October 1, 1988

NO. 393: IN MEMORIAM (Life of Pastor Russell)

No. 393

Pastor Charles Taze Russell was born February 16, 1852, and died October 31, 1916, age 64 years 8 months and 15 days. Thus in years, months and days, we measure the duration of his life; but measuring the duration of a life is not measuring the life.

“We live in deeds not years;

In thoughts, not breaths.”

We can count the number of his years, but many a man has lived longer to whom mankind owes no debt of gratitude. We can count the number of his days, but the value of a day depends upon what is put into it. One day may be worth a thousand other days, and how much he accomplished in those 64 years we can only begin to know when we learn the intensity with which he lived them.

In testimony meetings, thousands all over our land and in every land under the sun, bear witness to their gratitude to God that He has raised up a man who has been the instrument in His hand of snatching them from the very brink of doubt and infidelity, placing their feet on the solid rock of Christ’s “ransom for all.” Some of these men simply could not believe the Bible as interpreted by their religious teachers. They would not say they believed when they did not. They did not wish to be infidels, and they bewailed their lack of faith and hope. You need not tell me that normally constituted men are infidels from choice. You need not tell me that normally constituted men deliberately choose to believe and are glad to believe that they die as brutes, with no hope of a future life. Many of these men are infidels not so much from their own fault as from the fault of their religious teachers who gave them an interpretation of the Bible contrary to reason and impossible for them to believe. Many a man in this attitude has gone to hear Pastor Russell. They have gone to the service infidels and came back rejoicing Christians.

Their religious teachers kept saying: “Don’t go to hear that man Russell; he preaches dangerous doctrine.” But, by the Grace of God, they went and received the spiritual food they had been starving for, the spiritual food their religious teachers did not know how to give. It is no wonder that men would sometimes stand in a crowded aisle and listen to his inspiring words for two hours at a time without moving from their places – no wonder, when those words were bringing hope instead of despair, faith in the place of doubt, peace in the place of agitation and unrest, joy in the place of sadness.

When men with a heart full of gratitude would tell him of the blessings they had received, he would simply say something like this: “Brother, I am glad you received blessings from God’s Word; His truth is very precious.” He simply ignored his part in the matter. In proof that this was his attitude, hear his own words, as found on page ten of his celebrated book, “The Divine Plan of the Ages.”

“Though in this work we shall endeavor, and we trust with success, to set before the interested and unbiased reader the plan of God as it relates to and explains the past, the present and the future of His dealings, in a way more harmonious, beautiful and reasonable than is generally understood, yet that this is the result of extraordinary wisdom or ability on the part of the writer, is positively disclaimed. It is the light from the Sun of Righteousness in this dawning of the Millennial Day that reveals these things as present truth, etc.”

He believed that the time was due for these truths to be made known, and if he had not written them, God would have found some one else to do so.

One of the great objects of his life was to show that the Bible, when correctly translated and rightly understood, is harmonious throughout, and gives the most exalted and uplifting conception of our Creator and our duties to Him that is possible for a human being to attain. To show this complete harmony of the Bible, of all its parts, was no easy task. It meant labor. At that time there was great indifference on the part of the people. Most of them did not seem to care whether the various texts of the Bible were in harmony with one another or not. Each seemed more interested in seeking such texts as prove or seemed to prove his particular creed, and ignored such texts as oppose it. Even ministers, when texts were brought to their attention that contradicted their creed, would make such remarks as: “Oh, don’t trouble yourself about such matters as that. There is enough in the fifth chapter of Matthew to save anybody.”

They were merely seeking such knowledge as they thought would save them and their friends, and seemed utterly indifferent as to what truth honors God most. In 1st Samuel 2:30 the Lord says, “Them that honor me, I will honor.” This promise is not to those who carry on some great work of charity or make an attempt to convert the world, for these things are often done in such a way as to dishonor God. Many are engaged in these things; few make it the chief object of their lives to do these things and to preach those doctrines that bring most honor to God’s Name. Most men seem utterly indifferent on this matter. [They ignore the Scripture: “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]

At a time when such indifference was widely prevalent, Pastor Russell began his work of showing the harmony of the Bible with itself and with the character of its Divine Author. He saw that there is no way to bring permanent blessing to the human race except through faith in God and faith in the Bible. He, therefore, sought to show how worthy the Bible is of all our faith and love. That was the great motive of his life. We know that this was his motive, not because he has told us so, but because the motive rings through every article that he wrote and every sermon that he preached. A motive like that could not live in a narrow life. It could not find room in a little heart.

Therefore it is natural for us, as thoughtful men and women, to inquire, “What were the events of his life and the various circumstances leading up to such a motive? What must his childhood, his boyhood and his early manhood have been?”

Charles T. Russell was the second son of Joseph L. and Ann Eliza Russell, and was born in Pittsburgh, Pa. His father was a well‑to‑do merchant, and the son, when not engaged in study, spent much of his time helping his father in the store. By so doing, he rendered himself liable to the awful charge that certain ministers in various parts of the country have brought against him, that in his early life he was “a seller of shirts.” In this work, however, he developed the qualities of industry, perseverance and earnestness of purpose, qualities that have been such prominent characteristics of his mature years. As the father was a very successful business man, it was only natural for the son also to begin business as a merchant. In this work the young man manifested such business acumen that, in a few years, he was the owner of five clothing stores. In all this work he was so thoroughly honest and his goods so thoroughly reliable that his success was marvelous, so marvelous that some who then knew him believe that if he had continued in the mercantile business he might have rivaled in the accumulation of wealth some of the richest money kings of his day. But his great desire was not to be rich, but to be useful. We need not tell you this, you may know it for yourself when you consider the following facts:

At one time in his life, while he was yet a young man, the valuation of his real and personal property is said to have reached over $200,000. Of this $40,000 were spent in the publication and circulation of his first book, “Food for Thinking Christians.” At various times he contributed large amounts to the Society of which he was president. In fact at the time of his death he had but $200 left of his own private fortune. Not withstanding this fact, there have been men so ignorant of the facts in the case, or had so little regard for truth and veracity as to say: “Russell has just started this religious movement as a money‑making scheme.” The utter foolishness of such a statement could not be fully manifest to persons unacquainted with the manner in which the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society is operated. The very idea of a company of men getting rich preaching the gospel without money and without price, while their friends at various appointments advertised the meetings “Seats free; no collection.” The truth of the matter is that those ministers who have done this talking about “money‑making scheme” concerning Pastor Russell have simply been “measuring his corn in their own half‑bushel.” A man whose own life is actuated by low motives cannot appreciate a higher motive in another man.

In all of Pastor Russell’s work, and in all the work of the Society including missionary work, translation of the books into all the important modern languages, exhibition of the Photo Drama of Creation, etc., not one penny was ever solicited and no collection was ever taken. That, of course, does not mean that money has not been liberally contributed, but every contribution is and must be absolutely voluntary and unsolicited. Two years ago last summer in the northern part of Pennsylvania, a little girl eight years old came to me after the service and said: “Here is five cents to help other little boys and girls to see the Photo Drama.” [However, there was no admission fee to see the Photo Drama.] The five cents were forwarded to the Watch Tower office, along with larger contributions, and in the course of a few days the proper officer of the Society sent her a receipt with just the same care that a $50 contribution in a neighboring town was receipted for.

Pastor Russell was a man of great faith, and he always had perfect confidence that money would be forthcoming for every work that the Lord wanted done. On one occasion, after he had spoken to a large audience, he was shaking hands with the people as they passed out, when a man handed him an envelope. He put it in his pocket and went on shaking hands. After a few minutes some of the brethren were consulting with him concerning some work that all agreed would be good to have done; “but where was the money to come from?” Brother Russell said: “If it is a work the Lord wants done, He will see that the money will be provided.” He opened the envelope. It contained a check for one thousand dollars, and the work went on.

Men have sometimes come to him and said: “Brother Russell, I have been greatly blessed by your explanation of the Scriptures, and I feel that this is a great work. How can I get some money into it?” This may sound strange to men who all their lives have been dunned for money “to pay the preacher,” but “Truth is stranger than fiction.” “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. The cattle on a thousand hills are His,” and He does not need money that must be begged for or raffled for at box socials or church fairs.

His “Divine Plan of the Ages” has a circulation several times that of any other book ever published in the English language except the Bible. He is the author of five other principal books [The Studies in the Scriptures] and of numerous booklets and tracts. He is also the author of the “Photo Drama of Creation,” which has been seen and heard by over nine millions of people. His sermons of recent years have appeared regularly every week in over a thousand newspapers, and are read by millions of people.

While Pastor Russell had his friends and admirers he also had his enemies and persecutors. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” So if any one does not suffer persecution he is not living godly in Christ Jesus. When you read that a certain man did not have an enemy in the world, you have found a man that never steadfastly and earnestly opposed the wrong. On the other hand, every man that has done anything earnestly to free the race from wrong and error and superstition has had his opposers and persecutors. Christ and all His Apostles save one suffered martyrdom for the truth they preached, and from that day to this, every man who stood for unpopular truth and against popular error has had his persecutors. So Pastor Russell has likewise had his persecutors who tried to minimize his work, burned his books and attempted to destroy his good name.

Yes, they sometimes burned his books, and they did so for the very same reason that they used to burn the Bibles; they were afraid of the truth that was in them. But the more they burned the books, the more the truth spread. I had the pleasure a few months ago of speaking in a town where, not long before, some of the religionist had gotten together and agreed to advise the people to burn Pastor Russell’s books. In a few weeks colporteurs came into the town and sold far more books than had been burned. The bigots who had burned the books had merely aroused the curiosity of the people. In the Dark Ages they sometimes sought to terrify the people by burning the Bibles in the streets, and thus compel them to submit to the prescribed forms of religion, the “Orthodox” forms. There is too much of the spirit of liberty and tolerance in free America for such an indignity to be perpetrated today without arousing a sense of justice in the minds of those who hate tyranny.

It is interesting to note how the books have found their way through the hands of those who did not appreciate them into the hands of those who did. It often happens that one man buys and does not appreciate them, then loans them to another man who enjoys them with all his heart. At one of the conventions, a lady tells us that a friend sent her “The Divine Plan of the Ages” and she burned it. Another friend sent her a second book of the same kind, and she burned it. A third friend sent her a third book, and she stopped and thought. It is sometimes a good thing to stop and think. “Finally,” says she, “I read this book and it burned me.” By this, I suppose, she means that it burned away all her prejudice and left her ready for the heart‑glow of joy that comes to those who see what beautiful truth God has in store for those who are ready to enjoy it.

The parents of Charles T. Russell were of the “orthodox” faith, and up to the age of fifteen he believed all and only such doctrines as his sectarian ministers took the trouble to teach him. To fully understand doctrines at that time was very difficult. The clergy as a rule discouraged questions. So he simply believed the doctrines of the church he attended, especially the doctrine of the eternal torment of all except the saints. His favorite teacher was Spurgeon, because, as he said, “he peppered it hot,” his claim being that if one believed a thing he should tell it with all his might. So at the age of fifteen he used to go about the city of Pittsburgh on Saturday evenings with a piece of chalk writing on the fence boards and telling the people not to fail to attend church on Sunday, so that they might escape that terrible hell in which he so firmly believed. At about this time it seems that Providence had decreed that he should attempt to reclaim an infidel friend to Christianity. By skillful questions that neither layman or minister could answer and hold to the accepted creed, the infidel completely routed young Russell, and he became a skeptic. He saw, for instance, that with the doctrine of eternal torment in it he could not believe the Bible; though he still held to a belief in God and the hope of a future life.

As he desired to learn the truth in regard to the hereafter, the next few years were devoted to the investigation of the claims of the leading Oriental religions, all of which he found unworthy of credence. At the age of twenty he was possessed of much knowledge and voluminous data in regard to “religion” as believed and practiced in all parts of the world, but his mind was unsatisfied and unsettled.

At length he decided to search the Scriptures for their own answer on hell‑fire and brimstone. Here was the turning point in his life. Picture to yourself a young man in the early twenties with large business responsibilities upon him, and with little time for research, and yet longing to know the truth in regard to the great hereafter. He believed that the Creator of all things must be a loving God, and in harmony with this he read in the Bible, “God is love.” He also read, “The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.” That too was in harmony with what he believed the character of the Creator must be. But how could he harmonize this with what his creed taught? How could God’s tender mercies be over all His works when some of His works, some of His creatures, were to be roasted eternally in an abyss of fire and terrors? How could there be any “tender mercies” in a course like that? How could our loving Creator be a God like that? Then the question came, Does the Bible really teach the eternal torture of the unsaved?

As he searched the Scriptures for the answer, the answer came. Not one text, merely, but texts by the hundreds showing the foolishness and unreasonableness of the doctrine of eternal torment. We do not know the order in which these texts came to his mind, but we know they came. He read, “The Lord preserveth all them that love him.” (Yes, He preserveth them, to all eternity – “but all the wicked will be destroyed.” It does not say “All the wicked will be roasted eternally.”) Again he reads, “He that converteth the sinner from the error of his ways shall save a soul from death,” not from eternal torment. Again he reads, “The soul that sinneth it shall die,” not live in torment eternally. In fact, he saw that all the comparisons and contrasts in the Bible are never between life in happiness and life in misery, but between life and death, eternal life or eternal death, all the wicked utterly destroyed in what the Scriptures call “the second death,” so completely destroyed that “they shall be as though they had not been,” and even “the remembrance of the wicked shall rot,” utterly pass from the memory of all forever.

Then this young man saw God finally triumphant over all evil, when “at his name every knee shall bow,” when “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven, on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.” So he saw the whole glad universe uniting in one grand hymn of praise to the Creator, no room in that happy universe for men or demons who choose to remain in rebellion against the Creator, but all ready to Join in a hymn of praise.

Then this young man saw a loving God looking down upon a sin‑cursed earth with an eye of pity and love, and in order to make it possible for us to have eternal life, He must give what was dearest to Him in the whole universe. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not die eternally but live eternally.” When, as a young man, Charles T. Russell saw all this and far more, his great heart was thrilled to its very depths. He was ready to do anything for the God he had found to be so wise, so loving, so wonderful. It was then that he gave his heart to the Lord in full consecration, ready to do or say or be whatever the Lord might show him. Little did he care for wealth, or fame, or worldly pleasure. He had found a better God than he before had known, and he must tell it, and he did tell it out with a shout, hallelujah! Praise God’s holy name, that He has found a man strong enough, true enough, brave enough to vindicate His character from the unscriptural and unreasonable doctrine of eternal torment.

To the very ends of the earth he has told the Bible truth that “the wages of sin is death,” and not eternal torment. Yes, and his words have been heard, heard by many who will not admit that they have heard, believed by many who will not admit they believe.

A few years ago a minister who was then preaching in this country was asked by one of his parishioners if he believed the doctrine of eternal torment. He admitted that he did not. “Then why do your preach it?” asked the parishioner. “Oh, there has to be some kind of whip to bring them in,” was the reply. A minister who used to preach in Waynesburg made the same admission to one of his parishioners. “Then why don’t you tell your congregation so?” said the parishioner. “If I did that, I could not hold this pastorate,” was his reply. A minister of Washington, Pa., made the same admission. The young man said to the minister: “Then why don’t you tell your congregation?” He replied: “Young man, my bread isn’t buttered on that side.” That is the very class of men that are circulating false reports about Pastor Russell and other men who are opposing their false doctrines.

“Yes, but in regard to Pastor Russell’s character, the people say – Yes, “the people say” and “the people said” are the cudgels with which Satan has destroyed the reputation of many an innocent man. A few years ago, W. W. Giles, a leading financier of Brown Summit, N.C., made the following offer and published it broadcast wherever the English language is spoken:

“I have deposited $1,000 in the American Exchange National Bank of Greensboro, N.C., and $500 in the First National Bank of Miami, Florida, to be paid to the first person who proves through any court of justice in the United States that Pastor Russell is guilty of immorality such as is the gossip of those ministers who preach ‘for pay.’” No one ever responded. The editor of the Evening Journal of Wilmington, Del., about two years ago, published a statement that his columns were open to the publication of anything that might be published against Pastor Russell’s character, provided the whole truth was stated with all the related circumstances and accompanied by the writer’s name. Why did none of Pastor Russell’s defamers respond to this fair offer?

The people say! The people said! Satan’s weapon now; Satan’s weapon always. The people said that Jesus was a blasphemer. [They also said He was a wine bibber.] His friends on one occasion “went out to lay on Him, for they said, He is beside Himself.” The people said that the Apostles were unfit to live, and put them to death. The people said that the noble John Huss was unfit to live, and when they burned him at the stake, they confined a ball of brass in his mouth, in order, as the historian states, “that the people might not understand his Just defense against their unjust condemnation.” The people said that the brave Savonarola was a heretic and they hanged him and afterwards burned his body in reproach.

The people said that the noble Alexander Campbell was a “heretic.” “He is not orthodox. He is little better than an infidel.” The people said that the brave and true John Wesley was a “falsifier, a fomenter of strife, a breeder of contention.” They talked about the jealousy of his wife against Sarah Ryan, the jealousy against him of the husband of Sophia Christiana Williamson and how his wife finally deserted him. Does what the people say weaken our confidence in the purity of John Wesley’s life? By no means! The only difficulty was that he was so pure‑minded himself that he forgot to guard himself well against impure minds who were watching to find a charge against him. John Wesley, Alexander Campbell, Charles T. Russell, three of the bravest, purest men of modern times and the three most severely persecuted and slandered. Do we believe those slanders? Not if we are charitable, thoughtful and wise. Their names will go down in history together as the three greatest and truest reformers of the last two hundred years. (By E. D. Stewart – Overland Monthly, pages 435‑441)

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THE PAROUSIA AND EPIPHANY MESSENGERS

It has been seventy‑two years since the death of That Servant, but his memory is still fragrant with us – especially so with those who have been blessed with the Truth that he gave to us, and who are faithful to that Truth. “They may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.” (Rev. 14:13) His “works” continue to be a blessing to all who receive the Truth. Thousands of zealous and faithful brethren continue to distribute his Studies in the Scriptures. God bless his memory!

