Having started in the way of righteousness, let us never turn back.

²¹ If you have made a dedication to serve God, let it guide your decisions. Instead of taking on further obligations that will detract from your ministry, rather be always on the alert to avail yourself of opportunities to expand your knowledge of the truth and to accept further privileges of service. It may be that you can organize your affairs to spend more time in the ministry as a congregation publisher; if possible, even moving with your family into territory where the need for help is great. If so, you will want to do that. Perhaps you can organize your life to take hold of the glorious treasure of full-time ministry as a pioneer, going through Gilead School and on to missionary service or serving as a member of the Bethel family. Having taken a forward step, make it your determination to hold on to your privileges of service. It is easy to step aside and let someone else take over, but the pattern set out for us in the Bible is that of faithful servants who stuck to their work. There is no record that Jesus turned in a service assignment uncompleted, though he has through faithfulness been rewarded with further and greater privileges of ministry. Abraham accepted a foreign service assignment from Jehovah when he was seventy-five years old, and he stayed on the job for a hundred years, until the time of his death. May it be the determination of everyone associated with the New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses to copy those patterns of faithful perseverance. Having begun the course, let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, following the way blazed by Christ Jesus, the one whom God approves.—Heb. 12:1, 2.

Questions From Readers

● On page 86 of the book “New Heavens and a New Earth”, paragraph 5 tells why Jehovah God did not destroy Satan the Devil, the great Serpent, immediately at the garden of Eden after he had misled Eve and Adam into sin. Then it concludes the paragraph, saying: “Up to that time [that is, up to the rebellion of Satan at the garden of Eden] there had been no death of any angels, nor any killing of them; and God’s Word plainly states that such a thing is not to take place until the ‘war of the great day of God the Almighty’, in our day.” Does this mean that the abyssing of the fallen angels at the coming battle of Armageddon may be referred to as killing?

Yes, that is evidently what the book means by that statement. Satan the Devil is the prince or ruler of all the spirit demons. His being abyssed with them will take place at the climax of the battle of Armageddon in fulfillment of the prophecy at Revelation 20:1-3, which reads: “I saw an angel coming down out of heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And he seized the dragon the original serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he hurled him into the abyss and shut it and sealed it over him, that he might not mislead the nations any more until the thousand years were ended. After these things he must be let loose for a little while.”

This abyssing of Satan and his legions of demons at Armageddon is evidently the bruising that Jehovah God referred to in the garden of Eden, when he said to the serpent: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He [that is, her seed] will bruise you in the head and you will bruise him in the heel.” (Gen. 3:15) Bruising of a serpent in the head would mean the killing of it, or the putting of it to death. That the bruising of the head of the “original Serpent,” Satan the Devil, is to take place at the battle of Armageddon, and signifies his death, is evident from what the apostle Paul