The Watchtower — December 15, 1962

Humility—Love’s Complement

HUMILITY is not a popular virtue, for it is not easy to be humble. That is why so few persons, comparatively speaking, are truly humble. Oh, there are ever so many who imagine they are humble. And so they appear, as long as everything goes their way. But let them be crossed, or criticized, or faced with a frustrating situation and, Bang! there is an explosion. Then where is their humility?

Even a retiring person with strong feelings of inferiority may not be humble, though he may seem to be so to those about him. His lowly feelings may be due to fear of what others may think.

But why endeavor to be humble when it does not come easy, when so few persons are truly humble? Because of what God’s Word, the Bible, has to say about it: “God opposes the haughty ones, but he gives undeserved kindness to the humble ones.” Can we afford to be opposed by God? “We are not stronger than he is, are we?” Do we not need his favor, his undeserved kindness? We certainly do!—1 Pet. 5:5; 1 Cor. 10:22.

Since cultivating humility is to our interest, what will help us to be humble? Love. Yes, humility goes with love, so much so, in fact, that humility might be said to be love’s complement.

No one less than the Creator, Jehovah God himself, demonstrates this principle for us. His Word tells us, “God is love.” Does that mean that God is also humble? It most certainly does. Compared with Him, men are as but grasshoppers and entire nations as but the fine dust on a pair of balances or as a drop of water that falls from a bucket. Being so highly exalted, so far above this earth and its inhabitants, it takes humility on God’s part just to notice earth and man: “Who is like Jehovah our God, him who is making his dwelling on high? He is condescending [humbleth himself, AS] to look on heaven and earth, raising up the lowly one from the very dust.”—1 John 4:8; Ps. 113:5-7; Isa. 40:15-23.

What humility God showed in his dealings with the nation of Israel! How they tried him time and again by their rebellion, their blasphemies and their idolatries! Yet he kept pleading with them for their own good. It takes humility to plead, especially when you are able to resort to force and when what you are doing is solely for the other’s good. Yes, God pleaded with them: “I take delight, not in the death of the wicked one, but in that someone wicked turns back from his way and actually keeps living. Turn back, turn back from your bad ways, for why is it that you should die, O house of Israel?”—Ezek. 33:11; 2 Chron. 36:15, 16.

That love makes for humility, that humility goes with love, we have also demonstrated for us in the example set by Jesus Christ, “who, although he was existing in God’s form, gave no consideration to a seizure, namely, that he should be equal to God. No, but he emptied himself and took a slave’s form and came to be in the likeness of men. More than that, when he found himself in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient as far as death, yes, death on a torture stake.” What caused him to take this humble course? He himself tells us: “I love the Father.” “No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his soul in behalf of his friends.”—Phil. 2:6-8; John 14:31; 15:13.

In fact, Jesus’ entire earthly ministry was marked by love’s humility. Did it not take humility to put up with the abuse that the religious leaders of his day heaped upon him? Did it not take humility to continue instructing his disciples in spite of their many frailties and misunderstandings? He was a living demonstration of humility and he also preached humility, as when he took a little child and set it in their midst as an example, as when he told of the proud Pharisee and the humble tax collector that went up to the temple to pray, and as when he washed the feet of his disciples.—Matt. 18:1-4; Luke 18:9-14; John 13:1-17.

That fine imitator of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, imitated his Master also in this matter of humility. He humbly ‘became all things to persons of all kinds that he might by all means save some.’ Yes, that takes humility. Paul showed the same humility in dealing with his brothers: “Did I commit a sin by humbling myself that you might be exalted?” Rather than to insist on his rights as an apostle of Jesus Christ and so burden others, he humbly expended himself on their account. Why? Because of his love for his brothers.—1 Cor. 9:1-23; 2 Cor. 11:7; 12:15; 1 Thess. 2:7-12.

That humility is love’s complement Paul’s writings clearly show: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” “Love is long-suffering and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, does not get puffed up, . . . does not become provoked.” Why does love not do all these things? Because it is not proud but humble. Because love is humble it also willingly “bears all things, . . . endures all things.”—1 Cor. 8:1; 13:4-7.

We are counseled, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.” That means humbly to submit to his principles and arrangement of things. At times submitting may be irksome, but love will help us to submit humbly—love for God and love for those to whom we must submit. Love will help us to ‘be obedient to those who are taking the lead among us in the Christian congregation and to be submissive to them.’ Love will enable wives to appreciate that, ‘just as the congregation is in subjection to the Christ, they are to be in subjection to their husbands.’ And love will make it easy for ‘children to be obedient to their parents in union with the Lord.’—1 Pet. 5:6; Heb. 13:17; Eph. 5:24; 6:1.

We cannot escape it. Humility is the wise course, for it wins us God’s favor, not to say anything about its making for better relations with our fellows. Love for Jehovah God and for your fellowman will help you to cultivate humility, for humility goes with love; it is love’s complement.

What Is Your Chief Interest?

Is it worthy of the position you give it? What is the interest that should have first place in your life?

WHEN Judas Iscariot plotted with the chief priests of the Jewish nation to betray Jesus Christ into their hands for thirty pieces of silver, he showed by his actions that his chief interest was money. It meant more to him than loyalty to Christ and the approval of God, but it failed to bring him happiness and contentment. The few paltry silver pieces clinking in his hands were of small satisfaction for all he had lost by betraying his Lord. Conscience stricken, he threw the silver pieces into the temple and hanged himself. Too late he discovered that it was not worth while to make money his chief interest in life.

What is your attitude toward money? Are you making the same mistake Judas did by permitting it to be your center of interest? Do you avidly pursue it as if it were the all-important thing? Is it what you constantly talk about among your friends? Is being rich what you dream about and persistently scheme for? Are you like the wife of a rising company executive who said that her circle of friends worship money? Regarding her husband and the husbands of her friends she stated: “They’re on the make for money and prestige. And we wives worship the dollar. I don’t think it’s the success for our husbands or social prestige we want so much as the buck.”

Forewarning of the danger in giving too much importance to money, the apostle Paul said: “Those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires, which plunge men into destruction and ruin. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves over with many pains.” (1 Tim. 6:9, 10) That is what happened to Judas, and it can happen to you if you make money your chief interest in life.

Money cannot give life. It is not worthy of a man’s worship or of his undivided affection. The material things it can buy pass away with the using of them, and even the initial enjoyment they may bring gradually wears off. It is a mockery to spend a lifetime frantically pursuing riches that can bring no peace of mind or lasting benefits. It is like striving for the wind.

MANY INTERESTS

The average person has many interests, and money necessarily is one of them, but it should not be allowed to exceed those that are of greater importance. The interest a husband has in his wife and in his children deserves a higher position than his interest in money. Money cannot give him the warm affection and happiness that they can; yet some husbands become so wrapped up in money-making that they neglect their families. There is the case of a thirty-four-year-old businessman who was so absorbed in his business that he gave his wife very little of his time and virtually no consideration, tenderness and affection. He had made his business his chief interest, and it is not surprising that his marital life was shattered with quarrels. A man’s wife and children are more important than money-making and do not deserve to be given second place to it. The same can be said about hobbies.

Fascination for a hobby can easily lead a man to give it a position among his various interests that is too prominent for its relative value. When he should be thinking about more important things his mind is on the hobby, and when he should be giving time to his wife and children he is giving it to his hobby. Instead of being the least of his interests, it has become his chief interest. This is being selfish, thinking only of one’s own pleasure. It is contrary to the Scriptural instruction for husbands to be “loving their wives as their own bodies.” (Eph. 5:28) The same holds true for women and their interests.

Feminine interests have their relative positions in a woman’s life as do those of a man. A wife would be showing poor judgment if she were to allow her interest in new clothes, bridge parties, civic activities and pleasures to exceed her interest in her home. That would be placing such interests above their proper positions. All too frequently delinquent children result from mothers putting less important interests ahead of the family. On this point Detective-Superintendent J. W. Hill of Auckland, New Zealand, said: “Today, through circumstances or greed many mothers seek employment away from the home, and many seek their own selfish pleasures. In the meantime the children are left free to roam at large without adequate supervision. Can it be wondered that crime is rampant?”

The various interests that a man and woman may have can usually be cultivated without doing harm to more important things if they are kept subordinate. They must be evaluated for what they are actually worth with regard to life itself.

For example, when pleasures are engaged in moderately they add zest to living, but the enjoyment they bring cannot be intensified by devoting more time to them. As the human body is limited in the amounts of food it can take in, so it is limited in its capacity for feeling pleasure. Instead of increasing this capacity by making pleasures your chief interest, you may very well reduce it by dulling the body’s sensitivity to them. Pleasures are like seasoning in food. In small amounts they are delightful, but in large doses they can become sickening. There are more important and more worthwhile things to live for than pleasures. Your life becomes worthwhile when it has as its objective something of real value.

MOST IMPORTANT INTEREST

Although the family should be a major interest, it would be a mistake to make it the chief one. Jesus Christ pointed this out when he said: “He that has greater affection for father or mother than for me is not worthy of me; and he that has greater affection for son or daughter than for me is not worthy of me.” (Matt. 10:37) By this statement Jesus was not ruling out affection for the members of one’s family. Loving them and providing for them is a Christian requirement. The apostle Paul made that clear by saying: “Certainly if anyone does not provide for those who are his own, and especially for those who are members of his household, he has disowned the faith and is worse than a person without faith.”—1 Tim. 5:8.

Life is the most important thing you possess. Without it you would be of no help to your family; you would be unable to do anything productive, and you would be unable to enjoy the things in which you take an interest. “For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.” (Eccl. 9:5) Since eternal life comes through Christ because of his ransom sacrifice, love for him must necessarily exceed love for family. “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.” (John 3:16) This promise of everlasting life is good reason for your chief interest being Jesus Christ and his heavenly Father.

What Jehovah has purposed for persons who exercise faith in him and his Son affects their eternal welfare. It means life for them. They have the prospect of seeing a kingdom under Christ ruling mankind in justice and righteousness. That is why Jesus taught his followers to pray: “Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.” (Matt. 6:10) At that time “the righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.” (Ps. 37:29) The prospect of experiencing the fulfillment of Jehovah’s purposes causes the many personal interests you may have to fade into small importance. Even your family does not come before God. Rather, by putting God first you bring honor to him and blessings to yourself and your family. Interest in Jehovah God and Christ as well as in God’s purposes should have the chief place in your life. The apostles keenly appreciated this fact and adjusted their interests accordingly.

