Sam Gjesdal, assigned to Brazil, pointed out a feature of Gilead School that made graduation especially meaningful. “Worldly colleges dish out information and you take what you can get,” he said, “but here they really care about you and they want to see that you do the best you can. They take a real interest in you.”

Even the graduation exercise was different. There was no noisy fanfare to inaugurate the program. There was no pompous procession led by solemn-faced college faculty heads. There was no one marching down the aisle of the Assembly Hall to blaring music. There was no one garbed in long black robes and square-topped, tasseled college hats. No, there was nothing here in evidence to glorify human creatures and their attainments. Instead, glory and thankfulness were centered on the One who made it all possible, Jehovah God. Gilead graduations are truly different.

The goals are another reason why Gilead graduation is different. To explain this, let us go back in history to Gilead’s first graduation exercise. Note what Nathan H. Knorr, the first president of the school, said to those gathered:

“The men of this world, and their women and children, are storing up riches on this earth, trying to have a place of security insured to them. But do they really succeed? They can never be secure against the destruction unavoidably due to come upon the whole world. However, those who have entered into a covenant with God are storing up riches in heaven that will not rust or be destroyed. They have value with God, who is in heaven.

“So, then, the work that you Bible [school] graduates do in . . . proclaiming the Kingdom message . . . where witnesses have never gone before . . . is a vital work preliminary to the establishment of the [New Order] of righteousness.”

The goal of Gilead graduates is not material wealth or prestige through employment. Instead, they eagerly look forward to graduation as a means of satisfying their burning desire to preach the “good news” of God’s kingdom and to “make disciples of people of all the nations.” And their missionary assignment can reach into the new system of things where they can teach the “good news” to resurrected ones.​—Mark 13:10; Matthew 28:19; John 5:28, 29.