which the Devil is ruler: "The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one." (1 John 5:19, NW) Because the Serpent the Devil reformed his organization after the global flood of Noah's day and began its visible part with Nimrod's Babel or Babylon, the prophetic Scriptures use Babylon as a symbol of the Devil's entire organization, visible and invisible, and talk of it as such. From Nimrod's notorious Babylon it finally rose in Nebuchadnezzar's day to be the third world power to dominate the earth, adding to its nefarious deeds the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Mighty Babylon of earth met its overthrow at God's decreed hour. Its globe-circling counterpart, Satan's woman or world organization, will meet its disgraceful end likewise, and soon, and never rise again. "Down with you, sit in the dust, O maiden Babylon! No throne for you, sit on the ground, lady Chaldea!" —Isaiah 47:l, Mo.

⁵ Sixty-eight years after it destroyed Jerusalem and took thousands of the Jews captive to its provinces, Babylon's empire fell. But the false, demon-inspired religion which it had nurtured in defiance of Jehovah God had spread to the ends of the earth. It continued on, to infect finally compromising Christendom. So the great Babylonish organization, visible and invisible, has continued dominating the vast majority of mankind. And now it, too, has had a mighty fall, from the heavens themselves. When was that?

⁶ Immediately after God's kingdom was born in 1914. Christ Jesus had waited at his Father's right hand for many centuries since his ascent to heaven, and now the time had arrived for God to make Christ's enemies a stool for his feet and to send the royal rod of his strength out of the heavenly Zion. (Psalm 110:1,2; Hebrews 10:12,13) So down with great Babylon beneath his feet at his footstool the earth! "War broke out in heaven: Michael [his name meaning 'Who is as God?'] and his angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled but it did not pre-

vail, neither was a place found for them any longer in heaven. So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him."

⁷ The great ruler or king of Babylon Satan the Devil and the invisible part of Babylon, his angels, were humbled to this earth, never again to contaminate heaven. Joy this for heaven, but oh how the earth, yes, the visible part of great Babylon, has felt the effects of this bitter abasement: "Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time." Enmity between the Serpent and the woman! How that enmity did burn now! "Now when the dragon saw it was hurled down to the earth [with its angels], it persecuted the woman that gave birth to the male child [the King in his kingdom]." Not able to get back to heaven and its contacts up there, the abased Devil did his persecuting by striking at the woman's remnant of spiritual children on earth. "And the dragon grew wrathful at the woman, and went off to wage war with the remaining ones of her seed, who observe the commandments of God and have the work of bearing witness to Jesus." —Revelation 12:7-9,12,13,17, NW.

⁸ That description identifies who they are. Satan and his whole world wage war against them. They observe God's commandments. They bear

witness to Jesus, but not just to a Jesus who came nineteen centuries ago and died and was resurrected and ascended to God's right hand in heaven. No, but to a Jesus come into the Kingdom for which he was anointed and taken into the Davidic covenant; a Jesus who as a glorified immortal spirit Son of God returns to earth to rule as its King by extending the rod of his power down here and clearing the earth of every last enemy of God. No denying it, they are witnesses whom Jehovah God has raised up. And since the year 1931 when they saw the suitability of this Scriptural name and adopted it they have been known as "Jehovah's witnesses". If they did not observe his commandments they would not be his witnesses.

⁹ In this way they copy their glorified Leader, "Jesus Christ, 'the Faithful Witness,' 'The firstborn from the dead,' and 'The Ruler of the kings of the earth'." (Revelation 1:5, NW) And to the remnant of Jesus' followers God says: "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, that I am God. Yea, since the day was, I am HE, and there is none that delivereth out of my hand: I will work, and who shall hinder it? Thus saith Jehovah, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: For your sake I have sent [an army] to Babylon, and have brought all of them down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans, whose cry [or, rejoicing] is in the ships. I am Jehovah, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King." —Isaiah 43:12-15, Da; Mo.

¹⁰ Similar to the faithful Israelite remnant that

left Babylon after its fall and returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and restore Jehovah's pure worship there, the remnant of the seed of God's woman were once captive in Babylon. There, like the Israelites, they were contaminated with the Babylonian religion and systems of this world, including apostate Christendom. They believed many things in common with the modern Babylonians and followed their worldly customs in many things. But the end of the "appointed times of the nations" got closer as 1914 drew near. Correspondingly the time for God's kingdom to be born and for great Babylon's invisible section to be hurled down from heaven got closer. So God's spirit or invisible active force began moving on the hearts of those seeking his truth, those seeking the "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father". Then intensive Bible study was carried on independent of the clergy of Christendom. In the last half of the nineteenth century those clergymen were still in apparent prosperity and were outwardly righteous to the Babylonians and on good terms with the political rulers and in high hopes of going to a heavenly kingdom after quitting the politics of this world. They were like the "rich man" in Jesus' parable.

¹¹ On the other hand, the so-called "laity" were looked down upon and held under great restraint and fed little of Bible truth. Those laymen who were trying to search for Bible truths without complete trust in the clergy and dependence upon, them were especially despised, considered spiritually ulcerous and viewed as religiously poor, out

of Abraham's favor, and fit to mix only with dogs to whom holy things should not be given. A class like the beggar Lazarus they were! The clergy and their allies tried to keep these in Babylonian bondage to themselves. —Luke 16:19-31.

