21. (a) How did the religious enemies of the two witnesses take advantage of the war situation? (b) The fact that the corpses of the two witnesses were left unburied indicated what? (c) How is the time period of three and a half days to be viewed? (See footnote.)

²¹ From 1914 to 1918 the nations were occupied with the first world war. Nationalistic feelings ran high, and in the spring of 1918, the religious enemies of the two witnesses took advantage of the situation. They maneuvered the State’s legal apparatus so that responsible ministers of the Bible Students were imprisoned on false charges of sedition. Faithful coworkers were stunned.

In his book Preachers Present Arms, published in 1933, Ray H. Abrams refers to the clergy’s bitter opposition to the Bible Students’ book The Finished Mystery. He reviews the clergy’s endeavors to rid themselves of the Bible Students and their “pestilential persuasion.” This led to the court case that resulted in sentencing of J. F. Rutherford and seven companions to long years of imprisonment. Dr. Abrams adds: “An analysis of the whole case leads to the conclusion that the churches and the clergy were originally behind the movement to stamp out the Russellites.

Dr. Abrams continues: “When the news of the twenty-year sentences reached the editors of the religious press, practically every one of these publications, great and small, rejoiced over the event. I have been unable to discover any words of sympathy in any of the orthodox religious journals. ‘There can be no question,’ concluded Upton Sinclair, that ‘the persecution . . . sprang in part from the fact that they had won the hatred of “orthodox” religious bodies.’ What the combined efforts of the churches had failed to do the government now seemed to have succeeded in accomplishing for them.” After quoting the derogatory comments of a number of religious publications, the writer referred to the reversal of the decision in the Court of Appeals and remarked: “This verdict was greeted with silence in the churches.”

24. When the two witnesses came to life, what was the effect on their religious persecutors?

²⁴ What a shock for those persecutors! The corpses of the two witnesses were suddenly alive and active again. It was a bitter pill for those clergymen to swallow, the more so since the Christian ministers whom they had schemed to put in prison were free again, later to be fully exonerated.