The One Government for One World Under God’s Sovereignty
1. To what conclusion about government of mankind are world counselors being forced?
COUNSELORS and advisers on world affairs are continually being frustrated. Whether they like the thought or not, they are being forced to the conclusion that the human family, although now six thousand years old, is unable to govern itself. It has not of itself brought forth the type of government that has made or can make all mankind one world.
2. According to the start that God gave to mankind, why is he not to blame because mankind is not “one world” today?
2 Who is to blame? Not the Creator of the human family and hence not their heavenly Father. All mankind started from the one original man whom the Sovereign Lord God, Jehovah, brought into existence on earth. Afterward, from part of this man’s perfect body that the Creator used as a base, he made the first, original woman, that all mankind might be one flesh, the descendants of this original human pair. This fact was plainly stated to the philosophers of the Grecian High Court of the Areopagus in Athens, Greece, nineteen hundred years ago. To these eminent judges, the Christian apostle Paul said: “He [God] made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God.”—Acts 17:22-27; Gen. 2:7-25; 1:26-31.
3, 4. (a) From the start, what was God’s purpose for mankind? (b) How was it shown to Adam that submission to God’s sovereignty was a way of life with eternity in view?
3 God meant for the human family to be “one world” of mankind, one human society all of the same bone, flesh and blood. This united human society was to dwell over all the surface of the earth, this being converted to a parklike garden or paradise as their home forever. Mankind was to have in subjection the fish, the birds and the land animals, but mankind itself was to be in subjection to the sovereignty of the Universal Ruler and Creator, the Most High, “whose name alone is JEHOVAH.” (Ps. 83:18, AV) As man’s Sovereign, Jehovah God stated to the first man the divine law, by obedience to which the perfect man could live on earth forever.
4 This law commanded perfect obedience to the Universal Sovereign, for God said to the man, Adam: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Gen. 2:16, 17) For a time the man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, kept that divine command of loyal obedience. The human family was off to a perfect start. Submission to the Universal Sovereign, Jehovah God, was the way of life with eternity in view. The principle there set forth applies to us today. Shall we follow it?
5. The lack of oneness in the world of mankind today indicates that what took place, and when, and under what inducement?
5 Everybody will have to agree that the human family is not “one world” today, not an undivided human society, in spite of being of one flesh and blood. There are many self-assertive human sovereignties on earth at present, and these are dividing the loyalties of men. It is undeniable that in the distant past, before a son was born to Adam and Eve, there must have been a breakaway from the universal sovereignty of the Most High God, the Creator. What induced this breakaway? Only the Holy Bible, God’s written Word, gives the valid answer. The wrong inducement came from the realm of the unseen, from the spirit world. There one of the spirit subjects of Jehovah’s sovereignty saw an opportunity of setting up an independent sovereignty of his own.
6. The designations given to that spirit rebel harmonize with what course that he took to lead human revolt against God’s sovereignty?
6 Satan became a fitting name for this rebel, for the name means “Resister,” that is to say, to Jehovah God. Devil became a fitting designation for him, for the word means “Slanderer,” and Satan used slander against his Sovereign Lord in order to deceive and mislead. So to the woman Eve the Devil presented her heavenly Father as being a selfish liar to whom strict obedience was not due. Believing this lie, Eve ate from the forbidden fruit and broke her submission to the sovereignty of her heavenly Father. In line with the Devil’s scheme, she went farther than this: she prevailed upon her husband Adam to join her in a revolt against submission to the rightful sovereignty of his God and Father. It has turned out just as Satan the Devil figured it would: To this day the world of mankind has been born in sin against God, in nonsubmission to the sovereignty of the Most High God Jehovah.—Gen. 3:1 through 4:16; Rom. 5:12.
7, 8. (a) How has mankind since been divided on the matter of submission to a sovereignty? (b) How did God exercise foreign sovereignty in his relations with the rebel sovereign?
