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A Fine Reward for FaithfulnessThe Watchtower—1975 | February 1
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Happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so.
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A Fine Reward for FaithfulnessThe Watchtower—1975 | February 1
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A reward was to come after an inspection to see how the “slave” had been carrying out his job of feeding the “domestics.” The master had gone away to receive greater authority, as did the master in the parable of the minas. This man went to a distant land to receive kingly power. Christ is the “master” in the illustration, and he is shown as having a reckoning with his slaves on returning. (Luke 19:12-27) Likewise the “faithful and discreet slave” must receive his reward at the time of Christ’s return in an invisible presence in Kingdom power and before Christ acts to displace this present system of things from its domination over the earth. The apostle Peter stated the rule that ‘judgment must begin at the house of God’ and thereafter proceed to the world in general.—1 Pet. 4:17.
Feeding Christ’s “domestics” spiritually was no easy matter for the “faithful and discreet slave,” particularly for a few years after Jesus came invisibly to inspect and reward them. There was much opposition and severe persecution from religious organizations that claimed the sole right to dispense spiritual food to the “flock,” which they said belonged to them. However, these organizations of Christendom had made a wartime record for themselves, an open record of bloodguilt that had a heavy bearing on their claim to be disciples and slaves of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, they took advantage of the war hysteria to cause mobbings, arrests, imprisonment and death to members of the small remnant of Jehovah’s Christian witnesses. This, along with wartime conditions and restrictions, made it difficult for the small “slave” group to keep a steady flow of Bible information to the individual “domestics.” But they faithfully did so despite hardships.
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