up above dripping clouds and under starlit Hawaiian heavens.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA

Arrival of the plane on the American continent was next day, after 7 a.m., at the San Francisco international airport. Thirteen brothers, all servants and representatives from the numerous congregations in the San Francisco-Oakland area of California, were there. Brother Franz adorned each of them with a lei fresh from Hawaii. The public relations servant of the circuit was alert to his assigned task and so, before the evening meeting, a recording was made at the studios of Station KLX of a seven-minute interview with Brother Franz and then another interview at the Watch Tower Society’s former radio station, KROW. Invitations to the evening meeting at the Municipal Auditorium over in Oakland, California, were restricted so as not to draw too big a crowd. Yet, at 8 p.m., after a fine musical program of a half hour, the big auditorium had a capacity crowd of 8,091 to hear the round-the-world traveler give his first report in the United States of America. Listeners came from far points, even from Los Angeles to the south. All returned to their abodes much refreshed by the two-hour travelogue with which they were served.

The following morning, Thursday, February 7, the vice-president emplaned for the Brooklyn headquarters of the Watch Tower Society. There was a cross-country nonstop flight of over eight hours eastward to land safely, after some circling aloft owing to airport traffic jam, at the Idlewild International airport on Long Island, outside of New York city. On hand to greet Brother Franz were both the Society’s president and the secretary-treasurer, besides a goodly number of other members of the Brooklyn Bethel family. It was a joyous reunion, and there were still Hawaiian leis to grace those of this reception committee with. By 10:30 p.m. we were back at the Brooklyn Bethel home, grateful to Jehovah for his power and goodness that had preserved us all. The vice-president’s round-the-world service tour had taken seventy-seven days, including the day gained by crossing the international date line in the Pacific, or eleven full weeks. Seventeen different lands outside the American mainland had been visited with meetings with the members of the globe-embracing New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses. Everywhere there were members of this New World society that expressed their wishes and hopes of attending the already announced international assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses in the big New York city stadium in the summer of 1958.

Questions From Readers

● The Watchtower, September 15, 1955, page 572, paragraphs 38, 39, states that Satan did not promise immortality to Eve in Eden. Who, then, began this teaching, and when? Was it during Nimrod’s time that this teaching first began?—E. D., United States.

Satan, as the father of the lie and the originator of all false religion, must be held accountable for the teaching of the immortality of human souls. However, it does not seem that we can construe his remarks to Eve as teaching the immortality of a soul separate and distinct from the body, but rather that he led her to believe that even in the flesh she would not die at all.

As to when this teaching originated, that the dead did not actually die but lived on, Qualified to Be Ministers indicates it was believed in by men even before the flood of Noah’s day. Suggestion of this is seen where survivors placed food in the tombs of their dead. The present teaching of the immortality of the human soul, however, cannot be traced back to preflood times because all false worship was wiped out at the time of the Flood and only pure worship was engaged in right after the Deluge. Just exactly when the teaching of an immortal soul’s surviving after death of the human body again arose may be open to question, but at least by the time of Nimrod’s death it was current, as his wife taught that after his death he had become a god and was to be worshiped.