Questions From Readers
What is causing “the desirable things of all the nations” to come into the “house” of true worship?—Haggai 2:7.
Through the prophet Haggai, Jehovah foretold: “I will rock all the nations, and the desirable things of all the nations must come in; and I will fill this house with glory.” (Haggai 2:7) Is the rocking “of all the nations” causing “the desirable things” of the nations—honesthearted individuals—to embrace true worship? The answer is no.
Consider what rocks, or shakes, the nations and what this shaking leads to. The Bible says that “the nations [have] been in tumult and the national groups themselves kept muttering an empty thing.” (Psalm 2:1) The “empty thing” they keep “muttering,” or meditating on, is the continuation of their own sovereignty. Nothing shakes them more than any threat to their rulership.
The worldwide preaching of the established Kingdom of God done by Jehovah’s Witnesses has become just such a threat to the nations. After all, the Messianic Kingdom of God in the hands of Jesus Christ is going to “crush and put an end to all [man-made] kingdoms.” (Daniel 2:44) The message of judgment included in our preaching work is sending out a tremor among the nations. (Isaiah 61:2) And the shaking gets more severe as the preaching work increases in scope and intensity. Of what is the rocking foretold at Haggai 2:7 a portent?
At Haggai 2:6, we read: “This is what Jehovah of armies has said, ‘Yet once—it is a little while—and I am rocking the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry ground.’” Quoting from this verse, the apostle Paul wrote: “He has promised, saying: ‘Yet once more I will set in commotion not only the earth but also the heaven.’ Now the expression ‘Yet once more’ signifies the removal of the things being shaken as things that have been made, in order that the things not being shaken [the Kingdom] may remain.” (Hebrews 12:26, 27) Yes, the entire present system of things is going to be shaken out of existence to make room for the new world of God’s making.
Honesthearted people are drawn to true worship but not because the nations are rocked, or shaken. The action that is drawing them to Jehovah and his worship is the same action that is causing the nations to rock, namely the worldwide preaching of the established Kingdom of God. The declaration of the ‘glad tidings of everlasting good news’ draws rightly inclined individuals to the worship of the true God.—Revelation 14:6, 7.
The Kingdom message is one of judgment and of salvation. (Isaiah 61:1, 2) The results of preaching it worldwide are twofold: the rocking of the nations and the coming in of the desirable things of the nations to Jehovah’s glory.