The Watchtower — January 15, 1959

Do You Have Time?

DO YOU have time to do the things that matter most to you? Many persons do not, this despite the increasing use of timesaving devices. “With all the timesaving devices Americans have,” it has been said, “they have more trouble than anybody else finding time for anything.” Regardless of what country one lives in, this matter of finding time is an important one. It is especially vital for Christians, who are told: “Keep strict watch that how you walk is not as unwise but as wise persons, buying out the opportune time for yourselves.”—Eph. 5:15, 16.

To buy out time for pursuits that will truly enrich our lives we need an awareness of how we spend our time. According to a recent survey, the average man in the United States spends twenty years working, twenty years sleeping, five years shaving and dressing, five years eating, one year telephoning, three years just waiting and sixteen years playing or relaxing.

These waiting and relaxing categories may offer, for many persons, a wealth of time that can be bought out. After all, sixteen years of playing or relaxing is a lot of time. Could some of this time be more profitably used? Each person must answer such a question for himself, taking into consideration his own needs for relaxation.

One should also consider his goal in life. If his goal is to be a true follower of Christ Jesus, then he will continually be searching for ways to buy out time to enrich himself and others spiritually. In this age of rampant materialism those who would be happy must ever keep in mind Jesus’ words: “Man must live, not on bread alone, but on every utterance coming forth through Jehovah’s mouth.”—Matt. 4:4.

So one should be willing to examine the time he allots to relaxation. In this regard it is obvious that many persons are immoderate in their habits. For example, the A. C. Nielsen Company, a marketing research organization, reports that the American family spends an average of thirty-eight hours a week in front of the TV screen. That is about 2,000 hours a year, the equivalent of 250 eight-hour days—lost forever for any other purposes.

Not only is it wise to examine one’s relaxation habits but it is profitable to be conscious of how one spends much of his other leisure time. Some persons spend considerable time reading. To get the most out of this time one should ask himself: What is my purpose in reading this or that? What will I learn? How will I benefit? When one reads with a purpose, he saves time and is more likely to use it wisely.

Much time can be wasted on reading material such as newspapers. The Sunday newspaper is a notorious time waster because many persons try to read too much of it. Usually there are only a few items that are of real concern to the reader. View the newspaper for what it is—a page of history. Keep abreast of news that is significant history; but much that fills a newspaper is hardly that.

For those persons who already have their relaxation requirements at a moderate or minimum level, there is another category they may examine: waiting time. It is said to average three years. It may be even longer. One Swiss who made a careful record of his use of time found that in his eighty years he had wasted more than five years waiting for tardy people.

There is often considerable time at one’s disposal in this waiting category. There is waiting for haircuts, waiting for doctor or dental appointments, waiting for a spouse, waiting for trains, planes and buses and waiting while on trains, planes and buses. These waiting periods may furnish opportunities to study what you want to or need to. Think of the many opportunities to read publications that will aid one to improve his spiritual life! Think of the many opportunities to read God’s Word and to meditate on portions of it!

To use waiting time wisely one should be prepared. Some may find a pocket-size Bible convenient. Those who have automobiles may easily have reading material on hand for use during waiting periods.

Another way to buy out time is to alter your schedule. Some persons may be able to get along on less sleep; they may choose to get up a half hour or an hour earlier than usual. This gives them valuable time for reading the Word of God.

To buy out time there is something else that can be done: make time by organizing your time. A time-planned day or week should not be so rigid, however, that it leaves one frustrated because of inability to keep it. The schedule should be reasonable. It should take into consideration the vital things of life.

In his book You and Your Work Ways, Morgan D. Parmenter recommends listing three different types of activity when planning a time-scheduled day or week: (1) The things one must do, (2) the things one would like to do and (3) the things one will do only if time permits.

Beginning a week or day with a fair idea of what you intend to accomplish results in so much more being done than would be done had there been no schedule. “All your time should be organized,” says Harry Simmons, a widely known management consultant, “or much of it will be wasted—your study time as well as your working and leisure time. A study program without the discipline of a definite schedule usually results in nothing much being accomplished. The only way to study a subject is to work at it on a regular schedule. Take one thing at a time. Simply schedule it for a definite period each day, or every other day, and keep to your schedule. You’ll be surprised at what you can accomplish in this way.”

In category number one—the things that one must do—the wise person puts matters pertaining to his spiritual life. The best use that can be made of bought-out time is to use it in doing the will of the Creator. Since this old world will soon come to its end at God’s war of Armageddon, time is life. Those who kill time will soon not have time to kill. Those who use time wisely, buying it out for the service of the Creator, will be blessed with an eternity of time in God’s new world.

Down with the Old—Up with the New!

“See, I have commissioned you this day to be over the nations and over the kingdoms, in order to uproot and to pull down and to destroy and to tear down, to build and to plant.”—Jer. 1:10.

1. Who were the ones foretold to be hated by all nations on account of Jesus’ name?

“THEN people will deliver you up to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all the nations on account of my name. . . . And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness to all the nations, and then the accomplished end will come.” (Matt. 24:9-14) The speaker of these words, on account of whose name they would be hated by all the nations, was Jesus Christ. Those who would be hated by all the nations were his disciples, followers who were associated with his name and who preached in his name. They were Christians, of the real sort, not afraid to endure hatred on account of his name. When was this hatred to burn against them?

2. When was this hatred to burn against them?

² The time adverb then locates it at the time when Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled: “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another. All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress.” This beginning of pangs of distress, with more pangs and severer pangs due to come, was to mark the beginning of the consummation of the system of things.—Matt. 24:7, 8, 3.

3. When did the international pangs of distress begin, and what movement of things started taking place?

³ Our well-known modern history supplies us with the proof that that beginning of pangs of distress, that beginning of the consummation of the system of things, was forty-four years ago, in the year 1914. On July 28 of that year the kingdom of Austria declared war on the kingdom of Serbia. World War I followed, accompanied by the many other things that Jesus foretold. At that momentous time something began to go down, and something else began to come up.

4. What is it that Jesus’ followers have to do with the nations?

⁴ According to the words of Jesus just quoted, his real and true followers must have something to do with the nations. Of course, they may have nothing to do with national politics; yet they do find themselves living among all nations of the earth, there to suffer being hated by all the nations and there to preach this good news of the Kingdom everywhere for the purpose of a witness to all the nations, which means also those nations in Europe and in North, Central and South America.

5. What is the reason that Jesus’ followers are hated by all nations—merely the bearing of his name, or what?

⁵ Why should they be hated by all nations? It cannot be just on account of Christ’s name. In Europe and in the Americas as well as in the rest of Christendom there are hundreds of millions of people who are called Christians, and they are by no means hated. Rather, they are loved by the nations of this world. Still, anyone can take a name. So, besides the mere name, there must be another reason that causes this hatred by one and all the nations. This other thing must be that which Christ’s truly named followers do in fulfillment of his own prophecy. It must be their preaching “this good news of the kingdom” for the purpose of a witness. What kingdom? Well, which kingdom or which political government on earth today is a source of good news? None! Jesus did not prophetically refer to any of these. There was just one kingdom that he always talked about—just one, so that there is no mistaking. This was the kingdom of God. It is the only source for good news today. Jesus’ followers today mark themselves as genuine Christians by preaching just this kingdom and by being willing to be hated by all nations for preaching this kingdom.

6. According to Jesus’ prophecy concerning them, his followers would be very much like whom, and why so?

⁶ Nothing, therefore, is plainer than this, that Jesus Christ foretold that his followers who would bear witness to all nations would have startling things to say or preach about the ending of the old and the beginning of the new. For this reason they would raise a storm of international protest and would suffer hatred by all the old nations. In this regard they are very much like the ancient prophet Jeremiah, who lived and preached more than six hundred years before Jesus Christ. When Jesus was on earth, many Jews mistook him for Jeremiah the prophet. (Matt. 16:13, 14) Jesus quoted things from the prophecy of Jeremiah. In turn, Jeremiah foretold things concerning Jesus Christ. Jeremiah also foretold important things concerning the followers of Jesus. In fact, Jeremiah prophetically prefigured the remnant or remaining ones of Jesus’ consecrated, anointed followers on earth in this time of the outgoing of the old and the incoming of the new.

7. When Jeremiah began preaching, what was about to happen in the religious realm, and so why is it now necessary to listen to the remnant prefigured by Jeremiah?

⁷ The time of Jeremiah’s living greatly determined this prefigurement and its fulfillment today. He began prophesying at a time when a most heart-rending thing was about to happen, a thing almost unbelievable. This was the destruction of the holy city of Jerusalem and the plundering and burning down of its temple dedicated to the worship of Jehovah God. Just forty years from when Jeremiah began to prophesy in witness of Jehovah, that tremendous religious shock took place; from 647 B.C., which was the thirteenth year of the reign of good King Josiah in Jerusalem, to 607 B.C., the year that the Babylonian armies under the conquering King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple built by Solomon the wise. Today fear is more and more being expressed for the organized religion of Christendom. What is to come of it? For an answer, people should listen to the plain preaching by the remnant prefigured by Jeremiah, for these preach to men the present-day fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecies.

8, 9. (a) How and by whom did Jeremiah become a prophet? (b) When was it timely for Jeremiah to take on God’s work, and why was he not to be afraid of the faces of older men?

⁸ Who made them a prophet to speak with the authority that they claim? Well, who made Jeremiah a prophet? Jeremiah was a son of a Jewish priest in the city of Anathoth to the north of Jerusalem. That fact did not automatically make him a prophet. He did not make himself a prophet. He could not have done so, especially since he was set apart to be a prophet before he was born. Still he could of his own accord agree to and submit to serving as a prophet when told of the vocation for which he was marked out. Jeremiah tells us how and by whom he became a prophet: “The word of Jehovah began to occur to me, saying: ‘Before I proceeded to form you in the belly I knew you, and before you began to come forth from the womb I sanctified you. Prophet to the nations I made you.’ But I said: ‘Alas, O Lord Jehovah! Here I actually do not know how to speak, for I am but a boy.’ And Jehovah went on to say to me: ‘Do not say, “I am but a boy.” But to all those to whom I shall send you, you should go; and everything that I shall command you, you should speak. Do not be afraid because of their faces, for “I am with you to deliver you,” is the utterance of Jehovah.’” (Jer. 1:4-8) It is evident that Jeremiah was born for a work. The question was, Would he fit himself to the work? Would he be willing to undertake it? His feeling unequal to the assignment did not decide matters.

