Difficult Situations and Wisdom

Friday, 13 February 2004

Within a month of meeting Bernd and Schmid, we developed a very quick and intense relationship with the Witnesses. With these young men, who were the same age as us, being together felt like friendship. That is, we were together with them because we enjoyed it. Neither I nor my brother had any expectation or interest. Even if my brother thought that he might in time marry a girl from there, in my view that cannot be called an evil self-interest. This means that our brother valued the seriousness with which the Witnesses view the matter of fornication. We already know that these are qualities every man and woman looks for. Besides, if it is a crime for a single person to look for a spouse…! On the other hand, though, I also think that to be together with the Witnesses without feeling any love toward God and any curiosity to know Him, merely in order to marry, for friendship’s sake, is in my view the greatest thoughtlessness. Our brother, too, made such a foolish start with these people. Everyone except him noticed this situation!

While I was together with the Witnesses, in those very first days I noticed something. For instance, my inner self craved conversations about spiritual matters excessively. Knowledge of God, researching, talking, debating and so forth broadened my perspective and I took tremendous pleasure in it. I felt a very great hunger within myself for these subjects. But Bernd and Schmid were not like that at all. For example, my brother would ask questions, questions that were very logical and whose answers even I knew back then. I would watch them, wondering what they would say. Saying, “Bravo, a very good question,” they would leave it unanswered. As for me, so that the question would not remain open in my brother’s mind, I would give the answer. But our brother never liked the things I knew, and would always say, “You keep quiet and let them talk.” As far as my patience allowed, I would most of the time regard these feelings of his toward me as normal.

We are three siblings from one mother, but in temperament none of the three of us resemble one another at all. Most of the time we are like cats and dogs toward one another. Our ages have nearly reached the fifties, and we are still like that. Things between me and my brother have always gone this way! Perhaps it would be more correct if I said, like every set of siblings. For some reason, children of the same family become like enemies toward one another. And these feelings of hatred, jealousy and envy are given to children as though from birth. Yes, these are actually flawed qualities we receive from birth, but unfortunately we develop them ourselves too. In everyone the dose differs, that is all. As Jesus Christ also said, “A prophet is not without honor except among his own household.” Even if a person is a prophet, he is looked down upon by his own household. But strangers do not see that person in this way. King David’s elder brothers likewise could not stand David. I have seen very, very few siblings who love one another. Anyway, let me not go into these matters, otherwise the book will grow far too long to no purpose.

When Schmid and Bernd visited us, they gave the impression of doing a job. Sometimes we would be together until two in the morning. These two friends were staying in one room anyway. When it passed midnight, I would say, stay the night with us. These young men were in such an exhausted state, exhausted and unwilling. When Schmid sprawled out, about to slide off the armchair, nearly stretching his feet toward the floor, my brother and I would nudge each other. Sometimes we would watch television while Schmid’s face and eyes were in a swooning state. I would say, “Schmid, if you like, go and wash your face or something, don’t feel awkward, act as if you were in your own home.” What can I say, well, a young man may feel awkward in a stranger’s home. Even though the way he sat and rose did not show he felt awkward, I still thought it was not like being in his own home. When it was time to come to our house, Bernd would generally say, “Let me drop by my folks,” and would either come three or four hours later than the hour he stated, or would not come at all. Because they came in one car, when Bernd did not come, Schmid was obliged to sleep over at our place. Schmid would get angry at this situation. We did not like it either. We had once entered among the Witnesses. And everyone was making mistakes. As for me, I was very surprised that they were doing so. That these men, who outwardly seemed very humble, full of wisdom in their words and full of the knowledge of God, would slip up in such simple things surprised me greatly. Moreover these people are European, that is, German. We are Turks. That is, in the eyes of Europeans we are simple, ignorant, underdeveloped, brainless people, right! If so, these people ought to have shown qualities superior to ours. We never held a racist thought. At least for me personally this was so. If I was making any distinction and paying attention, it was to the things they said and proclaimed about God. Furthermore, I naturally looked at these young people, who devoted 90 hours a month to preaching, while making a distinction. And with a magnifying glass at that. I too loved God, but when these people came before me I was surprised. As I said, they were even a year or two younger than me. The sacrifice they made was great in my eyes. However this lasted only until I got to know them and their governing bodies. And getting to know them does not take so long. It was plainly evident that these young men were doing their work by force, under a pressure. They force themselves, and that congregation forces them too. This time the quality of the valuable work they do becomes zero for the outside observer. But he looks at his strange hours, thinking, “how many hours have I been together preaching.” As I said, he is going to write it in the report at month’s end. Just try walking door to door ninety hours every month! And after that, wait for joy! And in this way you will win people over to God. On the contrary, in my view, after seeing these people, even someone who was going to come would not come, but would flee. Because if the outcome he must take as an example is these people, would he not say, “Thank you, brother, that’s all right, I don’t want it”? There are surely also those who would not say it. They look at events, see them, and perceive them, from a completely different angle. Their numbers, over roughly a hundred years, have reached about 6 million worldwide. To some this is a lot; in my view, considering all this activity they display, it is little.

At the beginning, exactly as it was with me, these young men too surely started this work regarding it as very valuable. The pressure exists already. Well, who is it who loves God and does not give all his time, even his very life, to serve His will? And even if he does not love, who can say, “I do not love God”? Is there anyone who does not know these feelings full of pressure upon people? When these feelings begin to research within a person, they develop over time. Not in everyone, of course. But if a person, being sure about the things he does, passes through his mind, “I am doing what God wants,” does this not make that person happy, does it not ease his conscience? To belong to a religion, and that by working intensely. Almost his night and day will pass only in this milieu. These people were like sleepless piecework laborers working fourteen hours a day. The more exhausted and tired his appearance, the more joy he feels. As if to say, “Look at what I endure for this work.” In Europe a Muslim spreads out his prayer rug and prays among the semitrailers, in the parking lots. In my view the feelings experienced in both cases are the same. Whereas if only he knew that those who look at him do not regard him at all with the sort of eye he imagines! The person himself, unfortunately, does not know this. Or he knows, but thanks to the training he has received, he pays no heed at all to those bad eyes around him.

In Turkey, in religious circles, what things they force even those tiny children to do. By force of conscience, by pressure, by threat, by beating; supposedly they are made to serve God. Of course this is not only in Turkey; religious pressure exists everywhere. In Arab countries, if the police see on the street a man who does not go to the mosque on Friday, they chase him with a stick, it is said! You should just see those children who grow up under religious pressure, how much effort they put in. But all of them are sorrowful, unhappy, they do it by force, with hatred. Whichever way the compass of that religious community he is in is now turned, he keeps running toward that goal. He must not deviate a millimeter. On our earth there are thousands of religions and sects. All of them shout, “Only we are right.” All of them are terribly money-minded. The thing they love most is material wealth. Exactly of the type Jesus spoke of.

