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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 7: Man
It wasn't until August 24th that Ted again visited Arthur Olson along with Richard and Bob. This delay would be explained to Arthur as the result of illnesses and going in field service on Sundays. The fact, however, was that they decided Ted's insistence on being "born again" would be too upsetting for the elderly man. So they hauled Ted repeatedly before the Judicial Committee of elders who eventually toned down his desire to talk of it continually, and did all in their power to introduce dark doubts in his mind regarding his "mystical experience". Finally, Richard and Bob themselves had made Ted promise not to mention a word about it to Arthur or they wouldn't take him along. When he reminded them that Arthur expected them to always bring him along, they replied that they'd forego the meeting entirely rather than have him speak to Arthur about such nonsense. Ted suspected that what they were really afraid of was that Arthur might not think it nonsense in the least.
But by giving up so much Ted gained something almost as important to him in compromise: they agreed to let him bring Cyn along. Ted and Cyn had been going out in service all the intervening Sundays, and it seemed too great a loss to suddenly be apart this Sunday.
Arthur was reading quietly from the new Watchtower through his lighted magnifying glass as they came in. "Well, hello," he said as he looked up in surprise. His voice conveyed an underlying, "so where have you been all this time?" which Richard quickly explained as planned.
"Who's our new friend?" Arthur smiled, peering intently at the woman joined at the hand to Ted. After introductions were made he extended a hearty welcome to all and started in: "Last time we met, we used the method of formal debate in order to demonstrate its use. But today we shall use a more informal discussion in which I'll sometimes rely on the Socratic method of questioning."
"You didn't teach us anything last time," Bob broke in, "you just told us to be quiet whenever we wanted to make a point. And then you didn't tell us how to deal with an irate minister; you merely posed as one and forced us to put up with you."
Cyn looked in wonder at Bob and then in expectation at Arthur to see if his response might justify Ted's high opinion of him. To her mind Ted had been admiring all the wrong people.
"Did you know," Arthur responded, "prior to my forcing you to figure it out as your only remaining refuge, that Jesus had to be admitted as being God? Isn't that an example of something that you learned last time?"
"No," Bob replied in disgust as if he'd told Arthur this a million times and he still hadn't got it; "Jesus is not God. Jesus is not God."
"Oh dear, how you and I have wasted our time together, dear brother," he said as he turned hopefully to Richard. "You learned that last time, didn't you, Richard?"
"Yes. You must remember, Bob, that the Bible calls the angels 'God' as well. We can't deny that Jesus has this title: we merely have to define what it means. The dictionary defines 'God' as 'one of superhuman powers'. So of course the angels are such as well as Jesus. And from what Arthur showed us, I was forced to the conclusion that Jesus is God. And I think that frank admission will help smooth the way in any conversation with a Trinitarian and save a lot of useless talk."
"Thank you for that vote of confidence, Richard," Arthur responded. "You see, my purpose isn't to give you the answers on a silver platter. If I were to do that you wouldn't appreciate them as much as if you have to work for them yourselves. And 'what is expressed is impressed,' to quote Aristotle."
"You know Aristotle?" Cyn wondered aloud.
"Well, not personally, sister." At this she laughed and Arthur winked and continued, "But I've read some of his more lucid writings, yes. There's very little of importance I haven't read. Are you familiar with him, then?"
"Oh, just his Poetics; I had to read that for class."
"Another poet in our midst, eh?"
"Yes, she's quite good," Ted complimented and got a playful rap on the shoulder from her for supposedly exceeding her modesty.
"Well, Bob," Arthur teased, "maybe this session won't be so boring for you after all, what with your interest in poetry."
"Oh, are you a poet too?" she asked, hiding all her doubt.
"No, not really," Bob replied.
"Well," Arthur said, "perhaps we should get on with today's discussion. Since you are new in the Truth, sister, your ideas and comments will be refreshingly welcome, so feel free to join in. I am going to play the devil’s advocate again by trying to advance a doctrine directly opposed to the Truth so as to sharpen these gentlemen's skills. I'll no doubt need your help more than they, but please support whichever side you feel contains the truth.
"Last time we spoke of God and his essence. Today I'd like to discuss man and his essential nature. As you know, Jehovah’s people contend that man is a soul. The soul consists of the spirit of life from God and the physical body. At death, the spirit of life leaves the body and the soul dies. This means that man is not naturally immortal. Immortality is a gift God only bestows on his true worshippers. In contrast to these truths, I will be contending that man by definition is immortal."
"Good, we'll be out of here in two minutes then," Bob shouted, rubbing his hands together and sitting way forward on his chair until it looked about to tip over. "What is man? That's the same question David asked in Psalm 8:4:
"'What is mortal man that you keep him in mind, and the son of earthling man that you take care of him?'
"You'll notice that the Bible says there that man is mortal, so your idea of him being immortal is already disproved with one Scripture! Are we immortal souls? Abraham admits in Genesis 18:27, 'I am dust and ashes.' And in Romans 7:l8 Paul tells us what he means by the word 'me':
"'For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells nothing good.'
"Paul, you’ll notice, parallels 'me' with 'my flesh'. Therefore, we see that man is flesh, mortal, made of dust and ashes. Case closed." With that Bob folded his arms and sat back in his chair once more, a look of triumph and contentment spreading out across his face.
Arthur paused a moment to allow Bob the full pleasure of his imaginary victory. When he perceived that it had soaked through his entire being, he spoke, "Paul went on to say something else of interest in that verse. But don't you think we should ask Jehovah's blessing on our efforts before we begin?"
Bob, startled that he'd forgotten this prerequisite, looked about sheepishly and mumbled something.
But Ted was even more startled when Arthur asked him to do the honor! He'd never before led any brothers in prayer, and wasn't sure he'd say the right thing.
"That's right," Richard remarked brightening, "you're a baptized brother now; you can lead the whole congregation in prayer!" He smiled approvingly as did Arthur.
So Ted bowed his head, shut his eyes tightly, released Cyn's hand to clasp his own, and began, "Our dear, loving, heavenly Father, Jehovah," (he threw in more titles than he meant to), "we thank you for giving us life this day," (he wasn't striving for originality yet), "and we ask that you might help us use it to your glory. We're gathered here," (he felt like saying "as you know" but restrained himself), "to learn more about the Truth as you've given it to us in your Holy Word. So we ask that you might pour out an extra portion of your spirit upon us that we can come to a clearer understanding of your ways. We'd like to also remember all of our brothers and sisters around the world, and ask that you be with them, especially those who are undergoing persecution for your name. And we ask all this in the name of your Son and our Redeemer, Jesus Christ."
After they lifted their heads and saw daylight again, there was a moment in which they all silently agreed that he'd done the job well and according to the norm.
Then Arthur resumed the discussion: "What Paul went on to say in that verse you quoted, Bob, was:
"'For to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.'
"Now, Bob, let me ask you this: can flesh ‘will’ to do something good?"
"I don't understand the question."
"If I cut off a hunk of my flesh and lay it on the night table here," Arthur clarified, "would that hunk of flesh have the ability to ‘will’ to do something good?"
"No, of course not." Bob replied, "Dead flesh can't do anything."
"Well, what about the flesh on my arm. It's living flesh; can it will to do something?"
"No, not unless you direct it to do something," Bob explained.
"In that case it isn't willing anything; I am. But who am I?" Arthur asked. "I thought you said that we were all just flesh, but now you tell me that flesh cannot ‘will’ anything. So how could Paul say 'to will is present with me' if he was only flesh, made from dust and ashes?"
"Because Paul had an intellect: a will." Bob explained.
"Oh, so now Paul is more than flesh according to you. He also has an intellect and will. Would you say that his intellect is in his brain?"
"Of course."
"And since his brain is surrounded by flesh, would you say that his brain is 'in his flesh'?"
"That's a trick question." Bob cautioned. "Sometimes we refer to the flesh in a symbolic way as in Galatians 5:19 with the 'works of the flesh' or Matthew 26:41 in 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.'"
"Excellent point!" Arthur exclaimed. "And this, in fact, solves the difficulty: this ‘symbolic sense’ is the way Paul is using the word 'flesh' in Romans 7:18. His flesh is weak, 'nothing good in it,' but his will to do good is there; his 'spirit is willing.' That this is so can be seen from the fact that the only other way to take it would be absurd: since the brain is 'in the flesh' it too must not be good."
"All right already, you've made your point. Paul isn't just flesh, he also has a will," Bob acquiesced.
"And we could call this his ‘spirit’?" Arthur asked with a twinkling eye.
"Only in the sense of its being Paul's dominant attitude, such as we might say 'a spirited horse.'"
"So far we are in agreement;" Arthur commented, "the spirit in man is his will, his intellect, his dominant attitude. All this is located in his brain.
"Since we know, and have just agreed, that matter cannot think, man must be more than physical matter," Arthur reasoned, "more than dust and ashes. When Abraham made a statement seemingly contrary to this thought he was speaking somewhat poetically, not literally (as I'm sure you can well understand, Bob and Cyn). He was addressing God and wanted to show that he was nothing in comparison.
"We must also discount your use of Psalm 8:4 since only your own New World Translation has the audacity to translate the simple word for 'man' as 'mortal man'.
[Abridged version: skip the rest of this debate; it's not essential to the story line. But please note that I don't recommend that my Jehovah's Witness readers skip the rest of this debate.]
"That takes care of the Scriptures that were meant to take care of me." Arthur concluded. "But now on to more important matters: we just agreed on one major portion of man's being, but man is more than intellect and flesh; he has emotions, he can love, hate, be angered, and so on. Does the Bible assign a location for man's emotions in his body?"
"Yes," Richard said, springing into the conversation much to Bob's relief, "we find the Bible correctly informs us that the source of emotions is the heart."
"And physically what does the heart do?"
"It pumps blood to all parts of the body. Also, we find that it is directly connected to the brain by certain important nerves so that it conveys emotions to the brain."
"And now, Ted, would you please read Leviticus 17:14 for us, providing, of course, that your lovely fiancée will be kind enough to free your hand for our use."
Cyn smiled in embarrassment, and while Ted was searching for the verse, she made bold to comment, "You know, I was taught in my poetry class that the use of the heart is really only symbolic. Poets have used the 'broken heart' and 'bleeding heart' and every other manner of heart as a convenient way of conveying a person's feelings, but it's really not the source of any emotions. A person's emotions, rather, cause her to feel a change in the vessels in and around the heart so that they constrict with anger to prepare for fight or flight and things like that. And we feel the change through our nerves and sometimes mistake this effect of our emotions as the cause of them."
"Science really knows little of such things," Arthur smiled, "we prefer to rely on God's Word for our answers. Have you found that verse, Ted?"
"Yes, it reads: 'For the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood by the soul in it. Consequently I said to the sons of Israel: "You must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh, because the soul of every sort of flesh is in the blood. Anyone eating it will be cut off."'"
"Thank you. Now, according to that, the soul is in the blood. Since the heart is the source of blood to the body, we could say that the location of man's soul is in his heart just as we agreed that his spirit is in his brain. This is backed up by Proverbs 2:10 which we'll have read for us from the King James Bible, if you please, Ted.
"And while he's looking that up, I'll tell you something you perhaps didn't know about Hebrew poetry, sister. Instead of using rhyme or rhythm, they simply said the same thing in two different ways, such as 'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' You see how the same thing is said in a slightly different way?"
"Yes," Cyn nodded. She noticed that Arthur looked absently at Bob while quoting that particular Scripture.
Ted found the verse and read, 'When wisdom entereth into thine heart and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul.'"
"You see," Arthur explained, "in that verse, soul is paralleled with the heart just as knowledge is paralleled with wisdom. So we can safely agree that the heart is the location of the soul, can we not?"
"No," Bob disagreed emphatically, "the soul refers to the entire person, it isn't just something in the heart. In Leviticus it is being used to mean life. The life is being represented as being in the blood, but the soul (meaning the entire person) isn't literally in the blood."
"Even taking it your way," Arthur concluded, "the heart is still the location of the soul. If soul means life, then it is in the heart; 'Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life,' says Proverbs 4:23.
"Seeing, then, that man's intellect and will is in his brain," Arthur continued, "we might call the brain a container for the mind. The mind is the invisible thought processes and volition inside the visible brain. And, seeing that man's emotional personality is in his heart, we might call the heart the container of this nonmaterial entity of feelings that we shall call the soul.
"Just to get this clearly in your minds, this is my first main contention: man consists of an invisible, immaterial spirit (also known as his ‘mind’) that resides inside his brain and which functions on the intellectual level. He also consists of an invisible, immaterial soul, whose realm is inside the heart and functions on the emotional level of the personality. Finally, man consists of a physical body that houses the soul and spirit till death, when a new spiritual body must be created to house them. So it was, that when Paul spoke to the whole man, he addressed him by all three components: 'And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
"No," Bob exploded, "man is not a spirit, he has a spirit, but the spirit is not him."
"You’re contradicting yourself," Arthur cautioned. "You said that a man’s dominant attitude was his spirit. Couldn’t we say that a man’s dominant attitude is his personality? And isn’t that which contains our personality our person: ourselves? Therefore, the spirit is us."
"Dominant attitude is just one of the definitions of spirit," Bob explained, "the other definition is ‘life principle’. It is what keeps us alive. In James 2:26 we read, ‘the body without spirit is dead.’ The spirit keeps us alive, but it isn’t us."
"In the verse you just quoted," reasoned Arthur, "if the spirit isn’t us, I guess you’d say that the body is us?"
"Yes, that’s right," Bob readily agreed, "we’re bodies of flesh, and when the spirit leaves our bodies we go back to the dust:
"’If you take away their spirit, they expire, and back to the dust they go,’ says Psalm 104:29. We clearly see that by ‘they’ the Psalmist doesn’t mean the spirit, but the body that returns to dust."
Arthur, to the confusion of everyone, agreed: "I couldn’t explain it better! The Psalmist is talking about bodies when he says ‘they’. Persons never enter into his discussion. Just what happens to the bodies? They return to dust; that’s what they do. But what does the person do? We’ve already established that the person is soul and spirit which are trapped inside the body during life. At death the body returns to dust, but where does the spirit go? God takes it away according to Ecclesiastes 12:7:
"’Then shall the dust’ (matter, which could never ‘will’ or think) ‘return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ And where is God? In heaven. So the spirit goes to heaven. Paul backs this up by describing heaven and its inhabitants:
"'But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.' This is from Hebrews 12:22, 23, and you'll notice these ‘spirits of just men’ are seen to be in heaven with God. They, of course, also have their souls in heaven, as we read in John's vision of heaven; 'I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony they held.'"
"First of all," Bob reminded him, "you haven't 'established' that man is body, soul, and spirit. Man is a soul, and a soul consists of a body and a spirit. We could express it mathematically as body plus spirit equals soul."
"You will pardon my confusion," Arthur said, laying back and shutting his eyes wearily. (How he wished Richard would take over from Bob.) "Before you said that man was flesh, mortal, dust and ashes. You clearly said, 'we are bodies of flesh.' Now you say that man is a soul. What is a soul? First you said it was life represented in blood; then you said it was 'the entire person'; now you say it consists of a body plus a spirit. The spirit, you say, is either the dominant attitude or 'life principle'."
"Yes, that's right," Bob smiled devilishly, "Why are you confused? You seem to have grasped it well."
"Okay," Arthur chuckled, "I’ll try to remember all that. You say that the soul sometimes means life, and the spirit 'life principle'?"
"Correct."
"Can life principle die?"
"No."
"So the spirit in man is immortal?"
"Yes, in a sense," Bob cautiously agreed, "It is God's holy spirit and cannot die. That's why it's spoken of as returning to him at the death of the body."
"And when the soul means life -- life can't die, can it?" Arthur reasoned. "I mean, when Jesus said, 'Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul,' you must take 'soul' to mean 'life' which therefore cannot be killed. If so, then it follows that the spirit and soul somehow survive the death of the body because they are life and cannot die."
"You're all wrong. You're looking at it all wrong." Bob sighed. "'Soul' in that Scripture means 'future life prospects'. Men cannot destroy a person's prospects for future life. But when speaking of the soul as the entire person, we find that the Bible speaks of it as eating and fasting (Leviticus 7:20; Psalm 35:13) weeping and fainting (Jeremiah 13:17; Jonah 2:7) swearing, craving, fearing (Leviticus 5:4; Deuteronomy 12:20; Acts 2:43) and so on. It seems that the soul is not an invisible thing inside a person's heart, but the person himself, doesn't it?"
"I have a quote here," Richard announced, rifling through his notebook, "from The New Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13, page 467:
"'The soul in the Old Testament means not a part of man, but the whole man -- man as a living being. Similarly in the New Testament it signifies human life: the life of an individual, conscious subject.'
"So even the theologians of the Catholic Church are forced to admit it, so why don't you believe it? Do you have better scholarship than they?"
Arthur, eyes still tightly shut as if concentrating, replied oddly: "We find the Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as: knowing and willing (1 Corinthians 2:10, 11); creating and giving life (Job 33:4; Psalm 33:6); striving, commanding, forbidding, and appointing (Genesis 6:3; Acts 13:2; 16:6, 7; 20:28); he speaks, teaches, and can be grieved (1 Timothy 4:1; John 14:26; Ephesians 4:30). I have a quote here from the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas from his Summa Contra Gentiles:
"'Sacred Scripture manifestly speaks of the Holy Spirit as of a subsisting divine person.'
"So even the theologians of the Catholic Church are forced to admit that the Holy Spirit is a person. So why don't you believe it? Do you have better scholarship than they?"
"What are you talking about?" Bob asked, not catching on like the rest of them.
"I just wanted to show you how inconsistent your reasoning is," Arthur replied. "The argument that you use to prove that the soul is the person is the very same argument a Trinitarian can use to prove the Holy Spirit is a person. You just use a certain type of argument when it suits you, and regard the same argument as unreasonable when it doesn't. You use authorities when they agree with you, and condemn them for letting preconceived notions interfere with their scholarship when they disagree with you."
"Well, let's stick to the subject at hand, shall we, and not jump all around. We discussed the Trinity last time and disproved it, remember?" Bob retorted.
"It's not really off the subject," Arthur explained, "You say it is the same Holy Spirit in all things that's keeping them alive, don't you?"
"Yes we do," Richard answered.
"Well, if you proved that the soul is the person, then I proved, by the same reasoning, that the Holy Spirit is a person. Now if this Spirit is in man, it must be a person still, and not all of a sudden a mindless 'life principle'. If, then, the spirit in man has personality, intellect, and will -- to correspond to God's Spirit (since we are made in his image) -- and since this spirit, we already agreed, cannot die but goes to heaven, it follows that when our bodies die, we go to heaven."
"But you haven't proven that the spirit in man is man." Richard argued. "The spirit, we might allow, 'goes to heaven', but even if the holy spirit were a person, it certainly isn't the person that the spirit was in prior to death. Otherwise you'd be saying the holy spirit changes its personality within each individual."
"Very well," Arthur said, "let me endeavor to prove that man is, at least in his higher mental faculties, this 'spirit' of which we speak. We likened the spirit to the mind that is contained in the brain, and in one of your definitions of spirit you agreed with this. Now, if such a thing as a brain transplant were possible, would we say that the body which received another's brain was the same person?"
"No," Richard answered, "it would be more like the person who donated his brain would have a new body. We should maybe say that the one person is donating his whole body to the other person since the latter's brain would possess the former's body."
"And so it follows," Arthur continued, "that man lives inside his brain since we can imagine him moving from one body to another by moving only his brain. But how are we ‘inside’ our brains? You may recall from our last discussion how we said that what things we understand are inside our minds, and that we ourselves consisted of an idea of ourselves inside our minds. This fits in well with our present discussion. We know that our bodies are constantly changing so that if you were to see a photograph of me going back some eighty years, you wouldn't know that it was me; there's not one single cell in my physical being now that constituted my body then. And that goes for brain cells too. They've all died and been replaced by new ones. So how can I be said to be the same person? There are things I knew back then which I've long since forgotten, and I look at life very differently today. So if you could've had a conversation with me back then and could compare it with a conversation with me today, you might very well conclude, again, that I was not the same person at all. Yet I am the same person. Even if I get amnesia and can remember none of my past, I'm still the same person. So obviously, my personhood is not dependent on my body or my thoughts or memory or anything else save one thing: my conception of myself as the same person in my mind: my mind's understanding of myself. That, then, is what I am: an idea, an invisible, immaterial thought in my mind, and this I call 'me', or 'my spirit'.
"Why, though, you may wonder, do I insist on distinguishing an immaterial 'mind' apart from the material 'brain'? Because thoughts are not like any other sense which is material in nature. After a particularly loud noise, you'll have noticed it's difficult to hear, and so we speak of such noises as 'deafening'. Likewise, after seeing a very bright light, such as the sun, we find it difficult to see; we call such a 'blinding light'. And after an unusually spicy meal we find everything tasteless, just as over-stimulation of the sense of touch, say by freezing, can numb our feeling. But, on the other hand, when a particularly vivid thought sparks in our minds, there is no corresponding deadening. Quite the contrary, it spurs us on to further thought, and for a particularly engrossing new idea, we think upon it constantly and cannot get enough thought about it. There is no depletion of thought; it extends to infinity with always more room for more thought. This argues strongly for a difference between thought and the other senses and indicates that the one is nonphysical: spiritual. All our physical senses are severely limited to one specialty and perform crudely through nerves. You can't see with your sense of touch or hear through your eyes. But the mind receives all things from all the senses and even out of the senses in dreams and revelations and visions from God. But to receive all things one must be devoid of all things since one can't receive what one already has. Just as the pupil of the eye receives all color and is itself devoid of all color, so too the mind receives all things and must therefore be devoid of all substance; hence spiritual.
"But let's corroborate this from Scripture. Is it true that you Jehovah's Witnesses teach that since man is only dust and ashes, when God resurrects a man, he creates a new body and brain and inserts into it the memories of the man?"
"Yes, that's so," Richard responded.
"And the man who is thus resurrected is the same man?" asked Arthur.
"The very same."
"Can man then be a body?"
"No," replied Richard, "he must be the contents of his mind: his memories and thinking patterns."
"And his dominant attitude?"
"Yes, that too," Richard agreed.
"And could we call this man's ‘spirit’?"
"Yes, that's been established."
"And are there any Scriptures that refer to the resurrection as the restoring of the spirit to a body?"
"Yes there are," Richard replied and added proudly, "and I know them by heart too: Psalm 104:30 says: 'If you send forth your spirit they are created.' And Revelation 11:11 tells how God's two witnesses are brought back to life when 'spirit of life from God entered into them.'"
"Do you see, then, that the spirit is the person?" Arthur inquired.
"No!" Bob blurted out. "We see what you mean, but we can't believe it because it isn't true according to a million other Scriptures that we're anxiously waiting to show you as soon as you're done philosophizing."
"Well, I'm almost done." Arthur smiled. "But I want to answer the interesting objection Richard brought up in regards to the holy spirit having to change in every individual's mind. This is getting into a very complex subject as it has to do with God (who, being a Trinity is incomprehensible to begin with) and with mankind's emergence with him. In our Trinity discussion you'll recall how we used such Scriptures as Romans 12:5 and 1 Corinthians 6:15,19 to show how the Spirit helps us merge with Christ into the Godhead. Good men attain this by attuning their minds to the Spirit that is in them. Subordinating all fleshly desires till their thoughts (their selves) are brought in line with the Spirit's will so that they are one with the Spirit that is in them and in us all. Then when the spirit leaves the body at death, they truly are that spirit and so they go to heaven as that spirit. On the other hand, those who concentrate on the body and seek out fleshly pleasures all their lives really become one with their bodies. And when the Spirit returns heavenward, they, having never associated with it, lose it.
"It would be good to point up the difference between soul and spirit along this line here. The soul, we've said, has to do with the emotions, and in the fleshly man it is overcome by the baser passions. Such a man lives in his heart and not much in his head. At death the soul goes to what the Bible calls ‘Hades’ or ‘Sheol’: the common waiting place for all souls, good and evil. But the good man leaves only a very small part of himself there in Hades since he has associated more with his spiritual nature that is in heaven now. The wicked man, being all corrupted soul, however, is completely engulfed in Hades and feels the pangs of remorse because he's separated from God and realizes his foolishness.
"I have purposely strayed from my subject to tell you all that this is the way many modern ministers conceive hell to be: the fire and brimstone being merely symbols of anguish, and Hades being a common waiting ground for all souls till the resurrection. Fewer would agree, however, with my division of soul and spirit. I'm just trying to make as reasonable a stand out of their dichotomies and trichotomies as I can. Anyway, with that little aside finished, on to the question at hand.
"The Holy Spirit, then you see, needn't change with each individual: each individual needs to change with the Spirit. This doesn't mean that all godly people have to be exactly alike. Their personality relies more on their souls, remember. It only means that they'll have 'the mind of Christ' and that 'the Holy Spirit will bring to mind all the things (Christ) has taught us,' they’ll have the 'fruits of the spirit,' and will 'think on whatever is chaste and upbuilding.'
"Let me concentrate for a moment now on the soul. We agreed that when a person has a brain transplant he's no longer the same person. Therefore, the person is in the brain and further, in the mind. But what if a man has a heart transplant?"
Richard replied: "I've read in the Awake magazine that heart transplant patients have a total change of personality; they take on the personality of the donor, and this even happens in blood transfusions."
"Very good," Arthur said, "then it would seem that the personality of a man is in his blood, or more particularly, his heart. The Bible says that the soul is in the blood, and we might add, 'just as the spirit is in the brain.' Now when a person is resurrected I'm not suggesting that his blood is put into the new body anymore than the same brain is put into it. I am suggesting that just as the mind or spirit is put into the new body, the emotions, personality, or 'soul' is also. Are there any Scriptures which show the soul being restored to the body at resurrection?" Arthur asked.
"Yes there are," Richard responded, "one of them is here at let's see… 1 Kings 17:22: 'Finally Jehovah listened to Elijah's voice, so that the soul of the child came back within him and he came back to life.'"
"My conclusion, then," Arthur said, "is that the body is a container for the spirit and the soul. A moment's consideration will reveal why this is necessarily so. If we divide God's creation into two parts, the spiritual and the physical, and further divide those within these two groups as to the highest and lowest, we end up with a picture of all God's creation in a continuous progression from the lowest physical thing through the highest physical thing, and from the lowest spiritual thing to the highest spiritual thing. It is man that bridges the gap between our two groups; he is the highest of the physical beings and the lowest of the spiritual ones. We know that the highest of the lower group and the lowest of the higher group must touch, and that is why our soul and spirit touches our fleshly being. It is obvious that Paul had some such idea in mind when he said in 2 Corinthians 4:16, 'though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.' And Peter must've held the same notion judging from what he says in 2 Peter 1:13, 14 about being 'in his tabernacle' and 'putting off his tabernacle to be with the lord.'"
"What you've done so far," Bob stated, "is confuse the definitions of soul and spirit. We have to keep them separate to avoid just the type of confusion you're now into. In answer to the question, 'What is man?' we agree that he has emotions and a mind. But he doesn't have a soul; he is a soul, and when he dies he is a dead soul. The soul is the person, the total person, consisting of the spirit of life and a body.
"Let's examine this definition of yours," Arthur responded. "If man consists of the spirit of life and a body, that would mean if either ingredient were taken away it would no longer be a man, doesn't it?"
"Yes," Bob agreed, "the body without the spirit is dead. The life force outside a person's body could not be a man. It takes both together to comprise a man or 'soul'."
"That's an interesting theory," Arthur replied, "but Paul seems to contradict you in 2 Corinthians 12:2, 3. He begins by saying:
"'I knew a man in Christ about fourteen years ago --'
"What does Paul say he knew?" Arthur asked.
"A man -- a Christian," Bob replied.
"Remember you said that now," Arthur advised, "for Paul goes on to say, 'whether in the body I cannot tell; or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth.' And he repeats it for us in the next verse: 'And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth).' How could Paul have mistook him for a 'man' if he was out of his body? It seems that Paul is not aware of your supposedly Biblical definition of a man; he calls a disembodied man a 'man'. It would seem then that a man is a man even outside his body, and therefore, your formula is incorrect. Man can exist independently of his body."
"No," Bob replied, "Paul is speaking of himself here in a modest way. He is telling of a vision he had of the third heaven. He is not sure whether he was actually carried away bodily to the third heaven, or whether he just had a vision of it. That's why he says he's not sure if it was 'in the body' or out of it."
"Ted," Arthur said, "Bob seems to think that Paul was speaking of himself here. Would you please read verse five for us?"
Ted, who'd been following along in his Bible all this while, read, "’Over such a man I will boast, but I will not boast over myself, except as respects my weaknesses.’"
Arthur smiled and commented sarcastically, "Paul seems to be under the delusion that this man he is speaking about is not himself. Too bad you weren't there when he wrote this, Bob, you could've straightened him out on the matter."
"Paul knew it was himself," Bob insisted, "but he was writing modestly; he didn't want to point to himself as the one having this great vision. It's just like how John wrote of the 'disciple that Jesus loved' when he meant himself."
"In any case," Arthur continued, brushing the matter aside, "if Paul just had a vision and didn't go bodily to the third heaven --"
"There's no 'if's' about it," Bob broke in, "the Scriptures tell us that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.'"
"Very well then," Arthur allowed, "since he didn't visit heaven with his flesh and blood, you'd say that Jehovah just let him see the third heaven in his mind?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"In that case, Paul is calling his mind a ‘man’ out of or independent of his body -- all of which proves my point: Paul's mind apart from his body is 'a man'. The body is not a necessary ingredient."
"Not at all," Bob argued, 'Paul had our understanding that the man is the soul and vice versa. Notice what he says about the man Adam in Corinthians 15:45-47:
"'It is even so written: "The first man Adam became a living soul." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. Nevertheless, the first is, not that which is spiritual, but that which is physical, afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is out of the earth and made of dust; the second man is out of heaven.'
"Paul here is likening Jesus to Adam," Bob explained, "Jesus is the 'second Adam'. The first Adam was out of the earth and made of dust. He was not spiritual but physical according to Paul; he didn't have a soul inside him, he was a soul."
"Richard," Arthur said, "Bob seems to think that Paul said man doesn't have a soul inside him. How he gathered that from the Scripture he read is beyond me. But would you please read Acts 20:10?"
Richard had it in a flash and read: "’Paul went downstairs, threw himself upon him and said: 'Stop raising a clamor, for his soul is in him.'’"
"It's too bad you weren't there, Bob," Arthur taunted, "you could've explained to Paul that the soul is not inside a person but is the person himself."
"Soul there," Bob replied, "means 'life'; his life was in him."
"Come to think of it," Arthur continued, "you could've been instructive to Job and Jonah as well. Job said, 'But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.' And Jonah said, 'my soul fainted within me.' You could've told them that the soul is not within the person; it is the person. You could have told them that the only thing in a person is life, and life can't mourn or faint. Yes, I'm sure they would've been appreciative of your instruction, but I doubt that they would've taken you as an authority over the holy spirit."
"In those instances," Bob explained, "soul seems to mean the emotions of the soul."
"Another definition!" Arthur exclaimed.
At this, Richard spoke up to help out the faltering Bob: "The books of Job and Jonah support our view that man is a soul that return to the dust. Job 34:14, 15 says:
"'If he sets his heart upon anyone, if that one's spirit and breath he gathers to himself, all flesh will expire together, and earthling man himself will return to the very dust.'
"In Jonah 4:8 we read, 'and he kept asking that his soul might die, and he repeatedly said: "My dying off is better than being alive."'"
"If you had been there, Arthur," Richard said, imitating Arthur’s sarcasm, "you could've corrected Jonah and told him that his dying off did not require his soul to die. You could've told him how the soul continues living after the death of the body."
"Arthur smiled broadly and said, "Touché! But since I've allowed you about four definitions of the word ‘soul’, perhaps you'll be good enough to allow me two. I would agree that in some instances soul just means the body, such as in the common expression 'poor old soul'. But do you see how futile this makes our discussion? We'll never be able to pin each other down since we have so many different definitions of the soul! So it's useless for us to talk anymore about the soul. Whenever you bring forth a Scripture about the soul dying, I'll give the definition of soul in that instance as the body. And when I show you Scriptures about the soul being separate and apart from the body, you'll give the definition of soul as life."
"But the basic definition of soul," Bob said, reentering the conversation, "is 'a breather'. So every breathing thing is a soul, and when it stops breathing it's a dead soul."
"According to that definition," Arthur asked, "wouldn't it be improper to call something that has stopped breathing a 'dead soul'? I mean, how could a non-breathing thing be called a soul in any sense if soul means breather?"
"In the same sense," Bob replied, "that we use the term 'dead person' when someone who's dead is no longer a person. The word 'dead' qualifies the use of ‘person' just as it does the word 'soul'."
"I disagree," Arthur announced, playing the minister role to the hilt, "A dead person is still a person just as a dead body is still a body and a dead soul is still a soul."
"At death," Bob again stated the formula, "the spirit leaves the body. Since body plus spirit equals soul, when the spirit leaves the body it is no longer a soul."
"And that brings us back to my bone of contention:" Arthur stated, "according to your recipe for soul it would be improper to speak of a 'dead soul'. You could speak of a dead body, but never a dead soul if soul means a body with a spirit in it (because if it had a spirit in it, it wouldn't be dead). But since the Bible speaks of dead souls in such Scriptures as Leviticus 21:11 and Numbers 6:6, it must be that the Bible holds an entirely different definition of soul from yours.
"But in order to prove that the soul is still a soul after the death of the body, I'd like Ted to read Psalm 16:10."
Ted complied: "’For you will not leave my soul in Sheol. You will not allow your loyal one to see the pit.’"
"What is this verse referring to?" Arthur asked.
"This was David," Richard replied, "speaking prophetically about how God wouldn't leave Jesus in sheol but would resurrect him."
"But what was Jesus' soul doing in sheol?" Arthur asked. "If sheol is the grave and the soul is the body plus the spirit (as you hold they are), then Jesus was buried alive! But, really, John 19:30 tells us that Jesus delivered up his spirit when he died, therefore his spirit was not buried in the grave, just his body was. Do you agree?"
"Yes," Richard agreed, "just Jesus' body was in sheol."
"But then how can it be that Jesus' soul was in sheol?" Arthur asked. "Your definitions are, of necessity, wrong. Since a dead body is not a soul by your definition, the soul cannot be the body, and sheol cannot be the grave. Jesus' soul went consciously to sheol where he preached to the spirits in 'prison' there. He must've been conscious during this time in order to have raised up his body by returning to it. (You will remember that he said, 'destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.' And John tells us, 'he was talking about the temple of his body.')"
Bob sighed, but not deeply, and answered, "Soul in this instance means future life prospects. God didn't leave Jesus' prospects for future life in sheol. Jesus didn't raise his body, as I think we explained last time. He was not raised by his soul reentering his body either. The body that was put to death on the torture stake was never again brought to life. It was given in sacrifice and couldn’t be taken back. God resurrected Jesus by creating a spirit body and putting Jesus' memories and personality into it, 1 Peter 3:18 supports this view, saying, '(Jesus) being put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit.'
"The soul ceases after death; it no longer exists," Bob continued. "The soul does not continue living in sheol; the soul dies. 'The soul that is sinning, it itself will die,' says Ezekiel 18:4. How you can read such a statement and glean from it that the soul that sins lives forever is beyond me."
Arthur smiled his "I've got him now" smile and said, "First you told us that future life prospects returned to God (when you explained the meaning of 'the spirit returns to the true God who gave it'). Now you say future life prospects are in sheol (in explaining the phrase 'soul in sheol'). Which is it? Or are you just making up any excuse not to agree with me? Jesus said that he would raise his body. Why do you refuse to take him at his word? When he was resurrected, the body was gone from the tomb. Was this deception to make people believe he had resurrected the body when he hadn't? When Jesus appeared to his disciples, did he lead them to believe that he was a spirit or a physical body? To answer this, let's listen as Ted reads Luke 24:37-39."
Ted, daydreaming about Cyn whose hand had crept back to his, was startled by his name and had to ask for the verse to be repeated. When he had it he read: "’But because they were terrified, and had become frightened, they were imagining they beheld a spirit. So he said to them: 'Why are your troubled, and why is it doubts come up in your hearts? See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; feel me and see, because a spirit does not have flesh and bones just as you behold that I have.’’"
"This is another instance where it's unfortunate you were born too late, Bob," Arthur taunted. "If you had been there you could've told them that they weren't imagining that he was a spirit; they were right and Jesus was fooling them when he said he wasn't a spirit.
"Hebrews 13:8 tells us that 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.' When he rose from the dead three days after his crucifixion, was he the same Jesus?"
"Of course," Bob answered.
"But aren't you saying that Jesus was nonexistent those three days and God made a new spiritual body that had never existed before and injected into it the memories of Jesus?"
"Yes, his memories and personality."
"Then it was a new being and not the same old Jesus," Arthur insisted. "It was an imposter: a new being with all the memories of someone who had lived before but could never live again having once ceased to exist. The Jesus who died, according to your view of things, was never resurrected at all! I wouldn't object so much to your interpretation if you said that Jesus' mind or spirit remained in existence during those three days and then was restored to the same body or a new one. But in your interpretation you leave the real Jesus dead forever and create a new one! And this is the same prospect you hold out for all of us who die: to have some new being in the future take over our memories and personality. Some hope! As Aristotle says in his Ethics:
"'For existence is good to the virtuous man, and each man wishes himself what is good, while no one chooses to possess the whole world if he has first to become someone else (for that matter, even now God possesses the good, but as no one gains by God's now having the good, he would not gain if a new person which was no longer himself were to possess it).’
"Finally, you say that a soul dies and wonder how I can think anything else since the Bible is so clear on this point. Well, I don't think anything else. I know it dies. What I'm trying to establish is not that it doesn't die, but what it's dying means. And my hypothesis is this: its dying means its separation from the body. And its resurrection is the giving of a new body to it (or, in rare cases, the same body).
"1 Corinthians 15:35-38 tells us, 'That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.' What is this 'bare grain'? It must be none other than the soul and spirit. We have to die before these can really live, according to Paul here. Why is that? Because spirit and soul separate from the body at death: 'The body without spirit is dead'; 'Her soul was in departing, (for she died)' (James 2:26; Genesis 35:18).
"The Greek scholar Thayer defines death as 'separation of the soul from the body.' A dead (separated) soul must still be alive or it couldn't rightly be called a soul (since the word implies activity: breathing). Therefore, a dead soul is a separated soul free from the dead body. After this separation God gives the soul and spirit a new body: a spiritual one in most cases."
"I concede none of these points to you," Bob announced melodramatically. "Jesus was not resurrected into the same body; the very Scripture you just quoted from Corinthians proves that: Jesus did not 'sow the body that shall be'. The 'bare grain' was his memories and personality that God gave a new spiritual body. What the disciples saw wasn't a spirit because Jesus materialized physical bodies in order to appear to them. (No one can see a spirit unless it materializes a body in this manner.) This is backed up by the fact that they often didn't recognize him. They naturally would've recognized him if he'd been in the same body. We also read that he walked though a locked door, so he must've been a spirit. As for your ideas on 'dead souls' --"
"Just a moment, please," Arthur interjected, "I’d like first to reply to your last statements before you go on. In the instances where the disciples didn't recognize Jesus, in each case there were good reasons for their lack of recognition. Mary didn't perceive that it was him immediately because 'there was still darkness' according to John 20:1. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus also failed to appreciate his identity, not because he had a different body, but rather because 'their eyes were kept from recognizing him' (Luke 24:16). This could've been done supernaturally or simply by Jesus keeping his face hidden by the hood of his clothing. The verse implies that Jesus was so recognizable that some step had to be taken to prevent them from recognizing him immediately. The other account where he wasn't recognized was when the disciples were at sea fishing and he was on the shore. Why didn't they know him? They were 'three hundred feet away, hardly close enough to discern a person's features.
"And though I hate to disagree with you --"
'No you don't," Bob muttered, "you love it."
"The Bible nowhere says that Jesus walked through a locked door," Arthur continued. "It says that the door was locked and he came in. It would be more fitting of the one who 'opens so that no one will shut' (Revelation 3:7) that he miraculously opened the locked door and walked in. But even if we suppose him to have walked right through a closed door, it doesn't prove him a spirit. You'll recall how he walked on water with his physical body. Can we say there's much difference between a solid body not passing through a nonsolid like water, and a solid body that passes though another solid body like a door?
"Finally, as to Corinthians proving that Jesus was not resurrected in the same body: you can't really apply the one to the other. If you do, then you must take what Corinthians says as a universal principle applicable to all cases of resurrection. But is it? Was Lazarus, for example, resurrected to a new body or to the same one he had prior to his death? Or how about the Shunammite woman's son whom Elisha resurrected; was not that the same body? If you go down the list of every resurrection in the Bible, you'll see that they were all to the same body because they were all special cases just as Jesus was a special case. But you and I and every other typical case will be resurrected to a new body God will give us as Corinthians says."
"May I continue now?" Bob asked impatiently, and Arthur nodded him on. "Your ideas on 'dead souls' are mere sophistry. If you read the accounts in the Bible you'll see how wrong you are. In Numbers 19:13, for instance, ‘Everyone touching a corpse, the soul of whatever man may die…’ That shows us that the dead soul can be touched and so is, in fact, the corpse. So Jesus' soul (his corpse) was in hades or 'hell', the common grave of mankind. Sealed in the tomb, Jesus' life-less body could not preach to anyone. The incident where he preached to the 'spirits in prison', namely, the fallen angels, happened after his resurrection when he was made alive (indicating that he was dead prior to being made alive) as a spirit."
"Before," Arthur smilingly noted, "you said that 'Jesus' soul being in hades' meant his 'future life prospects were there' but weren't left there by God. Now you say 'Jesus being in hades means his corpse in his tomb.' Well, hopefully you'll drop the first notion entirely now that you've adopted my own second definition of the soul, namely the body. You will remember how you once held that a soul was a body plus a spirit and that both these ingredients were necessary at once to have a soul. Now you say a soul is just a body without a spirit!" Arthur paused here to chuckle to himself for several embarrassing moments before he continued, "I hope you don't think -- any of you -- that I'm trying to confuse Bob and make a fool of him. I'm just trying to get a hold of what it is exactly he thinks man is and I'm having an awful time of it. I really want to know. If I can't get a clear idea out of him, I’ll have nothing to attack in his view -- I have to know just what his view is (and so does he) before we can get anywhere. Otherwise we could go on like this forever and not solve a thing. We need to define terms so we can speak the same language before we can get anywhere. But maybe the fault's all mine. Let me ask you, Cyn, do you understand what Bob means by soul?"
"No, not at all," she said, clearing her throat, "he's said it's so many different things that I can't keep track of them or even begin to agree with him because I don't know what he's talking about."
"Glad to see I'm not the only one. Let's run down the list and see if we can't make some sense of it all." Arthur was fully in his element as he counted the following off on his fingers. He'd planned this moment from the beginning, and smiled with satisfaction to think that he'd made Bob admit to every last one. "So far we've heard that the soul is:
1.THE BODY
2.THE SPIRIT PLUS THE BODY
3.LIFE
4.A BREATHER
5.EMOTIONS OF THE SOUL
6.FUTURE LIFE PROSPECTS
7.BLOOD
"With that list I can see how you can wriggle out of any Scripture that seems to refute your view. But I’ll stick to my two:
1.the emotions (or emotional personality)
2.the body.
"You see, you agree with me sometimes," Arthur noted. "We both agree that the Scripture in Numbers about touching a corpse or 'soul' means the body (your first definition and my second). But you disagree when I say that the soul (emotions, as in your fifth and my first definitions) remains alive after the death of the body. The reason you disagree is that when the Bible says that the soul dies, you conveniently forget your six other definitions and remember only that the soul is the body, and since the body is totally dead, you assume the person is nonexistent. I, on the other hand, while acknowledging that the dead body may still be referred to as a dead soul (my second definition), don't forget my first definition of soul as an immaterial, emotional personality which was never dependent on the body for life, and so continues alive after its separation from it.
"That the 'dead soul' refers to more than the corpse is evident from the following two examples:
"The first is Enoch," Arthur said as Bob audibly sighed. "We can speak of death from two vantage points: it either means separation of spirit and soul from body, or separation from God. I realize this leaves me with two definitions of death to your one (namely, nonexistence), but I feel justified in this from my two examples. Hebrews 11:5 tells us that Enoch did not see death because God took him. Genesis 5:24 is the source for this statement. In that chapter, it says of every individual mentioned 'and he died' with the exception of Enoch. How is it that Enoch did not die? If we took your definition of death and soul, we'd expect to see Enoch still with us in the flesh! But I can't think that even you people would entertain such a notion.
"So what does that leave? Evidently God took his spirit and soul right out of his body and transferred him to the paradise part of sheol where he wasn't separated from God. Though his body died by the removal of spirit and soul, Enoch did not die because he was the spirit and soul and was not separated from God. I'd like you to try and explain the case of Enoch without saying 'it doesn't really mean he didn't die when it says he didn't see death.'
"The second example is Jesus' words in John 8:51 where he says, 'If a man keeps my saying he shall never see death.' He could not have meant death of the body since those who kept his saying died bodily. So he must've meant spiritual death: believers in him will not be separated from God but will go instantly to paradise. This is backed up by the language of Paul at Philippians 1:21-24 and 2 Timothy 4:6 where he speaks about being released from being in his flesh to be with the Lord. This releasing of his spirit and soul from his body brings him instantly to the Lord’s presence in heaven. As he says in 2 Corinthians 5:8, 'to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.'
"During their physical lives the early Christians had been living spiritual lives, ignoring the desires of the flesh to the cultivation of the spirit. They had as little to do with the body as possible. We might say, along with Socrates, that they'd been 'practicing dying' all their physical lives (at least since their conversion) because their actual dying was the complete separation at last of spirit and soul from body -- their releasing. If there were no 'inward man', no 'spiritual man', as Paul calls it, then they would've been 'fools' to ignore the 'outward, physical' man (2 Corinthians 4:16; 1 Corinthians 15:44). I contend that such language simply would not exist in the Bible unless my viewpoint were correct," Arthur concluded.
"He wasn't speaking literally," Bob argued, "he spoke of the old personality passing away in favor of the new personality. This is what he means by inward and outward and physical and spiritual men: his desire for fleshly things is in conflict with his desire for spiritual things."
Richard took over from the frustrated Bob: "Your idea that when people die they instantly go to heaven is grossly mistaken. It's true only of the 144,000. The vast majority do nothing after death, as Ecclesiastes, chapter nine reiterates: 'they are conscious of nothing at all… their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished… there is no work or devising or knowledge or wisdom in sheol, the place to which you are going.' So much for your emotions surviving the body's death.
"As for anyone being instantly with God in heaven at death," Richard continued, "Jesus had this to say: 'no man has ascended into heaven but he that descended from heaven, the Son of Man.' (John 3:13) So where was Enoch? Not in heaven, and I don't think you'd say he was in hell; therefore, he was unconscious in his grave. In fact, that's were Jesus said all the dead were in his day: 'the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.' (John 5:28, 19) He said the good and wicked dead were in the tombs: not in heaven or hell.
"As to your notion of soul and spirit," Richard went on, "we need only to look at the creation of a man to see just what he's composed of. To do that Jehovah has provided us with a beautiful description of his creation and the fate of the first man. God's Word says that man was formed from the dust of the ground, breath of life was infused into him (what we call 'spirit') 'and the man came to be a living soul.' Notice that it doesn't say he was given a soul or one was put inside him, but that he was a soul. That's what his entire being (body plus spirit) added up to: a soul.
"When God spoke to Adam," Richard continued, "it was a 'living soul' he was speaking to. Jehovah said to that living soul: 'As for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.' Was it actually possible for the living soul to die? Satan disagreed. He said, just as you are saying, that the soul could not die: 'You positively will not die, for God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God.' (Genesis 3:4, 5).
"Who was right: Jehovah or Satan?" Richard asked. "Fortunately we don't need to ponder the question; the account answers it for us. Adam ate the forbidden fruit, and Jehovah pronounced the sentence, 'In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.' Do we naturally gather from Jehovah's words that he believed Adam to be immortal and deathless? Is that what he meant by 'you will positively die'? Did Jehovah mean that this soul was immaterial, spiritual, and invisible when he said to it 'dust you are'?
"God was right, you know," Richard concluded, "Adam did die. In Genesis 5:5 we read, 'So all the days of Adam that he lived amounted to 930 years and he died.' He lived 930 years. After that he didn't continue to live; he was dead. So there's no life after death."
"To answer that," Arthur began, "I merely have to refer you to my second definition of soul; it refers to Adam’s body in these instances.
"As for anyone being in heaven," Arthur explained, "I didn't say that had occurred with Enoch or anyone before Christ. I said they went to the paradise part of hades if they were in tune with the spirit, or the other part of it if they weren't. So we agree as to everyone going to hades, it's just that I divide it in two and make its inhabitants conscious as Jesus did in his tale of the rich man and Lazarus going consciously to the paradise part of hades and that other part symbolized by fiery torments of separation from God's favor.
"But since you yourselves say that a new body must be given at the resurrection (since the old one will be decayed and become parts of plants and animals and fertilizer), how can you take Jesus' words about them all coming from the memorial tombs literally? He just means all those who've died, not that they're literally going to dig their way out of the graves, don't you agree?"
"Yes," Richard nodded, "I'd have to agree with that."
"There's another thing you should ask yourself," Arthur said, "in regards to your example of Adam and his 930 years. It's what I said before about how we shed all our body cells every few years. If Adam was only the formed dust that made up his physical being, there would've been some 132 different 'Adams' by the time he died, and the sentence passed on the first one couldn't be justly executed on the last one. So there must've been some spiritual Adam inside all those physical ones, and so I believe there was.
"Your use of Ecclesiastes is wrong," Arthur proclaimed. "You can't use that book to settle any issue like this."
"Why not?" Bob demanded, "it's an inspired book of the Bible, isn't it?"
"Yes," Arthur replied, "but Solomon is giving his earthly-wise observations in it, and these are dangerous to follow. It is only at the end that he concludes that all that goes before is the height of man's wisdom and is paltry in comparison with God's. So it's foolish for you to go to his earthly wisdom for spiritual doctrines like this. Or do you think it's a godly attitude to hate work?"
"Certainly not," Bob responded, "the Bible says we should work hard at whatever we're doing and do it as to Jehovah."
"Well, do you hate life?" Arthur asked.
"No, we love life; it's a gift from God."
"Then, if I were to say that I hated life and hard work, could I be speaking under inspiration?"
"No, because that contradicts the Bible."
"Then, Bob, would you read Ecclesiastes 2:17, 18 for us, please?"
Bob opened up his Bible and read, "'And I hated life, because the work that has been done under the sun was calamitous from my standpoint, for everything was vanity and a striving after the wind. And I, even I, hated all my hard work at which I was working hard under the sun.'"
"That proves my point," Arthur beamed, "that Solomon was presenting what man in all his wisdom concluded apart from the wisdom of God. So when he says that the spirit of man is the same as the spirit in a beast and that they all share the same fate, and all the other things he says along these lines, we know enough to value God's thoughts on these matters more highly.
"And God the Son's own thoughts were that the dead still existed consciously in hades. Would you read us his words in Luke 20:37, 38, Ted?"
"'But that the dead are raised up even Moses disclosed, in the account of the thornbush, when he calls Jehovah 'the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob.' He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living, for they are all living to him.'"
"Is God mistaken," Arthur asked, "or are they all living? Jesus says they are raised, not will be raised."
"In order to explain that," Bob replied, "we turn to Romans 4:17 and read, 'God, who makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were.' They are alive to God in his memory of them. Since he is going to resurrect them by putting his memory of them into a body, it is as if they are already living from his standpoint.
"If I were to tell you things that aren't true as if they were true, what would I be?" Arthur asked.
"A liar," Bob replied.
"Is God a liar?"
"Of course not."
"Then how can we understand it when it says he calls the things that are not as though they were? It must be referring to God's ability to prophesy an event yet future. But you will notice that it does not say that God calls the dead alive. No, it says he makes the dead alive and also prophesies. So it can hardly be used to mean that Abraham is dead when God says he's alive.
"We also know that Moses and Elijah were alive in Jesus' day because the apostles saw them on the mountain with Jesus as recorded in Matthew 17:3, 4. Were they really there or did Jesus trick them into thinking they saw someone living who was really dead? If it was part of Jesus' teaching, as it is of yours, that the dead are nonexistent, it certainly wasn't in his best interests as 'the great teacher' to show them two dead people talking with him, especially without explaining to them that it was all a hoax."
"It wasn't a trick or a hoax," Bob protested, "It was a vision."
"And a vision is a lie?"
"No, it's putting a sight into your mind rather than seeing it with your eyes."
"And God puts wrong thoughts in our minds?"
"No."
"Then when the apostles saw Moses and Elijah alive, it was correct to think of them this way?"
"It was a correct thought, having come from God, but they weren't really alive."
"Then it was wrong to think of them as alive. You have a paradox."
"I don't know how to answer that, exactly," Richard offered, "but I do believe we've been neglecting a lot of solid Scriptures in support of our view which I'd like to introduce now if I may.
"1 Timothy 6:16 tells us that this immortality that you would have us bestow upon all mankind as a naturally inherent thing belongs to only one: Jesus, 'the one alone having immortality.'"
"Doesn't Jehovah have immortality?" Arthur asked.
"Yes, of course."
"So then, at least one other person has immortality besides Jesus. How, then, can it say that only Jesus possesses immortality?"
"The verse is speaking in reference to kings. Jesus is the only king that has immortality."
"Isn't Jehovah the 'king forever' according to Psalm 10:16?"
"Yes."
"Then all that this verse must be saying," Arthur concluded, "is that of all the earthly kings, none of them is an immortal king like Jesus; his rulership won't ever be ended by death as all theirs will. I can't disagree with that: all rulers and kings die, and when they do they're no longer kings, so they can't be immortal kings, but they're still immortal souls; all they lose is their kingship. Pray continue."
"All right," Richard went on, "the Bible says of Abraham and the ancient men of faith: 'In faith all these died, although they did not get the fulfillment of the promises.' (Hebrews 11:13) Yet you say that they didn't die and were living in Paradise when Paul wrote this! You insist the soul is immortal, yet Paul said, 'This which is corruptible must put on incorruption, and this which is mortal must put on immortality. But when this which is mortal puts on immortality, then the saying will take place that is written: "Death is swallowed up forever."' (1 Corinthians 15:53, 54) What would you say 'puts on' immortality? Certainly not the body. What then? You'd say the spirit and the soul, and thereby you would be admitting that the spirit and soul are mortal and are only immortal if and when they put on immortality. So you'd agree with us that man is mortal and it's only through earning God's favor that one earns immortality.
"Man, then is inherently mortal," Richard concluded. "He doesn't fly off to heaven as a spirit when he dies, neither does anyone descend to hell fire. Since only those God favors are granted the gift of immortality, the wicked certainly won't be hanging around after death in torment. When they die, they're totally dead."
"Ted," Arthur began, "Richard seems to think that even though the spirit flies away to God at death, man doesn't. This stems from his inability to see that man is the spirit. To help him would you read Psalm 90:10 for us?"
"’In themselves the days of our years are seventy years; and if because of special mightiness they are eighty years, yet their insistence is on trouble and hurtful things; for it must quickly pass by, and away we fly.’"
"Moses, here, seems to disagree with you, Richard," Arthur taunted, "he says 'away we fly', not 'away something that isn't us flies' when we die."
'He was speaking poetically, not literally," Richard observed.

Arthur took a deep breath and said: "That's where the whole problem lies, as I'm sure we've amply demonstrated today. Do we take something literally or symbolically; do we apply the right definition to the word in question or make up a new one for each difficulty; do we allow our preconceived notions to interpret each verse or listen for the spirit's guidance? It's impossible to decide any matter this way. We are both right and both wrong, as our dear Brother Ted so aptly pointed out last time about the Trinity. In the end, when all is said and done, there is no clear-cut victory. We aren't dealing with intellectual matters, and so no amount of discussion, no matter how reasonable, can present us with a rational choice between the two views. In desperation we almost wish there were some alternative -- not a synthesis of the two, but something entirely different. But we must fight off such a fatalistic view and choose by faith rather than mere reason. That's what it comes down to in the end.
"We can't say that it makes any difference in anyone's life whether he believes God is a Trinity or not; it doesn't make him a better person. We have to look further then. Are the people who believe this way living better lives and making a better contribution to society, even though it may have very little to do with this particular belief we're trying, in vain, to decide upon? If so, that's the thing that should ultimately influence our choice since there is no other way of choosing rationally other than flipping a coin."
"That's not rational," Richard commented.
"No, that's a joke," Arthur replied, looking very tired. "I feel like joining Mr. Jandle now in a nap, so let's wrap this up. Is there anything anyone would like to say in conclusion? How about you, Cynthia, what do you think of all this bickering?"
"Well, it was interesting but rather futile, as you say. I believe in the immortality of the soul because I want to live forever. I guess you could call that wishful thinking, but really, Ted told me one of the reasons for believing in the Bible is that God has seen to it that all our desires are fulfilled. When he created thirst and hunger in us he had already provide water and food in abundance. And since he put in us the desire to know, to be curious, and search for meaning in life, he provided us with the answers in his written word. So why couldn't you use the same argument and say that since people desire to live forever, God has provided for that too by making us immortal?"
She was looking into Ted’s eyes as she said these things since Arthur's were closed in exhaustion.
"Life would seem so futile and vain if it ended -- so unjust! Think of all the wicked people who make out well in this life getting all they want while the honest people can't make ends meet. No meek person inherits the earth in this life: we must be immortal in order for these injustices to be taken care of in the next, like the rich man and Lazarus story points out.
"But the most beautiful explanation of immortality I read in Plato, whom I consider a poet in his own right, where Socrates asks whether or not opposites come from opposites."
"What did he mean by that?" Ted asked.
"Get my copy of Plato off the shelf, Ted," Arthur instructed, "You will find the passage she's referring to in Phaedo around section 71."
Ted did as he was told and handed the opened book to Cyn who said, "Yeah, here it is. Socrates says, 'I want to show that in all opposites there is of necessity a similar alternation; I mean to say, for example, that anything which becomes greater must become greater after being less.' 'True,' says his friend.
"'And that which becomes less must have been once greater and then have become less.' 'Yes.'
"'And the weaker is generated from the stronger, and the swifter from the slower.' 'Very true.'
"'And the worse is from the better, and the more just is from the more unjust.' 'Of course,'
"'And this is true of all opposites? And are we convinced that all of them are generated out of opposites?' 'Yes.'
"Let's see," she said, getting nervous, "let me skip some of this here, although it's all really good, and just read the last part.
"'Then suppose,' Socrates says, 'that you analyze life and death to me in the same manner' (as he just analyzed sleeping and waking as one coming from the other). 'Is not death opposed to life?' 'Yes,' his friend answers.
"'And they are generated from each other?' 'Yes.'
"What is generated from the living?' 'The dead.'
"'And what from the dead?' 'I can only say in answer -- the living.'
"'Then the living, whether things or person, Cebes, are generated from the dead?' 'That is clear,' he replied.
"'Then the inference is that our souls exist in the world below?' 'That is true.'"
"I have to disagree with all that," Richard responded, though Ted wondered how it was possible to disagree with something so obviously true coming from Cyn's delicious lips.
"If you take your formula away from carefully selected examples, it falls apart. For instance, fire generates cold ashes, but cold ashes don't generate fire. And that's how it really is with our lives."
Bob, emboldened by Richard's comeback, commented, "Yeah, and if you say that God had to provide for everyone's desires, you'd have him creating pornography and dope as well."
Bob's combativeness against the gentle Cynthia got her dander up, and she trounced them all: "That other alternative you almost wish you could grasp since you can't make head or tail out of what the Bible says on any given subject is obvious. The Bible is a mass of contradiction, supporting and denying all."
She sighed nervously, looking toward Arthur for a reaction -- she'd come to respect him as much as Ted had -- but there was none. So she quickly concluded, "Some of the Bible writers evidently thought the soul was immortal, and others didn't. And now you're both stuck trying to deny half the Bible and make it agree with the other half. No wonder you're all so frustrated and depressed! You listen to some antique puzzle-book instead of to your own hearts."
Ted frowned at her and she gulped an "I'm sorry," though she wasn't really.
All eyes turned to Arthur who'd long since dozed off, permitting them to show themselves out quietly without another word to ring in their ears but Cyn’s petulance.
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 8: Trouble
September 23 found Paul and Cyn waiting together in the back of the Kingdom Hall for Ted. The meeting that night had been depressing because of the announcement of Sandy Wilson's public reproof. The atmosphere was subdued: no loud laughs or animated conversations were heard other than the exaggerated ones directly around Sandy herself where the brothers and sisters went out of their way to make her feel better.
After awhile Jim Stokes came up to them and began talking with Paul. He was in the same boat they were in: he wanted to leave but had to wait for David Nelson to finish talking with Ted in his van.
The night was a little chilly, so David started the engine to warm things up. Unfortunately his voice was at approximately the same frequency as the engine, and many of his words were lost because of it.
As Ted sat there attentively, he felt sleepy from the droning, monotone words, and several times his eyelids began to droop. But he got the gist of what Elder Nelson meant to convey, even if he missed all the subtle reasoning behind it: he was no longer to study alone with Cyn. David had somehow been under the impression that she was Ted's sister, and so had said nothing before this. But someone brought to his attention that a single brother was conducting a Bible study with an unbaptized woman. He put an emphatic stop to it and assigned his own wife, Elvira, to take over the study.
When they were at last reunited in Paul's car, Ted wondered how to break the news to Cyn. As he wondered, he was grateful for Paul's convulsive mouth. "Everyone's telling me to change jobs," Paul said, "and I think I better start listening. The other night I accidentally took home some money, you know, because I'm supposed to empty out the register when I go and bring it over to their other bookstore. But I forgot 'cause I was tired, you know, and I brought it home with me.
"Then last night when I brought it back they're all saying that I'm short like about some fifty bucks! Shit! I could take it and short 'em anytime. Why should I be obvious about it and take it home first? So they're all giving me a hassle about it now saying I better bring it back. And I never took it. And now everyone at the hall is telling me I better get outta there 'cause Jehovah don't like that kinda stuff. But if I don't sell it someone else will just the same, you know."
Ted had worked up his nerve now, and after quickly agreeing that Paul should quit post-haste, turned to Cyn and announced: "Brother Nelson told me that it's wrong for us to continue studying together."
"How's that?" she asked with evident annoyance.
"Well, because it doesn't look right for me to be in your apartment all alone."
"I wasn't aware you were all alone;" she replied, "I thought you were with me."
"Well, of course that's what I meant. People might get the wrong idea."
"Nobody cares," she insisted, "Nobody in my building or in the whole neighborhood is so old-fashioned as to judge a person because of that. They've all gone through a sexual revolution and are free to express their feelings."
The way she emphasized "they" clearly implied that only Witnesses, out of all the people in the world, were restricted in expressing their feelings. Ted felt it better not to comment on this, so instead he told her that Elvira Nelson was to take over the study.
"No," she said, shaking her head, "Don't I have any say in this? I don't want that woman to study with me. I won't have a Bible study anymore if I can't have it with you. Remember, I told you that you were the reason I was coming into the 'Truth'; take that away and what have you got left? Nothing. I’ll just stop studying in that case."
He sat there wondering what to do next. As long as his intentions were honorable and he managed to control himself sufficiently, there was really no Biblical commandment against his studying alone with her; it was just David Nelson's ruling. And if it meant choosing between letting someone drop out of the Truth or obeying a man-made rule -- even if the man who made it was an elder -- the choice seemed clear.
So he asked her, "Is that final? You're giving us this ultimatum?"
"Yes. I will not study under that woman. I want only you, otherwise I’ll quit it altogether. I know most of it now anyway."
"That's just when you need to study the most, when you think you know it all." He meant to smile at this, but he was serious and spoke from his own experience, so he continued to frown.
"C'mon, man," Paul advised, "why don't you keep studying with her? I'm behind you all the way. Why let him tell you what to do?"
"Because he's a spiritually appointed elder, that's why."
"Didn't you tell me," she asked, "that Bob Morrow was going to be an elder too?"
The inference was obvious, so he didn't reply. Instead he pondered what it would be like to take orders from Bob. It was a repulsive thought. But David Nelson was no Bob Morrow, and he deserved the respect of his position.
Divining his thoughts she asked, "If David Nelson is so much better than Bob, then he'll understand and change his position after you explain the situation to him, won't he?"
"Yes, I believe he will," Ted answered in a subdued voice.
They had reached her apartment building and the two of them got out as Paul turned the radio on for company.
"So how's school going?" he asked as they hid behind the familiar tree in the front yard.
"Which one?" she asked. "I really love being with the little kids at Longfellow. They're all so precious and fun to be with. But college is really a drag this year. I've got some antique teachers who haven't had a new idea in fifty years. How's everything with you?"
"I kind of miss those poetry meetings on Wednesdays now, though I hate to admit it. They were sort of fun sometimes."
She smiled at the admission and said, "There's talk of another class like that being formed next semester, but it'll be accredited."
