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Epiphany Truth Examiner

RIGHT-EYE DARKENING

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MERARIISM
CHAPTER IV

RIGHT-EYE DARKENING

COURT—TYPE AND ANTITYPE. VIEWS AND REVIEWS. POUNDS AND TALENTS. MORE RIGHT-EYE DARKENING. MORE RIGHT-EYE DARKENING. STILL MORE RIGHT-EYE DARKENING. 

TRUTH is progressive; error is digressive. Our Pastor's writings are an illustration of the former, and J.F.R.'s of the latter thought. Step by step the former advanced into more light as the Day was approaching; step by step the latter turns aside as the night of his darkness deepens. Little by little and more and more the latter sees darkness for light; and alas! his adherents, forgetting the Scriptural, logical and factual presentations of our dear Pastor, in their "worship of angels," in the person of J.F.R., bow down to him in accepting without proper study that which he gives them as alleged advancing light. In Z '20, 99-104, J.F.R. made a plea for "Peace." In answering him we told the conditions on which we could have peace again. We also reminded him, in reply to his saying in that article that there was no cause for controversy, that so long as he continued writing against our Pastor's presentations there could be no peace. We will not be silent, while he is seeking to corrupt the faith once delivered to the saints. In his plea for "peace" he reminds us of a certain recent Emperor who addressed an exhortation on peace to a neighboring king, while invading the territories and killing the subjects of the latter! If he wants peace, let him make it possible for us to "dwell in peace." 

His methods with the subject matter of the article entitled, The Court - Type and Antitype, in the June 1, 1920, Tower, which we will here review, are characteristically Rutherfordian. As he did with his "New View" on antitypical Elijah becoming Elisha so 

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we are reliably informed he did with his "New View" on the Court and its Gate: first in a private way (2 Pet. 2:1) he circulated it by word of mouth and by correspondence; then he used the pilgrims further to inoculate with it the churches, himself claiming that our Pastor gave up Tentative Justification. Then finally he came out with it in the Tower. For months our correspondence has shown us what he was teaching on this subject; but we decided to wait until he would state his view in print before we would discuss this, another "New View" of his. And there will be more of his "New Views" coming out as he goes into deeper darkness. Knowing from Scripture that he would repudiate one truth after another until his understanding of his pet theories of God's Word would be utterly darkened, we knew that we would not wait in vain for him to give his "darkness" on the Tabernacle for "light"; and true enough, the June 1, 1920, Tower contains his confusion on the Tabernacle. He actually offers that which flatly contradicts our Pastor's view on the subject as a progressive development of that Servant's thought! From such progress may the dear Lord deliver us! 

Another matter should be brought to our readers' attention: the narrow, shallow and contracted use of the Scriptures that he makes on this subject. He quotes some Scriptures, it is true, but not one that proves or even treats of his main point of contention: that the gate of the Court represents Consecration, and the Court, Vitalized justification only; while the Scriptures that disprove this point he ignores. He claims that the Scriptures do not teach these doctrines taught by our Pastor, against which he writes. We rejoice that as yet he has not lost the Truth on the Holy and Most Holy, though he has lost a part of the Truth on the court, and though we know Scripturally that he will become confused on the entire tabernacle. Nor do we entirely disagree with him on the court; 

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he is half right on the court, but only half right. What he says on the court as representing the justified condition is true enough as far as it goes. But he sees only one phase of its justification picture, i.e., its vitalized phase. He is blind on its tentative aspect; hence he gives a one-sided and therefore a misleading setting to the entire subject. His claim that the Scriptures do not teach Tentative justification is an untrue and brazen assertion contrary to many Scriptures. Let him as inapplicable to the Gospel Age try to read Tentative Justification out of Rom. 4, especially verses 3-12, if he can! If he attempts it, he will find his teeth biting on granite! The fundamental error of the article under review, as in the case of his article on "Worthies—Ancient and Modern," is his denial of Tentative Justification as operative during the Gospel Age. Indeed, the only reason for his article appearing seems to be to undermine confidence in our Pastor's teaching on Tentative Justification. And to maintain his evident error, the tabernacle teachings must be twisted and distorted. It is unnecessary for us to treat further of Tentative Justification. We refer our readers to our brief discussion of that subject in Vol. IV, Chap. V. We refer to the matter here in order to emphasize the fact that J.F.R.'s error on Tentative Justification is causing him to be confused on many Scriptural subjects, among others, on some of the symbolisms of the court and its gate. If we remember the foundation error of the article under review, we will have no difficulty in seeing that his superstructure must also be false. 

We call attention to the opening sentence of his article: "Question: On the typical day of atonement [italics ours] what did the court of the tabernacle and its furnishings represent, or picture?" Then he assumes that the day of atonement types the Gospel Age only—despite our Pastor's later and more logical thought that it types both the Gospel Age and the 

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Millennial Age—the Gospel Age, in the acts up to and including Aaron's taking off his sacrificial garments; the Millennial Age from then on. (What Pastor Russell Said, 26, 27.) His later thought is doubtless correct, since the At-one-ment work includes the work of both Ages. J.F.R. then treats of the services of Lev. 8 and 9, as if they were performed on the Day of Atonement. Then he ignores other types that occur at other times than on the Day of Atonement, and that give us views of the things antitypical of the atonement sacrificings and other servings of the Gospel Age. He seems to think that only those tabernacle services that occurred on the Day of Atonement type Gospel-Age matters, ignoring the fact that the transactions connected with the tabernacle in the book of Numbers, and not a few in Leviticus that did not occur on the Day of Atonement, type Gospel-Age matters, as can readily be seen from 1 Cor. 10:1-14; Heb. 3:2—4:3, and from Lev. 8; 9; 10; 4:3-12, etc. Despite his question, to prove his claim that under-priests were in the Court on the Day of Atonement he is forced to leave the chapter that gives the service of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), and betake himself to two that treat of the service occurring in the Spring of the year (Lev. 8 and 9) at the consecration of the priests (Lev. 8) and at the installation (Lev. 9) of the high priest. On the Day of Atonement in the type, not only was Aaron the only person in the Holy, but he was the only person in the Court. The reason for this is very apparent: On that day he represented the World's High Priest—(1) in sacrificing the bullock, he represented the Head of the World's High Priest, and (2) in sacrificing the Lord's goat and in the rest of the service of that day, he represented the World's High Priest, Head and Body, as the Apostle Paul clearly teaches (Heb. 7:26, 27; 13:11-14; 10:4-10, 19). Hence it would have contradicted the viewpoint of the antitype, the oneness 

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of this High Priest, for Aaron's sons to have been in the court on the Atonement Day. The purpose of that picture is to type exclusively the work of the World's High Priest. Hence no one else than Aaron could have been in any part of the sacred enclosure on that day. How out of all reason it is for J.F.R. to conclude that, since no Levites were mentioned as being in the court that day, nobody but priests could be in the antitypical Court during the Gospel Age! Unless he views the purpose of Lev. 16 as just given, his way of reasoning logically excludes the Church from the antitypical Court during the Gospel Age. What is the difficulty with his teaching on this point? It takes only one type figuring forth limited Gospel and Millennial-Age conditions, and treats that one type as though it were all there is to the subject; yet he is forced to put the types of Lev. 8 and 9 in the typical Atonement Day picture to make his theory seem plausible, utterly ignoring other Scriptures that type antitypical Levites as being in the antitypical Court during the Gospel Age (Num. 8:22; 4:15, 25-28, 31-33; 1:51; 10:17, 21; Lev. 10:4, 5; Heb. 3:7–4:3). 

While professedly answering a question that pertains to the Atonement Day alone, as his opening sentence implies, to prove that Aaron's sons were in the court on the Day of Atonement he has recourse to the service of Lev. 8 and 9, which occurred in the Spring, and not on the Day of Atonement, which was in the Fall. While it is true that these chapters type certain phases of the Gospel, as well as certain phases of the Millennial-Age work, they do not refer to the typical atonement day service. He uses them, however, as though they did. Why? Because, impliedly, he wishes to seem to prove the point necessary to his proposition, that all the priests, but no Levites, were in the court on the atonement day; and that hence none but priests could be in the Antitypical Court during the Gospel Age! The very fact that he is 

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forced to leave the day of atonement chapter to find a supposed argument for his point shows that he cannot prove it from the atonement day service. Had he in addition to his first step taken a second step away from the day of atonement service, and entered Lev. 10:4, 5, he would have been faced with a type that disproves his implied contention and claim that in the Gospel Age Priests only are in the Court. 

Having pointed out the two main defects of the article under review, i.e., its basal error—the denial of Tentative Justification and its one-sided and universal emphasis on one limited picture, while ignoring other pertinent pictures which contradict his proposition, we will now discuss other features of the subject which will help us to see through others of his sophistries. He is fairly clear on the meaning of the term "outside the camp," and "the camp." We will, however, give on these a few explanations that he fails to give, and that will help us better to see the subjects, from which vantage point we will then be able better to see through his fallacies on the court and its gate. Hebrews 13:11-14 is very illuminating on what is meant by the expression "without the camp." It shows that the expression means a condition in which one is as an outcast from among, and in disfavor with God's rebellious nominal people. There are two figures in this text: the camp of the wilderness and the city of Jerusalem. These pictures correspond as follows: The temple and the tabernacle correspond; the camp about the tabernacle and the houses of the city about the temple correspond; the wall of the city and the last circuit of the camp's tents correspond; and the expressions "without the gate" and "without the camp" correspond. V. 13 shows that for the faithful to be, "without the camp" implies that they to a completion undergo from the rebellious nominal people of God the reproaches that the Christ class receives. Just as Jesus' death outside the gate 