They strain out the gnat but gulp down the camel. Matthew 23:24

They love taking far more than giving. Their heads always work in this direction. And in order to do their business as skillfully as possible, they enter into every sleight of hand without hesitation. Our brother used to tell of it; these situations were the greatest hardship he suffered too. In anger he would say, “Wherever I go with these people, they never take out and give five cents.” Because they had pinned not so much on me, but much more hope on him. Well, what hope was this? To draw him in, or to drive him away? By their words, drawing in; by their behavior, driving away. Again our brother would say, “Let them pay for the things they themselves eat, not for what I eat.” “Come on, I put up with one of them, and then the others come,” he would burn away saying. He would say, “It is not once, twice or three times or so; these people are like this always and forever.” Once, again like this, they were to go straight into someone’s house right at the door and take something or other and come out. That Witness was a high-school senior, a 21-year-old student, staying with his parents. He too was of the sort who, like the others, carries a scorpion in his pocket. Our brother had put up with him a great deal. As they were leaving the house, that young man hurriedly took two apples from the ones on the table. And in the room it was as if no one was there. But when a harsh voice from within said, “You have eaten up your apple ration!”, he stammered to his mother, “yes, yes, all right,” and put the apple back in its place. My brother would say, “I turned bright red.” This youth’s parents are Witnesses too! Perhaps if the Witnesses came to us a hundred times, I went to them, with great reluctance, only a few times, and that so as not to be rude. Whatever they were doing, I both knew and they showed how much by force they did it. They do it as a duty, never with any love. Only, the Turks among the Witnesses were not quite like this. The Turkish meetings, or the Turks within those Turkish-speaking meetings, were not of the type that strains out the gnat and gulps down the camel. But once you give them something in trust, if it goes, it does not come back; that is another matter.

On a hot day we had gotten ready and were waiting to go to the wedding of some Witnesses we knew. The thing I dislike most is going to weddings. I do not like any of the things done merely so that custom is satisfied. Perhaps that is just how weddings seemed to me. That day other Witnesses were to come to us and we would go together. They came, but because they had come from far away our sister had sweated on the road! “Oh, I can’t go like this,” she said. So that she could wear it at the wedding, our lady gave her her most beautiful dress. It happened, and a perfect fit at that. Off she went, and that was that. If I said we never saw either the dress or that Witness again, I think it would not be a lie. Even if we did see her, we were too embarrassed to say, “where is our dress.” The Witnesses who were going to come to visit us would phone a day before coming and give us instructions on how to prepare food for them. These people can be that brazen too. A dish according to their own wishes would be decided upon, and when they were going to come, that dish would be made. And these were the brothers at the Turkish meetings! Some, so as not to come to us empty-handed, would come with chocolate or candy whose date had passed by six months or a year. Behind their backs I would toss it into the trash just as it was, unopened. And these were Germans, at least 50 years old and among the leading figures of the congregation. When, in a conversation with one of these leading figures, I said, “God always sees the future,” he angrily stood up, threw his coat toward his wife, and played the tough guy, saying, “Come on, get up, we’re leaving.” His wife saved the situation and put this man back in his place! Out of shame on their behalf, water ran down my back, while in my eyes they shrank very much. Of thousands of such simple incidents with the Witnesses, I have told only a few. There were many occasions when I clenched my teeth and held myself back. These simple, disgusting, vulgar behaviors of theirs were perhaps of a kind that even the ones they call the worst worldly people would not stoop to. I was too ashamed even to write about very simple things and a whole host of other nauseating ones. Besides, these are things one encounters every day in the world. Perhaps things that nearly every person does. States and nations devour one another for money and, turning all kinds of intrigues, do vile things too; yes, that may be. But these people, these very people who condemn the whole world, were behaving this way. Moreover, that these people, who say that God will save no one but themselves, are like this—what, in your view, does this plainly mean? As for me, I never used to pay heed to such things. When I say I did not pay heed, I attributed it to that person’s character, not to the religion he belonged to. Well, there are crooked people everywhere, I thought. And even if ninety-nine percent of them were crooked like this, these were, in my view, base, vulgar offenses.

In those days we too were up to our throats in debt. Would a person living this way not have debt? It must be from the upbringing we received from our mother, we were accustomed to being open-handed. I suffered very, very much from living in debt. In those days, not only did I not have a single cent, but at that young age I had a total of 50 thousand marks of debt. Nor did we have a lemon tree. Thank God we still don’t! Those who do not grasp it misunderstand this, thinking, “how can this debt be.” Fifteen thousand marks was my military-service debt. When I started work my car was a wreck. It either ran or it didn’t. Obliged not to lose my job, I had bought a small, cheap but new car, or rather I had leased it for 3 years under the name of Leasing. We carried out the marriage in Turkey, without a wedding or anything. Even the bridal gown was given by our landlord’s daughter. Even so, the furniture and all of this fell onto my shoulders within one year. And you are in a foreign country and are expected to expend far more strength than an animal in order to earn money. If you are going to work like a German, why would the men hire you? The logic of all of them is like this. He takes pleasure and talks with a German, drinks and chats with him and so on, but what is he to do with you? That is, there is no benefit at all. They understand, protect and put up with one another. They regard one another as human beings. But they saw us as their rented animals and from time to time behaved so. Most of the Turks were not aware of this. Because in their own country they had seen the same things from one another. And because they knew neither the German’s language nor his ways, they did not understand, and were managed. Those Turks who were decent and did notice these situations returned home right away anyway. Some got angry at the German and returned, then, regretting the things they saw in their homeland, came back again. Such people generally withdrew into their shells and lived with community and social relations so limited as to be almost nonexistent. But when I saw that they did to Turks the things, the disrespect, the deceit, the injustices, that Germans could not do to one another, I would say, so if a person wills it, he can be this base too. That gentility, respect, reason, show—so, as in every person, in most of them too it was a pose. Among our own people there was no lack of lies, filth, and vulgarity either. All of them? If one or twenty of them are like this, then in between the other eighty fit into the same vessel, though this ratio is sometimes completely reversed. Germans are different toward one another, because they fear one another. As for us, we are a minority with no one to protect us, so why and whom should we fear? Once the situation is like this, you see that person’s true face. That is, they carry out their behavior of the sort described as “according to whom you’re dealing with.” My father too always used to say, “One behaves according to the man, son.” At that time this was logical in my eyes too. Yet for Germans, behaving according to the man depended solely on whether you were a Turk or a foreigner. Whatever qualities you might possess, it made no difference at all. However decent, however honest you might be, and however beautiful, clean and good you might be. Only, some Germans around you who notice this situation, for their own benefit, and because that person too has no one, extend a greeting as a favor. Whereas at this logic that says, “I behave according to the man,” God does not look at all kindly. Through King Solomon He says thus:

“Do not say, ‘As he did to me, so I will do to him; I will pay the man back according to his work.’ ” Proverbs 24:29.

We were living under such burdens in this so-called rich country. You have a car but cannot ride in it, you have clothes but cannot wear them, your eating and drinking always by the clock. I could ride in the car when going to work. I wanted very much to go out for a drive like that. To wear the clothes I had bought. But I could not wear them, doing the porterage of firewood. Generally I worked on Saturdays too. There remained one Sunday, and since I was already worn out the whole week, that day too I could only look to rest. This was modern slavery. I do not look down on the work I did with it and so on, but the morale and social circle we had were as if nonexistent. Actually we had no one. The Turks would meet one another in the coffeehouses. As for other places, they were afraid a lot of their money would go. And that unwanted atmosphere oppressed them too. Generally the places they went were either coffeehouses they ran themselves or Greek coffeehouses whose business was not going well. Once you enter such places, the smell soaks into your very skin. Especially if the season is winter—and Germany’s season is generally always winter—since everywhere is closed indoors, when you come home you take off a machine-load of laundry. Whereas I had gone out of the house spotless. I went to such places for a very short time. I got no pleasure at all. The worst aspect was the smell and the filth; I had no other problem. Actually the smell of cigarettes soaked onto a person even in the cleanest-looking German restaurants. In those days I also had a bad habit like gambling, and one came to those places practically solely for this anyway. If there had been clean environments, perhaps I too would have gone often. So the Turks who went there also had a need for people. They would not admit Turks to discotheques and such, they would not even open the door to them. I used to get very angry at this rudeness. Indeed, later I heard that they had placed Turkish bouncers at the doors. And the Germans do this so that no stain comes upon themselves. Just as in Hitler’s time they had the Jews slaughtered by the hands of Jews. I did not understand these situations until I had my own workplace.

