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Awakening the Sleepers

ONE of Jehovah’s witnesses was offering the Awake! magazine at a subway entrance situated in New York city’s largest hotel. Among the passers-by were two smartly dressed young women, one of whom, noting his slogans and the name of the magazine he was offering, jestingly remarked: “That’s right. I am sound asleep!” With a smile the witness replied, “Miss, you know, many a truth is spoken in jest.”

But no wonder the young woman joked about being asleep. Is it not ridiculous to call to people to awake in this, the fastest moving of all ages in history?

Nevertheless the fact remains, the vast majority of the people are asleep and do not know it. They may think they are witty by making such a remark, but actually they are stating a sobering truth. How so? Because they are asleep to the really important things, to the only things that really matter. They are sound asleep to the significance of the many momentous events that have taken place since 1914 in fulfillment of Christ’s great prophecy as recorded at Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21. They are asleep to the fact that the time is fast running out for this old wicked system of things and that they must get out of it if they would not go down with it.—Rev. 16:14, 16; 18:4.

What has put them to sleep? Preoccupation with selfish concerns, dishonest commercial advertising, political propaganda, false religious teaching and the theories of a worldly-wise pseudo-science; all of which act as opiates to the people.

At the time of the great deluge only Noah and his immediate family were awake to the time they were living in and they showed it by their actions; not only by building that large chestlike boat, but also by sounding the warning to others to awake before it was too late. (2 Pet. 2:5) Today, we, as Christian witnesses for Jehovah, have a like privilege and responsibility, for did not Christ state that as it was in the days of Noah it would be in the days of the Son of man? If we fully appreciate these facts we warn: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and the Christ will shine upon you.”—Eph. 5:14, NW.

Surely if our neighbor’s house were on fire and we knew that he was not aware of that fact, perhaps even sound asleep, we would be very urgent about awaking him and his family to their danger. Yet the work that Jehovah has given to his witnesses today is far more important and urgent, for what is involved is not merely a spending of the remainder of our threescore years and ten in this wretched system of things, but the spending of an eternity in God’s new world of righteousness and happiness. In fact, unless we do our best to awaken these “dead” ones, we ourselves will share their “perpetual sleep.”

As properly trained ministers, at every opportunity let us sound the warning to awake.