18. (a) According to David’s Hebrew expression, what does being courageous mean? (b) How may courage be demonstrated?

¹⁸ Faith and hope help us to be courageous. Being courageous, according to the Hebrew expression used by David, means to keep an internal strength, to hold together as if tightly bound together and so not to crumble under pressure, not to fly to pieces under the impact of tribulation or enemy attacks. Doing this, we can bear up with faith and hope under stress of difficulties and dangers. We do not need to make any daring display of ourselves, such as is usually associated with bravery. “Courageous,” says The American College Dictionary (page 146), “implies a higher and nobler kind of bravery, especially as resulting from an inborn quality of mind or spirit which faces or endures perils or difficulties without fear and even with enthusiasm.” Our steadily keeping on in the way of faithfulness to God, even though it be quiet and inconspicuous, denotes courage. We seek no admiration by a display of daring.

19. (a) How will courage affect our hearts? (b) Of what hope should we never let go, and why not?

¹⁹ Our courage will help our hearts to keep strong. They will not melt in fear, but will be unwavering in the love of God and will throw fear and distrust outside. (1 John 4:18) Thus we shall also have love of Jehovah God and of his Son Jesus Christ as the active force pushing us ahead through the trials, difficulties, persecutions, troubles and dangers, yes, through Gog’s attack that provokes God’s war of Armageddon. Always faithful to God, we will keep our faces turned ever toward His new world of victory over all that is wicked. Since it is Jehovah God himself that has given us this hope of the new world under the righteous kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ, then that hope is nothing to be thrown away. We may safely and profitably throw away all other hopes, but not that one from the God who gives hope. “Yes, hope in Jehovah.” He did not disappoint David, nor Jesus Christ the Son of David. He will not disappoint us. In the strength of our hope and faith we can be, yes, we will be courageous in the face of the world’s Armageddon, where Jehovah will triumph gloriously in vindication of his universal sovereignty.

Nothing Unscientific in the Bible

In his Studies in Creationism, Frank Lewis Marsh, professor of biology, Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska, observes: “As scientists come to a careful study of the Guidebook of the Christian religion, they find that actually no ground exists for any conflict whatsoever between scientific facts and the Christian religion. Although the Bible contains some of the greatest truths, still it is not a scientific treatise. This situation in the Bible is most worthy of careful consideration. If Moses had written down the very best scientific opinion of his day, advancing science would have discovered its inaccuracy long ago. But the scientific facts stated in nonscientific language thousands of years ago are still completely accurate scientifically. That is one of the marvels of the Bible. That Moses, who was ‘learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,’ and that Daniel, in whom the Babylonians considered that the spirits of the gods of wisdom dwelt, should write into their messages nothing of the accepted doctrines of beginnings of their day places the Bible outside of natural sources. Only those things were stated which evidently were everlastingly true. To the present moment no scientific inaccuracies have been discovered. True science can have no conflict with such a book.”—Pages 206, 207.