Tell the People “Until Cities Be Waste Without Inhabitant”

WHY have Jehovah’s witnesses become increasingly prominent and active since 1918? Who commissioned them and gave them their message? Is their activity accomplishing its purpose or must it be classed as a failure? For how long must they continue to witness?a

What makes Jehovah’s witnesses ever more prominent is that their message is so different from that of all others professing to be Christians. Jehovah’s witnesses, like the others, were at one time contaminated with the errors that marked the great apostasy foretold by the apostle Paul. (2 Thess. 2:3) However, due to their loyalty to Bible truth, God purified their message even as he cleansed the lips of his prophet Isaiah.—Prov. 4:18; Isa. 6:6, 7.

As a result of that purifying work Jehovah’s witnesses have a striking message, uncompromising, pure, free from the fear of man, religious traditions and human philosophies and creature worship. And this message fires them with zeal so that when they hear the call of Jehovah: “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” they eagerly respond: “Here am I; send me.” (Isa. 6:8) Without first inquiring whether or not such have had seminary training and whether or not they are single, Jehovah God accepts the services of such and sends them forth. They have the needed knowledge of Jehovah God and his purposes and the desire to tell others.

Are Jehovah’s witnesses converting the world? No, they are not. In fact, they are not even trying to do so; that is not the purpose of their activity. Their purpose is to warn the wicked and point the lovers of righteousness to the place of safety, and that purpose they are accomplishing. To compromise their message for the sake of popularity would not fulfill prophecy, for Jehovah foretold that their message would be rejected.—Isa. 6:9, 10.

If not until the world is converted, then for how long are they to continue to give the witness? Jehovah answers through his prophet Isaiah: “Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, and Jehovah have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land.”—Isa. 6:11, 12, AS.

Thus we see that, without setting a specific date, Jehovah does set the practical limits of the work his witnesses must do among the people of unhealed Christendom, until it is totally desolated. That desolation will be accomplished by the ten “horns” of the beast which will turn on Christendom’s whorish system of Babylonish religion and wreck it. All of her religious systems will be affected, none will escape. Their adherents will be taken captive or destroyed by the worldly elements that fight against religion and God’s kingdom, thus making organized religion completely desolate, this marking the beginning of Armageddon.—Rev. 17:16-18.

However, in spite of such conditions in Christendom, Jehovah’s witnesses will continue to proclaim the Kingdom message and declare the “day of vengeance of our God”. They will continue to do so until Christ Jesus, Jehovah’s chief Executioner, destroys all the ungodly elements, religious, political, social and commercial in the “war of the great day of God the Almighty”, thus completely vindicating Jehovah’s universal sovereignty.

Therefore, you Christian witnesses of Jehovah, do not relax your efforts, do not become weary in well-doing, warn the wicked and comfort men of good will “until cities be waste without inhabitant”!

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