NO. 653 RETROSPECT

 “Thou madest man a little lower than the angels, thou crownedst him with glory and honor and didst set him over the works of thy hands. Thou has put all things in subjugation under his feet.” (Psa. 8:6)

 “The first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is the Lord from heaven.” (1Cor 15:47)

The human race has always had miscreants throughout existence, since father Adam sinned by disobedience of God’s law and received the prom­ised death sentence, which the human race inherited. Crimes from jay-walking to petty theft, grand larceny, violent-weapons-bearing-major rob­beries, kidnappings for money, home invasions, single, serial, mass killings and hate driven terrorism are all growing alarmingly in the fast approaching end of The Gospel Age.

The “Good News” Age, the good news is the sacrifice of Christ, who died for us that we may live. The only good news, after the vio­lence at the end of this age is that it will mark the end of The Present Evil World and the begin­ning of Christ’s Kingdom on earth.

Washington DC

Probably, USA’s Capital City has more organ­ized and trained police officers of one kind or another than any other city in the world. There are the DC Metro Police and other police depart­ments in the satellite communi­ties. Add to this the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, US Marshals, DEA, etc., and of course, every government and private office building of any consequence has its own security force.

There are no better police anywhere else in the world, except perhaps in Israel, and certainly in the city of Jerusalem, their capital, which seemingly our govern­ment wants to divide between the Israelis and their enemy, the Arabs. We might as well divide New York City with the El Qaida terrorist.

This is not a complaint, in fact, all these police and more are needed in these troubling times of this time of trouble, and it is quickly growing greater than any since there was a nation (Dan 12:1). But Washington has been known as the murder capital of the USA. All cities of the world are similarly policed and more are needed in each, including USA’s capital city. Still the average resident of those cities is not safe on the streets.

Looking at Washington, DC, it is a good bet that no other city of the world has as many lawyers, judges and law courts, certainly not per capita, and all busier than they should have to be. Also, our capital is the best educated in the nation with more advanced college degrees probably than any other city, in the world.

the american prision system

America’s prison system is in a condition of serious crisis. Since the declaration of the war on drugs 40 years ago, our country has amassed the largest prison population the world has ever seen.

 Overcrowding and unconstitutional condi­tions have gotten so bad that one of the worst offenders, California, was recently ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to either transfer 33,000 people to other jurisdictions or simply let them go.

 Now, former police officer, turned criminal justice professor, Peter Moskos has devised a modest proposal that, he argues, could solve the problem of our congested prisons overnight: give prisoners the option of being flogged instead of being imprisoned.

Born in Jerusalem

If you are an American citizen born in Jerusalem, the United States Government will not include Israel as the place of birth on your pass­port. “One Jerusalem” is involved in an important effort to end this discrimination against Israel.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case brought by an American citizen born in Jerusalem. US citizen Menachem Zivotofsky was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 2002.

The US State Department has refused to list “Jerusalem, Israel” as place of birth on his pass­port and would only write “Jerusalem” in­stead. There are US towns named Jerusalem,   New York, for instance. This is despite the fact that in 2002 Congress instructed the State Department to “record the place of birth as Israel” on passports of American children born in Jerusalem if parents request it.

The present administration urged the Su­preme Court not to hear the case. The justices instead not only agreed to hear the case, but also directed the two sides to address the broad ques­tion of whether the law “impermissibly infrin­ges the president’s power to recognize foreign sove­reign­ties.”

This case is especially important at a time when the US President has effectively endorsed the division of Jerusalem in calling for a return to the 1967 borders, which were extended after the entire Arab world attacked Israel and lost the war. While an over­whelming majority of Congress sup­ports de­fensible borders and a united Jerusa­lem.

(Taken From the “One Jerusalem” News­letter)

Troubling Times and The Time of Trouble

 “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Gen. 6:5)

This was at the time of the end of the “world that then was” before the flood. (2 Pet. 3:6) The period in which our earthly father, Adam diso­beyed the one law God had given him – his sin – a deliberate disobedience for which he had been promised the death sentence, “dying thou shalt surely die,” and the eviction from the Garden of Paradise (Eden). See how fast the human race began to degenerate: Adam and Eve had a son, Cain who became a tiller of ground. Then they had Abel who became a sheep-tender. Cain was jealous of Abel and killed him because he offered a more excellent sacrifice to The Heavenly Father.

Then followed a period in which God per­mitted angels to try their hand at recovering man from the conditions imposed by sin. One can imag­­ine how eager these angels were to participate in the exciting acts of the creation they had joy­ously witnessed. They were totally incapable of revers­ing the Creator’s Plan and to restore Adam and Eve to that which was lost – life eternal.

Verse 6 – “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” The word translated repented here is from the Hebrew word nacham [naw-kham], the primitive root of which is to sigh and by implica­tion to be sorry – to pity. There is no indication that the Creator changed his mind or heart in the normal thought of the word repent. All, in fact, was going exactly the way He had foreseen and planned from the beginning. Every­thing was pro­ceeding according to his “eternal purpose [Divine Plan].” (Eph. 5:11) He had pity for man’s growing depravity and it was the set time to bring that world to a halt. All that could be gained in the knowledge of evil for his creatures, both spirit and human, had been accom­plished. Any furtherance of this “world that was” would be counter-productive to mankind and God’s “eternal pur­pose.” It was the due time.

 “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:” (Isa. 46:9,10)

What a reassuring message from our Hea­venly Father, “the ancient of days,” whose major character traits are power, wisdom, justice, and love. There is none other with the power to ac­complish all according to an eternal purpose. No other wisdom exists capable of creation with an eternal purpose and to declare the end from the beginning. This is exact justice in whom “judgment is laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet.” (Isa. 28:17) All these things equally balanced with perfect, Divine Love, “for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

With these things in mind, we must take a look at what our Heavenly Father accomplished for us during this period designated by Him as “The World That Was.” He formed a habitat and from the elements thereof created man, a singular creature in HIS own image and HE tells us about it succinctly, clearly and simply in very few words. Yet, man in his “wisdom” has expounded upon it to the extent of literally billions of words. We dispute, argue, fight, theorize, and disregard the teaching of Scripture; and with Satan’s “help,” concoct all manner of [false] religions and science.

The Angels rejoiced at God’s creation of man and were dismayed at man’s sin and con­sequent death penalty. No doubt, they wanted eagerly to help and started out with fervor at the opportunity the Creator permitted. But, bit-by-bit, their every effort failed until finally Satan, the deceiver, implanted the idea that they could begat an entirely new order of earthly creatures.

These deceived angels were led to believe they could assume earthly form and beget a new order, which they commenced to do. “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in ever­lasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” (Jude 1:6) It had been against God’s laws of nature.

Crossbreeding between different species pro­duces “mules” that cannot reproduce, though frequently they are superior to their parents in many respects, such as mental capacity, strength and endur­ance. The products of the union of angels and the daughters of men were “giants.” They were physically and mentally larger and stronger, with a much greater tendency to evil.

Those disobedient of the sinful angels were not given the death sentence as was man, but were confined until the great Day of Judgment so they could not interfere. As with man, these fallen angels who will not be rehabilitated will be elimi­nated. “Know ye not that we (the Saints) shall judge angels…” (1 Cor. 6:3)

But, why did God permit such a thing to happen when in his omniscience, He knew it was inevitable. What good came of it? – A wonderful lesson in the knowledge of evil for both the natural and spiritual creations. The vast majority of the spiritual who did not participate with the few who kept not their first estate, learned by observation of the abject failure of those who did, through their disobedience – sin. Those angels who fell from their first estate and practiced this abomination were con­fined in darkness until the Day of Judg­ment. Mankind learned a further lesson in the extreme sinfulness of sin – disobedience to God’s laws, though still the vast majority has not as yet learned this lesson.

In the meantime in the World that was, there were certain “sons of man” from Seth to Noah who maintained faith in God, even though they were unable to trace him. These are mentioned by name in the chronology of Genesis that establishes the period as 1656 years from the Creation of Adam through the flood.

From the beginning of the Adamic race, there were certain men who reverenced the Creator and had faith in Him. Noah was of this number and because of his faith; he and his wife, three sons and their wives were saved out of the flood. These eight people began a New World (order). In this new order man was on his own, Angels were not allowed to interfere except as directed by the Creator. Man had free will to maintain reverence and faith in his Creator or take the course of sin and degradation – a further step in gaining the knowledge of evil.

After the flood, the Patriarchal Age ensued in which certain individuals starting with Noah were favored because of their faith and reverence. They are the spiritual progenitors of the people of the Kingdom of God.

Of the three sons of Noah, Shem retained the reverence to his Father and it was from this lineage that sprang Abraham 352 years after the flood. Noah lived 350 years after the flood and died 2 years before Abraham [Abram] was born. Noah had to have been greatly venerated by all mankind; after all, he was the grandfather of the new order. This would have been especially true in the line through Shem. So, it’s safe to say, Shem and Abram were greatly influenced by Noah.

Abraham is styled the father of the faithful (Rom. 4:16). God made certain Covenants with him, which were passed on to Isaac, one of his sons. The first of these promises was designed to separate Abraham from the land of his birth and all the evil pagan influences thereof. Abraham was of the Chaldeans who were advanced in the var­ious sciences and even Abraham was said to have been schooled in the celestial sciences. True, there also were pagan influences extant in the Land of Canaan, but Abraham was a stranger there and had no renown as he did in the land of his birth, which made him less likely to be led astray.

Then Abraham showed the depth of his faith by obeying God’s instructions to offer Isaac, the promised son of his old age, on the altar of sacri­fice. Thus, creating a type of the sacrifice of the only begotten Son of God to be the ransom for man. God then made a unilateral covenant with Abraham: “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.” (Gen. 22:17) The two seeds (stars of the heaven/sands of the seashore) among other things are the purchased offspring of The One Seed, which is Christ. These are the spiritual and earthly houses of the new Adam and Eve (Jesus and his Church) – The Anointed father and mother of all creation.

These promises were re-stated to Isaac and subsequently to one of his sons, Jacob, both having retained their father’s faith.

When Jacob died, his twelve sons formed the nucleus of the nation of Israel to whom God gave His law and made them His people. God gave Jacob the name Israel which means “ruling with God.” There ended the Patriarchal Age and began the Jewish Age.

The Law Covenant given to the twelve tribes in the wilderness after they were led out of Egypt came 857 years after the flood. This nation became the Kingdom of God, as a type of His Universal Kingdom to come in due time. Further promises were extended to them, some conditional and some unconditional.

“And as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be also in the days of the Son of man.” (Luke 17:26–Dia.) In Noah’s day before the flood, God’s earthly creation had reached its extremity. As the present evil world reaches its extremity, God will destroy it, not with a flood of water for He promised not to do that again. But, saved out of this coming destruction will be a remnant, as Noah and his family were at the flood. These eight people saved from the flood were a percentage of the total population of the world at the time and it might be that the remnant saved from the des­truction of the present evil world will be a similar percentage of the current at the time, total popu­lation.

Though the second destruction of the world will not be a flood of water, the results will be the same. The world as we know it will be destroyed just as it was in the flood except for the remnant that will live through it as did Noah and his family. Keep in mind that “the earth abideth forever” as we are told in Eccl. 1:4. Keep in mind also that there are a number of Hebrew and Greek words translated world and earth, meaning land – the physical earth, to ages, meaning the infra­structure or the societal nature of the make-up of life. The latter is what is destroyed of both worlds, though in both, certain changes did and will occur to the physical.

The “days of the Son of Man” began on his return in 1874 with a harvest of his church, His Bride. In 1914, after forty years duration of this Harvest, THE CHRIST began to establish His Kingdom with the commencement of the time of trouble during which Satan and his minions will be dispossessed. This is, at least, circumstantial evi­dence that 1914 marked the close of the door to the High Calling.

When the rain began in the World That Was, Noah was ordered into the Ark and after all the creatures that would avoid the destruction were inside, the door to the Ark was sealed shut. As in the days of Noah, it began symbolic rain in 1914 with the Great War – the first phase (wind) of the time of trouble.

Curiosity abides in all of us and it is a great pleasure to find what appear to be parallels or types, to pin point dates and prognosticate. It is in our fallen human nature to try to reveal things of the future that no one else has “figured out.”

Belying admonition of the Psalmist “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say on the Lord. and keep his way He shall exalt thee to inherit the land.” (Psa 27:14 and 37:14)

AMERICA NEEDS ISRAEL

GEORGE GILDER, The Wall Street  Journal (07/05/11):

America's enemies understand deeply and intuitively that no U.S. goals or resources in the Middle East are remotely as important as Israel. Why don't we?

Israel cruised through the recent global slump with scarcely a down quarter and no deficit or stimulus package. It is steadily increasing its global supremacy, behind only the U.S. In an array of leading-edge technologies, it is the global master of microchip design, network algorithms and medical instruments.

During a period of water crises around the globe, Israel is incontestably the world leader in water recycling and desalinization. During an epoch when all the world’s cities, from Seoul to New York, face a threat of terrorist rockets, Israel's newly battle-tested “Iron Dome” provides a unique answer based on original inventions in microchips that radically reduce the weight and cost of the interceptors.

Israel is also making major advances in longer-range missile defense, robotic warfare, and unmanned aerial vehicles that can stay aloft for days. In the face of a global campaign to boycott its goods, and an ever-ascendant shekel, (The Jewish Dollar.) it raised its exports 19.9% in 2010's fourth quarter and 27.3% in the first quarter of 2011. Investors would be well advised to seek investment in Israel’s leading edge industries.

Israelis supply Intel with many of its ad­vanced microprocessors, from the Pentium and Sandbridge, to the Atom and Centrino. Israeli companies endow Cisco with new core router designs and real-time programmable network pro­cessors for its next-gener­ation systems. They sup­ply Apple with robust miniaturized solid state memory systems for its iPhones, iPods and iPads, and Microsoft with critical user interface designs for the OS7 product line and the Kinect gaming motion-sensor interface, the fastest rising consu­mer electronic product in history.

Vital to the U.S. economy and military capabilities, tiny Israel’s unparalleled achieve­ments in industry and intellect have conjured up the familiar anti-Semitic frenzies among all the eco­nomi­cally and morally failed societies of the socialist and Islamist Third World, from Iran to Venezuela. They all imagine that by delegitim­izing, demoralizing, defeating or even destroying Israel, they could take a major step toward bring­ing down the entire capitalist West. 

To most sophisticated Westerners, the jiha­dist focus on Israel seems bizarre and counter­productive. But on the centrality of Israel the jihadists have it right.

U.S. policy is crippled by a preoccupation with the claimed grievances of the so called “Pales­tinians” and their supposed right to a state of their own on the West Bank and Gaza. But the Palestinian land could not have supported one-tenth as many Palestinians as it does today, without the heroic works of reclamation and agr­icul­tural development by Jewish settlers begin­ning in the 1880s, when Arabs in Palestine numbered a few hundred thousand.

Actions always have consequences. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization launched two murderous Intifadas within a little over a decade, responded to withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza by launching thousands of rockets on Israeli towns, spurned every sacrificial offer of  “Land for Peace” from Oslo through Camp David, and reversed the huge economic gains fostered in the Pales­tinian territories between 1967 and 1990, the die was cast.

Religion in the usa

With all of the consternation about religion in this country, it’s sometimes easy to lose sight of just how many anomalies our religiosity is in the world.