The apostles placed the purposes of God and his worship foremost. By so doing they obeyed Jesus’ wise instructions to “keep on, then, seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness.” (Matt. 6:33) They knew that this was the way to divine approval and to receiving the gift of eternal life. But their making Jehovah, his Son and the divine purposes their chief interest did not mean that they ceased to have other interests.

Fishing was a principal interest for Peter and Andrew before they became apostles, because it was their means of earning a livelihood. Although the Bible tells us that they abandoned their nets when they began following Jesus Christ, we are not to conclude that they stopped fishing altogether. (Matt. 4:20) Mention is made in the twenty-first chapter of John about Peter and some other apostles going fishing on the Sea of Tiberias, and this was long after they began following Jesus. So their interest in serving God did not replace their other interests. Instead they wisely subordinated those interests to it. This is what Christians today should do.

Avoid the mistake Judas made by recognizing the folly of permitting money to become your chief interest in life. Give to it and your other interests positions in your life that are in proportion to their importance, but in the chief position put the worship and service of God. Like the apostles, “present your bodies a sacrifice living, holy, acceptable to God, a sacred service with your power of reason.”—Rom. 12:1.

Strong Reason for Faith in God’s New World

“Now we are not the sort that shrink back to destruction, but the sort that have faith to the preserving alive of the soul.”—Heb. 10:39.

1, 2. (a) What is ahead of us that lovers of peace and health have long desired? (b) Why should we not let the likelihood of nuclear warfare destroy our faith regarding it?

A NEW world is just ahead of us, where human souls will live forever on earth in perfect peace, happiness and well-being, with no fear of death or loss of loved ones. Lovers of peace and health have long desired such a world, and O how sweet the realization of this desire at last will be to them!

² The new world, with its everlasting life in happiness, has been made possible for us by the great Creator of heaven and earth. Because of His promises, written down in the Holy Bible, we can today have faith that that happy world will be brought in within the time of our generation. Mankind will enter it, not by dying and becoming spirit angels in heaven, but by continuing to live on this same earth that we now inhabit. God their Creator will set up a new order of things for their eternal blessing on earth. The terrible likelihood of thermonuclear warfare between the nations should never destroy our faith in God’s own promise of this.

3. Why is the question first proposed, Will God subject that new order of things to angels?

³ Under such a new order of things, the human family will not be subject to the present rulerships that threaten mankind’s very existence with their stockpiles of fantastic weapons for global warfare and their secret plans for using these in the event of war. To whom, then, will the Most High God put the new order of things in subjection for the blessing of earth’s inhabitants? Will it be to angels, hundreds of millions of whom serve before the heavenly throne of the immortal God, “the Ancient of Days”? (Dan. 7:9, 10) During centuries long past such angels served the Most High God in connection with mankind, to protect and preserve God’s people and to transmit God’s laws and commandments to them. The history of the Hebrews from the days of the patriarch Abraham the son of Terah gives us substantial proof of such service on the part of angels. Even now God uses these unseen spirit persons to render service in marvelous ways to those who will inherit salvation to everlasting life in that new order of things.—Heb. 1:14.

4. What do most natural Hebrews today not do toward the Christian letter to the Hebrews, and why do we not have to be guided by their example?

⁴ Today there are millions of natural Hebrews. Most of them, however, do not accept and heed what a certain Bible writer wrote to Hebrew Christians nineteen centuries ago. But we do not have to be guided by their faithless example. We are interested in salvation even if they are not, and we have the God-given ability to exercise for ourselves the quality of faith in what this inspired Bible writer told Hebrew Christians of the first century about the new order of things. Answering our question as to the person to whom God has purposed to subject the new order of things, this Bible writer says:

5. What did the writer say, in Hebrews 2:5-10 regarding the subjecting of the new order of things?

⁵ “It is not to angels that he has subjected the inhabited earth to come, about which we are speaking. But a certain witness has given proof somewhere [in Psalm 8:4-6], saying: ‘What is man that you keep him in mind, or the son of man that you take care of him? You made him a little lower than angels; with glory and honor you crowned him, and appointed him over the works of your hands. All things you subjected under his feet.’ For in that he subjected all things to him God left nothing that is not subject to him. Now, though, we do not yet see all things in subjection to him; but we behold Jesus, who has been made a little lower than angels, crowned with glory and honor for having suffered death, that he by God’s undeserved kindness might taste death for every man. For it was fitting for the one for whose sake all things are and through whom all things are, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Chief Agent of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”—Heb. 2:5-10.

6. Because of the above fact, what will that new earth mean to those who inhabit it, and why so?

⁶ Nothing could be plainer than that. It is not to the angels that God has subjected the inhabited earth to come, which we today are so rapidly approaching. It is to his chief Son in heaven that God has subjected that inhabited earth to come. And can we not see now what that new earth will mean to men and women who inhabit it? Life forever in happiness! This is because the One to whom that new earth will be subjected has been made the Chief Agent of salvation. He has been made such because of “having suffered death, that he by God’s undeserved kindness might taste death for every man.” He died that we might live forever. And we can enjoy living forever in the inhabited earth to come if we accept God’s loving-kindness through him who died for us, Jesus Christ.

7. How and why was the Chief Agent of our salvation made “a little lower than angels”?

⁷ It was not as if an ordinary man laid down his life for us that we might live a little while longer on earth and die later on without a better earth or a better order of things. Just think of it, God’s Son came down from heaven to share our blood and flesh as a man, as a perfect, sinless, uncondemned man. To this effect it is written, in Hebrews 2:14, 15: “Since the ‘young children’ are sharers of blood and flesh, he also similarly partook of the same things, that through his death he might bring to nothing the one having the means to cause death, that is, the Devil; and that he might emancipate all those who for fear of death were subject to slavery all through their lives.” Angels are not sharers of blood and flesh; they are spirits. Consequently, by leaving heaven and being born as a human creature and thus sharing or partaking of blood and flesh, God’s chief Son was made “a little lower than angels.”

8. What does his tasting “death for every man” mean for every man?

⁸ There was a purpose in this. It was that Jesus, as a perfect human Son of God, might offer up a human sacrifice acceptable to God and thus “taste death for every man.” His death for every man means everlasting life for every man that takes advantage of his sacrifice by faith in its life-giving value. It means emancipation from the fear of death if we put faith in him who will bring to nothing even the Devil who now has the means to cause death and who caused the death of Jesus nineteen hundred years ago.

9. (a) What did the fulfillment of Isaiah 53:12 require concerning the one there referred to? (b) To what position relative to the angels did God resurrect him, and what must we therefore do to be saved to eternal life?

⁹ Almighty God did not leave his self-sacrificing Son in death. God had said prophetically concerning his Son: “I shall deal him a portion among the many, and it will be with the mighty ones that he will apportion the spoil, due to the fact that he poured out his soul to the very death.” (Isa. 53:12) In order to give him a portion among the many and to let him spoil the enemy and share the spoils with other mighty ones, Almighty God resurrected his Son from the dead. The idea was not that Jesus might be a man again on earth, “a little lower than angels,” but that the angels might thenceforth be far lower than Jesus. God raised him from the dead to be a spirit creature, “crowned with glory and honor” in heaven, higher than ever before above the angels. To make known that this glorified Son was higher than the angels, God put the “inhabited earth to come” in subjection, not to the angels, but to his beloved Son Jesus. “God left nothing that is not subject to him,” not even the angels. God, who is the Most High, glorified and honored his Son by having him sit down at his own right hand in the heavens. Well, then, if we long to live in that “inhabited earth to come,” ought we not to subject ourselves also to this exalted Son of God? If we really desire to be saved to everlasting life in the new earth, is it not absolutely necessary to subject ourselves to him, God’s Chief Agent of salvation?

10. Why is there reason for us to take most seriously what we have heard through him rather than through angels?

¹⁰ So there is reason for us to be most serious about what we have heard. It is not as if we had heard just mere men, the Hebrew prophets. The Jews heard them up until A.D. 31. Neither is it as if we had heard angels. Through angels in the days of the prophet Moses the Jews had God’s Ten Words or Ten Commandments, together with all the other laws and statutes, passed on to them. Rightly it was said to the Jews: “You who received the Law as transmitted by angels.” (Acts 7:53; Gal. 3:19) Our case is different. We have had God’s own Son on earth nineteen centuries ago, directly speaking to men. Persons who heard him, such as Matthew, John, Peter, James and Paul, have written to us about what he said and did. Seeing, then, that we have heard what was said by God’s Son, the One next highest to God, we ought to take most seriously what we have heard by means of him.

11. Giving us a reason for doing so, what does Hebrews 2:1-4 say on the matter?

¹¹ “That is why,” says Hebrews 2:1-4, “it is necessary for us to pay more than the usual attention to the things heard by us, that we may never drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved to be firm, and every transgression and disobedient act received a retribution in harmony with justice; how shall we escape if we have neglected a salvation of such greatness in that it began to be spoken through our Lord and was verified for us by those who heard him, while God joined in bearing witness with signs as well as portents and various powerful works and with distributions of holy spirit according to his will?”

12. Why did that “word,” even though spoken through angels, deserve to be obeyed by the Israelites?

¹² The “word spoken through angels” to the prophet Moses stood firm and was enforced, so that every transgression and act of disobedience toward that word was justly punished. Those angels evidently did not include the Son of God. Why not? Well, here this inspired letter to the Hebrews is making a distinction between the angels in general and God’s exalted Son. But even if the Mosaic law given at Mount Sinai in Arabia was not through God’s heavenly Son, that Law was still of divine source and it was not delivered as if it did not amount to much, as if it could lightly be disobeyed with no fear of a just retribution. No, but despite its angelic transmission it was vitally important to pay attention to that Law and to obey it. It was a matter of life to do so. For instance, an Israelite was stoned to death for collecting pieces of wood on the weekly sabbath day, and this by order of Jehovah God.—Num. 15:32-36.

OUR GREATER RESPONSIBILITY

13, 14. Why does the word of salvation through God’s Son take on greater importance, and how does Hebrews 1:1-4 bear out this point?

