As this lesson points out, The International Bible Students and Jehovah’s Witnesses have been viciously persecuted by a variety of political and religious institutions. Truly, no other people have been made to suffer for their faith as have Jehovah’s Witnesses. In accord with Jesus’ message to the congregation in Smyrna, we may be sure that the Devil is the unseen promoter of the persecutions of Jehovah’s people.
In light of the concluding paragraphs of the lesson wherein the Society boasts of having written numerous articles in decades past that were instrumental in fortifying Jehovah’s Witnesses to endure persecutions, we might now ask: Why hasn’t the Watchtower better readied Jehovah’s Witnesses for what lay immediately ahead? Specifically, are Jehovah’s Witnesses mentally and spiritually prepared for the unanticipated collapse of the Watchtower Society and the inevitable lawlessness and confusion that will ensue? Why hasn’t the Society specifically prepared young men and women for the likelihood of mandatory military service in the Anglo-American realm in the near future? Or does the Watchtower merely assume that the Game-boy generation is sufficiently spiritually equipped to face the lion’s den?