"Well, everything else is the same with me," he said, "same old job that gets more boring every day, elders still challenge my being one of the anointed, still in love with an unbeliever. The only new obstacle is our studying together without elder approval."
"We're going to anyway, aren't we?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes, we are."
"Then kiss me goodnight and be on your way," she instructed, and he eagerly obeyed.
At work the next day he was called into the office. Wondering what he had done wrong, he announced himself, and a busy typist told him to take a seat. He wasn't too worried, as this place didn't really employ him; he worked for the daily labor agency. As he sat there idly, wishing he'd brought a study-book, he recalled how Richard told him once that he was silently praying to Jehovah every other minute some days. Ted had meant to get into this habit, but hadn't up to this time. So he began addressing the Almighty with the usual requests: to guide Cynthia into the Truth (he always used her full name when speaking to Jehovah), to help him know whether he was truly born-again, and to help the brothers being persecuted.
Bill Jackson walked in and Ted quickly ended his prayer with "I ask all this in Jesus' name" (otherwise all that went before wouldn't reach God, he figured). After a word or two with the typist, and after checking some things off his clipboarded papers, Bill commanded without looking up: "Come with me, Ted."
They walked into the break-room, which was empty at this time of day. Bill bought them both a can of soda pop. After they'd sat and sipped, Bill said, "How'd you like to come and work for us and make more money?"
"I don't know," Ted responded in surprise, "I don't want to seem ungrateful for your kind offer, but I enjoy the flexibility of this daily labor business. It gives me days off whenever I want to go out in service, and that's very important to me."
"We could arrange a four-day work week for you. How's that sound?"
He'd been getting a little weary of service now that he had to regard Phyllis (who was still pioneering) as a married woman. So one weekday in service with the pioneers was an attractive idea. "That does sound good," he admitted, "but I think the daily labor place made me sign an agreement when I started with them saying that I wouldn't work for any of their clients up to a year after I quit working for them."
"Yes," Bill said matter-of-factly, "well that's a fairly standard clause on such contracts, but we can safely ignore it. They're hard to enforce and rarely does anyone go through all the trouble of trying to enforce them."
"That's not the point." Ted replied.
"I know, " Bill anticipated, "the point is your conscience. You said you wouldn't do something and now you're going to do it. But if no one really cares, why should you? I can't think that God very much cares whether you work for them or us, or if you break a man-made rule which works against your own best interests, especially since what's good for you, as one of his Witnesses, is good for the spread of his Word."
"Which I'll be spreading less from working more," Ted reminded him.
"But you'll be able to contribute more financially to the cause," Bill argued. "You’ll pay your rent on time and all your other bills which has got to be a good witness to all creditors and neighbors. But the biggest reason of all is that you'll be able to afford to marry Cyn Rose."
"How do you know I want to marry her?"
"Isn’t that why you've been working so hard here, thinking of her?"
"No, we're taught to work as to Jehovah, and so we all work extra hard," he smiled, realizing Bill was too smart and saw through all this, "but I guess thinking of her has something to do with it too."
"All right, in the interests of business, I'd like you to think more of her than of Jehovah; I think it'll increase productivity. You'll be working in and out of the office as an errand boy, and we don't want you talking about the Bible to everyone in the process."
"That's rather an unusual restriction, isn't it?" Ted asked. "Doesn't everyone have the right to talk about whatever they please?"
"Certainly, but not on company time. You can preach during breaks if you like. But we don't want you wasting time when you're supposed to be delivering a message by witnessing to someone along the way. Can you understand that?"
"Yes," Ted agreed, "I can limit my Kingdom messages to breaks."
Bill twisted his mouth in a half-pucker and looked thoughtful as if he was debating whether he should really say what next he said; "What's a smart guy like you doing mixed up with them anyway? Haven't you seen through them yet?"
"I've seen through them," Ted responded matter-of-factly.
"Then why waste your time with them?" Bill asked.
"Excuse me, I don't think you understood," Ted answered with an inclination of his head to a forward-right tilt which conveyed his feeling of utter control of the situation as well as having the upper hand, "I have seen through them -- all various personalities from worst to best -- to the bright Truth that stands behind them and shines through them."
"And what truth is that, exactly?"
"The only truth there is," Ted answered in slight surprise at the question, as one dragged from the heights of abstractness to the depths of specificity.
"Quantum physics?" Bill asked with a smile, answered only by Ted’s perplexity. "Is quantum physics true or false?"
"I don't even know what it is," Ted admitted.
"Do you need to as long as you have the Witnesses to base truth on? Look, you just said that they have the only truth there is. So do they teach quantum physics or not?"
"No."
"Then it must fall outside the category of 'the only truth there is', mustn't it?"
"Well, I don't know."
"You disappoint me. You'd have to know according to what you said about them having the only truth there is. If they don't have this, then it must not be true. Or else you must be struggling to change your definition of what truth they have."
"Yes, well, what I mean is that they have all the most important truths, the truths about Jehovah God and future life and God's purpose."
"Oh, I see. Well, that's certainly more limiting than what you said at first. Do you think it's right to limit yourself in this way?"
"Yes. In this system where we're so far from perfection our minds can't hold that much. So we fill them with Godly truths, 'whatever thing is chaste, reasonable, good for upbuilding --'"
"Yes, I know the Scripture." Bill interrupted, "But do you really know how much you're missing in the writings of the great philosophers, poets, and classic literature?"
"I’m missing the second-best of what the mind of man has to offer," Ted replied. "But instead I'm overflowing with the Word of God and men's spiritually-guided comments on it."
"Did you know," Bill asked, "that Gregory the Great burnt the Library of Rome whilst proclaiming, 'Ignorance is the mother of devotion'?"
"Is that supposed to remind me of myself?"
"Does it?"
"No. We don't encourage ignorance and we don't go around burning books. We dispense all our knowledge free of charge. We go out to people on our own time and bring them knowledge of God's Kingdom, the very knowledge Christendom keeps from them."
"I didn't know the Watchtower was free," Bill said.
"The information in it is free," Ted clarified, "the paper and ink costs a little, though."
"I see. And tell me, when you buy one of your little 25-cent books, how much do you pay for it?"
"Twenty cents."
"And you sell it for 25 cents?"
"That's right," Ted admitted.
"So you make 5-cents profit on each one?"
"No. It's not profit because we spend much more than that in gas and time to get to the territories and contact the people."
"I see. So it's not only the paper and ink they're paying for, but part of your gas and time as well. So you were in error before when you said you go out on your own time free of charge to witness to the people; you are in fact reimbursed on some of it.
"But," Bill went on, "there seems to be little practical difference between burning a book and prohibiting its reading. The fact that you are surrounded with the best works that minds can offer and are forbidden to read any of them is a crime. Why do you suppose the Witnesses don't want you reading books other than the ones they print?"
"Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to Jehovah. And the Bible warns us to 'Look out: perhaps there may be someone who will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of this world and not according to Christ.' But I'd better stop quoting Scripture to you; I don't want your homilophobia to start acting up," Ted said sarcastically.
"I want to apologize about that day," Bill said, "I always get carried away in a group like that. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings; it was stupid of me, and I hope you'll accept my apology."
Ted thought he was kidding for a moment, but he looked sincere, so Ted accepted.
"But tell me," Bill continued, "do you agree with the statement by the poet William Blake that 'Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed'?"
"No, people believe whatever they want to believe," Ted replied.
"Do you count yourself among 'people'?" Bill asked.
"Of course."
"So you believe whatever you want without reference to facts or reason?"
"No. I believe the Truth." Ted stated.
"But don't you know that everyone thinks the same thing?" Bill asked. "I can say I believe the truth too, because whatever I believe must appear to me to be truth. Otherwise I wouldn't believe it. So how are you different? And if you're not, then what purpose do you serve in witnessing if everyone believes whatever they want to? How can you persuade them to stop believing their way and start believing your way?"
"You sure make everything difficult," Ted sighed.
"Well, don't you see the way out of the difficulty?"
"Yeah, let's go back to what the poet said and this time we'll agree that at least some people will believe the truth when they hear it."
"But that wasn't at all what he said," Bill replied, "He said when they 'understand it'. That's the whole point. When you understand something as true, you can't help but believe it. It's like the two terms: 'understanding as true' and 'believing' are synonymous. The problem you meet with at the doors in your witnessing work is not from people 'not wanting' to believe, but from not understanding. Otherwise your work would be totally futile since no one wants to change beliefs."
"I don't agree with that. When people hear about the paradise God's going to make of this world and how they can get in on it, then they want to believe."
"Ah, paradise!" Bill exclaimed in a sigh, "'Wherever the tree of knowledge stands is paradise' according to Nietzsche, and I agree. And knowledge precedes their wanting in the instance you gave; those who first understand what you're saying about paradise, then want to believe in it. But to reach their understanding you have to overcome many obstacles you can't even begin to be aware of. They've lived all their lives with a certain world view which you try to change within five minutes or less with mere words instead of a lifetime of experience spent in reconfirming and strengthening their own view. It's nearly impossible. There are only two ways in which you could possibly make a convert in this manner: either you'd have to have the truth and be able to demonstrate it within the allotted time to their understanding; or else you’d have to meet up with a temporarily unbalanced person, a person on the verge of changing his way of life. But keeping all this in mind, I want to ask you another question."
"Where is all this leading?" Ted asked before Bill had the chance to pose his own question.
"Perhaps to a better understanding of each other and an improved working relationship for you; perhaps only to a number on your Witness time card. But listen. You think you have the truth and you carefully arrange your presentation of it so as to capture the attention of the people you preach to. Yet you hardly ever meet with success. Now, judging from that experience, what danger is there in allowing you to read philosophy books? These, the Watchtower claims, are the empty deceptions of men, not the truth, and they are not carefully arranged so as to be easily understood. And further, you are not some naive householder, ready prey for every misleading writer. You're a Witness, fully indoctrinated in the Truth. If the clear-cut presentation of the Truth fails so often to hook an unwary householder, how can you worry about some vague philosopher snaring your truth-encrusted soul? If these 'worldly men' don't have the truth, you surely won't change your belief, will you?"
"You're right. There's little danger of that happening."
"Then we come back to our original question: why won't they let you read such things? Why do they insist you stick almost exclusively to their own publications? To me, looking in from the outside, there's one very obvious answer: if you were to read such books, you'd believe in them because they are the truth. You couldn't help but change your belief once you understood the truth. Why else would they ban them?"
"Because there's a lot of evil things in those books and we are to hate evil just as God does," Ted explained. "Most philosophers and a lot of poets say that God is dead. Well, I know different, so why should I waste my time on them?"
"If I may be allowed to quote another philosopher," Bill replied, "'Hatred of evil is itself a kind of bondage to evil.' If you only hate philosophy because of some third-hand, distorted account of it, you are in a bondage of fear to it. It really has the upper hand over you. But if you understand it, you are equal to it (if it is true) or superior to it (if it is false). I, for instance, understand your religion completely and am thus superior to it in knowing it to be false."
"I don't believe you," Ted responded in shock, "you can't understand the Truth and not believe it unless you've committed the unforgivable sin against the holy spirit."
"You've covered every possibility but one," Bill said with a sly smile, "the most obvious of all: it simply isn't the truth."
"But it is. It really is," Ted pleaded. "I know I could convince you if you had an open mind."
"No you can't. But whenever you get tired of slaving away for the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society Corporation we'll talk again, and I’ll convince you that it isn't the truth."
Workers began filing into the break-room for the first break of the day as the two left. Bill ran through all Ted's new duties for the next hour and then left him on his own.
It was a short day thanks to running around on the various errands and quitting half an hour early to fill in an application. Before he knew it, he was on his way home feeling good in spite of the fact that Bill had frightened him a little. He never met anyone who knew the Truth and didn't believe in it. "That's as bad as an 'Evil Slave'," he thought to himself as he walked home from the bus-stop.
Bobby was sitting on the front porch steps as Ted approached.
"Whatcha doin' out here, Bobby?" Ted asked.
"Nothin' but stayin' outta trouble."
From inside they could hear Vonnie's voice raised against Sherri, alternating with less articulate pleas and whines of the latter.
"What's going on in there?" Ted asked.
"It's Sherri; she wants to go to a birthday party."
"Haven't you kids gotten over that stuff yet?" Ted asked unsympathetically.
Bobby looked up at him in dismay. "It's her birthday." He paused, hoping the magnitude of her problem might sink in. But Ted’s own birthday had been months ago and he had forgotten any inclinations towards celebrating that he may have had.
"See, this girl she knows from school," Bobby explained, "Laura I think's her name, they always give each other a birthday party at each other's houses. Sherri gave Laura a birthday party last April at our house when we lived with our Mom. And tomorrow is Sherri's birthday and there's gonna be a party for her at Laura's house. But Vonnie and Dad won't let her go."
"Well," Ted advised, "it'll all blow over in a day or two, I think. You kids have to make these little sacrifices to train for the bigger ones we'll all have to go through in Armageddon."
"When's that?"
"Soon. Could be tomorrow. We never know, so we always have to stay alert and be good."
"I don't know." Bobby replied, "They've been saying that for so long… I don't know." He drew a crude circle in the sand on the step with his sandled foot and stared hard at it, then added, "But I guess I believe -- I don't have any choice but to believe."
Ted, not knowing what to say, went upstairs to greet a yawning and stretching Paul.
"Hey man, how's it goin’?" Paul asked.
"Great! I just got promoted with a raise today!"
"Great, man. I'm goin' down to the gas station down on Washington and 53rd. I hear they need an attendant."
"That's great! You’re getting out of the dirty book store."
"Yeah, they've been coming down too hard on me every night about that missing fifty bucks. Now they've been saying they're not gonna pay me till I turn it in, so the heck with that; I'm through."
"Glad to hear it. Want something to eat?"
"No, I'll catch something on the way there." looking like a prostitute's manager with his purple wide-brimmed hat and ruffled shirt, Paul walked out the door amidst stifled laughter from Ted. The day had been very good to Ted and he slept soundly that night through all Joey's snoring.
It had been decided that Thursday (the next day), would be Ted's day off. So he went downstairs early and called Phyllis, asking her to pick him up. He felt funny about doing it, but it was the best way to get out in service. After he put down the receiver he noticed that Vonnie had stopped folding laundry and was absently staring into space. He felt he should say something to her. "I hear you had trouble with Sherri’s birthday coming up."
"Yes, indeed. The little monster." Vonnie smiled, "She thinks I have to let her go because her mother used to. They've all got a long way to go, I'm afraid, Jeannie's a little dear because she's been brought up in the Truth, but can you imagine being that young and suddenly being asked to give up everything in the world for something you don't completely understand? I just tell them all to be more like Jeannie."
"Don't they resent that?"
"No," she laughed, "how could anyone resent Jeannie?"
"Well, there's Phyllis; I've got to go."
As soon as he got in the car he again felt pressure to make small talk: "How's married life treating you?" he asked.
"Just fine," she smiled, "No one's going to be at the hall this morning for the service meeting. Eric had to do something else and everyone else decided to do return visits. So do you have any territory you want to work?"
"Oh, that's a surprise!" he said. "So it's just you and me then? No, I never check out any territories since I don't have a car. I just help others do theirs."
"Well, I've got some not-at-homes we could do. How's that sound?"
"Sounds fine to me."
After the third house in the area, they had only spoken to one person: an old man who couldn't hear them. Now they stood outside a security apartment complex, pressing buttons and speaking through an intercom to voices that ceased after they announced who they were.
Phyllis pushed the button for apartment 206. "Yes?" came a woman's voice through the speaker.
"Good morning, how are you today?" Phyllis began.
"Fine, fine. What do you want?"
"We're a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses speaking to people today about God's Kingdom and what it will do for them."
"Well, listen," the voice came back sharply, "I’m a feminist and I think all you Bible-pounders are a bunch of sons of bitches."
Phyllis smiled slyly at Ted and asked, "Well, since you’re a feminist, Shouldn't you say 'daughter of a bitch'?"
Ted laughed and, catching the twinkle in Phyllis’ eye rejoined: "While you're at it, why pick on the mother, make it 'daughter of a cur'."
"What are you saying?" the voice laughed.
Phyllis wasn't sure if the woman had heard Ted, so she repeated with improvement, "We're saying if you're a feminist you should say 'offspring of a mut' or something like that." By this time they were all laughing at their silliness and the lady in 206 buzzed the door open for them. They opened it and went up to her apartment.
Softened by their joking, she invited them right in. On her door was a bumper sticker with the words "EQUAL RIGHTS N.O.W." with a fist through a circle above a plus sign. A tall brunette in her late twenties opened the door and immediately shook hands with Phyllis.
"Hi, I’m Janet Freeman," she said, and invited them in.
Ted noted that the inside of the apartment looked normal enough.
Phyllis captured Janet’s whole attention: she glanced only briefly at Ted when he spoke, and then with contempt.
"Well, I'm glad to see that you people let the women speak, anyway," Janet said, "some religions don't even allow that much! But I’ll bet they don't let you in to the top positions in the church, do they?"
"No," Phyllis concurred, "the elders and ministerial servants are all men as the Bible directs they should be. The woman's place is to be in subjection to her husband and the brothers in general as God commanded way back in the Garden of Eden."
"But that's all a bunch of crap written by men!" Janet informed them. "There's not one word in the Bible written by a woman, so how can it be a guide as to how women should run their lives? Of course it tries to push our heads under men's feet; men are insecure since they secretly know deep down that we are their superiors. So they tried to give a religious slant to treating us as inferior to them so we'd dutifully blind ourselves to the facts."
"What facts are those?" Ted asked.
"Facts such as 'men are flukes'," she replied, giving him a scornful look before fixing her gaze on Phyllis once more as she rattled off her facts: "All fetuses start out as female; all men once had a vagina which, unfortunately, went awry. Nature tries every time to produce a female, but sometimes fails to produce a second X- chromosome. Instead, an inferior Y-chromosome takes its place and a male is the result."
"How can you say one chromosome is inferior to another?" Ted demanded.
"By looking at the facts. A Y-Chromosome is simply an incomplete X. And the results of its incompleteness are catastrophic: Y-chromosomes fail to inhibit any bad traits in the X-chromosomes, whereas another X would cancel these out. This is why, with extremely rare exceptions, only man get hemophilia (the bleeder's disease) and over thirty other congenital defects. Eight percent of men are color blind whereas only one-half of one percent of women suffer from this because their 'XX' composition cancels out the problems that men's 'XY' composition fail to alleviate. That's why from fertilization on the male has a higher mortality rate. Women always live longer than men under the same circumstances. And, all other things being equal, the product that lasts longest is the superior one. Woman is constitutionally stronger than man. It is only muscular superiority that man can lay claim to, and this is a dubious advantage considering his shorter life-span and all the rest he gives up for it."
"How is woman constitutionally stronger?" Phyllis asked with her every-ready smile.
"She can withstand starvation, exposure, shock, and illness better. She has greater stamina and lives longer. This is due to the fact that she has a faster pulse; her heart and the circulation of her blood are more stable and resilient, capable of bending with changes in condition because she's used to experiencing real emotion rather than suppressing it as men have to. Her oxygen transport is more economical, and her muscular metabolism can cope with greater strain.
"Looking at it biologically," she continued, "we find that the most primitive species use one orifice for excreting, urinating, and reproducing. But as we ascend the zoological scale, these various functions become more and more divided into separate openings. Men have two openings for the three functions, and think they're the highest beings on earth. But we women have three, and we know better.
"We are more alive to our environment," she went on excitedly, "with faster reflexes we respond quicker to all physical and mental stimuli. That's why we are better at all clerical work or anything that requires accuracy and speed. We also have greater sensory acuteness for color, so we see more beauty in the world than men. We can feel deeper emotion than men. Evolution has provided us with an extra capacity to love and feel for our children, which we can extend in love for others as well. We have deeper depressions and more euphoric highs whereas men repress their emotions, resulting in a much higher male population in mental institutions. They have more nervous breakdowns and four times as many ulcers. Since he's incapable of controlling his emotions and can only repress them, he finds he must drink in order to be able to laugh or cry or feel at all. That's why alcoholism is much more prevalent amongst them. Men have much lower thresholds of frustration, which is why 'juvenile delinquent' always conjures up a picture of a boy and not a girl.
"This motherly love I spoke of has resulted in something else that even men generally recognize: women's intuition. It's been noted that pregnant women have a remarkable psychic ability as regards predicting a dangerous situation. This helps them take precautions and save the life of the future generation."
"C'mon now," Ted said wearily, 'you've gone on for some time and you’re really getting into some nonsense now. I don't know how much of what you said is true, but none of it matters much or proves that women are superior to men. It's clear that they are inferior since the Son of God decided to appear to men in the form of a man and not that of a woman. Man was created first; woman was just an afterthought, meant to be a helper and companion to man. None of Jesus' twelve apostles were women either."
The woman was quietly laughing over what Ted had said as Phyllis commented, "But I have to agree about women's intuition. I can't say that's nonsense. Remember what happened to me when I was with Eric out in service? I had the premonition not to go up to the door that had behind it a man holding a knife. Eric wanted to take that door."
"That was Jehovah protecting you," Ted corrected. But the explanation bothered him because of the mind's amazing ability to rapidly associate one idea with another far off the topic. The particular thought that worried him now was the conversation he'd had with Cyn that first day. When she asked him why God failed to protect the nine-year-old girl in the Texas church from the collapsing roof. "God isn't acting towards us in such ways at the present time," he had told Cyn. Yet now, in order to disprove women's intuition he was arguing that God was acting in such ways towards them.
"Then why did he convey his warning to a woman instead of to a man?" Janet asked. "Why dirty himself by dealing directly with a lesser being when a higher one was at hand?"
"Look," Ted responded, "you're dealing with things so abstract and vague that nothing can be settled. It doesn't make any difference in the long run how many openings a person's body has. What matters is that men, although they live shorter lives (and must therefore be working harder rather than sitting at home all day watching soap-operas), are smarter, more level-headed, and more productive than women. You said the longer lasting product must be superior 'all things being equal', but that's just it: all things are not equal. An ordinary rock lasts much longer than a chunk of uranium, but the uranium is much more valuable. So too with women and men. Men accomplish so much more in their briefer life spans that there is no question that the quality of their lives far outweighs the quantity of them. All the great chefs have been men. There has never been a woman chess champion. All the greatest deeds in the world have been accomplished by men. 'By their fruits you will know them.'"
"All you just said proves in one individual case how stupid men are," she replied. "Don't you ever know the facts before you speak? Men are not smarter than women! It's the other way around! Girls begin talking and using sentences sooner than boys. They score higher on I.Q. tests, begin reading earlier, and far surpass boys in grade school. It isn't till high school that young women feel our culture bear down on them with its dictum 'IT'S UNLADYLIKE TO BE SMART' and 'COMPETITION IS A MASCULINE TRAIT' so they unconsciously hold back in their efforts and allow the boys to feel smarter. But that's a culturally imposed matter. If it weren't, women would continue to surpass men at everything but brute strength.
"Your idea that men are smarter just couldn't be further off the mark," she said with contempt. "Women take the lead in every kind of intelligence. They have more vivid mental imagery, for one thing. They think logically with both hemispheres of the brain, whereas men do logical thinking only in the brain's left hemisphere. So we excel in logical memory, having twice the capacity. So who has the 'level-headedness' you spoke of? You men are lopsided in this regard, using only half your brain! And who is it that starts all the wars? The so-called level-headed men! You just couldn't be further off the mark in what you say.
"The X-chromosome is a gentle one, according to scientists, and the Y-chromosome is an aggressive one. This accounts for man's aggressive tendencies. A disproportionate amount of criminals of the excessively violent type have an extra Y-chromosome, an 'XYY' composition, proving that the Y is an offensive one. It's up to us women to rise up and take our rightful place as world leaders. Only we can bring peace to the world. You men are genetically ill equipped for such a job as is proven, not only by biology, but 6,000 years of history. And it is only because throughout this history we've been kept down and forbidden to make meaningful contributions to society that you can proudly boast of the accomplishments of men. Women have had to wage a long, hard fight in every area before they were allowed to begin the real work of their calling. But where they did, their names are still remembered for their monumental effects. Such women as Marie Currie…"
As she went on to recount the many life stories of her heroines, Ted began underlining in the current Watchtower, glancing up every now and then in astonishment at how Phyllis was enthralled, soaking up every word. At last, in a lull of historical recounting, Ted looked up from his magazine and got down to business, ignoring all her words and offering her a Bible-study. Both Phyllis and she laughed a full two minutes at him before Phyllis spoke, asking her name and asking if she could return to hear more and exchange ideas. Janet agreed.
As soon as they got back into the car, Ted asked, "You're not seriously going to go back on a return visit to her, are you?"
"Sure, why not?"
"Why not?" he asked in astonishment, "Well, let's just say she didn't seem very receptive to the Truth."
"It'll take time. It always does," she reminded sagely, "just like Brother Olson used to say--"
"Yes, I know what Brother Olson used to say. He still says it as a matter of fact. I don't know why everyone talks about him like he's dead."
"You're just upset because she threatened your masculine ego," she laughed.
They were being far too truthful with each other for the conversation to continue. So they went routinely through the rest of the not-at-homes without extraneous comment.
It was early afternoon when he got back home. It was so peaceful there now that the kids were at school. The Johnson's door was open so he peeked in. "Anybody home?" he called.
Vonnie came around the corner from the bedroom and asked, "All done with service already?"
"Yeah. It was just Phyllis and me doing her not-at-homes today. We ran into a women's libber and she took up a lot of time."
"Oh, one of those," she laughed, "they'll talk your ear off all right. I'm going to start getting out in service more now that my days are free again. Of course I always wanted to take the whole flock out with me this last summer, but then I would've had to palm them off on whoever else went out, and Richard thought that wasn't really fair to them."
"Oh, I don't know. I've always enjoyed working with Jeannie."
"Yes, she's such a dear," Vonnie said with a smile. "It's the rest of them; you never know what they're going to say or do. And I'd hate to have them embarrass some brother or sister at the door. But maybe by next summer they'll be trained enough so we'll all be able to share in the ministry work.
"Have you studied for tonight's meeting yet?" she asked.
"No," he replied, "that's what I was going to do now. I think I'm reading tonight, so I like to go over it real well and look up any words I don't know."
"I’ll bet you do that anyway," she smiled, and then with a grimace added, "scratch that word 'bet'. I've been picking up bad habits like that from the kids. Anyway, bring your book down here and we can study together."
And so went the afternoon. They studied and laughed together until Joey, Bobby, and Jeannie walked in en masse.
"Where's Sherri?" Vonnie inquired before even saying hello.
"I don't know," they all answered in disharmonious unison.
Vonnie ran to the porch and looked down the street in both directions for a hopeful glimpse of the girl. Seeing nothing she hurried back in and picked up the phone. "I was worried she'd pull something like this," she said as her fingers nervously dialed. "You’re all sure that none of you saw her after school?"
There was no answer and the silence was taken for a negative.
"Hello, can I speak to Richard Johnson please ... If that girl ran off to that party ... Hello, Richard? Sherri's gone. She didn't come home from school today. No she isn't late; they're all supposed to meet at school and walk home together, you know that. I'll bet she ran off to that party at her friend's house. What was her name?" she asked Bobby.
"Laura."
"Laura what?"
"I don't know."
"That's just great. We don't even know her last name… What if she doesn't? All right then." She hung up abruptly. Anger filled her entire body. "We're not going to do anything till your father gets home. He thinks she'll be back by then. So go get cleaned up for supper."
"I'm sure she'll be back soon," Ted lied as he left.
But the hours rolled on and neither Richard nor Sherri came home.
At 6:30 Richard called to say he was just leaving work and would be home soon. At 6:45 Ted came downstairs with his study-book, wondering if there would still be a meeting. To his surprise all the chairs were already arranged for it and three of the Johnson kids were obediently in their places.
"No Sherri yet?" he asked.
"As you see," Vonnie replied, making her entrance from the bathroom and taking her place.
"Have you thought of calling the school and asking them if they know a Laura that's in any of Sherri's classes?" Ted asked.
"No, we're not going to do anything till Richard gets home, and he's not home yet."
The Nelson's arrived and cordially greeted them all. "An interesting study tonight," David commented, taking the front chair facing them all.
Elvira commented condescendingly: "We all look so nice tonight, sitting and waiting so good in our places," and smiled at everyone so that the children wouldn't feel singled out. Neither of them noticed the absence of Sherri.
Phyllis and Terry Barton along with Martha Dorsey came in with Richard, who still had his overalls on. They were laughing and talking as they entered.
"There's a hard-working man," David Nelson appraised.
Richard said hello to everyone before leaning over and whispering in Vonnie’s ear: "Is she back yet?"
Vonnie shook her head.
"Well," he said as he straightened up, "I've got to get washed up before the meeting." And off he went as Bob and Jack Morrow arrived.
Ted leaned over to Vonnie and said in a low voice, "Maybe we should all form a search party instead of having the meeting tonight."
Vonnie let out a screech of laughter which made Ted jerk back in surprise.
"Funny secrets you two are having?" Bob asked.
"Yes," Vonnie replied, "he just said we should all form a search party to go after someone whom no one's even noticed is missing."
"Someone's missing?" Elvira exclaimed.
"Where's Sherri?" Jack Morrow asked.
"She didn't come home from school today," Ted explained.
Some expressed alarm at this, but Richard emerged from the washroom just in time to soothe their troubled souls. "Don't worry, she just sneaked off to a party. It's not like we don't know where she is. She'll come home when it's done."
"I hope you'll punish her," Elvira expressed as David nodded his agreement.
"Oh yes, I've got the belt ready," Richard pointed out.
"If we're all ready, then," David announced, "let's ask Brother Evanston to ask Jehovah’s blessing on our meeting."
Everyone automatically bowed their heads but Ted. He was startled at their calm attitude and their planning punishment rather than worrying over Sherri’s safety.
"We don't know for sure that she went to that party," he said anxiously, "she might've been kidnapped or raped or something."
The others slowly looked up as it dawned on them that this wasn't a prayer.
"We just can't sit here and have an ordinary meeting when one of us is in potential danger," Ted argued.
"And what do you suggest we do?" David asked in his most patronizing voice.
"Call the police," Ted suggested, "go out looking by car, call the school… Do something!"
"We have to maintain the proper image of Jehovah's people," David explained matter-of-factly. "We don't ever want to call the police in on something like this unless we absolutely have to. How would it look: the police coming here to a meeting of Jehovah's people? The neighbors would imagine all kinds of goings-on! Besides, there's no one at the school now. The best thing is to wait and have our meeting in the meantime. Now, since Ted doesn't value the privilege, perhaps Brother Morrow would be good enough to ask Jehovah's blessing?"
"You'll excuse me," Ted said, interrupting the proceedings yet again and dramatically rising to his feet, "but I can't sit here and pretend everything's all right under these circumstances." And he walked towards the door.
"Fine," David called after him, "go and sit up in your room and sulk, that'll do a lot of good. Meanwhile we'll praise Jehovah."
When he got upstairs he wondered really what he could do. He was correct, he felt, in leaving the meeting. There was such a spirit of inertia there that he'd never have pulled free if he'd waited for the meeting to get underway. But he had no phone to make any calls. And he realized the futility of walking around aimlessly hoping to find signs of a party in progress somewhere. He decided to change his clothes to be less conspicuous and go for a walk.
As he roamed through the large bedroom closet, he heard footsteps on the stairs. His immediate thought was that it might be Sherri, afraid to face a roomful of condemning Witnesses, sneaking up to his place for temporary refuge. A more likely explanation, he reasoned, was that Paul was coming home. The footsteps had made their way into the living room now, and there were more than two of them.
"There he is!" yelled one of the large, dark figures that ran at him as he peeked around the corner. A sweaty palm fitted itself over his mouth as his arms were pinned behind his back and his chest thrust forward. He felt hardened fists driving into his stomach until he was ready to collapse. Then he was on the floor, feeling the rough bedroom rug slide across his face as they dragged him into the bathroom.
"Is he out?"
"This’ll bring him out of it," Ted heard, and for a moment half-believed they were friendly voices helping him to consciousness after the thugs had departed. But he found his head thrust into the toilet, his tooth breaking on the porcelain, and his nose filling with water as they flushed the toilet. He gasped and gasped for an eternity.
A sharp boot split into his tailbone, knocking him onto the floor face up. Another boot smashed into his face. "Where's the money you stole, man?" a voice demanded. "Never mind," said the other, "we'll find it. Fill the tub with water." A boot drove into Ted’s skull and he welcomed the nothingness of darkness.
The next thing was fear. There was time for it now and it pervaded his being. He opened his eyes cautiously and stared at the colors before him. It took a good half-minute to decipher them as flowers, then flowers on a small table, a small table next to a bed he was in, a curtain beyond that, the sound of buzzers and things clattering together, a TV somewhere with a familiar commercial.
At last he realized he was in a hospital.
He tried to roll over off his side and felt severe pains in his stomach and head. The room swirled around into darkness again.
When next he awoke he found himself staring at the most beautiful sight in his world: the face of the woman he loved. He wasn't fully conscious the moment he opened his eyes and was able to view her from this altered state of perception. It was something wide and high and proud and deep. A beautiful mahogany sculpture, showing the hand of some divine artist. Darker spheres inside brilliant whites, framed with a soft swirling. Smooth hills and jeweled lakes. A mysterious beckoning cave of softness with lips of infinite pleasure.
"Hello," the vision said, "how are you feeling? To ask a stupid question."
"Fine," he smiled as he grit his teeth, "to give a stupid answer. Been here long?"
"No. You just missed the whole congregation practically. They all signed a card for you."
"What time is it?"
"Well, first of all, it's Sunday. And it's, let's see, twelve minutes to two in the afternoon."
"Sunday?" he asked in disbelief.
"You had a concussion," she explained, "and I'm supposed to call the nurse as soon as you come around." She accordingly found the appropriate cord and pushed the button to buzz for the nurse.
"Did they catch the guys?"
"No. But they've got a good idea who was behind it. How many were there?"
"Myriads. And none of them were brothers, either," he groaned, trying to joke and doing the best possible under the circumstances.
"I think they were black," he said. "There were really just two as far as I could tell. I never got a good look at them. But --didn't anyone at the meeting see them leave?"
At this point the nurse entered, "Ah, you're awake! Welcome back to the land of the living!"
"It was that bad, huh?" he asked.
"A concussion is always serious business. But you'll be all right now," she assured him as she took his blood pressure. "You'll feel dizzy for several days, and that stomach of yours is going to feel awful sore longer than that; but you'll survive. The doctor will be in to talk to you tomorrow morning."
"How soon do I get to go home?"
"Ah, you're going to be one of those, are you?" she laughed. "Barely awake and he wants to go home already! It'll be a few days. The doctor will let you know. Sounds like you've got some pretty unfriendly acquaintances, huh?"
"I don't know who they were. But Cynthia was about to tell me who she thinks they were."
"Well, I’ll be out of here in a minute if you want your privacy," the nurse offered.
"That's all right, you can hear this. It doesn't matter," Ted said.
"It was two goons from where your friend, Paul, worked," Cyn explained, "they mistook you for him. He says they were after him for some money he took -- though he says he didn't --"
"Fifty lousy dollars," Ted mused.
"Anyway, he evidently quit without any notice or anything and got a job at a gas station. So they figured he just took off with the money. They messed up your place real bad looking for money. Did you have any in the house?"
"I had some in the beer stein in the kitchen cabinet for the rent. Did they get that?"
"I don't know, probably. They threw all your books and papers into the bathtub, so they’re all ruined."
"I think we're tiring him out with all this," the nurse warned, "maybe you'd like to get some more sleep and you can talk more later?"
"No, I've had enough sleep if this is really Sunday. I’ll just lay awake brooding over this anyway. Please let her stay."
"All right then," the nurse acquiesced, and left the room.
"Did Sherri come back that night?" he asked.
"Not of her own free will. She went over to her mother's after her party. Her mother called the Johnson's and they came and got her."
He sighed deeply and braced himself internally as he asked, "What did they do to her?"
"He beat her up, of course," she said. "Then they locked her in her room after they moved Jeannie in with them. She's grounded for two months now. When she gets home from school each day they're gonna lock her in her room and only let her out for meals and to go to the bathroom."
"Did he hurt her?"
"Of course. But I haven't seen her, so I don't know the extent of the damage."
"So we both got beaten-up on the same night," he laughed but immediately stopped as it caused great pain in his tender stomach.
"You'd better get some rest now. I'll come see you again tomorrow."
"Okay, thanks for being here now. It was nice to wake up to you."
She bent over and kissed him on his unbruised cheek, whispered goodbye, and quietly left.
Alone with his thoughts he pondered once again his relationship with Jehovah. Had these latest developments strengthened or weakened it? Did he feel that Jehovah had let him down by not protecting him from physical harm? Or had Jehovah arranged it to remind him of his bodily constitution, that he'd better pay attention to that since he was destined to remain flesh-and-blood rather than being heaven-bound?
He knew how Arthur Olson spent his days in bed dreaming of heaven. He tried that. But no matter how he tried he still came up with the erroneous picture of clouds and harps and wings. He should've been able to do better than that if he were really of the remnant of the 144,000 spiritually anointed joint-heirs with Christ. Still, he shouldn't be looking for an additional sign, he concluded, the one he had at baptism should suffice.
The ensuing days were spent in such meditations interrupted by occasional visitors. Monday forenoon Phyllis came to his bedside, shortly joined by Cyn on her lunch hour. The former was talking a steady stream of feminist propaganda that she'd learned from her call on Janet Freeman that morning. Cyn listened attentively when she wasn't winking and smiling at Ted or stuffing her sandwich into her mouth.
"And Jan says you can see man's inhumanity to woman even in the name they gave us. Woman was originally 'wifman'--'wife-man' -- showing that all we were to be was a wife to a man with no individual essence of our own. She says it wasn't until the fourteenth century that the 'f' was dropped to form 'wiman' which later became 'woman'. And Jan says --"
"Never mind 'Jan says'," Ted interrupted, "what about 'Phyllis says'? Did you manage to tell her anything about the Bible?"
"Jan says that the Bible was just written by men so --"
"Yes, I was there when she said it." Ted reminded her, "But what did you say to her about the Bible?"
"Well, I have to let her get all this stuff off her chest before I could begin to talk to her about the Truth. I figure if I show an interest in what's important to her, then she'll pay attention when I start talking the Truth to her."
"That's a good idea," Cyn said appreciatively, "that way she'll feel that you value her ideas too rather than just preaching at her."
"Yes," Phyllis smiled, and then leaned towards her as if to keep the next observation from Ted, though he heard it perfectly well, "and you know what else Jan says? That women are superior to men because we can have continuous sex and multiple orgasms."
Ted howled at this while Cyn remained politely uncommitted.
"It's true," Phyllis chuckled, turning to him, "prostitutes have been known to go through a whole shipload of sailors in a night, wearing them all out."
"Sister,' he replied gently yet firmly, "keeping in mind the values of the fruitage of the spirit as opposed to the reaping of the fruitages of the flesh, how does this make women superior to men? Doesn't it just make them more liable to a life of sin having greater capacity for it?"
"Well, Jan says that sex is the ultimate pleasure in this life and the person who can have this pleasure most often in her short life is the happier and superior person."
"From a worldly point of view that might be true, but we know better, don't we?"
She only smiled at him in reply.
Cyn had finished her lunch and got up to go so Phyllis followed suit, leaving him alone for several hours of monotony, finally broken by the appearance of Bill Jackson.
"Hey, what do you think of a guy who gets promoted and doesn't show up his first day of work?" Bill called out in mock indignation.
"Hello, I didn't expect to see you here!" Ted replied.
"I didn't expect to see you here either. I expected to see you at work. So what are you doing lying around here?"
"Oh, I had a few problems with my brain, they tell me."
"Yes," Bill said, abandoning his jocular tone, "I heard: a concussion. How are you now?"
"They say if there's no setbacks I can go home this week, maybe the day after tomorrow. And, hopefully I can start work next week."
"Sounds good," he smiled, leaning forward in the chair, "so did all your brothers and sisters visit you already?"
"I think so. I was asleep at the time, though."
"It must be nice to have so many people care about you."
"It's wonderful," Ted agreed, nodding and looking out the distant window, afraid to meet Bill’s eyes for some reason.
"They do care about you, don't they?" Bill asked.
Ted swallowed, "Yes." Everything was so damned transparent to Bill. Why did he have to examine and analyze every little detail? Why couldn't he let a person's illusions alone?
"I mean," Bill continued, "they're concerned about you as a person, not just as a Jehovah's Witness. They come because you're their friend, not because it's a required thing to do for any Jehovah's Witness you know. They'd come even if you were no longer a Witness, wouldn't they?"
"No, I wouldn't deserve their concern if I left the Truth."
"So their friendship is based on your believing the same as them. It isn't friendship for you at all; it's merely dutiful recognition of a set of beliefs which happen to be inhabiting a person known as Ted Evanston."
"You can make every act of kindness seem base," Ted replied in disgust and anger.
"That's because I reduce it to its basic truth. You talk a lot about the truth. But isn't that all pretty hypocritical since whenever you're confronted with the truth you refuse to accept it?"
"I don't do that," Ted insisted, angered to the verge of tears, "I think you'd better go and let me get some rest instead of exasperating me."
"All right, Ted, but outside of your girlfriend I'm the first real visitor you've had."
The routine of the hospital was not again interrupted until the following noon. Then, with Cyn at his bedside, he got a phone call from Richard.
"Sorry we haven't gotten over there to see you yet," he apologized.
"That's all right," Ted quickly forgave.
"No, it's not all right. We should've come and we would've except for Sherri. She ran away again, and she didn't go to her mother's this time. So we've been busy trying to track her down."
"You called the police this time?"
Richard paused, feeling the full effect of Ted's barely intended condemnation for not doing so the first time. "Yeah," he answered slowly, "we've got the police working on it too. They say they always turn up sooner or later. Well, enough of my troubles, when are you getting out?"
"Tomorrow, I think."
"Great! Have you got a way to get home?"
"Not really. Could you ask Paul for me, if he's not doing anything, if he could pick me up?"
"If not, I’ll get a hold of someone to get you. Take care now."
So he turned once more to Cyn, who had rapidly polished off her lunch. "Do you know who was here yesterday afternoon besides you and Phyllis?"
"Who? George Butler I’ll bet, or your mother."
"Wrong on both counts. My mother doesn't even know about this."
"Shame on you! Not telling your own mother!"
"She'd be over here all the time if I had, and I'd never get a moment's rest. But anyway, it was Bill Jackson. Do you ever run into him anymore?"
"Where would I run into him?" she asked. "He's no friend of mine."
"Well, he seems to want to be a friend to me. But he's so strange, always arguing. He makes me mad all the time. He gave me a promotion at work just before this happened. So I'm working for him now instead of daily labor."
"That's nice, but I think he's trying to buy your friendship."
"Why would he want to do that?"
"With his personality he can't get friends any other way. I'd avoid him as much as possible if I were you. I don't want you becoming like him."
It was time for her to go, so she left him once more to his dreams of heaven and soul-searching which left him strangely dry.
Paul took him home the following morning. Disgusted as he was with lying around in bed at the hospital, Vonnie forced him into his bed as soon as he got home.
"At least until tomorrow," she laid down the law: "you stay put. And I'll hear you if you get up and walk around, so don't try that."
So he lay in bed once more. But this time it was his own window and the familiar neighborhood sounds combined with Vonnie's vacuuming which effectively distracted his thoughts from their morbid preoccupation with heaven.
He woke up in the late afternoon to the sound of the same voice he'd last heard. But this time it was screeching in desperate passion.
He looked at the clock and realized that the kids must've just come home from school. Still, her yelling at them was unfamiliar to him. It had an "I’m at my wit's end" feeling about it. Perhaps Sherri had returned, he reasoned, and was receiving her bawling-out.
It wasn't until Richard came home from work that he learned the truth. Then it was, after much more yelling and wailing, that he heard all ten footsteps ascending the stairs. This frightened him for a moment, remembering what happened the last time he heard footsteps on the stairs, but Richard knocked and announced himself. "Ted, it's us, are you awake?" Ted responded and into his bedroom entered Richard, frowning; Vonnie, in angry, confused tears; Jeannie hanging onto her hand with a worried look; Joey, whose face was red-blotched from crying; and Bobby, tagging behind in studied indifference.
"The whole family --" Ted began with a smile, but as the expressions sunk in, he hurriedly asked, "what's the matter?"
"Joey has something he wants to tell you,' Richard announced.
But the hysterical sobbing, which constituted the aftermath of his extended crying, made communication impossible for Joey.
"C'mon, stop that bawling and tell him what you did," Richard demanded impatiently and made a move towards the boy.
"Wait!" Ted blurted out, to the surprise of them all. It was not his place to give such instructions to Richard, but Richard stopped and waited for Ted to justify his request.
"Give him time," Ted requested, remembering all too well what it was like to cry like a child: impossible to just shut off the overwhelming emotions on command, rendering one incapable of speech, something beyond control which shouldn't require additional punishment.
"Give him time?" Richard echoed with a sinister laugh, and continued to menacingly approach the boy.
Ted thought that Vonnie would surely take Joey's part and say what her husband wanted him to say while protectively moving him behind her. That's what the Vonnie of the past would've done. But the new Vonnie had simply been through too much. She thrust Joey towards Richard when he struggled to get away.
"I took the money!" Joey screamed before Richard's back hand slapped against his face, producing a wail of painful shrieks.
Vonnie covered Joey's wide-open mouth with her hand as Richard further explained the situation, taking a roll of bills from his back pocket. "Vonnie found this in his dresser-drawer today while she was cleaning." He held it out for Ted to take, but Ted laid there dumbly.
"It's fifty dollars," he added. But seeing that even this didn't ring a bell, he elaborated: "It's the fifty dollars Paul was missing: the missing money you got beat-up for. This little thief stole it and hid it in his drawer. There’s no telling how much the others had to do with it. Bobby claims he's innocent, but that doesn't mean a whole lot since he's a liar."
Ted looked at Bobby whose pleading eyes made him speak up, "I don't think it was Bobby." But he couldn't exactly explain why he felt that way.
"We also found a bunch of toy race-cars in that drawer; he and a bunch of worldly kids from school have been shoplifting," Richard continued, ignoring Ted's defense of Bobby.
"Jeannie made me do it!" Joey cried.
"Listen," Richard shouted, grabbing him by the shirt collar as the little boy winced and rapidly blinked in reflexive anticipation of getting slugged again, "nobody made you do anything! And we know Jeannie a little better than that, mister. Didn't Bobby have anything to do with this?"
Joey shook his head no.
"Jeannie has been up here with Joey when nobody was home," Ted told them, glancing briefly at Bobby who was relying on him to clear him and tell all he knew.
"You know, the Bible had the right idea," Richard proclaimed, once again ignoring Ted, "just take your good-for-nothing kids out and stone 'em at the public gate, with the parents throwing the first stone. That's just the way they make you feel: you'd be better off stoning them. Jehovah really showed his love for parents in making that provision. It's almost worth taking back the whole Mosaic Law just to regain that one."
Jeannie began sobbing at this. Vonnie took her hand off Joey's mouth to put both her arms around her as she bent down to comfort her. "Daddy didn't mean you, sweetheart," she assured her, "you're our good girl and we love you very much."
Joey was hyperventilating from his wildly erratic breathing. Ted, confused, felt for him and Bobby. He wished the money had never been found if it meant this much suffering for everyone. Still, he knew it was important to nip such things in the bud lest Joey grow up to be a thief.
"Joey, you and your brother are grounded for the rest of the school year, " Richard sternly announced amidst Bobby's cries of innocence. "You'll both write 5,000 sentences by the end of next month saying 'I will not steal or lie anymore.'"
"But I didn't do anything," Bobby protested, "Jeannie was up here with him, not me. She's the one behind it. Why don't you punish her?"
"That's enough out of you, young man," Richard warned. "We're not sure if you were involved, that's why you didn't get hit. Consider yourself fortunate that all you have to do is write sentences."
But that amount of sentences was not about to be tolerated by Bobby in submissive silence, "Ask Ted;" he pleaded, "he knows Jeannie's behind it all and not me."
"I don't know that," Ted carefully stated under Bobby's imploring gaze, "I heard Jeannie and Joey talking once about money and that he had gotten something from someone at school who 'took them from stores'. I thought it was just playing at the time, but now it appears that maybe Jeannie knew of his possessing stolen merchandise and didn't tell anyone. That's all I really know."
"Well, Jeannie," Vonnie said gently, "you should tell us any time you find out your brothers or sister do anything wrong like this, okay?"
Jeannie responded with an "okay" and received a hug from her mother.
Richard suggested that they all leave and let Ted get some rest, so they filed out with their long faces.
Later that evening Paul returned from work. Now that he was working a day shift the sleeping arrangements had become more difficult.
Ted had wanted him to sleep on the sofa, but he insisted on the bed.
Since it was a queen-sized mattress, they shared it. But Paul's constant restlessness even in sleep exasperated Ted. He lay awake most of the night because of the bed quaking and Joey's snoring.
The next day Ted felt so sick and tired of bed that he got up as soon as everyone left rather than taking advantage of the sudden quiet to sleep.
Dizzy at first, he soon regained his bearings and was nearly as good as new. After bathing and eating, he spent the day studying for the night's meeting, as well as the ones he'd missed.
At the meeting that night in the familiar living room of the Johnson's, everyone was pleased to see Ted back in the fold. But their appreciation of his presence was somewhat diverted when Vonnie ushered a freshly made-up Sherri into the room. She sat down quietly beside her step-mother, and stared dumbly into space.
"Hello, Sherri, dear," greeted Elvira Nelson, "so good to have you back."
"Thank you Sister Nelson," Sherri replied with a polite smile. Her manner almost seemed to mock Elvira's, but it soon became apparent that there was no ridicule intended.
"How nice you look tonight, Sherri," Martha Dorsey joined in, "is that a new dress?"
"Thank you, Sister Dorsey," Sherri replied, "Yes, it is."
David Nelson was straining at his seat to blast forth in reprimands for the wayward soul. His wife gently put her hand against his arm to restrain him. He looked over at her in perplexity, and she softly explained, "Sherri's a proper little lady tonight."
"Yes, ma'am," Sherri again responded mechanically, "Thank you, ma'am."
Richard didn't arrive until the middle of the meeting due to his overtime at work. When he did, he couldn't interrupt the meeting to upbraid his long-lost daughter. So, after a moment of silent astonishment at seeing her sitting there in a feminine new dress answering a question out of the book in a steady, pleasant monotone, he took a seat. The remaining half-hour was enough for him to witness the remarkable change that Vonnie had wrought in her. She was a miniature version of Elvira. A Jehovah's Witness automaton: fully functioning, yet obviously lifeless. In short, she was all that Richard could hope for his daughter to be.
In one short afternoon, between the time the police brought her home and the start of the meeting, Vonnie had somehow successfully broken Sherri’s young spirit. She had made of her a "proper lady" and only time would tell if life would reanimate her. If it did, if that youthful spirit were somehow resurrected within her, it would now have to rebel against her own self as well as them. It was an extra safeguard, a fail-safe device automatically implanted when Sherri gave herself up to be molded by Vonnie.
Richard never did upbraid her for running away. He never even mentioned it. He knew that a much worse punishment than anything he could do or say to Sherri had already been administered.
If Sherri stole the show at that Thursday night meeting, Phyllis was the star on Sunday. She drew attention after the meeting by handing out pamphlets on Women's Liberation. She didn't go so far as to say she believed in what they said, but she asked the brothers and sisters to read them and tell her what they thought of them. She talked to Cyn and Ted for a long time about the new things Jan had said.
"Have you noticed that you no longer talk about the Truth, Phyllis?" Ted asked.
"Maybe this is the Truth," she offered with one of her famous broad smiles.
"If that's the Truth," Cyn asked wonderingly, "what about the Bible? Doesn't it say that women are the 'weaker vessel' and that their place is to be submissive to their husbands, and all that? How can you believe both at the same time?"
"It's hard, isn't it?" Phyllis agreed, "But these men who wrote the Bible, maybe they were influenced by existing conditions rather than the objective Truth."
"Wait a minute, sister," Jerry Lindquist interjected from behind the book-counter which they were standing near, "I didn't hear you say that the Bible isn't objectively true, did I?"
"Well, I don't know," she blushed, "but a lot of the stuff in these Women's Liberation tracts sounds right."
"Listen," Jerry countered with a triumphal air, "do you know how much a woman's brain weighs?" Cyn gave a gasp of laughter at this, but he continued unabashed, "It weighs four ounces less than a man's. So you tell me how a woman is equal to a man."
"She's not equal," said Phyllis.
"Well, that's more like it."
"She's superior," she announced, flooring everyone within hearing distance. "If you want to use brain-weight as a measure, you'd have to say whales are much smarter than men since their brain weighs many pounds more. If you take a more reasonable approach and say that the brain weight in proportion to body weight is what's important, then it's obvious that the whale's brain has to be bigger to control such a large body, and very little is left for intelligence. Understand?"
"Yeah, sure," Jerry replied, wondering what was next since she seemed so confident of victory.
"Then if you measure the male and female brain against their body weight, you'll find that since women as a rule weigh less than men, they actually have more brain in proportion to their bodies than men do. As it says in this pamphlet, one ounce of female brain has to control only 43 ounces of body weight, whereas one ounce of a man's brain has to control 47 ounces of body weight. So you see, you can't really use that to prove men are smarter since it proves just the opposite -- if brain size really had any relationship with intelligence at all, which it doesn't. As this pamphlet points out, the largest brain on record was that of an idiot, and the smallest was that of a brilliant French author. In fact, many prehistoric types of man had larger brains than man has today."
Her last remark was her undoing, and she realized it as soon as it was out of her mouth. "Prehistoric types of men?" Jerry and David Nelson (who had sneaked up behind her during this conversation) exclaimed in unison with horror. "We don't believe in any prehistoric men, sister!" David reminded her.
"Oh, that's right," she laughed nervously, "I was just saying what the pamphlet said."
"Well, maybe you should stop saying what the pamphlet says," David warned.
"All right, but just let me ask you this," continued the irrepressible young woman, "How would you go about answering the idea that women are superior to men because they live longer?"
"They only live longer because they don't work all their lives like men. They sit at home and let hubby bring home the bacon," David answered smugly.
"Yes," Phyllis replied, "but they did a study which found that spinsters with jobs lived an average of 71 years, whereas bachelors with jobs lived only 65 years on the average. So how do you explain that if not by a superior bodily constitution on the part of women?"
David became flustered, he had no answer and so replied, "Sister, I think you’d better stop talking of such things. In fact, I'd like you to come to an understanding with the Committee elders about all of this this afternoon."
Phyllis was instantly near tears. She never had to face the Committee before; she was an outstanding example and pioneer, and had been in the truth her whole life. "I thought -- I was told," she gulped, her chin quivering with fear, "we were supposed to ask all the questions we could think of -- all the questions --"
"Yes, sister. We'd like to ask you a few questions about all of this at the meeting. So we'll meet here right after the service meeting today." So saying, David Nelson walked away and the little crowd that had gathered dispersed.
On his way out the door Ted was taken in hand by David. "I don't think you should be talking to Phyllis Barton so much. You must remember she's a married woman now, and she's got some dangerous ideas. I shouldn't really be telling you this," he confided, "but I'm pretty sure she'll be publicly reproved if not disfellowshipped soon. We’ll probably make an announcement Tuesday night. So stay clear of her and you'll stay out of trouble. And, by the way," he continued, never one to stop with one admonition or bit of bad news, "you'd better stop sitting next to that Rose girl until you're engaged; doesn't look right. And whatever you do, don't get engaged till she's baptized! I’ll tell my wife to start going over the 80 questions with her when she starts her study."
"No one's going to study with Cyn Rose but me," Ted said defiantly, and walked out.
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 9: God's Purpose
After their dramatic exit from the hall, Cyn and Ted were whisked away to Brother Olson's. Ted had discovered, to his consternation, that they went ahead with the third meeting without him last week when he was in the hospital. That made this the last of the meetings, and he wasn't about to miss it.
"Well, last week we talked about everything under the sun," Arthur began after they had all finished their small talk, "so this Sunday let's talk about everything above it, namely God's purpose. It must strike one as immediately evident that Christendom's view of God's purpose is very different from our own. In their view, everyone ends up either as angels in heaven or demons in hell forever. This is generally so accepted that they hardly feel the need to defend it.
They seem to think that it's so obvious -- as if something inside of man always knew it was true -- that there's no denying it. We, on the other hand, know how easily their entire notion is toppled to the ground since it rests on such flimsy twisting of Scripture. So perhaps we should look deeply at our own view of God's purpose and see what kind of foundation it rests upon. When we meet up with ministers of Christendom, it is our view, no doubt, that they'll try to cut-down. So we should forearm ourselves by examining the types of objections they are liable to come up with.
"I will take the part of a very liberal minister here. Perhaps a Unitarian, as they seem most opposed to our views in these matters. So don't imagine that I'm acting as the same minister who defended the immortal soul and the Trinity. I'm going to be shiftier this time out.
"Cynthia," Arthur continued, "being new in the Truth, you have a nice fresh idea of God's purpose. So we'll let you start us off with your very own description of it."
Cyn, surprised to be called upon, proved equal to the occasion.
"I've always liked the description of the new world in Isaiah where it says the wolf will lie down with the sheep. And no animals or brute-natured men will do any harm in all the earth because Jehovah will be ruling over the earth from heaven with the 144,000 joint-heirs with Christ. Then there'll be the resurrection of all those in the memorial tombs to life on earth. And --"
"Let's just stop right there at Isaiah for the moment," Arthur interrupted. "Thank you sister for introducing our discussion. Now I'd like one of you would-be elders to answer this objection: This prophecy in Isaiah chapter 11 applied to Israel of old, not to us today or in the future. Verses 11 and 12 show that the symbolic language of all these preceding verses referred to the regathering of Israel and Judah."
Richard took up the challenge; "It applied to them back there as well as us today. We often find double prophecies of this nature with more than one fulfillment."
"You mean all those things in verses 13-16 about Ephriam, the Philistines, Edom, Moab, Ammon, the Egyptian Sea, and Assyria are going to happen to us today?"
"No. But the promises of something better for the Israelites apply to the meek ones today, especially to us as spiritual Israel."
"But all the promises made to the real Israel haven't come true yet," Arthur argued, "Don't they have to come true for Israel before they can come true for us?"
"They have come true," Richard insisted, "Joshua 23:14 reads: 'you well know with all your hearts and with all your souls that not one word of all the good words that Jehovah your God has spoken has failed. They have all come true for you. Not one word of them has failed.'"
"But God made promises to Israel after Joshua's death that haven't come true yet," Arthur stated.
"No," Richard insisted, "they have all come true as far as it depended upon God. God has to keep his promises because he cannot lie, as Titus 1:2 informs us. And Isaiah 55:11 tells us, 'so my word that goes forth from my mouth will not return to me without results, but it will certainly do that in which I have delighted, and it will have certain success in that for which I have sent it.'"
"It's all very well to say these things," Arthur commented, "but let's look at the track record. Results, not words about results, are what we want to look at. God has yet to keep this promise: 'And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD God.' (Amos 9:15). Or again in Jeremiah 24:6, 'For I will set mine eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them again to this land: and I will build them, and will not pull them down; and I will plant them, and not pluck them up.' We might argue that the Jews have been returned to their land in the past, but we could hardly argue that they have not been plucked up from it afterwards. Therefore, this promise awaits fulfillment."
"God isn't dealing with Israel anymore as a people," Bob offered, "They're just like any other nation now to Jehovah. He refuses to show partiality or recognize any people other than his name people. They broke the covenant he had with them, so he owes them nothing more."
"So, according to you," Arthur reasoned, "God's purpose in respect to Israel failed. They will not live forever on their land as Psalm 37:29 promised, they will not be a kingdom of priests, and the law covenant that God repeatedly stated as 'lasting forever' ceased!"
"It ceased in 36 C.E. to be exact, but God's purpose didn't fail," Richard replied, taking up the defense. "He just substituted spiritual Israel for fleshly Israel, as he long knew he would have to. Jesus himself pronounced the sentence, 'The kingdom of God will be taken from you and be given to a nation producing its fruits,' in Matthew 21:43. We know these fruits are the fruitages of the spirit and the nation is the spiritual Israel."
"I don't deny that there is a spiritual Israel," Arthur clarified, "but I do deny that God is going to destroy the nation of Israel as undistinguished from the rest in the battle of Armageddon, as you people teach."
"Well, you of course are free to believe what you wish," Richard allowed, "but the Bible tells us that 'there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision' (Colosions 3:11). So God can hardly have a special purpose for a people who no longer exist as such to him, now can he? Besides, if he were to judge Israel as a nation separate from the rest of mankind, he'd have to take into account their bloodguilt for the death of Jesus. When they demanded his death, they clearly said, 'His blood come upon us and upon our children' in Matthew 27:25. So either way you look at it, they'd have to be destroyed with all the rest of mankind who aren't Jehovah's Witnesses."
"But according to Jesus' own words," Arthur argued, "such a sin is not unforgivable. He said, 'And whosoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him.' (Matthew 12:32) Even when Jesus said of the Jews, 'Your house is abandoned to you,' he implied that they would, in the future, accept him and be blessed: 'For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."' (Matthew 23:39) While spiritual Israel, I grant you, has superseded them in gaining the position of a kingdom of priests, they are not thereby automatically made unfit for any sort of life, are they? God did not reject them totally, did he?"
"Yes, I'm afraid he did," Bob responded, "God doesn't recognize any nation now but spiritual Israel."
"Have you never read Romans chapter eleven?" Arthur asked. "Paul poses the same question I just asked you and he comes up with quite a different answer. To quote him: 'I ask then, God did not reject his people did he? Never may that happen! For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people whom he first recognized.'"
"While this would seem to say that the nation of Israel was not rejected," Richard surmised, "upon reading further, we find that he is not referring to the nation:
"'Why do you not know what the Scripture says in connection with Elijah as he pleads with God against Israel? "Jehovah, they have killed your prophets, they have dug up your altars, and I alone am left, and they are looking for my soul." Yet what does the divine pronouncement say to him? "I have left seven thousand men over for myself who have not bent the knee to Baal." In this way, therefore, at the present season also a remnant has turned up according to undeserved kindness.'
"So Paul is referring to a remnant of Jews who have accepted Christ, not the nation as a whole. He brings this out clearly in verse seven: 'What then? The very thing Israel is earnestly seeking he did not obtain, but the ones chosen obtained it.' And again in Romans 9:27, 'Although the number of the sons of Israel be as the sands of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved.'"
"I agree," Arthur said, "that the remnant who became Christians usurped the nation as a whole as the kingdom of priests and were alone 'saved' to this special privilege. But does that mean that there was nothing left for Israel from God but destruction? No. You neglected to read verse 11 of Romans 11:
"'Therefore I ask, did they stumble so that they fell completely? Never may that happen! But by their false step there is salvation to people of the nations, to incite them to jealousy.'
"Who is Paul talking about now? Who took a false step and stumbled, the remnant who accepted Jesus, or Israel who rejected him?"
"The latter," Bob replied.
"I agree, yet Paul says they didn't stumble completely. You would explain this away by saying that it means a remnant from out of them didn't stumble, but notice what he goes on to say:
"'Now if their false step means riches to the world, and their decrease means riches to the people of the nations, how much more will the full number of them mean it!'
"What does Paul mean? We agreed that he's speaking about fleshly Israel and how their stumbling meant their position was usurped by the spiritual nation. But why does he say that their 'full number' will mean even greater riches to the gentiles? According to you, the entire nation was already cast off; how then could more be cast off? Paul must be saying that the full number will be accepted, not rejected, and that the reacceptance of all Israel (rather than just the remnant) will be even more rewarding to all nations. He clarifies this in verse 15:
"'For if the casting of them away means reconciliation for the world, what will the receiving of them mean but life from the dead?'
"For some 50 years the Watchtower taught that this verse meant that when the Jews returned to their homeland and accepted Jesus as the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead would shortly follow.
"Well, I guess it's easy enough to see why they made such a mistake," Bob commented, "But the light has gotten brighter since then, and now we know that Paul was speaking about individuals from Israel turning to Christ. This is evident from the preceding verse where Paul says that he hopes to 'save some.'"
"Paul wants to save some to become spiritual Israelites," Arthur replied, "But fleshly Israel will be saved as a whole, not as a kingdom of priests in heaven like spiritual Israel, but they will be saved nevertheless. This is what Paul undeniably says in verses 25 and 26:
"'For I do not want you, brothers, to be ignorant of this sacred secret, in order for you not to be discreet in your own eyes: that a dulling of sensibilities has happened in part to Israel until the full number of people of the nations has come in. And in this manner all Israel will be saved. Just as it is written, "The deliverer will come out of Zion and turn away ungodly practices from Jacob."'
"Fleshly Israel is the one that had its sensibilities dulled;" Arthur argued, "therefore, when he says 'all Israel will be saved,' he means fleshly Israel."
"No," Bob insisted, "He means spiritual Israel will be saved by the gentiles coming into it to make it a spiritual nation."
