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Why Christians Shun TobaccoThe Watchtower—1950 | February 15
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are recommended by worldly theorists, such as special diets, exercise, medicines, gradual tapering-off of smoking, etc. The best method for quitting is to have a good incentive for doing so and then to stop abruptly. It is the method used by many when they became Jehovah’s witnesses and wanted to cease fouling themselves with tobacco. Many of this multitude of witnesses numbering into the tens of thousands were at one time in slavery to tobacco with the rest of the world, but they broke free of its unclean bonds, not because they followed a special diet or course of exercise, but because they realized that it was defiling their bodies and harming their health and making them unclean for Jehovah’s service. Had they not learned that Jehovah’s witnesses were commanded to be clean in both mind and body?—Isa. 52:11; 2 Cor. 7:1.
How, then, were so many thousands able to break the tobacco habit? Most people fail to appreciate that the mind is the agency that controls, governs and directs the body and its habits. But Jehovah’s witnesses fully realize this and know that the battle against tobacco must be fought and won in the mind. They know full well that the great adversary the Devil as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour attacks one’s mind, and so they take mental refuge under the protecting hand of Jehovah God. (1 Pet. 5:8) Under such overshadowing protection they are taught by God’s Word, the Bible. But in addition to a mind fed, strengthened and directed by God’s Word he gives them that all-necessary invisible force or energy toward righteousness, and that is his holy spirit. To those who ask him persistently he gives this spirit more readily than earthly parents give good gifts to beloved children. Thus, fortified and moved by his holy spirit, and with honest-to-goodness appeal or prayer to God for his help to overcome the entrenched habit, they are bound to vindicate his power in gaining the victory.
Food and exercise are also important factors for Jehovah’s witnesses. Their special diet is that prescribed by the great Physician: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4) They do not get choosy and stubbornly reject the spiritual food that puts their unclean habits in an unfavorable light, but partake of the spiritual food to get strength to overcome the uncleanness. For exercise they have their “feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15), and they hasten from house to house with this good news. They do not sit around in a tobacco-laden atmosphere, but get out into the fresh air and occupy their mind and body by standing on the street corners with magazines heralding forth the Kingdom message.
This, then, is the sure and positive cure for the tobacco habit, and anyone who will make a clean and abrupt break from the snare and follow this course will find that in a short time he will have lost his desire for the weed. Then he will have more health and strength and energy to expend in Jehovah’s service. He will have redeemed time and money for worth-while uses. He will have Scripturally cleansed himself from that particular “filthiness of the flesh”. Then, instead of tearing down the organization’s reputation for cleanness, he will be a clean associate of the clean organization that today is preaching the good news of Jehovah God’s righteous new world of endless blessings.
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Zechariah Urges God’s Service Despite BanThe Watchtower—1950 | February 15
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Zechariah Urges God’s Service Despite Ban
WHY did Jehovah God effect the release of the Jewish captives in Babylon that they might return to their homeland? Why, after their capital city of Jerusalem had lain desolate for seventy years, were they returned to Judah and Mount Zion? Was it for the sake of their political independence, so called? No; but for the restoration of God’s service in accord with Theocratic law. To this end the decree in the opening year of Cyrus’ full power over Babylon read: “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath Jehovah, the God of heaven, given me; and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever there is among you of all his people, his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of Jehovah, the God of Israel (he is God), which is in Jerusalem.”—Ezra 1:1-3, Am. Stan. Ver.
Accordingly in 537 B.C. nearly 50,000 devoted worshipers of Jehovah undertook the perilous journey to return to their desolated homeland. Zerubbabel was made governor of this restored remnant, and prominently associated with him in the work of rebuilding the temple was the high priest Joshua, or Jeshua. In the second year of their return the foundation of the new temple for the worship and service of Jehovah had been laid.—Ezra 2:1, 2, 64-70; 3:1-4, 8-11.
At this time opposition to rebuilding the temple broke out among the Gentile nations in Palestine. They carried on an official persecution of the temple builders and tried to hold up their work all the days of King Cyrus. Then they joined in sending a letter to Cyrus’ successor, King Artaxerxes, and accused the temple builders of seditious aims against the political state. King Artaxerxes believed the accusation. Contrary to the law of the Medes and Persians, he countermanded the temple decree of Cyrus, and had the temple work stopped. “So it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.”—Ezra 4:1-24.
That means that for sixteen years the work of rebuilding the temple had lain idle. Then, “the prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel.” (Ezra 5:1) Of the two prophets, Haggai was the elder and he took the lead in stirring up the Jews to activity in God’s service of rebuilding the house of Jehovah. Less than four weeks after his opening blast the temple work was resumed, in the teeth of the imperial ban! Two months after Haggai led off with his vigorous exhortations the younger contemporaneous prophet Zechariah joined in with his voice: “In the eighth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the LORD unto Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet.”—Zech. 1:1.
From the above it appears that Zechariah was the grandson of Iddo and the son of Berechiah. That Zechariah was
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