52:7, 8; 61:1-3; Matt. 24:14; 2 Cor. 5:20) So, even in Russia, with their Bibles they press on preaching the good news inside and outside prison camps. (Matt. 24:9; 28:19, 20; Mark 13:9-11; Luke 21:12, 13; Rev. 2:10) They celebrate the Memorial, privately or together, in cellars, in woods, in camps, isolated. They are ready to meet any obstacle and try to overcome it, but they will not compromise with this old world.—Joel 2:4-9; Phil. 1:28.

The Bible is in Russia to stay. Jehovah’s witnesses use it; and while the United Press last year reported that the most widely read book in the world will be “available again in Russia next month [meaning January, 1956],” it has been under ban by the Communists for thirty-eight years. Even now, as United Press pointed out, only a few Bibles will be printed: “The type had been set, and priests in the Moscow patriarchate were reading the final proofs. The first printing, set for January, will be small, since the church has to buy the paper and pay the government for the printing; but in time the church hopes to distribute the new Bible all over the Soviet Union.”

Will the Bible be released in great quantity throughout Russia?

When it is, Jehovah’s witnesses will explain it to the people. As long as the Communist leaders and their supporters are afraid of the truth, this new Bible of theirs, in the Russian language, may get only a limited distribution while the communistic regime continues. Certainly it will not be released to Jehovah’s witnesses, for in their hands it is like dynamite. So it continues under ban to them.

Will the world’s most widely read book be widely read in Russia before Jehovah’s war at Armageddon?—Rev. 16:13-16; Jer. 25:32, 33; Isa. 34:1-4; Zeph. 2:1-3; Acts 2:19-21.

Now only those who seek Jehovah, hungering for truth and righteousness, yes, only those who want to fight “the right contest of the faith” (1 Tim. 6:12, NW), only those who are willing to lay down their very lives for truth (Rev. 12:11), are the ones that will ever see and understand the Bible, not only in Russia but in all the rest of the world.

(Be sure to read in our next issue the firsthand story of a man who was one of the seven thousand turned into the woods in Russia, mentioned on page 214 of this issue. His personal story is titled, “I Lived in Exile in Siberia.” Don’t miss it!)

Shining as the “Light of the World”

“TRULY sweet is the light, and pleasant to the eyes.” Apt as are those words regarding the light of the sun, they are even more fitting regarding the spiritual light which shines from the great Sun, Jehovah God, the “Father of the celestial lights.” Spiritual light brings freedom from bondage, hope of everlasting life and comfort, love and joy.—Eccl. 11:7, Ro; Jas. 1:17, NW.

Today, however, more than ever before “darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples,” because Satan “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God,