The Watchtower — December 1, 1973

Religion Seeks Peace with Communism​—Why?

DOES it surprise you that religion is seeking peace with Communism? Did you consider the churches to be a bulwark against atheistic Communism?

You may have got that impression from the strong pronouncements of the Catholic Church years ago condemning Communism. Yet those pronouncements had little effect. After the second world war Catholic leaders in Communist-controlled countries, such as Hungary and Poland, compromised and swore loyalty oaths to atheistic regimes.

True, Catholic officials did not approve of this. For example, when the archbishop of Hungary, Joseph Groesz, warmly greeted the visiting Soviet premier, the Catholic magazine America, of April 26, 1958, said: “It was a disagreeable shock to see a Catholic archbishop shaking hands with Bolshevik Number One.” Also, the Vatican’s Cardinal Ottaviani complained: “Some still stretch out their hands to the new antichrists and even race to see who can first shake hands with them and exchange sweet smiles.”

But that was the Catholic attitude over a decade ago. Since then Communism has made great advances. Has this affected the official Catholic position toward Communism?

Indeed it has! Now even the pope greets and exchanges sweet smiles with the highest Soviet officials. Communist heads of state show up regularly at the Vatican for papal audiences. And two years ago Archbishop Agostino Casaroli became the first Vatican official to visit Moscow since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. A recent Vatican publication even said that it found “Christian values” in the teaching of Communist China’s Mao Tse-tung. Reporting on this radical change in attitude, the Panama Star & Herald of September 1, 1973, said:

“The Vatican has ended its cold war with the communist world and is moving steadily toward coexistence with Red regimes.

“Twenty-five years ago Pope Pius XII decreed excommunication for ‘atheistic communists.’ But today Pope Paul VI is dispatching envoys to communist capitals and concluding agreements with some governments.”

Thus far the Vatican has established full-fledged diplomatic relations with two Communist countries, and is seeking such ties with others. “Only the largest and the smallest Communist nations​—China and Albania—​have spurned all Vatican overtures so far,” the New York Times notes.

But it is not only Catholicism; other religions, too, seek peace with Communist regimes. In fact, the Orthodox churches work hand in hand with them. The Catholic World of February 1971 said:

“The Orthodox Church of Rumania and the Communist government have a de facto marriage of mutual interest which fosters nationalistic aims of Rumanians. It sometimes startles outside visitors to see President Nicolae Ceausescu and Patriarch Justinian present together to greet foreigners. . . . both the church and the state are prospering under this strange ‘marriage’ between church and Communist state.”

A similar friendship exists between Church and State in the Soviet Union. In fact, a few years ago the New York State Court of Appeals, ruling on a case involving the Moscow Patriarchate, concluded: “No other view is possible than that the Russian Church is a tool exploited by the communist rulers.”

It is noteworthy that the Russian Church and other Communist-supported Orthodox churches have received membership in the World Council of Churches. Under their influence the World Council has initiated “Marxist-Christian dialogues.” But why do the churches seek peace with atheistic Communism?

Because they fear that, if they do not, their religion will be stamped out by Communist regimes. So the churches make concessions; they compromise. The Baptists, for example, have been a “recognized” religion in the Soviet Union. But even their own members complained, according to New York Times correspondent Grose, that “Baptist leaders had shown themselves too pliable before state authorities.”

It is the same with the Catholic Church. The Panama Star & Herald reports: “The Pope’s approach to communism, Vatican sources say, is based on reality and his diplomatic initiatives are seen as the only realistic way to protect the Church and its estimated 65 million followers in communist lands.”

But why are Communist leaders willing to negotiate with the churches and make concessions to them? Because a significant number of their people still are religious, and so by permitting to function those churches that will do as they say, easier control over the people is maintained. Thus, as reported in The National Catholic Reporter of December 17, 1971:

“Cuban Premier Fidel Castro says that as a revolutionary he regards the growing cooperation between Marxists and Christians in Latin America as ‘something useful.’”

However, it should not really be surprising that worldly religion is seeking peace with Communism. It is not a new tactic. Time and again the churches have prostituted themselves to the political powers. For example, in seeking accord with the Nazi regime, the Vatican, in 1933, signed a concordat that required each Catholic bishop, before taking office, to take an “oath of loyalty” to the government.

Indicating the extent to which the church would go, Pope Pius XI said: “The Head of the Catholic Church would consider it his duty to deal with the Devil himself . . . if reasonable grounds existed to support the hope that such dealings would protect, or advance, the interests of religion among mankind.”​—The Brooklyn Eagle, February 21, 1943.

No wonder the Bible depicts world religion as “the great harlot . . . with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication.” (Rev. 17:1, 2) The churches have clearly abandoned Christ, who proclaimed: “My kingdom is no part of this world,” and who said that his disciples “are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world.” (John 18:36; 17:16) So, then, if you desire to have God’s favor it is vital that you have no share with religion that has ‘gone to bed’ with haters of God.

Gaining Wealth for Earth’s New King

“The pleasure of a king is in the servant who is acting with insight, but his fury comes to be toward one acting shamefully.”​—Prov. 14:35.

1. What kind of man put the words ordering the slaughter of enemies into the mouth of the king in the prophetic parable?

“MOREOVER, these enemies of mine that did not want me to become king over them bring here and slaughter them before me.” Those words of the king ought to strike terror into the hearts of the ones against whom they were directed! But who said those words? It was a man who most people might think would never issue such a harsh order. He put those words into the mouth of the king about whom he was speaking in a parable or prophetic illustration of his. But he was really speaking for himself, inasmuch as he himself was the one pictured by the king in the parabolic illustration.​—Luke 19:27.

2. (a) At the time, where was Jesus heading, and with what event in view? (b) On his descent of the Mount of Olives, what prophecy against Jerusalem did Jesus utter?

² At the time, Jesus Christ was in the city of Jericho, about fourteen miles northeast of Jerusalem, and the spring month of Nisan of the year 33 C.E. was beginning. Jesus had crossed the Jordan River and come into Jericho, where he made an overnight stop. He was on his way to Jerusalem, to make his triumphal ride into the holy city on Sunday, Nisan 9, five days before the Jewish passover. It was on this triumphal ride that he stopped the procession of his disciples on the descent of the Mount of Olives and shed tears over the city of Jerusalem, saying: “If you, even you, had discerned in this day the things having to do with peace​—but now they have been hid from your eyes. Because the days will come upon you when your enemies will build around you a fortification with pointed stakes and will encircle you and distress you from every side, and they will dash you and your children within you to the ground, and they will not leave a stone upon a stone in you, because you did not discern the time of your being inspected.”​—Luke 19:41-44.

3. When did the slaughter thus predicted by Jesus take place, and to what extent?

³ Was Jesus thus describing how the king of the prophetic parable would have his enemies slaughtered for not wanting him to be their king? As matters turned out, the city of Jerusalem did not welcome Jesus Christ as King on his triumphal ride into her. Five days later, or on Passover Day, the enemies in Jerusalem had Jesus executed like an accursed criminal on a stake outside the city walls. The enemies objected strenuously because the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate had an inscription posted on the stake, announcing in Hebrew, Latin and Greek: “Jesus the Nazarene the King of the Jews.” (John 19:17-22) They did not want the man whom they accused of being a blasphemer against their God and a seditionist against imperial Rome to be called their King. Thirty-three years later when they themselves revolted against Rome, it was not in favor of Jesus as their Messiah and King, but in favor of their own Messianic ambitions. In the fifth year of their revolt against Rome, there came the terrible slaughter predicted by Jesus. During the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem, one million one hundred thousand rebellious Jews lost their lives, only 97,000 surviving and being led away captive.

4. (a) Of what was that slaughter at Jerusalem typical or pictorial? (b) By doing what now can we avoid that slaughter?

⁴ However, after that destruction of Jerusalem and her temple by the Romans in the year 70 C.E., Jesus Christ did not forcibly impose his kingship upon the surviving Jews either in the land of Palestine or throughout the rest of the inhabited earth. The Roman Empire continued to hold the territory of Palestine for centuries thereafter. Evidently, then, the slaughter of the antichristian Jews in Jerusalem by the pagan Romans in 70 C.E. was only pictorial or typical of the slaughter on a grander scale, on a worldwide scale, of all those on earth who did not want Jesus Christ as earth’s new king at his second coming. So the time is yet to come​—but it is very near—​when, in fulfillment of his parable, the resurrected, glorified Jesus Christ will command his heavenly angels to bring his enemies on earth before him and to slaughter them as irreconcilable enemies of his kingdom. This signifies that we today are living in a dangerous time and we need to find out whether we are foes of his kingdom or not. By taking the right stand now we can be saved from the coming slaughter.

THE PARABOLIC ILLUSTRATION

5, 6. What were his disciples expecting Jesus to do at Jerusalem, and so why did he give them the parable?

⁵ As an aid to direct us in taking the right stand now, we do well to examine and get the sense of the entire parable given by Jesus Christ there in Jericho in the early spring of 33 C.E. As a result of Jesus’ visit in the home of the chief tax collector in Jericho, this despised man Zacchaeus had become a believer in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah or Christ. (Luke 19:1-10) Because Jesus’ face was set to go up to Jerusalem, his disciples thought that he was going to declare himself as the Messiah at Jerusalem and restore the kingdom to the nation of Israel, taking the control out of the hands of the imperial Romans. To disabuse the minds of his disciples of this wrong idea, Jesus Christ gave the parable to indicate that his kingdom was a long way off.

⁶ With regard to this, we read: “While they were listening to these things he spoke in addition an illustration, because he was near Jerusalem and they were imagining that the kingdom of God was going to display itself instantly. Therefore he said: ‘A certain man of noble birth traveled to a distant land to secure kingly power for himself and to return.’”​—Luke 19:11, 12.

7. (a) In the parable, how did Jesus indicate that the securing and applying of the kingly power would require a long time from then? (b) How was Jesus indeed a “man of noble birth”?

