year of 360 days being taken as the basic unit, 2,300 evenings and mornings would amount to six years four months and twenty days, each day being composed of an evening and a morning. (Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31) Count now from the beginning of this International Convention of London on May 25, 1926, and we shall find that the 2,300 days of evenings and mornings bring us to October 15, 1932.

45. As of that date, what did the Watch Tower Society’s official Journal point out?

⁴⁵ How was Jehovah’s “sanctuary” cleansed, vindicated or restored to its rightful state by that date? Examine the official journal of Jehovah’s witnesses, The Watchtower, as of that date. Note page 319. That page sets out the Resolution adopted by the New York company of Jehovah’s witnesses on October 5, 1932. It called for a cleansing of the congregational organization, a restoring of it to the rightful state of Jehovah’s sanctuary class. How? By the ridding of the organization of “elective elders,” or elders that had been elected to the office of eldership by the stretching out of the hands of the members of the congregation in a popular or democratic election, after the political style of the ancient Greek states and the democratic Anglo-American dual world power.

46, 47. (a) How had the congregations been proceeding in the matter of putting elders into office, and in what had this resulted? (b) What Resolution did the Watchtower magazine submit for adoption?

⁴⁶ For decades the congregations of Jehovah’s sanctuary class had been locally electing men to eldership by local congregational hand-voting. This, of course, was due to misunderstanding the apostolic procedure of the first century as described in the Christian Greek Scriptures.f Now at God’s chosen time the article entitled “Jehovah’s Organization” appeared in The Watchtower, Part 1 in the issue of August 15, 1932, and Part 2 in the following issue of September 1. This exposed the system of “elective elders” as conforming to the democratic part of this world and hence as being unclean and not theocratic, not submissive to the great Theocrat who rules his sanctuary from the top down. This democratic electing of elders had resulted in many being appointed to this office who were not really mature or spiritually grown up, who felt independent of superior control, who felt self-important in their local congregation as having the assignment to run the local congregation, being responsible primarily to the congregation to which they had looked for votes. This had resulted in much obstruction by such type of “elders” to the world-wide witness work that the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society was encouraging by its service representative in each congregation. The article on “Jehovah’s Organization” closed, submitting for adoption by all congregations a Resolution, which said, in part:

⁴⁷ “Therefore be it resolved that there is no Scriptural authority for the existence of the elective office of elders in the church and that henceforth we will not elect any person to the office of elder; that all of the anointed of God are elders, as that term is defined by the Scriptures, and all are servants of the Most High. . . . A service director who shall be nominated by us and confirmed by the Society’s executive or manager, and which service director shall be a member of the service committee of this company.”

48. What therefore, did the announcement in the October 15, 1932, issue of The Watchtower constitute, and how did this harmonize with the meaning of the “twenty-four elders” and the “seven stars”?

⁴⁸ This Resolution was adopted by congregations of Jehovah’s witnesses throughout the earth. The announcement in the Watchtower magazine of October 15, 1932, at the end of 2,300 evenings and mornings was the official notification made by Jehovah through his visible channel of communication that his sanctuary of anointed “living stones” had been cleansed, vindicated and justified. It had been restored to its rightful state as regards the elimination of democratically elected “elders” and as regards the theocratic appointing of the congregational overseer. Certainly the twenty-four elderly persons whom the apostle John saw in his heavenly vision crowned and seated on thrones around the throne of the Most High God were not “elders” democratically elected by the congregations on earth below. They were “elders” chosen by the Sovereign of the universe because of their full Christian growth and proved integrity. Certainly, too, the “seven stars” whom John saw upon the right hand of the glorified Jesus Christ and who pictured the “angels” or overseers of the congregations of Jehovah’s anointed sanctuary class were full-grown “elders” chosen and controlled, not by the congregations after the democratic procedure of the seventh world power, but by the Supreme Head of the theocratic organization through Jesus Christ. (Rev. 1:16, 20; 2:1; 4:4, 10, 11) Rightly the remnant of the sanctuary class on earth was brought into accord with this theocratic rule in Jehovah’s due time.

(To be continued)

Who Preach an Unreasonable God?

IN THE January, 1957, issue of The Diocesan magazine, official organ of the Church of England in Newfoundland, appears an article by cleric R. F. Palmer. Under the subject “What to Say to Jehovah’s Witnesses at the Door,” this clergyman writes: “I admire your zeal in trying to forward your beliefs. I am sure you are a sincere person. But I cannot accept your literature. You preach a cruel and unreasonable god who is going to sweep most of his children away in a horrible battle of Armageddon while you witnesses stand aside and look on. . . . I want nothing to do with such a god.”

But who really is it that preaches a cruel and unreasonable god? Who is it that preaches a god that punishes persons in a literal torment of unquenchable fire forever? Who is it that has always been ready to read a christening service over a warship? Who is it that has always been ready to pray to God for destruction of national enemies, even though those enemies profess the same religious belief as those praying for their destruction? Yes, who is it that has supported the unrighteous wars of this world—wars that have failed to settle anything permanently—and then at the same time deny God the right to fight a righteous war to wipe out wickedness for all time? It is the clergy of Christendom themselves!

Jehovah’s witnesses, on the other hand, are preaching the God who has purposed a righteous new world, the God who has determined to destroy this wicked system of things, putting the wicked, not in a literal hell of eternal torment, but out of existence forever, at Armageddon, “at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings due punishment upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. These very ones will pay the penalty of everlasting destruction from before the Lord.”—2 Thess. 1:7-9.