MISPLACED TRUST IN A RELIGIOUS CHARM

4, 5. (a) In what kind of structure are people of Christendom putting trust today? (b) How does Jeremiah describe people who made a like mistake in his day?

⁴ Millions today put their trust in a doomed religious structure. The clergy of Christendom induce their church members to do so. The people of Jerusalem and of the land of Judah made a like mistake in the days of Jeremiah. We do not desire to imitate them. Jeremiah was commanded by Jehovah to stand in the gate of the temple of Jerusalem and publicly say to those coming in there:

⁵ “‘Do not put your trust in fallacious words, saying, “The temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah, the temple of Jehovah they are!” . . . Here you are putting your trust in fallacious words​—it will certainly be of no benefit at all.

Jer. 7:4-11.

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be apostolic by building up a line of apostolic successors going all the way back to Christ’s twelve apostles. The Anglican Church of Great Britain does something similar with regard to its “bishops” (episcopal clergy). The patriarchates of the Eastern Orthodox Churches depend upon an imagined unbroken succession of their bishops back to the twelve apostles, who, they argue, had apostolic successors. The papacy of Rome maintains that it is built upon the apostle Peter as “this rock” and so the “gates of hell” cannot prevail against it. (Matt. 16:18, 19, Douay) Because of such claimed continuity of things from Christ’s own day, they consider Christendom to have a charmed life, safe from extermination.

9, 10. (a) What question arises about worshipers who put trust in the ‘charmed life’ of Christendom? (b) What did Jehovah tell Jeremiah to say about the Jews who trusted in their temple?

⁹ However, if a person puts his trust in Christendom’s ‘charmed life,’ does this guarantee his safety from calamity and destruction with her? The apostle Paul warns that in the “last days” people would be “having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power; and,” he added, “from these turn away.” (2 Tim. 3:1-5)

13. What lesson should we learn from that case of misplaced trust?

¹³ Let us today learn a lesson from this. Let us not put our trust in what the clergy of Christendom think will serve as a religious charm to save her from obliteration. The “great tribulation” that is shortly coming upon her will be worse than that which overtook Jerusalem and its temple 37 years after Jesus cleansed what had been turned into a “mere cave of robbers,” the defiled temple of Jerusalem.​—Matt. 24:1, 2, 21, 22.