they could add: “He was despised, and we esteemed him not.” These Jewish sentiments for Messiah at his first coming were foretold in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and this chapter goes on to show that Messiah would be led like a lamb to the slaughter “when he makes himself an offering for sin” and when he shall “make many to be accounted righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities.” Only after this first coming and ignominious death as a sin-offering would he come again with everlasting kingdom power, as Jehovah said: “Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”—RS.

So at his first coming Jesus fulfilled Zechariah 9:9, RS: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.” And he fulfilled Isaiah chapter 53 about dying a sacrificial death, despised and hated and classed with sinful transgressors.

It is at his second presence that he comes in clouds or in invisible heavenly kingship, and it is then that he is given an everlasting dominion from Jehovah that will administer peace and righteousness to all obedient mankind. Then will Isaiah 9:6, 7 and Daniel 7:13, 14 be fulfilled, at the second presence and not at the first as the Jews nineteen centuries ago erroneously expected. If he had set up his everlasting kingship then, when would the prophecies of Isaiah chapter 53 and Zechariah 9:9 have fulfillment? The Jews back there were looking for the wrong signs, for the wrong presence of Messiah, so they failed to recognize Jesus as Messiah. Nevertheless, thousands of individual Jews did recognize him, accept him, and become the first Christians. Today Jews and others can see the signs Jesus foretold for his second presence, for that time is here.

WITNESSING TO JEWS TODAY

When the apostle Paul witnessed to persons he adapted his words to their needs, to their viewpoints. He kept in mind what their background was. He said: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews,” and added: “I have become all things to people of all kinds, that I might by all means save some.” So should we keep in mind the false concept Jews have of Jesus because of past and present lies and atrocities in his name, misrepresenting him. We should rout this false picture, exposing the fraudulent Christians. Show the two comings, and that nineteen centuries ago the Jewish nation rejected Jesus because they looked for the wrong coming. Show the prophecies Jesus fulfilled the first time he came, and the ones now undergoing fulfillment at his second presence. Point out that soon Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses will be back, resurrected to act as princes in the new earth and inherit the promises long ago made to them. Depict the blessed conditions of unity among men then, with health and happiness and everlasting life for all obedient ones.—1 Cor. 9:20, 22, NW.

The Jewish religious leaders of ancient time demanded Jesus’ death as a service to Jehovah God, and Jesus rightly applied Isaiah’s words to them: “You hypocrites, Isaiah aptly prophesied about you, when he said: ‘This people honors me with their lips, yet their hearts are far removed from me. It is in vain that they keep paying respect to me, because they teach commands of men as doctrines.’” (Matt. 15:7-9, NW; Isa. 29:13) Past and present so-called Christians have persecuted and killed Jews and others in the name of Jesus and in imagined service to God, and to them also Isaiah’s above words apply. But many thousands of the common people, Jews, accepted Jesus long ago, and hundreds of thousands of the common people today are accepting him in this time of his second presence.

Talk about Jesus to the Jews. Do not avoid the subject. But show understanding of Jewish thinking, erase the false picture given by false religionists and Crusaders and Inquisitioners, ancient and modern. But talk about Jesus to the Jews, try to remove the cause of stumbling. “There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is not another name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved.”—Acts 4:12, NW.

Luther Fights Then Compromises

MARTIN LUTHER is to be remembered not only as the man who first translated the Bible into German, but as the successful challenger who courageously defied the all-powerful domination of the popes of Rome. Unwittingly Luther lit the match that finally set off the powder barrel of mounting opposition to Catholicism.

Martin Luther was born in 1483 at Eisleben in Prussian Saxony. After a stormy religious career, untouched by the murderous hands of Rome’s agents, Luther died a natural death February 18, 1546. Born a miner’s son, he had had a stern upbringing. Luther’s father was able financially to send him to the well-known University of Erfurt in 1501; in 1505 he graduated with a Master of Arts degree. At the desire of his father, who was somewhat anticlerical, Luther entered Erfurt’s law school in May, 1505. Two months later he suddenly renounced the world and entered the monastery of the Augustinian convent at Erfurt.

In 1507 Luther was consecrated to the Roman Catholic priesthood and later became associated with the teaching staff of the University of Wittenberg. As an Augustinian monk and priest he made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1510. The corruption, irreligion and vice that Luther witnessed among the priests in Rome greatly disturbed him. Years later he said that he would not have missed “seeing Rome for a hundred thousand florins; for I might have felt some apprehension that I had done injustice to the Pope; but as we see, so we speak.”¹

Returning from Rome to Germany he pursued his studies in the Latin Bible that was available