We can say much the same for the Epiphany Messenger, although we elaborate more on That Servant’s ministry because his work and office in the Lord’s Household was much superior to that of the Epiphany Messenger, which the Epiphany Messenger often said. Just as there were no successors to the twelve Apostles, there is no successor to That Servant. Since his death, however, there have been faithful mouthpieces, of whom the Epiphany Messenger was the foremost.

We quote excerpts from our paper, No. 351, October, 1984: “We also pay tribute to the Epiphany Messenger who faithfully upheld and defended the Truth given to us by That Servant... and in keeping with 1 Sam. 2:30: ‘Them that honor Me I will honor.’

“‘Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he will give thee the desires of shine heart. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.’ (Psa. 37:3‑6)”

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QUESTION OF GENERAL INTEREST

QUESTION: – Why do the Societyites believe that Christ died not for the wicked of Adam’s race?

ANSWER: – It is not because of their having any Scriptural proof for it, which they do not have, but because JFR shortly before his death accepted this thought; and Mr. Knorr, his successor, endorses and advocates it in a book that the Society recently published, i.e., they accept it because it comes through “the channel.” They have become amenable to it as an outflow of a number of errors, e.g., that many who are not new creatures, e.g., all the clergy and principles of the flock, and all who die in Armageddon go into the second death, their Jonadabs [now the “great crowd”] generating the restitution class in the Millennium, which in their estimation makes it unnecessary for all of Adam’s non‑elect descendants to return from the tomb.

This “new light” is in most striking opposition to the ransom and grossly contradicts the three fundamental doctrines of salvation: (1) God’s love and provision for everybody for salvation; (2) Jesus’ death for everybody for salvation; and (3) the Spirit’s work for everybody for salvation. Numerous Scriptures prove these three propositions.

Let us briefly look at the main ones on each of these three points: (1) God’s love and provision for everybody for salvation. Thus God so loved the world as to give His Son to save it (John 3:16, 17). He recommends His love for the race by giving Christ to die for the ungodly (Rom. 5:6‑8). His love for the world makes Him determine to save all men from the Adamic sentence, and bring them to an exact knowledge of the Truth (1 Tim. 2:4). He thus from His love is the Saviour of all men from that sentence (1 Tim. 4:10). His love is the grace of God that “hath appeared, bringing salvation for all men” (Titus 2:11; the literal translation is that within quotation marks). His love for all for salvation expressed itself in giving Christ to die for mankind, as we read in Titus 3:4. The kindness and love of God, our Saviour, toward man appeared. Certainly these and numerous other passages teach that God loves all men for salvation and provides for it.

(2) Now some passages that prove that Christ died for all men for salvation: Our Lord’s death for the whole sinner race is most graphically and prophetically described in Is. 53:4‑12. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world (Adam’s sin participated in by the entire race – John 1:29). Jesus said that if He were nailed to the cross for man’s sin He would favorably influence all men to Himself (John 12:32, 33). As Adam’s sin and disobedience brought sin and death to all men, so Christ’s obedience and righteousness will bring cancellation of that sin and death, to enable all to gain the right to life (Rom. 5:18, 19). Jesus’ ransom was laid down for all men, which makes Him the Mediator for all humans (1 Tim. 2:5, 63. He by God’s love, grace, tasted death for every man, and for this purpose has to be made Adam’s corresponding price (Heb. 2: 8, 9). He is the satisfaction to God’s justice not only for the Church’s, but the world’s sins (1 John 2:2).

(3) As a result of God’s love that gave Christ to be a ransom for all men, and of Christ’s death for all men, the Spirit’s work for salvation will in the Millennium extend to all the non‑elect of Adam’s race without exception. Very many, indeed, are the Scriptures teaching this thought, of which we will cite a comparatively small number: The Christ, as the Seed of Abraham, in doing the Millennial Spirit’s work, will bless for salvation purposes all the families, kindreds and nations of the earth (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18).

At Christ’s Millennial asking, God will give Him the nations and the ends of the earth (all mankind) as His inheritance and possession (Ps. 2:8). All the ends of the earth, all the kindreds of the nations and all that go down to the dust (all the Adamically dead) shall turn to, worship and bow down before the Lord (Ps. 22:27,29).

God made all nations, and these will Millennially worship and glorify Him (Ps. 86:9). God will reveal His plan to all; and the whole world will see it (Ps. 98:2, 3).

All nations will become parts of the Kingdom (Isa. 2:2); for the knowledge of God shall be sea‑deep and worldwide; and all nations will seek Christ (Isa. 11:9, 10). The Kingdom will destroy every effect of the curse and make all glad, some only for a while Is. 25:6‑9). All the non‑elect as errant from the Divine Truth will see it clearly (Is. 29:18, 24). All blind eyes and deaf ears of understanding shall see and appreciate the Truth; the morally lame shall make rapid progress up the highway of holiness and the Lord’s ransomed (gave Himself a ransom for all men) will return from the tomb for the joys of the Kingdom, and the sorrows of the curse will be wiped out (Isa. 35:5, 6, 10). All flesh shall see (experience) the salvation from the death sentence that God will work (Is. 40:5).

So deeply impressed will all the non‑elect become that according to the oath‑bound promise for a while all will be consecrated, though some will a little later fall away (Isa. 45:22, 23). As a result of God’s revealing the Christ to all the world, all will clearly perceive God’s work of salvation (Isa. 52:10). Yea, all, from the least to the greatest, will know the Lord (Jer. 31:34); for God has prepared salvation as a joy to all the non‑elect, even raising up fallen Israel again (Luke 2:10, 31‑34), since Jesus as the true Light will teach the Truth to every human that came into the world (John 1:9), in the day when the crucified Jesus will favorably influence all men toward Himself (John 12:31, 32).

In Phil. 2:10, 11, in harmony with Isa. 45:22, 23; Rom. 14:11, we are told that every knee, including the knees of those who were in the death state (“under the earth”), will bow to Jesus, and every tongue, including the tongues of those who were in the death state, will confess Jesus as Lord. God gives some in this life, the rest in the next life, the testimony of His love for all, Christ’s death for all and the Spirit’s work for all (1 Tim. 2:5, 6).

While now the Spirit’s work extends to the Elect only (Joel 2:29), in the Millennial Age it will extend to all the non‑elect (Joel 2:28; Rev. 22:17); for then Christ will become the Lord, Ruler, of the dead (Rom. 14:9), including the people of Sodom, Gomorrah, the cities of the plains and the people of the two‑tribed kingdom of the South and the ten‑tribed kingdom of the North (Ezek. 16:53‑63). Hence these three considerations: (1) God’s love, (2) Christ’s death and (3) the Spirit’s work completely refute this Society error.

(The Epiphany Messenger – The Present Truth, March 1, 1949, pp. 46,47)

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Note: That Servant gave the world “Good Tidings of Great Joy which shall be to all men”, in contrast to the Jehovah’s Witnesses – Bad Tidings of Great Misery to all who do not join them. That Servant’s message to the world was to seek meekness and righteousness in this Age which will better prepare them for the Kingdom’s blessings.

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LETTER OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dear Mrs. Hoefle,

I have just returned from Israel visiting Clarence and Pat. They will be moving to a new apartment in August, so Pat was able to pack while I tended the children. Their last little girl is one year old now and was born in Jerusalem.

While visiting there I visited with Mrs. Young and she mentioned receiving your publications and how much she enjoyed them. Yes, we received Dr. Russell’s book. Thank you. We have forwarded your letter to Clarence as I know he will want to write you. Please keep in touch.

Shalom, ----------- (OKLAHOMA)

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Mrs. Young is the widow of Dr. G. Douglas Young. After reading some of our papers he wrote us and requested to be put on our mailing list. Calvin B. Hanson wrote a biography of Dr. Young – A GENTILE WITH THE HEART OF A JEW. The book is very good and would adorn the library of any one. He was indeed a real Christian – “an example of the believers.” The book may be obtained from Parson Publishing, Nyack, N. Y. 10960 – or from Bridges For Peace, P. O. Box 33145, Tulsa, OK 74153.

September 1, 1988

NO. 392: THE GREAT COMMISSION

by Epiphany Bible Students

No. 392

My dear Brethren: Grace and peace through our Beloved Master!

After His resurrection Jesus had gone into Galilee to meet the Disciples, as He had promised them He would do (Matt. 26:32); and there He spoke to them what is commonly declared to be “The Great Commission” (Matt. 28:19,20): “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Motivated by this order, many Christians have zealously proceeded to the remote parts of the earth, declaring the name of Jesus to savage hordes, even as others of their fellows engaged in great drives to raise millions of dollars to finance those who would “save” the poor heathen. Up to now, at least, it must be admitted that their efforts have been far from successful. Even in those countries claiming to be Christian the practice of The Golden Rule is much conspicuous by the failure of the large majority to make even a token attempt to observe it. After more than nineteen hundred years of this effort, this dismal failure does indeed call for some reflection.

First of all, let us consider a critical translation of Jesus' words: “Go, disciple all the nations, immersing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things which I have enjoined upon you; and, behold, I am with you all the days, till the consummation of the Age.” Clearly enough, from this more exact translation, The Great Commission was not an order to convert the whole world – it was merely intended to win disciples from the various nations. And to what purpose? Our text says, “Immersing them into the name” that is, into the heart and mind, the disposition of the Father and of the Son.

This conclusion is clearly corroborated by Acts 19:1-7, where the twelve men there assembled had told the Apostle Paul that their baptism had brought them substantially nothing. They had been given the baptism of John – and, self–evidently, had not been instructed regarding the real baptism, which the immersion in water symbolized. Whereupon, “having heard this, they were immersed into the name of the Lord Jesus.” Their previous immersion had failed to “disciple” them; it was only after they had been immersed “into” the name (disposition) of the Lord Jesus, as symbolized by the water immersion, that Paul laid his hands upon them, and the gifts of the spirit came to them. All during the Age there has been much immersing done, and is still being done, without bringing the recipients “into” the name – into the disposition of the Lord Jesus. Unless the real baptism is understood and undergone by the participants, the ritual is merely an exercise in futility – an immersion of water and words only, with the participants in no better condition than they were before the ceremony.

“THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM”

It is frequently stated that “Jesus went about... preaching the gospel (the good news, glad tidings) of the Kingdom.” (Matt. 4:23; 9:35; Mark 1:14, etc.) This Kingdom was an important feature of His ministry, so much so that the Disciples themselves were much imbued with the thought. Even after His resurrection He spoke to them “of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3,4), which prompted the question from them: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel?” This they did before the Holy Spirit had been given them; and Jesus' answer is companion to The Great Commission in Matthew: “Ye shall receive power, after the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

During the evening of the last Supper, Jesus had told them, “I go to prepare a place for you... I will come again, and receive you unto Myself.” (Jn. 14:2,3) Not yet having received the Holy Spirit, the Apostles received these statements much as natural men, considering them from material standpoints. And they were much persuaded that His “coming again” would be in a very short time, this opinion aided in large measure by the experience at the Sea of Tiberias (John 21:1–23). In the course of that conversation Jesus asked Peter three times if he loved Him – probably a discreet prodding for the three times that Peter had denied Him the night of the betrayal. Then Jesus informed him that his death would be a violent one, imposed upon him by other hands, at which Peter pointed to “that disciple whom Jesus loved” (the Apostle John) with the query, “And what shall this man do?” (v. 21) This would be better translated, “Lord, and what of this man?” In other words, if Peter was to die in gruesome fashion, what about this particular favorite of Yours – How will he die? “Jesus says to him, If I wish him to abide till I come, what is that to thee?” (v. 23) “The report, therefore, went out among the brethren, that that Disciple would not die,” although Jesus said no such thing. However, the tale persisted, so much so that certain ones in Corinth thought the Kingdom had already been established, and that they were then reigning.(l Cor. 4:8)

It seems reasonably certain that the Apostle John lived to the age of about one hundred years. Thus, he was one of the last – if not the very last – to see Jesus while He was on earth. The Roman army under Titus captured Jerusalem in the year 70 AD; and few, if any, of the Jews who were in the city at that time escaped execution. The Apostle John lived for thirty years, more or less, after that event. Just where he was at that particular time we do not know, but we can be certain he was not in Jerusalem then. However, until the day he died, there could be some surface substance to the tale that he would survive until the Saviour came the second time, as He had promised He would. But the death of the Apostle did definitely eliminate any further credence in the story, which, as John himself stated in the last verses of his Gospel writing, had no real substance to it in what Jesus had said to Peter.

But of those who had reposed strong belief in the legend, we can well appreciate the disappointment that must have been theirs when the last glimmering hope was fully subdued in the death of John. And as those remaining ones expired – with still no evidence of a second coming – we can readily understand how a situation arose that was identical with the one confronting the Jews when Moses remained so long in Mount Sinai: “When Moses delayed to come down out of the mount (as Jesus was seemingly also doing after His ascension to the Heavenly Mount), the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him... and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” (Ex. 32:1–6) This situation with Israel saw an exact reproduction in the Gospel Age after Jesus had been away from this earth for several hundred years, and still no evidence of His return. He had promised the Kingdom upon His return, and it became very easy for those disappointed Christians to talk themselves into believing that perhaps He had meant that they should take on this task themselves, since there was just nothing to indicate that the Lord would be doing it Himself.

The Kingdom reign was to be a thousand years (Rev. 20:1–4); and the members of the Christian Church gradually determined that they should engage upon the thousand-year task of making earth ready as a proper preparation for His return. This had its first potential impetus when Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nice in 325 AD mainly to determine whether the Trinity should be determined as the accepted faith of the general church. Arius was the champion of the truth against this error; and history says of him that he was a man of clear intellect. Yet only two of that vast assembly of church prelates agreed with him. The vast majority – about 250 – decided otherwise, and the Emperor agreed with them; and from that conclave emerged what is now commonly known as “The Apostles' Creed.” Arius was banished from the Roman Empire, and forced to take refuge in northern Africa, where he died eleven years later not, however, without leaving his “footprints on the sands of time,” for he left behind him a flourishing colony of Christians zealously contending that there is but “one God” (Eph. 4:6) And what name did they attach to themselves? Why, Arians, of course!

THE COUNTERFEIT REIGN

In due time came the Pope of Rome, claiming for himself universal sovereignty over “the Church which is His Body.” By 799 this had made such an imprint upon people and rulers alike that Charlemagne of France virtually ceded his authority unto the Pope; and thus began “the Holy Roman Empire”—the beginning of that thousand–year reign which would cause “every knee to bow, and every tongue to confess that Christ is Lord.” (Phil. 2:9–11) During the next thousand years the determination that the Church should convert and rule the world was supported by the armies of the various countries, and by all the ingenious tortures that the human intellect could devise. It was indeed a full counterfeit of that glorious reign which the Lord Himself had promised would “wipe away all tears from their eyes... no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither any more pain.” (Rev. 21:1-4)

Instead of “wiping away all tears,” that regime multiplied the tears, the sorrow, the death, so that it is now known as “The Dark Ages,” with much of its history so garbled that it is totally unreliable. The Church today would much rather not be reminded of the facts of that time.

The colossal fraud of the whole arrangement was finally toppled by Napoleon in 1799 (just a full thousand years after Charlemagne, also of France, had set it up), when he took the Pope captive to Paris, where he eventually died. Thus was furnished to the whole world clear evidence that the papal claim of supremacy in church and civil court was nothing more than a vicious myth. In all of this the Lord was saying in effect once more: “I have seen this people...let Me alone... that I may consume them.” (Ex. 32:9,10) It is little wonder that so many “protesters” arose with Martin Luther and other noble reformers over the past five hundred years, although great effort is being made today to forget the past crimes, and let us all join in a grand brotherhood of man, with the Fatherhood of God. But, as one wit has expressed it: There are too few brothers, and too many hoods. The real reign of Christ is self–evidently an occurrence yet future.

THE CHURCH'S REAL MISSION

Based upon a misunderstanding of The Great Commission, a misunderstanding based somewhat upon the poor and inaccurate translation found in the King James version of the Bible, The Church has vigorously engaged upon an attempted conversion of the world when our Lord delayed His return. But it should by now be apparent to the ordinary believer that it has not been God's purpose to have it so; otherwise, He would have accomplished it. Either that, or we are forced to the miserable admission that He has been too weak to do it. This latter is certainly contradicted by the record of Gen. 1:3,14,16: “God said, Let there be light: and there was light... lights in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night... and it was so... God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.” Here is a clear record of power unlimited – a power so awesome that man would be forced to bow the knee before it whenever the command goes forth. It is clear that God has not been “trying” to do something for the past nineteen hundred years that was a little too much for Him! It should also be equally clear that man has been trying to do something that is much beyond his capacity. “Without Me ye can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

During “this present evil world” (Gal. 1:4) there have been three dispensations, or Ages – The Patriarchal, the Jewish and the Gospel Ages; all of them “faith” Ages, with the Gospel Age being by far the most important. At the very outset of this Age Jesus “abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light (made it clear for the first time) through the gospel (the 'good news' of the Kingdom)”—2 Tim. 1:10. And for the promulgation of this 'good news' St. Paul says of himself, “whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.” And in sympathy with this St. James says, “How God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name” (a privilege first offered to the Jews, which, when rejected by them, brought forth the expression from Paul: 'Lo, we turn to the Gentiles' – Acts 13:46). “After this (when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in) I will return and build again the Tabernacle of David... that the residue of men might seek after the Lord (when His Kingdom is finally established in power and great glory, forcing every knee to bow).” (See Acts 15:14–18; Phil. 2:9–11)

During these three Ages certain called-out ones have preached righteousness, which has restrained somewhat the tendency toward depravity so prevalent all about us. This has been more apparent in the Gospel Age, as Jesus said it would be. “The Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin (will point out the evils of this present dispensation through those who have the Holy Spirit), and concerning righteousness (will teach the world the correct conduct as against the evils now prevalent), and concerning judgment (will explain the judgment as it will truly be when the Kingdom is established).” (John 16:8) But up to now all of this has simply been a “witness” of things to come a mere token of the glorious actuality.

THE JUDGMENT DAY

In Acts 17:31 St. Paul declares, “God hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained.” It is clear that that “day” was in the future when Paul said what he did; and St. Peter states that “the heavens (the present ecclesiastical systems) and the earth (the present social order), which are now... are reserved unto the day of judgment.” (2 Pet. 3:7) But the Apostle Peter then clarifies his statement with these words: “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” which is further confirmed in Psa. 90:4: “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past.” St. Paul further states in 1 Cor. 6:2: “Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world?”