Later we too opened a small restaurant, but a very small place. It had a table for ten. There was room for two more to eat standing. My worst customers were Turks, and the best, trouble-free ones were the Germans. A Turk, when he comes to you to eat even a döner in bread, enters with an air as if he were not there to eat döner at your place but to buy your shop. In my view this is a situation stemming from ignorance and lack of manners. These men very rarely eat out. And even then he is now trembling over the three cents he is going to give. But these people, without any hesitation, gamble, throw dice for a month’s wages and lose, and their hearts do not burn; yet for a döner in bread, or for things like cheese and bread he would buy from the market, they become so finicky! Moreover, you can never satisfy those people who are even bigger firewood porters than I am! And he wants to know everything about you. If he does not like the answers to questions like what you believe, where your hometown is, how many kilos of döner you skewer, how much property you have, then, may he live long and prosper, he never comes to you again! Which one should I tell of. Our shop’s owner was a Turk too. The troubles, problems and lawsuits we had with him, we had with no customer, with no one.

Actually none of us has any superiority over another, and that is why God commands us to be forgiving. Because He looks at events from a clearer angle and knows us very well too. If we are not forgiving, if we have no love, then we end up in the very state of our present world. In my view there is no need for long, long descriptions.

I am recounting these tedious matters in detail so that you can picture our life over there in your minds. So that I can enable you to understand me and us better. The situations of the German ones among these Witnesses were incomparably better than ours. Money did not rain from the sky for them either, but naturally they did not carry our burdens either. Their own country, homes, parents, grandmothers, aunts—they have plenty and plenty. We too have such extended families, but none of them is of any benefit. On the contrary, if anything, they cause harm. From every relative of theirs who dies, something is left to the German young people. Another benefit was that at least living in their own country made them much more advantaged than us. The poorest German makes preparations in advance for his child’s future—life insurance, money, and a host of other savings. So that when those young people set out in life, they cover their deficiencies such as a driver’s license and a car. And once they acquire a profession, they now start out to work in that profession with no burden at all. The money he earns remains in his hand free of debts and expenses. After that he thinks about how many houses he will build and buy. Now he will always be thinking of piling up. His aunt dies and money is left, his grandmother dies and money and goods are left. If his parents die, everything is left to him. To us, only debts will be left, and we are terrified that we will be obliged to pay them. And while they are alive too, you have to provide constant material support. Whether this was a situation valid not as a nation, but perhaps personally only for us, I cannot know. Even if I said as a nation, I probably would not be speaking wrongly. We would send even those three cents in our hand to them so as to be a help. For the German there are none of these problems. On the contrary, they always take from their parents. And a German never likes to give anything to anyone without return. In my view again this is generally how every person is. The difference among them is in the manner of the weak-amateurish or the strong-professional.

No one made the German a gift of his earnings either. These men warred, massacred, stole, killed, died and lost; then, striving and toiling, working, they rose again. America has still not gotten off their necks. This means only that they give money and tribute to it. This is America, after all; if it does not take, it declares war! But another truth is that this wealth the Germans possess came about thanks to America. Not solely thanks to the Germans’ diligence, abilities and brains. And these are men who plundered the very teeth, right down to the crowns, of the people they killed. Where do you suppose that material wealth vanished to? Had Russia not been standing as a rival against America after that war, Germany now could not even be as much as, at most, a Czechoslovakia. Or rather it would be more correct to say it would be only as much as the former East Germany was. Surely America too considered its own benefit in these investments, but in the end, in my view, Germany came out the winner. Only, if they continue to anger America, the Germans’ situation is a bit difficult. Once upon a time the Ottomans were like this. Before that there is Byzantium, there is the Roman Empire, Babylon, the Medes and Persians, Assyria, Egypt. All of them were the same. Should the present America be any different! The end came for all of them; one way or another, none is eternal.

Bernd and Schmid too were like those religious youths of ours. Despite my being very ardent about these matters, they would say, “You’re still new, that’s why you’re like this.” I would always sift these words in my head and ponder them. So in time my joy too would go. Would I too in time, like these people, lose my feelings toward God? In that case what value would this have in God’s eyes? God’s men—Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Job, Noah, the apostles and however many prophets there are—did these people too in time lose their hearts that burned toward God? That such people who pass as devout had actually, from the very beginning, always had a relationship with God so slight as to be called zero, I would learn many years later. The works they did, the sacrifices, the efforts, and whatever else they do, were always for people who were just like themselves. They had no relationship with God, near or far. That name “Jehovah” they used was merely a talisman, a label, like a piece of gum in their mouths. They did not know God as God, did not love God as God, and did not delight in the things He delights in. As I said, it was nothing but human commandments and obedience to them, that is all. That these people too were like this, the former Witnesses themselves would confess after years had passed, after coming out from among them. Even if they did not confess it, the works I saw in them fit exactly, to the letter, with what I have described. Anyway, whichever of all these world religions a person belongs to, if he loves God with all his might, coming from the heart, he automatically, but surely, enters into great problems with those religions. This situation is like a screw and nut that do not fit each other. However much one struggles, they do not fit one another. As for me, because I feared becoming like them, and so as not to lose my joy either, I began to read again the Holy Scriptures, which I had already finished reading with great pleasure. This time reading it all, the book I had finished in one year took me six weeks. On average I was reading about eight hours a day. I was reading not for the sake of having read, but with pleasure, in order to understand. And with a far greater pleasure than the first time. I was not at all sorry to be unemployed, without work. The Holy Scriptures were worth everything. With them it was as if a person was seeking nothing. In the Holy Scriptures there was God, there were His words. And this was a tremendously great thing for me. The writings there and their meanings were not human thought. I had read the Quran too. Right around that time I was researching whether the Quran was wrong, whether it came from man or from God. Sometimes our money troubles too put me in very difficult situations. Especially when the people around you understand you are in straits, they become even more terrible.

Right across from our house there was a German restaurant where my wife worked. They continually began to increase the working hours. That job, which had started as eight hours a day, rose to 10 hours. Alongside this the money she received was decreasing even further. That is, if they paid 10 marks per hour of her wage, for the hours counted as overtime they paid 5 marks! Whereas it should have been exactly the opposite. They knew it as: whatever you can wring out is profit. These were supposedly beloved, leading figures in their own village! In my view most of them were men not worth five cents. I struggled hard for my wife to leave that job. Shamelessly he even threatened us. Such ugly things exist everywhere in the world. And I am trying to explain that people who praise themselves very much do not possess works worthy of that praise.

