So you keep writing your reports. Do not run out of ink, but mark with the pen of the man in linen. Do not get writer’s cramp, but keep drawing on God’s spirit to write on the fleshly tablets of human hearts. Let all of us be cowriters with our brethren throughout the earth in now heaping up an abundance of raw materials for the 1952 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

By Jehovah’s undeserved kindness, when its production is complete may we read in it a report of a publisher peak of 500,396!

Denial of Church Building Permit Unlawful

WHY discriminate against those who desire to assemble for divine worship? With lawlessness and delinquency rampant can you imagine city officials so unreasonable and arbitrary that they would forbid the construction of a church building? Is it possible that public officials could stoop so low? The denial of a permit to build a meeting place and place of worship is so obviously capricious that it offends any reasonable person.

From earliest times in America the church building has occupied a special status. It has been the desire of the people that the government should protect and extend favors as far as possible to congregations assembled for worship. All of the forty-eight states have provided in their constitutions for the exemption of churches from the payment of taxes. Churches bear burdens that would ordinarily fall directly upon the government. Christian preaching of the gospel enjoins upon the people an obligation to conduct themselves uprightly and to obey all proper law.

Jehovah’s witnesses are not surprised nor discouraged when confronted by bigotry, arbitrary denials of fundamental rights or discrimination on the part of public officials. “From ancient times to the present day, the ingenuity of man has known no limits in its ability to forge weapons of oppression for use against those who dare to express or practice unorthodox beliefs.”—Mr. Justice Murphy, dissenting, in Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158, 175-176.

In Tampa, Florida, it was necessary for a congregation to build a meeting place, since they were unable to lease suitable accommodations. A nonprofit corporation was organized, a lot obtained and a building permit procured. The day after the permit was granted the building inspector stopped work. He subsequently granted a new permit and then withdrew it, resorting to dilatory, delaying tactics. The board of representatives then, while the building inspector had the matter under reconsideration, hurriedly passed an ordinance designed to prohibit building of the church under the pretext of requiring off-street parking facilities for automobiles in the vicinity of places of assembly in residential areas.

Not retreating from their purpose Jehovah’s witnesses persisted in their plan to provide themselves