him it is written: “The feet of his loyal ones he guards; as for the wicked ones, they are silenced in darkness, for not by power does a man prove superior.”—1 Sam. 2:9.

³¹ What a steadying force to our hearts and nerves that promise is! This promise also: “For those walking in integrity he is a shield, by observing the paths of judgment, and he will guard the very way of his loyal ones.” (Prov. 2:7, 8) What a present reward this is for our being loyal to Jehovah God with a heart unified in the fear of his name! He rewards us even now because he desires us to enjoy a lasting reward in his new world, which will be inherited and inhabited by all those who are forever loyal to him.

Prophesying with the Loyal Organization

1. (a) What related loyalty is called for in our loyalty to God? (b) In giving loyalty to what religious organizations are people not giving loyalty to God?

LOYALTY to God who created and organized heaven and earth calls for loyalty to his organization. Today many persons think that by their loyalty to a religious organization they are loyal to God. But they can be wrong about this. Among things foretold to appear in our day are people and organizations described as being “lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power.” (2 Tim. 3:1, 4, 5) These make religious claims; they pretend to be devoted to God; they go through man-made religious ceremonies conducted by men who are ordained as priests, bishops, deacons, reverends and doctors of divinity. At the same time they go in for material things, the satisfying of the flesh rather than the spirit, and thus they betray that they are not God’s true organization. They betray themselves as loving the pleasant things and sports, games and gambles of this world, and they do not show the power of true godly devotion in their lives. Their conduct belies the sincerity of their outward godly devotion. Their loyalty is to a false organization, and not to the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 1:3) Their loyalty is to a religious organization that is false to God, an organization that God does not own as his organization.

2, 3. (a) To which organization does God command us to be loyal, and what day nineteen centuries ago decided this for us? (b) That day how was the Christian congregation shown to be the organization to which to be loyal?

² The visible organization to which God commands us to be loyal is the one upon which he has poured out his holy spirit. More than nineteen centuries ago, on the festival day of Pentecost of A.D. 33, the Jewish congregation in Jerusalem thought that they were God’s visible organization. For this reason fifty-two days previously their priests and religious rulers had forced the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate to nail Jesus Christ to a stake to die like a criminal slave. But what happened on that day of Pentecost proved whether their thinking was right or wrong. The disciples of Jesus Christ testified that he had been resurrected from the dead on the third day after his death and that he had appeared to them on a number of occasions, during forty days after his resurrection, and that they also had witnessed the beginning of his ascension to heaven. Were these disciples who had been outcasts by the Jewish organization the new visible organization of Jehovah God? The day of Pentecost decided the question in an authoritative way.

³ That day God’s holy spirit was poured out upon his approved congregation, no, not upon the Jewish congregation celebrating Pentecost at their temple in Jerusalem, but upon the disciples of Jesus Christ who were gathered in an upper room outside the temple precincts. These one hundred and twenty disciples all became filled with holy spirit and miraculously began to speak in foreign languages about the magnificent things of God. When Jehovah God had previously poured out his spirit upon Jesus of Nazareth, he said from heaven: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” Likewise, when he poured out his spirit upon that first Christian congregation in Jerusalem, it was the visible, audible evidence that he had approved them but had rejected the Jerusalem congregation of Jews who bore a community responsibility for the murder of Jesus Christ. There remained no question as to which one was the organization to which Jehovah’s worshipers must from then on be loyal. It was the Christian congregation, not the Jewish religious organization.

4. Of what prophecy was that a fulfillment, and how did those in that upper room prophesy?

⁴ That outpouring of the holy spirit with all its effects was a miraculous fulfillment of divine prophecy. The apostle Peter, who was one of those anointed and filled with the holy spirit that day, said it was the fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32, which reads: “After that it must occur that I shall pour out my spirit on every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will certainly prophesy. As for your old men, dreams they will dream. As for your young men, visions they will see. And even on the menservants and on the maidservants in those days I shall pour out my spirit. . . . before the coming of the great and fear-inspiring day of Jehovah. And it must occur that everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will get away safe.” (Acts 2:1-21) That was why all those in that upper room in Jerusalem prophesied, that is, spoke about the magnificent things of God for other persons to hear.

5. How did Peter’s remarks show whether the outpouring of the spirit was to be limited to the one hundred and twenty in that room?

⁵ That pouring out of the spirit was not limited to those one hundred and twenty there in that upper room in Jerusalem. Peter said that God had used Jesus Christ at his own right hand in heaven to pour out the holy spirit. So if the several thousands of Jews who heard the explanation that Peter gave of the miracle wanted to get the holy spirit in fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy, they would have to repent and get baptized in water in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. Then they would “receive the free gift of the holy spirit.”—Acts 2:22-40.

6. According to the Bible record, how did the spirit continue to be poured out, but has this continued into our own century?

⁶ About three thousand guilty Jews and proselytes repented and got baptized in Jesus’ name, and afterward they received the holy spirit the same as the original hundred and twenty disciples had that same day. About three and a half years later a group of uncircumcised Italians who heard Peter preach and who became believers received holy spirit and began