In the old days the Germans’ laws were at least a little on the side of justice; now that too is finished. With the East-West unification a brand-new generation sprang up. The country overflowed with police, prosecutors, doctors, lawyers and judges who take bribes, do harm especially to the foreigner, hand down crooked, twisted rulings with the thought that they are protecting their homeland, full of hatred, far from justice. If one of them, being on the side of truth, defends a foreigner because he is just, they declared him too a traitor to the homeland. The one subject on which they speak in unity, without quarreling among themselves, is condemning foreigners and especially Turks. When I came to Germany I was 10 years old; there was hatred within these men; I have reached 45 years of age, and again, and even more so, there is. Now, in a place where there are no Turks at all, this time they condemn the East Germans! Harm never came to a German from a Turk, but the very opposite has always happened. Do not be surprised if the greatest calamity is brought upon them again by a racist patriot who comes out from among themselves. Though Hitler did not come out from among these people either; the man was Austrian. If they cannot produce such calamities from within themselves, this time they import them from outside.

My prayer to God is always that, even if I have a guilt, I not fall into the hand of man. Let God give my punishment. I learned this too from King David. God sends His prophet to David and sets before him three forms of punishment for the offense he committed, and says, choose.

The LORD says this: I am setting three things before you; choose one of them for yourself, that I may do it to you. And Gad (the prophet) came to David and said to him: The LORD says this: Take what you will: either three years of famine; or three months of being wasted away before those who press you as the sword of your enemies reaches you; or else for three days the sword of the LORD, that is, pestilence in the land, and the angel of the LORD bringing ruin throughout all the territory of Israel. And now see what answer I am to bring back to Him who sent me. 1 Chronicles 21:10-13

Although David is in a very difficult situation, he decides with wisdom and says:

I am in great distress; let me now fall into the hand of the LORD, for His mercies are very great; let me not fall into the hand of man! Chronicles 21:14

I too pray that it may always be so for me. But will God grant me the right to choose, as He did to David? Am I even worthy? And since God will surely give this decision too, I am happy, because He is both just and merciful.

People always complain of the events and hard conditions that befall them. When they are told, “Read the Holy Scriptures, research them,” they always have an excuse. Because I want to emphasize that no excuse can keep us far from drawing near to God, I am writing down these distressing experiences of ours too.

Again I cannot pass by without touching on an event from years ago. At that beginning, a short time after meeting Bernd and Schmid, a wholly unexpected, adverse event occurred. We had ordered a bed for ourselves. The springs of the bed left behind by the Turkish tenants before us when they left had burst, and it was now digging into our bodies. The bed was to come a week later and we would pay for it. I was thinking, I’ll go to the bank and get the money. We had no money; we were going to borrow from the bank. They always gave, but this time they did not! There was no bank left within fifty kilometers around us that we did not try, and none of them would give us this bed money. I was astonished. What am I going to do, I fretted greatly. Up to that time there had been no little dishonesty, no lie, no unpaid debt or the like on our part toward the banks, but they would not give. Their excuse was my unemployment! “Ah, brainless me! Why do you order before you take the money in hand?” I got angry at myself. Two days or so remained for the bed to arrive. And we had neither hope nor money. Forget the bed, I even hated it, but what would we say to the man bringing the bed! When we had no remedy at all, the last hope that came to my mind was Bernd and Schmid. With great shame I called them and explained the situation. If they gave the money, so that they could trust us until the debt was paid off, we were both going to make an agreement and give them our passports. On condition of paying a certain amount each month and paying it all back in three months. Bernd said, “Let me speak with my friend, then I’ll call again.” Then they called us and said they would give it. As for us, we were in an agony of anxiety. We were very glad, and also astonished. Would it ever have crossed my mind to ask for a loan from these young men whom I had only just met? When I saw Bernd, I was mortified with shame. And on the way, didn’t he say to me: “Seeing that you were so good like this, I said to myself, ‘surely something will turn up from underneath’ ”! How much I wished then to die, to vanish while sitting beside him in the car. I lived with that shame and did not die. Nearly 20 years have now passed, and I feel gratitude toward both of them. As we said, we paid off and finished the money we took from them in three months. May they live long and prosper. That bed too became the bed I most hated in my life. Not six months passed before we handed the house over to a Turk along with all the furniture, and especially with that bed. When leaving the house we took only our personal belongings. We sold everything, but everything, to that young man who took over the house. With part of that money we paid off debt, and with part of it I was going to go to America, to the Witnesses’ governing body, to say, “The Quran too is God’s word; couldn’t you be mistaken?”

So, as with everyone, we too had money troubles. Nevertheless I always tried never to regard money as a master. I always regarded it as a servant. That is the very reason I am recounting all these matters, opening them up. People valuing money above all else. Everyone knows that money has the power of compulsion. Whatever the thing a person wants may be, if he has money in his hand, he makes the one across from him say to him, “Yes, all right, done, we’ll do it, at your command,” and so forth. You no longer need to struggle at all; give the money, take what you want. Even if it is a human being—do you want to buy him? There are so many people who sell themselves for these papers. Perhaps it would be more correct to ask whether there is anyone who does not sell. On this matter of money, Napoleon was probably the most outspoken statesman. Because at the same time he was a soldier, he did not feel the need to play politics, and stated this problem openly and plainly. This man always spoke of money troubles. Is there anyone who does not know that money is a power, that people live for it, and that the reason lying at the root of every ugliness is, in one way or another, money? God’s servant Solomon speaks very wise words on this matter. There:

For wisdom is a protection and silver is a protection; but the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves alive its owner. Ecclesiastes 7:12

These verses were verses that surprised me. God too knows what money is, its power of compulsion, and how much people value it. And He expresses this by comparison, in a manner that makes a person think. He compares wisdom with silver, that is, with wealth. And the dictionary meaning of wisdom, of the sage in modern Turkish, is to know the cause of things. That is, what happens because of what. This is valid for everything. From the falling of rain, from natural events, to human psychology, to know and understand the causes of those things. In a sense this also means the knowledge of being able to foresee the outcome of whatever you do, the results it will bring. As though it were foresight. At the same time wisdom is not merely blind knowledge either. In a knowledge that knows the cause of things there is automatically understanding as well. A person may be wise, but this does not necessarily guarantee that he will act wisely in every matter. There are many wise men who are defeated by the simplest desires of their bodies, and that knowingly. There are so many such examples both in history and in our day. And the most striking, plain example is the wise Solomon who wrote and knew these things. He too strayed on account of the many women he took, and toward the end of his life committed an offense against God. In that matter he behaved unwisely. This matter is written in 1 Kings 11:1-14. His behaving unwisely in that matter still does not mean that that person did not possess wisdom. In short, to possess something is one thing, and whether or not one uses that thing in accordance with its purpose is another thing. There are wise men, by whose counsel great, unconquerable armies have been conquered. These men themselves perhaps do nothing in practice in accordance with the wise counsel they give. They cannot even hold a sword or another weapon. Because they do not have these abilities, they cannot of course be called unwise, empty counselors. Or let us consider the prophet Jonah. He said, “If you do not throw me from the ship, you will not be saved.” This was wise counsel for the salvation of those on that ship. Jonah understood the cause of the waves, the storm, and the swelling of the sea. In describing wisdom we said “to understand the cause of things.” So Jonah too was, in his own way, a wise man. But he could not carry out for himself this wise counsel he gave. For example, he could not jump into that sea himself. Rather, they had to throw him. Because he cannot do it himself, because he has no courage, can that man be called someone unwise? Can it be said that the counsel he gave was unwise? These examples are proof that it is not so, and there are many more similar examples.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who carry out His commandments have good insight. So writes Psalms 111:10, in the part of the Torah known as the Psalms.

