*** w79 11/1 pp. 18-19 pars. 6-15 Christian Neutrality as God’s War Approaches *** not in a covenant with Jehovah. She may claim to be in the new covenant that was mediated by the One who is greater than Moses, Jesus Christ, but the facts belie that claim. Hence, those of the Jeremiah class know full well that they have no commission from Jehovah God to dictate to the nations of Christendom or to take an active part in the politics of such nations. Their faithfully declaring Jehovah’s warning to Christendom as well as to the non-Christian nations is no taking part in worldly politics. They do not love “either the world or the things in the world,” but stay true to Jesus’ words: “They are no part of the world.” (John 17:14, 16; 1 John 2:15) In strict neutrality they abstain from political matters of all kinds. THE RELIGIOUS REACTION 7 The other priests and the so-called “prophets” haled Jeremiah before a judicial session of the princes and before the people at an entrance to the temple. They accused him of seditious talk. “To this man the judgment of death belongs,” they said, “because he has prophesied concerning this city just as you have heard with your own ears.” (Jer. 26:7-11) In closing his defense, Jeremiah said to the Jerusalem court: “Only you should by all means know that, if you are putting me to death, it is innocent blood that you are putting upon yourselves and upon this city and upon her inhabitants, for in truth Jehovah did send me to you to speak in your ears all these words.”—Jer. 26:12-15. 8 What a spirit of nationalism these seekers for Jeremiah’s blood exhibited! It should have swept the court off its feet, just as similar patriotic pleas in other courtrooms have recently done. The plea of Jehovah for their reformation was overlooked. Their guiltiness before Him they passed over, stilling their conscience. Similar have been the cases involving the anointed Jeremiah class of modern times. The religious leaders of Christendom have put forth the same demand for drastic action. They have taken the lead in the clamor for putting the Jeremiah class to death, thus to be freed from the pricks of their own bad consciences. 9 Among the princes who worked for the deliverance of Jeremiah from the death sentence was Ahikam the son of Shaphan. The princes did not yield to the religious pressure. They recognized Jeremiah as really being Jehovah’s mouthpiece. They did not want Jehovah to charge them with the innocent blood of his faithful servant. They decided in favor of Jeremiah: not guilty! His defense put them in the mood to recall historical examples. For instance, they were nearly 100 years closer to what Micah had prophesied against Judah and Jerusalem. King Hezekiah kept himself from bloodguilt by not having Micah put to death for supposedly seditious language, harmful to the State. “So,” said the elders in arguing for cautious handling of Jeremiah’s case, “we are working up a great calamity against our souls.”—Jer. 26:16-19, 24; Mic. 3:9-12. 10 As a contrast to King Hezekiah who took to heart Jehovah’s warning by Micah, there was Hezekiah’s great-great-grandson then in his first year on the throne of Jerusalem, Jehoiakim himself! He bloodied up the very first year of his reign by having Urijah the son of Shemaiah put to death. To escape the wrath of King Jehoiakim, the prophet Urijah had fled to Egypt. But, without any reported arrangement with Egypt for extraditing Urijah, the vengeful king sent men to hunt down Urijah and forcibly drag him back to the land of Judah to suffer a martyr’s death. (Jer. 26:20-23) Thus later on in that same opening year of the new king, Jeremiah had additional ground for prophesying what he did, at Jehovah’s command. In this connection it should be noted that Pharaoh Nechoh had made Jehoiakim king over Judah. (2 Ki. 23:34, 35) So Pharaoh Nechoh may have cooperated with King Jehoiakim in crime. 11 Jehoiakim did procure calamity for himself. In his eighth year of rule, King Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and made Jehoiakim a vassal king to the new world power of Babylon. Three years later Jehoiakim met an apparently untimely death. His corpse was pitched outside Jerusalem’s wall to have the “burial of a he-ass.” It was just as Jeremiah had prophesied. (Jer. 22:18, 19; 2 Chron. 36:5-8; 2 Ki. 24:1-6) How terrible! 12 Like Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, the Jeremiah class of our 20th century has been spared from death. Not in all cases, and not in all lands, have the judicial courts yielded to the malicious desire of the powerful religious elements of Christendom. There have been judges who have recognized the religious rights and freedom of the Jeremiah class, who, here on earth, represent the wifelike organization of Jehovah God. So what happened was quite like what was pictured in Revelation 12:15, 16. Popular, democratic elements of the “earth” came to the aid of the representatives of God’s “woman” and counteracted the efforts of Satan the Devil’s religious henchmen to engulf the Jeremiah class in lasting ruin. 13 Those of the Jeremiah class continue to declare all that God commands them to declare against the modern counterpart of Judah and Jerusalem, as well as against all other political parts of this system of things. Even though they are driven “underground” in some areas, they do not work to subvert established governments in order to force what they declare to come true. They resist all pressure to make them compromise with this or that political party. They refuse to abandon Christian neutrality. 14 Thus, intransigent, they keep themselves “no part of the world.” They well know that Jehovah God the Almighty can take care of himself. The war is his! It is not theirs to fight! They stand firm in Christian integrity, confident that “the war of the great day of God the Almighty” has approached, inasmuch as unseen demon forces with their occult powers are gathering earthly rulers to the world situation that is symbolically called Har–Magedon. (Rev. 16:13-16) So the Jeremiah class rejoices that its unflinching Christian neutrality is in support of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty. What a grand place our earth will be for the Jeremiah class and their fellow Christian neutrals after they witness the triumph of Jehovah’s sovereignty at Har–Magedon! THE PLOT AGAINST JEHOVAH’S SERVANT-KING 15 However, the present is the time for Christians of the real Bible kind to be specially tested as to their neutrality and integrity. It is the time of the greatest international plot in all human history, for now it is the time of the United Nations, which today has 151 members. Why call the U.N. an international plot or conspiracy? Because it is a man-made organization for counteracting and holding off,
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:26:36 +0000