with whom you speak. (1 Tim. 4:15, 16) Listen intently and make proper use of the ears God gave you. With the knowledge you can gain by listening grow in spiritual health and fatness to your own eternal welfare.

Fight Indifference with Endurance!

“In every way we recommend ourselves as God’s ministers, by the endurance of much.”—2 Cor. 6:4.

1. What was the warning that Jeremiah preached, and how did the people react to it?

IN THE thirteenth year of the God-fearing king of Judah, Josiah (647 B.C.E.), Jeremiah was commissioned by Jehovah to warn his subjects that the kingdom of Judah was going to fall and that frightful desolation was coming upon their capital city of Jerusalem and upon the entire land. It was reasonable to expect these people to give heed to that warning in view of the record of accuracy Jehovah’s prophets had established during the more than eight hundred years that had passed since the people had come into covenant relationship with him. But this generation living during the forty years of Jeremiah’s preaching were indifferent to his warnings. They refused to listen to him.

2, 3. (a) What is the meaning of indifference, and to what can it be due? (b) How did the people of Judah show indifference?

² Indifference means that a person lacks interest or concern about something, that it is of no significance or importance to him. The unconcern of the people of Judah could have been due to selfishness that prevented them from feeling moved by Jeremiah’s warnings, or it could have been due to insensitivity to what is bad. In any event, they were indifferent to their failure to give God exclusive devotion and to their violating of his righteous laws. They selfishly wanted to do only what was pleasing in their own eyes and cared nothing about what was pleasing in Jehovah’s eyes.

³ To them Jeremiah said: “I kept speaking to you people, rising up early and speaking, but you did not listen. And Jehovah sent to you all his servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, but you did not listen, neither did you incline your ear to listen, they saying, ‘Turn back, please, every one from his bad way and from the badness of your dealings, and continue dwelling upon the ground that Jehovah gave to you and to your forefathers from long ago and to a long time to come. And do not walk after other gods in order to serve them and to bow down to them, that you may not offend me with the work of your hands, and that I may not cause calamity to you. But you did not listen to me,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.” (Jer. 25:3-7) He then foretold that the land would be desolated for this reason.

4. How was Jeremiah affected by the indifference of the people?

⁴ It is not difficult to imagine how discouraging it was to Jeremiah to preach to these people for forty years with no good result. He had the same human feelings we have and must have felt disheartened at times by the unfruitfulness of his efforts. On one occasion he expressed his discouragement by saying: “I became an object of laughter all day long; everyone is holding me in derision. For as often as I speak, I cry out. Violence and despoiling are what I call out. For the word of Jehovah became for me a cause for reproach and for jeering all day long. And I said: ‘I am not going to make mention of him, and I shall speak no more in his name.’ And in my heart it proved to be like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I got tired of holding in, and I was unable to endure it.”—Jer. 20:7-9.

5. Why is Jeremiah an example to God’s servants today?

⁵ These are the very feelings that God’s servants can have today when trying to warn the people of this present age of the coming “war of the great day of God the Almighty.” (Rev. 16:14) The people’s lack of interest and their unconcern can make these modern-day servants of God feel, at times, as if they are wasting their breath and should no longer speak about his purposes. Possibly you have felt this way if you are a Christian who is conscious of his responsibility to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom and to warn of God’s coming war of Armageddon. Like Jeremiah you need to endure the indifference of the people and to persist in fulfilling the commission to preach that Jesus gave his followers.—Matt. 28:19, 20.

6, 7. Make a comparison of the ministry of God’s servants today with the preaching done by Jeremiah.

⁶ Looking back to Jeremiah’s time, we can easily see the folly of the Judeans in refusing to listen to him. From the vantage point given us by time, we know that his warning was a valid one. Jerusalem was eventually destroyed in 607 B.C.E., and the entire territory of the Judean kingdom was desolated for seventy years just as Jeremiah had prophesied. (Jer. 25:11) Although he probably appeared ridiculous in the eyes of those people during the forty years that he preached to them, he was vindicated when the disaster of which he warned came. The foolishness of the people’s indifference was then clearly evident.

⁷ Since 1877 C.E., Jehovah’s witnesses have been warning the people of the world that the time when God will execute his adverse judgment upon this present system of things and replace it with a new and better arrangement is near. Generally, they have been confronted with the same lack of interest that Jeremiah was. Though many years have passed since they began proclaiming this warning, this does not mean that God’s declared purpose will not be carried out, no more so than the forty years of preaching by Jeremiah meant that for the kingdom of Judah. Just as surely as the foretold destruction of that kingdom was fulfilled, so the foretold destruction of the present system of things will come to pass. (Isa. 55:11) When it is over it will be possible for survivors to look back to our day and clearly see that Jehovah’s witnesses were doing the right thing by proclaiming God’s kingdom and the battle of Armageddon, just as that can now be seen of Jeremiah’s preaching. It will then be clear to all that their enduring of the people’s indifference was the course of wisdom.

8. What is the best way to fight indifference within a Christian household, and how can the trials it brings be regarded?

⁸ What makes things very trying for some of Jehovah’s witnesses is the fact that they live in divided households where unbelieving members of the households are often a constant source of discouragement to them because of indifference or because of outright opposition. This should not seem strange. Jesus foretold that this would be so. (Matt. 10:35, 36) Enduring