⁷ In this way Jesus hinted that he did not have the kingly power as yet, but that he had to travel a long distance in order to secure it for himself. In view of the relative slowness of travel nineteen hundred years ago, a journey to a distant location and then the return journey would indicate the passing of a long period of time. Jesus was not traveling to as near a place as Jerusalem, fourteen miles from Jericho, to secure the kingly power to which he was entitled because of his noble birth. (Luke 19:12, Jerusalem Bible; New American Bible; New English Bible; New World Translation) Although Jesus had been a lowly carpenter in the city of Nazareth, yet he was indeed a nobleman or “man of noble birth.” He was a natural descendant of King David, whose capital city had been Jerusalem. As such a person, he was entitled to inherit the kingdom of David over all Israel, with Jerusalem as his capital. Jesus had performed so many miracles by the power of God, and now his disciples thought that the Messianic “kingdom of God” would display itself in a miraculous manner by making Jesus the acting King over Israel in spite of the Roman occupation of the land. Thus the Messianic kingdom of God could be established instantly. But Jesus knew that the Kingdom was not as near as the time it would take for him to get to Jerusalem.​—Luke 3:23-31; Matt. 1:1-17.

8, 9. (a) Was the time involved the amount of time it took to make the trip to and from Rome, and why not? (b) How, in his words to King Zedekiah of Jerusalem, did Jehovah indicate that he was the One to bestow the kingly power?

⁸ Neither was the time that was involved the amount of time that it took to journey from Palestine to imperial Rome in Italy and then to return to Jerusalem. Rome was not the location for Jesus Christ to get his kingly power. The source of his kingly power was not Caesar or the Roman Senate. That fact was painfully demonstrated when the Roman soldiers impaled him on Passover Day as a seditious claimant to kingship. The distant place for Jesus to travel to in order to get the kingly power was the location of the One who had established the Messianic kingdom of Jesus’ forefather David. That One was Jehovah God, and his location was in heaven. Jehovah indicated that He was the One to bestow the kingly power upon the rightful descendant of King David, when he said to King Zedekiah of Jerusalem, shortly before his dethronement in the year 607 B.C.E.:

⁹ “Remove the [royal] turban, and lift off the crown. This will not be the same. Put on high even what is low, and bring low even the high one. A ruin, a ruin, a ruin I shall make it. As for this also, it will certainly become no one’s until he comes who has the legal right, and I must give it to him.”​—Ezek. 21:26, 27.

10. Why was Jesus not assuming or presumptuous in imitating the nobleman and going on a long journey to get kingly power?

¹⁰ Jesus Christ was not assuming or presumptuous when he determined to imitate the nobleman of the parable and go on what would be a journey consuming a lot of time in order to secure kingship for himself. Just before he was conceived in the womb of his earthly mother Mary of the royal house of David, the angel Gabriel said concerning her son whom she was to call Jesus: “This one will be great and will be called Son of the Most High; and Jehovah God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule as king over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end of his kingdom.” (Luke 1:31-33) Now it required a divine miracle for this Son of the Most High to have his life transferred from heaven to earth. So, now, how was Jesus Christ to get back to heaven in order to secure the Davidic kingdom from his heavenly Father?

11, 12. (a) By what miracle was Jesus enabled to make the journey to the location for receiving the kingly power? (b) Why is such a resurrection of Jesus not our theory on the matter?

¹¹ The divine rule is unalterably laid down: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom.” (1 Cor. 15:50) Evidently, then, it would have to be by another miracle that Jesus Christ would take the journey back to heaven to the Supreme Authority who could bestow the Kingdom upon him. Obviously Jesus would have to lay aside his “flesh and blood.” This would require him to lay down his perfect human life innocently as a human sacrifice. But this sacrificial death would not put him in heaven. God would have to bring his sacrificed Son back to life again, but not as a Son of “flesh and blood” again. It would have to be as a spiritual Son with a spirit body, invisible to human eyes but visible to heavenly eyes. So this would require Almighty God Jehovah not only to perform the miracle of resurrecting his sacrificed Son but also to resurrect him as a spirit being, with the promised reward of immortality and incorruptibility. This is exactly what Jehovah did. This is not our theory, but the apostle Peter writes:

¹² “Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison.”​—1 Pet. 3:18, 19, Revised Standard Version of 1952.

13, 14. (a) At Jesus’ death as a man of “flesh and blood,” where did he come to be? (b) How do we know whether immediately after his resurrection Jesus started on his journey to the “distant land” of the parable or not?

¹³ Of course, at Jesus’ death as a man of “flesh and blood,” he did not go to the “distant land” of the parable, that is, to the heavenly presence of his Father. He was really dead, and his body was put in a tomb, so that, for parts of three days, Jesus was in what the Jews called Sheol and the Greeks called Haʹdes. On his resurrection as a spirit person on the third day, Jesus had with him the value or merit of his sacrificed human life, but he did not at once start on his journey to the “distant land.” On that same day he appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden of the tomb and said to her:

¹⁴ “Stop clinging to me. For I have not yet ascended to the Father. But be on your way to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17) For forty days he continued invisibly in the vicinity of the earth, at times materializing in human form and appearing to his disciples to prove to them that he was again alive, resurrected from the dead.​—Acts 1:1-5.

15, 16. (a) When did the resurrected Jesus start on the journey to that “distant land,” and before what witnesses? (b) By when must he have reached that “distant land,” and how does Peter verify this?

¹⁵ When the resurrected Jesus Christ did ascend to his heavenly Father would be the time that he started traveling to the “distant land.” This was on the fortieth day from his resurrection from the dead. As a number of disciples on the Mount of Olives saw the materialized body in which Jesus had appeared ascending into the sky and disappearing, two angels stood by them and said: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus who was received up from you into the sky will come thus in the same manner as you have beheld him going into the sky.” (Acts 1:11) How long it took Jesus Christ in the spirit realm to reach the “distant land” of the parable, we do not know, but it was within ten days, or before the festival day of Pentecost of that year of 33 C.E. On that day the holy spirit was poured out upon Christ’s disciples in Jerusalem, and the apostle Peter spoke under inspiration and said to thousands of listening Jews:

¹⁶ “Actually David did not ascend to the heavens, but he himself says, ‘Jehovah said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.”’ Therefore let all the house of Israel know for a certainty that God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you impaled.”​—Acts 2:34-36.

“DO BUSINESS TILL I COME”

17. How does Jesus’ parable indicate what his disciples were to do on earth during his long absence?

¹⁷ So Jesus Christ was to come again​—but this time with “kingly power.” The parable that Jesus gave because his disciples “were imagining that the kingdom of God was going to display itself instantly,” indicated that Jesus Christ, like the “man of noble birth,” would be absent a long time. (Luke 19:11, 12) Well, then, what were his disciples to do in the meantime, while waiting for his return with “kingly power”? Jesus did not leave them without instructions specifically as to what they were to do. Jesus’ parable illustrated that he would do this. We read with respect to the departing nobleman: “Calling ten slaves of his he gave them ten minas and told them, ‘Do business till I come.’”​—Luke 19:13.

18. (a) What value do various Bible translations and Aid to Bible Understanding attach to the ten silver minas? (b) What were the slaves to do with the silver minas?

¹⁸ An American Translation attaches a money value to the ancient mina and translates this verse: “And he called in ten of his slaves and gave them each twenty dollars and told them to trade with it while he was gone.” Moffatt’s Bible translation attaches a British valuation to the mina and reads: “He first called his ten servants, giving them each a five-pound note, and telling them, ‘Trade with this till I come back.’” The New English Bible of the year 1970 values the mina at just a “pound.” The New American Bible is indefinite and says that the man of noble birth gave his servants “sums of ten units.” The 1971 publication entitled “Aid to Bible Understanding” reckons the silver mina of the first century C.E. at $14.094. This was a lot of money in Jesus’ day, it being equivalent to 100 drachmas, although it was worth only one sixtieth of a silver talent amounting to $845.64. Whatever the value of the silver mina would be today, the ten slaves of the man of noble birth were to do business with the silver minas by trading operations and thereby gain wealth for the prospective king.

19. Whom did the “ten slaves” picture, and what did the “ten minas” picture?

¹⁹ The ten slaves of Jesus’ parable pictured the disciples of the Lord Jesus. After his resurrection from the dead, what did he leave in trust with his disciples before he ascended into heaven ten days before the festival day of Pentecost of 33 C.E.? At his death on the stake at Calvary, Jesus had been stripped of absolutely every material thing on earth of any value. At his resurrection from the dead on the third day, even the burial bandages and headcloth were left behind in the tomb. (John 20:6, 7) What, then, did Jesus possess to entrust to his disciples before ascending to the heavenly “distant land”? It was something that, like the ten silver minas, had a value that could serve as a base or asset for making a valuable increase for the prospective King, the Messiah. As it was not something material, it was something intangible and yet it was there, it existed. What? The field of interest that Jesus had cultivated respecting God’s Messianic kingdom by his public ministry of about three and a half years in Israel.

20. (a) So what valuable quality had been imparted to the field of activity that Jesus’ disciples could turn to profit as if doing business with ten minas? (b) How did one slave and Jesus himself indicate such a useful valuableness imparted to a field of activity?

²⁰ Yes, those ten symbolic “minas” of silver represented the effects that Jesus’ intensive teaching and preaching had produced in the Jewish or Israelite world so that Jehovah’s chosen people were inclined toward accepting Jesus as the promised Messiah. Thus there was the prepared field for Jesus’ disciples where they could operate, to build up and encourage along to maturity in Jews the readiness to believe or to be persuaded that Jesus was Jehovah’s Anointed One because of what Jesus taught and did in fulfillment of Bible prophecy. It was a field that Jesus’ disciples could make very productive by occupying themselves with what Jesus told them to do. In the parable one of the ten slaves likened it to a field or farmland when this slave said to the returned king: “You reap what you did not sow.” (Luke 19:21) Jesus also illustrated it earlier when he said to his disciples while in Samaria: “The saying is true, One is the sower and another the reaper. I dispatched you to reap what you have spent no labor on. Others have labored, and you have entered into the benefit of their labor.”​—John 4:37, 38.

21. (a) What was it that Jesus wanted more of? (b) If the Jewish field would not prove productive enough, what were the disciples to do?

²¹ Thus Jesus’ disciples had something useful, something valuable, something adaptable, effective, with which to begin working or ‘doing business’ and gain increase. It was not more silver or gold that Jesus desired to gain through his disciple-slaves. What he wanted more of was disciples who followed in his footsteps and were in favor of him as the Messianic King. And if the already cultivated Jewish field would not produce them all, especially the 144,000 heirs of the Kingdom with Jesus, then the disciples could enlarge the field of their activities into the Gentile or non-Jewish realm. In this manner they would increase the cultivated field that would produce five or ten times more the area under cultivation to produce adherents to Christ’s kingdom.

