The Default of the Radio Commission[]
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Sept. 6, 1928
To the Federal Radio Commission, Department of Interior Building, Washington, D. C.
Gentlemen:
It is hardly to be expected that this letter will accomplish any immediate good, but it will be on record to bear witness in the future. Since my interview with various members of your Commission on Tuesday last, I feel it is my duty to write you. In the outset please be assured of my kind feeling toward you personally. Knowing me, I believe that you will bear witness that I am not erratic nor an extremist. I repeat my words uttered before your Commission on a former occasion: "What I say here is not a threat, but a warning."
From my personal knowledge of you gentlemen I believe that each of you desires to do what is right, but I am wholly convinced that you are unable to do so because of yielding to influences, some of which are visible and some invisible. It is well known that the great visible controlling factor of America is Big Business, and that Professional Politicians and an Apostate Clergy work in conjunction with that selfish interest. All of these yield unconsciously to an unseen and powerful influence....
It is well known that Big Business controls the commerce of America and the politics of the nation, and now it is boldly and blatantly announced that it will control the religious things that the people shall hear. Clergymen unfaithful to God and their vowes yield and are yielding to the sinister influence of the Trust.
Permit me to suggest that there are millions of people in America that are not at all in sympathy with the program of the clergymen and Big Business. These good, honest millions believe in the Bible as taught by Jesus Christ and the apostles, and by the good Christian ministers who during the early days of America taught the truth of the Bible then due to be understood and that without monetary consideration. This opinion is fully supported by the great flood of letters and telegrams which I have received from the people throughout America during the past few months...
The radio belongs to Jehovah God. It is not man's invention. Certainly Big Business does not rightfully own and control it. Why, then, do men yield to this selfish influence of the Trust? I answer, There is an unseen and more powerful influence that controls all selfish interests and therefore controls the world. That invisible power and influence is Satan the Devil, whom the Bible designates as "the prince of the power of the air", and again, "the prince of this world", and again, "the god of this world." The "Radio Trust" would never permit the clergymen to broadcast these Bible truths concerning the Devil and his power over the nations. How, then, are the people to learn of their unseen and sinister enemy and to learn who is their real friend, if the "Radio Trust" has its way?....
No longer can America boast of being the land of religious freedom as the Constitution guarantees. The fact that Big Business now controls the air and causes clergymen in the Name of the Lord to hypocritically serve up a "Great Message of Religion" that has the approval of the Power Trust and which ignores the Word of God, is but another proof that freedom of thought is done. It is also evidence that the end of near. No nation can continue to ignore God and continue to exist.
One of your members the other day said to me, "You must pray for us." I do pray that God will give you the courage to tell the Power Trust to stand aside and let the people have a full and fair opportunity to hear the Word of God freely discussed that they may know the way He has provided for their salvation and happiness. Because of the importance of your position relative to the teaching of the people, there is a far greater responsibility upon the Federal Radio Commission at this time than upon the President of the United States. It is of much more importance that the people know the Truth than that they possess all the money and honor that the world can afford.
Once more in the Name of Jehovah God, the author and creator of the radio, I ask that you grant unto radio stations WBBR and WORD more favorable broadcasting channels, to the end that the people may have a chance to hear the truth and that without money and without price.
Believe me, gentlemen, in all sincerity
You friend,
J. F. RUTHERFORD
The Sacred Name[]
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Not only is YEH-HO-VAH the pronunciation that by reverent tradition was preserved to the present generation of the Jews, and which is the correct pronunciation the orthodox Jews in an erroneous conception of Exodus 20:7 avoid uttering (Isaiah 29:13), but there are also other and even stronger corroborative arguments:
The pronunciation "Jahweh" is a "discovery" of the "Higher Critics". Their arguments to support their claim are undisputably false. Some explain that Jahweh was the name of one of the idols of heathen aborigines of Canaan, and that the Hebrews later adopted this name for their national god. This argument betrays the inspirer of the High Text Criminals. The Devil no doubt is the father of this lie. It is obviously another attempt of the enemy to defame the holy name of Jehovah.
The Jahwists claim that the later added vowel signs to the sacred name do not belong to it, but to the word ADONAI (Lord). Yet the vowel points of adonai are a-o-a, or the spoken a-o-ai, and the vowel points of Jehovah are e-o-a. This slight similarity proves nothing, but this so-called "scientific proof" looks rather as similar to other so-called "proofs" of a sham science as one egg does to another (for instance, the fallacy of the evolution theory that certain similarities between creatures prove that their species have the same primeval ancestors).
There is no doubt concerning the correct pronunciation of the Hebrew or real name of Jesus, namely Jehoschuah (yeh-ho-shoo'-ah = Jehovah's salvation). This shows clearly how the sacred name of God is to be pronounced. There are many other Biblical proper names with indubitable pronunciation where Jehovah's name appears in abbreviated form; for instance, Jehojada, Jehoadah, Jehoaddin, Jehoadaz, Jehoash, Jehohanan, Jehoiachin, Jehoiarib, Jehonadab, Jehonathan, Jehoram, Jehoshabeath, Jehoshaphat, Jehozabad, Jehozadak, etc.
"By My Name Jehovah Was I Not Known"[]
By Fred Franz
Having read Mr. Freschel's foregoing article on Jehovah's name, I should like to append thereto the following observations:
It no doubt causes wonderment that God's name, viz., JEHOVAH, does not occur in the New Testament, and neither Jesus nor His apostles are recorded as taking the name in their lips. In writing the New Testament in Greek, the writers of the gospels and epistles evidently followed the Greek Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, which also does not use the name Jehovah but uses the word "Kurios", Lord, in translating the name Jehovah from the Hebrew text.
The translators of the King James Version followed this practice, so that in the entire Authorized Version the name "Jehovah" occurs only seven times, viz., four times by itself and three times in combinations such as Jehovah-nissi, Jehovah-shalom, and Jehovah-jireh; and the name "Jah" occurs only once.
The Catholic version and Luther's translation followed the same method of translating.
In view of the above the name Jehovah became a rare and practically unnamed word amongst the Christian churches.
The Lord unquestionably arranged the omission of His name "Jehovah" from the New Testament, and has permitted the Christian churches throughout this era to overlook God's outstanding name.
Prior to 1918 A.D. even those in "present truth" used the name meagrely, and its full significance and glory was not understood by them.
Thus of a truth it has been with Christians as well as with all Christendom and heathendom that "by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them".
But now that the day is at hand to make a name for Himself, He has overruled that some modern translations, like the American Revised Version, the German "Miniaturbibel" and "Parallelbibel", etc., do not translate "Jehovah" by the word "Lord", but take the name bodily over into their translation or text; and now that the antitypical Moses is present for the deliverance of God's people and the common people, He is making Himself known to them by His "great and terrible name" Jehovah.
This is an interesting and yet unmistakable parallel, and also helps us to understand how Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, and others of their day knew and used the name "Jehovah"; as for instance when "Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh" (Genesis 22:14); and yet God says in Exodus 6:3: "Unto Abraham, and Isaac, and unto Jacob . . . by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." So, too, Christians knew the name, at least the sound of it, before 1918, and yet they did not know it, i.e., the significance, the might and glory of it.