Do Not Disturb!

ON THE door of a sickroom often appears the sign “Do Not Disturb.” On the door of most professed Christians appears the same sign. It is time they know it. Few do. You can tell it though; the average churchgoer does not want to be bothered with the good news of God’s kingdom. When Jehovah’s witnesses call at the door of a do-not-disturb Christian, he often says: “Don’t bother me; I go to church.” Now what happens when he goes to church?

Discussing this point, Simeon Stylites, in The Christian Century of February 13, 1957, said: “Sometimes we seem to get the motto for our church life from the barber shop: ‘Once over lightly.’ And do we hit it lightly! As a musical composer said, ‘No one who plays the piano with a feather duster, instead of driving down for the music that is in the depths, can ever become a concert artist.’ That is what too many of us do. Being a member of the church ought to be a very disturbing thing, for it really disturbs absolutely everything about us. But we often make it like joining a country club, with this one difference, it doesn’t cost as much.”

“There is something lacking in my church,” writes Alex Robertson in the same issue of The Christian Century: “There is a ‘do not disturb’ atmosphere about us. It was E. Stanley Jones, I believe, who said, ‘Christianity which does not begin with the individual does not begin; and Christianity which ends with the individual ends.’ It seems to me that this is the heart of the matter.

“At our church we begin with the individual, as we should; but we make no vigorous attempt to guide individual Christians to a world view which honors God and brings us, as individuals, to that telos, that maturity, which is the inheritance of the children of God. . . . Last summer a young preacher came from Princeton and preached about turning the world upside down. He was careful not to explain why such a procedure was desirable. . . . He did not set pagan and Christian side by side for comparison. He made no reference to the earth-shaking wars and revolutions of our time. He seemed completely unaware of the signs of the times. And when this young preacher had finished turning the world upside down in half an hour, we all went home to our roast beef and afternoon naps.”

Do-not-disturb Christians are asleep; worse than that they are spiritually sick. Such slumbering, spiritually sick persons should benefit now by the warning advice: “Jehovah’s day is coming exactly as a thief in the night. So, then, let us not sleep on as the rest do.”—1 Thess. 5:2, 6, NW.

Keeping Integrity in Communist Poland

The facts herein related have been taken from two documents submitted to the general state attorney of Poland at Warsaw by the presiding minister of Jehovah’s witnesses in that land.

“THE rule of the Soviets knows neither freedom nor justice. It is built up consciously on the destruction of every individual will, on unconditional submission. But the masters are we. The repression is entrusted to us. Utter harshness is our duty. And in fulfilling this duty utter cruelty means highest merit.”—Lenin.

This could be the language of only one who has the very spirit of the Devil himself. Of course, Lenin, the leader of the Russian revolution of 1917, did not believe in superhuman powers, either good or bad. He was an atheist, as are all orthodox Communists. For such men Darwin’s theory of evolution has been and still is a most welcome explanation for the existence of life and man, making unnecessary the giving of any credit to an almighty and all-wise Creator. The Communist conception of man as a product of evolution explains why man is valued so little. For them man is but an animal that has reached a higher evolutionary plane than the rest of the animals and that can be dealt with just as the interests of the Communist cause require.

The proof of this can be found in the history of the Soviet Union of the past four decades, in the millions of slave laborers it has kept in hundreds of camps and in the countless numbers who have perished miserably. It can also be seen in what has happened and is happening in Hungary, and it can be seen in the persecution that Jehovah’s witnesses have suffered under Communist rule since the end of World War II, such as that in Poland.

PERSECUTION BEGINS

In the fall of 1905 a dedicated Christian minister, a “Bible student,” moved from Switzerland to Warsaw, there becoming the manager of a lace factory. As do all such Christian ministers, he made known to others the hope he had regarding God’s kingdom, having to do this at first by means of an interpreter. Some heard, believed, dedicated themselves also to serve