22. The “slaves” in being ten in number picture whom, in the complete fulfillment of the parable?

²² The “ten slaves of his” in Jesus’ parable did not find their complete fulfillment in the apostles and disciples of the first century of our Common Era. Appropriately, the number of “slaves” was set at “ten,” inasmuch as ten is used in Bible illustrations to stand for allness or completeness, particularly with respect to earthly things. Thus, the “ten slaves” of the parable would nicely picture all the spirit-begotten, anointed slaves of Jesus Christ who are prospective heirs with him in the heavenly kingdom and who have been produced all down through these past nineteen centuries until Christ’s coming into kingly power at the close of the Gentile Times in the year 1914 C.E. and till now. This must be the case, because the apostles and other disciples of the first century C.E. have not survived in the flesh down till Christ’s invisible return with Kingdom power in this twentieth century.

23. (a) The parable’s culminating features find their counterparts with Christ’s disciples of what period? (b) In view of the impending slaughter of the King’s enemies, what is it in our interest to do as regards the parable?

²³ Consequently, the final culminating features of Jesus’ parable of the “ten slaves” with ten minas must find their counterparts with the baptized, spirit-begotten, anointed disciples of Jesus Christ alive on earth during this twentieth century. Investigation reveals that there is a remnant of around ten thousand yet on earth, who are ‘doing business’ with the ten symbolic minas for increasing the wealth of earth’s new King. These ten thousand are indeed but a small remaining number when we compare them with the full number of 144,000 disciples who are to be united with Jesus Christ in reigning with him for a thousand years to God’s glory and the everlasting blessing of all mankind. How all these figurative ten slaves have done business or traded with the “ten minas” of the prospective King provides an interesting story. In view of the impending slaughter of all the enemies of earth’s rightful Messianic King, it will be to our interest to follow the story through to the finish and see what proper part we can play in the modern fulfillment of Jesus’ parable.

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In Jesus’ parable the departing nobleman gave each of ten slaves a mina, telling them: “Do business till I come.” The ten slaves pictured Jesus’ disciples

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After Jesus’ resurrection he gave out the symbolic minas, as noted at Matthew 28:18-20

Spared from Slaughter with the King’s Enemies

1. Our rejecting of earth’s new King now can mean what consequences, according to what warning example of long ago?

LIVING as we do in the “time of the end” of the present “system of things,” it can mean the most serious consequences for us if we reject earth’s new King. (Dan. 12:4; Matt. 24:3) Nineteen hundred years ago the consequences were very serious for the Israelites who were living in the end of the Jewish system of things that revolved around Jerusalem and its temple. (Heb. 9:26) That was a warning example for us today. This warning is emphasized for us in Jesus’ parable of the man of noble birth who entrusted ten silver minas to ten of his slaves.

2. When did Jesus as the prospective King depart, and who were his fellow “citizens” who were to send a delegation after him to oppose his kingship?

² In the parable Jesus goes on to say: “But his citizens hated him and sent out a body of ambassadors after him, to say, ‘We do not want this man to become king over us.’” (Luke 19:14) It was after his resurrection from the dead that Jesus as the one anointed with God’s holy spirit to become the Messianic King ascended from earth to heaven, just ten days before the festival day of Pentecost of 33 C.E. According to Jesus’ fleshly nationality, “his citizens” were the Israelites or Jews. In line with this fact, it is written: “When the full limit of the time arrived, God sent forth his Son, who came to be out of a woman and who came to be under law, that he might release by purchase those under law, that we, in turn, might receive the adoption as sons.” (Gal. 4:4, 5) “He came to his own home, but his own people did not take him in.” (John 1:11) Well, now, after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, how did his Jewish fellow citizens send a delegation or deputation after him to voice their objections to Jesus’ exercising royal power over them?

3. Since his fellow “citizens” were of flesh and blood, how could they send a delegation “after him” to object to his kingship?

³ Being of flesh and blood, no body of Jewish ambassadors could go to heaven and appear in God’s holy presence and tell him not to give the Messianic kingship to his resurrected Son Jesus. But they did not have to do this. They served notice on God just as effectively. How? It was from the festival day of Pentecost forward, for then the Christian disciples who had been keeping “underground” came out into the open. It was then that the apostle Peter, acting as the spokesman for about 120 disciples, said to more than three thousand assembled Jews in Jerusalem: “Let all the house of Israel know for a certainty that God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you impaled.” (Acts 2:36) But did the religious authorities in Jerusalem agree with that announcement of Jesus as the Messiah? Not so, if their opposition and persecution of Jesus’ disciples thereafter are any indication. So by their official objection to the witness given by the disciples that Jesus was God’s promised Messiah, they were serving notice upon God in heaven that they did not want his resurrected Son as their Messianic King.​—Acts 5:34-39.

4. (a) By rejecting Jesus as the Messianic king, to what did the Jewish “citizens” expose themselves? (b) To what outcome did this lead such “citizens” later, but how did the Christianized Jews fare?

⁴ Jesus’ fellow citizens had their own ideas about who should become their king in the role of Messiah. They thus exposed themselves to being deceived by false Messiahs, false Christs. It was under false Messianic ideals that the nationalistic Jews revolted in the year 66 C.E. against having Caesar any longer as their king. (John 19:15) The few years of independence that they gained from the Roman Empire ended in the reducing of Jerusalem and its temple to ruins in the year 70 C.E. The thousands of Christianized Jews were thankful that they had not been deceived into joining the Jewish Messianic revolt, and they continued on ‘doing business’ with the figurative silver minas given to them by Jesus Christ before he departed to the heavenly “distant land.” They did not lose anything spiritually by the horrible destruction of Jerusalem and by the cruel dispersion of the unbelieving Jews.

DOING BUSINESS WITH THE KING’S VALUABLES

5. When, in the parable, the returned nobleman took account with his slaves, what did the first one to present himself have to say?

⁵ In Jesus’ parable, it is only after the “man of noble birth” got back from his long journey abroad, that we learn what his ten slaves did with the silver minas committed to them. We read: “Eventually when he got back after having secured the kingly power [or, the kingdom], he commanded to be called to him these slaves to whom he had given the silver money, in order to ascertain what they had gained by business activity. Then the first one presented himself, saying, ‘Lord, your mina gained ten minas.’” (Luke 19:15, 16) According to An American Translation this slave said: “Your twenty dollars has made two hundred, sir!” According to Moffatt’s translation, he said: “Your five pounds has made other fifty, sir.” He gained ten times as much as he had been given.

6. (a) What did this first slave picture? (b) How was business down with the Lord’s silver “mina” from Pentecost onward?

⁶ Since the “ten slaves” of the parable pictured all the spirit-begotten anointed disciples of Jesus Christ from Pentecost of the year 33 C.E. down till now, this first slave pictured a class or group of such Christian disciples. Doubtless, the twelve faithful apostles and the apostle Paul belonged to this class. Being apostles or “sent-forth ones,” they certainly widened out the field under cultivation that their Lord Jesus Christ had left as something valuable and productive with which to start working or doing business. How they did business with the symbolic silver mina the book of Acts of Apostles shows. From the festival day of Pentecost forward we read of “the teaching of the apostles” to which the Christian believers devoted themselves, and that “many portents and signs began to occur through the apostles,” and that “at the same time Jehovah continued to join to them daily those being saved.”​—Acts 2:42, 43, 47.

7. Under persecution, what did the apostles do, as, for example, after their experience with the Jerusalem Sanhedrin?

⁷ The apostles kept up their work of preaching and teaching, in spite of being unjustly punished for doing so. For example, this is what happened after the apostles had had their hearing before the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem: “They summoned the apostles, flogged them, and ordered them to stop speaking upon the basis of Jesus’ name, and let them go. These [the apostles], therefore, went their way from before the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy to be dishonored in behalf of his name. And every day in the temple and from house to house they continued without letup teaching and declaring the good news about the Christ, Jesus [or, Jesus the Messiah].”​—Acts 5:40-42, New World Translation; New English Bible; New American Bible; see also Moffatt.

8. Due to the apostles’ strict adherence to preaching and teaching, what happened with reference to the number of believers?

⁸ In strict adherence to their ministry, the twelve apostles told the Jerusalem congregation: “We shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:4) It is no wonder that thereafter we read: “Consequently the word of God went on growing [by the preaching and teaching], and the number of the disciples kept multiplying in Jerusalem very much; and a great crowd of priests began to be obedient to the faith.” The number of believers must now have risen above five thousand, for some time earlier we read: “Many of those who had listened to the speech believed, and the number of the men became about five thousand.”​—Acts 6:7; 4:4.

9, 10. (a) How was the field of cultivation widened out, according to Acts, chapters eight through ten? (b) What explanation does the apostle Paul give of how he did business with the symbolic silver mina?

⁹ Thereafter, from Jerusalem as a base of operations, the field of operations was extended to the circumcised Samaritans, and to a circumcised Ethiopian proselyte, and then, at God’s appointed time, to all the uncircumcised non-Jews or Gentiles. (Acts chapters 8-10) At the council of the Christian governing body in Jerusalem, the disciple James commented on the widening of the field of cultivation to embrace the Gentile world, saying: “Symeon [Peter] has related thoroughly how God for the first time turned his attention to the nations to take out of them a people for his name. And with this the words of the Prophets agree.” (Acts 15:14, 15) After that the apostle Paul went on his second missionary tour and penetrated into Europe. Concerning himself, Paul said: “Forasmuch as I am, in reality, an apostle to the nations, I glorify my ministry.” (Rom. 11:13) On the return journey of his third missionary tour, Paul explained how he did business with the symbolic silver mina that the Lord Jesus Christ had entrusted to him, saying to the elders of the congregation of Ephesus, Asia Minor:

¹⁰ “I did not hold back from telling you any of the things that were profitable nor from teaching you publicly and from house to house [or, in public or at your houses, AT, NE, Rotherham; in public or in private, NA]. But I thoroughly bore witness both to Jews and to Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus.”​—Acts 20:20, 21.

11. As a result of the Christian slaves doing business with the symbolic mina, how much of a witness had been given about ten years before Jerusalem’s destruction?

