thousands of conventioners to cities in Switzerland. The edition of Wednesday, August 10, of the Berne Daily (Berner Tagblatt) published a picture of delegates arriving there and headed the accompanying article “Invasion in Berne: 2000 Witnesses of Jehovah.” The article went on to say: “Swiss Berne experienced during two days the invasion of more than 2000 witnesses of Jehovah, predominantly from the United States. The people of all shades of color with the pinned-on little placard ‘Jehovah’s witnesses’ dominated for a time the street scene and especially the numerous ‘colored’ ladies of every age and build attracted prolonged looks at themselves. Far more than 4000 witnesses—of whom some hundreds stopped in Zurich and Geneva—traveled in two special ships and 42 special airplanes from the States to Europe, to go here from convention to convention, beginning in London, then in Paris.”

The second day of the Paris convention featured the president twice on the program, and after his evening talk against spiritism he surprised and delighted his audience with the presentation of the booklet Basis for Belief in a New World in French. The following morning he had to fly to Italy to climax the opening day of the three-day international assembly at Rome.

At Paris Friday morning, in the Sports Palace, 774 candidates answered with a firm “Oui!” to the questions put to them by the French speaker on baptism. They were then transported fifteen kilometers out from the Palace to Ville de Chatenay-Malabry, where they were immersed in the Piscine Municipale, an indoor pool, before many witnesses. An eight-year-old boy and an eighty-three-year-old lady were among those baptized. Even a blind woman braved the waters in Jehovah’s strength. Two former spiritists were baptized; this man and his wife greatly appreciated Brother Knorr’s talk last night against demonism, alias spiritualism.

Saturday night Brother Knorr returned by air from Rome to Paris and was on hand to give three speeches on Sunday. There was a grand turnout of Parisians to hear his widely advertised public talk, for the attendance at the Sports Palace soared up to 16,500 persons, who fairly overflowed the assembly place. Highly pleased, too, was Brother Knorr on seeing the lively responsiveness of this audience and he felt great joy at releasing to them the booklet World Conquest Soon—by God’s Kingdom in French. The record attendance had been realized and the foreign brothers rejoiced along with their French brothers. Enemies were frightened; and, as has been its custom after large gatherings of the New World society, a local French Roman Catholic newspaper published a lengthy article against Jehovah’s witnesses, misrepresenting them as predicting that the world was to end August 21. One of France’s most widely heard radio stations made a broadcast about our assembly. It fixed for us the date of the world’s end at August 21, 1955. Also on the station’s own initiative it added in that broadcast that Jehovah’s witnesses had already announced the world’s end 427 times without success. Thus this sensational “date” made the rounds of numerous dailies of Europe, including one in Lisbon, Portugal, and not leaving out one in Lausanne, Switzerland. The August 11 edition of the French Feuille D’Avis of Lausanne published a lengthy refutation of this misrepresentation on its page 19.

Jehovah’s witnesses in France came away from their successful assembly determined to push ahead with their work until Armageddon breaks out at an hour and a day known not to any man but only to God and his Christ. In consequence of the assembly at Paris the number of active Kingdom publishers should soon be reaching a new peak of over 10,000 for all France.

ROME, ITALY, AUGUST 5-7, 1955

All Italy took note of the first international assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses in Rome, August 5-7. The enemies first attacked, with some injuries, but later they turned to ridiculing. One section of the Italian press, while graciously announcing the assembly in Rome, claimed that the date of this assembly had suddenly been advanced in view of the extreme nearness of the end of the world. The effect of this ridicule, however, was only to advertise Jehovah’s witnesses and to focus more public attention on their Rome assembly.

The location of the assembly was enough to excite public attention; it was the Palazzo dei Congressi dell’ Esposizione Universale di Roma (Palace of Conventions of the Universal Exposition of Rome). The Protestant sects in Italy were stupefied at what Jehovah’s witnesses were doing. They asked: “How did Jehovah’s witnesses get the Palazzo?” This building owned by the Italian government was one of numerous Exposition buildings constructed by the late Fascist duce Mussolini, meant by him for the World’s Fair of 1942. Left unfinished by him, it was finally modernized and readied for use at a cost of two million dollars. It is an edifice of commanding appearance, surmounted by a sort of squared dome and with a façade of fourteen tall pillars fronted by a spacious, sloping, tesselated pavement with grooves between its angular stones. All in all, very impressive! It contains a beautiful large convention hall, with natural lighting; also smaller halls and many conference rooms. Inside and outside it presents a neat, trim, clean appearance. Standing atop a hill, it can be seen from other distant heights of Rome. It is situated to the southeast of Vatican City on the other side of the Tiber River.

Jehovah’s witnesses contracted to have the exclusive use of the Palazzo for their assembly. Suddenly, on July 18, the permission to occupy the building was revoked by the prime minister’s office, with the assembly’s scheduled opening just eighteen days ahead. All inquiry as to why brought no explanation. The manager and others in his office agreed that one single source of influence, very high up, had exerted pressure to have the engagement for the Palazzo canceled. Three days followed with feverish search for a new hall—theaters, racetracks, stadiums, etc.—with very poor results. When the brothers were about at the end of hope, a telephone call came to the Watch Tower Society’s Rome branch office: “Cabinet reconsiders and will let you have the building as at first contracted!”