¹³ We today have heard the word of salvation as spoken by God’s Son and as verified by those who heard him nineteen centuries ago. The word of salvation that he spoke takes on greater importance because of his importance in God’s arrangement, an importance greater than that of the angels who dealt with the Israelites long ago.

¹⁴ As to his greater importance, Hebrews 1:1-4 says: “God, who long ago spoke on many occasions and in many ways to our [Hebrew] forefathers by means of the prophets, has at the end of these days spoken to us by means of a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the systems of things. He is the reflection of his glory and the exact representation of his very being, and he sustains all things by the word of his power; and after he had made a purification for our sins he sat down on the right hand of the majesty in lofty places. So he has become better than the angels, to the extent that he has inherited a name more excellent than theirs.”

15. What question therefore arises as to our escaping execution?

¹⁵ Hence, if Israelites who violated the “word spoken through angels” were executed by God’s judgment, how much less would we escape execution, that is to say, endless destruction, if we now ignore and neglect the word of salvation that began to be spoken by such an important person as God’s own Son? God has appointed him to be Heir of all things and the Maker of the systems of things.

16. What do we desire to enjoy, and what mistake of the natural Jews do we not care to make, according to the warning of Hebrews 3:12-14?

¹⁶ We desire to enjoy some of those “all things” of which God has appointed him to be the Heir, do we not? We desire to enjoy the new system of things that he will make, do we not? Yes! Well, then, we must never let go of the word of salvation originally spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ. We must pay more than the usual attention to the things we have heard from him, that we may never drift away from the salvation in that new system of things, the new world. We do not care to make the same mistake that the natural Jews made; we see what they are today as a people. With them in mind, the inspired writer says, in Hebrews 3:12-14: “Beware, brothers, for fear there should ever develop in any one of you a wicked heart lacking faith by drawing away from the living God; but keep on exhorting one another each day, as long as it may be called ‘Today,’ for fear any one of you should become hardened by the deceptive power of sin. For we actually become partakers of the Christ only if we make fast our hold on the confidence we had at the beginning firm to the end.”

17. As to making fast our hold on our original confidence, what question is asked regarding Watchtower readers?

¹⁷ How long have you, as a reader of The Watchtower, had the confidence that the word of salvation spoken by God’s Son gives? When did you begin to have this confidence? First this year? Last year? Three years ago? Five—ten—fifteen—twenty—twenty-five years ago? Some readers of The Watchtower (which began to be published in July of 1879) have had this confidence for fifty years or more. This would mean before 1914, which was the year that World War I broke out and this old world or system of things entered into the “time of the end,” although it also entered into the most scientific period of all human history. Have these readers lost confidence because the years of waiting have piled up and the time of waiting is not yet over? No! Their continuing to read and support and circulate The Watchtower is strong proof that they have not let go their hold on the confidence that they had at the start, no matter how long ago.

18, 19. (a) For that lifesaving word to benefit us, what must we do? (b) Why do the natural Jews have no rest in this old world, but how only can we have it?

¹⁸ Because of our confidence, we have no desire to draw away from the living God, for to know him and his Son means everlasting life. (John 17:3) But if we allow a “wicked heart lacking faith” to develop in us, we would draw away from God and his Son. It may be that it was merely recently or quite some time ago that we first heard this word about life in the new system of things or in the “inhabited earth to come.” But that lifesaving word will not benefit us either now or in the critical future if we do not keep on exercising faith in connection with it. We have the ancient Jews to prove that point.

¹⁹ Referring to them, Hebrews 4:2, 3 says: “For we have had the good news declared to us also, even as they also had; but the word which was heard did not benefit them.” Why not? “Because they were not united by faith with those who did hear. For we who have exercised faith do enter into the rest, just as he has said [regarding the faithless Jews]: ‘So I swore in my anger, “They shall not enter into my rest.” ‘“ And to this day the descendants of those Jews have no rest in this world, even with their Republic of Israel. But we do desire rest in God the Creator. We can have it only if we hold onto our faith and the confidence that faith inspires.

To Preserve Your Souls Alive, Have Faith

1. What is faith, particularly as defined in Hebrews 11:1, 2?

“FAITH”? What is faith? a new Watchtower reader may ask. Let each Watchtower reader look up the definitions of “faith” in the nearest dictionary at hand. Here, though, is the definition of faith given by Hebrews 11:1, 2, as exemplified by men of God in ancient times before our Common Era: “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld. For by means of this the men of old times had witness borne to them.” Jehovah God bore witness to them that they pleased him because of their faith that they backed up by works.

2. Why did those men have hope, for example, Abel?

² Those men had a hope. They hoped for something. Their hope was imparted to them because of what God had said or had promised. For instance, there was Abel, the second son born to Adam and Eve outside the garden of Eden. Abel had a hope. Why? Because of what Jehovah God had said to the serpent of temptation in the garden of Eden in the hearing of Abel’s father and mother. On this, Genesis 3:14, 15 tells us: “Jehovah God proceeded to say to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this thing, . . . I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.’” Abel therefore hoped for the coming of the promised Seed of God’s “woman” and for the crushing of the Tempter’s head by that Seed.

3. What hope did Abraham have, and why?

³ Then, also, there was the Hebrew patriarch Abraham. When he was called to leave his home country and relatives, “Jehovah proceeded to say to Abram: ‘ . . . I shall make a great nation out of you and I shall bless you and I will make your name great; and prove yourself a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and him that calls down evil upon you I shall curse, and all the families of the ground will certainly bless themselves by means of you.’” (Gen. 12:1-3) So this childless Hebrew, Abraham, had the hope of having children and of becoming a great nation and having his name become great. Then he would be a blessing to others so that all earthly families would procure a blessing by means of him.

4. In harmony with what did both Abel and Abraham act, and what did their course of action mean?

⁴ Abel and Abraham expected to get what they hoped for. So they acted in harmony with their expectation of getting something desirable. That course of action meant faith on their part. Faith has a basis, even as hope has. Hope includes an expectation of getting something and not merely a desire for it. Now faith is not mere expectation; otherwise, faith would be the same as hope or would be at least a part of hope. But God’s Word treats hope and faith as being separate things, although they are related to each other.

5. (a) What definition of faith does Hebrews 11:1 give first? (b) According to the Greek word hypóstasis there used, is faith to be understood as a material substance?

⁵ Note that the New World Translation of Hebrews 11:1 says, not that faith is mere expectation of things hoped for, but that faith is the “assured” expectation of things hoped for. Of course, the word that the Greek text of Hebrews 11:1 uses is hypóstasis, and, according to the words accompanying it in a sentence, hypóstasis may mean a number of different things, such as (a) foundation; substructure; groundwork; confidence; courage; resolution; steadiness; undertaking; promise; or, (b) substantial nature; substance; actual existence; reality; real nature; essence; the full expression or expansion (of an idea).a Now we know that faith is nothing material; it is not a tangible substance that can be weighed on scales. It is a quality of the heart, for, as Romans 10:10 advises us, “with the heart one exercises faith for righteousness.”

6. What, then, does hypóstasis mean as respects things hoped for?

⁶ Here, then, hypóstasis as applying to faith would mean something that is a basis for hope but something that is also forceful, moving and exciting to action. Hence, as the New World Translation presents Hebrews 11:1, faith is an expectation that moves one to action because the expectation is well based; the expectation is made sure or is assured. It does not leave one unsteady, uncertain, unsure of himself, irresolute. So hypóstasis is an “assured” expectation.

7, 8. Why was Abel’s expectation of what he hoped for well based?

⁷ What reason, then, did Abel have to feel an “assured expectation”? Naturally God’s statement to the Tempter in Eden raised Abel’s hopes, but his expectation that God would carry out his promise was assured, well based, certain of realization. How so?

⁸ Abel saw that what happened to the serpent proved true God’s words: “You are the cursed one out of all the domestic animals and out of all the wild beasts of the field. Upon your belly you will go and dust is what you will eat all the days of your life.” Abel also saw that God’s sentence had been executed without fail upon his parents Adam and Eve: these had been driven out of the garden of Eden and Adam had to labor with sweat and toil to gain a living for his family and Eve was producing sons and daughters for Adam with pain of pregnancy and birth pangs, under the domination of her husband. (Gen. 3:14, 16-19) Abel also saw that his parents were in a dying condition, and he also, as their offspring, expected to die in the course of time. It turned out just as God had said to Abel’s father: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:16, 17) Abel saw that God was true to what he warned of or promised.

9. In faith what did Abel do, and with what result?

⁹ Reasonably, then, Abel founded a faith on known facts proving God’s trueness. He put faith in God’s promise of a Seed of God’s “woman” as being sure of fulfillment. The Tempter had induced death; the Seed of the woman would conquer the Tempter and become responsible for restoring life to men who had inherited death. In faith what did Abel then do? He offered an animal sacrifice to God, shedding the blood of sheep from his flock. Abel did not kill sheep to provide a flesh meal for himself, but he let the life of those sacrificial sheep go as a substitute for his own life, in a picturelike way. His older brother Cain merely made a lifeless offering of agricultural products to God. God rejected Cain’s vegetable offering but approvingly accepted Abel’s sacrifice. God bore witness to Abel of divine approval upon him.—Gen. 4:1-8.

10. As stated in Hebrews 11:4, according to what was it that Abel gained divine approval?

¹⁰ Why was this? Because Abel had faith in Jehovah God and sacrificed in harmony with his faith. To give the first illustration of what faith is, Hebrews 11:4 says: “By faith Abel offered God a sacrifice of greater worth than Cain, through which faith he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness respecting his gifts; and through it he, although he died, yet speaks.”

11. How does Abel, though dead, yet speak, and what “blood of sprinkling” speaks in a better way than Abel’s blood?

¹¹ By murder at the hands of his jealous brother Cain, Abel died. (Gen. 4:8-12) Though Abel died four thousand years before Christ, the faith that he had is reported in the Bible and thus he speaks as the first human witness of Jehovah. Abel’s blood did not ransom or redeem anybody, anymore than the blood of his sacrificed sheep did. His blood cried to God for vengeance upon assassin Cain. But the blood of the Seed of God’s “woman,” in whose coming Abel had faith, cries to God for mercy upon Abel and all persons with faith like that of Abel. For this reason Hebrews 12:24 speaks of “Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling, which speaks in a better way than Abel’s blood.” So by faith Abel approached God and pleased him, and now Abel awaits a reward from God in the new world.—Heb. 11:6.

