his perfect will, his faithfulness to his word, and his invincible power and ability expressed in his kingdom, his heavenly government through his Son Jesus Christ. The saving and preserving of the human race on earth under God’s kingdom is therefore made sure and certain. Let men rejoice! God’s all-powerful kingdom will take complete control over the earthly home of man regardless of the long-permitted interference and opposition of all man’s enemies under Satan the Devil. The events of our day are being controlled in that direction in fulfillment of God’s prophecy. This we shall see as we read on.

CHAPTER 3

THE NEED OF A SANCTUARY

1. How have buildings regarded by men as sanctuaries not been saved from desecration, robbery or destruction, and what questions does this fact raise?

DOWN through thousands of years of time men have felt the need of sanctuaries, sacred places or holy buildings at which to worship the gods of their religions. But any holiness claimed for such things has not saved them from desecration, robbery or destruction. Invading conquerors have plundered them for their treasures; worshipers of rival gods have polluted them in disgust; wars have brought on their destruction by fire and bombs; earthquakes have shaken them to their foundations and sent their walls and pillars crashing to the ground. At Baalbek in the valley between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains stand today the gigantic ruins of the greatest temple to Jupiter in all antiquity, the havoc upon it being climaxed by an earthquake of twenty-seven days in 1759. The magnificent temples to Jehovah that once crowned Mount Moriah in Jerusalem are no more. They suffered destruction by Gentile hands, and for years pious Jews were accustomed to use what is said to be the outside western wall of the ancient temple area as a wailing wall. Nothing has seemed to have a permanent holiness or sanctity. Why has this been so? Is there no real sanctuary?

2. By whom did Jeremiah show that Jehovah’s temple was being profaned, and when will God’s great footstool be treated as holy?

² In the days of the prophet Jeremiah the temple at Jerusalem was being profaned by the very ones that carried on religious services in it. Jeremiah tells of God’s indignation in these words to the hypocritical worshipers: “‘Has this house upon which my name has been called become a mere cave of robbers in your eyes? Here I myself also have seen it,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.” (Jer. 7:11) For the purpose of correcting wrong ideas about his sanctuary, God inspired his prophet Isaiah to say: “This is what Jehovah has said: ‘The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where, then, is the house that you people can build for me, and where, then, is the place as a resting place for me?’” (Isa. 66:1; Acts 7:48-50) Compared with the heavens where Jehovah sits enthroned as universal King of eternity, the earth is his footstool. This place of his feet should be holy. It will be treated as such when his will is fully done on earth as well as in heaven.

3. Why was the garden of Eden, in fact, a sanctuary, and of what is the happiness of living in holiness in it used as a picture?

³ At the beginning of man’s existence this earthly footstool of Jehovah God was not defiled by sinful creatures. The garden or Paradise that the Creator planted in Eden was part of his footstool. It especially was a holy place, because there Jehovah God conversed with man and, as it were, went “walking in the garden about the breezy part of the day.” (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:8) Having been planted by him and being surpassingly beautiful, it was “the garden of Jehovah.” (Gen. 13:10) It was “Eden, the garden of God.” (Ezek. 28:13, AS) This made it in fact a sanctuary, a sacred, holy place, where what is sinful must not enter, where what is sinful could not dwell. In its holiness it was a place of happy, joyous living for the first human pair, Adam and Eve. They had pleasure in living in holiness, in obedience to the will of their God and heavenly Father. This is taken as an example of the happiness of Jehovah’s spiritual children when he transforms their earthly condition to one of overwhelming spiritual prosperity. Speaking of this transformation for his spiritual organization, he prophetically said: “He will for certain comfort all her devastated places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert plain like the garden of Jehovah. Exultation and rejoicing themselves will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.”—Isa. 51:3.

4. What other sons of God were there then besides the perfect Adam, and so by whom did sin try to establish itself in the sanctuary in Eden?

⁴ However, it was not long before sin did try to establish itself and take up its dwelling in that Edenic sanctuary. How did such a thing ever start in God’s holy universe? By the fall of a son of God to selfish desire that this unfaithful son permitted to enter his heart and that he cultivated. True, the human family of today traces its line of descent back through Noah to the “son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Luke 3:38) Adam was an earthly son of God, because God was his Creator and Life-giver. But there were then other sons of God in existence, not on earth in the flesh, but in heaven; and these had watched the creating of our earth and of the first man. Jehovah God himself said so, when he asked the man Job: “Where did you happen to be when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you do know understanding. Into what have its socket pedestals been sunk down, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars joyfully cried out together, and all the sons of God began shouting in applause?” (Job 38:1, 4, 6, 7) It was a self-enticed spirit son of God that became leader in sin in God’s holy universe and that speedily introduced it into the earth at God’s sanctuary in Eden.

