Moreover, the Witnesses count it an obligation to call on you. They would feel that they had failed of a duty and done you an injustice if they deliberately ignored your home. Why?

Because they have a direct command from God to warn you.

Is this actually true? Most of us know that Jesus Christ said that the good news would be preached in all the world. (Matt. 24:14) But is it anyone’s duty to do so? Yes, on pain of death to them. How? A powerful illustration in the Bible leaves no doubt.

GOD’S “WATCHMAN”

This illustration clearly sets out God’s principles and way of dealing, and it is not something fictional, but it actually happened on a national scale.

The illustration has to do with Ezekiel, a man whom God selected as his prophet and then informed him that he must warn those practicing wickedness:

“Son of man, a watchman is what I have made you to the house of Israel, and you must hear from my mouth speech and you must warn them from me. 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. But as for you, in case you have warned someone wicked and he does not actually turn back from his wickedness and from his wicked way, he himself for his error will die; but as for you, you will have delivered your own soul.”

Why was the warning so urgent? Because Jerusalem would soon (within six years) be destroyed by the Babylonian army, for the reason that the Jews had rejected God’s rulership of them and had additionally turned to corrupt practices. The destruction to come would be terrible. Both old and young, men and women, were to die in the streets, and children were to be dashed to pieces, after a long siege of the city. Famine conditions would become so serious that some would eat their own children.​—Lam. 2:11, 12, 20, 21; 4:4, 9, 10; 5:11, 12.

Therefore, Jehovah’s witnesses, having embraced God’s name, and knowing his laws and judgments, are like a sentry who, if he should fall asleep and fail to guard his sleeping comrades, would lose his own life.

Accordingly, Jehovah’s witnesses must call to give their fellow humans opportunity to know what God is going to do and what he requires, so that all who desire to live may do so and not die.

Jehovah God is not harsh toward his witnesses in laying this obligation upon them. Really, it proves a test of their love. And they do it willingly, gladly, as the psalmist foretold: “Your people will offer themselves willingly on the day of your military force.”​—Ps. 110:3.

Neither is God unloving toward the people in sending his witnesses among them, even though their call and the message they bring may be considered disturbing to some. The work they do actually originates with God, because he sends and commands his witnesses to go and speak to all, particularly to those in Christendom.

Moreover, it is the greatest undeserved kindness for God to warn all persons, including those who prove to be his enemies. He says: “‘Do I take any delight at all in the death of someone wicked,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, ‘and not in that he should turn back from his ways and actually keep living?”’​—Ezek. 18:23.

The gravest danger facing those persons in Christendom who do not listen to what God’s Word of truth, the Bible, says is not danger of dying in a natural way, but of execution at the hands of God. That is why Jehovah’s witnesses take their duty so seriously. They themselves have first been called on by others and have studied the Bible. They see and understand what God is doing and what he is about to do. They would love to see all persons live. Furthermore, they do not want the blood of anyone on their heads for not being concerned enough about preserving life to give the warning. They accept their obligation to reform their own lives according to Bible principles and to inform others, for they know that only those living according to the clean principles of the Creator will live in his new order.