Evidently other pressures had begun to exert themselves. Indeed, the hand of Jehovah God itself was not shortened. Finally the cabinet of the national government of Italy had met, deliberated and had come forth with this decision that Jehovah’s witnesses should, after all, be permitted to use the Palazzo according to the original agreement.

So in ample time Jehovah’s witnesses moved in and set up their departments of convention services, using many of the conference rooms. For the first time the Palazzo electrician had to wire up the edifice so extensively, at our cost, to transmit the convention proceedings to halls, corridors and various other quarters of the great structure. A thousand dollars was expended for renting chairs for the expected crowd.

It is not allowed for non-Roman Catholic religious organizations to hold public demonstrations and to advertise public meetings and invite people in general to any event. So 1,000 personal letters of invitation were sent out to persons known to be interested or friendly. There were no handbills for free distribution, yet there were thousands of personal invitations directly by word of mouth, and the Society’s magazines The Watchtower and Awake! carried notices of the Rome assembly in many languages throughout the earth. Not to be ignored, either, is the great public demonstration that the conventioners themselves put on by wearing, right here in Rome just as at all other assembly cities, the miniature-placard badges on coat lapel or shirtwaist. These badges announcing the assembly and its public meeting provoked great curiosity and inquiry that called for an answer by the wearer, who took advantage of this opening to give a witness and invitation. This demonstration even invaded Vatican City as the sight-seeing, badge-wearing conventioners by hundreds went through its buildings open to the general public.

The printed convention program gave “Information for Conventioners” in Italian and English, indicating also which lectures were to be in English and interpreted in Italian.

Friday morning, August 5, the assembly in the sumptuous Palazzo dei Congressi was officially opened with an address of welcome by the convention chairman, a representative of the Watch Tower Society; and to the special joy of the native Italians present he released for the first time the magazine Awake! in their own language, telling them it would appear twice a month from then on. This opening day was crowned by the final speech at night, given by the Society’s president who had flown there that day from the Paris assembly. For the Italian brothers it was a supreme moment when, through an interpreter, Brother Knorr finished discussing “The Triumphant Message of ‘The Kingdom’” and announced, holding it aloft, the new book in Italian, “New Heavens and a New Earth”. The crowd there astonished the news reporters. The 4,200 in attendance packed out the beautiful, double-balconied main hall. For the first time this had occurred in the Palazzo. Convention crowds of that size are unusual in Italy. Release followed upon release in Italian. At the conclusion of his talk Saturday morning on “Jehovah Is in His Holy Temple,” the president presented a new Italian publication, the 32-page booklet “This Good News of the Kingdom”. Shortly after he left Rome by air to return to Paris the Society’s vice-president arrived by plane from Paris, to take up where the president had left off. That night after the closing speech to 2,859 he displayed the 64-page booklet Basis for Belief in a New World as another Italian newcomer.

Another notable event: 378 candidates presented themselves at the baptismal talk this afternoon and were thereafter quietly baptized, to create no public spectacle. Nine buses were used to transport them to the distant baptismal site.

A number of Roman Catholic priests and nuns in their religious garb tried to “crash the gates” but were told by the doorkeepers that this was a private meeting and was only for the invited. The invited were truly an international gathering from twenty-eight countries and islands, the Philippine Islands, Cyprus, the British Isles, etc. About 150 came up from Sicily, and the delegation of native Italians included not just men but also women. Many of the Italian brothers are quite poor under the prevailing circumstances. To bring children along to the assembly could not be afforded; so these had to be left at home and one member of the family was sent as a representative. Some seemed to be living just on bread as their solid food, which they brought with them. Some packed their suitcases not with clothes but with bread and cheese and with windfall olives, to live on at the three-day assembly. During those days the brothers ate 3,882 meals; 818 free meals were served at the cafeteria to pioneers. Pleasant it was to see many brothers eating box lunches while sitting out under trees of the parklike grounds. Roomless, some slept on park benches, but not on the Universal Exposition grounds; sleeping there was charged for. Quite a number of German-speaking brothers camped on the Exposition tenting grounds. There were 3,741 rooming accommodations for the foreign delegates, 2,750 for Italian brothers. Seventy brothers slept under the stars.

In Rome it is better to hold the principal meeting in the morning than in the afternoon. So the Sunday lecture on “World Conquest Soon—by God’s Kingdom” was programmed at 10:30 a.m. The day was sunshiny. The main hall of the Palazzo and its two balconies were filled with 2,700, hundreds of others were in the adjacent auditorium, while others sat on chairs and benches in the corridors and in the elegant lobby, listening by loud-speakers. The total attendance numbered 4,351, the majority of them being Italians. Clear through the talk by the vice-president (through an interpreter) that eager audience in Christendom’s religious capital were very responsive, somewhat galvanized by the force of the situation and circumstances, and with loud joy they received the new Italian booklet containing the full, unexpurgated text of this challenging public lecture, under Jehovah’s imprimatur and with the nihil obstat of Jesus Christ.