A Gallup report issued on Tuesday under­scored just how out of line we are. Gallup surveyed people in more than 100 countries in 2009 and found that religiosity was highly cor­related to poverty.

Richer countries in general are less religious. But that doesn't hold true for the United States.

Sixty-five percent of Americans say that religion is an important part of their daily lives. That is compared with just 30 percent of the French, 27 percent of the British and 24 percent of the Japanese.

I used Gallup’s data to chart religiosity against gross domestic product per capita and to group countries by their size and dominant religions.

(By Charles M. Blow, September 4, 2010)

Ancient date seed from Masada may yield “medicinaL” bounty

 A 2,000-year-old date seed discovered at Masada four decades ago may provide new cures to numerous ailments, Israeli scientists say, after making significant advances, against all odds, in producing fruit from the seed.

   Having been germinated, astoundingly, by an Israeli team more than three years ago, and kept alive since, the ‘Judean date’ sapling appears likely (though not certain) to yield a now-extinct species that was renowned in ancient times as a treatment for heart disease, chest problems, the spitting of blood, weakened memory and other medical conditions, possibly even symptoms of cancer and depression.

   The seed was discovered during the 1960s archeological excavations of Masada by Prof. Vigael Yadin, an eminent archeologist, political leader and the second IDF chief of General Staff.

   The Dead Sea region of Judea was famous for its extensive and high-quality-date-culturing in the first century CE. High summer temperatures and low precipitation at Masada contributed to the seed’s exceptional longevity.

   The plant's location is kept secret because of its great scientific and financial value. It could produce fruit at the age of seven years, according to Dr. Sarah Sallon, a physician and director of Hadassah University Medical Center’s Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Center (NMRC) in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem. She heads the team that succeeded in planting, germ­inating and growing the date seed, and des­cribes its findings and hopes for it in the June 13 issue of the prestigious journal Science.

The date project is part of the NMRC’s Middle Eastern Medicinal Plant project aimed at conserving, developing and researching the rich legacy of me­dicinal plants in Israel. The extinct “Judean date” is regarded by NMRC as having particular importance.

The ancient seed in Sallon’s experiment was procured from Bar-Ilan University, and germ­ination was handled by Dr. Elaine Soloway, an expert on desert agriculture at the Arava Institute of the Envir­on­ment at Kibbutz Ketura.

When the seedling was 15 months old, direct radio-carbon dating on shell fragments per­formed by Dr. Egli of Zurich University showed an age compatible with the Roman siege of Masada almost 2,000 years ago, thus making it the oldest seed ever to be germinated.

Early genetic analysis of the seedling, performed by Dr. Yuval Cohen of the Volcani Institute at Beit Dagan, shows differences from modern cultivated date species.

Further analysis is planned in the hope of discovering particular genetic characteristics that made the Judean dates famous both as a prized source of food and as a valuable medicine, Sallon told The Jerusalem Post.

 “Our next stage will be to grow more dates, in the hope of better understanding their genetics and possibly breeding the ancient date as a modern one,” she continued.

“We need to reintroduce ancient crops and plants that once flourished in this region and to investigate them scientifically for their properties. As much as Hadassah is involved in the most modern medical technologies, it also promotes our desire to discover new cures for diseases out of ancient sources.”

(Judy Siegel, The Jerusalem Post, June 20-26, 2008)

praise for “the invention of the jewish people”

a BOOK By Shlomo Sand

 “...much reviewed and rebutted, and re­cently translated into English – is provoking the inter­national community by arguing that Jews have never been genetically or otherwise ‘a people’...Sand’s larger point, that Israel needs to become more like other Western democracies and less obsessed with their ethnic purity, is wel­come.”  NEWSWEEK

“The translated version of his polemic has sparked a new wave of coverage in Britain and has provoked spirited debates ... The book has been extravagantly denounced and praised.” Patricia Cohen, New York Times

“Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People is both welcome and, in the case of Israel, much needed exercise in the dismantling of nationalist historical myth and a plea for an Israel that belongs equally to all its inhabitants. Perhaps books combining passion and erudition don’t change political situations, but if they did, this one would count as a landmark.” Eric Hobshawm, Observer, Book of the Year

“A formidable polemic against claims that Israel has a moral right to define itself as an explicitly and exclusively Jewish society, in which non-Jews, such as Palestino-Israelis, are culturally and politically marginalized.” Max Hastings, Sunday Times

“Zionism’s quest for a historical homeland is brilliantly excavated by Shlomo Sand in his recent The Invention of the Jewish People.” Alex Cockburn, The Nation

“I am one of many Jews who would agree with Sand that a decisive factor in the future of Israel will be its capacity to be far more attentive to the narratives and rights of its Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens.” Jonathan Wittenberg, Guardian

“[Shlomo Sand’s] Quiet earthquake of a book is shaking historical faith in the link between Judaism and Israel.” Rafael Behr, Observer

“It is certainly one of the bravest [books of the year].” Terry Eagleton, Times Library Sup­plement

And many others similar to the above.

Our brief comment

The only true “Palestinian”, if there is such a person, is the Jew. It was their nation “Israel” before it was Palestine and it was much larger than the little plot of ground now determined by the Jews to be Israel, but determined by the Arabs, their jealous brothers, to be added to the vast land they already occupy, even though there seems to be very little oil in the ground of Israel. The Arabs never have done much with their huge portion of the Middle East except to let their rulers get rich from the oil.

What could have attracted these “non-genet­ically connected people, who call themselves Jews” to get together and claim the right to be these dastard and evil people? Maybe it has been a higher level of intelligence that has made them claim a common heritage; even in the face of the Nazis and other haters who were almost successful in efforts to rid the world of them.

However, we know they are mostly the off­spring of Abraham whose progeny was born in Canaan before Abraham’s children took possession of it. They went into Egypt for water because of severe drought in their homeland and were enslaved by the Egyptians.  After some years they escaped, led by Moses with crucial help from their God. They formed the nation of Israel on the land designated as theirs by The Lord God and it was several times larger than what they have claimed today.

This isn’t to say that some Arab’s, Orientals, Caucasians, Black Africans and others have not become Jews. It has happened in every society. After all, we are from the same original pair.

Letter of General Interest

September 4, 2011

Dear Marjorie and All There,

Please forgive me for the lack of correspondence in the last four months. Many have written and sent cards that I have not been able to answer. So I try now to give an update on what 2011 has brought.

Of course we have all been shocked at the world events from the terrible earthquake in Japan to the terrorist attack in Norway! Also our area of the world is in a huge change and everyday uncertainty as governments go in this part of the world.

My year of 2011 started with the news that my landlord wants to sell the house that I had been living in for 13 years in Tiberias. So this was a big change and new season in my life as I have given up doing Bed and Breakfast in my home. This was a huge pleasure meeting guests from many countries, but also a huge work alone without Lev. So, after several months of searching, I found a cozy 2 bedroom, basement apartment in a community outside Tiberius. I was able to move in May.

However, I still have the same address: P.O. Box 1877, Tiberias, as well as the same phone number 04-6712038.

My second big crisis was a health one. I started having trouble with my stomach in February. First it was thought to be a virus, then bacterial infection, but after a CT scan and a colonoscopy it was found I had a tumor in my colon that was cancerous. So after having a removal of a cataract on my right eye on June 14th, I went into the hospital for colon surgery on June 15th. There were complications so I had a 2nd surgery within a week. Also collapsed from pneumonia, so I was in the hospital one month! A long heavy time!!! Now I am trying to recover at home and regain the strength. I had and do have a lot of good help from my friends here, and miracles from the Lord in many ways.

So it has been a heavy Spring/Summer for me. I thank the Lord daily for His care. The oncologist said I had a large tumor in the colon and they had to take a big section out. BUT the 22 lymph nodes in the area were clean, so I don’t need a heavy chemotherapy treatment now. So I praise the Lord for this!! I still need to have the colostomy closed, but I take one day at a time.

I hope all are well there and you have had a blessed summer and hope the hurricanes stay away from your area.

Israel feels like they are awaiting a possible “Hurricane” with the PA going to the UN later this month. We don’t know if that will mean violent demonstrations here! The terrorist attacks in the South two weeks ago, and the many Ground rockets into Beersheva gave us a taste of what can come. So we rest in the Lord’s care daily!

Thanks for your efforts to continue producing and sending out the Epiphany Newsletter. The Lord bless you! Take Care! 

                                                                                                Shalom and love, Hava Bausch        (ISRAEL)

September 1, 2011

Epiphany Bible Students Ass’n

I’m enclosing my contribution for use in furthering your work.

I very much enjoy reading the material you send each month.

Please keep sending.

World conditions worsening — Fast and — More to come just as prophesied.

Sincerely,

Signed -----------------------------

ANNOUNCEMENT: The date of our memorial is April 5, 2012. The moon becomes new this year nearest the Spring Equinox (using Jerusalem as the proper location) at 5:58 p.m., March 22, making Nisan 1 at 6 p.m., March 22 and counting from that time, we arrive at six p.m., April 5. We have offered much more detail on this calculation in some of our previous Memorial papers. 

No. 652 BABE OF BETHLEHEM

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:11,12)

WHY WAS THIS BABE EXPECTED?

Why were all men in expectation of him at the time of his birth? What was to be peculiar about him to lead Israel to expect his birth? The answer to this question is that God had made a certain promise centuries before and the promise had not been ful­filled. This promise contained the thought that a holy child would be born, and that in some way, not explained in the promise, this child would bring the blessing the world needed. Therefore every mother amongst the Israelites was very solicitous that she might be the mother of a son rather than a daughter, that perchance she might be the mother of this promised child. Thus the matter went on for years until, finally, the child was born.

The promise back of the expectation was that which God made to Abraham, saying, “In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” From that time forward Abraham began to look for the promised Seed – the promised child. He looked first of all to his own children, and was finally informed that it would not be one of his children direct, but through their children, at some remote date, this child should be born – the Seed of Abraham. From that time onward, all the Israelites were waiting for the birth of the child that should bring the blessing.

But why was a Messiah necessary? Why wait at all for the birth of the child? The answer to this question is that sin had come into the world; that God had placed our first parents – holy, pure and free from sin – in the glorious conditions of the Garden of Eden with every favorable prospect and everlasting life at their command if they con­tinued in harmony with God. But by reason of their disobedience they came under Divine displeasure and sentence of death. This sentence of death has brought in its wake aches, pains, sorrows, tears, sighing, crying, dying and death – all of these experiences as the result of sin.

Our Heavenly Father said to our first parents – and this was the first intimation that He gave them of a deliverance – that “The seed of the woman shall bruise the ser­pent’s head.” The serpent in this expression means Satan ‑ all the powers of evil, everything adverse to humanity, everything adverse to the blessings which God had given them, and which they had lost by disobedience. But the promise was vague and they under­stood little about the “seed of the woman” and “bruising the serpent’s head.” It merely meant in an allegorical way a great victory over sin and Satan, without explaining how it should come.

So mankind continued to die; they continued to have aches and pains and sorrows; they continued going down to the tomb. They realized that what they needed was some Savior to come and deliver them from the power of sin, to deliver them from the death penalty of sin – a Savior who would be, in other words, a Life‑giver. They were dying and needed new life. This is the meaning of the word Savior in the language used by our Lord and the apostles. They were hoping and expecting that God would send a Life‑giver.

It was on this account that they were so greatly concerned regarding the promise made to Abraham – “In thee and in thy Seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed” – they shall be granted a release from sin and death. In no other way could mankind be blessed. It would be impossible to bless mankind except by releasing them from sin and death. Hence, the Scriptures tell us of God’s sympathy; that God looked down from His holy habitation, and beheld our sorrow, and heard, figuratively, “the groaning of the prisoners” – humanity – all groaning and travailing under this penalty of death – some with few aches and pains, and some with more aches and pains; some with few sorrows and some with greater sorrows, but all groaning and travailing in pain.

But God’s sympathy was manifested; and we read that, “He looked down and beheld that there was no eye to pity and no arm to save” and with “his own arm he brought salvation.” This is what was promised to Abraham, that one should come from his posterity who would be the Savior of the world; and because this promise was made to Abraham and to his seed, they were marked out as separate from all other nations and peoples. To the Jewish nation alone belonged this great honor – that through them should come this salvation. Hence, from that time onward the Jews spoke of themselves as God’s chosen people, the people whom God had promised to bless, and through whom He would bring a blessing to all others. Therefore, all other people were called heathen (or nations, which the word means). Israel was thus separated because God’s covenant was with them, and not with the others. But God’s covenant with Israel was for the blessing of all the others: “In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Now we have the “why” of this wonderful babe’s being born.

HOW WAS THIS BABE PECULIAR ‑ HOLY, HARMLESS, UNDEFILED?

How could he be a Savior? In what way could he be different from any other babe? Why not use some other babe as the one through whom salvation should come? The answer of the Bible is that salvation could not come to mankind unless there should be a satisfaction of Justice on account of Original Sin. That must be the first consideration. The penalty, “Dying, thou shalt die,” pronounced against the first man, must be met before the world could be blessed.

Why not let any man die? Because all were under the sentence of the original condemnation, and none could be a ransom‑price or a substitute. Hence was the necessity for a specially born babe, different from any other babe. In what way was this One differently born? The Bible explains to us very distinctly that he was not begotten of an earthly father. Although Joseph was espoused to Mary, yet this child was not the child of Joseph. The Bible explains that this child was specially begotten by Divine Power, in the mother, though she was still a “virgin” when she brought forth the child.

This is the Scriptural proposition; and while it may not seem clear to some, yet the Word of God standeth sure. If the Redeemer was not perfect then He could not be the Savior of the world. The promised redemption implied that Jesus would be perfect; it implied that He would be as the first man was before he sinned. “For since by man came death, by man shall come also the resurrection of the dead”; “As all in Adam die, even so shall all in Christ be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:21,22)

So this One must be, as the Apostle declares, “holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners.” (Heb. 7:26) He must be entirely distinct and separate from humanity so far as sinful features were concerned. If we had time it would be interesting to go into the scientific features – of how a perfect child could be born from an imperfect mother. If we can have a perfect life germ, we can have a perfect child from an imperfect mother. If a breeder of stock wishes to raise the standard of his stock, he selects a fine bull, a male goat, or a male ram, and thus he improves the entire herd. And so, if we had perfect fathers, we would soon have a perfect race. But there is no father who can produce a perfect child. Hence it was neces­sary in this case (and the Scriptures declare it was accomplished) that God should beget this Son by power from on high. Therefore, that which was born of the “virgin” was separate and distinct from all humanity. His life came not from an earthly father, but from His Heavenly Father.

WHO WAS HE THUS BORN?

It is written that before He became flesh Jesus had an existence; as He declared, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Again, in one of His prayers He said, “Father glorify thou me with the glory that I had with thee before the world was.” The Revelator tells us that “He was the beginning of the creation of God,” and Paul says that “by him all things were made.” And so our Lord Jesus was not only the beginning, but also the active agent of the Father in all the creative work in the angelic world and in the creation of humanity, and in all things that were created.

