29, 30. (a) How may Sennacherib have felt after receiving that rebuke from Jehovah through Isaiah? (b) What then happened?

²⁹ After such humiliating notification from Jehovah through the prophet Isaiah, how did Sennacherib sleep? Likely after such a rebuff, he determined that, next day, he would show this God, Jehovah, something! With his army of around 200,000 troops Sennacherib would see to that! But first some sleep for him! Suddenly a strange stillness occurred that could be felt. It settled down over the Assyrian troops who were spread out like weeds and thornbushes over the area. Their sleep was not normal! What had happened?

³⁰ “And it came about on that night that the angel of Jehovah proceeded to go out and strike down a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians. When people rose up early in the morning, why, there all of them were dead carcasses.

2 Ki. 19:35-37.

31. In fulfillment of that ancient drama, how will the modern Assyrian “ax” fail to enhance itself successfully against the One chopping with it?

³¹ Aha! The Assyrian “ax” had failed to enhance itself successfully over the One chopping with it! Like that it will be during the coming “great tribulation” when the modern counterpart of Sennacherib and his army tries to enhance itself over the same God by threatening to wipe out His witnesses from the earth. What will follow in fulfillment of the ancient prophetic drama The Watchtower under date of April 1, 1945, pages 108, 109, explains:

. . . Then Jehovah’s witnesses, sheltered within his Theocratic organization, will be under siege and will seem threatened with destruction by the overwhelming hosts of the antitypical Assyrian, Satan the Devil. Yet be not anxious of such a future: Jehovah will fight the battle for his remnant and their companions. He will perform his “strange act” at Armageddon, as he did thousands of years ago in the land of Judah, ‘for his own sake and for the sake of his beloved King.’ Doubtless by that same Son of God who served as the angel to slay 185,000 of Sennacherib’s hosts and send him reeling back to his own violent death, namely, by his reigning King-Son, Christ Jesus, will Jehovah God go forth to battle and will wreak destruction upon the wicked challenger’s world-organization. Like Sennacherib, Satan the Devil will see his visible organization on earth utterly laid low in death.