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symbolized that He was in disfavor with, and an outcast from the rebellious nominal Jewish commonwealth, so St. Paul exhorted the Lord's saints to such faithfulness as would give them the same experience at the hands of the same class of people, explaining that we have here no religious commonwealth (city) with which we are in harmony. (V. 14.) Jesus shows the same thought in John 15:18–19:42. Hence we conclude that as "outside the Camp" means a condition of disfavor with, and rejection from among the rebellious nominal people of God, the camp means, as the above passages imply, the rebellious nominal people of God who, while desiring some relation to God, do not desire it sufficiently to be approved by Him, even for fellowship with Him. In the Harvest of the Jewish Age they were the about-to-be-rejected or the rejected house of Israel. During the Gospel Age they have been those professed Christians that have not heartily repented toward God and heartily exercised faith toward Jesus, or those who have not remained in these conditions of heart and mind, though desiring some fellowship with God, i.e.; those who have not even been tentatively justified, or those who did not retain Tentative Justification, though loud in their professions. The fact that all Israelites of the camp who left Egypt at the age of 20 years and upwards, except Joshua and Caleb, died in the wilderness under God's disapproval (Heb. 3:7–4:2) demonstrates that the camp represents, for the Gospel Age, those rebellious nominal people of God who, though desiring some harmony with God, either never attain or else cease to retain even Tentative Justification, i.e., in the finished picture, those who are less than tentatively justified. In the Millennium the antitypical Camp will be the world of mankind, more or less desiring harmony with God, but not yet by works justified. We suggest that the brethren read our Pastor's article on the subject in Z '10, 150. We likewise suggest that the dear ones read "that Servant's" 

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articles treating of Tentative and Vitalized Justification, as follows: Z '10, 93, col. 2, pars. 3-6; 246, col. 2, pars. 1-4; Z '11, 394; Z '12, 152, col. 2, par. 4; Z '13, 92-94; Z '14, 67; Z '15, 103, 104; 292, 293; Z.'16, 281; Foreword of Vol. VI, iii, iv. In these we will see his continued progress in the light, and a complete refutation of another "new view" of J.F.R. 

Having seen what is represented by the conditions implied in the expression, "without the camp" and "the camp," we are better prepared to see what the court represents In seeking a definition of its antitype during the Gospel Age, we must have one that embraces every class that according to the Bible is in the antitypical Court during the Gospel Age. To define and explain what the court types in such a way as to exclude therefrom a class which the Bible teaches has been during the Gospel Age in the antitypical Court is manifestly incorrect. In harmony with our Pastor's definition, to define the court as representing the justified condition, in contrast with the unjustified condition of the Camp, and the sanctified condition of the Holy, is correct. But if we then proceed to explain, as J.F.R does, that the justified condition means exclusively what our Pastor called the vitalizedly justified condition, and exclude what he meant by the tentatively justified condition, we err; for the Bible teaches that the tentatively justified condition as well as the vitalizedly justified condition is represented in the antitypical Court during the Gospel Age. We will give three proofs for this: (1) Rev. 11:2 is a passage to the point: "The Court which is without the Sanctuary … is given to the [emphatic in the Greek, i.e., the special class among the Symbolic] Gentiles" (I. V.). According to the Bible a symbolic Jew is a consecrated person (Rom. 2:28, 29; John 1:47); and a symbolic Gentile, a symbolic non-Jew, therefore, is one that is unconsecrated (Rev. 2:9; 3:9). Hence by the Gentiles of Rev. 11:2 certain, but not all, 

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unconsecrated persons are meant. Therefore they must be meant who are the tentatively justified; for they, though unconsecrated, have been in the antitypical Court during the Gospel Age, according to this verse as certainly unbelieving Gentiles cannot here be meant to be in the Court. This is very manifest, too when we realize that circumcision types consecration, and uncircumcision types the unconsecrated condition, whether tentatively justified, or not even tentatively justified (Col. 2:11, 12; Gen. 17:10, 11, 14; Rom. 4:11, 12). Rev. 11:2 assures us that the symbolic Gentiles would be in the antitypical Court. The verse therefore means that while no unconsecrated person would come into the antitypical sanctuary, the antitypical Holy, the place of sanctified ones—the special class among the unconsecrated, the Justified, would be in the enclosure outside of the antitypical Holy, i.e., in the antitypical Court. J.F.R.'s theory denying this fact must be wrong. His view is too narrow, contracted and shallow to take in all the pertinent facts and verses of the Bible; therefore he is in error on the point. (2) In Ezek. 9:7 we are shown that those who are in the Court are wholly different persons from those in the Holy; hence the tentatively justified are meant by them. For details on this point, please see Vol. V, Chap. II, in those parts that treat of the slaughter weapons. (3) The thought that our Pastor repeatedly proved, and that we proved in very many articles, is also to the point, i.e., that as there was no Great Company as such until the end of the Age, the Levites in the Court before the end of the Age must be the Tentatively Justified (Num. 8:22; 4:15, 25-28, 31-33; 1:51; 10:17, 21; Lev. 10:4, 5; comp. Heb. 3:7–4:3). These three considerations prove our Pastor's view that the court represents the justified condition, either tentative or vitalized. Hence J.F.R.'s view of the antitype of the court is only half true; and because of his one-sided denial that it types a tentatively

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justified condition, his article is defending an error by a one-sided and antithetical emphasis placed upon a half-truth, a most sophistical procedure. 

Something ought to be said of his oft repeated remark that one is either justified or he is not justified. This statement as it stands is true enough; yet he uses it to teach an error; for he uses it to deny Tentative Justification. To make his statement teach the full Truth we correct it as follows. One is either vitalizedly justified or he is not vitalizedly justified. One is either tentatively justified or he is not tentatively justified. It would be wrong, however, to say, as he implies by his use of the statement, that if one is not vitalizedly justified, he is in no sense justified; for many people have been tentatively justified that have not had their tentative justification vitalized (2 Cor. 6:1). Of course we do not claim that the tentatively justified are fully, i.e., vitalizedly, justified; for the very term tentative implies that they are not. Nevertheless for the purpose of a temporary experiment for the advancement and help of the persons concerned to consecration, God temporarily reckons the faith of truly repentant and believing sinners as righteousness (Rom. 4:3-8, etc.), and treats them temporarily as though Christ's righteousness were imputed to them (Rom. 10:4). The same thing applies to the symbolisms of the court-posts, hooks and curtains. On the one hand, temporarily, the posts truly represent the tentatively justified, who are truly (silver hooks) holding tentatively to the righteousness of Christ; on the other hand, they truly represent the vitalizedly justified, who truly (silver hooks) are holding vitalizedly to the righteousness of Christ. "It is not a camouflage, not a subterfuge," in either case; but in each case the exact thought symbolized must be kept in mind. It is because J.F.R. fails to see both facts that he can see only "a camouflage;" "a subterfuge," in what the Lord tells us as a verity (Rom. 4:3-8 and Rom. 10:4) of 

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the tentatively justified by faith, truly, though tentatively, holding to Christ's righteousness. We appeal to the experience of all the brethren, before their consecration and after acceptance of Christ as their Savior, as a proof that they truly held to Christ as their Righteousness, even though they did not understand it thoroughly. It is a fact of experience of which we can all testify, except those who like our Pastor consecrated at a time immemorial. 

This, another "New View" of J.F.R., is defective in a further respect: It does not allow for any symbolization of that condition in which unconsecrated believers are—a condition by far more important than that typed by the Camp. His view of the Camp gives the condition of those who are not even tentatively justified—among the tents, that of the impenitent; between the tents and the gate, that of the penitent; both conditions being outside the Court; his Court, the vitalizedly justified condition; his Holy, the spirit-begotten condition; and his Most Holy, the spirit-born condition. But he has no place for the tentatively justified condition. One's journey from the Camp to the Gate cannot at any stage represent a real faith in Christ as Savior, inasmuch as the Court curtain represents things connected with faith—the outside of it a "wall as unbelief" in Christ's righteousness to those outside, the inside of it a "wall of faith" in Christ's righteousness to those inside. Where is the faith that is both counted for righteousness, and that is tentatively holding to Christ's righteousness referred to in Rom. 4:3-25 and Rom. 10:4, represented in the tabernacle, if not in the act of the Levites' passing through the gate? At the antitypical Gate there is a consecration to righteousness on the part of the repentant and believing sinner (Num. 8:13-15): but not to sacrifice, which is symbolized at the first veil (Matt. 7:14; 2 Cor. 3:13-18). The twofold application of Num. 8:6-22 is very manifest. The tentatively justified

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are tentatively the firstborn, though of course they are not the firstborn in the finished picture in the end of the Age. Throughout the Gospel Age, in the tentatively justified, this passage has been antityping in a tentative manner; and now in the Great Company it is also antityping in a vitalized manner, even as in various descriptions from Num. 1:47 onward we find the twofold picture. Of course the service of Num. 8:6-22 cannot represent the consecration unto death that every individual who will find himself in the Great Company made when he came into Christ; for such a consecration is pictured in Lev. 8. As in the case of the tentatively justified, so it represents for the Great Company their consecration to the righteous service of the Sanctuary. Hence everything is clear, if we view matters as did our dear Pastor, but not so, if we view matters as J.F.R. does. The fact that his "new view" allows for no symbolization for the tentatively justified condition is one of its fatal defects. 

Another consideration that refutes J.F.R.'s "New View" on the court and the gate: his view leaves out of consideration the fact that one must progress from the Gate of the Court to the Door of the Tabernacle. He concedes that antitypically there is progress necessary in going from the Camp to the Gate of the Court. He will doubtless admit that antitypically there is progress necessary in going from the First Veil to the Second Veil. He will also doubtless admit that antitypically there is progress in honor and service necessary in arising from under the Second Veil, advancing to the Mercy Seat and sprinkling the blood; for these steps imply the first resurrection, ascension, glorification and ministration. Hence we should expect that there is, as our Pastor repeatedly showed, progress in going from the Gate of the antitypical Court to the antitypical First Veil. But J.F.R.'s "new view" makes one arrive at both stations at one step! This is even a more wonderful feat than that supposedly performed by the 

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fabled man who is said to have worn boots enabling him to take steps of seven leagues each! Since his proposition involves the denial of progress from the antitypical Gate to the antitypical First Veil, we ask him why this should be, since it contradicts the idea of progress implied in every other stage of Tabernacle symbolisms? Let him give us Scriptural, reasonable and factual proof, for so extraordinary a claim. Surely we could not accept his error, i.e., the denial of Tentative Justification, as a proof for his more than seven-league-boots proposition! Yet he offers nothing else than this. 

