Not that it does not take courage to be a speaking minister of Jehovah in lands where there is relative freedom. It does. It takes courage to take Jehovah’s unpopular message from house to house, to offer it to passersby on the streets. It takes courage to speak up whenever an opportunity for incidental witnessing presents itself. It takes courage to keep faithful to Jehovah when you are bitterly opposed by members of your own household. And it takes no small amount of courage to keep integrity if you are a youth still attending school and daily have to rub elbows with a crowd of God-defying, mocking, scoffing, sneering teen-agers that likewise flout all rightful human authority, parents, schoolteachers and even the police.

How can you gain this greatly needed, all-important courage? Not by wishful thinking. It comes from a knowledge and understanding of God’s Word and your wholehearted reliance upon it. It is not a book of cowards. When its precepts and examples are properly interpreted and applied it gives the faith and hope in Jehovah that make for courage. Among the many fine examples of courage it contains are those of King David and the One whom he foreshadowed, Jesus Christ. What courage David showed when as a mere youth he took on the taunting giant Goliath! What courage Jesus manifested as he calmly spoke to the armed mob that came to take him on that last night of his earthly ministry!—1 Sam. 17:34-51; Matt. 26:47-56.

You can have like courage today by coming to God’s Word with the right mental attitude, with a consciousness of your spiritual need. But for your personal Bible study to be truly fruitful you must take advantage of the means Jehovah God has provided for your understanding his Word and applying it in our day. Those means consist primarily of five weekly congregational meetings. Do not let any such obstacles as inclement weather interfere with your attending these and gaining the faith-strengthening and hope-inspiring spiritual food to be had at them. Your very association with other courageous Christian ministers will cause your own courage to grow stronger, for if ‘bad associations spoil useful habits,’ certainly it must follow that right associations will strengthen useful habits.—1 Cor. 15:33.

You do want to be a courageous Christian minister, do you not? A courageous minister is a joyful minister. A courageous minister is one that brings honor to Jehovah’s name and shares in its vindication. A courageous minister is one who strengthens his fellow ministers. And a courageous minister is one who brings forth abundantly both the fruitage of the spirit and Kingdom fruitage, thirty-, sixty- and a hundredfold.

During December courageous ministers in English-speaking lands will manifest their faith and hope in Jehovah by bringing the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures to men of goodwill. Happy are all those who share in this blessed work.

Questions From Readers

● What did Elijah mean when, in reply to Elisha’s request that he be permitted to say farewell to his parents, he said to Elisha: “Go, return; for what have I done to you?”—1 Ki. 19:20.—A. J., United States.

What Elijah here meant was that the matter was not so pressing that Elisha could not first go home and bid his parents farewell. Go, return, for I have no objections. I have done nothing to you to forbid this, his words might be paraphrased. So Elisha proceeded to prepare a feast for his family. This must have taken several hours at least, as it involved killing the bulls, preparing them and then boiling their flesh.

In fact, it is reasonable to conclude that Elijah stayed and shared in this feast, for we do not read of Elisha as hurrying to catch up with Elijah, as though Elijah had kept on going and Elisha stayed behind. So we read that after the feast Elisha “rose up and went following Elijah and began to minister to him.”—1 Ki. 19:21.

This was an entirely different situation from that recorded at Matthew 8:21, 22, where a disciple asked to be first permitted to bury his father, and Jesus replied: “Keep following me, and let the dead bury their dead.” In this case we are not to understand that the father was already dead; otherwise, the son would have been about burying his father, as in Oriental lands people bury their dead soon after they die.