¹¹ So, then, did the apostles and their anointed fellow disciples back there in the first century increase the symbolic minas that the Lord Jesus Christ had committed to them as his Christian slaves? Yes, they did. We have here the written testimony of the apostle Paul, when he wrote his letter to the Colossians from his prison house in Rome about ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E., speaking about the spread of the good news: “That good news which has presented itself to you, even as it is bearing fruit and increasing in all the world . . . that good news which you heard, and which was preached in all creation that is under heaven.” (Col. 1:5, 6, 23) Thus, years before the end of the Jewish system of things that revolved around Jerusalem, a world witness had been accomplished.

TRADING WITH THE “MINAS” IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

12. (a) Why is credit not to be given to Christendom for the modern-day “increasing in all the world” on the part of “that good news”? (b) To whom is the credit to be given, and why?

¹² Today, after the passing of nineteen hundred years, can it also be said that the good news is “increasing in all the world” and that it has been “preached in all creation that is under heaven”? Yes, far more so than in the first century C.E. The credit for this is not to be assigned to Christendom now over sixteen centuries old. She and her hundreds of millions of church members are not proclaiming that the Lord Jesus Christ secured his “kingly power” at the close of the Gentile Times in 1914, the year of World War I. They are not proclaiming the good news that the Messianic kingdom in the hands of the Lord Jesus was born in the heavens when the Gentile Times ended in 1914 and that his heavenly kingdom has nothing to do with the League of Nations or the United Nations, which Christendom depends upon for maintaining world peace and security. Not to Christendom, but to the anointed remnant of Jehovah’s Christian witnesses is the credit to be given for the preaching creation-wide of the good news of such a Messianic kingdom as now established in the heavens since 1914 for ridding the whole earthly creation of all unrighteousness and for blessing mankind with a perfect, divine government.

13. (a) After the anointed remnant emerged from World War I, how numerous were the adherents to the newborn Kingdom, and why? (b) How did this remnant come into possession of symbolic “minas,” and how did they do business with them?

¹³ When that anointed remnant emerged from World War I and its persecutions in the year 1918, they were an object of hatred by all the nations and were under ill repute religiously. (Matt. 24:9) The cultivated field that remained to them for the producing of more adherents to the newborn Messianic kingdom of God was very small. They were like the apostles and fellow disciples of Christ between the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from disgraceful death and the festival day of Pentecost. So what occurred was like a new committal of the symbolic silver minas in the year 1919 to the anointed remnant of Jehovah’s Christian witnesses. In that year, 1919, came the first postwar general assembly of the anointed remnant, at Cedar Point, Ohio, and, with a renewal of the spirit of Jehovah God, the anointed remnant set itself anew to doing business or trading with the symbolic silver minas freshly received from the Lord Jesus Christ now clothed with kingly power. In their manner of doing business or trading with those “minas,” they imitated the apostolic example of the first century by preaching and teaching “this good news of the kingdom.”​—Matt. 24:14.

14, 15. (a) Who are now being called to account on how they handled the “minas”? (b) In the parable, what were the rewards for the slaves that gained wealth for their Lord?

¹⁴ Now the members of the anointed remnant are being called to account as to how they have handled the symbolic minas. They know that increase is expected of them by their Lord. What is the reward for increasing the number of symbolic minas? Jesus’ parable, after telling of the accounting rendered by the slave that gained ten minas more, goes on to answer this question:

¹⁵ “So he [the returned Lord] said to him, ‘Well done, good slave! Because in a very small matter you have proved yourself faithful, hold authority over ten cities.’ Now the second [slave] came, saying, ‘Your mina, Lord, made five minas.’ He said to this one also, ‘You, too, be in charge of five cities.’”​—Luke 19:17-19.

16. (a) The fact that the “man of noble birth” was able to give rulership over fifteen cities to but two slaves of the ten, indicates what? (b) As for the members of the remnant who now gain wealth for the returned Lord Jesus Christ, what about their getting rulership now on earth over cities?

¹⁶ The fact that the returned “man of noble birth” could appoint the good and faithful slaves who brought increase to rule over cities, the one slave over ten cities and the other over five, proves that he had secured the kingly power and was now exercising it. The nobleman’s being able to appoint slaves over fifteen cities, in the case of the first two, shows that his kingly power was quite extensive. Because they had proved faithful with a relatively small sum like a silver mina, they could be entrusted with larger responsibility, rulership over cities. In the present-day fulfillment of the parable, those of the anointed remnant who are increasing the valuables of the now-reigning Lord Jesus Christ have his approval and favor at present. They retain their hope of rulership with him in the heavenly kingdom. But at present, during their active service on earth, they are given no literal rulership over a number of earthly cities. Their Lord’s approval still does not authorize them to dabble in world politics and gain political rulership on earth. They must remain no part of this world down till death in order to reign with Christ above.

THE “WICKED SLAVE”

17. What question arises about one’s resenting being required to bring increase to the Lord, and what case of resentment does Jesus’ parable show?

¹⁷ Does any one of us resent and take offense at the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ, now vested with royal power, requires an increase on what he commits to his slaves? Whether we are excusable for feeling that way about it is shown in the case of the slave who differed from those who got busy with their minas. We read: “But a different one came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your mina, that I kept laid away in a cloth. You see, I was in fear of you, because you are a harsh man; you take up what you did not deposit and you reap what you did not sow.’”​—Luke 19:20, 21.

18. Why was this profitless slave not to be excused on the basis of conscience?

¹⁸ Was this different slave to be excused on the basis of conscience? No; for he was not asked to do a wrong thing, namely, put his Lord’s mina to use in making dishonest profit. Regardless of his view of his master, he was a mere slave and should have done the honest thing that his master asked him to do. If he was too lazy to work, he should have put the mina in the bank and let the bankers do the work for him. So he had a lame excuse.

19. According to what did the master answer this slave, and how?

¹⁹ His master answered and judged him according to his own excuse, for we read: “He said to him, ‘Out of your own mouth I judge you, wicked slave. You knew, did you, that I am a harsh man, taking up what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Hence, why is it you did not put my silver money in a bank? Then on my arrival I would have collected it with interest.’”​—Luke 19:22, 23.

20, 21. (a) Was the master’s calling the slave “wicked” an improper, harsh, inconsiderate thing? (b) What does the parable show as to whether the “wicked slave” deserved another opportunity?

²⁰ Calling this worthless slave “wicked” was not an improper, harsh, inconsiderate thing, for this slave who was afraid to work with his master’s valuable mina had deliberately caused his master a loss. Valuable time and money were involved, and the slave had not made use of them in loyalty to his master or with the desire for the prosperity and increase of his master’s belongings. The slave’s handing back merely what he had received a long time ago was no fit way for a slave to welcome home a king! How cheap! How disrespectful! How undignifying! How lacking in joy and enthusiasm over the newly established kingdom of his master! Here was an absolute failure to render any service whatsoever to his master when he had the time and means with which to do so. At the time of settling accounts, did he deserve further opportunity? Notice:

²¹ “With that he [the master] said to those standing by, ‘Take the mina from him and give it to him that has the ten minas.’ But they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten minas!’​—‘I say to you, To everyone that has, more will be given; but from the one that does not have, even what he has will be taken away. Moreover, these enemies of mine that did not want me to become king over them bring here and slaughter them before me.’”​—Luke 19:24-27.

22. (a) Thus what royal opportunity did that profitless slave lose? (b) On whose side did that slave really put himself, and how did his master’s words make it look bad for that slave?

²² The taking of the mina away from the profitless slave meant that he lost his opportunity to prove himself worthy to “hold authority over ten cities” or to “be in charge of five cities” and thus to share in the kingdom of his now royal master. (Luke 19:17, 19) He could not be trusted with any Kingdom responsibilities. Although he had a negative attitude toward his master’s kingdom, he put himself on the side of those of a positive attitude against having this man rule as king over them. Whether he was slaughtered with the master’s enemies who did not want him to become king over them, the parable does not state or show. But the parable does show that right after the master says that a slave who has no zeal and interest toward his master’s kingdom will have what opportunity he has taken away from him, the master tells his royal subjects to slaughter his enemies before him.

23. (a) For what misdeeds was that slave not branded as “wicked”? (b) In the light of that slave’s failure, what are the baptized, anointed “slaves” of Christ under obligation to do since the end of the Gentile Times in 1914?

²³ It is to be noted that this profitless slave was not branded as being “wicked” for abusing his fellow slaves or for having committed immorality such as fornication, adultery or homosexuality. No, but he was judged as being wicked for his lack of support of his master’s Kingdom prospects, his not working for the increase of the wealth of his master’s kingdom. In not being for his master as king, he was against him. (Matt. 12:30; Luke 11:23) So, too, since the end of the Gentile Times in 1914, it is a serious thing for the baptized, anointed “slaves” of the now-reigning King Jesus Christ to neglect their duty to increase the public knowledge, support and loyal adherence with respect to his kingdom. They are held accountable to “do business” with the symbolic minas that have been entrusted to them for use till he holds account with them.

24. (a) What privilege do these Christian “slaves” not want to be transferred to someone else? (b) For them to lose the royal reward would mean to lose what?

²⁴ They should not want their privileges with regard to Christ’s kingdom to be removed from them and given to a zealous Kingdom preacher and teacher like the slave who gained ten minas. For them to have the symbolic mina taken away from them would mean for them to miss out on gaining a place in the heavenly Kingdom, to rule, as it were, over “ten cities” or “five cities.” For them to lose that would mean to lose all. It would mean their destruction with the direct enemies of God’s Messianic government who do not want Jesus Christ to exercise kingly power over them for a thousand years. (Rev. 20:4, 6) The time for the holy angels that accompany Jesus Christ at his coming to execute divine vengeance upon all opposers and nonsupporters of the Messianic kingdom is getting closer. It will begin before the battle of Har–Magedon.

25. (a) Why will the execution of divine vengeance begin before the battle of Har–Mageddon? (b) What will it then mean for us if, as professed Christians, we are found like that “wicked slave”?

²⁵ It will begin with the destruction of religious Babylon the Great at the outbreak of the “great tribulation” pictured by the siege and destruction of Jerusalem back there in 70 C.E. (Rev. 17:1-16; Matt. 24:15-22) Woe betide us then if we belong to that class of professed Christians pictured by the “wicked slave” who saved his mina in a cloth only to lose it eventually! It will signify everlasting destruction for us in the “great tribulation” along with the King’s “enemies.”