The whole matter is summed up by the Apostle John. We will give a more literal translation of “In the beginning was the Word.” [This expression, Word, in the Greek is Logos. The thought behind the word Logos is that in olden times a king, instead of speaking his commands directly to his people, sat behind a lattice work, and his Logos, or messenger, or word, or representative, stood before the lattice work, and gave the message of the king to the people in a loud tone of voice. The king himself was not seen.] So this is the picture the Scriptures give us of how Jesus was the express representative of the Heavenly Father, the one through whom the Heavenly Father made Himself known ‑ the Word, or the Logos. So we read in the first chapter of John, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with the God, and the Logos was a god. The same was in the beginning with the God. By him were all things made, and without him was not anything made.” (John 1:1, Dia.)

In other words, Jesus was the direct creator of all things. He was the Divine Power, Agent, Word, Messenger, the Logos of Jehovah. He did all the great work of creation; but He Himself was the first of God’s direct creation, the First‑born of all creatures, that in all things He might have the pre‑eminence – the first place.

When the time came that our Heavenly Father made known His great purpose that He would bless the world, He gave opportunity to this First‑begotten One ‑ this One begotten of the Father – to be the servant in this great work He intended to accomplish for mankind. Consequently, the Scriptures state that “for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame.” (Heb.12:2) And now He has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. He has this great reward because of His obedience even unto death, the death of the cross.

The Apostle speaks of Him as having been rich, but for our sakes becoming poor, that through His poverty we might be made rich. He tells us how He left the glory which He had with the Father and humbled Himself to the human nature. Why? Be­cause, as already stated, it was necessary that some one should become man’s Redeemer, an angel could not redeem man, neither could an animal redeem man.

The Divine law is “an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; a man’s life for a man’s life.” (Matt. 5:38) This was to teach us a great lesson: that perfect human life having been condemned to death, it would require a perfect human life to redeem it. It was therefore necessary that Jesus should become the “Man Christ Jesus,” in order “that he, by the grace of God, might taste death for every man.” (Heb.2:9)

WHAT RESULTS HAVE FOLLOWED?

The results that have followed have been that He Himself proved His own faithfulness. “Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8) – the most ignominious form of death. It pleased the Father thus to prove Him, not only by death, but by the most ignominious form of death – dying as a culprit, being crucified between two thieves. What a terrible ignominy to die thus!

It would be ignominy enough for us in our
imperfection, but for Him, perfect, “holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners,” it must have been a cause for deep and poignant sorrow. Having completed the laying down of His life, at the end of the three and half years, He cried, “It is finished!” What? Not His work, for much of that lay before Him! He merely finished this part of the work, finished laying down His life a ransom‑price.

What next? After His death came His resurrection; and we read that “God raised him from the dead on the third day.” According to the Scrip­tures He was raised up from death a glorious being – “sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spirit body”; “Wherefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, those in heaven, and those on earth, and those under the earth; that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:9-11)

But we see not yet all knees bowed to Him. Why not? The Scriptures tell us that before He begins His great work for the world of mankind, He first does a work for the elect, the Church, those who desire to walk in His footsteps, to gather out of the world a bride, to be co‑workers with Him in all the great work of the Father. This is the only work yet in process of accomplishment, and this has been going on now for over eighteen centuries. We see how He gathered out the saintly ones from amongst the Jews, “Israelites, indeed, in whom there was no guile.” Not finding enough to make the desired number, He proceeded to gather them from all nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples.

The Apostle tells us that when this bride class is united with Him they shall be parts of the seed of Abraham; as we read, “And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs of the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) This statement relates to the promise made to Abraham that through him and his Seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Thus we see the work that Christ is accomplishing now.

The invitation to become the bride of Christ is a very special invitation and those who would be His must walk in the “narrow way.” If they will sit in His throne, they must suffer with Him. If they suffer with Him they shall also share His glory. So “the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that shall follow,” were not only to be accomplished in our Lord Jesus, personally, but He was an example for all the Church who are justified through faith in His blood.

They have a share with Him in His sufferings, and will share in His glory; they have also a share in the First Resurrection; as the Revelator declares, “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, on such the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” (Rev. 20:6)

Saint Paul says, “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord,” “that I might know him and the power of his resurrection" (the special resurrection) to the Divine nature. (Phlp. 3:8,10)

How? By being made conformable to His death; for, “If we suffer with him we shall also reign with him.” (2 Tim. 2:12)

WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?

All families of the earth are to be blessed, as originally promised in Eden: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” Also, as St. Paul states in the 16th chapter of Romans, “The very God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.” So, then, the next thing in order in the outworking of God's plan will be to bruise Satan and destroy sin.

When and how will this be done? Just as soon as this Age shall end; because this Age is merely for the development of the bride class; then will come the promised free grace to all the families of the earth. Messiah’s Kingdom shall come. He has promised that when He shall reign, all His faithful shall reign with Him: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne.” (Rev. 3:21) All the Church will be associated with Him in His great Messianic Kingdom; and “he shall reign from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth”; and “Unto him every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, to the glory of God the Father”; “The knowledge of the glory of God shall fill the whole earth.” The whole earth will be­come as the Garden of Eden. Paradise Lost will be Paradise Restored. The Divine image lost in Adam will be restored to man.

Human nature will be brought to perfection. But the glorious reward to the Church will be the Divine nature, to sit at His right hand, and to bless the world of mankind. Man will become not only perfect, having all that Adam had, but will have additional know­ledge and character; and there is every evidence that this shall be an eternal blessing.

SHALL NONE BE LOST?

Yes, the Scriptures tell us that some will be lost, and that the loss they shall sustain will be loss of life, and therefore all the pleasures of life. “They shall be as though they had not been” (Obad. 1:16); “They shall be des­troyed from amongst the people.” St. Peter says, “They shall be destroyed as brute beasts.” (Acts 3:23; 2 Peter 2:12)

When? When the eyes of their understanding shall have been opened to see the Lord and to understand His glorious character, and they shall have had opportunity to appre­ciate and enjoy His blessing. When such intentionally reject the grace of God, they shall die the Second Death, from which there is no resurrection, no hope of recovery. But, thank God, there shall be no knowledge of suffering for them; they shall be de­stroyed as brute beasts.

In proportion as we believe in this babe of Bethlehem shall we rejoice today. In proportion as we believe He was manifested on our behalf; in proportion as we believe He died for our sins; in propor­tion as we recognize Him as the glorified Savior; in proportion as we have surrendered our hearts to Him and seek to do the things well pleasing to Him shall we have the peace of God.

Our hope on behalf of mankind in general is that in God’s due time His blessing shall reach all ‑ not the same as that for the Church, but as St. Peter tells us in Acts 3:19‑21, “Times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord, and he shall send Jesus Christ, who before was preached unto you, whom the heavens must retain until the times of restitution of all things spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets."

(Pastor Russell, Reprints 4963‑4965, February 1912)

Nothing is more necessary to the peace and prosperity of the Church of God than that its members should have a clear understanding and appreciation of moral principles, with a full determination to be controlled by them. Even among Christians there are often differences of opinion with reference to princi­ples of action, which greatly in­terfere with spiritual growth and prosperity. Such difficulties most fre­quently arise through failure to distinguish between the relative claims of love and justice. There­fore we consider it profitable to examine these principles and their operation among the children of God.

Justice is sometimes represented by a pair of evenly poised balances, and sometimes by a square and compass, both of which are fitting emblems of its character. Justice knows no compromise and no dev­ia­tion from its fixed rule of action. It is mathemati­cally precise. It gives nothing over for “good weight” or “good measure.” There is no grace in it, no heart, no sympathy, no favor of any kind. It is a calculating, exact measure of truth and righteousness. When justice is done, there are no thanks due to the one who metes it out. Such a one has merely done a duty, the neglect of which would have been culpable, and the doing of which merits no favor or praise. And yet, firm and relentless as this principle is, it is declared to be the very foundation of God’s throne. It is the principle which underlies all His dealings with His creatures. It is His unchangeable business principle; and how firmly He adheres to it is manifest to every one who understands the plan of salvation, the basis of which is the satisfac­tion of justice against our race. Though the arrangement for the satisfaction of jus­tice cost the life of His Only‑begotten and well‑beloved Son, so important was this principle of Divine justice that God freely gave Him up for us all.

JUSTICE, BEFORE GENEROSITY

The principles of love, unlike that of justice, overflows with tenderness, and longs to bless. It is full of grace, and delights in the bestowment of favor. It is manifest, however, that no action can be rewarded as a favor or a manifestation of love which has not underneath it the substantial foundation of justice. Thus, for instance, if one comes to you with a gift, and at the same time disregards a just debt to you, the gift falls far short of appreciation as an expression of love; and you say, “We should be just before we attempt to be generous.”

And this is right; if justice is the foundation principle in all of God's dealings, it should be the same in all of our dealings; and none the less so among brethren in Christ than among those in the world. As brethren in Christ, we have no right to presume upon the favor of one another. All to which we have a right is simple justice, though we may waive those things that are really our rights. But in our own dealings, we should strive always to render justice – justice in the payment of our honest debts to each other, justice in our judgment one of another (which must make due allowance for frailties, etc., because we recognize in ourselves some measure of similar imperfection), and justice in fair and friendly treatment one of another.

As we have just said, there is no obligation to demand justice for ourselves, and we may, if we choose, even suffer injustice uncomplainingly. We must, however, if we are Christ’s, render justice so far as we are enabled to recognize it. In other words, we are not responsible for the action of others in this respect, but are responsible for our own. Therefore we are to endeavor earnestly that all our actions, our words and our thoughts may be squared by the exact rule of justice, before we offer even one single act as an expression of love.

JUSTICE, EQUITY, A CHRISTIAN QUALITY

It would appear that many Christian people spend years of their experience without making any great progress. One difficulty is a failure to recognize the basic principles underlying the Divine laws, which apply to us from the moment we are adopted into the Lord’s family. The first of these basic principles is justice. We need to learn more and more clearly what are our own rights and the rights of our fellow creatures in the Church and out of the Church. We need to learn how to measure the affairs of ourselves and of others with the plummet of justice, and to recognize that we must not under any circumstances or conditions infract the rights, interests or liberties of others, to do so would be wrong, sinful, contrary to the Divine will, and a serious hindrance to our growth in grace.

Secondly, we must learn to esteem love next to justice in importance in the Divine code. By love we mean, not amativeness, nor soft sentimentality, but that principle of kindness, sympathy, consideration and benevolence which we see manifested in our Heavenly Father and in our Lord Jesus.

In proportion as we grow up in the Lord, strong in Him, it must be along the lines of these elements of His character. More and more we must appreciate and sympathize with others in their trials and difficulties and afflictions; more and more we must become gentle, patient, kind towards all, but especially toward the household of faith. All the graces of the spirit are elements of love. God is love; and whoever receives of His spirit receives the spirit of love.

These two basic principles must cover all of our conduct in life. Justice tells us that we must cease to do evil ‑ that we must not speak a word nor do an act that would work injustice to another, nor even by look imply such injustice; that we must be as careful of his or her interest and welfare as of our own. Justice may permit us to give them more than justice could require, but justice demands that we must never give them less than due. No matter if they do not require justice at our hands, no matter if they are willing to take less than justice, no matter if they would say nothing if we should take advantage of them, no matter if they would not appreciate our degree of justice, still our course is the same. We have received of the Lord’s Spirit, and must act from this standpoint and not from the standpoint of others who have not His spirit or who are more or less blinded and disabled from dealing justly.

LOVE AND JUSTICE BOTH CONTROL

If justice must mark our conduct toward others, so love must be used by us in meas­uring the conduct of others toward us. We may not apply to others the strict rules of justice which we acknowledge as our responsibility to them. Love, generosity, demands that we accept from others less than justice, because we realize that they are fallen, imperfect, not only in their flesh, but also in their judgments. Furthermore, we see that the great mass of the world has not received the spirit of the Lord at all, and therefore cannot appre­ciate these basic principles of justice and love as we appreciate them. We must in love look sym­pathetically upon their condition, as we would upon the condition of a sick neighbor, friend, parent or child. We must make allowance for their disordered condition, and think as charitably as possible of their words, conduct, etc.

This does not mean that we are to be blind or oblivious to true conditions, and permit ourselves to be deprived of all that we possess or earn; but it does mean that we should take a kind, sympathetic view of the unrighteousness and injustice of those with whom we have dealings. We should remember that they are fallen, and that they have not received the grace of God as we have received it; and that they are not, therefore, to be measured by the line of strict justice, but rather that their imperfections are to be allowed for reasonably by the elastic cord of love. It is our own conduct that we are to measure by the law of justice, the Golden Rule.

HOW LOVE MAY OVERFLOW THE MEASURE

How clearly the Master sets forth these conditions, urging upon us the Golden Rule as the measure for our conduct toward others, and that in measuring their conduct toward us we shall be as generous as we shall wish our Lord to be in His judgment of ourselves, in harmony with His state­ment, ‘With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged”! A right appreciation of these basic princi­ples, justice and love, by the Lord’s people, and worked out in the daily affairs of life, would lift them above the world. It would save many an altercation, many a law suit, many a quarrel, and would make of the Lord’s people shining examples of kindness, generosity, love, and at the same time examples of justice, right living, sterling honesty, etc.

Love is not, like justice, an exact principle to be measured and weighed. It is three‑fold in character: it is pitiful; it is sympathetic, in the sense of kinship of soul – affectionate; it is reverential. These different forms of love are exercised according to the object upon which love is centered. Pity‑love is the lowest form of love; it takes cognizance of even the vile and degraded, and is active in measures of relief. Sym­pathetic love rises higher, and proffers fellow­ship, comradeship. But the reverential love rises above all these, and delights in the contemplation of the good, the pure and the beautiful. In this latter form we may indeed love God supremely, as the personification of all that is truly worthy of admiration and reverence; and love our fellow men in proportion as they bear His likeness. The Divine law demands love, both to God and to man.

Although we owe to every man, as a duty, love in one of these senses, we may not demand it one of another; but love overflows justice. Love shakes the measure, presses it down, heaps it up. The lack of love is not to be complained of by the Christian, however, but when bestowed it is to be appreciated gratefully and reciprocated gener­ously. Every one who craves love should crave it in its highest sense ‑ in the sense of admiration and reverence. But this form of love is the most costly; and the only way to secure it is to manifest that nobility of character which calls it forth from others who are truly noble, truly like our Lord Jesus.

The love begotten of sympathy and fellowship is also very precious. But any senti­ment that comes merely in response to a demand, is deprived of love’s choicest aroma. Therefore never demand love, but rather by manifestation of it toward others court its reciprocation. The love of pity is not called out by the nobility of the subject, but rather by the nobility of the bestower, whose heart is so full of love that it over­flows in generous impulses toward even the un­wor­thy. All of the objects of pity, however, are not unworthy of love in the higher senses; and some such often draw upon our love in every sense.

A SELFISH, ONE‑SIDED VIEW

To demand love's overflow of blessing – which is beyond the claim of justice ‑ is only an exhibition of covetousness. We may act on this principle of love ourselves, but we may not claim it from others. If we do, we manifest a lack of love and the possession of a considerable measure of selfishness. Some seem to see clearly where brotherly love should be extended to themselves, but are slow to see their own obligations in this respect.

For instance, two brethren were once rooming together, and through a failure to consider the relative claims of both love and justice, one presumed upon the brotherly love of the other to the extent of expecting him to pay the entire rent of the room. When the other urged the claim of justice, the first urged the claim of brotherly‑love, and the former reluctantly yielded, not knowing how to refute the claim, yet feeling that somehow some Christians had less principle than many worldly people. How strange that any of God’’ children should take so narrow, so one‑sided, so selfish a view! Cannot all see that love and justice should work both ways; that it is the duty of each not to oversee others in these respects, but to look well to his own course, to see that he manifests brotherly love; and that if he would teach others, it should be rather by example than by precept?

