Source : w80 2/1 26 TODAY’S COUNTERPART OF EBED-MELECH 17 Is there really a counterpart today of Ebed-melech in connection with the modern Jeremiah class? Yes! Who, then, make up the modern counterpart of Ebed-melech? Just how he came by that name we do not know. As a name Ebed-melech means “Servant of a King,” or, “King’s Servant.” As a eunuch he may have been castrated and deprived of raising his own family. But, true to his name, he was in the court service of the king of Judah. Further, due to his trust in Jehovah, he proved to be in the service of more than an earthly king. Zedekiah sat on the royal throne at Jerusalem that was called “Jehovah’s throne.” (1 Chron. 29:23) Logically, then, Ebed-melech showed himself to be, in fact, in the service of the “King of the nations,” Jehovah. For being in the service of Jehovah’s typical kingdom in the land of Judah, he was amply rewarded by being preserved when unfaithful Jerusalem was destroyed. 18 When it comes to being preserved through Christendom’s “great tribulation,” Revelation 7:14, 15 says concerning the “great crowd” there described: “These are the ones that come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. That is why they are before the throne of God; and they are rendering him sacred service day and night in his temple.” As a class, those who make up that “great crowd” of tribulation survivors were prefigured by Ebed-melech, an outstanding survivor of Jerusalem’s destruction. 19 This class really learns to fear Jehovah and to trust in him. Their uppermost desire is to be in the service of the Universal Sovereign, the “King of the nations,” rather than to be serving the political rulers and kings of man-made governments. They see how power-greedy rulers, like Adolf Hitler who gained power in Germany in 1933 C.E., tried and still keep on trying to exterminate Jehovah’s anointed remnant who were prefigured by his prophet Jeremiah. So the Ebed-melech class raise a protest and make an appeal in the courageous effort to help the Jeremiah class, even though this means incurring the hatred and persecution of the religious and political enemies of the Jeremiah class. 20 These backers of Jehovah’s anointed remnant of witnesses came to view particularly in the year 1935, when the “great crowd” of “tribulation” survivors was identified. 21 Regardless of whether the Ebed-melech class have any influence with the governments of Christendom or not, they have never favored the religious-political endeavor to put the Jeremiah class to death or to make the Jeremiah class ineffective in Jehovah’s public service as if by lowering them into a miry cistern in a guardhouse. In spite of facing the fear-inducing disapproval of the political-religious authorities, they have done all they could to hoist the Jeremiah class out of the miry “cistern” of inoperativeness. To this very day they have been courageously acting world wide at the side of the Jeremiah class, proclaiming the doom of Christendom and of the world empire of false religion, Babylon the Great. They are encouraging people of all kinds to desert this doomed system of things and to take a firm stand on the side of Jehovah’s executional forces under the command of a general greater than Nebuchadnezzar, namely, Jesus Christ. Thus they prove that they have put their full trust in Jehovah, “King of the nations.” 22 Because of such unwavering devotion to him and his modern-day Jeremiah class, Jehovah loves this composite Ebed-melech. He promises that this class will not fall by the “sword” of the approaching “war of the great day of God the Almighty” at Har–Magedon.—Rev. 16:13-16. 23 As a reward from Jehovah, they will have their earthly lives, their souls, preserved for them like the spoil of warfare, deservedly coming into possession of a preserved life. Like the sheeplike ones in Jesus’ parable of the “sheep” and the “goats,” they have done good to the remnant of Christ’s spiritual brothers. When these were “in prison,” in a miry “cistern” or death house, they have visited these underground or openly and have served to free them for further action in the grand finale of Jehovah’s witness work amid a doomed worldly system of things.—Matt. 25:31-36, 46. 24 Let it be known everywhere that the Jeremiah class thank Jehovah for raising up the “great crowd” of “other sheep,” prefigured by the Ethiopian eunuch Ebed-melech of the last days of unfaithful Jerusalem, the capital city of the kingdom of Judah. Unspeakable will be the pleasure of the Jeremiah class in surviving the “great tribulation” with the Ebed-melech class at their side. Shoulder to shoulder they will begin working together in the New Order into which they will be introduced under Christ’s millennial kingdom. Such an introduction into the brilliant New Order will be their reward for having now served the Sovereign of the universe, Jehovah, the “King of the nations.” Another discussion in the series on Jeremiah’s prophecy will appear in “The Watchtower” of March 1, 1980 [Footnotes] According to A Greek-English Lexicon, compiled by Liddell and Scott (1948), the Greek word for Ethiopian (Aithiops) means “Burntface, i.e. Ethiopian, negro, Homer, etc.” No castrated foreign eunuch could become a Jewish proselyte or member of the circumcised congregation of Israel.—Deut. 23:1; compare Isaiah 56:3-5.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:59:05 +0000
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