• Will You Benefit From God’s Covenants?
    The Watchtower—1989 | February 1

    • 1. What does history show as to the effect of many rulerships?

      “BENEVOLENT [or, enlightened] despots” is what some 18th-century European rulers are called. They ‘meant well to govern their people with fatherly kindness, but their plans went wrong and their reforms fell flat.’a (The Encyclopedia Americana) This was a leading cause of the revolutions that soon engulfed Europe.

  • Will You Benefit From God’s Covenants?
    The Watchtower—1989 | February 1

    • a “Even the most adventurous reforms left an impoverished peasantry, an overprivileged, undertaxed nobility, a middle class inadequately integrated into government and society . . . It must be said that while enlightened despotism began to face questions that could no longer be ignored, it could provide no real solutions within the political and economic realities of the era.”​—Western Civilization—​Its Genesis and Destiny: The Modern Heritage.