e-Watchman

It has now been nearly a century since Charles Taze Russell made the bold proclamation: “The Gentile times have ended. Their kings have had their day.”  For nearly four decades before that fateful year Russell’s Watch Tower had been pointing forward to 1914 as a year marked in prophecy that would see the beginning of anarchy and the collapse of civilization.

When Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinad, along with his wife Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28th, it resulted in all the Great Powers of Europe choosing up sides and declaring war against each other in a matter of a few weeks – setting the stage for the bloodbath that became known as the First World War. Those tragic developments led C. T. Russell to make his historic announcement on October the 2nd of that year. 

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The sanctification of God’s holy name and the vindication of his sovereignty are of the utmost universal importance. Jehovah’s personal interests are supreme. Human salvation is secondary in the outworking of God’s purpose. Jehovah’s Witnesses well know that to be true.

To that end the ancient prophetic book of Ezekiel contains the yet-to-be-revealed judgments of Jehovah that will settle, once and for all time, the issue of Jehovah’s right to rule and the righteousness of his ways and forever sanctify his great name.

It does not matter that the scholars schooled in Christendom have expunged the distinctive name of God from their Bibles. More than any other book of prophecy, Ezekiel emphasizes how the revelation of God’s judgments will serve up to the nations of our modern world a bitter potion; forcing them to know that he is Jehovah, even as it says in Ezekiel: “The nations will have to know that I am Jehovah.”

But as Ezekiel 9:6 establishes, God’s judgment starts first in the holy place, in the very sanctuary of God; beginning with the covenant-breaking priests and older men in Jerusalem and ultimately with the entire house of Israel, exiles and alien residents included.

Because Jehovah’s Witnesses bear God’s personal name before the world, as did the typical house of Judah that fell under God’s judgment two and a half millenniums ago, and because anointed Christians are in a covenanted relationship with Jehovah, as were the Jews in Ezekiel’s day, it is Jehovah’s Witnesses who must first be made to know that he is Jehovah – as opposed to the nations. That is why it says throughout the prophecy of Ezekiel in many places: “And you people will have to know that I am Jehovah” – “you people” meaning God’s people.

"For this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: ‘Here I am, I myself, and I will search for my sheep and care for them. According to the care of one feeding his drove in the day of his coming to be in the midst of his sheep that have been spread abroad, that is the way that I shall care for my sheep; and I will deliver them out of all the places to which they have been scattered in the day of clouds and thick gloom.'" 

The prophesied desolation of Jerusalem and the Jewish exile in Babylon was by no means the end of Jehovah’s dealings with his renegade nation. Another significant aspect, not only of the book of Ezekiel, but of all Hebrew prophecy, has to do with the liberation, restoration and revival of God’s covenanted people. Although the nation as a whole, particularly the leadership, failed to live up to the obligations of the covenant into which their forefathers had entered with God, Jehovah did not stay resentful nor did he cast them off forever, but he extended forgiveness and mercy in a very large way to a chastened remnant.

But the relationship between God and his people was not to be as before. No, in his compassion Jehovah purposed to permanently repair his relationship with the Jews. At least that is what the prophecies relate. But while it is noteworthy that the repatriated Jews did not resume the degrading form of idolatry that they had practiced before their exile, it is also apparent that the prophecy of Ezekiel only had a relative fulfillment with regard to the post-exilic Jewish society. More importantly, the shadows cast by this portion of the prophecy have profound significance for Jehovah’s Witnesses at the coming of Christ, which is the subject of this article.

"Now the end is upon you, and I must send my anger against you, And I will judge you according to your ways and bring upon you all your detestable things." —Ezekiel 7:3

This article was originally an open letter to the Watchtower Society based upon the seventh chapter of the prophetic book of Ezekiel. It was mailed to all members of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses and to numerous departments at Brooklyn Bethel, Wallkill and Patterson facilities in New York State. Copies of this open letter have also been mailed directly to all 100 branch offices of the Watchtower around the world as well as to all assembly halls in the United States and individual congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the New York City area.

Some of the finest men I have ever known are elders and circuit overseers among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Most of Jehovah’s Witnesses would no doubt readily agree that the majority of overseers are honest, hard-working, self-sacrificing Christian men. Be that as it may, the privilege of tending to Christ’s sheep as a Christian shepherd is a privilege, not a right. It is also an enormous responsibility, which necessarily makes overseers more accountable before God. The reason that is so is because Jehovah’s sheep are very precious to him.

Surely, most human parents have the same parental love for their children as does Jehovah for his. For example: When human parents entrust their children to the care of others, such as baby-sitters, day-care staff, doctors, or school teachers, there is always an assumed understanding of the responsibility and accountability involved. But what parent would be reassured and comforted if most of the children in a particular day-care center did not die from abuse or neglect? Obviously, no amount of neglect or abuse is acceptable when it comes to something as precious as a child.

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