Insight on the News

A Surprised Immigrant

After spending 12 years in Soviet penal institutions, dissident Vladimir Bukovsky emigrated to England in 1976 and settled at Cambridge University. An extract from his book Cette Lancinante Douleur De La Liberté, appearing in the Canadian edition of Reader’s Digest, describes some surprises that greet a Soviet citizen in the Western world. He writes: “One evening in London, I happened to notice a plaque on a building that read: JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES . . . I couldn’t read any further, I was stupefied, almost to the point of panic. How could that be? I said to myself.” Why was he so shocked? He continues: “In the U.S.S.R., you meet flesh-and-blood ‘Witnesses’ only in prisons and concentration camps. And here I was in front of a building, a plaque . . . imagine for a moment that you come across a building bearing a plaque that says COSA NOSTRA LTD., MAFIA GENERAL STAFF. The ‘Witnesses’ are pursued in our country with as much fury as the Mafia in theirs.”

“Could anyone actually go in and have a cup of tea with them?” asked Bukovsky. Well, he could have gone in, not for tea, but for Bible education because he was standing outside a Kingdom Hall, as meeting places of Jehovah’s Witnesses are called. In more than 200 lands, they actively assist others to see that God’s Kingdom is the only sure hope for mankind, despite the risk of imprisonment in places not known for religious freedom. (Matthew 24:14; 28:19, 20) Christ predicted such ill-treatment for his followers when he said: “People will lay their hands upon you and persecute you, delivering you up to . . . prisons.” And then he added: “It will turn out to you for a witness.”​—Luke 21:12, 13.

Power of Pornography

Worldwide pornography is a multibillion-dollar business. It is part of what would happen in “the last days” when “men will become . . . greedy for money” and “loving what gives them pleasure instead of loving God.” (2 Timothy 3:1, 2, 4, Phillips, Revised Edition) Its powerful influence can slyly touch even common things in life, such as beverages.

Now pornography’s stain is seen in the merchandising of beer. The Wall Street Journal reports on a new product called Nude Beer. On each bottle label is a woman wearing a bikini. When scratched with a fingernail, off comes the bikini! Will it sell? “The first week in California, we sold half a million dollars worth,” says the manufacturer. He now plans to produce beer labels with men wearing scratch-off bikinis. Why? “The women have been calling up,” he says in the Journal. “They really want to see a man.” For the future, he hopes to market Nude Wine. There is an expanding market for pornography because, as was the case in immoral Jerusalem of old, “people have loved it that way.”​—Jeremiah 5:7, 8, 31.

Church Criticism of State Growing

The year 1983 “could easily become a turning point in the church’s debate about peace,” writes the Swiss Protestant weekly Schweizer Evangelischer Pressedienst. The report points to a growing trend among religious bodies publicly to find fault with national arms policies. In the past “it was chiefly individuals more or less on the edge or outside of the official churches who dared speak an open word.”

The article cites the Church of England as an example. For centuries, whatever the State said the Church supported. But now, continues the article, “Anglican Church personages are criticizing the security policies of their nation.” The Church “permits itself to express public and fierce disagreement with the strategy of nuclear defense.”

By meddling in the political arena, the churches are sounding their own death knell, according to Bible prophecy. Revelation chapters 17 and 18 reveal that hypocritical religion, symbolized by the harlot Babylon the Great, prostitutes herself to the “kings of the earth.” Finally tiring of her political meddling, a ‘ten-horned wild beast’ (the world government now in the form of the United Nations organization) devastates her. Certainly, then, true Christians are wise to imitate Jesus and remain politically neutral. Jesus said of his followers: “They are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world.”​—John 17:16.