Again, we have found the word to teach that the Jewish age was given as a pattern, or shadow, or illustration of the Gospel age, and we have found it so. The latter being on a higher plane than the former, but otherwise its exact counterpart. It was 1840½ years from the beginning of the age to their harvest when Jesus was present in the flesh to that fleshly house. And it was 1841½ years from the commencement of our Gospel age at Pentecost (A.D. 33,) to the commencement of our “harvest” in the autumn of 1874, when our “sure word of prophecy” announces him as again present, but now on the higher plane, a spiritual body unseen, reaping, or harvesting the spiritual house.

To the fleshly house the harvest work was on the fleshly plane and the chief reaper, Jesus and the other reapers, His disciples, were seen. Now there are under reapers, also, but they are “the angels,” [Matt 13] also spiritual bodies unseen, and so with the afterpart of the harvest. As Jesus gave up the Nominal church at the close of his 3½ years ministry because they “knew not the time of their visitation” (the Lord’s presence), so here too, at the parallel point of time, 1878, we believe the Nominal church to have been given up, and the “spewing out of His mouth” [Rev 3] to have begun.

As the Jewish house was shown some special favor for 3½ years, the latter half of their covenant week so we expect some favor to continue with the Nominal Gospel church for 3½ years, or until the autumn of 1881.

As with the Jew, a period of 33 years of trouble followed these 7 years of favor, so we understand there will be upon Christendom, so called, a period of 33 years of trouble – making with the preceding 7 years the 40 years of trouble or “Day of wrath” ending with the times of the Gentiles in 1914, when the kingdom of God [soon to be set up or exalted to power] will have broken in pieces and consumed all earthly kingdoms.

The Pastor later revised this last as it was determined he had made an error in his assumption with regards to the gospel age harvest.

“We imagined that the harvest work of gathering the Church would be accomplished before the end of the Gentiles Times [A.D.1914]; but nothing in the Bible so said. Our thought was purely an inference, and now we see that it was an unjustified one.

For a more in depth explanation of this please see, The 40-year Harvest.

Q. Wonderfully clear all this seems and how connected; my loss has been in not having a thorough knowledge of these time evidences of which you speak. I must study them up and make them my own that, as Paul says my faith may not stand in the wisdom of men (in others, and in their faith and beliefs), but in the power of God – His word. (1 Cor 2:5.)

W. I am glad to hear you say so. In no other way can you fully make them yours, or have in them such a basis for faith. Remember as Peter says the word is to be a “lamp to our feet,” “a light shining in a dark place until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts.” It is evident then that no period of walking by sight comes to us here. We shall need the lamp all the way for “we walk by faith, not by sight.”

Q. It speaks elsewhere of the “Sun of Righteousness arising with healing in his wings.” When sunrise has come, we do not need lamps.

Does not this seem to indicate that we shall reach a condition whether by sight or not, where there will be no need of the light of “the lamp?” 

Does not this involve the thought of faith giving place to sight?

W. I think not. It is not we but the Jews who see the “Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings;” and they are told in connection with it to “remember the Law of Moses.” (Malachi 4.) On the contrary, we, with Jesus our head will constitute that “Sun of Righteousness,” as Jesus said (Matt 13:43) speaking of the “harvest” or end of this age, when the wheat of the church should be completely separated from the tares of the same: “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the Sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

It is the same thought that is expressed in Rev 21:24 of the New Jerusalem shining and the Nations walking in the light of it. Yes, it is a grand thought, that the day so long expected is near at hand. Not only natural Israel but as Paul says: “The whole creation groans and travails together in pain until now,” and “waits for the manifestation of the Sons of God.” (Rom 8:19 and 22). All are now passing through a dark night of experience with sin, woe and death; all creation is sick; they groan in pain and soon they shall be delivered. Soon the “Great Physician” – “the Elijah” – “The Sun of righteousness (the Christ, head and body) shall arise with healing in his wings.”

“Now the world is full of suffering,

Sounds of woe fall on my ears,

Sights of wretchedness and sorrow

Fill my eyes with pitying tears.

‘Tis the earth’s dark night of weeping,

Wrong and evil triumph now,

I can wait, for just before me

Beams the morning’s roseate glow.”

Yes, Brother Q., “when He shall appear we shall appear with Him in glory.” We will not be here when the “Sun” rises. True we are now in the dawn, but there is quite a while between first dawn of day and the Sun rise, and that is what Peter means. “We have a surer word of prophecy – as a light in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.” Jesus is the day star – “The bright and morning star.” He must come first to us before we shine with Him as “the sun.”

And, dear Brother Q., do you not see that this very thing is now being fulfilled?

To all who recognize Jesus as present it is a fountain of joy to realize in Him the sure forerunner of our own glory with Him, and the great millennial day of restitution for the world.

Q. I must confess Brother W., that your hope is the grandest to which mortals could aspire.

W. We could not aspire to such things. God has crowded these exceeding great and precious promises upon us; and while I urge that if interested in this great hope, you should make it yours, by personal investigation of the proofs, and yet let me suggest that the very object of our heavenly Father in giving us these exceeding great and precious promises, is “that by these you might be partakers of the Divine nature.” (2 Pet 1:4.) If we have put on Christ, let us walk in Him, and walk not after our own will, but according to the will of our head, Christ Jesus.” R122