to attend, taking away their personal identification cards to prevent them from traveling. When the brothers went to the railroad station to purchase their tickets, they found that their names were on special lists of persons who were to be refused. In spite of these obstacles 15,418 were present in the Deutschlandhalle in West Berlin to adopt the Resolution, and for them its words carried special meaning: “. . . and even when persecution may get more intense and we may be scattered physically or be driven underground or deprived of our Bible-study literature, we will keep on obeying God rather than men and will preach the good news of the Kingdom . . . by use of our Bibles alone, if necessary, or by just that divine Word stored up in our hearts.”

By early December, ninety-one Divine Will assemblies had been held. The attendance had now swollen from 253,922 present to hear the public talk at the Assembly in New York to a total of 562,955. This was backed up with the delivery of that same talk, “God’s Kingdom Rules—Is the World’s End Near?” at all the congregations of Jehovah’s witnesses worldwide on October 5, followed by the distribution of millions of copies of it in The Watchtower. The 7,136 who symbolized their dedication by water baptism in New York have since been joined by 10,638 more at these further assemblies, bringing the total to 17,774.

One of the outstanding features of all these ninety-one assemblies was the wholehearted endorsement of the Resolution exposing the delinquency of the clergy of Christendom, spotlighting the kingdom of God as the only real hope for mankind, and declaring the determination of the witnesses faithfully to continue to serve Jehovah God. At the final count to date this Resolution has been publicly endorsed by 405,720 gathered in assemblies. And hundreds of thousands more have demonstrated that they too are in heartfelt accord with it by participating in the distribution of the Resolution contained in The Watchtower as of November 1, 1958, to millions of persons, including the rulers of the lands, the clergy and other prominent individuals. And on December 1 the world-wide distribution of 70,000,000 copies of this plain-spoken Resolution in fifty languages in tract form began, in what may well prove to be the greatest publicity campaign to date, making clear to the people of all nations the divine will as expressed in God’s own Word, the Holy Bible.

These assemblies and the Kingdom publicity now going on have attracted the attention of men of all national, racial and religious groups, and those who are of good will toward Jehovah God are gathering with his people to give him exclusive devotion.

Part 8—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”

In order that his will might be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Jehovah God started off the human family in a sanctuary. This holy place was the garden of Eden or Paradise of Pleasure in which Adam and Eve had fellowship with their God and heavenly Father. It was at this Paradise sanctuary that a heavenly spirit son of God rebelled and transformed himself into Satan the Devil. Using the serpent he tempted the woman Eve into sin by eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. She in turn induced her husband Adam to eat and willfully break God’s law. Their presence in the Edenic Paradise sanctuary now became defiling. God came upon the guilty trio and pronounced the sentence of destruction upon the great Serpent, Satan the Devil, by means of the seed of His woman. He also pronounced the death sentence upon Adam and Eve and cleansed the Paradise sanctuary by driving the sinful couple out and barring their return in any attempt to eat of the tree of life in order to live on earth forever.

23, 24. What fact showed sin had passed on to Adam’s children born outside Eden, and in what two respects was Cain a murderer?

²³ Sin, together with its condemnation to death, passed on to Adam’s children born outside the sanctuary of Paradise. This fact is plain from what happened to his very first son, Cain. This son became a cultivator of the cursed ground outside the Edenic sanctuary. His younger brother Abel became a shepherd. Cain and Abel brought offerings to God. Close to the sanctuary of Eden, to the east entrance by which the posted cherubs kept guard, was reasonably the proper place to bring the offerings. Each one brought some of the products of his own type of work. Cain offered field products. Abel sacrificed the lives of some of his sheep, firstlings, and poured their blood upon the ground and presented fatty pieces of them to God.

²⁴ Then God indicated that there must be a sacrifice of life and that this life must be presented to him in order for sinful humankind to get back into his favor and be forgiven and redeemed from sin and the penalty of death. God looked with favor upon Abel’s animal victims; he rejected Cain’s bloodless offering. In jealousy Cain now shed blood, but it was the blood of his righteous brother Abel, who had pleased God by his sacrifice offered in faith in God. By such bloodshed Cain defiled the ground. Though not put to death at once as a murderer, Cain came under God’s special curse. (Gen. 4:1-23; Heb. 11:4) He was a murderer in two respects, by his hatred of his innocent brother and by his act of actually putting him to death. He showed that he originated with the Devil and was a child of the Devil. (1 John 3:8-12) In due time Cain died under God’s curse. All his offspring were also wiped out by the global flood of Noah’s day.—Gen. 4:16-24; 6:5-13.

25. How is it that death carried on through Noah and his family down through the flood to today, and what pattern was set by God’s acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice?

²⁵ Down to the Noachian flood not one of Adam’s descendants proved able to invade the Edenic sanctuary and get to that tree of life there. That was not now God’s way for human creatures to gain eternal life in a Paradise on earth. In God’s due time the Flood swept away every trace of that Paradise sanctuary of Eden somewhere near the Middle East. Thus it was that death carried on in the human race even through Noah and his family, who survived the flood, all the way down to this day. All mystery about death and its cause is brushed aside in this brief statement: “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men because they had all sinned.” (Rom. 5:12) Wise King Solomon said: “There is no man that does not sin.” (1 Ki. 8:46) That is why all men receive the wages that sin pays, which is death. (Rom. 6:23) God’s acceptance of Abel’s sacrifice of sheep with the shedding of blood sets a pattern. It shows the way in which humankind are to be freed from the condemnation of death and delivered from death. It must be by the sacrifice of an acceptable life here on earth. Abel was not authorized to eat any of the sacrificed firstlings of his flock in communion with God, much less to drink their blood. Why, then, did Abel’s sacrifice please God?

26. With what divine law did Abel’s sacrifice line up, and how was a sacrifice better than that of Abel’s provided for mankind?

²⁶ He had not learned it from Adam, but he learned it by faith in God. It therefore lined up with God’s laws stated long afterward: “Only flesh with its soul—its blood—you must not eat.” (Gen. 9:4) “For the soul of the flesh is in the blood, and I myself have put it upon the altar for you to make atonement for your souls, because it is the blood that makes atonement by the soul in it.” (Lev. 17:11) “Yes, nearly all things are cleansed with blood according to the Law, and unless blood is poured out no forgiveness takes place.” (Heb. 9:22) Jehovah, who saw that justice toward dying, sinful mankind could be turned in favor of mankind only by a sacrifice of sufficient value and power, was also loving enough to provide the needed sacrifice. He did this in his heavenly Son, his first and chief creation, whom he sent from heaven