⁹ Jeremiah did not resist or rebel because work was cut out for him. Showing still further how God made him a prophet, he tells us: “Jehovah proceeded to thrust his hand out and cause it to touch my mouth. Then Jehovah said to me: ‘Here I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have commissioned you this day to be over the nations and over the kingdoms, in order to uproot and to pull down and to destroy and to tear down, to build and to plant.’” (Jer. 1:9, 10) Jeremiah’s being a boy, either in years or in his own estimation, was no real obstacle. When one is young is when one should make it one’s purpose to take on God’s work. Besides, in Jeremiah’s case it was to be no short-term job. In his case it was to be a responsible work of forty years in length, and then some. For him to carry it out in its fullness, it was timely for him to begin when young, in boyhood, when he had the larger part of his life yet ahead of him. So Jehovah brushed aside Jeremiah’s fear of being too young and said: “Do not say, ‘I am but a boy.’” Since it was the rule for young persons to show respect toward the old, it would require something unusual for a boy to speak sternly to older men. But Jehovah was older than any of Israel’s elders. So he said to the “boy” Jeremiah: “Do not be afraid because of their faces, for ‘I am with you to deliver you,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.” The whole question, then, was this: Was Jeremiah willing?

10, 11. (a) The consummation of the system of things was the time for what work? (b) In 1919 what was the question of highest importance that faced all professed Christians?

¹⁰ In the year 1914 the prophecy of Jesus began fulfillment. The “consummation of the system of things” began for this world. There were hundreds of millions that claimed to be Jesus’ disciples, the vast majority of these being found in Christendom. The consummation of the system of things was the time for a great work to be done, a work that would run from the beginning of that period of consummation until the accomplished end of it. It was a work toward all the inhabited earth, toward all the nations, a work of being witnesses to all these nations concerning God’s kingdom of good news. For more than four years World War I occupied the time and attention of over thirty nations, till near the close of 1918; and the religious systems of Christendom threw themselves into the war on the sides of their respective nations. Certainly they had no time for preaching God’s kingdom of good news then. As regards Jehovah’s witnesses, the religious systems of Christendom stirred up the political, military and judicial authorities to cut down or almost stop the public preaching that Jehovah’s witnesses were trying to do concerning the meaning of world conditions and the times and events. Came the year 1919, and the work of witnessing to the nations in fulfillment of Jesus’ words was still there to do. It faced all men who claimed to follow and obey Jesus. In that opening year for postwar decisions and work the question of highest importance to Christendom and to all who called themselves Christians was, not, Should all nations get together in a peace league? but, Who will be Jehovah’s prophet to the nations, to speak to them everything that He should command? Who will be the modern Jeremiah?

¹¹ Jeremiah prophesied forty years in the time of the end of the kingdom of Judah. So who will prophesy with his message in this time of the end of the nations of this world?

12. (a) How can we find the answer to the question? (b) What must the combined answer be on the part of all the things consulted?

¹² Back there, about forty years ago, that was the question. Today we may ask, How was the question answered? There are facts to show. We should not appeal to religious pride or boasting or self-made claims. We should appeal to the facts. Let facts speak for themselves. Consult the factual record of Christendom’s religious systems, Catholic and Protestant, not to speak of Jewry. More than that, examine also what those religious systems are doing today. Then consult the record of the one religious organization that all Christendom’s religious organizations and Jewry strenuously opposed during World War I and have opposed since. Everybody knows that this opposed organization of Christians is Jehovah’s witnesses. Consult the newspaper reports or magazine articles, the police and judicial court records, yes, consult the homes of the millions of people who have been visited by these witnesses of Jehovah, apart from their own annual reports and the Yearbooks of Jehovah’s witnesses. Ask all these what the witnesses have been doing since 1919 till this very hour. The combined answer will be that they have been preaching by all the means and channels of publicity. They have specialized on preaching just one thing, and that is, God’s kingdom of good news. This they have preached, as Jesus commanded, “for the purpose of a witness to all the nations,” including the nations behind the Iron Curtain.

13, 14. (a) What fact decides the answer to the question? (b) As regards the answer why are Jehovah’s witnesses grateful today and why have they become happy?

¹³ The fact that decides the answer to the question is, not, Do all the clergy of Roman Catholicism and of Protestantism agree that Jehovah’s witnesses have been and are God’s prophet to the nations? but, Who discerned the divine will for Christians in this time of the world’s end and offered themselves to do it? Who have undertaken God’s foreordained work for this day of judgment of the nations? Who have answered the call to the work and have done it down till this year 1958? Whom has God actually used as his prophet?

¹⁴ By the historical facts of the case Christendom is beaten back in defeat. Jehovah’s witnesses are deeply grateful today that the plain facts show that God has been pleased to use them. All the preaching and all the Bible educational work that they have done till now in 175 countries and islands of the sea they confess has been, not by help of a military army, nor by human power, but by God’s spirit, his invisible active force. (Zech. 4:6, AV) It has been because Jehovah thrust out his hand of power and touched their lips and put his words in their mouths. It has evidently been because he commissioned them to be over the nations and over the kingdoms. Happy are all those who have seen what the work of Jehovah God for now is and who have volunteered to do it.

TWO KINDS OF DIVINE WORK

15. (a) What was it that was foreordained? (b) How, then, must Christians live up to their claims, and which “Christians” have done so?

¹⁵ Individuals have not been foreordained for God’s work, as in Jeremiah’s case. The work was the thing foreordained. Christendom may fail to do the foreordained work, but it will be done just the same. We must harmonize with the work, not decide for ourselves what God’s work should be at this time and then ask his divine blessing on what we decide. This latter course is one of lawlessness against God, no matter how loudly and insistently one claims to be a Christian. God offers the foreordained work to Christians, as these claim to have given themselves to him through Christ to do the divine will. Thus God lets Christians live up to their claims, if they want to, by accepting the work he foreordained for Christians in this day. Regardless of the names of the individuals, a remnant of consecrated, anointed witnesses of Jehovah rejoiced to be freed from their captivity during World War I and to carry out their dedication to God by taking up the foreordained work. Hundreds of thousands have since seen the opportunities of the work and have joyfully joined the anointed Jeremiah class in doing the work.

16. Despite their fewness, why is the work of Jehovah’s witnesses of world importance, and what are they, as pictured by Jeremiah, commissioned to do?

¹⁶ Jehovah’s witnesses may be comparatively few in number. They do not have any political ties or influence. Nonetheless, their work is of world importance, because it was foreordained by God. It was foreshadowed and outlined by Jeremiah’s own work, which was of world importance. Jehovah’s witnesses are absolutely neutral toward the political, ideological and military conflicts of this world, and yet they are under divine command to declare Jehovah’s message concerning the nations and kingdoms of this world. As pictured by Jeremiah, they are commissioned “to uproot and to pull down and to destroy and to tear down, to build and to plant.”

17. In what they have done during the past forty years, how have Jehovah’s witnesses fulfilled His commission to them?

¹⁷ That is the work that Jehovah’s witnesses have been doing during these past forty years. In all that work they have not meddled in politics, subverted any governments or raised a violent hand against any of the institutions or political structures of any nation of the world. How, then, have they fulfilled Jehovah’s commission to them? Our guide to the right answer is found in the answer to the question, How did our pattern, Jeremiah, fulfill his commission to do such things? He did this by declaring the judgments, the judicial decisions and the purposes of Jehovah God, which, when pronounced over Jehovah’s own name, are as good as accomplished. Thus he “calls the things that are not as though they were.” (Rom. 4:17) Not one of his judgments and purposes has gone unfulfilled.

18. By comparing himself with whom does Jehovah show that he is unchallengeable, and so what decisions can he make or reverse concerning the nations?

¹⁸ Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground. Quite rightly, then, Jehovah compares himself to a great Potter or Fashioner of vessels, in supreme control of the products of his hands. As such Fashioner, he is unchallengeable. It does not do a bit of good to challenge him on what he is doing or how he expresses his will. He said: “As the clay in the hand of the potter, so you are in my hand, O house of Israel. At any moment that I may speak against a nation and against a kingdom to uproot it and to pull it down and to destroy it, and that nation actually turns back from its badness against which I spoke, I will also feel sorry over the calamity that I had thought to execute upon it. But at any moment that I may speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build it up and to plant it, and it actually does what is bad in my eyes by not obeying my voice, I will also feel sorry over the good that I said to myself to do for its good.”—Jer. 18:5-10.

19. How and with what nations did Jehovah anciently illustrate his power as a world Potter, and so why should nations today not despise Jehovah’s Word, even through his modern witnesses?

¹⁹ Long ago Jehovah God illustrated his power as a world Potter to make and break nations. The ruins of ancient world powers and kingdoms, those of Israel and of Judah, of Babylon, of Edom, of Moab, of Ammon and of other ancient political powers stand as warning examples of how he uproots, pulls down, destroys and tears down mighty governments, great cities and powerwielding populations and their institutions. In each case he poured out his judgments upon the nation or the world power that offended against him and fought against him. He always had his chosen executioner to carry out the divine word and make it live toward the offenders and fighters against Him. “‘Is not my word correspondingly like a fire,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and like a forge hammer that smashes the crag?’” (Jer. 23:29) Let the nations of today not despise the Word of Jehovah God, come though it may through the internationally hated body of Christians known as Jehovah’s witnesses. What they are saying and preaching to the nations is not their own word; it is taken from God’s written Word. “So, then,” says Paul, “the man that shows disregard is disregarding, not man, but God, who put his holy spirit in you.”—1 Thess. 4:8.

20, 21. (a) What significance were Jehovah’s witnesses attaching to 1914 (A.D.), and since when? (b) What was that “something new” and “something old,” and what are Jehovah’s witnesses declaring about the United Nations?

²⁰ As early as 1877 Jehovah’s witnesses, who are associated with the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, came out in print to the effect that 1914 was the date marked in God’s Bible for the Gentile Times, “the appointed times of the nations,” to end. This meant that something new was due to begin during 1914 and something old was to end or enter into the time of its end.