This leads us to criticize his partially blundering explanation of the steps from the Camp to the Most Holy. He gives them as follows: "(1) Seeking harmony with God; (2) being drawn to Christ; (3) consecration; (4) imputation of the merit of Christ and the presentation by the High Priest to Jehovah pictured at the door of the Tabernacle; (5) acceptance and Justification by Jehovah (6) Spirit-begetting to Sonship; [italics ours] (7) Spirit-birth." We have italicized the main words that are in confusion and disorder. By the words, being drawn to Christ, he uses an ambiguous expression. Did he mean by it "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ"? Then why not state it clearly? Would it not suggest the real Gate scene? Justification by Jehovah follows immediately on the imputation of Jesus' merit, before Jesus presents us to the Father, otherwise we would be unacceptable as gifts and sacrifices (Heb. 5:1). Again, Jehovah's acceptance and the Spirit-begettal are one and the same thing: He accepts us by the begettal of the Spirit. In contrast with the above faulty, and in part ambiguous, enumeration of the steps taken in starting from the Camp until one's ministry in the Most Holy we offer the following: (1) "Repentance toward God," i.e., progress from one's place in the antitypical Camp to a place just outside the antitypical Gate; (2) "Faith

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toward our Lord Jesus Christ," i.e., passing through the antitypical Gate, which puts one into Tentative Justification; (3) knowledge and appreciation of, and growth in harmony with the righteousness of Christ—the antitypical Brazen Altar; (4) cleansing from filthiness of flesh and spirit, represented at the antitypical Layer; (5) consecration by the individual and presentation by the High Priest at the antitypical First Veil; (imputation by Christ and full (vitalized) Justification by the Father occur in the Most Holy; and in time occur between one's consecration and Jesus' presentation of him to the Father as a gift). (6) Spirit-begotten condition, beginning with the begettal, progressing through enlightenment at the antitypical Candlestick, through strengthening in every good word and work at the antitypical Table, through sacrificing at the antitypical Golden Altar, and through perfecting by suffering, unto the antitypical Second Veil; (7) Spirit-born condition, progressing in the First Resurrection, Ascension, Glorification and Ministration. 

J.F.R. (Z '20, 167, par. 7) makes some quotations from T and A that he well knows our Pastor did not mean as he seeks to wrest them. Worse still, at the end of his article he quotes Z '16, 281, par. 2, which treats of Vitalized Justification, as a corroboration of his "new view" stated in a way to contain a denial of Tentative Justification, ignoring the fact that the preceding paragraph approves of Tentative—incomplete—Justification, as well as Vitalized—complete—Justification, and further, ignoring the fact that the following four paragraphs discuss and approve of Tentative Justification. What does this Lawyer mean by such brazen jugglery? We think that the Society adherents must face their individual responsibility toward God as to him. If they continue to allow him to misteach and mismanage as they have done, the Lord will hold them answerable to the extent that they might have changed, but did not change these conditions. We trust, however, 

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that they will see their privilege and duty to handle him as an unruly person should be handled (1 Thes. 5:14). The Lord will withhold marked blessing from the Society, until he is removed from his position as teacher and executive. Our dear Pastor wrote (Z '16, 174, par. 1), just four years before J.F.R.'s, attempted refutation, that nobody has been able to refute the setting that he has given to "the Plan" as set forth in Tabernacle Shadows (Is. 54:17). J.F.R. and his co-editors may think they have, but they have not; for among the conspicuous failures that they have made in attempting to refute various of our dear Pastor's teachings, we have above proven that a position in the forefront of such failures belongs to his article in the June 1, 1920, Tower, entitled, "The Court—Type and Antitype," just reviewed. 

It is now some months [written Sep., 1923] since we have written anything on Society conditions. During this time a number of things have marked Society activities and teachings that call for attention. Some of these things are quite praiseworthy, and for them we rejoice and offer our praise—we wish that in every particular matters were praiseworthy. It is surely a praiseworthy matter that the Society has issued all of our Pastor's Towers, in the Tower Reprints. All true lovers and admirers of his must appreciate and feel thankful for having all his Towers brought within their reach; and certainly they have been provided at a very reasonable rate. We, of course, cannot bestow such unstinted praise upon a part of the Reprints—about 2½ years' numbers—that have been written since our Pastor's death. It would be expecting too much of a work published under J.F.R.'s control to think that he would not see to it that the Index of Topics was juggled to favor his errors. This can be seen from the way the Topical Index treats Tentative justification, the Levites, and the Modern (Youthful) Worthies. Under Justification, Tentative, 

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references are given to it as treated by our Pastor up to 1913, and from then on no references to it are given. This, of course, would be in line with J.F.R.'s false statement that our Pastor gave up belief in that doctrine some time before his death. We wrote into the index the Tower references to it up to and including that in the September 15, 1916, Tower as these are given above. Under the topic Levites, in the interests of J.F.R.'s pertinent error, no references at all are given to the Gospel-Age Levites—the tentatively justified! Under Modern Worthies, only one reference is given, and that to a 1918 Tower, published two years after our Pastor's death, and quoting from him on the subject without the Index indicating that fact. We added two references as follows: 4836:2-5 [Z '11, 181, pars. 2-10]; 5761:7, 8 [Z '15, 269, pars. 11, 12]. These examples, among others, are given to caution the brethren that the Topical Index is juggled in the interests of J.F.R.'s errors. Of course, the Index is given a Society bias on events, persons, works, etc., since 1917. We desire to express pleasure, also, that the Tower is defending our Pastor's chronology on the Times of the Gentiles (though deviating from it on the dates of the beginning and end of the Harvest and on 1925), as against the Pastoral Bible Institute, which is teaching error on almost every line of our Pastor's chronology. The case of F. H. Robison, one of The Tower editors, calls here for a brief remark. From his published letter and type-written articles, we learned that his errors were on the Parables of the Kingdom and on Revelation, on which things he is accepting and spreading errors that he learned from a Nominal Church theologian, a Foolish Virgin, named Dr. Bullinger. The far-fetched points that F. H. Robison adduces to prove that the Revelation refers to Fleshly and not to a Spiritual Israel and applies exclusively to the end of the Age—the Apocalypse or Epiphany—and not to the entire Age, are characteristic

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of the confusion of Nominal-Church views, into which unfortunately he has allowed himself to fall His course as one of the chief Tower editors (the three who live at Bethel are doubtless the most influential editors) is, however, one of the best refutations of the newly developed doctrine of the Society as "the channel"; for he shows that for years he neither believed Brother Russell nor the Society to be "that Servant"—the channel. Query: How could he agree to articles claiming those thoughts and appearing in the Tower? His letter proves him to have been acting the hypocrite for years as to the Society's views on the subject. If a part of the so-called "channel" thought and acted hypocritically, this is likely true of the rest (Matt. 24:51), and how could such a so-called "channel" be the real "channel," i.e., "that Servant"? 

In F. H. Robison's published letter he makes the extraordinary statement, as a matter of general acceptance and self-evidence in Society quarters, that the Bethel Home is J.F.R.'s private property, as president of the People's Pulpit Association, basing the thought on the clause which says that the President of the Association who shall be elected at its first meeting would hold office for life and control all the business and affairs of that Society. J. F. R told us that the charter of the People's Pulpit Association was made so to read for the express purpose of preventing the control of the work from being gotten and exercised by some one else than Brother Russell. This fact as well as the wording of the clause itself proves that the controllership was intended for but one person, and not for his successor in that office after his death; for it; expressly stipulates that the President of whom it treated must be elected at the first meeting of the Board. Hence that clause on the President refers and was intended to refer to but one person—Brother Russell, who was elected President at the first meeting of the Board. Only one person could be and was 

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elected President at the first meeting of the Board; hence the clause referring to the powers of the President as controller applies and was intended to apply to the first President only. This matter is so clear as to be self-evident to those who know of Brother Russell's unique place in the Lord's work at the end of the Age. But it was in harmony with J.F.R.'s course of usurpation to take to himself the powers intended for the People's Pulpit Association's first President alone. However, conceding merely for argument's sake that subsequent presidents should according to the charter have such controllership, it by no means would follow that the properties held under the name of that Association were its President's private property, as is held at Bethel; for in such a case he could sell it at pleasure without the consent of the Board, or could by Will bequeath it to others without the consent of the Board. Hence the sophistry of the whole position. For our part we have good reason for believing that it is illegal in New York for a Corporation's president to hold office for life, and just because he is president to control all the business affairs and property of a New York Corporation. Such controllership the laws of New York do not permit to be vested in a corporation's president as such. The People's Pulpit Association's charter is in this clause illegal. 

This fact suggests another matter on which we offer some interesting information to the brethren: the law of Pennsylvania to which J.F.R. appealed as requiring the annual election of Directors (which construction of that law he threw to the winds in 1920, as to both Society Directors and Officers) expressly states that it is not retroactive, and hence does not apply to such corporations as were previously chartered with the privileges of electing Directors for longer terms. Therefore the Charter of the Society, having been granted before that law was enacted, did not in the point just referred to become illegal by the passage of

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that law. Hence the ousted Directors were legal directors and were ousted in gross violation of the law of Pennsylvania. Both Divine and human law forbade J.F.R.'s course toward the four Directors. 

In Z '21, 286, in answer to a question as to what merit atones for our wilful and partially wilful sins committed before our consecration, the Tower teaches that Jesus' merit atones for such sins. Such an answer is a gross doctrinal error. Jesus' merit atones for Adam's sin, which was totally wilful, and all sins that result from Adam's sin, i.e., all sins of weakness and ignorance. It does not atone for any wilful or partially wilful sins whatsoever in Adam's descendants. None of us before consecration can commit a totally wilful sin as distinct from a partially wilful sin; for a totally wilful sin can be committed by those only who are on trial for life. Each individual of the Church must by stripes expiate the partial wilfulness of his sins committed before consecration. In the very nature of the case he must rid his character of the partial wilfulness in the sin before he can consecrate; for consecration implies the surrender of every measure of wilfulness and the acceptance of the Lord's will. We would therefore say that expiation for the part that is wilful in any sin is made by stripes before the person consecrates, and thus he has a clean slate when he receives the imputation of Jesus' merit for his Adamic sins. 

