If other members of the Christian congregation learn that you have attended a worldly religious wedding and reception, what effect will it have upon them? Is there a possibility that some might be stumbled by what may appear to them as a compromise of faith? Will their respect for you as a servant of God be undermined? This should be considered, for it may well affect your position in the congregation. But the decision is one that you must make.

As long as this old system of things exists, Christians, who are endeavoring to live in harmony with God’s Word, will have to make decisions relative to their association with it. It is not always easy to decide what to do, but a prayerful consideration of Jehovah’s direction through his Word and organization will help us to make straight paths for our feet.—Ps. 25:4, 5; Prov. 3:5, 6.

Where Is the Witnessing?

The publication Lutheran Witness of March 17, 1964, page 15, says: “Research indicates . . . that it takes 27 years for the average member of our church body to help bring another person to Christ and membership in his Church. . . . During 1962, according to official statistics, 1741 of the 5500 parishes affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod did not gain a single adult by confirmation or confession of faith.”

Other churches in Christendom, if they did the necessary research, undoubtedly would come up with a similar or even higher figure than the twenty-seven years required for a member to bring a new person to his church. True Christians, Jesus Christ plainly indicated, would be known by their regular, busy Kingdom witnessing to people of all the nations.—Matt. 24:14.

Questions From Readers

● Please explain the application of Isaiah 14:12:14. Does it have any application to Satan the Devil?

Isaiah 14:12-14 reads: “‘O how you have fallen from heaven, you shining one, son of the dawn! How you have been cut down to the earth, you who were disabling the nations! As for you, you have said in your heart, ‘To the heavens I shall go up. Above the stars of God I shall lift up my throne, and I shall sit down upon the mountain of meeting, in the remotest parts of the north. I shall go up above the high places of the clouds; I shall make myself resemble the Most High.’”

The first application of Isaiah 14:12-14 is not to Satan the Devil, but is to the ruling dynasty of Babylonian kings beginning with Nebuchadnezzar and ending with Nabonidus and Belshazzar. This dynasty, referred to in Isa 14 verse 4 as the “king of Babylon,” exalted itself highly and shone brightly in the ancient world. Especially so did it desire to be superior to the line of kings that sat on the throne at Jerusalem. In Bible prophecy the kings of the royal line of David were likened to stars; and as these sat on the throne at Jerusalem called “Jehovah’s throne,” they had a brilliance, a royal glory. So, by desiring to make the Israelite kings mere vassals and by finally dethroning them and thus setting himself up above these royal “stars of God,” Babylon’s king was saying in his heart that his ambition was to go up to the heavens of Jehovah, lift his pagan throne up above the symbolic “stars of God” and seat himself on the northerly mountain where Israelites met with their God. In this way Babylon’s king would appear to put himself up above the God of Israel, whom he thus defied, challenged. When Nebuchadnezzar dethroned the “stars of God” at Jerusalem and over turned “Jehovah’s throne,” he may have appeared to himself and to the pagan world to have lifted himself heaven-high. (Compare Matthew 11:23.) So it was the “king of Babylon” who, by what he did to Zion or Jerusalem, had become the “shining one, son of the dawn.” But as ancient Babylon’s fall in 539 B.C.E. this ruling dynasty of Babylonian kings was dethroned, cut down. So rightly could Isaiah say of them: “How you have been cut down to the earth!”