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The Picking Out of Sharers in the World RuleOur Incoming World Government—God’s Kingdom
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3 “I John, your brother and a sharer with you in the tribulation and kingdom and endurance in company with Jesus, came to be in the isle that is called Patmos for [what?] speaking about God and bearing witness to Jesus.
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The Picking Out of Sharers in the World RuleOur Incoming World Government—God’s Kingdom
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4, 5. (a) How had John come into relationship with Jesus Christ? (b) In what was John then a sharer with those to whom he wrote?
4 This John, the son of Zebedee, had been a fisherman in the Sea of Galilee, but had left his fishing profession to become a ‘fisher of men,’ one of the twelve apostles of the Messiah Jesus. (Matthew 4:18-22; Luke 5:1-11) So John was a Christianized Jew, a faithful disciple of Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, the one “anointed” with God’s spirit to be the Messianic King. John had been an eyewitness of the impalement of this Jesus Christ at Calvary, and on the third day thereafter he had seen the resurrected Jesus. On the fortieth day thereafter he and his fellow apostles had seen the resurrected Jesus Christ ascend to heaven, to sit down at the right hand of God, his heavenly Father.
5 Furthermore, John the apostle was there in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost of 33 C.E., when Jehovah God used Jesus as his Chief Agent in pouring out holy spirit upon about one hundred and twenty assembled disciples. (Acts 1:1 through 2:36) So by the time that John wrote down the Revelation in 96 C.E., he had endured tribulation and suffering as a Christian for sixty-three years. John spoke of himself as a “sharer” in the kingdom with his fellow disciples of Christ.
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