Chapter Four/Jesus Comes With Encouragement

Obtaining Spiritual Food in Difficult Times

During these last days, when Jehovah's Witnesses have suffered so much persecution and hardship, it has been vital for them to receive spiritual food in order to stay strong in faith.  In most cases, adequate sustenance has been provided, often thanks to some remarkable demonstration of Jehovah's power.

For example, in Germany under Hitler, Witnesses mimeographed and distributed  copies of the Watchtower which was officially banned by the cruel Nazi authorities.   In Hamburg the Gestapo raided a house where such mimeographing took place.  The house was small, and there was nowhere to hide anything securely.  The typewriter had been left in a cupboard, and the bulky mimeograph equipment was stored in a potato bin in the basement.  Moreover, behind the bin there was suitcase full of magazines!  Discovery seemed inevitable.  But what happened?  The officer who opened the cupboard did so in such a way that he did not see the typewriter. As  for the basement, the householder reports:  "The three officers stood in the middle of the room, mind you, right there where the bin stood with the suitcase full of Watchtowers behind it. But none of them seemed to notice it; it was if they though they had been struck blind."  Thanks to this remarkable providence, the householder was able to continue supplying spiritual food in difficult and dangerous times. 

In the 1960's, there was a civil war between Nigeria and the breakaway province of Biafra.   Since Biafra was completely surrounded by Nigerian territory, the only link between it and the outside world was an airstrip.  This meant that the Witnesses in Biafra were in danger of being cut off from their supply of spiritual food.  Then, in early 1968, the Biafran authorities assigned one of their civil service staff to an important pose in Europe and another was assigned to the Biafran airstrip.  These two happened to be Jehovah's Witnesses, and now they were at both ends of the only link between Biafra and the outside world.  The two recognized that the arrangement must have been from Jehovah.  Hence, they volunteered for the delicate and risky task of channeling spiritual food into Biafra.   And they were able to do this all through the war. One of them commented:  "The arrangement was beyond something that humans could have planned." 

Next time: Chapter Five/John Beholds the Glorified Jesus

From the book of Revelation