A Time for Rejoicing in the Balkans

It was 1922, a meeting by the Earnest Bible Students, as Jehovah's Witnesses were then known, was being held in innsbruck, Austria.  In the audience was Franz Brand, a young man from Apatin in Vojvodina, Serbia.   The moment the speaker mentioned God's name, Jehovah, a mob started booing, making it impossible for him to continue, and the meeting was broken up. Yet, what Franz heard made a deep impression on him, and he took up the preaching of the Kingdom good news.  These were the humble beginnings of exciting spiritual growth in one of the Balkan countries. 

TO MOST people today, the name Yugoslavia conveys the images of terrible massacres, desperate refugees, destroyed homes, and anguished orphans  come to mine.  Words cannot describe the excruciating pain and misery caused by the war that ravished the Balkan Peninsula from 1991 to 1995, destroying all hope  for a prosperous and carefree future by human efforts.  As a result of the war, the people of the former  are Yugoslavia laboring under economic hardship and abject poverty. 

In the face of such suffering, one would hardly expect to find happy people in this part of the world. Strange as it may seem, though, such people do exist.  In fact, they experienced a day of special rejoicing toward the end of the 20th century.  What did Franz Brand, the young man mentioned at the outset, have to do with all of this? 

Next time: Spiritual Growth in the Balkans 

From the Watchtower magazine, 2002