From these words a distinction must be made. If a person possesses wisdom yet does not behave in accordance with it, this is called a lack of understanding. Some people also evaluate being wise according to those persons’ successes in their lives. There are people who appear very successful. These have advanced and risen very high. But leave wisdom aside; moreover, these are foolish people. Perhaps they are talented in a few matters. Or behind those people there are wise persons. The greatest reason for their advancing and rising to great heights, however, is that our earth has been given over to the dominion of Satan.

Such injustices and adverse events are widespread everywhere in our world. One of the greatest reasons that enable those persons to rise and grow great is that they perhaps never use their feelings of love and mercy at all. This may be because they are egoists, selfish and ruthless. Their abilities at war, struggle, and intrigue may predominate. It may be their benefiting from the means of their relatives, etc. Now the child of someone whose father is a president neither picks potatoes in the field nor does garbage collection for his livelihood. Nor is the rising of these people bound to their wisdom. It may be bound to a host of other reasons, but not to his wisdom, his sagacity. Moreover there is no rule that wisdom brings a person to a very rich, splendid state. In fact one who possesses wisdom does not regard money as happiness anyway, so as to enslave himself to it in order to obtain it.

The source of wisdom is God. Again, this does not mean that every wise person believes in God. Just as God feeds, gives drink to and satisfies all who live on the whole earth; just as He causes His sun to rise upon the good and the wicked—so too He gives wisdom to people who seek it.

A shoeshiner has faith in God and believes in His existence. Alongside this, a professor, although he has knowledge in many subjects, denies God and His existence. This does not mean that he is less knowledgeable than the shoeshiner. But solely on this matter of believing in God, who is the wiser? Is it not the shoeshiner? We say the shoeshiner, but again, not according to his knowledge. The professor’s knowledge about God is much, much superior to that shoeshiner’s. However, in accordance with the verse above, the professor behaves without understanding on this matter. While one has not read even a single page of the book he says he believes in, the other has read and researched countless books solely on that subject. Actually the professor knows the cause of things, but he does not believe. And this shows that he regards this knowledge as worthless and does not evaluate it as it ought to be. This wisdom of his, on the matter of benefit to himself, is in a sense empty and meaningless. That wisdom, obtained with much trouble and toil, has no value at all in his own eyes. On the other hand, while the person who believes and has faith in God from the heart with very, very little knowledge is called “wise,” that faithless professor is called “unwise.” Because not to know the value of the thing one possesses in one’s hand is also unwisdom, foolishness. This is why Proverbs 23:23 says:

“Buy truth and do not sell it; also wisdom and discipline and understanding.”

If money is earned in return for labor, the things we buy with money are actually the things we obtain with our labor. Wisdom too is obtained in return for labor. Reading, researching, thinking and racking one’s brain, observations—all of these require labor and time. By this means a person has, in a sense, bought wisdom. And in order to buy something it is not necessarily required to give money. Learning the truth is sometimes very laborious work. To learn the essence, the inner face of a thing, requires labor, patience, effort, courage and, most of the time, love. Many people, with their efforts, their sacrifices, with their whole hearts, have led such a life and practically waged war for this cause in order to serve God and be accepted by Him. But with another truth based on knowledge that comes later, that person is shattered and overturned, and he abandons God too. All those things he obtained, he throws into the trash, as it were, in an instant. And this too has happened because of another truth he learned. For instance, like a Christian being unable to understand and accept that the Quran too came from God. He cannot in any way swallow believing that new truth he learned. The same is valid for a Muslim too. This is why the sudden collapse and vanishing of all of it at once, together with the old values he possessed, actually stems from his having, from the very beginning, without being aware of it, kept the value he placed on truth, on reality, at the lowest level. Perhaps this is someone who uses this word “truth” the most, but he has not known its value and has not struggled to obtain it. Those things he learned as truth, he has always received ready-made, without doing anything himself. Does his spreading these things he learned to those around him make him superior to a parrot? He recounts, but he himself does not even know the essence and perhaps does not understand it. At most, by guessing and guessing, he supposes he knows. This thing that he too offers to others, he himself has accepted just as it is, that is all. It may even have been indirectly forbidden for him to do anything about this matter himself, to research, to inquire, to debate. And besides, such people’s devotion to God is conditional. In a sense they set conditions and rules for God. As if to say, “Look, if such-and-such is this way or that way, then I too will not believe in you.” As though, in their own minds, they threaten God!

Again the Witnesses came to my mind, willy-nilly. They want you to accept not the real truth, but necessarily the truth they themselves offer. Concerning the Holy Scriptures in their hands, the ones they tell you to “read,” they also say, “you cannot understand it; only our governing body can understand it.” By this means they have blocked the roads leading to the truth. The banning of many books and truths by the church in the Middle Ages stems from this philosophy. The terrible wretchedness of that age is the product of fanatical, stone-brained religionists. The members of the Witnesses too have well let themselves be swept up into such an atmosphere. When they hear something new from outside, if the majority opposes it, he opposes it too. Whereas on this matter he has neither much knowledge nor love. Especially if he wages war for this cause, and if he later comes to see and understand that he was wrong, this time he flings away the other things he believed too. Because he is now sulking. However much he preached being humble throughout his life, if the truth is different from what he accepted, this time his pride absolutely does not permit him to accept the other. Look, pay attention—I say what he accepted, I do not say what he believed. Because their faith rests on persons, not on the knowledge in their own research. Those persons trained him as to what he must accept. If he does not accept it, they never take him in among them anyway. And pride, for this reason, comes in between and later becomes a stumbling block for that person. For people who have learned by their own efforts, in research without seeing pressure, accepting other novelties becomes much easier. People who have not lived through, in their lives, thoughts like these riddles, this philosophy that I have written, do not really understand. Whenever a person wants to make his life meaningful and begins to struggle for the sake of some truth or belief, such problems too will frequently come before those persons.

I am writing these things so that you do not think that truth and wisdom are obtained so easily at all. In our time, has this seemingly changed? Although acquiring knowledge is incomparably easier than in the old days, the existence of many other obstacles cannot be denied either. Let us look at the simplest example, our own lives, and we will see that this is so. Which Turk or Muslim takes the Holy Scriptures in hand, reads them, researches them, and does not meet with a reaction? Which Christian takes the Quran in hand, reads it, researches it, and does not meet with a reaction? As an exception, if that person says, “But I am researching the unbelievability of these books, how absurd they are,” then it is another matter. But every society has an invisible, drawn path not written on paper. That line, which is as if invisible, does not appear in societies’ law books, and that is why it is called “the invisible line.” But once you cross that line, you meet with a reaction. In our country and in Europe there is freedom of belief before the laws. But this is not the line drawn by that society. That freedom remains on paper. The society’s own rules are different from its laws. Our country’s laws too are, more or less, like those in the European countries. But as a society our line, the path we walk on, is very different.

