WATCHMAN AND WITNESS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21256, 30 August 1934, Page 13

WATCHMAN AND WITNESS

! TO TUB EDITOR OF TUE l'KEsa. Sir, —By your courtesy to the general public you have allowed correspondence upon a variety of subjects in your columns, some of which has been more provocative than others, and those which were more provocative were doubtless the most important. If the matters impelling me to write to you should prove to be controversially provocative, I have no other wish than to discharge a conscious obligation. The dual office of watchman and witness dates many millenniums back. The moral obligation to watchman and witnesses is of Divine appointment, and failure to discharge the duty is o serious offence. It is recorded that in some eastern countries watchmen were required to indemnify those who were robbed in the streets, and in times of danger watchmen were posted in towers over the gates of the city. In the days of Jeremiah there were three night watches of four hours each. Watchmen were commanded to "Cry out in the night, rising up in the beginning of each watch: Pour out thy soul to Him for the life of thy children, that perish 'for hunger at every corner of the streets." The duty of a watchman is clearly stated in Ezekiel HI., verses 17-21, and his duty is to the House of Israel. These prophecies predict the House of Israel to be in a military state, and . exposed to danger. Many commentai tors say, "Ministers are watchmen on the wails of the church." The watch.men's warning is to "The House of Israel" and in Isaiah, Chapter LXII., the watchmen are upon the walls of Jerusalem. They are "never to hold their peace until Jerusalem is established and made a praise in the earth." Whether or not the Anglo-Celtic race is the House of Israel, the British nation is in the most dangerous position. Mr Wickham Steed in an article in the "Christian World" of May 24, 1934, says, "We are up against it more fully Ihan the people yet understand. Thr> Government have known the broad | truth for a year or more, but they have been unwilling to face the implications. and still more unwilling to tell the country." Mr Steed calls attention to an article in the organ of the German General staff. The "Militarwochenblatt," published on August 18, 1932; which says that Germany must aim at the annihilation of the foe in a surprise attack. Mr Steed points out that Germany already possesses military and air superiority over any other single power in Europe. Germany's "Hymn of Plate" closes with: "We will never forego our Hate, ! We have all but a single Hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have but one foe and one alone —England." I I am not inclined to quarrel over! the commentator's .statement that Min-i isters are "Watchmen on the walls of j the church"; and even if it is, as so j many of your correspondents have as- j sorted, that they have failed in the; functions of that office in the present | world crisis, it is their own matter, j God has in the Israel nation an ever-1 growing number of Living Stones-- j Citizens of the Stone Kingdom—whose i voice is being heeded all through the far-flung Empire. A young man approached a watchman a day or two ago, and enquired, "Do you think London will be destroyed by an air raid?" He was told that God had defended the British Isles on many occasions and in various ways. It was the watchman's opinion that the great hailstorm of Revelations XVI., 19-21, would be God's way of dealing with the enemy aircraft, and that "He will cause to fall from heaven a great hail, every stone about the weight of a talent; and men blasphemed God because of the plague of hail." The intensity of the plague-! of hail will be understood when it is remembered that a Jewish silver talent was about 115 pounds. The Egyptian talent was 86 pounds. Some make the Attic talent about 56 pounds. According to Ferrar Fenton a talent is "a weight equivalent to about 57 pounds avoirdupois." Such masses would crash and destroy everything by the force with which they would fall to the earth from the clouds. The witness of the watchman to the nation Israel is, "No weapon that is formed against thee : shall prosper. . . . This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord." (Israel LIV.. 17). —Yours, etc., W. T. KINGSTON. : Tcmuko, August 29, 1934.