26. What two classes will be spared from slaughter with the King’s enemies? And why?

²⁶ The anointed Christian “slaves” who bring spiritual gain to their heavenly Master, the King Jesus Christ, will be spared from slaughter with the King’s enemies. So also will be the “great crowd” who respond to the business activities of the faithful, profitable “slaves” and who loyally take their stand before the throne of Jehovah God and of his Lamb Jesus Christ and who enthusiastically cry out for all to hear: “Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”​—Rev. 7:9, 10, 14, 15, NE.

Declaration and Resolution

1. Who were assembled in international assembly, and in whose name did they make a declaration and resolution?

WE, a body of advocates of the best possible government for all the human family, being gathered together this Saturday, the ‐‐‐‐ (date) day of ‐‐‐‐ (month) of the year 197‐‐ at the “Divine Victory” International Assembly of the Christian witnesses of Jehovah that is being held in ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ (city), ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ (country), make the following public declaration and resolve in the name of the one and only Source of all righteous government, the Sovereign Lord of the universe:

2. What has study of the Holy Scriptures shown as to the start of humanity’s present distress, and what about any deadness of the Universal Sovereign to mankind’s affairs?

² As fellow human creatures we are deeply moved in our hearts at the continuing and increasing distress of all humanity since World War I broke out in the year 1914. We who are living during the generation that knew, felt and survived that first world conflict have sought for an explanation of humanity’s distress in the inspired written Word from the Source of all perfect government, that is to say, the Sacred Scriptures or Holy Bible. From its pages as illuminated by the light of modern events we have learned that the worldwide distress and anguish of nations did not begin back there in 1914 merely by accident, without intelligent purpose, without occurring at a foreordained, due time. Rather, this unparalleled distress of humanity started at the precise time marked by the Greatest Timekeeper of all, the Universal Sovereign, the Creator of the time-observing sun, moon and stars. He is not dead toward human affairs, but the interests of all humanity are of keen concern to Him. He is fully alive to humanity’s needs.

3. Timewise, what did the year 1914 mark, and is God responsible for the human distress since then, or who is?

³ Historians of the world refer to 1914 as the year marking the end of an epoch. The One who from time to time has made himself felt in human history, namely, man’s Creator, marked that same year as the one for the ending of the “appointed times of the nations,” the so-called Gentile Times. The ending of these Gentile Times was long awaited, for in the year 33 C.E., more than nineteen hundred years ago, God’s own Son Jesus Christ spoke of those Gentile Times and prophesied concerning the fulfillment of them. (Luke 21:24) He prophesied of what his heavenly Father, Jehovah God, would do at the end of those Gentile Times. What men and nations on earth did at that important date was their own responsibility. He did not force them to take the action that they then took, and so he is absolved from all responsibility for humanity’s distress that has dragged on till this day.

4. Upon what city did the Gentile Times begin, and upon what “city” do they come to their fulfillment, and why?

⁴ In recent centuries, since the printing and distribution of the Holy Bible world wide in many language translations, Bible students have formed ideas as to what the Most High God would do at the end of the Gentile Times. Their attention has focused on Jerusalem of the Middle East, under Turkish control for centuries, then passing under British control in 1917, and now being under Israeli control. Measuring the Gentile Times according to their count of time, those Bible students have expected the wrong thing to take place at the end of the Gentile Times. They fail to take note that God’s interest has shifted from earthly Jerusalem of the days of Jesus Christ and his apostles to the “heavenly Jerusalem,” which is the city that the Holy Bible now calls the “city of the living God.” (Heb. 12:22) The 2,520 years of the Gentile Times began in the year 607 B.C.E., with the desolation of the earthly Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon. Those Gentile Times, therefore, did not come to their complete fulfillment on the earthly Jerusalem of Jesus’ day. They did come to their complete fulfillment upon the “heavenly Jerusalem,” an indestructible seat of government.

5. Since the desolation of Jerusalem and Judah in 607 B.C.E., what royal right has been trampled on, and why did Jesus, when on earth, not establish a kingdom at Jerusalem?

⁵ At the end of the Gentile Times the reverse is to be expected of what took place at their beginning in 607 B.C.E. The desolating of Jerusalem and Judea at that time is not the vital thing. No, but it was the overturning of God’s Messianic kingdom that had been established at Jerusalem in the hands of the royal family of David of Bethlehem. From that overthrow onward the right of the royal family of King David to have a government over the earth has been trampled on by successive Gentile world powers, namely, the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, the Roman, and the Anglo-American. During all those Gentile Times Jehovah God did not interfere in human affairs by reestablishing the Messianic kingdom at rebuilt Jerusalem on earth. That explains why his Son Jesus Christ did not overturn the Roman Empire and establish an earthly kingdom of David’s royal family in earthly Jerusalem. Instead, he predicted the continuance of the Gentile Times until God’s time for their end. Instead of seating himself on David’s throne at Jerusalem, he died innocently as King David’s royal Heir, on the third day he was resurrected from his martyr’s death, and he ascended thereafter to heaven to be seated at the right hand of his heavenly Father’s throne.​—Acts 2:32-36.

6. Where and when did reestablishment of the Messianic kingdom take place, and was this what touched off World War I?

⁶ Up there God’s Son Jesus the Messiah continued waiting till the end of the Gentile Times. (Heb. 10:12, 13) Likewise, Jehovah God restrained himself till then. But in 1914, or 2,520 years from the desolating of Jerusalem and Judah by the Babylonians, the Supreme Ruler of the universe took due action. He reestablished the Messianic kingdom of David, this time in the hands of David’s heavenly Heir, Jesus Christ. The Gentile nations on earth could not interfere with this. No longer could they trample upon the right of King David’s family to Kingdom power. The “appointed times of the [Gentile] nations” had ended. From then on, David’s Permanent Heir, Jesus the Messiah, reigns in the “heavenly Jerusalem.” (Rev. 12:1-11) That heavenly birth of the Messianic kingdom did not touch off World War I on earth. Already, before the Gentile Times ended in 1914, the Gentile nations had gone to war​—two months beforehand. They started their own war on a global scale, for world domination. They recognized no end of the Gentile Times.

7. Under whose superhuman influence did the Gentile nations then act and have they acted since?

⁷ Under whose influence did the Gentile nations then act and have they acted since? Certainly not under the superhuman influence of Jehovah God, nor was this God on any side in World War I, for they were all warring for world domination by man, not for world domination by the “heavenly Jerusalem” and its new King, Jesus the Messiah. Logically, then, the Gentile nations were acting under the influence of the enemy of Jehovah God and his Messiah Jesus. Who is that superhuman Chief Enemy of Jehovah God? It is the one whom Jesus Christ called “the ruler of this world,” and whom the Christian apostle Paul called “the god of this system of things.” He is Satan the Devil.​—John 12:31; 14:30; 2 Cor. 4:4; Rev. 12:7-13.

8. Who are the chief figures involved in this controversy over world domination, and what question can we not escape facing with respect to this controversy?

⁸ Not carrying on their political affairs on God’s side by handing over their earthly sovereignty to God’s kingdom of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Gentile nations can locate their own selves only on one other side, the side of God’s Chief Adversary, Satan the Devil. The controversy over world domination since the year 1914 involves more than mere nations of mankind. It involves chiefly the Most High God Jehovah and Satan the Devil. Who will win out of these two chief contestants? is the question. Who will gain the victory? There can be no uncertainty about the outcome. The Holy Bible, God’s infallible Word, confidently declares that the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah, will gain the divine victory. (Rev. 16:16; 19:11 through 20:3) The question that no one of us can now escape facing is, With whom do I want to be, the Loser or the Winner?

9. For what reason will people continue to feel the “anguish of nations” and fail to find the way out of it?

⁹ Nothing could be plainer than that no one on the side of God’s enemies and opposers could have His divine blessing. This explains why, since 1914, humanity has lived through an “age of violence” and has felt nothing but the “anguish of nations,” just as Jesus Christ foretold. (Luke 21:25, 26) As long as men fail to take the side of Jehovah God and his Messiah in this universal controversy, they will never find the way out of their perplexity and fearful “expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth.”

10. Why does all mankind now stand in great peril, and who only may hope to enjoy blessings after the Divine Victory?

¹⁰ Just as “great tribulation” lay ahead of the nation that refused to accept God’s Son Jesus as the Messiah in the year 33 C.E., so a “great tribulation,” without equal in human history, lies ahead of already distressed humanity. Jesus Christ on earth gave due warning of it nineteen centuries ago, and foretold the world events that would precede it. (Matt. 24:3-22; Rev. 6:1 through 7:14) All the world of mankind now stands in peril. It needs to have the warning further sounded to it without interruption. Survival of the impending “great tribulation” can be hoped for by only those who heed his inspired warning. Only those who now align themselves on the side of the Divine Victor may hope to enjoy the blessings that will follow the Divine Victory.

11. What did Jehovah’s Christian witnesses resolve to sound out further, and to whom?

¹¹ THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we, as Jehovah’s Christian witnesses, will continue to put our faith in the Divine Victory. We will continue without letup to sound the warning from God’s written Word to all lovers of righteous government who have been misled by God’s Chief Enemy, Satan the Devil, and who therefore have put their trust in man-made systems of rulership, much to their sorrow and distress. We will continue to proclaim God’s Messianic kingdom of a thousand years as the panacea​—the cure-all, for distressed humanity.

12. (a) What methods of education and what means of spreading good news did they resolve to use? (b) They resolved to press on in telling mankind about what blessings and joys of God’s Messianic kingdom?

¹² Following the apostolic pattern, we will publicly preach from house to house and privately teach in the homes of interested persons by means of weekly Bible studies. We will use the printed page as well as word of mouth, yes, all the God-approved means of spreading the good news abroad. Faithfully we will press onward in telling imperiled mankind about the blessings and joys of God’s Messianic kingdom​—about uncorruptible, righteous government, about restoration of mankind to perfect health in their physical bodies, about resurrection of all the ransomed dead resulting in reunion of loved friends and relatives, about lasting peace and the satisfying of mankind’s every need in a Paradise reestablished on a cleansed earth, about freedom from fear, insecurity and misrule by Satan the Devil and his earthly agencies, about brotherly love among the whole human family, and about the one true religion, the pure worship of God our Creator through Jesus Christ his Son. Yes, we will continue telling of the victory that God Almighty will gain over mankind’s dreaded enemy, Death, and how he will bless all his obedient loyal subjects with everlasting life in blessed relationship with Him as their heavenly Father.

13. In view of the time, what commandment did they resolve to carry out to the end, and on what aid would they rely to fulfill this resolve?