The Scriptures thus draw a sharp line of demarcation between the “saints” and the “world” – or between the elect and the non–elect. This is further emphasized in Rev. 20:4: “I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God (the saints, as described in Rev. 6:9)... and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” And Rev. 5:10 tells us where this reign shall be: “Thou has made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.”

A SECOND COUNTERFEIT REIGN

As stated aforegoing, the Roman Church seized upon such texts to establish themselves as earth's rulers for a thousand years – from 799 to 1799; but of the true reign it is written, “There will be no night (error) there.” (Rev. 21:25) Just the reverse of that was true, however, under the terrible papal reign. That reign is now recorded in history as The Dark Ages, because the “night” of sin and death and error was so intense that not even a good clear record of it is to be found in the history books.

It is a sound observation that history often repeats itself; and this is often true in religious history, just as it is true in secular records. Comes now here in the end of the Age the Jehovah's Witnesses, attempting on a smaller, but hardly less sanguine scale, to establish themselves as the rulers for a thousand years. They would now have us believe the Kingdom has been established under them; and, while they do not themselves perpetrate the same violence in the same manner as did the Roman Church, nevertheless, they are telling us that their select group will take gleeful note of the blood bath that they now predict for the Armageddon that lies just ahead. Their prediction is that their faithful “dedicated” devotees are to survive that carnage, and on into the Kingdom of peace that will follow – never any more to experience death. Let us note, however, that this prediction has been broadcast for quite a few years now; and time itself is shaking the confidence of many of them, as they note the death of many of the faithful – touching them in like manner as it does the world in general. Up to now, at least, the Angel of death has shown very little respect of persons, as the processions to the cemetery proceed much the same as in times past. It should be noted, too, that since 1914 (the Witnesses' date for commencement of their kingdom) evils of all sorts have been greatly on the increase – a far cry indeed from that true kingdom “wherein dwelleth righteousness.” (2 Pet. 3:13)

Thus, here again, time itself has forced them to “reform” somewhat from their one-time positive promises. Just recently we discussed this point with one of their “dedicated” adherents – a lady well along in years. Forced to admit the truth of our contentions, she also admitted she “may not” live through Armageddon – or even until then. Here again the Witnesses show their kinship to the Roman system, which has ever been ready to change any of their teachings where 'policy' seemed expedient. However, “the leopard can't change his spots.”

Above we quoted St. Paul's statement that “the saints shall judge the world”; and our Lord had said of these saints, “Fear not, Little Flock, it is the Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom” – the reign over the earth. At present the Witnesses have much over a million of their “dedicated” partisans – hardly a “little flock” by any standard. Nor do we see any abatement of the evils of this world; in fact, they are very much on the increase since they began their “reign” – which is hardly the description given us in the Bible when our Lord's Kingdom is established for the purpose of blessing “all the families of the earth.” And note the close similarity of the old Roman claim to the Witnesses' present one: No salvation outside of our organization; but damnation (annihilation in Armageddon) to all who refuse us. Just a slight variation to the old Roman claim of eternal torment for all the heretics, even as they sold salvation in the form of indulgences to any and all who had the price and would bow the knee to them. Certainly, we have no wish to be facetious in the comparison we now offer; it is public property to all who would recognize it. The Roman Church gave the edict – Heaven for the faithful; Hell for the heretics. The Witnesses now give the edict – The Kingdom for the faithful; eternal annihilation in Armageddon for the heretics. Clearly enough, a second counterfeit reign! Also, the old Roman shibboleth was, “Reading is doubt; doubt is heresy; and heresy is Hell.” And those now rigidly imbued with the Witnesses, kingdom doctrine want no part of any literature that might enlighten them. If reports that come to us are true, they are forbidden to ask any oppositional questions in their study meetings of the Watch Tower.

GOD'S WORD EXPOSES COUNTERFEITS

Before the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 by the Roman Army it is clearly apparent that many Christians were so imbued with the thought of an imminent return of the Lord that it was necessary for the Apostle Paul and others to protest vigorously their false expectations. One such expression is found in 2 Thes. 2:1-10, parts of which we quote from the Diaglott translation: “We entreat you, Brethren, concerning the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ (to establish the Kingdom for which He had taught them to pray), and our assembling to Him (in power and great glory), that you be not quickly agitated in mind, nor alarmed, neither by a spirit, nor by a discourse, nor by a letter as from us, as though the day of the Lord was present. Let no one delude you by any means, because the apostasy must come first, and there must be revealed that Man of Sin, that son of destruction, the opponent who lifts himself above everything called Divinity or Majesty; so as to seat himself in the temple of God.” St. Paul had written to the Corinthians, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God.” (1 Cor. 3:16) Thus, “seating himself in the temple of God” is simply another way of saying that the apostates would be so much in the majority that they would submerge the true Christians; and, until they had seen that accomplished, they could be sure the Lord had not returned, or the Kingdom set up.

Then, to emphasize, the Apostle continues, “Do you not remember that while I was with you, I said these things to you?... Then will be revealed the lawless one, whom the Lord Jesus will annihilate by the appearing (bright shining) of His presence.” While it may he contended that that annihilation is now in process, as “knowledge shall be in creased” in the time of the end (Dan. 12:4), it is certainly not yet an accomplished fact. Therefore, there definitely cannot be any visible Kingdom yet, because the Apostle is emphatic that the “annihilation” of the apostasy must be accomplished before the Kingdom's inauguration.

Another point may be considered here: The Bible clearly teaches, and our own personal experience confirms that truth, that all men do not have the quality of faith (2 Thes. 3:2). Therefore, they cannot display or put to use something they do not have. This leads to the fact that men are presently divided into a faith class and a non-faith, or unbelief class. And, of the non–faith class, as well as of the faith class, there are many variations. The Apostles, who were born with faith in their very blood stream, “said unto the Lord, Increase our faith.” (Luke 17:5 And it is also written, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (Heb. 11:6) Yet, the Roman Church for hundreds of years, and the Witnesses now in our day, would tell us there is no Kingdom hope for this unbelief class – i.e., for those now living. Nor even yet for the faith class that cannot agree with and become “dedicated” to their interpretation of the Scripture.

Another striking similarity between the Roman Church and the Witnesses is this: The Roman Church stoutly claims to adhere to the teachings of the first “pope,” Saint Peter; the Witnesses make the same claim respecting their founder, That Servant. Without detailing all the vagaries and contradictions to both of these positions, we confine ourselves to this item of a faith class in this present Age, and now quote from the first “pope”: “The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ (at His second Advent to establish His Kingdom)... receiving the end (the purpose) of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” (1 Pet. 1:7–9)

And the Witnesses in like manner declare their adherence to the teachings of That Servant, who was very emphatic in his belief that the non-faith class could not possibly receive a fair trial now because of their inherent limitation, coupled with the failure of many of the heathen even to hear that Name – and there “is no salvation in any other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) For “God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” (See Rom. 11:31–32) Also, Jesus Himself said, “When the Son of Man cometh (at His second Advent), shall He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8) The clear inference is that true faith would be a very scarce article when our Lord returns, which is a direct refutation of the large memberships to be found in the Roman Church and with the Witnesses. But they both boast of their numbers as their strength, even though we know from Scriptural authority, therein lies their weakness.

It requires little argument that love of life is the strongest desire in most of us. Thus we can find little fault with the Jews at Sinai, when Moses gave them the Law and the promise along with it that “the man that doeth these things shall live in them” – at which “all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said will we do.” (Ex. 24:3) And the magicians, the astrologers, the sorcerers were crafty enough to tell King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon many centuries later what he wanted to hear: “O king, live forever.” (Dan. 2:4; 3:9)

Therefore, when the Roman Church promised immortality (immunity against death) to their faithful adherents, they were telling them something they wanted to hear, which made it easy to believe. And when the Witnesses now tell their “dedicated” devotees they will live right on through Armageddon, and never die, they are telling them something they want to hear – which makes it easy for them to believe, and understandable that their numbers are increasing rapidly, even as they boast. The founder of their Movement, That Servant, never advocated such a teaching – nor did he boast of his numbers. The nearest support he ever gave to it was to quote Zeph. 2:3, “Seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord's anger.” That this is merely a hope for those who do that, and not a definite assurance and promise to all the meek, is better revealed in Rotherham's translation of the text: “Seek Yahweh, all ye lowly of the land, who have wrought what He appointed, Seek righteousness, seek humility, Peradventure ye shall be concealed in the day of the anger of Yahweh.” There is nothing at all in this surmise to justify the express promise of survival now made by the Witnesses to lure proselytes to their banner. Certainly, it is to the advantage of all worldlings to “seek meekness,” because it will be only the meek who will inherit the earth. (Matt. 5:5)

OTHER RELATED ERRORS

St. Paul clearly taught that the World's judgment was future (Acts 17:31); St. Peter clearly taught that it was future (2 Pet. 3:7,8), and that it would continue for a thousand years – not just for a few years here in the end of the Age, as the Witnesses now proclaim for those now living. And in this they are joined – in less positive manner – by some of our very prominent evangelists: Make your decision for Christ now, even if you don't clearly understand what you are doing; you don't have to understand the Bible (the good Word of God) to know God. But the Prophet tells us in direct and simple speech just the reverse of all this: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord (the great judgment day of which Peter and Paul wrote)... that I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts... and they shall no more teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother (as the Witnesses and others are now feverishly attempting), saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity (their violations of the Law of Moses), and I will remember their sin (for crucifying the Lord of Glory) no more.” (Jer. 31:31-34)

And in all of this, our Lord Himself offers direct contradiction to the efforts of all such teachings in John 17:6–9: “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world... I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou hast given Me.” Yet, the record is clear also that God does love the world: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16,17) Here is given us an irrefutable distinction between the faith class (those who have responded to the call of salvation in this Age) and the non–faith class (all others not included in the elective salvation) who will receive their salvation under easier conditions, when their thousand–year judgment day is fully established. This is further confirmed by St. Paul in Gal. 3:8, “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the Gospel (the good news of the Kingdom) unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.” And in Gal. 4:28, the Apostle clarifies this further: “We, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise” (the elect of God who will eventually bless all the families of the earth – all the non–elect in the great Judgment Day).

All of which finds substance in the words of Jesus: “If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31,32)

Sincerely your brother, John J. Hoefle, Pilgrim

(Reprint of No. 229, July 1974 – first published in June, 1969)

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LETTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dear Emily Hoefle,

Thank you for your nice letter, dated June 14th, and for the January‑February issue of your bi‑monthly paper. My gratitude to Dolly Appleseed, the source of my name.

You are to be congratulated on your grasp of the international intricacies of our mundane, materialistic, mechanistic, Mammonistic world and your sound, intelligent dissection of their perversions of truth. The distortions in the “religious world” are unforgivable because they deal with deep fundamental subtleties that affect the human mind and govern a person’s thinking and determine his loyalties. A person’s childhood indoctrination remains with him for life.

Yes, in addition to that statement on Zionism, the idea of the “New Jerusalem” applies to the stretch of human imagination that embraces a new world governed by the Divine dictum of LOVE. Real LOVE is so powerful that it does not even need its associate, LAW. It will be a Utopia devoid of all killing – either animal or man – and where man will subsist on fruits and vegetables, as nature intended, and not on animal flesh. PEACE and FRIENDSHIP will be the unwritten law of the land.

In the meantime we must be content with the objective expression on the physical plane of these subjective realities, as they are manifested by the City of Jerusalem in Palestine and the fulfillment of the lofty concept of ZION as a material Home Land for the Jewish People in Israel.

My four visits to Israel over the years have convinced me that the Jewish State is here to stay and to act as a beacon light for the world, to bring LIGHT to all mankind. Perhaps we may live to see the day when The Prophet Isaiah’s prophecy will be fulfilled, that “Out of Zion shall go forth the LAW, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

May you be blessed with an abundance of God’s bounty and your work with unbounded success.

Sincerely, ---------- (NEW YORK)

PS ‑ Yes, David Horowitz did give me his book on PASTOR CHARLES TAZE RUSSELL. It is a splendid memorial to a great, stout‑hearted man, an illumined soul, who had the courage of his convictions, and the gallantry to articulate them. Today’s world is in great need of such men.

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Professor Warter has studied comparative religion, and has written numerous magazine articles on ethnical, moral and emotional subjects, such as health and the fruitarian‑vegetarian way of life. He is also a World‑Traveler, and recently returned from a five‑month tour of the Planet Earth. His name is listed in the International Who’s Who in Poetry and in the Directory of Men of Achievement.

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Dear Sister Hoefle: Greetings in the name of our Lord!

Thank you for your letter. No, I have not given Sister Allanach a book on Pastor Russell. She is soon moving, as the Army is transferring her to San Francisco. She said she would report for duty July 5 and send me her address after that. Then I will send you her address to put on your mailing list.

She had an interesting experience with a teacher as she was taking a course of medical data for computer processing. She talked to him about the Kingdom and learned he was a Jew. His parents told him not to tell anyone he is a Jew as it would lead to persecution and death. He said Sister Allanach was the first person to ever tell him that the Jews had a place in the Plan of God – and to now be proud of his heritage. She was going to loan her book to him.

Brother David Horowitz sent me the Summer UIB. Thank you! I just saw Dr. Alan Horowitz on the Donahue Show and wonder if he is related to David Horowitz. I’d like to read “Crisis of Conscience,” by Franz. The UIB gave the address but not the price of the book. Your picture is so clear and beautiful and reflects such a loving inner spirit. What a privilege for me to meet such a dear “new” sister!

Hope you can read “ISRAEL, MY SON.” Sorry I could not type it. A brother told me that Christ has not yet asked for the heathen for His inheritance. I believe He has. Others say Armageddon hasn’t happened yet. Pastor Russell wrote in a large volume on the subject. I believe it began in 1914.

Love & prayers, ….... (SOUTH CAROLINA)

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Dear Emily Hoefle,

Thank you for your nice letter, dated June 14th, and for the January‑February issue of your bi‑monthly paper. My gratitude to Dolly Appleseed, the source of my name.

May you be blessed with an abundance of God’s bounty and your work with unbounded success.

Sincerely, ------------- (NEW YORK)

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Dear Sister Hoefle: Greetings in the name of our Lord!

Love & prayers, ------- (SOUTH CAROLINA)

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August 1, 1988

NO. 391: “IN THE BEGINNING” Part Two

by Epiphany Bible Students

No. 391

So surely as “all the holy prophets since the world began” have declared the coming Millennium to be “times of restitution of all things spoken,” so surely the Evolution theory is in violent antagonism to the utterances of God through all the holy prophets. For restitution, so far from being a blessing to the race, would be a crime against it, if the Evolution theory be correct. If by blind force or other evolutionary processes, man has been climbing up by tedious endeavors and laborious efforts, from protoplasm to oyster, and from oyster to fish, and from fish to reptile, and from reptile to monkey, and from monkey to lowest man, and from lowest man to what we are then it would be a fearful injury to the race for God to restore it to what Adam was, or possibly to force the restitution further – back to protoplasm. There is no middle ground on this question; and the sooner God’s people decide positively in accord with His Word the better it will be for them, and the more sure they will be of not falling into some of the no‑ransom and evolutionary theories now afloat and seeking to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect. Let God be true, though it prove every Evolutionist a liar. (Rom. 3:4)

We cannot here go into the details of Adam’s creation, to discuss his organism, or body, his spirit, or breath of life, and how these united constituted him a living being, or soul. This has already been presented in a different connection.

Their fruitfulness in posterity was evidently in no manner connected with the transgression, as some have assumed, but was a part of the Divine blessing. The only relationship of the fall and its curse, or penalty, in this respect was, as stated, an increase of the mother’s conceptions and sorrows, corresponding to the man’s labor and sweat of face. These have borne the more heavily in proportion as the race has become degenerate and weak, mentally and physically. The object of the fruitfulness will have been attained when a sufficient progeny has been born ultimately to fill (not replenish) the earth. True, an immense number have already been born – possibly twenty thousand millions – and are now asleep in the great prison‑house of death; but these are none too many; for the present land surface of earth, if all made fit for man, as it ultimately will be, would hold two or three times this number, without taking into consideration the possibility of other continents being raised from the depths of the seas as the present ones were in the past.

Scientists of a skeptical turn of mind have for a long time been seeking to prove that man was on the earth long before the period assigned in Genesis, and every bone found in the lower clays or gravels is scrutinized with a view to making the scientist a world‑wide reputation as the man who has given the lie to the Word of God. We have already referred to the unreliability of such evidences, [1] as the finding of arrow‑heads amongst the gravel of an early period. In some cases at least these have been proven to have been the work of modern Indians, who had shaped them near the spot where they found the suitable flint‑stones.

At a meeting of the Victoria Philosophical Institute not very long ago it was stated that “a careful analysis had been undertaken by Professor Stokes, FRS, Sir J. R. Bennett, Vice‑Pres. RS, Professor Beale, FRS, and others, of the various theories of Evolution, and it was reported that, as yet, no scientific evidence had been met with giving countenance to the theory that man had been evolved from a lower order of animals; and Professor Virchow had declared that there was a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man; and that any positive advance in the province of prehistoric anthropology has actually removed us further from proofs of such connection, namely, with the rest of the animal kingdom. In this, Professor Barraude, the great paleontologist, had concurred, declaring that in none of his investigations had he found any one fossil species develop into another. In fact, it would seem that no scientific man had yet discovered a link between man and the ape, between fish and frog, or between the vertebrate and the invertebrate animals; further, there was no evidence of any one species, fossil or other, losing its peculiar characteristics to acquire new ones belonging to other species; for instance, however similar the dog to the wolf, there was no connecting link, and among extinct species the same was the case; there was no gradual passage from one to another. Moreover, the first animals that existed on the earth were by no means to be considered as inferior or degraded.”