LET LOVE REIGN SUPREME

Let us beware of a disposition toward covet­ousness. Let us each remember that he is steward over the Lord's goods entrusted to him, and not over those entrusted to his brother; that each is accountable to the Lord, and not to others, for the right use of that which the Master has placed in his hands. There is nothing much more unbecoming and unlovely in the children of God than a disposition to petty criticism of the individual affairs of one another. It is a business too small for the saints, and manifests a sad lack of that brotherly love which should be especially manifest in broad and generous consid­eration, which would rather cover a multitude of sins than to magnify one.

The Christian is to have the loving, generous disposition of heart ‑ a copy of the Heavenly Father’s disposition. In trivial affairs he is to have so much sympathy and love that he will take no notice, just as God for Christ’s sake deals with us and does not impute sin to us, except as it represents knowledge and willfulness. With such a rule operating amongst Christians, a determination not to recognize as an offense anything that is not purposely done, or intended as an offense, would be a great blessing to all, and the proper, God‑like course. The trans­gres­sions to which our Lord refers in Matthew 18:15‑17, are not the trivial affairs of no consequence, are not evil surmisings and imaginings, are not rumors, are not fancied insults, but positive wrongs done us, and on account of which it is our duty, kindly and lovingly and wisely, to give some proper rebuke – some intimation that we recognize the wrong and that it has grieved us and hurt us and needs correction.

The disposition to forgive should be with us always, and should be manifested by us at all times. Our loving generosity, our kindness and our desire to think no evil or as little evil as possible, should be manifest by all the words and acts of life. This is God‑like. God had a kind, benevolent, generous sen­timent toward us even while we were yet sinners. Nor did He wait for the sinners to ask forgiveness, but promptly manifested His desire for harmony and His readiness to forgive. The whole Gospel message is to this effect: “Be ye reconciled to God.” Our hearts should be so full of this disposition toward forgive­ness that our faces would not have a hard look, nor our words of reproof a bitter sting. We should manifest the loving forgiveness that we should have in our hearts at all times.

May love and justice find their proper, relative places in the hearts of all of God’s people, that so the enemy may have no occasion to glory! The Psalmist said, “O how I love thy law [the law of love whose foundation is justice]! It is my meditation all the day.” (Psalms 119:97) Surely, if God’s law were the con­stant meditation of all, there would be fewer and less glaring mistakes than we often see! Let us watch and be sober, that the adversary and our fallen flesh may not gain an advantage over us as new creatures. Let SELF be more and more eliminated and LOVE reign supreme. (Pastor Russell, Reprints 5883‑5885)

NO. 651 MAKE IT YOUR OWN

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:15)

Whatever you hear on Television or Radio; whatever you read in newspapers or books regardless of from whence and from whom it came, it is not yours. If it is from a presenter, speaker, writer, preacher, evangelist, politician, catechism or whatever, even if it appeals to you, it is not yours. No matter how much it may appeal take it under advisement, do not accept it – yet. Do your own carefully organized, in fact scientific investigation until you are thoroughly convinced it is the truth. Only then, consider it a valid theory that you might accept, though it requires further study. Do not be like sheep following a leader right off the cliff – “Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.” After you discover the truth, make it your own.

Study the scriptures

“All Scripture, divinely inspired, is indeed profitable for Teaching, for Conviction, for Correction, for that Discipline which is in Righteousness; so that the MAN of God may be complete, thoroughly fitted for Every good Work.” (2 Tim 3:16,17 Diaglott)

Read these verses in the KJV and other translations to compare. Check Comments and at least one of the exhaustive or analytical concord­ances. Remember the Scriptures in your language are not the Holy Scriptures but a translation, and it may contain errors which the Lord God has permitted, so only the truly committed FIND THE TRUTH and make it their own.

“Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” (Gen. 5:2) The family head was the male.

Adam created from the substance of the earth

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” (Gen. 2:7)

He did not say that man came forth as had other living creatures and vegetation of the earth. This shows that man was a special and direct crea­tion of the “LORD God.” The Creator did not install within Adam an Immortal Soul in this text or in any other of the Holy Scriptures. Adam “became” a living soul. The word in Hebrew is Nephesh (mean­ing a breathing creature) derived from naphash meaning to breath. When life goes out of a person, the soul dies and the body decays back to the substance from which it was made. The Creator loses nothing. HE still has the dust from which man was created and the power, wisdom, justice and love to recreate him.

“God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”. (Gen. 1:27)

Eve was created from the substance of Adam (his rib Gen 2:22) to be his companion and the two combined were “The Adam.”

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Gen. 1:28) The English word replenish, which means “to re-fill”, is translated from the Hebrew word mawlay, which means “fill.” God made man the ruler of the earth, one of the aspects of man’s image of his Maker.

Notice that Adam and Eve did not conceive children until after they had received the death sentence from the Creator for disobedience to God’s Law. So Adam’s offspring inherited the dying, thou

shalt die sentence imposed upon him and all of us – his progeny. This death sentence was rendered upon Adam for his disobedience to the one law God gave him. “...in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen 2:17) Surely die? No mention of eternal torment here or anywhere else in the Holy Scriptures.

The single law given to Adam was simple and entirely possible for the inexperienced first man to understand and obey and it had a very clear penalty.

more thoughts on beliefs

The atheist exhibits an amazingly enormous credulity in his belief that there is no God; the uni­verse created itself and the subsequent appearance of intelligent life was simply a biological accident. My how they do light up the sky with their so-called “science”!

Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest scientist of the 20th century, named “person of the century” by Time Magazine said, “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” Imagine if this man had devoted his wondrous mind to discovering the truth about God and his plan for mankind?

The United   States is said by some to be the most religious nation in the world, but the most ignorant concerning its beliefs – A slam to religious orthodoxy?

Christopher Hitchens, the famous British auth­or, critic and commen­tator, now a resident of USA, wrote the book God Is Not Great. It was near the top of best sellers’ lists for a number of weeks. We have not read it since assuredly the god he is writing about is the god of “orthodox” religions.

He will not have written about the God of the prophets of the Old Testament nor the God of Jesus and his apostles of the New Testament. These testify to The Heavenly Father’s main characteristics – Power, Wisdom, Justice and Love. We know he didn't write about this God, because he doesn't know anything about him. He has never made a “scientific” study of HIS inspired Books. The god he writes about is not great because he is the god of this present evil world (Gal 1:4) and is designated “...the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” (Eph 2:2)

v24“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is LORD of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.

v25Neither is worshiped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; v26And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; v27That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us

 v28“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are his offspring. v29Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. V30And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: v31Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he had ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. v32And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.” (Acts 17:24-32)

 “All scripture divinely inspired, is indeed profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for that discipline which is in righteousness: so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly fitted for every good work.”  (2 Tim. 3:16-17, Diaglott)

“For I would not, brethren, [Spiritual Israel] that ye should be ignorant of this mystery,[Secret] lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, [temporary blindness] until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Rom 11:25)

“Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God [Ignorance alienates from God] through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:” (Eph 4:18)

WHEN GOD WAS ALONE!

“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” (Psa. 90:2)

 “I am the LORD: [personal name of the Almighty GOD] that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, [The Son never sought and never will seek to be equal to the Father’s Glory, but always to add to it.]  neither my praise to graven images.” (Isa. 42:8)

“But to us there is but one God, the Father, [Not three] of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Cor. 8:6)

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” (Deut. 6:4)

These and other Scriptures tell us of a personal God, the Father or Life-Giver of all, the Great One who inhabiteth Eternity. St. Paul declares that to the heathen “there be gods many, and lords many, but to us there is but one God, the Father,” (1Cor 8:5,6) and one appointed Agent of His in dealing with humanity one Lord Jesus Christ. “And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2:11)

The Scriptures tell us of “the beginning of the creation of God.” Hence there was a time before that beginning of creation when The Almighty God was alone— “He that inhabiteth Eternity.” Not even the great Michael was with Him, the great Messiah, whom God has so highly honored and whom He declares He will still further honor throughout a glorious eternity. He was not with the Father before the beginning of creation; for He Himself was “the Beginning of the creation of God”— “the First-born of every creature.” (Rev. 3:14; Col. 1:15) He was the first expression or manifestation of the Divine attributes (John 1:18).

DIVINE ATTRIBUTES GLORIOUS

This Almighty God, self-centered, self-contain­ed, is ours; the same yesterday, today and forever, HE changes not. Every attribute of the Divine character is the same today as it was millions of years ago but then that same character was unrevealed.

Every step of creation has tended to display the Divine character more and more, and each successive step and development of creation has brought forth new creatures capable of compre­hending the Eternal One. We deem it not unreas­onable to assume that The Lord God’s creative power will continue to be exercised throughout all the unlimited time to come.

Astronomical photography now reveals nearly 125,000,000 suns, around which circle systems such as the one which circles around our sun, and of which our earth is a part. We deem it not un­reas­onable to assume, from the Scriptures, that the great work of ordering all those hundreds of millions of planets stretches forward into eternity. That the work of Divine grace, begun on the planet “Earth,” will be continued throughout the Universe, not only in conjunction with the planetary systems we can discern, but probably with millions of planetary systems too far removed from us to be discerned.

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL

Doubtless Divine methods in connection with other worlds and other inhabitants will display the manifold wisdom of God. For instance, we under­stand the Bible to indicate that while the permission of evil in the earth was wise, it will not necessarily be wise or expedient for any reason to permit a similar reign of Sin and Death in any other of the millions of worlds. That is with their ordering or development and their peopling with glorious crea­tures that will show forth the praises of the great Creator without their passing through experiences with sin and death such as have been permitted in connection with the humanity of earth.

Can we not see a broad reason for the permission of evil on the earth. for the permission of the reign of Sin and Death, which for six thousand years has apparently disgraced the Creator, degraded humanity, astonished the angels and constituted our race a groaning creation? Only when we discern that Messiah’s Kingdom will surely bring order out of this confusion, do we begin to get the proper focus upon our subject and realize something of the greatness of our God.

From the standpoint of the completion of the Divine purposes in connection with humanity, and from that standpoint alone, can we see illustrated Divine Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power. The primary lesson was Justice, which sin brings suffering and eventually death. The second lesson was that of Divine compassion, sympathy-Love. This lesson was mani­fested in the sending of the Redeemer and His subsequent reward of exaltation, and His gathering of an “elect” Church to be His associates in glory and in the blessing of the redeemed race. The Reign of Glory, the Reign of Messiah, soon to be introduced, will lift up poor humanity from sin and sorrow, from degra­dation and death, and give to each and all the fullest opportunity to return to human perfection and to Divine favor and everlasting life. In that work of human resti­tution, which will include the awakening of mankind from the sleep of death, the one great lesson will be the greatness of the Divine Power. It will be exercised through Messiah, the God-like One, the Prince of Life, “the Prince of Glory,” the Redeemer, the Regenerator of Adam and the whole race of mankind, His posterity, who have shared his death sentence.

And finally, from the standpoint of the completion of The Lord God’s great purposes, His dealings with man, will stand revealed the Fore­knowledge and Wisdom of God, who knew the end from the beginning. He foresaw how even the permission of a reign of Sin and Death could be made eventually to work out to His own glory and to the blessing and instruction of His creatures on both the human and the angelic planes. Then will be revealed to all, the glorious character of their Creator, and the necessity for His requirement of absolute righteousness and perfection.

Surely, the result eventually will be as the Scriptures declare, that all shall learn righteousness, and hate iniquity; and that every creature in Heaven and in earth and under the earth shall acclaim both Jehovah, who sitteth upon the Throne of the Universe, and the Lamb, the Redeemer, forever (Rev. 5:13,14).

If we allow ourselves to speculate respecting the future regarding the Divine purposes in relation to the millions of worlds around us, our speculations would run thus: those instructed and used of Yahweh, The Almighty God, in the initial devel­opment of the Divine Plan in the earth, will thereby be fitted and prepared to be the Divine Agents to other worlds. The Great Redeemer and His “elect” associates, after dealing with humanity for their uplift out of sin and death conditions, will surely be qualified for further service in other worlds, to “show forth the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into His marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

And what shall we say of humanity when perfected at the end of Messiah’s glorious Reign? Will not all be well prepared, not only to approve righteousness in themselves, but to tell it in other worlds, to other races. The story of the fall and of the reign of Sin and Death resulting; and of the redemption accomplished by God’s love; of the great restitution and of the lessons learned?

THE UNCHANGEABLE ONE

The qualities of the Divine character which we have just considered—Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power—belonged to our Creator in the great eternity preceding creation. But there was no one at that time to appreciate God. It requires a full view of the perfected Plan of the Ages to make known to any and to all the glory of the Lord. As we have just seen, thus far the secret of the Lord and the glories of His character are known only to His “sons,” begotten of His Holy Spirit. But the time nears when “the whole earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the great deep.” He and His glorious government will then be “the desire of all nations”; “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” (Hag. 2:7; Isa. 40:5)

St. Paul assures us that every feature of the Divine Plan which we see in process of execution was known to The Lord God from before the foundation of the world. He declares that these things God purposed in Himself before the found­ation of the world. The creative processes, which have been operating for thousands of years, were all surely elaborated in the mind of Jehovah before the creative work began. In that purpose angels had a part —of how many grades we may not surely know, but they are variously designated in the Holy Scriptures as “angels, principalities and pow­ers.” Later came the creation of man, “a little lower than the angels” and crowned with earthly honor, dignity and power, in the image and likeness of his glorious Creator.

These creations varied not in degrees of perfection and imperfection. Each was perfect on its own plane. Each intelligent creature was a free, moral agent, and hence, whether on the angelic or human plane, was created in the likeness of God, unblemished, but with different capacities and abil­ities. Almighty God, infinite in Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power, purposed the orderly exercise of His infinite powers, as a great Father, desirous of giving life and happiness to His creatures.

These intelligent ones were designated “Sons of God” so long as they maintained their attitude of perfect loyalty to Him, their Creator and Father. Not only was it the Divine purpose thus to give pleasure to millions of creatures to be created, but it was also the Divine will to manifest to His creatures His own greatness and the perfection of His own goodness that they might enjoy Him and He enjoy them ever­lastingly.

We are not to understand that Almighty God was lonely in that great Eternity before creation began. On the contrary, human loneliness is largely because of human deficiency. What we lack we seek for in others. But the great Yahweh lacked nothing; He was complete in Himself; He needed not companionship to complete or to supplement His happiness. It was His pleasure to create, that His creatures might have joy by reflecting as a whole His Divine qualities implanted in them.

The wreck of the human race produced by sin He well foreknew. Nor did this wrecking of human hopes defeat, nor was it in danger of defeating, the Divine purpose. It merely demonstrates to angels and to men the graces of the Divine character and shows unto all more fully the qualities of God proper to be appreciated and copied by all His intelligent creatures.