¹³ Seeing now more clearly than ever before that God’s kingdom of a thousand years has approached and that the time gets shorter and shorter for distressed humanity to take advantage of the good news of salvation, we will display both loyal love for God and love for our fellowman. In this course we will obey God rather than man and will not slack our hand in carrying out his command through Christ to ‘preach this good news of the Kingdom in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations,’ before the end of this doomed system of things comes. (Matt. 24:14; Mark 13:10) On God we rely to aid us to fulfill this resolve. And may He find us faithful to the end and count us worthy to share the joys and blessings resulting from his Divine Victory!

14. What was done with the foregoing Declaration and Resolution at the “Divine Victory” international assemblies, and what publication was released immediately thereafter, in what languages?

¹⁴ The foregoing Declaration and Resolution was submitted to the “Divine Victory” Assembly of Jehovah’s Christian witnesses after the programmed speech was given that combined the material of the two preceding Watchtower articles on “Gaining Wealth for Earth’s New King” and “Spared from Slaughter with the King’s Enemies.” After the fervent, whole-souled adoption of this Declaration and Resolution by the assembly, the new publication, the 416-page hardbound book entitled “God’s Kingdom of a Thousand Years Has Approached” was released. In German-speaking lands, it was released also in the German language. This new Bible study aid, now available in English and German only, is proving to be a mighty, stimulating aid to those who attended the “Divine Victory” Assembly in faithfully carrying out the Declaration and Resolution that they unitedly adopted.

15. How many such assemblies had been held by the time of the date of this Watchtower issue, in how many lands, with what total attendance, and with what assemblies yet in view?

¹⁵ Down to the date of this issue of The Watchtower, 43 such “Divine Victory” Assemblies have been held in 20 lands with a total attendance of 1,447,235. Still more will follow until these assemblies have been held in all hemispheres of the earth, northern, southern, eastern and western, according to the good pleasure of Jehovah and to the praise of Him in His coming Divine Victory.

What Is the “First Resurrection”?

DO YOU believe in a resurrection? That is, that the dead will be brought back to life? The Bible says: “There is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Acts 24:15) Does such a thought seem farfetched to you?

Really, it should not seem strange. True, we all know that we are very complex in our physical and mental makeup. But actually our basic makeup is all represented in our body cells, particularly in the forty-six chromosomes in the nucleus of each cell. Additionally, our environment and experiences combine with our genetic inheritance to make us what we are. Why should it be viewed as too difficult, then, for the Creator to remake this pattern​—the exact chemical and structural arrangement of the cells, together with the memory pattern? It would be easier than it was to design the cells at the time of man’s creation, putting in the original “mechanism” and the potential to bring out individual traits and the ability to pass the genetic combinations on to children. This the Creator did at the start.​—Ps. 139:13-15; Gen. 5:3.

But what about the “soul”? Well, first of all we must recognize the Scriptural fact that every living creature has an organism or body, whether heavenly or earthly. (1 Cor. 15:40) There is therefore no such thing as a ‘disembodied spirit,’ such as spiritistic mediums talk about. The “soul” is the person, including both personality and organism. Throughout the Scriptures, all human attributes, mental, physical and spiritual, are shown as being manifested by the living soul, the living person. (Lev. 7:18, 20, 21; 23:30; Ps. 105:18) It is the functioning of the organism or body that expresses the personality. The dead body, without “spirit” or life force, or without the breath that sustains the life force, has no personality, no activity. (Gen. 7:22; Jas. 2:26; Eccl. 9:5, 10) It is therefore no longer a living soul. The soul has died, ceased to exist.​—Ezek. 18:4.

THE “SOUL” RESURRECTED

Consequently, for God to resurrect a person, what would he have to do? He would have to make a body having the same traits, restoring also the memory, which has provided the person with the characteristics he had acquired during his lifetime. The entire soul would thus be restored. The person would then be able to identify himself. Otherwise, he would be like an amnesia victim, unable to say who he is or what he had done in the past.

The psalmist wrote, addressing Jehovah: “Your eyes saw even the embryo of me, and in your book all its parts were down in writing, as regards the days when they were formed and there was not yet one among them.” (Ps. 139:16) If Jehovah is capable of seeing and having a record of the child’s traits as soon as conception and genetic combinations take place, why can he not have an accurate record by which to reconstruct one who has died?​—Compare Genesis 25:23; Romans 9:11-13.

What of a person’s body? We know that the atoms forming human bodies are merely building blocks. They have no personality. Need the resurrected body, then, be the same one, that is, be the same body preserved, or made up of the same atoms gathered back together? Obviously not. For example, a person may have died, and the atomic elements from his decayed body may have nourished a fruit tree growing near his grave. Other persons may have eaten the fruit. Therefore many persons’ bodies would now contain those atoms. Clearly, at the resurrection not all the bodies could have those same atoms back.

Some may object to this, saying that, in that case, the person would only be a “copy,” not the real person himself. He would be something like a videotape picture, merely a “recording” from God’s memory, they say. But they forget that, even now, the major portion of our bodies is constantly wearing out and being replaced. This is why we have to eat food. In seven years or so the individual’s organism is virtually a different body. He even has a different appearance. Yet do we not still count him as the same person? Certainly. When a mother sees a long-lost son, even if his appearance has changed and if he has acquired some new traits, his basic characteristics are the same, and the mother does not take long to recognize him. And she accepts him as her son.

We might further illustrate: A person dies. It may be that he was horribly mangled in an accident, or that his lungs, liver or other organs were partially destroyed by some disease. Obviously, he has to come back with a renewed or restored body if he is going to keep living after his resurrection. He is no mere “copy” but, rather, is the same person restored so that he can function as a “soul.” The body of Lazarus, for example, suffered considerable decomposition, for, as Lazarus’ sister Martha said to Jesus at the grave site: “Lord, by now he must smell, for it is four days.” (John 11:39) Yet, when resurrected by Jesus, he was, not a copy, but Lazarus, and was recognized as Lazarus by Jesus Christ, also by himself and his family.

RIGHT AND WRONG VIEWS OF THE “FIRST RESURRECTION”

What, though, is meant by the expression “first resurrection”? “First” can mean first in time and/​or first in quality. This resurrection, then, must stand apart as something special. Who receive such resurrection?

Briefly stated, the “first resurrection” applies to the first ones to come back to the fullness of life. Such fullness of life the persons resurrected by the early prophets, and later by Jesus Christ and the apostles, did not receive. They died again. This was because Jesus Christ had not yet come in Kingdom power to judge the people and to reward his faithful servants.

Consider now the Bible’s description of the “first resurrection” as given in a vision to the apostle John. John reports:

“I saw thrones, and there were those who sat down on them, and power of judging was given them. Yes, I saw the souls of those executed with the ax for the witness they bore to Jesus and for speaking about God, and those who had worshiped neither the wild beast nor its image and who had not received the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand. And they came to life and ruled as kings with the Christ for a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Happy and holy is anyone having part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no authority, but they will be priests of God and of the Christ, and will rule as kings with him for the thousand years.”​—Rev. 20:4-6.

Though “executed with the ax,” note that these were not seen as headless “souls” by John. Rather, they were persons equipped with mental abilities to judge. However, in order to occupy thrones in the heavens, they had to have, not human, but spirit bodies. With regard to their resurrection, the apostle Paul wrote: “It is sown [in death] a physical body, it is raised up a spiritual body.”​—1 Cor. 15:44.

But someone may ask, Is not this “first resurrection” the ‘spiritual rebirth’ that takes place as one of the first experiences in a Christian’s course? Is it not what the apostle Paul spoke of when he pointed out to the Colossian congregation that Christian circumcision was not literal, in the flesh? He wrote: “This is circumcision according to Christ. You have been buried with him, when you were baptised; and by baptism, too, you have been raised up with him through your belief in the power of God who raised him from the dead. You were dead, because you were sinners and had not been circumcised; he has brought you to life with him, he has forgiven us all our sins.”​—Col. 2:11-13, The Jerusalem Bible; compare Ephesians 2:1-6.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia (copyrighted 1967) takes this view, saying, under the title “Millenarianism”:

“. . . The ‘first resurrection’ symbolizes Baptism, . . . by which one shares in Christ’s Resurrection. . . . All the faithful, both those on earth and those in heaven, share in the 1,000 year reign of Jesus, a symbol for the entire life span of the Church considered in its glorious aspect from the Resurrection of Christ until the Last Judgment.”

Does this explanation fit the “first resurrection” that John refers to in Revelation 20:4-6​—the only place in the Bible where this expression is used? No, for John says, “they . . . ruled as kings with the Christ for a thousand years.” The “life span of the Church” has proved to be, not just one thousand years, but nearly two millenniums.

Furthermore, has any member of the true Christian congregation on earth thus far “reigned” as a king? Even Paul, an apostle, wrote to certain ambitious members of the congregation in Corinth: “You have begun ruling as kings WITHOUT us, have you? And I wish indeed that you had begun ruling as kings, that we also might rule with you as kings. For it seems to me that God has put us the apostles last on exhibition as men appointed to death, because we have become a theatrical spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men.” (1 Cor. 4:8, 9) To his missionary companion Timothy, he presented the matter of reigning as coming after the Christian’s physical death, saying: “Faithful is the saying: Certainly if we died together, we shall also live together; if we go on enduring, we shall also rule together as kings; if we deny, he also will deny us.”​—2 Tim. 2:11, 12.

Years later, when the apostle John was in exile in the isle of Patmos, he quoted the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ as saying to the congregation in Laodicea: “To the one that conquers I will grant to sit down with me on my throne, even as I conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.” (Rev. 3:21) All the reigning, therefore, was future, after the death of the faithful disciples of Christ, not from the day of their baptism.

Paul also said of two professed Christians, Hymenaeus and Philetus, that they had “deviated from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already occurred.” (2 Tim. 2:17, 18) So he did not count the Christian’s baptism as the time of his resurrection.

Accordingly, the “first resurrection” of Revelation 20:4-6 is a real, literal resurrection from a physical death, from Sheol, the common grave of mankind. The apostle Peter spoke of the heavenly inheritance, not as being possessed already, but as “reserved in the heavens” and as “a salvation ready to be revealed in the last period of time.” He also spoke of the “grand promises” of God, that Christians would “become sharers in divine nature.” (1 Pet. 1:4, 5; 2 Pet. 1:4) To gain “divine nature” they would have to put off human, physical nature, ‘corruption putting on incorruption.’ Certainly their physical bodies were not incorruptible nor immortal.​—1 Cor. 15:50, 52-54.

