he established his seat of government in the holy city of Jerusalem. God’s holy ark of the covenant was brought there and lodged near King David’s palace. Then God made a covenant or a solemn contract with King David, that the kingdom would never depart from his family, from his lineage, from his house, from his line of descent. (2 Sam. 7:12-16) In the 89th Psalm God said that he had made this covenant with David and that he would never profane it, for which reason the perfect king that would come forth from David would have a throne that would endure just as long as the sun and the moon would endure, that is, it would be eternal, never having an end, never needing to have a successor in government.—Ps. 89:3, 4, 19-37.

The Perfect Ruler for Man’s Government

1. How, without a kingdom today at earthly Jerusalem, does God nevertheless have his promised King, and why was he born where he was?

WHAT, then, about this perfect eternal king that was promised to come in the line of descent from King David of Jerusalem? After these thousands of years of human experiment in government, we see today no kingdom at the city of Jerusalem in the land of Israel. Nevertheless, God has his promised King! Also, he has come through the royal line of King David. In support of this fact we turn from the Hebrew Scriptures to the Christian Greek Scriptures, and the very first words that we find in them read this way: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matt. 1:1, AS) Ah yes, this line of descent of kings that was to run down from Abraham through King David found its climax in Jesus Christ and goes no farther than him. Not by accident, this Jesus was born in the same city where King David had been born, in the city of Bethlehem. This was in fulfillment of Jehovah’s prophecy.—Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:1-16.

2. How was this one born there really a “Son of Heaven,” and how was he then identified as the one to become the promised King?

² True, this Jesus had the patriarch Abraham and King David as his ancestors, but he really had a heavenly Father, and his virgin mother was, of necessity, human. She was the one who was in the line of descent from Abraham and through David. (Luke 3:23-34) So this Jesus who was born in Bethlehem in fulfillment of Bible prophecy was really the “Son of Heaven”; he was really the Son of God, whom his heavenly Father sent down to earth by a miracle in order to provide a perfect ruler for mankind. No perfect king was to be found from among imperfect, sinful, dying mankind itself. Let us recall that when this child Jesus was born in Bethlehem the angel from heaven announced to the shepherds out in the fields: “There was born to you today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in David’s city.” That angel who brought “good news of a great joy that all the people will have,” called this child who was there born the Christ. That is to say, he was the Messiah, the Anointed One; he was the one to become king in fulfillment of prophecy.—Luke 2:8-11.

3. Where did this child grow up, and what did he become there?

³ This child escaped being killed by King Herod, who reigned in Jerusalem as representative of the Roman Empire. After Herod’s death Jesus was taken to the city of Nazareth. There he grew up to manhood. He became, not a shepherd as his ancestor King David had been, but a carpenter. He lived and worked in the city of Nazareth, in obscurity, leading, as it were, an underground existence.

4. What got Jesus out of his shop, and how was his next step shown to be not a false one?

⁴ What, then, was it that called Jesus out of his carpenter shop? What set him on the road to the kingdom over all mankind? Ah, it was the proclamation of God’s kingdom. At that time Jehovah God had raised up the prophet John the son of Zechariah, and in due time John the Baptist came preaching repentance of sins and baptism in symbol of such repentance. He told the Jews to repent because God’s government was at hand. John’s proclamation was: “The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.” As soon as the news of John’s proclamation reached Jesus there in the carpenter shop at Nazareth, he gave up shopwork. He laid down his tools and went to John the Baptist and was baptized by him. This was no false step by Jesus of Nazareth, for as soon as he came up out of the water following his baptism in the river Jordan, there was an announcement from the heavenly King of eternity, Jehovah God. Picture the scene as the faithful Record says: “After being baptized Jesus immediately came up from the water; and, look! the heavens were opened up, and he saw descending like a dove God’s spirit coming upon him. Look! also, there was a voice from the heavens that said: ‘This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.’”—Matt. 3:1-6, 13-17.

5, 6. (a) How did Jesus’ anointing differ from that of David? (b) What did selfish Jews want to make Jesus, and why did he refuse?

⁵ Centuries before that, David had been anointed with oil to be king over Israel; but this Jesus was anointed from heaven with the spirit of God to be the king in the promised kingdom, the perfect government for all mankind. The apostle Peter reports: “God anointed him with holy spirit and power, and he went through the land doing good and healing all those oppressed by the Devil, because God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) He was acknowledged by his followers to be the “Son of God,” the “King of Israel.” (John 1:49; Matt. 16:16) He went through great tests. He endured great opposition at the hands of the leaders of Israel.

⁶ In spite of all this opposition and persecution, he stayed faithful to the true kingdom of God. He refused to let men, even the Jews themselves, make him king over them, even as he had refused to let Satan the Devil make him king over all mankind. (Luke 4:5-8) We remember the time that he freely fed 5,000 men together with women and children, multiplying a little boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fishes to feed the whole crowd. When the Jews saw that Jesus had this miraculous power to feed a nation, they selfishly wanted to make him king. But the Record says that just as soon as Jesus saw that they wanted forcibly to make him king over them, he withdrew from them and went into the mountain all alone. (John 6:1-15) Why? Jesus wanted God to make him king. He waited upon God to crown him king of the perfect government over all mankind in God’s appointed time. Cannot we be glad for this?

7, 8. (a) Why would Jesus not be satisfied with less than a perfect government to come over mankind? (b) To that end, what course did Jesus pursue, and hence where was he given a seat?

⁷ As for Jesus’ ability to become a faultless ruler, he lived a perfect life on earth amid tremendous temptations. To the Jews who accused him Jesus said: “Who of you convicts me of sin?” (John 8:46) As a perfect man he prayed and taught us to pray for a perfect government from a perfect source, saying: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come.” (Matt. 6:9, 10) Always praying for the perfect government, Jesus would never be satisfied with less, and neither should we.

⁸ To that end, Jesus remained a perfect man to the death, always bearing witness to the true kingdom of God. When he stood trial before Governor Pontius Pilate he corrected the governor’s misunderstanding, saying: “My kingdom is no part of this world. If my kingdom were part of this world, my attendants would have fought that I should not be delivered up to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom is not from this source.” (John 18:36; 1 Tim. 6:13-16) With his human perfection unmarred by sin, Jesus Christ died as a faithful martyr to the kingdom of God. Because of the perfection of his integrity and loyalty toward God, the heavenly Father raised him up from the dead and took him back home to heaven and seated him at his own right hand, far above angels. There God told him to wait till God’s time to make him king, at which time God would give him all the nations, yes, the very ends of the earth, as the realm of his dominion.—Ps. 2:6-9; Dan. 7:13, 14; Ps. 110:1, 2.

9. Whom does God take into the government with Jesus, and what is the prospect of a remnant of these yet remaining on earth?

⁹ Consequently, Jehovah God, the heavenly Source of perfect government, has his perfect Ruler for the kingdom that he has promised for the blessing of all mankind. However, he takes into the government with Jesus Christ faithful followers of the perfect Ruler. While Jesus was yet on earth as a man he began calling these followers after him. To the faithful ones he said that he was making a covenant for the kingdom with them, even as God his Father had made a covenant for the kingdom with him, in order that they might sit down with him on thrones in his kingdom and eat and drink at his table in his kingdom and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. (Luke 12:32; 22:28-30) Since then the calling and the testing of the full number of 144,000 faithful associates of the perfect Ruler Jesus Christ has been going on. By now the majority of these have proved their faithfulness to God and his perfect Ruler to the very death and have been perfected in the heavenly kingdom by a resurrection in heavenly glory. Only a remnant of these Kingdom associates remain and are seeking to prove their faithfulness to the death, and they look forward to their being perfected in the heavenly kingdom with the perfect King of kings, Jesus Christ.

THE TIME FOR THE PERFECT GOVERNMENT

10. What day had to come in fulfillment of God’s promise to Mary, and what tangible proof do we have as to when it came?

¹⁰ Now we are living in a most wonderful time. The day had to come when God must fulfill the words of his angel Gabriel in announcing the coming birth of Jesus to his virgin mother Mary: “This one will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and Jehovah God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will be king over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end of his kingdom.” (Luke 1:26-33) The day came in the early fall of the year 1914, when the “appointed times of the nations” to dominate the earth without interference of God’s kingdom ended. True, this is for humanity a time of unparalleled distress. Never has mankind gone through a tribulation as we have gone through since the year 1914. But this great time of tribulation is a tangible proof that the perfect government for all mankind promised by God is at hand.

11. Why should we now have no doubt about the Kingdom’s being here, and what climactic occasion in preaching was reached last year?

¹¹ The kingdom is here, established in the heavens to take over the rulership of all mankind. We should have no doubt about it, for, as a prophet, Jesus foretold the evidences by which we should know the time of the establishment of the promised government. He said that this “time of the end” of the nations of this world would start with world war and be accompanied by famines, pestilences, earthquakes in one place after another, and by the persecution of his followers. He also said that the good news of the established kingdom of God would be preached in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness to all the nations, and first then would the end of the imperfect governments of men come. (Matt. 24:7-14; Mark 13:8-10) The preaching of the good news of God’s kingdom by Jehovah’s witnesses has become more widespread every year. A climactic occasion in the Kingdom preaching that arrested the attention of all the world was when Jehovah’s witnesses held their eight-day international assembly in Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds in New York city, where, at the public meeting on Sunday, August 3, 1958, there were 253,922 persons who listened to the hour-long address on the subject “God’s Kingdom Rules—Is the World’s End Near?” The world’s complete end is near, the speaker said, but so, too, is the beginning of the righteous new world under God’s kingdom by Jesus Christ the perfect Ruler.

12. (a) To what are the nations marching, and to what experience? (b) This is a compelling reason for Jehovah’s witnesses to do what, and their doing this adds to what evidence?

¹² Unquestionably we are living in the “time of the end” of the nations. They are marching to the battle of the great day of God the Almighty, the universal war, which is called Armageddon. (Rev. 16:14-16) There they will be destroyed by the heavenly government of the Son of God, just as Daniel 2:44 (RS) announces: ‘In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. And that kingdom shall not be left to another people, but break in pieces and bring to an end all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.’ That is the compelling reason why Jehovah’s witnesses, the wide world over, in 170 or more lands are today proclaiming the good news of the established kingdom. This preaching amid unprecedented