²¹ That something new was God’s kingdom of the heavens, prayer for the establishment of which had gone up for near onto nineteen hundred years. The something old was this world; not this earth, which sixty nations scientifically studied during their International Geophysical Year, but the bedeviled man-made system of things on the surface of this earth. Since 1914, the year to which Jehovah’s witnesses pointed long in advance, this old world has never been the same. The distress and perplexity have continued and increased upon it. In 1919 the victorious nations of World War I established an international league to hold the world together and to promote and maintain international peace. Jehovah’s witnesses identified it as something abominable in God’s sight and said that God’s Word doomed the League of Nations to go down. Down it went in 1939, not because Jehovah’s witnesses pulled it down—the Nazi leader Hitler and the Axis Powers behind him did that—but because Jehovah’s infallible Word said so. His Word through his witnesses on earth did not fail. As regards the successor of the League, the United Nations, Jehovah’s witnesses are boldly declaring his Word concerning that international peace organization, just as he has commanded. Jehovah’s Word says, Down with it! Hence it is doomed to join the League of Nations.

22. For members of the United Nations to have to listen to what Jehovah’s witnesses declare is like doing what, but what is His command to his witnesses concerning this?

²² The eighty-one members in the United Nations will not relish this pronouncement from the Word of Jehovah God. To listen to it, especially at the mouth and by the publications of the witnesses of Jehovah, may seem to them like having to drink drugged wine. Yet the Jeremiah class of today are commanded to make the nations hear this warning message from Jehovah’s inspired Word. ‘Uproot, pull down, destroy and tear down,’ said Jehovah to Jeremiah. And so we today, as long as this old world stands, must keep on preaching this bitter message and make the nations drink this warning until God himself makes them drink the real thing. Says he: “You must say to them, ‘This is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said: “Drink and get drunk and puke and fall so that you cannot get up because of the sword that I am sending among you.”’ And it must occur that in case they refuse to take the cup out of your hand to drink, you must also say to them, ‘This is what Jehovah of armies has said: “You will drink without fail. For, look! it is upon the city upon which my name is called that I am starting off in bringing calamity, and should you yourselves in any way go free of punishment?’” ‘You will not go free of punishment, for there is a sword that I am calling against all the inhabitants of the earth,’ is the utterance of Jehovah of armies.”—Jer. 25:27-29.

23. For what claim will Jehovah hold Christendom accountable, and why will the Communist bloc and the nations outside not escape punishment by Jehovah’s executional sword?

²³ Copying the unfaithful nation of Israel in Jeremiah’s day, unchristian Christendom of this twentieth century claims to be called by God’s name and to represent him. Jehovah God will hold Christendom accountable for not living up to the divine name. At the universal war of Armageddon, which draws near, Jehovah will tell his Executional Officer Jesus Christ to swing down the sword of destruction upon the hypocritical religious organization. Let not the Communist Eastern bloc of nations, neither the non-Christian nations outside, gloat because of the coming destruction of the so-called Christian Western bloc, or, more particularly, Christendom. If Jehovah considers Christendom, which pretends to bear his name and to stand for God to the world, to be punishable, do Communist Russia and its satellites, and the non-Christian nations of the world, think that they are unpunishable? Have they loved Jehovah God more than Christendom has? Have they refrained from opposing and fighting against Jehovah God and his witnesses? Have they been guiltless as to doing filthy things and sinning against Him? No; and Jehovah says that they will not go free of punishment, but his executional sword will be upon all the inhabitants of the earth. Consequently they have not gone unwarned by Jehovah’s witnesses.

24. What was Jehovah’s message through Jeremiah concerning the calamity and its effects, and of what was Nebuchadnezzar’s conquering sweep through the Middle East and into Egypt an illustration?

²⁴ Hear this: “This is what Jehovah of armies has said, ‘Look! A calamity is going forth from nation to nation, and a great tempest itself will be roused up from the remotest parts of the earth. And those slain by Jehovah will certainly come to be in that day from one end of the earth clear to the other end of the earth. They will not be bewailed, neither will they be gathered up or be buried. As manure on the surface of the ground they will become.’” Then, addressing himself to the political rulers, backed by the religious leaders and the commercial, industrial and financial princes, he says: “Howl, you shepherds, and cry out! And wallow about, you majestic ones of the flock! For your days for slaughtering and for your acts of scattering have been fulfilled, and you must fall like a desirable vessel. And a place to flee to has perished from the shepherds, and a means of escape from the majestic ones of the flock. Listen! The outcry of the shepherds, and the howling of the majestic ones of the flock, for Jehovah is despoiling their pasturage.” (Jer. 25:32-36) What took place long ago when Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonian world power, swept through the Middle East and down into Egypt is a small, human-scale illustration of what Jehovah’s mightier Executional Servant, Jesus Christ, will do when he sweeps round the entire globe from nation to nation and destroys the old worldly system of things.—Jer. 25:8-11.

Surviving with the New

1. For their preaching, with what may Jehovah’s witnesses be charged, and how did Jeremiah himself escape execution for a like charge?

FOR preaching such a message as this to the nations Jehovah’s witnesses may be charged with being subversive. Jeremiah was charged that way. The religious leaders tried to have the political princes kill him. “Then the priests and the prophets and all the people proceeded to lay hold of him, saying: ‘You will positively die. Why is it that you have prophesied in the name of Jehovah, saying, “Like that in Shiloh is how this house [this temple] will become, and this very city will be devastated so as to be without an inhabitant”?’” Then they said to the princes of Jerusalem: “To this man the judgment of death belongs, because he has prophesied concerning this city just as you have heard with your own ears.” Jeremiah defended himself, saying: “It was Jehovah that sent me to prophesy concerning this house and concerning this city all the words that you have heard. . . . And as for me, here I am in your hand. Do to me according to what is good and according to what is right in your eyes. Only you should by all means know that, if you are putting me to death, it is innocent blood that you are putting upon yourselves and upon this city and upon her inhabitants, for in truth Jehovah did send me to you to speak in your ears all these words.” At that time the princes showed courage enough to stand up against the religious leaders and false prophets and refused to put Jehovah’s witness to death. (Jer. 26:1-24) That was twenty-two years before Jerusalem was destroyed.

2, 3. (a) In spite of Egyptian aid, how did Jeremiah keep on pulling down Jerusalem? (b) Of what was Jeremiah afterward accused, and why did he come into the miry cistern and yet escape death?

² Later, in the ninth year of King Zedekiah, the Chaldean armies under King Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem. When they heard that Pharaoh of Egypt was coming up to relieve the city, they lifted the siege and withdrew. But Jeremiah uprooted and pulled down Jerusalem by predicting that that city was doomed. Said he: “‘The Chaldeans will certainly come back and fight against this city and capture it and burn it with fire.’ This is what Jehovah has said: ‘Do not deceive your souls.’” Afterward Jeremiah was accused of deserting to the Chaldeans. On his way out through one of Jerusalem’s gates he was seized by the official guard of the gate, who said: “It is to the Chaldeans that you are falling away!”

³ Jeremiah was then put in a house of detention. Even from there Jeremiah told King Zedekiah himself that the enemy Chaldeans would come back and capture king and city. (Jer. 37:1-19) When released, Jeremiah preached the same thing. He told the people to surrender to King Nebuchadnezzar if they wanted to escape destruction inside the city by sword, famine and pestilence. The political princes did not take the message to heart in faith and act on it. They misinterpreted the message and said to the king: “Let this man, please, be put to death, for that is how he is weakening the hands of the men of war who are left remaining in this city and the hands of all the people, by speaking to them according to these words. For this man is one seeking not for the peace of this people but for calamity.” Jeremiah was now arrested and lowered into a waterless cistern with a miry bottom. There Jeremiah was left to sink into the mire. However, an Ethiopian eunuch was man enough to get him out of that death hole. Jeremiah was then kept under detention in the Courtyard of the Guard until Jerusalem fell and release came to him at the hand of the Chaldeans.—Jer. 38:1-13.

4. Despite national security measures and false clergy charges, what must we keep on doing, like Jeremiah?

⁴ In these days, when the political governments find it advisable to take special security measures and when it is popular for certain religious clergymen to cry “Communist!” because Jehovah’s witnesses foretell the destruction of Christendom in the universal war of Armageddon, we cannot alter our message. When under any arrest and imprisonment, we must stick to the message that Jehovah has commissioned us to preach, because it is true and is certain to be fulfilled. We must remember Jeremiah and keep on warning.

5, 6. In what way will the clergy and prophets of Christendom dispute us, but what are they forgetting that Jeremiah said about the temple?

⁵ The religious clergy and prophets of Christendom will dispute us. They will deny that Jehovah God will destroy Christendom and will use Jesus Christ himself as one Greater than Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the realm that takes its name after Christ. Their church system, they will argue, was founded by Jesus Christ and they can trust him to preserve and not to destroy what is his own. “God’s house is this!” they say. “God’s house is this!” Talking like that, they forget what Jesus said about the temple at Jerusalem: “Look! your house is abandoned to you. . . . By no means will a stone be left here upon a stone and not be thrown down.” (Matt. 23:38; 24:2) They forget that Jeremiah said the following about the temple:

⁶ “Do not put your trust in fallacious words, saying, ‘The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah they are!’ . . . ‘Here you are putting your trust in fallacious words—it will certainly be of no benefit at all. Can there be stealing, murdering and committing adultery and swearing falsely and making sacrificial smoke to Baal and walking after other gods whom you had not known, and must you come and stand before me in this house upon which my name has been called, and must you say, “We shall certainly be delivered,” in the face of doing all these detestable things? Has this house upon which my name has been called become a mere cave of robbers in your eyes? Here I myself also have seen it,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘However, go, now, to my place that was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to reside at first, and see what I did to it because of the badness of my people Israel. . . . I will do also to the house upon which my name has been called, in which you are trusting, and to the place that I gave to you and to your forefathers, just as I did to Shiloh. And I will throw you out from before my face, just as I threw out all your brothers.’”—Jer. 7:4-15; 1 Sam. 4:3-22.

7. Why, therefore, can we not alter our message just to please people?

⁷ That utterance from Jehovah denies what the priests and prophets of Christendom tell the people in contradiction of Jehovah’s witnesses. That is why we cannot alter the message, just to please the people and their chosen religious leaders. Changing the message will not save anyone, not even our own selves. Like Jerusalem, Christendom is doomed to extinction and with her all the rest of this worldly system of things, in the “war of the great day of God the Almighty.” His heavenly Field Marshal, Jesus Christ, will destroy unchristian Christendom, because it has hypocritically misrepresented him before all the non-Christian peoples and nations.