EVIDENT DEMONSTRATION OF THINGS NOT SEEN

12. What else does Hebrews 11:1 say that faith is, and why is the Greek word élengkhos there used fitting in connection with realities not yet beheld?

¹² However, faith is said to be, not only “the assured expectation of things hoped for,” but also “the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.” For the expression “evident demonstration” Hebrews 11:1 uses the Greek word élengkhos. The above-named Greek-English lexicon defines this word as meaning (a) argument of disproof or refutation; (b) generally, cross-examining, testing, scrutiny, especially for purposes of refutation; (c) catalogue, inventory. The Greek word thus has to do with bringing forth evidence that demonstrates something, particularly something contrary to what appears to be the case. It thus makes evident what has not been discerned before and so refutes what appears to be the case. In this way real things that are not beheld but that have to be studied out are able to appear to our appreciation.

13. How did Christopher Columbus furnish a good example of this?

¹³ As an illustration, take Christopher Columbus. If, instead of being a Roman Catholic forbidden back there to read the Holy Bible, Columbus was a Jew as claimed by many, he may have read Isaiah 40:22 concerning the roundness of the earth: “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gauze, who spreads them out like a tent in which to dwell.” Also, Job 26:7: “He is stretching out the north over the empty place, hanging the earth upon nothing.” Now Columbus was no astronaut like those of today who have orbited the earth in outer space and have seen with their eyes the sphericalness of the earth. But by three main lines of argument drawn (1) from natural reasons, (2) from theories of geographers, and (3) from the reports and traditions of seagoing men, Columbus reasoned and discerned that our earth must be a sphere. For instance, he could see that the moon was round; that the eclipse of the moon was circular; that, when incoming ships rise up over the distant horizon, the masts of sailing vessels appear first and the hull last. In these ways there was demonstrated to him very evidently a real fact about the earth, though he had not seen it. Acting on this evident demonstration, he sailed due west and discovered the West Indies and South America. His faith triumphed.

14. What kind of faith was that of Columbus, but what sort of faith is that illustrated in Hebrews, chapter 11?

¹⁴ However, Columbus’ faith was not a spiritual faith. It was just scientific. By it he served this materialistic world and its god. (2 Cor. 4:4) But chapter eleven of Hebrews gives historical illustrations of men who pleased the God of the new world, Jehovah, by their Scriptural faith. They all had faith in the coming of, not the so-called new world of America, but the new world under the promised Seed of God’s “woman.” Hebrews 11:3 says: “By faith we perceive that the systems of things were put in order by God’s word, so that what is beheld came to be out of things that do not appear.”

15. In what way do materialistic men of this world show they have no faith, but why do we have faith?

¹⁵ Materialistic men of this world claim it is impossible for them to believe there is a God who always existed and who created the universe out of nothing. So they cannot believe that the things they behold by means of telescopes and electronic microscopes “came to be out of things that do not appear,” that is to say, were created out of nothing. But we, as Bible students, because of our practical faith, cannot see how the “systems of things,” or “what is beheld” by our naked eyes, created themselves out of nothing and came into existence in any other way than by an intelligent, all-powerful God of inexhaustible energy and wisdom. We are not blind. We can see the “evident demonstration” that Almighty God Jehovah is and always has been, so that “by faith we perceive that the systems of things were put in order by God’s word.”—Rom. 1:20-23.

16, 17. (a) According to 2 Peter 3:13, what are we awaiting, and why? (b) In relation to that, what does Hebrews 11:8-10 tell us about Abraham the Hebrew?

¹⁶ Our faith is not an ignorant readiness to believe something on weak or insufficient evidence. Our faith is intelligent and is based on God’s infallible written Word. By faith we look for God to create a new system of things with an “inhabited earth” under his glorified Son Jesus Christ, “through whom he made the systems of things.” (Heb. 2:5-9; 1:2) Just as 2 Peter 3:13 says, “there are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to his promise, and in these righteousness is to dwell.” Among those ancient men who Hebrews, chapter eleven, says awaited the coming of that new system of things in which righteousness is to dwell was the Hebrew patriarch Abraham. Regarding him, Hebrews 11:8-10 tells us:

¹⁷ “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed in going out into a place he was destined to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, although not knowing where he was going. By faith he resided as an alien in the land of the promise as in a foreign land, and dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the very same promise. For he was awaiting the city having real foundations, the builder and creator of which city is God.”

18. What did Abraham leave, where did he stay and with whom, and why is Esau not mentioned with him?

¹⁸ According to Genesis 11:31 and Acts 7:2-5, Abraham, whose name was at first Abram, left the city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans, that is to say, in the land of Shinar where the tower of Babel had been built about two hundred years previously. The “land of the promise” to which Jehovah God led him proved to be the “land of Canaan.” (Gen. 12:1-9) Here sons and grandsons were born to him, including Isaac and Jacob. Hebrews 11:9 says that Abraham dwelt in tents with his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob, with Jacob for fifteen years. Jacob had a twin brother named Esau, but we notice that it does not say that Abraham tented with Isaac and Jacob and Esau or with Isaac and Esau who was the older twin. Esau the firstborn was left out of this chapter eleven of Hebrews with its brief account of the exploits of the men of faith evidently because Esau was not a man of faith. The facts show that he was not.

19, 20. (a) Whom did Esau marry and where did he go? (b) How did the descendants of Esau (or Edom) show they had no faith like their great-grandfather Abraham?

¹⁹ Instead of marrying within the Jehovah-fearing family relationship of his grandfather Abraham, Esau made his own arrangements for marriage at forty years of age and took as wives two pagan girls, two Hittites in the land of Canaan. (Gen. 26:34) Many years later, however, his twin brother Jacob was sent by their father Isaac northward to Syria to take a wife from Abraham’s family relationship. (Gen. 28:1-8) During Jacob’s absence his twin brother Esau left their father Isaac and took up residence in the “land of Seir, the field of Edom.”—Gen. 28:8, 9; 32:3; 33:16.

²⁰ After Jacob’s return to their father Isaac, Esau definitely took up settlement in the land of Seir, including the “mountainous region of Seir.” (Gen. 36:1-9) God had already told Jacob (or Israel) that kings were to come out of his loins; but before this ever occurred, the descendants of Esau (or Edom) set up kings over themselves and built cities as permanent dwelling places. Hence we read: “Now these are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom before any king reigned over the sons of Israel. And Bela son of Beor proceeded to reign in Edom, and the name of his city was Dinhabah.” Other royal cities were Avith and Pau. (Gen. 36:31-39; 35:9-11) Esau wanted no part in suffering the fulfillment of God’s word concerning Abraham’s seed: “Your seed will become an alien resident in a land not theirs, and they will have to serve them, and these will certainly afflict them for four hundred years.” (Gen. 15:13) Esau’s descendants did not look for any future city from God. They left tents to dwell in cities.

21. (a) Why does Hebrews 12:15-17 hold up Esau as a warning example? (b) Why does Hebrews 11:9 mention Jacob instead of Esau?

²¹ Esau the firstborn of Isaac had despised his birthright and sold it to his younger twin brother Jacob. He did not have faith. He did not appreciate sacred things like the Abrahamic promise from God. (Gen. 25:29-34) For this reason Hebrews 12:15-17 holds up materialistic Esau as a warning example, saying: “Carefully watching that no one may be deprived [like Esau] of the undeserved kindness of God; that no poisonous root may spring up and cause trouble and that many may not be defiled by it; that there may be no fornicator nor anyone not appreciating sacred things, like Esau, who in exchange for one meal gave away his rights as first-born. For you know that afterward also when he wanted to inherit the blessing he was rejected, for, although he earnestly sought a change of mind with tears, he found no place for it.” Hebrews 11:9 is therefore correct in excluding Esau and saying that Abraham “resided as an alien in the land of the promise as in a foreign land, and dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the very same promise.” Jacob left Syria after having raised a big family there. He returned to his father Isaac and lived in close touch with him till Isaac died. Even after that Jacob built no city.—Gen. 31:17, 18; 35:27-29.

22. For how many years did Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live in the land of promise, and why?

²² For a stretch of 215 years (from 1943 to 1728 B.C.) Abraham, Isaac and Jacob continued tenting in the “land of the promise” as in a foreign land, as alien residents. Why did they do that? It was because they looked for God to found and build a permanent city for them, a heavenly government under which they would live. “For,” says Hebrews 11:10 concerning Abraham, “he was awaiting the city having real foundations, the builder and creator of which city is God.”

23. How long did each one tent as in a foreign land and for tenting there so long did they realize God’s promise to them?

²³ Personally Abraham tented 100 years as an alien in the land of Canaan. Isaac tented there 180 years, and Jacob tented 110 years until he was called down to Egypt by his son Joseph, the prime minister of Egypt. Abraham had lived in the then highly civilized city of Ur of the Chaldeans with all its comforts and settled life. He did not have to keep on living as a nomad in a foreign land, moving about from place to place and living under tents. Why did Jacob leave the city of Haran in Syria and return to that life with his father Isaac in the pagan land of Canaan? Why did not Abraham, Isaac and Jacob look at life materialistically and think of all the comforts and opportunities of the cultured city of Ur of the Chaldeans and give up the rough life of tenters in a foreign land and go back to that earthly city? No matter how long they tented in the land of Canaan, they did not realize God’s promise to give them that land. Why, O why did they observe God’s call to Abraham and at last die, each one in a foreign land? Hebrews 11:13-16 tells us why:

24. What does Hebrews 11:13-16 say was the reason that they did not leave Canaan and go back to Ur?

²⁴ “In faith all these died, although they did not get the fulfillment of the promises, but they saw them afar off and welcomed them and publicly declared that they were strangers and temporary residents in the land. For those who say such things give evidence that they are earnestly seeking a place of their own. And yet, if they had indeed kept remembering that place from which they had gone forth, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they are reaching out for a better place, that is, one belonging to heaven. Hence God is not ashamed of them, to be called upon as their God, for he has made a city ready for them.”

25. (a) What would it have meant if they had gone back to Ur? (b) What really is the “city” for which they were reaching out, and how now will they be brought into touch with it?

