this old world or system of things entered into the “time of the end,” although it also entered into the most scientific period of all human history. Have these readers lost confidence because the years of waiting have piled up and the time of waiting is not yet over? No! Their continuing to read and support and circulate The Watchtower is strong proof that they have not let go their hold on the confidence that they had at the start, no matter how long ago.

18, 19. (a) For that lifesaving word to benefit us, what must we do? (b) Why do the natural Jews have no rest in this old world, but how only can we have it?

¹⁸ Because of our confidence, we have no desire to draw away from the living God, for to know him and his Son means everlasting life. (John 17:3) But if we allow a “wicked heart lacking faith” to develop in us, we would draw away from God and his Son. It may be that it was merely recently or quite some time ago that we first heard this word about life in the new system of things or in the “inhabited earth to come.” But that lifesaving word will not benefit us either now or in the critical future if we do not keep on exercising faith in connection with it. We have the ancient Jews to prove that point.

¹⁹ Referring to them, Hebrews 4:2, 3 says: “For we have had the good news declared to us also, even as they also had; but the word which was heard did not benefit them.” Why not? “Because they were not united by faith with those who did hear. For we who have exercised faith do enter into the rest, just as he has said [regarding the faithless Jews]: ‘So I swore in my anger, “They shall not enter into my rest.” ‘“ And to this day the descendants of those Jews have no rest in this world, even with their Republic of Israel. But we do desire rest in God the Creator. We can have it only if we hold onto our faith and the confidence that faith inspires.

To Preserve Your Souls Alive, Have Faith

1. What is faith, particularly as defined in Hebrews 11:1, 2?

“FAITH”? What is faith? a new Watchtower reader may ask. Let each Watchtower reader look up the definitions of “faith” in the nearest dictionary at hand. Here, though, is the definition of faith given by Hebrews 11:1, 2, as exemplified by men of God in ancient times before our Common Era: “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld. For by means of this the men of old times had witness borne to them.” Jehovah God bore witness to them that they pleased him because of their faith that they backed up by works.

2. Why did those men have hope, for example, Abel?

² Those men had a hope. They hoped for something. Their hope was imparted to them because of what God had said or had promised. For instance, there was Abel, the second son born to Adam and Eve outside the garden of Eden. Abel had a hope. Why? Because of what Jehovah God had said to the serpent of temptation in the garden of Eden in the hearing of Abel’s father and mother. On this, Genesis 3:14, 15