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Taking Final Advantage of the “Year of Goodwill”The Watchtower—1970 | November 1
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‘Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor, he sent me forth to preach a release to the captives and a recovery of sight to the blind, to send the crushed ones away with a release,
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Taking Final Advantage of the “Year of Goodwill”The Watchtower—1970 | November 1
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Had not Jerusalem and its temple built by Solomon been destroyed in the year 607 B.C.E., or more than a hundred years after Isaiah’s prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-3? Yes, that is true, and the city and the land of Judah had lain desolate and devastated for seventy years, until the year 537 B.C.E., when the faithful Jews who were held captive in Babylon were released and returned to the land of Judah and began to rebuild Jerusalem and its temple.
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Taking Final Advantage of the “Year of Goodwill”The Watchtower—1970 | November 1
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There was then need also of having good news preached to the meek ones, and Jesus Christ had such good news and he preached the good news of God’s kingdom. There was need to comfort the mourning worshipers, mourning, not over a desolated Jerusalem and temple, but over the broken-down state of pure worship of Jehovah. There were captives to be freed, not from ancient Babylon, but from a corrupt religious system.
20. (a) Rather than their material well-being, what was to be cared for in the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-3 to Jehovah’s people? (b) What was the objective of this as regards them and God?
20 The material well-being of Jesus’ own people was not the essential thing to call for the fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-3. The things that were set out there in the commission to Jehovah’s anointed one were to be fulfilled in a spiritual way. Jehovah’s goodwill needed to be expressed in providing things more essential than material things. Not liberation from ancient Babylon as in the year 537 B.C.E., but releasing the captives from oppressive religious bondage was what Jehovah offered to his chosen people through his anointed Son Jesus. Not deliverance from subjection to the pagan Roman Empire, but deliverance from subjection to sin and its penalty death was what Jehovah in his favor held forth through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. These were the real things over which to cease mourning, to be joyful and to praise Jehovah as God. Then they could bear the fruitage of righteousness, like big trees planted by Jehovah, in order for him to be beautified in the fruitful lives of these liberated, godly persons.
21. (a) Who got the benefit of that “goodwill on the part of Jehovah” through the Messiah? (b) In what work were they commissioned to share from Pentecost of 33 C.E. onward?
21 Who got the benefit of that “goodwill on the part of Jehovah”? Not the Jewish nation, although the opportunity was wide open for them to take advantage of it; but the really “meek” ones, the religiously mourning ones, the ones who felt their captivity to a false religious system, these ones who became the baptized followers of Jehovah’s Anointed One, Jesus. They were the ones that also received the anointing with God’s spirit, just as their spiritual Head and Leader Jesus had received it. They were thereby commissioned like him to share in the telling of the good news to other meek ones, and in bringing release to the blinded captives of false religion and in comforting those mourning because of a lack of God’s blessing.
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