²⁵ What if they had gone back and become a part again of the Chaldean city of Ur? They would have forfeited Jehovah’s promises to them. It would have meant abandoning relationship with him, and this would have meant the destruction of their souls. Their faith kept them away from Ur and obedient to Jehovah’s call and guidance of them. They looked forward, not backward. They reached out for a place better than the earthly city of Ur. They looked for a city belonging to heaven, a heavenly government, God’s kingdom by means of the Messianic Seed of His “woman.” What is Ur of the Chaldeans today? Just a mass of ruins dug up by archaeologists not long ago. But what about God’s kingdom, the heavenly city made ready for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? It is in power in the heavens since A.D. 1914. Shortly, after it destroys this old worldly system of things and takes absolute control of the whole earth, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be resurrected from the dead and live under that heavenly government, because God is not ashamed of them.—Luke 20:37, 38.

OF WHAT SORT ARE WE?

26. In comparison with the foregoing ancient men, what questions do we ask ourselves, and why do we desire Hebrews 10:38, 39 to answer for us?

²⁶ What sort of persons are we today? If we are Christian witnesses of Jehovah, are we persons like profane Esau (Edom)? God forbid! Then are we persons like those Hebrew witnesses of Jehovah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who never turned back? If we are, then, after we have come this far since when we first believed, no matter how far back that may be, we will not now turn back to this old world of materialism and false religion. Let it be for us also that Hebrews 10:38, 39 speaks when it affirms: “‘My righteous one will live by reason of faith,’ and, ‘if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.’ Now we are not the sort that shrink back to destruction, but the sort that have faith to the preserving alive of the soul.”

27. In what, therefore, is our interest, and what would our shrinking back mean for us?

²⁷ Our interest is in that God’s soul should have pleasure in us. We desire to have a righteous standing with him and to prove worthy of living by reason of our faith. Faith does not allow for us to shrink back. Shrinking of a person is understood to be an instinctive recoil at something that is painful or unpleasant, so as to avoid it. Shrinking is due to fear. In Hebrews 10:38, 39 the word for shrinking back is used by ancient Greek writers for fearing, and for withdrawing or hiding oneself through fear.b For us to shrink back would lead to destruction of our soul forever.—Matt. 10:28.

28, 29. (a) Where is the danger in shrinking back, and how may it start? (b) What does Hebrews 5:11 to 6:3 say to those doing that?

²⁸ The shrinking back may be like a small contraction, producing a wrinkle. In this very fact there lies danger for us, because we hardly notice our start toward eternal destruction of our soul. The shrinking back or withdrawing may be in the form of refusing to make progress because self-exertion is required. It is as in the case of a child that does not want to grow up and shoulder responsibilities but wants to remain a carefree child with others obliged to take the responsibility for it. For instance, why did the writer to the Hebrews have to go to such lengths in explaining things that were more advanced, more involved than such Bible doctrines as repentance from sin, faith toward God, baptisms, laying of the hands on chosen ones, resurrection, everlasting judgment by God? It was because those Hebrew Christians wanted to stay spiritual babies able to feed only on doctrinal milk, so dull in hearing that they did not understand what was said or taught. So Hebrews 5:11 to 6:3 tells them:

²⁹ “We have much to say and hard to be explained, since you have become dull in your hearing. For, indeed, although you ought to be teachers in view of the time, you again need someone to teach you from the beginning the elementary things of the sacred pronouncements of God; and you have become such as need milk, not solid food. For everyone that partakes of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to mature people, to those who through use have their perceptive powers trained to distinguish both right and wrong. For this reason, now that we have left the primary doctrine about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying a foundation again, namely, repentance from dead works, and faith toward God, the teaching on baptisms and the laying on of the hands, the resurrection of the dead and everlasting judgment. And this we will do, if God indeed permits.”

30. How is God indeed permitting us to do so, and consequently what should spiritual babes do?

³⁰ God is indeed permitting us, to the extent that he lets us live on and does not destroy this world. Since God mercifully permits it, will we “press on to maturity”? Will we take advantage of the further time to grow up spiritually and become able to teach others not just the “primary doctrine about the Christ” or the “foundation” beliefs but also the things “hard to be explained”? In view of the length of time that we have known the truth, are we ashamed that we do not know or understand more than doctrinal “milk” of the Bible or that by now we do not have our “perceptive powers trained” to enable us to be teachers of others, not only in the congregation, but in the homes of interested people not yet belonging to the congregation? If we honestly feel such shame at not yet being grown up spiritually, then by all means, as long as God indeed permits it, let us do something about it, something positive. To do so means our living.

31, 32. (a) What will positive action on the part of spiritual babes mean? (b) Warning us of such a bad custom what does Hebrews 10:23-27 tell us?

³¹ Taking positive action will certainly not be by further retarding our spiritual progress, or by directly drawing back, shrinking back because something difficult is ahead of us requiring constancy in effort and action. Positive action will mean more than just pushing on with our personal Bible study privately. It will also require attending meetings for study with the New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses, taking consideration of them. If we unnecessarily miss meetings with the modern Christian witnesses of Jehovah, it will be the start of our shrinking back. Persisted in, it will finally become a custom with us. Hebrews 10:23-27 tells us not to do that. It tells us the reason for not doing that. It says:

³² “Let us consider one another to incite to love and fine works, not forsaking the gathering of ourselves together, as some have the custom, but encouraging one another, and all the more so as you behold the day drawing near. For if we practice sin willfully after having received the accurate knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice for sins left, but there is a certain fearful expectation of judgment and there is a fiery jealousy that is going to consume those in opposition.”

33. If we willfully miss meetings, what are we doing as regards Hebrews 2:1, and how can we prevent our drifting away?

³³ When we willfully miss meetings where incitement to love and good works is given, what are we doing? Are we doing what Hebrews 2:1 tells us to do, namely, paying more than the usual attention, or are we paying less than the usual attention to the things heard from God’s Son? Certainly less, not more, even if we do a lot of home Bible study by ourselves. To prevent our drifting away toward destruction, we need to pay attention to God’s Son because of his superior importance.

34. To have our faith perfected, to whom must we look and why therefore could not the ancient Hebrews have their faith perfected?

³⁴ If we desire to have our faith perfected to the preserving of our souls alive forever, we really do have to pay due attention to God’s Son Jesus. We have to look to him as the “Perfecter of our faith.” Prior to his coming nineteen centuries ago, the ancient Hebrews had faith in Messiah’s coming and looked forward to it. But their faith respecting him was very lacking in many regards because of their not understanding the then unfulfilled prophecies about him. Even the angels of heaven were inquisitive as to how the prophecies would actually be worked out regarding the Messiah or the Christ. (1 Pet. 1:10-12) Hence their faith was not yet perfected.

35, 36. With whose coming did faith really arrive, and how was that so?

³⁵ However, when Jesus Christ came, preached, died and was resurrected to heavenly life and returned to God his Father and sat down at God’s right in the heavens, the prophecies about him that were hitherto not understood were fulfilled in detail. Then the faith concerning the Messiah or Christ became filled in with historic facts. Thus with the Christ faith really arrived, that is, corrected belief about him and his relationship with God. Therefore to the Hebrews once under Moses’ law but now Christians, Galatians 3:23-25 says:

³⁶ “Before the faith arrived, we were being guarded under law, being delivered up together into custody, looking to the faith that was destined to be revealed. Consequently the Law has become our tutor leading to Christ, that we might be declared righteous due to faith. But now that the faith has arrived, we are no longer under a tutor [the Mosaic law].”

37. What, therefore, was Jesus as regards our faith and so what really began with him?

³⁷ Because of this fact Jesus is really the Leader, the Pioneer, the Chief Agent of our faith. As such, he undertook to do God’s will and to bring Messianic prophecies to fulfillment and thus to clarify for us our faith in those Bible prophecies. Correct faith or belief began with Jesus Christ—nineteen centuries ago.

38. How has he, since back there, been perfecting the faith of his followers?

³⁸ Down till the festival day of Pentecost, fifty days after his resurrection, in the year 33, when he poured down holy spirit from God’s right hand in heaven upon his Hebrew disciples in Jerusalem, Jesus worked toward perfecting their faith in him. When, in the year 36, he poured down holy spirit upon the first non-Hebrew uncircumcised believers, he brought still more to perfection their faith respecting him. (Heb. 2:4) As far as he dealt from heaven with his disciples on earth down till the apostle John wrote his Gospel and letters and the Revelation or Apocalypse to John, Jesus was bringing their faith to perfection, sufficiently for them to be saved. Now by what he has been doing during the past ninety years or so, to fulfill prophecy toward his disciples on earth, he has been perfecting our faith to meet the needs of our time, for our eternal salvation.

RACE!

39. What, then, is the vital thing for us to do, and in harmony with that what does Hebrews 12:1-4 tell us to do?

³⁹ The vital thing for us to do, then, is not to shrink back or even to look back. The soul-preserving thing for us to do is to look forward and race! “So, then,” Hebrews 12:1-4 tells us, “because we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also put off every weight and the sin that easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, as we look intently at the Chief Agent and Perfecter of our faith, Jesus. For the joy that was set before him he endured a torture stake, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Indeed, consider closely the one who has endured such contrary talk by sinners against their own interests, that you may not get tired and give out in your souls. In carrying on your contest against that sin [of lack of faith] you have never yet resisted as far as blood.” No, you have not yet shed your lifeblood as a faithful witness of Jehovah.

40. What ancient Hebrew among those pre-Christian witnesses should we remember, and why?

⁴⁰ Remember, among that “great cloud” of pre-Christian witnesses who because of their faith pleased God, the faithful patriarch Abraham. He did not settle down in any city or build a city as a permanent dwelling place in this old system of things. He looked forward to the city having foundations of permanence, the city then to be built and created by God. Hence he kept living here and there in tents, identified with no earthly city.—Heb. 11:9, 10, 15, 16.

41. What about Jesus in this respect and what are we resolved to do according to Hebrews 13:12-15?

⁴¹ Neither did God’s Son make any city his permanent city, not even the then earthly Jerusalem with its temple and altar. As we look to him, let our own resolution of what we are going to do be found stated in Hebrews 13:12-15: “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Let us, then, go forth to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach he bore, for we do not have here a city that continues, but we are earnestly seeking the one to come. Through him let us always offer to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips which make public declaration to his name.”

