you will make every effort to learn about Jehovah’s purposes and what he requires of you for preservation into a righteous world under the rule of his kingdom. By acting in harmony with his will your trial for life will not end in an adverse judgment of death but in a favorable judgment of life.

Part 30—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”

The age-long conflict between the symbolic king of the north and the king of the south, foretold in Daniel’s prophecy, chapter 11, has now entered the twentieth century of our Christian era. On January 1, 1871, the German Empire was re-established and shortly it formed a Triple Alliance or “Dreibund” with Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy. On the other hand, in 1882 the British Empire established virtual control over the land of Egypt. Thus the Anglo-American dual world power in effect stepped into the shoes of the king of the south. A.D. 1914 war broke out between the two kings. Regarding this, Daniel 11:29 prophesied that it would not now be the same for the king of the north as it had been in former times, for now he was but a second-rate power and he faced not only a first-rate power, the Anglo-American dual world power, but also the kingdom of God established in heaven in 1914.

16. At first what mainly were the “ships of Kittim” that came against the king of the north?

¹⁶ Commenting on this lack of sameness with former times, the angel said to Daniel: “For there will come against him the ships of Kittim; and he will become fainthearted, and return, and will rage against the holy covenant; and he will do it: and he will return, and have an understanding with those that forsake the holy covenant.” (Dan. 11:30, Le) Although armed with the second-largest navy and many destructive U-boats, the king of the north proved no match for the “ships of Kittim” that came against him. These were not literally ships of Cyprus, the ancient Kittim, although on November 5, 1914, Great Britain annexed the island of Cyprus, to keep pro-German Turkey out. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, the term Kittim was applied not only to Cyprus but also to the coasts of Italy. Interestingly, Italy joined the warring Britain in 1915, according to the Treaty of London, and thus put her own Roman navy alongside that of the king of the south. But the “ships of Kittim” were at first mainly the great British navy.

17. How did more ships of Kittim come later when the seventh world power fully got into the war with the king of the north?

¹⁷ More “ships of Kittim” came from the west later, after the German submarine, U-20, sank the British Cunard Liner Lusitania off Ireland on May 7, 1915, and 124 American lives were lost. A diplomatic controversy arose between America and Germany. Matters worsened, and on April 6, 1917, American President Wilson declared a state of war existed with Germany. Then from the west came the American warships in the fight against the king of the north, and American troops were poured onto the European continent. The king of the south, the Anglo-American dual world power, was now fully at war with the rival king. In September, 1916, however, the British had introduced a strange kind of armor-clad land battleship against the king of the north, in the form of the tractored “tanks.”

18. In 1917, how did the king of the north help world communism?

¹⁸ Significantly, in 1917, after Russia’s czar abdicated, Kaiser Wilhelm sent Nikolai Lenin from Switzerland across Germany and Sweden to Russia to spread Bolshevism or communism, for the purpose of weakening and destroying the Russian armies. (So says General Ludendorff, the ally of Adolf Hitler, in his memoirs.) By this war strategy the king of the north helped the cause of world communism.

19. When did the king of the north “become fainthearted, and return,” and how, and by what world events had 1914 now become stamped as significant?

¹⁹ However, in November, 1918, the king of the north grew “fainthearted” and returned, withdrawing from the war, whipped. Kaiser Wilhelm, who had ruled since his father, Frederick III, died in 1888, gave up the throne and fled into exile, and Germany became a republic. So World War I ended. But it, together with the food shortages, pestilences and the persecution of Jehovah’s sanctuary class, stamped A.D. 1914 as the year when the “seven times,” “the appointed times of the nations,” ended and when God’s kingdom was born in the heavens and this Devil-ruled old world entered in upon its “appointed time of the end.”—Matt. 24:7-9; Luke 21:10-17.

20. With Kaiser Wilhelm now in exile, how did the king of the north “rage against the holy covenant”?

²⁰ In Kaiser Wilhelm’s case, his heart had been against the holy covenant. (Dan. 11:28, JP) With him in exile till his death on June 4, 1941, how did the king of the north now “rage against the holy covenant” and “do it”? This was by the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, the Austrian, aided by German Catholic politicians, for example, Franz von Papen. In January, 1933, President von Hindenburg put out Schleicher and put in Hitler as German chancellor, with Von Papen as vice-chancellor. Then President von Hindenburg declared: “And now, gentlemen, forward with God!”a It was really ‘FORWARD AGAINST GOD!’ By then Jehovah’s witnesses numbered more than 19,200 in Germany and were very prominent. One of the first things that the Nazi Fuehrer Hitler did was to ban Jehovah’s witnesses, seize their witnessing equipment and consign them to prisons and concentration camps.b On April 1, 1933, Hitler became dictator, for the German Reichstag delegated its lawmaking powers to Hitler’s government for a term of four years. By this stroke the German republic ceased and was followed by the “Third German Empire.” The First had been the Germanic Holy Roman Empire from 962 to 1806; and the Second, the Hohenzollern Empire from 1871 to 1918. The Third was the Hitler dictatorship.

21. How did the king of the north now “do it” by having an “understanding with those that forsake the holy covenant”?

²¹ Still, how did he “do it”? On September 8, 1926, Germany had been admitted to the League of Nations, but Nazi dictator Hitler marched Germany out of the League on October 14, 1933. Boldly he went from one worldly success to another, annexing Austria and then Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia and forming the Axis Powers, including faraway Japan. Much of his success was due to his having an “understanding with those that forsake the holy covenant.” Those who claimed to be in favor of God’s covenant for the Kingdom were the clergy of Christendom, particularly those of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. These had not waited upon the rightful Heir, Jesus Christ, to come into his kingdom in 1914, but established a religious-political government of their own and set up the Holy Roman Empire.