As we have said, according to these teachings, ever in- creasing numbers seemed to be in line for the second death. This popular trend of so-called increasing light continued until it was discovered that so many were going into the second death that there wouldn’t be enough people left of those who have lived and died to fill the earth. So, the next flash of “light” revealed that those who accept these teachings, and work hard to promulgate them, will live through the “time  of trouble,” get married, and raise large families—very large, indeed—and thus through them will the earth be filled.

The Scriptures, of course, do not teach any such absurd notion as this, but because so many people had been consigned to the second death something had to be done about it, and the advancement of this fantastic theory     of “filling the earth” seemed like a logical thing to do. Like every other false doctrine, it was “proved” by the use of remote Scripture texts improperly associated and woven into a pattern of belief which was naught else than a “cunningly devised fable.”

This substitute for restitution was about the final step backward into the fundamental viewpoint of all nominal churchianity. That blessed theme of God’s mercy and grace, that melody of love which had as its chorus the blessing of all the families of the earth, was scarcely heard in her any more at all. As in Babylon, fear took the place of love and became the driving power of all their activities; and fear was implemented with the threat of the second death to all who dared question the new “light.”

With this “advancement” accomplished, the teachings of the Watch Tower relative to hope beyond the grave were in principle no different from those of all Christendom except in one respect; that is, the use of the “second death” as a whip to keep the workers in line instead of eternal torture. Their teachings, of course differed from those of the churches in a hundred ways so far as details were concerned. So do all the churches differ from one another; but the final result of their teachings is the same; namely, believe us now, or be lost. It is into this gross darkness that many who once rejoiced in the truth gradually were led. The theme song of restitution for the condemned race no longer stirred their hearts