use when the day of reconstruction of mankind comes. He cured a lunatic, cast out evil spirits, cured cases of fever, cleansed from leprosy, cured a paralytic, healed a man infirm for thirty-eight years, restored a dried-up hand, cured a woman subject to a flow of blood for twelve years, restored eyesight, made the dumb able to speak, straightened a woman who was bent double, cured dropsy, replaced a cut-off ear, and, last and greatest of all, he performed three resurrections. What a wide range of restorative healings! Surely there is not a sin-produced handicap or evidence of human degeneracy that lies beyond the power of Jesus Christ to heal lastingly in the new earth society.

20. (a) How did Jesus demonstrate what kinds of people will be healed by him in the antitypical sabbath? (b) How did Jesus indicate the time when this would take place?

²⁰ Another comforting fact to notice in Jesus’ ministry is that he did not confine his miraculous healing to the Jews. There were two cases where he healed non-Jews and non-Samaritans, thus showing that in the time of the reconstruction good people from all nations who are invited to be his subjects will be recipients of this great healing service. (Mark 7:24-26; Matt. 8:5-10) Likewise it is interesting to note that Jesus performed so many of his miracles on the sabbath day. Actually the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the sabbath in the performance of these mighty deeds. Jesus argued that it was lawful to do good on the sabbath and finally stated that he was the Lord of the Sabbath. Here, then, is the clue as to the time for his permanent recovery program. It is during the thousand-year Kingdom rule, which is a thousand-year sabbath over which Christ Jesus rules as Lord, that faithful man is to be helped to meet the mark of integrity.—Matt. 12:1-8; 19:28, NW.

SINS FORGIVEN

21. What other authority did Jesus demonstrate in his earthly ministry, and of what comfort has this been to Christians?

²¹ Jesus, too, had the authority to forgive sins. In fact, certain scribes accused Jesus of blasphemy because he claimed this power. In reply Jesus showed that it was just as easy for him to perform a miracle as to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” One was just as easy as the other and both related to the recovery program. “‘However, in order for you to know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins—’ then he said to the paralytic: ‘Get up, pick up your bed, and go to your home.’” (Matt. 9:6, NW) What great relief this provision has ever been to the conscience of the true Christian to know that as he prays to Jehovah his Father in Jesus’ name for forgiveness of sins along with repentance, such forgiveness is granted!—Mark 11:25, NW.

22. What happiness do Jehovah’s people have now?

²² “Happy are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered; happy is the man whose sin Jehovah will by no means take into account.” (Rom. 4:7, 8, NW) Today the anointed remnant by reason of their being justified by faith have had their past record of inherited sins wiped away. The other sheep, too, have had a token forgiveness. Coupled with the fact that both groups have been undergoing a spiritual healing by means of God’s Word of truth, this means that all Jehovah’s witnesses are even now enjoying a great state of happiness. They are transforming their minds and already are being lifted up spiritually toward the high goal of holiness. Yes, they are determined to render exclusive devotion to Jehovah their God-King and to maintain absolute integrity toward him. However, we know men have yet a long way to go to meet that perfect standard. But step by step we desire diligently to travel the way Jehovah has provided in his undeserved kindness for man’s gradual uplift to human perfection in God’s image.

23. What will be the final achievement of God’s uplift of humankind by the thousand-year kingdom of Jesus Christ?

²³ We thrillingly look forward to a still greater state of happiness, after Armageddon, when the physical healings commence for the survivors, their offspring and the resurrected ones. While mankind retrogressed in sin to a very low level from God’s original mark during the past six thousand years, yet by means of an accelerated program Jesus Christ will accomplish the lifting up of the new family of humans in a thousand years. He will fully recover them to full perfection in the flesh and mind so that they can easily meet Jehovah’s restated terms of perfection and integrity. Gone beyond memory then will be the aches, pains, faults, mistakes, weaknesses, troubles, sorrows, deformities, handicaps, sicknesses and negligence of the days under the harsh rule of sin and king death. Then, too, during the first part of that thousand years of reconstruction, as a parallel project the entire earth will become an Edenic paradise. At the conclusion of the thousand years, after the uplifted multitudes of mankind meet their final test to determine their worthiness of the gift of an unending life span, radiantly vital mankind, then holy, perfected and truly loyal, will be standing in paradise on the shore of the ages to come. As they employ their powers of free will to maintain the glory of their Holy God, earth’s resplendent subjects will pass from one exhilarating exploit to another and from one state of complete happiness to another to time eternal. (Eph. 1:21, NW) Forever they will maintain their integrity to Jehovah God to his vindication.

Questions From Readers

● Will a baby that is stillborn or that dies shortly after birth have a resurrection if its parents are faithful servants of Jehovah?—H. C., United States.

What Jehovah resurrects or implants in a created body is the life pattern or personality the individual had developed before death. Although a child dying a few hours or days or even a year after birth may not have developed a life pattern or intelligent memory, yet it has a mental and trait inheritance from its forebears, and if time had been allowed for these to develop they would have resulted in a definite personality which would have shown relationship to the family. Said Dr. Milton J. E. Senn in March of 1949 from the Child Study Center of Yale University, in his capacity of professor of pediatrics and psychiatry: “It appears that the beginnings of the individual organism in a psychological sense as well as in a physiological sense begin with conception. . . . The child comes into the world with physical and mental patterns pretty well set, and the child’s behavior during the growing up period is influenced by them.”

Jehovah God and Christ Jesus are able to note and reproduce all these latent tendencies in a babe and to reproduce them in the resurrection, so that the child to whom its mother will then be united will really be her child, and as such traits and tendencies unfold with the child’s growing up under the Kingdom and in the new earth, this fact will become more and more apparent to the mother. She will know it is really her own for these reasons and not for any basic physical resemblance. In the case of one that was stillborn these physical and mental patterns that are inherited were present from the time of conception and for the time the babe was developing in the womb, but the child had never lived as an individual, and resurrection is for those who have lived.

If children are sanctified by reason of a believing parent, then there is no reason to doubt that such “holy” children will have a part in the resurrection, even if they died as babes.