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There is a war wracking the world today. It is not a conflict between individual nations or even blocks of nations. It is not so black and white as that. It is not confined to national borders, as wars of the past typically have been. It might best be described as a war between the rulers and the people. But that does not really tell the whole story either, because in the USA the government is “by the people” – ostensibly. More specifically, the conflict is really between two systems of rule – the empire and the republic, or neo-colonialism and the nation-states.

This is a revised and expanded article that appeared on the original Watchman site in 2005.

The April 1st, 2004, Watchtower Magazine carried an article on the meaning of Revelation’s mysterious 666 – the name and mark of the wild beast. Under the subheading on page four, the Watchtower asks the rhetorical question: “Do you enjoy solving a mystery?” Notably, that statement implies that the Watchtower Society has already solved the mystery. But have they really? In keeping with the apostolic exhortation: “Do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions to see whether they originate with God,” we do well to take a closer look at this important topic.

It has been a couple of weeks since the Watchtower Society's Governing Body lost Ted Jaracz in death. I try to keep the Jehovah's Witnesses in the News blog up-to-date with links to the latest information appearing in the news, and so I have been scannning Google search results for the Watchtower's press release of the death of Theodore Jaracz. So far, there has been no mention of it in any newspaper.

 

Who are Jehovah’s Christian Witnesses? Are they the true worshippers of God – the true light-bearers, as the Watchtower Society claims? What makes the witnesses of Jehovah so special? Do they really believe that they are the only ones who will receive salvation? After all, many accuse Jehovah’s  Witnesses of being a satanic cult. How could such a maligned sect possibly be the only true faith?

According to the Watchtower Magazine’s mission statement on the inside cover, the purpose of the Watchtower is to explain the significance of world events in the light of Bible prophecy. Here is what it says specifically:

“Just as watchtowers in ancient times enabled a person to observe developments from afar, so this magazine shows us the significance of world events in the light of Bible prophecies.”

The question posed here is: Has the Watchtower fulfilled its mission statement?

While the Watchtower frequently reminds Jehovah's Witnesses of its supposed prophetic prowess of yesteryear, such as divining the year 1914 and predicting the reformulation of the League of Nations in some form during the waning years of the Second World War, in more recent times the Watchtower seems to have gone silent.

When Christopher Columbus returned to his native land with the news of his discovery Europeans immediately began to refer to it as “the New World.” For the past half millennia the Americas have been called the New World. For desperate millions the New World offered the hope of a fresh start, free from the grinding poverty and oppression of the remnants of a feudalistic system in Europe, that at the time of Columbus’s discovery still had not fully recovered from the ravages of the Black Death, famine and the so-called Hundred Year’s War, which combined, had reduced the population in some parts of the Old World by as much as two-thirds. 

The world was shocked in the days following the night of April 14 of 1912, as the news spread of the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. The vessel was the largest  ship ever built up until then and it was touted as the safest.  It employed the state-of-the-art technology of the time and was thought to be virtually unsinkable by some people.  

This article has been slightly edited - originally published in April 2008

The course of history for the past 500 years has been dominated by an ongoing conflict between the forces of tyranny and the human struggle for liberty. For over a millennium following the collapse of the Roman Empire Europe was dominated by a bestial Feudal system, enforced by the Roman Catholic Church, which enslaved the vast majority of the population in perpetual poverty and ignorance. But the Renaissance began to change that miserable situation.