IMMUNE FROM THE “SECOND DEATH”

Another point in proof is seen in Revelation 20:6: “Happy and holy is anyone having part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no authority.” That second death is symbolized by the “fiery lake that burns with sulphur.” (Rev. 19:20; 20:14) Is this true of those who have merely been baptized in water and who have spiritually been made alive from death in trespasses and sins and who have been raised up together spiritually and been “seated . . . in the heavenly places in union with Christ Jesus”? (Eph. 2:1, 5, 6) No, it is still possible for them to prove unfaithful under test and to come under the penalty of the “second death,” total annihilation. That is why the apostle Paul warned baptized, anointed Christians: “Let him that thinks he is standing beware that he does not fall.” Also, Jesus counseled: “Prove yourself faithful even to death, and I will give you the crown of life.”​—1 Cor. 10:12; Rev. 2:10.

If baptized, anointed Christians having the heavenly hope had already enjoyed the “first resurrection” and had been beyond the power of the “second death,” it would have been useless for Paul to write as he did at Hebrews 6:4-8 and Heb 10:26-31. Here Paul warned that one who had become a partaker of holy spirit and who then fell away could not be renewed to repentance, because he impaled the Son of God afresh for himself and put Him to public shame. Such ones, he said, trampled upon the Son of God, disrespected the blood of the covenant and outraged the spirit of undeserved kindness. God would execute vengeance upon them.

Since “over these [experiencing the first resurrection] the second death has no authority,” we can appreciate why it is called the “first resurrection.” It is the same kind of resurrection that Jesus Christ experienced on the third day of his death, a resurrection to instantaneous fullness of life. Jesus Christ then became “the firstborn from the dead.” (Rev. 1:5; Col. 1:18) The “first resurrection” is not only first in time but also “first” in being the best resurrection that the dead could experience. It is a resurrection to incorruptible, immortal life as a spirit son of God in God’s own heavens.

This is a wonderful hope. The apostle John wrote fellow anointed ones: “Beloved ones, now we are children of God, but as yet it has not been made manifest what we shall be. We do know that whenever he is made manifest we shall be like him, because we shall see him just as he is.”​—1 John 3:2.

How can God have such confidence in these as to grant them immortality and incorruptibility​—yes, even to make them associate kings with Jesus Christ, ruling over mankind on earth, including those who come back from death in an earthly resurrection?a How many receive the “first resurrection” as heavenly heirs? How do they qualify? How long will they rule and for what purpose? These questions will be considered in following issues of The Watchtower.

[Footnotes]

Jehovah Brings ‘Sealing’ of His Chosen Ones to a Close

THE apostle Paul wrote to his spirit-begotten brothers: “The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children. If, then, we are children, we are also heirs: heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ, provided we suffer together that we may also be glorified together.”​—Rom. 8:16, 17.

How is this ‘bearing witness’ done? “Our spirit,” that is, the dominant attitude of these spirit-begotten Christians, is molded by God’s holy spirit so that they come to know what relationship with God they have. But it is not done in some altogether mysterious way. God’s Word, his dealing with the Christian congregation, the “food at the proper time” through the “faithful and discreet slave,” the enlightenment that our brothers help us to get and the clear view of God’s purposes along with the fulfillment of prophecy, all unite with the operation of God’s holy spirit, in this ‘bearing witness.’

THE FINAL ‘SEALING’

One of the Bible passages bearing on God’s activity toward his anointed ones on earth at this time is Revelation 7:1-8. There, the angels holding back the destructive winds of the “great tribulation” are told not to loose them until the 144,000 spiritual Israelites are “sealed” in their foreheads. (Matt. 24:21) What is this ‘sealing’? Some have understood it to mean that, during the spiritual “harvest,” which is “the conclusion of the system of things,” the selection of spiritual brothers of the Messiah Jesus will go on until the last year, day, hour and minute before the “four winds” begin to blow on the earth. Is this the correct understanding? No. Why not?​—Matt. 13:39, 40.

Well, the ‘sealing’ here referred to does not mean the initial sealing of the 144,000, as if all of these, particularly all those yet remaining on earth, had not yet been sealed. The apostle Paul shows that this initial sealing takes place at the time of selection of an individual for the heavenly inheritance. He says to his spiritual brothers: “By means of [Christ] also, after you believed, you were sealed with the promised holy spirit.”​—Eph. 1:13.

Some of the ‘remnant,’ therefore, were sealed in this initial sense before the angel was sent forth with the “seal of the living God.” The sealing that the angel does is a final sealing, a determination of the permanence of the initial sealing, so that “all [spiritual] Israel” is saved, the complete number of the 144,000 making the calling and choosing of themselves sure. (Rom. 11:26; 2 Pet. 1:10) Nearly all of these, if not all, were already sealed many years ago with the initial sealing. While it is true that some, before the sealing is permanent, may prove unfaithful and so others have to be sealed, there is no general ingathering of disciples being initially sealed at this late date. If those spiritual Israelites are to prove themselves true to God’s purpose for them, it is unlikely that God would initially seal new ones of this body of heavenly heirs at the ‘last minute.’

SELF-EXAMINATION

How can you personally examine yourself if this matter is a question in your mind?

First, you should examine your view of what it means to be sealed for the heavenly inheritance. Do you view being one of God’s anointed spiritual Israelites as giving special status in the Christian congregation, entitling you to greater respect than would be the case if you were one of the “great crowd” of those awaiting an earthly inheritance? Do you feel it will give you deeper knowledge? Do you believe you will receive special revelations or understanding of prophecies, and so forth? You may feel a keen desire to enjoy such things. Perhaps you are successful in placing Bible literature, in conducting Bible studies, in answering Bible questions, in giving Bible talks. You may be full of zeal, making rapid progress, living an exemplary theocratic life. Perhaps all of this is so. Yet these would not be the things on which one should build the idea that one is qualified for the heavenly Kingdom assignment. Why not? Because both anointed spiritual Israelites and “other sheep” have God’s favor, and both must live lives in harmony with God’s will.

Samson and many other persons in pre-Pentecostal days were filled with zeal and understanding. God’s spirit was upon them and, as a result, they were able to accomplish many supernatural feats. Yet none of such “so great a cloud” of faithful ones were of the heavenly class.​—Judg. 14:6, 19; 15:14; compare Exodus 35:30, 31; 1 Samuel 10:6; 16:13; Ezekiel 2:2; Hebrews 11:32-38; 12:1.

Then you might review your background and characteristics. Are you taking an emotional approach to the question? One who was in a false religion that held out heaven as the only hope​—particularly one of the more emotional “fundamentalist” religions—​may be swayed by emotion and past views. Have you, before coming to a knowledge of the truth, used narcotics or psychedelic drugs? Have you been on medication that affects the mind and emotions? Have you had to undergo psychiatric treatment for emotional or mental disturbances? While these things would not necessarily rule out the receiving of the heavenly call, in the case of a repentant, converted, baptized disciple they are factors that should be seriously considered.

Some have said that they undergo great inward disturbances, a few even saying that their receiving of the heavenly hope created within them a ‘real fight.’ Some have said that they first fought against it. Others, that for a while they lost all hope​—that God had taken away their erstwhile earthly hope for a while and then finally had given them the heavenly hope. Such a procedure would be contrary to God’s way of dealing, for one cannot serve God pleasingly without hope of reward. (Heb. 11:6) There is no uncertainty about this. Faith is not uncertain, but confident, convinced.

AN ILLUSTRATION

A simple illustration may help: Biologists say that what determines the sex of a child is the microscopic difference of one of the forty-six chromosomes in the fertilized egg. This egg or ovum, fertilized by the male sperm cell, contains twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. One pair determines sex. This pair can be composed of two “x” chromosomes or of an “x” and a “y” chromosome (the “y” chromosome being shorter). If the cell contains two “x” chromosomes, the child is a girl; if an “x” and a “y” chromosome, the child is a boy. This very minute difference triggers, in the growth of the child, all the vast differences that result between the male and female.

Now, we know that no one has to tell a normal person whether he or she is a man or a woman. This difference, created and arranged by Jehovah, at first extremely small, results in the wide difference in makeup of the man and the woman. The man’s heart and mind tend toward masculine things, such as mechanics, construction, and so forth; while the woman loves to dwell on feminine desires, such as home, clothing, decoration and the like. Neither can fully explain to the other his or her exact thinking, reasoning and feeling about matters. It is of God.

Similarly with the spirit-begotten “little flock” and the “other sheep.” The apostle Peter says to his spirit-begotten brothers: “You have been given a new birth, not by corruptible, but by incorruptible reproductive seed, through the word of the living and enduring God.” (1 Pet. 1:23) If God can, by the difference of one microscopic chromosome, bring about an amazingly different way of thinking and desire, just as surely he can impart the heavenly hope, way of thinking, desire and goal or drive to those whom he selects according to his will. By his spirit and Word he can implant that “seed” that makes the individual a “new creation,” with corresponding heavenly hopes. (2 Cor. 5:17) Even in a human body God places the members according to what he sees the body needs.​—1 Cor. 12:18.

Consequently, those of the anointed Kingdom heirs are happy that they are chosen for so great a service and reward, just as a normal man is glad that he is a man and as a woman is glad that she is a woman. Each person is what God made him. The man or the woman does not have to be encouraged to ‘find his or her place’ among the sexes. It is God-ordained and cannot be changed, nor does the individual need anyone else to determine what he or she is.​—Rom. 9:16.

Accordingly, it is not necessary, or good, when studying or talking with persons new in knowledge of the Bible truth, to suggest they should personally try to decide or determine whether they are recipients of the heavenly ‘calling’ or have an earthly hope. If not called to the heavenly calling, they are obviously of the earthly class. If ever there is to be any change, this should be left to God to determine and to inform them in his due time.

At this time the dominant thrust of God’s message is, not for people to be members of Christ’s heavenly “bride.” Rather, the Bible says: “The spirit and the bride keep on saying: ‘Come!’” This invitation is now the call to people of the nations, to live in an earthly paradise through which “water of life” will freely flow, bringing forth trees producing symbolic fruitage and leafage “for the curing of the nations.”​—Rev. 22:1, 2, 17.

