KEEP JEHOVAH'S DAY CLOSE IN MIND

"In the last days there will come ridiculers." -2 Peter 3:3.


A FULL-TIME minister for more than 66 years wrote:  "I have always felt a keen sense of urgency.  Armageddon has always been, in my thinking, he day after tomorrow.  (Revelation 16:14, 16) Like my father, and his father before him, I have lived my life as the apostle [Peter] urged, 'keeping close in mind the presence for  the day of Jehovah.'  I have always viewed the promised new world as  a "reality though not beheld.' " -2 Peter 3:11, 12; Hebrews 11:1; Isaiah 11:6-9; Revelation 21:3, 4.

Peter's expression "keeping close in mind" in reference to Jehovah's day means that we do not put it off in our minds.  We should not forget that the day when Jehovah will destroy this system of things as a preliminary to establishing his promised new world is very near.  It should be so real to us that we see it clearly, as being immediately ahead of us.  That was how real it was to God's prophets of old, and they often spoke of it as being near. -Isaiah 13:6; Joel 1:15; 2:1; Obadiah 15; Zephaniah 1:7, 14.

Why did Peter urge us to view the day of Jehovah as though it could come, so to speak, "the day after tomorrow"?  Because some had evidently begun to ridicule the idea of Christ's promised presence during which wrongdoers would be punished.  (2 Peter 3:3, 4) So in chapter 3 of his second letter, which we will now consider , Peter answers the chargers of these ridiculers.

Next time: Warm Appeal to Remember

The Watchtower, 1997