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Let Jehovah’s Purposes Guide Your Way of Life

THAT people in this twentieth century can let Jehovah’s purposes guide their way of life, just as was done by the apostles of Jesus Christ, has been demonstrated by the seventy persons who made up the forty-ninth class of Gilead School. These students from six different countries placed their worship and service of Jehovah, the Creator, in a position of primary importance in their personal lives. They demonstrated this recently by completing five months of intensive schooling to prepare them for missionary work in twenty different countries.

On September 13, 1970, these seventy dedicated persons were graduated from Gilead School, at which time they received upbuilding admonition. For example, one speaker reminded them that the only wise course to take is that of always wanting to please God. He quoted Jude 20 and 21, where the admonition is given to ‘build up yourselves on your most holy faith’ and to “keep yourselves in God’s love.”

The vice-president of the Watchtower Society observed in his talk to the graduating class that they were taking on a new designation, that of “missionary.” But there are some countries that do not want them because they know that the word “missionary” means a person who is sent to win people over to a certain line of thinking, and they do not want that. They think, he said, “you are in their land as missionaries of communism or have been sent by some foreign enemy land having a sinister purpose in their country. Missionaries of Christendom have made a bad face for Christianity in such countries.” He then noted that the word “evangelizer” accurately indicates what they will be doing.

Quoting 2 Timothy 4:5, according to the New World Translation, the speaker stressed the point of being an evangelizer. It says: “You, though, keep your senses in all things, suffer evil, do the work of an evangelizer, fully accomplish your ministry.” He told the graduates that this means being a bearer of good news.

In conclusion, the vice-president of the Society said: “Today you are graduating, and I am reminded of this, that it is not what you start that matters but what you finish. Ecclesiastes 7, verse 8 says: ‘Better is the end afterward of a matter than its beginning.’ Now your beginning today as graduates of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead is a good thing, but is the matter going to become better? It can be made better if you will do what the apostle Paul himself did and what he told Timothy to do​—‘fully accomplish your ministry.’”

The president of the Watchtower Society brought the series of talks to a conclusion by giving his parting admonition to the class. He stressed Jehovah’s purpose for them to preach the good news of the Kingdom. He reminded them that Jesus was sent by Jehovah to get the good news of the Kingdom preached, and Jesus trained others to preach. Just before he ascended into the heavens Christ Jesus gave them definite instructions that they would be witnesses of him “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the most distant part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) The speaker then went on to point out that Jesus’ disciples did get out and preach in all these places and more.

On the day of Pentecost Christ’s disciples, particularly Peter, spoke to people of at least fifteen nationalities, and 3,000 of them accepted Jesus Christ and were baptized, becoming his disciples. The Society’s president also commented that when some of these people went back to Egypt and Libya, from where they had come, the message of the Kingdom was taken there with them. Thus the good news was preached in Africa in the first century C. E. He then observed that some of the students in this forty-ninth class of Gilead received assignments to go to Africa and to preach the good news there. In the year 1942 there were only about 10,000 of Jehovah’s witnesses doing this preaching in Africa. In April, 1970, the preaching was being done there by 242,000 Witnesses. World wide, there are now 1,453,000 sharing in this work as Jehovah’s witnesses.

Then the speaker drew attention to what is written at Hebrews 12:25, which says: “See that you do not beg off from him who is speaking.” As part of his concluding comments, he said: “This is not a time to beg off from carrying on the work that God has given us to do.”

With the conclusion of the talk by the Society’s president, the seventy students filed past him to receive their diplomas and his warm congratulations. But the program was not over, for the students had prepared for the audience a fine Bible drama based upon the Bible book of Ruth.

Following this stirring drama the entire class sang along with the audience of 2,022 the lovely song “Be Steadfast like Ruth.” Then a heartwarming prayer by the Society’s president brought their graduation exercises to a close. The graduates and all present departed with the satisfied feeling of having been spiritually uplifted and with the determination to continue letting Jehovah’s purposes guide their way of life.