During the war years a small group of Bible Students developed in Rotterdam and another group in Amsterdam. In 1918 they even took the initiative to publish three issues of The Watch Tower in Dutch, but the interest shown at that time was evidently very limited.

Arrangements were made the next year for a branch office right in Amsterdam. There had been some disturbance among the brothers in the Netherlands, but, with improved organizational arrangements, progress became evident. Their energy was directed into the preaching of the good news of the Kingdom, and that message spread throughout the land as never before.

The Kingdom work here was given further impetus when Brother Rutherford personally visited Amsterdam in 1923. In the large hall at the Diamond Exchange he delivered the thrilling talk “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.” With the cooperation of Dutch radio pioneer Willem Vogt, this discourse was broadcast live from the Diamond Exchange so it could be heard by people throughout the country. This was the first time that such a thing had been done in the Netherlands.

In the audience on that occasion was 19-year-old Arnold Werner. He had been making an earnest effort to get to know more about God by attending catechism in the Reformed Church. But he was not receiving satisfying answers to his questions. At the same time, his older brother, Tom, was getting answers right from the Bible as a result of his contact with the International Bible Students, as Jehovah’s Witnesses were then known. For Arnold, that talk at the Diamond Exchange was a major turning point in his life.