When I say to someone wicked, ‘You will positively die,’ and you do not actually warn him and speak in order to warn the wicked one from his wicked way to preserve him alive, he being wicked, in his error he will die, but his blood I shall ask back from your own hand.”​—Ezek. 3:17, 18.

5, 6. (a) In what time period was Ezekiel living? (b) Why could God not be accused of forcing a difficult commission on Ezekiel?

⁵ Why did Jehovah talk so seriously to this Jew Ezekiel? Because in that year 613 B.C.E. Ezekiel was living in the last days of the doomed kingdom of Judah with its capital at Jerusalem. His people down there in that kingdom had been brought into a national covenant with Jehovah by means of His mediator, the prophet Moses, and so as a member of that people Ezekiel was under lifelong obligation to Jehovah. He was also a priest, who should have been serving Jehovah in his temple at Jerusalem. So naturally he owed something to God. Hence, God could not be accused of improperly forcing a difficult mission upon Ezekiel, who had been born under the national covenant and under the duties of the Aaronic priesthood, then headed by high priest Seraiah.​—2 Ki. 25:18.

If, at the critical time, the Christian “slave” class back there did not warn and urge the affected Jews to get out of the danger zone as fast as possible, then they would share in the responsibility for the loss of life and of liberty on the part of the unwarned Jews.

9. How was Ezekiel an excellent example for God’s anointed “slave” today?

⁹ What if Ezekiel long ago had failed to discharge his assigned task of warning from a distance his endangered countrymen? He would not have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E., for Jehovah would have held him accountable for their blood. That Ezekiel faithfully discharged his divine commission as long as communication with doomed Jerusalem was possible is evident, for Jehovah was pleased to let him live on. Jehovah was pleased to use him to utter a prophecy in the 27th year of his exile in Babylon. That was 16 years after the horrible bloodbath at Jerusalem in 607 B.C.E. (Ezek. 29:17; 40:1) In this respect he was an excellent example for the anointed “slave” class in our perilous times. True, if any individuals in the “slave” class withdraw from further sounding the warning and putting the wicked people on notice, such individuals will have to settle accounts with Jehovah. But, for the most part, the “slave” class will prove to be like Ezekiel. No bloodguilt will be able to be charged to them.