What Has Religion Done For Mankind?

CHAPTER XXV

Red Religion and the "Man of Lawlessness"

THAT anyone should gain liberty from modern Babylon is a miracle, accomplished by Almighty God's power. When the Israelite remnant marched away from the once world-mistress Babylon in 537 B.C., it almost seemed unreal to them: "When Jehovah brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the nations, Jehovah hath done great things for them. Jehovah hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Turn again our captivity, O Jehovah, as the streams in the South." (Psalm 126:1-4, AS) It was a totalitarian power from which they had been set free, Babylon the third world power. The Babylon over which Nimrod the mighty hunter ruled at the beginning of its history was a totalitarian government run in defiance of the supremacy of Jehovah God. Nimrod who was popularly idolized as a mighty god claimed to be the liberator of the people from the opium of the religion of Jehovah, the God of Noah and of his son Shem. (Genesis 10:8-10, AS) The modern Babylon is a still greater creation of Satan the Devil run in defiance of Jehovah's universal sovereignty. It is a totalitarian organization, the mother of all totalitarian systems on

earth. There is enmity between it and God's woman, the heavenly Jerusalem or Zion; and this enmity has been heightened by Jehovah's freeing of his remnant since 1919.

² At the hurling of Satan the king of Babylon and his angels down to earth after God's kingdom was born in the heavens, the cry rang out, "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." The fire-red dragon's comedown meant not only total war between nations and kingdoms on a global scale; it meant not only earthquakes, pestilences, food shortages, and fearful sights, all of which Jesus said were to be a "beginning of pangs of distress" and a sign that the "time of the end" had begun for this world. (Matthew 24:3-8 and Luke 21:10, 11, NW) It meant also that totalitarian forms of government on a modern style would be set up and there would be great regimentation of the people. The purpose of Satan the red dragon was by this means to hold the people in unbreakable bondage to his organization Babylon. In the short period of time remaining till the battle of Armageddon he must turn all mankind into destruction by lining them up against Jehovah's rule of the earth by Christ Jesus his King. It enrages Satan to see the remnant of the seed of God's woman challenging the power and claims of Babylon and rendering their worship and service to Jehovah as Universal Sovereign to whom all the earth belongs. He tries to hinder people of good will from joining them.

³ One totalitarian system fears another such. One modern development that has thoroughly frightened the totalitarian religious system of the pope, yes, and all Christendom too, has been the rise of totalitarian political power in Eastern Europe. Fascist totalitarian rule was foisted upon Italy in 1922, and Nazi totalitarian rule on Germany in 1933; but the pope made working agreements with these through concordats and his priests blessed the aggressive armies of Fascism and Nazism. In fact, through the Fascist dictator the pope gained political independence for Vatican City in 1929. These political totalitarian systems were used by the pope as the "sword of the church" to fight the totalitarian system that now all Christendom fears, that of Communism. The pope well remembers that after the Communist Manifesto was issued by Engels and Marx at the end of 1847 there were great political revolutions in Europe, including Italy, and on November 24, 1848, the pope was obliged to escape in disguise from the Vatican and flee south to Gaeta. He did not return to Rome till April of 1850, surrounded by French bayonets. Another such flight from the Vatican could be forced now by international Communism directed by its capital Moscow, Russia.

⁴ In November of 1917, during the throes of World War I, there came the Bolshevik counterrevolution in Russia and a Communist government was set up with Nikolai Lenin as the leading figure. The Russian Orthodox Church which had been married to the previous Czarist government

was disestablished from this union and parts of its property were confiscated. In harmony with the saying of Karl Marx religion was branded as "the opium of the people", and there was a shocking exposure of the real frauds the orthodox clergy had practiced on the illiterate and oppressed people. At the bitter persecution which was carried on against the Russian clergy protest was made by the clergy of other lands and an appeal to their government to interfere in behalf of religion. But in vain! What remains of the Russian Orthodox Church has now been made subservient to the Soviet state. After Lenin's death January 21,1924, Joseph Stalin made successful political maneuvers and finally became the undisputed head of the Communist political bureau in August, 1926. He thus rose to be General Secretary of the Communist party of the country. In 1945 he was made Generalissimo. On March 12, 1948, a headline in the New York Times read: "Stalin Selected by God, Moscow Patriarch says." The "providence of God chose" this "wise leader".