8. What will befall those who stick inside Christendom, and to what do we urge and educate the people to go out?

⁸ Those who stick inside Christendom by adhering to its religious systems will die in the universal war of Armageddon, just as those who stayed inside Jerusalem and did not go out to the besieging king of Babylon died miserably inside the city. By our message against Christendom we do not advise or encourage people to go over to ungodly communism of any type. In harmony with Jeremiah, we urge the liberty-loving, life-loving people to go out to the conquering King Jesus Christ. From the Holy Bible we educate the people to take upon themselves the yoke of the King Jesus Christ and to serve him. We tell even the political rulers to do this, just as Jeremiah strongly urged King Zedekiah to do similarly. It means their life, their eternal life.—Jer. 38:17-20; 27:12-17.

9. What does taking the yoke of the reigning King Jesus Christ mean for one, and for what does bearing it work?

⁹ To take the yoke of the reigning King Jesus Christ upon one, even so late as this in the world’s time of the end, means sweet refreshment to one’s soul. Hundreds of thousands of sheeplike people all around the earth have already found that out. Jesus Christ, although now in battle dress for the universal war of Armageddon, still says: “Come to me, all you who are toiling and loaded down, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and become my disciples, for I am mild-tempered and lowly in heart, and you will find refreshment for your souls. For my yoke is kindly and my load is light.” (Matt. 11:28-30) It is like a wooden yoke or yoke bar, and he helps us to bear it, rather than to press us down and crush us with it. Bearing his yoke now works for our life in the new world!

10. How do Christendom’s priests and prophets take the position of prophet Hananiah, and how will people following their advice fare?

¹⁰ The priests and prophets of Christendom take the position of the false prophet Hananiah and other religious leaders who opposed Jeremiah. They deny that Jesus Christ, now reigning in the midst of his enemies since 1914, is against Christendom and will destroy it and that it is very urgent to desert Christendom without delay and dedicate oneself to Jehovah God and truly follow in Christ’s footsteps, bearing his yoke according to the Holy Scriptures and not according to the religious creeds of Christendom. If people follow the advice of men like Hananiah and refuse to get out of Christendom and bow their neck under the yoke of the King of kings and Lord of lords, it will go very hard with them at Armageddon.

11. How did Jehovah contradict Hananiah and sentence him, and between what yokes do the people now have to choose?

¹¹ The prophet Hananiah broke the wooden yoke bar from off Jeremiah’s neck. He said that Jeremiah’s illustration of his prophecy was false; and that just as he (Hananiah) had broken the yoke of wood, so inside of two full years Jehovah would break Nebuchadnezzar’s yoke from off the neck of all nations. Jehovah told Jeremiah to say to Hananiah that iron yoke bars were what was in store now instead of wooden ones: “A yoke of iron I will put upon the neck of all these nations, to serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon; and they must serve him. And even the wild beasts of the field I will give him.” Another thing: Hananiah, who had “spoken outright revolt against Jehovah,” must die. He did die that very year. (Jer. 27:1 to 28:17) What will happen to the people who today choose to follow religious leaders like Hananiah? Jesus said: “If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matt. 15:14) The choice now before all people is between a symbolic wooden yoke with life for our souls in the new world and an iron yoke with death for revolt against Jehovah and his King.

BUILDING AND PLANTING

12. Why could Jeremiah well give way to the expressions in the book of Lamentations, and yet how does that book breathe of Jehovah’s righteousness?

¹² Jeremiah has been called a “prophet of gloom.” “Gloom,” yes, for the wicked, who deserve it. Because the holy name of his God, Jehovah, was implicated, Jeremiah could give way to the expressions of grief contained in his book of Lamentations. Yet Lamentations is a book of great poetic beauty; it breathes of Jehovah’s righteousness. It pours out sorrow for sin against him, it wells up with hope in merciful restoration and reconstruction by him, and it draws consolation from the divine vengeance that is coming upon those who have taken part and rejoiced in working ruin upon Jehovah’s people.—Lam. 1:18, 21, 22; 3:26-41, 55-66; 4:21, 22; 5:19-21.

13. What was it that made Jeremiah sad, and yet in fulfillment of what did that come?

¹³ Because the enemy gloated and bragged, because they taunted and reproached God’s name, because the symbols of Jehovah’s typical religion were wrecked and overthrown, and because Jehovah’s people grew so rebellious, unfaithful and worldly as to deserve this painful experience, it made the prophet Jeremiah sad. Still it came in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s preaching, in which Jeremiah uprooted and pulled down, destroyed and tore down with descriptive language.

14. Happily, what also was Jeremiah commissioned to do, and in harmony with this what grand prophecies was he privileged to utter?

¹⁴ Happily Jeremiah was also commissioned “to build and to plant.” It was he who foretold of a miraculous restoration of Jehovah’s people, this resulting in an overflow of joy. Jeremiah was the one who said these touching words of Jehovah to his visible organization: “With a love to time indefinite I have loved you. That is why I have drawn you with loving-kindness. Yet shall I rebuild you, and you will actually be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel. You will yet deck yourself with your tambourines and actually go forth in the dance of those who are laughing. You will yet plant vineyards in the mountains of Samaria. The planters will certainly plant and begin to use them. For there exists a day when the lookouts in the mountainous region of Ephraim will actually call out, ‘Rise up, O men, and let us go up to Zion, to Jehovah our God.’” Jeremiah dispelled gloom by foretelling that the captive ones of Jehovah’s people would “return from the land of the enemy.” Jeremiah also foretold the “new covenant” that Jesus Christ was to mediate with God for his body of followers, the nation of spiritual Israel. In this covenant Jehovah said: “I will put my law into the midst of them, and in their heart I shall write it. And I will become their God, and they themselves will become my people. . . . for they will all of them know me, from the least one of them even to the greatest one of them, . . . For I shall forgive their error, and their sin I shall remember no more.”—Jer. 31:3-6, 16, 31-34.

15. (a) What did Jeremiah see happen to Jerusalem’s king and priests, and yet what did he upbuildingly say regarding the covenants with David and with the Levite priesthood? (b) So what do we now preach?

¹⁵ Jeremiah saw how the typical “throne of Jehovah” in Jerusalem was emptied of its last king, Zedekiah. He saw how Jehovah’s chief priest of the temple, Seraiah, and the second priest, Zephaniah, were killed by the Babylonian executioner. Yet Jeremiah built and planted by joyfully declaring that Jehovah’s covenants with King David and with the Levite priesthood for a “kingdom of priests,” a “holy nation” of king-priests, “a royal priesthood,” would endure: “This is what Jehovah has said, ‘If you people could break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, even in order for day and night not to occur in their time, likewise could my own covenant be broken with David my servant so that he should not come to have a son ruling as king upon his throne; also with the Levites, the priests, my ministers. Just as the army of the heavens cannot be counted, neither the sand of the sea be measured, so I shall multiply the seed of David my servant and the Levites who are ministering to me.’” (Jer. 33:20-22; Ex. 19:6; Num. 25:10-13; 1 Pet. 2:9) Likewise today, Jehovah’s witnesses preach for a witness to all the nations the good news that Jehovah has planted the enduring kingdom of his King-Priest like Melchizedek, Jesus Christ. With himself in that heavenly kingdom Jesus will have the full 144,000 anointed followers, who “will be priests of God and of the Christ” and who “will rule as kings with him for the thousand years.” (Rev. 20:4-6) By that kingdom mankind will procure eternal blessings.

16. How did Jeremiah do constructive work concerning the kingdom of God’s new world, and also concerning survivors into that new world?

¹⁶ “‘Look! There are days coming,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and I will raise up to David a righteous sprout. And a king will certainly reign and act with discretion and execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel itself will reside in security. And this is his name with which he will be called, Jehovah Is Our Righteousness.’” (Jer. 23:5, 6) In his prophetic work Jeremiah did more than build up and plant the only government of hope, the everlasting kingdom of God’s new world. He also built up and planted a great crowd of sheeplike worshipers of Jehovah, getting these into that new world without their dying. Jehovah used Jeremiah to cause persons to reveal themselves as illustrations of these “other sheep.” Who were they?

DRAMATIC ACTORS PREFIGURING SURVIVORS

17. At God’s command, what did Jeremiah do to the Rechabites, and how did they respond?

¹⁷ Jerusalem was then in its time of the end. King Jehoiakim, who cut up a scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecy and pitched it into the fire, still reigned but was undergoing pressure by the king of Babylon and his armies. Cooped up in the city with Jeremiah was a tribe of Rechabites, who were not Israelites but yet worshipers of Jehovah. God told Jeremiah to bring the Rechabite men to the temple and give them wine to drink. The Rechabites absolutely would not drink it. They explained, saying: “We keep obeying the voice of Jehonadab the son of Rechab our forefather in everything that he commanded us by drinking no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons and our daughters, and by not building houses for us to dwell in, so that no vineyard or field or seed should become ours. And we keep dwelling in tents and obeying and doing according to all that Jonadab our forefather commanded us.”—Jer. 35:1-10.

18, 19. (a) So what was Jehovah’s message to the Rechabites, and why? (b) To whom today does Jehovah’s assurance to the Rechabites give an assurance, and why?

¹⁸ If men like those Rechabites unswervingly kept the commands of their forefather, why could not and why did not the Israelites keep the commands of their heavenly Life-giver, their God Jehovah? The faithful example of the God-fearing Rechabites condemned the God-forsaking Israelites. Therefore, let Jerusalem and its wicked inhabitants go down in destruction, but let the Rechabites live on!

¹⁹ Hence Jeremiah said to them: “This is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said, ‘For the reason that you have obeyed the commandment of Jehonadab your forefather and continue keeping all his commandments and doing according to all that he commanded you, therefore this is what Jehovah of armies, the God of Israel, has said: “There will not be cut off from Jonadab the son of Rechab a man to stand before me always.”’” (Jer. 35:12-19) Even so! The Rechabites survived the destruction that came on Jehovah’s unfaithful people by His executioner, just as their forefather Jonadab had survived the slaughter of Baal-worshiping Israelites in their idolatrous temple. Today, in association with the anointed Jeremiah class there is a great crowd of “other sheep.” These condemn Christendom by refusing to join with her in forsaking Jehovah in order to go over to materialism and selfish idolatry. God’s promise to the Rechabites assures these other sheep that they will survive Christendom’s destruction and live on into God’s new world.

20. During Jerusalem’s final siege, how was Jeremiah mistreated for keeping up his warning, and what non-Israelite came to his rescue?