THE SEVEN-SEALED SCROLL

Revelation Chapter 5

In which God illustrates to us His own great personality. When He would show to His creatures how He is working all things according to the counsel of His own will, which He pictured sym­bolically in the Book of Revelation. In that vision the Throne of the Eternal One is graphically por­trayed as the seat of Divine power and authority for the Universe, with angels as ministering spirits. Then is described a scroll, in the right hand of The Lord God, in Divine power and keeping. That scroll, written inside and outside, was “sealed with seven seals,” representing the complete secrecy of the Divine purposes related in that scroll. From before the foundation of the world it had been in the hand (in the power) of The Great Eternal. He had given hints respecting it and had caused it to be symbolized in the Law and to some extent to be described by the Prophets. But still it was a Hidden Mystery; for the Prophets understood not the things which they wrote; nor could any understand them until the Father’s “due time.” (1 Peter 1:10-12)

Not only was the Divine Program thus sealed and safely secreted, but it was the Divine determ­ination that it should be given only to the One who would demonstrate His worthiness to be Yahweh’s honored Agent for the carrying out of those pur­poses, predestinated before the world was. The honor of being the Agent, the Representative of The Great Yahweh, to carry out the Divine purposes, should be disclosed in advance only to the One who would demonstrate His worthiness to be the great Messiah, the great Deliverer, Prophet, Priest, Judge, King of Israel.

High as the Redeemer stood in the Divine counsels and fellowship before he came into the world to be man’s Redeemer, it was not then granted even to Him to know all the mysteries of the Divine Program. But by virtue of His high station, His perfection, His obedience, the privilege was given to Him first to become man’s Redeemer, at the cost of personal humiliation and death; and then, if faithful in this redemptive work, it should be His to be glor­ified, exalted to the Divine nature, and to execute the Divine Program to its completion. First, He must manifest His devotion and loyalty to the Father, before he could be trusted even with the knowledge of the Divine Program for blessing the whole world of mankind.

 “WORTHY IS THE LAMB”

All this is declared in the account. (Rev. 5) The proclamation was made, who is worthy to receive the scroll and to break its seals and to execute the wonderful purposes of God? None was found worthy! Finally, one demonstrated His worth­iness. He left the courts of glory; He humbled Himself, He “was made flesh.” More than this, being found in fashion as a man, He consecrated His all to the doing of the Father’s will, even unto death, the death of the cross. Wherefore, says the Apostle, “God also highly exalted Him” and gave Him a standing, a rank, a title above all others. (Phil. 2:7-9) He commissioned Him to execute all the Divine purposes; and to Him He handed over the Scroll with the privilege of opening its seals and compre­hending its message.

hope in this life

“If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are of all men most miserable.” (1Cor. 15:19)

In other words, if our hope in Christ is merely dependent upon the circumstances of this present life, we rob ourselves of what little enjoyment and advantage that might be gained here.

“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” (1 Cor 15:20) The Emphatic Diaglott has it “But now Christ has been raised.”

It wasn’t God that had died here. The love of God was manifested toward us, because God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him (1 John 4:9).

Christ was dead, unconscious and not breathing for part of three days. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.” (Eccl. 9:10)

“In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was a God.” (John 1:1, Diaglott)

In other words, Christ was the first in the beginning of God’s creation. He was the first-fruit of all creation.

the holy scriptures

“And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which  is in Christ Jesus.” (2 Tim 3:15)

The early settlers to North America sought religious freedom and some of the current immi­grants seek those same rights. The Constitution and Bill of Rights invoke the name “Almighty God” as does the preamble of nearly every state constitution. All the nation’s legal tender contains the words “In God We Trust.”

The United States is considered to be the most religious of all nations of the world and this might well be true. The Harper San Francisco book catalog (May-August, 2007, Page 15) states that, the annual expenditure for Bibles in America is currently $425 million and the average American household con­tains four Bibles.

Until recent times, the Bible traditionally was used for teaching the basic standards of private and public moral conduct. It has been the “foundation” of our laws and judicial system, as well as the moral standard for federal and state governments.

Why the King james bible endures

By Charles McGrath – April 23, 2011 NY Times

The King James Bible, which was first pub­lished 400 years ago, may be the single best thing ever accomplished by a committee. The KJV translation of the Bible was the work of 54 scholars divided into six groups of nine member sub-committees each called “companies” meeting separately on equal portions of the 66 little books.

In a preface to the new Bible, Miles Smith, one of the translators and a man so impatient that he once walked out of a boring sermon and went to the pub, wrote that anything new inevitably “endured many a storm of gainsaying, or opposition.” So there must have been disputes, shouting, table pounding, high-ruffed, black-gowned clergymen folding their arms and stomping out of the room, but there is no record of that. And the finished text shows none of the PowerPoint insipidness we associate with committee-speak or with later group translations like the 1961 New English Bible, which T.S. Eliot said did not even rise to “dignified mediocrity.” Far from bland, the King James Bible is one of the great masterpieces of English prose.

The issue of how, or even whether, to translate sacred texts was a fraught one in those days, often with political as well as religious overtones, and it still is. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, recently decided to retranslate the missal used at Mass to make it more formal and less conversa­tional. Critics have complained that the new text is awkward and archaic, while its defenders (some of whom probably still prefer the Mass in Latin) insist that’s just the point — that language a little out of the ordinary is more devotional and inspiring. No one would ever say that the King James Bible is an easy read. And yet its very oddness is part of its power.

From the start, the King James Bible was intended to be not a literary creation but rather a political and theological compromise between the established church and the growing Puritan move­ment. What the king cared about was clarity, simplicity, doctrinal orthodoxy. The translators worked hard on that, going back to the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, and yet they also spent a lot of time tweaking the English text in the interest of euphony and musicality. Time and again the language seems to slip almost unconsciously into iambic pentameter. This was the age of Shakespeare, commentators are always reminding us, and right from the beginning the translators embraced the principles of repetition and the dramatic pause: “In the beginning God created the Heaven, and the Earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

The influence of the King James Bible is so great that the list of idioms from it that have slipped into everyday speech is practically endless, taking such deep root that we use them all the time without any awareness of their biblical origin: sour grapes; fatted calf; salt of the earth; drop in a bucket; skin of one’s teeth; apple of one’s eye; girded loins; feet of clay; whited sepulchers; filthy lucre; pearls before swine; fly in the ointment; fight the good fight; eat, drink and be merry.

But what we also love about this Bible is its strangeness; its weird punctuation, odd pronouns (as in “Our Father, which art in heaven”), all those verbs that end in “eth”: “In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.” As Robert Alter has demonstrated in his startling and revealing translations of the Psalms and the Pentateuch, the Hebrew Bible is even stranger, and in ways that the King James translators may not have entirely comprehended, and yet their text performs the great trick of being at once recognize-ably English and also a little bit foreign. You can hear its distinctive cadences in the speeches of Lincoln, the poetry of Whitman, the novels of Cormac McCarthy.

Even in its time, the King James Bible was deliberately archaic in grammar and phraseology: an expression like “yea, verily,” for example, had gone out of fashion some 50 years before. The translators didn’t want their Bible to sound contemporary, because they knew that contemporaneity quickly goes out of fashion. In his very useful guide, “God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible,” Adam Nicolson points out that when the Victorians came to revise the King James Bible in 1885, they embraced this principle wholeheartedly, and like those people who whack and scratch old furniture to make it look even more ancient, they threw in a lot of extra Jacobeanisms, like “howbeit,” “perad­ven­ture,” “holden” and “behooved.”

This is the opposite, of course, of the procedure followed by most new translations, starting with Good News for Modern Man, a paperback Bible published by the American Bible Society in 1966, whose goal was to reflect not the language of the Bible but its ideas, rendering them into current terms, so that Ezekiel 23:20, for example (“For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses”) becomes “She was filled with lust for oversexed men who had all the lustfulness of donkeys or stallions.”

There are countless new Bibles available now, many of them specialized: a Bible for couples, for gays and lesbians, for recovering addicts, for surfers, for skaters and skateboarders, not to mention a superheroes Bible for children. They are all “accessible,” but most are a little tone-deaf, lacking in grandeur and majesty, replacing “through a glass, darkly,” for instance, with something along the lines of “like a dim image in a mirror.” But what this modernizing ignores is that the most powerful religious language is often a little elevated and incantatory, even ambiguous or just plain hard to understand. The new Catholic missal, for instance, does not seem to fear the forbidding phrase, replacing the statement that Jesus is “one in being with the Father” with the more complicated idea that he is “consubstantial with the Father.”

Not everyone prefers a God who talks like a pal or a guidance counselor. Even some of us who are nonbelievers want a God who speaketh like — well, God. The great achievement of the King James translators is to have arrived at a language that is both ordinary and heightened, that rings in the ear and lingers in the mind. And that all 54 of them were able to agree on every phrase, every comma, without sounding as gassy and evasive as the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, is little short of amazing, in itself proof of something like divine inspiration.

Not the holy scriptures

Most English speaking Biblical scholars seem to prefer the King James version of the Holy Scriptures. However, it should be understood that all translations of the original languages from the various writers of the “little books” are, in fact, translations and are subject to the translator’s lifetime of learned beliefs and superstitions, no matter how conscientious this person might have been. So the King James version or any other translation is NOT “The Holy Scriptures.”

One of the chief tricks of the Prince of the Power of the Air in this Present Evil World is to create controversy. It gives the adversary better control. The Heavenly Father has permitted this to make it necessary to “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15)

Also it should be noted that the Ancient Aramaic/Hebrew (Old Testament) and Ancient Greek (New Testament) like all languages changed down through the years. Aramaic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afroasiatic language family. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic subfamily, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. Aramaic script was widely adopted for other languages and is ancestral to both the Arabic and modern Hebrew alphabets.

During its 3,000-year written history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), was the original language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra; was the language spoken by Jesus, and is the main language of the Talmud.

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic (c. 9th–6th centuries BC), Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine (“common”) or Biblical Greek, (New Testament) and its late period mutates imperceptibly into Medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earlier form it closely resembles Classical Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects.

Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of classical Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in Western educational institutions since the Renaissance. Latinized forms of Ancient Greek roots are used in many of the scientific names of species and in scientific terminology.

So, the problem of the Biblical translators of The Holy Scriptures becomes extremely apparent. To the unlearned in languages of the average want-to-be Bible Student, it is nearly impossible. But the Lord allowed this so that we must study to gain his approval.

Some people endeavor to read the entire Bible every year and there are a number of plans published to help the reader do this. Though reading the Script­ures is very ennobling; it is not studying to shew thyself approved.

Perhaps we Americans should donate one or two of our Bibles to needy families and get one of several Exhaustive Concordances to help us study.

NO. 650 THE MISSION OF THAT SERVANT

"Who then [in the end of the Gospel Age, at the time of Christ’s return] is a faithful and wise servant [special messenger to the Church], whom his lord hath made ruler [general servant or steward] over his household [the household of faith], to give them meat in due season [truth as it becomes due]?” (Matt. 24:45)

The context of this pledge shows that this special servant would be placed over the household of faith in order to minister to it, showing that the servant is an individual leader and not the household itself, nor an organization or group. As That Servant, Pastor Russell founded, led and directed a world­wide Little Flock movement dispensing an abun­dance of deep truths then coming to light concerning Christ’s Second Advent and imminent Kingdom. He gave “meat in due season.” Although the theme “restitution of all things” (Acts 3:21) ran throughout his ministry, his mission included much more. Since 1799 the world had entered the “time of the end” (Dan. 12:4) and the work of cleansing the sanctuary (Church Class) had been proceeding. The Miller Movement had brought attention to the timeliness of Christ’s return and related features of God’s Plan. That Servant gave the chronology, which we accept, as follows:

1874 – The awakening of the Lord’s people on the subject of the Second Advent culminated in 1874 when the announcement began to go forth:

“Behold The Bridegroom.” This message was given to the Virgins: “And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” —Matt. 25:6 (see Diaglott). It does not say He cometh but Behold (see) he is present. He is here, go meet him. And the further announcement, “Thy God reigneth.” (Isa. 52:7) the message was to the Virgins. The revelation to this will come later.

A detailed understanding of the different lines of Bible Chronology, (genealogies, Jubilee cycles, parallel dispensations, etc.) provided undeniable proof to the watching saints that the Lord’s presence had commenced. Truth on the distinction between human and spiritual natures revealed that Christ’s second presence is an invisible one and that the only manner in which He would be revealed or “seen” by the world was through the eye of understanding. That Servant showed that the first and second comings were related and part of one plan: the first to redeem the world, the second to restore and bless the world through the promised seed (Gal. 3:8,29). He made clear that the period between the first and second Advents (Gospel Age) was for calling, testing, and selection of a “people for his name” (Acts 15:14) to reign with Christ in the next age and share in the work of judging and blessing the world (1 Cor. 6:2). He came as the chief “reaper” at that time, also.

“THE HARVEST IS THE END OF THE AGE”

It was long believed that the Biblical Harvest applied to all times, but the light of present truth made clear that one Harvest occurred in the end of the Jewish Age gathering from that nation the “Israelites indeed” into the Gospel Church to be part of the prospective Bride. These being too few to make up the predestined number (Rev. 14:1), the High Calling was extended to the Gentiles “to take out of them a people for his name.” (Acts 15:14)

Even though Christ was present in the Parousia and chief reaper, separating the wheat and tares with the sickle of truth (Rev. 14:14), That Servant was the mouthpiece and instrument for overseeing the gathering work. The Lord gave the message to That Servant: “Gather my Saints together unto me.” (Psa. 50:5) The Berean comments on that verse is as follows: “Gather my saints – from every quarter of Babylon into oneness with the Lord and each other, and out of fellowship with mere professors, tares…Not at death, nor continuously during the age, but after, and in consequence of, the Lord’s return.”

That Servant in turn gave the message to the Saints as “Come out of her my people.” (Rev. 18:4) The Berean Comments: “Come out of her – This advice was not always applicable; not until mystic Babylon’s fall under divine condemnation which pro­phecy shows was in 1878 AD.” The Saints were never gathered into one unit at all in the Gospel Age until the Harvest when they were gathered into the sphere of the Truth. As the consecrated came forth from the nominal church from 1874 to 1914, the Lord’s command of Psa. 50:5 was fulfilled. The gathering was done under That Servant to an extent never done since the days of the Apostles.

1878 – At this date Jesus took the office of King and began to exercise His power by resurrecting the sleeping Saints. (Matt. 28:18; Rev. 11:15‑17; Isa. 52:7) “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth...” (Rev. 14:13). The Berean comments on this: “Marking a particular time – 1878 – before which it would not be a blessing to die, but after which it would be a blessing to die.” Since 1878 those Saints who were still alive need not sleep even a moment, but in the instant of dying are changed to spiritual beings.

This date – 1878 – also was the beginning of the return of Divine favor to fleshly Israel. Their 1845 years double, [mishneh] began in AD 33 and ended 1878 AD ‑ 33 + 1845 = l878. (Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 2, page 218) “Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare [appointed time of waiting] is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for her sins.” (Isa. 40:2) This is the new message to Israel – that the return of Divine favor has come. This “speaking comfortably” was to be done from 1878 onward, before they believe in Christ. All evidence of the return of Divine favor to fleshly Israel is evidence that Divine favor to spiritual Israel is gradually drawing to a close.

