For keeping on warning that Jerusalem would be burned and torn down, Jeremiah was arrested, charged with sedition and put down in a cistern, where he sank in the mire. To his rescue, in defiance of the princes, there came, not a circumcised Israelite, but a castrated Ethiopian, a eunuch named Ebed-melech. He condemned what the princes had done to Jehovah’s prophet. At King Zedekiah’s order Ebed-melech took along thirty men for safety and for assistance and got Jeremiah out of the miry death hole. After that, thanks to Ebed-melech, “Jeremiah continued to dwell in the Courtyard of the Guard.”

21. What happened to many inhabitants during Jerusalem’s siege, but what was Jeremiah commanded to tell Ebed-melech?

²¹ During Jerusalem’s siege mothers boiled their own children for food against starvation, many died of pestilence, and many died by the swords of the Babylonians. But what of Ebed-melech, who was in the house of King Zedekiah? Jehovah commanded Jeremiah in the Courtyard of the Guard to tell his rescuer Ebed-melech: “‘I will deliver you in that day,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘and you will not be given into the hand of the men because of whom you yourself are in fright.’ ‘For I shall without fail furnish you an escape, and by the sword you will not fall; and you will certainly come to have your soul as a spoil, because you have trusted in me,’ is the utterance of Jehovah.”—Jer. 39:15-18.

22. Who today, like Ebed-melech, have put their trust in Jehovah, and how have they proved this trust?

²² Today, near Christendom’s destruction at Armageddon, a sheeplike class like Ebed-melech have put their trust in Jeremiah’s God. They have proved this trust by being willing to risk death at the hands of Christendom’s princes in order to come to the rescue of the antitypical Jeremiah of today. “To the extent that you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me,” said the King Jesus Christ to the “other sheep” in his parable of the sheep and goats, the last part of his prophecy on the world’s end.—Matt. 25:40.

23. What will the King’s invitation to these sheep to come and inherit the kingdom prepared for them mean and, accordingly, what promise will Jehovah then remember and apply to them?

²³ In this day of the judgment of the nations, Jesus Christ the King, seated on his heavenly throne for judgment work, turns to his right and says to these sheep: “Come, you who have my Father’s blessing, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the world’s foundation. . . . I was in prison and you came to me.” Since the year 1914 that heavenly kingdom is here and this green earth is its realm. These sheeplike persons of the Ebed-melech kind do not have to die and be resurrected in order to enter into the realm of that kingdom of God’s new world. They are already living in the Kingdom’s earthly realm. This is the realm they must inherit, and so they are not going to be evicted from this earthly inheritance of theirs. Christendom is cursed, but these sheep have the blessing of the King’s Father, Jehovah God. Christendom with its goats will be destroyed, for it has no place in this earthly Kingdom realm. But the King’s Father Jehovah will remember his promise to Ebed-melech at Jerusalem’s destruction. So these blessed sheeplike Christians will not fall by the Executioner’s sword at Armageddon.

24. How will it be possible for these sheep never to die off the earth, their inheritance?

²⁴ In that battle they will certainly come to have their soul, their life, as a victor’s spoil. This guarantees that they will live through the crash of Christendom and its religious temples and will begin to enjoy their earthly inheritance in the eternal new world. By maintaining sheeplike obedience toward their Shepherd King they will never die off the earth, their inheritance. The goats “will depart into everlasting cutting-off, but the righteous ones into everlasting life,” said Jesus the Judge.—Matt. 25:31-46.

25. Because of what work do we suffer reproach, but should we be like Jeremiah when under his reproach?

²⁵ Just as with Jeremiah, so with the anointed remnant and their companions, those righteous sheeplike ones. Heavy is the reproach that they bear because of their work of uprooting, pulling down, destroying and tearing down the old world by means of preaching the day of Jehovah’s vengeance. But should we, on that account, stop filling ourselves with Jehovah’s Word and quit preaching his hard message? We cannot, even as Jeremiah said he could not: “Take note of my bearing reproach on account of your own self. Your words were found, and I proceeded to eat them; and your word becomes to me the exultation and the rejoicing of my heart, for your name has been called upon me, O Jehovah God of armies.”—Jer. 15:10, 15, 16.

26. By whom are we opposed and obstructed even because of our constructive work, but when it comes to stopping speaking, how are we like Jeremiah?

²⁶ Even because we do a building and planting work in favor of God’s new world, the lovers and supporters of the old world oppose us and try to force us to stop. But fired as we are with God’s Word, how can we stop speaking? To quote Jeremiah: “The word of Jehovah became for me a cause for reproach and for jeering all day long. And I said: ‘I am not going to make mention of him, and I shall speak no more in his name.’ And in my heart it proved to be like a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I got tired of holding in, and I was unable to endure it. . . . Sing to Jehovah, you people! Praise Jehovah! For he has delivered the soul of the poor one out of the hand of evildoers.”—Jer. 20:8, 9, 13.

27. While expressing the theme of our preaching, how does Jehovah strengthen us not to fear the enemies’ faces, and, true to his deliverances when ancient Jerusalem perished, what will Jehovah do?

²⁷ Therefore, in expression of the theme of our preaching, Down with the old world! Up with the new world! The Almighty God of the new world bids us not to be afraid of the enemies’ faces: “They will be certain to fight against you, but they will not prevail against you, for ‘I am with you,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘to deliver you.’” (Jer. 1:19) True to his promise, he delivered Jeremiah and the Rechabites and Ebed-melech when Jerusalem perished. True to that prophetic picture, Jehovah of armies will deliver us the remnant and the other sheep when, at Armageddon, he fulfills what we have preached and he brings down the old world and brings up his righteous new world.

“His Own Purposes”

The following is a passage from Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speech (March 4, 1865): “Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces. . . . The prayers of both could not be answered. . . . The Almighty has his own purposes.”