²⁰ King Jehoiakim’s son succeeded him and reigned on Jehovah’s throne for just three months. Then Jehoiakim’s brother, Zedekiah, was made king. In the ninth year of his reign Jerusalem again came under siege by the king of Babylon and his armies. For keeping on warning that Jerusalem would be burned and torn down, Jeremiah was arrested, charged with sedition and put down in a cistern, where he sank in the mire. To his rescue, in defiance of the princes, there came, not a circumcised Israelite, but a castrated Ethiopian, a eunuch named Ebed-melech. He condemned what the princes had done to Jehovah’s prophet. At King Zedekiah’s order Ebed-melech took along thirty men for safety and for assistance and got Jeremiah out of the miry death hole. After that, thanks to Ebed-melech, “Jeremiah continued to dwell in the Courtyard of the Guard.”

21. What happened to many inhabitants during Jerusalem’s siege, but what was Jeremiah commanded to tell Ebed-melech?

²¹ During Jerusalem’s siege mothers boiled their own children for food against starvation, many died of pestilence, and many died by the swords of the Babylonians. But what of Ebed-melech, who was in the house of King Zedekiah? Jehovah commanded Jeremiah in the Courtyard of the Guard to tell his rescuer Ebed-melech: “‘I will deliver you in that day,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and you will not be given into the hand of the men because of whom you yourself are in fright.’ ‘For I shall without fail furnish you an escape, and by the sword you will not fall; and you will certainly come to have your soul as a spoil, because you have trusted in me,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.”—Jer. 39:15-18.

22. Who today, like Ebed-melech, have put their trust in Jehovah, and how have they proved this trust?

²² Today, near Christendom’s destruction at Armageddon, a sheeplike class like Ebed-melech have put their trust in Jeremiah’s God. They have proved this trust by being willing to risk death at the hands of Christendom’s princes in order to come to the rescue of the antitypical Jeremiah of today. “To the extent that you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me,” said the King Jesus Christ to the “other sheep” in his parable of the sheep and goats, the last part of his prophecy on the world’s end.—Matt. 25:40.

23. What will the King’s invitation to these sheep to come and inherit the kingdom prepared for them mean and, accordingly, what promise will Jehovah then remember and apply to them?

²³ In this day of the judgment of the nations, Jesus Christ the King, seated on his heavenly throne for judgment work, turns to his right and says to these sheep: “Come, you who have my Father’s blessing, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the world’s foundation. . . . I was in prison and you came to me.” Since the year 1914 that heavenly kingdom is here and this green earth is its realm. These sheeplike persons of the Ebed-melech kind do not have to die and be resurrected in order to enter into the realm of that kingdom of God’s new world. They are already living in the Kingdom’s earthly realm. This is the realm they must inherit, and so they are not going to be evicted from this earthly inheritance of theirs. Christendom is cursed, but these sheep have the blessing of the King’s Father, Jehovah God. Christendom with its goats will be destroyed, for it has no place in this earthly Kingdom realm. But the King’s Father Jehovah will remember his promise to Ebed-melech at Jerusalem’s destruction. So these blessed sheeplike Christians will not fall by the Executioner’s sword at Armageddon.

24. How will it be possible for these sheep never to die off the earth, their inheritance?

²⁴ In that battle they will certainly come to have their soul, their life, as a victor’s spoil. This guarantees that they will live through the crash of Christendom and its religious temples and will begin to enjoy their earthly inheritance in the eternal new world. By maintaining sheeplike obedience toward their Shepherd King they will never die off the earth, their inheritance. The goats “will depart into everlasting cutting-off, but the righteous ones into everlasting life,” said Jesus the Judge.—Matt. 25:31-46.

25. Because of what work do we suffer reproach, but should we be like Jeremiah when under his reproach?

²⁵ Just as with Jeremiah, so with the anointed remnant and their companions, those righteous sheeplike ones. Heavy is the reproach that they bear because of their work of uprooting, pulling down, destroying and tearing down the old world by means of preaching the day of Jehovah’s vengeance. But should we, on that account, stop filling ourselves with Jehovah’s Word and quit preaching his hard message? We cannot, even as Jeremiah said he could not: “Take note of my bearing reproach on account of your own self. Your words were found, and I proceeded to eat them; and your word becomes to me the exultation and the rejoicing of my heart, for your name has been called upon me, O Jehovah God of armies.”—Jer. 15:10, 15, 16.

26. By whom are we opposed and obstructed even because of our constructive work, but when it comes to stopping speaking, how are we like Jeremiah?

²⁶ Even because we do a building and planting work in favor of God’s new world, the lovers and supporters of the old world oppose us and try to force us to stop. But fired as we are with God’s Word, how can we stop speaking? To quote Jeremiah: “The word of Jehovah became for me a cause for reproach and for jeering all day long. And I said: ‘I am not going to make mention of him, and I shall speak no more in his name.’ And in my heart it proved to be like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I got tired of holding in, and I was unable to endure it. . . . Sing to Jehovah, you people! Praise Jehovah! For he has delivered the soul of the poor one out of the hand of evildoers.”—Jer. 20:8, 9, 13.

27. While expressing the theme of our preaching, how does Jehovah strengthen us not to fear the enemies’ faces, and, true to his deliverances when ancient Jerusalem perished, what will Jehovah do?

²⁷ Therefore, in expression of the theme of our preaching, Down with the old world! Up with the new world! The Almighty God of the new world bids us not to be afraid of the enemies’ faces: “They will be certain to fight against you, but they will not prevail against you, for ‘I am with you,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘to deliver you.’” (Jer. 1:19) True to his promise, he delivered Jeremiah and the Rechabites and Ebed-melech when Jerusalem perished. True to that prophetic picture, Jehovah of armies will deliver us the remnant and the other sheep when, at Armageddon, he fulfills what we have preached and he brings down the old world and brings up his righteous new world.

“His Own Purposes”

The following is a passage from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speech (March 4, 1865): “Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered. . . . The Almighty has his own purposes.”

The Popular Worship of Faith

What is popular religion today? Why the materialism and unhappiness among so many religious people?

“THE ‘unknown God’ of Americans,” recently said noted theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, “seems to be faith itself.” What an enlightening comment on popular religion today!

It is this popular worship of faith that helps explain so much about the present troubles of mankind. It helps explain why America, for instance, is growing more materialistic at the very time it is becoming increasingly more religious. It explains why so many persons have not found the happiness they seek.

What is this popular worship of faith? It is religion that puts the emphasis on faith, not on the Bible, not on God or his will. A striking thing about this popular religion is that it is not limited to any special religious group; Protestants, Catholics and Jews in large numbers have come to worship at the shrine of faith. But do not these many persons speak of God?

“Of course, religious Americans speak of God and Christ,” writes Will Herberg in his noted work Protestant—Catholic—Jew, “but what they seem to regard as really redemptive is primarily religion, the ‘positive’ attitude of believing. It is this faith in faith, this religion that makes religion its own object, that is the outstanding characteristic of contemporary American religiosity. [Cleric] Daniel Poling’s formula: ‘I began saying in the morning two words, “I believe”—those two words with nothing added’ may be taken as the classic expression of this aspect of American faith.”

Will Herberg, who has made an extensive study of this worship of faith, also points to the popular book This I Believe, edited by Edward P. Morgan, as a well-known example. In this book one hundred “thoughtful men and women in all walks of life,” both professed Christians and Jews, make statements regarding what they believe. What is the faith they proclaim as being paramount in their life? Faith in an amazing variety of things, such as brotherhood, spiritual values, life, tolerance, freedom, democracy and faith in faith. Scarcely half of these prominent people even mention God. “Somehow their belief in God, and the God they believed in,” comments Herberg, “did not seem to be very central to whatever it was that they had in mind when they stood up to tell the world ‘This I Believe.’” The average churchgoing adherent of popular religion, Herberg observes, is not much different.

PRIMARILY FAITH IN FAITH

Popular religion, then, does not put stress on God but on faith itself, the so-called “magic of believing.” And the strange thing about it is that this positive attitude of believing is even represented as the Christian faith of the Bible! In God’s Psychiatry, Charles L. Allen writes: “I tell you that you can look into a future of peace and victory. ‘Only believe, only believe all things are possible, only believe!’ That is more than just a little chorus. It is the Christian faith.”

Among the Jewish exponents of this faith-in-faith religion is Rabbi Louis Binstock, who writes in The Power of Faith: “You, like everyone else, have access to a great storehouse of dynamic power on which you can draw. . . . That storehouse is Faith. . . . Not God. But—Faith.”

Because it is popular, religious groups of all kinds have adopted, in varying degrees, this form of worship. Go-to-church advertisements now usually stress faith, not God or the Bible. One such newspaper advertisement says: “Regular church attendance helps you build your own personal reserve of faith.” No mention was made of church attendance helping one learn and do the will of Jehovah, the Almighty God.

Small wonder that popular religion is hazy, foggy and that its adherents are hard put to define in precise terms what they believe.

WRONG MOTIVES

God’s Word, the Bible, tells us about the “one faith,” the true religion that Christ Jesus taught. (Eph. 4:5) At the core of this Biblical “one faith” are Jehovah God and his will. At Hebrews 10:9 the apostle Paul speaks of the mental attitude of Christ Jesus: “Look! I am come to do your will.” But in today’s popular religion it is not the will of God that is of prime importance; it is the will of the worshiper himself.

Speaking of the motives permeating popular religion, Will Herberg says: “Prosperity, success, and advancement in business are the obvious ends for which religion, or rather the religious attitude of ‘believing,’ is held to be useful. . . . The cult of faith takes two forms, which we might designate as introvert and extrovert. In its introvert form faith is trusted to bring mental health and ‘peace of mind,’ to dissipate anxiety and guilt, and to translate the soul to the blessed land of ‘normality’ and ‘self-acceptance.’ . . . Its extrovert form . . . is known as ‘positive thinking.’ ‘Positive thinking,’ thinking that is ‘affirmative’ and avoids the corrosions of ‘negativity’ and ‘skepticism,’ thinking that ‘has faith,’ is recommended as a powerful force in the world of struggle and achievement. Here again it is not so much faith in anything . . . that is supposed to confer this power—but just faith, the psychological attitude of having faith.”

What many persons are searching for, then, is not the divine will for man but a spiritual anodyne, something to relieve the pains and vexations of existence; or else they want a spiritual stimulant, something to spur them on to worldly success. As Dr. Clifford E. Barbour, president of Western Theological Seminary of Pittsburgh, puts it: “They want either a faith that will be a contributing factor to success in this life—a so-called enlightened self-interest—or a religious faith that is an escape from this life.” Roman Catholic Archbishop Patrick A. O’Boyle has declared that many persons are “turning to religion as they would to a benign sedative to soothe their minds and settle their nerves.”