1881 – This is the date of the complete casting off of Babylon. The Gospel Age condition of wheat and tares combined is designated the Church nominal, church in name only. This mixed and confused condition is scripturally styled Babylon. That the wheat and tares were allowed to grow together until the Harvest indicates that God’s favor had been upon the nominal church throughout the Gospel Age (“Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand” – Jer. 51: 7). This was for the spiritual growth and testing of the Wheat class. As the Harvest truth reached the true Brethren throughout all denominations, it became apparent to them that the doctrines of Christendom were scripturally unsound, moving them to leave their various sects and join the assembly of the Saints outside sectarian boundaries. The Truth, therefore, made plain that “Babylon the Great is fallen” [no longer under Divine favor – Rev. 3:16], and that the only proper response for the true believers was to “come out of her my people.” (Rev. l8: 2,4)

Therefore, this date – 1881 – also marked the close of the special favor to Gentiles, the close of the High Calling, or invitation to the blessings peculiar to this age – to become joint-heirs with Christ and partakers of the Divine nature. (See Vol. 2, pp. 234, 235, also p. 213) At this time the full number was complete, including those in Heaven and those still in the flesh. However, opportunity was still open for some whom would take the place of those who lost their crowns. But at no time after 1881 was the full number incomplete, because each crown‑loser was replaced immediately.

In Volume 3, p 219 there is this: “As a matter of fact, then, the only ones, therefore, who could announce or explain this calling, are the very ones who are also shown from God’s Word that the time limit of this call was reached in October, 1881. Others, while quoting the Apostle’s words concerning a ‘high calling of God in Christ,’ really explain the lower call which belongs to the Millennial Age. Hence the general Gospel call is ended. None can extend it – some because they do not understand it and cannot give it, others because they know it to be at an end.”

1914 – That Servant predicted according to Bible Chronology, that this date would be the end of Gentile Times and a world war would be the sign of that. But everything was so calm and serene all over the world that he began to question the chronology. He went over it four or five times with other Brethren, but could find nothing wrong with it. Suddenly the war broke out due to the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo. All countries were involved, though some were not active in the battles of war.

In Rev. 7:1-3 we are told that the four angels should “Hold the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth... till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.” The four winds in this text are the fallen angels (see also Dan. 7:2); the wind is the great war that started in 1914; and the forehead sealing refers to the administration of the Truth to those who came into the Truth before that war began in each country.

It should be noted here that all the Saints were spirit‑begotten (sealed in the heart) by 1914, but all of them had not been sealed in their foreheads (intellectually) with present truth. “Till we have sealed...” – those on this side of the veil had an important work, to gather together the elect and to seal the elect and to seal them in the forehead. Each sealed one became a sealer of others as soon as he himself was sealed.

The chief mission of the Church has been her own development. “Edifying one another.” (1 Thes. 5:11) “Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.” (Jude 20)

However, it should be carefully noted that this restraint was to be only “that no wind [World War One] might blow on the earth... till we have sealed the bondservants of our God in their foreheads” – giving sufficient knowledge of “Present Truth” to enable them to “Come out of her, My people.” (Rev. 18:4) The war did not break out in any country until the saints there had been “sealed in their foreheads.” Our thought is that the evil angels would long ago have done injury to the symbolic earth, sea and trees, had it not been for the restraint of Divine power. Symbolically, the earth represents organized society; the sea represents disorganized masses, and the trees represent the Household of Faith.

THE SMITING OF JORDAN

But all of them were “sealed in the forehead” in time to take part in the first Smiting of Jordan. This Smiting was sharp, disclosing truths that disproved the doctrine of Divine Right of the clergy, of aristocrats, of labor, each claiming certain privileges and powers by Divine Right. All the literature exposing these evils was used and directed by That Servant such as: Volume 4, Armageddon, tracts like The World on Fire, Distress of Nations, Clergy Ordination Proved Fraudulent, Why Financiers Tremble, PhotoDrama, etc. Public 1ectures and private conversations were used in this smiting, also. The Bible teaches that all of the saints, the entire 144,000, under Jesus their head, would be given the honor of executing (spiritual) vengeance upon the nations, and (spiritual) punishment upon the people, of binding the king and princes, and executing upon them the judgment written. (Psa. 149: 5‑9) This was done from the fall of 1914 to that of 1916. Certainly the work that the Lord’s servants did during those two years was the Glory, i.e. the special honor accorded the faithful at the extreme end of the Age. This passage by the expression, “this honor have all His saints,” shows that this honor would be shared in, even by the last member of the Little Flock to be called.

UNITY OF FAITH

If we define the “unity of faith” to be a clear and harmonious understanding of the “ten strings of the harp of God” (Psa. 33:2), then we must conclude Brother Russell and all who came into and clearly understood Harvest Present Truth indeed came to “unity of faith.” That this is the position God wishes His people now to accept is shown in Isa. 52:8, “Thy watchmen... shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring again Zion.” Note the Berean Comments on this: “In the harvest of the Gospel Age, clearly, harmoniously.” It was Brother Russell’s Stewardship Doctrine centering about Restitution that brought “unity of faith” for the first time in history to God’s people as a collective group. It is true that St. Peter preached Restitution (Acts 3:19-21); and it is true that St. Paul was “caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Cor. 12:4); and it is also true that the General Church of that time had not come to th­e “unity of faith” – had not come to a clear understanding of Restitution. Note the Berean Comments on verse 4: “unspeakable words – the message of present truth”; “it is not lawful – because not yet due.” Thus Brother Russell is in agreement that, though St. Paul himself may have arrived at “unity of faith,” he made no attempt to convey that knowledge to the General Church then. In support of this, note 2 Tim. 2:18, where some apparently thought they were already “reigning.” Certainly, in those two instances there could have been no clear concept of Restitution – no “unity of faith.”

Therefore, a Prophet (a Star Member) did accomplish the first of the two purposes for which the servants of the Church were appointed – “till we all attain to the unity of faith.” We believe he also accomplished the second of these purposes – “the measure of the full stature of the anointed one.” (Eph. 4:13, Dia.) When the last one was reaped in September 1914; when they had all come to anti­typical Horeb, there also for the first time was reached “the full stature of the anointed one” in that the Body was then full and irrevocably complete unto that unity which “every joint supplieth, to the effectual working in the measure of every part.” (Eph. 4:16)

The Little Flock developing Truths were all presented by October 1914; all the Saints had come into Present Truth by Passover 1916, which then brought them all into “unity of faith,” although they were not then, or at any time on earth thereafter, endowed with the same degree of knowledge.

Can it be said that the “watchmen” have seen “eye to eye” since 1916? NO! Nor can it be said that this oneness is something attained by the Saint class beyond the veil, because there would be no need for them to be “watchmen” then. If any are inclined to believe that “unity of faith” means understanding the entire Bible, then we must admit that no one does, so far as we know.

This “unity of faith” may be summarized tersely as a general good understanding by all in the Parousia movement of the Great Plan of the Ages involving the Two Salvations, – for the Elect and Non‑elect – described in Rev. 15:3 as the “song of Moses and the Lamb.” All who accepted Harvest Truth were reasonably clear on this much of the Truth.

STONE CUT OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN

Dan. 2:34,35,45

The stone cut out of the mountain without hands, which smites and scatters the Gentile powers, represents the true Church, the Kingdom of God. During the Gospel Age this stone kingdom was being formed, “cut out,” carved and shaped for its future position and greatness – not by human hands, but by the power or spirit of the truth, the invisible power of Jehovah. When complete, when entirely cut out, it was to smite and destroy the kingdoms of this world. Not the people, but the governments, are symbolized by the image, and these are to be destroyed that the people may be delivered. Our Lord Jesus came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them (John 3:17).

The stone, during its preparation, while being cut out, might be called an embryo mountain, in view of its future destiny; so, too, the Church could be, and sometimes is, called the Kingdom of God.

And at successive dates the authority of that “Stone” was broadened in scope: After 1878 the next date was l881 at which time ­Babylon was cast off; then still more of it in 1914, when “the stone cut out of the mountain without hands [the completed Christ Company began its smiting work; “to execute the Judgment written.” – Psa. 149:9]” Inasmuch as “this honor have all the saints,” it should be clear enough that all of them were fixedly in the Body, although quite a few of them were still on earth.

Now referring back to the metallic image of Dan. 2, we read in vs. 45: “Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold.” The utter annihilation of the empire of Satan in the great symbolic wind, the great symbolic earthquake and the great symbolic fire of the present Time of Trouble, which began in 1914, is thus represented as taking place. (1 Kings 19:11,12) God’s Millennial Kingdom [the stone that smote the image] will soon be established in place of Satan’s empire, and it will eventually fill the whole earth (v.35).

From Reprint 5631, February 15, 1915: “Wherever we look, we witness the disintegration of the present order, whether we view the conditions from a socia1 or religious or a financial standpoint. The lease of power to the kingdoms of this world has expired. It was foretold by the Prophet Daniel that ‘in the days of these kings,’ before their utter overthrow, the God of Heaven would set up a Kingdom which should smite and break in pieces all the kingdoms of men, the beastly kingdoms of Daniel’s dream. When these kingdoms would be given to ‘the people of the saints of the Most High,’ they were to ‘smite them in pieces as a potter’s vessel.’ This intimates that in some sense of the word the Lord will take possession of these before they have been completely overthrown; that some of the kingdoms represented in the Gentile image will be remaining at that time.

“What time then, is signified by the expression ‘in the days of these kings,’ when the Kingdom of God was to be set up in power? To our understanding the first step in the setting up of this Kingdom was the raising of the sleeping saints of the Gospel Age, which we believe was in the spring of 1878. Then began the glorification of the Church class. When these all shall have taken their places as members of the Church in glory, the Kingdom will be fully set up.

“This does not signify, that there may not be a part of the Kingdom work begun while some of the members of Christ are still in the flesh. Indeed some Scriptures seem to imply that there will be Kingdom work done this side the veil, while a work of still greater magnitude and authority is progressing on the other side of the veil. We read, ‘Let the saints be joyful in glory; let them sing aloud upon their beds.’ (Psa. l49:5‑9) This seems to imply, as we have mentioned before, that there is a special work to be done while these Saints still have beds, while they are in a condition of repose – not ‘tossed to and fro, and carried about by every wind of doctrine.’ (Eph.4:14) but fully at rest in God’s great plan. The Scripture goes on to say that they have a two­-edged sword in their hands – this is the Word of God. They use it as the sword of the Spirit. This would not be true of them on the other side of the veil. They would have no use for a sword there. The Scriptures also declare that the high sounding praises of God are upon their lips. This, too, seems to be applicable to those this side the veil.

“The final phrase, ‘to execute the Judgment written,’ would seem to imply that there would be something for the saints on this side of the veil to do in connection with the execution of the Judgments upon the nations... We see nothing here to conflict with the thought that the Lord’s Kingdom may be properly understood to have begun operations and that the present smiting of the nations is under Kingdom control [written l915]. The fact that some of the members of the Kingdom class are still in the flesh does not militate at all against this thought. We see the kingdoms of this world now being dashed to pieces, and we are expecting to see the process continued until they are completely ground to powder. They shall become as the chaff of the summer threshing floor, and the wind shall carry them away. Then shall they be found no more at all. (Dan. 2:35)”

SUMMARY

Brother Russell repeatedly said, in both the Towers and the Volumes, that the Kingdom was set up September 21, 1914. This meant that the full number of the Saints had been won and between 1914 and l9l6 the last ones came into the sphere of the truth – “sealed in the forehead.” (Rev. 7:1‑3) He also referred to the dates 1874, l878, and 1881 many times in his writings. He did not draw these out of his mind or imagine them, but understood them from the Bible chronology, time prophecies, parallels, jubilees and types. It is remarkable how al1 five of these lines of Biblical teaching reach the same conclusions and the same dates. The Bible is the standard by which we accept or reject any teaching. That Servant’s teaching on chronology meets that standard, therefore we accept it.

That Servant did not hesitate to give us the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). He taught four elect classes, including an unbegotten consecrated class between the ages, after the High Calling is closed and before Restitution begins. Perhaps in a future paper we will give more details on these four classes citing Brother Russell’s references to the unbegotten class in the end of the age. But it is sufficient to say That Servant finished his mission to “gather together the Saints.” (Psa. 50:5) All were reaped into the Harvest movement before.

That Servant enacted the toga scene in the railroad Pullman in Texas on October 16, 1916, with one of his final statements being, “I have done as thou has commanded me.” (Ezek.9:11). This was in substance one of the last statements of Jesus. “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” (John 17:4)

a brief biography of Charles Taze Russell

“And, behold, the man clothed with linen, which had the inkhorn by his side, reported the matter, saying, I have done as thou hast commanded me.” — Ezek 9:11

Pastor Russell died in 1916 at 64 years of age on the 31st day of this month. He was on his way from speaking engagements in California to Bethel in New   York City.

He was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. on February 16, 1852, the son of Joseph L. and Eliza Birney Russell, both of Scotch-Irish lineages. Reared under the influence of Christian parents, at age 11 he became interested in theology, joined the Congrega­tional church and became active in local mission work.

The doctrine of eternal torment of all mankind, except the few elect, became so abhorrent to him that at the age of seventeen he was a skeptic. He said, “A God that would use his power to create human beings whom He foreknew and predestined should be eternally tormented, could be neither wise, just nor loving; His standards would be lower than that of many men.”

However, he continued to believe in God and felt sure there was a misunderstanding of the Scriptures. Young Russell began a systematic study of the Bible and among many others found texts like: “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:” —Isa 28:10, and others like:

 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. —Isa 1:18,

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness dividing the word of truth.”  —2 Tim 2:15-16  

Russell sought out other persons who were seeking like himself and soon a regular Study was formed. He and his co-seekers discovered there was no such thing as “immortal souls” in the Bible. Instead:  “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.” —Ezek 18:20, and:  “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”  —Eccl 9:10

A wise and faithful servant

 “Who then is a faithful and wise servant whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?” —Matt. 24:45

Pastor Russell never claimed to have formed a new religion but taught the truths that Jesus and the Apostles had proclaimed and it has been said that he was the greatest teacher of the Good News since the Apostle Paul.

He was known the world over as author, publisher, lecturer, minister of the Gospel and was Pastor to 1200 Congregation. His writings were published in at least 35 languages.

The following publications, issued between the years 1881 and 1914, had phenomenal circu­lation, as indicated below and it has been monu­mental numbers since that time and they are still being published:

Food For Thinking Christians-------------------------- 1,450,000

Tabernacle Shadows------------------------------------ 1,000,000

Divine Plan of the Ages --------------------------------- 5,532,500

The Time is at Hand ------------------------------------- 1,878,500

Thy Kingdom Come --------------------------------------1,792,500

Battle of Armageddon------------------------------------   714,000

The Atonement--------------------------------------------    663,500

The New Creation----------------------------------------    646,500

What Say the Scriptures About Hell-------------------3,000,000

He also wrote and published an accompanying book, Scenario and produced the Photo-Drama of Creation, which had a spectacular circulation.  Production began in 1912, and it premiered in January 1914 in New York City. It was the first major screenplay to incorporate synchronized sound, moving film, and color slides.

In the summer of that year it was presented in Germany, other countries of Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Over 9 million people saw the full Photo-Drama of Creation or an abbreviated version named The Eureka Drama.

In 1879 at age 27, Pastor Russell edited and published in July the first edition of a monthly paper “Zion’s Watch Tower, Herald of Christ’s Presence.” The subscription price was 50 cents per year. It was a success and the name was changed to “The Watch Tower,” with the subtitle as above and himself as Editor and Publisher.

He also founded the “Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society” and using all his personal funds, purchased the Bethel property in Brooklyn, NY, which became headquarters and home until his death October 31, 1916. By present day terms those funds are estimated to have been more than 5 million dollars. The only income he received from his writings, publications and the Society was a living allowance of $11 per month. He left no personal estate.

