As these dedicated, baptized and spirit-anointed Christians had proclaimed the approaching destruction of all the worldly nations, including the British Empire and the United States of North America, these nations set out to destroy these proclaimers of God’s kingdom by Christ. They used the situation created by World War I to do so.​—Note Revelation 11:3-10; 13:1, 2, 5, 7.

23. In 1917 what book provided further basis for persecution?

²³ On July 17, 1917, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society released the book entitled “The Finished Mystery.” This book dealt with Revelation and the prophecy of Ezekiel and, unavoidably, it emphasized the destruction of religious Babylon the Great and her political, military, judicial and commercial friends. (James 4:4) This provided further basis for the political authorities, egged on by the clergy of Babylon the Great, to ‘dash to pieces the power of Jehovah’s holy people.’ This they accomplished by the end of the foretold three and a half years on June 21, 1918. Thus this period began on December 28, 1914, in the first northern winter of World War I. By then the International Bible Students, who were conscientious objectors to carnal warfare, felt the mounting pressure upon them to compromise in the embattled British Empire, the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the French Empire, Belgium, and the five other nations then engaged in the spreading world conflict.

We see how the “appointed time, appointed times and a half” of Daniel 12:7 have fitted into this “time of the end.” Although those three and a half years are now so far in the past, yet they marked a turning point in the course of the remnant of Daniel’s modern-day “people,” so that this has affected the Christian witnesses of Jehovah who are alive today.