What a vast number of churches are dispensing, instead of spiritual food, these spiritual sedatives! The word “success,” appearing in so much popular religion, does not refer to success in practicing true Christianity but success in whatever worldly attainment to which the worshiper aspires.

NO CRITICAL EXAMINATION

When motives are wrong and there is no heart-deep desire to learn and do the divine will, then it is not strange that we find this characteristic: an unwillingness to make a critical examination of one’s faith, testing it by the standard for judging religion, the Holy Bible.

God’s Word commands: “Make sure of all things.” (1 Thess. 5:21) But the followers of popular religion shy away from making the test for right belief. Why so? Possibly there is a fear of the responsibilities of true religion as found in the Bible. And as Will Herberg explains: “There is ordinarily no criticism of the ends themselves in terms of the ultimate loyalties of a God-centered faith, nor is there much concern about what the religion or the faith is all about, since it is not the content of the belief but the attitude of believing that is felt to be operative.”

This attitude could only lead to many false teachings. But no matter how many false doctrines there may be, this does not seem to disturb the sought-after peace of mind. A comment on this point appears in the Christian Herald of March, 1957, under the feature “Doctor Poling Answers Your Questions.” A troubled reader asks this question under the subheading “False Doctrines”: “I am greatly troubled by false doctrines. Someone tells me that there are 80 or more of these. Even though I know the Lord is my personal Saviour and have been firmly established in my faith these many years, I am all upset. How may I find firm foundations again?” The answer given the inquirer was this: “As to false doctrines, there may be 80 or there may be a thousand. I am sure they are quite beyond numbering, but since you know the Lord and have been within His grace all these years, surely you have the witness in your heart day by day. You have everything that is required for your peace of mind.”

NO SENSE OF JUDGMENT BEFORE GOD

With a willingness to put up with or risk false doctrines, it is not surprising that popular religion is marked by an absence of any judgment before the living and true God. Yet true religion, as taught by an apostle of Christ, is based on these principles: “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God” and “Each of us will render an account for himself to God.”—Rom. 14:10, 12.

Adherents of the popular religion that stresses faith seem oblivious to the Biblical fact that “The true God himself will bring every sort of work into the judgment in relation to every hidden thing, as to whether it is good or bad.” (Eccl. 12:14) By stressing faith the idea of judgment before the Almighty is obscured. When God is mentioned it is hardly ever as the righteous Judge who will soon execute his judgment against this world; instead God is viewed as a friendly neighbor.

To many adherents of popular religion God is just a “Good Guy” or the “Man Upstairs.” “All sense of awe before the divine majesty, all sense of judgment before the divine holiness,” says Herberg, “is shut out; God is, in Jane Russell’s inimitable phrase, a ‘livin’ Doll.’ . . . Is this He of Whom we are told, ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb. 10:31)? The measure of how far contemporary American religiosity falls short of the authentic tradition of the Jewish-Christian faith is to be found in the chasm that separates Jane Russell’s ‘livin’ Doll’ from the living God of Scripture.”

MAN-CENTERED, NOT GOD-CENTERED

Right at the core of this faith-in-faith religion is the fact that it is man-centered, not God-centered. Thus it operates in just the opposite way from the Christianity of the Bible. When teaching his followers to pray, Christ Jesus placed Jehovah God, his name, his kingdom and his will, first: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will come to pass, as in heaven, also upon earth.” (Matt. 6:9, 10) But those who worship at the altar of faith say in effect: ‘Let my will come to pass with your help.’

One of the most apt descriptions of this man-centered popular religion was given by Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations: “Man is the beginning and end of the present-day American religiosity—God is made to serve, or rather to subserve man, to subserve his every purpose and enterprise whether it be economic prosperity, free enterprise, security, or peace of mind. God thus becomes an omnipotent servant, a universal bell-hop, to cater to man’s every caprice; faith becomes a sure-fire device to get what we petulantly and peevishly crave. This reduction of God from master to slave has reached its height, or rather its depth of blasphemy, in the cult of the Man Upstairs—the friendly neighbor-god who dwells in the apartment just above. Call on him any time—especially if you are feeling blue. He does not get the least bit upset with your faults and failings and, as for your sins, not only does he not remember them . . . but the very word and concept of sin have been abolished.”

CONSEQUENCES OF FALSE RELIGION

A man-centered religion is false religion, and false religion cannot save anyone when God destroys this evil world at the war of Armageddon, “at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings due punishment upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. These very ones will pay the penalty of everlasting destruction.”—2 Thess. 1:7-9.

Thus today’s popular religion is without power to save anyone to everlasting life in God’s new world. The fact that such a religion cannot merit God’s approval is even admitted by some clergymen, such as cleric Ralph Sockman who said: “We tend to present God as our servant who brings us financial and social success rather than as our sovereign whom we serve. A self-centered, self-serving religion is not Scriptural and, however popular it may be at the moment, it cannot save us.”

Despite the admitted futility of this man-centered religion, it continues to be popular; and clergymen, despite protestations now and then, continue to dispense what is popular.

Ah, now we gain insight into why churchgoers have not found the happiness they seek. Only true religion, centering around the will of Almighty God, and resulting in right motive, right belief and right works can bring the peace of mind the Bible speaks of: “The peace of God that excels all thought will guard your hearts and your mental powers by means of Christ Jesus.”—Phil. 4:7.

Now we also see why crime increases despite rocketing numbers of churchgoers. Popular religion has not been a molding force in their lives; it has not brought about a change in their way of living. It has not given them guidance and power to “put away the old personality” and to “put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will.”—Eph. 4:22-24.

No wonder there is so much moral insensitivity among professedly religious people! No wonder so many persons, despite regular church attendance, operate in a moral vacuum! No wonder materialism has increased right along with the rising rate of church membership!

To climax its reprehensibility, popular religion has obscured the true worship of Jehovah, the true and living God. What folly to allow what is popular to obscure what is right and true! True religion will never be popular with this world, as Jesus plainly showed: “Go in through the narrow gate; because broad and spacious is the road leading off into destruction, and many are the ones going in through it; whereas narrow is the gate and cramped the road leading off into life, and few are the ones finding it.”—Matt. 7:13, 14.

True religion, the way to life, can be found. It is largely a matter of right heart condition. Do you sincerely desire to find the truth and to do the will of the true God? Then to his Word, the Bible, you must go. From this Book you must get your principles for living. Associate with those who practice the true religion of the Bible. Allow Jehovah’s witnesses, who have brought you this magazine, to assist you in taking “the road leading off into life.” Turn from the futile popular worship of faith to the life-preserving worship of Jehovah God; for, of a certainty, “the world is passing away and so is its desire, but he that does the will of God remains forever.”—1 John 2:17.

Part 6—“Your Will Be Done on Earth”

The theme of the book that we are studying serially, namely, “Your Will Be Done on Earth,” was taken from the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, which prayer he addressed to the heavenly Father of both him and his faithful disciples. It is the will of the heavenly Father, Jehovah God, that Christians are instructed to pray to be done on earth as well as in heaven. “Why It Must Be Done on Earth” is the title of Chapter 2, in the midst of which we now find ourselves. One of the strong reasons why is that Jehovah God created the earth to exist forever as the habitation of humankind together with all the lower animal creatures subject to man. It is God’s purpose that the whole earth be made a paradise like the original garden or Paradise of Eden. When that purpose is fully realized and mankind in human perfection are doing the heavenly Father’s will, it would bring to nothing his divine purpose if he removed the inhabitants of Paradise to some place else.

26. What, however, has man been doing to earth, water and air, and what divine purpose must be realized to justify man’s creation?

²⁶ Today, after almost six thousand years of human history, men in general are ruining the surface of the earth by their wars and commercial exploitation of the land. They are making a sewer of its atmosphere and are polluting and radioactivating its waters. They are filling the earth with imperfect children, illegitimate and legitimate, who are no more doing the will of God than their parents are doing. God’s will has never yet been done over all the earth by all humankind as God indicated to man in Eden was the divine purpose. That divine purpose must yet be realized in order to justify God’s creation of the first man. God must yet be vindicated in the matter of having his will done on earth as well as in heaven. Jesus prayed that God should be vindicated in that way.

27. By whom will God not let his purpose be blocked, and for what deliverance did Jesus teach us to pray, and by what means?

²⁷ God has not changed his purpose in this regard, not even since his Son Jesus Christ came to earth. Regarding his stated purposes he says: “I, Jehovah, change not; therefore ye, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.” (Mal. 3:6, AS) He will not be obliged to consume all humankind off the face of the earth or to destroy the earth. He will not quit with his purpose unrealized in a confession of defeat. He will not let his purpose be blocked by an opposer, a Satan, or by a liar and slanderer, a Devil. For deliverance from that wicked one Jesus taught us to pray. He ended his model prayer for us, saying: “And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the wicked one.” (Matt. 6:13) Almighty God will answer that part of his Son’s prayer too; and this means that the wicked “ruler of this world,” “the god of this system of things,” will have to go. The presence of the “wicked one,” Satan the Devil, and God’s will being done on earth as well as in heaven do not harmonize. So Satan the Devil and his invisible demons and his visible human agents will have to go. An everlasting earthly Paradise filled with perfect doers of his will is a future certainty. The kingdom of the heavenly Father, for the coming of which Jesus taught his disciples to pray, will see to that.—Rev. 20:1-3.

28, 29. For that reason, what did Jesus on the stake say to the sympathetic evildoer, and what vision did he later give to John on Patmos to show God’s purpose unchanged?

²⁸ This was why, when the sympathetic evildoer was dying on a stake alongside Jesus and said to him: “Remember me, my Lord, when you come in your kingdom,” Jesus said to him: “Truly I say to you today, You will be with me in Paradise.”a On the third day after this Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but not the sympathetic evildoer. Forty days later, as his faithful apostles looked on, Jesus Christ ascended from the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem and disappeared into the heavens, to return to his Father above, the King of eternity. That was in the spring of 33 (A.D.). Years later, about A.D. 96, Jesus from heaven made known to the apostle John on the island of Patmos that the heavenly Father’s purpose concerning the earthly Paradise under the kingdom of God was still unchanged. Jesus gave John a prophetic vision of the coming of God’s kingdom to earth in a glorious way. Then John said:

²⁹ “With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: ‘Look! the tent of God is with humankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away.’ And the one seated on the throne said: ‘Look! I am making all things new.’ Also he says: ‘Write, because these words are trustworthy and true.’”—Rev. 21:3-5.