"Pardon my slowness, but I don't understand how you come up with that at all," Arthur sighed. "Let's go over it bit by bit and define our terms. Who is the 'you' Paul is writing this to?"
"The Christians in Rome, his spiritual brothers," Bob replied.
"All right. Now who is the 'Israel' he writes about? You just said that the 'you' was the Christians (who constitute the spiritual Israel) so they can't be the Israel mentioned now can they?"
"No," Bob explained, "the first mentioned Israel is indeed all fleshly Israel with the exception of the saved remnant who became Christians. A dulling of sensibilities has happened to them. But the second mentioned Israel," Bob paused for full effect at the announcement's sheer boldness, "is spiritual Israel, and they are the ones who will be saved."
"Would you care to explain how in the world you arrived at that?"
"Certainly, " Bob smiled confidently, "the clue is in the words 'the full number of the people of the gentiles has come in.' Now where do we find a set limit to the number of the gentiles that can come in? In Revelation chapter seven, verse four. There we read that the number will be 144,000, and it likens them to the sons of Israel: spiritual Israel. So, when this full number of 144,000 comes in, Israel (spiritual Israel) will have been saved. The action of the 144,000 coming into the Truth is what constitutes their salvation, and 'in this manner all Israel (all 144,000 of them) will be saved.'"
"Bob," Arthur smiled and nodded his head, "that was really excellent. You handled a very difficult explanation well. But as the minister," Arthur said, changing to a stern expression, "I say, I'll give you an A+ for cleverness, but your argument just won't hold water. In the same sentence you have Paul using two entirely different meanings for the word Israel without anything on his part to indicate this difference. It certainly would've been a poor use of language on his part. But look again at verse 25. Look at the word 'until' there; it's important not to ignore it because it indicates that after a certain time Israel (and you agree that the first mentioned Israel is fleshly) will no longer be blinded. Until when? Until the nations have come in. Then what? Then they'll be unblinded: 'and in this manner all Israel will be saved.' Now look at verse 26 where Paul cites a Scripture in support of what he has just said in verse 25:
"'Just as it is written: "The deliverer will come out of Zion and turn ungodly practices from Jacob."'
"Now, if this is meant to back up the statement 'in this manner all Israel will be saved' (as it undoubtedly is), and that statement refers to spiritual Israel (as you would have it), it follows that your spiritual Israel has ungodly practices that won't be turned away until their full number comes in. But in order to already be a spiritual Israelite one has to have already turned away from ungodly practices, as this is what makes him, in part, a spiritual Israelite. Therefore, the conclusion is inescapable that Paul must mean none other than fleshly Israel will be saved when it has ungodly practices turned away from it. Paul continues:
"'True, with reference to the good news they are enemies for your sakes, but with reference to God's choosing they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are not things he will regret.'
"Spiritual Israelites were not enemies of the good news, but fleshly Israel was. Spiritual Israel was not loved for the sake of their forefathers, but fleshly Israel was. God does not regret the calling of fleshly Israel his chosen people; he won't destroy them, he'll show them mercy: 'For just as you were once disobedient to God but have now been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so also these now have been disobedient with mercy resulting to you, that they themselves may also be shown mercy. For God has shut them all up together in disobedience that he might show all of them mercy.'"
A silence followed in which Richard softly said, "I don't know."
It wasn't broken until Bob concluded, "Well, I don't know how to refute you on those texts but to say that Israel is a government as well as a false religion, and God has vowed elsewhere to destroy all forms of both."
Knowing he'd won his victory on the point, Arthur was content to allow them to move on to another. "How?" he asked.
"Probably through natural means in Armageddon, such as hailstones, floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes --"
"Let me understand you then; God's not just going to destroy the institutions and false beliefs, but the people themselves?"
"Yes," Bob responded, "just as he did in Noah's flood."
"Ha!" Arthur exclaimed. "The Bible says all Israel will be saved, yet you say God is going to kill them all!"
"I already explained," Bob slowly stated, "that that means spiritual Israel is going to be saved, not fleshly Israel."
"And I just showed," Arthur replied, "how it had to be referring to fleshly Israel and couldn't be referring to spiritual Israel by any stretch of the imagination."
Bob responded in a flustered voice, "But in view of what I just said, it must be spiritual Israel. God wouldn't show such partiality to one group of people and treat them better than anyone else. You are saying that God is partial. But he isn't. Israel will be destroyed just like every other government and false religion."
"Who make up spiritual Israel?" Arthur calmly asked, cutting into Bob's pleading voice like a knife.
"Anointed Christian Witnesses of Jehovah."
"And who are in the true religion, Jehovah's organization, so that they won't be destroyed?"
"Jehovah's Witnesses," Bob replied.
"Allow me to use your own words:" Arthur said with a smile, "'God wouldn't show such partiality to one group of people and treat them better than anyone else. You are saying God is partial but he isn't.' Jehovah's Witnesses will be destroyed just like every other organization and false religion. Indeed, God would be partial if he just saved the Jews or the Jehovah's Witnesses and destroyed everyone else. So, they must either all be destroyed or all saved. I am in favor of them all being saved."
"Now you have really gone too far. Only true believers can be saved," Bob protested.
"You and Paul sure can't get along," Arthur said with a chuckle, "listen to what he writes to Timothy:
"'We have rested our hope on a living God, who is a Savior of all men ('sorts of' is not in the Greek and appears only in the New World Translation), especially of faithful ones.' (1 Timothy 4:10)
"Paul strongly implies that God is the savior of unfaithful ones (or 'unbelievers', AV). Pastor Russell taught that this meant all men would be brought into the Millennium and there be put on trial for everlasting life. But, however you want to look at the word 'saved' you can't get around the fact that Paul says, in effect, that unbelievers will be saved."
"But there are many Scriptures," Richard reminded him, "that show a great destruction of lives in Armageddon which precedes the Millennium. We read, for example, in one of my favorite Scriptures, 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9, 'of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire as he brings vengeance upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. These very ones will undergo the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction from before the Lord and from the glory of his strength.' We read of the corpses of the slain covering the earth from one end to the other and blood up to the horses' bridles."
"Yes," Arthur agreed, "and at the same time we read of unbelievers being saved and turning to the Lord: 'All the ends of the world shall remember the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship thee.' (Psalm 22:27) 'Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.' (Psalm 46:10) Russell taught that the following Scripture from Isaiah 26:9, 10 referred to the wicked being in the Millennium on earth under God's kingdom, but remaining wicked therein (after a trial period of l00 years) eventually being destroyed:
"'for when thy judgments are in the earth,' (his 'will being done on earth' by his kingdom), 'the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness,' (they had been unrighteous so that it is necessary for them to learn righteousness). 'Let favor be showed to the wicked,' (in the Millennium), 'yet will he not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness,' (the earth under God's kingdom), 'will he deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the LORD.'
"Russell would've agreed completely, I believe, with my parenthetical statements. You see, he taught (and you would be saying it was the Truth if this was 1916), that everyone would make it into the Millennium (with the exception of the spirit-begotten who had committed the unforgivable sin) and there be taught the Truth and be put on trial for life then. He taught that only spiritual Israel is on trial for life now because only they are well acquainted with the Truth and anointed with the holy spirit. You said before, when we were discussing the Trinity, that the only way in which one can sin against the holy spirit is by going against its leading. Do you still hold this as true, or has the light gotten brighter since we last discussed this?"
"What you say is correct," Bob replied.
"And can one go against the holy spirit's leading if the holy spirit is not leading one?"
"No, Of course not."
"Are worldly people being led by the holy spirit?"
'No, they're following the spirit of this old world, the spirit of Satan."
"Then, since the holy spirit isn't leading them, can they sin against it?"
Bob was struck dumb, so Richard replied, "No, I guess not."
"And shall we have the too-quiet Ted read Matthew 12:31 and 32 again for us, please?"
Ted cleared his voice and read, "'On this account I say to you, every sort of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. For example, whoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the holy spirit, it will not be forgiven him, no, not in this system of things nor in that to come.'"
"According to that, can the people of the world be forgiven?"
"It would appear so,' Richard acknowledged, "And yet we know there are many Scriptures that show them being destroyed. How do you explain that?"
"Russell taught," Arthur explained, "that the destruction happened in the Millennium in which everyone was being taught and led by the spirit so that it was possible for them to sin against its leading. His interpretation, we must admit, harmonizes the contradictory thought of everyone being saved, and many being destroyed. He taught that Christ's death was for everyone; it was salvation from the death brought on by Adam: 'He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.' 'For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.' (Hebrews 2:9; Corinthians 15:22) We likewise read in 1 Timothy 2:4 of God 'who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto an accurate knowledge of the truth.' You will notice here that being saved precedes the learning of the Truth; they are saved into the Millennium first, where the curse of Adamic death is lifted from them and where they are then taught the Truth."
Ted gasped, 'That's always bothered me how being saved is put before learning the truth in that Scripture. That's a good explanation for it."
'Yes," Richard agreed, "but it's not true. Christ's sacrifice was for everyone who put faith in it. And though God would like to have everyone saved, well --"
"What you mean," Arthur interpreted, "is that God's will is to save everyone, as the Scripture says, but that his purpose in this matter will fail as surely as did his purpose for Israel (according to you). But let's have Ted read 1 John 2:2 and check on your statement that Christ's sacrifice applies only to those who have faith in it."
"It reads, 'And he is a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, yet not for our sins only, but also for the whole world's.'"
"You see, Christ's sacrifice wasn't just for the sins of Jehovah's Witnesses, but also 'for the whole world's'. You see how much more loving Russell's view was back then than yours is today?"
"Well, it might have been more lenient," Richard clarified, "but was it true? We expect God to destroy all non-Witnesses any day now. We're very sure that he will because he likens our day to the time of Noah where all those outside the ark were destroyed. God's organization is the ark today."
Arthur replied: "In Matthew 24:36-39 where Jesus makes this reference to Noah's time, he points out especially that the parallel consists of ignorance by all but a select few of the coming event. The destruction, Russell held, was not in Jesus' mind, just the attitude of the people. But let me ask you this: Will the people of Noah's day be resurrected?"
"No," Bob blurted out.
"Oh, I think they will, brother," Richard cautiously corrected. "We know that there will be a resurrection of the unjust as well as of the just. And we know, specifically, that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected because Jesus tells us so in Matthew 10:15. So there's reason to believe that Noah's contemporaries will be there in the Millennium."
"And if they are resurrected in the Millennium," Arthur continued questioning, "will they have the opportunity to live forever if they remain faithful?"
"Yes."
"And you say that people today are like the people of Noah's time?"
"That's what Jesus says, yes."
"And you say this means that they'll all be destroyed?"
"Just like they were back then."
"And so, too," Arthur concluded, "the people today will be resurrected in the Millennium and given an opportunity to live forever if they remain faithful."
"No," Richard smiled and shook his head, almost taken in, "those who are destroyed in Armageddon go into the second death; they'll never be resurrected."
"But I thought you said they paralleled the people of Noah's day who will be resurrected. If you draw the parallel as far as the destruction part, why not go all the way to like resurrections?"
Bob spoke up, "Why would God destroy them if he's just going to resurrect them again?"
"You could ask the same question of Noah's contemporaries," Arthur reasoned, "yet you have no objection to their being resurrected. Actually, my position is that they won't be destroyed in Armageddon at all. I'm just delving into your position to show how inconsistent it is. You say that people of the world today will go into the second death from which there is no resurrection. Why should they? When have they died the first time? When have they sinned against the holy spirit so as to become unforgivable? Must I again recall to your minds what your own Watchtower Society held for many decades to be absolute truth and the mainstay of their beliefs? They taught that only spirit-begotten Christians who had died once already to their former course of life and were being led by the holy spirit could die a second death by abandoning the spirit's guidance."
"Ha!" Bob exclaimed, "Then it would be better not to be a born-again Christian; you'd have a better chance of losing out on life entirely if you were."
"Yes, " Arthur agreed, "but you'll remember that God 'especially saves' believers. These faithful ones have a higher hope, the heavenly hope of being one of the 144,000 reigning with Christ over the earth in the Millennium. This greater reward carries a greater punishment for unfaithfulness -- dying the second death,"
"What especially bothers me in all this nonsense," Bob said meanly, "is that you imagine all these wicked people today who we are trying to spoon-feed the Truth suddenly being given the same reward as we by making it into the Millennium and there eagerly accepting what they refuse today. This is fallacy. God is not waiting for the Millennium to teach people the Truth; only his worshippers will survive Armageddon and make it into the Millennium, and they won't need to be taught the Truth they already know. 2 Corinthians 6:2 tell us, "Look! Now is the especially acceptable time. Look! Now is the day of salvation." Now is the time to believe, the only chance, not some time in the future. Jehovah is teaching people today all over the world with the greatest preaching organization the world has ever known. His Witnesses are spreading the good news of the kingdom now; all will hear it and choose to be for it or against it, and then the end of this system will occur (Matthew 24:14). Those who don't accept it now before the Millennium will be destroyed at Armageddon."
"You keep repeating the same thing over and over as if that makes it true somehow," Arthur pointed out, "But let's examine it. You just referred to this system coming to an end. Let's dwell on this concept of an old 'system' or 'order' as opposed to the 'new system of things' we are anxiously awaiting. Since we are in this old system now, who is running things?" Arthur asked.
"Satan is the ruler of this old world. 2 Corinthians 4:4 calls him the 'god of this system of things,'" Bob replied.
"Yes," Arthur agreed, "the whole verse reads, 'the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers.' So Satan as god of this system, who has the whole world lying in his power as 1 John 5:19 informs us, has the power to blind people to the Truth so as to prevent them from becoming believers?"
"That's what the Scriptures indicate," Bob agreed.
"And could he do this unless Jehovah allowed it?" Arthur asked, "Or is he mightier than Jehovah God?"
"Jehovah is allowing Satan's rulership in order to show all the universe how wickedly such leadership will turn out. Satan couldn't do anything unless Jehovah permitted it, and he's permitting it in order to prove that we are free to choose which is better: God's rulership over us or Satan's," Bob explained.
"Can I say something about all this?" Cyn asked eagerly, about to burst from unexpression at any moment.
"Yes, of course," Arthur invited.
"I've been working on a short story for school patterned after Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in which the Duke of Vienna sets up the wicked Angelo in his place in order to secretly watch over what he and his subjects do in his apparent absence. What you're discussing gives me an idea for my version of this story.
"I'd have a king who was very insecure and easily despairing. All the people would really love him, but he'd blow up all out of proportion any little slight or even innocent jokes at his expense told in good-nature. All this while since the beginning of his reign there has been an evil rival to the throne: an aristocrat whom the people hate for his wicked ways.
"The king, in one of his moods, decides the people do not love him sufficiently and would prefer the rival claimant on his throne. So imagining that a revolution of major proportions must already be breaking out, he decides to peacefully hand the kingdom over to his rival for a trial period. The length of the trial being so secretly agreed that only the king knows the exact date when positions will again be reversed.
"So the real king goes off to view the proceedings from a distant castle as he allows the rival to do his worst. 'My people will really appreciate me after this,' the vain king says to himself as he retires to obscurity with his court in attendance.
"The first thing the rival king does," Cyn went on, fully caught up in her own story, "is to equip his troops with pokers and order them to put out the eyes of all the subjects in the realm so that it will be easier to trick them. When they are all blinded, he freely walks among them and issues his commands through a mediator; they never actually see him or hear his voice and naturally assume it's the same king they've always had. Many of the poor souls, suffering heavily from the unjust taxes, the confiscation of their lands, the raping of their daughters by the king's men, and all the other injustices of a thoroughly corrupt man with power, reason amongst themselves that 'this is our lord the king's will. He is good and just, so all that happens to us must be for some higher purpose.' Others even go so far as to call all their tribulations 'blessings from our king.'
"But there are other, shrewder people in the kingdom who suspect that things are not quite right. They believe that the real king has died or forgotten them. They clamor together and shout for the return of their beloved king, while the others try to hush them for blasphemy and others merely weep continuously.
"'The king must be dead,' some reason, 'How could any human being watch all this suffering without lifting a finger to put a stop to it? Even if it were true, as some said, that the king went away for a specified time, surely he should come back now, even if that time were not yet up, if he loved his people. He would know that everyone wants his rulership, that many beg for it daily.'
"But the king refuses to listen to the people's suffering until the full time has been completed. When at last it has, all the people are gathered before the two rulers who sit there silently as the mediator speaks to the people: 'You have all seen the misery and suffering brought on by this rival king ruling us these past years. Now is the time to choose and make public declaration as to which person you will welcome as king over you forever. Both men sit behind me here. Let every man, woman, and child indicate his choice by aligning himself to the side where his king sits.'
"'But we are blind!' the people cry, 'How can we see whom to choose? You say we have seen the misery brought on by the rival, but we have seen nothing. We have felt the oppression but have known not the cause save by hearsay. And for all we know, you could be one of the rival's men trying to trick us. How do we know where to stand or even which side is the right one if we could suddenly see?'
"The mediator replies, 'I know many of you think I'm lying and will choose the opposite side from the one I might indicate, and anyway I must follow my orders which demand that you each decide for yourselves what side you'll be on. The rival can disguise his voice to sound exactly like the king, so it's no use asking them to speak. So choose, poor, miserable creatures who had the misfortune to be born in this kingdom, choose. Those who align themselves with the king will live and those with the rival will be taken to the city gate and there be slaughtered with him.'
"And all the people cry in anguish, 'If only we could see! If only we could see!' And that's where the story will end."
"What's that got to do with anything?" the dim-witted Bob asked.
"Don't you see, either?" Arthur asked, pointing to his own eyeball, "it's your own version of God's purpose slightly disguised. You admit that God has allowed Satan to blind everyone in the world so as not to become believers, and you say God is going to destroy all unbelievers. You see how well the story fits? The only thing it lacks, if I may suggest it, is that someone should yell out at the end, 'The king will be slaughtering blind men, women, and children for not being able to see! Is that just?' And then the king has him executed on the spot for blasphemy.
"But do you see," Arthur continued, "how unjust it would be to destroy everyone who didn't see something because you allowed them to be blinded? This is why Pastor Russell taught that everyone would make it into the Millennium and there 'the eyes of the blind shall be opened', then 'the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah 35:5; 11:9). Under these conditions God could judge the world in righteousness since they would no longer be blind and would have full knowledge of God and be enabled to make an educated decision between him and Satan: 'Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness.' (Acts 17:31)."
"But God is opening eyes today through the preaching work of his Witnesses," Richard argued, "If this weren't true, there'd be little purpose to our preaching since the 144,000 have already all been called. So now must be the time when eyes are being opened to the Truth and the sheep are being separated out from the goats who'll be destroyed in Armageddon."
"But these so-called 'goats' of yours, do they also have their eyes opened, or is it just the sheep?" Arthur asked.
"Just the sheep. The goats remain blind to the Truth."
"Then will you please tell me how it is justice to destroy them for their blindness?"
"Because they have every opportunity to become unblinded and they don't take advantage of it."
"If a person knew of an operation," Bob added, "that could regain him his sight but refused to look into it and just ignored it completely, then his blindness would be his own fault. That's just the case here. We're coming to people's homes and offering to open their eyes, yet they refuse the Truth. Therefore, it's just of God to destroy them for their willful rejection of him."
"But it's not exactly like that," Arthur disagreed, "or do you imagine in your wildest fancies that the people at the door believe that you have the Truth that will lead to their everlasting life? You see, the real analogy would be of people knowing of some disreputable doctor, unlicensed by the A.M.A. and publicly denounced as a quack, who claimed to have a cure for blindness. If people didn't flock to his door but just ignored him in general, you wouldn't say it was still their own fault that they were blind even if this man really could cure them, would you? Of course not. Well, that's just the same as when you come to their doors. They don't believe you have the Truth, they are blind to the Truth, so how could they?"
"Yes, that's all true," Richard admitted, "but we open their eyes to the Truth at the doors by quoting and explaining Scriptures to them."
"Showing light to blind men can't open their eyes," Arthur reasoned. "How can you, in a few minutes at the door, cut through a lifetime of prejudice against you, turn them against their own beliefs they've relied on throughout their lives? Their entire minds are preoccupied with how to get rid of you; they won't listen to you long enough or with a mind open enough to receive what you're giving. That doesn't make them evil any more than a blind man is to be blamed for his inability to see.
"The last time I checked this out," Arthur calculated, "there were 1,870 worldly people to every Witness. Assuming that God always acts justly and agreeing that it would be unjust to judge someone on the acceptance or rejection of a certain set of beliefs unless these beliefs were presented to them in such a manner that they were assured of their truthfulness (which in itself seems quite impossible to me in every case) --"
"Blake says that 'the truth can never be presented so as to be understood and not be believed,'" Ted blurted out, showing off his newly acquired knowledge. It was an appropriate comment, but it threw Arthur off for a moment. He took time to examine and assimilate the quote before proceeding and bypassing it.
"And assuming," Arthur continued, "that it takes two witnesses an average of 6 months to complete a study with a person out of the Truth book with hour-long studies once a week; we come to the conclusion that it would take 1,870 years to present the Truth in this way before the end could come. Since you say it has to come long before the year 3850 in order to fit in with your other interpretations of Scripture, it's obvious that your interpretation is wrong and that this opening of eyes can only logically take place in the Millennium under God's Kingdom, not now."
"Not everyone has to have a Bible-study before the end comes," Bob corrected, "they only have to be reached. When you consider the enormous amount of hours that millions of Witnesses put in every month, you'd realize that each Witness could reach his quota of 1,870 people in a year!"
"No," Arthur disagreed, "only about one out of 18 Witnesses is a pioneer, putting in 100 hours of field service a month. The rest average only about 10 hour a month or so. That's hardly enough. At that rate it would take 15.5 years for a single Witness to reach his quota if he could reach through all their prejudices and preconceived notions in one short hour and teach them all they needed to know on a one-to-one basis about the Truth. He'd have to talk to that many different people, too. No 'return visits', no working a territory a second time, and no time wasted on 'not-at-homes'. When a territory had been worked at this break-neck speed, all the Witnesses with the exception of the new converts (if any) would have to be packed up and shipped out to new, untouched areas, leaving jobs, homes, friends, everything, to talk to people of possibly different backgrounds, cultures, or even languages.
"As an example of this need to move them en masse, take a look at Bangladesh. There is one Witness there, according to the 1977 Yearbook, to a population of 79,000,000 people. There are no Bible studies being conducted, and only 42 hours reported for the entire year. At this rate, even granting you 5 minutes to change a Moslem into a Jehovah's Witness, it would take 156,747 years to complete the Witness work in Bangladesh.
"I once heard the late president of the Society, Nathan Homer Knorr, state at a convention that the Chinese people did not seem to be interested in the Kingdom message, so no great effort is made to reach them. In many countries all the preaching work is done among the English-speaking residents rather than the natives. I have heard branch coordinators of these countries plainly state that the Witness work was not done among the Hindu or Moslem populations in countries where they were prominent, but rather amongst the English population. So, all things considered, I must say that your notion of 'eyes being opened' now is clearly a blind man's folly."
"So what would you have us do?" Bob demanded indignantly, "forget the whole thing? We're commanded to preach in order to save these people because God's going to destroy those who don't know him and who knew him but didn't bother to tell others according to 2 Thessalonians 1:8 and Ezekiel 3:18."
"And if the Watchtower suddenly ran out of ink," Arthur replied, "and the Society grew tired of their 'preaching', you'd undoubtedly be quoting Revelation 22:11 instead of those Scriptures."
"What's that say?" Bob demanded, so upset that he didn't bother opening his Bible to check.
"It says, 'He that is doing unrighteousness, let him do unrighteousness still; and let the filthy one be made filthy still,'" Arthur quoted.
"You're forgetting," Richard began, "all the scenes of destruction in the Bible. Armageddon is going to wipe out most of the world's population. This will be justice because the angels, we must remember, are directing the preaching work, guiding us to right-hearted ones and opening up their hearts to the Truth when we present it. We must never fall prey to the illusion that any of this is done on our own power; if it were, you'd be quite correct in saying that we'd never get the job finished."
"Now you're shifting around," Arthur said, "you're saying that for the most part only the right-hearted people will be contacted with your message. Before you said that everyone would hear it and be judged by their acceptance or rejection of it. But if some are judged to be 'right-hearted' so that they get a better chance to hear and accept it, then it's obvious that they've been judged already, and your message has little or no bearing on their judgment. So which is it? It has to be one or the other; it can't be both. Either people are judged on the basis of their reaction to your message (in which case they all must get a full opportunity to understand it in their own minds and hearts as the absolute Truth without a shadow of a doubt): or the angels judge who's right-hearted before you reach them, making your hard work superfluous and redundant. If you agree to the former, you admit that your work will require at the very least several hundred more years before everyone is witnessed to. If you agree to the latter, why should you waste your time preaching? And why hasn't the end come by now if the angels are capable of judging the right-hearted and separating them as sheep from goats?"
"I don't know what to answer exactly," Richard said; "it's some sort of mixture between the two that we can't understand exactly. But we know the angels are helping direct the work and that everything will turn out justly in the end."
"So you're like the Trinitarian you mock so heartily for believing in his 'mysteries' so faithfully. You have your own mysteries everywhere you turn!" Arthur pointed out. "You can't even logically explain your own version of God's purpose without resorting to the ploy of 'beyond our understanding, but true nonetheless, even if it's self-contradictory.'
"But let's return to these scenes of destruction you wanted me to recall before, Richard. I believe what you were referring to mostly were the accounts in Revelation where the symbolic Babylon the Great Harlot and the Wild Beast and its image, among others, are destroyed. Is that right?"
"That's correct," Richard replied.
"And what do these symbolic beings represent?"
"Babylon the Great is the world empire of false religion. The Wild Beast, or at least its image, is the United Nations (as it, in turn, is the image of all the nations of the world). These will be destroyed by God's Kingdom which has promised to put an end to all rival kingdoms, be they religious or governmental."
"Thank you for that information," Arthur smiled. 'Now I'd like to draw Cyn and Ted into the conversation a little with some related non-technical questions, if they'll permit me.
"Let's take a hypothetical situation. Let's say that I'm a member of some financial institution that suddenly goes bankrupt and dissolves. Let's say it's 'destroyed by inflation' just as many banks were broken by the depression. What would this mean to me as a member of this institution?"
"You might not smile for a couple days," Cyn joked.
"It would work some hardship on you," Ted said more seriously, "You'd lose a good deal of money. You might even be 'ruined.'"
"Yes, I would be 'financially embarrassed,' as they say. But wouldn't I be destroyed, becoming as nonexistent as the institution of which I was a member?"
Cyn laughed as Ted replied, also smiling, "Destroyed? Not hardly. What are you getting at now?"
"I mean, if an institution I belong to is destroyed, doesn't it mean that I am destroyed as well? That I, of necessity as part of the institution, disintegrate with it?"
"Of course not."
"What a relief!" Arthur cried at his mock deliverance. "So, then, relying on what you just said, I can be a member of such other institutions as, for example' let's see, let me just pick an odd for-instance out of the air' let's say Babylon the Great Empire of False Religion and the United Nations, or at least a member of one of its member nations. I can be a member of these institutions, I say, and when they are destroyed I will remain in existence. Is that correct?"
"Sure," Cyn assured him.
Unsure of what Ted was about to reply, Richard cut him off, "No, that's not quite right. All you've proven is that your destruction wouldn't necessarily have to occur; it's not some innate law. But the fact is that it will occur just the same because God has decreed it. People will be destroyed because it is the people that make up the religions and governments."
"No it isn't," Arthur refuted confidently, "False religion is not people, and neither is government people. They are abstract institutions which may come and go without harming a soul. Your own experience illustrates this. How many times has a 'truth' you held as a Jehovah's Witness been dropped in favor of a 'new truth'?"
"Many times because the Truth gets clearer as the light gets brighter,' Richard replied.
"So what once constituted your religion is no longer truth; it doesn't exist anymore, it has been destroyed. But have you yourself ever been destroyed even once in all the times that you've destroyed false beliefs from your religion?"
"No."
"Well then, there you are! False religion can be destroyed without destroying people; you are a living, surviving example of it! Changes in government have also been made occasionally throughout history without killing any people. So we are in agreement. God will destroy the false beliefs by teaching people the Truth in the Millennium, and man-rule will give way to God-rule."
Bob, no longer able to contain himself, launched forth, "You are still forgetting the scenes of mass destruction we asked you to remember. Revelation 18:4 talks about people being destroyed as Babylon the Great:
"'And I heard another voice out of heaven say: "Get out of her, my people if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues."'"
"Look at that more closely, dear brother," Arthur requested, "it's contrasting Babylon the Great with people, and so clearly shows that Babylon is not people. Take it your way and see what sense it makes to command: 'Get out of her my people!' No one has ever been inside people so that the angel saying 'get out of her' could mean 'get out of people'!
"According to your own book Babylon the Great has Fallen, God's Kingdom Rules!, Babylon fell in the year 1918. Is that correct?"
"It is," Bob acknowledged, "it was then that Jehovah judged Christendom and it fell from any favor it may have had. At the same time Jehovah judged his spirit-anointed Witnesses as the faithful and discreet slave class."
"Well, it's certainly nice that you know the dates as well as the results of God's judgments," Arthur replied dryly, "But tell me, did a lot of people fall down when Babylon the Great fell back then?"
"No," Bob answered disgustedly, "people didn't fall, it was respect for the institution of false religion that fell."
"Yes," Arthur agreed, "I was around myself back then, you know, and I can vouch for the fact that the members of false religions didn't fall down. But if people didn't fall when Babylon the Great fell, then when Babylon the Great is destroyed, people won't be destroyed either. Isn't that consistent? You say that Revelation 18:4 proves your point. But all it says is that people in this institution will share part of its plagues. This is just like my example of the financial institution. I would suffer hardship and be financially embarrassed by its demise, but this means I will share in only part of its plagues: it won't mean my demise. Members of Babylon the Great, then, will suffer reproach and ridicule for having put all their faith in something so patently false. In this way they will share in part of its plagues. Babylon the Great will be totally destroyed, but the Scripture nowhere states that people would share the same fate. No, it says 'part'; therefore, they cannot be destroyed (for that would not be a sharing in part, but a receiving of the full plague)."
"That just means," Bob explained, "that one individual won't receive all the destruction, but being 'part' of Babylon, will receive 'part' of its destruction. In addition to this evidence, we read in Revelation chapter seven that all those being saved out of Armageddon are believers:
"'And they keep on crying with a loud voice, saying: "Salvation we owe to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb."'
"In verse 14 we are informed that 'they are the ones that come out of the great tribulation and they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.'
"Therefore, only believers make it through Armageddon and into the new order of the Millennium."
"Where does it say that these are the only ones that survive Armageddon?" Arthur asked.
"It says that 'they' are the ones who come out of it, implying that no one else does," Bob replied.
"What about the 144,000 mentioned just before in this same chapter; do they all die in Armageddon because they don't 'come out of it'?"
"No, the 144,000 are in heaven; they are immortal."
"Are all the 144,000 in heaven at the time of the great tribulation?"
"No, we believe that some will remain on earth to get things organized after Armageddon," Bob explained.
"Then you admit that there will be some outside of this one group that will survive Armageddon," Arthur pointed out, "if I allow you that, you have no call to deny me another group of unbelievers surviving it as well."
"No," Bob replied, "because the 144,000 are all believers, and they are a special heavenly class. Only they and the great crowd (which is how we refer to the ones who come out of the great tribulation) survive Armageddon."
"Why not look at it this way:" Arthur reasoned, "the great crowd is said to attribute salvation to God and Christ after the great tribulation, as well as to wash in the blood of Christ after coming through the tribulation. This shows, then, that mankind will recognize and turn to God after the time of trouble in which false beliefs and systems of government are destroyed.
"Or look at it this way," Arthur continued, "the great crowd are being contrasted to the 144,000. The latter are a heavenly class that does not go through the great tribulation, and the former are a heavenly class that does go through it. Yet there is still room for an earthly class made up of unbelievers which goes through and survives the tribulation. This last view was that of your founder's, Charles Taze Russell."
"We can't accept that," Bob replied, "because we know the great crowd is an earthly class. In verse 15 of Revelation it says that they are before the throne. What is before God's throne? His foot-stool. And what is his footstool? The earth. 'This is what Jehovah has said: "The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool."' according to Isaiah 66:1."
"In verse eleven," Arthur eagerly countered, "it says that 'the older persons and the four living creatures fell upon their faces before the throne'. Does that mean they are on earth, too?"
"No, they are in heaven," Bob replied.
"Then being 'before the throne' isn't very good proof that one is on earth, now is it? It says that the great crowd are serving God day and night in his temple. Since God resides in heaven, these people must be in heaven also."
"No," Bob replied, "the 144,000 are likened to God's spiritual temple in 1 Corinthians 3:16, 'Do you not know that you people are God's temple?' The great crowd serve God 'in his temple' by working along with and cooperating with the remnant of the 144,000 on earth as they direct the preaching work and organize the Society."
"But," Arthur interjected, "you said that the remnant would only remain on earth a short while into the Millennium and then go to heaven. So how can the great crowd work along side them day and night after the tribulation if they're no longer there?"
"The 144,000 will direct things from heaven. The great crowd are to follow their leadings. That is how they serve in his temple," Bob explained.
"It says 'in', not 'with', not 'under', not 'in cooperation with', but 'in' his temple. God's temple is heaven according to Hebrews 11," Arthur stated.
"You must remember Jehovah's original purpose," Bob reminded him. "It wasn't to bring a great crowd to heaven, but to rescue mankind from death so they could live forever on earth: 'As regards the heavens, to Jehovah the heavens belong, but the earth he has given to the sons of men.' (Psalm 115:16) The 144,000 are very special, an exception to the rule, you might say. But the vast majority of mankind is to live on earth. That is why a great crowd is seen on earth and only 144,000 in heaven.
"Jesus seems to disagree," Arthur replied, "he said, 'In the house of my Father there are many abodes. Otherwise I would have told you, because I am going my way to prepare a place for you.' (John 14:2). Many abodes must have many occupants. Therefore, the great crowd must be heavenly!
"This should not strike you so strange; the Watchtower taught this till 1932. In fact, Rutherford, your second president, went so far as to say (in his ever-dogmatic style) that 'They must be spirit creatures' in his book Vindication, Vol. 3, page 204. How is it that three short years later it suddenly turned out that they 'must not be spirit creatures'? What evidence was there for changing this doctrine? The Bible surely contained the same verses in the same wording that it always had. And it meant a very great deal. This was no minor change but affected the world-view-point of every Witness. No longer was anyone outside the fold to make it into the new order; their place had been usurped by the 'great crowd' of Jehovah's Witnesses whose membership had exceeded their magic number of 144,000! Suddenly non-Witnesses were all condemned to die as wicked 'worldly' people since there was no longer any room for them. The great crowd had stepped down out of heaven and taken their place on earth.
"So don't tell me," Arthur continued authoritatively, "that such earth-shaking change occurred because of such flimsy support as Rutherford suddenly finding that the great crowd were 'before the throne' and hence on earth. That doesn't wash; the elders and 'four living creatures' were also 'before the throne, but you claim that means they were in heaven."
"In 1935," Bob slowly told the story, "the Society saw such a great crowd coming in who weren't spirit-begotten that they realized this was the great crowd John saw in Revelation. And since they weren't spirit-begotten, they had to be an earthly class."
"That's really great reasoning," Arthur replied sarcastically, "As if anyone could tell if another person were spirit-begotten or not! Did you ever look at the Scriptural reasons the Society gave for a heavenly great crowd before they turned to Rutherford's reasons for an earthly one?"
"No, there's no reason to go back and look at old light," Bob shrugged.
"Then why look at the Bible? Certainly its light is older than that of the Watchtower less than 50 years ago! You see to what confusion man-made interpretations lead? Why not allow the Bible to interpret itself and tell us if the great crowd is heavenly or earthly? Ted, read for us Revelation 19:1, please."
"'After these things I heard what was a loud voice of a great crowd in heaven. They said, "Praise Jah, you people! The salvation and the glory and the power belong to our God."'"
"Where is the great crowd that attributes salvation to God?" Arthur asked.
"In heaven," Ted answered.
"Yes, how about that. We needn't waste any time wondering where the great crowd is now; the Bible tells us that they are in heaven as plain as day. But as you are always dredging up Scriptures showing two people or groups of people and forcing them to prefigure the 144,000 and the great crowd (such as saying Jonah represents the former and the sailors who threw him off the boat represent the latter; or that Elijah prefigured the heavenly class since he went up in a fiery chariot, and Elisha types the earthly class since he remained earth-bound): let's take a look at the forty-fifth Psalm and see what we can do to that. Verses six and seven we already had recourse to and agreed it referred to Jesus. But let's have Ted read verses nine through eleven and have Bob identify the class spoken of."
"It reads, 'The daughters of kings are among your precious women. The queenly consort has taken her stand at your right hand in gold of Ophir. Listen, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear; And forget your people and your father's house. And the king will long for your prettiness. For he is your Lord, so bow down to him.'"
"That's talking about the bride of Christ, naturally," Bob interpreted, "the 144,000."
"Now that we've established that, we'll have Ted read verses 13 through 15."
"The king's daughter is all glorious within the house; Her clothing is with settings of gold. In woven apparel she will be brought to the king. The virgins in her train as her companions are being brought into you. They will be brought with rejoicing and joyfulness; They will enter into the palace of the king."
"Now, if the daughter of the king is Christ's bride of 144,000 spirit-begotten individuals (as you have said), then who are the 'virgins in her train' who enter into the king's palace? This palace of the king can be nothing else than heaven. So who is this group that enters heaven in conjunction with the 144,000? You have no answer, I realize, since you say no one but the 144,000 enter heaven. But you're evidently in error there in view of this Scripture. And since Revelation has already shown us a great crowd in heaven, we must be justified in assuming 'the virgins in her train' are these same people who make up the great crowd. They follow the anointed to heaven and take a lesser place there."
Arthur continued to explain: "Russell actually taught that the great crowd was made up of spirit-begotten ones who didn't quite live up to the high requirements of the 144,000 class. But this didn't make them unworthy of any salvation whatsoever; they merely were granted a lesser station in heaven. 2 Timothy 2:20 was one Scripture that suggested this to his mind: 'Now in a large house' (heaven) 'there are vessels not only of gold and silver' (the 144,000) 'but also of wood and earthenware, and some for an honorable purpose but others for a purpose lacking honor.' The wood and earthenware vessels represent the great crowd who had less honor than the other group."
Arthur paused for a moment and went on, "But perhaps the best argument for the great crowd being a heavenly class is the fact that they are said to serve God day and night in his temple. Who was it that served in this manner in typical Israel? It was the high priests and the Levites. We are in agreement that the high priests represented the 144,000, but who do the Levites represent? Certainly it must be this other group who are said to serve day and night in the temple: the great crowd. The temple, of course, represents heaven, but when we recall also that the Levites had no inheritance in the land according to Joshua 14:4 and 18:7, it becomes fairly conclusive that the great crowd, as prefigured by them, must not be a land-based group either, but must be heavenly. Do you see how much more Scriptural support the Watchtower's former view on this matter had?"
"I can, yes," Richard agreed.
"Then will you go on believing their current position?"
"Yes, because I know that if there is something wrong, the Society will eventually straighten it out."
"But in this instance you're saying they were right before; they were straight in their understanding and then they changed and made it crooked."
"Now wait a minute! I didn't say I disagreed with our present understanding," Richard spoke nervously, "I just said that, as a matter of fact, the old view appears to have had more Scriptural support. But our current view has basis in revealed fact. The great crowd is an earthly class. I know because I'm a member of the great crowd and I entertain no hope of going to heaven. My hope is earthly; I've never been born of the spirit so as to be capable of being a spirit in heaven."
"But I thought you people went by the Bible," Arthur said in feigned surprise, "now you tell me that you go by what has happened in your own experience and then make it fit into the Bible even though it lacks Scriptural support. But be honest with me now and answer me this: if this was 1932, before the great crowd was for some reason demoted from heavenly to earthly life, would you think yourself as having been born again to be of the heavenly great crowd?"
"Quite probably," Richard admitted. "Many of the brothers did think that back then, and after 1935 changed their minds and realized they weren't."
"Then," Arthur concluded, "the non-Scriptural decree of the Watchtower in 1938 (and more particularly we could say 'of Rutherford') is what makes all the difference. Not even your own personal experience is as important to you since you admit that you would probably be claiming spirit-begettal if the Watchtower hadn't decided that the great crowd wasn't spiritual. What it comes down to then is this: you are putting the Watchtower ahead of the Bible as well as ahead of personal experience."
"No we're not," Bob virtually shouted, "all through the Bible there's this indication of two separate classes, such as Jehu and Jehonadab in 2 Kings 10:15, and Jesus' referring to his 'little flock' and his 'other sheep' in John 10."
"Even so", Arthur said, "(and please try to remember I already admit to two 'classes': there is no dispute here), what is there to indicate that one class is earthly rather than just having a slightly less honorable heavenly position? Jesus says, 'and I have other sheep. These also I must bring, and they will become one flock, one shepherd.' What can this mean but that he brings them to heaven with the 'little flock'? How else could he bring them together unless he brought them together where they are in heaven?"
"He brings them into the congregation with the 144,000, not in heaven," Bob retorted.
"And this is your great evidence that the great crowd is earthly and that, therefore, all unbelievers will be destroyed before the Millennium?" Arthur asked in mock astonishment. "Do you honestly expect people to believe this?"
"Well, if I proved to you that the 144,000 were the only ones in heaven, then would you believe me?' Bob asked.
"I'd have no choice. But I don't think even you could kick God out of heaven," Arthur chuckled.
"All right, let's not get sarcastic. You know what I mean. The other mention of the 144,000 is at Revelation 14:1:
"'And I saw, and look! The Lamb standing upon Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads' And they are singing as if a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the older persons; and no one was able to master the song but the hundred and forty-four thousand, who have been brought from the earth.'
"These are the ones who've been brought from among mankind," Bob concluded, "the strong implication being that no one else was brought from among mankind since no one but they could master the song."
"There's nothing there that rules out the possibility of others being brought from the earth," Arthur replied. "The only implication is that these are the only ones brought from the earth who could master the song.
"But let's consider the 144,000 themselves for a moment," Arthur continued, "How do we know, Revelation being a book of symbols, that this is a literal number? If the torment of the Devil in the book of Revelation is symbolic and not literal, how do we know this number is literal? It seems more logical and consistent to think of it as symbolic of perfect organization, since this is what your own Aid book ascribes to the number twelve. This number is based on twelve, being twelve squared times a thousand. And if we look at chapter 21 and verses 15-17 of this same book we see the number once again, only this time it is used in the measurements of 'the holy city, New Jerusalem' which is said to be '144 cubits' across one of its walls, and 12,000 furlongs in height, breadth, and length. Since this city is merely symbolic of heaven and has no real existence, what must we conclude about the same numbering system used in connection with the 12,000 individuals from each of the 12 tribes of Israel that make up our infamous 144,000? And why should the Bible go to such great pains to delineate each and every tribe of Israel and mention that there are exactly 12,000 from each named? Isn't this symbolic? Or are your anointed Christians really divided into twelve tribes?"
"I don't know the answer to that, I'm afraid," Richard admitted, "I once heard a brother say that since the number is 'sealed' it must be a literal number, but I confess that I don't see the logic behind that statement."
"Well then, I'm afraid you've both failed to prove that unbelievers will be destroyed in Armageddon."
"How's that?" Bob asked in disbelief.
"Your 'proof' that only believers would make it was based on the idea that only the 144,000 and the great crowd (who were all believers) would survive Armageddon in heaven and on earth, respectively. That, of course, would mean that everyone else was a goner. But you failed miserably in trying to prove your hypothesis. You admit that the great crowd has more Scriptural support as a heavenly class, and if this is true, it leaves the earth wide open for all unbelievers to inherit! You said only the 144,000 were in heaven, yet upon examination it seems that it's a number symbolic of organization, and not necessarily literal. But if it were literal, than it should be literal all the way and be fleshly Israel since only they are divided into 12 tribes and are 'standing on Mount Zion'. So your 'proof' isn't provable. And I still stand behind 1 Timothy 4:l0:
"'God is a Savior of all men, especially of believers.'
"But before we leave this subject," Arthur said slyly, "let me say one more thing. The number of the wild beast has always been a fascinating subject for interpretation. The Society used to teach that this number, 666 (Revelation 13:18) symbolized the Pope, since his title, Vicar of Christ, when written in Latin as VICARIVUS FILII DEI, and given numerical values as in Roman numerals (V = 5, I = 1, etc.) adds up to 666. (This interpretation was given in The Finished Mystery, page 215.) Now you teach that the number is just symbolic of man's imperfection (since seven is the perfect number, writing 6 three times emphasizes its falling short). This is a comparatively weak interpretation.
"Wouldn't we be surprised, instead, since the wild beast is so often conjoined with the 'false prophet' in Revelation, to find some relation between the number 666 and a great false prophet of our time? It is difficult to do so, just as John warns when he gives the number, so we won't be surprised if it takes some doing. Let us first locate the major false prophet of our time and try to convert it somehow into a number so we can see if it bears any resemblance to 666. Let's see' a false prophet would say things that were distortions of the Bible, wouldn't you agree?"
"Yes, I'd go along with that," Richard said.
"For instance," Arthur continued, "take this business with the 144,000 and the great crowd. The Society says things about them that are the opposite of what the Scriptures indicate. They are the ones that tout this number more than any other religion. They claim all the number within their own ranks, and many of their prophetic statements hinge on their interpretation of the 144,000. So we'll assign them this number or, for the sake of easier calculations, we'll strike off the last three zeros and give them the number 144 (12 x 12 to symbolize their organization). We'll assign them another number as well to check our findings. The other number that identifies them in most people's minds would be 1975, for that was the year many Witnesses, in accord with what the Society said about it, felt the great tribulation would occur. This has stuck in many people's minds so that one can't begin to talk to them about the Truth without them cutting us off with, 'Yeah? What happened to 1975? That's when the end was supposed to come, wasn't it?' So in their minds, 1975 would indite us as false prophets.
"So, armed with a possible false prophet, the number of his associate wild beast, 666, and the assigned numbers of our candidate: 144 and 1975, let's see if there's any connection. Richard, I know you always carry a calculator with you. Would you get it out, please, and enter the number 144?"
Richard dug into his briefcase and pulled out his long calculator he often used at work. He pushed a few buttons and indicated his compliance.
"Fine, now you must remember that for everything to work out perfectly, the connection between 144 and 666 should not be direct, because the false prophet is only the associate of the wild beast. They are closely related, however, so if the Revelation contains truth as precise as mathematics, and our candidate for false prophecy is the correct one, there should be a clear, once-removed connection in these numbers. I believe this is the case. Richard, will you please push the sine key and read the answer?"
Richard complied and read the tiny red digits, "point 58778525."
"Fine. Now will you please press in the number 666 and then find its cosine?"
"Okay, it's point 58778525."
"So the sine of 144 is the exact same eight-digit number as the cosine of 666." Arthur stated. "To me this is quite startling, and can hardly be a coincidence. It fits the facts too well.
"Now let's try our other number and see if we get similar results: enter 1975 and find its square-root."
Richard nodded when he completed the operation, and Arthur continued, "If the square-root of 1975 were 666, it would be too direct; we'd have found the wild beast rather than his associate, the false prophet. So press your square-root key one more time and read out the first three numbers."
Richard gulped and hesitated, "666," he said.
"So what does that prove?" Bob balked, "You can find a connection between any two numbers."
"To anyone unfamiliar with mathematics I admit the evidence won't appear all that conclusive. I only brought it up because I find it interesting," Arthur smiled.
"Let me say this," Bob spoke sternly, anxious to get the ordeal over and get home, "if I may be allowed to return us to our subject. It's easy to get sloppily sentimental and conclude that God's going to save everyone and give them another chance, and all that. But do you really think the Millennium would be such a peaceful paradise with tame animals and men if murderers and thieves and drunkards and idolaters and all the rest were allowed in? I'm glad Paul had better sense than you when he said:
"'What! Do you not know that unrighteous persons will not inherit the kingdom? Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit God's kingdom.' (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10)."
"Now you're trying to persuade me of something you don't even believe yourself! Wasn't David an adulterer?" Arthur asked.
"Yes, but God forgave him," Bob replied.
"And David will be resurrected in the Millennium and have an opportunity to live forever?"
"Yes, that's right."
"And the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were fornicators and their men laid with men?"
"Yes."
"And the people of Sodom and Gomorrah will be resurrected and given an equal opportunity to live forever?"
"Yes. In Matthew 10:15 Jesus said they would be alive at the judgment day."
"And the people of Noah's time were drunkards and thieves and revilers and extortioners and murderers?"
"Yes, they were so wicked that God had to wipe them off the face of the earth."
"And yet they too will be resurrected and live forever if they reform?"
"We believe so."
"And all the thieves and drunkards and murderers and idolaters, and all the rest, who have lived between the time Paul spoke these words and today, will be resurrected and have the same chance at everlasting life?"
"Yes," answered Bob, "there will be very few throughout the ages of the world who won't be resurrected due to their sinning against the holy spirit. As for the others we read, 'there is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.' (Acts 24:15)."
"And so," Arthur concluded, "all these types of 'wicked people' mentioned by Paul will, in fact, be in the Millennium according to you. So why do you argue with me when I say the same thing? We both believe that these people will not remain wicked but will gradually change under the better conditions of God's kingdom, or be destroyed. The only point in dispute is whether people living today will make it into the millennium if they are unbelievers or 'wicked.'"
"They won't be," Richard answered, "because these are the last days. Peter tells us that baptism today as one of Jehovah's people is the same sort of saving device as was the ark for Noah. Everyone outside of the ark was killed, and everyone outside the organization at the time of Armageddon will be killed as well. In all past warnings God delivered to people they had to repent then before he visited the destruction upon them. It was too late afterwards; so that rules out all who are killed in Armageddon getting a second chance. Peter goes on to say:
"'For it is the appointed time for the judgment to begin with the house of God. Now if it starts first with us, what will the end be of those who are not obedient to the good news of God? "And if the righteous man is being saved with difficulty, where will the ungodly man and the sinner make a showing?"' (1 Peter 4:17, 18)."
"How would you answer Peter's question, Bob?" Arthur asked.
"It's obvious that the answer must be 'nowhere'. The sinner shall not be saved at all since the righteous are barely saved."
"Please think again. You just said that all the sinners of times past will make a showing in the Millennium and may live forever," Arthur corrected.
"Yes, but now we're talking about people living in the time of the end. All the sinners that die at Armageddon won't make a showing in the Millennium."
"But did Peter mention anything about the time of the end when he said this?" Arthur asked, and then proceeded to answer his own question: "No, he doesn't say anything about the time of the end. He says 'it is the appointed time for the judgment to start.' So his words should've applied as much to his own time as to ours."
"Then, according to you, none of the unrighteous from Peter's time on will be resurrected?" Bob asked surprised.
"Quite the contrary," Arthur replied. "We have to reevaluate that part of your interpretation as well. But first I might ask: if I allow you such liberties as to stretch Peter's words about his own time so that they don't apply till our own time, what prevents me from likewise stretching them just a bit further to the Millennium? For only in the Millennium will it be possible to be righteous, and only then can anyone be judged on the basis of their righteousness. The Bible says that 'there is not a righteous man, not even one,' in Romans 3:10. If that is true, then no one will be saved at all if we accept your interpretation of Peter's words. But let's try to discover the Truth here, instead of what you or the Watchtower says, shall we?
"Let's assume for a moment that no provision had been made for man's salvation and he had to rely on his own righteousness as under the Mosaic Law. Peter says that under such circumstances a righteous man would scarcely be saved. That is, a righteous man would live by means of fulfilling the Law completely, and then would just scarcely be saved with no extra merit. Further, if God had arranged for salvation only for the righteous, there'd be none for any sinner. But since the Bible tells us that everyone is a sinner and at the same time tells us that many will be saved and sinners will be resurrected, we can safely assume that Peter's words do not contradict this thought -- they merely point out that without the merciful provision of God's forgiveness through Jesus' sacrifice, none of us would live.
"Now, as for your 'ark of salvation'," Arthur continued, "I'll again remind you that if you insist on likening Armageddon to past destructions, where all those who perished will be resurrected in the Millennium, then everyone who dies at Armageddon should likewise be resurrected in the Millennium."
"No they won't," Bob retorted in exasperation, "The Bible says that they all go off into the second death:
"'But as for those cowards and those without faith and those who are disgusting in their filth and murderers and fornicators and those practicing spiritism and idolaters and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This means the second death.' Revelation 21:8."
"When it says 'all the liars', does it include Jacob?" Arthur asked.
"Of course not. Jacob will be one of the princes in the new order according to Psalm 45:16."
"Then it doesn't mean 'all liars'. Does it just means liars within a certain time period, namely the time of the end?" Arthur asked.
"Yes."
"What about liars who died before Armageddon but who still died during the time of the end?"
"They'll be resurrected."
"So the words at Revelation you quoted apply only to liars who die at Armageddon."
"Now you've got it."
"So if I were a liar, which of course I'm not," Arthur slyly smiled and winked at Cyn, "and I died today (which is always a distinct possibility at my age) and Armageddon came tomorrow, I'd be resurrected. But if I died tomorrow during Armageddon I'd be dead forever?"
"Precisely."
"In view of all that (which in itself sounds quite ridiculous since you're forcing people to be judged not on the basis of what they did with their lives but merely on when they died), it's quite amazing that the verse in Revelation doesn't say a word about the time of the end. It's even more astounding in view of this theory that this 'second death' for the wicked comes 'after the thousand years have ended' according to the previous chapter, and after a new heaven and earth have come into existence according to the beginning of the same chapter. It would almost seem to be saying that those who had persisted in being liars, murderers, etc., after the thousand years of judgment would be judged unworthy of life and go into the second death. Amazing, isn't it, how this comports with Russell's discarded interpretation of God's purpose and contradicts your own?
"But let me ask you one more thing on this subject, and then I want to move on to an examination of your 1914 date and such, since I know it's getting late and these two young people are longing to be alone somewhere together in their chaste love." He smiled at them for a moment and continued, "From about 1954 to 1965 the Society taught that Adam, Eve, Cain, the inhabitants of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the antediluvian world would not be resurrected. But now the Society says (I always think I sound like 'Simon Says' whenever I say that) -- the Society says merely that Adam and Eve won't be resurrected. What was the reason for this change?"
"We recognized from Scripture," Richard responded, "that those of Sodom and Gomorrah would be there on judgment day. We know the unrighteous will be brought back to life, and so we can't say who will or won't be there. But we know Adam and Eve won't be because they were perfect beings. It's a much more serious matter for a perfect being to sin. We have the excuse of our inherited imperfection. But their sin came from their own initiative since they were perfect."
"So," Arthur clarified, "the change came from an understanding that a perfect person is responsible for his sin to the point of meriting the 'second death', whereas an imperfect person isn't responsible to that point because they have inherited sinful tendencies?"
"Yes, that's right," Richard responded.
"And is anyone perfect today?"
"Not hardly. Mankind is growing less and less perfect."
"And will anyone be made perfect before Armageddon?"
"Not on this earth."
"So the unbelievers and wicked people at Armageddon will be imperfect just as they are today?"
"Yes."
"Then will they be responsible for their sin to the point of meriting the second death?"
Richard was stunned at the apparent contradiction. His silence was filled in by a gasp of appreciation on the part of Cyn. It accompanied a thrill in Ted's own heart which suddenly responded to what seemed irrefutable proof that his mother and father and all his family, and all the human family as well, was equally loved by God and forgiven and would find a happy home under his kingdom in the new world.
Bob struggled for something to say but couldn't locate a theme to demolish the old man's logic. In a last-ditch attempt to crumble that victorious smile, he changed the subject. "Well, if you want to talk about 1914 we'd better get going on it. We haven't got all day."
But Arthur just lay there smiling his knowing smile at Ted and Cyn. So, in desperation Bob summed up the evidence for 1914 in monologue.
"We know God's kingdom was set up in heaven in 1914 because we know when his typical kingdom of Israel ceased: 607 BCE when the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, conquered it. That's when Jehovah allowed the gentile nations to rule the world for a specified amount of time till he would again set up his kingdom over the world (only this time with Spiritual Israel taking the lead). It is in Daniel chapter four where we find the amount of time between the two events.
"There, the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a huge tree that was chopped down by angels and banned so as not to grow for a period of 'seven times'. We know that trees often represent kingdoms in the Bible (Matthew 13:31, 32), and in this case the tree represented that kingdom which had just been cut down: Israel. It was to be bound for 'seven times' in which the gentiles would dominate the earth. But after that it would be loosed and would grow up to the very heavens, representing God's kingdom ruling from heaven over earth.
"So we ask, how long is 'seven times'? By looking at Revelation 12:6,14 we learn that 3 1/2 times amount to 1,260 days. Therefore, 7 times must amount to 2,520 days. We also know that God had punished Israel before as a day for a year (Numbers 14:34). Accordingly, the 7 times must last 2,520 years, or from 607 BCE to 1914 CE
"We have backup proof that 1914 was the end of the gentile times in the signs Jesus gave us in Matthew 24. He said that in the time of the end 'nation would rise against nation, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes' persecution of his followers, false prophets, increasing lawlessness, and the good news of the kingdom being preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness.' We have seen all these things since 1914. Those who witnessed the events of 1914 won't have all passed away before the end of this system comes about, Jesus tells us. So it has to be soon now, as they're all getting up there in age."
"But let's take this 'proof' step by step and see how well it holds up," Arthur began, unimpressed by Bob's monologue. "As to Daniel chapter four, does it say anything about 'the times of the gentiles' in it?"
"No," Bob admitted, "but it was written that way to hide the truth till the right time. Daniel admitted that even he didn't understand what he wrote; 'Now as for me, I heard, but I could not understand; so that I said, "O my lord, what will the final part of these thing be?" And he went on to say: "Go Daniel, because the words are made secret and sealed up until the time of the end."' (Daniel 12:8, 9)."
"When did the 'time of the end' begin?" Arthur asked.
"1914."
"And when did Russell first understand the word of secrecy in Daniel?"
"In the very first issue of the Watchtower," Richard replied, "in July 1879 Russell pointed out that the end of the times of the gentiles would occur in 1914."
"But how could he know the secret if it was sealed up till the time of the end?" Arthur wondered. "You just said that the time of the end didn't occur till 1914. Writing before 1914, Russell couldn't possibly know the secret which was 'sealed up until the time of the end'. Therefore, he could not know in 1879 that the time of the end would begin in 1914. The only way Russell could know the secret that was sealed up until the time of the end, was if the time of the end had already begun when he wrote about it in 1879, in which case his dating it at 1914 would be erroneous."
"That's rather confusing,' Richard admitted.
"Let me help you out of the difficulty," Arthur offered. "The words in Daniel chapter 12 have nothing to do with the dream recorded back in chapter 4. They only applied to the last series of visions he had from chapter ten on. That Daniel obviously understood the dream of Nebuchadnezzar is seen from the fact that he interpreted it for him: 'This is the interpretation, O king,' he says in verse 24. And what is the interpretation he gives? Is it about the times of the gentiles? Does he say the tree represents God's kingdom? No, he says, 'The tree that you beheld--it is you, O king,' (verses 20-22). Daniel's own inspired interpretation seems to get in the way of your own. It's rather a nuisance to you, I think. For in the 'antitype', what do you say Nebuchadnezzar represents?"
"The gentile powers, and their beastly rule (corresponding to his period of madness for seven times)."
"All right, do you admit that your whole interpretation rests on the supposition that this is a typical representation which has a double fulfillment, and that it has no other support?"
"Yes," Bob replied, "I admit that there's noting in the chapter that says it applies to the gentile times."
"In any case," Arthur went on, "since in the first fulfillment Daniel plainly states that the tree represents Nebuchadnezzar, in order to be at least consistent, your second fulfillment requires that the tree and Nebuchadnezzar represent the same thing."
"While that sounds right," Bob replied, "it isn't. In the major fulfillment we find that the tree represents God's kingdom and Nebuchadnezzar represents worldly government."
"Then Daniel's interpretation was wrong according to you!" Arthur exclaimed. "He clearly stated that the tree represented Nebuchadnezzar. So in the final fulfillment both of them must represent the same thing. And if you say this king represented worldy government ruling from 607 to 1914, how is it that during the seven times of the fulfillment of this prophecy as recorded in the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar was not ruling? How could he represent the ruling world powers when he was taken off his throne all during the seven times?
"Furthermore, everyone knows that Israel wasn't overthrown by Babylon in the year 607 BCE Nebuchadnezzar didn't even become king 'till 605 BCE, so how could he conquer Israel two years before he became king? These are absolute dates you can find in any and every reference work on the subject: Babylon conquered Israel in 587-6 BCE. So, if we were to accept everything else about your interpretation of Daniel (though there is absolutely no reason for doing so), we would end up with the date 1934 instead of 1914. But either date is ridiculous since we can all plainly see that the gentile powers are still ruling!
"All of the 'signs' you use to prove that the time of the end began in 1914 are the same ones Russell used to prove that the time of the end started in 1799, and that Christ's presence began in 1874. He used incidents in the papers of the time and gave just as convincing an argument for his dates as you do today for yours. This proves that, with your methods, you can persuade a person in any time period that he is living in the 'last days'. You can even twist the facts to make them fit your time period. For instance, the Watchtower of May 1, page 9, reported:
"'The severity and deadliness of earthquakes have increased markedly since "the time of the end" commenced for this old system in 1914. In fact, over 900,000 persons have died from earthquakes in this century, including close to 1,250 in the United States.'"
But you will notice this figure dates from the beginning of this century rather than from 1914. The fact is that more than half the number died prior to 1914! To be precise, if you were to look the matter up in my Collier's Encyclopedia on the shelf there, Volume 8, page 254, you'd find that between the years 1905 and 1908, 520,000 people lost their lives in earthquakes; that's well over half the number the Watchtower gives to prove that the number has gone up since 1914! So, if the straight facts were given, it would point to the 'time of the end' having an earlier start than 1914. But the straight facts aren't given; they're half-truths that are twisted to fit your interpretation of God's purpose -- an evil, wicked purpose to destroy all of mankind whom he loves for the sake of giving you Witnesses the revenge for having doors slammed in your faces.
"How can you call this 'good news'? The wholesale slaughter of innocent children as well as adults? The virtuous with the wicked and the knowledgeable with the totally ignorant? Those who've heard your message twice a week with those who've never heard of you or even of Christianity? Where is justice in this? Where is common sense? Where is compassion or love? The wolf may indeed lie down with the lamb in your 'new world', but they will be laying atop the blood-soaked shreds of flesh and shattered bones of worthy men."
Everyone was taken by surprise at Arthur's emotional conclusion. Bob felt defeated, Richard felt stupid, Ted felt good though confused, and Cyn was afire, anxious to convert the experience into a poem.
"Well," Arthur said at last, seeing that no one else dared to speak, "that ends our meetings together. I hope I've helped you brothers to think in new ways and have prepared you for possible objections you'll encounter from ministers while in the field ministry.
"I don't think it will make any difference, but I've decided not to add my recommendation for your eldership, Richard. This is nothing personal, nor does it reflect on your excellent conduct and brilliant answers in our meetings together here. I base my decision solely on the Scriptural injunction that requires all servants in the congregation to have their children in subjection without unduly irritating them.
"But for you, dear brother Bob, I am taking more positive action than merely declining to voice an opinion to the committee. I'm recommending that you not be considered for eldership. No matter how much you know about the Bible and the publications, you are not in the Truth.
"Finally, my dear friends, Ted and Cynthia, I hope this won't be the last I'll see of you. Please stop by and visit me when you can. And whenever you have a problem or question you think I can help you with, just let me know.
"Thank you," Ted answered, "we will."
As they all silently filed out of the room, Ted reasoned to himself that now that these meetings were at last over, he could freely talk to Arthur about his being born-again at baptism. He eagerly looked forward to it.
As Richard drove them all home, no one dared speak. Finally, Richard said to no one in particular, "He's quite a brother, isn't he?"
"We didn't learn any Truth from him," Bob sneered, "it was all just tearing down the Society by a Russellite. It was a waste of time all right, but he won't stop me from becoming an elder."
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 10: More Trouble
Tuesday night the congregation dutifully opened their Bibles to the accustomed Scriptures on ‘keeping the congregation clean’. They knew what was coming. Some, like Ted, even knew who it was.
"So, in accordance with these Scriptural injunctions," Brother Nelson droned, "the Judicial Committee convened and decided after prayerful consideration to place Phyllis Barton on public reproof for conduct unbecoming a Christian…" He continued with the usual speech of admonishing everyone to encourage the offending member to renew her relationship with Jehovah and strengthen her.
It was always depressing, no matter how often it happened or how richly it was deserved. The poor brother who had to follow this announcement with the "concluding comments" looked out over a field of blank faces and knew he wasn't getting through to anyone; all were preoccupied with the shame brought upon the congregation.
But after the meeting, when Ted brought Cyn over to join the brothers and sisters who were offering Phyllis their support, Phyllis, though distraught with embarrassment and shame, started in again: "Cynthia, come here. I want to tell you what Jan told me today about how evolution is selecting women over men."
