True Liberation Nearing
WOMEN do need liberating, in many ways. But then, so do men. India’s prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi said: “Men are no more liberated than women.”
The reality is that the entire human family is in need of liberation. The Toronto Daily Star commented:
“The feeling of being trapped and unfulfilled is not confined to the female. We live in a mass, industrialized society in which a great many people are lonely, rootless, unfulfilled and lacking in a satisfying identity and the opportunity to make full use of their capacities.
“The people are both men and women. To pinpoint marriage and male domination as the causes of female unhappiness is to blindly distort and to ignore the realities of life in the 20th century.”
The industrial civilization has not proved to be the blessing many thought it would be. Much of it is proving to be a curse. It is producing large cities with teeming millions of people jammed together. Has life been improved by these ‘concrete jungles’ that wall off the sky and sun, and keep trees and grass and hills out of sight? Is it an improvement when people are afraid to walk city streets at night, and even in the daytime in some places? What about pollution, and strangling traffic conditions?
What good is a so-called ‘high standard of living’ when it cannot really be enjoyed? What pleasure is there in work when jobs become drudgery and the individual becomes an insignificant cog in a huge mass-production scheme?
Everywhere you look, men and women, and children, have serious problems from which they need liberating. For example, in the richest country on earth, the United States, about one fourth of all persons over sixty-five years of age are forced to live on incomes that the Department of Labor considers as at poverty level. Many more are forced to exist on incomes not much higher. All the time, prices rise, and many married women are forced to work away from home because their husbands’ income is not enough.
Also, consider this report from Time magazine: “About 300 million people in the world have highly visible deformities, which cause emotional problems not just for the victims but for the society around them.” And what about the mentally ill? What, too, of the poor and hungry of the world, which is the majority of the human family? Do not all these need liberation?
There is no longer any question that men, as well as women, have become victims of the oppressive system of political, economic and religious rule that has dominated the earth. That system is the end product of man and woman’s desire for independence from God. What a failure human rule that ignores God has proved to be!—Jer. 10:23.
What this earth needs now is for God to remove the present system and replace it with his own righteous arrangement. We need his perfect wisdom, justice, love and guidance directing human affairs. But is such a hope just a dream?
No, it is not just a dream! Why not? Because God’s time limit for permitting human wickedness is fast drawing to a close. All the evidence in fulfillment of God’s own recorded prophecies shows that we are nearing the end of this oppressive system of things.
Soon, when that time limit is up, God will assert his almighty power and wipe this earth clean of the bad effects of human rule. Daniel 2:44 foretells: “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be brought to ruin. And the kingdom itself will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite.”
That heavenly government is the one for which Jesus Christ taught his followers to pray. (Matt. 6:10) All ruling authority over the earth will reside with it, not with humans. It will enforce God’s righteous laws all over the earth. And it will provide true liberation, in a most desirable way.
That liberation will include freedom from human oppression and injustice. It will include freedom from economic want, enabling women to play their normal role in life. And it will also provide freedom from those great enemies of mankind—sickness, old age and death. God’s promise is: “He will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore.”—Rev. 21:4.
Think of that! Think of a time when men and women will fulfill their roles as their Creator purposed, so that there will be no friction, grief, sorrow or tears in their relationship with one another. And with sickness, aging and death gone, what a happy life that will be! Concerning the time of such liberation, God’s Word promises: “The meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace. The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.”—Ps. 37:11, 29.
True liberation will soon be a reality, but only in God’s way. That is why it is futile to look for relief to any part of this doomed system. It is also why God’s Word says: “The world is passing away and so is its desire, but he that does the will of God remains forever.” (1 John 2:17) Persons interested in true and permanent liberation should hasten to find out what God’s will is. Jehovah’s witnesses will be pleased to help them, free of charge, with the use of the Bible.
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God’s kingdom will bring in true and permanent liberation, making the earth a Paradise. Even the animal kingdom will be at complete peace with man