42. Because of our approaching what should we do that all the more so now?

⁴² All the more so let us do that now. That “city to come,” that “city that continues,” is at hand! It is God’s kingdom, the heavenly Jerusalem, established in the year 1914 at the end of the Gentile Times. More true of us today, therefore, are the words written nineteen centuries ago: “You have approached a Mount Zion and a city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and myriads of angels, in general assembly, and the congregation of the first-born who have been enrolled in the heavens, and God the Judge of all, and . . . Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling, which speaks in a better way than Abel’s blood.” (Heb. 12:22-24) This heavenly kingdom to which we have approached is a “kingdom that cannot be shaken.” It will remain all through this “time of the end” of this world, when Jehovah God is shaking heaven and earth in order to remove this old faithless order of things.—Heb. 12:26-28.

43. How can we now pay more than the usual attention to God’s Son as respects Matthew 24:14?

⁴³ In fulfillment of Jesus’ own prophecy, the good news of this established kingdom is being preached in all the inhabited earth as a witness to all the nations before these are rocked to pieces and removed forever. (Matt. 24:14; Mark 13:10) To that prophecy spoken by God’s Son let us pay more than the usual attention by taking as full a direct part in it as we possibly can. Do so in faith. Preach!

44. What quality is this specially the time for us to have, and with what lasting good result?

⁴⁴ Of all times this is the time to have faith, to mature our faith by increasing our knowledge and understanding, and to prove our faith by teaching it to others. Our faith undergoing perfection will never let us draw back to eternal disaster, the destruction of our souls. Our faith in perfection will lead to God’s preserving of our souls alive forever. Where? In the new order of things, with its “new heavens” and with its “inhabited earth to come” subjected, not to mere angels, but to God’s Son of sons, Jesus Christ, the Chief Agent and Perfecter of our faith.

[Footnotes]

We Need Jehovah’s Organization

IT WAS with good reason that Jesus Christ likened the worshipers of Jehovah to gregarious sheep. Like sheep, they need one another and the loving oversight of a shepherd. That it is Jehovah’s will for them to be together in one flock instead of being scattered, having a separate spiritual existence, is made evident by what Jesus said in the tenth chapter of John. In the eleventh verse Joh 10:11 he identifies himself as their shepherd, saying: “I am the fine shepherd; the fine shepherd surrenders his soul in behalf of the sheep.” Then in verse sixteen Joh 10:16 he states: “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; those also I must bring, and they will listen to my voice, and they will become one flock, one shepherd.” This gathering of worshipers of Jehovah into one flock shows that it is his purpose for them to be in close association with one another.

Jesus would not have likened Christians to sheep in one flock and one fold if it were not God’s purpose for them to be together in an organization. His spirit is where the Fine Shepherd and the flock are. How can a person expect to continue under the influence of that spirit if he separates from the flock and seeks to live a solitary spiritual life? It is like separating a coal from a bed of coals. As the coal soon cools because of its being separated from the fire, so the spiritual flame in a dedicated servant of God will soon cool and die out when he willfully separates from the flock where Jehovah’s spirit is.

Regarding straying sheep, Jesus said: “What do you think? If a certain man comes to have a hundred sheep and one of them gets strayed, will he not leave the ninety-nine upon the mountains and set out on a search for the one that is straying? And if he happens to find it, I certainly tell you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that have not strayed. Likewise it is not a desirable thing with my Father who is in heaven for one of these little ones to perish.” (Matt. 18:12-14) With the flock of God’s organization there is safety, but there is grave danger in straying from it.

Being in the Christian flock involves more than just belief in Christian teachings. It also means contact with the organization of Jehovah’s worshipers. When sheep are in a flock, they are in physical association with one another. This also is necessary with Christians. The apostle Paul made that clear when he said: “Let us consider one another to incite to love and fine works, not forsaking the gathering of ourselves together, as some have the custom, but encouraging one another, and all the more so as you behold the day drawing near.” (Heb. 10:24, 25) Is not a person forsaking the gathering with dedicated worshipers of Jehovah when he tries to live a solitary spiritual life, having no physical association with the Christian flock? Jesus would not have given his illustration likening Christians to a flock of sheep if he did not believe that worshipers of Jehovah need the Christian organization.

EARLY CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATION

The apostles became the principal overseers of the early Christian organization. Those who became Christians looked to them as the channel Jehovah was using to instruct them and guide them in true worship. When there was a dispute among them, they would turn to the apostles for a decision. An instance of this was when a dispute arose in the congregation at Syrian Antioch over the question of circumcision. The congregation sent Paul and Barnabas to the headquarters of the Christian organization at Jerusalem for a decision. “But when there had occurred no little dissension and disputing by Paul and Barnabas with them [the men who were disturbing the congregation], they arranged for Paul and Barnabas and some others of them to go up to the apostles and older men in Jerusalem regarding this dispute.” (Acts 15:2) There a ruling was handed down by the governing body and it was carried to all the congregations. “Now as they traveled on through the cities they would deliver to those there for observance the decrees that had been decided upon by the apostles and older men who were in Jerusalem.”—Acts 16:4.

The governing body of the Christian organization in the first century sent out traveling representatives who began new congregations and visited established ones. They had the authority to appoint persons to positions of oversight in the congregations so that the local organization would function smoothly and fulfill its purpose. (Acts 14:23) At 1 Timothy 3:1-13, we read some of the organizational instructions that Paul, a representative of the governing body, gave regarding overseers and ministerial servants. Thus it can be seen that the early Christians were in one fold that formed an organization. That was where they found Jehovah’s spirit, and that was where they received Scriptural knowledge, good counsel, firm discipline and dependable guidance in the way that is pleasing to God.

JEHOVAH’S ORGANIZATION TODAY

In this twentieth century the Lord’s “sheep” need to be together in one fold just as much as in the first century. As Jehovah had an organization then for his worshipers, so we should expect him to have one today. But how can it be identified when there are so many religious organizations that bear the name Christian? The disunity and conflict in teachings among them rule out the thought that God is using all of them. He is not a God of confusion. He used only one organization in the first century, and we can expect him to use only one today. The one that would be doing the work he has commanded to be done would have his spirit.

The confusion of multitudinous religious organizations claiming to be Christian began appearing after the death of the apostles when there was a falling away from the early Christian organization. Many sects began to appear. The apostle Paul foretold this when he said: “I know that after my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.” (Acts 20:29, 30) Even before he died there were persons who began to cause divisions. “Now I exhort you, brothers, to keep your eye on those who cause divisions and occasions for stumbling contrary to the teaching that you have learned, and avoid them.” (Rom. 16:17) Jude also spoke about such persons. In the tenth verse of his letter he said: “These men are speaking abusively of all the things they really do not know.” And then in the sixteenth verse he observed that “their mouths speak swelling things, while they are admiring personalities for the sake of their own benefit.”

God certainly did not use the splinter groups that were formed back there by the dissident individuals who lost sight of their need for Jehovah’s organization. His spirit was not with them but stayed with the flock made up of persons who were putting his interests first rather than personalities. Paul condemned the practice of following men when he said: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God kept making it grow; so that neither is he that plants anything nor is he that waters, but God who makes it grow.”—1 Cor. 3:6, 7.

The careful searcher can find Jehovah’s organization today by looking for its identifying marks. One of them is its separation from the world. James said: “Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God.” (Jas. 4:4) The Christian organization of the first century did not involve itself in the politics and wars of the Roman world but kept separate from it as Jesus did.—John 17:16.

It is a common practice for religious organizations in Christendom to be deeply involved in political affairs, even to the point where members of the same organization will kill one another in political wars. This the early Christians never did, and neither do those who form Jehovah’s worldwide organization today.

Another mark of Jehovah’s organization is the magnifying of his name, making it known to the peoples of the world. Jesus showed the importance of this name by putting the sanctifying of it first in his model prayer. (Matt. 6:9) Only one organization today is making Jehovah’s name known throughout the world. It alone is upholding it and is proclaiming the importance of its being vindicated. That organization is well known as the bearers of the name.

Jesus foretold that the preaching of the good news of the Kingdom would be done by his followers. (Matt. 24:14) In 189 lands Jehovah’s witnesses are doing that very thing. Theirs is the only organization that concentrates on this important work that Jesus began in the first century. It alone is pushing this preaching work and training all who come within it to participate in it. As activity in the Christian ministry was important among Jehovah’s servants of the first century, so it is important today. Paul said: “With the heart one exercises faith for righteousness, but with the mouth one makes public declaration for salvation.” (Rom. 10:10) Since preaching is important for salvation, God’s organization should be expected to stress it. This is what Jehovah’s witnesses are doing.

Under the supervision of the remnant of Christ’s anointed followers, the organization of Jehovah’s worshipers today is geared to preach and to teach the good things in God’s Word. In obedience to Jesus’ command, it is “seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness.” (Matt. 6:33) The world over it is helping to transform people so that they become integrity-keeping Christian ministers who are peaceful, honest and morally clean. It is turning multitudes to Jehovah God and building up their faith in his Word.

It organizes congregations and sends representatives to them to build up the Lord’s “sheep” and to give them assistance in making “public declaration for salvation.” It does its utmost to help them walk in the way of obedience to God. It encourages, instructs, counsels and disciplines, as did the Christian organization of the first century. It devotes its resources entirely to fulfilling the Christian commission to preach the good news of the Kingdom. The good fruits it has produced to Jehovah’s honor and praise as well as its spiritual prosperity testify to the fact that his spirit has been operating upon this one organization. It is doing his will.

LOYALTY TO THE ORGANIZATION

In the first century there were “sheep” that began to stray from the Christian organization, losing sight of the fact that God’s spirit was operating upon it. To such ones among the Galatians the apostle Paul said: “You were running well. Who hindered you from keeping on obeying the truth? This sort of persuasion is not from the One calling you.” (Gal. 5:7, 8) So today “sheep” can be expected to stray.

There are persons who have been closely associated with Jehovah’s organization but who begin to lose sight of it and to think that they can get along without it. Some have been in close contact with the overseers of the organization. Because they personally know these men and the work they do in directing the preaching activities of the organization, they come to see only these men when they think of the organization rather than seeing the organization as a whole. They allow personalities to stumble them, forgetting that it is God who is causing the organization to grow and to prosper, not the men who serve in it. This mistake was made by the people of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.

