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Kingdom Missionaries, the Bringers of the Best NewsThe Watchtower—1959 | April 1
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spoke to Philip, saying: ‘Rise and travel to the south to the road that runs down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” Down there by the roadside Philip was directed by God’s spirit to get into the approaching chariot of a faithful proselyte to Judaism, an Ethiopian eunuch who was the treasurer of Queen Candace of Ethiopia. In the chariot Philip evangelized this student of Isaiah’s prophecy. “Philip opened his mouth and, starting with this Scripture, he declared to him the good news about Jesus.” At the believing eunuch’s request Philip baptized him in water.
32. Down in Ethiopia what work did the eunuch do, but what mission did Philip go on carrying out?
32 The eunuch did not receive the miraculous gifts of the spirit, but it did not require an apostle to be serving there in order for this eunuch to be begotten by God’s spirit to become a joint heir with Christ in the heavenly kingdom. Down in Ethiopia the baptized eunuch doubtless did the evangelistic work that is obligatory upon all dedicated, baptized Christians; but Philip continued his travels as one sent on a mission of evangelism. “Philip was found to be in Ashdod, and he went through the territory and kept on declaring the good news to all the cities until he got to Caesarea.” (Acts 8:26-40) He did missionary work just as Timothy was later told to do.—2 Tim. 4:5.
GOOD NEWS IN THE “TIME OF THE END”
33. How was the special evangelistic work of today foretold by Jesus, and by whom is his prophecy being fulfilled?
33 Today we are living in the time of special evangelistic work. It is the work foretold by Jesus in his prophecy concerning the end of this world or system of things: “This good news [or, evangel, Luther] of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness to all the nations, and then the accomplished end will come.” (Matt. 24:14) Is this prophecy being fulfilled by evangelist angels, by Jehovah’s angel Gabriel or by the angel that announced Jesus’ human birth to the shepherds or by the host of angels that said: “Glory in the heights above to God, and upon earth peace among men of good-will”? No; there is no evidence of angelic appearances since A.D. 1914, when the “beginning of pangs of distress” befell the nations. By whom, then, since the close of World War I, is Jesus’ prophecy relative to the greatest evangelistic work thus far in human history being fulfilled? It is being fulfilled by Jehovah’s witnesses. In carrying on their earth-wide preaching of the good news of God’s established kingdom in 175 or more countries and islands, they are working under the eighty-five Branches of the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, their legal and administrative agency or servant.
34, 35. (a) What do we today not have as “gifts in the form of men,” and yet how do we have evangelistic missionaries? (b) When was the greatest graduation of missionary students held, and under what circumstances?
34 Today we do not have “gifts in the form of men” in the form of Christ’s twelve apostles or of inspired Christian prophets or of evangelists associated with the apostles as Philip and Timothy were. Nevertheless, we do have evangelistic missionaries. How so?
35 In the year 1943 Jehovah’s witnesses established in New York state a missionary training school called the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead, the name of its main school building being called Gilead, meaning “Witness Heap.” Beginning on February 1, 1943, it has since graduated two class-groups of missionary evangelists each year till now. In the past summer of 1958 Gilead held the greatest graduation exercises of its career. This was the graduation of its thirty-first class of 103 ministerial students Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1958, in the Yankee Stadium of New York city. Sixty-four countries and islands supplied the students for this thirty-first class, and they were assigned to posts of evangelistic service in fifty-two lands. In the hearing of 180,291 delegates to the Divine Will International Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who overflowed both Yankee Stadium and the nearby Polo Grounds, this graduating class was addressed by a number of speakers before they received their diplomas of merit. Pertinent to the above discussion of missionaries, or evangelists who are sent with a special assignment of service, one of the speakers delivered the following address.
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Missionaries of God’s Kingdom That RulesThe Watchtower—1959 | April 1
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Missionaries of God’s Kingdom That Rules
1. What were those Christians graduating from Gilead sent forth as, but what do enemies in many places call them?
AFTER your graduation, you Christian men and women will be sent on a mission. That is why you are all missionaries, for, basically, a missionary is one who is sent on a mission. A mission is a work with which a person is charged as an agent or envoy and it serves as the reason for sending this person out. Usually a missionary is understood to be a person that is sent out for spreading his religious belief into a heathen land or a newly settled territory. From this fact the word missionary has come to mean also a mere propagandist. In many lands the enemies speak of graduates of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead as propagandists, not Christian missionaries.
2. Why was it well for those graduates to keep in mind the mission on which they were being sent, and why would we not want to be the kind of missionaries that Kaiser Wilhelm II once spoke of?
2 You will do well to keep in mind always the mission on which you are sent. Then you will distinguish yourselves from missionaries of other kinds. There are missionaries and missionaries. Less than ten years before Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany plunged his empire into World War I he spoke at Bremen, Germany. In this speech on March 22, 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm spoke for all the German people, his subjects, and said: “God has called us to civilize the world. We are the missionaries of human progress. . . . We are the salt of the earth.”a Now, do we today owe a debt of gratitude to those German Imperial “missionaries of human progress”? Did they advance world civilization in a way that has benefited everybody? Have they as the “salt of the earth” kept their strength or lost it and ruined the earth instead of preserving it? World War I and its aftereffects down to this day give the best answer. No sane person needs to feel a debt of gratitude to missionaries of human, materialistic progress of that kind in any nation. We do not want to be missionaries of that kind, do we?
3. How have missionaries been taken advantage of, and how have heathen natives pointed out their not being what they preach?
3 In the past, British and other religious
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