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Loyalty with a Unified HeartThe Watchtower—1961 | October 1
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him it is written: “The feet of his loyal ones he guards; as for the wicked ones, they are silenced in darkness, for not by power does a man prove superior.”—1 Sam. 2:9.
31 What a steadying force to our hearts and nerves that promise is! This promise also: “For those walking in integrity he is a shield, by observing the paths of judgment, and he will guard the very way of his loyal ones.” (Prov. 2:7, 8) What a present reward this is for our being loyal to Jehovah God with a heart unified in the fear of his name! He rewards us even now because he desires us to enjoy a lasting reward in his new world, which will be inherited and inhabited by all those who are forever loyal to him.
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Prophesying with the Loyal OrganizationThe Watchtower—1961 | October 1
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Prophesying with the Loyal Organization
1. (a) What related loyalty is called for in our loyalty to God? (b) In giving loyalty to what religious organizations are people not giving loyalty to God?
LOYALTY to God who created and organized heaven and earth calls for loyalty to his organization. Today many persons think that by their loyalty to a religious organization they are loyal to God. But they can be wrong about this. Among things foretold to appear in our day are people and organizations described as being “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power.” (2 Tim. 3:1, 4, 5) These make religious claims; they pretend to be devoted to God; they go through man-made religious ceremonies conducted by men who are ordained as priests, bishops, deacons, reverends and doctors of divinity. At the same time they go in for material things, the satisfying of the flesh rather than the spirit, and thus they betray that they are not God’s true organization. They betray themselves as loving the pleasant things and sports, games and gambles of this world, and they do not show the power of true godly devotion in their lives. Their conduct belies the sincerity of their outward godly devotion. Their loyalty is to a false organization, and not to the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 1:3) Their loyalty is to a religious organization that is false to God, an organization that God does not own as his organization.
2, 3. (a) To which organization does God command us to be loyal, and what day nineteen centuries ago decided this for us? (b) That day how was the Christian congregation shown to be the organization to which to be loyal?
2 The visible organization to which God commands us to be loyal is the one upon which he has poured out his holy spirit. More than nineteen centuries ago, on the festival day of Pentecost of A.D. 33, the Jewish congregation in Jerusalem thought that they were God’s visible organization. For this reason fifty-two days previously their priests and religious rulers had forced the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate to nail Jesus Christ to a stake to die like
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