For instance, the laws in Germany are against xenophobia. Even those who make these laws, since they know the society’s line that is separate from those rules, use these feelings of the people in order to gather votes. Let them pass as many opposing laws as they like; these laws do not easily affect the line drawn by the society. They only frighten them, that is all. And they think up other ways and apply it again. I have tried to tell you, even a tiny bit, what we, who have lived for years in this country without touching anything sensitive, experienced in matters concerning the hatred of the German people. Their practices, feelings, forms of behavior are all, but all, in the direction of this line. This line’s name—call it, if you like, hatred; call it mercilessness; call it selfishness-self-interest; call it rule-boundness; call it stock thinking; call it belief; or, more politely, call it culture—it will surely fit. In advancing, in learning truths, in discipline, in coming to possess understanding, and in obtaining wisdom, these lines have generally always been an obstacle to people. Every culture has good aspects too and bad aspects. When you seek wisdom, truth, God, all these cultures, however good they may be, all possess qualities that will be an obstacle—never forget this. As long as you go according to their heads, as long as you fall in step, as long as you touch nothing sensitive, all is well. But when you begin to ask questions about those societies’ empty beliefs, their absurd traditions and customs, the reaction begins too. That is why Solomon, because he knew the difficulty of obtaining these things, says, “by all means, do not sell them.”

On the matter of wisdom, and some verses showing that God has given great authority to Satan on earth: Job 21:7-14, Job 32:9, Ecclesiastes 4:13, Luke 4:6, Surah al-A‘raf (7) 13-15, Surah al-Hijr (15) 33-37, Surah Sad (38) 71-87

The fear of the LORD, that is wisdom; and to turn away from evil is understanding. Job 28:28

On the matter of wisdom, Proverbs, for instance, is a very beautiful book. It touches on the value and the source of wisdom. Please open it and read it in its place. So that it may not be a trouble for you to open these books, I write out those passages from time to time just as they are. But of course I cannot write them all out. For those who have computers, when you go over the verses I have prepared in the form of a PDF file, it opens by itself. I too see that it is a very great convenience. Still, if you read some places by opening the book yourself, I believe that you will feel sympathy toward these books, which until now you never knew, never even thought of reading; and from time to time, discouragement as well. While you fill with feelings of joy and encouragement as you read in these books the good things you yourself have done, you will also, perhaps, look with discouragement at the fact that things you have done, seemingly by your nature, since your birth, are regarded by God as bad. But do not be discouraged by God’s exalted demands. Do not let those deficient sides of yourself discourage you. “For a man is a slave to whatever defeats him,” says Jesus Christ. (John 8:31-32) If you are defeated by your sin, your cowardice, your laziness, your desires, your habits, then it means you have become its slave. If you decide to do what is good, what is right, and take these qualities upon yourself, then it means you are slowly becoming a servant of God.

If we return again to this matter of the love of money, on this subject Jesus Christ makes clear and precise distinctions. First he says thus:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Here moth and rust eat them away, and thieves break in and steal. Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. There neither moth nor rust eats them away, nor do thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21

With these words Jesus is actually giving wise counsel against those who chase after material wealth and have made this path their goal. Instead of chasing after these values, he says, chase after spiritual values, that is, after a good relationship with the One who created you. Later he says these words concerning this love of money:

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will cling to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money (mammon).” Matthew 6:24

God makes so definite a distinction. It means that in a person who has love of money, love of God existing too is virtually impossible. Nations, peoples, religions, organizations, armies, individuals—all chase after it. We read how the prophet Abraham served people he did not know at all, with his money, his very life, coming from his whole heart. Let us live using the wealth we possess in accordance with these examples. Let us not be defeated by others regarding us as suckers, as fools. To be generous is a gift, a favor that comes from God. Jesus said, “it is happier to give than to receive.” Let us seek this happiness. After everything is over and it is too late, where can we carry those things we have piled up? On this matter Solomon states some bitter truths too with these words:

A man to whom God gives riches, wealth and honor, and his soul lacks nothing of all that it desires, yet God does not empower him to eat of it, but a stranger eats it; this is vanity and an evil affliction. Ecclesiastes 6:2

If a person cannot enjoy that wealth, what use is it? Is not the common problem of all the rich that of being happy? While for the poor such things are not so great a problem, in the rich it comes to light much more distinctly. While poor children are very happy with their friends, amid want, amid the garbage; the child who is alone amid computers, all kinds of electronic toys, and abundance is very unhappy. And such people who have very many things, whether a child or a grown adult, are terrified of sharing too. If you bring a friend to that lonely child, within a short time discord begins right away. The situation of the poor, of the destitute, is not like this. Is there no discord among them too? Of course there is, but they are in need of one another, and this binds them to one another. He who has everything uses the option of saying, “I don’t need you.” The poor person does not have such an option to use. If he had it, he too would use it right away—this is another truth. Does he become happy? No; what I want to explain here anyway is that wealth does not bring happiness. People regard the things they chase after, the fortunes of those rich people whom they recount with their mouths watering, as valuable because they are hard to attain. Material wealth may be hard to obtain, but it does not mean the key to joy, to happiness. Of what benefit or happiness to anyone is the wealth of a stingy, miserly person who has everything? Even in advertisements it is now proclaimed, “everything is more beautiful the more it is shared.” It is certain that the rich too do not live alone. But generally all of them are surrounded by flatterers. They strive to do what pleases him and, for their own benefit, try to get into his good graces. Does this supposedly give those rich people happiness? Perhaps solely at the beginning, yes, but in time he will find it very tiresome. Whatever he now does, he will already know by heart how others will behave two-facedly toward him.

On account of the rights given to women in Europe and America, those women give those rich ones just as hard a time of it. Whatever he says, the woman does the opposite. Accustomed to giving orders, and those flatterers having accustomed him to it, but are the woman’s rights the same, that she should flatter you? And once she has had a child, then just imagine. While he waits on guard for those enemies he imagines to come from outside, from a place he never expected, from his own bosom, one springs out. Behold, the vicious-circle wealth and happiness of our world are like this too. I have given one or two examples from the hundreds of thousands of tangled knots that exist. As long as we do not know the value of love, of loving one another, let us not expect either that all manner of troubles and calamities will depart from our heads.

Better is a dish of vegetables where there is love than a fattened ox eaten with enmity. Proverbs 15:17

Alongside this, the excessive value that a devout person, people who struggle in God’s way, place on money astonishes one.

This money-collecting, or the state of need, arises in the time of Moses and other prophets, or of kings, too. For instance, if we again take an example from Moses: for the tabernacle of worship that God commanded to be made in the wilderness, material was needed. And the best at that. Moses too proclaimed this. No one was to give by force, but from the heart. But with the people’s bringing, a problem arose. Let us see what this problem was, how it is written, and read it in its place.

…They took from before Moses all the contribution that the sons of Israel had brought for the work of the service of the holy place, to make it. And they kept bringing him freewill offerings again every morning. And all the skillful ones, all those doing all the work of the holy place, each came from the work he was doing, and spoke to Moses, saying: “The people are bringing much more than enough for the work of the service that the LORD commanded to be done.” Moses commanded, and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp, that neither man nor woman should do any more work for the contribution of the holy place. And the people were restrained from bringing. Exodus 36:3-6

