The Leader on the Road to Peaceful Paradise
1. Who today do not qualify as the descendants of Judah and David to be that promised Seed, but who does qualify?
TODAY the earthly kingdom of King David of Jerusalem is no more, not even since the setting up of the Republic of Israel in the year 1948, nor since the Jews captured all of Jerusalem in 1967 C.E. No Jew on earth today can prove that he is a royal descendant of King David. But in heaven there is One today who can prove that he was born on earth in the tribe of Judah and in the royal family of King David. Who is that? If we turn to the last book in the Holy Bible, that is, to Revelation 5:5-12, we find one who is called “the Lion that is of the tribe of Judah,” and concerning whom it is said: “The Lamb that was slaughtered is worthy to receive the power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.” This one also speaks and calls himself “the root and the offspring of David” and claims to have the “key of David” for opening and shutting. (Rev. 22:16; 3:7) Who is that one? He speaks of himself as Jesus.
2. Why did Jesus refuse to become a king on earth?
2 Ah yes, this one is Jesus Christ, who was born in David’s town of Bethlehem not quite two thousand years ago but who has been glorified in heaven by his heavenly Father Jehovah God. But he had to sacrifice his human life in order to gain that place in heaven at God’s right hand. That is why he is spoken of as “the Lamb that was slaughtered.” Although he was the rightful heir of King David, he refused to become a king on earth. He preached “the kingdom of the heavens,” “the kingdom of God.” However, when he was put to death on an execution stake outside the walls of old Jerusalem, the Roman governor of the land had posted above Jesus’ head the words: “Jesus the Nazarene the King of the Jews.” (John 19:16-22) No wonder that one of the evildoers who was hung on a stake beside Jesus showed his belief in the resurrection of the dead and said to Jesus: “Jesus, remember me when you get into your kingdom.”
3. What future hope for a Paradise earth did Jesus give in speaking to the evildoer hanging alongside him, and how are we assured it is earthly and not heavenly paradise?
3 The reply of Jesus showed also his faith in the resurrection of the dead for both himself and this friendly man. Jesus said to him: “Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:39-43) There was only one Paradise that this dying Jewish evildoer knew of, and that was, not a paradise in heaven, but the Paradise in Eden in which Adam and Eve had been created in human perfection. That was the Paradise to which Jesus referred. His words to the evildoer meant that when he got into his kingdom by resurrection from the dead, he would restore Paradise to earth and he would remember this dead evildoer and see to it that he enjoyed this earthly Paradise by resurrecting him from the dead. Jesus’ words also meant that the original purpose of Jehovah God to have all our earthly globe transformed into a Paradise was to be realized under the kingdom of Jesus Christ. On the day that Jesus said those words to the evildoer, it looked very unlikely that such a thing would ever be. But let all mankind rejoice. Paradise will soon be restored!
4. What promises regarding Jesus did God give through Gabriel to the Jewish virgin Mary?
4 The earthly, worldwide Paradise is an absolute future certainty, just as the heavenly kingdom of Jesus Christ is now a present actual certainty. Before Jehovah God transferred the life of his beloved Son from heaven to earth, he sent his angel Gabriel to a Jewish virgin of David’s royal family to tell her that God had selected her to become the mother of His son as a man. The angel Gabriel went on to say to this unmarried girl concerning her miraculous son-to-be: “You are to call his name Jesus. This one will be great and will be called Son of the Most High; and Jehovah God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule as king over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end of his kingdom.”—Luke 1:26-33.
5. How did Jesus prove worthy of the kingdom and being God’s seed?
5 This Jesus had to prove worthy of the kingdom, not merely by fleshly descent from King David of the tribe of Judah, but also by keeping faithful to his heavenly Father Jehovah God even to a martyr’s death. At the same time he must die as a perfect, sinless human sacrifice for the “sin of the world,” the sin that Adam had brought upon all mankind by his disobedience in the Paradise of Eden. (John 18:36, 37; 1:29, 36; Rom. 5:12) But by making this sacrifice of his perfect humanity, he could be raised again to life as a spirit son of God, clothed upon with the reward of immortality in heaven and still keeping his unforfeited right to the kingdom of his ancestor David. (1 Pet. 3:18; 1 Cor. 15:45-47) Thus he becomes a king at God’s right hand in heaven, just as King David had prophesied in Psalm 110:1-4. As heavenly king he has to keep his promise to the dying evildoer. He must produce better living conditions on earth than King Solomon did.