⁵ The movement is stigmatized by the religious leaders in the Western democracies as "godless (or atheistic) Communism". And the Communists do brag that they are godless and irreligious. But if we recall the definition of "religion" set out in our first chapter, namely, "a form or system of worship," we must conclude that the Communists are religious and indulge in worship according to the creed of their party. When we remember that Satan the Devil promised to give Jesus political power in this world if Jesus would worship him as the "ruler of this world", the Communists must have come to their position of political power only

by grant of the "ruler of this world", Satan the Devil, for their worship of him. How and at what price the pope and other religious leaders came by their political power and influence we leave our readers to judge.

⁶ Because they deny his existence, the Reds may deny they worship the Devil. But they have set up a state religion by requiring the people to give their unquestioning obedience to the political state as their highest counselor, guide, provider and protector. In this they attribute to the state what really belongs to the living and true God, Jehovah. For him they have substituted a man-made visible organization. In endeavoring to set up or sanction only national church systems in each country and make them completely subject to the political authorities, they are making the state a super-religious system that regulates the religious affairs of the subservient systems. As with children in religious parochial schools, they are most careful to indoctrinate the growing children in the articles of the Communist credo. As its Holy Scriptures Communism has the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, who are spoken of as inspired writers. "Inspired" by whom?

⁷ Carrying our comparison farther, we note that Communism has its missionaries, whose entry into their midst countries of the Western bloc of nations are attempting to deny or prevent. It has its priesthood or hierarchy, that Politburo with all its lesser orders of functionaries for the guid-

ance of the people in Communist orthodoxy and with power to demand and hear confessions and to issue excommunications, to forbid heretical literature and to censor and expurgate books, magazines, movies, stage plays, poetic and musical compositions. It has its shrines and pilgrimages. Moscow parallels the Mohammedan Mecca. There the Kremlin, where Stalin has had his residence with his family, is Communism's Vatican; and pious pilgrimages are made to the tombs of its martyrs and venerated men. It has its calendar of holy days, among which are May Day and the anniversary of Lenin's death and also, during his life, the birthday of Stalin, December 21. On that day in 1950 in the satellite land of Albania the People's Assembly voted to erect a statue to "the deity, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin", and the premier declared: "The Great Stalin is our people's glorious savior." Other flattering titles have been paid him, glorifying him to the place of a national god. As with Lenin, he is venerated as being the embodiment of the political aims of Communism. The prophets of Communism predict world victory for it.

⁸ It is significant that the religion of Communism was born in the heart of Christendom. The lands where it has its strongholds and its greatest number of adherents are lands where there has been union of church and state and where religious hierarchies have dominated the lives and politics of the people, such as Russia, Italy, France, etc. This betrays the failure of Christendom and exposes its religion to be Babylonish, but dressed up with Christian names. True Christianity does

not breed political Communism. Hypocritical religion does. Honest clergymen are forced to admit it. Said a Presbyterian preacher in Brooklyn, New York, on Sunday, February 4, 1951: Communism is an "instrument of social change born in the intolerable vacuum left by a thousand years of Christian failure to achieve a better instrument or any instrument at all". —New York Times, 2/5/51.

⁹ Christendom's religion in all its sectarian forms is an apostasy, a falling away from the pure, primitive Christianity based on God's holy Word the Bible. It has rejected God's kingdom set up at the enthronement of the Seed of his woman, Jesus Christ. As an organized, collective system of religion its clergy are the "embodiment of disobedience" to Jehovah God. They form a "man of lawlessness" toward him, just as Saul the first king of Israel was lawless, hypocritically setting himself up above Jehovah's law. Who this man of lawlessness or man of sin was to be was long a mystery. But now the united course of conduct of Christendom's clergy and religious leaders discloses who it is today fully developed. This composite "man" was to be revealed before the "day of Jehovah" arrived for destroying that lawless religious system.