30. How will it not be a strange thing then that God should dwell with men, and so how will that evildoer come to be with Jesus in Paradise?

³⁰ In harmony with this vision of things that “must shortly take place” the tent of God will be with men. In a representative way God will dwell with men on earth, and not men with God up in heaven. This is not strange. Thousands of years ago Jehovah God dwelt representatively with the ancient Israelites by the sacred tent of worship that the prophet Moses constructed when they were encamped on the Sinai Peninsula on their way from Egypt to the land of Palestine. (2 Sam. 7:5-7) Because this symbolic “tent of God” comes down to be with men during the new world, Jesus Christ as God’s High Priest will be representatively at the earth. Our earth is then to be made a Paradise of pleasure, without tears, death, mourning, outcry or pain, with all former things of sin and death having passed away, and with God on his throne making all things new for humankind on earth. So it will come true that, when the sympathetic evildoer is resurrected from his centuries-long sleep of death to life on earth, he will be with Jesus in Paradise.

31. Why is this hope of an earthly Paradise not a materialistic one, and what was the God-given hope of men from Abel to the dying evildoer on the stake?

³¹ This hope of an earthly Paradise restored and made earth-wide is not a materialistic hope, to turn men away from the joys of heaven, which many religious leaders of Christendom say is the destiny of members of their religious systems. This hope is no more materialistic than Adam’s obeying God for a time in Eden in order to remain alive in the first paradise was selfishly materialistic in its aim. “‘The first man Adam became a living soul.’ The first man is out of the earth and made of dust.” (1 Cor. 15:45, 47) Adam’s God-given hope could be no more than an earthly hope, the same hope that all the holy men of God entertained, from the first martyr Abel down to John the Baptist, yes, and down to that sympathetic evildoer dying alongside Jesus.—Heb. 11:3-40.

32, 33. Why does this not contradict with the heavenly hope that God puts into the hearts of followers of Jesus Christ?

³² This does not conflict with the heavenly hope that God puts in the hearts of the followers of Jesus Christ. These God makes his spiritual children by the use of his holy spirit or active force, to start them in a new way of life, a heavenly life. These comparatively few Christians, pictured by the twenty-four “elders” in the vision to John, are said to be begotten or engendered by God through the means of his life-giving spirit. So they set their affections and keep their minds fixed on the things above. In the resurrection from the dead they expect to be born like Jesus Christ into the fullness of spirit life in heaven, changed, transformed indeed.—1 Cor. 15:42-54.

³³ The heavenly hope of these 144,000 faithful ones of the true Christian congregation does not leave the rest of mankind with nothing to hope for. That gleaming hope of an earthly Paradise, where God’s will is to be done on earth as well as in heaven, is the blessed hope reserved for them according to God’s unchanged loving purpose. The realizing of the heavenly hope by the faithful, world-conquering congregation of Christ takes place before the realizing of the earthly hope by faithful men of pre-Christian times and by faithful men of good will toward Jehovah God today. The realizing of the heavenly hope by the Christian congregation also works for the realizing of the earthly hope by believers of mankind.

34. Why will God’s will in being done on earth mean more than endless happiness for righteous mankind, and why should men now rejoice?

³⁴ All the above is why God’s fatherly will needs to be done on earth as well as in heaven. This will mean more than an unending happiness for the righteous ones of mankind in their earthly Paradise home. It will also show forth God’s holiness, his respect for his name, his changelessness in his perfect will, his faithfulness to his word, and his invincible power and ability expressed in his kingdom, his heavenly government through his Son Jesus Christ. The saving and preserving of the human race on earth under God’s kingdom is therefore made sure and certain. Let men rejoice! God’s all-powerful kingdom will take complete control over the earthly home of man regardless of the long-permitted interference and opposition of all man’s enemies under Satan the Devil. The events of our day are being controlled in that direction in fulfillment of God’s prophecy. This we shall see as we read on.

CHAPTER 3

THE NEED OF A SANCTUARY

1. How have buildings regarded by men as sanctuaries not been saved from desecration, robbery or destruction, and what questions does this fact raise?

DOWN through thousands of years of time men have felt the need of sanctuaries, sacred places or holy buildings at which to worship the gods of their religions. But any holiness claimed for such things has not saved them from desecration, robbery or destruction. Invading conquerors have plundered them for their treasures; worshipers of rival gods have polluted them in disgust; wars have brought on their destruction by fire and bombs; earthquakes have shaken them to their foundations and sent their walls and pillars crashing to the ground. At Baalbek in the valley between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountains stand today the gigantic ruins of the greatest temple to Jupiter in all antiquity, the havoc upon it being climaxed by an earthquake of twenty-seven days in 1759. The magnificent temples to Jehovah that once crowned Mount Moriah in Jerusalem are no more. They suffered destruction by Gentile hands, and for years pious Jews were accustomed to use what is said to be the outside western wall of the ancient temple area as a wailing wall. Nothing has seemed to have a permanent holiness or sanctity. Why has this been so? Is there no real sanctuary?

2. By whom did Jeremiah show that Jehovah’s temple was being profaned, and when will God’s great footstool be treated as holy?

² In the days of the prophet Jeremiah the temple at Jerusalem was being profaned by the very ones that carried on religious services in it. Jeremiah tells of God’s indignation in these words to the hypocritical worshipers: “‘Has this house upon which my name has been called become a mere cave of robbers in your eyes? Here I myself also have seen it,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.” (Jer. 7:11) For the purpose of correcting wrong ideas about his sanctuary, God inspired his prophet Isaiah to say: “This is what Jehovah has said: ‘The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where, then, is the house that you people can build for me, and where, then, is the place as a resting place for me?’” (Isa. 66:1; Acts 7:48-50) Compared with the heavens where Jehovah sits enthroned as universal King of eternity, the earth is his footstool. This place of his feet should be holy. It will be treated as such when his will is fully done on earth as well as in heaven.

3. Why was the garden of Eden, in fact, a sanctuary, and of what is the happiness of living in holiness in it used as a picture?

³ At the beginning of man’s existence this earthly footstool of Jehovah God was not defiled by sinful creatures. The garden or Paradise that the Creator planted in Eden was part of his footstool. It especially was a holy place, because there Jehovah God conversed with man and, as it were, went “walking in the garden about the breezy part of the day.” (Gen. 2:15-17; 3:8) Having been planted by him and being surpassingly beautiful, it was “the garden of Jehovah.” (Gen. 13:10) It was “Eden, the garden of God.” (Ezek. 28:13, AS) This made it in fact a sanctuary, a sacred, holy place, where what is sinful must not enter, where what is sinful could not dwell. In its holiness it was a place of happy, joyous living for the first human pair, Adam and Eve. They had pleasure in living in holiness, in obedience to the will of their God and heavenly Father. This is taken as an example of the happiness of Jehovah’s spiritual children when he transforms their earthly condition to one of overwhelming spiritual prosperity. Speaking of this transformation for his spiritual organization, he prophetically said: “He will for certain comfort all her devastated places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert plain like the garden of Jehovah. Exultation and rejoicing themselves will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.”—Isa. 51:3.

4. What other sons of God were there then besides the perfect Adam, and so by whom did sin try to establish itself in the sanctuary in Eden?

⁴ However, it was not long before sin did try to establish itself and take up its dwelling in that Edenic sanctuary. How did such a thing ever start in God’s holy universe? By the fall of a son of God to selfish desire that this unfaithful son permitted to enter his heart and that he cultivated. True, the human family of today traces its line of descent back through Noah to the “son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Luke 3:38) Adam was an earthly son of God, because God was his Creator and Life-giver. But there were then other sons of God in existence, not on earth in the flesh, but in heaven; and these had watched the creating of our earth and of the first man. Jehovah God himself said so, when he asked the man Job: “Where did you happen to be when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you do know understanding. Into what have its socket pedestals been sunk down, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars joyfully cried out together, and all the sons of God began shouting in applause?” (Job 38:1, 4, 6, 7) It was a self-enticed spirit son of God that became leader in sin in God’s holy universe and that speedily introduced it into the earth at God’s sanctuary in Eden.

5. What monarch did Ezekiel liken to that original sinner, and how did this sinner draw himself into sin?

⁵ Long afterward in human history a Middle Eastern king, the monarch of the Mediterranean seaport of Tyre, took a line of action similar to that of the unfaithful spirit son of God. So God likened the king to the original sinner and inspired his prophet Ezekiel to say to the symbolic king of Tyre: “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; . . . You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, . . . Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. . . . By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries.” (Ezek. 28:12-18, RS) The spirit son had had an interest in the real Eden, man’s first Paradise home. He had the gift of freedom of will, but he willed in a selfish way as he began to see selfish opportunities there in Eden. His studying these selfish possibilities caused him to be tested. God was not to blame for this: “When under trial, let no one say: ‘I am being tried by God.’ No; for with evil things God cannot be tried nor does he himself try anyone. But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn, sin, when it has been accomplished, brings forth death.”—Jas. 1:13-15.

6. From what into what did he change himself, and how did he desecrate God’s Eden sanctuary?

⁶ By deciding to do wrong to God and thus to sin and then by taking the steps to satisfy the selfish desire by which he was enticed, this spirit son of God changed himself from a son of God into a disowner of God his Father, from a co-worker with God into an opposer of God, from a truthtelling praiser of God into a lying slanderer of God. He turned himself into Satan the Devil, whom God could not own as his son. He did this by trying to convert Adam and Eve from perfect, righteous, sinless children of God into bad persons such as he could now originate, sinners against their Creator. That is why John writes: “He who practices sin originates with the Devil, because the Devil has been sinning from when he began. For this purpose the Son of God was made manifest, namely, to break up the works of the Devil. . . . The children of God and the children of the Devil are evident by this fact: Everyone who does not practice righteousness does not originate with God, neither does he who does not love his brother. . . . we should have love for one another; not like [Adam’s son] Cain, who originated with the wicked one and slaughtered his brother [Abel]. And for the sake of what did he slaughter him? Because his own works were wicked, but those of his brother were righteous.” (1 John 3:8-12) Through introducing sin, Satan desecrated God’s Eden sanctuary.

(To be continued)

[Footnotes]

Questions From Readers

● At John 3:16, 17, what “world” did God love so much, and what “world” did God send Jesus, not to judge, but to save?

