Keep Integrity and Live!
“CURSE God and die!” Our magazine cover depicts the wife of Job, who assailed him with those words. That was some 3,600 years ago. Yet that verbal attack on God’s faithful servant highlights an issue that confronts mankind down to this day. Faithful Job had suffered terrible losses—his livestock, his home, his ten children. Now his body was being tortured by a chronic disease, testing him to the limit. The reason? The archenemy of God and man, Satan the Devil, was pursuing a challenge that man cannot maintain integrity to God under severe test.—Job 1:11, 12; 2:4, 5, 9, 10.
Today, as in Job’s day, “the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one,” Satan the Devil. (1 John 5:19) Indeed, that is even more true today, for now “the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth,” has been thrown out of the heavens down to this earth. (Revelation 12:9) This accounts for the intense woes that afflict mankind in our time. The first world war, erupting in 1914, marked “a beginning of pangs of distress” that have continued deep into this 20th century.—Matthew 24:7, 8.
In this cruel, degraded world, do you ever feel that you have come to the limit of human endurance? Do you ever wonder, ‘Is there any purpose to life?’ Job may have felt that way, but he never lost faith in God, though he made mistakes. He expressed his determination in these words: “Until I expire I shall not take away my integrity from myself!” He had confidence that God would ‘get to know his integrity.’—Job 27:5; 31:6.
Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, also had to endure trials while here on earth. Satan attacked Jesus in various ways. He played on Jesus’ physical needs and tested His reliance on God’s Word, as at the mountain of temptation. (Matthew 4:1-11) He harassed Jesus by having the apostate scribes and Pharisees and their dupes persecute him, accuse him of blasphemy, and conspire to kill him. (Luke 5:21; John 5:16-18; 10:36-39; 11:57) They did far worse to Jesus than the three false comforters did to Job.—Job 16:2; 19:1, 2.
In the garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus approached the climax of this testing, he told his disciples: “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death.” Then, “he fell upon his face, praying and saying: ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me. Yet, not as I will, but as you will.’” Finally, on the torture stake, in fulfillment of the prophetic words of Psalm 22:1, Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But ultimately God did not forsake Jesus because Jesus maintained perfect integrity to Him, providing a model for all true Christians to follow. Jehovah rewarded Jesus’ integrity keeping by resurrecting him and exalting him to the highest heavens. (Matthew 26:38, 39; 27:46; Acts 2:32-36; 5:30; 1 Peter 2:21) God will reward all others who similarly keep integrity to him.
Not only did Jesus’ integrity give a complete answer to Satan’s challenge but the sacrifice of his perfect human life provided the ransom, on the basis of which integrity-keeping humans may gain everlasting life. (Matthew 20:28) First, Jesus gathers an anointed “little flock” who become joint heirs with him in the Kingdom of the heavens. (Luke 12:32) After this, “a great crowd” are gathered to survive “the great tribulation,” coming out of it to inherit everlasting life in the realm of God’s Kingdom on earth.—Revelation 7:9, 14-17.
Integrity-keeping Job will be among the billions of dead ones who will then be resurrected to become part of that peaceful “new earth” society. (2 Peter 3:13; John 5:28, 29) As depicted on the back cover of our magazine, integrity had its reward in Job’s day when Jehovah “blessed the end of Job . . . more than his beginning.” He had gained spiritual strength as one who “did not sin with his lips.” God extended his life an additional 140 years. Materially, he gave Job double of all that he had before, and Job “came to have seven sons and three daughters,” the daughters being considered the most beautiful in all the land. (Job 2:10; 42:12-17) But all of this prosperity was only a foretaste of the blessings that integrity keepers will enjoy in the Paradise of the “new earth.” You too can share in that joy, as the following pages will explain!
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Jesus set the perfect example as an integrity keeper