The townspeople of Nazareth did not see Jesus as an instrument in the hands of God who was doing God’s work. They saw him only as the son of Joseph, a mere carpenter. “‘Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Where, then, did this man get all these things?’ So they began to stumble at him.” (Matt. 13:55-57) Today a person should have his eyes on what Jehovah’s organization is doing to further Jehovah’s interests rather than on personalities who are giving their service to God and his organization.

The care of God’s organization today is not in the hands of men who are inspired by God. They can make mistakes as any imperfect man can. Even the apostle Peter, who unquestionably had God’s spirit, made mistakes. On one occasion he denied Jesus Christ. On another he had to be rebuked by Paul for “not walking straight according to the truth of the good news.” (Gal. 2:14) God’s spirit inspired him to write Scripture, but it did not prevent him from being a free moral agent capable of making mistakes when he was not under inspiration. His mistake in the matter of applying Christian doctrine in his relationship with non-Jews does not argue that he did not have God’s spirit at all. The same is true today.

The men in Jehovah’s organization who prepare spiritual instruction for the Lord’s “sheep” diligently study the Scriptures to learn what God has put there for the instruction and guidance of his people. They make no claim of inspiration—only that they are Bible students. Since their comments on the Scriptures are not inspired, they can at times make mistakes. Does this make them false prophets? Not at all! A false prophet does not correct himself. He persists in proclaiming a wrong view even when he knows that it is wrong. But these students of God’s Word correct misunderstandings when they discover them. They are interested in the truth, not in self-justification. Their mistakes do not mean God’s spirit does not operate upon them; it does, just as it did upon Peter despite his mistakes.

Over the years the anointed remnant have published many things through the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society that they have learned from their ceaseless searching of God’s Word. Some of these things have made Jehovah’s witnesses distinctive from the religious organizations of Christendom that refuse to correct mistaken views, and they have proved to be basic Scriptural truths. Some others have, by further study, been revealed to be mistaken conclusions due to an unclear view of certain scriptures. As understanding of these scriptures became clearer the mistakes were corrected. Such corrections show their honesty and love for truth.

This sincere desire to search out accurate understanding of the things in God’s Word and this willingness to make changes when Scriptural evidence accumulates to indicate a need for them should instill confidence in the organization. It assures the Lord’s “sheep” that the organization will never knowingly misinform them.

God’s spirit operates upon his dedicated servants today, not to inspire them, but to move them gently in the direction of increased understanding. It permits them to make mistakes as they grow in understanding of God’s Word, but in time it helps them to see their mistakes, which they gladly correct. In this manner they progress along the path of the righteous ones, with the light of Scriptural understanding steadily getting “lighter and lighter until the day is firmly established.” (Prov. 4:18) This progress in Scriptural knowledge might be likened to an overcast sky that is gradually breaking up. As the openings between the clouds grow, more and more light comes through. Sometimes a truth is seen but then is obscured by a misunderstanding, just as a passing cloud momentarily obscures some rays of the sun. Later this truth returns in greater clarity when the misunderstanding is removed. God’s spirit is evident upon the organization from the progress it is making along the path of Scriptural truth.

The person who permits a seed of discontent against Jehovah’s organization to grow until it becomes a poisonous root puts himself in a dangerous position. (Heb. 12:15) If he leaves the flock, where can he go? He knows that the Devil’s world and its religious organizations do not have words of life. He knows the folly of joining with deserters who now fight the organization. If he leaves, he puts himself in the position of those about whom John spoke when he said: “They went out from us, but they were not of our sort; for if they had been of our sort, they would have remained with us.”—1 John 2:19.

Those who remain loyal to Jehovah’s organization take the view the apostles did when many of Jesus’ disciples stopped following him. Peter expressed their feelings by saying: “Lord, whom shall we go away to? You have sayings of everlasting life.” (John 6:68) The loyal “sheep” see that the way to life is with Jehovah’s faithful organization.

Like gregarious sheep that stay together in one flock and find shelter and protection in one fold, Jehovah’s worshipers today find shelter, protection and an abundant supply of spiritual nourishment in his organization of witnesses. Under its direction they are doing what is fine in the eyes of God, and his spirit is prospering them. To such ones the apostle Paul said: “Let us not give up in doing what is fine, for in due season we shall reap if we do not tire out.”—Gal. 6:9.

Giving Spiritual Help to Clergymen

PURPOSE OF CALLS RECOGNIZED

One of Jehovah’s witnesses in North Carolina relates this experience: “After mailing out the special Awake! on Spain to most of the clergymen in our territory, we decided to deliver one personally to a Methodist minister, since we had had several Bible discussions with him. Right away we got into a Bible discussion, and he asked what we believed the sin against the holy spirit to be. I referred him to Hebrews 6:4-6, and he got his own Bible. After reading the scriptures, he said that, to tell the truth, he had never read that scripture before. He next asked what we believed about hell. When we said it was mankind’s common grave, he said that he believed the same as the Witnesses on that. He said he could not start teaching in church that there was no burning hell because it might offend some, but he wanted to introduce the truth gradually to his congregation. Then he said: ‘I guess that’s why you keep calling to see me—to teach me the truth.’”

PRAYING FOR HELP

Another Witness in North Carolina relates this experience about calling at the home of a minister of the Church of God: “He told me that he had taken the magazines from a lady on the street for the first time in his life, though he had always been told by his superiors never to read them. However, lately things had been bothering him to the extent that he did not attend church or preach for over a month. When he arrived home, he immediately sat down to read the magazines. He became so interested that he wrote the Watch Tower Society, asking for more information. He stated that he had been praying to the Lord to help him, as he was thoroughly confused.”

AFTER MANY YEARS

A Witness out in the magazine work in Virginia called at the home of an elderly man and placed both The Watchtower and Awake! After calling back, the Witness offered him the book “Let Your Name Be Sanctified,” and a study was started. One day after the close of the study, he expressed how much joy he was getting out of his study in the Bible. He further stated that he had been a minister for more than sixty years and thought that he had been rendering service to the true God. Now he was just beginning to learn how to serve Jehovah and to be a minister for him. He began to attend the meetings at the Kingdom Hall regularly, and he took part in the field ministry. After studying a little more than five months, he symbolized his dedication to Jehovah and was baptized at the Greensboro North Carolina, Courageous Ministers Assembly, in 1962—when he was ninety two years old.

Satisfaction in Serving Jehovah

As told by Henri Geiger

I BROUGHT a hunger for justice and truth back with me from the front at the end of World War I. It was not satisfied until April, 1920, when something special came to Strasbourg, France, where I lived with my mother, working at my profession as ferro-concrete builder and engineer. This special event was the arrival of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society’s “Photo-Drama of Creation,” an illustrated explanation of God’s purposes, using slides and motion pictures. From this pictorial explanation of God’s purposes I learned more about the Bible than in all the thirty years of my life in the Evangelical Church. It was spiritually satisfying.

From that time on I missed no meetings of the Bible Students, as Jehovah’s witnesses were then called; and from May to August I thoroughly studied the six volumes of Studies in the Scriptures, by the Society’s first president, Charles T. Russell. I had married in May, and in September my wife and I symbolized our dedication to Almighty God by water immersion.

EARLY BEGINNINGS

The showing of the “Photo-Drama of Creation” was the first effective public activity of Jehovah’s people in Alsace. Having a desire to help in this work, I traveled by train every evening to the places where it was being shown. While traveling in Europe in 1920, the Watch Tower Society’s president, J. F. Rutherford, also came to Strasbourg to give his lecture “Millions Now Living Will Never Die.” We advertised this lecture thoroughly, and it was a gigantic success.

Alsace began to awaken spiritually, and new study groups sprang up in various towns. The privilege of serving these groups was entrusted to me. Since the Society had appointed me congregation overseer for Strasbourg, I had the privilege of starting regular house-to-house activity in town and country. Our study aids were the first volume of Studies in the Scriptures and the illustrated book The Photo-Drama of Creation. It was work that brought great satisfaction.

Proclaiming God’s truth became my joy in life. Being a joy that comes from Jehovah, it was very strengthening. In Strasbourg I had the joyful privilege of conducting a group study in the seventh volume, called “The Finished Mystery,” and some 250 to 300 persons participated. The magazine The Golden Age (now Awake!) also served to spread God’s message. One sister placed up to 2,000 copies monthly in the restaurants. The book The Harp of God came as a further impetus in proclaiming God’s purpose to the people. Yes, Jehovah had given us work and this brought us great joy and satisfaction.

Together with my wife, my mother and our little son we formed a theocratic family in which all things were determined according to the interests of God’s service.

FURTHER SERVICE PRIVILEGES

The “Photo-Drama” made four more tours throughout Alsace. When being advertised the last time, it was forbidden by the Directeur des cultes, a government official who was also a Protestant clergyman. As on many former occasions I had an interview with him, during which he admitted that ‘if the clergy had done their duty in 1914 there would have been no world war.’ This clergyman admitted that ‘the destruction of the present world order and the establishment of God’s kingdom was the only real solution,’ but that he could not believe it, as he did not believe the Bible to be God’s inspired Word. However, he said to me, ‘If the apostle Paul were on earth today he would be working in the same way and according to the same methods that you are doing.’ He then authorized the further showing of the “Photo-Drama.”

And so we had two presentations in Strasbourg, using the Aubettesaal (Aubette Hall) in Kleberplatz right in the middle of town, with an attendance of over 3,000 persons. Favorably disposed persons warned us that the Catholic student body under the influence of their professors were planning an attack for the last evening in order to disrupt the Biblical presentation. We organized ourselves. When these peace disturbers began their attack, they found themselves, within a few minutes, ejected from the hall. About fifty students then sought entrance by force, but the police had now come to our aid; they arrested the ringleaders. Though the crowd in the middle of the square began to sing Catholic songs, our show went on peacefully to its conclusion.

As the work increased the Watch Tower Society considered it necessary to establish an office and literature depot for Alsace-Lorraine in the city of Strasbourg, and I was entrusted with this service. I lived with my family in a small two-story building, where we were able to house everything. I continued my secular work and retained my service as congregation servant. In the evenings I attended to the office work and visited the congregations on the weekends to help them get ahead with God’s work. This activity afforded me great joy and satisfaction of heart, and I was grateful to Jehovah for the privileges entrusted to me.

