lack his favor and blessing. “For Jehovah is righteous; he does love righteous acts. The upright are the ones that will behold his face.” (Ps. 11:7) They will really come to know Jehovah as “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth.” They will continue to rejoice in his name and in his provided protection when shortly he brings the Armageddon of destruction upon this last generation of ‘those who hate him.’ All survivors will “well know that Jehovah your God is the true God, the faithful God, keeping covenant and loving-kindness in the case of those who love him and those who keep his commandments to a thousand generations.” Thus the complete fullness of mankind, to the symbolic ‘thousandth generation,’ will gain the reward of everlasting life in the paradise earth, for an eternity of praise to the faithful Creator.—Deut. 7:9-11; Ps. 98:1-3.

The Name of Jehovah—a Strong Tower

“The name of Jehovah is a strong tower. Into it the righteous runs and is given protection.”—Prov. 18:10.

1. What is essential for surviving this world’s end and where is it to be found?

THE power of faith—a strong, unwavering faith, grounded in the accurate knowledge of Jehovah, his Son Christ Jesus and his glorious Kingdom purposes—is essential for protection and survival during this twilight hour of Satan’s world. What is this faith? It is not to be confused with the watered-down credulity of Christendom’s religion. It is not to be found in the worship of images, relics and mystic trinities. Nor is it to be found among professing Christians who are steeped in immorality and pagan materialistic pursuits, and whose trust is in multimegaton bombs of the god of war, instead of in the strong tower of true Christians—the name of Jehovah God.—Ps. 20:7.

2. What is the Creator’s judgment on Christendom?

² Counterfeit Christendom has rejected the name of Jehovah. For this reason she stands condemned as did unfaithful Israel of old: “And you must say to them, ‘This is the nation whose people have not obeyed the voice of Jehovah its God, and have not taken discipline. Faithfulness has perished, and it has been cut off from their mouth.’ . . . upon the bare hills raise a dirge, for Jehovah has rejected and will desert the generation with which he is furious.” (Jer. 7:28, 29) We are now living in the days of that generation, which will reap the climactic stormwind of Armageddon’s fury. (Hos. 8:7) Useless is Christendom’s boast in strategic air power and nuclear warheads. She has lost faith in the strong tower of true strength and follows false shepherds. Hence Jehovah declares: “Against the shepherds my anger has grown hot, and against the goatlike leaders I shall hold an accounting.” (Zech. 10:3) Christendom must pay the supreme penalty for her rejection of the faithful Creator.—Jer. 23:1-4.

3. What is one reason for the lack of faith in Christendom?

³ Why is there such lack of faith in Christendom? One reason is indicated in an AP dispatch from New York, dated June 10, 1961. It reported the findings of the general secretary of the United Bible Societies as the result of a worldwide investigation: “Millions of additional people are acquiring Bibles these days, but the book isn’t being read much—except by non-Christians. . . . The exception, he said, was in non-Christian Asian countries, where there was a ‘new interest in scripture.’”a Professing Christians, it appears, are investing in Bibles, but they do not read them, let alone study them. No wonder that Christendom is in the throes of a famine “for hearing the word of Jehovah”!—Amos 8:11.

4. In what realities is the Christian’s faith grounded?

⁴ The true Christianity is alive and meaningful. Far different from fearful Christendom, it holds courageous hope in Jehovah, the faithful Creator and God of the Bible, whose name remains ever a strong tower of protection. The faith of the true Christian is grounded in knowledge of the Bible and carries conviction. It is “the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.” (Heb. 11:1) What a grand demonstration of these unseen realities has the New World society enjoyed throughout its more than forty years of service in Jehovah’s name! His abounding loving-kindness, his truth, the understanding and appreciation of his kingdom by Christ as a glorious reality since A.D. 1914, the prosperity and earth-wide expansion of the Kingdom witness work, the remarkable fulfillments of prophecy in this “time of the end”—all these have become an evident demonstration to us. They are our faith.

5. What does the man of faith appreciate with regard to God’s long-suffering?

⁵ Modern worldlings mock at Jehovah and his strong tower. They fail to appreciate how small man really is. They fail to appreciate how utterly dependent man is upon the sustaining power and mercy of his Creator. For a short season longer Jehovah will ‘make his sun rise upon wicked people and good and make it rain upon righteous people and unrighteous,’ but then his long-suffering will be withdrawn from this generation of the unrighteous, and only the righteous will remain to see the dawn of His new world of blessing. (Matt. 5:45) Happy the man of faith who runs into Jehovah’s strong tower for protection! He has heart appreciation of the fact that “God, although having the will to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, tolerated with much long-suffering vessels of wrath made fit for destruction, in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.”—Rom. 9:22, 23.

6, 7. (a) What things are beyond the comprehension of materialistic man? (b) To what do those in union with Christ attain? (c) Where will Jehovah’s will be done with respect to mankind?

⁶ With all his vaunted knowledge and ability, materialistic man will never begin to approach the ‘riches of glory’ of the ‘new creation in union with Christ Jesus.’ However man may boast in his inventive genius and rockets, his telescopes should have told him that even the material universe is an expanse far beyond his power