¹² Under the guidance of God's spirit of freedom the magazine today known as The Watchtower but known back there as Zion's Watch Tower, began to be published in July, 1879. In the first year of its publication it pointed to the date 1914 as marked in the Bible. It sounded the warning of modern Babylon's approaching fall. It pealed forth the clarion call to flee from Babylon and be clean from it in order to bear the temple "vessels of Jehovah" which Babylon had misappropriated. (Isaiah 52:11,12, AS) The better to organize, serve and activate this work of liberating God's devoted people by the power of the truth, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society was incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States of America, in 1884. The remnant of Jehovah's witnesses have used this legal corporation as their servant or agent ever since. But how the clerical "rich man" class of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism have hated, misrepresented and fought against this liberation movement of Jehovah's remnant of the seed!

¹³ Then total warfare was set in motion in 1914. All elements of the population in the nation were mobilized and regimented. There was war hysteria. The Serpent remembered how he had caused Jesus

to be branded as a seditionist and revolutionary disturber of the peace in order to involve the Seed of God's woman with the government of Rome and bring about his execution in public disgrace. Follow now the same trick under war conditions just suitable for it. So again the Serpent stirred up his religious seed to spit out their venom of murderous hatred against the remnant on earth, the associates of the great Seed of God's woman. By this, halt their escape from Babylon! But before this was achieved, the remnant in concerted action throughout the land distributed millions of copies of the free tract "The Fall of Babylon", on Sunday, December 30,1917, and on the same day hundreds of public lectures on the same subject were delivered by speakers to large audiences. Now again by false religious misrepresentation the remnant were implicated with the governments of the visible section of modern great Babylon, and the free and unhampered activities of the liberty-seeking remnant were practically halted. Literature of theirs was banned, leading officers of the Society were imprisoned and oppressive measures were applied to the remnant. This was a culmination of their captivity in Babylon. They felt great pain over it and languished under the seemingly unbreakable power of their enemies. But at the time of this greatest anguish deliverance was nearing. As it had been written: "Be in pain, and labor to bring forth, O daughter of Zion,

like a woman in travail; for now shalt thou go forth out of the city [Jerusalem], and shalt dwell in the field, and shalt come even unto Babylon: there shalt thou be rescued; there will Jehovah redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies."  —Micah 4:10, AS.

¹⁴ World War I ended in the fall of 1918. The captive remnant took hope. In 1919 the promised rescue came. The invincible spirit of Jehovah God moved upon them, as it did in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-28), and His message of deliverance came to them through the message of truth revealed from his Word. "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." In the spring of the year the work was reorganized and courageously resumed with faith in Jehovah God. "Blessed are the fearless," rang in their ears; and that was the main theme of the first postwar international assembly they held at Cedar Point, Ohio, September 1-8, 1919. What research in the Holy Scriptures there was! Restoration of primitive truth as well as uncovering of fulfilled prophetic truth was the reward, with its corresponding measure of increase of freedom in Christ. That we were in the foretold "time of the end" of this world was more keenly appreciated. In 1920 the command of Jesus given in his prophecy on the sign of the "time of the end" was seen to apply now since 1914: "This good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness to all the nations, and then the accomplished end will come." (Matthew 24:14, NW) What made this good news

different from all preceding was that this was the good news of God's kingdom as established in the hands of the Seed of his woman.

¹⁵ A Kingdom witness! By delivering it it would make us witnesses, and to save some flesh for this purpose was why Almighty God had shortened the days of the tribulation upon the Devil's organization Babylon by allowing an interval after it was hurled down from heaven to earth. —Matthew 24:21, 22; Mark 13:19, 20.

¹⁶ In 1925 came the revelation through the Scriptures that chapter twelve of The Revelation applied to the birth of God's kingdom in 1914 and that immediately following its birth the invisible wing of Babylon, Satan and his demon angels, had been cast out of heaven. Now their main target of attack was the remnant of the woman's seed, because these had been taken by Christ Jesus into the covenant for the everlasting kingdom. (Luke 22:28-30, NW; Ro) In that same year of 1925 there began to be brought to the remnant's notice the present application of Isaiah 43:10-12: "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen; . . . therefore ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and I am God." (AS; see The Watchtower of 1925, pages 9, 22, 75.) His witnesses they must intelligently prove themselves from then on. Six years of intensive work to do so followed. Then on July 26, 1931, at the international assembly in Columbus, Ohio, came the public adoption of the name "Jehovah's witnesses". By these witnesses Jehovah has made his name

famous throughout the world in this "time of the end", despite the mounting opposition of the modern Babylonians and their invisible king, Satan the Devil, the Serpent.

¹⁷ Truly the remnant of the seed of Jehovah's woman have been delivered from Babylon and restored to his theocratic organization for his worship and service. The tables have been turned! In fulfillment of Jesus' parable the remnant have died like the beggar Lazarus to their former poor, oppressed condition and have plainly come into the bosom of favor of the Greater Abraham, Jehovah God. With their apostolic brother Paul they can say: "The Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. Wherefore, brothers, we are children, not of a servant girl [earthly, tradition-bound Jerusalem], but of the free woman. For such freedom Christ set us free. Therefore stand fast, and do not let yourselves be confined again in a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 4:26,31; 5:1, NW) In such freedom from mystic Babylon the restored remnant are determined to stand firm and no more let themselves be snared by false religion through any compromise. In appreciation of their own God-given freedom they are working with might and main to help all people of good will to gain the same glorious freedom now before Babylon is destroyed.