When I read these verses I am struck with amazement. There was a work that had to be done, and for this work every kind of material and moral help of the people was necessary. Since there was no pressure, no compulsion, the people did this with joy. A problem arose—the people were bringing more than needed!!! It is immediately proclaimed to those millions of people, “Enough! No more, do not bring it!” When a person reads these things, he becomes both full of anger toward those who say, “Without us you will never be saved,” and bitterly laughs to himself. I have never, not even once, heard those who proclaim, “We do not collect money, but at the conventions too we have no money,” those who collect aid for the mosque, those who say make a donation to the church, say, “Enough now, do not throw money into the boxes, do not bring more than our need.” If, in the whole world, you have heard such a thing, please tell me too. Leave the present time aside; have you ever, throughout history, heard such a thing? All of them are like the greedy wolves of this world and of the insatiable sort. If it came in excess, grinning, they say, “God’s blessing; Jehovah has blessed His people.” And blessing means the widening of their own fringes, the strengthening of their crushing power. He will supposedly guarantee himself with an “Ah!” Again for a time. Then again, at conventions, meetings, mosques, churches, synagogues (the Jews’ place of worship), he will make his hawkers cry out to collect money. Moses did not do so. He did not look at the valuable things that came with their eye. He stopped the people. Whereas the religions of our time play the stock markets with those excess monies and lose. They buy the latest-model, ever more printing presses worth nearly millions. They change the models of their cars more frequently. And if it still increases—which it increases a great deal—with that too they buy buildings. Jehovah has blessed His people, after all! That aid worth five cents was given to the members writhing in that poverty—asking after the people’s condition—I have neither seen nor heard. It is only what the initiative-holders among them did with their own means personally. And these supposedly gave aid to the former Yugoslavia. There too, making a distinction, they again did it for themselves, not for everyone. And the aid, too, that governing body again had done off the backs of these lowest ones. Without laying a hand, for these things, even on the penny it collected into its own treasury. One who enters that governing body never comes out again anyway. Just like the Roman Catholic Church. It is said that the world’s greatest fortune is theirs. This too is a truth proclaimed by themselves and by everyone. Again the world’s greatest movable and immovable fortune is said to be this Roman Catholic Church’s. That is, cash money and property wealth. Their jewels, rubies, diamonds, gold, coral, ruby-embroidered magnificent robes are again theirs. They were like this in the Middle Ages too, and are again like this. They do not toss even a dry morsel of bread before anyone. Always, “give, give,” they demand; you can never satiate them with either money or goods. Where is Moses and where are these people. They regard themselves as far superior to Moses. And who is Moses anyway. He was a good, poor fellow, but we are far more knowledgeable, we have far more means… “Actually he was a bit of a fool,” they will say, but their faces will not hold to it.

Among us too, when a person’s ability, intelligence is described, we say “a devil of a man” or “woman.” The cunning tricks that person did, how he got rich, how he swindled people, are recounted. “Honestly, he’d take the underwear off you from under the gold and you wouldn’t even notice,” our society recounts, praising such people, praising and praising. On the other hand, about honest, upright, generous people who show mercy to everyone, they raze that person to the ground, saying, “he’s a naive fool, and he has nothing to boot.” And Moses, because the people brought too much, for this reason says: “Enough, stop! Bring no more!” Good heavens, what a man who does not know his own business this Moses was! So an abundance of goods puts out an eye, does it!!!

While I was recounting this example at home, my wife jumped right in, saying, “In the old days people had a contentment of the eye.” Although such subjects have been discussed in our home for years, in short our lady’s views are something else entirely! First I looked at her face to see whether she was joking. Whereas the people in Moses’ time were a society that was greedy, disobedient, rebellious, ungrateful and possessing every kind of our era’s corruptions. And whatever befell all of them befell them because of these very reasons. Although he was told so much, one man could not restrain himself in the war and stole clothing and gold and such things and buried them inside his tent. Because of this God abandons Israel and they are routed before their enemies. But God again states the reason, and after that person and his family together suffered the punishment of being wiped out on account of his greed, the nation is saved. (Joshua, the whole of chapter 7) Let us not regard good qualities as quite normal. This was never normal. Not in the time of Abraham, nor of Moses, nor of Jesus, nor of Muhammad. Now, in our time too, the situation is no different. If a person’s goodness changes according to place and circumstance, his goodness is empty anyway. Someone who is truly good and upright must reflect this quality always, everywhere, and under all circumstances. No one is without fault; that is not the point we are defending. Those very valuable people too from time to time found themselves amid faults and sins. But these people always tested themselves and disciplined themselves. And that by doing it for a whole lifetime. In the book of Psalms David says:

“Examine me, O LORD, and test me,” he says. (Psalms 26:2) How many people can say this? In whom is there such a heart? David said it. He took care that his heart, his attitude and behaviors be spotless, without stain, toward God and toward people. Such people too are not of the kind one comes across by chance always, on the street, at the corners. This is why God had their heart-attitudes, their relationships with God, their lives, their offenses recorded. Because all these were written for our admonition too. (1 Corinthians 10:6-13) That is, that we, looking at them and taking a lesson, might run toward the same goal they ran toward, toward God. They too were sinful people like us. They descended from the same man as us, from Adam and Eve. God wants to say, “If they did it, you too can do it.” They introduced the prophets to us as unreachable, as if superhuman beings. This is because Satan wants to break our courage, wanting us to believe, “you can never be like that.” This is why the Muslims absolutely do not want to believe that Muhammad committed sin. Whereas it is plainly written about his sins in the Quran. (Surah 47:19; 66:3-4; 40:55; 48:1-2) Just as the Christians made Jesus God, do the Muslims suppose that by supposedly doing so they show respect to Muhammad and protect him? Did God have such events recorded in order to belittle those people, to destroy our trust in them? On the contrary, the recording of these deficiencies of theirs shows that they and those writings are more trustworthy. More than anything, God gives courage to humanity so that we too may be like them. Otherwise, could God not have sent words making His purpose known by means of angels and given them to us humanity? Could they too not have said, “Take, and keep these commandments and laws”? If we had received these books by means of angels, and their experiences had been in them, then which of us would have had the courage to walk on this path? At least for my own part I would say, “My God, I cannot be like them and cannot do the things they did.” But God does not do so. Because He loves us and wants to help humanity. By means of the free will He gave us, in order to encourage us to do His own wishes, He wants to give us heart. He commissions people who, like us, have faults, angers, joys, weaknesses, desires, whatever there is, good or bad, but who resemble us. He says, “Look at these people’s lives, and you too be like them.” He wants to say, “If they did it, you do it too.”

Say: “I do not say to you that the treasures of God are with me; nor do I say I know the unseen; nor do I say I am an angel. I only follow what is revealed to me.” Say: “Are the blind one and the seeing one ever equal? Do you not then reflect?” (Surah al-An‘am) 6:50

Whereas people have in no way understood this good and wise intention that God had Muhammad speak. This is why Christians feel toward Jesus, Jews toward Moses, Muslims toward Muhammad, a weakness greater than toward God! Indeed, going further, they even worship them. Christians place Jesus on the same level as the Almighty God. They believe in the existence of three Gods—God-Jesus-Holy Spirit. This desire to exalt these prophets as superhuman beings and to see them so existed among the Arabs of Muhammad’s time too. Look at the demands that people made of Muhammad in order to believe.

They said: “We will never believe in you until you cause a spring to gush forth for us from the earth;

Or until you have a garden of date palms and grapevines, and make rivers flow abundantly through its midst;

Or until you cause the sky to fall upon us in pieces, as you have claimed; or bring God and the angels before us.

Or until you have a house of gold; or ascend into the heavens; and we will not believe in your ascent to the heavens until you bring down to us a book we can read.” Say: “Glorified is my Lord! What am I but a human being, a Messenger?”

And what kept people from believing when guidance came to them was nothing but their saying: “Has God sent a human being as a messenger?” (Surah al-Isra) 17:90-94

So, exactly as it is stated in the Quran, people think this way. That Muhammad was a human being like us—not only now, but the unbelievers of that time too opposed it and could not understand it. And this is why they denied it. The persons they pictured in their eyes as prophets were only absurdities, the product of their imagination. The Arabs had a water shortage in those times. This is why in the things their hearts desired, that they longed for, there are always abundant waters, rivers.