¹⁰ "Let no one seduce you in any manner," writes the apostle Paul, "because it [the day of Jehovah] will not come unless the falling away comes first and the man of lawlessness [the embodiment of disobedience, AT] gets revealed, the son of destruction. He is set in opposition and lifts himself up over everyone who is called 'god' or an

object of reverence, so that he sits down in the temple of The God, publicly showing himself to be a god. Do you not remember that, while I was yet with you, I used to tell you these things? And so now you know the thing that acts as a restraint with a view to his being revealed in his own due time. True, the mystery of this lawlessness is already at work; but only till he who is right now acting as a restraint gets to be out of the way. Then, indeed, the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will annihilate by the spirit of his mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of his presence."

¹¹ The "mystery of this lawlessness" was already at work in the days of Christ's twelve apostles. As the governing body of the Christian congregation, they were the ones who were acting as a restraint upon the development of this "man of lawlessness" to full growth. They were filled with God's spirit and this helped them as a restraining power over this apostate "son of destruction", foreshadowed by the traitor Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus to be hanged on a torture stake to die in agony and shame. His being called the "son of destruction" means he is sure to be destroyed.

¹² So the falling away of Christian leaders from true Christianity to form a "man of lawlessness" class or system began shortly after the twelve apostles died. The apostles being thus out of the way, the composite lawless man came out into the open and followed his self-exalting, lawless course of conduct. He set himself up as an apostate

clergy in power over the religious interests of professed Christians. The clerical word was more powerful than the written Word of God. The clergy put the traditions and commands of men up above the laws of God and nullified them. Assuming the titles of "Reverend", "Right Reverend," "Most Right Reverend," "Divine," and even 'vice-god" for the pope, they elevated themselves in their temples, cathedrals and church buildings as objects of reverence capturing the due reverence and fear away from Jehovah God and his Son Jesus Christ. They claimed to be sons of God, but they made themselves gods or spiritually mighty ones to their parishioners and flocks. So to them the words which Jesus once quoted apply: "God takes his stand in the divine assembly; in the midst of the gods he gives judgment. 'How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality toward the wicked?' I say, 'You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High! Yet you will die as men do, and fall like any prince.'" (Psalm 82:1, 2, 6,7, AT; John 10:35) Now that Christ Jesus is present in his kingdom, the time has come for him to annihilate these apostates, now that he has exposed this "man of lawlessness".

¹³ "But," continues the apostle Paul, "the lawless one's presence is according to the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and wonders and with every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth that they might be saved. So that is why God lets an operation of error go to them that they may get to believing the lie, in order that they all may

be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thessalonians 2:3-12, NW) This warns of a terrible end for people who do not love the pure truth of God's written Word but who prefer to have their ears tickled by the religious lies of these clergy "gods". If the blind people choose to be led by blind religious guides, they can expect to fall into the ditch with them.

¹⁴ Communists with their Red religion and the clergy of Christendom—which class is the more reprehensible? The Bible answers, The religious clergy. Those who have become communists have stumbled at the hypocrisy of the clergy and have turned against their religion and its gods. But the clergy have professed to be Christian and to speak for the Most High God. So they have wielded great influence over hundreds of millions in their flocks. They have failed to use this marvelous opportunity to teach these God's Word of truth but have led them into worldly philosophy and Babylonish religion. They have guided the people into outright opposition to God's kingdom by Christ and into full support of Satan's world and its conflicts, World Wars I and II included. Showing their reprehensibility above that of all others, Jehovah's Word says of the clergy: "I sent not these prophets, yet they ran: I spake not unto them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, then had they caused my people to hear my words, and had turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings." (Jeremiah 23:21, 22, AS) They will therefore have the severer judgment.