A PERSONAL CHOICE

17. From what source comes life, to whom is it offered, and how is it obtained?

¹⁷ All humans, including all of us, are born sinners and from birth are under condemnation to death without a right to life, by reason of the first man Adam’s transgression of God’s command. Everlasting life is therefore an undeserved gift from the Life-giver, Jehovah; and he has chosen to make this gift available to any willing human, but only through Christ Jesus. (Acts 3:23; 4:12; Rom. 5:19; 6:23; 1 Cor. 15:22) The only way, then, to win everlasting life is to accept it on the terms upon which it is given by God; that is, by confidently coming through Christ to the Life-giver, Jehovah, and willingly dedicating oneself to serve him now and forevermore. This dedication to God must be made gladly and voluntarily. It is a personal choice and no one can make it for another. It is not a choice to be made under coercion either. One should not make such a dedication just to keep peace in the family or because one feels he is under pressure to do so. No one is compelled to choose the only way that leads to life. The choice is each individual’s personal responsibility. As Moses said: “I have put life and death before you, the blessing and the malediction, and you must choose life in order that you may keep alive, you and your offspring.” And how does one now choose life? The next verse explains: “By loving Jehovah your God, by listening to his voice and by sticking to him, for he is your life and the length of your days.” In other words, you choose life by dedicating yourself entirely to Jehovah your God, to obey him forever.—Deut. 30:19, 20, NW.

18. What choice does every informed person have to make?

¹⁸ Joshua also emphasized the fact that dedicated service to Jehovah is a personal choice for each one to make. “Now if it is bad in your eyes to serve Jehovah, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods that your forefathers who were on the other side of the River served or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are dwelling. But as for me and my household, we shall serve Jehovah.” (Josh. 24:15, NW) So each one of you undedicated persons has today the same freedom to choose, a choice of life or death. If you deliberately refuse to dedicate yourself to Jehovah God in this judgment day of his in which we now are living, your life will end at Armageddon, if not before, as a condemned sinner without right to life and even without hope of a resurrection. On the other hand, in choosing Jehovah’s way that leads to life you will willingly and with great delight wholly dedicate your heart and your mind, your strength and your substance, to Jehovah God and his triumphant kingdom.

19. Is dedication to Jehovah worth what it costs?

¹⁹ Count the cost, yes, by all means! Study over what it is going to require of you in this world. (Luke 14:26-33) However, measure what you give alongside what you are promised by Jehovah. Have you anything that you did not receive from Jehovah in the first place, except your power of devotion and praise and willing service? So all you have you gladly dedicate to God. What you already have received from him you give him for the unspeakable privileges and blessings continually bestowed upon God’s dedicated servants! He puts his spirit and power upon them and gives them authority to be called by his name and to speak in his name as his witnesses. Amid this doomed and dying old world these dedicated servants of God are the happiest people living. Their hope to survive Armageddon, in vindication of God’s word and name, removes fear of that oncoming tempest and they confidently expect to live forever in a new world with new heavens and an earth-wide paradise of perfection. Certainly much depends now upon making a dedication; everything depends upon faithfulness to that dedication.—Luke 9:59-62.

20. What reasons make it most urgent for good-will persons to dedicate themselves to Jehovah now?

²⁰ For the past several years great multitudes, numbering more than 50,000 a year, have been coming forward and dedicating themselves to the living God, Jehovah. Ask yourself, “What does dedication mean to me?” With Armageddon coming on apace, the favorable time for salvation is now, not later. Now, not later, God’s patience is waiting for all who want to live to seek him while he can yet be found. Now, not later, is the time to flee to the theocratic mountains for safety. Now, therefore, is no time to postpone dedicating one’s life to Jehovah God. So do not put off to tomorrow what should be done now when you appreciate what dedication means and what blessings it brings. If you have real faith and hope and are a person of good will toward God, and you have sufficient knowledge and understanding and appreciation of dedication, and if you are morally and Scripturally clean, then this day, in the secret of your prayer, you should solemnly vow to Jehovah God that you will henceforth and forever worship and serve him exclusively, and that you will do his will as set forth in his written Word, the Bible, come what may. If that is what you do, why not afterward be baptized? Then Jehovah will bless you richly!

Why One Must Be Baptized

1. What instinctive desire do human creatures have, and how can it be really satisfied?

THE desire to worship their Maker and God is one of the many qualities of the mind that places human creatures on a plane far above the lower animals. This desire is instinctive and hereditary and all mankind possess it. The most primitive races as well as the most highly advanced peoples of earth—even the so-called “godless” ones of human society—all possess some measure of this inborn desire to worship a superior or some object that the worshiper secretly considers to be higher and more honorable than himself. It was Jehovah God that implanted this desire to worship in the first human pair, and he did so that they might worship their Creator and Benefactor, which was for their good and for their proper guidance. It was not long, however, before the rebel Satan succeeded in turning the worship of the first pair away from their Creator, and since then the majority of humankind have indulged themselves in many false religions in an effort to satisfy their desires to worship. So when an honest person learns the truth he gladly abandons his false religion and turns to the pure, clean worship of the Most High God, “whose name alone is JEHOVAH.”—Ps. 83:18.