7 Since that rebellion back there in the Garden of Eden, the descendants of Adam and Eve have been divided between submission to the universal sovereignty of Jehovah God and submission to the sovereignty of Satan the Devil, whom Jesus the Messiah called “the ruler of this world.” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11) Jehovah God did not enter into any treaty with this newly established inferior sovereignty. Exercising his power as Rightful Sovereign in control of his dealings with foreign governments, Jehovah God declared war upon the enemy sovereign. Showing supreme contempt for this Satanic sovereign, Jehovah God likened him to an earth-hugging serpent and said to him, as if speaking to the serpent whom the Devil had used to deceive Eve:
8 “I shall put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He will bruise you in the head [like treading on the head of a serpent to crush its brains] and you [like a serpent lying in wait] will bruise him in the heel.”—Gen. 3:1-15.
9. Warfare of what length did God declare against the foreign sovereign, and how did Paul indicate this in Romans 16:20?
9 Perpetual warfare Jehovah God there declared against the rebel sovereign and all those adhering to the sovereignty of this crafty rebel, who from the start tried to hide his identity from human creatures. Jehovah God has not forgotten his “foreign policy” of warfare against the enemy of both Him and mankind. More than four millenniums after the Great Adversary set up the foreign sovereignty at Eden, Jehovah God inspired the Christian apostle Paul to write to the congregation located at the seat of the Roman Empire: “The God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. May the undeserved kindness of our Lord Jesus be with you.”—Rom. 16:20. Compare Exodus 17:14; Isaiah 45:7.
10. (a) Who will be used to crush the Great Serpent underfoot, and how soon? (b) How was the bruising of the “heel” of God’s promised Seed accomplished, and how was there a healing?
10 The time for the crushing of the Great Serpent Satan the Devil and his “seed” “shortly” should now be near, after the passing of over nineteen hundred years. The principal one of the promised “Seed” of God’s “woman,” Jesus Christ, is now clothed with adequate power to crush this Satanic author of all earthly sovereignties foreign to Jehovah God, the only Giver of peace. Back in the first century of our Common Era, this “Seed” of God’s “woman” was bruised in the heel. This took place as the outcome of that conspiracy between the “peoples of Israel” and King Herod Antipas and the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. The “heel” wound inflicted by the Great Serpent did cause the death of Jesus Christ on Passover Day of 33 C.E., but only a physical death. And, at any rate, Jesus had to die a sacrificial death, according to God’s purpose. But the sacrificing course did not go unrewarded. On the third day of Jesus’ death, the Almighty God raised him from the dead to immortal spirit life in the heavens. God seated him at His own right hand, to await the time for the Great Serpent to be crushed in the head.—Heb. 10:12, 13; 12:2.
11. What government did Jesus as a man publicly preach, and from when on?
11 While Jesus the Messiah was still a perfect man on earth, he ceaselessly preached the Government that, under God’s sovereignty, will rule all mankind and make the obedient ones “one world.” He took up where his forerunner, John the Baptist, had left off, for the account tells us: “Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into [the province of] Galilee. . . . From that time on Jesus commenced preaching and saying: ‘Repent, you people, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.’”—Matt. 4:12-17.
12. Because of what choice when he was under temptation by the Devil did Jesus prove worthy to preach that Kingdom message?
12 Never would Jesus have been worthy to take up preaching that message if he had not made the right decision some months earlier. On that crucial occasion Jesus was out in the wilderness of Judea, where he had fasted in solitude for forty days. Then the invisible rebel sovereign approached him to tempt him away from his Messianic course. With respect to the third and last temptation the record tells us: “Again the Devil took him along to an unusually high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him: ‘All these things I will give you if you fall down and do an act of worship to me.’” What the Devil here offered Jesus was not the “one government” that would make all obedient mankind “one world.” It was not a world government under God’s sovereignty, but was one under the Devil’s sovereignty. For whose sovereignty Jesus made his unequivocal decision, the account goes on to tell us, saying: “Then Jesus said to him: ‘Go away, Satan [Resister]! For it is written, “It is Jehovah your God you must worship, and it is to him alone you must render sacred service.”’”—Matt. 4:1-10.
