¹⁸ “Beat yourselves upon the breasts in lamentation over the desirable fields, over the fruit-bearing vine. [Why?]

—Isa. 32:12-16.

19. What was the national calamity to which Isaiah was there referring?

¹⁹ Can we today identify the national calamity that the prophet Isaiah here described more than a century in advance? Ah, yes, it was the desolating of the land of the kingdom of Judah for seventy years, during which time the deported Israelites were kept as exiles in the pagan land of Babylon. They were the survivors of the shocking destruction of the holy city of Jerusalem and its temple by the Babylonians in 607 B.C.E. That must certainly have been a dispiriting experience for those survivors to go through. As they languished in an idolatrous country, Jehovah’s temple of worship lay in ruins, Jerusalem was a dead city without any hubbub, and their once productive land was a thornbush-infested wilderness, and a playground for wild zebras, without molestation by man.

21. How does that event back there figure as to the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, chapter thirty-two?

²¹ However, did that event of more than 2,500 years ago provide all the fulfillment that there was to be to that prophecy of Isaiah, chapter thirty-two? No! What there was of fulfillment back there was just a miniature fulfillment to illustrate a future full-scale fulfillment during our own twentieth century. This major and final fulfillment has now come upon those who are today the approved people of the same God, Jehovah.

22. During World War I, what kind of weapons were used in warring upon Jehovah’s Christian witnesses, and why were the nations wrathful against them?

²² Since the year 1931 C.E., these restored Christians have been known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. But years before that, there was that spiritual calamity that befell them during World War I. Simultaneously with that gory war with death-dealing weapons, a war was waged upon them by the symbolic “wild beast” that had received its power and throne and great authority from the “dragon,” Satan the Devil. However, this war was carried on without lethal weapons, for the attacked Christian Bible Students were a harmless, unarmed people. Instead, political and judicial weapons were put to use, even to the imprisonment of peaceable, innocent Christians. (Rev. 13:3-7) The war-inclined nations, who make up the symbolic “wild beast,” were moved to wrath because these Christian witnesses of Jehovah were proclaiming his kingdom by Christ to be the only rightful rule for all the earth now, forasmuch as the appointed “times of the Gentiles” had ended in early autumn of the year 1914 C.E.​—Luke 21:24, Authorized Version; Rev. 11:15-18.

23. By whom were the war-minded nations egged on, and by what mighty trio was the remnant of Kingdom proclaimers overpowered?

²³ The wrathful nations were egged on by the religious leaders who belonged to Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion that has its roots in ancient Babylon. In that religious empire Christendom took the lead in stirring the nations to act and to persecute the small remnant of spiritual Israelites.

1. Before World War I ended in 1918, the spiritual estate of the remnant of spiritual Israel had been reduced to what condition?

BEFORE World War I ended on November 11, 1918, the spiritual estate of the persecuted remnant of spiritual Israelites became desolate. Spiritually, it became like a wilderness, in which the ‘fruits of the kingdom’ were not being brought forth publicly through a bold preaching of “this good news of the kingdom” on the part of the anointed remnant. (Matt. 21:43; 24:14) Uncertainty and despondency settled down upon the internationally hated, oppressed remnant of Kingdom ambassadors.