Pastor Russell’s Will and Testament

“Having at various times during past years donated to the Watch Tower Bible And Tract Society all of my personal possessions except a small personal bank account of approximately two hundred dollars, in the Exchange National Bank of Pittsburgh... I have merely love and Christian good wishes to leave to all of the dear members of the Bible House Family — and all other dear co-laborers in the harvest work—yea, for the entire household of faith in every place who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus as their Redeemer.

“However, in view of the fact that in donating the journal, Zion’s Watch Tower, the Old Theology Quarterly and the copyrights of the Millennial Dawn Scripture Studies Books and various other booklets, hymn-books, etc., to the Watch Tower Bible And Tract Society, I did so with the explicit understanding that I should have full control of all the interests of these publications during my life time....”

Although Pastor Charles Taze Russell is listed as founder of The Jehovah’s Witnesses by newspapers, history books and encyclopedias all over the world; it is plainly not true. A conflict ensued among the leaders after the Pastor’s death and the person or people who finally won the battle coined the name Jehovah’s Witnesses for the surviving organization. The name change of The Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society occurred some 12 to 14 years after their true leader, That Servant had died.

This led to a Little Babylon on the order of The Great Babylon that developed after Christ and the Apostles died.       -------------------------------

February 16, 1852

Pastor Russell’s Birthday

Through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; Giving no offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed.—2 Cor 6:8,3

WHILE in the discharge of duty to the best of our ability and when apparently we have the Lord’s blessing and favor upon us and our affairs in a most marked degree, suddenly trouble may arise, adver­sity come, the powers of darkness seem to triumph, and for a moment we may be apparently culprits in the judgment of our fellowmen, and apparently forsaken by divine providence. Such experiences, doubtless, are needful to us; for though we may sing:—

“I would rather walk in the dark with God, Than go alone in the light,”

“Yet this might be but an empty boast unless we were put through the trying experiences which would develop such faith, such trust, as would hold to the Lord’s hand, and trust divine providence in the darkest hour.—Z.’01-314; R 2886:3

“The Christian life is one of contrasted experiences the Christian must keep himself in the love of God and in the hatred of selfishness. No amount of love, honor or praise should sway him from Loyalty to God.”

NO. 649 THE LIVING AND TRUE GOD

 

“God is a Spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”—John 4:24.

The structure of the brain places veneration at the very top, and thus by implication conforms to the statement in the catechism that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” However great the depravity of our race in the dark places of the earth this element of veneration, is an instinc­tive appre­ciation of a God and a feeling of responsibility toward Him. It constitutes a foundation upon which to build and to reconstruct, the depraved elements of character. Without this veneration, mis­sionaries and phil­anthropists might well lose all heart and all hope in respect to the moral and social uplift of the masses.

Therefore, whoever is intelligently a friend to his race must do everything in his power to maintain this center of mental balance of mind and to utilize it as an essential feature in the Divine arrangement for human well-being. Whoever in any manner or degree under­mines this element of the mind is surely doing a destructive work, instead of a constructive one, whether he realizes it or not.

But, alas that we must say it, some of the most intelligent of our most intellectual day are rapidly drifting away from the fundamental truth that there is a living and true God! These intellectuals are accept­ing the thought of an impersonal God. From our stand­point this is tantamount to saying, “There is no living and true God.” This is the position taken, not only by Theosophists and Christian Scientists, but also by many scientific and professional thinkers. Rarely is an attempt made to define the impersonal God. Rather the term God is used merely as a concession to popular sentiment and the “ignorance of the unlearned.”

Those who hold this view often use the word nature as a synonym for God. Their thought really seems to be that there is no intelligent Creator in the Universe; that our sun, stars and planets are governed by what they term “natural laws,” and that humanity prospers and progresses merely as it learns by experience the operation of these laws, and seeks co-operation and avoids conflict with them.

Christian Science, dealing less with the scholastic and more with the ordinary reason, at­tempts to explain that the word God simply signifies Good. Then with something of a play upon words, which confounds the reasoning faculties of the untrained mind, tells us that whatever is useful is good, and therefore is God. Proceeding with the explanation, it declares that every tree and rock have good or usefulness in them, and hence to that extent have God in them. Elaborating further, it says that God is in the air, because of its vitalizing effect. He is in the flower because of its goodness and useful­ness for beauty and fragrance. He is in the teakettle because of its usefulness. He is in the table, the floor, the ceiling, everything. Whoever entertains such views proportion­ately destroys his faith in a personal God, “the Living and True God,” and in the Bible as His revelation.

How could an impersonal God have a purpose, a will, a plan, a program? How could it give a revelation of that purpose or program in the Bible or otherwise? “He that cometh unto God must believe that He is, and that He rewards them that diligently seek Him.” He shall be found of them. “He that seeketh findeth.” But our Christian Science friends meet our objection with the assertion that Buddhists and Theophists hold the same view, and that they represent a large proportion of the human family.

Furthermore, they claim that the same thought of an impersonal God is taught in all the principal creeds of Christendom, when they declare faith in an omnipresent God. Alas! It must be admitted that the charge is well founded; that the seed of error on this subject was planted in our minds and confessions of faith long ago. Notice this incon­sistency cannot be charged against the Bible, for although our confes­sions of faith were ostensibly made to be in harmony with the Scriptures, the truth is that not one word of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, declares bodily omnipresence, but every utterance on the subject affirms the personality of the Father, and that our Lord Jesus is the “express image of His person.”—Heb. 1:3.

THE GOD OF THE BIBLE is A PERSON

“God is a spirit,” but He is a being, a person. The Scriptures distinctly tell us that a spirit has not flesh and blood, as we have; but they as distinctly inform us of the Divine personality, and use the members and qualities of the human body to bring the Creator within the range of our apprehension. The Hand of the Lord (His Divine Power) and the Eye of the Lord (His Divine Wisdom) is in every place. The Ear of the Lord is bowed down to hear the groaning of the prisoner. And the Heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind. Heaven is His Throne and the earth is His Footstool. True, these expressions are pictorial, figurative; never­theless, they figure not an impersonal Creator, but a personal One, who feels, who thinks, who exercises His power; who has displeasure with those who are sinful and who loves those who seek to do His will, to walk in righteousness.

Whoever cultivates this thought of a righteous personal God assists in establishing his heart along lines of corresponding character. He seeks a further knowledge of such a Creator; seeks his compassion and his protecting care, and learns to love Him, as he never could appreciate nor love Nature or any dis­ordered conception of a space-pervading non-entity. He whose mind and heart grasps the Scriptural Person­ality of the Heavenly Father catches the significance of our Savior’s words, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; ye are of more value than many sparrows.” (Matt. 10:29-31)

Such may worship in spirit and in truth proportionate to their knowledge of the Infinite One, whom they were directed to address, “Our Father, which art in Heaven.” Thinking of the Almighty, as everywhere present is entirely unsatisfactory to our comprehension, which calls for a God whose Throne is in Heaven. This was the same thought that our Savior again impressed on the women who met Him after His resurrection. To these he said, “I have not yet ascended to My Father and to your Father; to My God and to your God.” Thus, the general trend of Scriptural testimony confirms the thought which we receive by nature, and intensifies and elaborates it, by giving location and quality of heart, mind and power. Regardless of the truth of the two theories, the Bible presenta­tion is surely the more helpful to humanity. To have no personal God must eventually signify to the reasoning mind no Law-Giver, no Judge, no Justice, no Love, no Mercy, no personal relationship as between father and child. Thus would be lost the very basis of Christian faith and doctrine.

INFINITELY SUPERIOR TO OUR HIGHEST IDEALS

The Scriptural presentation of the Almighty is, therefore, the one most consistent to our reason and most helpful to us; namely, that He is a great God, infinite in His Wisdom, His Justice, His Love and His Power. His personality has Heaven for His locality, but His influence and powers pervade the Universe. We may but imperfectly imagine the various channels of His information and the in­numerable agencies through which He can exercise the Almighty Power. But in the light of present day inventions, we have at least sug­gestions of it; for cannot man communicate by wireless instruments over thousands of miles? And not only so, but cannot he use the Hertz-waves for the transmission of power? And can he not with the telescope greatly enlarge his vision, and with the microscope see things otherwise indiscernible?

And if puny man, imperfect and fallen, “born in sin and shapen in iniquity and of few days and full of trouble,” can thus enlarge his natural powers, what limitations might he justly or wisely set upon the intelligence and powers of his Creator? “He that formed the eye, shall He not see? He that formed the ear, shall He not hear?” He that gave to humans the sense of justice, shall we not consider Him the very embodiment of Justice? He who gave us the power of sympathy, compassion and love, shall we not consider Him, the Author of our powers, as infinitely superior to our highest ideals?

For our present purpose, it is not even necessary that we be believers in the Bible in order to formulate before our minds something of the glorious character and attributes of our Maker. True, correct views of the teachings of the Scriptures will surely aid us in our conceptions; but at this time, we are addressing not merely believers in the Scriptures, but also unbelievers. We urge, then, that rational thought on the subject bids us believe that man is the highest type of earthly intelligence, and this teaches us that there must be an intelligent Creator as much su­perior to us as we are to the crawling worm.

Yea, more than this, He who gave us our intelligent being must be separated from us by a still wider gulf than that which separates us from the worm. And it is but a logical process of reasoning that the noblest of our talents and powers are but feeble reflections of the same qualities in our Creator.

Scriptures assist us by showing that the blemishes which we find in others and ourselves are the results of disobedience to the Divine instruction.

IGNOBLE CONCEPTIONS OF A DARK PAST

Filled with so noble a conception of Deity, we would naturally hasten to worship and bow down, but are stopped by the voices from the Dark Ages, which misrepresent the Almighty, implying that He is not the embodiment of Justice, Wisdom, Love and Power. These voices assure us that, although He has commanded us to love our enemies, and to do good to them that hate us, persecute us and say all manner of evil against us falsely, nevertheless the Almighty, who gave these commands, does not love nor forgive His enemies, but has made preparation for their eternal torture.

There is something wholly inconsistent between these voices from the past and the voices of our reason. It is claimed by many that the Bible substantiates the voices of the Dark Ages, the creeds. But we hold that this is a mistake, partly attributable to poor translation and partly to misunderstood parables. The reasoning mind surely rebels against the theory which in the Dark Ages held sway and led to the Inquisition and the stake. And it is glad that it has gotten rid of so gross a misconception of the “Father of Lights.” A well-balanced and reverential intellect will rejoice to find and to recognize a God who not only is not devoid of Justice, Wisdom, Love and Power, and on a plane lower than our own, but is infinite in these attributes and worthy of reverence and worship.

We assent that the Divine Word, the Bible, has been greatly misrepresented by us all in the past, and deserves reconsideration. If our forefathers read the Bible with smoking lamps and blurred vision, and nevertheless got some blessing, what a power of God it would be to us now if, in the light of the electric age, we should find it the Store-house of Divine grace and truth, perfectly coordinated and surpassing our highest ideals!(From Pastor Charles Taze Russell’s Book of Sermons Pages. 621–626)

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QUALITIES AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD

The Scriptures declare a “beginning of the creation of God.” His qualities and attributes were the same then as they are now; for the Scriptures also declare His unchangeableness; “the same yes­ter­day, today and forever.” (Heb. 13:8; Psa. 90:1, 2)

The completeness of the Divine perfection is such that companionship is not neces­sary to the happiness of God. The One who “inhabiteth eternity” is self–contained. The creation of angels and of man was indeed His pleasure, because, benevolently, he desires to do good, to give capacity for pleasure and to afford it opportunity for gratification. Further­more, the highest good of his creatures calls for an exhibition to the full of all the elements of Divine character: Divine Justice, Love, Power and Wisdom.

BELIEF IN SATAN LOGICAL

The declaration of the Bible respecting the Father’s Power is that “the eyes of the Lord [the intelligence of God] are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.” (Prov. 15:3) This statement implies that there are things evil as well as good; things which God approves and things which He disapproves. This citation comes the nearest to a suggestion of God’s omnipresence contained in the Scriptures.

The fact that the Lord has knowledge of all conditions of things is not out of harmony with the other facts that He permits conditions which He disapproves, and which He declares that He will ultimately destroy. “All the wicked will he destroy.” (Psa. 145:20)

If we accept the great Divine premise that the Bible is the Word of God, then we are bound to accept the declaration that there is a being called Satan, that he is the “god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4), and that he now works in the “hearts of the children of disobedience.” (Eph. 2:2) These words imply not only that there are evil principles at work in this world, but that behind them there are evil spirit beings, of whom Satan is the inspirer and through whom he is working.

Certain statements are made respecting Satan which could not be applied properly to a principle of evil, or to a working of error; as, for instance, Jesus declared that Satan was a “murderer” from the beginning – and a “liar.” (John 8:44) Errors and principles are not murderers and liars. It would be a misuse of language to make such application. Only a being with some reasoning power can be a murderer or a liar. Hence, the whole tenor of the Scriptures upholds the assertion that there is such a being as Satan and that he is in opposition to God.

If we were to suppose the everlasting continuance of Satan as a being, as an adver­sary of God, the matter would seem strange to us, because it is irreconcilable with our conception of Divine Power. We have the statement of the Scriptures respecting his reign and ultimate destruction (Heb. 2:14). With this infor­mation, we have a reasonable, logical thought on the subject. When we consider the Scriptural presen­tation further, that originally Satan was not an evil being, but that he made himself evil by the exercise of personal liberty and became the enemy of God, the subject seems to be clear and reasonable. In fact, this is the only rational solution to the problem of his existence.

To suppose that there is no Satan is to suppose that God has permitted his Word to deceive mankind in this respect, or that the devil is a manifestation of God himself, a position which is unthinkable. Nor is it logical to say that there is a devil, an opponent of God, and at the same time to maintain that God is all in all, and omnipresent, everywhere present. But we do not find this latter statement to be Biblical.

The Scriptural proposition is that when Christ shall have conquered sin and Satan, when Satan shall have been destroyed, and when the empire of the universe shall be in absolute harmony, then God will be all in all. (1 Cor. 15:28) To all eternity, there will be no opposition to His will. There is opposition now, however, in many places and at many times. But ultimately, God will have full control.

THE OMNIPOTENCE OF GOD

To say that God is all power is sophistry of language which often misleads the one questioning as well as the one attempting to answer him. The statement is not correct. If God is all power then he is not love, justice, or wisdom. He would thus be limited to the one great attribute of power, or force. Such cannot be the thought entertained by any logical mind. It is, nevertheless, a form of statement that is often used, perhaps unintentionally, but very injuriously to the reasoning faculties.

The Bible nowhere says God is all power. There is a marked difference between being power and exercising power. God is all–powerful. He has the ability to exercise power in any direction to the extent that He wills. If He had chosen, He could have so created Satan that he could not think or do other than in harmony with the Divine will; or He could have exercised His power to crush the adversary and thus have destroyed him long ago. But He has permitted Satan to exist for six thousand years, in the sense that He does not restrain the devil from doing evil. The Scriptures, however, tell us that God will eventually destroy him.

