Questions From Readers

● Isaiah 41:6 reads: “They help every one his neighbor; and every one saith to his brother, Be of good courage.” (AS) Who are fulfilling this prophecy today? May it be used as an example for encouraging one another in giving the witness to Jehovah’s kingdom by Christ today?—F. F., United States.

Taken out of its context this Bible verse may seem to be a fine text for Christians to apply to themselves in helping and encouraging one another to co-operate enthusiastically in the Kingdom ministry. But in all its history the Watch Tower Society has never in its bound books, booklets and magazines applied Isaiah 41:6 in this way, never, in fact, treating this verse in detail. Why not? Because it does not apply to Jehovah’s witnesses.

In verse 1 Jehovah bids the island communities to keep silence before him and the peoples to enter into a legal argument with him. Verse 5 tells that the islands see and fear what Jehovah is doing and they come together to oppose the one whom Jehovah raises up from the east to execute his judgment. It is then they start helping every one his neighbor and every one says to his brother to be courageous. That they help and encourage one another in opposition to Jehovah’s executioner is evident from the next verse (7): “So the carpenter encourageth the goldsmith, and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good; and he fasteneth it with nails, that it should not be moved.” That what “should not be moved”? The idol, the wooden frame for which the carpenter made. He then encouraged the goldsmith to plate it all over. The sculptor hammered everything out smooth and approved of the soldering. After that the idol image is nailed down to a flooring or pedestal that it may not fall over but even be carried in a procession.

Verse 7 harks back to the preceding chapter, verse 19. The fact is, Moffatt’s translation and An American Translation transpose verses 6 and 7 to next to Isaiah 40:19. (See also the footnote in Knox’s translation.) Thus they help and encourage one another in a demonic work, appealing to false gods to save them from execution.

Certainly this foretold how faithless worldlings today construct their own idols of power and appeal to these false gods to save them from Jehovah’s executioner, Jesus Christ, at the universal war of Armageddon. Jehovah’s witnesses today have no part in fulfilling Isaiah 41:6. Only by a careless slip, overlooking the context, have any applied it to Jehovah’s witnesses erroneously. We regret this.