That afternoon the program was resumed and many stayed until the closing remarks and packed out the main auditorium once more. Again and again they gave vent to their gladness at the report on the series of international conventions thus far and the account of expansion operations and activities of Jehovah’s visible organization. At the finale of the assembly a number were seen to be weeping with emotion. Said one conventioner from Switzerland: “My heart aches from happiness.”

Eleven startled newspapers carried reports about the assembly, and there were seventeen editions. Up till Sunday morning there had been seven meters in the news columns. The Italian people were stirred by this international assembly, and they especially appreciated the attendance of the many foreign brothers. Many return-visit references were handed in to the full-time pioneer publishers. The assembly toned them up for the entire month. Summer months are generally poor in Italy as far as field activity is concerned, and the month of August has always registered the poorest report of active publishers. In the April campaign with the booklet Christendom or Christianity—Which One Is “the Light of the World”? there was a new maximum number of 3,238 publishers reporting, a 37 percent increase. But in July, in anticipation of the international assembly, there was a participation by 2,948, a 25 percent increase in publishers. In the assembly month of August there was participation by 3,044, a 29 percent increase. The usual slump had been broken. For the first time the August report of publishers went up in a fine flourish for the close of the 1955 service year. Early progress is looked for in the 1956 service year and it is expected to reach the mark of 4,000 publishers for all Italy soon.

After the assembly the brothers began sending special copies of the booklet Christendom or Christianity—Which One Is “the Light of the World”? to the clergy of all denominations and religious editors for their notification and their comment. Quite a few letters have been received from the clergy. Almost all of them were insulting expressions; two were found on the favorable side. One was received written by the hand of the sixty-four-year old Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro, archbishop of Bologna, a noted social worker, who is cited as one of the best prospects for the next pope. His letter of acknowledgment was not an abusive one, but at least took note of Jehovah’s witnesses. It is up to the witnesses in Italy to exemplify the true Christianity to Jehovah’s glory and to the ingathering of all his other sheep there under his one Shepherd, Christ Jesus.

Questions From Readers

● A number of readers have written in proposing a question like this: How can we harmonize Genesis 1:11-13 where it mentions the earth’s bringing forth vegetation on the third creative day with Genesis 2:5, 6, which the New World Translation renders as follows: “Now there was as yet no shrub of the field found in the earth and no vegetation of the field was as yet sprouting, because Jehovah God had not made it rain upon the earth and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a vapor went up continually from the earth and it watered the entire surface of the ground”?

The New World Translation words this in harmony with the New Commentary on Genesis, by F. Delitzsch, D.D., which reads: “And no plant of the field was yet upon the earth, and no herb of the field had as yet sprung up: for Jahveh Elohim had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth, and men there were not to till the ground. And a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” (Pages 115, 117) Also The Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament, in German, by the Hebrew grammarian E. Kautzsch, translated into English, reads: “But there was not as yet upon earth any shrub upon the plains, and as yet no plants sprouted upon the plains; for Jahwe God had not yet made it rain upon the earth, and men were [as yet] not there, to cultivate the ground; but a mist kept rising from the earth and watering the whole surface of the earth’s ground.” (Brackets his)

The Book of Genesis, by Thomas J. Conant, also reads: “Now there was yet no plant of the field in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not yet caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. And there went up mist from the earth; and it watered all the face of the ground.” Also the Notes Critical and Practical on the Book of Genesis, by George Bush, page 53 of Volume I, says in the footnote with reference to the word “before” appearing in the King James Version Bible: “The Hebrew particle (טרם terem) rendered ‘before’ may mean ‘not yet,’ namely, ‘and every plant of the field was not yet in the earth, and every herb of the field had not yet sprung up,’ which substantially agrees with the former” rendering of the King James Version. An American Translation reads similarly; so does Moffatt’s A New Translation of the Bible.

The above verses are not out of harmony with Genesis 1:11-13; they could not be. Jesus Christ quoted from both chapter one and chapter two of Genesis, and the apostle Paul did likewise, and thus two witnesses established that both accounts are true and hence in agreement with each other.—Matt. 19:4-6; Mark 10:3-9; 1 Cor. 15:45, 47; 6:16; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 5:31; Col. 3:10; Heb. 4:4, 10.

Accordingly Genesis 2:5, 6 quoted above must apply to the third day of creation described in Genesis 1:9-13. But first it describes the earth’s condition just after Jehovah God had made the dry land appear and before he had commanded the earth to bring forth grass and seed-bearing vegetation and fruit-bearing trees. Persons who take the King James Version or a similar version’s rendering to be correct interpret its rendering to mean that God started off such plant life perfect, that is, full-grown, without its germinating from the seed. But this does not necessarily have to be so, not according to the reading of the New World Translation and of other versions. At any rate, for a time the earth was lifeless, without plant life and without animal and human life. The earth was also