copies, hard bound, printed at our Brooklyn factory, were on hand and were quickly grabbed up. East zoners were favored with free copies.

This climaxed Brother Knorr’s third and final speech of the day, but in view of his return to Nuremberg next morning he added many extemporaneous words of farewell, which were deeply appreciated. To add to their joy he announced that immediately afterward the film “The New World Society in Action” would be shown for the benefit of the thousands of East Germans who had not yet viewed it. So after the closing prayer a screen was erected before the trellis back of the platform and 7,500 of the conventioners remained to see the motion pictures. Repeatedly throughout they burst into applause.

To escape identification by any spies East zone brothers wore badges here bearing no name of person and no name of congregation. Having no songbooks at home, the East zoners sang the Kingdom songs from memory at the Waldbuehne. The singing led by a thirty-five-piece orchestra was especially rich-sounding in this amphitheater.

Sunday morning the special convention plane flew back to Nuremberg, but the vice-president along with others remained in Berlin. The brothers streamed forth from their mass quarters at the Olympia Stadium and other lodging places to the Woodland Stage for the morning sessions. The 11,114 in attendance, especially the East zoners, were greatly comforted and strengthened at hearing the hour speech “Cautious as Serpents Among Wolves,” in German.

The 3 p.m. public lecture by the vice-president was well advertised by handbills and other means, including forty-eight banner signs suspended between temporary pole supports throughout West Berlin. The display of these signs was at first opposed by the city government, but through the magnanimous argument of one of the senators the objection to the signs was pushed aside. A fine orchestral presentation regaled the early comers, and the Waldbuehne loosely filled up with 17,729 for the discussion of “World Conquest Soon—by God’s Kingdom,” in German. In unbroken, silent attentiveness they listened to the talk to its end and then gave way to pent-up feelings at the release of the speech in booklet form in German.

An intermission followed. Then the assembly servant addressed the 15,449 that remained, on “Stay Awake, Stand Firm, Grow Mighty.” As he spoke storm clouds rolled up and massed overhead. About ten minutes after the vice-president began giving the “closing remarks” in German, taking his audience on a quick tour of all the 1955 international assemblies from Chicago on till now, down poured a heavy rain. Thousands kept their seats in the rain. Down the sheer sides of the amphitheater the rainwater rushed to dam up in pools in front of the platform and behind the retaining wall of the lowest amphitheater seats. Toward the close of the remarks after 6 p.m. the rain eased off. The appreciative listeners did not seem to want to leave off clapping. But then came the last song, No. 91, “Blessed Zion,” and the final prayer, and God’s kingdom had scored another triumph in the German assemblies. The combined public attendance for Nuremberg and Berlin (107,423 and 17,729) was 125,152, and the total number immersed (4,333 and 870) was 5,203.

That evening the Eastern zone brothers began making their way back home across the dividing line of battle-scarred Berlin, on the Communist side of which stood the signs reading “Beginning of the Democratic Sector of Greater Berlin.” Greatly uplifted and strengthened, they returned in the fear of Almighty God, not of weakling man. The following afternoon the vice-president went to the offices of the American Berlin radio station RIAS (Radiocaster in American Sector). There he recorded a 14 1⁄2-minute speech in German regarding God’s kingdom, the closing words of which speech were addressed directly to brothers in East Germany to encourage them and assure them they have an interest in our prayers. This was to be broadcast over RIAS during the “Hour of Worship” Sunday, September 18. (It was. Even in the Netherlands this splendid message was heard.) At the time there were 1,400 brothers under confinement in Eastern Germany, and the first brother to be seized by the Communist persecutors in 1951 had recently died because of brutal treatment, but faithful. The Saturday, August 13, 1955, issue of 8 Uhr-Blatt (Eight-o’clock Paper) came out with red headlines at the very top of the first page, “Rounding Up of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Then in black bold type, “Wave of Terror in the Soviet Zone. Berlin, August 13—A new wave of terror against adherents of the religious society of Jehovah’s witnesses rolled over the Soviet zone. After a number of months of quiet the advices about new persecutions of the believers increase in recent days. It is estimated that more than a thousand of them are to be found in Soviet-German prisons and correctional houses. The most of the prisoners have to do forced labor. . . . [Page 2:] Since 1951 the society has been forbidden in the Soviet zone by the communistic holders of power. . . . In spite of all bans and persecutions the power-holders in the Soviet zone have till now not succeeded in smashing the tight holding together of the believers. Public demonstrations are no longer possible for them. . . . Faith and the holding together gives them a strength that has not till now been able to be overcome by the leaders of the SED. . . . As always it is again stirring to see how entire families come out of the most remote villages in these days into free Berlin. . . . Repeatedly the State Security Service has tried to send secret police and agents among Jehovah’s witnesses. Terror trials speak a clear language. However, faith lives on out beyond the walls of correctional houses.”

(To be concluded)

Questions From Readers

● Did Adam die as a result of being ousted from the garden of Eden and having to eat the imperfect food that grew outside?—L. D., United States.

It was not the eating of food outside the garden that Adam was warned against, but the partaking of certain fruit growing inside the garden, namely, the tree of the knowledge of good and bad: “But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:17, NW) Not that the fruit of this tree was poisonous; to the contrary, “the woman saw that the tree’s fruit was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, yes, the tree was desirable to look upon. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it. Afterward she gave some also to her husband when with her and he began eating it.” The harm came in what the eating in disobedience to Jehovah symbolized, namely, that the first human pair thought they could decide for themselves what was good and what was bad. Disobedience resulted in their having guilty consciences: “Then the eyes of both of them became opened and they began to realize that they were naked. Hence they sewed fig leaves together and made loin-coverings for themselves.”—Gen. 3:6, 7, NW.

It was this rebellious disobedience that brought upon them Jehovah’s sentence of death. They were ousted from the garden and in the sweat of their brows had to eke their existence from the soil, but it was not the eating of this food that killed them. It was disobedience that brought death, not food. But food was partly Jehovah’s means of execution, now that man was sentenced to death and imperfect. Food was not the total factor. Jesus when a man on earth was perfect, had the right to life, and could have lived forever on earth as a perfect man. Some challenge this, saying he would have become imperfect and died by reason of eating of our present food supply. But if food would do this, the process must have started during the thirty-three and a half years that he lived, and if this was so then Jesus was no longer perfect at the time he died, and therefore not Adam’s equal and not a qualified ransomer. But we know that Jesus was a perfect man, Adam’s equal, when he died and that he is the qualified ransomer. His perfection was not marred by the food he ate. Food is not the total factor. It is not what you eat or refrain from eating that governs, but whether you obey or disobey Jehovah. So it was also in Adam’s case.

The Origin of Life

“No adequate explanation, apart from creative activity, has been offered of the origin of life upon the earth.”—Dr. A. Rendle Short, Modern Discovery and the Bible, page 229, edition of 1943.