healing all those oppressed by the Devil; because God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) Said the apostle Paul to Titus: Christ “gave himself for us that he might deliver us from every sort of lawlessness and cleanse for himself a people peculiarly his own, zealous for fine works.” (Titus 2:14) This zeal manifested itself throughout the centuries in the Christian’s attitude toward the importance of God’s service. Dedicated Christians have placed the worship of God first in their lives. (Matt. 6:33) They have become zealous for Jehovah. And this zeal can be seen in their Christian conduct and worship, in the desire and effort that they put forth to transform their minds and personalities to those of Christ. Their daily lives are permeated with zeal for Jehovah. In them, the words of the apostle Paul find fulfillment: “You no longer go on walking just as the nations also walk in the unprofitableness of their minds, while they are in darkness mentally, and alienated from the life that belongs to God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the insensibility of their hearts. Having come to be past all moral sense, they gave themselves over to loose conduct to work uncleanness of every sort with greediness. But you did not learn the Christ to be so, provided, indeed, that you heard him and were taught by means of him, just as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old personality which conforms to your former course of conduct and which is being corrupted according to his deceptive desires; but that you should be made new in the force actuating your mind, and should put on the new personality which was created according to God’s will in true righteousness and loyalty.”—Eph. 4:17-24.

19. What questions are we forced to ask, and where will answers to our questions be found?

¹⁹ But where today can you find such zeal in a world of religious ferment? Who today in this era of science wants to be zealous for Jehovah? What people are willing to set aside the old easy ways of loose living in a world of collapsing morality, crime and rebellion for a new personality? What proof is there that there is a genuine religious zeal for Jehovah in the earth? The following article will answer these and other timely questions.

Does Your Zeal Stir Up Your Brothers?

“Your zeal has stirred up the majority of them.”—2 Cor. 9:2.

1, 2. What events prove that people still have the capacity for zeal?

IN RECENT years, especially so since World War II, enthusiasm for Christendom’s religious institutions has diminished perceptibly, particularly so among the youth of the world. Empty church pews go begging, while sports arenas have been bursting at the seams with record crowds on Saturdays and Sundays, days generally set aside in Christendom for the worship of God. Sports fans, many of whom are churchgoers, brave bad weather and all manner of inconveniences, often travel great distances and pay exorbitant prices to be admitted to the games. They then cheer their teams to victory or console them in defeat.

² Some youthful fans can recite verbatim endless statistics about each player and happily volunteer all you want to know about the sport. So great has been the enthusiasm for competitive sports in recent years that in some lands huge walls have had to be built around the playing field, some even with moats filled with water, to discourage zealous crowds from storming the barriers and to keep them from charging onto the playing field and perhaps doing injury to the players. Obviously, people still have a capacity for overwhelming zeal, but religion is not what is stirring their hearts, is it?

3. In England, what stirs enthusiasm among many young people?

³ In England, the Beatles are declared to be more popular than Jesus Christ among teen-agers. The old religion is reportedly dead. There is a new religion now. It is the religion of the young crowd, with the young sound. John Lennon of the Beatles, recognizing this sweeping change in the world, announced: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. We’re more popular than Jesus now.” A young girl siding in with him asked: “Do you see a girl screaming over a picture of Christ as they do over a picture of the Beatles?” Quite naturally not. As little Zacchaeus once climbed up a fig-mulberry tree in order to get a better glimpse of Jesus Christ, so now youngsters line the rafters to get a better look at those who stir their souls. At the sight of the Beatles one girl cried out: “O my God! O my God! I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” “God” was on her lips, but it was not a minister of God or the message of Christ that was stirring her soul.—Luke 19:2-8.

4. What questions are asked, and why?

⁴ What has happened to the Christian religion that once stirred the hearts of men to leave their fathers and mothers, their places of employment, climb trees, even disown themselves for the sake of Christ? Where is that revolutionary zeal that once inflamed the world? Where are the people who were once charged with overturning the inhabited earth? (Acts 17:6) Without zealous ministers, there can be no triumph of Christianity, no rewarding deeds of Christian faith. But where today can such zeal be found?

RELIGIOUS FERMENT IN CHRISTENDOM

5, 6. In what condition is Christendom’s religion, as testified by her clergy?

⁵ Within Christendom, there are evidences, more of religion dying, than of a dynamic Christianity. Evangelist Billy Graham asserted that Christendom’s churches are floundering in tragic confusion. “If we have lost our enthusiasm for Christ,” he said, “it is because our faith has ceased to mean much to us.” Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, evangelist-theologian, said that liberal Protestantism “has lost most of its evangelical drive.” And there seems to be no question about that. On October 31, 1966, while church bells in divided Berlin rang out announcing Reformation Day, many delegates reportedly were beseeching God “to breathe the spirit of Reformation into the Christian church once again.” But the spirit of God apparently has left that body flat.

⁶ Protestantism is without first-century zeal. A Protestant church leader in America confessed: “The Christian church is dying around the world.” He described professed Christians as “smug, hate-filled [and] bigoted.” “Father” Boyd, nightclub Episcopal priest, said that ‘his church is moribund.’ In England, religion is described as being “on the slippery slope downhill. . . . The people have deserted the church,” said an Episcopal minister. He went on to say: “The same thing will happen here in America and it will doom the church.”