at the Fair Park were impressed by the unusual co-operativeness and cleanliness of the conventioners. One policeman confessed he had never taken an interest in us before. “You people have something!” he added. But religious prejudice kept the newspaper publicity down to 517.5 column inches.

Incidentally, today during the progress of the Dallas assembly two “Flying Tigers” at New York city’s Idlewild airport took to the air loaded almost to capacity with conventioners availing themselves of early flight facilities across the Atlantic to be on hand for the London (England) assembly the following week.

The public lecture on “World Conquest Soon—by God’s Kingdom” was billed for eight o’clock tonight in both English and Spanish. During the hour-and-a-half program that preceded this a threatening storm cloud began approaching from the southwest and fanned out over Dallas. All other clouds closed in with it to form a pitch-black cloud mass over the city, from which lightnings flashed. The effect on the thousands of the public who may have thought of attending the public lecture in the open, coverless Cotton Bowl can be imagined. So only 14,825 turned out for the talk by the president in the Bowl and 1,508 for the same talk in Spanish by the vice-president in the Pavilion, or a total of 16,409. As soon as the president under the drapeless canopy on the platform began to speak, down came a heavy rain. Fortunately he had donned his raincoat and rubber overshoes, but thousands before him in the Bowl moved back under cover of the corridors beneath the stands. Many, however, kept sitting under umbrellas in the rain in full view of the speaker, who offset the sudden difficulty by endeavoring to make this his best delivery yet of this powerful lecture. The rain beating down on the tin top of the canopy over him produced a background noise over the loud-speakers, but the message continued going out till its grand climax and the release of the free booklet to this faithful audience. Over at the Pavilion the booklet was released for the first time in Spanish and elicited a great applause that kept up till the speaker departed for the airport with the president to fly to New York city. The conventioners now began to depart to share their blessing with those back home, and the nine congregations in Dallas with a total of more than 700 active Kingdom ministers were left to take advantage of all the fine effects of the assembly upon the inhabitants of Greater Dallas.

(To be continued)

Questions From Readers

● What is meant by a token fulfillment of the procreation mandate? Is not its fulfillment to be more than just a token?—A. L., United States.

The general mass of mankind, “those who practiced vile things,” will not be brought into the new world by resurrection until the thousand-year reign is well along and paradisaic conditions have overspread the earth. (John 5:28, 29; Luke 23:43, NW) It is the survivors of Armageddon that will join in carrying out the command to “be fruitful and become many and fill the earth” with righteous offspring. But their fulfilling of this command cannot be understood to mean populating the earth to completeness, for that would leave no room for the resurrected multitudes that are to come.—Gen. 1:28, NW.

Hence, rather than a complete fulfillment of the procreation mandate it is a token fulfillment. It will constitute a token of what God could accomplish. It will demonstrate Jehovah’s power to populate the earth with a righteous race by means of human procreation, as purposed at the time of creation. We have an example of such a token fulfillment in Noah’s perfect number of generations (10 × 7 = 70) after the flood. (Gen. 9:1) So the filling of the earth by the other sheep surviving Armageddon will betoken or represent or demonstrate Jehovah’s power to accomplish the procreation mandate in this way, and hence may be called a representative fulfillment or a token fulfillment, but not a complete one that would leave no room for the later resurrection of “those who practiced vile things.”