its agitation, while men become faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth.” Worldly men and nations are suffering such things because they are opposing the kingdom of God, but we are suffering at their hands because of proclaiming “this good news of the kingdom” in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations before their end comes. (Matt. 24:14) They face eternal destruction. We face eternal deliverance. Why not, then, raise ourselves erect and hopefully lift our heads up, also lifting up our voices as we keep on proclaiming God’s kingdom?—Mark 13:10.

21. Because of what other things, as mentioned in Jesus’ warning, should our heads not be bowed down?

²¹ Now especially we should never become bowed down and let our heads drop and nod in slumber and drowsiness because of our overindulging ourselves with the worldly nations in their efforts to forget and ignore the things taking place since 1914. Because it is now so late and is so far along in the current of world affairs, it is the time of all times for us to keep alert to what is taking place in the world’s speedy approach to the unavoidable climax, and then to act as observant, understanding Christians. We dare not ignore what Jesus included as a warning in his prophecy: “But pay attention to yourselves that your hearts never become weighed down with overeating and heavy drinking and anxieties of life, and suddenly that day be instantly upon you as a snare. For it will come in upon all those dwelling upon the face of all the earth. Keep awake, then, all the time making supplication that you may succeed in escaping all these things that are destined to occur, and in standing before the Son of man.”—Luke 21:34-36.

22. (a) What will it mean for those caught by that ensnaring day? (b) What heart condition should we avoid?

²² A snare is triggered to snap in on its victim in a fraction of a second before he can escape. So for us to have that day suddenly be upon us in an instant like a snare means to be caught beyond all chance to work ourselves loose and means death for us. That ensnaring day is fast coming in “upon all those dwelling upon the face of all the earth,” just as surely as day follows night. We are all of us bound to enter into that day since it will arrive suddenly earth wide, no dweller on earth being out of its reach. We must all face it. But how? Doing like the people of Noah’s preflood days, eating and drinking to excess and giving way to the “anxieties of life,” including the anxieties over seeking pleasures? This is what the “evil slave” class does. (Matt. 24:38, 39, 48-51) These are not the things to set our hearts upon, letting our hearts be weighed down with these things and growing fatty, thick and unresponsive to Christ’s call to Kingdom service. In this destiny-determining time we need to pay attention to ourselves in order to avoid such a heart condition.

23. To “succeed in escaping all these things,” how should we keep ourselves mentally, and with the aid of what?

²³ It is a time for us to keep our full powers and faculties awake, active in God’s service, a time for us to make supplication, because we cannot do this in our own strength. Without God’s help we cannot succeed. Only in this way shall we escape sharing in the anguish, fear and dreaded expectation of the worldly nations and being ensnared in destruction with them at Armageddon.

24. Our purpose, along with our strong supplication, is to do what, and fulfilling this purpose will bring us what?

²⁴ What we are striving to do with all our hearts is to stand before the Son of man who comes “with power and great glory” to the execution of divine judgment upon this system of things and its backers. Let all of Christendom, the antitypical Jerusalem and Judea, fall condemned to destruction before this Son of man whom she hypocritically has claimed to serve. Our purpose, along with our making strong supplication, is to stand approved before the Son of man as his true followers who have kept ourselves raised erect, with our heads lifted up, constantly awake and never looking back at Christendom and Babylon the Great, from which we have fled. Erect in the full dignity of our service as free, dedicated servants of the Most High God, we shall keep our heads up, obediently proclaiming the kingdom of our heavenly Father, Jehovah God, and serving its interests. (Rom. 14:4) This active, faithful course will shortly bring us the grand reward of our being delivered from this wicked system of things into God’s blessed new order, there to worship and serve him at his imperishable temple forevermore.

Assyria’s Historical Records and the Bible

DURING the many centuries the names of prominent Assyrian rulers such as Sargon, Tiglath-pileser, Shalmaneser and Sennacherib have been passed on to generation after generation of Bible readers. With a sense of reality unmatched by any secular record, the Bible related their dealings with the people of Judah and Israel. In the case of Sargon, modern secular historians for long were not even sure of his identity.

Then, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came the era of the archaeologist. Diggings in mounds or tells of Mesopotamia produced startling finds. Specifically referring to work undertaken by archaeologist Paul-Emile Botta, author C. W. Ceram, in Gods, Graves and Scholars, writes on page 225: “Hitherto only the Bible had had anything pertinent to say about the land between the two rivers, and for nineteenth-century science the Bible was a collection of legends.”

But now those warrior-kings of Assyria lived again, as their own annals, their palaces, their “display” inscriptions and their “king lists” came to light. Assyriology became an accepted science, and its students delved into the mass of unearthed data to build up a history of a little known empire. The facts related in the Bible about Assyria and her rulers were now recognized to be authentic, but modern students began to challenge the chronology or dating of events in Assyrian history as found in the Bible.

So the question now arises, Do the specialists in Assyriology have reliable material on which to base their supposed corrections of the Book that for so many centuries kept alive knowledge of those ancient names and the events connected with them? Have the records and monuments wrested from the dusty mounds of