Considerable excitement was raised among the Society brethren by the statement in the Tower that there were more Apostles than The Twelve, and that St. Paul did not take Judas' place as one of The Twelve. The root of the difficulty is due to the Tower Editors failing to recognize that the Greek word apostolos has different meanings, i.e., a general meaning and a special, or technical, meaning. Its general meaning is messenger, and as such it can apply to any one and every one who is used as a messenger—one sent forth

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with any order or on any mission. The New Testament uses this word in both the above senses. Clear examples of the general sense can be seen—among other passages, in 2 Cor. 8:23; Phil. 2:25. In these passages the persons mentioned were messengers—apostles—of certain churches—not of God or of Christ; for they were sent forth by the vote of these churches on certain missions. Sts. Paul and Barnabas are in Acts 14:4, 14 called apostles in this same general sense, because they were sent out on their missionary journey by the church at Antioch as its missionaries—messengers. The word apostles is not used in 2 Cor. 8:23; Phil. 2:25; Acts 14:4, 14 in its special, or technical, but in its general sense—that of a messenger—one sent out on a mission. In the special, or technical sense, the Greek word apostolos is applicable to a special class of twelve, and only twelve, distinct men, who as messengers of God and Christ acted as their plenipotentiaries in the founding, teaching and upbuilding of the entire Church. As such they had to be eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection, and had to be endowed with inspiration and infallibility in all their teachings, and with the power of working miracles and bestowing the gifts of the Spirit. None others than these Twelve were given all these powers. Therefore, since St. Paul had all these powers, and that in a higher measure than any others of "The Twelve," he must have been one of them, as repeatedly he compares himself with the remainder of "The Twelve," showing that in no way was he inferior to any of them. 

That Matthias was counted one of "The Twelve" was due to the fact that fallible and mistaken men regarded him as such. Christ alone had the right to choose "The Twelve" (John 15:16), even as only Jacob, as His type, had the right to beget his children, as their types. Hence the Apostles and the Church, even after Pentecost, would have had no more right to choose an Apostle, as one of "The Twelve," than certain

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of Jacob's sons, the Apostles' types, and their descendants, types of the Church, would have had the right to beget a son for Jacob. Therefore the choosing of Matthias by the Spirit-lacking, uninspired and unauthorized eleven Apostles and 109 other brethren (Acts 1:15-26) was entirely null and void. St. Luke's not expressly correcting in the Acts their busybodying was likely due to the fact that writing largely as St. Paul's amanuensis, St. Paul himself in Galatians and 2 Corinthians having already sufficiently proved that he was one of "The Twelve," it would seem too much like "rubbing it in" on St. Luke's superiors and the Church for the correction to have been made in the book of Acts. The use of the expression, "The Twelve," in Acts 6:2 no more proves that Matthias was by St. Luke regarded as being one of the Twelve Apostles than St. Paul's telling us (1 Cor. 15:5, compare John 20:24-26) that Jesus (eight days after His resurrection), when there were but eleven Apostles, appeared to "The Twelve," means that there were then twelve Apostles. In both cases we are to consider that the whole of the Apostolic band then existing is called by the name—"The Twelve"—that designated them as a class, or a body. If, e.g., four of the Apostles had died, it would have been right from this standpoint to speak of a meeting of the remaining eight as a meeting of "The Twelve"; for in such a case the whole of the class, the whole of the body that was called "The Twelve," then living, would be meeting, even as a similar use is made of the term "seventy" (Num. 11:24, 25), though applying to but 68 of the 70 (Num. 11:26-30). From the same standpoint the expression, "Peter standing up with the eleven," is to be understood; for that expression is equivalent to the expression, "The Twelve," and as in the other cases just mentioned applies to the whole body of the Apostles as such, even if one or more of them were absent by reason of death or cutting off from the Apostolate. 

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The Tower claims that 1 Cor. 4:4-9 proves that Apollos is called an Apostle. This statement is certainly not true. The expression in verse 9, "us, the Apostles, last," proves that "The Twelve" are meant, and also proves that St. Paul was one of them. If St. Paul and Apollos were meant by that expression in verse 9, it would read, us Apostles, two of the last. Especially the article "the" before the word Apostles, and less especially the adjective "last," after the word "Apostles," prove grammatically that "The Twelve" are meant. Nor do 1 Thes. 1:1 and 2:6 call Silvanus and Timothy Apostles. Rather, St. Paul says that he and they might have been of weight among the Thessalonians, just as "The Twelve" could be, the reason being that St. Paul was one of "The Twelve" and the other two acted as his representatives. In other words, the expression, "as the Apostles of Christ," is not in verse 6 definitive of and restrictive to Sts. Paul, Timothy and Silvanus, i.e., as meaning these three, but is comparative of them with "The Twelve," of whom St. Paul was one, and as such used the other two as his representatives. The thought would be clear as such if stated as follows: We might have been burdensome (of dignity or weight) as the Apostles of Christ are burdensome—of dignity or weight. The Tower's question as to whether the spirit of discernment that enabled St. Peter to detect the fraud of Ananias and Sapphira could not have detected a spurious Apostle is beside the mark. Of course it could, had it been the Lord's will to reveal such a thing to St. Peter; but the Lord willed otherwise. Hence St. Peter, though able to detect the one, was not able to detect the other. Doubtless, among other reasons, the Lord withheld knowledge on this matter as a test on the whole Church, including the Apostles, as subsequent events abundantly prove. When The Tower says that St. Paul never claimed to be one of "The Twelve," it speaks unadvisedly. 1 Cor. 4:9 certainly proves that he 

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did. The Epistle to the Galatians and the second to the Corinthians were written, among other things, to refute the Judaizing error that denied that St. Paul was one of "The Twelve," and hence denied the obligatoriness of his teachings on the Church, though it conceded that the teachings of "The Twelve" were binding on the Church (Matt. 18:18). Lack of knowledge of the Greek, inaccurate knowledge of the Scriptures and illogical thinking are responsible for the Tower editors' errors on the Apostles, as taught in Z '21, 350, 351. 

The Tower published a letter which sets forth the statement that J.F.R. told its writer and others that Brother Russell just before his death said that Tabernacle Shadows needed revision; and that it was in fulfillment of this (supposed) expression of his that the Society published its revisions of that booklet. Judging from similar claims of J.F.R. on our Pastor's supposed changes of thought, and from our knowledge of what our Pastor actually held up to his death, we are satisfied that J.F.R.'s statement on this subject is as untrue as his statement that our Pastor gave up Tentative Justification (See Chap. III). The letter seems to have been inserted into the Tower, as some other things have been, to feel the pulse of the Church as to the safety of inserting the so-called revisions—devisions, views away from the Truth, is a proper designation for them—into the text of the Tabernacle Shadows. 

Seemingly as a pretext intended to spread the thought among the Society friends that Tabernacle Shadows needed revisions, among others the question on whether the Altar of Incense was not in the Most Holy has been agitated in Society quarters, with the answer generally given that it was there located. We have already shown the erroneousness of this view by pointing out that the correct translation of Lev. 16:2, 12 (P '21, 126, pars. 5, 6) proves that it was in the Holy.

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This is also implied in every reference to it in the accounts of the command to build the Tabernacle and in the accounts of its actual building as given in Exodus, and in the account of the Levites' service with reference to it as given in Numbers. Heb. 9:4, as rendered by some translators, is also appealed to by the Society leaders to prove their position. On this point we may say several things: (1) The Vatican MS, and the Egyptian and Ethiopian Versions (both very ancient) place the words in question, rendered by some as "the golden altar," in v. 2. (See Diaglott.) We know that the Vatican MS. as far as it extends is considered by the best text critics, as the most reliable of all the ancient MSS. of the Greek New Testament. If we should accept this reading, it, of course, would deprive those who seek to place the Incense Altar in the Most Holy of their only argument. (2) However, to those who insist that the other MSS. prove that the words in controversy should be placed in verse 4, we offer another answer: The word translated by some as altar, in Heb. 9:2 or 4 is thymiaterion, and occurs but once in the New Testament, i.e., in the passage under consideration; while every place in the New Testament where the Golden Altar is undoubtedly meant the word thysiasterion is used in the Greek Rev. 6:9; 8:3, 5; 9:13; 14:18; 16:7). This implies that the word in the New Testament should be translated "censer" as is done in the A.V., in the text of the E.R.V. and in the margin of the A.R.V. Moreover, in the Septuagintthe Greek translation of the Old Testament made by Hebrews and begun 283 B.C.—thymiaterion is never used to translate the Hebrew word for the Golden Altar, but is frequently used to translate the Hebrew word for censer. This fact is helpful to settle the question at issue, because the Apostles generally—almost without exception—use in the Greek those expressions for Old Testament things that occur in the Septuagint. The use of the word 

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thymiaterion for altar occurs only in heathen and other unbiblical books, never in Biblical books of the Old (the Septuagint) and New Testaments. Hence we see that the weight of evidence favors the A.V. and E.R.V. translation of thymiaterion as censer, in Heb. 9, whether we place the word in verse 2 or 4. The evidence, typical and antitypical, is overwhelming that our Pastor was right as to the situation of the Golden Altar. The Tower Editors' use of this matter is a proof, among many others, of their unfitness to revise Tabernacle Shadows. 