"Can't you tell me as well?" Ted asked.
"No, she's not in the Truth,' Phyllis replied, "so I can talk to her. "
Thinking she had the restrictions of disfellowshipping on her mind in which no one in the Truth would be allowed to talk to her, Ted responded, "You can talk to anybody, sister. There's no restriction there."
"Yes, but only she’ll understand," she remarked, taking Cyn off to a corner to talk to her.
"It doesn't look good," David Nelson said to Ted, "I overheard what she said. If she's accepting evolution now in order to prove this women's lib thing, we'll have no choice but to go for disfellowshipping." He placed his hand on Ted's shoulder, one of his many gestures that made him feel superior and his victims inferior, though to a bystander it merely looked like a friendly action.
"I see you're still sitting by that Cynthia without being engaged. Do you still intend to continue studying with her alone in her apartment?"
"Yes," Ted answered nervously, and felt the grip on his shoulder tighten uncomfortably.
"Brother, brother," David shook his head sadly, then releasing him and clapping the shoulder once more as Ted turned to go, he said, "Well, I guess you've made your decision. Now we'll just see what comes of it." A double disfellowshipping was certainly David Nelson's idea of personal glory so long as he could perform the honors; he took such great pride in keeping the congregation clean.
Paul, whom they usually rode with, had taken over an additional shift temporarily at the gas station, so he didn't make it to the meeting that night. Cyn and Ted, therefore, climbed into the overstuffed car of the Johnson's. Richard was tired from a long day's work, and decided to drive Cyn to his place and let Paul (whom Ted said would be home by now) drive her home from there.
But when they reached their destination, Richard remarked that there was no light on upstairs. "He should be home in a minute," Ted said. And though Richard looked at him with some suspicion, he was really too tired to put up much of a fuss. He was mostly to blame for Cyn being there, and he didn't want her waiting in his place as he got ready for bed, so he let it slide.
"If I'm going to be disfellowshipped anyway," Ted told her as they made their way into his empty apartment, "I might as well do something to deserve it."
She smiled and sat at the far end of the sofa, suddenly nervous.
"I'm just kidding," he said, wishing he wasn't. "But it's nice to be alone with you after a hectic meeting."
"Why do you go if you don't enjoy them?" Cyn asked.
He let the question go by and sat next to her, the entire right side of his body making contact with the left side of hers. He put his arm around her and had his hand on her thigh before he could think about not putting it there. She moved her face towards his and they kissed with more passion than they had ever allowed to pass between them.
His hand stroked her thigh several times until it came to rest between her legs. He flinched slightly as he felt her hand in the same place on him. A charge went through them that told them they couldn't stop there.
But there was a key in the lock, and the door swung open.
"Ooo-eee!" Paul exclaimed. "Guess you Jehovah's know how to have a good time too!"
His mocking laughter pried them apart like a wedge of lightning.
Ted's guilt and embarrassment turned to instant anger as he vented it at the intruder, "I wish you'd learn to knock! Since you never pay the rent, I think I'm at least entitled to a little privacy!"
As Ted began to think of Paul's big mouth and realized how quickly this incident would reach the ears of the entire congregation, and the satisfaction that it would bring to Brother Nelson to read his disfellowshipping announcement, he grew angrier still. "In fact, why don't you just take your things and get outta here? You have no right being here, barging in on us like that. You don't pay any rent here; you're trespassing, so get out! Here, I’ll help you…"
Months of little frustrations had accumulated and were pouring forth now in a raging torrent against Paul, bolstered by the great frustrations of this night. Ted walked into the bedroom and dumped drawer after drawer of Paul's things into his suitcases. "There, take 'em and go!"
"Sheeat, I ain't goin' nowhere tonight man."
Looking at him defiantly, Ted grabbed a suitcase in each hand, walked back to the living room, opened the entrance door, through which Paul had so lately come, and threw the bags down to the bottom of the stairs.
Seeing that he meant business, Paul figured he'd better leave after all. Facing eviction, his mind was unusually quick and had already supplied him with a better place to spend the night. He wouldn't even have to feel guilty about it because Ted was forcing him to go there.
"All right, man, I'm going," Paul said, grabbing up the rest of his stuff. And with a contemptuous look at Cyn and then at Ted, he said, "I knew all this holier-than-thou shit was just a put-on. You're no better than any 'worldly' person you condemn."
After Paul had gone, Ted was still fuming. He paced back and forth through the rooms mumbling about the many irritations Paul had caused him over the months and how he "should have done this a long time ago."
When he'd cooled off some, he sat again on the sofa, this time at some distance from Cyn.
"Well," she said calmly, "there goes my ride. I guess I’ll have to spend the night."
He glanced over at her just long enough to take in her meaningful smile. He stared straight ahead and frowned. "It just so happens that they let Joey sleep over at the Lindquist's with their little boy, and Bobby is sleeping on the couch downstairs tonight. So if it were ever possible, tonight would be the night."
"Yes, it sounds like a night for sleeping over," she agreed, still talking to a profile.
"It almost sounds like I arranged it this way, doesn't it?" he laughed.
"Maybe you did, subconsciously."
"Would you like some wine? It's the one thing Paul forgot to take," Ted chuckled awkwardly as he made his way to the refrigerator.
"He always keeps a bottle of cheap wine on hand. I’ll take it as partial compensation for the rent." He poured two glasses and returned, this time sitting even further away from her.
"It's warm," she commented.
"Must be something the matter with the fridge."
They drank in silence for several minutes, Ted still afraid. In fact, now he didn't even dare look at her.
When they had finished the wine, she realized that if she let him speak first he'd spoil it all by saying something about the meeting or Paul. So she made the first move, scooting over beside him and pressing her soft, warm body against his. "I've been wanting to read you some new poems I've been trying out," she breathed.
"Oh, really?" he said in his unromantic voice. It was clear that he was putting up the greatest resistance now. At any moment he would ask her to leave if only there were some way for her to do so. So she quickly dominated the conversation in sensual tones.
"Yes. Would you like to hear them? In our last poetry meeting the instructor said we should continue using his method and try to be inspired to write new poems after studying old ones, using the themes in novel ways, and such. So I tried this with the paired poems of The Shepherd to His Love and The Nymph's Reply. The first was written by Christopher Marlowe, and the latter by Sir Walter Raleigh."
"Really, how do they go?"
"Well, I didn't memorize them. But the first is a plea by the shepherd boy to 'Come, live with me, and be my love,/ And we will all the pleasures prove…' and so on. And the second is the refusal on the part of the girl: 'If the world were young/ And truth on every shepherd's tongue,/ then these things might me move/ to live with thee and be thy love.' Something like that. So, anyway, I thought I'd turn them around and have the girl doing the pleading."
"And the boy doing the refusing?" Ted asked.
"Yes, but that's where the trouble came in. I wrote two refusals, and they're both too harsh to be considered enjoyable poetry. Well, tell me what you think," she said as she unfolded two sheets of paper from her purse.
"Now these are the boy's refusals of love you're going to read?" Ted asked.
"Yes," she replied, eyeing him nervously before her eyes descended to the page in her hands, "Here goes. The first is entitled, The Misogynist to the Flirt."
"What's a misogynist?" Ted asked.
"A person who hates women," she replied, and began her poem:
"So you have breasts I may not lick
 Which milk the seed-beds of apostrophe.
 So your thighs are sewn together Stitched by pendulating pelvis.
 You tease but the scratched frame,
 The dried oils remain unaffected.
 I saw the late rabbit chew its leg off
 In the trap by which you'd catch me
 Where my teeth cannot reach.
 If you tongue your eye once more It may counterfeit a tear
 Or some other ex-testinal worm.
 Your O's have sprouted now,
 And I may smell one at your bidding?
 But I know where you perch it after breakfast;
 You'll have this function alone as well.
 Still, we may flatten our curves on parquet
 Pressing backs together with eyelids
 Groaning."
"That's terrible," Ted judged, "it doesn't make much sense, and when it does it's gross. Also, I like it better when you write in rhyme."
She saw that he was cranky and thinking of Paul, so she laid the next one on him before delivering the final one in which she hoped to grab his full attention as well as change his mood. "Well, it just so happens that this next one is in rhyme, though it's more gross, being more plain. It's called The Misogynist's Reply to the Virgin:
"Virgin girl, sweet young thing,
 You make yourself a whore
 With all your vain imploring;
 The sight of women I abhor!
 Sex is dirty, ugly,
 Shameful, vile, and gross!
 Maybe I’d fit snugly,
 But I'm too morose
 Than to copulate
 Gaily, lightly, in your arms.
 Why, I'd rather masturbate
 Than fall prey to your charms!
 Worthless sacs of flesh displayed
 Prominently to my view,
 Nothing move me or persuade
 Me to yield myself to you.
Most men are already fools;
 When it comes to love, it's all.
 In women's hands men are tools.
 Love is best described as a fall.
 Gods above rebuke us!
 I don't know why men
 Lust for bloody mucus.
 You can keep your hymen!
"Yes, that's much worse; it's downright disgusting! You can write better than that, I know you can," Ted said appalled.
"Well, that's the whole point," she replied, "you can't write pleasantly about something so unpleasant as a person refusing love. So take that as your clue; that's not the way to respond to a girl's pleading with you for love. I want you to pay close attention now as this last poem has everything to do with us and tonight, and this very moment. It's called The Black Girl to the Jehovah's Witness:
"Will you love a laywoman's human bones?
 Or would you rather hold those old beliefs
 That make all women Virgin Mary clones,
 And study, lawyer-like, your own dry briefs
 While my hexagon of lips salivate?
 Let's plead eternal guilt to nature's laws
 And judge our case 'Desire Insatiate'
 Forget your proverbs, sayings, and old saws.
 Just shape your tongue to fit me -- I'm a bell --
 And ring the watching stars from out their sockets;
 Rain Gods and Devils -- there's your heaven, hell,
 And all the rest aflame like streaking rockets.
 That fire within you is not for God alone.
 This black girl knows what black men want in prayer.
 Their hunger wants no words; their bed no stone;
 Their thirst no salt; their ears no soundless air.
 While belly, touch, tongue, and ears have these needs,
 There's something more than these he always craves
 As natural as the heart his lifetime bleeds,
 He needs the tight confines of softest caves.
 He needs the warming touch of tender lips.
 And mine are yours for your still lips to hush
 Till all past joy and thought your flesh outstrips;
 Let's love so hard we'll make Jehovah blush!"
Ted, stunned by her words, was led along until the very end. But at the sound of the name Jehovah he snapped out of it. He jumped up, freeing himself from the woman clinging to him. His mind froze in a desperate attempt to cool his boiling blood. "We mustn't," he said, "you’ll have to leave."
And as he stood there, forming in his mind a plan to call for a taxi by means of the corner phone booth, she fled. Having offered herself in a mutual exchange of tender love-expression with the man she adored, his callous rejection hurt her more than she could bear. She ran out the door and flew down the steps, disappearing into the dark night.
He thought to follow her, but remembering Joseph's example, felt that it was for the best that one of them had run out anyway.
Situations were reversed for him the next day. He accepted an invitation at the Tuesday night meeting from Julia Salvayez to come over in the morning. It seemed she'd met up with some Mormons who were coming over at that time to "convert" her, and she wanted Ted to be there because, as she said, "you're the only young person I know who's so knowledgeable about the Bible." Flattered, Ted agreed to the arrangement. She lived in a well-kept apartment with her older sister Rita, and it was Rita who answered the door.
Before responding to his "hello," she shouted over her shoulder, "Julia! Ted's here!" Then, addressing him, she said, "C'mon in."
He made his way to the living room and chose the most commanding chair. It was a simulated-leather reclining chair, the kind a man would more likely pick out. The sisters, he thought, would look out of place in it.
"Hi Ted," Julia greeted, coming around the corner in a too-skimpy dress, "glad you could make it." And she sat on their little sofa.
"Thanks for asking me. When did they say they were coming?"
"They weren't sure. You don't mind waiting with me, do you?" she asked flirtingly.
"Not at all, sister," he replied, using "sister" to tactfully remind her of their spiritual relationship, "I just hope I'm equal to the occasion."
He meant, of course, to be able to refute the Mormon's teachings, but Julia typically made everything a sexual innuendo. "Oh, I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion," she giggled.
At this point Rita re-entered the room, much to Ted's relief, and sat in a chair opposite her sister. Their small talk soon turned to gossip about the married couples at the hall. Ted, hearing more than he deemed appropriate, asked them to change the subject.
"Why? Don't you like marriage?" Rita asked.
"It's a great institution," Ted replied, "I just thought that --"
"I'd like to get married," Julia cut him off, "wouldn't you?"
"Well, sure, I guess so."
"I'd like to marry a missionary brother and go to some far-off land where they've never heard of us, and preach day and night, and live just for Jehovah and my man," Julia said dreamily.
Knowing that she never went out in service except for about an hour a month, Ted took this with a grain of salt. But Julia had excited herself with her own romantic fantasy, and she and Rita lapsed into some rapid-fire Spanish exchanges. Ted sat there for several minutes, biding his time as they went on and on at a fevered pitch, several times casting odd looks at him. Finally, they both screamed with laughter and remarked that that they suddenly remembered that he couldn't understand a word they were saying. Still laughing, Rita made her exit, surprisingly enough, out the door.
"Isn't Rita going to stay to help us with the Mormons?" he innocently asked.
"No, they called late last night to say they weren't coming," Julia explained in an off-handed way. "Won't you come sit beside me here on the couch?"
"Why?"
"I’ll let you put your arms around me," she promised.
He gulped. Why was Satan throwing women in his path just now? Where would he find the strength? "Why should I want to do that?" he asked, gripping the arms of the chair.
"I’ll let you feel me up," she offered. "I've seen how you've snuck looks at my tits when you thought no one was looking. Well, now I’ll let you see them." And she leaned forward on the edge of her seat and undid the zipper of her dress. Thus loosened, she managed to pull the top down, exposing her breasts.
He looked; his pulse quickened. He jumped up, took two steps towards her -- and then the image of Cyn came to his mind. He did not think of her exactly, just as he did not think of jumping on the half-naked woman in front of him; the sight of her soft inviting skin had driven away all thoughts per se.
But somehow the image of Cyn came to him, and the fact that he'd refused what the woman he loved had offered him the night before made him turn and run from what this loose woman enticingly thrust in front of his eyes today.
Once again the example of Joseph had been imitated. But the once-aroused flesh could not be dispensed with quite so easily. Ted arrived back home with the sight of the woman's fleshly endowments still dancing in his mind. He could almost reach out and grab them, as he had almost done to the genuine article.
Glancing at the rubble from last night's ruckus with Paul, he discovered a drawer with some more of Paul's stuff in it. Prominent amongst the other junk were three pornographic magazines and two Playboy magazines. He grabbed them and jumped into bed with them, tearing off his pants with one hand and arranging the pillow behind him with the other. As he concentrated his full visual attention on the pictured flesh in his hands, darting his eyes from thighs to breasts over the countless posed women, some part of his mind, reserved for such things and thus unable to participate in these proceedings, formed an excuse.
If he had the strength to deny himself real live, beautiful women two days in a row, he was surely entitled to a little make-believe. But as soon as his hand ceased its furious stroking, and the sticky, warm fluid had soaked the sheets, he tossed the magazines off the bed in anger as guilt settled over him. It was guilt so powerful and deep that it would be a very long time before he was over it. In the intervening time he would successfully burn in his own manufactured hell as payment for a moment's imagined paradise.
Two hours later, despite his very fear to pray to Jehovah and ask forgiveness, and despite his worry that, as an anointed, born-again Christian, he'd committed the unforgivable sin, he picked the magazines up off the floor and masturbated again. Afterwards, instead of flinging them from him, he began leafing through the old Playboys. He was surprised to find something intellectually interesting in them.
News-clips of violence to children especially caught his eye, and he read where Sweden outlawed parents' use of physical violence on their children. "I’ll bet that makes it hard on the brothers there in Sweden," he said to himself. "They can't even bring their children up the way the Bible tells them to without disobeying man's law." He continued to read that: "children just do not respond when they are hit or threatened. Their reaction is the opposite. They think in terms of revenge, and they can live in fear." Another similar one he read noted that parents who use violence against their children are likely to find themselves on the receiving end when the children grow up because "most violent children were themselves beaten when younger."
Surprised to be reading something intelligent in Playboy for the first time (for he'd never read the articles in them before) he went on that day to read more. In fact, he spent the entire day in this manner, masturbating only once more when his attention again reverted to the nude photography.
But all that long night he lay awake tormenting himself with guilt and feeling ever more guilty as he still felt the desire within him.
Although he mustered up the courage to beg strength from Jehovah, and though he promised never to do the wicked deed again, he knew he would the next chance he got. And as he lay there listening once again to the familiar sounds of Joey's snoring and the occasional moans of Bobby (which he imagined were caused by nightmares about his father beating him), he wondered about the wisdom of so much punishment.
Thinking of Sherri and her newfound submissiveness, he wondered if she could really be said to have been gently molded to Jehovah's will, or rather "broken" like a dog is housebroken. Were these children bending to conformity, or were they being snapped in two? And was it really right of them to force anyone -- even their offspring -- into their religion? Could they really make a person believe something, or could they just make them outwardly conform, like Sherri? And, if it was just outward conformity, weren't they really raising a generation of hypocrites? Such were the thoughts that alternated with his overriding preoccupation with his own sinfulness.
He wasn't to start work until next week, and he feared that this would leave him nothing to do but give in to "self-abuse". (He'd adopted this term as more derogatory than masturbation, and because it was the one the Society used most often in condemning the deed.) So he got up the next morning and decided he'd better find something to do to occupy his time. What he decided upon was to find Paul and straighten things out between them. After all, he was almost a brother, and he couldn't hold a grudge against a brother.
After searching for nearly two hours, he found Paul girl-watching in the park.
"Hey, there's my main man!" Paul called out upon seeing Ted, "What's new with you, man? Didja get it on that night?"
"No, she left right after you did."
"Sheeat, you expect me to believe that, too, don’t you?" he chuckled.
"Look, Paul, I'm sorry I got so mad that night. You can come back if you want to. Only don't say anything about it to anyone because they'll get the wrong idea. And she did leave right away."
"You're a fool if she did. She was all ready, man. I could see that. But I don't hafta come back there. I got me a nicer place now."
"Where might that be?"
"Oh, I shouldn't really say. It's not all that official yet. But I’ll find out for sure today."
"It must be pretty nice. Can you afford the rent?"
"Ain't no rent. I got me two roommates--both chicks, and they don't pay no rent either," Paul boasted.
"Who pays the rent?" Ted asked. "The government? My taxes, I suppose."
"No man," Paul laughed, "you'd never guess who pays the rent, but you know him."
"I know him?" Ted was perplexed. He let a moment or two slip by for Paul to enjoy his superiority in knowing a secret. But after he grew tired of watching the leafs change color, he said, "Okay, Paul, you've got me. You want to tell me what's goin' on?"
"Not till you tell me what you did with Cyn. I want to hear all the spicy details."
"She read me some poems she wrote about love, we both got too excited, and I told her to leave. So she ran out, and I don't know if she’ll ever want to see me again."
The hurt in Ted's eyes rang true and drove all doubt from Paul's mind. "Hey, man, I'm sorry. Okay, here's something that'll cheer you up if you think you got girl problems. Our mysterious rent-payer is none other than your Bob Morrow."
"What? Why should he pay your rent?"
Paul laughed, "Why do you think?"
"I can't begin to imagine."
"Remember how he was under public reproof the first time I met him?"
"Yeah, but that was a mistake; they acquitted him."
"Well, that may be, but this is what it was all about. Remember you even said he had 'gotten too close' to a sister. Who did you mean?"
"I thought it was Julia Salvayez, because she was reproved about the same time, and Brother Nelson's always counseling her in the van."
"Well, you were wrong, man. You don't know what's goin' on at that Kingdom Hall, do you?"
"Well why don't you tell me, if it's the truth. I don't want to hear gossip."
"This ain't no gossip, this is straight from the horse's mouth, man. You were wrong, it wasn't Julia; it was her sister, Rita. I should say it is her sister Rita."
"Okay, so what does that have to do with his paying the rent on this apartment you found?"
"Shit you're dumb. Do I have to spell it all out for you? The apartment is the Salvayez's apartment. Bob Morrow is married to Rita Salvayez. But it's a big secret because she gets welfare and alimony, and who knows what all, and that would all stop if anybody knew she was married. And Bob can't live away from his father because he depends on him so much, or some damn thing. So they worked out this arrangement where he can come over there when he gets the chance, and they screw. Only it ain't against the Bible 'cause they're married, See?"
"And he pays the rent?" Ted asked, too astounded to really know what to say.
"Shit, yes. That's the least he can do for his wife is pay the rent! But anyway, the elders found out about this somehow and he got disfellowshipped for 'living a lie'. Well, that threatened the whole arrangement, so Julia, the world's greatest tease, lured David Nelson into her arms (and who knows what else) in that van he always takes her to right when Bob was supposed to come out of the meeting at a pre-arranged time and find them. That provided him with blackmail, see, so he called the shots and got himself reinstated and even was made an elder!"
"You know I don't believe any of what you're telling me."
"Suit yourself, man. Don't matter to me what you believe."
"How do you know all this?"
"Where do you think I went when you threw me out Tuesday night? I went over to Julia's and Rita's place. They told me all about it. And Julia wants the same arrangement her sister's got, only with me!"
"So you were there Tuesday night? When did you leave?" Knowing that Paul wasn't there early Wednesday morning when Ted was there expecting to confront the Mormons, he was testing the validity of his story.
"They got me up real early the next morning. I had to go, they said, 'cause Bob was comin'. He was there off and on all day and night, I guess, 'cause this afternoon is the earliest time I can come back there. And then we're gonna settle things."
"And you're gonna marry her?"
"Yeah, man. Why not? She's got a great bod and knows how to use it."
"And she uses it too much," Ted said in disgust. "It wasn't Bob who came after you left, Paul; it was me. And if I put the pieces together properly, she was seeing if she couldn't hook me first before settling for you. They were talking for a long time in Spanish, and I'll bet that's what they were talking about. They were talking about marriage before that, and then Rita left us alone together and Julia tried to get me -- well, you know. She's a very loose woman. You'd never be the only man in her life. I'm not saying this to hurt you, only to warn you of what you're letting yourself in for."
"No, you like nothin' better than hurtin' me," Paul replied in anger. "You'd say anything just to keep things in a certain, narrow, 'Society' way. There's nothin' wrong with this 'cause we’ll be married. We just won't tell anybody -- man, I shouldn't a told you -- and we'll maybe live apart, that's what she wants anyway. There's nothin’ the Bible says against that. It's the same thing your elder does."
"He's not an elder yet," Ted cautioned, "You mustn't live your life trying to get away with as much as possible without actually breaking God's laws; you should instead try to stay as close to them as you can. But it's your life; if you want to mess it up, I guess that's your business. I've done all I can in warning you." Ted got up from the bench and walked away from his friendship with Paul.
That night, following the meeting at the Johnson's, Ted invited David Nelson upstairs to speak with him in private about his new problem.
"It's a pity Phyllis Barton decided not to come to our meeting tonight," David lamented, happy to beat around the bush before coming around to Ted's troubles as long as it meant that he could discuss the shortcomings of others. "Terry really looked depressed sitting there with his mother-in-law. It must really be hard on him not only having an uppity, unsubmissive wife involved in women's liberation, but having her disfellowshipped as well, so that he can't even talk to her except when it's absolutely necessary."
"She wasn't disfellowshipped," Ted reminded him, "just reproved."
"Oh yes, that's right. Well, let's just say that it's a matter of a very little time, and till then we'll keep it between you and me. Now what was it you wanted to see me about?"
"I've been having this very personal problem, brother. It seems events have conspired against me to entice me past endurance, and I've yielded to finding relief in self-abuse."
"That's not what the Scriptures say, brother," David quickly replied. "The first Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 13 tells us, 'No temptation has taken you except that which is common to men. But God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but along with the temptation he will also make the way out in order for you to be able to endure it.' So don't cast the blame for your sinfulness on fate or on too-great temptation; God doesn't allow that. You are able to withstand any temptation that comes you way, and if you don't, the fault is all yours.
"This is a practice that is certainly disgusting to Jehovah," David continued, "one that he hates and deplores. The True Peace book is quite clear that it is an unclean practice, and the Organization book instructs us on the judicial committee to keep a clean congregation. So what does that suggest to you that I should do under these circumstances? I’ll allow you to judge your own situation now."
"Logically, you should remove me from the congregation."
"And by what means do we do that?"
"By disfellowshipping me."
"That's right." David beamed, as if making Ted say the word was some sort of victory. Then, remembering that it wasn’t happy news as far as Ted was concerned, he resumed his frown and continued: "Now many elders wouldn't take this step yet. They'd allow you time to break the habit and spend countless of their valuable hours wasting counsel on you. But I know better. You'll get a first-hand appreciation of the seriousness of the matter if you're placed immediately outside God's organization because of it. Then you can work your way back inside by abstinence rather than becoming increasingly closer to disfellowshipment from your failures.
"I'm going to recommend you for disfellowshipping also for the reason that you have deliberately disobeyed the orders of an elder and flaunted your disobedience before others. Your conduct with sisters in and out of the congregation has been too loose. And you continue sitting next to and studying alone with that black girl despite repeated warnings.
"How do you think it looks to people when you go over to her apartment alone at night and spend an hour there? And now that you admit to the unclean practice of self-abuse, it casts more suspicion on what you do there. It makes us wonder if you aren't just carrying on promiscuity under the cover of Jehovah's organization. So, all these things considered, I feel fairly confident that the committee will judge disfellowshipping to be the most appropriate course of action in view of all I'll report to them."
After making some brief comments about how much nicer the apartment looked with all Paul's things gone (comments that went by an unhearing, dazed Ted), he said goodnight and left.
Now, Ted had not expected this at all. He expected something quite different. Turning to an elder and laying such an intimate problem at his feet, asking for his help as one humble, unworthy sinner to another, he little thought he'd be treated as an inferior slave by a tyrannical master. He needed help, counsel, a strong, confident arm to pat him on the shoulder and tell him that it was something all young men go through, and that with Jehovah's help they overcame it.
Disfellowshipped! Now he felt he'd certainly committed the unforgivable sin and was doomed to second death: eternal death. Now he was nothing. "Worthless" was now too good a name for him; he was less than nothing. For "nothing" was not opposed to Jehovah. "Nothing" did not lust and yield to selfish desires of a disgusting nature. "Nothing" didn't disgust Jehovah. So he was no longer even equal to zero; he had instead become a negative number. Negative infinity.
And to think that he so lately considered himself worthy of being a joint-heir with Christ! He laughed mockingly at his former self, and so laughing he realized that it was his "former man" -- that sinful, pre-Witness self -- laughing at what had been the "new man". They had changed places and he was again an "old man" belonging to the old world and destined to be destroyed with it in at Armageddon. In fact, he'd just experienced his spiritual second death in the dying of his "new man". He was not back to square one, he was worse off than he began: at a negative square one.
He spent all of the next day in such self-torment of soul that if anything deserved the term "self-abuse" it was certainly this self-berating. His guilt knew no modesty; he was at once the greatest sinner that ever lived and the most despicable specimen of humanity.
He refused to eat that day. "A person who so misuses the body that God gives him," he reasoned, "certainly doesn't deserve God's gift of food." So he planned to starve to death. It was a form of passive suicide, and appealed to him on this count. He knew it was a terrible sin to commit suicide, but as he was no longer deserving of God's gift of food, it wouldn't really be his fault if he died for lack of it.
By Saturday morning he was hungrier than he'd ever been in his life. He spent the morning in a daze of strange, disconnected thoughts alternating with weeping in anguish over all his shortcomings as he dwelt on them one at a time or in combinations. He'd think of how bad Julia was, or the report he'd heard of Bob's carryings-on, and then he'd say to himself, "I'm much worse than they are; they're saints compared to me." And he imagined all the angels, saints, and even Christ and Jehovah up above him in heaven turning their faces from him in contempt and disgust, thrusting out their arms towards him with their palms facing him in a gesture of revulsion. He could almost hear the Devil laughing triumphantly.
Bobby interrupted this train of thought by coming up with the mail (an Awake magagine) and noticing a puddle on the kitchen floor.
"Hey, there's water around your refrigerator," he reported.
Ted rose slowly -- reluctant to leave his anguished revelry -- and investigated. Sure enough, the refrigerator seemed to be leaking. Upon opening it he found that the food had all spoiled. Only the light seemed to be working as it shone on rotten food and sour milk.
"It's broke," the observant Bobby announced. "I’ll go call the landlord and get him to come and fix it." With that he ran down the stairs, and Ted returned to his daze.
It was interrupted an hour later by Bobby again. "Dad says you gotta come down right now!"
Zombie-like, he followed Bobby down the steps into the living room where Richard was sitting.
"’Stupid’ here called the landlord and told him to come right over," Richard explained, using his new pet-name for the son he was raising to be a schizophrenic, "so now we've got to hide you somewhere."
"Hide me somewhere?" Ted echoed.
"Yes, you see they don't know anyone's up there but the kids. They think we've been paying the rent up there for an extra bedroom for the kids and storage space for our stuff. In fact, he's gonna think it's funny that we use the fridge up there at all."
"Why is that?"
"They'd have a fit if they knew you were up there."
Ted could tell Richard didn't want to spell it out further, he easily filled in the blank himself and it read 'prejudiced'. He didn't really care about that; he expected that of worldly people. What upset him was that he'd been unwittingly living a lie all this time. Instead of placing the blame on Richard, where any blame would belong, he chalked it up to another sin of his own.
"I was thinking of the basement," Vonnie, who was standing by the stove, suggested.
"No, that's no good," Richard said impatiently, as if expecting the landlord to burst in upon them at any moment, point an accusing finger, and yell 'nigger!' "He always goes down there this time of year to check on the furnace. Let him hide in Jeannie's room; he won't go in there."
"All right," Ted simply said, and allowed Bobby to lead him into the girls' room. Sherri, Jeannie, and Joey were in there. Jeannie and Joey were playing with the toy cars he received as stolen merchandise, and Sherri was lying on her stomach atop her bed reading a magazine.
"Hi Ted," they all said one by one.
"Shhh," he cautioned, "I'm supposed to be hiding in here." He found himself unaccountably happier in the presence of these children. Sherri was looking less and less like a child, though, being a rapidly developing teenager now. He made towards Jeannie's bed to sit and wait out the ordeal.
"But don't sit on my bed, okay?" Jeannie asked, "'cause we're gonna use it in a minute. Right, Joey?"
Remembering Joey's peculiar obsession with Jeannie's bed when matched with a layer of toys, Ted turned towards Sherri's bed, intending to sit on the edge.
"A gentleman doesn't sit with a lady on her bed," Sherri advised without looking up from the magazine which Ted now made out to be Seventeen.
"Sorry," he apologized, and sat on the floor between them.
The ordeal was soon over, and Bobby accompanied him back upstairs to oversee the repair work that had been done. All the food had been removed and dumped in the garbage can. But the refrigerator itself was humming along, cooling empty shelves with great efficiency. While Bobby, who was always loath to return downstairs, hung around, Ted began talking to him about the things bothering him.
"What do you think about people who've been disfellowshipped?" Ted asked.
"I don't know. I don't know anybody that's been disfellowshipped. But I know you're not supposed to talk to them."
"But they're worse than worldly people aren't they?" Ted asked, "Because you can talk to worldly people. In fact, that's our most important function: preaching to people outside the Truth. But if you're kicked out of the Society, you're worse off than when you were in the world because you had the Truth and gave it up."
"But what's the difference if you're destroyed either way?" Bobby reasoned. "One's no worse off than the other, really, if they're both killed in Armageddon.
"Hmmm, I never thought of that," Ted replied, surprised at the pragmatism of his young friend. "But then shouldn't we treat them both the same? We’d have to try to bring those cast out of the Society back in, we'd have to talk to them and encourage them."
"Well, sure. If Jehovah judges them both the same, we should treat them both the same."
"That's a very enlightened view, Bobby. I only wish the Society saw it that way."
"Yeah," Bobby complained, "we can't do what we think is right; we gotta do what the Society says and call that the only right thing."
At this point Vonnie called him back down. Now Ted had something new to ponder from an unexpected source. Perhaps he was at square zero after all. Everyone else was convinced that he was not one of the anointed, and if they were right, then, according to Arthur, he could never commit the unforgivable sin in this system. But was that something Arthur really believed or just something he said to test Bob and Richard, like his arguments on the Trinity and the soul? He didn't know, but at least he'd moved into the realm of uncertainty. And coming from certain condemnation, such doubt was a forward step and a relief. The innocent honesty of Bobby saying exactly what he thought about the Society was refreshing and pulled him from the quagmire of depression until that Sunday.
That Sunday Elder David Nelson mounted the platform following the Watchtower meeting. He had his grave look on, and when he asked the congregation to look up the familiar Scriptures, everyone knew what was up. The next step was being taken. Neither Phyllis nor her husband were present that day, knowing what was to transpire. So it was merely a formality to warn the congregation to shun a former member of God's organization, a former pioneer, a former 'good person'.
And after Phyllis had been officially disfellowshipped "for conduct unbecoming a Christian," it was Ted's turn. At the last moment he reminded himself that this couldn't really be happening; he was supposed to meet with the judicial committee before any decision could be reached as to disfellowshipping, and he had not. Since this was true, Brother Nelson had no choice on such short notice but to wield his authority and push for the most he could get without a confrontation between Ted and the committee. He announced: "And we're sad to have to report that there is further cleaning to be done in God's house. Though not yet of such a serious nature, we must ask the congregation to reach out and support a falling brother…" and he read the Scriptures reserved for public-reproving occasions. So Ted was only to be placed on public reproof! He was only restricted from answering or praying at the meetings, and his penance was to listen to all the individuals in the congregation (some of whom had never spoken to him before) suddenly patting him on the back and speaking in an "upbuilding way" to him.
After the meeting he found out what a horror this was! Not a one was sincere. They acted like a bunch of preprogrammed robots doing exactly what they were told. Most of them, he concluded, were anxious not to miss this opportunity to "encourage a reproved brother." It was one of the requirements in the Bible, and people who did not force themselves to follow out these requirements would not survive Armageddon.
Even Richard spoke differently to him. At first he said quietly, "I never suspected there was any problem; you should have asked for my help." And then he lapsed into the same manner as all the rest.
Vonnie even sent Sherri over to "upbuild" him, as if letting everyone see her talking to him at the meeting were somehow different and special from the talk he could have with her at home every day.
It really got to him. It was like a strange place he'd never been to before. "Is this the way Cyn saw the place?" he wondered, recalling how she seemed able to "see through" what he felt was a genuine loving concern on the part of all the "brothers" and "sisters". Now that he suddenly felt as though he was seeing them for the first time as a pack of individuals selfishly doing whatever was necessary (even acting unselfish) to get them into everlasting life, he felt a certain affinity with Cyn and understood how she could stand aloof from what she saw. They were all just doing what they thought would result in the best for them in the long run. How was that different from a man playing the stock market, a corrupt politician, or a woman selling her body? If all the people in this room would rather be shot to death than salute the flag, or let their children die rather than allow them a blood transfusion, it was only because they saw an advantage in the long run. It was only a very shrewd and calculating bunch willing to do anything as long as they were sure it would work out for the best for themselves in the final analysis.
David Nelson was making his way towards him to offer his own "upbuilding" and probably to arrange for a meeting to bring about his disfellowshipping. Ted hurried towards the door and heard David calling after him as he went out.
Ted determined to walk to the Barton's house. Being half-outside the organization, he felt closer to one who was all the way out than to the hypocrites in the hall. He walked the distance thinking only of the first thing he'd say to Phyllis: "Well, you were kicked out, so what? I will be soon too."
Somehow he forgot that she wouldn't be there alone, and in fact, when he got there, Terry answered the door.
"Oh, Brother Stanton, isn't it? Come in."
"Evanston," Ted corrected, flattened more by Terry being there than his forgetting his name. "Is Phyllis here?"
"Yeah, she's working on something for Jan in the bedroom. Come in and sit down."
Ted did so. The apartment was very nice, simply decorated, and neat.
"Just come from the meeting?" Terry asked, attempting to make small talk. He didn't get many visitors now since the brothers and sisters had already begun to avoid Phyllis.
"Yes," Ted answered, "I wondered if I might talk to Phyllis."
"Well, no," he said, shocked, "I'm not even supposed to talk to her now that she's disfellowshipped. Didn't they announce that at the meeting?"
"Yes, but I don't care about that. I was publicly reproved too. So I can kind of sympathize with her --"
"She doesn't need sympathy, brother," Terry said, "that's the last thing she needs. This punishment of no association is the only hope we have of turning her around so she can be a real wife and sister again," his voice cracked showing the strain the situation was having on him. The two young men both realized that the last time they were together socially was when Terry had boasted of his choice of Phyllis as a submissive woman whom Jehovah would make beautiful in the new order.
His plan had fallen through completely; she had surprised everyone and become an individual. Ted could readily sympathize with him; he could very well have ended up in his position -- he would have if he had anything to say about it. And here she was, a disgrace to the congregation: an uppity wife.
"But did you ever think that maybe the Society is wrong in all this disfellowshipping stuff?" Ted asked, throwing caution to the wind. "Can they really pronounce such judgments when the Bible says judgment is reserved for Jehovah? I mean, if he hasn't judged her, what do the elders amount to? They've been wrong in important matters before, haven't they?"
"Yes," Terry readily agreed, "in fact I remember at Bethel -- you knew I was at Bethel for a year, didn't you? -- My first roommate left because he found out some of their past mistakes."
Ted recognized this as an attempt to change the subject and to allow him to go on and on with his many tales of his adventurous life at Bethel. But what he said had interest in itself, so he took advantage of it and focused in on it. "That sounds interesting, Terry, why don't you tell me about that. What mistakes did he find, and how?"
"Well, I'm really not supposed to talk about it. He wasn't even supposed to discuss it with anyone, but I forced it out of him by demanding that he tell me what was the matter. It's stuff no Witness knows and is better off not knowing."
"Well, I'm going to force you to tell me just like you forced him. Because if you don't, I'll go in and talk to Phyllis." Ted smiled to tone down this threat somewhat, but it only made it more menacing.
"All right," Terry acquiesced, "since you've talked with Brother Olson so much, you've probably heard most of it anyway.
"Barry was his name, and a nicer brother you'd never want to meet -- at least that's how he was at first. If I ever got in an argument with him over something and he knew he was right, he’d say, "Well, it's hard to say,' and let it go. That takes a lot of self-control.
"I remember he used to take new, shy brothers who'd just sit in their rooms because they didn't know anybody, and he'd take them down to the recreation room and let them beat him at pool or Ping-Pong to make them feel great, and stuff like that.
"But after a while he began to change, and it was rather dramatic. He withdrew inside himself and hardly ever laughed or smiled. We worked in the same department, sewing books together, and after awhile when he'd come to the counter where they check the books, the brothers there would half-jokingly caution each other, 'Here he comes, everybody be serious now, no goofing off' because he'd become so melancholy overnight and everyone thought it was an act at first. And then I caught him weeping several times as he sat at his machine performing his work rapidly through his tears.
"So I confronted him and asked him what was going on. Well, he'd already talked to the governing body about it and the judicial committee for the factory, so he didn't think I could help. But I pressured him, and he told me that, in the first place, his sister who had brought him into the Truth, had just been disfellowshipped unjustly. I tried to dissuade him, but he insisted that it wasn't justified at all. He just couldn't be made to doubt his sister's version of the story even though she refused to appeal the committee's decision. I told him he was placing more trust in her than in the Society, and he calmly agreed. 'I know that makes me like Adam who chose to die with his wife rather than live without her, but if you ask me to doubt the Society or my sister in this matter, I cannot help but doubt the Society, and I'll tell you why.'" At this Terry sighed as if hesitant to go on.
Ted was caught up in the story and eagerly prodded him on; "What did he say? C'mon! I want to hear this, I need to, and I think all Witnesses have a right to. If we give up our entire lives and hand them over to the Society, we should at least know what things they've done in the past that they try to cover up."
"Okay. He had been reading the old literature, and just in general browsing through the Bethel library amongst things that no one ever reads there. (We had gotten a third roommate by this time and our room was very over-crowded, so he spent a lot of time after work in the library reading that sort of stuff.)"
"The Society says we shouldn't read any of the old literature or any books attacking us. How did he get around that and do it right at Jehovah's Witnesses' headquarters, under their very noses?" Ted asked.
"Well, he didn't get away with it for long. But his incentive was that one of the brothers he'd studied with had the hobby of collecting the old Watchtower books, and he picked it up from him. But it wasn't till he was at Bethel that he began reading them in connection with all the old magazines they had there, and even a few of the anti-Witness books that managed to find their way into little obscure boxes and corners in the library."
"All right already!" Ted said impatiently, "What did he find?"
"Okay, to sum it up, he found that what Russell taught was so much better than what the Society now teaches, that he made a thorough search through the old Watchtowers and books to find out what reasons Rutherford gave for changing it all. And he didn't find any reason.
"What he found was, to quote him, 'disgraceful lies and cover-ups and misrepresentations.' For instance, there was something called 'tentative justification' which had something to do with getting worldly people into the new order, because that's something they believed in back there--"
"Yes, I know all about that," Ted said.
"Anyway," Terry continued, "Rutherford said that Russell had changed his mind on it and decided there was no tentative justification: but he hadn't."
Ted scoffed, "How could Barry know whether Russell, over half a century before he was born, changed his mind or not?"
"Because the publications of that time show that he didn't. One, written just two weeks or less before Russell's death plainly stated that he hadn't changed his mind. And then there was an article in the Watchtower as late as 1916, the year he died, supporting this doctrine.
"But when the Society under Rutherford printed the bound volumes for all these years of the Watchtower and made an index for them, the latest date under 'Justification, Tentative' was given as 1913! The reason they skipped the 1916 article in the index was because Russell was supposed to have 'changed his mind' about it by then according to Rutherford: but not according to the facts.
"Then there was the business about Rutherford changing the date of his imprisonment to fit in with his interpretation of the time prophecies in Daniel.
"Then there was 1925 -- all of these thing had gotten him really angry as he checked them out one by one. It wasn't a passionless voice that reported these things to me as I do to you. Russell, he found, had written that they were not looking forward to 1925 or any other date after 1914. But Rutherford revived the 1925 date in the minds of the Watchtower readers. Barry showed me the booklet in the library (we couldn't take books out of the library, but had to look at them all there) called Millions Now Living May Never Die. In there, written by Rutherford, was a statement to the effect that 'we are confident that 1925 will mark the date of the resurrection of the ancient worthies' and 'We have no doubt at all in regard to the chronology of 1925.' This in itself was bad because, not only had Russell warned against accepting that date as significant, he also never stooped to dogmatism, according to Barry. But what made it all the worse is that after 1925 had come and gone without any resurrection, he read to me from a Watchtower article written by Rutherford, saying that 'a lot of brothers had looked forward to that year as the end.' This, he now said, was ‘motivated by selfishness on their part’, never once admitting or seeming to recall that he himself told them he was certain of its coming! But to make matters still worse, he then read from the 1975 Yearbook. Here, let me get that; it's one book I do have."
Terry returned from the built-in wall shelf with the book Ted had once read with great interest and appreciation.
"I've got the page marked; no one else knows why. Here it is on page 146:
"'1925 was a sad year for many brothers, some of them were stumbled; their hopes were dashed. They had hoped to see some of the ancient worthies resurrected. Instead of being a "probability" they read into it that it was a "certainty."'"
Closing the book, Terry commented, "But you see, that's a lie. They didn't 'read into' anything but the Watchtower which told them in black and white that 1925 was a certainty, not a probability: that the Society had 'no doubt whatever' about the date!
"But Rutherford had more troubled with dates. Barry went through all of his interpretations of the times of Daniel and the 3 1/2 times of Revelation and all that, and counted each of the days on a perpetual calendar. This was where Rutherford had lied about the date that he and the other board members had been imprisoned for sedition. He told this lie in order to make his imprisonment harmonize with the 3 1/2 times that the 'two witnesses' of Revelation lay dead in the street before their resurrection (corresponding to Rutherford’s release from prison). Barry found that all but one of Rutherford's interpretations was grossly off target in regard to the actual lapse of days.
"Further, in a similar vein, he thought it rather ridiculous to think that the seven great plagues that the angels pour out upon the earth in Revelation were seven different conventions and 'drives' to sell Rutherford's books. He was suddenly amazed that he could ever have believed that such powerful symbols were recorded as divine Revelation nearly 2,000 years ago merely to prefigure a mentally unbalanced man addressing a handful of people in Cedar Point, Ohio on how to effectively sell his books filled with 'new truths' soon to be discarded for still newer ones!"
Ted began laughing uncontrollably at this last statement. Humorous as it was in itself, he was struck silly at the realization that he too now found it past belief that up until this moment he had held this very notion as absolute 'Truth'.
"Anyway, there were many other incidents he related that I've forgotten. Barry got into trouble before he told me all of this. He had taken a week's vacation that he'd been accumulating, and instead of going anywhere he went to one of the Gilead lounges where there was a typewriter, sat down, and wrote a long letter about all these things that he'd uncovered. He sent copies to all the governing body committees. After a while he was called up before them and told what a rotten person he was for doing this. He agreed with them that he was a sinner, but what he really wanted were answers. Was what he found out true? And if so, would the Society admit its mistakes and rectify them? But all he was told hour after long hour was how wicked he was and how he needed to get back in line with the Society. They went on and on about how great the organization was and how everyone needed it -- and completely ignored his questions. One of the things he said in the letter was that there was a lack of love in the congregations, and part of the reason for that was the slavish attitude the brothers and sisters had to maintain with the Society. That they weren't allowed to think for themselves --"
"Or feel for themselves," Ted added, drawing from his own recent experience.
"Yes, and that made love suffer in the congregations. After Barry read Rutherford’s books Vengeance and Enemies, he came to view the Society as an organization seething with hate for all outside its realm and for any inside that deviated a fraction of a hair from the Society's norms."
"I'd have to agree with that," Ted commented.
"But you know what the committee said? And it made him feel bad, too. They asked him if it were true that a certain brother in the congregation had given him an old coat, and another a new jacket that had never been worn because it was too small. And they started naming off such actions, which were true in themselves, but which didn't necessarily have anything to do with the spirit of love."
"That makes me think of all the things I was given by the friends," Ted admitted, feeling a little bad now for accusing them of a lack of love after they'd stocked his refrigerator and furnished his kitchen with appliances.
"But giving doesn't mean all that much," Terry pointed out, "Christ said that the Pharisees gave things away too, but that they blew a trumpet ahead of them when they did so to call attention to their magnanimous deed. And if a person recalls to your mind that he gave you a gift, then it's not really a gift; he expects something in return, be it only respect or friendship, or a gift of equal or greater value. The fact that the committee knew that these brothers had given Barry things shows that there was some trumpet-blowing going on."
"Yeah," Ted agreed, "then it's just like everyone thanking a brother for his talk after they're told to do so from the platform. They're not really thankful; they're just doing what the Society tells them because following the organization means their life. So when the Bible says 'When I was naked you clothed me,' the Witnesses naturally jump at the opportunity to give away some clothes to a brother in need just so they can fulfill that requirement. Or, 'When I was sick you visited me'; Brother Olson told me everyone in the city who was a Witness came to see him the first week he checked in at the nursing home; since then he's seen a handful.
"But what happened to Barry?" Ted asked.
"They kicked him out, of course. But he was very cautious. He still believed it was God's organization, though maybe not the faithful and discreet slave class he'd been drilled into believing it was. He wasn't a fiery type at all when confronted with authority; he was calm and said little in his own defense except to ask occasionally for them to concentrate on the points in his letter rather than on his own sinfulness. When they vehemently denied that theirs was an organization of hate as he claimed in his letter, he replied that they were just so used to it that they didn't notice it anymore. 'For instance,' Barry related, 'the other night at the dinner table the brother who said the prayer for the entire Bethel family, a brother carefully picked for this honor, and no doubt choosing his words carefully all day at work, said in his prayer, "We look forward to the time when you will wipe off the face of the earth every two-legged germ."' He told them that he considered that not to be a loving attitude to people outside of the organization.
"'That's one brother, probably in the Truth no longer than you,' they replied -- always making a point of his mere two years in the 'Truth' -- 'it doesn't reflect the attitude of the entire Bethel family!' "'Everyone said "Amen" to it, but me,' Barry replied. And he was right: I was there at the time and that's exactly what happened. When someone says Amen to a prayer, he better agree with it because it means 'so be it.'"
"What did they say to that?" Ted asked.
"They said that all the other brothers at Bethel were kept far too busy out in service, at the factory, and studying and attending meetings to go backwards and dredge up the past as he had done. And since he was so out of step with the organization, he'd better leave. They asked him to leave by the next day. Now Bethel is in New York, you’ll remember, and his home was in California, so to up and leave the next day required a little preparation and funds, but he managed to do it. What happened to him after that I don't know.
"There was another brother I knew at Bethel, if you want to hear some more of the 'goods' on the governing body."
"Yes, I do," Ted replied eagerly.
"Well, he was engaged to be married to a nice girl in his home congregation in Ohio. But he came back from his vacation there and let it be known that the engagement was off. He was promptly called up before the committee and asked to explain the reason. The reason was that the girl had gotten engaged to another brother while he was working at Bethel, but not wishing to damage her reputation with the Society (since they regard engagements as a very serious matter not to be backed out of without powerful good reasons), he refused to tell them. And for that he was kicked out of Bethel! Can you imagine how he felt? First losing his girl, and then being kicked out of Bethel?"
"I can imagine. But tell me, Terry, how can you know all of this about the Society and still stick with them, and even obey them in the matter of not speaking to your own wife because they've decided she's unclean?"
"Because they're right. She is unclean: not being submissive to her husband's will and joining an organization of Satan’s."
"Women's liberation is not of Satan!" yelled Phyllis from the other room. Terry ignored it.
"And besides," Terry continued, "none of these things matter much when you consider that the Society is the only one with the Truth, the only one spreading this Truth as a witness to all nations, the only 'name people' of Jehovah. And if we're willing to follow, they'll lead us into everlasting life in the new order." Terry's eyes sparkled as he said this; he had left logical thought for the moment and passed the invisible barrier into faith. It was a place Ted feared to follow him into. Rising, he thanked him for the instructive talk and left.
He directed his rapid pace towards the one person who could sort it all out. Terry didn’t know what Ted knew from his long talks with Arthur: that the basic 'Truths' on which Terry supported his belief in the Society were themselves simply held on faith, there being equal arguments on both sides of any issue. That left faith to bolster both the Society’s credibility and its doctrines. That being so, where was the reason to believe? Without reason, a person could believe anything, and faith was too malleable a substance to trust to so completely. People believed the Trinity on faith, and a literal fiery hell on faith, and the Third Reich on faith…
Ted began to run.
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 11: God's Organization
Arthur wasn't there. All that greeted Ted in the room was the blissfully oblivious Mr. Jandle. Ted had never seen Arthur out of bed before, and he was worried. The worst possibility entered his head: Brother Olson had died and left him to sort out all these difficulties for himself.
Such thoughts being too discouraging to bear immediately, he went to the nurses' station and asked, "What happened to Brother Olson?"
Receiving an odd look from the nurse on duty, he realized his mistake and corrected, "Where's Mister Olson?"
"Let me see," she responded, glancing over a clipboard, "yes, here he is: he's down in room 203 having his dialysis. You can visit him there if you like."
"Maybe I should wait?" He had a squeamish stomach when it came to hospital procedures. He'd be most uncomfortable to watch Arthur undergoing treatment.
"It's not bad," the nurse assured him, divining his thoughts from her long experience, "he's just hooked up to a machine that cleans his blood -- strictly routine for him three times a week. Go on down, he'll be glad of the company."
Encouraged by her manner and smile, Ted took the elevator down to the second floor and found room 203.
"Well, hello brother!" called Arthur. He was hooked up to the softly humming machine by means of small plastic tubes connected to the veins in his left wrist. The tubes were filled with his dark-red blood. Lying flat on his back, he looked wearily up at Ted. "This takes a lot out of me -- no pun intended. I'm glad you're here, but don't expect me to be my usual brilliant self with part of my blood in that machine there."
"Are you all right?" Ted asked.
"Sure, don't be concerned. They've been giving me this treatment for years now. They claim I'd be dead long before this if it weren't for this dialysis machine. It takes over the job my kidneys no longer perform very well: cleaning out the blood. The elders made a big fuss about it at first, seeing as how it has to do with blood. But once they were assured that it's my own same blood (minus impurities) that's going out and coming back in, they were satisfied."
"Yes, I suppose there's nothing wrong with that," Ted agreed.
"But tell me, brother, what is troubling you?"
There was no hiding from this ancient sage one's feelings, Ted thought to himself, and confessed, "Well, Brother Olson, there's a lot of things, and I really don't know where to begin."
"Feel free to ramble, then, and we'll sort it out afterwards, but just get it off your --"
At that moment a very loud buzzing emitted from the dialysis machine, and what looked like some sort of pump-wheel that had been slowly turning inside it continually, suddenly stopped. In a flash two nurses and an intern were surrounding it, fiddling with different controls as Ted stood back in horror at the scene. He was even more frightened when he managed to tear his eyes away from the source of all this confusion to Arthur. His eyes were shut and he looked dead! One of the nurses left to call a technician.
When the technician arrived several minutes later, he got the machine running again in three minutes. The way he said, "There, it should be all right now," combined with the way in which everyone was ignoring Arthur, indicated to Ted that he hadn't died after all. He hadn't wanted to look stupid or disturb them by asking, and so, after they all left, he sat back down apprehensively and waited to see if Arthur would move. "Dear Jehovah, don't let him be dead," he prayed silently.
"Now, where were we?" Arthur asked as he opened his eyes.
"Are you all right?" Ted asked again. "Maybe I should come back another time?"
"Nonsense. Now tell me what's bothering you."
"I don't know exactly what it is;" Ted began, "it's everything, it seems. It started out when I was baptized. The elders made me promise not to tell you about it or they wouldn't bring me along to your talks with them."
"The would-be elders, you mean," Arthur corrected.
"Yes, anyway, now that your meetings with them are done, I guess I can tell you. I feel I was born-again at baptism so I'm one of the anointed 144,000! What do you think of that?" Ted asked nervously.
"It sounds fine to me," Arthur smiled, "If you were, you were, and you know it. Don't let them come between you and God."
"Then you mean I could've been born-again? But haven't all the 144,000 been called already, and now just the great crowd of other sheep are being called?"
"So they say. But who's to say they're right? Don't you trust your own experience over an organization's beliefs which change all the time?"
"You mean you really think I should? I remember that's the same thing you said to Bob and Richard: that they trusted the Society over their own experience and even let it dictate interpretations over their own experiences as far as belonging to the great crowd or the anointed. But if you meant that, how much more did you mean in all those hours of debate? That's another thing that puzzles me, because you said a lot of things that sounded right, but they were against the Truth. So how much of what you said do you believe?"
"That doesn't matter," Arthur replied. "It's up to you to decide from what I said and what they said which you'll believe."
"It used to be easy to choose," Ted lamented, "I just believed everything in the Watchtower publications. But a lot of what you said sounds truer and better. Like the idea of everyone making it into the Millennium and being tried for life there. That makes a lot more sense than what the Society teaches now about everyone being destroyed. But is the Society wrong then?"
"I believe so," Arthur admitted, "but what you believe is for you to decide. Don't let me or the Society dictate your beliefs to you."
"But this is incredible!" Ted cried. "You're one of the remnant and you don't go along with a basic Society doctrine! How can you align yourself with them if you disagree so fundamentally with them? It's all so confusing to me. Nothing is clear-cut anymore."
"Nothing is clear-cut in real life, Ted." Arthur explained. "The Society tries to divide the world into black and white: in the organization and out of it; life and death; true and false; good and evil; sheep and goats. But that's their own make-believe world that has no correspondence with the real one.
"As for aligning myself with the Society," Arthur continued, "I don't think of it that way; rather, I have allowed the Society to join me insofar as they can be helpful to me in preaching and being in association with other Christians. But I don't consider it true for one moment that being inside the Society’s 'ark' means life, and being outside of it means death. That's total nonsense."
"Do you know Phyllis Dorsey -- I mean Phyllis Barton?" Ted asked.
"Yes, I know her."
"She was just disfellowshipped today, and I got publicly reproved. So does that mean anything or not? Because up till now I've thought of anyone being out of the Truth as being out of hope for salvation until they get reinstated."
"It's as serious a matter as you make of it." Arthur said. "The elders make mistakes. And just because she's out of good graces with the elders at the moment doesn't mean she's 'out of the Truth'; she still believes in what she thinks to be the Truth; everyone does."
"But she thinks women's liberation is the Truth."
"And so it is," Arthur replied, to Ted’s surprise. "And she's living up to what she now conceives to be the Truth, just as she's always done. I think that's commendable."
"Then I shouldn't worry about being publicly reproved at all then?"
"That depends on the reason for it."
Ted hung his head in shame, "Self-abuse and sitting next to Cyn at the hall and studying with her alone."
Arthur thought for a moment before responding. He wanted to ascertain just how serious Ted himself thought these matters to be.
"Well, I guess that makes you about the worst sinner that's ever lived!" he smiled, and kindled a like gesture in Ted.
"Have you tried to break the masturbation habit?"
"I've tried without any luck – " Ted admitted, and then corrected himself: "or, I should say 'success.'"
"Yes," Arthur said, "by all means let's worry about saying such words as ‘luck’, and ‘strain the gnat as we swallow the camel’!
"I’ll tell you a little secret: there are two ways to stop masturbation outside of death or coma: the first is castration, and I don't recommend that; the second is marriage, and I'm sure the elders you've talked with have recommended this step already. Why don't you marry Cynthia?"
"We had a fight recently, and I don't know if she'll see me again."
"Well, there's plenty of fish in the ocean, they always say."
"But you were never married, how did you do it?"
"I didn’t. Just how do you imagine I got through all my early years, a man like any other, without touching a woman? You see, that was before the Society decided to begin laying down laws where there were none in the Bible. Masturbation was never discussed, and everyone tolerated it as a necessary evil: the only relief available to a young brother who had foregone marriage in order to serve the Lord. But now, of course, it's a horrendous sin against Jehovah because the Society says it is. And we know they are always right, do we not? Now, is there anything else bothering you?"
"Well, yes. Everything you just said bothers me. If you can deal so loosely with the Society's doctrines, how can you say they have the Truth, and that we are in the right religion?"
"Is that all that's bothering you?"
"No. It also bothers me that the brothers and sisters beat their children mercilessly. Richard scares me the way he mistreats his kids, and he's being made an elder. Is it right to force them into the Truth? Because that's exactly what he's doing, forcing them to conform to Society ways, stifling their own creativeness by filling them up with Watchtowers, beating them over the head with them."
"Well, you have to discipline your children," Arthur reminded him, "there's no getting around that. The Bible quite clearly teaches us to beat our children and bring them up in the way of Jehovah. I think you mistake zeal for mercilessness. I know his oldest daughter ran away that time, and that indicates one of two things: either he didn't discipline her enough, or he over-disciplined her to an unbelievable extent. But since this latter option is unlikely, I believe the former. These children will all thank their parents for caring so much when they grow into young ladies and gentlemen.
"But as for the organization, and being in the right religion, well, I have a lot I could say about that."
"Please do, as this is bothering me more than anything else. Is this really God's organization?" Ted asked.
"That's a decision you'll ultimately make for yourself. But I can tell you all you need to know in order to form an enlightened opinion. First of all, tell me your opinion. What exactly do you make this group out to be?"
"It isn't what it says it is, that's for sure." Ted declared. "But what's worse, it isn't even what it thinks it is. But it is something, and that something is of value and sets it apart, if not above, the rest. I can't define precisely why, but I feel that I've made the right choice in it."
"But now I'll critique it for you." Arthur offered. "There's a lot that has been said unjustly about the organization and its past, but I’ll stick to the facts while presenting the most damaging cases I can remember. Then, if you’ll compare that with all the glowing reports of self back-patting the Society has engaged in, you should get a more balanced view.
"First of all, we'll define our terms as good philosophers always should at the outset. We are trying to determine the validity of such claims on the part of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society that it is directed by a governing body consisting of members of the remnant of the 144,000 which make up the 'faithful and discreet slave' class mentioned in Matthew 24:45; and that it alone has the 'Truth' so that those who are in the organization are 'in the Truth'; and that they are acting as 'God's prophet.'
"So what do we mean by 'faithful and discreet'? The dictionary defines faithful as:
"'full of faith steadfast in action or allegiance: LOYAL: firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty: CONSCIENTIOUS: given with strong assurance: BINDING: true to the facts.'
"As for discreet, we read:
"'having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech.'
"So, if ever we discover the Watchtower to be guilty of broken promises, opposed to the facts, or making bad judgments, it would prove them to be other than the faithful and discreet slave class, you see?"
"Yes."
"And as for the Truth, we’ll use the Society's own definition as found on page 22 of their book Things in Which it is Impossible for God to Lie:
"'Truth does not contradict itself or deny the facts. It does not go contrary to reality, nor is it one thing to one person and another thing, even a contradictory thing, to another person. The one truth applies to all persons, whether they recognize it or not. It does not change because of location or time. The truth is provable by actual fact. The truth endures, persists, because it is genuine, actually existing, in harmony with reality. All this we have to recognize about religion also.'
"It's ironic that such a definition of Truth comes from the people at the Watchtower, for no one else has quite contradicted reality and changed their 'Truth' with time as much as they. It's interesting to note that they do not say their early views were falsehood, but that they were 'truths for their time,' thus straying 180 degrees from their own given definition of what constitutes Truth!
"They tell us that Russell had 'the Truth for his time', but since then 'the light has gotten brighter'. When we ask why no one had discovered these 'truths' but Russell, who was ignorant of the Bible languages and just about everything else necessary to qualify a theologian, we're told that the apostles, too, were 'unlettered and ordinary'. We grant them that, but insist that there were an awful lot of unlettered and ordinary people around before Russell, so why did the Truth have to wait for him? And we are answered that it was not to be revealed until the time of the end, as is stated in Daniel. Well, that's fine, we reply, for even Russell himself agreed with that answer. The only thing is that he began the Watchtower in 1879 -- thirty-five years before the 'time of the end' began according to the 'new truth' on the matter!
Russell had the 'time of the end' beginning in 1799, and Christ's 'invisible presence' in 1874. So this put him well within the time indicated to begin understanding the Truth, with an extra lift from the newly installed Jesus. But we run into this contradiction: if Russell had the Truth, his interpretation of the 'time of the end' beginning in 1799 would've had to have been correct, otherwise he couldn't have understood the Truth yet if it wasn't to be revealed until 1914. But if it didn't begin in 1914, then the Society doesn't have the Truth today. This is just an elaborate way of saying that if what Russell said was different from what the Society says today, one of them must be wrong, and what is wrong is not the Truth. So if the Society says that Russell 'had the truth for his time', they are in effect saying that they do not have the Truth today. If they tell us that Truth changes with time, we'll have to assume that their own definition of Truth, which 'does not change because of location or time,' must also change with time."
Ted, awed at the way Arthur could point out any hidden contradiction and sort it all out into an either/or proposition, almost sighed with relief; the Society didn't have the Truth after all. He was free! "So the Society doesn't have the Truth, then," he said, half-questioningly.
"Have you decided that already?" Arthur exclaimed, "After having examined only one thing briefly on the matter? How shallow is your faith? Where is your loyalty?"
Ted was surprised by the question and angered as he remembered that one never knew how much of what Arthur said he actually believed.
"Don't look so hurt," Arthur said, "I thought you'd answer me that your loyalty is to the Truth, rather than to any organization. You only joined this organization because it claims to have the Truth, didn't you? So if you find that they no longer have it, you're still loyal to the only thing they asked you to be loyal to: the Truth.
"But this first thought isn't really an insurmountable obstacle," Arthur observed, "A Witnesses would just reply that Russell had a close approximation of the Truth, although he can't say for sure where he got it since the time for revealing these things hadn't come yet. Then he'll forget he said this, and the next time he hears about 'the Truth for its time' he'll agree wholeheartedly.
"But we can't allow such slipshod reasoning. We want to know where Russell got his ideas, and since it couldn't have been from heaven, according to the Society's current understanding, it must've been from men. And so it was; Russell himself admitted that the Adventists resurrected his faith in the Bible. Before they did, he had been something of a hell-fire 'screecher' (as he later called others of the same occupation) even going so far as to write warnings of its terrible flames on walls in the hopes of converting passers-by through sheer fright.
But the idea of hell eventually struck him as inconsistent with a God of love, and he accordingly lost all faith in the Bible, till one night he happened upon an Adventist meeting. He sat through it listening to them explain their own interpretation of how hell was not a place of torment at all, but the grave. As this had been his main preoccupation before, and as it had been the stumbling block away from faith in the Bible, he now reaccepted it. He began preaching his 'brand new, never before preached' ideas on how hell was not a place of torment, but the grave.
