true “superior authorities” that must be obeyed.b (Rom. 13:1, NW) This new understanding put fire into the witnesses to stand their ground against the onslaught of court battles involving their freedom of worship.

In the fight that was brewing for the 1930’s the Society’s extensive use of radio broadcasting figured in prominently. Modern radio communication had appeared in 1920. Like the early Christian witnesses of the first century, who quickly embraced the invention of the codex style of bookmaking to spread Jehovah’s written word, so the modern witnesses soon saw in radio a marvelous means to spread oral proclamation of Jehovah’s written judgments in all the earth. The Society’s first broadcast from a public platform was headline news and was so reported in the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Record of April 17, 1922:

Radio Tells the World Millennium Is Coming. Judge Rutherford’s Lecture Broadcasted from Metropolitan Opera House. Talks into Transmitter. Message Is Carried Over Miles of Bell Telephone Wires to Howlett’s Station [WGL].c

Shortly thereafter, toward the end of 1922, the Society purchased a tract of land on New York city’s Staten Island, where construction of its first radio station was begun. It being finally completed and licensed by the government as station WBBR with a power of 500 watts, the first official broadcast was made Sunday evening, February 24, 1924, Judge Rutherford delivering the inaugural address, “Radio and Divine Prophecy.”d For now more than three decades this noncommercial, educational station has continuously kept on broadcasting the Kingdom message, reaching multitudes of appreciative listeners. Its present studios are in the Bethel building at 124 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, New York.e Its modern steel-tower directional antenna and 5,000-watt transmitter are at the station’s original site on Staten Island, at “Watchtower.”

(To be continued)

Steadfastness Bears Fruit

How steadfastness defeats the purpose of persecution is to be seen from the following experience. In Eastern Germany, in the town of Y—— are to be found many Methodists. One of these, no longer satisfied with Methodist teaching and particularly disgusted with the way those of his congregation compromised with the Communists, came in touch with Jehovah’s witnesses. Soon he took his stand, was baptized and zealously proclaimed the good news of God’s kingdom. Three months after being baptized, one morning on his way to work he was pounced upon by the SSD, the State Security Service, who spirited him away in a waiting truck.

For weeks his family did not know what had happened, as he was not allowed to communicate with them. This caused them to think things over and the next time one of Jehovah’s witnesses came to the door they invited him in and arranged for a home Bible study. Before long the whole family was taking part in the study and another was started in the home of some friends.

Six months later the witness, who had in the meantime been tried and sentenced to several years’ imprisonment, was allowed to receive callers. Imagine his keen delight as his daughter greeted him with, “My dad—and now, my brother also!” Yes, by this time eight members of his family had taken their stand and were immersed as witnesses of Jehovah, the oldest being 84 and the youngest 15. In those six months the local congregation of the witnesses grew from 12 to 22! Truly steadfastness defeats persecution.