The Society under J.F.R.'s direction is introducing Sunday Schools into the Classes. It is true that it avoids the use of the expression, Sunday Schools, as a name for them; but this is merely juggling words. They have the thing itself, whether they call it a Sunday School or Juvenile Class! By introducing such Classes they are perverting the Church, both in its organization and its mission, and are grossly revolutionizing against the Lord's Word as explained by our Pastor, F 545-547. We must call the attention of the brethren to another interpretational deviation in the Tower from our Pastor's teachings: that the image of Daniel 2 is not yet smitten on its feet by the Stone taken without hands out of the mountain. Our Pastor's thought was that the stone began with secular and religious Truth to smite the image from 1874 and 1878 onward, and from 1914 onward continued to smite the image, with the war implements that the Lord's scientific—secular—truth gave the nations. This is only another of the countless, thoroughly useless and unfactual deviations from our Pastor's teachings by the Tower editors. 

It is self-evident that in a review of this kind we should give some attention to J.F.R.'s book, The Harp of God. The publication of the book is a violation of Brother Russell's Will, which denies the right of the Society to publish anything apart from the 

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Tower and our Pastor's writings, and which denies the editors of the Tower the right to have part in any other publication than the Tower. A book begotten, conceived and born in revolutionism against God's arrangements cannot have God's approval, and must be designed by Satan for a fell purpose. And that purpose is manifest from the discussions of Society brethren on, and the use they make of the book. It is intended to save people now coming into the Truth the trouble and labor of "wading through the Six Volumes"! Thus by this amateur book Satan is setting aside the Divinely approved and masterly Six Volumes of our beloved Pastor. The stress placed by the Society on The Golden Age, The Finished Mystery, Talking with the Dead, Millions Now Living, and The Harp distribution, and the consequent lack of emphasis placed on our Pastor's books by its Colporteurs, prove that our Pastor's books and booklets are being displaced and shelved. This is Satan's purpose in this entire affair, and he is accomplishing it through the unholy ambition of revolutionism of the Society leaders, especially J.F.R. It is only the blind who do not see this trend in the Society. 

The Harp is replete with misinterpretations and farfetched imaginations. It is a mild description to call its claim (p. 16), that Job 38:35 refers to radio and Is. 60:8 to air-ships, far-fetched imaginations; for they are more than far-fetched imaginations - they are errors. While visible, discharging electricity is lightning; radio, and we might add telegraphy and telephony, are not lightning. Is. 60:8 refers to Israel fleeing from persecution to Palestine, as the connection shows. J.F.R. (p. 41) applies Nadab and Abihu as types of our first parents. How could this be, since the Law, its Tabernacle and its services in their right and wrong uses were shadows of future things (Heb. 9:9, 10; 10:1; Col. 2:16, 17)? Perhaps he seeks by this perversion of our Pastor's interpretation

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to turn away attention from himself as being a part of antitypical Abihu—a supposition that is in line with the misinterpretation that he offers on the subject. His statement (p. 90) that Mary bore Jesus "without pain and without suffering" is an unprovable assertion contrary to all reasonable and analogical experience, and is a theory worthy of a Mary-worshiping Jesuit, but not of a Truth teacher. What he says (pp. 91-96) about Satan's plot to destroy the infant Jesus is a striking example of a confusion of Truth and error. It is an unprovable guess that Satan made the star of Bethlehem to appear in the east, and with fell purpose started the wise men out on their quest for the babe Jesus. The first Scriptural evidence that we have of Satan's activity toward the wise men is in connection with Herod's appearing on the scene. Our Pastor's explanation on the subject is of greater depth, sobriety and credibility. It is certainly as reasonable to think that God revealed Himself to the wise men in the East, sending them on their errand, as that He did in the dream after they found the child, and then sent them on another errand. Had they been Satan's agents and Divinely displeasing, as J.F.R. contends, God would not have favored them with the dream, at all, but would have saved the infant Jesus in another way by approved agents. The word Magi does not necessarily mean one who dealt with the occult; it was frequently used as a title for the learned, the scholarly, as the word Doctor is now frequently used. We suggest that the brethren read our Pastor's comments, Z '06, 14, 15. 

J.F.R.'s remarks (p. 117) on the life-rights prove that he does not understand the life-rights nor their relation to the right to life. We understand the right to life to mean the Divinely sanctioned privilege to exist perfectly, and the life-rights to mean the privileges connected with, and necessary for the perfect enjoyment of the right to life. Thus Adam and the 

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angels, created perfect, were given by God the privilege to exist perfectly, and could retain that privilege by obedience to His Law. In the life-rights, God gave them everything they needed for the perfect enjoyment of their perfect existence, so long as it was theirs by right. Thus the life-rights of Adam included perfect food, light, air, home surroundings, dominion, etc. By sin Adam forfeited both his right to life and his life-rights, for himself and his race. Hence none of the race in Adam now has the right to life nor the life-rights that go with that right, though they have a temporary use of a little life to which they have no right (before Divine justice), and a moiety of light, warmth, food, home, surroundings, dominion, etc., to which they have no right (before Divine justice), and which are not life-rights; for the sentence deprived Adam and his race of the right to life and the accompanying life-rights, the latter of which are inseparably connected with perfect conditions, either in Eden or the perfect earth. Accordingly, when J.F.R. says (p. 117), "Any human being that is living possesses the right (?) to food, air, light, … and these (?) are called life-rights," he teaches two errors; for life-rights imply perfect things as their constituent parts, and the fallen race has no Divinely sanctioned right to them. But some may object to this that Jesus did not have perfect air, food, etc., and yet had life-rights. To this we reply, Jesus until thirty years old was not a perfect man. Hence from His birth until He was thirty He is to be considered as being in God's sight as Adam was during the process of creation, i.e., from the time when God began to form his body until he actually was a living soul—a perfect man. This being the case, the right to life with its accompanying life-rights did not belong to Jesus as a human being until He was just about to consecrate Himself. Immediately on receiving them as His by right He sacrificed His right to use them for Himself; and thus God was

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not obligated to give Him the use of Edenic perfections so far as the life-rights were concerned, because the Son gave up the personal use of these life-rights at His consecration, just as He became a perfect man. 

In numerous cases J.F.R. gives a twist to passages whereby he claims for them, and wrongly so, senses different from those given by our Pastor, many of which twists are given to prove his "millions" proposition, e.g., he explains in 2 Tim. 4:1 and 1 Pet. 4:5 (p. 329) "the living" to be those under the curse who have not yet departed this life, and the dead to be those of that class who have departed this life. Our Pastor explained the living as the New Creatures and fallen angels who are not under the death sentence, and the dead as Adam's entire race under the curse, whether in or out of this life (Matt. 8:22; Rom. 14:9; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15). He also formerly explained the dead in 1 Pet. 4:6 as the Church as human beings in the death of consecration, though later he applied the expression to the race under the curse. To bolster his "millions" errors, J.F.R., perverts these passages. So also as a proof of his "millions" gospel he applies John 11:26 (p. 334) ambiguously. While admitting that it belongs to the next Age, he claims that it is proper to give it as the message now—"millions now living," etc. To prove such a thought the passage will have to apply now and not to the next Age. Is. 35:4-6 (p. 330) he also grossly twists to prove his "millions" proposition. Vs. 3 and 4 are an address to the Church living before the Second Advent (not to the world now living), bidding her, for a number of reasons, not to fear, because of (1) the hope of the Second Advent, (2) her vindication as against her institutional enemies in the Time of Trouble, and (3) her deliverance. Then vs. 5 and 6, indeed the rest of the chapter, show what will then take place, after these three things occur—restitution to the world, which is described as symbolically blind, lame, deaf, 

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and dumb, etc., in vs. 5 and 6. So our Pastor very properly explained these verses. But J.F.R., on account of his darkening right eye, explains the deafness, blindness, etc., as physical and belonging to this generation, and thus thinks he proves his "millions" proposition! In a similar manner, for the same purpose, Rom. 8:19, 22 (p. 330) is twisted. Our Pastor showed that the entire race in the dying process is meant. J.F.R. puts the proposition as though one must understand the passage as applying either to people in the tomb or to those living at the inauguration of the Kingdom. Denying the former part of the alternative (in which denial we agree) he claims as a self-evident consequence that it applies to the generation now living, and hence it teaches that "millions now living will never die!" What logic and discernment! Noah's family saved in the Ark now types, according to J.F.R. (p. 333), his millions who will pass through the Trouble. St. Peter tells us that those in the Ark type the consecrated, including the Little Flock, and we will not hesitate to accept his interpretation as against J.F.R.'s (1 Pet. 3:20, 21). He also cites (p. 330) Matt. 24:21, 22 to prove his millions proposition. While the passage, as well as others, certainly does prove that some will live through the Trouble, it does not in the remotest way hint how many they will be, much less teach that they will number millions. 

Zech. 13:8, 9 (p. 330) is his classic passage on the "millions" subject. We all know our Pastor's logical explanation—"the two parts"—classes—representing the Little Flock and the Great Company, and the "third part"—class—the Restitution class, passing through the refining fires—the resurrection by judgment (John 5:21)—of the Millennium, and thus at its end made God's people through entering into direct relationship with Him as such in the New Covenant, when its Mediator ceases to function as such (1 Cor. 15:24). 

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It is self-evident that the refining fires cannot be the Time of Trouble; for that has not and will not refine—help restitute the race. At best it will punish, abase and beat into subjection, and thus will prepare people to accept the Kingdom; but it will not even partially restitute the race, as the expression refine means to rid the world of depravity and to restore them to God's image, even as it has a similar meaning for the Little Flock and Great Company (Mal. 3:2, 3; 1 Cor. 3:12-15). In other words, Zech. 13:8, 9 refers to the three salvations and how they will be brought about: the Little Flock and Great Company gaining their salvations by being cut off—separated in consecration from the world—and by dying—carrying out their consecration unto death; while the world gets its salvation by being brought through the resurrection of judgment, spoken of in this passage as being brought through refining fires. Such an exposition is logical, factual, reasonable and Scriptural—just as is characteristic of our Pastor's expositions. J.F.R. muddles the passage, especially as according to a later Tower he has given up our Pastor's thought on verse 8 (forced thereto by holding error on who are meant by those who pass through the refining fires), and now claims that its "two parts" are the clergy and the Second Death class! But even if we should concede that Zech. 13:9 refers to the Time of Trouble and to those who will pass through it, it does not teach how many will do so, much less that there will be millions who will so do. 

