MAY 30 FOR PRAYER AND SUPPLICATION
In accordance with the resolution of Congress of April 2nd, and with the proclamation of the president of the United States of May 11, it is suggested that the Lord's people everywhere make May 30th a day of prayer and supplication. God was graciously pleased to cause the nation to be formed and to grow under the most favorable conditions in the world for the preservation of liberty, civil and religious.
This is a land divinely "shadowed with wings"--over-shadowed by the providential watchcare of God?s word--where God has lifted up an ensign on the mountain (kingdom), and where he has blown the trumpet message of the truth. Here the love of truth has for three thousand years attracted from all quarters of the world people who love God, love the Bible and love religious liberty. Here, practically alone of all the nations, exists in the fundamental laws of the land the safeguard that so long as the Constitution stands no law may be made nor any governmental action taken prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech or the press.
Countless blessings have flowed to devout people through the wise provisions of the laws of the United States, blessing whose influences have been felt to the remotest corners of the earth, whenever even a spark of love for God-given freedom might be fanned into a glow. Here, more perhaps than elsewhere, exists that present which shall be brought unto Jehovah (Isaiah 18:7), earth's oblation (Ezekiel 45:1) to God of that class who, when in the age to come the restitution hosts shall be numbered, shall be found to have been born in Zion (Psalm 87:5, 6), taken out of the world and given, in a figure, as humanity's present to their God, to be forever sons and servants of the Most High.
This class love to assemble themselves together, and so much the more as they see the day approaching? (Hebrews 10:25), and they will be of all people the most ready to embrace an opportunity of gathering in an additional service of prayer and supplication. As says the spirit through the Apostle Paul: I exhort, therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.? (I Timothy 2:1-3) Let there be praise and thanks-giving to God for the promised glorious outcome of the war, the breaking of the shackles of autocracy, the freeing of the captives (Isaiah 61:1) and the making of the world safe for the common people--blessings all assured by the Word of God to the people of this country and of the whole world of mankind. (1 June 1918 Watch Tower, p. 174)
(It is interesting to note that this is the same year that Christ came to inspect the churches, and found only the Watchtower worthy.)
5 comments:
I am an American. (North American, specifically a citizen of the United States of America...)
I am also a citizen of the Kingdom of God, whose King is Jesus Christ.
I was also in the Boy Scouts when I was younger, but never pledged allegiance to the American Flag, after understanding it was idolatry...which it is.
At my instigation, my sons, who are currently very strong in the Truth, and pioneering or almost pioneering, were in the Civil Air Patrol, which respected their stand on the flag issue, and never required an oath of allegiance.
Many Witnesses work for county, city, state, or national governments as employees ... I hope not at the "broken camera department" of the Division of Motor Vehicles.
Believe me...I would much rather live in America during a global conflict than Germany.
My appreciation for the usually superior constitutional safeguards, courts and laws would be palpable, and verbal.
During World War One Jehovah's Witnesses did not understand the principle that a Christian, as an Ambassador of Christ, has to be ABSOLUTELY neutral as respects the affairs, conflicts, and politics of the nations.
The nations Jesus will destroy at Armageddon to establish for a thousand years his kingship, as regent of Jehovah God.
During WWI, the International Bible Students (JWs) even had combatants in the war. They even had a cross on the cover of the Watchtower.
To criticize, being ignorant in one's early years is like saying we should beat up the baby because he poops in his diaper.
Being wrong as we grow is a natural process, and to not understand that we were wrong before, are wrong in many areas now, and will be wrong in the future is to ignore that as humans we are just "Earthlings ... big ugly bags of mostly water" (line from Star Trek).
Some have more water than others.
The trick...is not being filled up with bile.
Tom.Rook@Technik-SA.US
for this one theres no excuse.
"Being wrong as we grow is a natural process, and to not understand that we were wrong before, are wrong in many areas now, and will be wrong in the future is to ignore that as humans we are just "Earthlings ... big ugly bags of mostly water" (line from Star Trek)."
I would absolutely agree if we were talking about a strictly human organization. But we are not. We are talking about an organization that claims to channel Jehovah. An organization who speaks to us in God's name. An organization that was inspected by him and approved. Would Jehovah allow his representative to be wrong, not once, not twice, but constantly? The Watchtower organization is simply not of God. To compare it's ignorance with that of an innocent baby is an insult to Jehovah. This organization was built on lies and errors and yet you still believe that Jehovah is somehow involved in it? Well, the Jehovah I know and worship is far removed from the likes of organizations like this.
tom.rook, you are a good writer and very convincing but your thinking is not logical.
the video posted earlier made a good point at the end about truth is always present and doesn't change or go away, truth is truth and doesn't change. so that said, all your points of defense are invalid and a figment of your imagination "infused" by the watchtower society.
I would have to agree...the Truth is the Truth and is immutable...but, as "big ugly bags of mostly water", our understanding of it changes, grows, backslides, advances, etc.
Take the advances in any physical science ....at the time Robert Heinlein wrote the poem "Green Hills of Earth", the planet Venus was thought to be a steaming jungle, now we realize that it is hot enough to melt lead.
Before the turn of the twentieth century, we had no idea what made the sun hot...now we understand the BASICS of nuclear fusion.
The search for truth, in astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, quantum mechanics, AND theology is a progressive thing.
How many tens of thousands of people have been doing calculations for DECADES, trying to understand String Theory ....probably a collective work of ten thousand man years.
And with the advent of Lisi E8 theory of "Life, the Universe and Everything", it is probably all wrong. So will E8 theory be after a few more decades, I suspect.
Every science book more than 20 years old is filled with error.
50 years from now what we now believe as a comprehensive understanding of (Insert Topic Here ________________ ) will be laughable.
As far as the expectation that Jehovah's Witnesses claiming to be the agent of God somehow should make them immune to error ....there are big errors and small errors ... a big error is sending Chaplains to give aide and comfort and their "blessing" in the name of God to soldiers that are killing people as policemen of their nations' political agenda.
A big error is filling Europe with a half billion dead and billions of people impoverished due to warfare over a period of 1700 years, in the name of Christ.
A BIG ERROR is making God's Son into a God, at least in theory.
Never in the history of God's people in the Bible, have God's chosen people ever fulfilled the will of God without considerable error.
Jonah was sent BY GOD to preach the destruction of Nineveh, and Jonah ran the other way...and after "transporting" Jonah to Nineveh...God changed his mind.
Consider this ...Jonah was a false prophet..even when he accurately conveyed God's word to the people of Nineveh ... because God saw the repentance of the people of Nineveh, and spared them.
Jehovah God CHANGED HIS MIND !!
Boy, was Jonah royally ticked off !
Perhaps that is why God has spared civilization the great end-times tribulation and Armageddon so far ...he sees people evolving very rapidly towards repentance and awareness.
Perhaps not.
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society's "great sin" is poor scholarship and crappy writing and general cluelessness to real life.... NOT the GREAT SIN of serving as cheerleaders for wars, inquisitions, treasonous political affiliations, and the great slander against God ..claiming all these horrors in his name. The things that almost ALL Trinitarians do.
The small sins are the ones that that all scientists have committed, from time to time, and are committing, as I type this.
Of course, we will not know that for 25 years.
Tom.Rook@Technik-SA.US
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