Monday, April 18
Do not be afraid. Stand firm and see the salvation of Jehovah.
Your faith in the outcome of “the great and awe-inspiring day of Jehovah” will help you to “see the salvation of Jehovah” and to maintain your integrity. Prepare now for those thrilling events by continuing “steadfast as seeing the One who is invisible”! Strengthen your friendship with Jehovah God through regular study and prayer. Moses had such a close friendship with Jehovah and was used so powerfully by him that the Bible says that Jehovah knew Moses “face-to-face.” Moses was an extraordinary prophet. By faith, however, you too can know Jehovah as intimately as you would if you could actually see him. If you constantly take notice of him “in all your ways,” as God’s Word encourages you to do, “he will make your paths straight.”
COMMENTARY
I for one have no doubt that God is going to provide a grand salvation for a great number of people when he destroys this world. A situation will develop when all seems lost, like when the Israelites were trapped at the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s army of charioteers bearing down on them. And Jehovah will intervene in a big way. That is Armageddon.
But what lies between here and there is a great chasm of the unknown. The reason being, the Watchtower has no knowledge of certain vital matters regarding the return of Christ and the judgment. That is because they have promoted a delusion, deluding Jehovah’s Witnesses into believing Christ has already come in Kingdom power and that the parousia began in 1914.
Take the book of Joel for example, which the WT cited in the day’s text. Do Jehovah’s Witnesses have any idea what the locust/caterpillar onslaught signifies? No. None. They have no spiritual comprehension as to what Moses’ “face-to-face” encounter with Jehovah foreshadows, no appreciation for the significance of Moses’ face glowing as the sun; making no connection to “Moses” appearing in the Transfiguration with Christ, which Peter said was a fore gleam of the parousia. Nor do they understand the meaning of Moses and Elijah as the two witnesses during the Lord’s day.
What lies between here and Armageddon is the very presence of Christ. His coming will result in a massive shakeout, as Christ foretold: “many will be stumbled and hate one another.”
Even though the Watchtower now no longer teaches that the wise and foolish virgins parted ways in 1918, in moving that fulfillment to the future they divorced it from the coming of the Christ; same thing with the judgment of the slaves appointed to feed the domestics. Although Christ related the illustration of the faithful and unfaithful slaves to stress the importance of his disciples being awake and ready for his unexpected inspection, which comes as startlingly as a thief in the night, and which the 12 chapter of Luke makes clear that his coming precedes his presence with the faithful, the Watchtower now explains his coming to be at Armageddon.
Truly, it is as Jehovah long ago indicated, No one is as blind and deaf as the servant of Jehovah.