We quote briefly from Sir J. W. Dawson, LL.D., FRS, from his summary of his recent findings respecting “The Meeting Place of Geology and History.” He says:

“We have found no link of derivation connecting man with the lower animals which preceded him. He appears before us as a new departure in creation, without any direct relation to the instinctive life or the lower animals. The earliest men are no less men than their descendants, and up to the extent of their means, inventors, innovators, and introducers of new modes of life, just as much as they. We have not even been able yet to trace man back to the harmless golden age [of Paradise]. As we find him in the caves and gravels he is already a fallen man, out of harmony with his environment and the foe of his fellow creatures, contriving against them instruments of destruction more fatal than those furnished by nature to the carnivorous wild beasts... Man, as to his body, is confessedly an animal, of the earth earthy. He is also a member of the province vertebrata, and the class mammalia; but in that class he constitutes not only a direct species and genus, but even a distinct family, or order. In other words, he is the sole species of his genus, and of his family, or order. He is thus separated by a great gap from all the animals nearest to him; and even if we admit the doctrine, as yet unproved, of the derivation of one species from another in the case of lower animals, we are unable to supply the ‘missing links’ which would be required to connect man with any group of inferior animals...

“No fact of science is more certainly established than the recency of man in geological time. Not only do we find no trace of his remains in the older geological formations, but we find no remains of the animals nearest to him; and the conditions of the world in those periods seem to unfit it for the residence of man. If, following the usual geological system, we divide the whole history of the earth into four great periods, extending from the oldest rocks known to us, the eozoic, or archaean, up to the modern, we find remains of man, or of his works, only in the latest of the four, and in the latter part of this. In point of fact, there is no indisputable proof of the presence of man until we reach the early modern period... There is but one species of man, though many races and varieties; and these races, or varieties, seem to have developed themselves at a very early time, and have shown a remarkable fixity in their later discovery... The history in Genesis has anticipated modern history. This ancient book is in every way trustworthy, and as remote as possible from the myths and legends of ancient heathenism.”

Prof. Pasteur, the great bacteriologist, was an outspoken opponent of Darwinism; and expressed himself as follows: “Posterity will one day laugh at the foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophers. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the works of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged in my work in the laboratory.”

Virchow, the Russian savant, though not a professed Christian, was similarly opposed to the Darwinian theory of the development of organic beings from inorganic, and declared: “Any attempt to find the transition from animal to man has ended in a total failure. The middle link has not been found and will not be found. Man is not descended from the ape. It has been proved beyond a doubt that during the past five thousand years there has been no noticeable change in mankind.”

Other naturalists have also raised their voices against the Darwinian views. In view of these facts how foolish appear the occasional essays of “Doctors” or “Professors” who feign learning by discussing “missing links” or suggesting that the little toes of human feet are becoming useless and will soon be “dropped by nature” as “monkey tails have already been dropped.” Have we not mummies well preserved nearly four thousand years old? Have we not life‑sized, nude statuary nearly as old? Are tails shown on any of these? Are their little toes anywise different from ours of today? Is not the whole tendency of all nature downward? With plants and the lower animals is not man’s wisdom and aid necessary to the maintenance of highest types? And with men is not the grace of God necessary to his uplift, and to hinder gross degeneracy such as we see in “Darkest Africa”? And is not this in accord with Scripture? (Rom. 1:21,24,28)

It is appropriate that the Lord’s people keep well in mind the caution bestowed on Timothy by the Apostle Paul: “O Timothy... avoid profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so‑called.” (1 Tim. 6:20) To see any truth clearly we must look from the standpoint of the Divine revelation. We must “See light in His light.” Then looking abroad through nature under the guidance of nature’s God, the effect will be to expand both heart and intellect, and to fill us with admiration and adoration as we catch panoramic glimpses of the glory, majesty and power of our Almighty Creator.

Evening and morning, Day Six, at its close, 42,000 years after “work” began, found the earth ready for man to subdue it, yet still, as a whole, unfit for him. Knowing in advance of His creature’s disobedience (and of His entire plan connected with His sentence of death, His redemption and the ultimate recovery from sin and death of all rightly exercised by their experiences), God did not wait the creation of man until the earth would all be ready for him, but merely prepared a Paradise, a garden in Eden, perfecting it in every way for the brief trial of the perfect pair, leaving to mankind, as convict laborers, the work of “subduing” the earth and at the same time gaining thereby valuable lessons and experiences.

THE SEVENTH EPOCH‑DAY OF THE CREATIVE WEEK

“And on the Seventh day God ended the work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.”

Noting the upward, progressional sequence of the six days, and keeping in memory the fact that the number seven of itself implies completion and perfection, we naturally would expect the Seventh Epoch‑day to be more marvelous than its predecessors. And so we find it: only that its important part is for a time – until the “due time” – shut to our mental eyes of understanding by the general statement that God rested on the seventh day from all His work. How strange that He should rest the creative work at a point where it seemed just ready for completion, as though a workman should prepare all the materials for a structure and then desist from further activities without accomplishing his original intentions!

But the whole matter opens grandly before us when we perceive that Jehovah God rested His work of creation, ceased to prosecute it, because in His wisdom He foresaw that His designs could best be executed by another means. God saw best to permit His creature Adam to exercise his free will and fall under temptation into sin and its legitimate penalty, death ‑ including a long period, 6,000 years of dying and battling, as a convict, with evil environment. God saw best to permit him thus as a convict to do a part of the subduing of the earth; that to bring it as a whole toward its foretold Paradisaic condition would be profitable to man under the circumstances; that it would be expedient that man realize the principles underlying Divine righteousness and the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and be thus prepared for the grace to be brought to the world in due time.

However, one of the chief reasons for Jehovah’s cessation of the creative work undoubtedly was that it might be accomplished by another ‑ by His Only Begotten ‑ in a manner that would not only glorify the Son, but glorify the Father also, by displaying the perfections of the Divine attributes as no other course could do. This was by the giving of His Son to be man’s redeemer – an exhibition not only of Divine Justice, which could by no means violate the decree that “the wages of sin is death,” but which simultaneously illustrated Divine Love – compassion for His fallen creatures to the extent of the death of His Son on man’s behalf. Divine Wisdom and Power will also ultimately be exhibited in every feature of the arrangement when completed.

It may be suggested that for the Father to desist from the perfecting of the creative plan in order that the Son might do this work during the Millennium, by processes of restitution, would be no different from the previous creative operations, all of which were of the Father and by the Son – without whom was not anything made that was made. But we answer, No. The relationship of the Son to the work of restitution with which this Seventh Epoch‑Day will close and bring terrestrial perfection, will be wholly different from any of His previous works. In all the previous creations the Son simply acted for Jehovah, using powers and energies not in any sense His own; but in this grand work to come He will be using a power and authority that are His own – which cost Him 34 years of humiliation, culminating in His crucifixion. By that transaction, which the Father’s wisdom and love planned for Him, He buys the world, buys Father Adam and all his progeny, and his estate, the earth, with all his title to it as its monarch “in the likeness of God.” The Father delighted to honor the “First Begotten,” and therefore planned it thus, and rested, or ceased from creative processes, that the Son might thus honor Him and be honored by Him.

God rested, not in the sense of recuperating from weariness, but in the sense of ceasing to create. He beheld the ruin and fall of His noblest earthly creation through sin, yet put forth no power to stay the course of the death sentence and started no restitutional procedures. Indeed, by the law which He imposed, He precluded any opportunity for His exercise of mercy and clemency toward Adam and his race, except through a ransomer. The penalty being death, and that without limit, everlasting death, “everlasting destruction,” and it being impossible for God to lie, impossible for the Supreme Judge of the universe to reverse His own righteous decree, it was thus rendered impossible for the Creator to become directly the restorer of the race, or in any sense or degree to continue His creative work in the condemned man or in his estate, the earth.

Thus did Jehovah God manifest His confidence in His own great plan of the ages, and in His Only Begotten Son to whom He has committed its full execution. This confidence of the Father in the Son is used by the Apostle as an illustration of how our faith should so grasp the Anointed One that we also can trust every interest and concern to Him, as respects ourselves and our dear friends and the world of mankind in general: the Apostle’s declaration is, “We who have believed do enter into rest... He that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.” Believers, like God, have perfect confidence in Christ’s ability and willingness to carry out all of Jehovah’s great projects in respect to our race, and therefore rest, not from physical weariness, but from concern, from anxiety, from any desire to take the matter out of Christ’s charge, or to attempt to secure the result by any other means.

If our Creator’s resting, or desisting from coming promptly to the relief of His fallen creatures, has in any degree the appearance of indifference or neglect, it was not really so, but merely the outworking of the wisest and best means for man’s assistance – through a Mediator. If it is suggested that the restitution work should have commenced sooner, we reply that the period of the reign of Sin and Death, 6,000 years, has been none too long for the bringing forth by births of a race sufficient in number to “fill the earth”; none too long to give all a lesson in the “exceeding sinfulness of sin” and the severe wages it pays; none too long to let men try their own devices for their own uplift and note their futility. Our Lord’s First Advent to provide the ransom price for the world so that He would have a just, equitable right to come again to bless, uplift and restore all who will accept His grace, although it was more than 4,000 years after the blight of sin and death entered, is, nevertheless, declared in Scripture to have been in God’s due time: “In due time God sent forth his Son.” Indeed, we see that it would not even then have been due time, except for the Divine purpose to call and gather and polish and make ready the elect Church to share with the Redeemer in the great Millennial work of blessing the world; God foreseeing that it would require this entire Gospel Age for this election, sent His Son for the redemptive work just long enough in advance to accomplish it.

THE PERIOD OF DIVINE CESSATION, OR REST, FROM CREATIVE AND ENERGIZINGACTIVITY IN CONNECTION WITH THE EARTH

How long is it since Jehovah ceased, or rested in, His creative work? We reply that it is now a little more than six thousand years. How long will His rest, or cessation, continue? We answer that it will continue throughout the Millennium, the thousand years of the reign of the great Mediator, effecting “the restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:21) Will the confidence of Jehovah in the outworking of His plan, which led Him thus to rest it all in the care of Jesus prove to have been fully justified? Will the conclusion be satisfactory? Jehovah God, who knows the end from the beginning, assures us that it will, and that the Son, at whose cost the plan is being executed, “shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.” (Is. 53:11) Yea, all believers who are resting by faith in their Redeemer’s work – past and to come – may have full assurance of faith that “eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath in reservation for those who love him,” specially for the Church; but also the lengths and breadths and heights and depths of love and mercy and restitutional blessings, for all those of the non‑elect world, who in their Millennial day of grace shall heartily accept the wonderful Divine provisions on the Divine terms.

Six thousand years past and one thousand years future, seven thousand years of Jehovah’s “rest,” will carry us to the time when the Son’s Millennial reign shall cease because of having accomplished its design – the restitution of the willing and obedient of mankind to the Divine image, and the subjugation of the earth under man, as his estate, his kingdom. Then the Mediatorial throne and reign having served their purpose, and all corrupters of the earth having been destroyed, “the Son shall deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father,” by delivering it to mankind for whom it was originally designed, as it is written. (Matt. 25:31,34) “Then shall the King say unto them... Come, ye blessed [approved] of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” mundane creation. (1 Cor. 15:25‑28)

It is the length of this Seventh Epoch‑Day, so distinctly marked by history and prophecy, that furnishes us the clue to the length of all the other epoch‑days of the creative Week. And the whole period of seven times seven thousand years, or forty‑nine thousand years, when complete, will lead up to and introduce the great Fiftieth, which we have already noted as prominent in the Scriptures, as marking grand climaxes in the Divine Plan; Israel’s day Sabbaths culminating in 7x7=49, leading to and introducing the fiftieth, or Pentecost, with its rest of faith; their year Sabbaths 7x7=49, introducing the fiftieth, or Jubilee, year; the still larger cycle of 50x50, marking the Millennium as Earth’s great Jubilee. And now, finally, we find the Sabbath, or seven day system, on a still larger scale measuring earth’s creation, from its inception to its perfection, to be 7 times 7,000 years – 49,000 years, ushering in the grand epoch when there shall be no more sighing, no more crying, no more pain and no more dying, because God’s work of creation shall then have been completed so far as this earth is concerned. No wonder that that date should be marked as a Jubilee date!

The angelic sons of God “shouted for joy” (Job 38:7) in the dawn of earth’s creative week, and after witnessing step after step in the development, finally saw man, its king, made in the Divine image. Then came the fall by disobedience into sin and death, and the frightful experiences of fallen angels who kept not their primary estate, and man’s selfish and bloody history under the reign of Sin and Death. Then successively follow the redemption, the selection of the Anointed One (Head and Body) through sacrifice, and the establishment of the Messianic Kingdom with its wonderful restitution of all things spoken by God through the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. No wonder indeed that there should be a Jubilation in heaven and in earth when all of Jehovah’s intelligent creatures shall thus behold the lengths, heights and breadths and depths, not only of God’s Love, but also of His Justice and Wisdom and Power.

Surely the New Song can then be sung by all of God’s creatures, both in heaven and in earth, saying,

“Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God, Almighty!

Just and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages!

Who shall not reverence thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?

For thou only art bountiful.

For all peoples shall come and worship before thee,

Because thy righteous doings are made manifest.” (Rev. 15:3,4)

“Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens: God himself, that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it. He created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited.” (Is. 45:18)

“And every creature which is in heaven and on earth... and such as are in the sea. .. heard I saying, ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb, forever and forever.”‘ (Rev. 5:13)

Since writing the foregoing we find the following on the subject from the pen of Prof. G. Frederick Wright, DD, LL.D., under date of Nov. 19th, 1902, on the Genesis account of creation.

THE GENESIS RECORD

“The first chapter of Genesis, which treats of the creation of the world, is a most remarkable document. It is remarkable as much for the skill with which it avoids possible conflict with scientific discovery as for its effectiveness from a literary point of view. Measured by the influence it has had, there is scarcely any other piece of literature that can be compared with it. Its evident object is to discredit polytheism and to emphasize the unity of the Godhead. This it does by denying a plurality of gods, both in general and in detail, and by affirming that it is the one eternal God of Israel who has made the heavens and the earth and all the objects in it which idolators are in the habit of worshiping.

“The sublimity of this chapter is seen in the fact that everywhere apart from the influence of it polytheism and idolatry prevail. The unity of God and His worship as the sole Creator of all things are maintained only by those nations which have accepted this chapter as a true and Divine revelation.

COMPATIBLE WITH SCIENCE

“At the same time the advancement of science has served rather to enhance than to detract from our admiration of this remarkable portion of the grand book of Divine revelation. Within its ample folds there is opportunity for every real discovery of science to find shelter. With such remarkable wisdom has the language of this chapter been chosen to avoid conflict with modern science that so great a geologist as Prof. J. D. Dana of Yale College asserted with great emphasis that it was impossible to account for it except on the theory of Divine inspiration.

“In the opening verse it shuts off controversy concerning the age of the earth, and indeed of the solar system, by the simple statement that the heaven and the earth were created in the ‘beginning,’ without any assertion how long ago that beginning was. But that the solar system had a beginning is proved by modern science with such clearness that the boldest evolutionist cannot gainsay it. The modern doctrine of the conservation of energy proves that the present order of things has not always existed. The sun is cooling off. Its heat is rapidly radiating and wasting itself in empty space. In short, the solar system is running down, and it is as clear as noonday that the process cannot have been going on forever. Even the nebular hypothesis implies a beginning, and no wit of man ever devised a better statement of that fact than is found in the opening verse of the Bible.

CREATION WAS GRADUAL

“This whole first chapter of Genesis is based upon the principle of progress in this method of creation. The universe was not brought into existence instantaneously. It was not complete at the outset. In the beginning we have merely the physical forces out of which the grand structure is to be made by a gradually unfolding, or if one prefers to say so, an ‘evolutionary’ process. [As already indicated, it is only in respect to man’s creation that the Evolution theory conflicts with the Bible; and only to attack this point does that theory exist or find advocates.] This is equally true whatever view one may take of the word ‘day’ (Hebrew ‘yom’). Why should an Almighty Creator need six days, even if only twenty‑four hours long, to create the world in? The answer is that the Creator not only possesses almighty power, but has infinite wisdom, and has seen fit to choose a method of creation which involves first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.

“That there is a Divine plan of evolution, appears on the face of this whole chapter. The creation is begun by bringing into existence the simplest forms of matter, and continued by imposing upon them those activities of force and energy which produce light. This is followed by the segregation of the matter which forms the earth, and the separation of land from water, and of the water upon the earth from that which is held in suspension in the air. If anyone wishes to carp over the word ‘firmament,’ and insists upon its bald literal meaning, he is forbidden to do so by the subsequent statement (Gen. 1:20) that the birds are made to fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. The medium which held up the water in the clouds was one through which the birds could fly.

CREATION OF VEGETATION

“At the third stage the land was covered with vegetation, which is the simplest form of life, but which, when once introduced, carries with it the whole developing series of vegetable products. So comprehensive is the language in which the creation of plants is announced that it leaves ample room for the theory of spontaneous generation, which is yet one of the mooted questions in biology. In the light of this how remarkable are the words ‘and God said, Let the earth bring forth grass... and the earth brought forth grass.’

“The same remarkable form of expression occurs in introducing the fifth day of progress, where we read (Gen. 1:20): ‘And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.’ ... And again, introducing the sixth day’s work the same phrase is used (Gen. 1:24) ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind.’... If one should insist on interpreting this language according to the mere letter he would have what neither science nor theology would accept.

A SPECIAL CREATOR

“When it comes to the creation of man a very different expression is used. It is said that God made man in His own image and breathed into him the breath of life. How much this may signify with reference to the mode of man’s creation is not necessary to consider at this point. But the expression fitly corresponds to the exalted dignity which belongs to man when compared to the rest of the animal creation. The most noteworthy characteristics of man are brought to light both in this and in the subsequent account of the beginning of his career. Not only is man said to be made in the image of God, but he is fitted to rule over the beasts of the field and has the gift of language, through which he can bestow names upon them. Furthermore, he is a being free of will, who knows the difference between right and wrong – in short, is in possession of a moral nature which places him in a class by himself.

“That so many things should have been told us about the creation, with nothing which is absurd and fantastic, and so little which creates any difficulty in harmonizing it with modern science, is the clearest evidence which we can have that it was given by Divine inspiration. Not even Milton, with all his learning and with the advantage of this account before him, could curb his imagination sufficiently to keep from making a travesty of his whole conception of the creation of the animal kingdom. What but the hand of inspiration could have so curbed and guided the writer of the first chapter of Genesis?

