Page 6: O if only you would actually pay attention to my commandments! Then your peace would become just like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.(Isaiah 48:17,18)
Clarification: The commandments of God are to love Him and each other.
Jesus said to him, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Matthew 22:37-40.
A new (fresh) commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. John 13:34.
Page 6: In every corner of the earth, they are searching out those who want to learn Jehovah's ways and be taught by him. Their efforts are bearing fruit.
Correction: The fruit that God desires is a changed heart.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Galatians 5:22-23.
Page 6: The result of this educational campaign is that a marvelous prophecy is being fulfilled. Some 2,700 years ago, the prophet Isaiah was inspired to write: "It must occur in the final part of the days that ... many peoples will certainly go and say: 'Come, you people, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will instruct us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths.'"-Isaiah 2:2,3.
Correction: This prophecy is still future and is talking about the 1,000 year reign of Jesus Christ on the earth.
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.
Revelation 21:22-26.
Page 9: Here the wonderful prophecy in Isaiah chapter 35 has exciting meaning. It might be called a restoration prophecy, for it had its first fulfillment when the Jews returned to their homeland in 537 B.C.E.
Correction: This Prophecy is about the return of Jesus Christ and the restoration of the earth.
Say to those who are fearful-hearted, "Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; He will come and save you." Isaiah 35:4.
Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. Luke 21:27-28.
Page 12: No one contaminated with Babylonish, pagan religious practices had a right to return. (Daniel 5:1, 4, 22, 23; Isaiah 52:11)
Correction: The Daniel references were talking about Belshazzar who was not an Israelite.
Page 12: Nor could anyone return who was foolishly committed to an unwise course. All such persons were disqualified. On the other hand, those who met God's standards, whom he viewed as being holy in a relative sense, could head back to Judah.
Correction: God encouraged the Jews to return to the land of Judah.
Then the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, with all those whose spirits God had moved, arose to go up and build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem. Ezra 1:5.
Page 14: It was in the World War I period, soon after God's Messianic Kingdom was set up in heaven in 1914.
Correction: The kingdom of God is an everlasting kingdom.
Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Your dominion endures throughout all generations. Psalm 145:13.
Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here." John 18:36.
Page 14: God, of course, was as opposed to apostate Christendom with its elevated clergy class as he had been to the high-minded nation of Edom. Hence, Christendom, the antitypical Edom, is in line to feel the modern-day fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 34.
Correction: God, not the Watchtower, will decide who is an apostate.
There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?
James 4:12.
Page 14: What of chapter 35 of Isaiah's prophecy, with its emphasis on joy? That has also undergone fulfillment in our time. How is that? It has been fulfilled in a restoration of spiritual Israel from a type of captivity.
Clarification: We have been set free from captivity by Jesus Christ.
Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
Galatians 4:7.
Page 15: They could see better the meaning of what had happened in 1914 and afterward. That has also had an influence on the many of us who make up the "great crowd," now serving alongside the remnant.-Revelation 7:9.
Correction: The great crowd is in heaven.
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" Revelation 7:9-10.
Page 15: You now know, for instance, the truth about the condition of the dead.
Clarification: Everyone shall be resurrected from the dead to be judged by God.
For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Romans 14:9.
And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. Rev. 20:12.
Page 15: Keen students of the Bible and of God's dealings over the centuries know that this is not the period in history for physical miracles of healing.
Correction: The gift of healings is active or else faith would not exist at this time either.
To another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit. 1 Cor. 12:9.
Page 15-16: Frederick W. Franz, one of the anointed and then president of the Watch Tower Society, approached 100 years of age, he was legally blind and had to use a hearing aid. His acute spiritual vision was a blessing to God's people earth wide.
Correction: Good spiritual vision is a inward change toward God or being born again.
Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot SEE the kingdom of God." John 3:3.
The real Fred Franz: The day before I (Ray Franz) took off for Paris on the first leg of my trip to West Africa (November 16, 1979), the Society's president (Fred Franz) was presiding at the morning Bible text discussion. In his comments, he stated that some were questioning the Society's position that Jesus Christ is the mediator only for the "anointed" ones and not for the other millions of Jehovah's Witnesses. He said of such ones: "They would merge everyone together and make Jesus Christ the mediator for every Tom, Dick and Harry." The president went on to affirm that the Society's teaching was right. The one text he referred to in Scripture was Hebrews, chapter twelve, and the words: "It is for discipline you are enduring. God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is he that a father does not discipline? But if you are without the discipline of which all have become partakers, you are really illegitimate children, not sons." He then gave the illustration of a horse whose master uses discipline to teach it to walk around in a circle and he stated, "Sometimes it may take a few lashes with the whip to get it to do this." He urged anyone who had doubts about the Society's teaching on this point to hold on, take the discipline and "show that he has the guts to stick with it!"
Crisis Of Conscience, Raymond Franz, page 233.
Page 21-22: Carol adds: "Genuine interest in the person is important as the changes the truth will bring to his life will sometimes mean the loss of family and friends. Generally, it is good if the student knows where we live and has the confidence to come to us at any time." Help him to view the congregation as his new family.-Matthew 10:35; Mark 10:29,30.
Clarification: We need to love Jesus Christ more than our families.
For I (Jesus Christ) have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 10:35-39.
Page 22: "Making disciples means more praisers of Jehovah. It means life for those who accept the truth," says Pamela. "I just love teaching the truth to others-its so beautiful!
Clarification: Jesus Christ is the truth!
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." John 14:6.