"It becomes increasingly clear as to where he got his ideas when he also admits that the Adventists looked forward to the years 1873 or 1874 as the return of Christ and the burning of the earth. This was the date he hinged all his other dates, including 1914, upon. An Adventist named N. H. Barbour convinced Russell that Christ would return invisibly at that time, and the 'burning of the world' would be symbolic. He did this by means of Christadelphian ideas as contained in one of their member's books, The Emphatic Diaglott, by Benjamin Wilson. This indicated that Christ was not coming, but was 'present'. They concluded that he was 'present' since 1874 and would continue in this state for a forty-year 'harvest period' until 1914. Then they of the little flock would be whisked away to heaven, and the multitudes of other people would live forever on earth.
"We read something of interest on this in one of the many 'history' books the Society has put out in significantly altered versions over the years. On page 19 of Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, it says:
"'That same year 1877, together with Barbour, Russell produced a book called Three Worlds or Plan of Redemption. Nothing like it had ever been published before. It combined for the first time prophecies with the work of restitution.'
"But, truth to tell, R. C. Shimeall had published, just a year before, a book entitled The Second Coming of Christ, which gave the same interpretation of Daniel chapter four as being the times of the gentiles and lasting 2,520 years (pages 170, 171). And way back in 1851, E. B. Elliott had given the same interpretation in his book.
"So, in what was Russell original? Was he original in rejecting the Trinity? No, the Christadelphians and Unitarians were way ahead of him there. Was he original in rejecting the immortality of the soul? No, the Adventists and Christadelphians had rejected that long before. In short, he was original in nothing, and his ideas, as they appeared in his writings and lectures, were not guided by the holy spirit, but were merely the results of combining the most popular aspects of the 'heresies' of his day. Since such guidance really wasn't available until 1914, according to what we say today, then he must have had to rely on himself in order to choose what was good out of each of these religions. Was he qualified to do this? Just what sort of man was he?
"According to Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, page 62, J. F. Rutherford said of him in eulogy:
"'With a strong physique, a fertile brain, and a brave heart, wholly devoted to the Lord, he consecrated all of his power to teach man the great message of Messiah's kingdom and the blessing which it will bring to the world.'
"That makes him sound like some sort of Herculean messiah.
"But notice what Rutherford allowed to be written of him less than a year later in The Finished Mystery, page 57:
"'When he was in his 20's, he was refused the lease of a property because the owner thought he would surely die before the lease expired. For fifty years he suffered constantly with sick headaches, due to a fall he had in his youth, and for twenty-five years had such distressing hemorrhoids that it was impossible for him to rest in the easiest chair.'"
"Wow!" Ted commented, "You make him sound crazy! Migraines are almost always psychosomatic. And then that part about him writing about hell on the walls!"
"But that's your own opinion formed after hearing just exactly what the Watchtower has printed about him." Arthur said. "I'm not making him 'sound' like anything, I’m just relating facts most people are unaware of. But I cautiously suggest some similar interpretations. Psychologists tell us that those who feel the need to preach the most about a certain topic are the ones who need the most convincing themselves. They try to achieve this by getting as many people as possible to agree with them. Once they do, they can say to themselves, it must be true, I explained it to them and they believed me. You see how this would apply to a man who dreaded hell-fire to such an extent that it drove him to irrational actions -- attempting to warn or save everyone so that he, too, might be saved -- and then taking up the idea instead of no hell-fire at all, and preaching this with even more fervent zeal.
"Such a man as I've described, being in physical misery and possible psychological quandary, certainly deserves our sympathy. But does he deserve our implicit trust for all his interpretations? Let's look at a few of those interpretations. Many of them show him have been overly credulous. He believed and espoused phrenology, for one."
"What's that?' Ted asked.
"It's the belief that the shape and size of the head has a direct relationship with mental faculties and character. Started by Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), it was always known by scientists to be a fraud. But it was all the rage in Russell's time, and he swallowed it whole, having his own head read many times with the results published later by the Watchtower. He also made reference to it in The New Creation, pages 325-327.
"In another book of the Studies in the Scriptures series, he espoused the cause of pyramidology (Thy Kingdom Come, pages 313-376).
As to their history, he taught that the great pyramid was built by none other than Melchizedek, whom he claimed was one of the Hyksos kings (Hyksos meaning, according to Russell, 'shepherd' or 'peaceful' kings). The Hyksos were supposed to have entered Egypt peacefully, and built the pyramid according to God's exact specifications (so as to measure out in 'pyramid inches' the total number of years between major events in Russell's chronology of the end of the gentile times, etc.). That accomplished, Russell claimed, the Hykos kings left Egypt just as peacefully as they had come.
"The problems with his interpretations of history and fact are manifold. In the first place, on page 321 of this book, he agrees with Professor Smyth's date for the building of the pyramid as 2170 BCE. Now, the encyclopedia tells us that the Hyksos kings didn't enter Egypt till around 1720 BCE, 450 years after the pyramids were built. They didn't enter or exit peacefully, and the meaning of their name is not 'shepherd kings,' but 'foreign kings.' We are also told that they left no remarkable buildings.
"But the most detrimental facts of all are the actual measurements of the pyramid passages themselves. At first, Russell wrote in an article in the Watchtower in a common-sense fashion saying that the measurements and corresponding years had been given in his book, and that it was 'impossible to see how any longer measure for the passage could be given'. But then he came out with a new edition of the book in 1907 containing longer measurements for the passages, changing 'the beginning of the time of trouble' from 1874 to 1915, and so on. At the same time, the Watchtower officially endorsed and sold two books on the pyramid written by the Edgar brothers. (They were Watchtower readers who had gone to Egypt to make their own measurements). Their figures were shorter still, and would've resulted in setting the date of the 'time of trouble' back from 1915 to 1846. But no one seemed to bother figuring this out. They just assumed all the figures agreed, and half the time they weren't sure just what they believed the correct date to be.
"It was left to the straight-thinking Rutherford to clear the matter up. Writing in the December 1, 1928 Watchtower, he declared that the pyramid was not built under God's orders at all; it was built under Satan's! Further, he told the faithful that this 'altar in Egypt' they had mistaken for 'the Bible in stone' had actually been a tool of Satan's to mislead the faithful!
"Now how does all this stand up to our definition of Truth as not contradicting itself or denying the facts?" Arthur asked. "How does it stand up to the test of faithfulness when that has been defined as 'true to the facts'? Or how does it accord with the advertisement in the back of the 1953 edition of the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures which proudly told of:
"'The Watchtower An Outstanding Bible Aid… The Watchtower fulfills [the need for a dependable Bible aid]. Since 1879 it has been published regularly for the benefit of sincere students of the Bible. Over that time it has proven itself dependable.'
"But how can we let this get by? How could the Watchtower have been ‘dependable’ since 1879 when it had been extolling a tool of Satan as ‘the Bible in stone’ until 1928?
 "But, lest I stray from my subject and maunder on and on, let me say that I am trying to establish the credulity of Russell, and that in addition to believing in phrenology and pyramidology, he was also ready prey to panaceas. Watchtower readers were invited to mail in for a free 'cancer cure,' for instance. (They'd charge 25 cents for it today, no doubt.) In the field of agriculture, in addition to the infamous 'miracle wheat', his readers were invited to buy 'millennial beans', 'wonderful cotton', and so on.
"Now, if Russell was such an easy prey for every novel idea that came along, doesn't it point out what happened when novel religious ideas met up with him? And if he was so patently wrong in the field of history, science, and medicine, was he suddenly right in the field of religion?
"If we ask whether this man regarded his position, his writings, and his followers in a proper and sane light, the affirmative comes only in relation to the latter. As to his own position, contrary to what the Society says today about it, he felt himself the faithful and discreet slave, or as they called it back then, 'that faithful and wise servant whom the Lord appointed over the household of faith.' The Finished Mystery tells us of Russell:
"'He has privately admitted his belief that he was chosen for his great work from before his birth.'
"He also believed himself to be the man dressed in linen with the writer's inkhorn described in Ezekiel chapter nine. One of my favorite anecdotes relates to this. It's from pages 417 and 418 of the same book:
"'The Writer's inkhorn symbolizes that the seventh man's function was to write. God identified him thus: When the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society was at Allegheny, Pennsylvania, an open Bible was to be painted on one of the large front windows of the office. A sign painter, not in the Truth, painted the open Bible, and without instruction from anyone, of his own volition, he painted the Bible as open to Ezekiel, chapter 9. The man in linen was the Laodicean servant, the Lord's faithful and wise steward, Pastor Russell. When Pastor Russell saw this, he turned pale. Ezekiel seeing the man in linen, types Pastor Russell thereafter seeing himself to be the anti-type of that man.'
"It's a good thing he didn't happen to paint Revelation 17! But even then Russell would've probably seen an anti-type of himself in the angel relating the vision, rather than the harlot or wild beast. But 'seeing yourself' in innocent signs is a thing we today call paranoia (in which everything has some reference to the insane person, usually bad, but sometimes of a good, even an omnipotent nature)."
"But did Russell himself believe all this?" Ted asked. "I've heard that it was just everyone else in the Society, and that he himself didn't believe he was the faithful and discreet slave. And then after his death the Society said he was, but later Rutherford changed his mind so that now we say he wasn't, but that the remnant are the faithful and discreet slave."
"But he did believe it." Arthur insisted. "Where else do you think people got the idea? It isn't something you'd naturally come up with by yourself one day and say, 'Hey, I think a certain man named Pastor Russell is the faithful and wise servant as well as the man in linen of Ezekiel's vision.' It's just not something that would pop into your head, much less into all the readers of the Watchtower's heads in unison, unless the Watchtower itself (which was written by Russell) suggested it.
"At his hour of death, Russell had Menta Sturgeon, who was a brother traveling with him on his lecture tour by train, wrap him up in a sort of 'Roman toga' with the linen bed sheet. What reason did he have for this strange symbolism? The Watchtower (always dependable, you'll recall) said afterwards that it was his humble way of showing the 'household of faith' that he had been the man dressed in linen of Ezekiel chapter nine.
"The 1975 Yearbook, in its odd way of selective reporting, leaves the entire incident out. So Russell's symbolic act, seemingly so important at the time, has been lost to his modern-day followers (who even refuse to be called his followers or to read anything he wrote).
"But the 1975 Yearbook goes much further than selective reporting; it commits an outright lie on page 88. There the Yearbook supposedly quotes something (it doesn't bother to mention where this all-important 'quote' comes from) that Russell supposedly wrote in 1881 as to the 'faithful and wise servant' being 'a class' rather than an individual. And they leave the reader with the impression that this was the official view:
"'So it was understood that the "servant" God used to dispense spiritual food was a class. With the passing of time, however, the idea adopted by many was that C. T. Russell himself was the "faithful and wise servant."'
"But Russell himself believed this, and the Society officially declared it again and again. Look at The Finished Mystery again:
"'Pastor Russell being the messenger of the Laodicean Church, and occupying the position of the Lord's special servant to give the Household of Faith meat in due season… the earthly creature made prominent above all others is the messenger of the Laodicean Church -- "that wise and faithful servant" of the Lord -- CHARLES TAZE RUSSELL… Pastor Russell, as a member of the great High Priest and as Christ's representative in the world, the sole steward of the "meat in due season"' (pages 4, 5, 483)
"And that Russell himself believed the servant to be one individual, at least from 1897 on, is shown in this quote from The Day of Vengeance, page 613:
"'Our Lord… will make choice of one channel for dispensing the meat in due season, though other channels or "fellow servants" will be used in bringing the food to the "household". But the servant is merely a steward, and liable to be removed at any moment, should he fail to fully acknowledge… the Master. Faithfulness on the part of said steward… will be rewarded by his continuance as steward… But if unfaithful he will be deposed entirely and put into outer darkness, while presumably another would take his place, subject to the same conditions… We may be sure that whoever the Lord may use, as a truth-distributing agent, will be very humble and unassuming, as well as very zealous for the Master's glory; so that he would not think of claiming authorship or ownership of the truth, but would merely dispense it zealously, as his Master's gift, to his Master's 'servants" and "household."'
"Although we set out to prove that Russell had rather an overestimated view of his position and writings (and we certainly have accomplished the former thus far), we've stumbled onto something even more condemning of the Society: they've lied about it! They've lied about their very own history and founder. Is this the act of a faithful and discreet slave dispensing truth?"
"No, it's not," Ted answered, "and it's starting to bother me very much. If this isn't the Truth, why have you wasted your long life in it?"
"Now don't jump the gun on me, Ted," Arthur smiled, "the question was meant to be rhetorical. The time for conclusions hasn't drawn near yet. Don't you recall my method of loading you down with all the adverse evidence, facts, and opinions I'm capable of, and then allowing you, spurred on by these doubts, to find your own answers?"
"But how can I find answers to these things that you're telling me? I can't go back in time 50 or more years and see for myself what really happened. And if all these quotes you give are in print on your bookshelf, as I know they are, what's left but to conclude that it's not the Truth?"
"There are more things to consider here than just whether or not it's intellectually true or false --"
"But it's beginning to all add up," Ted responded in anguish that resulted from a need to know one way or the other.
"Please don't quote me on this, Ted, but you have to learn that life is not a mathematics problem. Stop trying to make everything 'add up'!"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that not everything belongs to the realm of analysis. When you're happy, you don't sit down and try to figure out why or whether all the conditions in your immediate environment 'add up' to justify your happiness, you just enjoy it. And that's the biggest hint I can give you to the solving of your dilemma.
"So, to continue with what may, indeed, be analyzed: did Russell view his own writings in the proper light? We can find the answer quickly from one quote of his in the September 15, 1910 Watchtower page 298:
"'If the six volumes of Scripture Studies are practically the Bible, topically arranged with Bible proof texts given, we might not improperly name the volumes "The Bible in an Arranged Form". That is to say, they are not mere comments on the Bible, but they are practically the Bible itself. Furthermore, not only do we find that people cannot see the divine plan in studying the Bible itself, but we see, also, that if anyone lays the Scripture Studies aside, even after he had used them, after he has become familiar with them, after he has read them for ten years -- if he lays them aside and ignores them and goes to the Bible alone, though he has understood his Bible for ten years, our experience shows that within two years he goes into darkness. On the other hand, if he had merely read the Scripture Studies with their references and had not read a page of the Bible as such, he would be in the light at the end of two years, because he would have the light of the Scriptures.'
"Despite his claims, it is manifest that his 'Scripture Studies' were not the Bible in an arranged form since the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society dispensed with them entirely about a dozen years after his death. When we consider the high value he placed on the real Bible, it becomes evident that he held his own writings in an abnormally high regard. The fact of its abnormality becomes even clearer when we realize how it contradicts other claims he made for them. Although the claim was made that his volumes were the 'key to the Scriptures’, which 'opened up their meaning', it's seen from this quote that they were actually a 'truth' unto themselves, entirely independent of the Bible. What sense does it make to tell someone that a certain set of books will help them understand the Bible, and then tell them that they must continually read these books in order to understand the Bible and that, should they read the Bible after reading these books, the Bible will no longer be understandable? The only conclusion a reasonable person would arrive at is that the volumes were not an accurate representation of what was in the Bible.
"So much for what we can learn about the man from his writings. Now let's examine a few of his actions. Like the Witnesses of today, he had a persecution complex which magnified all criticism, whether justified or not, into a virulent outrage against the Truth and his person. So he sued for libel when such things came to his attention.
"Reverend J. J. Ross, a Canadian, published a pamphlet entitled, Some Facts About the Self-Styled "Pastor" Charles T. Russell in 1912, and was the focus of one of these libel suits of Russell’s. The pamphlet itself was miniscule, being just six pages, most of which was devoted to quoting the newspaper, The Brooklyn Eagle, which had done some exposé articles on Russell. So Ross could not be held responsible for merely repeating what The Brooklyn Eagle had already published. The rest of it was undeniably true in that it accused Russell of being without knowledge of Biblical languages or having been made a 'Pastor' by any recognized authority. When Russell issued a charge of criminal libel against its author, he was saying in effect that the pamphlet contained lies. He was unable to prove this before a jury, convened on March 17, 1913 at the High Court of Ontario, and lost the case.
"Let's look at two incidents taken from the court record:
"'Do you know the Greek?' asked the attorney.
"'Oh, yes,' was Russell's reply.
"Here he was handed a copy of the New Testament by Westcott & Hort, and asked to read the letters of the alphabet as they appear on page 447. He did not know the alphabet.
"'Now,' asked Mr. Staunton, 'are you familiar with the Greek language?'
"'No,' said Mr. Russell.
"After the trial," Arthur continued, "Ross wrote a sequel to his first pamphlet, detailing the incidents of the trial. I can stil remember this quote from that pamphlet:
"'In the leaflet, Mr. Russell is charged with being connected with "lead, asphalt, and turpentine companies". Under his direct-examination by his attorneys, he was asked, "Now if these charges did appear in The Brooklyn Eagle, are any of them true?"
"’They are not true,’ was his most emphatic answer.
"'’Not true?’
"’Not true. But when he was forced into the witness box by the defense and learned that we had the facts about these companies on hand, and the charters of them in our possession, he made a clean breast of the whole thing. He confessed being a stockholder in the Pittsburgh Asphaltum Co., which afterwards became the California Asphaltum Co.; the organizer of the Selica Brick Co., which he "entirely" managed from the Bible House on Arch Street, Pittsburgh; the Brazilian Turpentine Co., in which he had a controlling interest; a cemetery company, located in Pittsburgh, and the United States Coke and Coal Co., with capital stock of $100,000. It should have been most humiliating to swear to one thing and then, again under oath to be compelled to confess to the very opposite. What do you call this? Is it strange that the jury brought down the verdict "No Bill"?'
"While I'm at it, I'll quote one more extract from Ross' booklet as to Russell's business dealings:
"'But there is another Russellite Company I wish to speak about. This is left to last, because it has a vital connection with the Watchtower Bible and Tract concern. I mean the United States Investment Co. The crafty "Pastor" has never been willing to admit that there is, and has been, this secret Russellite incorporated body. He denied that the U.S. Investment Co. was a Russellite Co., that he was the President or manager of it, that he was stockholder in it, or that he had any interest in it whatever. He also claims that this U.S. Investment Co. had long ago become defunct. In the People's Pulpit, a Russellite paper, Vol. 3, No. 13, in the second column, near the top of page two, you will find the "Pastor" explaining to his readers about this company. He says, "I have not one dollar invested in it; nor have I been even nominally connected with it." I cannot understand how a man who is normal intellectually and morally can make such denials. His own Secretary and Treasurer, testifying for the defense in the Eagle case, swore that there was that Company, that it was in the present doing business, and that it was a holding company for the Bible and Tract Society. That the reader might see how Russell told the exact truth and nothing but the truth about himself and this Company, I will give him an extract from the Company's charter. From the records in Pittsburgh we learn that this Company was incorporated June 24, 1896:
"'Article 1. Names of Subscribers: John A. Bohnet, Ernest C. Henninges, Chas. T. Russell.
"'Amount Subscribed by Each: Bohnet $5.00; Henninges $5.00; Russell $990.00.
"'Article 3. For purpose of buying and selling real estate, patent rights, stocks, bonds, and other securites, merchandise, building homes, etc.
"'Article 4. Name of Association is U.S. Investment Co., Ltd.
"'Article 6. Officers--… C. T. Russell, Manager.'
"'The claim is now made,' Ross goes on to say, 'that this U.S.I. Co., Ltd. has no property, and had been out of business for "many years". The records in Pittsburgh show transfers of property to this self same society as late as 1911 and November 1912. You can see that the U.S.I. Co., Ltd. is in existence, is doing business, and is just another name for Russell. It is purely a holding company for the Bible and Tract Society, and it holds all it can get its hands on. We found that the U.S.I. Co., which is Russell, holds or did hold 28 houses and lots in Binghamton, New York; several lots in Tacoma, Washington; a farm near Rochester, New York; a house and lot in Buffalo, New York; a farm in Oklahoma; 100 lots in Texas; a house and lot near Pittsburgh; and 5,500 acres of land in Kentucky. This is only a small fraction of what the company holds… As it appears to me, this is the way it works. The International Bible Students all over the world, and others who are foolish enough to do so, send their money into the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, which is Russell. A part of that money is used to pay the expense of circulating Russell's literature, paying his advance agents and "pilgrims", which always means chiefly the glorifying of Russell.' (Ross notes elsewhere that in the January 1 Watchtower, Russell speaks of himself 174 times, 'and of our Lord and Master but 7 times') 'and the rest goes through to the U.S.I. Co., Ltd., which is also Russell, and is invested in lands, lots, timber limits, houses, etc., etc. You can see it is all Russell. It is claimed that he is many times a millionaire.'
"All right, we've spoken enough about Russell now. Perhaps we should turn our attention for his 'faithfulness' and 'discreetness' to the 'truth' of his teachings. Recalling that the Truth does not change with time or contradict itself, let's examine his all-important view on the ransom. Beside the doctrines on God and man, the only other thing a modern-day Witness might acknowledge that Russell was right about was the ransom-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But, in fact, views about this have undergone change too. Russell himself had three different views over a period of time which contradicted each other:
"The First View was that 'The whole world was bought with ... the precious blood of Christ.' (At-One-Ment Between God and Man, page 135) and 'The ransom price has been paid for our race.' (Watchtower, 1900, page 183).
"The Second View was that 'By the grace of God our Lord paid the price and bought us for whom he appeared. He did not buy the world, but the church.' (Watchtower, 1909, page 379).
"The Third View was in response to the questions: 'Was the ransom price paid when Jesus ascended into heaven?' Answer: 'No!' 'Has the ransom price been paid yet?' Answer: 'No!' (Watchtower 1916, p. 108).
"All three views cannot be the Truth. If Jesus bought the whole world in accord with the first view, it cannot be true that he did not buy the whole world, according to the second view, or that he bought none at all, according to the third view!
"Our definition of 'faithful' was 'loyal, firm in adherence to promises or duty: conscientious.' Was Russell any of these things? If he no longer believed the first view, why didn't he take it out of his Studies in the Scriptures? Why did that teaching remain in those volumes through all subsequent printings well into the late 1920's? Why did he sell and circulate for many years hundreds of thousands of books that he believed contained something false? It seems he was feeding his 'household' poisoned meat!
"But looking further at the intricacies of his ransom doctrines, I wonder if he knew himself just what he meant, or that he was continually changing interpretations on every conceivable idea. Take a look at this change within a few months:
"'The sin-offering -- the offering which Christ made to Divine Justice in offset to man's sin -- was the ransom. (Watchtower 1909, page 87).
"'We are to remember that the ransom sacrifice was not the sin-offering.' (Watchtower, 1909, page 201).
How could readers 'remember' any such thing when the last given 'truth' on the subject said the exact opposite? All they could 'remember' was that the Watchtower said it was one and the same. But a few months later a new development occurred in relation to the ransom-sacrifice, having to do with a 'type' of it in the sacrificed bull on the Day of Atonement:
"'He (Jesus) had in his possession the merit of his own sacrifice, the ransom price, and there and then he offered it on our behalf. This is shown in the type by the High Priest taking into the Most Holy the blood of the bullock which represented his human sacrifice -- the ransom-price which he possessed.' (Watchtower, l909, page 308).
"'On the Day of Atonement no type of the ransom is given us… a bullock would not be found to represent the ransom price.' (What Pastor Russell Said, pages 561, 562).
"Do you see what great sense this makes?" Arthur asked sarcastically, "Do you see how Russell ‘opened up the meaning of the Scriptures like no man ever before’? We are told that the sin-offering bullock was the ransom' and that the ransom was not the sin-offering; that the ransom price was/was not paid; that it was paid for the whole world; that it was paid only for the ones to 'whom he appeared'; that no one has been 'bought' at all since the ransom had not been paid yet; that Jesus' paying the ransom as soon as he ascended to heaven is represented in the sacrificed bullock; and that the sacrificed bullock does not represent the ransom price.
"Since every statement nullifies every other, the only thing that's clear is that Russell used an incredible amount of words to say nothing at all.
"He failed to pass our test of being the faithful and discreet person he thought himself. Instead of dispensing spiritual food to the believers, he let them starve on empty words that never added up to anything.
"But all in all, Russell was much better than his successors. Joseph Franklin Rutherford, the next president of the Society, usurping that position from the board of directors Russell had meant to replace him, made Russell appear a humble saint in comparison.
"Rutherford threw out the best things that made up the Bible Student's beliefs, and magnified all the worst traits. If Russell had thought a little too much of himself and of his critics, Rutherford was a dangerously paranoid egomaniac!
"Let us first point out the best thing Russell had going for him: his attitude of tolerance and his valuation of love. He insisted, for instance, that anyone who undertook to distribute a tract of his should read it several times over and make sure that they agreed with it. He was in no sense dogmatic or 'organization minded'. He wrote in one of the first Watchtowers:
"'Must I not join some organization on earth, assent to some creed, and have my name written on earth? No. Galatians 5:1: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again in a yoke of bondage."' (Watchtower Reprints, page 295).
"Again, he wrote:
"'The test of membership in the New Creation will not be membership in any earthly organization.' (The New Creation page 78).
"In view of these statements, how do you think he'd react to such statements that find their way over and over again into the Watchtower publications of today, as:
"'It is solely in brotherly association with the New World Society that we can possibly survive when this old world passes away.' (New Heavens and a New Earth, page 363)
"Think about this before you answer me now, Ted, because this is important. Do you think it's better to say: 'We need to belong to 'God's organization' here on earth by being baptized as a Jehovah's Witness in order to 'survive' Armageddon; or do you think it's more reasonable to say: 'Love is the only standard by which we shall ultimately be measured.' (Pastor Russell's Sermons, page 283)?"
"You mean just love?" Ted asked in astonishment. "You'd at least have to be in the Truth, wouldn't you? And be obeying God's laws?"
"No, he said and meant 'just love,' for he appreciated its value:
"'Love is the principal thing, then; for whatever knowledge we might gain, whatever talents we might possess, whatever faith, whatever hope, none of these could bring us to the Kingdom. They can all merely assist us in developing this love-character which is the Kingdom test -- the fulfilling of the Law.' (ibid, 280).
"I guess Russell's view appeals to me more," Ted replied.
"As well it should," Arthur agreed. "But Rutherford came along and called the brothers striving to cultivate such a loving personality, 'character-builders', which, oddly enough, was a bad word to him. He thought such people were trying to 'save themselves' on their own merit rather than recognizing how utterly sinful and worthless they were. They now had to cease concentrating on improving themselves and doing acts of kindness as Russell had recommended, and had to concentrate instead on the new dogmas and organizational rules of Rutherford's New Society.
"All of a sudden what had been the very best in Russell's teachings was anathema to the Watchtower as Rutherford wielded his ill-gotten power. Right away a seventh volume of the Studies in the Scriptures series was published under a secret order by Rutherford. The board of directors knew nothing about it. The book was handed to them complete, and they were supposed to be thankful for it.
"The story is now given to us modern-day Witnesses that those on the board of directors were very evil people who sought to worship the dead bones of Russell in refusing to allow the 'Truth' to go 'forward'. But no one had appointed Rutherford as an author, much less a subcontracting author who dredged up 'new truths' all on his own and tried to force them upon others by means of a 592 page book. The story is also given that they had no reason to complain because the book was largely made up of quotes from Russell's writings. That it was so constituted is true, that this gave them no cause to complain is manifestly false. From what little you've heard from me about Russell and his teachings on the value of love and the ransom for all to make it into the Millennium and there be judged, tell me whether or not these brothers, who had spent many years believing in Russell's truth, had cause to reject this book, based on this one quote alone:
"'Also, in the year 1918, when God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions, it shall be that any that escape shall come to the works of Pastor Russell to learn the meaning of the downfall of "Christianity."' (The Finished Mystery, page 485)."
"That's totally against everything I've learned about Russell's view." Ted replied. "The church members weren't going to be destroyed; they were supposed to make it into the Millennium and live forever if they proved worthy. It's no wonder they rejected it. I guess I would've too. But didn't the book give his reason for changing this important view so radically?"
"That's just it, it didn't even acknowledge that this was a change in viewpoint! It's as if this is what Rutherford thought Russell had been teaching all along, rather than the exact opposite! And thereafter, for every arbitrary change in doctrine the 'judge' made, either no admission was made that this contradicted long held views without giving reasons for the change, or the old view was simply brushed aside with a casual remark like 'some used to believe differently, but the light is brighter now, so let's not succumb to creature worship, but move ahead.' And, in every case, the reasons for the old views were sounder."
"So why didn't everyone stick to the old views? They weren't all crazy, were they?" Ted asked.
"No, and many of them did leave, as I did myself, as did Paul Johnson, and other members of the board of directors, and thousands of others outside of Bethel. But the rest stayed because they now felt like part of a group, and they had no place else to go. Others were just plain scared by Rutherford's threats. He now had an organization that everyone must join in order to make it into the Kingdom. To stop believing what the Watchtower said was to risk eternal death. So no one now read each article and tract over and over, examining whether it was sensible or not. They just jumped on the bandwagon and joined in the 'drives' to sell Rutherford's books, being sure to count every sale and add up every hour and report it, not bothering to think that this was much closer to 'buying salvation on their own merit' than 'character-building' ever was.
"Unwittingly, Rutherford described his own actions when warning about an imaginary enemy of the Truth in an article on 'systematic deception':
"'Some with too much confidence in their own ability seek exhilaration out of taking a chance rather than abide in the Truth as it has been Scripturally explained by God's instruments… And now with the death of that faithful and wise servant, the tendency of some self-reliant ones is to fly off at a tangent and abandon the general outline of the Divine Plan of the Ages. These, harping on Proverbs 4:18, get into a frame of mind where they think they are the individual channels for the advancing light. They advance into a supposed light which contradicts revealed proven Truth… to claim, then, that Brother Russell misdrew God's plan is to argue in effect that the vision did lie, that it did tarry, and that Brother Russell got ahead of the light instead of following its gradual revealment. Do, then, those who thus argue imagine that the vision tarried for them as the specially chosen ones of the Lord? Such an attitude spells a high degree of pride and egotism. In all the above instances can be noted 1) a growing disregard or neglect of what that servant wrote. 2) A denial or reversal of formerly held truths is naturally suggested to those having a morbid desire for novelty. Instead of dispelling the doubt by a reexamination of Brother Russell's writings, an endeavor is made to prove the new views and ideas to be Scripturally correct. 3) Strong inclination to believe the error is created by the seeming truthfulness of the new views. This is due to the outward appearance of the channel of the new ideas… Shall we accept the teachings of these latter day teachers as being gifts of the Lord Jesus to the church? How could we?… The Society's policy is not to reverse the work begun by its founder, nor to toss the Lord's people about by pretending to explode the truths as brought forth before 1916. Its true course is to follow in the same path of the just which its organizer walked.' (Watchtower, 1923, pages 259-263)."
At this point one of the nurses walked in and began checking the machine. "Don't mind me," she said, and Arthur resumed: "But you see, no one was doing this but Rutherford himself. This goes to show how far his mind was gone. Who else 'harped on' Proverbs 4:18? Who else pointed to the greatness of the 'channel' to bolster his reversals of formerly held truths?"
The nurse began inspecting the tubes leading from his wrists for blood clots, and Arthur was temporarily distracted. Ted made use of this after a moment to lead him away from the topic of Rutherford. He knew that Arthur had a thing about Rutherford, and he'd heard most of it before, so he said, "You know, before I came here today I stopped over at the Barton's -- you know, Phyllis Dorsey and her husband Terry? Well, anyway, we got to talking about these things, and he told me a lot about Rutherford that he'd heard from a brother at Bethel who went back and read the old literature --" He wondered if he had Arthur's attention, but since it was better than silence, he went on, "He told me about how Rutherford changed the date of his imprisonment to fit in with his interpretation of the days of Daniel --"
"The 1929 Watchtower, page 372, paragraph number eight, where he gives the date as February 1918, whereas everywhere else the correct date of May 8, 1918 is given (the l918 Watchtower, page 133, paragraph 5, for instance, and the 1975 Yearbook, page 104)."
Ted who thought Arthur was mumbling incoherently at first, now realized that he had his alert mind at full attention despite his seeming preoccupation with the nurse's activities. "Yeah, and he also told me about 1925 --"
"Millions Now Living Will Never Die," Arthur rattled off, "pages 89, 90, 97. Compared with the 1925 Watchtower, page 259."
"Yes, so, well, I think I know all about Rutherford now." Ted said.
"Did he tell you about the mansion he had built in San Diego for King David and the other 'ancient worthies' whom he thought would either be resurrected there or sent there after their resurrection? And how he himself lived there instead? And how the Society, despite its many claims and 'advertised' position of holding the deed for David until he came, sold the mansion shortly after Rutherford's death? And how now they no longer admit they had this crazy notion, but instead think it's better to confess the bare fact that it was built solely for Rutherford's use during a time when the hard-working Bethel brothers had to share cramped quarters in New York and the rest of the world was in dire straights between depression and world war? They make much of the fact that this mansion was not bought with 'Society' funds, but that a brother (I think it was MacMillian) bought it for him. But how did this Bethel brother, making $14 a month at the most for his services, acquire such a great sum of money that he could afford such a gift? That they don't explain. With all the other corporations Rutherford doubtlessly took over (many of which are probably still being run by the Society in addition to others), it would be no problem to transfer Watchtower contributions to one of them and claim the home wasn't bought with 'Society money.'"
"But many people feel," Ted objected, feeling the need to make some defense of the religion he'd devoted his life to rather than sit back submissively as it took such a beating, "that none of this 'ancient history' matters, and I can see their point. What difference does it make that the Society committed shady deals or even wrong doings and lies in the past? That's not what it is now. Judging from their own experience of what the Society is like today, they conclude that no matter what it was before, now it's God's organization."
"That's what the brothers told themselves under Russell's and Rutherford's administrations, too. They didn't know what was all going on at the time, and neither do we. But can you honestly say that even in your own limited experience with the Society on the congregational level, you've found nothing wrong with it so that you'd naturally conclude, without them having to tell you, that this is God's only organization on earth?"
"No, I’ll have to admit I've seen too much to say that."
"Then just think what you'd say if you'd seen it all from the top down. Just think if you'd seen Brother Knorr, then president of the Society, accepting a wayward brother back into excellent standing after that brother had come to Bethel and given Knorr a brand new car. Just think if you could've known that this brother had just before offered a few thousand dollars to the Dawnites to accept him as a member and they turned him down. So he applied to the Jehovah's Witnesses with better success in his bribery attempt. Think if you knew that this particular brother really didn't go along with the 'Truth' (since his first choice was the Dawn group, this was manifest already) but that you later saw Knorr presenting him at a convention as an excellent example of a brother putting the Truth first in his life.
"You see, we're all afraid to trust our own experiences because the Society tells us not to judge (although they continually judge the congregations of Christendom as well as us), and that we must make allowances for the 'imperfections' of the brothers. And so we must. But believe me, brother, the whole Society is only the sum of its parts, and the part you have experienced is no different in nature from the whole. Trust your own experience.
"And as for the present being better than the past, the question hinges on this: is it better to admit a sin and repent of it and apologize to those hurt by it, or is it better to deny the sin and add the sin of lying to the record? The great philosopher Pascal had this to say about it:
"'To have defects is not as bad as to try in every possible way to conceal them.'
"Since the Society of today has gone to great lengths to hide the truth about its past -- lying extensively in at least three different versions in print -- it's worse now than then. In any case, it certainly doesn't comport well with our definitions of faithful, discreet, or true."
"Then it's not the Truth?" Ted asked.
"What do you think?"
"I don't see how it can be."
"Then what's your conclusion?"
"My difficulty is in deciding how much is true and how much is false. I accepted it all in one big bundle, with everything hanging together. To deny one part was to lose the whole. So now what do I do with 'no Trinity' and 'no hell-fire' if I drop the 'faithful and discreet slave' doctrine? Where does that leave me after I've been disowned by my family, lost my best friend, lost the girl I love, and suffered public reproof from the organization I've given my all to?"
"I guess you'll have to start thinking and feeling for yourself," Arthur said seriously, "But don't worry about it; you've already hurtled over the worst obstacle by admitting to yourself that you haven't been."
"They wouldn't let me. I thought I was anointed and born-again at my baptism and they wouldn't let me talk to you about it. They even tried to talk me out of it!"
"You see," Arthur explained, "they want you to deny your own personal experience, what your own eyes and ears and mind tell you in favor of what they tell you. And they knew I'd only congratulate you and accept your experience instead of denying it."
Having crossed this forbidden boundary unscathed, Ted ran to the next, telling what he had repressed even more than his anointing. He told it to himself for the first time as well, and was more surprised to hear it than Arthur: "Did you know Richard tortures his children?"
Ted flushed. Certainly it was too drastic a word his subconscious had thrown into his mouth. He wished to take it back but could only ponder the horror of all the scenes of tyranny as they gushed forth in his mind.
"It's a terrible thing," Arthur said in amazement. "I knew his daughter had run away and came back tamed, but I didn't know he was guilty of child battering. Are you sure it's as bad as all that? Wild children do need some discipline, you know."
Ted wanted to hesitate and find a way to say, "no, I guess it's really not that bad," but the words flew out refusing hindrance: "Yes, I'm sure. It's awful. He's beaten his wife as well. Everyone at the hall saw her black eye. She wanted me to tell someone and help her, but I couldn't. I failed her, and she's been such a good friend to me."
"Your telling me won't absolve you, you know," Arthur spoke sternly, "I can't do anything about it. But you, as a witness, should call one of those agencies for child protection and report him. They can help him."
"But Richard wouldn't listen to worldly people. He'd tell them he's following the Bible and that it recommends not sparing the rod."
"He'd listen, or eventually he'd either lose custody or go to prison."
"I don't know, maybe it's not that serious. I don't want to be a Judas."
"Only you know how serious it is, Ted. This is your chance to begin thinking for yourself and making your own decisions."
"You don't make it easy."
"No decision is easy. Life isn't easy."
"All right. I’ll think about it seriously and prayerfully. But before I go, just let me ask you how it is that your own life is such a contradiction? You say to think for yourself and you freely acknowledge all the wrongs and lies of the Society. You can support the doctrines of Christendom as well as if not better than our own doctrines.
"You disagree with the Society's main contention that everyone outside the organization will be destroyed. Yet, in spite of all this, you remain a member, and a well-respected one at that. No one at the hall outside of Bob and Richard suspects you of being anything but an orthodox Witness. How do you explain these things?"
"I don't explain them, but I refer you to the first and last lesson of importance I've tried to teach you: faith is more important than, and beyond reason."
"But how can you have faith in something you know has lied?"
"Maybe I don't have faith in that part of it. But as soon as you start asking questions, you no longer have faith, just reason -- and we've seen where that has gotten us and where it's gotten the Society. The Society has stressed reason ever since the time of Rutherford, and that's the wrong approach in regards to matters of faith. No one knows more about the unknown than another, and it's foolish to claim that one does. We cannot sit around and discuss whether or not God is three persons or if man's soul is immortal or how big heaven is. We can either believe in these things or disbelieve; and the rest no man knows. So we must choose our religion by faith, not reason. Therefore, I can give no reason for my faith, and that's that."
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 12: God's Law
Ted was missing meetings on a regular basis. He no longer went out in service or prayed. He had lost his spirituality at the cost of much guilt. For a long time he agonized over what to believe. He came close to rejecting Arthur's view; perhaps he was just a senile old man whose good memories of the Society had been lost somehow, leaving all the bad ones to take their place and be exaggerated. But the facts piled up on him, and they were not to be denied so easily.
So now he went to meetings merely out of pretense, so that Richard wouldn't be disappointed with him, and he could retain his friends at the hall. At the same time, he realized that he was slowly becoming marked as another George Butler: coming there bodily only, and the color of their skin no doubt added to the similarity.
He devoted himself more to his work now. It was an easy, pleasant job, running small errands. And Bill Jackson, he found, was someone he could really talk to. Over the months he’d told him all about the genius of Arthur Olson and pointed out that someone so smart wouldn't belong to the Witnesses unless they were right. Bill always listened with intense interest as Ted went over the details of his talks with Arthur, though he didn't ever seem to draw the conclusion Ted was trying to lead him to. But he did pick up the desperately concealed signals Ted was inadvertently sending in regard to his own deep doubt. Although Ted never verbally admitted that he was anything but a dedicated Witness, Bill could sense that such was no longer the case, and he gradually attempted to dig beneath the surface and bring the truth to light.
"You know what you need?" Bill asked Ted one afternoon on break.
"Yeah, I need to study a lot more and get to the bottom of things," Ted replied.
"No," Bill laughed, "you need a woman to help you forget all about it."
Ted blushed, "Why would I want to forget the Truth?"
"Nobody said anything about your forgetting the Truth. I'm talking about forgetting the Witnesses -- and don't tell me it's the same thing because I know you know better."
Ted remained silent, stirring his lukewarm cocoa with a plastic spoon. He felt like crying, but bit his lip to control the emotion.
"I saw Cynthia Rose the other night," Bill said.
Ted looked up in surprise and waited forever for him to continue.
"They started up a poetry group at the U. I just heard about it and went the other night, and she was there."
"How was she?' Ted asked, trying to remain calm.
"She misses you."
"Did she say that?"
"Not in so many words."
"What did she say exactly?"
"We didn't speak. She doesn't like me, you know. But she read a poem about lost love. It was quite sad and touching."
"Who was she sitting with?" Ted asked anxiously. "Was someone with her?"
"No, she was alone as far as I could tell. Why don't you call her or go see her? That's the only way you’ll find out if she's still yours. I mean, now that you're --"
"Now that I'm what?" Ted demanded with a nervous laugh.
"Well, you're not quite so unreasonably strict about your religion. You might be friendlier to her now. Isn't that why she left you in the first place? It's hard for a woman to compete with an ideal utopian society."
"Is that what you think?"
"It doesn't matter. What do you think?"
"I think you're right," Ted admitted, "I've even begun thinking of the Society as a woman since Cyn left me. That's not as crazy as it sounds because the Bible does speak of Israel as married to God, and spiritual Israel as Christ's bride, and it's the remnant of them that makes up the governing body of the Society."
"Yes," Bill replied with a worried look, "those are just the type of thoughts I want you to rid yourself of; they're unhealthy. Let me ask you if you feel happy the way things are now, you being in relationship with this 'Society woman' instead of a real woman?"
"No, I must tell you that I've been very depressed these last months," Ted slowly admitted, but then quickly added: "But that's because I've been unfaithful to the Society."
"But one should be unfaithful to an unfaithful Society!" Bill exclaimed.
With that, the end of the break was reached, and Ted was left to contemplate calling on Cyn for the rest of the workday. He decided that calling her would be too impersonal and give her too good a chance to hang up on him. So he trudged through the snow to her place, stopping at a florist's on the way to pick up a dozen yellow roses.
He walked up the familiar wooden steps to the top floor and stood outside her door. He heard a male voice inside, and gripped the newsprint so tightly that a thorn pushed its way out and stabbed his palm. He thought to leave, but hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do with the flowers. Maybe he would leave them at the door with a note. As he was pondering this, a neighbor's door opened a crack and out peered an elderly lady. He realized how suspicious he must look standing listening at the door, so he raised his hand and forcefully knocked, instantly regretting his need to do so. The lady shut her door, satisfied that he was no burglar, and then he heard that wonderful voice call, "Just a minute!"
The door opened and the two beheld one another. She had on a bathrobe and her hair was wrapped in a towel. Her mouth fell open a little, and then started curling into a faint smile. Ted stood there with the roses stuck in his hand, not knowing what to do or say. He vaguely noted that the male voice was still intoning on. It sounded like he was reading her poems aloud.
"Hello," she said in a voice full of question, "I was just taking a bath."
"I brought these for you. But if it's an inconvenient time --"
"No, come in," she said in full smile, taking the roses in both hands and pulling the man in with them. "Oh, you stuck yourself!"
"It's nothing, just a prick -- like I've been all this while," he added, coming close to unclean speech.
"You said it, not me," she replied.
They stood there awkwardly, and he wondered if he was going to be introduced to the man who just wouldn't stop reading aloud.
"Who's here?" he asked.
"Nobody," she said innocently. Then, realizing what he was thinking, she began laughing uncontrollably.
"What's so funny?" he asked, barely smiling since he feared she was making a fool of him.
She couldn't answer as the tears rolled down her cheeks, contorted with gales of laughter, and seeing his evident distress raised her to new heights of hysteria. She pulled him into the living room by the arm and pointed.
It was a record player she pointed to in the otherwise empty room.
Beside it he could see the album cover, "Poetry Readings by --" that was all the farther he got as he too joined in the laughter.
"I almost didn't come in because I heard that!" he cried, sending Cyn into grand hysteria as she collapsed on the love seat, holding her stomach and emitting high-pitched screams of laughter. Ted soon found himself caught up in the same overwhelming convulsions and joined her, doubled-up for a moment, on the love seat. Before it was over they were both on the floor. The incident in itself, of course, was not all that humorous. Their hysteria was a combination of joy at being together again and relief. Their very strong emotion at this reunion had fortunately found a release, but being touched off by a comic incident, it vented itself in uncontrollable laughter. When they had finally composed themselves after several short-lived attempts, they sat together and spoke seriously.
"Cyn, I think I've changed enough now that we could try again, that is, if you haven't found someone else, and you'll have me."
"There's no one else," she said matter-of-factly. "Tell me how you've changed. Have you left them?"
"No, not really. But Bill Jackson says I'm not as strict as I was."
"Does that mean we can make love now?" she asked hopefully.
He sat and thought a moment. So far he'd done nothing wrong. He'd only cooled off towards the Truth. But now she was asking him to defy it. There was no question in his mind that the Bible strictly forbade sex outside of marriage. This had nothing to do with the Society being right or wrong; this was a direct command issued by God himself. So he replied, "I don't think so. I think we should wait till we're married --" He stopped himself realizing that he'd just implied that they were going to be married, when this is not what he meant at all. He was only making a general statement like "all people should wait till their married"; unfortunately he'd personalized the statement.
"Why, do you want to marry me now?" she asked in surprise, "I thought you couldn't marry anyone but another Witness."
"There again the Bible itself seems pretty clear when it says to marry 'only in the Lord.'" Ted replied.
"Wow! You've really changed," she cried.
"I can understand your sarcasm," he said, "but I have changed in other ways. It's not so important to me anymore. I still have to go by the Bible though, and these things are very clear in the Bible. And I think, or, rather, I feel that the Witnesses are the group I belong with in spite of all their faults. But now that I recognize their faults, I no longer follow blindly; I take them with a grain of salt."
"Well, I still admire you for doing what you believe in."
Ted smiled and continued, "And aren't you the one who's always telling me to go with my feelings? Well, I am in this matter. I've stopped trusting in intellectual reasons for being a Witness; that only leads in a circle at best. So now I'm a Witness because I feel I should be, not because it seems the only way to survive Armageddon. I don't know how much of that I believe anymore; I don't think God will kill everyone who's not a Witness."
"But he’ll kill you if you make love to me?"
"I'm a special case; knowing the Truth, I'm more responsible."
"Because you know a 'truth' that 'leads in a circle at best'?" she asked, crinkling up her nose. "That makes a lot of sense. Maybe you shouldn't go with a feeling on a matter that's so totally intellectual. Because that's all the Witness religion is, it seems to me: intellectual. They have no real love for anyone; they're looking forward to seeing them all die --"
This recalled to Ted's mind the prayer of the Bethel brother who looked forward to the time God would wipe off the face of the earth every 'two-legged germ'.
"Why don't you go all the way with your thoughts and your feelings for a change," she asked, "and abandon what you know to be false and what you feel to be wrong?"
"Well, I --"
"Shhh," she whispered, pressing her tender hand against his lips.
"You don't mind if I go with my feelings now, do you?" she asked, and replaced her hand with her own lips.
After a minute of intimate caresses she struggled out of her robe with his help. When he saw her perfect, young body, all thoughts of resistance were effaced. He swooped her up and carried her into her bedroom. Although he didn't notice, it was quite different from how he had pictured it. There was no table filled with makeup and brushes, and there were no stuffed toys. There was just a plain queen-size bed, a dresser, and a nightstand crammed with books. Most of the latter toppled onto the floor in the first couple of minutes.
Instead of the immediate guilt he'd experienced whenever he'd finished masturbating, he just felt good after climaxing inside her.
They lay together on their sides catching their breath.
"I can't get over how beautiful you are," he sighed, gently sliding his hand across the length of her body.
"You're not so bad yourself," she returned the compliment and began licking his lips and tongue, giggling as if it tickled.
Several hours passed in which they made love again and followed it with similar love-play as they explored each other and pleasured one another.
At last they lay exhausted, flat on their backs, staring alternately at the ceiling and at each other. Ted commented, "And to think I was publicly reproved for masturbating!" They had a good laugh over this.
Cyn, who had seen Phyllis on several occasions since their break-up, knew that he'd been reproved, but she didn't know why.
"That's really medieval!" she exclaimed, "Do they really think all their young people don't do it?"
"All of them but those of us stupid enough to confess it," he said.
"Why? What's wrong with it?" she asked. "Everybody does it. Now it's wrong to touch your own body and give yourself pleasure?"
"It's even wrong for two people to kiss unless they're at least engaged," he explained. "The Society doesn't even like hand-holding because they say it's a link in a chain that will lead to -- well, to this."
Cyn smiled and said, "And do they also object to it when you close your mouth and your lower lip kisses your upper? No. So why then should they object when other lips touch? Or what's the difference between clasping your hands together and holding someone else's hand? Where's the evil in it? The only difference is a good one: you share your pleasure with another. And the same can be said for getting off by yourself as opposed to getting it on together. They don't object to a husband and wife getting it on, do they?"
"No, they don't," Ted replied. "They even allow them to enjoy it. Only there's a few restrictions, like oral sex for instance, that they can't do."
"Doesn't anyone ever ask why?" she demanded, "All their ideas are so inconsistent! How can they say it's all right for a married couple to have sex between them, but wrong for a single person to masturbate? Do they allow married people to masturbate?"
"No, although they do allow artificial insemination, and then leave it up to the individuals as to how the sperm is to be obtained. So in that instance it's allowed."
Cyn giggled and said, "So the man can come inside his wife, but not in his hand! Sounds sort of like a candy commercial!" At this they both broke down in gales of laughter as they hugged each other's shaking sides.
"But," Cyn continued, "the point I was getting at is that their thinking is so backwards; it's like they're making the vagina a special, sacred place -- the only place a man can put his erection, and only then if he's married to it. He can't put it in his wife's hand, much less his own, at least not for the purpose of pleasure.
"Now, I know they permit birth control, so how can they issue a blanket condemnation of all sexual activities that are considered 'perverted' because they fail to deliver semen to the vagina? If you allow birth control, the same thing is prevented, even when the man is where he's 'supposed to be'. So what's the difference? If you wear a condom, for example -- do you mind me talking so frankly?"
"How could I after we've acted so frankly?" Ted asked.
"Well, then, if you were to wear a rubber, your skin would never really touch mine, so what difference does it make what particular area of skin you're not touching? It's all the same. There's no reason behind any of their restrictions so long as they allow fertilization to be prevented.
"And if the Bible says that a man and woman 'become one flesh' when they're married, and then it's all right for them to have sex, it follows that it's all right for one person to have sex with himself, in other words, masturbate. Or, as I prefer to think of it, to pleasure one's self."
"You know, I've thought of that myself, too," Ted acknowledged. "If the 'two become one' and then can have sex, it's the same as 'one' having sex, and that's masturbation. If the one is permissible, so is the other."
"So you agree that pleasuring one's self is a good thing and not evil in any way?" she asked.
"Yes, I think I do, because even Brother Olson admitted that he used to do it, and that nothing was really wrong with it."
"Okay then, let's be consistent and take it one step further. If it's all right for me to lay over here and give myself pleasure, and it's all right for you to lay over there and do the same, why shouldn't we be allowed to give each other pleasure?" Cyn reasoned.
"I admit it's reasonable, but we should be married."
"Why?" she cried. "Always ask why; you don't do that enough. Were Adam and Eve ever married? Is there any marriage ritual set down in the Bible for us to go by? Is there even any record of one person actually marrying another, rather than just saying so-and-so was his wife?"
"The groom," Ted explained, "would just go one night to his bride's tent, and then they were considered husband and wife."
"And what do you suppose they did all night?" she asked.
Ted smiled, and Cyn continued, "So if you really want to go by the Bible, rather than by the Watchtower, your coming here and spending this night with me makes us husband and wife right now. So even the Society shouldn’t frown on our activities here tonight."
It was a startling thought to be suddenly married. It made sense, and even going by what his former self would do in this situation, he should marry her; he wanted to marry her. But was he, in fact, married to her now? "So you consider us married now?" he asked.
"I just said that if you want to go by the Bible, as you claim you do, we are married now."
"But the law of the land doesn't recognize us as married," he argued.
"That's just a formality," she replied, "and it doesn't matter. I don't need a legal document to tell me that you love me or to bind you by law to faithfulness. If you can't do that of yourself, springing from your own love for me, then I don't want you around in the first place. But I think what's really bothering you is that I tricked you into marrying someone 'out of the Truth'; that still matters to you, doesn't it?"
"No," Ted lied, "it's just that I don't know if we're really married or not. You see, if I tell them all at the hall that I've married you, they'll ask where and when and --"
"Tell them tonight and here at my apartment."
"No, seriously, they'll assume I mean a legal marriage, and I can't lie to them. And they'll consider anything else living in sin."
"Just tell them God's laws are higher than man's. That's something they quote often enough when it means not serving their country. If God recognizes our marriage here tonight, what difference does it make if we have a government-issued license to make love or not?"
"I’d rest easier with one, nonetheless." He said, searching her drooping eyes, hoping for a glimmer of giving-in to replace her current stubbornness. "It would make life easier for us all around, I think." He paused and remembered the word "proposal". He certainly never imagined it like this, lying naked in bed with his woman about to drift off to blissful sleep. "I love you, Cyn, will you marry me?"
"I already have," she yawned, closed her eyes, and turned on her side, pulling the sheets up around her, "but we'll make it legal and everything. In fact, I’ll go you one better -- you'll see. I have a surprise for you."
In another minute they were both asleep.
She fixed him breakfast the next morning and they arranged for her to meet him at his place after work with her surprise.
"I’ll be in trouble for not being home last night," he commented, biting his lip. "I'll have to think of some excuse that won't be a lie. But we won't be able to do this again till we get legally married. So you'll have to leave early tonight."
"Well, sure. I don't want to be in your room with all the kids around. But it's a meeting night, isn't it? Then we'll have all that time together till they get back." They both smiled in anticipation.
"I'll see you about seven, then," he said, hand on the door, "they should be gone by then." He gave her a parting kiss.
"If I can't sneak in earlier -- never trust me," she smiled and watched him walk down the hall.
The elderly lady peeked out her door at him again, imagining that she wasn't seen. "Good morning!" Ted called to her in a much too cheery voice that took her by surprise. "Morning," she replied in a rather crabby tone.
Ted went directly to work, thinking up an excuse while on the bus so that he could promptly phone the Johnson's when he arrived.
It was Vonnie who answered the phone; "Where have you been?" She demanded, sounding like a worried mother, "The kids said you didn't come home at all last night. We're worried sick about you. Are you all right? Why didn't you call?"
"Hang on. I had to stay overnight at a Bible study's house. A real friendly person -- just wouldn't let me go -- kind of lonely, you know. We talked about the Truth all night till it was too late to come home. So when the offer was made to stay over, I figured it would be a real gesture of friendship to do so."
"A new study?" she asked, sounding somewhat suspicious, "What's his name?"
"Newness is relative;" he hedged, "we're all new to the Truth, as Brother Olson always says." Actually, Brother Olson never said this to Ted's knowledge, and it caused him to wonder just how many sayings of his were apocryphal. "Oops! It's starting time -- gotta run. See you!" He hung up and breathed a sigh of relief. It was now up to Vonnie to relate the story believably or as an unlikely excuse.
Turning around, he saw Bill Jackson standing there with a knowing smile. "Been out all night at a Bible study, huh? You really expect them to believe that?"
"Don't you know it's impolite to eavesdrop?"
"Sorry. But tell me about last night. You know I was the one who suggested you go see Cynthia, so if you did and you hit it off -- well, you should thank me."
"Very well, thank you," Ted said as Bill motioned him into the chair opposite him by one of the break-room tables. "I was with her all night, it's true. We're back together again, and I'm glad I went over there. But that wasn't a lie I told just now, because she is my Bible study."
"Yes, and it's very important never to lie, isn't it," Bill responded as if he didn't mean it. "But don’t you feel the least bit guilty about spending the night with her like that? That doesn't sound like you."
"I know. I always figured that if I did something like that I'd be real guilty, but it didn't happen. I jut felt good about it, and I couldn't convince myself that there was anything wrong with it."
"Yes," Bill agreed, "I've always wondered how anyone could imagine that God doesn't like us to enjoy ourselves, and that he gets real mad about it. Why should God care what you do? How could it possibly affect him if you go to a meeting or stay home? What difference could it possibly make to him if you swear or not, or if you sleep alone or with someone? Why should he get upset about it? It's the height of egotism to think that he would, or that there's a multitude of demons cheering you on to do the very opposite of what God wants you to do. It's not only nonsense, it's megalomania and paranoia as well."
"I'm not so sure about that," Ted said, "I believe that God cares."
"You've still got a long way to go then. Look around the world and tell me what it is that God cares about. Lives? Peace and plenty? Love? Show me one thing he cares about enough to actually do something about it. And if you're fool enough to tell me that he has done something somewhere, I’ll force you to admit that he's done a poor job of it.
"You can't go through life striving to do what God wants you to do," Bill argued, "because it's always just what you think your God wants you to do, or, even worse, what someone else tells you their God wants you to do. You can never know if any God exists, much less what he wants of you, if anything at all. For if such an all-powerful being really exists with all the infinite cosmos at his disposal, do you imagine for one moment that your little life would have any effect at all on his vast eternal plan? Or that God cares whether or not you get enough subscriptions to the Watchtower and Awake magazines; or whether you sleep alone, like a good little boy, or make love to your woman?"
"You do make it sound ridiculous," Ted admitted.
"I can make it sound more ridiculous," Bill continued. "Imagine, if you can, (for I surely can't), that this omnipotent being who created the entire universe, somehow patterned himself after the gods of mythology and had a son through a virgin woman on earth. And he let his son die so that mankind could live forever so long as they believed this incredible story."
"That I find little difficulty in believing," Ted insisted.
"That's because it's part of your culture. But you should start thinking for yourself." Bill advised. Then, looking at the clock he concluded, "Well, it's time to go to work now. You think about what I said."
And he did. It seemed to him that Satan was doing his best to pull the Truth out from under him like a rug and leave him tumbling down to utter destruction. Bill could make his atheism sound logical, and Arthur could make Christendom's views tenable, so that all three sides of the triangle seemed correct at the same time. But he had to choose just one side on faith rather than reason, like Arthur had done. But which side did Ted belong to?
He had convinced himself once of having committed the unforgivable sin when he'd masturbated. Now he'd committed fornication, which was considered much worse: a disfellowshipping crime if ever there was one. But he no longer believed that being out of the organization meant death, and he couldn't make himself feel guilty about loving Cyn. He was smack-dab in the middle of the triangle, spinning dizzily.
He stopped at the liquor store after work and picked up a bottle of wine for the occasion. When he got home, he started right in cleaning the place. He especially fixed up the bedroom, taking pains to make the boys' beds as well as his own. "I’ll have to remember to mess them up again before they get back tonight," he thought.
They hadn't planned on eating or anything, so he wondered what else he could do in preparation. He wanted to get candles out and set the table for a romantic dinner, but what if she'd eaten already? Besides, he wasn't a cook. So he put on romantic music instead.
"Maybe we can dance," he said to himself, clearing a spot in the living room by moving the furniture tight against the walls.
And then he waited, glancing through the Kingdom Ministry just to get an idea of what would be discussed at the meeting that night.
Eventually he heard Richard's car doors slam and a couple minutes later the horn honked. Still he waited.
He heard footsteps running up the steps and a forceful, rapid knock. "Ted!" Bobby's voice called through the door, "Ted, are you in there? C'mon, we're waiting for you!"
"I’m not feeling very well," Ted called back, pinching his arm so as not to lie about what he was feeling, "Tell them to go without me."
"Okay," Bobby yelled and ran back down the steps. In a moment the car door slammed again and Ted listened as the car took off. Cyn, he recalled, was going to try to make it here before now. But maybe she was hanging around close by waiting for them to leave. He waited.
He was still waiting at 7:30, and he was getting nervous. He went downstairs and, using the key they'd given him in case of emergencies, tried to open the Johnson's door. It wouldn't turn. So he went back upstairs and put on his heavy coat and winter boots.
It was snowing fast and thick as he walked out into the white night towards the phone booth. He slipped around and actually fell once into a snow-bank. Conditions were bad, and maybe Cyn had decided for that reason not to come. "It must've started just as soon as I got home from work," he reasoned as he trudged down the unshoveled walk to the corner phone booth that swallowed his dimes.
The phone rang and rang, and no one answered it. He counted the rings until they totaled twelve -- still no answer. He sadly hung up the phone and turned to leave. But, thinking that he may have dialed the wrong number, he tried once more. This time it stopped ringing on the third count, but no one answered. The phone just plain went dead -- no dial tone or any other sound.
He walked to the edge of the street to look down the lane in case he should spot her walking along. Instead, he saw the flashing red light of a police car a couple of blocks away with the usual crowd milling about the sight of an accident. Ted had never felt any particular desire to be at the scene of a fire or accident, and had always wondered why others raced to the spot when they didn't care. Perhaps it was just to see some violence or to say they were there. (What empty lives they all led!) But he figured he'd better hurry home in case Cyn got there ahead of him.
Now, the phone booth happened to be in front of a pizza parlor, and Ted thought this would be the perfect solution to having something to eat on hand. It wasn't really romantic food, but it was good. So he went in and ordered one with the works. As he stood there waiting impatiently and wishing he'd left a note for Cyn on his door, a young man came into the place and immediately began talking to the man who was preparing Ted's pizza.
"Big accident down the street," he announced as if proud to have been an eyewitness after the fact. "This guy comes flyin' down the street in a '67 Chev…" There followed a long description of the car before he resumed the story, "skiddin' like hell all over the road, and he slams into this black chick crossin' the street way over on the left side --"
"What?" Ted shouted in anger.
"A black girl -- okay, a ‘colored woman’. What d'ya want from me, man? So anyway, his rear-end slams into her, and he's tryin' to steer out of it, or maybe he's tryin' to get away. Anyway, he steps on it, really floors it, and smacks right into a telephone pole!" At this he burst out laughing at what he considered a funny situation. "The cops and the ambulance arrived at the same time, and the cops wanted to give him a breath-test, but the ambulance guys wouldn't let 'em; they whisked him right off to the hospital. But I don't think there was anything wrong with him, he was just goin' too fast on all that new snow."
"What happened to the girl?" Ted asked, excitedly.
"Oh, they took her away in an ambulance too."
"Was she hurt? What did she look like?"
"Hell, how should I know if she was hurt? It's dark out there, you know. They took her off in a stretcher, so I don't think she was conscious."
"What did she look like? Did she have on a long beige coat with an eskimo-type hood?"
"Yeah, that's her. You know her?"
"What hospital did they take her to?"
"Hell, I don't know; the County I suppose."
Ted ran out and started running down the busy street, wondering about the best way to get there quick. He didn't know what bus went out that way. On the next corner he saw a taxi stopped for a light, so he ran up to it and hopped in.
"Listen, Mack, I'm on a call here. Find yourself another cab!"
"This is an emergency! My wife's just been hit by a car. Take me to the County Hospital."
"Sure, everything's an emergency. But that don't pay the bills. I gotta pick up a fare and take 'em to the airport. Now that's an eight-dollar tab plus a dollar tip at least. You willin' to pay me that to take you downtown? 'Cause if you're not --"
"I’ll pay it, just move!"
The driver sped off beyond the speed limit, but at every stoplight an eternity ticked away which seemed to be dragged out even longer by the man's constantly running mouth. "Yeah, a lotta accidents today, I'll bet. People don't know how to take it a little easy when they don't know how to drive in this stuff. Ninety percent of your drivers shouldn't be allowed on the road. You got old ladies out there on the road that can't even see. Hell, they can't even walk, some of 'em, an' what the hell they givin' 'em a license for? I'll bet it was a woman what hit your old lady, huh?"
"Listen, could you just shut-up and drive? I'm very upset right now."
"Sure Mack. But don't worry, I seen 'em come outta some pretty tight scrapes. I once saw a guy get pinned under the wheel of a semi--" And so he went on and on long after Ted had shut him out completely.
"Okay, you got ten bucks?" the driver asked as he pulled up in front of the hospital entrance.
"No, I've got $4.15; but since the meter only reads $3.75, I'm sure you'll be happy to keep the extra change." Ted handed him the money and ran out, hearing the torrent of abuse the cabby heaped upon him as he hurried through the glass door.
"Did you just get a car accident victim in here by the name of Cynthia Rose?" he asked the nurse at the counter.