WHAT TRULY ANOINTED ONES WILL DO

What will those truly of the anointed spiritual Israelites now be doing? They will set themselves vigorously to caring for the Kingdom interests, ministering to the “other sheep.” It would not be caring for the present Kingdom interests for those of the anointed class to separate themselves to have regular sessions to ‘talk of their heavenly hope.’ That which they discuss should be the things that upbuild and make for peace and unity in all the congregation. This will help the “other sheep” and will help the anointed ones themselves equally. Thus both classes will make up “one flock.” (John 10:16) The spiritual “food at the proper time” is what is to be feasted upon by all alike. This food will nourish the inner hope of both the anointed sealed ones and the “other sheep.”​—Matt. 24:45-47.

This point about separation is mentioned because, in some instances, persons professing to be newly anointed have tended to isolate themselves, or to form a separate group. This works toward disunity and has actually brought about division in the congregation in a number of cases.​—Prov. 18:1.

Those who are called to the heavenly inheritance with Jesus Christ acknowledge, when asked about it, that they are indeed receivers of this calling. At the celebration of the Lord’s Evening Meal each year they demonstrate that they have this heavenly hope by partaking of the emblems served. But they do not constantly advertise this fact. They do not self-importantly call attention to it so as to keep everyone in the congregation continually aware of it. They do not expect preferential treatment. Rather, they are busy in the manner described by the apostle John: “Everyone who has this hope set upon him purifies himself just as that one is pure.”​—1 John 3:3.

At 2 Peter 1:5-11, this apostle points out how the spiritual brothers of Christ will be occupied, working to produce the fruits of the spirit “to make the calling and choosing of you sure for yourselves.” This requires “lowliness of mind and mildness, with long-suffering, putting up with one another in love, earnestly endeavoring to observe the oneness of the spirit in the uniting bond of peace.”​—Eph. 4:1-3.

As to elders and other members of the congregation, they should not try to determine the position of a recently baptized one who feels he or she has the heavenly calling. It is not for them to criticize such a one for the hope he claims to have. It is not something over which to argue. The requirements placed on an anointed one may be discussed to help the individual to get the clearest possible Scriptural picture. And the one professing to be of the anointed class should be appreciative of the attempts to assist him. But, after all is said and done, it is God who makes the selection and it is between the individual and God as to where he stands. Such persons should be treated as all others in the congregation should be, with love, understanding and cooperation as all ‘work together with God and Christ.’​—Col. 3:12-17; 2 Cor. 6:1.

At this late date in the outworking of Jehovah’s purposes toward the Christian congregation, it is clear that the emphasis is not on the general call of disciples to the heavenly inheritance. The primary thing now is to serve God whole-souled, giving attention to our Christian integrity and the work of gathering the “other sheep.” No one should let his personal feeling toward his own status or that of another create an issue in the congregation. It is essential in this strenuous “time of the end” for all to be united in love, which is the “perfect bond of union.”​—Col. 3:14.

The Seed Finally Germinated

NEAR Tokyo, Japan, three lotus seeds were recovered that experts determined had been buried in a canoe under a peat bog for 2,000 years. A lotus expert carefully prepared the seeds and placed them in water. Two of the ancient seeds germinated and developed into full-blown, beautiful lotus blossoms. Though they had been dormant for about two millenniums, under the right conditions the seeds could still germinate and develop.​—The Plants, page 94.

In his illustration of different types of soil, Jesus spoke of another kind of seed, saying: “The seed is the word of God.” (Luke 8:11) This type of seed also can lie dormant for some time and eventually germinate when conditions are right. This is well exemplified in a recent experience in the southern part of the United States. It involves a young woman who had her first experience with the real truth of God’s Word some years earlier.

At the age of thirteen the girl had become quite interested in politics. One day the girl asked the family maid for whom she was going to vote in the election. Being one of Jehovah’s witnesses, the maid told the girl that she did not vote in political elections due to what the Bible says about the position of Christians in the world. (John 17:16) The young girl had never heard of anything like that. So in the days and weeks afterward, she followed the maid around the house asking many questions about the Bible. The girl’s parents objected to this, though, and they fired the maid. But the seeds of truth had already been planted.

There was no congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses in the town where the family lived, and so for the next five years these seeds of truth lay dormant. Still she made a vow to herself that when the time came for her to leave home and go away to college, she would again get in contact with Jehovah’s witnesses. She says: “I could never dismiss from my mind the things that I had learned from the maid.”

When finally she did go away to attend a university, she came across a copy of The Watchtower containing the article “Which Comes First​—Your Church or Your God?” That moved her to write to the headquarters of the Watchtower Society. One of Jehovah’s witnesses was soon put in touch with her. Immediately she began attending their Christian meetings. She shared with her roommate what she was learning and she began to attend the meetings too. Both of them progressed nicely in their study of God’s Word.

During summer vacation the young woman returned home. She happily shared with her parents some of the good things she was learning from the Bible. Her parents were very disturbed and did not even want her to correspond with the Witnesses. Though she loved and respected her parents, she realized that she should not uproot the seeds of Bible truth that had been sown in her heart and that were now growing. Thus when she returned to school in the fall she again associated with the Christian witnesses and continued to share with her roommate and with other girls in the dormitory what she was learning. The young woman also began to make adjustments in her activities, as she was president of a woman’s Baptist organization, a Sunday School teacher, president of her dormitory and an officer in the student government at the university. She saw from the Bible that she should take steps to terminate her involvement in such activities, and she did so.

Also, she realized that another adjustment was in order; she needed to terminate her membership in her former church. A local clergyman she spoke with said he believed that the Genesis account of creation and other parts of the Bible could not be taken literally. Furthermore, he admitted that many of the things taught in the churches were of pagan origin. After repeated efforts on her part, the young woman was finally released from the church.

Continuing to progress in her study and application of God’s Word, she was baptized as a Christian witness of Jehovah. When home again on vacation she told her parents that she was happy to be with the family but that her conscience would not allow her to share in their religious activities at the church. Her parents made it plain that she was going to have to choose between her religion and them. Was the truth rooted in her heart so that she could endure?

She was scheduled to have a part in the Theocratic Ministry School in the congregation of Jehovah’s witnesses back in the university town. Her mother indicated that when her daughter went to give that talk, she could take absolutely nothing with her besides the clothes she was wearing. After she had arrived at the college town and handled her part at the congregation, she telephoned her parents to let them know that she had arrived safely. Her mother told her not to bother to come home.​—Matt. 10:32-38.

This young Christian is continuing to make advancement as she regularly serves Jehovah God. At a recent assembly of Jehovah’s witnesses she encountered the Witness who had been the family maid seven years earlier. It was a thrilling occasion for both of them, but especially for the Witness who had first planted the seeds of truth. She told the young woman: “I felt from the start that you would take your stand for Jehovah, because you displayed immediate love for God’s Word.”

Questions From Readers

● What is the view of Jehovah’s witnesses toward interracial marriage?​—France.

Jehovah’s witnesses at all times seek to reflect the Biblical view of matters. The Bible does not specifically discuss interracial marriage. It does, however, show how Jehovah God views humankind and it provides guiding principles for those considering marriage.

Superiority of race is nowhere taught or implied in the Bible. Jehovah God accepts as his approved servants people out of all races, without discrimination. The Bible tells us “[God] made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him.” (Acts 17:26, 27) “God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.”​—Acts 10:34, 35.

So, the Bible nowhere implies that racial differences in themselves have anything to do with the properness of marriage. Of the remarriage of widows, the apostle Paul wrote: “A wife is bound during all the time her husband is alive. But if her husband should fall asleep in death, she is free to be married to whom she wants, only in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 7:39) Thus the Christian is free to marry anyone who is Scripturally and legally free to do so, as long as that one is truly a fellow believer.

Are there any other factors, then, worth considering? Yes, for Christians seek to exercise good judgment and wisdom in all they do. Among other things, they are encouraged to “go on walking in wisdom toward those on the outside,” those outside the Christian congregation.​—Col. 4:5.

In many areas interracial marriages are becoming increasingly common. People are traveling more, and often find the ways and customs of people of other lands attractive. War, too, has played a part, and many European and North American soldiers have married Asiatic wives. There is, then, a somewhat broadened viewpoint on the part of many toward interracial marriage.

Nevertheless, not all persons share this broadened viewpoint, nor do all appreciate Bible standards. Many deep-seated prejudices remain in the world of mankind. A Christian, being realistic, must face life as it is​—not as he wishes it might be.

In a few places, there are even laws making interracial marriages illegal. When that is the case, Christians are under Scriptural obligation to obey them, as such laws do not make it impossible for them to worship God with “spirit and truth.” (John 4:24; Rom. 13:1) Of course, if a Christian would prefer to move to a locality where such laws are not enforced, he is certainly free to do so.

In other communities, local prejudices produce discrimination and unkind treatment toward those of certain races of mankind. These prejudices do not make interracial marriage wrong. For the discerning Christian, nonetheless, they may give cause for thought as to the advisability of such marriage. No matter what the racial backgrounds of the mates, marriage of itself requires much adjustment on the part of both persons to be successful and to bring happiness. Human imperfection causes all marriages to bring some measure of ‘tribulation in the flesh,’ as the apostle Paul wisely points out. (1 Cor. 7:28) In certain localities, where racial prejudices are strong, this could put added strain on the marital relationship and could be especially trying for any children resulting. So the Christian should give thoughtful consideration to the probable consequences before entertaining the prospect of interracial marriage.

Persons of different races may have very similar backgrounds, culturally, socially and as to education. Or their backgrounds may be very different. Sometimes the varied habits, attitudes and customs that go with different backgrounds seem to add interest to the marriage union. Yet widely differing backgrounds, even among marriage mates of the same race, can and sometimes do give rise to problems, making marital adjustment more difficult. In making his decision, the Christian should also rightly weigh these factors​—for the other person’s happiness as well as his own.

The Christian is under obligation to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom to others. (Matt. 24:14; 28:19, 20) As a factor, then, he may consider whether or not interracial marriage is likely to create a seriously adverse effect on the attitude of the people in his community toward this Kingdom-announcement work. The examples of Christ Jesus and his apostles show that they were willing to forgo things to which they had a right rather than severely hinder persons from being receptive to the truth of God’s Word.​—Rom. 15:3; 1 Cor. 10:32, 33.

However, after weighing all these factors thoughtfully, each Christian must make his own decision​—in good conscience and motivated by love for God and for his neighbor.

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