There is not a Scripture that teaches his millions proposition. It is purely a guess, which will probably prove true, but is nowhere taught in the Scriptures, either expressly or impliedly; and therefore should not be taught to the public, much less as the message of the hour and the Gospel of the Kingdom, though it would not be out of order among Truth people to discuss it as a probably true guess, but nothing more.

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The writer of The Harp did not show the wisdom of the writer of The Studies, who avoided explanations on subjects that could not, in the space available for them, be clearly and convincingly given, and who therefore left these undiscussed, until they could be given adequate and convincing treatment. Lacking this wisdom, J.F.R. gives so brief statements on immortality (p. 41), the soul (p. 28), the Great Company (p. 80), immersion (p. 188), etc., that no thinking person holding opposite views could be adequately instructed unto real conviction. The Harp by what it says and leaves unsaid carries on the propaganda of many of J.F.R.'s errors, on which we have already in this treatise given full explanation. In teaching so many wrong things in The Harp, J.F.R. has given additional proof that he as "that evil servant" (Matt. 24:48-51) is eating and drinking with the drunken, and has been cut off from the Little Flock, and as "the foolish and unprofitable shepherd" (Zech 11:15-17) his right eye is continuing to darken. Some of our dear readers may ask, as has been told us they do, "Why does Brother Johnson devote so much space to criticism?" "Necessity is laid on" us. Our criticisms though plain are never of a personal or bitter kind; and are always with reference to official teachings and acts. We would ask our questioners, How could we as an under-shepherd in God's flock be faithful to the Lord, the Truth and the Brethren, if we remained silent while Satan through various leaders among the Truth people is seeking to undermine the Truth and the Divinely given methods for its service, to the injury of God's sheep? If we should cease to guard the flock from Satan's subtle attacks and fell purposes, would not the Lord raise up another to do what we failed to do? 

Our writing on the parables of the pounds and the talents is not due to a belief on our part that our dear Pastor did not truthfully, sufficiently and clearly explain 

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them; for a calm study of his articles on these parables, especially as they are found in Z '06, 315-319; Z '10, 251; 313, 314; Z '14, 202-204, will convince the meek child of God that these presentations are true, sufficient and clear. Rather, our writing on the subject is due to the fact that some of the brethren are being troubled by two Tower articles (Z '23, 35-40; 67-73) that have denied our Pastor's interpretations of these parables, doing so with confidence-men-like protestations of not antagonizing any other's interpretation. The style and confused reasoning of the two articles convince us that they were written by the Society's president. It is not our design here to discuss in detail the parables of the pounds and the talents; rather, we wish to show the errors and wrong methods of reasoning that characterize the Tower articles under review. Particularly will we expose the false definitions that they give to various features of the parables and their misrepresentation of our Pastor's view on the meaning of the pound. 

To make it appear that the light on the parable was not due until after 1918 and just before the Church would pass beyond the vail, presumably by 1925, and to make it appear that the parable's reckoning began since 1918, the article on the pounds (Z '23, 35, par. 9) interprets as teaching a type of the Church's present nearness to the kingdom the statement that introduces the parable of the pounds, "He spake a parable because he was nigh to Jerusalem and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear." That introductory statement in connection with the parable was intended to convey the reverse of the thought of the nearness of the kingdom, and hence cannot type the nearness of the kingdom. (Z '14, 202, par. 4.) It was given to show that those who thought that at their reaching Jerusalem which occurred Nisan 10, 33 A.D., the kingdom would be established, were wholly mistaken; for the kingdom was far in the 

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future, which thought, among other things, Jesus shows by the parable. Nor is it true that Jerusalem even usually types the kingdom in its rule over the earth. Usually it types Christendom. In connection with Jesus' approach to and entering into Jerusalem at the time connected with this parable, Jerusalem did not type the kingdom at all; but it stood representatively for Jewry (Matt. 23:37-39; Luke 19:41-44), and as such typed Christendom. We know this from the parallel dispensations, which show that as Jesus entered Jerusalem, A.D. 33, typically as King and exercised kingly authority in judgment against Jewry, so He typed how in the parallel He as King came in 1878 to Christendom and exercised kingly authority in judgment against Christendom, otherwise called Babylon (Matt. 16:28; 21:1-16; 23:37-39). Hence the statement of their approaching Jerusalem has no reference whatever to the Lord's people after 1918, much less as being very near the kingdom. The event cannot apply to the Lord's supposed coming (a vagarious Rutherfordian coming) to His temple in 1918. He has been spiritually in His temple throughout the Gospel Age, as is seen from His walking amid the seven golden candlesticks (Matt. 28:20; Rev. 1; 2; 3). He came in a personal way to the real temple in 1874 and to the nominal temple in 1878. What the article under review says about our Lord's (supposed) coming to His temple in 1918, has no other foundation than the Azazelian theories of the Society's president. Then the article under review speaks of the Church in the flesh coming to the temple condition in 1918. How absurd! From the beginning, the Church has been the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21; 2 Thes. 2:4, etc.); and thus has from the beginning been in the temple condition. Additionally we may speak of the glorified Church—typed by Solomon's temple—as being in the temple condition when contrasting her with her condition in the flesh as in the 

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tabernacle condition typed by the tabernacle. But we may not contrast two of her periods in the flesh in that way. 

Again, the first article (Z '23, 36, par. 1) speaks of our Lord's return in 1874, taking unto Himself His kingdom in 1914, and beginning to reckon with His servants in 1918, after His return (1874) and taking the kingdom (1914), and quotes to prove these thoughts the words, "when He was returned, having received the kingdom" (Luke 19:15). Against such an application of these words especially two things may be said: (1) Greek grammar forbids such an application: for the participle "having received" is in the aorist (past) tense, and therefore proves that the action indicated in the participle "having received" occurred before the action indicated in the verb "was returned." Hence the kingdom—kingdom-authority, as our Pastor explains the use of the word here (see Berean comments on the verse)—was received before our Lord returned in 1874; and (2) the parable elsewhere shows (v. 12) that the purpose of our Lord's going away was to receive kingdom-authority and then afterward to return. These two reasons therefore forbid the application of the expression, "having received the kingdom," as referring to what He supposedly received in 1914. Furthermore we deny that our Lord first took unto Himself His great power and first reigned in 1914. When He returned in 1874 He already had the authority to reign as king (Ps. 45:3, 4), which is also symbolized by the crown on the Reaper (Rev. 14:14), who began to act as Reaper in 1874, as well as is taught in this parable (Luke 19:12, 15). The first exercise of His kingly power—His beginning to take unto Himself His great power and beginning to reign—occurred in 1878 paralleling His typically taking this power and typically reigning the day of His entrance into Jerusalem (Rev. 11:15-17). The especial acts by which this exercise of power and this reigning were

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begun, were the casting off of Babylon and the raising of the sleeping saints. Not only do the parallels and subsequent world events prove this proposition; but it is also proved by the fact that the kingdom beyond the vail had to be existing and exercising power as a kingdom (Dan. 2:44) before it could in 1914 stand up in the World War to overthrow Satan's empire (Dan. 12:1). 

The article under review fails to distinguish properly and therefore confuses what it should clarify on this subject. While the Lord's beginning to exercise His great power and His beginning to reign occurred in 1878, from that time forward He continually increased the exercise of His power and the sphere of His reign. A very important stage of such increase of exercise of power and rulership occurred in 1881 when He withdrew all exclusive favor from Babylon; another extension of these occurred in 1914. Such activities will increase when the symbolic earthquake sets in, and still further will they increase when the symbolic fire starts. In Jacob's Trouble it will take on a further increase, as will also be the case when the kingdom beyond the vail awakens the Ancient Worthies, establishes the earthly phase of the kingdom, and inaugurates the New Covenant. In a partial sense we may speak of each one of these steps as our Lord's taking His power unto Himself and reigning; but to single out 1914 as the date for the whole action or the beginning of the action, as the article under review does and attempts to prove, is a demonstrable error, as we have shown above. But this error is taught to support another error of the article, i.e., that our Lord began in 1918 to fulfill the parabolic reckoning with His servants. The harvest gatherings and privileges of service prove that He has been reckoning with the Faithful from 1874 until the present time; and the harvest siftings prove that He began to reckon with the partially faithful and the utterly unfaithful in 1878 

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and has been continuing so to do ever since, even as our Pastor taught. Scriptures, Reason and Facts utterly overthrow the errors of the article under review on the point as to the time of our Lord's beginning to reckon with His servants after His return. 

In Z '23, 36, pars. 3, 4, the first article under review, as the connection shows, applies the kingdom that was appointed to the disciples (Luke 22:29) to their stewardship of the Lord's affairs while in the flesh. The next verse thoroughly refutes such an idea; for it shows that when they get the kingdom that was appointed them, they would sit on thrones and reign over the twelve tribes of the Millennial Israel, as well as share with the Lord in His glory (eating at His table), which of course will not happen until the Millennium. 