MAN CREATED, NOT EVOLED

“There is a vast difference between the size and development in the brain in man and that in the lower members of the order ‘primates.’

“Physiologically and psychologically man differs even more widely from the lower members of his order. He has the power of grammatical speech. He can arrange his thoughts in sentences, which can be represented by arbitrary marks on paper or some other substance. Man has an ear for harmony in music, which no animal has. This involves a delicacy of structure in the organs of hearing of a most marvelous character. Among his mental qualities, that of scientific or inductive reasoning is most remarkable when contrasted with the mental capacities of the animal creation.

“In his great work on ‘Mental Evolution,’ Romanes thinks he finds in the lower animals all the rudiments of man’s mental capacity, but they are so clearly rudimental that they leave the gap between man and the animal nearly as great as ever. By collecting all the manifestations of intelligence in animals he finds that they all together manifest as much intelligence as a child does when it is 15 months old. But this intelligence is not in any single species, one species being advanced to that degree in one line, and another, in another...

REASON VERSUS INSTINCT

“Keen as the dog’s sense of smell may be, it is of no help in teaching him geology. Nor is the eagle’s acuteness of vision of any assistance to him in studying astronomy. In vain would one conduct a dog over the world to learn the extent of the ice cap during the glacial period, for he has no powers of thought through which he could connect the boulders in the United States with their parent ledges in Canada, or the scratched stones on the plains of Russia with the Scandinavian mountains from whose ledges they were wrenched by the moving ice. Such inferences are entirely beyond canine capacity...

CAPACITY FOR RELIGION

“In nothing does this superiority of the human mind appear more striking than in its capacity to gain religious idea through literature. There are, indeed, wonderful exhibitions of learned pigs, which, by some process, can be taught to select a few letters on blocks so as to spell out some simple words. But no animal can be taught to talk intelligibly. To this statement the parrot even is not an exception, since its words are merely a repetition of sounds unintelligible even to himself. Much less can an animal be taught to read or to listen intelligently to an oration or a sermon.

“On the other hand, the Bible, which is a book of the most varied literature, containing the highest flights of poetry and eloquence ever written, and presenting the sublimes” conceptions of God and the future life that have ever been entertained, has been translated into almost every language under heaven, and has found in those languages the appropriate figures of speech through which effectively to present its ideas...

“It is thus, when viewed from the highest intellectual point of view, that man’s uniqueness in the animal creation is best seen. Intellectually, he stands by himself. The scientific name for the genus to which man belongs is ‘homo,’ but the species is ‘homo sapiens,’ that is, a human frame with human wisdom attached...

“Alfred Russell Wallace, who independently discovered the principle of natural selection, and published it at the same time with Darwin, instanced various physical peculiarities in man which could not have originated by natural selection alone, but which irresistibly pointed to the agency of a superior directing power.

CLOTHES AND TOOLS

“Among these he cites the absence in man of any natural protective covering. Man alone of all animals wears clothes. He weaves the fibers of plants into a blanket or deprives other animals of their skins, and uses them to throw over his own naked back as a shelter from the inclemency of the weather. The birds have feathers, sheep have a fleece, other animals have fur admirably adapted for their protection. Man alone is without such protection, except as he obtains it by the use of his own intelligence. Until we pause to think of it, we scarcely realize how much intelligence is involved in man’s efforts to secure clothing. Even in so simple a matter as that of securing the skin of another animal for a robe, he is compelled as a preliminary to be the inventor of tools. No animal was ever yet skinned without the use of some sort of a knife.

“This brings us to another good definition of man, as a tool‑using animal. The nearest approach to the use of tools by animals is found in the elephant and the monkey. An elephant has been known to seize a brush with his trunk and by thus lengthening it enabling himself to brush objects off from otherwise inaccessible portions of his body. A monkey has been known to use a stick in prying open a door. But no animal has ever been known to fashion a tool: whereas there is no tribe of men so low in intelligence that it does not fashion most curious and complicated tools.

“The canoes of the lowest races are most ingeniously formed, and most perfectly adapted to their needs. The chipped flint implement involves the cherishing of a farsighted design and the exercise of great skill in carving it out. The ingenious methods by which savage nations secure fire at will, by friction, would do credit to civilized man; while the use of the bow and sling and of the boomerang shows inventive capacity of a very high order with which the animal creation has nothing to compare.

CAPACITY FOR MUSIC

“Wallace furthermore adduces the human voice as a development far in excess of anything that can be produced by natural selection. Monkeys have no music in their souls and no capacity for music in their vocal organs; whereas even the lowest races of man have both. The “folk‑songs” are the great source to which our leading musical composers go for their themes. The late Theodore F. Seward, in commenting upon the Negro plantation songs which he transcribed, says that in their harmony and progression they all conform to the scientific rules of musical composition. However much of advantage this musical capacity may be to fully developed man, we cannot conceive of its having been any advantage to an animal in the low stage of development in which we find the ape. The musical voice that attracts the ape has only the faintest resemblance to that which is attractive to either man or woman.

“Again, the size of the human brain is out of all proportion to the mental needs of the highest animal creation below man, and without man’s intelligence would be an encumbrance rather than a help. The two, therefore, must have sprung into existence simultaneously in order to have presented an advantage which natural selection could seize hold of and preserve and develop.

“It is difficult to see how it could have been an advantage to an ape to have the thumb of his hind limb turn into a big toe which can no longer be used for grasping things, but is useful only as he walks in an upright position. It is difficult to see what advantage could come to an ape in having his forelimbs shortened, as they would have to be if they were transformed into the arms of a man. It is difficult also to see how it should have been of any advantage to an ape to experience those changes in the adjustment of the hip bone and of the neck which would prevent his walking at all on all fours, and limit him to walking on two legs and in an upright position.

“In all these respects the difficulty in our understanding the origin of man from natural selection is increased if we are compelled to suppose that it was a very gradual process, and that these changes leading on to the perfection of the human organization began in an imperceptible, or almost imperceptible, degree; for such incipient changes could have been of no advantage. To be of advantage they must have been considerable, and the mental and physical changes must have been correlated in accordance with some law of pre‑established harmony.

“The mystery of the origin of man has not been in the least degree diminished by the Darwinian hypothesis, or by any light which evolutionary theories have thrown upon it. It is acknowledged by all that geologically, he is the most recent of the species which have been added to the population of the earth; while mentally, he towers so far above the lower animals that he is for that very reason, if for no other, classified by himself. The mystery is how he came into possession of this high degree of mental power with a bodily frame and a physiological constitution so completely adapted to its exercise. Those who say that it was exhaled in some way from the lower orders of intellectual beings, will encounter philosophical difficulties tenfold greater than do those who accept the simple statement of the Bible, that his soul is the Divine inbreathing – the very image of God.” (Pastor Russell – Studies In The Scriptures, Volume 6, Chapter One)

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QUESTION OF GENERAL INTEREST

QUESTION: – In John 3:16,17 it is stated that “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 love 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 that “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 agapeo, 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. He there 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 shine 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.

The inhabitants of this world who will receive restitution in the world just ahead are not now required to practice agape (sacrificial) love in this Age – nor will they be required to do so in the next Age, or at any time in the future. However, we would stress in conclusion that a proper understanding and analysis of love in the two texts is not the real crux of the problem; it is rather the two meanings of the word “world” (kosmos) that make them readily understandable. All who “follow in His steps” also love the world (its inhabitants). (Brother Hoefle, Reprint No. 250, April, 1976)

“IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW”

BROTHER DICKEY A. DEPUE finished his course on March 3, 1988. He was 89 years old on February 12, 1988. He was a good Bible student and well grounded in the Truth. He was our good friend and co‑worker, and has been with us since the inception of our movement in August 1956. He was faithful in all his commitments and was an “example of the believers.”

We believe he will be rewarded in honor and service with the Ancient Worthies described in Hebrews, chapter 11, and will be one of the princes(Psa. 45:16) in the Kingdom. He had the faith of Abraham and demonstrated his faith by his works just as did the Ancient Worthies. We will miss him and sorrow for him but not as others which have no hope. We rejoice that his pain and suffering are over. He is now “asleep in Jesus,” awaiting the “better resurrection.” (Heb. 11:40) Such faithful brethren cannot be replaced

[1] We are not ignorant of the theory of a pre‑Adamite man and the attempt thus to account for the different races of the human family. But we stick to the Bible as God’s revelation and, hence, superior to all human conjectures. It declares the solidarity of the human family in no uncertain terms, saying: “God made of one blood all nations of men.” (Acts 17:26) And again that Adam was “the first man.” (1 Cor. 15:45,47) Again the story of the deluge is most explicit to the effect that only eight human beings were saved in the ark, and they, as Noah’s family, descended from Adam. The variety of human types, or races, must be accounted for along the lines of climate, customs, food, etc., and especially along the lines of the seclusion of the various peoples in various quarters from each other, by which peculiarities became fixed. This is illustrated by the fact that Europeans living for a long time amongst the people of India or China gain a measure of resemblance to their neighbors, while their children, born in those lands, bear a still stronger resemblance in skin and features – affected no doubt by the mother’s surroundings during the period of gestation. An illustration of such assimilation is furnished by the Chinese of one district, who identify themselves with the Israelites scattered by the troubles which closed the Jewish Age – about AD 70. These Jews have become so thoroughly Chinese as to be undistinguishable as Jews – the hardiest of races.

July 1, 1988

NO. 390: “IN THE BEGINNING” Part One

by Epiphany Bible Students

No. 390

Many are Jehovah’s agents, and innumerable His agencies, connected with one and another feature of His creation; but back of them all is His own creative wisdom and power. He alone is the Creator and as the Scriptures affirm, “All His work is perfect.” He may permit evil angels and evil men to pervert and misuse His perfect work; but he assures us that evil shall not for long be permitted to work blight and injury; and that eventually, when He shall restrain and destroy evil, we shall discern that he permitted it only to test, to prove, to refine, to polish and to make His own holiness, gracious character and plan the more resplendent in the sight of all of His intelligent creatures.

When in Genesis we read, “In a beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” we are to remember that this beginning relates not to the universe, but merely to our planet. Then it was that “the morning stars sang together” and all the angelic sons of God “shouted for joy” when the Lord laid the foundations of the earth and “made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness its swaddling band.” (Job 38:4‑11) But a still earlier beginning is mentioned in the Bible; a beginning before the creation of those angelic sons of God; as we read: “In a beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Logos was with the God and the Logos was a God: the same was in the beginning with the God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:1‑3) Since Jehovah Himself is from everlasting to everlasting, He had no beginning: the “Only Begotten” has the high distinction above all others of being “The beginning of the creation of God” – “firstborn of every creature.” (Rev. 3:14; Col. 1:15) Other beginnings came in turn as the various angelic orders were one by one created; and these beginnings were in the past, so that their hosts could shout for joy when our earth’s creations, related in Genesis, had their beginning.

Examining the Genesis expressions critically, we discern that a distinction is made between the creation of the heaven and the earth (v. 1) and the subsequent regulations, or ordering of these, and the further creations of vegetable and animal life. It is these subsequent operations that are described as the Divine work of six epochal days. V. 2 tells us that in the very beginning of the first day of that creative week the earth was – though without form (order), and void (empty) – waste, empty and dark. This important item should be distinctly noted. If recognized, it at once corroborates the testimony of geology thus far; and, as we shall be obliged to dispute the deductions of geologists on some points, it is well that we promptly acknowledge and dismiss whatever does not need to be contended for in defense of the Bible. The Bible does not say how long a period elapsed between the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, and the beginning of the creative week used in perfecting it for man: nor do geologists agree amongst themselves as to the period of this interval – a few extremists indulge in wild speculations of millions of years.

Coming then to the creative period – the ordering of affairs in our heaven and earth in preparation of the Paradise of God for man’s everlasting home – we note that these “days” are nowhere declared to be twenty‑four‑hour days; and hence, we are not obliged thus to limit them. We find in the Bible that the word day stands for epoch, or period. The fact that it is most frequently used in reference to a twenty‑four‑hour period matters nothing, so long as we have the record of “the day of temptation in the wilderness... forty years” (Ps. 95:8‑10), and sometimes a “day” or “time” representing a year period (Num. 14:33, 34; Ezek. 4:1‑8), and also the Apostle’s statement, “A day with the Lord is as a thousand years.” (2 Pet. 3:8) Most assuredly these epoch‑days were not sun days; for the record is that the sun was not visible until the fourth day, the fourth epoch.

We believe our readers will agree that although the length of these epoch‑days is not indicated, we will be justified in assuming that they were uniform periods, because of their close identity as members of the one creative week. Hence, if we can gain reasonable proof of the length of one of these days, we will be fully justified in assuming that the others were of the same duration. We do then, find satisfactory evidence that one of these creative “days” was a period of seven thousand years and hence, that the entire creative week would be 7,000 x 7 = 49,000 years. And although this period is infinitesimal when compared with some geological guesses, it is, we believe, quite reasonably ample for the work represented as being accomplished therein, the ordering and filling of the earth which already “was” in existence, but “without form (order), and void (empty).”

Prof. Dana, commenting on the date from which scientists draw their conjectures, and the method of reckoning employed by them, says:

“In calculations of elapsed time from the thickness of formations there is always great uncertainty, arising from the dependence of this thickness on a progressing subsidence [regular sinking of the land]. In estimates made from alluvial deposits [soil deposited from water], when the data are based on the thickness of the accumulations in a given number of years – say the last 2,000 years – this source of doubt affects the whole calculation from its foundation and renders it almost, if not quite, worthless... When the estimate... is based on the amount of detritus [fine scourings] discharged by a stream it is of more value; but even here there is a source of great doubt.”

Let us examine the matter from the standpoint of the Bible, as believing it to be the Divine revelation, and fully persuaded that whatever discrepancies may be found between the Bible testimony and the guesses of geologists are the errors of the latter, whose philosophies have not yet reached a thoroughly scientific basis or development.

Nor is it necessary to suppose that the writer of Genesis knew all about the matter he records – the length of these days and their precise results. We accept the Genesis account as a part of the great Divine revelation – the Bible – and find its sublime statement in few sentences most remarkably corroborated by most critical scientific researches. On the contrary, none of the “religious books” of the heathen contain anything but absurd statements on this subject.

There is a grandeur of simplicity in that opening statement of revelation, “In the beginning God created.” It answers the first inquiry of reason – Whence came I, and to whom am I responsible? It is unfortunate indeed that some of the brightest minds of our bright day have been turned from this thought of an intelligent Creator to the recognition of a blind force operating under a law of evolution and survival of the fittest. And, alas! this theory has not only found general acceptance in the highest institutions of learning, but is gradually being incorporated into the text‑books of our common schools. [This was written early in this century. God’s inspired Word is the only true science we have – and the Bible says that God created the first man on this earth – but the Bible is not allowed to be taught in the schools.]

True, only a few are yet so bold as totally to deny a Creator; but even the devout, under this theory, undermine the fabric of their own faith, as well as that of others, when they claim that creation is merely the reign of Natural Law. Not to go further back, they surmise that our sun ejected immense volumes of gases which finally became consolidated, forming our earth; that by and by protoplasm formed, a small maggot, a microbe, got a start they know not how. They must concede a Divine power necessary to give even this small start of life; but they are industriously looking for some Natural Law on this also, so as to have no need at all for a God‑Creator. It is claimed that this discovery is now almost accomplished. These “savants” think and talk about Nature as instead of God – her works, her laws, her retributions, etc., a blind and deaf God indeed!

They claim that under Nature’s regulations protoplasm evolved microbe, or maggot, which squirmed and twisted and reproduced its own species, and then finding use for a tail, developed one. Later on, one of its still more intelligent offspring concluded that oars, or fins, would be useful, and developed them. Another, later on, got chased by a hungry brother and, jumping clear out of the water, got the idea that the fins further developed would be wings, and liked the new style, so that he stayed out of the water, and then decided that legs and toes would be a convenience and developed them. Others of the family followed other “notions,” of which they seemingly had an inexhaustible supply, as evidenced by the great variety of animals we see about us. However, in due time one of these descendants of the first maggot which had reached the monkey degree of development, got a noble ideal before his mind: he said to himself, I will discard my tail, and cease using my hands as feet, and will shed my coat of hair, and will develop a nose and a forehead and a brain with moral and reflective organs. I will wear tailor‑made clothing and a high silk hat, and call myself Darwin, LL.D., and write a record of my evolution.

That Mr. Darwin was an able man is evidenced by his success in foisting his theory upon his fellow man. Nevertheless, the devout child of God who has confidence in a personal Creator, and who is not ready hastily to discard the Bible as His revelation, will soon be able to see the sophistry of Mr. Darwin’s theory. It is not sufficient that Mr. Darwin should note that amongst his pigeons he was able to develop certain breeds with peculiar features, – feathers on their legs, crowns on their heads, pouting throats, etc.; others had done the same with poultry, dogs, horses, etc., and florists had experimented upon flowers and shrubs, etc., with similar results. The new thing with Mr. Darwin was the theory, – that all forms of life were evolved from a common beginning.

But Mr. Darwin’s experiences with his pigeons, like those of every other fancy breeder, must only have corroborated the Bible statement, that God created every creature after its kind. There are wonderful possibilities of variety in each kind; but kinds cannot be mixed nor new kinds formed. The nearest approach is called “mule‑in”” – and all know that new species thus formed lack ability to perpetuate their kind. Moreover, Mr. Darwin must have noted, as others have done, that his “fancy” pigeons needed to be kept carefully separate from others of their kind, else they would speedily deteriorate to the common level. But in nature we see the various species, “each after its kind,” entirely separate from each other, and kept so without any artificial fencing, etc., – kept so by the law of their Creator. As believers in the personal Creator, we may rest assured that human speculation has missed the truth to the extent that it has ignored our God, His Wisdom and His Power, as outlined in Genesis.

Nothing, perhaps, has done more to becloud and undermine faith in God as the Creator, and in the Genesis account as His revelation, than has the error of understanding the epoch‑days of Genesis to be twenty‑four‑hour days. The various stratification of rocks and clays prove beyond all controversy that long periods were consumed in the mighty changes they represent. And when we find that the Bible teaches an epoch‑day we are prepared to hear the rocks giving testimony in exact accord with the Bible record, and our faith in the latter is greatly strengthened; we feel that we are not trusting to our own or other men’s guesses, but to the Word of the Creator, abundantly attested by the facts of nature.