She quickly ran her finger down the list and responded, "Yes we did. Are you a relative?"
"No, I'm her fiancé. Is she all right?"
"I'm afraid the doctor has placed her on the critical list for the moment. If you'll just wait here a minute I’ll call the doctor for you."
"No, let him stay with her if she need him."
"Well, there's a little problem I understand about blood, and they can't do anything until they get permission from a relative. Just a minute."
In a minute an imposing looking doctor stood before Ted. He was in his fifties, about a foot taller than Ted, with a magnificent beard. "Hello, I'm Dr. Schwartz," he said, shaking Ted's hand briefly, "I understand you're Miss Rose's fiancé?"
"That's right. How is she?"
"I’ll be frank with you, young man, she's in a very bad way. She's lost a lot of blood and it needs to be replaced. But we found this in her purse." He held a little card in his hand that was instantly familiar to Ted. It was the old style baptism card with a "no blood" statement on the other side.
"It says here," the doctor continued, "that she's a baptized Jehovah's Witness and refuses any blood transfusion. Our hands are tied unless some relative is going to take responsibility. I know what these people are like. They're likely to sue you for saving their life. Would you sign a paper taking responsibility? She'll die within the hour without blood."
"But I'm not a relative," he declared, trying to pass off the responsibility and not yet thinking clearly.
"Do we have time to contact any others? Do you know where her family is?"
"No, she's got an uncle somewhere, but they're out of touch."
"That leaves you, and time's a wasting. Will you sign the paper?"
"It's not that easy, doctor. You see, I'm a Jehovah Witness --"
"Oh God!" Dr. Schwartz exclaimed, holding his hands to his head and walking away from him down the hall.
"Doctor!" the nurse on station called after him, causing him to turn around, "I've called the local Jehovah's Witness church and they're sending someone right out. Meanwhile there's someone there who wants to talk to you."
The doctor picked up the phone and was informed that there was no record of Cynthia Rose having been baptized, but that if she had a card saying that she was, and that she refused blood transfusion, the Witnesses would stand behind her as she upheld that Biblical principle.
"Under no circumstances are you to give that girl blood, or you'll have a lawsuit on your hands," the brother told him. Ted was to learn later that it was Bob Morrow who was on the other end.
"Well?" Ted asked as the doctor hung up the phone.
"What do you think? They say she wasn't baptized, but that I'd better not give her blood anyway! So now you'll have to fight them as well as her if you want her to live. But you won't do that, will you?"
"What authority do I have?"
"What authority do you have?" Dr. Schwartz repeated in astonishment, "What authority do they have? Don't you love this girl? Are you going to let her die because of what they say?"
'No, I wouldn't if it were just that, but the Bible itself is very clear. It says we must abstain from blood.
"Listen," Dr. Schwartz said sternly, "I'm a Jew, and we know what the Law means. It means not to eat the blood of animals. It doesn't mean blood transfusions; how could it when they didn't have blood transfusions back then? You Christians claim that those dietary restrictions all passed away anyway; you eat pork, don't you? So why not blood? How can you let someone you love die over semantics?"
"But that law didn't pass away," Ted argued in a daze, "and transfusion is the same as eating because when you can't eat normally they feed you intravenously, so the restriction holds."
"So God wants Cynthia Rose to die rather than have blood in her veins? What kind of monster is it you worship! Come with me and see what you're doing first-hand." He grabbed Ted roughly by the shoulder and ushered him down the hall, through the doors, and up to the emergency room. He didn't let him go in, not being sterile, but had him peer though the window in the door. There she was, hardly recognizable with tubes leading into her nose and a large black tube in her mouth connected to a respirator. The sheets were soaked in blood, even though most of the bleeding had been stopped. The air was pricked with the steady bleep of the monitors as doctors and nurses scurried around but didn't seem to be doing anything to immediately help Cyn.
"Why aren't they doing something to help her?" Ted asked through his tears. He felt faint.
"What her body needs right now is blood." Dr. Schwartz explained, "The cells need the oxygen and corpuscles in blood to begin the massive healing that must take place. There's nothing else we can do till she gets that."
"Let me make a quick phone call," Ted requested, "and then I’ll tell you. I just don't know what to do right now."
The doctor took him back to the waiting area and Ted called the nursing home. Arthur was already asleep and the nurse was loath to wake him, but Ted insisted. A groggy-voiced brother greeted him.
"Hello, is that you, brother?"
"It's Ted Evanston, Brother Olson. I'm sorry to disturb you but I need your advice in an emergency. Cyn Rose has been hit by a car and they want to give her blood. What should I do?"
"Blood? No blood," Arthur groaned as if someone was trying to force him into taking it; he was really only half awake.
"So I shouldn’t let them give her blood?" he asked. Doctor Schwartz looked on in exasperation, motioning to let him speak to the crank on the phone, but Ted wouldn't let him.
"Your own conscience," Arthur was wheezing over and over.
"But I don't know," Ted confessed, "What would you do? The Bible says to abstain from blood. I don't want both of us to lose out on eternal life because I gave her blood!"
"Mark 7:15," Arthur breathed, scarcely audible, "Mark 7:15; nothing. Nothing." Arthur replaced the receiver and fell back to sleep.
"I need a Bible," Ted told the doctor who stood in impatient expectation of a yes or no. He slipped into an empty room and took a Gideon Bible out of a drawer, came back and handed it to Ted.
Quickly turning to Mark 7:15, he read, ‘There is nothing from without man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile a man.’
"Well, what's it say?" the doctor demanded.
Ted was about to answer, when, looking up, he spotted a furiously determined-looking David Nelson storm into sight.
"Did they give her any blood yet?" David asked, out of breath.
"No we didn't. She's dying rapidly because of your insane rule," Dr. Schwartz reported.
"We're not insane by obeying God's laws." David explained. "We must abstain from blood, even if it means our lives, which it very seldom does. There are blood substitutes, you know. Have you given her saline solution?"
"Oh God!" Dr. Schwartz shouted, "Now he's going to tell me how to practice medicine! They tell you that you can live without blood even when the doctors say blood is necessary, don't they. Well, that all looks very fine on paper, I'm sure. But this is real life, gentlemen, and it doesn't quite work as well as your dreams. That girl will be dead very shortly unless she has whole blood and nothing but blood. She needs the oxygen in it that you just can't get from salt-water."
"Give her blood," Ted declared, "I’ll take full responsibility."
David Nelson's mouth dropped open in shock. "Brother, you don't know what you're saying!" Then, turning to the doctor, "I forbid this absolutely. He has no say in this matter. She's thrown herself on the sanctuary of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society by means of signing that baptism card and carrying it on her, and we mean to protect her everlasting life by keeping her unconscious body from blood. If you don't want an enormous malpractice suit on your hands, you'd better forget about transfusion and give her a substitute."
"No, brother, listen," Ted foolishly pleaded, "Nothing that enters into a person can defile him."
"What's that?"
"That's the Bible -- Jesus' words at Mark 7:15. Nothing that enters a person's body can defile him -- nothing! That's what Jesus said! So a blood transfusion can't defile her. It's all right. Brother Olson told me --"
"Nonsense!" David cried, "Jesus was talking about something else there. He was talking about eating in the first place."
"But isn't that one of our main arguments:" Ted asked, "that a blood transfusion is eating blood just like intravenous feeding is eating? I just used it on this doctor here."
"But Jesus went on to say," David explained, "that the reason unclean foods didn't defile a person was because they passed through his body and out into the sewer. That doesn't happen with blood; it enters right into the bloodstream and is retained in the body."
"Then it's not like eating after all, is it?" Ted reasoned, "And we've wasted all that paper and all those words in arguing that it was. But if it isn't eating blood, then it's all right, isn't it? The Bible just had the eating of blood in mind. But if you say that transfusion isn't eating, then there's no law against it!" Ted argued.
"But it is eating," David insisted.
"Then Jesus' words must apply that 'nothing entering into a person can defile him'; they must apply in any case because he says 'nothing,' and that must include blood," Ted reasoned.
"And I suppose," David began in his best oratorical sarcasm, "that poison mushrooms and marijuana can also enter the body and not defile it in that case?"
"Blood isn't a poisonous drug," the doctor commented.
"It is to our everlasting life," David countered.
"Why? Certainly God wants us to do all we can to save life!"
"No, not all we can. The Witnesses of Jehovah are prepared to give up their lives on the basis of principles. We would rather die than commit idolatry such as saluting the flag, for instance. Don't you agree that it would cost a Christian his everlasting life to commit idolatry or fornication? And why is that? Because these acts break God's laws. Well, abstaining from blood is also one of God's laws, so we must not break it either. In fact, all these things are classed together in Acts the fifteenth chapter, just to show that they are all of the same seriousness:
"'To abstain from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood,' in verse 20; and again in verses 28 and 29:
"'For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you, except these necessary things, to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things you will prosper. Good health to you!'"
"Ha! a lot of good health it brings, doesn't it!" Dr. Schwartz commented sarcastically.
"But brother, listen," Ted implored, "it just came to me: that classifies taking blood with fornication and things sacrificed to idols, right?"
"That it does, and they're very serious offenses, so you can see how serious taking blood is," David assured.
"But on this eating of foods sacrificed to idols, the Watchtower says it's all right. Because Paul said in 1 Corinthians that we could eat meat sacrificed to idols and not worry about it. That it was all right unless it bothered someone else, and then if it offended them you shouldn't do it for their sake."
"Yes, that's right," David agreed.
"Well, then, if this thing that's classed with taking blood is in fact permissible, and was only to be avoided if it would offend someone else's weak conscience, blood must be all right too. You see what I mean?"
"Yes, that's one of Christendom's arguments," David explained. "They claim that abstaining from blood was just a temporary measure imposed so as not to stumble the believing Jews. The gentiles who became Christians had to abstain from eating of blood and food sacrificed to idols because they'd stumble their Jewish brethren who'd become Christians. Christendom claims that it was never meant as an everlasting law."
"Well, doesn't that fit in with what Paul says about eating food sacrificed to idols?" Ted asked.
"What Paul says in First Corinthians, chapter ten, verses 25 through 30," David pronounced, taking great pride in knowing exactly where the quote in question was from, "has nothing to do with what Acts, chapter fifteen is talking about. The one has to do with eating at a friend's home and the other with eating at the temple of the idol --"
"It says nothing about the location, " Ted corrected, "only to abstain, period."
"Brother," David began in a condescending tone, "it's against God's law to take blood, believe me. Better minds than yours have spent years studying this question. We wouldn't enforce it on God's people unless we knew it to be his law. You've only been in the Truth a few months; not even a year, and you're succumbing to the pressure of the situation and not seeing things too clearly."
"No, brother, you're wrong," Ted replied. "I'm seeing things more clearly now that I ever have. I'll tell you why the Society lets us die; it's not because it's God's law. God doesn't want us to die. It's just for publicity. The Society will do anything, believe anything, no matter how outlandish, in fact the more outlandish the better, just to get publicity."
David was shocked at Ted’s impertinence and said, "You don't know what you're saying."
"Don't I? What did Jesus say when he was accused of breaking the precious Sabbath law? The law the Jews were certain was from God, the law they knew God would punish them for breaking? He said the law was for man's good, not man for the law's good. He told them that if they ever really read the Scriptures they'd see where David entered into the holy place and ate the showbread which it was unlawful for anyone but the High Priest to eat. And he and his men ate it because they were starving to death --"
"Actually, it was any of the priests that could eat it, not just the High Priest," David noted matter-of-factly, "The account is in Mark, chapter two, verses 23 through 28."
"Damn it! Listen to me!" Ted screamed, "Christ himself spoke of that incident approvingly; he used it as an example of his own actions of breaking the law and eating something that was forbidden under God's law to eat in order to save life! Don't you see that it's the same thing here? If a blood transfusion is eating blood, and that's forbidden under God's law, it's still all right to have the transfusion in order to save life. King David did the same thing, and Jesus approved. What higher authority could you want?" And turning to the doctor Ted once again ordered, "Give her the blood."
"He has no authority to tell you that," David countered, "He's not a relative or anything."
"My God, man! He's the girl's fiancé. Aren't you gonna let him have any say in the matter?"
"No one has any say as long as she's carrying that card. And I'm here to make sure her wishes are complied with."
The nurse once again called to Dr. Schwartz, "Doctor, I have another one of those people on the line."
"One of what people?"
"Jehovah's Witnesses," she said quietly.
"You call them people? Let one of them answer it, I've heard enough!"
David stepped over to the counter and picked up the phone. Ted waited impatiently, aware for the first time how much time had lapsed since the doctor had given Cyn an hour to live.
"Well?" Ted asked a couple of minutes later when David had finished.
"Strange news," he said thoughtfully, "That was Terry Barton. Seems his wife is the one who baptized Cynthia."
"Phyllis?"
"Yes. She wasn't at the meeting tonight, but Terry heard about what happened afterwards and decided he'd better call and tell me. He isn't sure when she did it."
"What difference does that make? I didn't know Phyllis had baptized Cyn. That must be the surprise she was going to tell me tonight: that she got baptized so I could marry her guilt-free!"
"It makes a great deal of difference." David explained, "If she baptized her after she was disfellowshipped, it couldn't possibly count. But if it was before then, I don't know. They're really supposed to be baptized by a brother unless it's an emergency situation. And then there are the 80 questions. There's no record of her having answered them at all."
"You mean the Society doesn't consider her baptized?"
"It's hard to say at this point. It's an interesting problem."
"An interesting problem?" Ted echoed in disbelief. "Cyn is dying in there! Do you have authority over whether she dies or not?"
"I don't know. Terry's on his way home to ask Phyllis when it was she baptized Cynthia. Then he's gonna call us back."
"We haven't got time for all that," Dr. Schwartz said in exasperation, "Can I give her the blood or not? It's probably already too late."
"In that case it's a moot question," David replied.
"I've never seen anyone so heartless," Dr. Schwartz replied in disbelief.
"Listen, Brother Nelson," Ted tried once more, "Doesn't the Bible say that love is the law's fulfillment? And doesn't Paul say that all things are lawful?"
'Yes, that's in 1 Corinthians 10:24."
"Could you just stop thinking about where things are for a minute and think about what they mean? I love this girl. That fulfills the law. That is the law! And my love for her wants to keep her alive. If all things are lawful, blood transfusion is lawful, isn't it? Or doesn't it come under the heading of 'all things'?"
"You've been talking too much to old Brother Olson, I can tell."
And so it went, with neither of them getting anywhere, and Cyn's life steadily flowing away.
But the mention of Brother Olson brought another argument to Ted's mind, and his mind was buzzing in an effort to argue life back into Cyn. "Brother Nelson," he began, "do you remember reading a question in the Kingdom Ministry where some brother wondered whether or not it would be against God's law to give blood for his own private use and have it stored in case he needed it? He figured it would be all right since it was his own blood he'd be giving in a transfusion, and the only thing wrong with it in the first place is that the life is in the blood, and you shouldn't take someone else's life."
"It was something like that, yes." David smiled condescendingly.
"Well," Ted continued, "that was wrong according to the Society because you should never store blood; you're supposed to pour it out on the ground and cover it up like when you drain the blood from an animal. Right?"
"That's what they said, yes."
"But in Brother Olson's dialysis, when the machine breaks down, his blood is stored in the machine for the length of time it takes them to fix it before it flows back into him. Isn't that the same thing as what that brother wanted to do, only the time interval is Shorter?"
"Essentially, yes. But the machine breaking down isn't an intentional thing, and we can't be responsible for accidents."
"Well, even if it doesn't break down, the blood flows out of him and is in the machine for a while before it flows back in. It's still the same thing, only the time interval is shorter still, and the Society says that's all right. You see, they don't know what they're talking about; they just make it up as they go along. Just like they used to say it was a sin to have a vaccination because they thought there was blood in it -- they were wrong but wouldn't listen to anyone."
Just then the phone rang. David answered it, and spoke with Phyllis. She related that Cyn wanted to get baptized as a surprise for Ted so he would more readily marry her. Phyllis, wanting to prove that a sister had just as much authority as a brother to make converts, dunked her in the bathtub without the formalities of all the 80 questions. None of this made the baptism invalid since no one could read what was in Cyn's heart when she made the "public declaration" for her faith. But Phyllis baptized Cyn after the elders told her she was going to be disfellowshipped and before the official announcement to the congregation. It was now left up to the Jesuitical mind of David Nelson to determine whether or not she was actually in a disfellowshipped state in that interval. If she was, then the baptism of Cyn, he figured, wouldn't count, and he would have no real authority to forbid the transfusion.
It was 'an interesting problem'.
The meeting had ended and a few of the elders, including the two new ones, Bob Morrow and Richard Johnson, joined Elder Nelson in his deliberations at the hospital. Forty-five minutes later they had reached the conclusion that Cyn's baptism was invalid; therefore, they would do nothing to interfere with the transfusion. Ted, of course, would have to consider himself disfellowshipped for pleading for the transfusion to take place. It took them another ten minutes to explain all this to Ted since David insisted on going through all the Scriptural considerations he'd taken into account before allowing anyone to talk to the doctor.
With these deliberations finally over, Ted rushed over to the nurse on station and asked her to inform Dr. Schwartz to go ahead with the transfusion.
"I'm afraid it's too late." the nurse said gently, "Cynthia Rose died three minutes ago."
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 13: God's Word
The congregation took up a collection for the funeral. Unfortunately, it didn't begin to cover the expense. Ted applied to the elders, but they told him the Society had no responsibility to pay for funerals. "Let the dead bury their dead," David Nelson quipped.
Ted put all the money he had with what he had received, and managed to get a showing of the body at a local funeral home. The Witnesses filled the aisles that day just as if it were a meeting. And, in fact, it was conducted just like a meeting. Brother Garvias gave the 'funeral talk', speaking for only thirty seconds about Cyn.
"Friends," he began, "as you know, our dear sister, Cynthia Rose, passed away on Tuesday evening, December l6, 1980 at 9:53 p.m., the result of a car accident. She was born on March 3, 1961, and lived in this city all her short life. She is survived by an uncle, so far as we know, and a fiancé: our dear Brother Evanston, to whom our hearts go out.
"It is good for those of us who are living in this turbulent time to reflect on death, its meaning, and our readiness for it." There followed an hour-long talk on the Truth that was all too familiar to all present, though they were all experts at hiding this type of utter boredom.
Ted wanted to believe that there was something left of Cyn, but the Witnesses stole her soul with their logical words: no one had a soul. Cynthia Rose simply was no more, although she had a good chance of being resurrected in the New Order.
Richard further convinced him of this hard fact at the reception following the service. (This was held at Brother Nelson's house; Elvira had stayed home from the service along with a couple other sisters just to prepare the feast.) Richard told him: "Remember when Brother Olson talked about how the mind was an invisible, spiritual thing, like a spirit that would survive the death of the spiritual body?"
"I've been thinking about that a lot lately," Ted admitted.
"Well, I figured out an answer to it." Richard boasted delightedly. "It's so simple I wonder why I hadn't thought of it sooner. The electrons in our brains, which are our thoughts, are invisible it's true, but that doesn't mean they're spiritual. We just can't see them with the naked eye, but we can with a microscope. Electrons are real, material things because every material thing is composed of them. See what I mean? You can't say the mind is spiritual, because it's made up of invisible atoms just as every material thing is."
Richard was excited about his discovery and couldn't understand Ted's despondency. He wasn't sensitive enough to realize that a person likes to think of a dead loved one as still alive somehow.
"What's the matter? Richard asked, "How come you're so quiet?"
Ted did seem quiet amidst the controlled revelry of the Witness get-together. Anyone entering the room would never have guessed that the party going on was a funeral reception; it was indistinguishable from the wedding reception for Terry and Phyllis a few months before, with the exception that occasionally some sister would come over to Ted and offer her sympathy.
Richard sat down next to him, and Ted spent several minutes frowning into the carpeting and pretending to listen.
Ted snapped out of his daze when he saw Bill Jackson approaching him with an extended hand.
"I'm so terribly sorry, Ted," Bill said, "She was so young." He shook his hand and sat on the other side of him.
"I'm glad you came," Ted said, "and surprised."
Bill quickly explained: "When they told me at work that you called in about attending a funeral, I looked into it and discovered what had happened. I took off myself because I knew her and liked her, even if the feeling wasn't mutual. I really wanted to see you two happy together."
"We were for awhile."
"You must be Richard Johnson," Bill said, reaching his hand across Ted to him.
"Yes, how do you do," Richard replied, giving him a firm handshake, "I don't think I know you, brother."
"No, you don't, because I'm not a brother. I'm Ted's supervisor at work. Bill Jackson's my name."
"Are you the one who got him that good job?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to call it good;" Bill replied with a smile, "'better' is a more apt description."
"You seem like an intelligent man," Richard said, "so why aren't you a brother? I'm sure Ted's talked to you about the Truth. Do you have any particular objections to the Truth? Maybe I could help explain them to you." Richard never passed an opportunity to witness.
"Your question is self-answering," Bill replied, "Ted and I have had some interesting conversations, but there's been very little of what I’d call truth in them."
"Okay," Richard laughed good-naturedly, "I see you're opposed to the Truth, but what exactly is it you disagree with? I can't imagine anyone not accepting the Truth once they hear it presented well, unless they're incorrigible."
"First and foremost," Bill replied angrily, "I'm opposed to the fact that we are here today remembering a young woman who should be alive. I've heard the report from many lips today about how this lovely girl was allowed to die when medical help was available. And if there were any chance at all of winning such a case, I'd sue you people for murder.
"The second thing is that there was no real funeral. I understand that after you people let her die and got all your free publicity, you wouldn't even have the decency to provide for a funeral. Ted had to pay for that facade I was just at mostly out of his own pocket, and had to have the city bury her in a 'potter's field'.
"The third thing is that you enslave yourselves to the Bible, a book full of nonsense and things offensive to every sensible person with feelings.
"Lastly, I object to your so-called 'Truth' because you believe in a self-contradictory thing called 'God.'"
"You don't mince words, do you," Richard replied, "But since we do accept the authority of the Bible as God-breathed or inspired, we abstain from blood, and --"
"But she wasn't a Jehovah's Witness," Bill said, "as I understand it. So why did you people interfere?"
"She had a blood-card," Richard quickly explained, "so we weren't sure if she was a sister or not.
"But the main thing to decide is whether or not the Bible is God's word." Richard continued, swiftly turning the conversation back into a ‘witness’: "Once you accept that it is God’s Word, it's fairly easy to determine that his Word says to abstain from blood; you just have to read it."
Bill realized that Richard had drawn the boundaries of their discussion, and so decided to argue within those boundaries: "But how could anyone be so foolish as to come to the conclusion that the Bible is 'God's word'?" he asked.
"By looking at the facts." Richard replied, matter-of-factly, "Are you willing to do that?"
"Are you?" Bill threw back.
"I always am," Richard smiled proudly.
"Ted," Bill said, "after this last fiasco, the gloves are off! The time for pulling punches is over. Remember how I told you once that if you ever wanted to be freed from them, to come to me and I'd convince you that their 'truth' was anything but? Has that time come? Are you ready?"
"I’m ready to hear what you have to say;" Ted replied weakly, "I'm disfellowshipped now, anyway."
"Who told you that?" Richard asked in astonishment.
"Brother Nelson. It counts from the elder's decision, they decided, not from the announcement to the congregation."
"Then I shouldn't really be talking to you!" Richard stated in alarm.
"Well, you haven't been officially warned not to yet, so don't worry about it."
"Why were you disfellowshipped?" Bill asked, not knowing that it was a taboo question among the Witnesses.
"I told them to give Cyn blood -- but it was too late by then."
Bill sighed and said, "You see now why you have to know where you stand ahead of time? You can't let them tell you what to think and then wait till a crisis arises before deciding whether you'll go along with them or not. You have to get off the fence now and decide!"
"That's harder than you make it sound," Ted said, "but I'm ready to go one way or the other, if it's really an either/or situation. So let me hear your worst. Only I'd like a better defender of the Bible to debate you."
"What's wrong with me?" Richard laughed, insulted.
"I'd like you there too, as second best. But I’ll never be certain who's right unless I hear the two best representatives of both sides debate together. I very much need for all of us to visit Brother Olson now."
"Now?" Richard asked, shocked both by Ted's wavering over the Truth and by his forthright manner. Hadn't he studied all the important doctrines with this boy? Hadn't he even attended those meetings with Brother Olson wherein he'd defended the doctrines of the Truth against all the cleverest objections Arthur could think of? It never occurred to Richard that he hadn't won all those debates hands-down. He never realized that they only served to drive the point home to Ted that both sides were right and wrong at the same time, even though Ted had told them so that one time. "You want us to leave the reception here and go to the nursing home for another debate?"
"Yes I do." Ted replied, "Are you coming? I don't like it here anyway."
"You're distraught and don't know what you're saying." Richard concluded. "Maybe a visit with Brother Olson will do you good. Okay, let's go."
'You're not leaving us already?" Elvira pleaded as the men put on their coats.
"Yes, I'm afraid we have to," Richard apologized, "But it was very nice of you to have us all over. It was a wonderful reception and I'm sure if Ted weren't feeling his loss so heavily he'd thank you too."
And out they went into Bill's car, leaving Richard's car for Vonnie (whom he seldom spoke to anymore).
"How deeply you must be suffering," Arthur sympathized upon seeing Ted, "She was so full of life and love. It is a great loss to us all. But why are you here? I understood the funeral was today."
"It's over now," Ted answered simply.
"This is a friend of Ted's," Richard explained as Arthur viewed the stranger before him, "He's opposed to the Truth, Brother Olson, and he's trying to cash in on Ted's grief by talking him out of the Truth at this time. But he knew that you'd be able to answer any objection, so he wanted to bring him here to you today."
"I see," Arthur replied, and then addressed Bill: "Well, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have on the Bible, young man. But do you think it's a prudent thing to take advantage of someone who's just lost a dear one?"
"That's not exactly the way it is," Ted corrected, "I want very much to hear both sides and see which is right. I've been disfellowshipped for following up what you told me about letting Cyn have blood."
"I never said that, Ted, and you know it," Arthur replied wearily. He always seemed tired these days.
"Do you think it's a good thing that she didn't get a blood transfusion?" Bill asked him.
"What I think doesn't matter --"
"Then we may as well leave," Bill responded.
"You're a smart aleck, aren't you?" Arthur chided.
"No more than you're a fraud hiding behind evasive answers."
"Please, I didn't bring you two together to bicker," interposed Ted.
"Alright," Bill replied, "but if he never answers a question directly I can see how he can pose as a sage old man while spewing forth one contradiction after another. I mean to pin him down. Is he in favor of blood transfusion or against it?"
Seeing Arthur hesitate, not wanting to commit himself before Elder Johnson, Ted once again intervened; "You two are the greatest minds I know and you're both usually calm and open-minded when considering opposing views. I didn't expect this kind of behavior. Let's all sit down and discuss the Bible, please."
"Very well," Bill agreed, "I'm sorry, but I just feel very strongly that Mr. Olson knows better than to believe in it."
'I know no such thing. I believe in the Bible whole-heartedly."
"You can't; it's impossible even if you wanted to," Bill argued.
"The Bible tells us that 'Love believes all things' --" Arthur replied.
"But that isn't true," Bill interrupted, "You can't believe all things, otherwise you'd believe me when I tell you that the Bible isn't true, and we'd have nothing to discuss. You see, you can't believe two contradictory things at the same time. Doesn't that accord with your own definition of the Truth that Ted has told me?"
"Yes it does," Arthur agreed, "But you're implying that the Bible contains contradictions, and since that's the tack most of you people set out on, I'd like to say that there are only apparent contradictions in the Bible; they aren't real contradictions when you examine them closely. So, in light of what I anticipate from you, I'd like to quote Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to you:
"'If we take single passages, torn from their contexts, and compare them with one another, apparent contradictions are not likely to be lacking, especially in a work that is written with any freedom of expression. In the eyes of those who rely on the judgment of others, such contradictions have the effect of placing the work in an unfavorable light; but they are easily resolved by those who have mastered the idea of the whole.'"
Bill smiled scornfully at this and replied, "It's very fitting that you chose to quote a philosopher who unashamedly admitted: 'I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.' Because, from what Ted has told me, your whole philosophy is to deny the facts and encourage simple-minded faith in Watchtower doctrines, even when you know them to be untrue.
"If I can persuade Ted to use his mind in a rational way for one moment," Bill continued, "you've already done my work for me; you've already amply displayed that the contradictions inherent in the Bible are not merely 'apparent', 'skin-deep', 'surface' contradictions; they're as deep as you can go. If you examine any particular doctrine and take the Bible as a whole rather than just 'single passages torn from their contexts,' you see that there is total contradiction. Is God a Trinity or not? Go as deeply as you like in examining the question from the Bible and you come up with the wonderful yes/no answer that is familiar to anyone who's asked the Bible any question. Go to the Bible in search of an answer to the hell-fire question; again the answer is yes/no. You, Mr. Olson, have already proven this to all here, and I can do no better than to point it out to them.
"But as for contradictions on the moral issues, we have the recent example of abstaining from blood being thought more important than saving a life."
"Let's skip that, please," Ted requested sadly.
"All right then," Bill said, "take lying as a moral issue. Is it always wrong to lie in every situation?"
"I believe it is," Richard answered, seeing as no one else was willing.
"Okay," Bill continued, "and to support your belief you could use the ninth commandment, and Proverbs 6:6-19 (where God is said to hate the person who lies), and Revelation 21:8 (which depicts all liars in the lake of fire).
"But what if I were to take the opposite belief? I could just as easily justify my view by the Bible too. I’d use the examples of Abraham lying to save his life when he told people that his wife was just his sister --"
"If you'd bother to look you'd see that she was his half-sister," Arthur said.
"That's true enough," Bill admitted, "but the story was so good they repeated it again, not only with Abraham and Sarah, but a third time with their son Isaac and his wife Rebekah. Now, was Isaac lying when he said his wife Rebekah was his sister? Or was she his half-sister as in the case of Abraham and Sarah?"
"No," Arthur answered, "she was a more distant relative than that, but you'll recall that God punished his sinning --"
"I know nothing of the kind," Bill interrupted. "The Bible says God blessed him after his lie:
"'Consequently the man became great and went on advancing more and more and growing great until he got very great.' (Genesis 26:13.)
"That's how Jehovah rewarded this man's sinning. He even came to realize that it was unjust to punish the innocent victims of Isaac's lie as he had done to the Pharaoh who had fallen prey to Abraham's lie about Sarah, visiting 'great plagues' upon him and his family. That, he must've realized a generation later, was unjust. But in neither case did he punish the sinner.
"Or go a generation further and note the elaborate deception perpetrated upon Isaac by his wife, Rebekah, and their son, Jacob, who posed as his favored brother, Esau. Was it a lie when Jacob said to his old, blind father, 'I am Esau your first-born.'? (Genesis 27:14.) And was it not a blessing he received for this lie, becoming the patriarch of the nation, and compared throughout the Bible to Christ himself, being his foremost ancestor? And doesn't the Biblical account seem to approve of the crafty way he later tricked his father-in-law Laban out of all of his cattle by means of sympathetic magic?"
"What do you mean by 'sympathetic magic'?" Ted inquired.
"What the Bible itself condemns as 'witchcraft'," Bill explained. "Sympathetic magic refers to the belief that by doing some particular thing on a small scale, it will cause a like occurrence in something major. Pouring out water upon the ground in hopes that the clouds will follow suit is an example of it, as is the mutilation of a 'voodoo doll'.
"After arranging with Laban to be given all the spotted and speckled sheep, you'll recall, Jacob peeled the bark off of some sticks, giving them a spotted appearance, and placed them in front of the flocks and in their drinking water. The Bible tells us that this caused them to come into heat and give birth to spotted offspring. The sticks, no doubt, were thought to work this magic by being phallic symbols."
Ted shook his head in doubt, "Does it really say all that?"
"If you don't believe me, you can ask Mr. Olson where it's at; I can't remember the numbers as well as he can. But --"
"Genesis chapter thirty, from verse 31 on," Arthur complied.
"But if you believe what the Bible has to say there, you're a bigger fool than I can imagine," Bill scoffed.
"Are there any other examples of sympathetic magic in the Bible?" Ted wondered.
"The Bible's filled with such incidents, though they're not always so obvious because you've been trained to think of familiar stories in other ways. But just look at the time when Moses cast the form of a serpent in bronze in order to stem the plague of serpents devouring his people. Now, outside of your usual thinking on this subject about types and antitypes, why should such a thing be done? Why should the symbol of the Devil be honored with a bronze idol and be given the power to save all those looking on it from the poison of real serpents? Why wouldn't God just want them to pray to him and ask his forgiveness, help, and salvation? The reason, once again, is sympathetic magic; it runs throughout the entire Bible and makes many obscure incidents clear. The casting of the image of a god in some precious metal assuaged that god's wrath and caused him to stop tormenting one. So, honoring the serpent-god made him call off his earthly representatives.
"Of course, I realize you'll say this had nothing to do with such superstitious beliefs because you think the serpent represented Christ. But in the Bible’s own symbolism Christ is supposed to be represented as stepping on the serpent's head with his heel, rather than being the serpent itself.
"So let's look at the pagan Egyptians. In First Samuel chapters five and six we see that God was up to his old plague-striking tricks again and, given his odd sense of humor, afflicted them all with 'piles,' or as we would say today, hemorrhoids. He also threw in an infestation of rodents for good measure. So what do you suppose they did? They made golden images of hemorrhoids and rodents! That, of course, was more expensive than the hemorrhoid ointments of today, but evidently just as effective. And I very much doubt that you'll argue for these golden hemorrhoids typing Christ. So, you see, this is the way all the ancient races of men behaved; it was the age of superstition, and the Israelites were no different from anyone else in this matter. But we today should know better, and not regress to their advice.
"But you're leading me astray from my subject. (There's so much nonsense in the Bible that it's easy for me to get onto a sidetrack and talk all day without ever returning to what I started to say.) We were discussing the Bible's view of lying, which outwardly condemns it but in actuality honors all the 'great men' in its pages who lied.
"Passing from Jacob, we can quickly skip over to Jeremiah who thought nothing of lying to save his skin in Jeremiah 38:24-28.
"Worse still was his fellow prophet, Isaiah, who confidently told King Ahaz that the kings of Aram and Ephriam would not succeed in their war against him. Ahaz, being evidently well acquainted with the ways of the Lord's prophets, asked for a sign to prove this prophecy. Isaiah granted the sign in a startling proclamation; he announced that a virgin would give birth, and 'before the child learns to reject the bad and choose the good, the land of those two kings whom you dread shall be deserted.' (Isaiah chapter 7.) In chapter 8 we go on to read the words of the prophet:
"'Then I went unto the prophetess and she conceived and bare a son. Then the Lord said to me, "Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz," [poor kid!], "For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, 'My father, and my mother,' the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria shall be carried off by the king of Assyria.'
"Now it's clear to see that the 'prophetess' was no longer a virgin when she gave birth to this child of Isaiah's, and in fact, Ahaz was defeated by the kings of Aram and Ephriam. You can read that for yourself in 2 Chronicles 28:5-8. So, it appears that Isaiah was perhaps playing a trick on Ahaz and getting his kicks with the prophetess at the same time. In any case, his prophecy certainly backfired and the whole episode is now used as a prophecy, in the book of Luke, of Christ's virgin birth! That tends to throw the whole idea of Christ's virgin birth upon the scrap pile.
"But let's say something in defense of Isaiah, at least as far as the prophecy itself goes. He may not have been lying but just saying exactly what God told him to say, if we believe what the Bible tells us in 1 Kings 22:20-23."
"I’ll bet I know what that says," Ted boasted, "That's about where Jehovah sends a 'lying spirit' to lie to the prophets so Ahab would die following their oracle to go into a war he was told he'd win."
"Precisely!" Bill exclaimed, and then read the passage:
"'And Jehovah proceeded to say, "Who will fool Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?"' and one volunteers, '"I shall go forth and I shall certainly become a deceptive spirit in the mouth of all his prophets."' So God said, '"You will fool him, and what is more, you will come off the winner. Go out and do that way." And now Jehovah has put a deceptive spirit into the mouth of all these prophets of yours; but Jehovah himself has spoken calamity concerning you.'
"So, you see, God himself lies, despite what Titus 1:2 says. His ruse succeeded, and Ahab died in the war.
"If that's hard to believe, consider Jesus himself; he lied to his own brothers according to John 7:8-10:
"'Go to the feast yourselves; I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet come." So saying, he remained in Galilee. But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but in private.'
"So you see that the Bible contradicts itself right there on the simplest of moral issues. Although it repeatedly makes the over-simplification of saying thou shalt not lie in any circumstance because all liars end up in the lake of fire, it also shows that such notorious liars and cheats as Jacob and the 'lying spirit' have an eternal abode in heaven, or at least in God's kingdom.
"But now I want to turn to textural contradictions. These are difficult to prove --"
"That's because they aren't true,' Arthur jabbed, though he still appeared very weary, almost asleep, with his eyes, as usual, shut.
"No," Bill disagreed, "not because they're not contradictions; they are. But because you can talk you way out of a contradiction so easily. Let me show you what I mean. Richard, I want you to get the Revised Standard Version, as it's the most clear on this Scripture, and read 2 Samuel 24:1 for us."
Richard complied and read, "Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'"
"Okay, now let's say that I want to contradict the Bible. How can I best go about it in this instance? Shouldn't I try to say the exact opposite of what that verse says? Of course. And what is the exact opposite of Jehovah God?"
"Satan the Devil," Ted responded.
"Very well, so trying my best now to contradict the Bible, I say 'Satan incited David to number Israel.' Have I succeeded?"
"Yes," Ted replied.
"Are you sure?" Bill asked with a smile.
"Well," Richard thought, "since the Bible said Jehovah God incited David to number Israel, you certainly contradict that statement by saying that Satan incited David to number Israel."
"All right," Bill agreed, "it all seems perfectly clear. But if we go to the Bible again, it suddenly becomes unclear. 1 Chronicles 21:1 is another place where this same account of this "numbering" or census taking is related. Would you read that for us, Richard?"
"It reads, 'Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel.'"
"Now, when I said those very words, you were sure that I was contradicting the Bible, and thus telling a lie. So, to be honest, you must now admit that the Bible contradicts itself and therefore cannot possibly be true."
They all sat in stupefaction for a moment as the full weight of the objection sank in; this seemed an undeniable contradiction.
Richard wondered how it was possible to take back what he'd already said about Bill's words.
"Cyrus," Arthur wheezed at last, "Tell him about Cyrus."
Richard took the hint and proceeded, "Oh yeah, it's just like how God used Cyrus to free the Israelites from Babylon. Cyrus, being a gentile king, was an enemy to God's people, just like the Devil is, but God used him anyway for his purpose. So, on the one hand you could say that God freed his people from Babylon, and on the other, you could say that it was Cyrus who did it; but neither statement contradicts the other. So too in this case with God and Satan."
"There, you see how hard it is to maintain a contradiction!" Bill exclaimed, "Even when we tried our best to make a contradictory statement to the Bible, even when we were all convinced that it was indeed contradictory, it turned out that as soon as you saw it in the Bible you were able to explain it away.
"But let's examine your explanation for a moment, because if I'm not mistaken, it will lead to further contradictions and do more harm to your set of beliefs than good.
"You are saying -- now correct me if I'm wrong -- that the explanation for the Bible attributing the inciting of David to number Israel to God and Satan at the same time is that God acted through Satan just like he acted through Cyrus?"
"That's it exactly," Richard responded.
"And if we were to read further in this account," Bill said, "we'd see that the Bible calls this census a sin. And that it was punished by a great pestilence falling upon Israel. Now, since you are reasonable men, I assume you believe that there is a cause for every effect. So what was the cause for David's sinning by numbering Israel? What was his motivation to do so? Well, the Bible tells us, and you tell me, that God and Satan were behind it: they 'incited' him to do it; or, to speak plainly, God made him do it, using Satan as a messenger of his will. Keeping this in mind, would you read James 1:13-17 from the American Translation of Goodspeed for us, Ted. This is a set of verses I'll be referring back to, and that version is the one that brings out my point the best."
Ted went to Arthur's shelf and located the volume. He opened it and read:
"'No one should think when he is tempted that his temptation comes from God, for God is incapable of being tempted by what is evil, and he does not tempt anyone. When anyone is tempted, it is by his own desire that he is enticed and allured. Then desire conceives and gives birth to sin, and when sin is mature, it brings forth death. Do not be misled, my dear brothers. Every good gift and every perfect present is from heaven, and comes down from the Father of the heavenly lights, about whom there is no variation of changing shadow.'"
"Thank you," Bill said, "You'll notice that James tells us that it is by our own desire that we are enticed to sin, not by God. So how can we explain David's being enticed not by his own desire but by God? It makes little difference if God spoke through Satan or not (although this would be a momentous occasion; the first and last time he did so) so long as the original temptation to commit this 'sin' came from God, it contradicts James' words.
"But let's examine the two census accounts more deeply so that you won't accuse me of tearing Scriptures out of context. We read that after the census was taken, God punished Israel for this sin by a pestilence that killed off 70,000 men. Now, I realize all too well that 'God's ways and thoughts are higher than ours' (and this is the same argument believers in hell-fire use), but even using our own lowly moral standards, what can we think of this slaughter of innocent people, whose only crime was to allow God's appointed king to count them? Now let's get this straight: God tells Satan to make David number Israel (which happens to be a sin this week for some odd reason. It was not a sin when Moses, for example, had taken his censuses.) And then God kills 70,000 men for the sin David committed. What possible reason could there be for all this on God's part? Unless he just needed some excuse to engage in mass-murder."
"If you'd take the trouble to read the account," Richard replied, you'd see that it says God was angry to begin with, and that's why he did it. Being just, he had to punish them."
Bill shook his head and responded: "If I get angry and kill off 70,000 people 'because I was angry,' would you say I had a higher moral standard than most? If God was angry for a purpose (like some past sins of the Israelites), why this farce of punishment for a census?
"In addition to all this, the two accounts contain at least three more glaring contradictions. First of all, the infamous census comes up with totally different figures. 2 Samuel gives the count as 800,000 men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah, while 1 Chronicles has 1,100,000 men in Israel and 470,000 in Judah.
"Second, when God (in all his vanity) agrees to stop the deadly pestilence if David will build an altar to him on Ornan's (or 'Araunah's') threshing floor, David buys it from the owner for a mere 50 silver shekels in 2 Samuel, but a whopping 600 gold shekels in Chronicles.
"Third, we read that at the height of the destruction:
"'The angel stretched forth his hand towards Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD regretted the calamity and said to the angel ... "Enough now! Stay your hand!"' (2 Samuel 24:16, New American Bible.)
"Here, not only do we see God changing his mind and thus contradicting James' words about God in 'whom there is no variation or change,' we also see him 'regretting,' of which 1 Samuel 15:29 says in your own New World Translation:
"'He will not feel regrets, for he is not an earthling man so as to feel regrets.'"
"The reason for the destruction is left out," Richard stated, "so that we can put our faith in the fact that God would always act justly. We don't know all the facts in the case, but we know enough to believe that God would always do the just thing. As for the census figures it's probably just an error in the translation, or maybe one included some group that the other left out. The difference in the price paid for the threshing floor is just a matter of inflation. The writer of Chronicles was stating the price paid in what it was worth in his time: 600 gold shekels were then worth what 50 silver ones had been worth in David's time, no doubt. As for God having a regret, that's not to be taken literally. It's just a figure of speech so we humans can understand him. Just like God is said to have eyes and arms when in reality he's a spirit without these things; they're just written so we can understand him from our human viewpoint."
"You're doing very well explaining away real contradictions;" Bill stated, "that doesn't mean they’re not contradictions, of course. The main one, in fact, remains untouched: God doesn't tempt, and yet he tempted. I still don't think you fully understand how a person can explain away a contradiction that's nonetheless very real. Even though you’re a master at it (all you Jehovah's Witnesses are); you do it unconsciously. Ted, I want you to make some sort of a statement about anything at all and then contradict it to show you what I mean."
"Okay. The sun is hot. The sun is cold."
"That's easy," Bill smiled. "Hot and cold are relative things. Compared to earth's atmosphere, the sun is hot. Compared to a super-nova, the sun is cold. I've adequately explained away your contradiction, but that doesn't mean that what you said wasn't a contradiction; you meant it to be, and so it was. Try another."
"Try this: I'm dead. I am alive."
Bill smiled again and replied, "I can say that's no contradiction by using the Bible itself. It says that a person can be 'dead in trespasses and sin,' or dead to their former life of sin, yet alive in Christ."
"The world is flat; the world is round," Ted offered.
"You can do better than that, can't you?" Bill laughed, "There are large areas of the earth which are flat. You didn't mean the whole world."
"Okay, the whole world is flat; the whole world is round."
"The physical world is round," Bill responded, "but the Bible often speaks of 'world' when it means the people in the world. Just as you use the vulgarism 'worldly people' or 'the whole world is in the power of Satan' meaning not the planet but the people, it was this latter definition of people you referred to when you said the world was 'flat'. You meant flat like a sour note in music, or like a beer gone flat, not physically flat. You're saying that people are without good taste, or at least not to your taste."
"That's stretching it a bit, isn't it?" Richard asked.
"Not at all. You should see yourself when it comes to explaining away the Bible's contradictions; then you'd see some real stretching. But this is why we need to go to external evidence to determine the real meaning of what the writer meant, otherwise you can explain it however you want and get the exact opposite meaning of his thoughts, just as I've demonstrated with Ted's contradictions. For instance, in our example of David's census, it would be helpful to go to anthropology and discover that the primitive peoples of that time were very superstitious and wont to attribute any calamity to the last major activity they'd performed. It was sympathetic magic in reverse. The Israelites, suffering a great pestilence so soon after their census-taking, naturally connected the two, and came up with the notion that census-taking must be a sin, and God was punishing them for it. When it came time to write this account, it was wondered why David would commit such a sin. It was decided that he must've been made to do it since he was a good king. But would God allow anyone to make David do this terrible thing? No one but God Himself could wield such authority, so God himself must've done it. But why? He must've been angry over some hidden sin of Israel's. It's kind of convoluted logic, but they must've thought along these lines.
"Now, again turning to external evidence, we have the very best explanation as to why the writer of Chronicles changed the instigator from God to Satan. It's enlightening to know, first of all, that this is the very first mention of Satan in the Bible."
"What about Job?" asked Richard.
"Job was written much later according to the experts," Bill explained, "and really isn't a Jewish book at all.
"The fact is that Chronicles was written after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, and they wanted to rewrite their history. That's why you have the same things repeated from Samuel and the book of Kings in Chronicles."
"Yes, we know that," Richard responded.
"And did you know that Zoroasterism was all the rage in Babylon right at that time?" Bill asked, "And that Zoroaster's main contribution to religious thought was the idea of an Adversary? This Adversary was thought to be a spiritual being wickedly opposed to God. Now before this, all the peoples had generally ascribed both good and evil to their gods. If bad things befell them, it was because they had displeased their god, and they'd better make a sacrifice to him or build an altar, just like the first version of the Israelite's census. But with the invention of the Adversary, they could now keep their God an unchanging source of good, and pin the blame for evil on the Adversary. Since the Hebrew's religion was already an admixture of Egyptian and volcano-worshipping religions, they readily added this innovation as well. And when they returned to their homeland and rewrote their history in Chronicles, they zealously set the record straight about who made David sin: it wasn't God, it was the Adversary, or, in Hebrew, 'Satan' who made him do it.
"In conclusion, this external evidence helps us to realize that the writer of Chronicles deliberately set out to contradict the account in 2 Samuel, so none of our 'explaining away' is valid.
"Now, we could go through all the contradictions at this same depth and prove that they really are such, but hopefully from here on you'll trust me a little more.
"If we start at the beginning, then, we can quickly go through the book and find it consists of a mass of contradictions. Starting in the first chapter of Genesis, we have many problems attempting to believe the story of creation. God creates light and 'separates it' from the darkness as if light somehow had been mixed with darkness. Note this now: he calls the light 'day' and the darkness 'night'. Then we read, 'there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a first day.' But how could there be night and day? God just finished defining these terms for us as light and darkness, not day and night as we define them today. Our night and day are not universal things; the universe doesn't go black and then light up again at regular intervals. Such a concept as we have of day and night could not have possibly come into the picture yet, since they refer merely to the period when a certain spot on a planet is either turning into or out of the light of the star it orbits. Since God's own definition of day is light, how could there come to be a first day, a second day, etc. when no planets were yet formed?"
"Well, these ‘days’," Richard explained, "were not 24-hour periods, as you've implied. There'd be no reason for them to be such periods since light was not yet reaching the earth and no living thing was on it. We find that each of these days was actually 7,000 years long."
"Then what does all this business about morning and evening mean?" Bill wondered, "Where does the day (light) and darkness (night) come into the picture? Did God turn off and on the light like some cosmic lamp every 7,000 years?"
"It could be referring to spiritual light and darkness," Richard guessed.
"God was in spiritual darkness?"
"No, the angels were. And they were enlightened when they saw what God had accomplished; the light 'dawned on them.'"
"It's too bad you're blind to your own 'stretch-marks' now!" Bill said, "The writer had just finished describing the creation of physical light and the naming of it 'day,' and physical darkness as 'night'; yet you say that the very first use he puts these just-defined words to is a spiritual one. Very strange. It seems to me that he obviously had no concept of spiritual light and darkness referring to enlightenment or ignorance. His style is too simple and straightforward. It seems obvious to me that he could only think in terms of his own surroundings, and imagined God as being subject to day and night, just as he was. (This is a fault we will detect in many subsequent passages throughout the book.) The writer didn't conceive of the earth as turning, of course, but of the light and darkness as traveling around the earth next to one another (hence the strange notion of 'separating' the light from the darkness). Since this writer could see light before he saw the sun in the morning, he concluded that lightness and darkness were not dependent on the sun. Therefore, God didn't have to create the sun until the fourth day.
"I suppose you could attempt to resolve these difficulties by arguing that the sun was already created before the first day as part of the 'heavens'. And that on the fourth day God simply allowed the light from the sun and moon to penetrate the earth's atmosphere for the first time. But then we are still left with the disturbing question of how God separated that first light from darkness, and how that first, second, and third day and night are to be accounted for. Where did the light and darkness occur? And where did it occur all at once so that one period could be called day and another night. I add this because, if other planets were already receiving light from stars, it follows that these planets contained day and night at the same time, one on either side of their surface. So 'day and night' could still not be thought of in any universal regularity so that God, overseeing all, could say, 'It's night now' or 'day now'."
"I already told you," Richard insisted, "day and night was in the angel's understanding of God's work."
"And, as I already said, that's unreasonable , " Bill responded.
"But let's move on. What I really wanted to point out about the creation stories is that they contradict one another. In that first chapter of Genesis, the order of creation is: vegetation, animals, man and woman. But in the second chapter we find:
"'At the time when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens--while as yet there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted… the LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground… then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man that he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow… The LORD God said: "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him"… So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was his name… and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman.'
"This shows the order of creation being: man, vegetation, animals, and (last and least) woman. A clear contradiction of the order in the first chapter."
"There's no contradiction," Richard calmly replied, "The second chapter doesn't say there was no wild vegetation existing prior to man's creation, it says there was no vegetation of the field; in other words, no cultivated vegetation. All the wild plants were already existing before man, and the same with the animals. It doesn't say that there weren't any animals in existence already, God just made some more for Adam to name rather than just bringing him the ones he'd already created."
"I knew I should've read every word!" Bill exclaimed in exasperation, "It says that no grass or shrub of the field had sprouted yet because there was no rain yet. The fact of there being no rain would have just as much effect on cultivated as on wild vegetation. But let me ask you, do you think these field shrubs and grasses produced seeds?"
"As far as I know, all plants produce seeds of some sort," Richard shrugged.
"Then they would be covered under the category of 'every kind of plant that bears seed'?"
"Yes."
"Then wouldn't they have been created on the third day when 'the earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed'?"
"Yes."
"Then we have a definite contradiction," Bill smiled, "If they had been created on the third day, and man was created on the sixth day (according to chapter one), it cannot be true that they were not created till after man (according to chapter two).
"Each of these accounts is complete unto itself and written with a different style," Bill explained. "The second chapter begins in verse four, second sentence, with its version of creation, and it starts right at the beginning with the creation of heaven and earth. It again lists the creation of man and woman. So why should we doubt (when it starts from the time when there is only heaven and earth in existence) that its mention of plants and animals (clearly implying that none existed before) is not a re-creation, but the only creation this account knows of. The only logical inference is that this is a second story of creation which contradicts the first. Actually, going to external evidence, we find that the second chapter was written about 850 BCE and the first about 450 BCE. Thus, the second chapter is much more primitive in style, as it shows God walking in the garden, having to look for the human couple, forming man out of dust and woman out of man's rib… none of which appears in the latter, loftier view of the first chapter, where even women were given a somewhat higher recognition."
"I don't buy any of your 'external evidence,'" Richard scoffed.
"No, but here's some more anyway:" Bill continued, unabated, "That later story in Genesis chapter one is a near-verbatim copy of the Babylonian account of creation which is ancient by comparison. Their account has first the primeval chaos of waters and darkness called in Babylonian Tiamat, but in Hebrew Tehom. The creation of light is first, then the division of the waters by means of a firmament; then land and vegetation; the creation of luminaries for dividing time; and finally the creation of man. Once again we see how the Jewish scribes or priests changed their own account and adapted the Babylonian view since it seemed so much better. In 450 BCE they had already returned from their captivity in Babylon, and had been 'going over the books' for quite some time. Unfortunately for its believability, they left in the first account and put this new one ahead of it, hoping no one would notice the glaring contradictions -- and amazingly, hardly anyone has!
"But now we must come to the 'Adam and Eve story'; it is less original than the creation account in chapter one! Similar stories predate the Bible's account in many countries. There were subtle differences in all of these, and the Genesis version seems to miss the best points.
"Primitive peoples have always seen the snake as a symbol of immortality because of the fact that the snake sheds its skin when it's old and wrinkled, and appears in a new, smooth skin, like a baby. Seeing this, it was natural for them to jump to the conclusion that it was able to do this whenever it got old, and thus to live forever.
"But why was it that snakes were immortal and people weren't? It seemed that it should be the other way around. So a great mixup is suggested to the myth-making mind of the primitive people: some switch must've come about between snakes and people, they reasoned, and framed their story accordingly:
"The first humans had a fruit tree which contained everlasting life, as well as a tree which contained death. Now God sent a messenger down from heaven to tell them to eat from the tree of everlasting life. (You'll notice that in your own account, they are allowed to eat from all the trees except the tree that means their death; and this, of necessity, means that they were allowed to eat from the tree of everlasting life.) Now, in some versions of the story, the messenger (almost without exception a snake) gets mixed up and tells the human pair to eat from the tree of death. When the messenger realizes his mistake, he quickly eats from the tree of everlasting life himself so that God cannot kill him for his error. In other stories the snake deliberately misleads them so he alone can eat from the right tree and live forever. The whole purpose of the myth, remember, is to show why snakes are immortal while men must die. And all your Biblical version lacks is to have the snake eat from the tree of life in the end (for he wasn't very shrewd and cunning unless he derived this advantage from the trickery)."
"But the Bible's account has nothing to do with snakes," Richard insisted, "It was Satan the Devil who took the form of one to tempt them; snakes can't talk of themselves."
Bill shook his head again and said: "But this was before the Jews had a Satan, an 'Adversary'; they hadn't been to Babylon yet at the writing of this part. It was just a snake, and nothing more. It is only in much later Christian writings that it is even implied that this snake was Satan.
"But let's move on more quickly, as there's a lot to cover yet. We come to Cain and see once again an ancient superstition in the belief that a murderer had a dire effect upon the soil if he remained in his homeland. He had to be banished in order for the crops to grow.
"Chapter five also shows Babylonian influence, as we return to the account of 450 BCE. I know this is hard for you to accept yet, but there are these two accounts running through the book, as well as the compilers' comments interspersed in an attempt to piece them together. For convenience, they are referred to as the P and the J documents (the P being the Priestly account of 450 BCE with its avoidance of the name Yahweh, and its Babylonish influences; the J being the older (850 BCE) 'Jehovistic' account, which uses the name 'Yahweh' or 'Jehovah' often). We will continuously pick up evidences for their existence, though I may not always point these out to you. Chapter one was P; from 2:46 up to chapter five was J, and now we're back to P.
"The Babylonian's also had a record, like Genesis chapter five, of ten ancient kings with fantastically long life-spans who reigned successively before the flood. And as this chapter refers to Enoch, it would be well to see where the Jews stole him. It was again from Babylon: the legend of Enmerduranki. He was also the seventh in line (as Enoch is from Adam) of the Babylonian kings before the flood, and was called up to heaven by the sun god to learn spiritual secrets. Now could it be that Enoch is the same as this 'god of the year'? His dying on his 365th birthday is just too suggestive to be passed over. According to the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, Jewish tradition had it that he died on the very hour he was born: 'At what hour he was conceived, at that hour he was born, and at that hour too he died.' (68:5) This undoubtedly connects him with the god of the solar year; for the solar year is 365 days long, and when it 'dies' at the end of 365 days, it is 'born' in the same hour, and thus never really dies but becomes 'translated' (as they say of Enoch) into the new year.
"Coming back to J, we read in chapter six of the Nephilim who were 'the heroes of old, the men of renown' -- giant offspring of angels and women. This only serves to show how freely the writers of Genesis borrowed from the mythology that abounded at that time and prior thereto in all the 'gentile nations.'
"But now we come to the flood story which demonstrates the piecing together in a crazy patch-work of the writings of J and P. Look closely and you can see the seams: P has God instructing Noah in Genesis 6:19 to take two of all living creatures into the Ark, period. But in chapter seven we switch to J, who has God instructing Noah: 'of every clean animal, take with you seven pairs, and of the unclean animals one pair.' J, once again, was suffering from his own narrow-vision. He imagined that times in the distant past were the same as his own day. He didn't stop to think that the designations 'clean' and 'unclean' weren't made till the giving of the Law about a thousand years later. Noah knew of no dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law. In fact, when he later emerged from the Ark, God said he was free to eat any of the animals: 'every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat.' (6:3) So this is an evident mistake (again) by J. When P wrote his account, he carefully avoided such near-sightedness and simply put down that Noah took two of every animal.
"Then there is the great difficulty of trying to get the two accounts to come together on the length of the flood. J insists that it was forty days and nights, after which there was a period of three weeks in which Noah sent forth his birds to determine if the water had drained off. Then he went out and built his altar, and so on. But P never mentions the forty-day period or even how long it rained. He just says that 'the waters maintained their crest over the earth for one hundred and fifty days' (7:24) and, comparing the starting date he gives in 7:11 with the ending date in 8:14, the whole thing took one year and eleven days. Try as you might, there's no sensible way to harmonize these two accounts and say that one person wrote the whole thing.
"In the first part of chapter eight, the compiler of the two accounts has already given P's record of the waters subsiding to the point where the tops of the mountains were visible and the Ark, in fact, was sitting atop Mount Ararat. But then we read in verse 6, 'After the forty days had ended, Noah opened the hatch…' What forty days? We've just gone through P's 150 days. It doesn't make sense to talk about a 40-day period now, unless you assume (correctly) that this account in verse six knows nothing about P's 150 days and is continuing its own story where we left it back in verses 17-23 of chapter seven. Then it's entirely sensible for Noah to send forth a bird and to have it come back because there was no place to land. But if this is all one account written by Moses, then the bird had all the mountaintops on which to land.
"But there's one last thing I must say about the flood story," Bill said, looking closely at Arthur's bookshelves. Recognizing a certain large volume, he helped himself to it and opened it. "Tell me if this sounds familiar at all to you -- I hope you don't mind my using one of your books, Mr. Olson? Arthur didn't reply, and Bill assumed that he was asleep. "The account here reads:
"'O man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu: Frame a house, build a ship; forsake thy possessions, seek to save life; abandon thy goods, and cause thy soul to live: bring up into the midst of the ship the seed of life of every sort. With all that I possessed I laded it: with all the silver that I possessed I laded it; with the seed of life of every kind that I possessed I laded it. I took on board all my family and my servants; cattle of the field, beasts of the field, craftsmen also, all of them did I take on board… Six days and nights raged wind, deluge and storm upon the earth. When the seventh day arrived the storm and deluge ceased, which had fought like a host of men; the sea was calm, hurricane and deluge ceased. I beheld the land and cried aloud: for the whole of mankind were turned to clay; hedged fields had become marshed. I opened a window, and the light fell upon my face. When the seventh day arrived, I brought forth a dove, and let it go: the dove went to and fro; as there was no resting place it turned back. I brought forth a swallow and let it go: the swallow went to and fro; as there was no resting place it turned back. I brought a raven and let it go: the raven went, and saw the decrease of the waters; it ate, it waded, it croaked[?], it turned not back. Then sent forth everything towards the four winds of heaven: I offered sacrifice: I prepared an offering on the summit of the mountain. I set Adagur-vases seven by seven. Underneath them I cast down reeds, cedar-wood, and incense. The gods smelt the savor, the gods smelt the godly savor; the gods gathered like flies over the sacrificer."
"That's from the Babylonian Epic of Gilsamesh, and it leaves no doubt as to where the Hebrews got their story of Noah's flood.
"In a similar vein, though I don't have a copy of it with me, and don't know where to find one in Mr. Olson's library, the 'tower of Babel' story comes directly from the Sumerian story of Babili; it's one of those many legends that sprang up in an effort to explain how it came to be that there were different languages that men spoke. Of course, there are a lot of reasons why it cannot be true, but they're all so obvious that I won't go into them."
"I think you should go into them" Ted spoke up, "I haven't been too impressed with what you've done thus far. We know that other peoples had these same traditions; why shouldn't they? Noah was their ancestor, too. So, naturally they preserved a slightly distorted picture of the flood and of creation. That only serves to prove that the Biblical account is true, not that it stole from other writings! And I don't see how it's so obvious that changes in language couldn't have come about at the tower of Babel by God's thwarting mankind's wickedness through the confusion of tongues."
"Good for you, Ted!" Richard said.
"Well," Bill said thoughtfully, "you can look at it either way; but then if your criterion for the truthfulness of a legend is that a number of countries have versions of the same tale, you’d have to believe in a lot of pretty far-flung things (least of all hell-fire and reincarnation). As for why the tower of Babel story cannot adequately account for the diversity of languages, it has to do with the structures of those languages themselves, as well as the way the human mind works.
"We can see that there are 'families' of languages in which nations living close together have similarly structured languages, whereas those separated by mountain ranges or seas are different. All of which shows a natural development and influence over thousands of years: not an instantaneous creation of languages. Writing of these languages is, perhaps, a better example in that it's easier to see what I mean. Writing, the graphic symbolizing of sounds, is so different in unrelated language-families that it cannot have sprung from one corrupted source but must've had independent origins; even the writing of numbers and methods of counting are diverse.
"In any given language you have two things: the names of things, and grammar or syntax (which means the way sentences are put together). Learning a different language would be simple if it involved only the first part -- you'd just have to substitute one word for another, and in a short time you'd know the entire 'substitute vocabulary'. But, unfortunately, this isn't the case at all. The first snag is words that mean more than one thing; and the second, greater obstacle, is grammar. Words are not strung together in the same way in different languages, so the patterns of word-thinking differ and make for years of study.
"Now, if God 'confounded their languages' there at the tower of Babel, we know that he must've confounded the grammar, not just the names of things. In addition to this, he must've taken away all their memory and put in its place the new language. For when a person learns a new language, he doesn't cease thinking in his native tongue and stringing his thoughts along its grammatical paths. So God had to fill their minds with not just substitute words, but entirely new words separate from all former word-object associations, as well as new, complex grammar. This means that they would've suddenly had to think in entirely new ways. The world they knew an instant ago was no more; God had created a new world inside each and every mind there. And if he had managed to somehow convert all their past memories into thought-patterns consistent with their new language, then he performed a double miracle. That any human being could even survive such drastic tampering with his mind makes it a triple-miracle, and in fact the greatest miracle recorded in the Bible! For God needed seven 'days' to create the physical world, having all space to work in, yet here he created hundreds or even thousands of thought-worlds in the tiny area of the delicate minds of men in an instant!"
"All this is very interesting," Ted commented dryly, "but what's wrong with it? Where's your contradiction?"
"I admit I've strayed somewhat from my goal of pointing out the textual contradictions; but you asked why the story was obviously untrue, and that involves reasoning on the matter, not just finding a contradiction. You see, once we really understand what God had to have done in order to accomplish this feat, we realize how unlikely it is that he would've done it."
"Why?"
"Well, does God do stupid or wasteful things?"
"No. "
"Then why would he do this? Why go through all the work of creating new thought-worlds and memories (for the men would've had to believe that they had always spoken this new language if God reworded their memories into it for them; and if he hadn't, then he performed the greatest mass brain-washing technique in history) just to make them split up? No matter how you look at it, God was putting lies of one sort or another into their minds, and it would have been far easier, as long as he was totally rearranging their thinking processes anyway, to simply make them his worshippers."
"God doesn't force anyone to worship him," Richard noted.
