The special target of these religious organizations of Babylon the Great were the dedicated, baptized Christians known then as International Bible Students, who were pointing to the kingdom of God as the only hope, as they preached and distributed literature published by the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society. The clergy seized upon the war hysteria as an instrument to get political action. The book The Finished Mystery, which gave an explanation of the entire book of Revelation (Apocalypse), and the tract called “Bible Students Monthly,” one issue of which carried an article entitled “The Fall of Babylon,” were banned in Canada and shortly afterward in the United States. Then eight agents of the Watch Tower Society, including its president, were arrested and sentenced on June 21, 1918, to eighty years’ imprisonment in a Federal penitentiary.

Besides this persecution of the Watch Tower Society’s agents, the Christian Bible students who had cooperated with them in the preaching of the Kingdom and the fall of Babylon were persecuted fiercely by mobbings, arrests, loss of employment and in other ways, all egged on by the religious clergy in Canada and America.

Who had been right? Certainly Jesus’ words at Matthew 24:7-13 and Revelation 12:5-10 had been fulfilled in the tremendous loss of life along with the pestilences, earthquakes and famines that accompanied the war, proving that Jesus Christ had stood up in power in heavenly Mount Zion, that the kingdom had been born in the heavens in 1914. (Matt. 24:3, 7-9) The war had ended with an armistice on November 11, 1918. It had not been a war to establish God’s kingdom but, rather, a war between the nations for world domination because, as foretold at Revelation 11:18, the nations were angry rather than happy and willing to accept God’s kingdom. Really the war had been merely a fight over world domination by one part of Christendom over another part and, as a result, instead of God’s kingdom, the Anglo-American World Power, foretold in the Bible as the Seventh World Power, continued its domination over the earth. However, Babylon the Great had not fallen, for she now had taken into captivity God’s witnesses, the Christian Bible students who had been proclaiming Jehovah’s judgments against her, and she had broken up their worldwide organization and stopped their work. But where did she stand before God? She had brought herself into a position to experience divine judgment for opposing his kingdom on heavenly Zion and for persecuting his Christian witnesses and bringing them into captivity because of her spiritual fornication with the political powers to carry out her will.

BABYLON THE GREAT FALLS, TO LOSE HOLD ON HER CAPTIVES

Great was the rejoicing of the clergymen, especially those of Christendom, at the captivity of Jehovah’s Christian witnesses, and they would have delighted to see the captivity continue forever so that the work of proclaiming the Kingdom message in the earth would be dead.f But what a surprise they experienced! They overlooked the fact that the Greater Cyrus, Jesus Christ, was now reigning on Mount Zion with all power in heaven and in earth. With the suddenness of the fall of the ancient city Babylon, which formidable and supposedly impregnable city was taken in one night by Cyrus of Persia, the tables were turned. In March of 1919 the prison doors were forced open to Jehovah’s witnesses by order of the Federal Court of Appeals and the charges for which they had been incarcerated were shown to be false. The eight prominent agents of the Society were completely exonerated.

What had happened? Well, Babylon the Great had not been destroyed, just as ancient Babylon remained intact when Cyrus took her. But she had now absolutely lost power to hold her captives. From now on all who were worshipers of Jehovah as well as those under her domination who desired to worship Jehovah could come out and freely worship him with spirit and truth. They could join in declaring the judgments of Babylon, soon to be completely put out of existence, just as she deserved for her opposition to Jehovah The agents of the Society immediately upon their release got busy and repaired its worldwide organization, reestablishing international contacts. An international assembly was held on September 1-8 and on the fifth day the Watch Tower Society’s president, J. F. Rutherford, addressed the assembly on the subject “Announcing the Kingdom.” He made a modern application of the prophecy of Isaiah 52:7 (AV), which had applied to the release of the Israelites from Babylonian captivity: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!” Then on Sunday, September 7, he addressed a public audience of 7,000 on the subject “The Hope for Distressed Humanity” and spoke in favor of God’s kingdom as against the human substitute, the then-proposed League of Nations.

It was indeed a joyful announcement to God’s people Zion, “Thy God reigneth!” Yes, the fall of Babylon in the spring of the year 1919 was further proof that the Greater Cyrus had begun his Kingdom rule and had opened Babylon’s gates, broken the “copper doors” in pieces and cut down the “iron bars” holding Jehovah’s people.—Isa. 45:1, 2.

So Jehovah unravels for us the great Bible mystery, a mystery not of God’s making, but one that God’s opponent, Satan the Devil, has promoted. But Satan has lost. His secret is out and no one has to be bound in death-dealing ignorance by it. With the destruction of Babylon the Great and her political, commercial friends and supporters and the bringing in of a new order under the rule of Christ’s Kingdom government, confusing religious ignorance will be nonexistent. The resurrection will bring back millions who in the past have been victims of Babylon the Great, to learn the truth. Exercise your opportunity now to flee from and stay out of Babylon in order to avoid being lastingly crushed in the fast-approaching day of her destruction.

It Dwells in the Palace of a King

● At Proverbs 30:28, the “gecko lizard” is listed as one of the four small things that are instinctively wise, this lizard being able to take hold “with its own hands” and make its way even into a king’s palace, where it can take hold of any surface by means of its “hands”—its adhesive-padded feet. The adhesive disks, says Raymond Ditmars, “are strikingly like the magnified pads on the foot of a fly; and their method of adhesion is the same—not aided by a sticky secretion, but through actual suction produced by close-set, concave areas.”