A THEORY OF COSMOGONY

For the benefit of some of our readers, we will briefly state one of the views of the creative period, known as “The Valian Theory,” or “Canopy Theory,” which specially appeals to the author; subsequently we will endeavor to trace a harmony between this view and the narrative of Genesis 1:1 – 2:3.

Starting with the condition mentioned in Gen. 1:2, “Now the earth was,” waste and empty and dark, the wise will not attempt to guess that which God has not revealed respecting how He previously gathered together earth’s atoms. Things unrevealed belong to God, and we do well to wait patiently for His further revelations in due time. Taking pick and shovel and a critical eye, man has found that the earth’s crust is composed of various layers, or strata, one over the other, all of which give evidence of having once been soft and moist, – except the basic rocks upon which these layers, or strata, are with more or less regularity built. These basic rocks indicate clearly that they were once soft and fluid from intense heat; and scientists generally agree that not a great way below the “crust” the earth is still hot and molten.

Since these basic, igneous rocks – granite, basalt, etc. – must at one time have been so hot as to drive out of them all combustible elements, and since they are the bottom rocks, we are safe in concluding that there was a period when the whole earth was at a white heat. At that time, it is reasoned, water and minerals (now found in the upper layers, or strata, laid down in water) must have been driven off as gases; and must have constituted an impenetrable canopy extending for miles around the earth in every direction. The motion of the earth upon its axis would extend to these gases surrounding it, and the effect would be to concentrate them, more particularly over the earth’s equator. As the earth cooled these would cool, and thus be resolved from gases into solids and liquids, the weightier minerals gravitating in strata toward the bottom. The earth at that period probably resembled the present appearance of Saturn with his “rings.”

As the cooling process advanced, these detached and distant rings would gradually acquire a different rotative motion from that of the earth, and thus gravitate closer and closer to her. One after another these were precipitated upon the earth’s surface. After the formation of the “firmament,” or “expanse,” or “atmosphere,” these deluges from descending “rings” would naturally reach the earth from the direction of the two poles, where there would be least resistance, because farthest from the equator, the center of the centrifugal force of the earth’s motion. The breaking down of these “rings,” long periods apart, furnished numerous deluges, and piled strata upon strata over the earth’s surface. The rush of waters from the poles toward the equator would distribute variously the sand and mud and minerals, the water strongly mineralized thus covering the entire surface of the earth, just as described at the beginning of the narrative of Genesis.

During each of these long “days,” of seven thousand years each, a certain work progressed, as told in Genesis: each possibly ending with a deluge which worked radical changes and prepared the way for still further steps of creation and preparation for man. This Valian theory assumes that the last of these “rings” was freest from minerals and all impurities – pure water; that it had not yet broken and come down in the day of Adam’s creation, but that it completely overspread the earth as a translucent veil above the atmosphere. It served, as does the whitened glass of a hot‑house, to equalize the temperature – so that the climate at the poles would be little, if any, different from that at the equator. Under such equable conditions, tropical plants would grow everywhere, as geology shows that they did; and storms which result from rapid changes of temperature must then have been unknown; and for similar reasons there could then have been no rain.

The Scriptural account agrees with this; declaring that there was no rain on the earth until the deluge; that vegetation was watered by a mist rising from the earth a moist, or humid, hot‑house‑like condition. (Gen. 2:5, 6) Following the deluge in Noah’s day came great changes, accompanied by a great shortening of the span of human life. With the breaking of the watery veil the hot‑house condition ceased: the equatorial path of the sun became hotter, while at the poles the change must have been terrific; – an almost instantaneous transition from a hot‑house temperature to arctic coldness.

Corroboration of this sudden change of temperature have been found in the arctic region: Two complete mastodons have been found embedded in clear, solid ice which evidently froze them in quickly. Tons of elephant tusks have been found in the same frozen Siberia, too inhospitably cold within the range of history for elephants, mastodons, etc. An antelope was found similarly embedded in a huge block of ice in that arctic region. That it was suddenly overwhelmed is clearly demonstrated by the fact that grass was found in its stomach undigested, indicating that the animal had eaten it only a few minutes before being frozen to death; – and that in a location where no grass could now grow.

This sudden downpour of water – this sudden breaking of the envelope which held the warmth of the earth and sun equably – produced the great ice‑fields and ice‑mountains of the arctic regions, from which every year hundreds of icebergs break loose and float southward toward the equator. So far as we can judge, this has been the procedure for centuries, but is continually growing less. Here we see the Ice Age, or Glacial Period, of the geologists, when great icebergs, borne by swift currents, cut deep crevasses throughout North America, distinctly traceable in the hills; northwestern Europe, too, bears the same testimony in its hills. But not so southeastern Europe, Armenia and vicinity – the cradle of our race, where also the ark was built, and near which, on Mount Ararat, it finally rested. The testimony of Prof. Wright and Sir J. W. Dawson LL.D., FRS, is that in the vicinity of Arabia a general sinking of the earth and a subsequent rise occurred. The testimony in general would seem to imply that the ark floated in a comparatively quiet eddy, aside from the general rush of the waters. This is indicated by the exceedingly heavy alluvial deposit declared to be present in all that region. Evidently the whole earth was deluged by waters from the North and South Poles, while the cradle of the race was specially dealt with by first depressing, and then at the proper time elevating it. On this, note the words of the celebrated geologist, Prof. G. F. Wright, of Oberlin, OH., College, as reported in the New York Journal, March 30, 1901, as follows:

THE FLOOD CORROBORATED

“Prof. George Frederick Wright, of Oberlin College, a distinguished geologist, has returned from Europe. He wrote ‘The Ice of North America’ and other geological works, studying and describing the glacial period. He has been on a scientific tour around the globe. He passed most of his time studying the geological formations and signs in Siberia, although his explorations took him to other parts of Asia and to Africa.

“Prof. Wright’s main object was to answer, if possible, a long‑disputed question among geologists: namely, whether Siberia had ever been covered with ice, as North America and parts of Europe had been, during the glacial period.

“A great many geologists, including many eminent Russian savants, believe Siberia was covered with ice.

“As the result of his present studies, Prof. Wright firmly believes that, at the remote time that North America was covered with ice, Siberia was covered with water [ice].

“And the water and the ice were practically phases of the Biblical flood.

“First read a description of the flood in Genesis, much abbreviated:

“‘And the flood was forty days upon the earth and the waters increased and bore up the ark and it was lifted up above the earth.

“‘And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth: and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.

“‘Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail and the mountains were covered.

“‘All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land died... And Noah only remained alive and those that were with him in the ark.

“‘And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.’ (Gen. 7:17-24)

“Now hear what Prof. Wright is quoted as saying:

“‘I found no sign of glacial phenomena south of the 56th degree. North of that I did not go, but from other things I am convinced that the land was covered with ice, as was our own, where signs of it are now found as far south as New York.

“‘We did not find indications of an extensive subsidence of all that region, which puts a new light on everything here.

“‘At Trebizond, on the shore of the Black Sea, there was evidence of a depression of 700 feet. This was shown by gravel deposits on the hills.

“‘In the center of Turkestan the waters reached their greatest height, for there we found these deposits over 2,000 feet above the sea level.

“‘Southern Russia is covered with the same black earth deposit that we found in Turkestan.

“‘There were still other evidences of the waters having covered this portion of the globe. One of these is the presence yet of seals in Lake Baikal, in Siberia, 1,600 feet above sea level. The seals which we found are of the Arctic species, and are the same species as those found in the Caspian Sea.

“‘The only theory, therefore, is that they were caught there when the waters receded. Perhaps the most wonderful discovery of all was at the town of Kief, on the Nippur river, where stone implements were found fifty‑three feet below the black earth deposit, showing that the water came there after the age of man.

“‘This enabled us, therefore, to determine the age of this depression. It shows that since man came there, there has been a depression of 750 feet at Trebizond, and in Southern Turkestan the waters were over 2,000 feet deep. The implements found were such as those made in North America before the glacial period, which gives good ground for believing that the depression was made there when the glacial avalanche occurred here.

“‘In fact, it was, practically, the flood.”‘

Knowing the end from the beginning, Jehovah so timed the introduction of man upon the earth that the last of the rings came down in a deluge just at the proper time to destroy the corrupted race in Noah’s day, and thus to introduce the present dispensation, known in the Scriptures as “this present evil world.” The removal of the watery envelope not only gave changing seasons of summer and winter, and opened the way for violent storms, but it also made possible the rainbow, which was first seen after the flood, because previously the direct rays of the sun could not so penetrate the watery canopy as to give the rainbow effect. (Gen. 9:12‑17)

Since writing the foregoing, we clipped from the Scientific American the following succinct statement from Prof. Vail’s own pen:

THAT FROZEN MAMMOTH

“To the Editor of the Scientific American:

“I have read with great interest in your issue of April 12 the note on the recent discovery of the body of a mammoth, in cold storage, by Dr. Herz, in the ice‑bound region of Eastern Siberia. This, it seems to me, is more than a ‘Rosetta Stone’ in the path of the geologist. It offers the strongest testimony in support of the claim that all the glacial epochs and all the deluges the earth ever saw, were caused by the progressive and successive decline of primitive earth vapors, lingering about our planet as the cloud vapors of the planets Jupiter and Saturn linger about those bodies today.

“Allow me to suggest to my brother geologists that remnants of the terrestrial watery vapors may have revolved about the earth as a Jupiter‑like canopy, even down to very recent geologic times. Such vapors must fall chiefly in polar lands, through the channel of least resistance and greatest attraction, and certainly as vast avalanches of tellurio‑cosmic snows. Then, too, such a canopy, or world‑roof, must have tempered the climate up to the poles, and thus afforded pasturage to the mammoth and his congeners of the Arctic world – making a greenhouse earth under a greenhouse roof. If this be admitted, we can place no limits to the magnitude and efficiency of canopy avalanches to desolate a world of exuberant life. It seems that Dr. Herz’s mammoth, like many others found buried in glacier ice, with their food undigested in their stomachs, proves that it was suddenly overtaken with a crushing fall of snow. In this case, with grass in its mouth unmasticated, it tells an unerring tale of death in a snowy grave. If this be conceded, we have what may have been an all‑competent source of glacial snows, and we may gladly escape, the unphilosophic alternative that the earth grew cold in order to get its casement of snow, while, as I see it, it got its snows and grew cold.

“During the igneous age the oceans went to the skies, along with a measureless fund of mineral and metallic sublimations; and if we concede these vapors formed into an annular system, and returned during the ages in grand installments, some of them lingering even down to the age of man, we may explain many things that are dark and perplexing today.

“As far back as 1874 I published some of these thoughts in pamphlet form, and it is with the hope that the thinkers of this twentieth century will look after them that I again call up the ‘Canopy Theory.’ Isaac N. Vail”

THE CREATIVE WEEK

With this general view of creation before our minds, let us now turn to the Genesis account, and endeavor to harmonize these conjectures with its statements. First of all we notice that the Creative Week is divided into four parts: (1) Two days, or epochs (in our reckoning 2 x 7,000 = 14,000 years), were devoted to the ordering of the earth preparatory for animal life. (2) The next two days, or epochs (in our reckoning another 2 x 7,000 = 14,000 years additional), were devoted to bringing forward vegetation and the lowest forms of life – shell‑fish, etc. – and laying down limestone, coal and other minerals. (3) The next two epoch‑days (in our reckoning 2 x 7,000 = 14,000 years) brought forward living creatures that move – in the sea and on the land – vegetation, etc., still progressing, and all preparing for the introduction of man, the earthly image of his Creator, “crowned with glory and honor,” to be the king of earth. (4) Man’s creation, the final work, came in the close of the sixth day, or epoch, and the beginning of the seventh: as it is written, “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He made, and He rested.”

TWO LOYAL TESTIMONIES

Professor Silliman declares: “Every great feature in the structure of the planet corresponds with the order of events narrated in the sacred history... This history [the Bible] furnishes a record important alike to philosophy and religion; and we find in the planet itself the proof that the [Bible] record is true.”

Referring to the account of Creation in Genesis, Prof. Dana declares: “In this succession we observe not merely an order of events, like that deduced from science; but there is a system in the arrangement and a far‑reaching prophecy to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed.”

He adds further: “No human mind was witness of the events; and no such mind in the early age of the world, unless gifted with superhuman intelligence, could have contrived such a scheme, or would have placed the creation of the sun, the source of light to the earth, so long after the creation of light, even on the fourth day; and what is equally singular, between the creation of plants and that of animals, when so important to both; and none could have reached into the depths of philosophy exhibited in the whole plan.”

THE FIRST CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY

“And the spirit of God was brooding over the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.”

The nature and physical cause of light is as yet but imperfectly comprehended; no satisfactory solution of the query, What is light? has yet appeared. We do know, however, that it is a prime essential throughout nature; and we are not surprised to find it first in the divine order when the time came for divine energy to operate upon the waste and empty earth to prepare it for man. The nature of the divine energy represented by “brooding” would seem to be vitalizing, possibly electrical energies and lights such as the aurora borealis, or northern lights. Or, possibly the energy brought down some of the heavy rings of aqueous and mineral matter, and thus the light and darkness, day and night, became distinguishable, though neither stars nor moon nor sun were in the slightest degree discernible through the heavy rings, or swaddling bands, which still enveloped the earth.

“Evening and morning – Day One.” As with the Hebrew solar days, so also with these epoch‑days, the evening came first, gradually accomplishing the divine purpose to its completion, when another 7,000 year day, apportioned to another work, would begin darkly, and progress to perfection. This period, or “day,” is scientifically described as Azoic, or lifeless.

THE SECOND CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY

“And God said, Let there be an ‘expanse’ [firmament, atmosphere] in the midst [between] the waters; and let it divide waters from waters. Thus God divided the waters under the atmosphere from the waters above the atmosphere. And God called the firmament [expanse, or atmosphere] heaven.”

This second epoch‑day of 7,000 years was wholly devoted to the production of an atmosphere. It was probably developed in a perfectly natural way, as are most of God’s wonderful works, though none the less of His devising, ordering, creating. The fall of the “ring” of water and minerals, which enabled light to penetrate through to the earth during the first epoch‑day, reaching the still heated earth and its boiling and steaming surface waters, would produce various gases which, rising, would constitute a cushion, or firmament, or atmosphere, all around the earth, and tend to hold up the remaining waters of the “rings” off from the earth. This “day,” so far as Scriptures show, would also belong to the Azoic, or lifeless, period; but geology objects to this, claiming that the rocks appropriate to this time show worm trails and immense quantities of tiny shell‑fish, the remains of which are evidenced in the great beds of limestone. They denominate this the Paleozoic Age of first life – the Silurian period. This is not at variance with the Biblical account, which merely ignores these lowest forms of life.

Evening and morning – Day Two – ended with the full accomplishment of the divine intention respecting it; the separation of the clouds and vapors, etc., from the surface waters by an atmosphere.

THE THIRD CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY

“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas. And this being accomplished and approved of God, He said, Let the earth bring forth tender grass, and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree bearing fruit after its kind, in which is its seed, upon the earth: and it was so.”

Geology fully corroborates this record. It points out to us that, as the earth’s crust cooled, the weight of the waters would tend to make it kink and buckle – some parts being depressed became the depths of the seas, other portions forced up constituted mountain ranges – not suddenly, but gradually, one range following another. We are not to suppose that all these changes took place even in the seven thousand years of this third epoch‑day; but, rather, that it merely witnessed the beginning of the work necessary as preparatory to the beginning of vegetation; for evidently geology is correct in claiming that some great changes of this nature are of comparatively recent date. Even within a century we have had small examples of this power: and we shall not be surprised if the next few years shall give us further paroxysms of nature; for we are in another transition period – the opening of the Millennial Age, for which changed conditions are requisite.

As the waters drained off into the seas, vegetation sprang forth – each after its own class or kind, with seed in itself to reproduce its own kind only. This matter is so fixed by the laws of the Creator that although horticulture can and does do much to give variety in perfection, yet it cannot change the kind. The different families of vegetables will no more unite and blend than will the various animal families. This shows design – not a Creator only, but an intelligent one.

Geology agrees that vegetation preceded the higher forms of animal life. It agrees, too, that in this early period vegetation was extremely rank; that mosses and ferns and vines grew immensely larger and more rapidly then than now, because the atmosphere was extremely full of carbonic and nitrogenous gases – so full of them that breathing animals could not then have flourished. Plants, which now grow only a few inches or a few feet high even at the equator, then attained a growth of forty to eighty feet, and sometimes two or three feet in diameter, as is demonstrated by fossil remains. Under the conditions known to have then obtained, their growth would not only be immense, but must also have been very rapid.

At this period, geologists claim, our coal beds were formed: plants and mosses, having a great affinity for carbonic acid gas, stored up within themselves the carbon, forming coal, preparing thus our present coal deposits while purifying the atmosphere for the animal life of the later epoch‑days. These vast peat‑bogs and moss‑beds, in turn, were covered over by sand, clay, etc., washed over them by further upheavals and depressions of the earth’s surface, by tidal waves and by other descending “rings” of the waters above the firmament. Practically the same procedure must have been oft repeated, too; for we find coal‑beds one above another with various strata of clay, sand, limestone, etc., between.

Evening and morning, the third 7,000 year epoch‑day, accomplished its part in preparing the world, according to the divine design. In geology it is styled the Carboniferous era, because of its deposits of coal, oil, etc.

THE FOURTH CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament [expanse, atmosphere] of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: and let them be for lights in the expanse [atmosphere] to give light upon the earth; and it was so. God made [or caused to shine – a different verb not meaning created] two great lights; the greater light for the rule of the day [to indicate the time of day] and the lesser light, the night; the stars also.”

