God, for he is “a God exacting exclusive devotion.” That is why King Hezekiah “removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars to pieces and cut down the sacred pole and crushed to pieces the copper serpent that Moses had made, for down to those days the sons of Israel had continually been making sacrificial smoke to it, and it used to be called the copper serpent-idol.” As apostate Israelites worshiped the copper serpent, so the cross has been worshiped by apostate Christians.—Ex. 20:5; 2 Ki. 18:4, NW.

In fact, even to cherish the instrument on which Christ died does not make sense; it is utterly incongruous. Rather than being venerated it should be loathed and abhorred. Who would think of kissing the revolver that had been used by a murderer to kill one’s loved one? It is just as senseless to bestow affection on the instrument on which Jesus met a cruel death. Thus Maimonides, the Jewish scholar of the twelfth century, tells us that the Jews viewed the torture stake as a disgusting thing.⁷

Thus we see the Scriptures, the facts of history and reason uniting to testify that Christ did not die on a cross but upon an upright pole or stake, a stauros, xylon, crux. Also, that regardless of its form, it is to be abhorred rather than venerated. In keeping with these facts the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures renders stauros as “torture stake” and xylon as “stake,” when it refers to the instrument on which Christ died.⁸

REFERENCES

¹ Encyclopaedia Biblica, Vol. 1, p. 957.

² New Schaff & Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. 3, p. 313.

³ Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Vol. 1, p. 508.

⁴ The History of the Cross, Ward.

⁵ The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Strong.

⁶ Dictionary of the Bible, Hastings, Vol. 3,, p. 328.

⁷ Exercitationes contra Baronium, I. Casaubon, 16, An. 34, No. 134.

⁸ New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, Appendix, p. 768.

An Outsider’s Viewpoint

● E. Stanley Jones, American author and evangelist to the high castes of India, in his work Mahatma Gandhi, wrote of the Hindu nationalist leader: “Mahatma Gandhi tells of his contact with a Christian family in South Africa who gave him a standing invitation to dinner every Sunday, and afterwards they all attended the Wesleyan Church. He describes it: ‘The service did not make a favorable impression on me. The sermons seemed to be uninspiring. The congregation did not strike me as being particularly religious. They were not an assembly of devout souls; they appeared rather to be worldly-minded people going to church for recreation and in conformity to custom. Here, at times, I would involuntarily doze. I was ashamed, but some of my neighbors, who were in no better case, lightened the shame. I could not go on long like this, and soon gave up attending the service.’”

Reason for Success in Distributing Bibles

● In the past year the London office of the Watch Tower Society received a letter from a secretary of the United Bible Societies, saying that the writer had been asked to make inquiry into the methods of Scripture distribution. “No one can make such an inquiry,” he wrote, “without realizing that one of the most effective and efficient agencies for Scripture distribution is Jehovah’s witnesses.” In replying to this courteous letter the Society pointed out that their success was due to the noncommercial motives that prompted the witnesses and because their aim was not mere Bible distribution but education for life.—1957 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses.