Qualified to Be Ministers

“Our being adequately qualified issues from God, who has indeed adequately qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant.”—2 Cor. 3:5, 6, NW.

1. What desired results are produced by adequately qualified ministers?

IN THIS age of materialism and of spreading communism mankind stands in great need of adequately qualified ministers. In itself, being adequately qualified means being suitable, being fit, having what is necessary for the ministry, being equal to the requirements of the ministry, in order to carry it out successfully and produce the results desired, namely, other real Christians able to meet the tests of the day, overcome all the faith-destroying, morals-corrupting influences, keep on imitating Christ and gain the approval of God for eternal life in the new world.

2, 3. (a) What are two prime essentials for one to be an adequately qualified minister? (b) In spite of what attainments was Saul of Tarsus not qualified, and why not?

² Unless a person is ordained by God and has been sent out by him to carry on the ministry or service, he can never be an adequately qualified minister. Take the apostle Paul, for example; to begin with, he was named Saul of the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor, a Hebrew of Hebrew parentage, a Jew belonging to the nation of Israel that Jehovah God had chosen for his special people. He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a member of the sect of the Pharisees, zealously trying to live up to the righteous standards of God’s law through Moses, but thinking he had to persecute the newly begun Christian congregation in order to do so. From the Jewish standpoint Saul was blameless. As a student of the Mosaic law he attended school in Jerusalem and sat at the feet of the noted lawyer Gamaliel. Trying to have the law of Moses pronounce him righteous, Saul of Tarsus was trying to live under the old covenant that Jehovah God had made with the Israelites at Mount Sinai in Arabia. (Phil. 3:3-6, NW; Acts 22:1-5) Manifestly at that time Saul wanted to be a minister of God, a minister of His old law covenant with Israel, but did all these things adequately qualify Saul or make him suitable, fit, for God’s ministry? No! Why not?

³ Because Jehovah had abolished the old covenant with its Mosaic law and had begun a new covenant with the people of his choice. The old law covenant had had Moses as its mediator. It had its priesthood of the family of Aaron and its temple servants of the tribe of Levi. It had its material temple at Jerusalem and its animal sacrifices. It had its law, the Ten Commandments of which had been written by the “finger of God” upon two stone tablets. It put Jehovah God in covenant relationship with the twelve tribes of Israel, with whom there was associated a great crowd of non-Israelite sojourners or temporary residents. But that law was pictorial of greater arrangements by God; it foreshadowed good things to come. After 1,545 years of operation it had grown old and was due to be taken away when Christ died, was resurrected, ascended to heaven and appeared in God’s presence with the value of his human sacrifice. So on the day of Pentecost, A.D. 33, Jehovah God inaugurated the new covenant through Jesus Christ as his Mediator. Jehovah had already sworn by an oath in his own name that Jesus should be a priest like Melchizedek king of Salem, and he now made this Melchizedekian priest Jesus Christ the High Priest of the new covenant.

4. Ministers of Jehovah’s new covenant became such upon what conditions, and why?

⁴ The Christians on earth who accepted Jesus as their Mediator and High Priest were brought into this new covenant, their sins were forgiven them according to the terms of the new covenant, and they were made the people of the covenant, the spiritual “Israel of God.” They became the people of Jehovah, who were to know him “from the least of them unto the greatest of them,” and they bore his name. Faith in Jesus Christ rather than circumcision in the flesh was now the sign of their righteousness. (Jer. 31:31-34, AS; Gal. 6:15, 16) They were made Jehovah’s under priests, Jesus Christ their Mediator being their great High Priest, through whom they were to offer the sacrifices of praise and good works to God. So God was no longer qualifying ministers of the old law covenant, and the efforts of Saul of Tarsus to be a minister of that covenant proved him to be out of date. Jehovah God was now qualifying his ministers of the new covenant. Being a minister of God’s new covenant meant being one of the under priests of Jesus Christ the High Priest, one of the “royal priesthood” of Jehovah God. (Heb. 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 5:9, 10) Saul’s dependence upon his fleshly works and upon what he himself was in the flesh no longer counted. By none of these things could Saul adequately qualify himself as God’s minister. Neither can any other man adequately qualify himself or qualify another man. But what we cannot do, God can do.

5. Saul of Tarsus, as a blasphemer and persecutor of Jehovah’s people, illustrates what encouraging result Jehovah can achieve?

⁵ Now, as illustrated in the case of Saul of Tarsus, how does God qualify anyone adequately and put him into the Christian ministry? Saul’s case shows there is hope for even persons who are now persecutors of Jehovah’s people if they are honest and willing to be corrected, for Saul too was a bloodstained persecutor of the Christian “Israel of God.” He needed God’s mercy. In mercy God stopped him in order to put him into the ministry of the new covenant. Says Paul the apostle: “I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who delegated power to me, because he considered me trustworthy by assigning me to a ministry, although formerly I was a blasphemer and a persecutor and an insolent man. Nevertheless, I was shown mercy, because I was ignorant and acted with a lack of faith. But the undeserved kindness of our Lord abounded exceedingly along with faith and love that is in connection with Christ Jesus. Trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance is the saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am foremost. Nevertheless, the reason why I was shown mercy was that by means of me as the foremost case Christ Jesus might demonstrate all his long-suffering for a sample of those who are going to rest their faith on him for everlasting life.” (1 Tim. 1:12-16, NW) If anyone has been a persecutor of Jehovah’s people and now realizes his error and gross sinfulness, let him take courage. Look at Saul as a sample and have faith that you too can be shown mercy.

6, 7. (a) How was Saul, the interrupted persecutor, informed of Jehovah’s will for him? (b) By meeting what requirements did he then become God’s qualified minister?

⁶ Remember that the perfect human sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the Mediator put the new covenant in force. This allowed for God to forgive sin and iniquity according to his express promise in that new covenant. So Jesus the glorified Mediator of that covenant stopped Saul the persecutor on the road to Damascus by blinding him and sent him into the city to await the coming of a faithful Christian whom Saul had been bent on persecuting, Ananias of Damascus. When Ananias came to Saul on his third day of blindness, he explained how Jehovah God was adequately qualifying Saul for the ministry of the new covenant. “He said: ‘The God of our forefathers has chosen you to come to know his will and to see the righteous One and to hear the voice of his mouth, because you are to be a witness for him to all men of things you have seen and heard. And now why are you delaying? Rise, get baptized and wash your sins away by your calling upon his name.’” (Acts 22:14-16, NW) “And immediately there fell from his eyes what looked like scales, and he recovered sight, and he rose and was baptized,” and he was “filled with holy spirit.” (Acts 9:17, 18, NW) He washed his sins away in the cleansing blood of the Mediator of the new covenant by calling upon the name of the great Author of the new covenant, Jehovah God, who had covenanted to forgive iniquity and remember sin no more.—Heb. 9:14-26.

⁷ Saul, now baptized, forgiven and filled with holy spirit, felt adequately qualified and sent by God. Hence he at once took up the ministry for which he had been made fit. Note how he proved qualified: “He got to be for some days with the disciples in Damascus, and immediately in the synagogues he began to preach Jesus, that this One is the Son of God. . . . Saul kept on acquiring strength all the more and was confounding the Jews that dwelt in Damascus as he proved logically that this is the Christ.” Because of a plot to kill him, “his disciples took him and let him down by night through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.” He then came down to Jerusalem and got to be introduced to the apostle Peter and Jesus’ half-brother James. “And he continued with them, carrying on his daily life in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord, and he was talking and disputing with the Greek-speaking Jews. But these made attempts to do away with him.” So the Christian brothers sent him back to his home town Tarsus.—Acts 9:19-30, NW.

STEPS TOWARD QUALIFICATION

8, 9. What steps toward qualification as a minister precede removal of “the veil of unbelief”?

⁸ No one can be adequately qualified to be a minister of God in his new covenant unless, like Saul, he has the light from God through Christ shine upon him, repents of his sinful course, accepts God’s mercy, calls upon God’s name as the Forgiver of sins to have his sins washed away in the blood of Jesus’ sacrifice and gets baptized in water and thus shows faith and makes a public confession of that faith. The apostle Paul presses home these points to us when he discusses his qualifications for the ministry. He mentions the veil of unbelief that once blinded him and says:

⁹ “When there is a turning to Jehovah, the veil is taken away. Now Jehovah is the spirit; and where the spirit of Jehovah is, there is freedom. And all of us, while we with unveiled faces reflect like mirrors the glory of Jehovah, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, exactly as done by Jehovah the spirit. That is why, since we have this ministry according to the mercy that was shown us, we do not behave improperly, but we have renounced the underhanded things of which to be ashamed, not walking in craftiness neither adulterating the word of God, but by making the truth manifest recommending ourselves to every human conscience in the sight of God. . . . For we are preaching, not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For God is he who said: ‘Let the light shine out of darkness,’ and he has shone on our hearts to illuminate them with the glorious knowledge of God by the face of Christ. However, we have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels, that the power beyond what is normal may be God’s and not that out of ourselves. . . . Now because we have the same spirit of faith as that of which it is written [Psalm 116:10], ‘I exercised faith, therefore I spoke,’ we, too, exercise faith and therefore we speak, knowing that he who raised Jesus up will raise us up also together with Jesus . . . Therefore we do not give up.”—2 Cor. 3:16 to 4:16, NW.

10. Jehovah’s glory had what effect upon the mediators of the two covenants, the old and the new, and upon Paul?

¹⁰ Paul here referred to Moses the mediator of the old law covenant. Moses, because of communing with Jehovah’s angel in Mount Sinai, became charged with a glory light, so that, on coming down from the mountain, “the skin of his face emitted rays” and he had to veil his face as long as he talked with the terrified Jews and until he returned to speak with Jehovah’s angel. (Ex. 34:29-35, NW) Now the apostle Paul himself was reflecting like a mirror Jehovah’s glory as it shone in the face of Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant. Paul was being transformed into the same image from one degree of spiritual glory to another, exactly as done by Jehovah the spirit whom he was coming to know more and more.

11. How did Paul ‘glorify his ministry’?

¹¹ Certainly as long as Paul was thus reflecting glory light and was being transformed, he could not behave improperly in his ministry. He could not walk in craftiness nor adulterate God’s Word with any impurity. He had to renounce the underhanded things of which to be ashamed. By making the truth manifest in its purity he had to recommend himself to every human conscience in the sight of God. He could not veil anything from those to whom he preached as a minister of the new covenant. So if the good news that he declared was veiled, Paul was not to blame. Satan the Devil, the god of this system of things, had veiled it by blinding the minds of all who did not believe, “that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through.” (2 Cor. 4:3, 4, NW) Veiling nothing, Paul could not be a commercial peddler of God’s Word as the paid clergy of Christendom are. Paul had to speak sincerely the message with which God sent him. Knowing that he was “under God’s view, in company with Christ,” Paul had to “glorify my ministry,” not degrade it.—2 Cor. 2:17 and Rom. 11:13, NW.

12. Like Paul, whom must all ministers of the new covenant know, and why?

¹² The new covenant of which Paul was a servant declared: “They shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith Jehovah,” and in Hebrews 8:11 the apostle Paul quoted those very words. (Jer. 31:34, AS) Paul knew Jehovah God and was therefore one of Jehovah’s witnesses. All ministers of the new covenant must know Jehovah, otherwise they could not be adequately qualified to be in the ministry of his new covenant. They must be witnesses of what they know, hence be witnesses of Jehovah. With that in mind Paul said to his fellow ministers: “I entreat you, therefore, become imitators of me.” (1 Cor. 4:16, NW) In imitation of Paul all ministers of the new covenant must be witnesses of the One whom they know as the God of that covenant, Jehovah, the Forgiver of their sins. As God himself said to his typical people in the law covenant: “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen; that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I [am] HE.” These words of ordination to be witnesses apply with more force now to God’s servant class who are in the new covenant and of whom he prophetically said: “This people have I formed for myself: they shall shew forth my praise.” (Isa. 43:10, 21, Da) Catching up the glory light from Jehovah as it is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ who has appeared to mankind, today’s ministers of the new covenant must, like mirrors, reflect that light of the knowledge of the glory of God to others that he may be praised and they may be enlightened. In this bedarkened age great is the need to do this.

Ordination of the Qualified Ministers

1. How was ordination of Jehovah’s qualified ministers typified in the case of Jeremiah?

PAUL says: “Our being adequately qualified issues from God, who has indeed adequately qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant.” (2 Cor. 3:5, 6, NW) That means it must be God who ordains or appoints a person to be his minister. This fact was typified in the case of Jeremiah, who was a minister of the old law covenant of Israel. Being of the priestly family of Aaron, Jeremiah was automatically in line to be a priest at the temple in Jerusalem. But to be more than a priest, namely, a prophet who would prophesy with respect to all nations of the earth, Jeremiah needed more than to be born as the son of Hilkiah the priest. No man could make him such a prophet. God, who inspires prophecy, was therefore the One to ordain or appoint him as prophet, to qualify him adequately. Jeremiah points to his ordination or appointment from God, when he says: “The word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I hallowed thee, I appointed [ordained, AV] thee a prophet unto the nations. . . . thou shalt go to whomsoever I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. . . . And Jehovah put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations.”—Jer. 1:4-10, Da.

2. Why did Jesus require the same kind of ordination?

² Even Jesus the carpenter of Nazareth had to have this ordination from Jehovah God. As a man Jesus was not of a priestly family in Israel. As a member of the royal tribe of Judah he was an heir to the earthly throne of David but not to a heavenly throne and royalty. To be a high priest like the royal priest King Melchizedek, Jesus had to be ordained by Jehovah, and Jehovah had sworn prophetically that Jesus should be such a royal priest. To be a heavenly king sitting on Jehovah’s own throne at his right hand, Jesus had to be anointed with something more than the anointing oil at the hands of a human prophet or priest. He had to be anointed and thus ordained or appointed with the holy spirit from Jehovah God. As Paul writes: “The Christ did not glorify himself by becoming a high priest, but was glorified by him who spoke with reference to him: ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ Just as he says also in another place: ‘You are a priest forever after the likeness of Mel·chizʹe·dek.’”—Heb. 5:5, 6, NW.

3. How did Jesus demonstrate that his ordination was not from John the Baptist but from Jehovah?

³ Jesus did receive the needed ordination from God. When John, the son of priest Zechariah, baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, he did not ordain Jesus to be either priest or king. He could not do so. John did not know why he was baptizing Jesus. He did not then understand that he baptized Jesus merely to symbolize that Jesus had dedicated himself to do God’s will for which he had come into the world. The water baptism symbolized Jesus’ dedication, for a change of course in life. It was first after Jesus had been baptized and came up out of the water that his heavenly Father Jehovah God ordained or appointed him by audibly acknowledging the dedicated Jesus as his spiritual Son and by anointing him with his holy spirit. (Matt. 3:13-17) Shortly afterward, to show that it was Jehovah, not the priestly John the Baptist, who had ordained him, Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth and read to the people Isaiah’s prophecy: “Jehovah’s spirit is upon me, because he anointed me to declare good news to the poor, he sent me forth to preach.” Then Jesus said to the congregation: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.”—Luke 4:16-21, NW; Lu 3:21-23.

4. Paul’s ordination by Jehovah is shown in what scriptures?

⁴ Did Paul also have this ordination or appointment from God? He said: “For the purpose of this witness I was appointed [ordained, AV] a preacher and an apostle . . . a teacher of nations in the matter of faith and truth.” (1 Tim. 2:7, NW) “Appointed” or “ordained” by whom? Paul answers in his words to the Galatians: “Paul, an apostle, neither from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, . . . when God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his undeserved kindness, thought good to reveal his Son in connection with me, that I might declare the good news about him to the nations, I did not go at once into conference with flesh and blood. Neither did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles previous to me.” (Gal. 1:1, 15-17, NW) Paul was baptized, likely by Ananias who told him to get baptized. Afterward Paul was “filled with holy spirit” in evidence that he was ordained or appointed by Jehovah through Christ, who had chosen him as a vessel to bear his name.—Acts 9:15-18, NW.

5, 6. What part, if any, did Peter perform in ordaining Cornelius, his relatives and his intimate friends?

⁵ Even the first uncircumcised Gentile converts had this ordination or appointment from God to be ministers of his new covenant. If their ordination had not been by God, the Jewish Christians would have been unprepared and disinclined to recognize them then as ordained Christian ministers. Before the apostle Peter finished preaching to the Italian Cornelius and many of his relatives and intimate friends, these uncircumcised non-Jews believed and accepted God’s mercy through Christ and God ordained or appointed them as his ministerial witnesses. The Bible history says: “While Peter was yet speaking about these matters the holy spirit fell upon all those hearing the word. And the faithful ones that had come with Peter who were of those circumcised were amazed, because the free gift of the holy spirit was being poured out also upon people of the nations. For they heard them speaking with tongues and glorifying God. Then Peter responded: ‘Can anyone forbid water so that these might not be baptized who have received the holy spirit even as we have?’ With that he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” Later, at Jerusalem, Peter explained to his fellow Jewish Christians: “When I started to speak the holy spirit fell upon them just as it did also upon us originally. . . . If, therefore, God gave the same free gift to them as he also did to us who have believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I should be able to hinder God?”—Acts 10:44-48; 11:15-17, NW.

⁶ So Peter had them baptized, not to ordain them (God had done that already), but for them to symbolize their faith and dedication that God had already accepted with miraculous evidence.

7, 8. As to today’s remnant of anointed witnesses, what proof have we of their being appointed by God?

⁷ How about dedicated witnesses of Jehovah today? These also rely upon this appointment or ordination from him in order to be qualified as his ministers in this most necessary respect. Today on earth there is only a remnant of those whom Jehovah God has been choosing during the past nineteen centuries and appointing or ordaining to be his anointed ministers of the new covenant. These are the remnant or “remaining ones” of the seed of God’s womanly organization. (Rev. 12:17, NW) To them he says: “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen.” (Isa. 43:10, AS) As a group this remnant now form a servant body or a slave body. They form what Jesus in his prophecy called “the faithful and discreet slave,” who has been “appointed over his domestics to give them their food at the proper time.” From whom have the remnant received their appointment or ordination as such? Not from men, but from their Master, the reigning King Jesus Christ. Since coming into his kingdom in 1914 and since coming to the temple in 1918 for the judgment first of the “house of God,” he has found this remnant of dedicated, anointed Christians doing what they were appointed to do. So he has done to them what he promised: “Truly I say to you, He will appoint him over all his belongings.”—Matt. 24:45-47, NW.

⁸ What proof do we have of their being appointed by God through his invisible, glorified Christ and of their being adequately qualified? The proof is their giving of the spiritual “food at the proper time.” It was not with regard to them that Jehovah prophesied: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah.” (Amos 8:11, AS) It was with regard to Christendom’s clergy and their congregations. They reject the food served at the hands and mouths of the “slave” class and so suffer famine spiritually. All because these do not recognize the unorthodox ordination or appointment of the “faithful and discreet slave” class. But there are hundreds of thousands of others who are conscious of their spiritual need and who find out where to get the spiritual food and who do accept it at the hands of the anointed remnant of Jehovah’s witnesses. These are the honest, humble, sheeplike people whom Jehovah’s Right Shepherd Jesus Christ brings into the fold to be his “other sheep,” making them “one flock” with the anointed remnant.—John 10:16.

MINISTERS UNDER THE NEW COVENANT

9, 10. Although the “other sheep” cannot be “ministers of a new covenant,” why are they also among today’s properly ordained ministers?

⁹ Since the “other sheep” must follow Jehovah’s Right Shepherd, they also must be ‘faithful and true witnesses’ just as he was; they also must be adequately qualified ministers of Jehovah God. Of course, they cannot be “ministers of a new covenant” in the sense that the apostle Paul was, who was in the new covenant as a member of the “holy nation” of spiritual Israel and who was therefore a priestly minister, a member of the “royal priesthood” with a heavenly calling. But we must remember that spiritual Israel was typified or foreshadowed by natural Israel of ancient time. As members of that chosen nation the natural Israelites were in the old law covenant with Jehovah their God. But among the natural Israelites there were many non-Israelites who were temporary residents or alien sojourners and who served in various ways in Israel, some even being temple slaves. These also worshiped Jehovah as their God and his law protected them and provided many blessings and privileges for them. They were “your temporary resident who is inside your gates” who were not to work on Israel’s sabbath day. (Ex. 20:8-10, NW) They were to bring no reproach upon Jehovah’s name but were to praise him along with the natural Israelites. They had to show how blessed they were by him through his natural seed of Abraham.

¹⁰ Likewise with the “other sheep,” the modern-day “temporary resident who is inside [the] gates” of spiritual Israelites. They are not spiritual Israelites in the new covenant, but they do live under the blessings and provisions of that new covenant and must harmonize their lives with it. They must be a New World society with the remnant of spiritual Israel. They are under the one general law of being Jehovah’s witnesses and preaching the Kingdom news for a witness to all the nations, before this worldly system of things completely ends. (Matt. 24:14) To do this, they also have to be adequately qualified, and this requires them, first of all, to have an ordination from God. As the necessary step toward this they have willingly and lovingly dedicated themselves to God through his Son Jesus Christ, and this full surrender of themselves to him they have symbolized as Jesus did, by water baptism. In view of their proper dedication of themselves God accepts them into the “one flock” of his Right Shepherd Jesus Christ, not to be members of spiritual Israel or of the royal priesthood with a heavenly inheritance nor to be priestly ministers of the new covenant, but to be witnesses of Jehovah and adequately qualified ministers under the new covenant. He ordains or appoints them as his earthly ministers, to serve with the anointed remnant of spiritual Israel. All such have this ordination or appointment by virtue of Jehovah’s acceptance of their dedication through Jesus Christ the Mediator of the new covenant. So they are all his ordained ministers, whether male or female according to the flesh.

11. Scripturally viewed, how are ministers whom Jehovah ordains affected by ordination rules of worldly nations?

¹¹ On this basis alone it would be proper for all nations that claim to give consideration to Christian ministers to recognize them as Scripturally ordained ministers. The nations are self-willed and dictatorial when they set up their own rules and requirements and by them declare who is a real ordained minister recognized by God. When the nations require a written authorization from some man, group of men or religious organization, or some man-made ceremony to be performed before they recognize these dedicated men and women as God’s ministers, it is Scripturally out of order. Uninspired lawmakers of this world did not write the Scriptures, but God caused the writing of those Scriptures by the moving force of his spirit, and his true ministers have the testimony of his inspired Scriptures respecting their ordination by him for having dedicated themselves to him. The proof of what his ordained ministers should be ought to be taken from the written Word of God who does the ordaining, not from man-made laws and their legal interpretation by judges.

12, 13. Worldly interferers with the forming and operation of a society of ministers, such as Jehovah’s witnesses, properly are answered how, and why?

¹² God, the Universal Sovereign, has the right to determine how his visible organization of his people shall be framed and operated and who shall be his ministers in it and upon what conditions. Even religious sects of Christendom recognize this right of their sectarian organization. Last year the chief administrative officer of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, when speaking to 400 delegates of the World Presbyterian Alliance at Princeton, New Jersey, included among the basic religious freedoms the ‘freedom to determine the internal government and conditions of a church body.’ He then said: “When in the considered and prayerful judgment of a church the freedom to fulfill these responsibilities is essentially abridged by state or society, it is the duty of the church to say ‘no’ to the state and ‘no’ to the society.” (New York Times, July 29, 1954) Jehovah’s witnesses theocratically stick to His rules and appointments as to how his New Covenant organization should be built and operated. They say no to worldly interferers.

¹³ They need no religious men to lay hands upon them to be ordained. Their ordination is from God and results to them from dedicating their eternal existence to him through Christ. They are not ordained by the hands laid upon them by the one who baptizes them in water in symbol of their dedication. But, inasmuch as their water baptism has a relationship to their ordination from God, they may, for the purposes of record, submit their baptismal date as the approximate time of their ordination, to satisfy the law of the land where an ordination date is asked for. What Jehovah’s witnesses want upon themselves to qualify them is the hand of God, the hand of Him who touched Jeremiah’s mouth and said: “Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.” (Jer. 1:9) They want the hand of Him who brought Ezra the priest safely to Jerusalem, “the good hand of his God upon him”; the same hand of which Nehemiah, the builder of Jerusalem’s walls, says: “So the king gave [them] to me, according to the good hand of my God upon me.” (Ezra 7:6, 9, 28; Neh. 2:8, 18, NW) Says the psalmist: “Let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.” (Ps. 80:17, AS) Jehovah’s is the first hand that should be upon us to ordain or appoint us as qualified ministers. Without first his hand upon us the laying of human hands upon us afterward has no force, but is mere form.

14. In what essential respects do spiritual Israelites and their dedicated companions differ from Christendom’s clergy?

¹⁴ It is Jehovah’s hand that sets his anointed remnant of spiritual Israel and their dedicated companions apart, separates them. As King Solomon prophetically said to God at the temple inauguration in Jerusalem: “You yourself separated them