The achievements of one epoch‑day were carried over into the next, and we are justified in supposing that the light of the first day became more and more distinct during the next two, as ring after ring came down from the waters above the firmament to the waters below it, until by the fourth epoch‑day the sun and moon and stars could be seen – not so clearly as now on a bright day, until after Noah’s flood – the last of the “rings”; but clearly discernible, nevertheless, through the translucent veil of waters, as now on a misty day or night. Sun, moon and stars had long been shining on the outer veil of the earth, but now the time came to let these lights in the firmament be seen; to let the days – previously marked by a dull, grayish light, such as we see some rainy mornings when the sun, moon and stars are invisible for clouds – become more distinct, so that the orb of day might by its course mark time for man and beast when created, and meantime begin to oxygenize the air, thus to prepare it for breathing animals. Later on in the same 7,000 year day, the moon and stars also appeared – to influence the tides and to be ready to mark time in the night for man’s convenience.

We are not to suppose that the development of plant life ceased during the fourth day, but rather that it progressed, the increased influence of sun and moon serving to bring forward still other varieties of grass and shrubs and trees. Geology shows advances, too, at this period – insects, snails, crabs, etc. Fish bones and scales are found in coal seams, too; but this does not disturb the order; for the formation of coal‑beds evidently continued after the third day – thus running into the Reptilian period. This “day” corresponds most closely with what geology designates the “Tries” period. Evening and morning – Day Four of seven thousand years, or 28,000 years from the starting of this work – closed, witnessing great progress in the earth’s preparation for man.

THE FIFTH CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY

“And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open atmosphere of heaven. And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, with which the waters swarm, after their KIND and every winged fowl after its KIND. And it was as God designed.”

How the warm oceans of the earth swarmed with living creatures, from the Jellyfish to the whale, may be judged by the profusion of life in the warm southern seas at the present time. Reptiles, living partly in the water and partly on the land (amphibious) belong also to this period, during which present continents and islands were gradually rising and again subsiding, at one time deluged by larger or smaller rings coming down, and at another washed by tidal waves. No wonder the remains of shell‑fish, etc., are found in the highest mountains. And no wonder the immense beds of limestone in all parts of the world are sometimes called “shell‑fish cemeteries,” because composed almost exclusively of conglomerate shells. What a swarming there must have been when those untellable trillions of little creatures were born, and, dying, dropped one by one their little shells! We read that God blessed them in multiplying. Yes, even so lowly an existence and for so brief a time is a favor, a blessing.

Let us not contend for more than the Scripture record demands. The Bible does not assert that God created separately and individually the myriad kinds of fish and reptiles; but merely that divine influence, or spirit, brooded, and by divine purpose the sea brought forth its creatures of various kinds. The processes are not declared – one species may, under different conditions, have developed into another; or from the same original protoplasm different orders of creatures may have developed under differing conditions. No man knoweth, and it is unwise to be dogmatic. It is not for us to dispute that even the protoplasm of the Paleozoic slime may not have come into existence through chemical action of the highly mineralized waters of those seas. What we do claim is, that all came about as results of divine intention and arrangement, and, hence, were divine creations, whatever were the channels and agencies. And we claim that this is shown by the facts of nature no less than by the words of Genesis, that however the creatures of the sea were produced, they were brought to the condition in which each is, of its own kind – where the lines of species cannot be overridden. This is God’s work, by whatever means brought about.

This day, or epoch, corresponds very well to the Reptilian age of the scientist. Evening and morning – Day Five – 35,000 years from the commencement of the work of ordering the earth as man’s home and kingdom.

THE SIXTH CREATIVE EPOCH‑DAY

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind. And it was so; God made the beast of the earth after its kind and cattle after their kind and earth‑reptiles after their kind. And God saw it was so done and approved.”

By this time matters on this earth were becoming more settled; the crust was thicker by hundreds of feet of sand and clays and shells and coal, and various other minerals gathered, some from crumbling rocks thrown up by earthquakes, some from the “rings” once surrounding the earth, and some from animal and vegetable deposits; besides, the earth itself must have cooled considerably during those 35,000 years. A sufficiency of earth’s surface was now above the sea, and well drained by mountain ranges and valleys to be ready for the lower animals, which are here divided into three kinds: (1) earth‑reptiles, cold‑blooded, breathing creatures – lizards, snakes, etc.; (2) beasts of the earth, or wild beasts, as differentiated from domestic animals, specially suited to be companions for man, and here referred to as (3) cattle. The air also by this time would be purified of elements unsuited to breathing animals, absorbed from it by the rank vegetation of the carboniferous period, as the excessive hydrocarbons had been absorbed from the oceans by the minute shell‑fish, preparatory to the swarming of sea creatures which breathe.

Here, again, we need not quarrel needlessly with Evolutionists. We will concede that, if God chose, He could have brought all the different species of animal life into being by a development of one from the other, or he could have developed each species separately from the original protozoan slime. We know not what method He adopted, for it is revealed neither in the Bible nor in the rocks. It is, however, clearly revealed that in whatever way God chose to accomplish it, He has fixed animal species, each “after his kind” in such a manner that they do not change; in such a manner that the ingenuity of the human mind has not succeeded in assisting them to change. Here is the stamp of the intelligent Creator upon His handiwork; for had “Nature” or “blind force” been the creator, we would still see it plodding blindly on, at times evolving and at times retrograding; we would see no such fixity of species as we behold all about us in nature.

We may reasonably assume that it was Just at the close of the sixth epoch‑day that God created man; because his creation was the last, and it is distinctly stated that God finished His creative work, not on the sixth, but “on the seventh day,” the division of the man into two persons, two sexes, being, evidently, the final act.

“And God said, We will make man in our image; and after our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every reptile that creeps upon the earth. So God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them, and God blessed them and said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue and control it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the heavens and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

In view of our remarks, foregoing, that the Scripture language does not forbid the possibility of the plants, water‑creatures and land‑creatures being more or less developed, or evolved, in their various kinds, it may be well for us to note the wide difference in the language used when referring to man’s creation. The latter is a specific declaration of the direct exercise of divine creative power, while the others are not, but rather imply a development:

“And the earth brought forth grass,” etc.

“Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature,” etc.

“Let the earth bring forth living creature after his kind, cattle,” etc.

There are two accounts of the creation – the one we have just been considering, which treats the matter briefly and in its epochal order, and another which follows it in Genesis 2:4‑25. In other words, the division of the chapters was at a wrong place – the two accounts should each constitute a chapter. The second one is a commentary on the first, explanatory of details. “These are the generations,” or developments, of the heavens and the earth and their creatures, from a time before there was any plant or herb. The first and principal account gives the word “God” when speaking of the Creator; and the second, or commentary account, points out that it was Jehovah God who did the entire work, “in the day” that He made the heavens and the earth – thus grasping the whole as one still larger epoch‑day, including the work of the six already enumerated.

The word God in the first chapter is from the common Hebrew word Elohim, a plural word which might be translated Gods, and which, as we have already seen, signifies “mighty ones.” The “Only Begotten” of the Father was surely His active agent in this creative work, and He may have had associated with Him in the execution of its details a host of angels to whom also the word elohim would be applicable here as elsewhere in the Scriptures. It is appropriate, therefore, that the second, or commentary, account should call our attention to the fact that Jehovah the Father of all was the Creator, whoever may have been used as His honored representatives and instruments. The added particulars of the second account respecting man’s creation may properly be considered here.

It declares: “Jehovah God formed man of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and the man became a living being.”

God was glorified in all His previous works and in every creature, however insignificant, even though none of them could properly render Him thanks or appreciate Him or even know Him. The divine purpose had foreseen all this from the beginning, and was preparing for man, who was intended to be the masterpiece of the earthly, or animal, creation. It is not said of man as of the sea creatures, “Let the seas swarm,” nor as with the lower earthly animals, “Let the earth bring forth”; but it is recorded, on the contrary, that he was a special creation by his Maker, “made in his own image.” It matters not whether the image of the Elohim be understood or the image of Jehovah, for were not the Elohim “sons of God,” and in His likeness in respect to reasoning power and moral intelligence?

We are not to understand this “image” to be one of physical shape; but, rather, a moral and intellectual image of the great Spirit, fashioned appropriately to his earthly conditions and nature. And as for the “likeness,” it doubtless relates to man’s dominion – he was to be king of earth and its teeming creatures, like as God is the King of the entire universe. Here is the battlefield between God’s Word and so‑called Modern Science, to which the whole world, especially the learned – including the leaders of thought in most theological seminaries, and the ministers in most of the prominent pulpits, are bowing down – worshiping the scientific God called “Evolution.” The two theories are squarely at issue: if the Evolution theory be true, the Bible is false from Genesis to Revelation. If the Bible be true, as we hold, the Evolution theory is utterly false in all its deductions as respects man.

It is not alone the Genesis account of man’s creation in the Divine image that must determine the matter, strong as are the declaration of the Word: the entire theory of the Bible supports the Genesis record, and stands or falls with it. For, if man was created otherwise than pure and perfect and mentally well endowed, he could not, truthfully, have been called an “image of” God; nor could his Creator have placed him on trial in Eden to test his fitness for everlasting life; nor could his disobedience in the eating of the forbidden fruit have been accounted sin and punishable, as it was, by a death sentence; nor would it have been necessary to have redeemed him from that sentence.

Moreover, “the man Christ Jesus” is declared to have been the “anti‑lutron,” the ransom‑price (or corresponding price) for this first man’s guilt, and He must, therefore, be considered a sample, or illustration, of what the first man was, before he sinned and passed under the Divine condemnation of death.

We know, too, that there are today, as there have been in the past, many noble natural men, all of whom God declares are sinners, and, as such, unrecognizable by Jehovah, except as they penitently approach Him in the merit of Christ’s sacrifice and obtain His forgiveness. The standing of all who thus come unto God is declared to be only of His grace, under the robe of Christ’s righteousness. The outcome, we are informed, must be a resurrection, or restitution, to perfection ere any can be personally and entirely satisfactory to the Creator. And yet it was this same Creator who communed with Adam before his transgression and called him His son, and who declared that Adam and we, His children, became “children of wrath” and passed under condemnation because of sin, which Adam did not have when created a “son of God.” (Luke 3:38) (To be continued) (Studies In The Scriptures, Volume 6, Chapter One)

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LETTER OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dear Brethren,

Please send me the news from Epiphany Bible Students Ass’n. I liked the sample copies. I associate with the brethren that believe we are in the Millennial Age now. We use the chart of the Ages and continually study the six volumes of the Studies In The Scriptures.

I am a widow, 69, very isolated, with 4th generation in the Truth. We left “The Society” and suffered for continuing to study Pastor Russell’s teachings... things become much brighter on our pathway. It seems to be His will to leave some of them in the shadows to be of the restitution class. So many friends and relatives are there but do not have an “ear to hear,” or “eyes to see.” Is this not evidence that the 144,000 is nearly complete?

I do not read the newspapers – 1/2 an hour on TV news is enough for me. Your paper seems to pick up the news that matters. My health is very poor (cancer, etc.) so I keep on one day at a time by His Grace. Sometimes only hour by hour, or minute by minute.

Your sister by His Grace, ------- (SOUTH CAROLINA)

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June 1, 1988

NO. 389: THE EVOLUTION THEORY – Part Two

by Epiphany Bible Students

No. 389

THE POPULATION – The human population offers another staggering blow to evolution. There is great argument among them about the age of man, some claiming 100,000 years, and others claiming as much as 2,000,000 years. But mathematics prove that even the lowest of these estimates is an absurdity; for it is altogether too short a time for such a method as evolution to bring from apes a being like man into existence and into his present condition. The 1922 Berlin statistics, the latest then available, gives the population as 1,804,187,000 (it is now in 1980 more than twice that figure). To reach this number the human race must have doubled itself 30.75 times; for, if we raise the number 2 to that figure, the result is 1,073,741,824. Thus the race had to double itself between 30 and 31 times.

The Bible chronology tells us that the flood began in the Fall of 2473 B.C.; and to the Spring of 1922 this would give us 4,493.5 years. Now, Shem (the eldest son of Noah) was begotten a few months less than 100 years before the flood (see Gen. 11:10; 5:32; 6:6). Therefore, in that year one human couple and their descendants came through the flood to populate the earth anew. Hence, in the 4,493.5 years before the Spring of 1922 the race doubled itself 30.75 times. This gives us an average of 146.13 years for each doubling of the population. Thus the time from Jacob’s marriage to 1922 was 3,798 years. Raising 2 to its 23.8758th power we get 15,393,815 – the Jewish population in 1922. Dividing 3,798 by 23.8758 we get 159.07, which would be the average number of years for Jacob’s descendants to double themselves – to become a population of 15,398,815 from Jacob’s marriage until 1922.

Also, Abraham’s descendants through Ishmael (the Arabs not only in Arabia, but in the rest of Asia and in Africa) number approximately 25,000,000. According to the Bible chronology, Abraham entered Canaan at 75 (Gen. 12:4) in the Spring of 2045 B.C.; hence, 3966 years before the Spring of 1922 A.D. Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86 years old (Gen. 16:16); hence 3955 years before the Spring of 1922. Hence the Spring before Abraham and Hagar were a childless couple, which was 3,956 years before the Spring of 1922. But 25,000,000 is the 24.4901th power of 2. Hence Abraham and Hagar doubled themselves in their descendants every 161.53 years – 3,956 divided by 24.4901. These investigations show that the whole race doubled itself since Noah and his wife were childless every 146.13 years, the Jews doubling themselves every 159.07 years, and the Arabs doubling themselves every 161.53 years.

Doubtless why the entire race kept doubling itself on an average of about 15 years sooner than the Jews and the Arabs is due to the fact that it is written of both typical and antitypical Ishmaelites that their hand would be against every man and every man’s hand would be against them (Gen. 16:12), with the result that more of them on the average met with untimely deaths and propagating hindrances than the average of the rest of the race, like the starving conditions of Asiatic and African deserts and constant wars and feuds for the Arabs, mad among others, the Assyrian, Babylonian-and Roman conquests and Gospel-Age persecution for the Jews. But, with these limitations, that the figures for all three should be practically alike proves that the principle on which they have been obtained is on the average reliable.

Let us now consider some of the wild statements of the evolutionists, who claim man has been on this earth perhaps two million years. The mildest guess of any of them is a hundred thousand years; and we shall give them all the advantage by using that figure. Let us assume that the population doubled one-tenth as fast as did the Arabs; that is, once every 1,161 years. In one hundred thousand years the population would have doubled itself 86 times (we are omitting fractions); and 2 raised to the 86th power is 4,660,210,253,138,204,300 – or more than two and one-half billion times as many people as are now on earth. This destroys even the mildest form of evolution on man’s age on the earth. If there had been no flood in Noah’s day, the increase in the population would be such a staggering figure that human minds could not grasp it; in other words, about 2,500 times its present population. Thus it should be clear enough that the Bible record of man’s history is readily acceptable; whereas, that of evolutionists appears as self-evident nonsense.

All the foregoing is based upon the fact that all human beings came from one pair; but this is also farfetched if we consider that it would be just as reasonable for men to evolve from apes in Asia, Africa, Europe or America as from any one pair. And such a conclusion simply complicates the situation still more for the evolutionists. The figures prove conclusively that man could not have evolved from the ape, because in two million years the race would have doubled once in every 65,040 years. On that basis, there would be less than four Arabs and four Jews on earth now. All of this certainly disputes evolution, and shows that man was a direct creation at the hand of God, as the Genesis account tells us it was.

As mentioned foregoing, a strong second argument against evolution is the unity of the human race. That “God hath made of one blood all nations” is clearly proven by the fact that all races interbreed, and their offspring is fertile; but this would not be true if we are as the animals, because even the most closely related animals can produce another, but that one cannot reproduce itself, thus avoiding discontinuance of any evolutionary theory.

Thus, the ability of human beings to interbreed, whereas none of the animals can do this, certainly is a compelling argument against evolution. As stated above, all languages are derived from five others; and all basically have one language. So words like ‘father’ and ‘mother’ are very similar in many languages of the five groups, which proves the early origin of home and civilization. If certain forms of evolution were true, our present languages could not be reduced to five linguistic groups, and these five in turn reduced to one; but they would have to be traced to thousands of non-related languages, such as the thousands of evolved species that mankind would have invented, had there been such a situation.

The unity of the race in religious beliefs also militates against evolution. Had evolution been true, there would certainly be at least one section of the race – one nation – that would have reared a population of atheists; and probably more, but there is not a single one that does so. Thus all races hold the following religious ideas: A supreme God surrounded by subordinate gods, such as the angels recognized by the Christian part of the world. In the Greek and Roman mythology much is related about such, showing their bickerings, their weaknesses, etc., but the Bible clearly states in Gen. 1:31 that “God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” The record of all the heathen gods clearly disputes that all their gods (angels, etc.) are “very good.” The cheapest kind of quarrels and intrigues are recorded of many of them; and those records are certainly not “by inspiration,” as our Christian Bible is by inspiration. (2 Tim. 2:16,17)

Furthermore, if evolution were true, why not have all the lower species passed out, of existence through evolving into higher species – until by now there would be only one left – man – and he on the way to evolving to some higher species? Also, why have some species become so large, like the ancient saurians, and our modern elephants alleged later species than these, e.g., monkeys become so small, if evolution is true? And why did Romanes, while yet an evolutionist, find that the collective intelligence of all species equals the intelligence of the average child of 15 months, if evolution is true? Why should all males but one, and all females but one die as members of the 3,000,000, and the two not die as such, but as members of the next higher species? Would not this be as unlikely as if untold decillions of dollars being tossed into the air, should all fall heads down except two?

If as Huxley, a leading evolutionist, said “There is an enormous gulf, a divergence practically infinite, between the lowest man and the highest beast.” Then why are there not between man and ape many other species in existence, if evolution is true? Surely Huxley’s gulf between them is evident when we consider man’s immense superiority to the ape in physical and mental respects, letting out of consideration entirely the moral and religious aspects, of the latter of which the ape is entirely destitute. Why are the senses of seeing, hearing and smelling on the wane in man, why are people now more nervous than formerly, why do more people become bald than formerly, and why are distresses – physical, mental and moral – increasing if evolution is the law of existence? Certainly such and other like considerations refute evolution as a law of existence. Degeneration is the trend, not evolution. Even in the better civilized of the nations we find insanity and nervous disorders increasing to such an extent it is taxing the authorities over the limit to know how to cope with these things.