The larger conventions, which were arranged each year in Switzerland and Paris, often with the Society’s president in attendance, were always especially fortifying and stimulating. Our new name “Jehovah’s witnesses” was received with great joy, and our position was greatly strengthened before God and man. But our peaceful activity was interrupted in a brutal manner in 1939, by the beginning of World War II. Within three days Strasbourg and the frontier population along the Rhine were evacuated by the government into the Dordogne territory, where I was fortunate in finding a furnished apartment for my family.

INCREASING JOY DESPITE HINDRANCES

Two weeks later I received instructions from the Berne office to go to Paris to help the branch servant, Brother Knecht, who was seriously ill. I left my family in the Dordogne and traveled to Paris. Shortly afterward, in October, our preaching work was banned by the French government, and the Society’s property confiscated. Fourteen days later Brother Knecht died, and Brother Harbeck, the manager of the Central European office, entrusted me with this service. We tried to have the government ban lifted, but all our petitions were turned down. We organized the work according to our new circumstances and continued right ahead.

With the advance of the German troops the population of Paris and the whole of northern France were seized with panic, many persons fleeing to the south and west. I had resumed my secular work with the same firm in Paris, and now my employer received instructions from the government to move back into the Dordogne with all his workers, but when we reached there everything had to be liquidated owing to the Nazi conquest. Following the truce treaty between France and Germany, the people began to return to their homes; and I returned to Paris, taking my family with me.

France was divided, and with German censorship and control of paper, typewriters and printing machines, many hindrances were in our way. Despite all this we printed books and booklets and we received the necessary spiritual food regularly. By going zealously and fearlessly into God’s service, we had the satisfaction of observing the congregations grow and the work expand. In favorably situated places we organized larger assemblies for the brothers, to the joy and encouragement of all. Many officials in the French police were favorably disposed toward us, and very few of us were arrested by the Gestapo.

The fury of war swept once again over the country, and great destruction was caused by the bombardments. Although the work was still under ban, we could now develop a freer and more effective activity. I gave up my secular work, which I had retained till then, so that I could devote my whole time to the interests of God’s kingdom.

Immediately after the war I took the necessary steps, supported by two other brothers, to have the ban rescinded. And on August 31, 1947, the Watch Tower Society and our Christian activity were again legally recognized by the government. We were also successful in having our confiscated property released by court order. In accordance with instructions from the Society’s president, we then bought a house in Paris to serve as office and Bethel home.

Jehovah has richly blessed our perseverance. At the beginning of the war we were 800 publishers in the whole of France, and at the lifting of the ban we were 2,800. When we could once again assemble freely, we harvested in the next few years much of what we had sown during the war years, the number of Kingdom ministers rising, in 1951, to 7,136.

The work continued to increase in France in the following years, and now we have passed the 16,000 mark in ministers of the good news. We have a fine new five-story building with printing factory and home for the Branch workers. I look back with joy to the privileges I have had in serving the interests of God’s kingdom, ever thankful that the “Photo-Drama” came to Strasbourg in 1920. I have not become younger during the years and an illness I contracted during the war years has sapped some of my strength, yet the joy of Jehovah continues to give me strength and great satisfaction.—Neh. 8:10.

(Brother Henri Geiger finished his earthly course faithfully, dying in his son’s home in France, August 29, 1962.)

Memorizing the Bible Canon

EACH Bible lover and, in particular, each Christian minister will save much time by memorizing the order in which the Bible books appear. Noting the natural divisions of the canon as well as the contents and time of writing of the various books will doubtless help in memorizing this list.

Of the sixty-six books, thirty-nine comprise the Hebrew Scriptures and twenty-seven the Christian Greek Scriptures.

In the Hebrew Scripture canon the five books of Moses come first: GENESIS begins with creation and takes in the history of mankind from Adam to the death of Joseph. Then come EXODUS, LEVITICUS, NUMBERS and DEUTERONOMY, which give Israel’s history from their bondage in Egypt to the death of Moses. These five books are also known as the Pentateuch, meaning “five books.” In some translations, such as Luther’s, these are simply known as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Moses. Next, just as Joshua succeeded Moses, so the book of JOSHUA succeeds the books of Moses. And even as Joshua was followed by other judges who ruled Israel, so his book is followed by the book of JUDGES, which tells of their rule. RUTH relates certain events of the time of the judges and so logically follows.

Then come three sets of two books: 1 and 2 SAMUEL, which complete the period of the judges and introduce the period of the kings; 1 and 2 KINGS, which complete the history of the kings; and 1 and 2 CHRONICLES, which give a parallel history of the kings beginning with David’s rule, as well as a resume of Bible genealogy from Adam to the time of its writing. Next come EZRA, NEHEMIAH and ESTHER, which deal with events that occurred in Jerusalem and Medo-Persia within a century after the Jews’ return from Babylon in 537 B.C. This completes the seventeen so-called “historical” books.

After these come five books containing wise sayings and superb poetry: JOB, PSALMS (about one-half of which are credited to David), PROVERBS, ECCLESIASTES and THE SONG OF SOLOMON. The last three were written by Solomon with the exception of the last two chapters of Proverbs.

The remaining seventeen books of the Hebrew Scriptures are primarily prophetic. ISAIAH, whose writer prophesied in the eighth century B.C.; JEREMIAH, whose writer began prophesying in the next century, forty years before Jerusalem’s downfall in 607 B.C.; LAMENTATIONS, in which Jeremiah mourns Jerusalem’s desolation; EZEKIEL, whose writer prophesied in Babylon during Jerusalem’s desolation, and DANIEL, whose writer served as Jehovah’s prophet, before, during and even after the seventy-year desolation.

The rest of the prophetic books are called the “minor” prophets by reason of their length, although these twelve prophecies are neither minor in import nor in time, several coming ahead of the “major” prophets. These twelve do not follow a strict time pattern. They begin with HOSEA (pronounced Ho·seeʹa), JOEL (actually the first of the seventeen to be written), AMOS and OBADIAH; JONAH, MICAH, NAHUM and HA·BAKʹKUK (accent on the second syllable); ZEPHANIAH, HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH and MALACHI. Thus we have three sets of four books; Jonah begins the second set of four, and Zephaniah, not to be confused with Zechariah, which follows Haggai, the third set.

Now to the Christian Greek Scriptures. First we have five books mostly historical, the four Gospels, MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE and JOHN, and ACTS OF APOSTLES. Next come twenty-one letters, fourteen by Paul, which as a memory aid may be divided as follows: three of his longest letters: ROMANS. 1 and 2 CORINTHIANS; then four quite similar in size, style and content: GALATIANS, EPHESIANS, PHILIPPIANS and COLOSSIANS. Then follow five beginning with the letter “T”: 1 and 2 THESSALONIANS, 1 and 2 TIMOTHY and TITUS. PHILEMON and HEBREWS complete Paul’s letters. So we have in Paul’s letters, nine to congregations, four to individuals, and one to a group of Christians, those of Hebrew birth. This leaves seven more letters: JAMES, 1 and 2 PETER, 1, 2 and 3 JOHN and JUDE. And in conclusion is the prophecy in symbols, REVELATION, last book of the Bible but not the last one written, it being written A.D. 96, whereas the rest of John’s writings appear to have been written A.D. 98.

With a little effort this list of books can be memorized. Doing so will not only prove very useful in one’s Bible studies but also help to recommend one as a Christian minister.

Questions From Readers

● Was the dove that descended upon Jesus at the time of his baptism a materialized representation or was it merely a mirage or a calm that pervaded the area? And why was a dove chosen, in view of its use in pagan religions?—F. C., United States.

At the time of Jesus’ baptism a materialized bird, a dove, did indeed descend from the sky and rest upon Jesus. That something material was observed is apparent from the words of John the Baptist as recorded at John 1:32-34. “I viewed the spirit coming down as a dove out of heaven, and it remained upon him. Even I did not know him, but the very One who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘Whoever it is upon whom you see the spirit coming down and remaining, this is the one that baptizes in holy spirit.’ And I have seen it, and I have borne witness that this one is the Son of God.”

The purpose of this materialized dove coming down was to convince John the Baptist that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by means of his sense of sight. It therefore had to be just as real to his eyes as were the words, “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved,” to his sense of hearing, to his ears.—Matt. 3:17.

This representation of the holy spirit as a dove calls to mind the manifestation of the holy spirit at Pentecost, as recorded at Acts 2:1-4. At that time it took the form of “tongues as if of fire” that became visible and rested upon each one of the 120 present in that upper room in Jerusalem. Of course, these were not burning flames, but “tongues as if of fire,” otherwise they would have burned the ones upon whom they rested. Yet they were something that was truly observable; just as were the flames that Moses saw at the thornbush at the time Jehovah God called and commissioned him to deliver his people from bondage.—Ex. 3:2

As for the choice of a dove as a symbol, this is in harmony with the use of the dove in the Scriptures. It was a dove that Noah sent out and that came back with an olive leaf showing that the floodwaters had finally drained off. (Gen. 8:8-12) And the lovers of The Song of Solomon referred to each other as doves. (S. of S. 2:14; 5:12) Then again Jesus told his followers to be “innocent as doves.”—Matt. 10:16.

We know that Babylon, both ancient and modern, has counterfeited the truths of God’s Word, and of his dealings with his faithful servants. It should, therefore, be no great surprise that Babylon also counterfeited the dove as a religious symbol, doubtless basing it upon Noah’s use of the dove after the flood.

Announcements

FIELD MINISTRY

Faithful service to Jehovah God requires courage. (Ps. 27:14) Throughout December Jehovah’s courageous and faithful witnesses will carry out their ministry by offering the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, with a Bible-study booklet, on a contribution of $1.

A RACE AGAINST TIME

The end of this system of things is very near, and before it comes the good news of God’s kingdom must reach the ends of the earth. How far has the preaching extended? What are the current results of this greatest of all “advertising” campaigns? Send for the 1963 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is 50c. Send also for the beautiful 1963 calendar for 25c.

“WATCHTOWER” STUDIES FOR THE WEEKS

January 27: Strong Reason for Faith in God’s New World, and To Preserve Your Souls Alive, Have Faith, ¶1-11. Page 744.

February 3: To Preserve Your Souls Alive, Have Faith, ¶12-44. Page 750.