instituted for the very purpose of suppressing.”

There has been one compromise after another. In the area of human relations the narrow gate of divine principle concerning human marriage and morality has been widened. The result? Christendom’s broad way is littered with the wreckage of innumerable marriages and is filled with the shameful headlines of a soaring crime rate and unspeakable immoralities. Writes a clergyman in The Interpreter’s Bible: “We have acquiesced in conventions, practices, and aims which are at entire variance with the ideals and spirit of the religion we profess.”

It could hardly be otherwise when religious leaders abandon divine principles such as separateness from the world. Bible principle is: “Do not be loving either the world or the things in the world.” “The friendship with the world is enmity with God.” (1 John 2:15; Jas. 4:4, NW) For selfish advantage, to gain favor in the eyes of men, the religious leaders have sacrificed right principle.

“Go in through the narrow gate,” declared Christ, “because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.”—Matt. 7:13, 14, NW.

Christendom’s compromising clergy, to get whole states and nations to follow them, have leveled the siege guns of expediency at the narrow gate. By blasting down the narrow gate of divine principle with salvo after salvo of compromise the clergy have led people en masse through a gate that is as wide as it possibly can be.

“Go in through the narrow gate,” Jesus advised. Have you?

When All Men Again Worship One God

1. On December 6, 1956, what did two officials of a New York publishing society note at Mars’ Hill in Athens?

One day in 1956—it was the sixth of December—the president and the vice-president of an internationally known publishing societya climbed up Mars’ Hill in Athens, Greece. The pagan Greeks of long ago called the hill A·re·opʹa·gus. Stone steps lead to the top. Near the bottom of these the two men stopped. Look! A bronze plate imbedded in the rock to the right of the steps! It is inscribed with words in the common Greek speech of nineteen hundred years ago. The words are, in fact, a quotation from the Sacred Bible. Yes, they are from that part of the Bible which was first written in Greek to the Christians and which is generally called “The New Testament.” The words quoted are from its book of the Acts of the Apostles, chapter seventeen, verses twenty-two through thirty-one. Translated into modern English here are what the words say:

2. What did the inscription on the bronze plaque say?

² “Men of Athens, I behold that in all things you seem to be more given to the fear of the deities than others are. For instance, while passing along and carefully observing your objects of devotion I also found an altar on which had been inscribed ‘To an Unknown God’. Therefore what you are unknowingly giving godly devotion to, this I am publishing to you. The God that made the world and all the things in it, being, as this One is, Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade temples, neither is he attended to by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives to all persons life and breath and all things. And he made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed seasons and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist, even as certain ones of the poets among you have said, ‘For we are also his progeny.’ Seeing, therefore, that we are the progeny of God, we ought not to imagine that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, like something sculptured by the art and contrivance of man. True, God has overlooked the times of such ignorance, yet now he is telling mankind that they should all everywhere repent. Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead.”Ac 17:22-31

3, 4. To what fact did that plaque on the rock testify, and how did this happen?

³ Why was that plaque with those remarkable words imbedded in the rock? To testify that Paul of the city of Tarsus, Asia Minor, spoke those words there on Mars’ Hill nineteen centuries ago. Paul was an apostle or envoy of Jesus Christ, who had been unjustly killed about eighteen years before this at Jerusalem, but whom the Almighty God had made alive from the dead on the third day. Paul himself had met this Jesus Christ years after his resurrection from death. This miraculous meeting helped to change Paul from being a persecutor of Christ’s followers to becoming a faithful follower of him. Paul was therefore a witness to the fact that the Almighty God had resurrected Jesus Christ out of death and had transformed him into a glorious spirit person in the invisible heavens.

⁴ So now the Christian apostle Paul stood on top of Mars’ Hill, or the A·re·opʹa·gus. The highest legal court in ancient Athens had brought him up there to listen to him, because on Mars’ Hill was where this court held its meetings. Members of this court were philosophers known as Stoʹics and Ep·i·cu·reʹans. As Paul reminded them, they believed in many deities to whom they had built temples and altars out of fear. They were afraid they might leave out one god. So to avoid punishment they erected an altar to whoever this god might be. They confessed that they were ignorant of this god by inscribing on this altar the words, “To an Unknown God.” Who was He? Paul knew. Those men of Athens did not know.

5. What did Paul prove to the legal court concerning the terms “Jesus’ and “resurrection”?

⁵ What was the name of this Unknown God? Those men of Athens had heard Paul talk about Jesus and about resurrection. So they thought that Jesus and Resurrection were the names of gods strange to them. They brought Paul into the Mars’ Hill court to defend himself against the charge of religious blasphemy, for which he could be put to death. Paul proved to them that Jesus and Resurrection were not the names of the Unknown God. Had Jesus resurrected himself from the dead? No. History tells us that Jesus had resurrected or raised other persons on earth from the dead. But himself he could not raise from the dead. His being dead prevented his doing that.