While the first article under review professes not to antagonize any other's interpretation (Z '23, 35, par. 8), it attempts to refute our Pastor's explanation of it (page 36, par. 6). But in the attempt it grossly misrepresents what our Pastor meant when he spoke of "our justification" as the pound given to each of the ten servants. In other words, either because its writer and the other Tower, editors are grossly ignorant of our Pastor's understanding of the pound, or are wilfully perverting it, the article attempts to refute his thought by using the words "our justification" as the pound in a different sense from our Pastor's use of them as the thing meant by the pound, and then the article proceeds to give three reasons against this misrepresentation of our Pastor's thought as a proof that his thought is untrue, and as a consequent reason for seeking another definition of the pound, i.e., it sets up a man of straw and then kicks it over. This straw-man performance will become apparent from the following explanations: As the word, sanctification, means first an action—a setting apart, and second the product of that action—a holy condition of heart and mind, so the words "our justification" mean first an

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action—God's freeing us from the Adamic condemnation and reckoning us perfect, and second the product of that action—our human all reckoned perfect and made acceptable for sacrificial purposes. Our Pastor's uses of the words "our justification" as his understanding of the pounds of the parable, prove that he uses the words "our justification" as the definition of the pound, not to mean God's action in freeing us from the Adamic condemnation and in reckoning us as perfect, but in the sense of the product of that action—our human all reckonedly perfect and made acceptable for sacrificial purposes. How often he shows this to be a sense in which he used that term, when explaining the words of Rom. 12:1, "present your bodies … holy, acceptable … your reasonable service!" In proof of the fact that this is his thought we suggest that our readers compare Z '06, 316, par. 1 with Z '14, 203, par. 2. If the words "our justification," as the pound, meant God's judicial act of forgiveness through Christ's merit, we could give not only three, but at least a dozen reasons to prove that it could not be the pound of the parable. But our dear Pastor was too deep and clear a thinker to set forth such a foolish definition of the pound—a definition which for many reasons breaks down under the requirements of the parabolic pound. What he meant is clear from what he wrote on the subject of what God's justifying us does with our human all, and on the subject of the pounds in the above-cited paragraphs and in other articles—that the pound represents our human all reckoned perfect and made acceptable for sacrificial purposes. Without naming our Pastor, the article under review seeks to disparage his misrepresented definition (and on this point goes back on the definition that it misrepresents as his) by the claim that our justification is ours, not God's, and therefore cannot be the pound, because the pounds according to the parable belong to the Lord. This argument we deny— 

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our human all reckoned perfect and made acceptable for sacrificial purposes belongs to God, because before (Heb. 10:14) He really—vitalizedly—justified us—actually reckoned us perfect and thus made us acceptable for sacrificial purposes—we gave Him our human all in consecration, and immediately after vitalizing our justification He accepted our human all as reckoned: perfect and acceptable for sacrificial purposes. 

This, then, is the pound—our justification understood as our human all reckoned perfect and made acceptable for sacrifice. This definition stands every requirement of the parable. The pound is the same in all—thereby all God's servants are given an absolutely equal thing. The sacrificial uses of this pound in proportion to the different degrees of faithfulness in the servants have produced different results, causing some to have tenfold fruitfulness—the ten gained pounds represent, not ten acquired human alls reckoned perfect and acceptable for sacrificial purposes, but greatest increased fruitfulness—some to have average fruitfulness, etc. For such varying fruitfulness resulting from varying degrees of faithfulness we would naturally expect, even as the parable teaches, the Lord to render appropriate different degrees of rewards—ten cities, five cities, etc. Before showing how the pound of the unfaithful servant could be given to another we desire to make some further explanations. 

The second article under review (Z '23, 67-73) in its definitions, makes no distinction between the pounds and the talents, defining them both as being all the Lord's kingdom interests committed to His servants. The fact that each was given the same amount from the standpoint of the pounds and the fact that the amounts of the talents differed in proportion to the differing abilities of the servants, prove that the pounds and the talents are not the same things. The fact that the talents are apportioned according to each; recipient's ability, proves unanswerably that they 

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represent opportunities of service. Why? Because the reason that God has for making His servants have different positions—functions or opportunities for service—in the body, is based solely on their different abilities. These abilities consist of three classes of things: (1) the measure of the Holy Spirit in each one; (2) the measure of human capacities, attainments, possessions, etc., in each one; and (3) the measure of the providential situation of each one. Each of these three things is of different value in Jehovah's estimation. He values the first more highly than the second and the second more highly than the third; but figures in each servant their respective values for service in the body in such a way as to make their total value for His purposes in the body determine the place or function that He gives each one in the body of Christ. That place in the body constitutes that person's opportunities of service, just as the nature of each of our bodily organs constitutes its function—its opportunity of service. Consequently we see that the talents varying with the varying abilities of each one, must represent opportunities of service and not all the Lord's kingdom interests on earth. Z '23, 70, par. 7 gives as the definition of the abilities of the servants only what comes under the first of the three lines of abilities as given above—in other words, with usual Rutherfordian superficiality it gives an incomplete definition, one that covers only one-third of what the true definition covers. This is one among many illustrations of the poor analytical powers of the Society's president. 

The ten entrusted pounds of the one parable correspond quite closely to the second and third classes of the abilities of the other parable—the measure of human capacities, etc., and the measure of the providential situation—plus their being reckoned perfect and made acceptable for sacrifice, which makes their possessors all have an equally valuable entrustment in God's sight. This point is necessary to keep in 

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mind for a variety of reasons: (1) it is a fact, and (2) it enables us to see how the parable can say that the pound of the unfaithful servant was given to the most faithful servant. Remembering that the entrusted ten pounds—not the gained pounds—represent each servant's human all reckoned perfect and made acceptable for sacrifice, and that this human all consists first of the human capacities, attainments, possessions, etc., of each servant, and second of the providential situation of each servant, and remembering that the slothful and wicked servant represents the Great Company, we can see how, from the standpoint of speaking of a part of a thing for its whole, the pound can be taken from the one and given to the other. In the first place, that part of the pound that consists of acceptableness of the human all for sacrificial purposes is taken entirely away from the Great Company; for its humanity ceases to be a part of the Lord's antitypical Goat. In the second place, God changes their providential situations so that they are not in a sacrificial environment. In the third place, through chastisements He takes away more or less of their human all. Henceforth lacking essential features of the pound, they may properly be spoken of as having had their pound taken from them! The activities and environments of such persons since 1878, both in the nominal church and in the harvest siftings among the Truth People, prove that they have from the above-mentioned standpoints lost their pound—that the Lord has taken it away from them. However as long as they retain their place in the Great Company, they still retain the robe of Christ's righteousness; but they have spotted it badly. The Lord gives the pound taken from the slothful, to the faithful servants, by giving them the others' human capacities, attainments, providential situations made acceptable for sacrifice. 

For example, doubtless Mr. Barbour lost his crown sometime before April 16, 1878, when, as the parallel of 

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Judas, he betrayed the Lord. One of his attainments was proficiency in editing, and one of his providential situations was freedom from pre-occupation for controlling, a Truth paper. As the Lord was taking these away from him, by giving him several associate editors and by giving our Pastor executive charge of the paper, He was giving our Pastor the attainments and providential situation not previously had by him whereby he could edit and control such a paper. In this way, as well as in others, He took away Mr. Barbour's pound and gave it to our Pastor. It is easy to point out in various ways as touching the talents as distinct from the pounds, how when certain persons forfeited their opportunities of service, these fell to his lot to have. More than once certain ones at the Bible House being displaced during siftings, their work temporarily at least fell to his lot to perform; and this is also true respecting the larger opportunities of service that other persons forfeited, e.g., when certain associated editors, notably his helpmeet, forfeited their editorial work, it fell to his lot to perform it all; also some of their pertinent human capacities—the pound—he was enabled by the Lord to cultivate, thus gaining their pound. A notable and overshadowing instance in which the Lord took away both the pounds and the talents from the Great Company in the Truth as a class, and gave them to the Little Flock as a class, occurred in connection with His removing from the former certain human attainments, possessions, providential situations and opportunities for service—thus both pounds and talents—and giving these to the Little Flock for Jordan's first smiting from 1914 to 1916. 

From the above considerations we can readily see how our Pastor's interpretations of the pounds and the talents stand all the tests of Scripture Truth: they are in harmony with (1) themselves, (2) all Scripture passages, (3) all Scripture doctrines, (4) God's character, (5) the Ransom, (6) the purposes of the 

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Bible and (7) facts; while the contrary interpretations of the Society's president were occasioned either by a deplorable misunderstanding or a wilful perversion of our Pastor's thought on the pounds, are based on incomplete and insufficient definitions, are presented in hypocrisy as not antagonistic to another's interpretation, are set forth in revolutionism, were engendered by a lack of meekness and humility toward that Servant, are given as a part of a program for the spread of errors in teaching and practice invented by Azazel. 

In the May 15, 1923, Tower appears an article entitled The New Creature, which we will here briefly review. Any use that its writer may make of a truth that he has not yet lost may properly be looked upon as used in the same general way as Papists use Scriptural teachings - directly or indirectly to palm off, wittingly or unwittingly, Satanic perversions of the Truth. Those who do not recognize this as the use that Satan is making of "that evil servant" and "foolish, unprofitable shepherd," are either babes in the Truth or are under the influence of spiritual opiates. The inability to see the erroneousness of the article in question is first-class evidence of the possession of undeveloped, or of stunted and blunted spiritual perceptive powers on the part of a New Creature. 

The fundamental error of the article is the pet error of "that evil servant" his denial of Tentative Justification. It is because the Truth on Tentative Justification implies the truthfulness of our Pastor's teachings on the nature, office and place of repentance, conversion and faith in relation to justification, and on the nature of the things sacrificed in consecration, and because "that evil servant" denies the Truth on Tentative Justification, that he must perforce advance false or insufficient definitions on the office, relation and working of repentance, conversion, faith and the things sacrificed in consecration. Whoever logically holds the Scripture Truth on Tentative and Vitalized Justification

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will, generally speaking, be free from the spiritual contagion that holds "that evil servant" in its grasp as a fevered victim (Ps. 91:6). We have from various standpoints in Vol. IV, Chapter V, refuted his views on that subject, and will not here repeat these refutations. 