"No," Bill agreed, "in fact, so far is he from forcing people into righteousness, that he actually helps divide mankind up through language, and thus fosters misunderstanding, hatred, and war (if you believe the Bible's account, that is). He has great scruples when it comes to putting good thoughts into someone's head, but putting lies there is perfectly all right. I guess that's about par for a god whose main worry is whether men will succeed in building a tower up to his off-limits heaven, and (horror of horrors) whether mankind might 'become like him' and live forever on top of it!
"If you also want a common-sense reason why the flood story isn't true, I’d ask you: first, where all that water came from. To cover the tall mountains of the entire earth (and remembering that water seeks out the lowest places first and fills them) this quantity of water would've been much more massive than, say, five miles deep. Now you know that today we consider it a heavy rainfall if we get more than a couple of inches, so we're talking about a whole lot of water here -- around fifty-three-thousand-billion gallons! It would've been falling on the wooden Ark at a rate of one-thousand-six-hundred-thirty-six gallons an hour and would have utterly demolished it!"
"The water came from the 'waters above the earth' mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis," Richard replied, "You'll recall how God created the firmament by dividing these waters from the waters on the earth. Well, this 'water-canopy' is what came down in the great flood. And that's really not so much water to have been way up in the atmosphere and encircling the earth; it's funny it wasn't more! As it is, the quantity you're talking about is only one-tenth of all the waters in all the oceans. So we have no problems with where it came from or where it went. It all makes perfect sense."
"You obviously don't know how much water weighs," Bill replied. "Such a quantity of water hanging over mankind would have a pressure of 10,560 pounds per square inch! It would want to come down bad! And what would stop it? When we take into consideration that our bodies deal most effectively with an air-pressure bearing down on us at 14.7 pounds per square inch, and that the least change in that barometric pressure affects our entire metabolism, we can get some idea of what this 10,560 pounds per square inch would do to our bodies if it were in the upper atmosphere! We'd be crushed to nothing instantly. On the other hand, if it were outside the range of our present atmosphere, the pull of our gravity might be too weak to hold it together; it would splay out into the universe and break up into tiny droplets and disappear. Or, it would freeze and become like the rings of Saturn, but could never fall to earth. In any case, I don't see how man could live with such a quantity of water effectively blocking out the sun's rays. It just couldn't have happened that way, gentlemen; it's impossible. And no matter what distortions the Watchtower has told you, no respectable geologist believes that there could have been an earth-wide flood of this extent.
"The only 'earth' that people knew back then was their own back yards. When the Euphrates overflowed its banks once upon a time in the dim and dark past and a certain man, perhaps by the name Gilgamesh, floated away to safety with his few possessions in a boat, the stage was set for an 'earth-wide' flood story. Doubtless such incidents happened all over the world, leaving survivors to spin the tale of their heroism at the 'great flood' like a modern day fisherman telling of the one that got away.
"The last and not at all the least reason for disbelieving the tale, is the lowly platypus. He, and others like him, refute the tale as far as the animal part of it goes. If all the animals that we see today had their ancestors on that ark (as we did), and then were released after the flood waters subsided on a mountain in the Middle East, how comes it that the funny little platypus made its way to Australia? It can't swim such great distances as a voyage from the Mediterranean to Australia would entail. It's a slow little creature, and quite unique. No one has ever found a trace of him or his ancestors anywhere along the route from Mt. Ararat to Australia. He is found only in Australia, just like the koala bear and the kangaroo. How can we explain it? Or the many unique species to be found on the Galapagos Islands? It's inconceivable that any of them could've made it there in one generation from the Mediterranean. So there should be populations of them, or fossils or bones of them scattered all along the route; but there are none. Furthermore, it's clear that many of these animals never could have lived in the climate of the Mediterranean. The koala, for instance, lives off of eucalyptus leaves only; he can't live off of anything else, and eucalyptus trees don't grow in the Mediterranean.
"So all the facts about us in nature disprove this idea of an earth-wide flood, not to mention the fact that it was a waste of effort on God's part since the wickedness he meant to wipe out forever was back very shortly. Even the horrid Nephilim, which are listed as one of the main things that ticked him off, are back again in Numbers 13:33. So he evidently didn't do as thorough a job as the Bible would like us to believe.
"But now that I've gone through the flood and the tower of Babel at such length (and still more could be said of them), I hope you’ll see why I'm not going to continue this practice. There are several methods I've shown you so far: showing a textual contradiction, showing external evidence, and using commonsense. I’ll try to confine myself to one method per instance henceforth, but keep in mind that the others apply to most of them as well.
"Continuing in chapter eleven after the Babel yarn, we come to a textual contradiction in verse 12 in which a certain Arpachshad is said to be the father of Shelah. Yet in Luke 3:35,36 we learn that Shelah's father was not Arpachshad at all, but one Cainan; and, in fact, Cainan's father was Arpachshad! This one fact alone throws off all your carefully calculated chronology for the time of the end of 6,000 years of man's existence; so you see, it is of some importance, as are all these contradictions, no matter how trivial they may seem at first glance.
"In chapter 12 we come to the story of Abraham’s lying about Sarah being his sister. I've already commented on this cowardly and unchivalrous action, so let me skip over to the other versions of the story in chapters 20 and 21. Here the patsy is Abimelech, the king of Gerar, who 'sent and took Sarah' after Abraham lied to him about her being his sister. Now God, in all of his divine justice, threatens to kill Abimelech! But Abimelech returns Sarah and is saved. About this same time, due to a dispute over a well, Abraham and Abimelech enter into a covenant of friendship over the well, and 'that is why the place is called Beer-sheba; the two took an oath there.' There are two odd things here: the first is that, according to Genesis 17:17 and 18:11, 12, Sarah is 90 years old. To be specific, we read:
"'old, advanced in years, and Sarah had stopped having her womanly periods. So Sarah laughed within herself and said, "Now that I am so withered and my husband is old, am I still to have sexual pleasure?"'
"All of this before the incident with King Abimelech. So was there any real reason for Abraham's apprehension about the beauty of his wife being a temptation to others? Can we honestly believe that this king who had a harem full of the most beautiful girls in the kingdom would desire a withered 90-year-old woman who was (if we believe the account) pregnant on top of it?
"The second odd thing about this account is that it's used yet again in chapter 26. The place and the 'sinner' are the same: Gerear and the king. The sin is the same, and the lie and the conclusion are the same. But Isaac and Rebekah take Abraham's and Sarah's places. Once again, it ends in a dispute over a well. Isaac and Abimelech enter into a covenant, and, 'hence the name of the city, Beer-sheba, to this day.' It is far beyond the laws of chance that the same spot should be named twice with the same name resulting from the same set of bizarre circumstances. I think even you will have to agree that this is clear evidence of the same story used twice (or really three times, if we count its use in chapter 12 as well). It seems the Jews had whole sets of these legends into which they could interchangeably insert the names of their great men, and some of these stories were so juicy that they inserted more than one of their heroes as its perpetrator. But none of this suggests divine inspiration to my mind.
"In chapter 14, Lot is captured by a ransacking horde that descends upon Sodom and Gomorrah (where Lot, for some reason, liked to live). So Abraham, who has suddenly found courage from somewhere (which must've surely delighted his wife), musters up three hundred men and goes in pursuit against great odds. Now, in this successful chase we are told in verse 14 that they went as far as 'Dan'. This is very interesting indeed. Whom do you say wrote this book?"
"Moses wrote Genesis, as well as the first five books of the Bible, which we call the Pentatuech, meaning five books," Richard informed him.
"And now would you read Judges 18:27-29 for me, please?" Bill asked.
Richard stuck his thumb at Genesis 14 and flipped over to Judges, reading: "As for them, they took what Micah had made and the priest that had become his, and they kept going towards Laish, against a people quiet and unsuspecting. And they proceeded to strike them with the edge of the sword, and the city they burned with fire. And there was no deliverer, for it was far away from Sidon, and they had nothing at all to do with mankind; and it was in the low plain that belonged to Bethrehob. Then they built the city and took up dwelling in it. Furthermore, they called the name of the city Dan by the name of their father, Dan, who had been born to Israel. Nevertheless, Laish was the city's name at first.'"
"All right," Bill continued, "that raises some other interesting points, but before I get side-tracked on them, let's note what it says about the name of the place. It was Laish up to this time, and then the Danites changed it to Dan. Was Moses still alive at this time?"
"No, he died long before," Richard answered.
"Then why did he call the location 'Dan' and say that Abraham had gone there? He should've said Laish, shouldn't he have?"
"Maybe it was a different Dan," Richard offered.
"That would be nice for you if it was, but it wasn't. So someone who lived long after Moses had to have written Genesis chapter 14; someone who was living long after the time the Danites renamed the city; someone who suffered from the narrow vision of thinking that things in the past were the same as in his day. In fact, the preceding verse (14:13) gives evidence that this account was written by a foreigner, because it suddenly mentions one 'Abram the Hebrew' as if we'd never heard of him before. 'Hebrew' at this time was used only by foreigners in regard to this Semitic tribe, because it had a somewhat disparaging connotation, like 'immigrant' does today. The fact is that there was a legendary Abraham, a warlike sheik of Palestine that adorned many a tale throughout this region. The Jews just picked up on him and made him their ancestor.
"But, if I may comment on the passage in Judges, since we've had it read already: what the Danites took that Micah had made were molten and carved 'gods' and the 'priest' for those gods. These they stole from him and threatened to kill him if he interfered. The last verse in that chapter tells how they set up these images and worshiped them 'all the days that the house of the true God continued in Shiloh.' Well, isn't that just fine. They went and stole god and priest, and then the 'true God' helped them butcher up a 'quiet and unsuspecting' people who had nothing to do with the world, so they could steal their land and set up the worship of these idols. Now this, you'll admit, is quite different from the usual explanation given for God's slaughtering of the Canaanites. Usually you Christians justify that by saying how very wicked the Canaanites were, and how God allowed them to get so bad that he couldn't take it anymore and had his 'chosen people' who were filled with the 'right' religion come in and do his cleaning-up operations as effectively as the great flood had done a few generations before. But no honest person can read this account and not feel that a very great wrong was done here.
"In chapter 15 of Genesis we read something that sounds very strange. Abram receives the 'oath-bound covenant' from God. And how does God take an oath? He has Abram cut up a heifer, a she-goat, and a ram, all three years old, and place each half-piece opposite the other at some distance. Then Abram falls fast asleep, but somehow still sees as God passes between this butchery in the form of a torch and smoking brazier as he recites his promise to give the land belonging to many other peoples to Abram and his descendants. Why did God happen upon this particular manner of making an oath? How was it an 'oath' simply to represent himself passing between cut-up meat? The answer is that this was thought by the primitive peoples to tie one's soul up with the sacrifice, and if one then proved false to the promise he had made at the time of the sacrifice, what happened to those animals he'd walked between would happen to him as well. It was just another application of sympathetic magic. The Bible even provides us with this very answer in Jeremiah 34:18 in which the Lord declares in one of his more imaginative threats: 'The men who violated my covenant and did not observe the terms of the agreement which they made before me, I will make like the calf which they cut in two, between those two parts they passed.'
"In the next chapter we have another gallant action on the part of the great Abraham. He willingly complies with his wife's order to have a go with her maid, and succeeds in making her pregnant. But this makes the vacillating Sarai angry when she sees her in this state and she begins to cruelly abuse her. Now we have one of those 'take charge' courageous actions on the part of the kind Abraham, who was known as 'God's friend': 'Your maid is in your power,' he tells his wife, 'do to her whatever you please.' Sarai then abuses her so much that she runs away from her.
"To ‘console’ the maid Hagar, God tells her that her son will be 'a wild-ass of a man; his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him; in opposition to all his kin shall he encamp.' Judging from that, I’d say that God's a pretty poor consoler. This is J's account mostly, but in chapter 21, verses 9-19 we have an account by ‘E’.
"’E’ is the Elohist document, which we haven't discussed yet. It's known for constantly referring to God as neither Jehovah (as J does) nor Adonai (as P does) but as Elohim (God). There are other subtler differences that I won't go into now.
"In E’s account, Hagar is once again driven away by Sarai's abuse, only this time Ishmael's already born, and other details differ accordingly. To harmonize this with J’s account, the compiler merely had to have Hagar go back after her first running away. It would've been most unlikely for her to do so, though, even with God's 'great promises' concerning her son.
"Skipping a little, we come to chapter 22 where God, who 'reads all hearts' doesn't know if Abraham is devoted to him until he shows himself ready, willing, and able to sacrifice his son to him. Now just try to imagine what we, today, would think of someone who told us he heard voices (God's voice, no less) telling him to kill his son. We'd put him away as quickly as possible, wouldn't we? But here Abraham does the same irrational act and gets rewarded for it by God.
In my opinion, Abraham failed the test miserably. He should have said, 'Listen, God, I love you and all that, but if this is the sort of proof you need, forget it! I won't kill for you, especially not my own son. And if you think that means I don't love you enough, well, that's your problem.'
"How is this God of the Bible any better than the god Molech whom Jehovah despises in Jeremiah 31:35 for accepting the burned-alive bodies of the Israelites' children? There, he rightly calls such a thing a sin, but when he asked Abraham to do the very same thing, that was all right and proved Abraham a righteous man!
"The long involved stories of Esau and Jacob, as well as Joseph and his problems with sibling rivalry, arose from one simple misunderstanding on the part of the writers: they didn't understand that ultimogeniture was the rule back then."
"What's that?" Ted asked.
"It means the youngest son in the family inherits the father's wealth, rather than the later practice of primogeniture in which the eldest inherits all. Anthropologists have determined this sequence of events for all peoples who move from a nomadic, shepherd's life to an agricultural one -- and most peoples did move from one to the other eventually. In the beginning, when the tending of the flocks and herds was the way of life, the first-born son, when he reached maturity, would take a few of the cattle and set off on his own to greener pastures. When the father died, it was the youngest son who was still with him and inherited his possessions. But when they became farmers, their land provided their livelihood, not portable cattle as in the past. So the eldest son stuck around, and when his father died, there wasn't anyone (least of all a kid brother) who was going to take the ownership of that farm away from him. So primogeniture was already a long-established rule by the time the Bible was written. And, once again suffering from imposing present conditions on the past, the writers had to think up some elaborate stories to account for the fact that Isaac and Jacob's youngest sons seemed to have been the favored ones. The fact that they had no scruples about having Jacob perpetrate a cruel deception on his aged father to bring this about shows what a tight grip this illusion of inserting the present on the past had over them, and hardly argues for divine inspiration.
"So far we have seen little reason for God to have selected this line of descent to be his chosen people or the ancestors of his son. From Abraham to Jacob they have been a despicable lot. Any hopes we might've had about Jacob's sons come crashing to the ground in chapter 34. Here we read that the sons of Jacob promised to give their sister Dinah in marriage to Shechem the Hivite if all the males of his country were to get circumcised. After the Hivite men dutifully complied with this odd request, the sons of Jacob advanced upon the place, while the men there were still in pain from the crude operation, and massacred them all. Then they carried off their women, children, and all their goods.
"You conveniently forgot to mention," Richard reminded him, "that Shechem had raped Dinah."
"And what do you suppose Jacob's sons did with the Hivite women they 'carried off'?" Bill asked. "They multiplied the wrong they were trying to right hundreds of times over with deceit and murder.
"But the Bible nowhere approves of their action," Richard objected.
"No, but it doesn't disapprove either. What does Jacob say upon hearing of what his sons did? He only worries about the Canaanites taking revenge, and his having too few men to kill them all off if they do. So he prays to his God who (naturally) protects him, and even names him ‘Israel’ and renews his promise of giving him the Canaanite's land.
"In telling of the descendants of Esau in chapter 36, the writer makes one of his by-now-familiar errors and says, 'before any king reigned over the Israelites,' (verse 31). Now, if Moses had written this, as you claim, how did he know that any king would ever rule over the Israelites? There had been no Israelite kings in his time, and not for a very long time after his death. This statement had to have been written sometime after the time of Saul who was the first king of Israel.
"Next we come upon the story of selling Joseph into slavery by his brothers. It is the easiest place in the Bible to spot the two different accounts that are pieced together rather unsuccessfully. In this case it is J and E who are at work. Just reading it consecutively can be pretty revealing; the seams are showing here more plainly than anywhere, and reveal the hands of men, not the hand of God.
"First we read that when Reuben heard of the plot to kill Joseph, he suggested throwing him into the cistern in order to save him later. Then the brothers sat down to their meal (not even losing their appetites after this dastardly deed) and spotted a caravan of Ishmaelites. Judah then suggested selling Joseph to these Ishmaelites, which they did for 20 pieces of silver.
"All well and good so far, but suddenly we read, 'Some Midianite traders passed by, and they pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and took him into Egypt. When Reuben went back to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not in it, he tore his clothes, and returning to his brothers, he exclaimed: "The boy is gone! And I -- where can I turn?"'
"Apparently, Reuben was not with his brothers when they sat down to their meal (where he was is hard to imagine since he was evidently nowhere near the cistern either, and a caravan could be seen a long way off), and so he is flabbergasted to find Joseph missing from the cistern. But, oddly enough, Judah doesn't console Reuben by telling him how he sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites in order to save him from death. In fact, all the brothers now seem to be in the dark as to how Joseph comes to be missing from the cistern. But, more glaring is how, after they sold him to the Ishmaelites, 'some Midianites' happened along and 'pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and took him to Egypt'! How can this be? It can't. There are two accounts here."
"No," Richard argued, "there's only one account. The Midianites had inter-married with the Ishmaelites, and so their names could be used interchangeably."
Bill shook his head and said: "But it's not likely that one person writing one narrative would use the two different tribal names for one group. He would choose one name and stick to it through his account, not switch back and forth.
"Further, if you claim that the solution is to be found in saying that the Ishmaelites were identical with the Midianites, how is it that these shrewd traders would hand over 20 pieces of silver for a slave, and then pull him up and take a look at him? And if the Midianite traders are supposed to be the same as the Ishmaelites who just paid a good sum for Joseph, why does the writer refer to them now (having already introduced them into the account as Ishmaelites) as 'some' Midianite traders? It would be much more natural at this point to say 'the' Midianite traders. And he certainly wouldn't say 'Some Midianite traders passed by,' he would say 'So the Midianite traders went over and pulled Joseph out.' But even so, it's hard to imagine them paying for him before pulling him up. The way it is written gives every indication that these Midianite traders are by no means the Ishmaelites who just bought Joseph.
"The only logical conclusion is that there are two stories here. If we read the chapter to verse 20, then skip to verses 25-28a (25-27 in the New World Translation), we get one complete story from J in which Judah is the hero who saves Joseph from murder at his brother's hands by selling him to the Ishmaelites. Then, if we read verses 21-24 and skip to 28b-36 (28-36 in the New World Translation), we have E's story in which Reuben is the hero who saves Joseph by suggesting to his brothers to just throw Joseph into the cistern (from which he intended to rescue him later). But when they are away at their meal, Midianites take Joseph out and away. Reuben discovers this when he goes back to save him, and all the brothers are in genuine perplexity over his disappearance.
"The reason for the discrepancy about which brother was the hero is that J was written in the two-tribe kingdom of Judah, whereas E was written about 800-750 BCE in the ten-tribe kingdom of Israel; each was exalting its favorite patriarch in a simple-minded patriotism."
"But all that is pure conjecture by so-called scholars who like to call themselves 'higher critics,'" Richard noted. "Why should we believe what they say?"
"Because you can see it for yourself by simply reading the chapter in your Bible." Bill reasoned. "The term 'higher critic' isn't an egotistical one; it just distinguishes literary criticism from manuscript criticism ('lower criticism'). It isn't setting itself up as higher than religious interpretations, but as distinct from another branch in its own field. So don't be intimidated on that account. But it hasn't just been what you term 'so-called scholars' that have come up with this thought. In T. H. Robinson's The People and the Book, on page 153, he tells of a group of Sunday-school teachers who had met to discuss the lesson for the next Sunday, which happened to be Genesis 37. As they studied it with a view to making it plain and teachable, they found difficulties in reconciling the contradictions it contains. The case seemed hopeless until the possibility was suggested that two stories were intertwined in the chapter. At once they set about disentangling them, and with nothing but the King James Bible they succeeded in half an hour. They came up with the same results as I've just explained to you in dividing up the two accounts. But had they been told that they were doing 'higher criticism', I'm sure they would've been horrified.
"So much for Genesis. Exodus abounds with a treasure trove of contradictions and incredulities. If I went into only half of them, we’d be here several days. So I’ll have to sum up.
"I recommend that you read Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, in which he postulates that Moses was an Egyptian at the time that Amenhotep was Pharaoh. There are several startling proofs of this theory. The first goes back to the legendary birth of Moses. It was another common story (first used in connection with Sargon, long before) that the Hebrew writer adapted to Moses. Arabia, Assyria, and Phoenicia all had their own Moses, only he was called Mises. In the Orphic Hymn to Bacchus, Mises is picked up floating in a box on the waters. For this reason he is called Mises as well as Bimater (meaning of 'two mothers'; one by nature and one by adoption).
The laws of Mises were written on stone tablets. He had a rod for working miracles. The rod had power to change into a serpent and to divide the rivers Orontes and Hydastus. He also passed dry-shed over the Red Sea at the head of his army (something Alexander was to repeat in much later historical legend). When Mises' army thirsted, he struck a rock with his rod and water gushed out. Wherever he went the land 'flowed with milk and honey.' And, whereas Moses had to be content with a pillar of fire, Mises had the light of the sun at night. So, we can see where the mythical notions of Moses came from, but Freud presents a fair argument for believing that a real Moses existed as well. And, removing the veil of the legendary one, we can get a glimpse of the real Moses.
"In the first place, since such stories were tacked on to all great heroes before and after Moses, we can rather dismiss the whole Nile incident. Freud relates the anecdote that when a boy was asked in Sunday school who Moses' mother was, he replied it was Pharaoh's daughter. 'No,' replied the instructor, 'she just found him floating in the Nile, she wasn't his real mother.' 'That's what she said,' the boy quipped. And there's a lot of truth in that. There is reason to believe that Moses was born an Egyptian, and that he brought a band of Semites out of Egypt after the death of Amenhotep. He became such a hero to the Jews, that the Bible writers borrowed this much-used story to transform him into a Jew.
"If Moses were an Egyptian, it sheds light on a few otherwise difficult points. The first is his name. We are told that the daughter of Pharaoh named him Moses because in Hebrew it means 'drawn out'. But what is an Egyptian princess doing with knowledge of Hebrew etymology? It doesn't make sense. What does make sense is this: Mose was a common Egyptian name, which simply meant 'son'. This 'mose' was tacked onto the end of a name much as we today tack on 'son' in many surnames. The pharaoh which many people wrongly believe ruled at that time is an example of this: Ramose, or simply 'Ramses', meaning son of the god Ra. Doubtless Moses also had an Egyptian deity as the first part of his name, though it was later dropped. He was an important Egyptian, with quite possibly a governorship over a region populated with the group of Semites who were later to call themselves Hebrews. But, since he couldn't speak their language (no self-respecting Egyptian would stoop so low as to learn it), he needed an interpreter to speak to them. Enter Aaron."
"Oh, that makes sense!" Ted exclaimed. "I often wondered how Moses could speak right up to God and make demands of him, and yet was supposedly too shy to talk to the people. But if he couldn't speak their language because he was an Egyptian, well, that explains it."
"But let's turn back to Amenhotep for a moment because it's very important -- we’re dealing with the very foundation of Judaism and Christianity here. Amenhotep broke with all traditional Egyptian religion and held that there was one God, represented by, though distinct from, the sun. This God he named Aton (borrowing the sun-god's name, but making him much greater). He had all inscriptions to plural gods effaced, and brought down temples and disbanded priests of other gods. There was only one god over all, he taught, just as there was only one Pharaoh over all. But the people went along with it begrudgingly. He was way ahead of his time, and after his death the old religion began to spring up again immediately. But it was sometime after his death before the government resumed its full authority under a new Pharaoh, and it was at this time, when no Pharaoh was ruling in Egypt, that Moses, an adherent to the Aton religion, walked out quietly with the people in his region to set up the great religion elsewhere. The people, he figured, would be so grateful for being freed from slavery that they would readily accept what the Egyptians had disdainfully cast away.
"Now I know all this contradicts the Bible, but I'm telling you the reasonable account first before I show you why the Bible's account is obviously made up. If we take a look at the Egyptian name for Moses' god, Aton, and compare it with the Syrian Adonis, and then with the Hebrew Adonai, we get some idea of what was going on here; the Aton religion was finding its way into other lands.
"And what was one of the first things Moses asked of these people? That they be circumcised. Now this is very odd indeed. If there had been Hebrews before this, descendants of Abraham, certainly they'd already be circumcised; their being in Egypt wouldn't have prevented that. But evidently they weren't. This is because they hadn't borrowed the Abraham figure yet and made him their forefather, and they hadn't introduced circumcision yet because this was an Egyptian practice! So the first thing Moses the Egyptian must do in order to have any dealings at all with these unclean people is to have them become Egyptians in a sense by being circumcised. Doubtless they resented this, but he wanted them to remember their having been in Egypt and that it was an Egyptian who led them to freedom. They obeyed, but their grumbling began. And as he tried to pass on his monotheism to them, taking away their very gods, their grumblings grew louder still, until they (according to much tradition) killed him."
"What is all this nonsense you're talking about?" Richard asked, making a face.
"Only what probably happened. They killed Moses before they ever made it to Palestine (or I should say Canaan). The reason given in the Bible for his not reaching there with them is that God wouldn't let him for some really unspecified reason. It sounds like a cover-up to me. Anyway, Moses' retinue was still very much alive; these would've been his Egyptian friends, scribes, servants, and adherents of Aton. They were the only force left directing the people towards Aton (or 'Adonai') worship, and played a great role in the future forming of their religion; eventually becoming the Levites who were never given a share in the land, but acted as priests. (It is only among the Levites in later times that we find Egyptian names.)
"At Mount Horeb and/or Sinai (a Biblical contradiction) these fugitives came across another Moses, whose father-in-law was the priest of the volcano-god of the mountain. Actually, in the Bible Moses is given at least three fathers-in-law who are all supposed to be the same man. So which father-in-law belonged to which Moses is hard to say; either Reul (Exodus 2:18), Jethro (Exodus 3:1) or Hobab (Numbers 10:29; Judges 4:11). Take your pick. Reul is probably a mistake from a careless reading of Numbers 10:29, so Jethro was the father-in-law of one Moses, and Hobab of the other.
"There being two Moses' is also backed up by the very great difference in their characters. The Egyptian one had a hot temper (as is said of him when he kills the workman in Egypt); breaking the stone tablets in anger, striking the rock in anger, and so on. Whereas the other Moses is spoken of as 'the meekest of men,' and this appellation cannot apply to the first one in any sense. So, there must've been two of them, though they were later combined into one man with a split personality.
"Anyway, when they came to Horeb/Sinai (again you can take your pick), they accepted this volcano god and adopted this new Moses as a replacement for their old one. The god's name was Jahve, or, as you people say it, Jehovah. The religion of this new Moses was filled with magic and demons; his god was a pillar of smoke that changed to fire by night (that is, the appearance of a smoldering volcano). Its rumblings the people mistake for the voice of God speaking with Moses as he ascends the sacred mountain to take dictation. But it was a compromise that was wrought there; the people still retaining a guilty reverence for the Egyptians among them. These Egyptians (and we might as well start calling them Levites from this point on) retained a lot of Aton for their small numbers, especially when you consider that they were up against this impressive smoking mountain. The people, for instance, could worship this Jehovah God, but only if they said Adonai instead of Jehovah."
At this point Ted got such a look of surprise and revelation on his face that even Bill stopped talking and looked at him.
"You're not buying all this crap, are you?" asked Richard.
"I don't hear you refuting it," Ted replied.
"The Bible refutes it. Refute it? There's nothing to refute! He's just running off at the mouth. He hasn't shown any contradictions in the Bible yet."
"Ha!" Ted cried, "What do you call them then?"
Richard didn't respond, so Ted turned to Arthur. "Brother Olson, are you awake? What do you think of all this?"
Arthur wearily opened his blood-shot eyes and whispered, "Still I believe." He looked around for a moment, and then shut his eyes again.
Ted turned his attention back on Bill who resumed: "Well, then they had to ascribe great things to this god. They had to credit it with freeing them from Egypt instead of merely the Egyptian man Moses. (They probably hadn't yet hit on the idea of transforming him into one of them.) So they spun their tale and filled it with great miracles that a powerful mountain might be thought capable of, such as spewing forth plagues, and causing a great storm to divide the sea, and leading them with its pillar of cloud and fire. The Levites, having the records for safekeeping, were free to tamper with them here and there and inject as much as they could of Aton worship in with Jahva worship.
"When they made war upon the Canaanites, they were called Habiru by them, because the Habiru were hordes of warlike Aramaeans who'd been sacking their countries for years, making them easy pickings for these people when they came along. So, as I said before, Habiru, or 'Hebrew' was originally a disparaging thing to be called, and it was only later, when they'd forgotten this fact, that they adopted the name for themselves.
"So much for reconstructing history as it probably happened. Let's go to the Biblical account you're so anxious to have me disprove. In Exodus 6:3 God tells Moses that his name is Jehovah, and that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never knew his name."
"That's not what it says," Richard interrupted, "It says that he didn't make himself known to them as Jehovah. That doesn't mean that they didn't know his name was Jehovah, but that he'd never proven to them all that Jehovah was; he'd never fought for them as he was to fight for Moses."
Bill quickly responded: "And when Abraham rescued Lot and gave thanks to Jehovah, he was wrong in doing so because Jehovah hadn't fought for him? And when Jehovah said, 'I am a shield to you' he was lying to Abraham, because he never fought for him? In either case you have a contradiction, so it little matters what you answer. The fact is, this is P writing here; the priests who added to the documents left in their care, and who quite rightly believed that this name Jehovah was unknown before the time of the second Moses. In none of P's writings prior to this does the name Jehovah appear; it is always either God or Adonai (Lord). It is only J who contradicts this thought, thinking everything has been the same from eternity.
"But let's examine this God Jehovah's actions in this affair. First of all, let me ask you this: do you still agree with what we read from James about God not tempting us to sin?"
"Certainly," Richard replied.
"And is it a sin to disobey God?"
"Of course."
"Then when we read in Exodus, chapter 7, that God is going to:
"'make Pharaoh so obstinate that, despite the many signs and wonders that he will work in the land, he will not listen,'
"and that God promises:
"'Therefore I will lay my hand on Egypt and by great acts of judgment I will bring the Israelites out of Egypt, so that the Egyptians may learn that I am the LORD,'
"we are reading of God making Pharaoh sin, because he is going to make Pharaoh obstinate and 'harden his heart'! According to this, the Pharaoh had no choice in the matter -- no free will. God made him sin so that he could awe the Egyptians with a big show of all his worst calamities so that they would know exactly what kind of a god he was and what great power he had. Such great vanity being exercised at the cost of so many lives show us, indeed, just what kind of a god we are reading about. This is not some superficial 'word-contradiction'; this is a 'thought-contradiction,' having just the opposite thought to the thought in James about God not tempting anyone to sin.
"We have another contradiction in this same chapter. In verse 19 God says that when Aaron stretches out his staff over the waters:
"'their streams and canals and pools, all their supplies of water -- that they may become blood. Throughout the whole land of Egypt there shall be blood, even in the wooden pails and stone jars.'
"They then accomplish the deed; 'But the Egyptian magicians did the same by their magic arts.' The difficulty here is, where did these magicians get water to change into blood, when all the water was already turned to blood?"
"They must've dug some up and changed that into blood, as verse 24 says the Egyptians had to dig for water," Richard offered.
"But that's hardly doing 'the same thing' that Moses and Aaron did," Bill replied.
"In the fifth plague," Bill continued, "which God eagerly dishes out according to his pre-arranged plan for his glory, 'All the livestock of the Egyptians died.' (9:6.) But the writer of these accounts is so ready to magnify the greatness of God's merciless slaughter, that he has them all killed again in the seventh plague! Yet, even after being killed twice, the Egyptian horses have no trouble racing towards the fleeting Israelites with armed men on their backs and chariots being pulled behind them!
"The 16th chapter of Exodus is clearly mistaken in assigning its events to the '15th day of the 2nd month after their departure from Egypt.' It is out of place because this would've been before they came to Mount Sinai and received the ten commandments; yet the chapter certainly implies that they've already received them:
"'Moses then told Aaron, "Take an urn and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the LORD for safekeeping for your descendants." So Aaron placed it in front of the commandments for safekeeping, as the LORD had commanded Moses.' (Verses 33, 34.)
"What were these 'commandments', and where were they placed so as to be 'before the LORD'? The only answer is that they were the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets that were placed in the Ark of the Covenant (as this represented God's presence). But none of these things existed until after they'd come to Sinai (which doesn't happen for another three chapters). This is backed up by Numbers, chapter 11, which describes the same incident of the manna and quail, but assigns the date to the period after they had been at Sinai.
"It's also rather odd that the Israelites were crying out for meat in the desert so that God had to send manna and quail since we're constantly told (in Exodus 12:32, 38; 17:3; 34:3; Numbers 20:19; 32:1) of their numerous livestock.
"At last we come to the Ten Commandments themselves in chapter 20. These are the Ten Commandments by P, and no one who was actually there at Mount Sinai ever heard of them, least of all Moses (who wasn't really there according to the Freudian theory).
Almost immediately after giving the second commandment:
"'You must not make for yourself a carved image or a form like anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth ... You must not bow down to them or be induced to serve them'
God commands the Israelites to break it by the making of an ark with two cherubs (a form of something in the heavens above) cast in gold, which he commands them to serve by sprinkling blood of sacrificed animals on them. And no sooner is this completed than God commands them to break the sixth commandment ('thou shalt not kill') by ordering them to kill someone they caught collecting wood on the Sabbath! (Numbers 15:32-36.)
"Moses breaks (literally) the stone commandments, so God has to write them up again. Before doing so, Moses asks to see God. But God replies, 'No man may see me and yet live.' This causes us to wonder if Isaiah was dead when he wrote:
"'In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high-and lofty throne.' (Isaiah 6:1.)
"But back to Moses:
"'The LORD said to Moses, "Cut two stone tablets like the former, that I may write on them the commandments which were on the former tablets that you broke."' (Exodus 34:1.)
"But God proceeds to recite, not the Ten Commandments that were on the former, but some very different ones indeed :
1.Thou shalt not worship any other god.
2.Molten gods thou shalt not make thee.
3.The feast of unleavened cakes shalt thou keep.
4.Firstlings of ox and sheep belong to Jehovah. Firstlings of ass and man must be redeemed.
5.Thou shalt keep the Sabbath.
6.Thou shalt keep the feast of weeks and the feast of ingathering.
7.Three times in the year shall all thy males appear before the LORD.
8.Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread. Neither shall the sacrifices of the feast be left over night.
9.The firstfruits of the field thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.
10.Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk.
"'And Jehovah went on to say to Moses: Write down for yourself these words, because it is in accordance with these words that I do conclude a covenant with you and Israel. And he continued there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights. He ate no bread and he drank no water. And he proceeded to write upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.'
"This account of the 'Ten Commandments' is obviously the older, cruder one. It is less concerned with treating one's neighbor righteously, and more concerned with the appeasing of a fussy deity. The compiler, having both these accounts at hand, merely made up the story of Moses breaking the first set so that he could work in this second set under the pretext of rewriting them. But in no sense could these be said to be 'the same words'.
"It's also very revealing that the last commandment is a bit of pure sympathetic magic. The cattle were very important to Israel; at an early time it was their sole means of support. So the health of the cattle was of prime concern. It is a common belief amongst many primitive peoples that boiling the milk of an animal will harm that animal through sympathetic magic. You are doubtless familiar with this idea in the practice of Voodoo (where they take a hair or some other part of a person and affix it to a voodoo doll, and believe that what they do to the doll affects the person). To cook that animal's offspring in its milk was really asking for trouble, because the animal would be tied to your actions in two ways.
"So much for J's original Ten Commandments. But even looking at the new improved version of P's, we find that they reflect a certain malice beneath what we would expect of a God. He tells us that he is a:
"'jealous God, bringing punishment upon sons for the error of fathers, upon the third and the fourth generation.' (Exodus 20:5.)
Jealousy is a fault, not a virtue. And to punish a son, grandson, and great- grandson for the error of the father is unjust in the highest degree. Would we send a criminal's children to prison, and their children, and so on? Of course not. But why? Simply because it's unjust. So either God is unjust, or he never inspired this to be written. Besides, we hear a completely different tune from the God who 'doesn't change' in Ezekiel, chapter 18, in which he scolds the Israelites for saying that sons bear the errors of their fathers, and adds, 'A son will bear nothing for the error of the father.' This is just, but it contradicts what he supposedly said in Exodus.
"Let's move on now to one of my favorite Bible stories, the tale of Balaam and his talking ass. This poor prophet seems to be the most unjustly criticized person in the Bible. Peter and Jude both rail against him (2 Peter 2:15; Jude 11) and he even gets dishonorable mention in John's Revelation (2:14). He is accused of loving the wages of wrongdoing, thoughtlessly rushing into something for the sake of gain, and instructing Balak to tempt the Israelites with fornication and foods sacrificed to idols. All in all, he is given the character of a very evil person. Strangely enough though, the record in Numbers totally contradicts all such thoughts. It presents Balaam as a humble prophet who rushed into nothing. When the entourage from Balak arrives with the offer to come and curse Israel, Balaam has them spend the night so that he can ask God what to do. God tells him not to go, so he doesn't. When the messengers come back a second time with offers of a handsome reward for his cursing, Balaam replies:
"'Even if Balak gave me his house full of silver and gold, I could not do anything great or small, contrary to the commandment of the LORD, my God.'
"He has them spend the night again and this time God says:
"'"If these men have come to summon you, you may go with them; yet only on the condition that you do exactly as I tell you." So the next morning when Balaam arose, he saddled his ass and went off with the princes of Moab. But now the anger of the Lord flared up at him for going.'"
"Balaam was the unfortunate victim of a God who couldn't make up his mind. He tells him to go, then gets mad when he does! Now the ass speaks to him (this, of course, is from J, who also believes that serpents can talk (Genesis 3), and so has Balaam show no surprise in the matter), and then the angel says:
"'"This rash journey of yours is directly opposed to me. When the ass saw me she turned away from me these three times. If she had not turned away from me, I would have killed you; her I would have spared." Then Balaam said to the angel of the LORD: "I have sinned. Yet I did not know that you stood against me to oppose this journey. Since it has displeased you, I will go back home."'
"What can we say about this? In the first place, his actions were in no sense 'rash'; hadn't he waited overnight for the Lord's command on the matter? In the second place, how could it be directly opposed to God when God was the one who told him to go? And how can we believe that a just God would have killed Balaam for obeying his command but for the fact that his ass turned away? Almighty God's purpose thwarted by an ass? You’ll notice that Balaam offers to return home, but now the angel says something really astonishing: 'Go with the men; but you may say only what I tell you.' This was the understanding all along. Why did the angel stop Balaam and try to kill him, when in the end he sent him off to continue doing exactly what he was doing from the start?
"Finally, Balak and Balaam reach their destination, and every word that transpires between them is given: Balaam blesses rather than curses Israel. He then predicts Israel's victory, and 'then Balaam got up and went and returned to his place. And Balak also went his own way.' (Numbers 24:25.)
"Immediately in chapter 25 we read that the Israelites began having immoral relations with the daughters of Moab, and began worshiping the god Baal of Peor. It is obvious that Balaam had no connection with this; he just blessed Israel and went home. And it's clear that he was a worshipper of Jehovah, not of Baal. But, because of this sinning on the part of Israel, God orders a total extermination of the Midianites (I mean, that's only fair, after all, isn't it?) And so we read of it in chapter 31:
"'They waged war against the Midianites, as the LORD had commanded Moses, and killed every male among them. When Moses and the priest Eleazar, with all the princes of the community, went outside to meet them, Moses became angry with the officers of the army, the clan and company commanders, who were returning from combat. "So you spared all the women!" he exclaimed. "Why they are the very ones who on Balaam's advice prompted the unfaithfulness of the Israelites in the Peor affair, which began the slaughter of the LORD’s community. Slay, therefore, every male child and every woman who has had intercourse with a man. But you may spare and keep for yourselves all girls who had no intercourse with a man."'
"What comment can I make on this order from the 'meekest of men'? Is this God's 'Holy Word' with its moral guidance for our lives? Or isn't it rather the record of the exploits of some fiendish being unworthy of the name 'human'! What justice is there in slaughtering the children of a people who tempted Israel to sin? I thought James said that each one is tempted by his own desire, but here we learn that this is not the case at all. It is not one's own desire that tempts one to sin; it is the Midianites! But even granting that, what have innocent children to do with it? And what kind of savage morality exterminates a whole people, but saves its virgins for itself? We can well imagine what use these 32,000 virgins were put to. The Israelites having 'immoral relations' with the Midianites is supposedly what started the whole thing, but in the end the same thing was continuing, only on their own grounds. In addition to all of this, we get a first-hand glimpse of Moses' horrible character. It shows, amongst other things, that he was either uninformed or given to lying, for he states that Balaam was behind the whole thing.
"After reading here of the total destruction of the Midianites (save the virgins) and the burning of their cities without a single casualty to the Israelites, we come to Judges 6:1, 2 and read:
"'The Israelites offended the LORD, who therefore delivered them into the power of the Midianites for seven years, so that the Midianites held Israel subject.'
"But how can this be, when, according to the previous account, the Midianites no longer existed? If we believe the account in Numbers, we cannot believe the account in Judges, and vice-versa. It is impossible to believe in the Bible.
"What's really ironic is that we can read so boldfaced a lie after all of this as in Deuteronomy 10:15-17:
"'Yet in his love for your fathers the LORD was so attached to them as to choose you, their descendants, in preference to all other peoples, as indeed he has now done ... For the LORD your God is the God of Gods ... who has no favorites (or 'who treats none with partiality' according to your New World Translation).'
"What sense does this make? First of all we're told that he chose them over all other people, then in the same breath we’re told that he has no favorites and shows no partiality. God clearly showed favoritism and partiality to Israel in the Bible. How else can we account for his fighting on their side against the Canaanites? If he treated all people the same, why did he help the Israelites steal the Canaanites' land and mercilessly slaughter them instead of helping these poor people defend themselves against the foreign invaders?
"I wish it were possible for you to be open-minded enough to put yourself in their place and see if you could then consider the people who murdered all your people, raped your daughters, burned your cities, and stole your land as the 'chosen people of God' and the 'holy nation of priests,' and if you could agree to worship their God as just and good and impartial.
"I mention this because we've now come to that most bloody book, Joshua. It recounts in gory details the massacre of the Canaanite people, and is just about as bad as what the 'good Christians' did to the Native Americans when they patterned themselves after the ancient Hebrews and called their stealing of the land 'Manifest Destinty’. But bearing in mind how brutal the whole thing is, let's look in on a few of the contradictions.
"In chapter seven we see God punishing the son for the father's sin in contradiction to Ezekiel 18. In fact, God punishes Achan's entire family, his ox, his ass, his sheep, his tent, and all his possessions (all of which were stoned). More importantly, God makes the Israelite army fall in defeat to Ai, and 36 soldiers die because of Achan's sin. And what great sin did Achan commit? He took some spoils in war. Evidently, God feels that only virgins are acceptable plunder. Also, it's good to note that the city of Ai wasn't really in existence at this time. It had been destroyed long before in 2000 BCE and wasn't rebuilt till some 400 years after Joshua's time. The name, Ai, in fact, means 'The Ruin'.
"You're all well aware of Joshua's great feat in chapter 10 of making the 'sun stand still' so that his army could see to kill more Amorites. And you know that it contradicts the fact that the sun doesn't move around the earth. In order for the sun to stand still in the sky, the earth would have had to stop turning. The Israelites didn't know this, of course, but if God inspired the writing of this, it's funny that he didn't know it either! As late as the time of Martin Luther this Scripture was used to prove that the sun moved around the earth, and those who knew otherwise had better keep their mouth shut. The poor ignorant Christians didn't even know the earth was a sphere till relatively recently, yet the philosopher Pythagoras had taught, as early as the 6th century BCE, that the earth was round and moved around the sun. Christians burned all such 'pagan' books that contained these truths in an effort to remove all traces of the sources for their own stolen myths. In the process they set their own knowledge back by 2,000 years!
"The validity of Joshua is continually marred by his habitual forgetting those he'd killed off; and so he kills them off again for good measure: In 10:33:
"'At that time Horam, king of Gezer, came up to help Lachish, but Joshua defeated him and his people, leaving him no survivors.'
"Yet in 16:10 we read:
"'But they did not drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, who live on with Ephriam to the present day.'
"In 10:36-39:
"'Joshua went up with all Israel to Hebron, which they attacked and captured. They put it to the sword with its king, all its towns, and every person there, leaving no survivors, just as Joshua had done to Eglon. He fulfilled the doom on it and on every person there. Then Joshua and all Israel turned back to Debir and attacked it, capturing it with its king and all its towns. They put them to the sword and fulfilled the doom on every person there, leaving no survivors. Thus was done to Debir and its king what had been done to Hebron, as well as to Libnah and its king.'
"But in 14:6-15 we find that Caleb asks for this very region from Joshua:
"'"Give me, therefore, this mountain region… True, the Anakim are there, with large fortified cities, but if the LORD is with me I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD promised." Joshua blessed Caleb, and gave him Hebron as his heritage… Hebron was formerly called Kiriath-arba, from Arba, the greatest of the Anakim.'"
"And further:
"'Joshua gave Caleb… Hebron. And Caleb drove out from there the three Anakim from there he marched up against the inhabitants of Debir…"
"The contradictions here, of course, are that Joshua had already killed every living person in these cities and captured them, so how could Caleb drive anyone out of 'fortified cities', or how could there be inhabitants in Debir to march against?
"In Joshua 11:1-10 the Israelites kill Jabin, the king of Hazer, and all his people, leaving no survivors. How is it, then, that in Judges 4:2-4 we read:
"'So the LORD allowed them (the Israelites) to fall into the power of the Canaanite king, Jabin, who reigned in Hazer with his nine-hundred iron chariots he sorely oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.'
"In a story strikingly similar to that of Lot in Sodom, the men of Gibeah (Benjaminites) clamor for the owner of a house to send out his male guest (a Levite) so they can lie with him. (This is in Judges 19:22.) But instead, the Levite thrusts his guest’s concubine out the door (chivalry was evidently unknown to the Israelites). The men rape and kill her. For this outrage, the Israelites vow vengeance upon the entire tribe of Benjamin. Judges 20:46-48 records how they wreaked that vengeance:
"'Those that fell of Benjamin on that day were in all 25,000 swordsmen, warriors to a man. But 600 others who turned and fled through the desert reached the rock Rimmon, where they remained for four months. The men of Israel withdrew through the territory of Benjamin, putting to the sword the inhabitants of the cities, the livestock, and all they chanced upon.'
But, not wanting to be an eleven-tribe kingdom, they hit on the idea that the 600 survivors of the purge needed wives. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, the men of Israel had all taken an oath that none of them would give his daughter in marriage to a Benjaminite. Calling a meeting of all Israel to ponder this perplexing problem, they discover that no one from Jabesh-Gilead is present at this all-important conference.
"'The community, therefore, sent 12,000 warriors with orders to go to Jabesh-Gilead and put those who lived there to the sword, including the women and children.' (You didn't get away with missing meetings back then.) 'They were told to include under the ban all males and every woman who was not still a virgin. Finding among the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead 400 young virgins, they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan. Then the whole community sent a message to the Benjaminites at the rock Rimmon, offering them peace. When Benjamin returned at that time, they gave them as wives the women they spared, but these proved not to be enough for them.' So they stole some more virgins from Shiloh.
"What can our opinion be of such actions? This, you'll keep in mind, is the book we encourage our young people to read and ponder for 'moral uplift'! And much of it is like this, the record of a barbarous, ignorant people, feigning holiness. Further, Jabesh-Gilead could hardly have been depopulated here since in Saul's time it is shown to be a strongly fortified city withstanding a siege. (1 Samuel 11; 31:11-13.)
"In First Samuel we learn that God torments people with his 'bad spirit' (doubtless one of those 'good and perfect gifts from the Father of heavenly lights' that James refers to). For we read in 16:14-23:
"'And the very spirit of Jehovah departed from Saul, and a bad spirit from Jehovah terrorized him.'
"This is doubtless J’s idea, before Satan had been borrowed from Babylon and evil as well as good was still attributed to Jehovah.
"But there is further evidence of the piecing together of J with E here:
"'And the servants of Saul began to say to him: "Here now, God's bad spirit is terrorizing you"… and one of the attendants proceeded to say: "Look! I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is a skillful harpist, and he is a valiant mighty man and a man of war"… Then Saul sent to Jesse and said: "Do send to me David your son, who is with the flock." Thus David came to Saul and attended upon him and got to love him very much, and he came to be his armor-bearer. Consequently, Saul sent to Jesse, saying; "Let David, please, keep attending upon me, for he has found favor in my eyes." And it occurred that, when God's spirit came upon Saul, David took the harp and played with his hand; and there was relief for Saul and it was well with him.'
"After reading this, we come upon the story of David and Goliath, 'the Philistine from Gath, whose wooden shaft on his spear was like the beam of loom workers'. In this story David is described as 'only a youth' ('but a boy', New World Translation), and as never having tried on armor before (17:33, 39). This is quite a contrast to 'a valiant mighty man and a man of war'. Even more odd is what Saul says after David chops off the Philistine's head:
"'When Saul saw David go out to meet the Philistine, he asked his general Abner, "Abner, whose son is that youth?" Abner replied, "As truly as your majesty is alive, I have no idea." And the king said, "Find out whose son the lad is." So when David returned from slaying the Philistine, Abner took him and presented him to Saul. David was still holding the Philistine's head. Saul then asked him, "Whose son are you, young man?" David replied, "I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem."'
"How could Saul have forgotten that David's father was Jesse when he had sent him messages on several occasions? It's obvious that there are two entangled accounts throughout here. In the one, David is a mighty man of war who becomes an attendant of King Saul with his father Jesse's full knowledge and approval. In the other, David is a shepherd boy and is first seen by Saul when he fights Goliath. In 17:15 we can see the compiler's hand attempting a rather crude knitting together of the two accounts by having David go back and forth from attending on Saul to attending his father's sheep!
"In addition to this, it is evident from 2 Samuel 21:19 that it wasn't David at all who killed Goliath:
"'There was another battle with the Philistines in Gob, in which Elhanan son of Jair from Bethlehem, killed Goliath of Gath, who had a spear with a shaft like the beam of loom workers.'
"Scholars agree that this is the older and more reliable account, and that instead of crediting an otherwise unknown man named Elhanan with the deed, legend came to attribute it to David in time.
"In chapter 31 of First Samuel, we read of Saul’s death by suicide (verse 4). But in 2 Samuel 1:9,l0, we are told that Saul requested an Amalekite to finish him off, and the Amalekite did so. Yet, we are later told that it was the Philistines who had killed Saul (2 Sam. 21:12).
"Second Samuel chapter 8 and First Chronicles chapter 18 are similar except for the last words, which, in the former are: 'And David's sons were priests,' and in the latter: 'and David's sons were the chief assistants to the king.' To the priestly Chronicler, no one could be a priest unless he was of the tribe of Levi. He therefore had to change 'priests' to 'assistants to the king'. This also indicates that the so-called Mosaic laws which contained this prohibition on priesthood were not around in David's time but came much later, and so, were not at all from Moses.
"Even the murderous-minded David, who had no qualms about sending men to certain death and then taking their wives, is upset at God's uncontrollable temper in 2 Samuel 6:6. There we read of Uzzah who, acting on reflex, reached out his hand to catch the sacred ark that was tipping, only to be instantly zapped by God for such a horrid sin!
"In 1 Kings we come upon that 'wisest man in the world,' Solomon, the builder of the temple that never existed. In First Kings 9:15-22 we learn that Solomon conscripted Canaanites to do the building, and that none of the Israelites did the work. But in 1 Kings 5:13 we learn that they were all Israelites.
"If I may digress to external evidence for a moment (for I could go on forever with these textual contradictions), I’ll tell you why I believe this Solomon never really lived (and I have my doubts about most of the people in the Bible, for that matter). The story told to illustrate his great wisdom, in which he judges who is the real mother of a child, is taken from the literature of the Jains of India. And Proverbs 22:17 to 23:11 is a nearly verbatim translation of the Egyptian book The Wisdom of Amenemope, written about 550 years before. The story of Sheba (the queen thereof coming to see Solomon) was taken from the Mahabharata, a book of Hindu poetry older than the book of Samuel. According to 2 Chronicles 9:23, 'all the kings of the earth sought his presence.' If this is true, it is very strange that not one of them mentions him. He allegedly lived just prior to Homer and Hesiod, yet they do not mention this richest and wisest man on earth. Herodotus, the 'father of history' who traveled throughout the Middle East at this time, does not mention him or even the Jews (who were in reality a tiny, insignificant, Semitic tribe, indistinguishable from those about them).
"Returning to the contradictions: Elijah calls down fire from heaven to consume two groups of messengers (51 in each killing). The leader of the third group foolish enough to brave his God's unpredictable wrath, implores Elijah (in Second Kings, chapter one):
"'Let my life and the lives of these fifty men, your servants, count for something in your sight! Already fire has come down from heaven consuming 2 companies of fifty men. But now, let my life mean something to you!'
"Elijah certainly needed someone to teach him the value of human life, but then so did the God who sent the fire. Prometheus also brought down fire from heaven in the ancient Greek myth (but that, of course, is an unbelievable myth, whereas the Hebrew copy is Divine Truth). In later times the myth-makers made their heroes more humane; Jesus, for instance is made to reprimand the disciples for wanting to call down fire on their enemies. Elijah also seems to be at variance with later and earlier admonition to be obedient and respectful to the king (and so his messengers) (Proverbs 24:21; Romans 13:1-4).
"Elijah's being taken up in a fiery chariot wasn't original either; Romulus, the supposed founder of Rome, was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, and Mirtha, the king of Persia, rode a similar vehicle to the same destination.
"Elijah’s successor Elisha carried on his fine tradition: when some little children called him a 'bald-head', he had God send two bears to tear them to shreds. What very tolerant people these men of God were! Can this be in the same book that says to love our enemies and pray for them? If it is, then these two parts of the book are ignorant of each other; and therefore God couldn't have supervised the writing of it.
"Jehu belongs to the same class of unfortunate prophets as does Balaam. He did what God told him to do, and is judged as wicked for having done so. The account in chapters 9 through 10 of Second Kings presents Jehu as having done well: God first commissions him,
"'"Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, you shall destroy the house of Ahab your master… and all the rest of the family of Ahab. I will cut off every male of Ahab's line"… Thereupon Jehu slew all who were left of the family of Ahab… leaving him no survivors… The LORD said to Jehu, "Because you have done well what I deem right, and have treated the house of Ahab as I desire, yours sons to the fourth generation shall sit upon the throne of Israel."'
"What a surprise we get, though, when we read in Hosea 1:4:
"'I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed at Jezereel'!
"Jezereel was the place where Jehu 'did well what God deemed right' by slaughtering the family of Ahab. Now God is going to punish his great-great-great-grandson because of it? Yes, the prophecy was fulfilled by the murder of Zechariah in 2 Kings 15:10.
"A quick contradiction in the 17th chapter of 2 Kings concerning the Samaritans who 'venerated the LORD' according to verses 32 and 33, and who 'did not venerate the LORD' according to verse 34 (which was written later, when the Jews' animosity towards their neighbors had increased).
"I've already mentioned the intervening books in one connection or another, so let's skip to Daniel. The story of Daniel was taken from a North Syrian poem written about a thousand years before. The hero, Daniel, was a judge, lawgiver, and provider for his people. This poem about him became the source and model for many mythical heroes in many races. It is this Daniel that Ezekiel refers to in 14:14 of his book."
"How do you know that?" Ted asked, "How do you know it's not the Daniel of the Bible Ezekiel refers to?"
"Quite simply because Ezekiel was written before the time of the Biblical Daniel. Even a comment in the New American Bible on this verse in Ezekiel admits:
"'The Daniel mentioned here may be the traditional just judge of the ancient past; celebrated in Canaanite literature, who is possibly reflected in Daniel 13, but is not the hero of Daniel 1-12.'
"In fact, it's thought that the writer of the book of Daniel got the idea for the name from Ezekiel's comment, rather than the other way around. This Syrian Daniel was also the source for the Hebrew's Joseph, and even for the woman he married. (Joseph is said to have married Asenath, whereas in the Syrian poem it is Anath, which, allowing for slight corruption, is the same name.)
"The story of Jonah is also a copy. Hercules (we are told) was also swallowed by a whale at Joppa, and he too remained in its belly for three days. The Persians tell us that Jamshyd was devoured by a sea monster that later vomited him out safely upon the shore. Then there is the Greek myth of Arion, who was thrown overboard for causing a storm, and was saved by a dolphin. In India, Saktadeva was swallowed by a fish and later stepped out unharmed. All these stories, of course, are patent falsehood, and only the Bible is Gospel Truth.
"If you're beginning to wonder why Almighty God couldn't come up with more original stories for his one and only book, and why he had to resort to such plagiarism, I have an even better topic for wonderment: Why couldn't God's son see through all this? Why did he also fall prey to believing in the Bible? Why was he unable to see (as we've proven beyond a doubt) that Moses, for instance couldn't have written the Torah? Why does he say 'in the book of Moses' or 'where Moses wrote…' and such expressions?
"The reason Jesus didn't detect that these were myths is that Jesus himself is a myth! Consider the myths surrounding the Greek Hercules, from which the Jews got a few of their ideas for Jesus: Hercules was born of a virgin, he had a god for a father, he too was the 'only begotten' of his father Zeus, he too was called 'Savior' and 'the good shepherd'. He died, went to the lower region, and then ascended to heaven from Mount Orca. He was also called the 'Prince of Peace', and was known to strangle snakes in his crib.
"Virgin birth was a favorite myth to attach to 'saviors' long before Jesus came on the scene. The mothers of Sosiosh the Persian, Attis, Romulus and Remus, Bacchus, Aesculapius, Zoroaster, and many others, were all virgins. Christians laugh at the credulity of those 'pagans' who believed such things. It's obvious to them that such stories were only told in order to magnify the greatness of the individuals. But perhaps Christians should concentrate on the 'beam in their own eye'!
"Annunciation was also part of the myth-makers' stock-and-trade: an angel announced the birth of Samson and Samuel, as well as Zoroaster. In Mexico an angel announced to Sochequetzal (a virgin) that she would conceive and bear a son (Quetzalcoatl) miraculously. Bodhisat announced to Maia the coming birth of Buddha.
"In fact, even the name Mary seems to have been borrowed from the surrounding nations for the Jesus myth. We've just seen the similarity in the name of Buddha's mother Maia. Agni's mother was Maya; Adonis' mother was Myrrha; Bacchus' mother was Myrrha; Sommona Cadom, the Siamese savior, had a mother named Maya Maria; Krishna's mother was Mariama; and the divine mothers of Pontus and Sumeria were Ma and Mama, respectively.
"We are told in The Anacalypris that at the birth of Socrates, 470 BCE:
"'Magi came from the east to offer gifts at Socrates' birth, also bringing gold, frankincense, and myrrh.'
"It's interesting that myrrh plays such a large part in this: Adonis, who was a god of vegetation, was said to have been born from a myrrh tree, and so the use of myrrh as incense at the festival of Adonis became established. Incense was also burnt by the idolatrous Hebrews to the Queen of Heaven Astarte (Easter) as in Jeremiah 44:l7-l9. Later, a rationalistic touch came about when it was suggested that Adonis' mother was named Myrrh(a).
"At the birth of Krishna, 1200 BCE, 'angels, shepherds, and the prophets attended. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were brought to him.' And when Confucius was born in 598 BCE, 'Five wise men from a distance came to the house, celestial music was heard in the skies, and angels attended the scene.' Magi also attended the birth of Mithra, Zoroaster, and Osiris.
"The savior myths also have the common theme of some great power trying to kill the savior. In Egypt, it was Herut seeking to destroy Horus; in Greece it was Python, the serpent, who threatened Apollo; in India, Kansa sought to destroy Krishna; the same theme occurs in Pharaoh trying to kill the infant Moses, and even in God seeking to kill him later (Exodus 4:24). Saul seeking to kill David recreates the same idea.
"The story of the youthful Jesus in the temple comes from Egypt in its original form. There, Isis searches for her lost son Horus and finds him in the temple of the sun teaching the priests.
"The gods of India, Greece, and Egypt were all baptized (in fact the Egyptian god Anup was called 'The Baptizer') and supernatural phenomena attended each baptism.
"The temptation in the wilderness is a steal from the Vendidad in which Zoroaster is tempted; and this story was taken, in turn, from the story in Hindu literature in which Buddha was tempted by the demon Wasawrthi.
"The 12 apostles found their origin in such myths as the Hindu's 12 Aditya; the Greeks had 12 Titans; in Scandinavia they were the 12 Aesirs of Asgard; the gods Osiris and Marduk also had their 12 helpers.
"We are told that Jesus fed 5,000 on five leaves and two fishes in Bethany. But so near a contemporary as Origen (of the second century) could find no trace of 'Bethany beyond Jordan'. It never existed; the idea came from Egypt where Bethanu was called 'the place of multiplying bread'. Such a thing suggesting a miracle to the Hebrew mind is paralleled in how they thought up the idea of all the water in Egypt turning to blood. You see, every year the Nile floods it banks and the red clay turns the water red.
"The resurrection of Lazarus also was taken from Bethanu, Egypt. There, Horus came to raise his father from the dead. Even the names Mary, Martha , and Lazarus were taken from this story where the two sisters were Meri and Merti, and their brother was El-Azarus.
"The story of raising Jarius' daughter came from India. In the Hari-Purana we have an account of Krishna raising a young girl from the dead, and the similarities in detail are too great to ignore:
"'"Why do you weep?" replied Krishna, in a gentle voice, "Do you not see that she is sleeping? See she moves. Kalavatti! Rise and walk!" But the crowd marveled and cried out, "This is a god, since death is no more for him than sleeping."'
"You Witnesses have rightly noted that the cross was a popular pagan article of veneration and was used to represent all manner of gods around the Mediterranean. What you failed to note is that the reason so many crosses represented gods, was that these gods had died on crosses! In Babylon, Ishtar 'stood the cross beside' (as a forerunner of Mary) as her son, Tammuz, was crucified. (He was then buried and resurrected, of course, being the god of vegetation that he was; and his resurrection corresponded to spring, right after a 40-day period of 'Lent' in which the women 'wept for Tammuz' (Ezekiel 8:14).
"Among the Telingonese, their god is pictured with nail holes in his feet. In the Norse Elder Edda, Odin is 'wounded with a spear' while hanging in self-sacrifice on the World Tree (just as Jesus is said to have died on a 'tree' in Acts 5:30) and he is represented as saying, 'I knew that I hung on the windswept tree nine whole nights wounded with a spear, and to Odin offered myself to myself on that tree.'
"Quetzalcoatl was not only crucified, but the place where he was crucified means 'place of the skull' (as does Christ's Golgatha). In fact, some 16 'saviors' were crucified.
"Why is it that men kill their gods almost without exception? Once again the answer lies in primitive superstitious sympathetic magic. The Bible is right, actually, when it ascribes our salvation to Jesus' death. But the later rationale behind this was not that which originally brought about the story. First of all we must take into consideration that primitive peoples were very superstitious. They had no understanding of meteorology or simple science; spirits and gods caused everything, and one must be constantly on guard against taboos that would cause the loss of one's soul or affect the seasons and the vegetation. Kings and leaders were connected in their minds with gods. Pharaoh was worshipped as a god, and even the king of Israel was thought to be God's son (Psalm 2:6, 7).
"The god-king had to be extra-extra careful about breaking taboos, for the whole universe hinged upon him. In some cases, he was not allowed to even touch the earth lest he be defiled, and he had to be carried about. Even an awkward movement of his arms might bring bad luck to the world, so he was constantly watched over. Now, if the king had such a strong connection with nature, what would happen if the king were allowed to grow old and feeble, and eventually die? Why that would mean catastrophe! The end of the world! The first solution they hit upon was to murder the king at the first sign of enfeeblement and transfer his powers to some virile young man. After awhile it's easy to imagine that no one wanted the job of being king, so they hit upon an improvement: find a substitute for the king, and kill him instead of the king! I'll quote Sir James Frazer, the anthropologist, on this:
"'Now it was as a god or demigod that the king had to die; therefore the substitute who died for him had to be invested, at least for the occasion, with the divine attributes of the king. But no one could so well represent the king in his divine character as his son, who might be supposed to share the divine afflatus of his father. No one, therefore, could so appropriately die for the king, and through him, for the whole people, as the king's son.' (The New Golden Bough, page 296.)"
"Very fine," Richard yawned, "We're glad you know so much about the early pagans, but there's nothing like that in the Bible. The Jews didn't put any of their kings to death, they respected them as the anointed of Jehovah and let them live long lives."