6. Who, then, had performed the resurrection of Jesus, and what relationship did they therefore hold to each other?

⁶ Who, then, performed the resurrection of Jesus Christ out of death? It was God. He raised Jesus Christ from the dead and not only brought him back to life again but also transformed him into an undying spirit person to live up in the heavens. Do you not think that he had to be God in order to be able to do that? Yes; any Being that could do such a miraculous thing must be the one true and living God. He must be almighty to do such a thing. None of the gods of the men of Athens or of any other people had ever done or could do such a thing. Also, by raising this Jesus Christ from the dead to enjoy superhuman, spirit life with Him in the highest heavens, the Almighty God showed that he was the heavenly Father of this Jesus and that this resurrected Jesus was the Son of God. His receiving body and life from Almighty God made him the Son of God, a heavenly, spiritual Son of God.

7. What else is this Resurrector of Jesus Christ?

⁷ This almighty, immortal God did more than give life to his Son Jesus Christ. In order to make the men of Athens better acquainted with the Unknown God Paul on Mars’ Hill told them that this is the God that “made the world and all the things in it.” He is therefore the great Creator, the greater Former and Shaper of all things that exist, whether unseen to us or seen to us. Well, then, this One is, as Paul says, the “Lord of heaven and earth,” that is, the Master and Owner of all heaven and earth. Hence we rightly call Him the Lord God.

HIS NAME AND WORSHIP

8. By what personal name may we call him, and where and how many times therein does that name occur?

⁸ Can we call this Lord God by a personal name in order that we may set him apart from all others who are called “gods”? Yes, we can. What personal name, then? Well, have you ever heard anyone sing or shout out the long word “Hal·le·luʹ·jah”? That is a Hebrew word and it means “Praise Jah!” But who is this Jah that we are thus called upon to praise? Hebrew scholars tell us that this name Jah is a shortening of the full name Jehovah. Some scholars prefer to pronounce the name Jahʹveh or Jahʹweh, but today Jehovah is the most popular way of pronouncing the name. No man gave him this name. He named himself this way. By his invisible force by which he made the world he also caused a book to be written on earth by men who served and worshiped him. Because he moved these men by his unseen active force to write this book it is called holy or sacred. Some call it the Holy Scriptures, because it is made up of holy writings. Others call it the Holy Bible, because it is made up of many little books, sixty-six books being in most versions of the Holy Bible. The first thirty-nine books were written in the Hebrew language, and in those books the Almighty God tells us that his personal name is Jehovah—at least 6,823 times.

9. What does he declare at Isaiah 42:8, to identify himself?

⁹ In the book of Isaiah, chapter forty-two, verse eight, the Almighty God says: “I am Jehovah, that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise unto graven images.” (AS) So now this only true and living God is no longer unknown to you by his personal name. He is Jehovah God.

10. Why is there today no man-made temple to Jehovah, and what did King Solomon say in this regard?

¹⁰ In most lands of the earth there are thousands of temples made by the hand of man. But do you know of any one of them that is consecrated to Jehovah God? No, you do not. Nineteen hundred years ago there used to be a temple to Jehovah at the city of Jerusalem, now in the land of Jordan. But Jehovah God himself let it be burned and broken down in the year 70 of the Christian era. Why? Because that temple was misused and because, as Paul told the men of Athens on Mars’ Hill, the one living and true God “does not dwell in handmade temples, neither is he attended to by human hands as if he needed anything.” (Acts 17:24, 25, NW) How could the God who made the measureless heavens and the big earth dwell in the really tiny temples that the hands of men make? We must not dishonor God by belittling him. Almost three thousand years ago King Solomon built a glorious temple to Jehovah at Jerusalem. Yet when this wisest king of ancient times dedicated the temple to Jehovah he prayed and said: “But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded! Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Jehovah my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee this day; that thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place whereof thou hast said, My name shall be there.”—1 Ki. 8:27-29, AS.

11, 12. What state of dependency is there between God and us?

¹¹ The Creator of all things in heaven and on earth is too big to dwell in temples made by our hands. He does not need anything such as a temple of wood, brick or stone. Instead of our needing to give him things to keep him well and happy, “he himself gives to all persons life and breath and all things,” said Paul.

¹² Our life is from God. Our power to breathe and the air that we breathe are from God. The earth and all the things that we enjoy are from God, his gifts to us. Why, then, should we think that He has to depend upon us and that we have to build temples to Him? Since he is our Life-giver and the One upon whom we depend for everything good he ought to be our God whom we worship, adore and please. This should be true of us regardless of what nation we belong to today.

13. Regardless of our nationality, in what sense are we God’s progeny?

¹³ Listen again to what Paul on Mars’ Hill said in explaining this God: “He made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed seasons and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist, even as certain ones of the poets among you have said, ‘For we are also his progeny.’ Seeing, therefore, that we are the progeny of God, we ought not to imagine that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, like something sculptured by the art and contrivance of man.” So we all