of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.”—Rev. 11:17, 18.

The first work of the enthroned King is to oust the rebel Satan, and therefore the “war in heaven” began in 1914. (Rev. 12:1-17) The battle of Armageddon yet to come will dispose definitely of all those who oppose Christ the King, and that will be the end of Satan’s reign.

The kingdom of heaven is God’s capital organization called Zion. It consists of Christ Jesus, the Head, together with 144,000 associates, who are designated as kings and priests unto God and Christ. All of such are spirits in the likeness of Christ Jesus. The number will be no more and no less than 144,000 members. The Kingdom is the creation of Jehovah God, and he is over all and above all. He is the great and almighty Theocrat. The King, Christ Jesus, will fully and completely carry out Jehovah’s purpose. The kingdom or government of peace is The Theocracy.

But what about the men of faith that lived before Jesus, who devoted themselves to God, refused to compromise with Satan or worldly governments, and looked to the promised rule of Almighty Jehovah? None of them can ever be members of the heavenly kingdom or government of Jehovah, for the manifest reason that they all died before the ransom sacrifice was provided by Jesus and paid over.

Those men are held forth in the Scriptures as examples of faith and true devotion. (Heb. 12:1) Being faithful, they received at God’s hand a “good report”. They were witnesses to the name and majesty of Almighty God, and he approved them, and concerning them the inspired apostle, who is a member of the Kingdom, wrote: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us [Christians], that they without us should not be made perfect.” (Heb. 11:13, 39, 40) The apostle Paul spoke also of himself when he said “us”, and he knew that he could not be made perfect until the coming of Christ Jesus, the King of glory (2 Tim. 4:8); and therefore the faithful men of old could not be made perfect until the setting up of the Kingdom. It is certain, then, from the Scriptures that these men will be brought back from death as participants in a “better resurrection” following the Kingdom’s establishment. (Heb. 11:35) What, then, shall be their place in Jehovah’s arrangement and under his Theocratic government?

The kingdom or government of Jehovah is spiritual: therefore invisible to human eyes. God had his representatives on earth during the tenure of his typical kingdom of Israel and so he will have his representatives on earth during the reign of Christ the King of glory. And those visible representatives, acting with authority, will be made up of the faithful men of old mentioned at Hebrews chapter eleven, as well as others not there mentioned by name; and concerning them it is written: “Instead of thy [Christ’s] fathers shall be thy children whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.”—Ps. 45:16.

The King, Christ Jesus, is the Ruler, and the earthly representatives of that great Ruler are called the “princes”, who shall represent the Kingdom on the earth. As Samuel the prophet, under the typical kingdom, went about among the people delivering to them the commands of Jehovah, so under the reign of Christ the faithful men of old, the princes in the earth, shall go among the people directing them according to the commands of the Lord. That is the Theocratic government in operation toward the paradise earth to come.

The abundance of Scriptural evidence, together with the physical facts that have come to pass showing the fulfillment of prophecy, conclusively proves that the time for Armageddon, the battle of the great day of God Almighty, is very near and that in that battle all of God’s enemies will be destroyed and the earth cleared of wickedness, preparatory to the complete establishment of righteousness. The affairs of earth then will be under the complete control of Christ Jesus; and the faithful men of old above mentioned will act as representatives of the heavenly Theocratic government. They will inhabit the glorified earth with men of good-will preserved through the battle of Armageddon. Such “great multitude” of Armageddon survivors will marry and multiply and fill the earth with offspring devoted to God; and thus an inhabited earth will rejoice under the righteous administration of God’s heavenly government.

Nehemiah Makes Most of Opportunities

“MAKE the most of your opportunity, for these are evil times,” the apostle Paul counseled the Ephesians, as recorded at Eph 5:16, An Amer. Trans. The servants of Jehovah today have particular reason for taking this Theocratic admonition to heart, for never before have they had so many opportunities for service as now and never have the times been so evil. All such will therefore note with interest and profit the example of one who zealously made the most of his opportunities, and that in evil times, namely, Nehemiah.

The record of Nehemiah is in the form of an autobiography. Its simplicity and straightforwardness stamp it as truth. Without doubt God’s active force directed him to write such things as God wanted recorded for the benefit of his servants now. And though it does not appear that Jehovah displayed any supernatural phenomenon in Nehemiah’s time, as he did in the days of Moses, Joshua and others, neither can there be any doubt that he was active on behalf of Nehemiah, guiding and blessing his efforts, even as Jehovah is guiding and blessing the efforts of his servants today.

Little is known of Nehemiah’s genealogy, aside from the fact that his father’s name was Hacaliah. However, it is quite apparent that his parents were God-fearing Jews, for the name they gave their son means “Jah is comfort”; and from Nehemiah’s own course it is clear that he had been