In John’s account of Jesus’ life the English word “world” is translated from the Greek word kósmos, which occurs at least seventy-nine times in the original text of John’s account. Fundamentally, kósmos means “order,” that is, a constituted order, an arrangement, an ordering of things according to a certain design, an arrangement of things according to a certain pattern.

However, whenever in John’s account we read the word kósmos, we must not in every case at once think of a world made up of heavens and an earth, the heavens being composed of invisible controlling spirit forces and the earth being composed of human creatures subject and submissive to the control of those invisible spirit forces. Hence we should not at once think of such kinds of world which have been or will yet be associated with this earth—the Edenic world of Adam and Eve’s innocency; the world outside the garden of Eden or the world of the ungodly before the Flood; the present world of the “heavens and the earth that are now”; and the coming new world of “new heavens and a new earth.” If we always think of such worlds we may run into confusion and wonder which is the one of those several worlds that is meant.

For example, take John’s first four uses of the word kósmos or “world.” We read: “The true light which gives light to every kind of man was about to come into the world [1]. He was in the world [2], and the world [3] came into existence through him, but the world [4] did not take note of him. He came to his own home, but his own people did not take him in.” (John 1:9-11) Now, into what world did Jesus come as the true light? It is true that this occurred during the time of the world made up of the “heavens and the earth that are now.” (2 Pet. 3:7) But is this the “world” that John 1:9-11 means? Was this the world that “came into existence through him”? Was this “his own home” to which he came, but none of which took him in?

We must keep in mind that Jesus came out of the invisible, higher spirit realms into the visible, lower earthly or fleshly realms. This was why he said to the Jews: “You are from the realms below; I am from the realms above. You are from this world; I am not from this world.” (John 8:23) Here Jesus was identifying one world with the “realms above,” and another world with the “realms below.” He said that the people from the realms below were “from this world.” He himself, being from the realms above, was therefore “not from this world.” What, then, was this world? Yes, it was an established order or an arrangement; but for there to be an order or arrangement, there have to be things or people to be set in a certain order or to be arranged a certain way. It is clear, then, that the word “world” in its usage by John here would mean the people who are in a certain arrangement or constituted order and subject to a certain system of things.

Now, to return to John 1:9-11: Jesus, the true light that gives light to every kind of man, was once about to come into the world, that is to say, come in among the arranged people or the people subject to a certain set order. Jesus came from above, from among angels, and he came among people on earth, human creatures living according to the order of things that prevailed among them. As long as he was in the flesh, and particularly during his public ministry when he sought contact with all the people, the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he was in this world of people. He was the Word of God, by means of whom all things came into existence. Hence Jesus Christ was responsible for the existence of this world of people, although not exactly for the arrangement or constituted order according to which they lived and worked.

Did this world of people “take note of him”? John 1:10 says that it did not. That is, the majority of the people did not do so. They clung to their preferred order to which they conformed; they wanted no change. So his own people, creatures who owed their existence to his original work, did not take him in, not even the Jews. But did nobody at all accept the light or take note of him or take him in? John 1:12 says that some did so. It says: “However, as many as did receive him, to them he gave authority to become God’s children, because they were exercising faith in his name.”

Since the greater part of this world of people treated Jesus that way, it could be said that the world hated Jesus. When Jesus’ own half brothers said to him: “Manifest yourself to the world,” Jesus said to them: “The world has no reason to hate you, but it hates me, because I bear witness concerning [the world] that its works are wicked.” (John 7:4-7) For this reason Jesus did not manifest himself to the world of people, but went up secretly to the feast at Jerusalem, to thwart attempts of the world to kill him out of its hatred. For the greater part, the world of people did not love him and they would not love those who came out of this world of people and became Jesus’ followers. So he said to his apostles: “These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, on this account the world hates you.”—John 15:17-19.

In order to hate, the world has to be made up of people, creatures with the capacity to hate. Jesus did not pray for these haters, the hateful world of people. To his heavenly Father he prayed: “I make request concerning them [the men you gave me out of the world]; I make request, not concerning the world, but concerning those you have given me, . . . Also I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you.” “They are no part of the world just as I am no part of the world. Sanctify them by means of the truth; your word is truth. Just as you sent me forth into the world, I also sent them forth into the world.” “I make request, not concerning these only, but also concerning those putting faith in me through their [apostolic] word, in order that they may all be one, . . . Righteous Father, the world has, indeed, not come to know you, but I have come to know you, and these have come to know that you sent me forth.”—John 17:9-11, 16-18, 20, 21, 25.

Now in this connection, who was it that the heavenly Father, Jehovah God, loved? Was it the whole world of people, of whom his apostles and later believers ceased to be a part? Let Jesus answer these questions in his own prayer: “I in union with them [not with the world] and you in union with me, in order that they may be perfected into one, that the world may have the knowledge that you sent me forth and that you loved them just as you loved me. . . . because you loved me before the world’s foundation.” (John 17:23, 24) God loved those who loved the one whom he loved, his Son Jesus Christ. The world of people did not love the Father’s beloved Son. Those who ceased to be one with the world of people and who became one with Jesus Christ loved him. Those in union with Jesus Christ were the ones whom the heavenly Father loved. This excludes the world of people from the Father’s love. Any of this world of people who desired to come into the Father’s love had to quit hating Jesus as the world was doing. They had to separate from this loveless world and had to love God’s Son and come into union with the Son. These become the ones whom God the Father loves just as he loves his Son.

On this basis of understanding, let us now consider John 3:16, 17, over which the original questions were raised. The verses in question read: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life. For God sent forth his Son into the world, not for him to judge the world, but for the world to be saved through him.” Jesus’ words here do not refer to that large, comprehensive arrangement or constituted order made up of symbolic heavens and earth, “the heavens and the earth that are now.” Jesus is here talking about people, about people living on the literal earth and living according to a certain order or arrangement, as they are living under the invisible “ruler of this world,” Satan the Devil. (2 Pet. 3:7; John 12:31) Certainly God did not love the symbolic heavens, composed of Satan the Devil and his demons. Hence the world that Jesus said God loved is a restricted one and does not include the symbolic “heavens . . . that are now.”

Certainly in sending his Son into this world of people on earth Jehovah God the Father was performing a loving act toward this world. The taking of steps to save people of this world, instead of destroying this world of people outright with every member of it, was an action of love toward this world. No particular individuals in this world of people were singled out, although Jesus was sent directly to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Thus anybody and everybody of this world of people could take advantage of what God was doing through his Son. Because it was a loving act of God for the benefit of anyone and everyone in this world of people, God’s giving of his Son was an expression of love for the world of people living under the “ruler of this world,” Satan the Devil.

This did not mean, though, that everybody of this world of organized people would respond to that love and would come into God’s love and prove worthy of God’s love. That was why, without naming names of any individuals and without specifying any certain persons, Jesus added the conditional words: “In order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.” It is only “everyone exercising faith in him” that will “have everlasting life.” Those not “exercising faith in him” will “be destroyed.” Those not exercising the necessary faith prove to be in the majority, for which reason the world of people in general, without naming names, will be destroyed.

So from being a general love for this world of people, Jehovah’s love becomes a specific love for those who exercise faith in his Son and who love his Son and come into union with him. These are the ones who will “have everlasting life” in that righteous new order of the future and who make up a part of its new heavens and new earth. They are really people of the new order, for by coming into loving union and association with God’s given Son they cease to be a part of this world of people.

God knew that there were lovable persons, or persons who could become lovable, in this world of people. He, with his discerning eyes, knew that there were individuals who by birth were a part of this world of people but who were really not in heart harmony with the “sin of the world” and who desired to get free from the condemnation that was due to the “sin of the world.” (John 1:29) Hence God did not send his Son into this world of people to pronounce a blanket condemnation of this entire world of people, an indiscriminate condemnation of every member of this world of people without first an opportunity to show how individuals felt about the world’s condemnable sin and sinfulness. So God sent his Son into the world of people, “for the world to be saved through him.”

This is not saying that all the world of people will be saved through Jesus Christ, God’s Son. It is saying that the opportunity is open for anyone and for all to be saved, without partiality to anyone. Nevertheless, the world of people becomes judged. This is the meaning of Jesus’ words later on to a crowd of Jews: “Now there is a judging of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And yet I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw men of all kinds to me. I have come as a light into the world, in order that everyone putting faith in me may not remain in the darkness. But if anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him, for I came, not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that disregards me and does not receive my sayings has one to judge him. The word which I have spoken is what will judge him in the last day.”—John 12:31, 32, 46-48.

Not all the people of this world get saved; not all this world of people escapes judgment that results in a condemnation to destruction, even though Jesus at his first coming did not come to judge and condemn the world of people in its entirety. Why does not the whole world of people therefore get saved and escape judgment? It is because, as Jesus added, “he that exercises faith in him is not to be judged. He that does not exercise faith has been judged already, because he has not exercised faith in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Now this is the basis for judgment, that the light has come into the world but men [not angels] have loved the darkness rather than the light, for their works were wicked.” (John 3:18, 19) Consequently, the only ones of this world that do not get judged down and that get saved are those who put faith in God’s Son and come out of the world’s darkness into the light in order that their “works may be made manifest as having been worked in harmony with God.” (John 3:21) Except for these, the world of people in general get judged as unworthy of salvation.

Concluding now the discussion, we say that the “world” that God loved so much and that he sent Jesus, not to judge, but to save, is the world of people on earth as represented by those members who break away from the worldly, organized people and who exercise faith in God’s gift of his only-begotten Son and then come into union with him or into association with him, proving themselves to be worthy of God’s love through his only-begotten Son. Such faithful believers and followers are reserved for everlasting life in God’s promised new order of “new heavens and a new earth.”—2 Pet. 3:13.

Christians Ever Misunderstood

The complaints made against the Christian witnesses of Jehovah as to their not joining in with popular well-meant movements have a familiar ring to those who know the history of early Christianity. Thus second-century anti-Christian writer Celsus “besought them to help the Emperor [Marcus Aurelius] in his difficult task of saving the world. Let them come forth from their selfish isolation, let them assist his councils, and even join his armies as officers.” Yes, even as with dedicated Christians today, Christians back there in the second century were unpopular because “they refused to come into a scheme deemed vital to the interests of civilization.”—Eusebius of Caesarea, Foakes-Jackson.

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“WATCHTOWER” STUDIES FOR THE WEEKS

February 15: Down with the Old—Up with the New! Page 37.

February 22: Surviving with the New. Page 44.