The scope of the exercise of Divine Power is the universe, but it is difficult for our finite minds to comprehend the meaning of this word – universe. Astronomers tell us there are more than 125,000,000 suns – the centers of solar systems like our own, with supposedly more than a billion of planets more or less like our earth. These, we may assume, are in process of development, are in preparation for inhabitants, whom the great Creator will in due time provide. From the Scriptural standpoint, however, the great work of human creation began with our earth. That a boundless thought we have in the mere suggestion that the billion worlds are to be peopled, and that the lessons of righteous­ness and sin, of life and death eternal, now being taught to humanity, will never need to be repeated.

We stand appalled at the immensity of space and at the law and order which every­where reign! We heartily assent to the words of the Prophet David, “Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard.”  (Psa. 19:2,3) The person who can look upon this wonderful dis­play of superhuman power and believe that these worlds created themselves, shows to the majority of us that if he has brains they are sadly disordered, unbalanced. Whoever, after mature thought, concludes that there is no God, that everything came to be what it is by chance or by the operation of some blind force – that person is described in the Scriptures in the following words, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” (Psa. 14:1)

As scientific instruments demonstrate to us the immensity of the universe, we perceive that the Prophet used very moderate language indeed in his description of the majestic power and greatness of the Creator, when he represents Him as weighing the mountains in his balance and holding the seas in the hollow of His hand (Isa. 40:12). From His standpoint, a thousand years are but as a watch in the night (Psa. 90:4). How insignificantly small we all feel in the presence of our God! No wonder some great men are inclined to say that humanity is too insignificant from the Divine standpoint to be worthy of the least consideration – much less to be objects of Divine care and providence!

THE OMNISCIENCE OF the Lord God

o say that God is all knowledge is also an inaccurate statement. If God were all knowledge, how could He be all power? God has all knowledge, possesses all knowledge. But this is a different matter. If we say, “The boy has a bicycle,” we do not mean that he is a bicycle. To be a bicycle and to have a bicycle are not the same. God is omniscient; that is, He knows all things. This very fact proves that He is a personal God. There can be no knowledge without personality. Knowledge implies cognizance of external things. Amongst the things outside the Divine Person are things both good and evil.

When we read that God created man in His own image and likeness (Gen. 1:26, 27) we may know that man is not God. He was merely made in the image of God. Because God is perfect, therefore the human being made in His image would be satisfactory to God. That human being had knowledge. But he neglected the Word of God, and thus he learned some­thing by his neglect. What he learned is mentioned in the Scriptures. “He is become as one of us [the Elohim], to know good and evil.” (Gen. 3:22) This statement proves that God knows good and evil.

If God did not know evil from good, then He could not be our Instructor. By His laws, His principles, God sets before our minds that which is right and that which is wrong. Adam knew how to discriminate between right and wrong, but his disobedience increased his knowledge of both good and evil. In his fallen condition, man cannot always determine between them. Therefore, God gave Israel a law, and man’s knowledge of that law assists him to discriminate between good and evil.

The Prophet Isaiah said, “Thou art a God which hidest thyself.” (Isa. 45:15) How true! As a result, the world by wisdom knows not God. He is near in His wisdom and love, yet He can be seen only by those whose eyes of understanding have been opened. But we are glad that the time is coming when all the blind eyes shall see clearly. “As truly as I live,” says God, “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (Num. 14:21; Hab. 2:14) Then all shall see what God hath wrought, and our temporary blindness will but accentuate the glorious brightness of His Wisdom, Justice, Love and Power.

“GOD IS LOVE”

God is love in the sense that the term love represents the central principle of the Divine char­acter. There is nothing contrary to love in God. The Scriptures do not teach anywhere that there is nothing except love that God is everywhere and love is everywhere. But they teach that God is a loving character.

This does not militate against the other statements that God is just, wise and powerful. But this quality of love best of all represents the Divine Being. All of His justice is in harmony with His love. There is no exercise of justice or power in an evil sense, for all His attributes work together for good to all His creatures.

The Scriptures encourage us to reason from the known to the unknown. They tell us that although God is so great, so wise, so powerful, He is also just and loving. And the more we consider the matter, the more reasonable the Bible description of the Almighty appears. His power we see dem­onstrated. The wisdom of One so great cannot be doubted. When we come to consider, could One so wise and so powerful be unjust or ungenerous? Our hearts answer, No! No one is really great who is devoid of justice and love. As surely as our God is Lord, He must possess these qualities.

When we come in contact with the Bible, and particularly when we learn something of its teach­ings and get rid of the misrepresentations which gathered about it during the Dark Ages – then we begin to recognize it as the message of God to His creatures. It informs us that the great Creator of the universe is not only almighty and all–wise, but loving and kind, with Justice as the foundation of his empire (Psa. 89:13, 14).

 From the Bible we learn, too, that our Creator has been pleased to make us in His own image, in His own moral likeness, to the intent that we may enjoy Him and the fruits of His righteousness to all eternity.

All the power, all the justice, all the wisdom, of God must be used in accordance with His own character, which is love. It will therefore be loving wisdom, loving justice, which He will use toward all creation in the exercise of His loving power for their good. He created man. He permitted Adam to disobey His law, telling us that He knew in advance what man would do and that he permitted man to do wrong (Isa. 6:9, 10).

In permitting sin to enter the world, God had two ends in view. He purposed to give an illustration to the angels respecting the results of obedience and of disobedience. He also intended that the human family should gain a lesson from this experience. Thus, we know that God’s arrangement from the beginning has been for a resurrection of the dead. “As all in Adam die, even so shall all in Christ be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15:21, 22)

If we were to take any fragment of Scripture as a basis for a system of doctrine, we would find ourselves either teaching universalism on the one hand, or claiming that God has no wisdom, or that He purposed the evil, or what not. We would get into all sorts of confusion. But when we see the perfect adjustment of God’s Justice, Wisdom, Love and Power, and realize that He has good purposes res­pect­ing the evil, that He has fully marked out what it shall do and what it shall not do, either in its present influence, or its ultimate influence, this gives us confidence in the character of God.

THE PERMISSION OF EVIL

From only one standpoint can Divine Wisdom and Love be discerned in connection with the history of mankind. It must include the Age about to be ushered in, the period of Messiah’s reign of right­eousness. This will be the time when every member of Adam’s race, sharing the penalty of sin and death because inheriting weaknesses, will be set free from these; the time when the full knowledge of the glory of God shall be granted to every human being, and when a full opportunity will come to each, by obedience, to gain life everlasting.

The lesson thus far taught is the goodness and the severity of God – His goodness in bringing us into being, and His severity in the punishment of father Adam’s willful transgression; also to men and angels, justice, unswerving justice.

The next lesson to be taught to God’s intelligent creatures is that God is love. The found­ation for these lessons is already laid in the ransom-sacrifice of Jesus, through and on account of which he becomes the world’s Redeemer and Restorer. A few can believe this message by faith; but not many have the ear of faith or the eye of faith.

That which is now secret and understood only by the few is shortly to be made manifest to every creature in heaven and in earth.

All will then see and be able to appreciate the great fact that the redemption accom­plished by the sacrifice of Jesus is world-wide and means a full deliverance from the sin-and-death condemnation which passed upon Adam and his entire race, to all who will accept the same as a gift from God. The remainder will be destroyed in the Second Death.

THE SECOND DEATH THE ESSENCE OF WISDOM

As for the Second Death, we see easily that if God created man in His own image, man must of necessity be a free moral agent; otherwise, he would not be in God’s image. If man was created a free moral agent, he must have the power or privilege to will wrong as well as right. If he exercises his power in the direction of evil, God has the power to destroy him. On the other hand, if he lives in harmony with righteousness God has the power to grant him life to all eternity.

The destruction of the wicked in the Second Death is the essence of wisdom. As to the declar­ation that God is too pure to behold evil (Hab. 1:13), the thought of the original seems to be that God’s character is so pure and so righteous and He will not continue to behold evil. He will not permit evil to all eternity, for this condition would not be pleasing to Him.

This very thought implies that there is evil to behold. If not so, how could He behold it? But this is all consistent with God’s plan. Ultimately, all evil shall be destroyed. Ultimately all creatures which are “in heaven and on earth and such as are in the sea shall be heard saying, Blessing and honor sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” (Rev. 5:13)

(Pastor Russell, Reprints 5209–5211, April 1, 1913)

QUESTION OF GENERAL INTEREST

QUESTION: – In John 3:16, 17 it is stated “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son... that the world through Him might be saved.” But in 1 John 2:15 we are told “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Skeptics seize upon these texts as one instance where the Bible contradicts itself. What is the correct thought on these texts?

ANSWER: – The Bible is harmonious with itself. If this were not true – even in a single instance – it could not be regarded as “the Word of Truth.” In both these texts, the word “love” is from the Greek agapao; but the word “world” is from the Greek kosmos. Agapao in both texts carries the thought of duty love; but the word kosmos has two different meanings – just as many of our English words have two or three different meanings. In the first text the kosmos means the inhabitants of the earth; whereas, in the second text it carries the thought of the present social order or arrangement.

In the Bible, we are told to love our neighbors as ourselves, but nowhere are we told to love the present social order. It was the present social order that crucified our Lord; and it was the present social order that has shed “the blood of the prophets and of saints,” and it has been condemned to destruction “by fire,” the fire being a figurative expression used to denote complete annihilation.

In 2 Peter 3:10 we are told “the earth [another expression for the present social order] and the works that are therein [the selfish and depraved acts of men] shall be burned up.” The whole chapter from which we have quoted one small text is written in highly figurative language, but much confusion has resulted by men attempting to accept these figurative statements as literal. If they were literal, it would indeed be a sore and unexplainable contradiction of many other Bible statements ‑ such as “The earth [the planet on which we live] abideth forever.” (Eccl. 1:4) This “burning” began in 1874 in a broad sense; but it actually began in a narrow violent way in 1914 with the outbreak of the World War; and has been steadily progressing since 1914 – so much so that it is now apparent to many persons of sharp discernment. As one outstanding instance, we quote President Woodrow Wilson, who said concerning the Great War, “The world is on fire.” Thus, it becomes apparent that God has arranged for the salvation of the people living in this present social order, although He has condemned the social order itself to destruction.

It is our thought that the Jehovah’s Witnesses would be well advised to ponder this point in their present proclamations, because they are heralding just the reverse of what the Scriptures teach on the subject – also it is just the reverse of the error which they taught for 1925, Millions Now Living Will Never Die. These people change their teachings just as easily and just as readily as the chameleon changes his color. They reverse themselves when their predictions fail; and their “dedicated” adherents close their eyes, open their mouths, and swallow any new delirium that they present to them. For the past few years, they have been very vociferous in their declaration that the large majority of earth’s inhabitants now living WILL DIE – be annihilated in Armageddon when the present kosmos is overthrown. They now have about two million “saved” persons in their organization, and it is only those who accept them that will survive Armageddon. While the Bible does teach that large numbers of the human family will perish in Armageddon, nowhere does it teach that such death means their eternal annihilation, but the Bible does teach clearly and emphatically the eternal annihilation of the present kosmos – the present social order.

The Witnesses’ present teaching is indeed a far cry from what they were teaching some fifty years ago, at which time they placed great stress upon Zech. 13:8,9: “It shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.” When they were using this text, they tried to give it a very literal explanation. Namely, one‑third of earth’s population would survive Armageddon, which would mean by present reckoning that over one billion living through 1925 would live right on through Armageddon, and into the Kingdom, which is how they arrived at their slogan “Millions Now Living Will Never Die” – after the year 1925. Of course, time itself made them look quite ridiculous, so they were forced to come up with some new hocus‑pocus. Now only their “dedicated” devotees will live on into the Kingdom; all others will be annihilated by that seething caldron. Thus, through fear they have persuaded many to join them – just as did the Roman Catholic Church in the Dark Ages gather numbers to avoid the fate of eternal torment. As so many of their devotees have died since 1975 they have been forced to change their teachings. They now teach that their faithful devotees who have died before Armageddon will also be rulers in the Kingdom with those who live through Armageddon on into the Kingdom.

When the lawyer asked Jesus which is the great commandment (Matt. 22:37‑40) He answered him in this manner: The first “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul and mind... and the second, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” From this, it is very clear that the requirements of the Law given through Moses are a duty, and many of the Jews tried to keep it, but could not do so because of their fallen condition. And in this connection it should be noted that when “the restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19‑23) is fully established under the Kingdom reign, perfect duty love will be required of all who gain life under that arrangement ‑ a “new heavens [new spiritual powers] and a new earth [a new social arrangement] wherein dwelleth righteousness.” (2 Peter 3:13) Just the opposite of that condition prevails now, which is the reason for its “burning,” which will proceed to a completion in the future.

As stated foregoing, the word “love” in both texts in the question is from the Greek agapao, which conveys the thought of duty love. There are a number of other texts which contain the word love, but are translated from different Greek words. One of these is the Greek agape, which carries the thought of a sacrificial love, and has been in operation specifically since Pentecost; but it has not been required of the world in general during this Gospel Age, nor will it be required in the next Age when “the restitution of all things” becomes operative. The only ones required to practice sacrificial love during this Age have been those who have accepted Jesus in the full sense determined by His words: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matt. 16:24) But this has been an invitation – and not a command.

Such persons as the foregoing have been a very small minority, and they have not loved the world as it refers to the present social order. This is graphically typified by the acts of the Prophet Elijah in his attempts to reform the Jews ‑ especially so as respects Ahab and Jezebel. In this, he typed the Gospel‑Age Christians who have attempted to reform the present social order, and have failed badly in their efforts. However, the reformers have shown great love for the people, the inhabitants, of this “present evil world,” and have done much good for them in their ministries.

The Jews under the Law were not required to practice agape love; in fact, they knew little or nothing about it. This is clearly stated by Jesus (Matt. 5:43, 44): “Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

The foregoing, however, applies only to those who have come into the Christian family; it is not now required of the “world” (the inhabitants of earth), nor will it ever be required of them in the next world. [Sacrificial love will not be necessary in the Kingdom as “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.” – Isa. 11:9] Much confusion has resulted as Christians all during the Age – since shortly after the demise of the Apostles – attempted to apply these words to every one now, which error came about through the loss of the Truth on the two salvations – the “common salvation” (Jude 3), and the “great salvation” (Heb. 2:3). The “common salvation” is not available during the Gospel Age; and the “great salvation” will not be available in the next Age. Any attempt to mix the two salvations is certain to result in rank confusion.

Love for our enemies was not required under the Law Covenant, such love being sacrificial love ‑ from the Greek agape. Our Lord was the One who brought this agape love into focus – just as He also “brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” (2 Tim. 1:10) Had “the ancients” in Old Testament times been instructed in agape love, David and Samson would not have prayed for the death of their enemies.

(Brother John J. Hoefle, Reprint No. 250, April, 1976)

Thy Blood was shed on Calvary

Forgive me Lord, to Thee I pray,

Forgive the sins I did today

And help me know Thy truth and might

And serve thee always, day and night.

If there is good that I could do,

Some soul, Lord; I can bring to you,

Then let me not be satisfied

Until that soul in Thee abides.

I know I’m weak and filled with sin

But Thou can make me pure within.

Place in my heart thy love divine,

And let me know I’m wholly Thine.

There is no friend like Thee, I know,

In all life’s sorrows I can go,

For thou has promised and I know,

That Thou canst make me white as snow.

Then lead me Lord, lest I should stray

From Thine own perfect righteous way,

And ever, Jesus, let me see,

Thy blood was shed on Calvary,

For me was shed, dear Lord, for me.

By Virginia Snow Dunnagan