13, 14. After miraculously feeding the multitude, why did Jesus not let the people make him king, and yet why did he formally offer himself in fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9?
13 In deciding for the sovereignty of his God, Jehovah, Jesus was the perfect example for all of us today. But we must persist in our decision for God’s sovereignty, as Jesus did. On a later occasion, after he had fed an audience of five thousand men and their families in a miraculous way, many wanted to make this miracle-working provider of food their earthly king. But Jesus thwarted their efforts by getting away from them. He knew that the time had not yet come for him to offer himself in a formal way to the Jews as their Messianic king, in fulfillment of prophecy. (John 6:1-15) At God’s due time, on Sunday, Nisan 9, 33 C.E., Jesus rode, as foretold by Zechariah 9:9, into Jerusalem and went to its temple, where the nation’s high priest officiated. Jesus did not stop the great multitude that was accompanying him from loudly recommending him as king by shouting out:
14 “Save, we pray! Blessed is he that comes in Jehovah’s name! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Save, we pray, in the heights above!”—Mark 11:1-11, NW; Diaglott.
15. When did “the peoples of Israel” plainly declare publicly their decision on sovereignty, and how did Pilate go along with their decision?
15 Then it was the time for “the peoples of Israel,” as represented by their religious leaders, to decide and show the sovereignty to which they adhered. Five days later they plainly declared publicly whose sovereignty they chose. When Passover celebrators under the coaching of their priests clamored for the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate to have the prisoner Jesus killed on a stake, Pilate asked them to reconsider the matter by saying: “Shall I impale your king?” The issue of sovereignty was now squarely before “the peoples of Israel.” Whose sovereignty would they choose? The Bible account indicates, when it says: “The chief priests answered: ‘We have no king but Caesar.’” Caesar’s representative, Pilate, went along with their decision, for the account says: “At that time, therefore, he handed him over to them to be impaled.”—John 19:12-16.
16. By means of whom will the Great Serpent soon be crushed, and how does Psalm 2:8, 9 picture the crushing of the Serpent’s “seed” on earth?
16 That was the miniature fulfillment of the prophetic words of King David in Psalm 2:1, 2. (Acts 4:24-28) It set the pattern for the major fulfillment, which occurs in our day, when the paramount issue of world domination and universal sovereignty must be settled once and for all time. Satan the rebel sovereign has had his day in the bruising of the heel of the promised “Seed” of God’s “woman.” Now this Great Serpent, the heel bruiser, must have his own head bruised, and that affects all the “seed” of this Serpent at the same time. The same Second Psalm 2 indicates how the crushing of the visible “seed” of the Great Serpent would be done. In Ps 2 verses eight and nine, Jehovah addresses his Anointed Son, Jesus Christ, and says: “Ask of me, that I may give nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your own possession. You will break them with an iron scepter, as though a potter’s vessel you will dash them to pieces.”
17. The book of Revelation pictures what as God’s agency for smashing the sovereign nations on earth, and what part is Jesus Christ pictured as having therein?
17 The last book of the Holy Bible (Rev. 12:5) speaks of God’s kingdom of his Messiah as the divine agency that will “shepherd all the nations with an iron rod.” The nineteenth chapter, which describes the coming war with the earthly nations at Har–Magedon, speaks of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as the one who “will shepherd them with a rod of iron,” and adds that “he treads too the winepress of the anger of the wrath of God the Almighty.” (Rev. 19:15; 16:14, 16) This crushing of the nations with their claims to national sovereignty is vividly pictured for us in the prophecy of Daniel, chapter two.
18. How does Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream picture the violent end of the system of things that has featured world powers, and how do we know that the end of the system is near?
18 In that chapter 2 of Daniel interprets the prophetic dream that the God of the heavens sent to Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of the Babylonian World Power, in the second year after he had destroyed the city of Jerusalem and the temple built by David’s son, King Solomon. The succession of world powers that began with the Babylonian and ran down through the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, the Roman and the Anglo-American, was pictured as a large, unusually bright image of several materials, with feet of iron and of clay. Then a stone that was cut out of a distant mountain, without the aid of human hands, struck the image on those feet and finally ground the whole fallen image to powder, which a strong wind blew away. If nothing else, that crushing of the symbolic image to powder pictured the end of a system of things by some supernatural agency that is not produced by human hands under the direction of human brains. The fulfillment of the prophecy that Jesus Christ gave concerning the “conclusion of the system of things” shows that the smashing of the system is at hand!—Matt. 24:3-22.
