the minute their education for the true Christian ministry. This remarkable educational program has been a tremendous success. What other religious organization in these modern times has devoted such prodigious efforts in educating its associates of 608,000 ministers? Not one. The present preaching of the witnesses to congregations and in their house-to-house field service is on a higher level than ever before. This is now commonly recognized by the public, who accord the witnesses a superiority in speaking tactfully and making convincing effective appeals to Mr. and Mrs. Average Man. Jehovah’s witnesses are trained in the conversational style of public speaking, which is the rising style of speech communication, rather than the antiquated oratorical style held onto by the clergy. After 1944 the ten-year preaching campaign by means of phonograph recordings began to be replaced by personally presented sermons at the doors, which the ministers were now well trained to deliver.

After two years of education for the ministry a fairly large male staff of well-trained Bible speakers became available. For this reason the Watch Tower Society decided to inaugurate a world-wide public-speaking campaign commencing January, 1945. It was also well planned to maintain a uniform world-wide public appeal by means of a series of eight timely, striking subjects for talks. Furthermore, a uniformity of platform presentation was assured by the Society’s designing one-page outlines for each of these hour lectures. This enabled all speakers to present and emphasize uniformly certain major Biblical points of argument and information to convey to the world public. “Will Man Succeed as a World-Builder?” was the catching subject of the first public lecture in this opening series. It took time for the congregations to get into gear for this new public work that required special meetings in various public places, also to co-operate in advertising these by means of handbills in house-to-house work and on street corners. In the United States for this first year 18,646 public meetings were held, with a total attendance of 917,352. However, these meetings were conducted by only 1,558 of the 2,871 congregations in the States at that time.g In 1946 the number of public meetings rose to 28,703 for the American field, thus indicating a rolling along with this new preaching feature.h Each year since 1945 the Society has regularly released outlines for a new series of eight public talks, which have stimulated the powerful, world-wide public platform now operated by Jehovah’s people.

Thousands of newly interested ones have been given spiritual nourishment through this important preaching service. The trained theocratic speakers have put forth great effort to make these lectures a continuing success.

(To be continued)

Written Nonsense

Never before has so much been written that is nonsensical. In Roman times Paul told Christians not to act like the people of the nations, who “walk in the unprofitableness of their minds.” (Eph. 4:17, NW) Just how sadly unprofitable some of the writings of those minds must have been we can imagine from a discovery at Pompeii. It was the custom back then to write on the walls of buildings. Some shrewd reader and commentator of the writings of others had written on a wall in Pompeii the following in Latin: “It is a wonder, O wall, that thou hast not yet crumbled under the weight of so much written nonsense.”