TIME NEAR FOR AN EARTHLY PARADISE
6. When did the time come for God to give the kingdom to Christ Jesus, and so what, then, must be very near?
6 The earthly kingdom of David’s royal family line was overturned more than two thousand five hundred years ago, in the year 607 before our Common Era. It was not to be restored until God’s time came for Him to give the kingdom to the one that has the right to it. (Ezek. 21:25-27) So it was not to be restored until the “appointed times of the nations” ran out. Those times of the Gentile nations were to run for two thousand five hundred and twenty years from the overthrow of David’s kingdom in 607 B.C.E. Those Gentile Times ended therefore in the year 1914 of our Common Era. (Luke 21:24; Dan. 4:16, 23, 25) By that time the Gentile political powers and governments had had their day, and the rulership of the royal house of David was due to be restored in agreement with God’s covenant with David for an everlasting kingdom. So the resurrected Permanent Heir of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, was installed as king in heaven, to rule the earth from up there. Earthly events since 1914 C.E. prove that fact. This means that the restoration of Paradise to earth must soon begin.
7. How do we know a Paradise earth can never be brought about by man’s efforts alone?
7 Since that important year of 1914 the Gentile governments have tried to continue ruling the earth in their way, not God’s way. Has this been beneficial to mankind? Has it brought worldwide peace to all peoples? Has it done away with hunger and poverty and disease and old age? Has it resulted in a global paradise as a decent place for the human family in which to live? Has it bruised the Great Serpent Satan the Devil and his seed in the head? All of you know the answer! What fact remains plain, therefore? That the everlasting blessing of all mankind can never come through these man-made political powers and their scientific, commercial, social, educational and religious institutions, but it can come only through the promised Seed of God’s “woman,” the Seed of Abraham. By this Seed all nations will bless themselves.
8-10. How did the Secretary General of the United Nations speak about our present-day world problems?
8 According to the way world conditions are going, this heavenly seed of God’s “woman” needs to take full charge of earth’s affairs very soon. Just this past May 9th, Secretary General of the United Nations, U Thant, of Burma, spoke at the United Nations, New York, at a closed meeting before thirty-five leaders from various countries in order to talk over the strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade, namely, the nineteen-seventies. In his speech Mr. Thant said:
9 “I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary General that the members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion and to supply the required momentum to world development efforts.”
10 Thus, in his estimate the world had only about ten years left in which to avoid disaster by finding answers to the problems of the arms race, pollution and overpopulation.—The New York Times, May 10, 1969, page 3, column 3.
11. (a) Why will Almighty God not wait upon the nations to bring Paradise conditions to our earth? (b) How only can our earth be transformed into a paradise?
11 Given any amount of time, the nations would continue to fail and leave the world hopeless. God will not wait upon them. He has his own fixed time to remove these incompetent rulers, whose continuance in power will ruin the earth even more and threaten the existence of all mankind. He will do so, and that shortly, in what Bible prophecy calls “the war of the great day of God the Almighty.” This will mean an Armageddon disaster and destruction for world rulers who show themselves to be the earthly “seed” of the Great Serpent. (Rev. 16:14, 16; 19:11-21) Only in this way will this earth be cleared of those who are “ruining the earth.” (Rev. 11:18) This will be followed by the bruising of the head of the Devil, the Great Serpent, putting him and his invisible demon seed completely out of action and out of control in an abyss.—Rev. 20:1-3.
WILL YOU GET ON THE ROAD TO IT?