5. What monarch did Ezekiel liken to that original sinner, and how did this sinner draw himself into sin?

⁵ Long afterward in human history a Middle Eastern king, the monarch of the Mediterranean seaport of Tyre, took a line of action similar to that of the unfaithful spirit son of God. So God likened the king to the original sinner and inspired his prophet Ezekiel to say to the symbolic king of Tyre: “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; . . . You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, . . . Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. . . . By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries.” (Ezek. 28:12-18, RS) The spirit son had had an interest in the real Eden, man’s first Paradise home. He had the gift of freedom of will, but he willed in a selfish way as he began to see selfish opportunities there in Eden. His studying these selfish possibilities caused him to be tested. God was not to blame for this: “When under trial, let no one say: ‘I am being tried by God.’ No; for with evil things God cannot be tried nor does he himself try anyone. But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn, sin, when it has been accomplished, brings forth death.”—Jas. 1:13-15.

6. From what into what did he change himself, and how did he desecrate God’s Eden sanctuary?

⁶ By deciding to do wrong to God and thus to sin and then by taking the steps to satisfy the selfish desire by which he was enticed, this spirit son of God changed himself from a son of God into a disowner of God his Father, from a co-worker with God into an opposer of God, from a truthtelling praiser of God into a lying slanderer of God. He turned himself into Satan the Devil, whom God could not own as his son. He did this by trying to convert Adam and Eve from perfect, righteous, sinless children of God into bad persons such as he could now originate, sinners against their Creator. That is why John writes: “He who practices sin originates with the Devil, because the Devil has been sinning from when he began. For this purpose the Son of God was made manifest, namely, to break up the works of the Devil. . . . The children of God and the children of the Devil are evident by this fact: Everyone who does not practice righteousness does not originate with God, neither does he who does not love his brother. . . . we should have love for one another; not like [Adam’s son] Cain, who originated with the wicked one and slaughtered his brother [Abel]. And for the sake of what did he slaughter him? Because his own works were wicked, but those of his brother were righteous.” (1 John 3:8-12) Through introducing sin, Satan desecrated God’s Eden sanctuary.

(To be continued)

Questions From Readers

● At John 3:16, 17, what “world” did God love so much, and what “world” did God send Jesus, not to judge, but to save?

In John’s account of Jesus’ life the English word “world” is translated from the Greek word kósmos, which occurs at least seventy-nine times in the original text of John’s account. Fundamentally, kósmos means “order,” that is, a constituted order, an arrangement, an ordering of things according to a certain design, an arrangement of things according to a certain pattern.

However, whenever in John’s account we read the word kósmos, we must not in every case at once think of a world made up of heavens and an earth, the heavens being composed of invisible controlling spirit forces and the earth being composed of human creatures subject and submissive to the control of those invisible spirit forces. Hence we should not at once think of such kinds of world which have been or will yet be associated with this earth—the Edenic world of Adam and Eve’s innocency; the world outside the garden of Eden or the world of the ungodly before the Flood; the present world of the “heavens and the earth that are now”; and the coming new world of “new heavens and a new earth.” If we always think of such worlds we may run into confusion and wonder which is the one of those several worlds that is meant.

For example, take John’s first four uses of the word kósmos or “world.” We read: “The true light which gives light to every kind of man was about to come into the world [1]. He was in the world [2], and the world [3] came into existence through him, but the world [4] did not take note of him. He came to his own home, but his own people did not take him in.” (John 1:9-11) Now, into what world did Jesus come as the true light? It is true that this occurred during the time of the world made up of the “heavens and the earth that are now.” (2 Pet. 3:7) But is this the “world” that John 1:9-11 means? Was this the world that “came into existence through him”? Was this “his own home” to which he came, but none of which took him in?

We must keep in mind that Jesus came out of the invisible, higher spirit realms into the visible, lower earthly or fleshly realms. This was why he said to the Jews: “You are from the realms below; I am from the realms above. You are from this world; I am not from this world.” (John 8:23) Here Jesus was identifying one world with the “realms above,” and another