"Not true." Bill corrected, "Most of them died in war while they were still young, and we can't really take their word for how long the rest of them lived, since they tell us some people lived for hundreds of years. The smart but ruthless kings seemed to have appeased the superstitious desires of the people by murdering their brothers upon succession to the throne. Solomon executed his eldest brother (supposedly the rightful heir) Adonijah (1 Kings 2:22-24) to remove the stipulation for his own death; Jehoram put all his brothers to the sword in 2 Chronicles 21:4; and Abimelech did likewise with all seventy of his brothers.
"But, more importantly, let me again quote Frazer:
"'Among the Semites of Western Asia, the king, in a time of national danger, sometimes gave his own son to die as a sacrifice for the people. Thus Philo of Byblus, in his work on the Jews, says: "It was an ancient custom in a crisis of great danger that the ruler of a city or nation should give his beloved son to die for the whole people, as a ransom offered to the avenging demons; and the children thus offered were slain with mystic rites. So Cronus, whom the Phoenicians call El, being king of the land and having an only-begotten son called Jeod (for in the Phoenician tongue Jeous signifies 'only begotten'), dressed him in royal robes and sacrificed him upon an altar in time of war, when the country was in great danger from the enemy." When the king of Moab was besieged by the Israelites and hard beset, he took his eldest son, who should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. (2 Kings 3:27.) With the preceding evidence before us we may safely infer that a custom of allowing a king to kill his son, as a substitute or vicarious sacrifice for himself, would be in no way exceptional or surprising… the criminal, who perished on the cross or the gallows at Babylon, died instead of the king in whose royal robes he had been allowed to masquerade for a few days.'
"It is this ancient superstitious custom, then," Bill continued, "that the high priest Caiaphas refers to when he tells the Sanhedrin:
"'You do not know anything at all, and you do not reason out that it is to your benefit for one man to die in behalf of the people and not for the whole nation to be destroyed.' (John 11:49, 50.)
"Why would the nation of Israel have been destroyed if they hadn't killed Jesus? It doesn't make sense from the Biblical account. That says that God cast them off because they did have Jesus killed! But, reasoning on the superstitious level, it makes sense that they had to have a sacrifice of someone who represented their king-god due to the pressures of the Romans upon them.
"Anyone who knows anything about the history of this time would know that the last thing in the world the Jews would have shouted out would be 'we have no king but Caesar'. Their hatred of the Roman's rule over them was intense. This could only have been written by a gentile who, together with his 'let his blood be upon us and our children' was trying to cast aspersions on the Jewish people.
"The whole story, I think, was made up, though doubtless there could have been Jewish males at that time about that age with the name Jesus. And perhaps one of them even was a 'prophet'. And, of course, there is even a slim chance that he said something like the things that are recorded in the Bible, and may have even been executed for sedition. But even granting that, taking the story as a whole, I'd still have to say it is made up. In the nineteenth century an eminent scholar, Rabbi Wise, searched the records of Pilate’s court for records of Jesus' trial. He found none. Had there actually lived a man who walked on water, raised the dead, healed the sick, and so on, history would've recorded it. It didn't. And it wasn't due to a lack of interested historians. The most illustrious historians of all time were living just then: Seneca, Martial, Juvenal, Epictetus, Tacitus, Livy, Pliny, Philo, Josephus, among others. These were men of great intellect, deeply concerned with the doctrines and morals of their day. Why, then, didn't they record the wonder-worker of all time? Because he was a savior, and all saviors are myths. The fact is, there is not a single word about Christ, secular or otherwise (including 'Divine') dating from the first century. And the evidence of uncertainty about dates and times in the details of the Gospels indicates a long-subsequent authorship (such as the second or third centuries)."
"What confusions about dates are there?" Ted asked.
"Well, for instance, Herod was king at the time of Jesus' birth according to the Bible, and for about two years thereafter. But, in fact, he died in 4 BCE. So Jesus would've had to have been born in 6 BCE, not 1 CE, as is claimed. And, according to Luke, Cyrenius was then governor of Syria, but according to Syrian records, Herod had died nearly ten years before Cyrenius became governor.
"But I don't want to get into the contradictions in the Gospels because I’m running out of time. Let's talk a little about Jesus' teachings instead, because that's the one thing that 'makes' the Bible for a lot of people.
"But here again we find nothing original. The Son of God could find nothing totally new to say. The famous 'golden rule' already existed in seven different religions by this time. Buddha himself was reputed to have said it in reverse 600 years before Jesus: 'Do not do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you' was the gist of it.
"Jesus said to 'turn the other cheek'. In my early life I followed this advice to the letter, and as a result was constantly getting beat up at school. When people know that you won't fight back, they'll take advantage of you. It sounds real nice on paper, but it just isn't a practical theory.
"But turning the other cheek and praying for your enemies was certainly something new for the Jews to hear. Especially after their God had helped them kill off all the former inhabitants of the land they were now on, and after they’d been told not to let their heart feel sorry for these people. It was a totally different philosophy to them and contradicted everything in their 'sacred books' as to God's real nature (being the 'Lord of armies').
"But it's questionable as to whether Jesus practiced what he preached on this matter. Look at him 'cursing his enemies', the Pharisees, and physically throwing the money-changers out of the temple!
"Look at his crass attitude towards the mourners he elsewhere says are 'blessed because they will be comforted', when he says, 'let the dead bury their dead'.
"Towards the poor he also promised a blessing. But when it was pointed out that he could do without the luxury of perfumed feet and donate the money to those in poverty around him, he dismissed the idea offhand with: 'The poor you always have with you, but me you do not always have with you.' Some compassion!
"Look at his gross disrespect for his family and his refuting of the commandment to honor one's parents when he refuses to even talk to or acknowledge his family, and saying in Luke 14:26:
"'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.'
"So let's not assume that Christ's message was one of total love and peace, it was a confused message with only an occasional glimpse of goodness. He tells us that he's come to bring, not peace, but a sword, and to divide up families. But this side of him is ignored, and was ignored from the start; contrast what we just quoted Jesus as saying about hating your parents and brothers and sisters with 1 John 3:15 which tells us that anyone who has hatred for his brother in his heart is a manslayer!
"Or take Jesus' breaking of the Law (which he said he wouldn't do, only modify it) when he refuses to stone an adulteress, and contrast that to his promising eternal hell-fire to anyone who has lust in his heart -- it just isn't consistent!
"The only good things Jesus' teachings contain are simple truths which we don't need anyone to tell us. The nations all about Israel had similar moral codes; only Israel hadn't developed them yet, so anyone coming along preaching them would seem very lofty indeed.
"Outside of that, Jesus only offers us blind faith and child-like innocence and trust in the supernatural. He said to take no thought for the next day; that God would provide. Well, if you follow such pretty thoughts, the heavenly father will let you starve and his murderous parasites will get you. Mankind must realize that we need to take things into our own hands and stop wasting time waiting around for God to take care of us. If Jesus were really mankind's savior, he wouldn't have cured a handful of people of blindness and leprosy; he would've taught mankind the real causes of diseases and their cure so that we wouldn't have had to go through thousands of years of leeches and blood-letting and plagues that killed millions. (But then again, if God were really a God of love, there would never have been disease to begin with.)"
"Are you done now?" Richard asked as he stared in mock amazement at his watch.
"I could be, if you have to go. Though I’d also like to say a few things about Paul, since he's the real founder of Christianity."
"Well, I think we've given you more than enough time to present your viewpoint."
"Yes, and I want to thank you for not interrupting me; you let me present nearly my whole case and didn't hamper me at all. Now, if you'd care to make your case for the Bible's truthfulness, I'd be happy to reciprocate."
"Brother Olson," Richard called, "he's finished now. Did you want to say anything?"
Arthur, his eyes tight shut, stirred a bit, licked his lips with great effort, and forced the dry words out: "Still I believe." With that his body relaxed and he evidently faded off to sleep.
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Falling in Truth 
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Chapter 14: God Again
Ted didn't work that Monday; instead he filled the day with immense sorrow and confusion. The sight of Cynthia lying dead in her coffin stared back at him in his mind's eye wherever he looked. She was there because of him: because he had introduced her to "the Truth". If he hadn't done so, she would've had that blood transfusion without delay. And so he was convinced that he had killed her.
At the same time he felt the guilt of wanting her to have the transfusion. Hadn't he been fully persuaded that to do so was to break God's law? This guilt was not alleviated even by the thoughts that streamed into his head which seemed to contradict the notion of blood transfusion being a sin. And then there were the many contradictions that Bill had brought up yesterday, and how neither Richard nor Arthur could answer them.
He had concentrated so fully on all his shortcomings and done so much soul searching lately that his depression was now bottoming-out.
The pain was no longer sharp, but numbing and apathetic. Oddly enough, it seemed to focus itself on his left wrist. Dull throbs continually assaulted his wrist; his sadness seemed concentrated there. He tried to figure out why this was so (his mind was still attuned to reasoning everything out in spite of all he'd been through). It was a mistake, though, for him to try to understand his psychosomatic pain because he came to the unbalanced conclusion that his wrist was calling out: aching for a razor blade.
He went to the bathroom and searched through the medicine cabinet for one. Fortunately, he used an electric razor and Paul had left no blades behind. He thought briefly about going to buy one at the drug store, but he had absolutely no money. As it turned out, his poverty saved his life.
Deprived of such drastic action, he merely brooded until the kids came up to go to bed. He seldom talked to them anymore. They each had their individual sorrows, and as Ted proved he wouldn't help them with theirs, he felt they couldn't help him with his. "Good night" was all the conversation they had.
He went to work the next day. Bill was wise enough to give him a lot of work to keep his mind occupied, and this helped a great deal in ridding him of his moroseness. Most of the morning he spent shoveling snow around the block that their building occupied. It was a frigid day and he had to work fast and hard to stay warm, with no time to think how sad he was.
"Do you like standing out in the cold waiting for late busses?" Bill asked him at the end of the day. When Ted responded with a negative, he offered him a ride home in his new car. "It's a concession I had to make to the oil companies," Bill explained as Ted viewed the subcompact and wondered how to crawl inside.
They rode along in silence for half the distance until Ted felt the need to speak, "I was very impressed with what you said on Sunday about the Bible. I never knew you had so much knowledge on the subject."
"Well, I used to be as involved with religion as you are now," Bill confessed, "till I reasoned my way out of it. But tell me, what conclusions did you draw from that encounter. You know I promised to prove to you that it wasn't the truth. Did I keep my promise?"
"I don't know. What you said made a lot of sense, and it showed me that the Bible wasn't very much like I thought it was. But I keep thinking to myself that if there's a God he must've given us a revelation of his will, and the Bible is the only book that comes close to filling the bill."
"Why do you say that?" Bill asked, "Even if there was a God, why should he automatically be an author?"
"Well, because for every desire God created in us he provided for its satisfaction: food for our hunger, water for our thirst, and so on. But we have a great desire to know the meaning of life and to know about him. So, judging from everything else, it seems reasonable to think that he gave us a revelation of himself to satisfy our curiosity, otherwise he wouldn't have created curiosity in us."
"That's fine reasoning from your first two premises," Bill agreed, "but I think the first two premises are wrong. But since I can't disprove God's existence, let me attack the second premise. How can you say that our every desire is provided for? What about the hunger of children in India? What about the desire for peace? What about the desire to cure cancer? What real knowledge does the Bible convey, anyway? It steered us wrong in astronomy, to say the least. And what does it even tell us, clearly, about God? That he doesn't regret except when he regrets; that he's vindictive except when he's love; that he hates lying except when he or one of his favorites lies; that he's impartial except for those he's partial to; that he wants to save everyone except all those he'll delight to destroy…"
Ted interrupted him and demanded: "Are you really trying to take advantage of my grieving state to pull me out of the Truth? How do you answer that charge?"
"Innocent." Bill responded firmly, "I asked you if you were ready to have me disprove your cherished beliefs, and you said you were. So there's no one to blame but yourself. If you'd rather not talk about it at this time, just say so. But I think it'll be helpful for you to do so; you need to get your head straight at this time before they lay a real heavy guilt-trip on you for trying to save Cyn's life. They'll disfellowship you for what you did, you know. And then where will you be? If you believe that it matters, you'll have nothing at all left. You'll have lost all self-respect as well as your love, and that will pile on top of your grief; and I fear the consequences."
Ted wondered if he should tell him of his suicidal thoughts of the previous day. But since Bill seemed to already suspect as much, he let it go. They reached the house and Ted invited him up. He needed company and was interested in hearing more of what Bill had to say.
As they walked through the entranceway, Richard poked his head out the door, "Hey, Ted -- oh, you're here!"
"Hello, Richard, nice to see you again," Bill greeted.
"So you've come around," Richard joked for some reason, "and you're going to study the Bible with Ted, huh?"
"I already put the Bible to its final resting place," Bill responded, immediately realizing the untimeliness of the comment, but adding, "Now we're going to do the same with God himself. Care to join us?"
"Ted," Richard said, mustering up his sincerest concerned look, "you might be in trouble, being considered for disfellowshipping and all, but this is really too much. You don't want to fall completely out of the Truth, do you?"
"No, I don't want to fall out of the Truth. But maybe I'm falling into it now. In any case, how can I know what is the truth without hearing both sides?"
"Just a minute, I’ll get my Bible and be right up," Richard said and disappeared again behind his door.
It was some time before he came up, though, and Ted showed Bill around his apartment in the meantime.
"I found the perfect quote for you," Richard boasted when he finally shouldered his way through the door with his arms loaded with books.
"Oh, really?" Bill said with a smile, "I see you came well prepared -- and they’re not even mostly Watchtower books. I'm impressed. Let's see, you've got Will Durant's Story of Philosophy, and Darwin's books -- have you actually read any of these, or have you just looked up the passages the Watchtower has referred to out of context?"
Ignoring the jibe, Richard sat down, spread the books on the coffee table, turned to the first mentioned book, and prepared to read. "Now this fits you in our last engagement perfectly because the Bible refers to itself as a mirror in that it's self-revealing. The philosopher Schopenhauer said:
"'Works like this are as a mirror: if an ass looks in you cannot expect an angel to look out.'
"And he also said:
"'When a head and a book come into collision, and one sounds hollow, is it always the book?'"
At this Richard forced himself to laugh, as Bill and Ted displayed polite smiles at the witticism.
"That's very clever," Bill replied, "but am I to accept that as your total answer to all my objections last Sunday? Because, unless you care to reopen the subject, I consider it closed; we want to move on to discussing the existence of God."
"Since I know how you like to impress everyone by quoting worldly philosophers," Richard replied, "have you ever read of Pascal's Wager?"
"I have."
"How do you answer it?"
"Before you attempt to answer it," Ted intervened, "first tell me what it is."
Bill motioned for Richard to do the honor, since he seemed so eager. So Richard said: "Pascal pointed out that if you were to look at belief in God as a wager you had to make, all the odds would be on the side of belief, and so it would be the wisest thing to do. You see, if there is a God, and you make the wager there is, and thus believe in him and live your life accordingly, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose; you've got everlasting life on the one hand and death on the other. But, say there isn't a God and you bet there was; well, you're still no worse off; you'll just die like everybody else. But if there is a God, and you bet that there isn't, well then you're in the most miserable possible state; you've lost everything. So the most intelligent thing to do, when you weigh the outcomes, is to believe in God whether he exists or not, because the only really bad outcome is when you disbelieve and it turns out that you're wrong."
"That's simple, but brilliant!" Ted noted.
"It's also crass," Bill argued, "The philosopher William James made a good answer to Pascal's Wager. First of all he noted that it was a vile reason, and if a person were to base his faith in God on something so mercenary, God would destroy him at the Judgment anyway."
"What do you mean by mercenary?" asked Ted.
"I mean that you're believing in God for what you can get out of it. It sounds like a businessman trying to get the most profit out of a situation and avoid default at all costs. It has nothing to do with love for God or man, only with love for self, otherwise known as selfishness. Christ is even supposed to have implied that if you're so concerned with your own soul, you'll lose it.
"But the main objection James raised was this: you cannot will yourself to believe something; it's impossible. If I accepted Pascal's Wager as completely valid, and feared the consequences of disbelieving in his particular God, as he wants me to, I still couldn't make myself believe in his God."
"Why not?" asked Richard.
"Could you have made yourself believe in the gods of the Romans -- Jupiter, and the rest of that lot -- even if it meant your life (as it did for many Christians in the first century)?"
"No."
"Neither can I make myself believe in the God the Romans have today. But let's see what other uses we could make of the Wager. Look at hell, for instance -- I mean the fire and brimstone variety. According to Pascal's reasoning, you should believe in hell as well as one of the major religions that teaches it. The reason is simple: place the Jehovah's Witnesses' religion next to the Catholic's, for instance. The Witnesses tell us that if we're not one of them we'll merely cease to exist, in a word: die. But the Catholics state that if we're not numbered among them, we'll burn in terrible torments forever and ever in hell. Now, if the Catholics are wrong, it just means that we'll die as Catholics. But if they are right, and we became Jehovah's Witnesses, that would be the worst possible thing. So here again, in order to avoid the worst possible alternative, we become Catholics!
"That's really all the Wager does," Bill concluded, "it makes us choose the position which most threatens disbelievers of it.
"But isn't it indeed strange that we have all these different religions in dispute after God went to all that trouble to write a book for us, telling all about himself and how to worship him and live our lives? You'd think he'd have been smart enough to write plainly enough for us to understand it. For what sense does it make to give us a book with hundreds of possible interpretations? Then we're better off throwing it away and doing as Jesus says when he asks, 'Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?' (Luke 12:57).
"There are no sects in science or mathematics," Bill continued, "We do not hear some scientists saying 'I am a Newtonian' and others 'I am an Einsteinian' or other such absurd things. And why is that? Because the sciences are truths, and men agree on truths when they see them. As I told Ted before, no man can have the truth presented to him so as to understand it, and not believe it. Yet people cannot believe your religion, and you cannot believe theirs for the simple reason that they have nothing to do with truth. All your disputes about God are nothing more than what Voltaire calls 'Questions about light by men born blind.'"
"But we're not born blind," Richard insisted, "we're given a God-given conscience to know good from evil. And this moral sense that is prevalent throughout all humanity is clear evidence that God does indeed exist. We may not see him with our physical eyes, but we can see him in our mind's eye because of our conscience."
"According to your own Bible account," Bill pointed out, "this knowledge of good and evil was something man had to grasp for himself from an unwilling God who then punished him for it. But let's pretend you're right, and not self-contradictory (as always). You say this 'conscience' is universal, and thus it could only have come from God?"
"That's what I say," Richard agreed.
"Hand me your Story of Philosophy for a moment, and let me show you a part you obviously haven't read."
Richard did so, and Bill quickly turned to the section on Herbert Spencer, reading:
"'We find the most diverse, and apparently the most hostile, conceptions of the good. There is hardly any item of our Western moral code which is not somewhere held to be immoral; not only polygamy, but suicide, murder of one's own countrymen, even of one's parents, find in one people or another a lofty moral approbation. The wives of Fijian chiefs consider it a sacred duty to suffer strangulation on the death of their husbands. A woman who had been rescued by Williams escaped during the night, and, swimming across the river, and presenting herself to her own people, insisted on the completion of the sacrifice which she had in a moment of weakness reluctantly consented to forego; and Wilkes tells of another who loaded her rescuer with abuse, and ever afterwards manifested the most deadly hatred towards him. Livingstone says of the Makololo women, on the shores of the Zambesi, that they were quite shocked to hear that in England a man had only one wife; to have only one was not 'respectable'. So, too, in Equatorial Africa, according to Reade, 'If a man marries, and his wife thinks that he can afford another spouse, she pesters him to marry again; and calls him a "stingy fellow" if he declines to do so.'
"Such facts, of course, conflict with the belief that there is an inborn moral sense which tells each man what is right and what is wrong," Bill concluded.
"Now hand me Darwin's Descent of Man," Bill requested. And after Richard reluctantly turned the book over to him, he read:
"'BELIEF IN GOD--RELIGION.--There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary, there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travelers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed, and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their language to express such an idea. It is also probable, as Mr. Tylor has shown, that dreams may have first given rise to the notion of spirits; for savages do not readily distinguish between subjective and objective impressions. When a savage dreams, the figures which appear before him are believed to have come from a distance and to stand over him; or the soul of the dreamer goes out on its travels, and comes home with a remembrance of what it has seen… Mr. Herbert Spencer accounts for the earliest forms of religious belief throughout the world, by man being led through dreams… The belief in spiritual agencies would easily pass into the belief in the existence of one or more gods. For savages would naturally attribute to spirits the same passions, the same love of vengeance or simplest form of justice, and the same affections which they themselves feel… Yet we could never discover that the Fuegians believed in what we should call a God, or practiced any religious rites; and Jemmy Button, with justifiable pride, stoutly maintained that there was no devil in his land. This latter assertion is the more remarkable, as with savages the belief in bad spirits is far more common than that in good ones.'
"So much for the 'universality' of the belief in God," Bill commented. "Writing in the next chapter on the 'moral sense', Darwin has these interesting comments:
"'Even when an action is opposed to no special instinct, merely to know that our friends and equals despise us for it is enough to cause great misery. Who can doubt that the refusal to fight a duel through fear has caused many men an agony of shame? Many a Hindoo, it is said, has been stirred to the bottom of his soul by having partaken of unclean food. Here is another case of what must, I think, be called remorse: Dr. Lander acted as a magistrate in West Australia and relates that a native on his farm, after losing one of his wives from disease, came and said that "he was going to a distant tribe to spear a woman, to satisfy his sense of duty to his wife. I told him that if he did so I would send him to prison for life. He remained about the farm for some months, but got exceedingly thin, and complained that he could not rest or eat, that his wife's spirit was haunting him because he had not taken a life for hers. I was inexorable, and assured him that nothing should save him if he did." Nevertheless the man disappeared for more than a year, and then returned in high condition; and his other wife told Dr. Lander that her husband had taken the life of a woman belonging to another tribe; but it was impossible to obtain legal evidence of the act. The breach of a rule held sacred by the tribe will thus, as it seems, give rise to the deepest feelings, -- and this quite apart from the social instincts, excepting insofar as the rule is grounded on the judgment of the community. How so many strange superstitions have arisen throughout the world we know not; nor can we tell how some real and great crimes, such as incest, have come to be held in an abhorrence (which is not, however, quite universal) by the lowest savages. It is even doubtful whether in some tribes incest would be looked on with greater horror, than would the marriage of a man with a woman bearing the same name, though not a relation. To violate this law is a crime which the Australians hold in the greatest abhorrence, in this agreeing with certain tribes of North America. When the question is put in either district, is it worse to kill a girl of a foreign tribe, or to marry a girl of one's own, an answer just the opposite of ours would be given without hesitation. We may, therefore, reject the belief, lately insisted on by some writers, that the abhorrence of incest is due to our possessing a God-implanted conscience… No tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery, and so on were common; consequently such crimes within the limits of the same tribe are branded with everlasting infamy; but excite no such sentiment beyond these limits. A North American Indian is well pleased with himself, and is honored by others, when he scalps a man of another tribe; and a Dyak cuts off the head of an unoffending person, and dries it as a trophy. The murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has met with no reproach; but infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious… It has been recorded that an Indian Thug conscientiously regretted that he had not robbed and strangled as many travelers as did his father before him. In a rude state of civilization the robbery of strangers is, indeed, generally considered as honorable… We have now seen that actions are regarded by savages, and were probably so regarded by primeval man, as good or bad, solely as they obviously affect the welfare of the tribe -- not that of the species, nor that of an individual member of the tribe. The judgment of the community will generally be guided by some rude experience of what is best in the long run for all members; but this judgment will not rarely err from ignorance and weak powers of reasoning. Hence the strangest customs and superstitions, in complete opposition to the true welfare and happiness of mankind, have become all powerful throughout the world. We see this in the horror felt by a Hindoo who breaks his caste, and in many other such cases.'
"I might add here," Bill commented, looking up from the book, 'That I recently read a case where, in a shipwreck, the Hindus refused to use the same rope to climb to safety, and they all perished just because of their strict caste rules."
"Or how about," Ted offered, sadly, "letting someone die because of a superstition about blood transfusion. It seems the same thing to me now."
"Yes," Bill agreed. "Darwin concludes:
"'It is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, whilst the brain is impressible, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.'
"I think that puts your notion of a 'God-given conscience' to rest," Bill concluded. "And if you can't prove God's existence through man, what does that leave you? You'll certainly agree that man is the highest being on this planet, so if you can't show God through him, you can't do it through anything else."
"Oh, but we can," replied Richard confidently, "the beauty of nature speaks of an artful God, and the harmony and order of the universe tell of a purposeful Creator. We can see from all of his creation that he is a God of love and tender kindness, and even that he has a sense of humor from the way young animals play. The fact that every little creature serves a purpose and has a place in the ecosystem shows that it must have been placed there by a purposeful God."
"How can you answer that?" asked a skeptical Ted.
"Like always," Bill quickly responded, "with the real facts in the case. The female fly known as the ichneumon has a long, needle-like tube called an ovipositor because she deposits the ovi, or eggs of her young with it. It is a very 'purposeful' and 'harmonious' thing, to be sure. But she uses it to deposit these eggs deep within the body of a caterpillar. When they hatch, these 'baby flies' start to eat their way out. But there is yet another marvelous sign of God's tender kindness in this arrangement; they have enough instinct to know not to eat the vital organs at first, they eat only the fat, connective tissues, and the like, till these are all gone. Only then do they eat up the rest from the inside out. The amount of suffering the caterpillars must undergo is unbearable even to think about; imagine a horde of rats inside you eating their way out!
"Fly-maggots that live within the noses of certain animals are a similar example of 'God's love and sense of humor'. Pain and suffering and gruesome death are the facts of nature, and if you choose to call it 'creation', I can think of no greater blasphemy to your God.
Snatching up the philosophy book again, Bill opened it and said, "You had applied Schopenhauer to me before, so I hope you won't object if I quote him too; he says of this matter:
"'The bull-dog ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary example of the kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the tail with its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head; the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place every time the experiment is tried… Yunghahn relates that he saw in Java a plain, as far as the eye could reach, entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a battlefield; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles… which come this way out of the sea to lay their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs who with their united strength lay them on their backs, strip off the small shell from the stomach, and devour them alive. But often then a tiger pounces upon the dogs… For this these turtles are born… Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. Yet even the human race reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will with itself; and we find man is a wolf to man. The total picture of life is almost too painful for contemplation; life depends on our not knowing it too well.'
"We humans get a very selfish outlook when we make the assertion that nature is a place displaying 'tender kindness'," Bill continued, "it is red in tooth and claw. It is true that we have eked out some relief from constant suffering at the expense of the rest of nature, but that shouldn't lead us to conclude the rest of the earthly creatures are as well off. The natural world is a bloody battlefield filled with unimaginable pain and horror. Where is your Godly 'harmony' when it comes to parasites, tapeworms, and vile diseases? It's not there; order is not there. The ecosystem you refer to points straight at natural selection – evolution -- but not at a loving God.
"Just look at ourselves -- how much pleasure is there in our lives? How much joy have you really had in your whole life? Does it add up to an hour? If so, you're fortunate indeed. We're built for pain; our skin possesses some 200,000 nerve endings for detecting temperature, half a million nerve endings for touch or pressure, and three million for pain! Our tongues are about 1,000 times more receptive to sourness than to sweetness, and 10,000 times more sensitive to bitterness! To go to the opposite end of the scale: plants are now believed to experience pain also. Scientists have recorded their 'screams' when injured."
"But what has all that got to do with anything?" Richard demanded, "How does any of that disprove God exists?"
"Well," Bill responded, "I just don't think a loving God would've made his creation like that; so capable of suffering and so many opportunities for it."
"But someone must've created it all," Richard argued, "The fact that there is a creation says that there must be a Creator. You once said yourself that every effect has a cause; so what is the cause of creation? It must be a Creator!"
"I agree that every cause has its effect," Bill replied, "you are the one who doesn’t believe it."
"But I just said that we do!" Richard insisted.
"But you don't believe what you just said," Bill said with a laugh. "Let me try to understand what you're trying to say: every effect has a cause, so every existing thing must’ve had a creator, therefore every existing thing proves God’s existence. That's what you're saying, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"And the whole purpose behind your saying this is to prove that God exists?"
"Naturally."
"All right then, let's say that God exists. Now, let's apply your rule: God is an existing thing, right?"
"Definitely."
"And every existing thing has to have a Creator, right?"
"Right."
"Then God must have a Creator."
Richard smiled in reply. He couldn't agree, of course, but didn't know how to answer the logic. So Bill continued, after letting his point sink in, "And furthermore, since God's Creator must be an existing thing, he too must have a Creator, and that Creator a Creator, and so on ad infinitum. So, you see, when it comes right down to it, in order for you to believe in one Creator, you must deny the cause-effect fact."
"Well, all right, we deny it in God's case," Richard acknowledged, "because God is the exception to the rule. You have to have an exception to every rule, don't you? Haven't you ever heard that ‘the exception proves the rule’?"
"Yes, I've heard it and I understand what it really means. It's using the archaic meaning of 'prove', that is, to 'test'. As the expression 'the proof of the pudding' doesn't mean that the pudding is logically correct, but that it is 'tested' when eaten. A moment's thought will show that an exception could never in a million years prove a rule in the logical sense of that word, but that it certainly would 'test' it, and would mean that it would have to be thrown out if the exception was important enough. And since your whole argument centers on proving that God is the First Cause, you can't have God be the exception to your rule that would prove this. If you do, your statement is really meaningless. It's as if you said, 'God is the Creator because God is the Creator.'"
"Well, I admit that we can't entirely understand God;" Richard replied, "he's too far above us. We can't comprehend the infinite, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The only possible explanation for the universe is that God created it. Life doesn't come from non-life, therefore we must've come from a living God. And don't ask me where the living God came from, because I don't know. He was just always there. You've got to start with that, with God always being there before all creation; we can't comprehend it, but it's the only answer."
"It's not the only answer," Bill insisted; "There is a sensible answer that we can comprehend, and which fits all the facts of cruel nature. And the factual answer is that 'non-life', as you call it, is precisely where life comes from."
"Don't tell me you believe in evolution when it can be so easily disproved!" Richard exclaimed.
"Do you really believe that it's been disproved in your books?"
"I sure do. We've got quotes of actual scientists who don't believe in evolution because the facts just aren't there."
"Yes, I've seen the 'actual' real, true, why-don't-you-believe-me 'scientists' you've quoted. I see you've got the old Watchtower book Evolution Versus the New World," Bill said, grabbing it and opening to the back. "Here they quote and praise one Anthony Standen, because he said that evolution was 'much further from being proved than men are from flying to the moon.' Now, the fact is that men have flown to the moon since this was written, and that shows you how much this 'scientist' knew about science and its abilities.
"I've read that booklet," Bill admitted, "as well as your other book there, Did Man Get Here by Evolution or by Creation?, and they both show that the writers did not bother to find out about their subject. They merely went looking for odd quotes they could use. They never bothered to discover that Darwin already answered the very ‘unanswerable’ questions that they raise.

"Take your statement, echoed from this book, that life cannot come from non-life. There is a justly famous experiment relating to this (which authors of such a book as this had no business ignoring or not knowing about).  The experiment was first conducted by Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago, and published in 1953.  In the experiment, non-organic matter was used to produce organic matter!  Miller induced electric sparks in an atmosphere of mostly hydrogen to replicate the conditions in earth's early history (lightning, that is, and a similar atmosphere). The result was that the atoms rearranged themselves to form amino acids: the building blocks of life!
"Since this is a scientific experiment, it is repeatable by anyone with the right equipment at any time.  And since 1953 there have been numerous such experiments around the world using different model gasses, and producing a variety of organic compounds. 
"One such experiment was conducted by a group at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego.  They exposed sulfur-bearing molecules (like those thought to have been present before the Earth formed) to low levels of light. Just the presence of the light was enough to generate organic compounds: molecules containing carbon, which form the chemical basis of life as we know it.
"In other experiments, scientists have been able to induce replication at the molecular level.  One such experiment was done by Manfred Eigen in Germany in the 1970's.  In this experiment, RNA was observed to replicate itself spontaneously.
"And as soon as you have reproduction taking place, you have variation, and with variation comes natural selection, and with natural selection comes evolution.
"These are all facts, not 'theory' as your book claims.  I wonder if the writers of your books bothered to conduct any of these experiments before making up their minds on this issue and deciding that they were qualified to write on the subject.  What do you think?"
Since no one offered an answer, Bill continued: "It is a fact that life was on this planet long before your Witness chronology of 42,000 years or so. The fossils prove that, and you are in no position to question the scientific dating procedures in this regard. Even allowing a healthy margin of error, life -- even man -- has been around a lot longer than that. The bones of our ancestors are a fact you can't dispense with just because artists have drawn in their facial features differently or because of the Piltdown-man hoax. Your book tries to write these skulls off as ancestors of the modern-day ape rather than man, and some of them are, it's true. But in trying so hard to deny evolution for man, they therein admit it for the ape! But, really, judging from the size of the brain-case and other features, we know that the majority of these skulls were not forerunners of the ape; they were already superior to the ape; they were our forerunners."
"I don't believe that, " Richard said, "because evolution just can't happen. If it did, we'd see evidence of it today. There wouldn't be any apes; they'd have all evolved into men! Evolution just can't take place because everything is according to its 'kind' and reproduces itself exactly. Or if there is a genetic mistake, the result is a harmful mutation which often can't reproduce itself or survive."
"Once again you are ignorant of the facts," Bill rejoined. "Evolution is a proven fact. It's been done in the laboratory by the biologist Demerec. He placed a certain bacteria called Esxherischia coli in cultures containing a drug that is poisonous to these bacteria (namely, streptomycin). Now, bacteria reproduce very rapidly, and it soon became evident that the drug no longer harmed the bacteria. This happened not because individual bacterium had become gradually immune, but rather, due to the amazing rate of reproduction. Certain mutants were quite accidentally resistant to the streptomycin before they were even placed in it. Only these mutants survived out of the hundreds of thousand-million individual bacteria. But these survivors passed on their peculiar resistant trait, and soon replaced the last batch.
"This is how natural selection works. It is a fact of nature, and no amount of denying it will make it less of a fact. In nature, particularly the further down the scale you go, creatures reproduce far more offspring than can possibly survive and compete for the available food. So the ones best equipped to survive are the ones that live to reproduce and pass on whatever helpful characteristic they may have had."
"But how do these 'helpful characteristics' come about?" asked Ted. "What reason could there be, or how could it even happen that a thing like a mouse, for instance, would suddenly sprout wings and become a bat? And if it happened gradually, that's even worse, because a half-formed wing would be of no use at all. I just can't see how these things could change."
"And yet we do it all the time," Bill responded, "Or at least people who breed animals do it. At first they did it quite unconsciously; they merely selected the best cattle over the poorer specimens, and thus encouraged their breeding to produce higher quality stock. Darwin mentions the pigeon-fancying craze that was in England at his time. They had bred so many varieties of pigeons that if they were presented to an ornithologist who didn't know the facts ahead of time, he'd assume that they were all different species of birds, and would be astounded to learn that they were all descendants of the rock pigeon. So this is how evolutionary changes come about; it's this simple. No two offspring are exactly the same unless they're twins; just look at the variations in man. Now many variations are quite meaningless as far as survival is concerned, but those that are vital will have an advantage, and live to reproduce that advantage in their offspring. So a bear pup that has a little more fur than his siblings will be more likely to survive the onslaught of an ice age, and reproduce furrier offspring. A lizard who's coloring more closely matches the surrounding rocks will have less likelihood of being eaten by birds, and so a greater likelihood of reproducing more of the same camouflaged lizards.
"You might argue that these are small things, and are really adaptation rather than evolution, since your book tries to draw a line between them. That's a mistake; these things are nothing less than evolution, and as important as the rodent 'sprouting wings' to become a bat. But on these types of changes we might wrongly distinguish as 'big', let's say this: they were gradual, and the 'half-formed' changes were not detrimental. Looking at the bat, we wonder how he could've gotten along in the transition period when he couldn't yet fly, and why he should grow wings in the first place. But all we have to do is look in nature to find an answer in the 'flying squirrel'. Now, we have your regular squirrel, and we have the 'flying' variety, which of course doesn't really fly because it has something like 'half-formed wings', a webbing, really, which helps it glide from tree to tree. We can well imagine that this corresponds to the earlier stages of the bat. Those that just happened to have a little extra webbing were able (as the flying squirrel today) to glide somewhat when jumping from one place to another, and those who were better able to get away from predators in this manner survived. Further webbing was encouraged till eventually there was enough to allow them to turn their body in such a way as to maneuver themselves through the air somewhat, and this continued till full flight evolved.
"We can see similar transition periods between fish and land animals in the amphibians and reptiles. You have things like the lung fish, which evolved to breathe during periods of drought, and then developed legs to pull itself along to another body of water when its water dried up. You still have frogs that spend the first part of their lives as tadpoles under the water, and then emerge as air-breathing creatures. There is nothing so mysterious in all of this as a 'Divine Purpose'. When the thyroid gland (which controls growth) is slowed, we have a creature like the Mexican axolotl. This is a salamander tadpole that never metamorphoses into a land animal, but becomes sexually mature in the gill-breathing larval form. A simple meal of thyroid reconverts it into a land salamander.
"Change is not so hard to believe in, Ted, it's all about us, and in us, if I may quote Julian Huxley·(who has been the source of most of my comments, anyway):
"'Every butterfly was once a caterpillar; every oak once an acorn; every barnacle once a tiny free-swimming crustacean. You, like me and every other human being, were once a microscopic spherical ovum, then in turn a double sheet of undifferentiated cells, an embryo with enormous outgrowths enabling you to obtain food and oxygen parasitically from your mother, a creature with an unjointed rod -- what biologists call a notochord -- in place of a jointed backbone; you once had gill clefts like a fish, you once had a tail, and once were covered with dense hair like a monkey; you were once a helpless infant which had to learn to distinguish objects and to talk; you underwent the transformation of your body and mind that we call puberty; you learnt a job. You are in fact a self-transforming process.'"
"But all that points to a miraculous power bringing about all those changes," Richard argued, "How else can we account for them?"
"Through science. Through knowledge. Since we can control these growth-changes with thyroid, we know that it is this chemical substance that brings about these changes, not God."
"But He created the chemical substances," Richard argued.
"No, " Bill said, "remember the experiment in which the scientists brought about organic molecules from non-organic electricity and hydrogen? That's all it takes, natural occurrences --"
"But God created the hydrogen and the electricity," Richard insisted.
"Well, we could go back and back all day and never reach what was first," Bill replied. "Your short-cut is to say that it was God, and mine is to say that it was the 'big bang' which resulted in a spontaneous eruption of these molecules such as formed hydrogen (for hydrogen is prevalent throughout the universe; and lightning storms occur on our neighboring planets). There is no reason to call God into the picture once it's been proven that atoms can so easily combine and form the building blocks of life; and that was your whole argument, as I recall, that life had to come from life."
"What do you mean by the 'big bang'?" asked Ted.
"Just that all the matter in the universe was once held tightly together in an incredible mass, and that it exploded, forming the galaxies we have today. The proof of this is that all the galaxies are known to be moving away from each other, expanding out into space. So, if we 'run the film backwards', we see that they must've all been closer together in the past if they've been moving apart all this time; and going back as far as we can, they must've all been together at the beginning and had to have exploded out."
"But who created this lumped mass of a universe that exploded?" Ted asked.
"No one," Bill answered. "It may not have been in the form of matter, but of energy, or even anti-matter. It was just there, like space had to have always been there. I've never heard anyone say that God had to create space to put his universe in; we just can't imagine a time when there was no space, and it was in this space, or perhaps of it that the 'big bang' occurred."
"If you can say that," Richard laughed, "how can you object to our saying that God must've always existed?"
"I'd have no objection," Bill replied, "if you'd equate God with space."
"Okay, but listen, your evolution theory," Richard emphasized, "can't account for all of the facts. Look here in our book; it shows a picture of a Shropshire ram and a Dorset horn ram, the former is hornless and the caption reads, 'If sheep evolved horns because they aided survival, why are there many hornless varieties of sheep that survive just as well without them?'"
"When was the last time you saw sheep struggling for existence?" Bill asked, "This is a common fault with your book: it crosses important boundaries without taking their significance into account. Sheep have been domesticated by man for millennia, their breeding has been carefully controlled by man throughout this time. If one breed has horns and another does not, that's the way men wanted them to be. They have nothing to do with survival of the fittest in the sense the book is implying, and no one ever said they did.
"A better example would've been to look at something wild and ask the question about horns, or even better, about the very conspicuous coloring of some birds like the bird of paradise or the peacock, and ask how this could ever have helped them survive since it merely made them more apparent to their enemies. Well, Darwin discusses these things in his book in great detail, and it's obvious that the writers of your book never even bothered to read him. Darwin accounts for these things, not by natural selection, but by something even more obvious: sexual selection. It is the males especially who have the horns or the bright coloring. In the former case it is to do battle with the other males for the females, and the latter case is to attract the females. So, if a bird is particularly bright-colored, it is not due to natural selection trying to make him inconspicuous (since it does just the opposite) but it is merely because the females like it!
"Eventually, if a coloring or other sexual characteristic becomes too much of a danger as far as escaping enemies is involved, natural selection will cut back on sexual selection, and the two forces will have to reach a compromise. So, even though it's a weaker force in the long run than natural selection, sexual selection can bring about such great changes in the male that many birds and insects once thought to be distinct species are now known to be simply the male and female of the same species.
"But let's look for a moment (which is longer than it deserves) at your book, Did Man Get Here by Evolution or by Creation?. Here on page 35 it quotes Darwin as saying:
"'To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.'
"That's all your book quotes of Darwin, and then it comments that a 'half-formed' eye would've been useless, so it had to have been created all at once. This is a common trick of theirs, quoting out of context. You'd almost think that Darwin didn't really believe in his own theory after all! The truth of the matter is that it is his writing style to state the most powerful objections against his hypothesis in the strongest possible language, and then to answer them. In fact, he answers the challenge he poses for himself right on the same page in my edition of Origin of Species; they didn't even have to turn the page to find it! Yet they dishonestly passed it over, and even contradicted the facts it sets forth. Here is what Darwin went on to say:
"'Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive to the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility… The simplest organ which can be called an eye consists of an optic nerve, surrounded by pigment-cells and covered by translucent skin, but without any lens or other refractive body. We may, however, according to M. Jourdain, descend even a step lower and find aggregates of pigment-cells apparently serving as organs of vision, without any nerves, and resting merely on sarcodic tissue. Eyes of the above simple nature are not capable of distinct vision, and serve only to distinguish light from darkness. In certain starfishes, small depressions in the layer of pigment which surrounds the nerve are filled, as described by the author just quoted, with transparent, gelatinous matter, projecting with a convex surface, like the cornea in the higher animals. He suggests this serves not to form an image, but only to concentrate the luminous rays and render their perception more easy. In this concentration of the rays we gain the first and by far the most important step towards the formation of a true, picture-forming eye; for we have only to place the naked extremity of the optic nerve, which in some of the lower animals lies deeply buried in the body, and in some near the surface, at the right distance from the concentrating apparatus, and an image will be formed on it… When we reflect on these facts, here given much too briefly with respect to the wide, diversified, and graduated range of structure in the eyes of the lower animals; and when we bear in mind how small the number of all living forms must be in comparison with those that have become extinct, the difficulty ceases to be very great in believing that natural selection may have converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve, coated with pigment and invested with a transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the Articulate Class.'
"Skipping over to another point your book is at some evident labor to repeat again and again: it tells us that hybrids cannot reproduce. And this, somehow, is supposed to disprove evolution. Don't ask me how it is supposed to disprove evolution, we'll just have to take the book's word for it, since it wastes so much space repeating it. The fact is, though, that many hybrids can reproduce. Experiments have shown that some can reproduce to the tenth generation or more. But what little this proves is shown from the fact that many varieties within a given species cannot reproduce together either. The whole theory of 'producing only according to its kind' is rather a moot question; as soon as a species develops its varieties to such an extent that one variety can't reproduce with another, it's automatically called a different species, or 'kind', and you Bible people forget as quickly as you can that they were originally wrought from the same 'kind'. But if you manipulate the facts like that, it's obvious that we could never prove that unlike 'kinds' can reproduce; as soon as we do, you'll just say they were of the same 'kind' all along. But none of this has any real effect on evolution; it just disproves the Bible, because evolution doesn't require the crossbreeding of species.
"Let's see," Bill said as he leafed through Richard's Evolution book, "Here's another illustration on page 58 showing a horse and a cow. Again, these are domesticated animals, so natural selection hardly applies to them; unnatural or man-caused selection does. It reads:
"'Both the horse and cow eat the same food, exist side by side, survive equally well. Why should one of them evolve with upper front teeth, the other without them?'
"This is laughable. I'm not a rancher, but I know I've never seen a cow and a horse grazing together like this. Don't they keep them in separate corrals? They've evolved differently because man has chosen the strongest horses and the fattest cows, just as today breeders pay enormous prices for stud services of a race horse or a prize heifer, and get faster and better breeds accordingly. As for the teeth question, it has nothing to do with the horse; cows don't really live 'side-by-side' with them in that sense; they don't compete for food. The cow used to have upper front teeth, but evidently lost them after long domestication since they were no longer really needed. And I'm sure cattlemen who'd been bitten encouraged this trend by preferring toothless cows. But here's a real interesting facet to this question: the teeth are still there under the gums! They just never develop and break through. All they do is rob the body of precious phosphorus; they serve no real purpose, and are thus actually detrimental, but not to a great enough degree to be effaced by natural selection. If we look at the cow through creationists' eyes, we do well to wonder why God put these rudimentary teeth in the cow. Since they do more harm than good, don't serve man in any way, are not beautiful (no one can see them), and basically do nothing; why did God create them? You see, when you really look at these facts, rather than the Watchtower's distortion of them, you see that they favor evolution and show how silly creationism is.
"We see other 'rudimentary organs' like this in the wings on beetles which are soldered to its body under a covering and are completely useless. Often, we can see long-lost characteristics return to an individual in a species. Such examples in our own species are: hairiness of the body, pointed and moveable ears, multiple digits, and the multiple breasts that sometimes occur in women (such as Henry the VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, who had three; others have had six or more, and sometimes gave birth to five or six babies at a time. Bigger litters are also a throw-back to the dim past). A thing that is sometimes mistaken for the same thing is rudimentary mamae in men; it isn't of the same nature because men never had breasts. They only have nipples now after millennia of breeding with females who had them. You see, after so much breeding together without any real evolutionary change, men and women are becoming more like each other. This also explains the primitive uterus in men called the prostate, and the rudimentary penis in women called the clitoris. I challenge you to come up with a creationist's explanation for nipples on men. What purpose do they serve? None. Here again, as in every case we've considered, evolution provides an answer for the way things are, and creationism does not.
"Showing a picture of a smashed up car, as your book does here on page 64, and asking if evolution is true, why the car doesn't evolve from this accident into a higher form, is really stupid. Is an automobile a living organism capable of reproducing? Then why use it as a comparison? The book just doesn't make sense at all! Just read some of it as an example, here from page 66:
"'If an organism did have a beneficial mutation (which is highly questionable), but then this same line had a host of harmful mutations, "nature", if it did anything, would reject this organism because it would be inferior. "Natural selection" would actually be the enemy of evolution just as mutations are.'
"Now I ask you, does that paragraph make any sense at all? It mentions a beneficial mutation at the start, and at the end it states that mutations are the 'enemy of evolution'. How can this be? If it's beneficial it certainly can't be an enemy. But look at the interior ‘reasoning’ going on in this passage: if there was one beneficial mutation it would be rejected because there'd be a lot of other harmful mutations. Why? It doesn't say. They're hoping to get a lot of words by your real quick before you have time to think and realize they're devoid of any meaning. If they mean to say (for they certainly don't actually say it) that the offspring of the 'beneficial mutation' will all be harmful mutations, I'd again like to ask why in the world they believe this (other than that they want to). A beneficial mutation should have no problem passing on whatever beneficial characteristic it has. Even using their own figure given in the first part of this paragraph on 'less than one percent' of mutations being helpful, and given the millions of years this less than one percent had to work with, we can well account for all the variety we see about us today.
"In the very next paragraph, though, they forget what they were just talking about and make a big fuss about how natural selection could never produce anything new:
"'Because a living thing has survived, that does not mean it evolved. If a hen hatches a dozen chicks, and some are killed by predators, does this indicate they evolved? No, all it indicates is that some chicks survived while others died. This "selection" by "nature" in no way changes the chick to something new.'
"But, you see, no one ever claimed anything else! Putting forth these straw man arguments, the Society makes it appear that they are successfully combating the issue of evolution, when they haven't yet addressed it. Of course natural selection of and by itself produces nothing new; who ever said it did? All it does is work in conjunction with variation in a species to preserve the favorable variations and make the unfavorable ones extinct. It itself cannot produce the variations; that's caused by the DNA."
"But if God doesn't exist," Ted wondered, "then what's the purpose in life? I mean, where's the incentive to do good? We may as well 'eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we are to die.' Life loses all its value if you look at it that-way. It's every man for himself without regard for the other person."
"Why is that?" Bill asked. "Why do you think that if you hold this certain idea in your mind that there's a Creator-God somewhere floating around heaven, you'll be a better person, an unselfish person? Why is that?"
Ted thought a moment and replied, "Well, you know that God, your Creator, is watching you, and you want to please him, just like your father, and do right."
"But why do you want to please him (assuming that he is pleased when you do what you call 'right')?"
"Because if he's happy with you he'll reward you with everlasting life."
"Everlasting life for whom?"
"For me, of course," Ted laughed.
"For yourself, you see? Doesn't it revolve back around to selfishness after all?"
"Yes, I guess it does."
"Then how can you say that believing in God makes you less selfish than a person who doesn't believe? In the end, you're just as selfish if not more so (wanting the greatest possible reward for yourself rather than settling for the puny immediate rewards like the other fellow you're so much better than)."
"I guess it doesn't," Ted responded dejectedly.
"Whenever you're expecting a reward (even if it's way in the back of your mind) for 'doing right', you're not practicing goodness at all; you're just doing a job for God: so much good work for so much everlasting life. It's just a business deal. But we atheists agree with Spinoza that 'Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.' It is only when you really believe that no external or future reward exists at all that you can really be unselfish and good. You have to become an atheist before you can become a good person," Bill laughed.
"As for the purpose and value of life," Bill continued, "it's what you make it. We don't need God to give our lives value; we can get that from each other through love. And this means loving clergymen as well as politicians, Catholics as well as atheists. You Jehovah's Witnesses have a long way to go on that route. You still think it makes some sort of difference what a person believes: as if you were somehow a better person for believing that God is not a Trinity, and the world were a better place for it. That's a lot of nonsense, and you both should be grown-up enough to realize it. Beliefs make no pragmatic difference to the world unless they produce actions.  They often don't produce actions unless they are fanatically held -- which means loving your beliefs more than the people around you, including loving God more than mankind. That leads to war, that leads to hate, and even to allowing those you love to die. That's when beliefs make a big difference, and that's why they shouldn't be fanatically held.
"You can believe anything you want, and more power to you. I don't care how absurd it is -- even believe in the God of the Bible if you like -- only don't cling to that belief more tenaciously than to people. Jesus was actually close, he only missed it by one: the first commandment should've been to love your neighbor, and after that he could've said love the devil for all the difference it would've made."
"That's a very lovely speech," Richard said sarcastically, "but nothing you've said today has persuaded me to stop believing in God."
"I didn't expect that it would. God is something people believe in if they want to, and don't believe in if they don't want to. It's as simple as that. All our knowledge comes to us through our five senses, and since we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell God, your saying that he exists or doesn't exist is all the same to me. We cannot know; it's impossible for us to know. It lies without our senses, and hence outside of our knowledge, where anyone's guess is as valid as another's. It's best to listen to your own guess. Mine is that there's nothing out there, but I don't expect that to change yours.
"I do think, though," Bill added, "that if you're going to believe in a God, you should at least find a set of attributes that are consistent and believable."
"Now what makes you say that?" Richard asked.
"Because the things you say about God are quite impossible. First of all, you say that he's omnipotent, which in itself is impossible, then --"
"Why is omnipotence impossible?" Richard interrupted, "Of course God is all-powerful; everyone believes that."
"Everyone thinks they believe that," Bill corrected, "but they can't. If God is all powerful, can he make a material object so heavy he can't lift it?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"A paradox. If you answer it either way it proves that God is not all-powerful; the question itself proves that omnipotence is impossible."
"But we don't say that God can do everything --"
"Jesus did. He said, 'With God all things are possible.'"
"Yes, but he didn't mean what you're saying."
"How do you know?"
"Because it doesn't make sense."
"Yes," Bill agreed with a wink; "Jesus said a lot of nonsense."
"No, listen," Richard shouted, "God cannot die, and he cannot lie, for a start. He has to follow his own laws. He has set limits to himself, and we take all of this into consideration when we say that he's all-powerful.
"In other words, what you're saying is that 'God can do anything except the things he can't do.' That's quite profound. But you could say as much of me or anyone else for that matter.
"Next, you say that God is all-knowing, do you not?"
"We do."
"And knowing everything includes, naturally, knowing the future?"
"Well, no," Richard replied, "God can know the future, of course, when he wants to, in order to predict it or whatever, but usually he doesn't want to, and he chooses not to look into the future."
"That's very interesting indeed. So God doesn't usually know the future. But then he's not all-knowing. A prophet down here on earth might look into the future and know something God doesn't know then?"
"No," Richard replied, "no one can really predict the future but God."
"Then how do you explain accurate predictions?" Bill asked, "I thought you wrote them off to the Devil's power. How does the Devil come to know the future?"
"He doesn't. He just sometimes manipulates events to accord with a prophecy he's made."
"But then the future he predicted does indeed become reality?"
"Yes, but it wasn't a case of seeing it ahead of time and predicting it, but of forcing the events to take place."
"So God sees the events ahead of time without forcing them to happen?"
"Exactly."
"And if God sees something he doesn't like, can he change it?"
"I don't know," Richard admitted.
"But remember, you said he was all-powerful."
"Yes, then I guess he could change it."
"And if he does so, how is he any different from the Devil?"
"I'm really getting tired of these arguments," Richard sighed.
"Well, let me help you out," Bill offered, "because it's another case of whichever way we answer this issue it proves that God cannot be what you say he is, namely omniscient. If he changes the future to accord with his desires, it means that there's no free-will. We're all just puppets on his string, and we shouldn't worry about 'doing right' or 'wrong', because we'll do whatever God directs since he controls the future. This, you see, is a frightening alternative. But, if he doesn't do anything about the future because he can't or he refuses to, that puts him at the mercy of fate. And fate would then be greater than God. The very fact that God can see into the future means that there's a certain set of incidents that will be followed, like it or not, and once again we have no free-will, only this time it's fate that pulls the strings as God sits idly by, perhaps watching a few acts ahead of where we're at."
"Why do you say that there's no free-will either way as long as God can look into the future?" asked Ted.
"Since it's possible for him to look ahead and see what will happen, everything must follow the pattern that he sees -- it's all fore-ordained, whether by him or by fate -- there's no longer any choice in the matter."
"That leads me to believe," Ted acknowledged, "That God cannot see into the future, and I'd get around having to admit that he's not all-knowing by saying that 'the future' is simply not something that a person can have knowledge of; it's not a subject for knowledge."
"That's a very fine answer," Bill complimented, "But unfortunately it leads to further complications. If God can't look into the future, how did he supposedly predict things and have them written in the Bible before they happened? This is one of your main arguments for the inspiration of the Bible, and I'm sure that if Mr. Olson had been feeling better he would've brought it up last Sunday. Of course, from our examination of historical facts we know the Bible books were all written long after the events they supposedly predicted, but this is still a favorite argument of those who ignore such facts."
"Well, maybe he just brought things about to fulfill his prophecy," Richard offered.
"Then he interfered with free-will," Bill pointed out, "and forced events just as you say the Devil did. And when you have God and the Devil using the same tactics, I think you'd better scrap the whole idea.
"The next thing you say about God is that he's very much like yourself. He gets mad, hates, loves, is happy, and so on. In short, he has emotions and thinks exactly like a primitive chieftain. It's interesting that this is so, since man is such an emotional and intellectual creature. I imagine that if a triangle, for instance, could think, it would conceive of a triangular God and make that shape its essential characteristic, whereas a peacock would have a god with the most enormous and beautiful tail. Even in the Bible we can see this projection effect: to the very primitive writer J, God appears as a man walking about the garden, smelling the sacrifices, and having to search for Adam when he hides. Throughout the Old Testament he appears as a vengeful king, patterned after the bloodthirsty kings of the time.
"It is not until the first or second century in the New Testament that we have God pictured as a father figure, and even changing his ways so radically as to become the personification of love. What is remarkable in all of this is that you can believe statements in there that claim that it's all the same God. And further, that this God doesn't change!
"Emotion itself is change. As Spinzoa says: 'All passions are passages, all emotions are motions, toward or from completeness and power.' There should be nothing that could make an all-powerful, all-knowing God angry or jealous or vindictive. Some modern Christians have come to such a lofty view of a passionless God, but the Bible hadn't quite reached it, what with pouring the seven plagues on the earth and all the rest."
Bill paused and seemed to be done. "Have you had your say now?" Richard asked.
"I have."
"Well, Ted?" Richard asked his Bible study, his 'letter-of-recommendation'.
"Well what?"
"Are you coming with us to the meeting? It'll be starting soon, you know."
Richard and Bill looked at Ted in anticipation. Bill, it's true, had most of the talking, but Richard was a closer friend for a longer time and knew he had all the studying and meeting attendance he'd done with Ted on his side.
"Do I have to decide right now between you two?" Ted asked.
"You'll have to decide sometime, Ted," Bill said gently.
"Well, I keep wishing there was some other alternative. Like when I first heard you, Richard, talking to Brother Olson about the Trinity. I felt there was some third possibility, and that you were both wrong. But I don't feel that now, although I wish I did."
"Ted," said Bill, "that third possibility was this. They were both wrong. God is neither one nor three; he doesn't exist."
Yes, that was it, Ted thought to himself. That fit perfectly; it was the elusive thought he was grasping for way back then, and now it was out in the open, visible to everyone. Now he had to decide between this possibility and what he had been calling 'the Truth' all this time.
"You know," Ted began, "ever since I came into the -- ever since I became a Witness, it seems I've been hearing things against it. Not mean things said to tear it down, but reasonable arguments that no one could adequately answer. I don't claim to know all the answers yet, but I think I'm going to have to find out for myself by looking even more fully into both sides. So I will go with you to the meeting tonight Richard, and I’ll pay closer attention than ever before. But all the same I intend to pay just as much attention to Bill's viewpoint. And soon, I hope very soon, I’ll know. But right now I'm still confused."
His answer seemed unsatisfactory to both men. Each had wanted a clear victory but had to depart on a draw for now. Bill left, and soon Ted was in the car with the Johnson family.
They didn't talk on their way to the hall. Vonnie especially seemed cold to everyone lately, especially her husband. What a change had come over her since the kids had come to live with them. Ted thought back to that fight he overheard the first night he'd slept there. Had she been right all along about the kids being a bad idea? He knew that Richard still was cruel to his children, but Ted had gotten used to it, and so had they apparently. All the spirit had gone out of them and they had conformed to a dignified silence as the only way of getting along in public. Ted knew that life together had turned out to be torture for them all, and that the 'Truth' didn't help them any. He wished he could do something to set things right and make them all happy and treat one another with respect and love. He knew that Vonnie and Richard never made love anymore because he used to be able to hear them down there as he lay in bed at night.
They no longer could stand one another.
"Why does it have to be this way?" He asked aloud to everyone's surprise as they rode along.
"What way?" Richard asked, keeping his eyes glued to the white snow falling in the darkness before the headlights.
"Why can't we talk about it to each other?"
"I think we've had enough talk for one day," Richard said sharply.
At the hall, while he was still removing his coat, David Nelson came up to him. "I want to talk to you, young man," he said, placing his hand on Ted's shoulder as his familiar sign of authority and rendering the coat-removal impossible.
"I’ll bet you do," Ted smiled weakly, noticing how he had called him ‘young man’ instead of ‘brother’.
"Before the meeting, too," David added, turning away quickly to talk to a passing brother. As it happened, though, David went off with a couple other elders and never got a chance to talk to Ted before Brother Garvias began the meeting. Ted had almost forgotten about his impending disfellowshipment until he saw David. He didn't want to be disfellowshipped. That interfered with his plan to delve more deeply into both sides of the issue. So he sat there through the Ministry School wondering what to do.
Could he really go any deeper into the issues than he had? It became evident to him that he could not. All the speakers on the platform were just rehashing the same things over and over that he'd heard a million times before it seemed. He was not likely to find better representatives of the issues than Brother Olson and Bill Jackson. And it was stupid to ask them to repeat everything again. He was rapidly approaching the dreaded decision that was to affect his entire life. His head spun from it all. The fence he was on was high, and he was losing his balance -- about to fall one way or the other into the Truth.
The second meeting had concluded, and the brother on the platform was introducing Brother Nelson for some 'special announcements'. Ted knew what that meant: his official disfellowshipping. Suddenly, blackness filled his eyes, he felt as if everyone was watching him closely, but he could no longer see them. He rubbed his eyes and stood up, almost falling. He knew he was about to faint. Grasping the chair in front of him he steadied himself as his eyes slowly began to clear just enough for him to see where he wanted to go: out the door for some fresh air. He stumbled out to the aisle just as David was shuffling his papers on the podium. He managed to grab his coat on the way out just as David began speaking.
Ted stood at the landing atop the steps outside the door of the hall, breathing in the cold, crisp air, with the snow falling heavily all about him. Ted's eyes cleared and he noticed some movement inside the van about twenty feet in front of him. He recognized the two embracing figures -- Richard Johnson and Julia Salvayez! He was too numb now to be shocked by this sight. He could write it off as the imperfections of a brother, especially since he knew Richard wasn't getting any affection at home. This convinced him, however, of the truthfulness of Paul Huberman's report concerning Julia and David Nelson, and concerning her sister Rita and Bob Morrow. That meant that Bob Morrow was an elder solely because he'd seen David Nelson doing exactly what Ted could see Richard doing now.
Ted now had three choices before him: 1) He could blackmail his way into being reinstated, becoming a ministerial servant, and eventually being appointed as an elder, enabling him to wield power within the congregation (just as Bob Morrow had done). 2) He could start a great purge of all these elders from the congregation, disbanding David Nelson, Bob Morrow, and Richard Johnson. The Society would probably reinstate him for that -- if he could prove any of it. He could also, going along these crusading lines, report Richard's child and wife beating to an appropriate agency. 3) He could just walk away, enlightened at last to the fact that everything added up to much more than just the brothers' imperfections: it added up to a make-believe "God's Organization". On this last option he could go as far as he liked, even as far as Bill Jackson, if he wanted. But he would be free to believe what he wanted; no one would punish him, turn his friends away from him, and prevent them from speaking to him because of his beliefs.
Inside the hall, Brother Nelson was not announcing Ted's disfellowshipping. Brother Garvias, who was an elder on the committee, had voted that they hold off on that course because Ted had actually done nothing wrong. Cynthia Rose was not a Witness, therefore, withholding blood from her was wrong on their part. So they all agreed to write the Society for advice since the problem was so complex.
Ted's story would've been quite different had he paid more attention to brothers like Dale Garvias: brothers who had nothing to hide and were exactly as they appeared: trusting and sincere in their faith. Dale was always there in the background -- but such is fate. This has been Ted's story, and nothing could have changed it.
Ted stood there grasping the railing, hypnotized by the falling snow, unaware of what David Nelson was really announcing: Arthur Olson had slipped into what would prove to be a swiftly fatal coma.
It was fortunate Ted didn't hear that announcement. Life was coming down too hard on him right at that moment. But gazing upward at the falling snow he had the illusion of ascending -- of climbing: climbing out of the hole he had so eagerly jumped into. It suddenly occurred to him that David Nelson and the Governing Body had only as much control over him as he allowed them to have. A year ago he did not know any of these people, so why did it matter so much what they thought of him now?
Richard and Julia had finished, and were approaching him on the stairs. He stared at them. Julia glanced over at Richard, laughed scornfully, and said, "We get more elders appointed this way!" then she ran past Ted and back into the Hall.
Richard stopped three steps below the landing and said, "What are you doing out here, Ted? Better come inside; you need all the spiritual food you can get."
Ted gave him a penetrating look.
Richard lowered his eyes. He tried to think of something more to say, but couldn’t come up with anything, so he slowly walked back into the Hall.
Alone again, Ted filled his lungs with a deep breath of frosty air, and came to a decision: this would be his last moment on the bottom.
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 This site is concerned with: ethics, compassion, empathy, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Watchtower, poetry, philosophy, atheism, and animal rights.    <imgsrc="http://visit.webhosting.yahoo.com/visit.gif?us1376941852" alt="setstats" border="0" width="1" height="1">


































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