19. According to Daniel 2:44, what happens to the nations lined up with the United Nations, but what about the sovereignty of God’s Messianic kingdom?
19 Today, by being lined up with the unchristian organization of the United Nations, the worldly rulers display where they stand on the issue of sovereignty. So it is with regard to these political rulers, Communist and non-Communist, that the interpretative words of the prophet Daniel apply: “In the days of those kings the God of heaven [not human hands] will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand for ever.”—Dan. 2:1-44, Revised Standard Version Bible.
20, 21. (a) Who will share with the Messiah in that heavenly kingdom? (b) Daniel 7:26, 27 pictures the sovereignty over the earth as being given to what people?
20 This is the heavenly Messianic kingdom that Jehovah’s Christian witnesses have been proclaiming world wide since the year of its birth in the heavens at the end of the Gentile Times in the year 1914. (Luke 21:24; Matt. 24:14) Footstep followers of the Messiah, anointed like him with God’s spirit, are to share with the Messiah in that heavenly kingdom. This was spoken of prophetically in a dream that was sent to Daniel himself. In this prophetic dream the series of Gentile world powers from the Babylonian onward was pictured by four wild beasts. Concerning the divine judgment that was executed by the Supreme Court of the universe upon that fourth symbolic beast, Daniel 7:26, 27 explains:
21 “Then the court shall sit, and he shall be deprived of his sovereignty, so that in the end it may be destroyed and abolished. The kingly power, sovereignty, and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High. Their kingly power is an everlasting power and all sovereignties shall serve them and obey them.”—NE; The Bible in Living English.
“ONE WORLD” UNDER IT
22. To whom will the sovereignty over the world of mankind be given in order that there may be “one government” over them?
22 The fulfillment of that prophecy is now about to take place. All the present-day national sovereignties on earth will shortly have to bow before the Messianic kingdom in the hands of the heavenly Son of God. (Dan. 7:1-12) That will make room for just the “one government” for all mankind. As Daniel 7:14 says: “On him [the Messianic Son of man] was conferred sovereignty, glory and kingship, and men of all peoples, nations and languages became his servants. His sovereignty is an eternal sovereignty which shall never pass away, nor will his empire ever be destroyed.”—The Jerusalem Bible.
23. (a) What will fulfillment of that prophecy mean for this generation of mankind? (b) What favorable opportunity is held out to us?
23 What will fulfillment of that prophecy mean for this generation of mankind? This: Present-time national sovereignties and the patriotic upholders of them will suffer extermination in the world’s greatest trouble that rapidly approaches, but the upholders of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty will be miraculously preserved and emerge alive from that “great tribulation.” (Matt. 24:21, 22; Mark 13:19, 20; Rev. 7:14, 15) Shall we be among these favored survivors of the “conclusion of the system of things”? The opportunity to be among such is held out to us by God’s written Word. What is now required of us is to take our stand immovably on the side of God’s sovereignty and of his Messianic kingdom and to stick to these in spite of all the future political, religious and social efforts to pull us away.
24. For how long now will the suffering upon us for sticking to Jehovah’s sovereignty last?
24 This may result in some suffering for us for as long as our persecutors are permitted to remain. Under such affliction we can remember the cry of earlier witnesses of the Lord God Jehovah who suffered, even to the death: “How long, sovereign Lord, holy and true, must it be before thou wilt vindicate us and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” They were assured that it would be only “a little while longer” before this would occur.—Rev. 6:10, 11, NE; Moffatt; RS; NW.
