41. Why do we need, today, to obey the command to get filled with God’s spirit?

⁴¹ Today we need to obey the apostolic command to get filled with God’s spirit, for we want to avoid the plague now being dealt to the “spirit of the world” and we want to go forth and preach publicly and from house to house the “word of God with boldness.”

Not the Way to Love One Another

◆ Introducing the first book of her trilogy on the Spanish Inquisition, Jean Plaidy writes, “It is important, I submit, to remember that Christianity and the Church do not always walk in step. In fact, the simple doctrines, founded on the teachings of Jesus Christ, have too rarely been followed. They are too simple to appeal to men who love power and wealth—but mostly power—and how can men acquire power by following the doctrines of Christ? What temporal glory could they find in taking staff and scrip, divesting themselves of their worldly goods, and going forth to preach the simple doctrine: ‘Love one another’?”

“Where in such a life were to be found the pomp and splendour, the ceremonial robes, the swaying censer, the fat incomes and the splendid palaces? Yet these were the signs of rank and importance necessary to induce that hypnotic state in which men might worship themselves whilst feigning to worship God.”

“Thousands were submitted to the cruellest torture these men could devise; the flesh of their victims was torn with red hot pincers, and molten lead poured into the wounds; many suffered the agonies of the hoist and the water torture; some were racked to death; some were burned at the stake; every means of dealing pain and indignity to the human body was explored; and all this was done in the name of One who had commanded his followers to love one another.”—The Rise of the Spanish Inquisition (Published by Robert Hale Limited, London, in 1959. It was followed by The Growth of the Spanish Inquisition and The End of the Spanish Inquisition.).

“Ominous Signs for Religion”

✔ Reminding the Bible student of the prophecy at Revelation 17:16, concerning the world empire of false religion and the political powers’ eventually turning against such religions, is an article by Associated Press writer George W. Cornell, which appeared in the Wilmington (Delaware) Morning News of February 1, 1963: “The world’s environment is spotted today with ominous signs for religion. They keep showing up, week by week, like shadows across the horizon of our times, threatening men’s rights to practice their faith. Missionaries are expelled from the Sudan. Another seminary is closed in Russia. Nuns are ordered out of Ceylon. Christian schools are ‘arabized’ in Egypt. Ministers are barred from Angola. Others are banished from Nepal, executed in Morocco. An antichristian massacre erupts in New Guinea. Mostly, the events are isolated, scattered here and there, not extensive in themselves, but adding up to a somber testimony about the modern era. . . .

“It is an era marked not only by the neo-nationalistic opposition to Christianity in many African and Asian areas, but the antireligious drive throughout the vast Communist orbit. . . . Dr. Paul Anderson, consultant on international affairs of the National Council of Churches . . . said that even in the martyrdoms under pagan Rome in the first four centuries of Christianity, the persecutions involved ‘one religion by another,’ but now the attempt is to ‘eliminate any concept of God.’ It is the vastest attack on religion, and involves more people, than ever before, he said.”