Freely do we admit our limitations when it comes to gauging the age of this planet in its early formative stage – as a molten mass. Nor do we consider it necessary that we understand this. Our main argument here has to do with man, and very little else. – It seems that a sort of specialized evolution was carried on for some years after the first life came into the pristine mud and species that followed thereafter; but we are not in position definitely to prove any of it, nor does it greatly concern us.

We have already shown that history contains not one hint of the transmutation of species into another. We now add that, like history, geology confounds the evolutionist by not furnishing even one fossil showing anything in process of change from one into another species. We have many fossils of plants and animals, but they entirely lack an example showing a transition from one to another species. If evolution were true, we should have millions of these on earth’s strata.

The distribution of certain plant life and certain animal life disproves evolution. If all plants evolved from an original germ, how come them to be distributed in continents separated by oceans, and that before man appeared on earth, as many fossils of them prove? So, too, we find certain animals whose power of locomotion is but very slight. The oyster is found in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North and South America. How could they have crossed oceans? Again, if all plant life originated in a single germ, how did it happen that some plants are scattered among all continents, and others when found by civilized man were limited to but one, like Indian corn, tobacco, potatoes, etc.? If these once existed in the eastern hemisphere, as evolution requires, why were they found only in America? Certainly we must accept the conclusion of Agassiz, one of the greatest scientists of all times, to the effect that evolution “is a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its methods and mischievous in its tendencies.”

Evolution denies design in creation, which is the corollary of a wise purposeful Creator, and must fall back on chance as the line along which the universe and its life manifestations came into being and move. The universe and plant and animal life literally overflow with the expressions of design – which imply a designer. Almost infinite in number are these design expressions. We shall offer but a few: The human body is packed to overflowing with evidence at design and adaptation. The most intricate machine, like the Hoe printing press, shows design decidedly much less markedly than the human body. How manifold is design manifest in the nervous system, with its relations to thought, affection, will, the five senses, our blood and its channels and vital organs! How wonderfully designed are our blood and its channels, our muscles, glands, skin, brain, vital organs, hands, fingers, joints, arms, feet, toes, legs, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, teeth, excretory organs, reproductive organs, etc. Their locations, their protectors, etc., as well as their nature and functions, also evidence design. And we think it is well repeating here that man is the only animal who has a chin, which none of the lower animals have this physical characteristic.

It would be a million-fold more foolish to say that man came by chance than to say that a Hoe printing press came by chance! Marvelously formed is our body. The principles underlying its activities are followed by inventors of dynamos, steam engines, etc., and yet how greatly inferior are such inventions to the human body! Nevertheless, evolutionists would attribute its origin to blind chance, while denying the possibility of a steam engine coming by chance! William Jennings Bryan pointedly expressed himself on the folly of this chance theory as follows: “According to evolutionists, there was a time when animals had no legs and so legs came by accident. How? Well, the guess is that a little animal was wiggling along on its belly one day, when it discovered a wart – it just happened so – and it was in the right place to be used to aid it in locomotion; so it came to depend on the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. And then another wart, and another leg at the proper time – by accident – and accidentally in the proper place. Is it not astonishing that any person, intelligent enough to teach school, would talk such tommyrot to students and look serious while doing so?”

Nature is a proof that design marked man’s coming. Earth’s coal, gas, petroleum and electrical power, that no being but man uses, and that are so necessary for him, were stored up in the earth for him long before he came. The metals, so useful to man and useless to all other animals, were on deposit in the bank of the earth for man to check on as needed. Fruits, vegetables, grains and flesh having the chemical elements needed to replace waste tissue in man were prepared for him. The resources of nature needful for man’s protection from inclement nature were made abundant for him. Everything in the earth shows design, and that for the most part in anticipation of man’s arrival on earth; and this only a less loud voice in him, with harmonious chorus of the universe and its living creatures, cries out design, as against chance, which the evolutionist, discordantly with the universe, the earth and plant and animal life, and their associated supplies, shouts is the course of nature. Chance, the course of nature in the face of the laws of nature!

Foregoing we showed the almost infinite improbability of the transmutation of species from the lowest of them in plant life through all successive species of plant life into the lowest form of animal life and then through all the successive species of animal life up to man, i.e., through evolution’s 3,000,000 species. We now present an argument against evolution based upon the genera of life as forming eight impassable gulfs, all of which evolution would have to prove to have been passed, if it were to be proven true, and not even one of which has been proven to have been passed by evolution.

These eight impassable gulfs separating the genera of being are the following: (1) from the non-living to the living; (2) from vegetable to the animal kingdom in the lowest form of invertebrates; (3) from the invertebrates to the vertebrates; (4) from the marine beings to amphibians; (5) from amphibians to reptiles (the Reptilian Age – animals who live partly in the water and partly on the land – snakes, crocodiles, etc.); (6) from reptiles to birds; (7) from birds or reptiles to mammals; (8) and from mammals to humans. “And God said, Let us make man... and the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” (Gen. 1:26-31) In the above we have ignored the multitudes of species in each genus simply giving the classification according to genera in harmony with the Biblical week of 49,000 years. But how does evolution meet this progress? The atheistic materialist and the spontaneous-generation evolutionist are forced to make the first gulf be passed by the lowest form of plant life after the manner of the Topsy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who, when asked when she was born, answered that she was not born at all, but just grew up!

Spontaneous generation is a senseless guess that experiments under the most favorable experimental conditions have failed to achieve, these having broken down in complete non-success. Neither of these kinds of evolutionists knows how to get life from the non-life; for if anything is scientifically true, the proposition is true that what is in effect must have been in the cause; hence, non-life could not have produced life. Therefore, these two kinds of evolutionists have found an impassable gulf between the non-living and the living, on the assumption which they make: A living being did not cause the first form of life.

The hopelessness of the task of getting life from the non-living without the agency of a living being; i.e., without a creative act of God, forced Mr. Darwin and all Darwinian evolutionists to assume that God created at least one, at most a few, forms of the lowest plant life. Therefore, they had to have a God to pass this gulf; and thereafter, as it were, they mummified Him for all future times. But little good did that do them; they are equally helpless to bridge the next gulf, i.e., that which lies between the highest form of plant life and the lowest form of animal life, endowed with consciousness and locomotion. How could they overcome this great gulf? for which question they have no real answer.

Then comes the next puzzler: that which lies between the highest form of invertebrates to vertebrates. Here again, so far as a real answer is concerned, they are “dumb dogs that cannot bark”; “watchmen that are blind, ignorant, sleeping down, lying down.” (Isa. 56:10) However, their guttural growls are usually more or less audible.

Now we compare the highest form of marine invertebrates with amphibians. And here they are as helpless as on the previous points; for they cannot tell how fish, which do their breathing with water, could have changed to do it with air as well as water. Then comes the next question: How and why do amphibians develop into reptiles? Then comes the same question between reptiles and birds, and between reptiles or birds (they do not know which) and mammals. But the most unyielding of all obstacles for the evolutionists is that between the highest mammal and man – where Huxley admitted there was a gulf to pass whose passage he could not explain, calling it almost infinite.

The only rational explanation for any of the foregoing is an intelligent and purposeful Creator; and their failure to explain satisfactorily any one of the questions raised is a complete refutation in itself of evolution.

It would seem in order here also to consider the magnificent pageantry of the heavens. In Psa. 8:3-9 David says this: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him ... Thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep, and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea ... 0 Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.” It should be emphasized here that in all the centuries since records have been kept we find not one instance whether any of the great heavenly constellations have ever collided; it would seem there is some intelligent and powerful force guiding their movements.

Here we mention just a small incident which occurred some forty years ago. We went deep-sea fishing off the coast of Florida, and hooked a 90-inch sailfish. There was a 25-foot piano wire lead at the hook end of the line – to prevent a catch from snapping the fabric line. During the fight the fish jumped out of the water, attempting to dislodge the hook. In about five minutes the fish came to the surface, dead as a stone. The captain of the ship said he had drowned himself (which was indeed a surprising piece of news to us). How could a fish, who lived in the water all the time, drown himself? Well, he had lodged that piano-wire lead through his gill, which cut off his breathing; and he drowned – just as you and I would have done under similar circumstances. This also is a telling blow to evolution.

Each of the foregoing presents so many unexplainable differences, that it should discourage the boldest evolutionist; e.g., some of them claim that mammals are descended from some (unknown) reptiles, and birds from other (unknown) reptiles. But how did the first mammal get breasts, a four-chambered heart instead of the three-chambered heart of the reptile, hair, or fur or wool and a womb for developing young, all of which reptiles lack? How was the reptiles blood temperature raised from 40 degrees and in the extremist cases from 60 degrees to nearly 100 degrees in mammals? And from reptiles to birds, how was that same temperature raised to 107 degrees? How were wings and feathers developed? Evolutionists offer for this gulf two fossils of what they call the archaeopteryx, which was nothing but birds with abnormal tails and bills. Of real logical evidence they have not even one link, whereas millions would be required to fill up each of the above-mentioned eight gulfs. These eight genera, to say nothing of their three million species, say at each of their separating gulfs: “Thus far and no farther.”

Much more could be said about this subject, but we now close by offering a solemn indictment of it. It has had its vogue among “the intelligentsia,” though now among the leaders of science it is dead with many of them undergoing preparation for burial; but among the superficially educated and the shallow thinking it has worked, and will continue to work the direst of evils. It has made atheists, agnostics and infidels of many. It is demoralizing many of our youth, who by it are made to believe in their superiority to their elders and kinship to brutes; hence, their growing disrespect for law and order in the home, state, society and church, and their increased indulgence in the lower elements of their nature. From the thought of no God, no responsibility to law, no higher authority, no hereafter and a brute descent, it becomes but a natural step to youthful disrespect to religion and government, disobedience toward parents, immorality as to sex, drunkenness as to intoxicants, and a materialistic outlook on and practice in life. A generation of evolutionist professors and teachers has produced the moral, social and religious havoc that we behold in so many of our youth. The pessimism and brute instincts inculcated by evolution have in large part produced the collapse everywhere manifest in church and state and contributed largely to producing the World War, as it also does a large share in the work of leading the nations to Armageddon and World Anarchy. And when these shall have wrought their unexampled havoc on mankind, it will in great resentment arise and repudiate forever every feature of unbelieving evolution.

VARIOUS PROOFS: In the past hundred years or so evolutionists have made frenzied effort to prove their contention – to offset the devastating attacks that have been made upon it. In their activities they came upon three specimens which they claim upholds their teaching, these three particularly being the Piltdown, the Heidelberg and the Neanderthal Man. When we were in the colporteur work a college-graduate business man whom we accosted one day just sneered when we told him we had no confidence in the “proof” derived from these three distorted skulls.

Comes now in the April 1979 issue of a prominent newspaper some very damaging statements concerning the Piltdown Man, which we now quote:

‘PILTDOWN MAN’ – WHOSE APRIL FOOL’S JOKE OF 1912?

“New evidence concerning a most far-reaching April’s hoaxes in the history of science – the bogus ‘Piltdown Man’ – has stirred up a dispute in which some scientists are questioning the integrity of their own profession. The bones purporting to be the fossils of Piltdown Man began to be ‘discovered’ in 1912 in a gravel pit in the English County of Sussex. They were soon accepted by most scientists as the ‘missing link’ between apes and man, a link that had been postulated by the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin (It is now reported that toward his death Darwin himself repudiated much of his evolution tommyrot—JJH), the lawyer and amateur geologists who found them. The new species was named Eoanthropus Dawson, or Dawson’s Man.

“The fragments of two skulls found at the site suggested that the creature’s jawbone was similar to that of an ape, while its brain case was closer to that of modern man. Dawson turned up stone tools at the site as well as an object strikingly resembling a modern cricket bat, lending to Piltdown Man a peculiarly British character. Darwin’s monumental theory appeared to have been confirmed at one dramatic stroke, and the world recognized in Piltdown Man a discovery of the first magnitude. Dawson and his collaborator, the anthropologist Arthur Smith Woodward, achieved immediate fame.

“But in the 1920s real fossils of early man began to be discovered in Africa, and they were entirely different from the Piltdown bones. Their jaws were human and their brows simian – the reverse of the English fossils. Increasing numbers of the real fossils were found, and because none of them resembled Piltdown Man, doubts began to stir about the authenticity of Eoanthropus Dawson.

“In 1953, modern analysis, including dating techniques using the decay of radioactive carbon, were applied to the Piltdown fossils. Piltdown Man was finally and devastatingly proved to be a forgery in which human and simian bones had been skillfully blended and artificially aged. One of the three investigators who exposed the fraud, J. S. Weiner, described the achievement in a book, ‘The Piltdown Hoax.’ The circumstantial evidence indicated that the hoax had been perpetrated by Dawson himself, who died in 1916.

“All that was scandal enough and many scientists were angry and embarrassed that the scientific establishment could have been fooled so completely, and for so long. But just before his death last Fall, Dr. James A. Douglas, professor of geology at Oxford University from 1937 until 1950, made a tape recording in which he disclosed new and even more disturbing evidence. Douglas said he believed the Piltdown hoax had been perpetrated by his world-famous predecessor at Oxford, Professor W. J. Sollas, as a way of making an academic rival look ridiculous. The rival was Dawson’s collaborator, Smith Woodward.

“Douglas said that Sollas had assisted in an earlier hoax in which some schoolboys. presented to Smith Woodward a purportedly prehistoric drawing of a horse on a piece of bond. That hoax also fooled Smith Woodward, according to Douglas, and may have given Professor Sollas the idea for the much more elaborate Piltdown hoax, including the bogus prehistoric cricket bat.

“The report has prompted a lively and sometimes heated exchange in leading scientific journals. In a recent issue of the Journal “Nature” for example, L. B. Halstead, a University of Reading geologist, commented that the Piltdown hoax went far beyond a practical joke and deeply affected scientific, philosophical and even theological thinking. The scientific establishment found it easier to accept the idea that Dawson, a non-scientist, had acted alone, he said, preferring not to believe that one of its own respected members could do such a thing.

“Inferring the guilt of the amateur Dawson, is far the most acceptable to Scientists, Halstead said, ‘as it absolves the academic world from any involvement.’ ‘The other view is that Dawson was the scapegoat and the hoax was part of a conspiracy on the part of the scientists to delude the public in accepting the anti-religious idea of human evolution,’ he added. But while Halstead believes the scientific establishment has been proved by the Piltdown hoax to be vulnerable to criticism, his views are not shared by all scientists.

“Nature also published a letter from Weiner himself, discounting the evidence presented in Douglas’ tape recording, including Douglas’ recollection of 68 years ago of a packet of potassium bichromate, allegedly used by Sollas to stain the bone fragments and make them look old. One thing that the late Professor Douglas succeeded in doing, Weiner said, was adding a mystery of his own devising to the Piltdown saga – why should Douglas on such incredibly weak evidence take the trouble to besmirch Solla’s reputation.

“The debate continues, but those who had direct knowledge of the Piltdown hoax are now dead. The ultimate truth may never be known, but most interested scientists agree. But there is a nagging suspicion among some of them that the spirit of April’s Fool Day dies hard, and science may not have suffered its last stupendous hoax.”

BEECHER AND INGERSOLL

The renowned minister and preacher Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) – an ardent fundamentalist – is said to have been a close friend to Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), prominent agnostic, lawyer and lecturer. It needs no argument to visualize the elaborate controversies that often arose between the two; and we are told that on one occasion some one gave a very attractive global atlas to the preacher; and Ingersoll was warm in his praise as soon as he saw it. Who made it? he asked. Answered the preacher: No one; it just made itself. Of course, Ingersoll was crestfallen; but this is just another evidence that evolution cannot be proved.

Some of our readers will undoubtedly realize that much of what has been given herein has been borrowed from the writings of the Parousia and Epiphany Messengers; and it is our fond hope that this treatise on evolution will convince all of our readers of the shabby fallacy of evolution and to accept the truth on creation as it is contained in the inspired Word of God. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isa. 8:20) As our Lord tells us: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-31 – free from “science falsely so called”—l Tim. 6:20).

“Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all.” (2 Thes. 3:16)

Sincerely your brother, John J. Hoefle, Pilgrim

(Reprint No. 298. April 1980)

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LETTERS OF GENERAL INTEREST

Dear Sir:

I am engaged in a study of World Religions at the college I attend. Would it be possible to please send me some information regarding your organization? I would greatly appreciate your cooperation as I wish to come to a better understanding of your goals and objectives within society, distinctive doctrines which set you apart from other religions. I am also interested in why you think (if you do) that your belief is superior to the many represented in the World today. Why would I want to join your organization and not someone else’s?

Thank you for your time and I sincerely would appreciate your response in the near future.

Yours truly, ------- (CANADA)

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Dear Sister Hoefle: May God's healing Grace be working in you for your full recovery!

We are in good health considering our age. I dread writing letters. Poor writing, spelling and composition – and I hope this explains my delay in answering your letter.

My brother does not agree with us on many things – like the Trinity, the Kingdom and its purpose, the soul and the opportunity for all for salvation in due time.

Do you suppose that the waters that support Little and Great Babylon are being diverted at this time and will cause their destruction? The Vatican, PTL, Swaggart, Oral Roberts – all in the red.

I believe the Truth will make us free and destroy these man‑made institutions. How can they say "Praise the Lord," and still teach the doctrines that vilify His character of Perfect Justice, Wisdom, Love and Power?

I think your January issue represents a lot of work, and is full of information, comfort, hope and instruction.

Your brother, ------- (MICHIGAN)

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Dear Sirs:

Hello, I am a student and I am studying up on the different beliefs and religions that I see in our society today. I wonder if you could help me? In order to grasp the complete picture of what you believe, I need information. As much information as I possibly can get of your beliefs: books, writings, articles or whatever you can give me.

If you have found the key to living a full and meaningful life that we all are looking for, please share it with me. I would sincerely appreciate your help. Thank you very much.

Sincerely, ------- (CANADA)

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Dear Sister Emily: Peace and Blessing in Jesus' dear Name!

Thank you for your letter and also for a copy of the letter to Professor Wangshi. I think you wrote him a very good letter. I hope he likes the Pastor Russell book and will ask for the first volume.

I am thinking of how different the Ancient Worthies were. Samson was so different from Moses or John the Baptist. So perhaps there will be some of the Youthful Worthies who have done different types of work – but who maintain their faith in God and Christ.

With love and wishes for God's blessing to be with you and family. ------- (CALIFORNIA)

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