12. Who will survive God’s war of Armageddon, and what assignment will they be given?
12 Would you like to survive that Armageddon war of God the Almighty? Revelation 7:9-17 tells of a “great crowd” of people of every nation, tribe, people and language that will survive that “great tribulation.” Just as the patriarch Noah and his family survived the global deluge and had the privilege of cultivating the cleansed earth to make it a suitable living place, so with the “great crowd” of survivors of the “great tribulation” at Armageddon with which this wicked system of things on earth will end. They will have the privilege of doing under Jesus Christ the heavenly king what Adam and Eve were told to do but failed to do because of violating the law of Paradise, namely, to “subdue” the earth and thereby extend Paradise to the four quarters of this earth. (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:7 to 3:6) They will do this in absolute peace, peace with God, peace with one another and peace with the lower creatures of earth, for all the promoters of war and violence and organized crime will have been destroyed.—Isa. 2:2-21.
13. What blessings lie ahead for survivors of God’s war of Armageddon?
13 Their Davidic King is the heavenly Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, and he will enforce “peace on earth.” There will be no end to earth’s peace under his kingdom. (Isa. 9:6, 7; Luke 2:14, Mo) As the earthly survivors of God’s war at Armageddon work away at cultivating and tending to their earthly home they will have the blessing of God’s kingdom by Christ, and will rejoice to see Paradise taking form and spreading everywhere. As their own living conditions improve, their health will improve and the effects of old age will pass away. They will not now need to die, no matter how long they live, because mankind will now be started on its way back to eternal life in peaceful Paradise.
14. Who, in time, will join those who have survived?
14 In God’s own time these pioneer workers for Paradise will be joined by countless others. From where? Not just from any families that they might raise, but mainly from the returning dead, those being resurrected from the common grave of mankind. Jesus Christ, “the Lamb of God,” will not have been slaughtered in sacrifice in vain. His own resurrection from the dead is God’s guarantee that those for whom “the Lamb of God” died will likewise be resurrected from the dead under the Lamb’s kingdom. (1 Cor. 15:13-20; Acts 17:31) For all the human dead to be raised at one time would indeed create a “population explosion.” But Jesus Christ himself said when on earth: “The hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out” to the opportunity for everlasting life in God’s new system of things. (John 5:28, 29) Jesus Christ the King is to become the Eternal Father to redeemed mankind, and as he calls them forth they will come from mankind’s common grave. How soon he will call out that evildoer of nineteen centuries ago we do not know; but by then Paradise should well be extended throughout the earth.
15. In time what will be completely missing from this earth, and how does Revelation 21:3, 4, describe the conditions?
15 In the course of the thousand years of Christ’s reign the entire common grave of mankind will be completely emptied; there will not be a single cemetery left on earth. Paradise is a place in which to LIVE, to live forever, and not a place of death. Adam and Eve were turned out of the original paradise after sinning in order that they might die OUTSIDE. Of this restored Paradise, extended earth wide, the comforting prophecy will be true: “And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away.”—Rev. 21:3, 4.
16. By what means is the road back to Paradise provided, and what must all who want to live in that Paradise now do?
16 Since you were meant to live in such an earthly Paradise, do you find yourself naturally warming up to this bright prospect for the early future as held out, yes, to “this generation”? (Matt. 24:32-34) Time fails to quote from Bible prophecies the description of natural beauty of earth that reflects the glories and peace of the Paradise earth under God’s kingdom by means of the Seed of His “woman.” The road back to peace in Paradise is by means of that perfect heavenly government. You can start now on that road back. In order to do so, imitate those of the “great crowd” described in Revelation 7:9-17. By an active faith, wash white your robe of religious identification in the redeeming “blood of the Lamb” now. Hail Jehovah God and his sacrificed Lamb and publicly ascribe your salvation to them. Worship Jehovah as the one living and true God and take up his service in his temple of worship. Follow undeviatingly in the footsteps of his Lamb as your loving Shepherd. He will safely bring you into eternal peace in Paradise.
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Jesus’ answer to the evildoer’s request meant that Paradise would be restored to earth under the kingdom of Jesus Christ
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The “great crowd” of “tribulation” survivors will be started on the way back to eternal life in peaceful Paradise, extending it earth wide