25. When and how will Satan, the Great Serpent, be crushed under the feet of Christ’s disciples “shortly”?
25 It will be only a little while longer before the faithful upholders of Jehovah’s universal sovereignty will be vindicated in their position by His decisive victory over all the national sovereignties represented inside and outside the United Nations. Immediately thereafter the original rebel against Jehovah’s universal sovereignty, namely, Satan the Devil, and all his demon angels, will be given deserved treatment. Isolation in chains in an abyss out of communication with this earth will be their portion. (Rev. 20:1-3) Thereby the Great Serpent will be bruised in the head, as it were; and the loyal “Seed” of God’s “woman” will be the one by whom God will thus crush the Great Serpent and his demon seed under the feet of the faithful joint heirs of Christ.—Rom. 16:20.
26. How is it that God’s “new order” will start out with “one world” under “one government”?
26 The human survivors of these momentous events will all be those adhering to the one Messianic kingdom of Jehovah’s victorious Son Jesus Christ. Consequently, at the very start of God’s righteous new order of things, there will be “one world” on earth, under “one government,” regardless of the tribes, peoples, races, nations and languages to which the “tribulation” survivors belonged. They will all be one human society on a cleansed earth, all of them worshiping the one living and true God, Jehovah, and all of them submitting to his Son, Jesus Christ, upon whose shoulder the princely rule will be laid. What a unifying force that will be!
27. That situation will be a force for what condition among mankind, under what one sovereignty?
27 What a force, too, that will be for worldwide peace! No more interreligious wars! No more territorial boundary disputes! No more interracial and international wars! No more political rivalries and contests! Bible prophecy says: “Jehovah must become king over all the earth. In that day Jehovah will prove to be one, and his name one.” (Zech. 14:9) At the same time the “one government” under him, the Messianic kingdom of his enthroned Son Jesus Christ, will be an expression of His universal sovereignty.—Isa. 9:6, 7.
28. In what good work will all mankind then cooperate, in fulfillment of what promise of Jesus to a dying wrongdoer?
28 “Shoulder to shoulder” all living mankind will serve the Sovereign Lord God, Jehovah. (Zeph. 3:8, 9) As “one world” the new human society will cooperate together in a good work. They will cooperate in transforming the battered surface of this earthly globe to the state that its Creator originally purposed for it, that of a garden of Eden, a paradise of pleasure. (Gen. 1:27, 28; 2:7-15) Then there will be an answer to the request made by the sympathetic wrongdoer dying alongside Jesus Christ on a torture stake: “Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom.” Yes, then the reigning King will fulfill to him the promise: “Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise.”—Luke 23:42, 43, NW; Rotherham.
29. (a) how may mankind become Christ’s eternal children? (b) How will he lead them as an example in submitting to God’s sovereignty?
29 Not alone that kindly disposed criminal, but also all the rest of the human dead are involved, all for whom Jesus Christ died as a perfect human sacrifice. These also will come forth at his call to a resurrection from the dead. (Matt. 20:28; John 5:28, 29; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Acts 24:15) All the submissive ones will be incorporated into that “one world.” All will be brothers and sisters, for they will become the ransomed, adopted children of the one Eternal Father, Jesus Christ, who sacrificed his human life for them. (Isa. 9:6, 7; Heb. 2:9) By obedience to him they can become his eternal children. He himself will lead them in the way of submission to the universal sovereignty of his own heavenly Father, Jehovah God. After the accomplishment of his work of uplifting obedient mankind to human perfection in an earthly paradise, he himself will express his own subjection to the sovereignty of his God by turning over the kingdom to him. Why? “That God may be all things to everyone.”—1 Cor. 15:24-28.
30. What exhortation is there for those who have become disillusioned by the disastrous division caused by national sovereignties?
30 All these wonderful things being so, then take courage, all you who have become frustrated and disillusioned by the disastrous division of the world, by conflicting national sovereignties independent of divine sovereignty! Take firm hold, now, of the glorious hope of “one world, one government, under God’s sovereignty”! Live for it from now on till its blessed realization.
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GOD’S KINGDOM WILL BE THE ONE GOVERNMENT FOR ALL MANKIND
THE KINGDOM OF GOD WILL DESTROY ALL NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTIES