Integrity in Serving the God of Truth
“Instruct me, O Jehovah, about your way. I shall walk in your truth.”—PSALM 86:11.
1, 2. (a) How may God’s provision for mankind be illustrated? (b) How do the Scriptures describe God’s handiwork and the waywardness of men?
IMAGINE that you are walking in a barren desert, devoid of all life. Suddenly you come upon a beautiful house. It is air-conditioned and has heating, plumbing, and electricity. Its refrigerator and cupboards are filled with food. Its basement contains fuel and an abundance of other supplies. Would you say that all of it got there just by chance? Would you be thankful if the owner asked you to stay in that house and enjoy it?
2 Well, this delightful earth on which we live is just like that house. Long before mankind was created, our loving God prepared this earth to become our home and he provided everything that we would need to make us happy. (Isaiah 45:12, 18) Should we not be thankful to this generous Provider? He is the One who inspired the writing of the Bible’s words at Hebrews 3:4: “Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.” The shame is that selfish men have vandalized and are ruining God’s handiwork on earth.—Deuteronomy 32:3-5.
3. What does the Bible say about Jehovah’s generosity now and for the future?
3 Even to opponents of the truth, the apostle Paul could say concerning God: “He did not leave himself without witness in that he did good, giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts to the full with food and good cheer.” (Acts 14:17) How much more so Jehovah can bless those who serve him in integrity! Though the hardships and burdens of these “last days” may press in on us, there is the glorious hope that in the not-far-distant future the Sovereign Lord Jehovah will certainly provide a veritable banquet of good things for those who love him, wiping the tears from all faces.—2 Timothy 3:1; Isaiah 25:6-8.
The Marvel of the Human Intellect
4. (a) What dilemma confronts some computer scientists? (b) What does Jeremiah 33:2, 3 say concerning the Maker of the human brain?
4 For several years, scientists have been trying to make computers that actually think. But now they admit that they are blocked at the very first step. Why so? Well, they confess that the structure of the human eye has them beaten. If they cannot imitate the eye, how can they start on the brain, and how are they ever going to reproduce the faculty of mind? What a marvel the human brain is! Every second, a hundred million bits of information pour into this organ to be sifted, sorted, and applied in intelligent living. The most sophisticated computer cannot even begin to compare with that. What a fine testimony to the surpassing wisdom of the loving God who made us! We can be happy that our Maker and Former, Jehovah God, endowed us with intelligence and that we may use our brains in learning the “great and incomprehensible things” that he reveals to us in his own due time and way.—Jeremiah 33:2, 3.
5. (a) What miracle of growth takes place only in humans? (b) How are Elihu’s words appropriate?
5 The miracle of the human brain starts in the womb, with brain cells beginning to form just three weeks after conception. These multiply in spurts, sometimes up to a quarter of a million cells a minute. After birth, the baby’s brain triples in size the first year, showing it to be far, far different from the brain of any animal, including the ape. Soon the human child can handle languages, reason on matters, appreciate moral issues and spiritual values. How could these faculties ever have evolved from brute beasts? Appropriately, Elihu said concerning our God and Grand Maker: “He is the One teaching us more than the beasts of the earth, and he makes us wiser than even the flying creatures of the heavens.”—Job 35:10, 11.
6. (a) How do the Scriptures account for the marvelous structure of man? (b) How may we lovingly use our God-given powers?
6 This marvel, the human intellect, harmonizes with Genesis 1:27, which states: “God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” Should we not be thankful for the way God has made us? David was. He praised Jehovah, saying: “I shall laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful.” (Psalm 139:14) Do we not laud our God for the same reason? Moreover, we may use our God-given brains and bodies in meeting the challenge that Satan has thrown in the face of our God. We may serve Jehovah as integrity keepers.—Proverbs 27:11.
Hold Fast to Truth
7, 8. (a) What contrasts are to be noted between truth and theory? (b) As to evolution, what are knowledgeable people now saying? (c) Why must evolution be linked with credulity rather than faith?
7 Truth must triumph! We lovers of Jehovah must hold fast to truth as we use our mental powers in choosing the course of integrity. The truth on creation is established. It is firm. It has stood the test of millenniums. In little more than a century, that great untruth, the theory of evolution, stands ready to be discarded. This is not just our opinion. It is the consensus of many open-minded scientists, lawyers, investigators, and other knowledgeable people. Speaking of the challenge to “the principles of evolution, as laid down by Darwin and others,” The New York Times summed up the situation by stating: “The field is in an uproar.” A well-informed scientist writes: “We admit there are gaping holes in the evidence for evolution. . . . Yes, evolution is only a theory. Believing in evolution, then, is an act of faith.”
8 But is belief in evolution really an act of faith? We would say, rather, that it is an act of credulity. Faith has a firm foundation. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that it is “the evident demonstration of realities.” The evidence that the Bible record is based on realities and is truth is overwhelming. (2 Timothy 3:16, 17; Romans 15:4) On the other hand, the more that evolutionists investigate matters, the more they unearth contradictions that they try to justify to the credulous.
Did Ape-Men Exist?
9. How abundant are ape-man fossils, and where do they belong?
9 In 130 years of searching for fossils of the missing link between ape and man, evolutionists have come up with a pitifully small array of bones. According to the magazine Science Digest, “all the physical evidence we have for human evolution can still be placed, with room to spare, inside a single coffin!” No doubt, that is where such so-called evidence belongs—with the lid of the coffin nailed down tight!
10. How honest are artists’ reconstructions of ape-men?
10 Those magazine pictures of ape-men that are used to bolster the evolution theory are nothing more than figments of the imagination, drawn on the basis of a few small fragments of a skull or a jawbone. For example, on page 1 of The New York Times of August 16, 1985, there appeared an “artist’s reconstruction of Amphipithecus, earliest known higher primate . . . from which humans evolved,” showing its hairy head and hands. From what was this reconstructed? Says the accompanying article: “The rear portion of a lower jaw . . . together with the frontal jaw fragment found half a century before.” But can the complete head, hair and all, really be reconstructed on the basis of two such fragments? The article quoted an anthropologist at Harvard University as calling these fossils a “pool of light in acres of darkness.” But may they really be equated with light?
11. How may Isaiah 59:15 be applied in connection with the so-called ape-men?
11 What some might call another such “pool of light” was the skull of Piltdown man. It held the center of the evolutionary stage for about 40 years but was exposed in 1953 as an assemblage of bone fragments, some animal and some human, fraudulently stuck together as a hoax! In the words of the prophet Isaiah, it can be said of these theoretical ape-men: “Truth proves to be missing.”—Isaiah 59:15.
A Prophetic Parallel
12. What detestable things did Ezekiel see?
12 Ungodly Christendom of today was foreshadowed by unfaithful Jerusalem of ancient times. It was in the year 612 B.C.E. that the Sovereign Lord Jehovah gave Ezekiel a vision in which He transported His prophet from Babylon to Jerusalem. There, in the courtyard of the temple, Ezekiel saw an abominable symbol of idolatry. Jehovah next had him bore through and enlarge a hole in the wall. Then he said to Ezekiel: “Go in and see the bad detestable things that they are doing here.” What did he see? Why, in the inner rooms of Jehovah’s house of worship, “there was every representation of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the dungy idols of the house of Israel, the carving being upon the wall all round about.”—Ezekiel 8:1, 7-10.
13. (a) What parallel situation exists in Christendom today? (b) How did Jesus view the Bible’s creation account?
13 In parallel to this vision, we find a shocking situation among Christendom’s clergy today. For the most part, this “man of lawlessness” has abandoned the Bible’s creation account. (2 Thessalonians 2:3) Or, like those apostates of Ezekiel’s day, the clergy struggle to blend evolution with the Bible, stating that the opening chapters of Genesis consist of myth or allegory. Disregarding the scientific axiom that the simplest explanation is often the true one, they say that the Bible account is too naive for them. Their puffed-up intellects call for something more sophisticated and complicated. They exalt themselves above Jesus Christ, who referred to the literal Genesis account as “truth.”—John 17:17; Matthew 19:4-6.
14. How do “elderly ones” now fail to lead their flocks, and what will be the result?
14 In his vision, Ezekiel saw “seventy men of the elderly ones of the house of Israel” worshiping before those representations of “creeping things and loathsome beasts.” (Ezekiel 8:10, 11) This is comparable to those modern-day clergymen who openly claim that mankind evolved from such beasts! These “elderly ones” should be leading their flocks in the way of truth. But does not Jesus’ description at Matthew 15:14 apply to them? Jesus said: “Blind guides is what they are. If, then, a blind man guides a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” They can find such a pit in the “acres of darkness” where the evolutionists are groping.
15. How do evolutionary clergymen give further proof of being part of “the man of lawlessness”?
15 Jehovah next asked Ezekiel: “Have you seen, O son of man, what the elderly ones of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each one in the inner rooms of his showpiece? For they are saying, ‘Jehovah is not seeing us. Jehovah has left the land.’” (Ezekiel 8:12) Clergymen who subscribe to human philosophies give similar proof that they are part of “the man of lawlessness.” They abandon God’s law, which includes the book of Genesis. (Acts 7:53) They lead their flocks into the darkness of worldly thinking, as exemplified by the unproved and unprovable theory of evolution. They “have loved the darkness rather than the light” of truth.—John 3:19.
16. What similarity is to be noted between “the elderly ones” of Ezekiel’s day and many clergymen today?
16 Just as those Jewish elders brought their false worship into the temple at Jerusalem, so false religious leaders today try to cling to the label “Christian.” But belief in evolution is not Christian. Acceptance of this theory has caused many to turn away from God. It has contributed in no small measure to the independence, violence, and terrorism of our 20th century, with nations and individuals espousing the evolutionary maxim of “survival of the fittest.” Evolution has taught that man has no responsibility to a Creator. (Romans 9:28) People have therefore felt free to ‘do their own thing,’ without any thought of God.
17. In what respects have evolutionary clergymen fallen into gross error?
17 Religious leaders who accept evolution are saying, in effect: “Jehovah is not seeing us. Jehovah has left the land.” Because of embracing this philosophy, they feel no accountability to him. Indeed, their conception of God is clouded by their belief in a mysterious, unexplainable Trinity of gods. In line with this viewpoint, they would like to do away with the very name of the one true God, Jehovah, making no mention at all of the name and studiously removing it from their Bible translations. They fear to go contrary to the popular worldly teaching of evolution.
18. What accounting awaits the theory of evolution and its supporters?
18 Aptly, Jehovah says through another prophet: “For the reason that this people have come near with their mouth, and they have glorified me merely with their lips, and they have removed their heart itself far away from me, and their fear toward me becomes men’s commandment that is being taught, therefore here I am, the One that will act wonderfully again with this people, in a wonderful manner and with something wonderful; and the wisdom of their wise men must perish, and the very understanding of their discreet men will conceal itself.” (Isaiah 29:13, 14) At the latest, the God-dishonoring theory of evolution and those professed Christians who embrace it will meet up with that accounting in the day of Jehovah’s burning anger.—Zephaniah 3:8.
Serving in Behalf of Truth
19. (a) Why have many embraced evolution? (b) In what rejoicing may meek ones now share?
19 This is indeed an ungodly world! False religion and misdirected scientific pride have helped to make it so. The absurdities in the teachings of “the man of lawlessness,” the clergy of Christendom, have turned many away from religion. Some of these have grasped at evolution, much as a drowning man will grasp at a straw. Others have embraced the creed of evolution because its godlessness appears to relieve them of responsibility to a Creator-God. (Compare Romans 1:21-23.) But the humble, meek ones of mankind are now rejoicing to learn of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah, of the reigning King Jesus Christ, and of God’s Kingdom purposes soon to become a glorious reality.—Romans 16:20; 1 Corinthians 15:25, 26.
20. (a) What grand promise is even now being fulfilled? (b) How was this evidenced during 1985? (c) How may you show integrity in serving the God of truth?
20 How happy we are, as Jehovah’s Witnesses, to be united all over the earth in zealously proclaiming the truth! God’s spirit is working mightily with his organization, so that we already see the fulfillment of the promise: “The earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea.” (Isaiah 11:9) The worldwide witness that was given by Jehovah’s people during 1985 resulted in the field distribution of 339,351,170 Bibles and publications explaining the Bible, in upwards of 200 languages. It was the privilege of more than three million of us to share in this grand global preaching work, “publicly and from house to house.” (Acts 20:20) May we continue to be richly blessed by Jehovah as we strive to keep integrity in serving the God of truth.
What Is Your Comment?
◻ What marvels of the human brain point to an all-wise Maker?
◻ Why is it wrong to say that belief in evolution is an act of faith?
◻ How much evidence is there that ape-men really existed?
◻ How may Ezekiel 8:7-12 be applied to some religious leaders today?
◻ Integrity in serving the God of truth is bringing what results?
[Box on page 21]
Life—How Did It Get Here? By Evolution or by Creation?
The book by the above title was released in 1985 and 1986 at many of the “Integrity Keepers” Conventions of Jehovah’s Witnesses around the earth. It has now been published in the following languages: Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
[Picture on page 19]
Is it honest for artists to reconstruct ape-men from a few bone fragments?
[Picture on page 20]
Jehovah’s Witnesses have ‘filled the earth’ with knowledge of Jehovah