Truth Inspires Zeal in Youth

IN THE Christian Century, April 23, 1952, appeared an item regarding the ‘British Methodist Church deploring the failure of its affiliated young people to take the step of full membership’. Among other things, attention was called to the fact that the Methodist Church is losing 65,000 young folk annually and that if all these could be kept the church would double its membership.

What can be the matter? Can it be that there is something wrong with the spiritual diet that these young people receive? That such may be the case appears from the following letter of a Gilead missionary worker telling of the way the good news of God’s kingdom affected a certain young person in Geneva, Switzerland.

“I must tell you about my new home Bible study which I am conducting with a pretty young girl of twenty-three. She came here as a French refugee and entered a Catholic home for young girls. With the bickering among the nuns and priests there she was far from happy. While on a vacation in Strasbourg she attended mass and on the way home a friend stopped her and asked where she had been. This friend invited her to an apéritif (appetizer) and started talking to her about the Bible, telling her that the Most High dwelleth not in temples made with human hands, etc.; this friend being one of Jehovah’s witnesses. She met this friend only twice, but in those two meetings she got enough of the truth to make her want more.

“She came back here to Geneva with the Bible-study aid ‘Let God Be True’ that she had obtained from this friend and eagerly devoured its contents. As a result she left the Catholic home and got a job and wrote the Watchtower Society for more literature. The Berne office forwarded the address to me. It happened to be in the very same building where we have our missionary home, the girl working as a maid for a diplomat. The next week I started a home Bible study with her, and on the following Sunday she began coming to our meetings at the Kingdom Hall.

“She is bubbling over with zeal and when she talks about the truth her eyes just sparkle. She is a realization of the scripture that speaks of the ‘first love’ in the truth. She is now talking to everyone, even though we have been studying together only four weeks. Two weeks ago she started coming to the service meeting also, and the talk on having a share in preaching the good news to others so thrilled her that when the speaker asked who would have a part in advertising the good news on the street, as I raised my hand she raised hers. She spent the entire Saturday afternoon on the street with us, presenting the truth to passers-by.

“Sunday morning she came down and said that she wanted to go out in the service from door to door. I told her that there were a few things that we should go over first to make sure she had a good foundation. I took the various Bible doctrines listed in the Bible-study aid ‘Let God Be True’ and asked her about them and explained them to her, as I knew I couldn’t keep her from going from house to house with this message even if I wanted to. We studied for about three hours, and I think that she will be all right now; as she will learn more while gaining experience in preaching.

“We have a circuit assembly in La Chaud de Fond next month, and she is seriously thinking of being baptized. Tomorrow night at the service meeting we will have a talk on baptism which will help her to see the seriousness of the step she wants to take. I do not want her to jump into anything like this without her fully realizing what she is doing.

“She makes every sacrifice to get to the congregational meetings, working late at nights to make up for the time lost by attending them. She took time off to go into the service Saturday afternoon and gave her employers such a thorough witness that they were moved by her sincerity and obtained two magazines from her to find out what this was all about. She already has arranged for me to conduct a home Bible study with the cook that works for her employers. You can well imagine the joy that this young ‘sheep’ of the Lord has brought us.”

Questions From Readers

● John 2:19 (NW) states: “In answer Jesus said to them: ‘Break down this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’” Does this indicate that Jesus had power to raise himself from the dead, as trinitarians argue, and proving, as they say, that Jesus and God are the same person?—M. S., Oregon.

We must harmonize Jesus’ words with many other scriptures, which clearly show that God and Christ are separate persons and not equal and not tied together, along with the holy spirit, to form one god. Numerous texts show that Jesus did not raise himself from the dead, but that he was resurrected by Jehovah God his Father. (Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:15; Eph. 1:20) So how may we logically view John 2:19?

The context must be examined. Joh 2 Verses 13 to 18 show that Jesus had cleansed the literal temple at Jerusalem, routing from it those who were making it a place of merchandise, and as a result had been confronted with this question from the Jews: “What sign have you to show us, since you are doing these things?” Then in the 19th Joh 2 verse 19 Jesus told them the sign, which is the basis of our question. Joh 2 Verses 20-22 continue: “Therefore the Jews said: ‘This temple was built in forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was talking about the temple of his body. When, though, he was raised up from the dead, his disciples called to mind that he used to say this.”—NW.

This setting shows that Jesus was not talking about his physical body, but “he was talking about the temple of his body”. The temple in Jerusalem that Jesus cleansed represented not Jesus alone but also the body-members over which he is head. Just as the literal temple was not made up of one stone but many, so “the temple of his body” consists of many living stones, with Jesus as the foundation cornerstone: “You yourselves also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house for the purpose of a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Pet. 2:4-7, NW) After the Jewish religionists rejected Christ the living stone and broke him down by death on the torture stake, on the third day thereafter Jehovah God raised him up to become the chief cornerstone of the temple of living stones then under preparation. He immediately appeared to his disciples and lifted them up out of their despondency, built them up spiritually so that they could “offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God”. That this building of “the temple of his body” started then and continued through the years that followed is shown by Peter’s use of the present tense when years afterward he said Christ’s followers “are being built up a spiritual house”.

Now with this broadened view of matters we must return to the consideration of Jesus’ words, “In three days I will raise it up.” We have seen how he did start giving attention to the building up of the temple of living stones after his resurrection on the third day of his death. Yet it might be argued with some force that since Jesus was to be the chief cornerstone and he was the firstfruits of the resurrection, the first one to be built up for use in the construction of the spiritual house or temple, we cannot eliminate him entirely from this