"Your Own Watchmen Have Raised Their Voice"

Does the cry "Your God has become king!" elicit a response?  Yes. Isaiah records:  "Listen!  Your own watchmen have raised their voice.  In unison they keep crying out joyfully; for it will be eye into eye that they will see when Jehovah gathers back Zion."  (Isaiah  52:8)  No literal watchmen take their positions in Jerusalem in 537 B.C.E. to welcome back the returning exiles.  The city has laid desolate for 70 years.   (Jeremiah 25:11, 12)  So the "watchmen" who raise their voice must be those Israelites who get the news in advance  regarding Zion's   restoration and who become responsible for passing the news o n to the rest of Zion's children.  Upon seeing Jehovah give Babylon into  the hands of Cyrus in 539 B.C.E., the watchmen have no doubt in their minds that Jehovah is liberating his people.  Together with those who respond to their call, the watchmen keep crying out joyfully, in unison, letting others hear the good news.

The alert watchmen establish a close, personal relationship with Jehovah, seeing him "eye into eye," or face-to-face, as it were.  (Numbers 14:14) Their close contact with Jehovah and with one another highlights their unity and the joyful nature of their message. -1 Corinthians 1:10.

In the modern-day fulfillment, the watchmen class, "the faithful and discreet slave," raises their voice not just to the ones who are already in God's visible organization but also to outsiders.  (Matthew 24:45-47)  A call went out to gather in the remaining ones of the anointed  in 1919, and in 1922 the call was intensified at the Cedar Point, Ohio, convention with the appeal to "advertise, advertise, advertise, the King and his kingdom."  Since 1935, attention has been turned  to gathering in a great crowd of sheeplike ones.  (Revelation 7:9, 10)  In recent years  the announcement of Jehovah's kingship has intensified.  How?  In the year 2000, some six million  were sharing in telling of Jehovah's kingship in more than 230 lands and territories. Further, the Watchtower, the foremost instrument of the watchman class, sounds out the joyful message in more than 130 languages.

Next time: Conclusion of "Your Own Watchmen Have Raised Their Voice"

From the Book Isaiah's Prophecy Light for all Mankind, Volume II, 2001