The Jews too had similar attitudes toward Jesus. They are more experienced on this matter. Because nearly all the prophets came out of Israel. Their experience, their knowledge, is not simplistic like the Arabs’, but their hearts and behaviors are no different.

The Pharisees came out and began to argue with him; testing him, they demanded of him a sign from heaven. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said: “Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly I say to you: No sign will be given to this generation. Mark 8:11-12

The person from whom they demand a sign, in whom they cannot believe, opens the eyes of the blind, heals the lame, the deaf, the paralyzed, the crippled, those with congenital diseases and the maimed. Before their eyes he raises the dead three times. With two or three fish and a few pieces of bread, twice thousands of people are fed and leave leftovers. I cannot write all the miracles, for then I would have to write the Gospel again. From a man who does such things, these people demand a miracle! These men’s hearts are now not of flesh but of stone, and their eyes do not see. If we look at the essence, the literally blind saw Jesus and had faith in him. But these people’s spirits have darkened, and their spiritual eyes neither see nor feel.

Despite so many miracles coming one after another, together with God Himself speaking with millions of people at once, and countless other more events, did they, as it were, believe in Moses? Well, what had these people done? We spoke of it in earlier subjects—that when Moses went up to God on the mountain for 40 days, they made a golden calf and worshipped it. (Exodus, the whole of chapter 32) When you read all these holy writings, there are such events with no end to them. These books write down examples of how corrupt, faithless, disobedient, obtuse and evil we humanity have been in our relationship with God. For so many generations, at various times too, this has unfortunately always been so. There are very few exceptions. This is why, when we struggle to seek the true God, let us not seek great numbers of supporters. Those with many supporters are, in the same measure, just as far from God. Again, when you read these books, do not be surprised to read that persons who believed and were acceptable to God through their good works were generally pushed, chased, thrown in prison, beheaded and killed by that society. Do not think, “these were only in that time.” God is not telling us, by means of these books, that by having faith in Him and changing our lives and ourselves, we will possess an abundance of inns, baths, fortunes and friends. Without plunging into expectations in our imaginations, let us understand everything plainly, as He has written it. Let us have an unconditional relationship with God. In Atatürk’s war of independence and in his great speech, we always read and heard of his expectations for the nation, the homeland and the flag. These expectations exist in all the world’s nations too. People were expected to go to death unconditionally, and it is still expected. The aspect of Atatürk that I love most is his having no relationship with the religionists, but this time, like the communists, he razed faith in God to the ground. He surely found the English way of life and culture more congenial. Over a matter of clothing he set his signature to massacres. In the end let us say he too was a sinful human being. In these foreign countries I have often recalled his words: “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk.”

While it is expected of us to go to death unconditionally—politicians will expect this—then should God not expect it? The religionists curse Atatürk. One who curses has actually made plain what he himself is. As a nation they either exalt Atatürk to the heavens or throw the one who criticizes him into prison. Is this love of Atatürk? They treat the prophets this way too, but after killing them! Then they deify them and worship them. When you so much as take his name upon your lips, they practically command you to perform ablution. Whereas in their works they are so far from these people. If you love and exalt someone, then do the works he did too, so that at least it is convincing. “If you want to be rid of someone, you either crucify him or make an idol of him,” says an Indian professor of philosophy.

Among the Witnesses, if a person does not go to a meeting and has no valid reason either, they now become his enemy. Whereas if going to that meeting is a very beautiful, valuable, unmatched thing, actually should they not be sorry, thinking, why did he miss this beautiful thing? Whereas they plainly display this hatred of theirs. And the other, being afraid, comes again to that meeting even though he does not want to. Even if he sleeps there and understands nothing, he still comes! The point is to have come. It is not as if one cannot sleep, brother. I am not opposing those who sleep; I am opposing those who pressure you, saying you must absolutely be here. To whom did Jesus say by force, “you must absolutely listen to me”? I said meeting here; you say mosque, another says church, another says place of worship, says synagogue, etc.—they are all the same, it does not change.

On a certain day, in a certain place, just imagine in your minds that fruits on the trees will become gold at that exact hour. The fruit of whoever comes and picks at exactly that place and hour will always remain pure gold. Suppose then that if it is not picked while it passes—while there is still time—the golden quality of the fruit passes too. Who would not go there? Would they pressure you because you did not come? On the contrary, would they not even say, “good thing he didn’t come”! In such a self-interest he would not even let anyone know. Come, let us say he is very well-intentioned and loves that person and did let him know. This time should he not be sorry about him, saying, “You didn’t come; look how much wealth you missed”? This is just one example. The religionists, on the other hand—forget the gold—supposedly take you along the road that leads to eternal life. Which is more valuable? Eternal life, or the gold pieces? Is someone saying “Lie”? Well then, why do you gnash your teeth at the one who does not come to the meeting, to worship? Did you gnash your teeth because he did not come to collect gold?

Those who came to Jesus, on the other hand, either always came with joy or came to watch for an opportunity for enmity. The interesting side of the matter is that there was no one who came by force. Both enemy and friend came lovingly, willingly. No one forced anyone, saying, “Why didn’t you come?” But if a person is defeated by something and does that work by force, this time he envies the freedom of the one who does not do it. He hates that person’s courage in using this freedom, his indifference, his ease. He envies it and shows it too, and in every kind of way at that. Now whatever his power and courage suffice for, that is the sanction he applies.

Some fellow, as worship, fasted all day in the burning sun during the month of Ramadan. His strength is spent, he is writhing. The one across from him is munching and slurping something, drinking cold things! His brain reels; he either curses or knifes him or now does whatever he can do out of his anger! He looks with hatred at the one who is not fasting. He thinks, if everyone were like himself, then this torment would be easier. That is, because he regards that thing he does, whatever it is, as a torment, he is full of hatred. If he did it with joy, these feelings would not even pass by his side. On the contrary, even though everyone eats, drinks and does not fast, he, by fasting, would rejoice on account of his own strong will and faith, and would pity and feel mercy for the others too on account of their weaknesses or their faithlessness.

For years I went to the Witnesses’ meetings. One trip was a full 100 km. I had a child; with the baby bag in my hand I went alone all the same. They would come to me and, with two-facedness, say words like, “You come from such a distance to these parts, that’s very good,” and so forth. As for me, I would say, “I do this for my own sake, with love.” The only aspect that was hard for me was their hatred toward me. Each time they saw me, I noticed that most of them grew angry, wondering why I come. I would enter among them as if a thief and leave like a thief too. This was because I did not say “yes” to their every word. In the end, until they placed a ban on everyone speaking with me, I joined among these people for many years. What many of them did by force, I did with love. Because I had not permitted them to take the joy within me. That is, you are good for them only if you become a mere puppet. As for me, with the things I did, by feeling God in my heart and my conscience, I was much, but much happier than they. And this contentment had not been given within a mold received ready-made from others, the mold they described, saying, “if you do such-and-such this way, you become that way.” They think that by taking refuge in the shadow of others, they escape their own responsibilities. God will not permit such things. Everyone must prove himself in his own name, present himself in his own name, and also give account in his own name. Have no doubt at all, it will surely be so.

The conclusion of the matter is this; all has been heard; fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, together with every hidden thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14