We should always watch the definitions that are offered us on Scriptural subjects; for therein lurk the seeds of error in the teachings of a false prophet. The article under review offers some one-sided, and therefore misleading definitions of mind and heart. According to this article, the mind means only the knowing "faculty" and its contents—knowledge, and the heart means only the feeling "faculty" and its contents—the affections. Accordingly, the article uses the word repentance to mean a change of mind in the sense of a change of one's knowledge! Mere novices in Biblical knowledge are aware of the fact that, in addition to meaning the knowing faculty and its contents, the word mind frequently in the Bible means the disposition (Rom. 7:25; 12:2; Col. 2:18; Phil. 2:5, etc.). No wonder such an incomplete definition of the word mind moves J.F.R. to define repentance, as he does in the example that he gives, as a change of mind in the sense of a change from the wrong knowledge endorsing evolution to the true knowledge that one is a sinner and needs a Savior. The word repentance means much more than a change from wrong to right knowledge as to one's moral state. It means not only a change from a wrong to a correct knowledge as to sin and righteousness, but also a change of disposition from a love of, and pleasure in sin to a sorrow for, and a hatred and abandonment of sin, and also from a hatred and avoidance of righteousness to a love and practice of righteousness. Anything short of this is not a Biblical repentance. It implies a "godly sorrow" that "worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of" (Matt. 3:8; Luke 10:13; Luke 15:7; Acts 8:22; Rev. 3:2, 3, 19; 2 Cor. 7:9-11). Every case of a 

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genuine repentance mentioned in the Bible implies a change of disposition, as can be seen in the case of Joseph's brethren, various national repentances of Israel, David, Manasseh, Nineveh, the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears, the prodigal son, Peter, etc. Our experiences corroborate this. 

Again, he defines conversion as changing one's course from a life of self-righteousness. He does not say to what the change is made, except that it is to a different course; but he assures us that even after one's conversion he does not yet know what he must do [presumably, to come into harmony with the Lord]; that it is only later on that he learns that he is alienated from God, and what are the terms of his coming into harmony with God. According to this thought, the conversion that this article teaches is that part of the Biblical repentance that decides to give up sin and to do right, before one has learned to believe that God will forgive him his sins [tentatively], if he accepts Jesus as his Savior. Such a conversion is poorer in contents than even the conversion of revivalists who make it consist of "repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus." Conversion, as the Bible teaches it, is the entire process of turning from depravity into the image of God, and is a lifelong work. J.F.R. has not only forsaken the Truth definition of conversion (Berean Comments, Acts 3:19), but has fallen into deeper error on the subject than has the Nominal Church. To supplement the one-sided and incomplete definition of the heart offered by the article—the faculty of the feelings and its contents—the affections and motives [presumably, not the motives that come from the intellect] - we add that the word heart is also frequently used in the Bible to mean the will, as the following passages prove: Matt. 15:18, 19; Mark 3:5; Luke 8:15; 21:14; Acts 7:51; 11:23; Rom. 2:29; 10:9, 10; 1 Cor. 4:5; 7:37; 2 Cor. 9:7; 1 Thes. 2:4; Heb. 4:12; Rev. 2:14. 

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Again the article under review teaches that one at consecration comes to exercise faith in Jesus' blood as the merit which works forgiveness of his sins. This is a palpable error contradictory of the Bible, which sets forth faith in Christ's blood for [tentative] forgiveness as the immediate antecedent of Tentative Justification (Rom. 3:25, 26; 4:1-10, 22, 23; 10:4; Acts 16:30, 31; Gal. 2:16); contradictory of the experience of at least a billion of believers throughout the Gospel Age, who believed on Jesus' death for the forgiveness of their sins, and who were thereby introduced into a measure of peace with God, though they never consecrated; and also contradictory of the experience of all consecrated persons, except those few who like our Pastor cannot remember a time when they were not consecrated. This error, that one at consecration comes to believe that he is forgiven for Jesus' sake, J.F.R. has been driven to accept, because of his false doctrine that it is at the gate of the antitypical Court that one consecrates. The sword-thrust on this line has blinded his right eye on this subject as well as on other subjects. How true that his defense of his errors against attacks from the standpoint of various truths drives him to give up those opposing truths! It is in this way that each sword-thrust increasingly blinds him. 

Most palpable is his confusion on the Sarah covenant and on the covenant of sacrifice. He makes them the two parts of one covenant and that in the sense of a contract! He, therefore, says that Jehovah and we enter into the contract relations of this covenant. In refutation of this error, we would say: Biblical covenants are of two kinds: (1) promises binding but one party to another, and that unconditionally, and (2) contracts binding both parties to them to certain conditions. The covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:15; Is. 54:9) is an example of the former, the Mosaic covenant of the latter kind (Gal. 3:18-21). Our covenant of 

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sacrifice is not a part of a contract. It is an unconditional promise on our part, binding us alone, and is produced by such appreciation of God's past, not future, favors as worked in us a consecrating faith in, and love for God, obligating us unconditionally to do anything that God desires of us, even unto death (Ps. 50:5; Rom. 12:1). The covenant of sacrifice was made by us to God as an unconditional promise, and not by God to us. On the other hand, as a totally different covenant, God made the Sarah covenant (Gen. 22:17, 18) as an unconditional promise—not a contract—to the Seed—those who are of the Christ (Gal. 3:16, 28), as they before becoming the Seed—parts of the Christ—made the covenant, or promise of sacrifice to God, i.e., their consecration vows. 

To claim that the covenants operating between God and us are the two parts of one contract binding each side to certain conditions, on the fulfillment of which certain advantages flow to God and to us, shows an utter misunderstanding of the covenant of sacrifice—our consecration vows—and of the Sarah covenant, which are two separate covenants,—both of them being unilateral and unconditional promises (Gal. 3:20). Such a view as the article under review presents destroys the unilateral character of each of these covenants and necessitates a mediator to make the contract operative; because God would not enter into a contractual covenant with imperfect beings without a mediator (Gal. 3:20). As we unconditionally promised God out of appreciation of His past favors—(Rom. 12:1)—and not as a condition of obtaining the High Calling—to do anything that He may desire, so God greatly appreciated this spirit of devotion to Him, and out of this appreciation begat of His own Spirit us who had this spirit of devotion to Him, and gave us who have and keep that spirit of devotion to Him (Heb. 3:14) certain features of the unconditional promises of Gen. 22:17, 18. These promises insofar 

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as they apply to the Christ class are the Sarah covenant, which is made only to those who have and keep the spirit that prompted their consecration, and it is absolutely unconditional to them. And it belongs to no others; for it belongs to those only who are in Christ. Consequently there are now two covenants operating: one of sacrifice—our consecration vows—that we made to God unconditionally (Ps. 50:5; Rom. 12:1), and one—the Sarah covenant or promise—that God made to the Faithful; for the Faithful alone are the Seed, the Christ (Gal. 3:15-18, 29). Thus there are unconditional promises binding God to the Seed, and unconditional promises binding the Seed to God; but these two sets of promises are not two parts of a contract; for each is bound to the other by an unconditional promissory covenant—not by a contractual covenant. 

Finally, the article offers some confusion as to what we give to the Lord in consecration. It denies that we give Him our will, our mind, our heart or anything else except our imputed human right to life. If this were true, we would give Him no actual present possession, only a prospective possession. Biblically, we presented to Him our heart in the sense of our will (Prov. 23:26); we presented to Him our human all—all that we are and have and all that we hope to be and have as human beings, implied in the term "bodies" (Rom. 12:1); and we presented to Him ourselves, and renew the presentation every day (2 Cor. 8:5). Thus we not only presented to Him our tentatively] imputed right to life with the [tentatively] imputed life rights that go with that right to life—things that we did not actually have—but we also presented to Him what we actually had and were, not simply what we were [tentatively] imputed to be and have and are actually now imputed to be and have. It is self-evident from experience, as well as from Scripture, that we offered to give Him what we were and had, and 

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not simply what we might hope as human beings actually to be and have, but which we will never get; for let it be remembered that the right to life and the life-rights are not actually given to us, but only imputed to us; for if they had been given to us, we would actually have become perfect. Experience teaches us that we presented for sacrifice actualities, as well as [tentatively] imputed things and hopes, which under the terms of our consecration will never be ours except as we now have them imputatively. What we were and had, having been presented to God and then made acceptable by the imputation of Christ's merit, God after accepting our sacrifice at Christ's hand by the Spirit begettal, contrary to the teaching of the article under review, gave us back our human all, in the sense of a stewardship, for use according to His will for His cause. This is shown in the parable of the pounds. Each one has committed to him as a stewardship that which in consecration he offered to give to God, plus that which Jesus' imputation made it in God's sight—a reckonedly perfect humanity acceptable for sacrifice—the pound. J.F.R. denies this in the article under review. His denial explains the reason for his rejecting our Pastor's definition of the pound and his substituting "kingdom interests" as the definition of the pound—all of which is due to his denial of Tentative Justification. In the Tower for Sept. 1, 1923, he published an article entitled "Methods of Deceit." Generally speaking, up to its last page he described the studied deceitfulness of perverters of the Truth so accurately that he, as the guiltiest of them, must have made an exhaustive study of his own "methods of deceit," and then described them as though they were those that he desires his readers to believe are practiced not by himself, but by those who teach contrary to him, the special mouthpiece and controller of the Society, God's supposed channel for the Priests' faith and work; for who among Truth people have 

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been tossed to and fro by various winds of doctrine more than those who have accepted his increasingly perverse teachings? Who has more deceitfully contradicted our Pastor's teachings than he? Who has sought to make our Pastor appear as an advocate of perversions of his own teachings more than "that evil Servant"? Who has attempted to palm off "original" teachings (original with Satan) as meat in due season, in an attempt to set aside the real meat prepared by our Lord through our Pastor, than he? Who among Truth people has presented "darkness in advance" more than he? Who, making capital of our Pastor, has given him the Judas kiss while betraying, him in many of his teachings, in his charter, will and in many of his arrangements, more than the foolish, unprofitable shepherd? What teacher among Truth people has been more guilty than he of the charge implied in the following sentence of his, "The logical deduction they draw from their findings is that the Lord deluded Bro. Russell in permitting him to believe a lie"? Who "instead of dispelling doubt by a re-examination of Bro. Russell's writings" has made an endeavor "to prove the new [italics his] views and ideas to be Scripturally correct" more than he? Who has shown more of "a growing disregard or neglect of what that Servant has written" than he? If "a denial or reversal of formerly held truths is naturally suggested to those having a morbid desire for novelty," what teacher among the Lord's people on the basis of such a principle has a larger "morbid desire for novelty" than he? Who by "reputation of channel" has "rushed off their feet" more brethren than he? Whose official conduct, onward from the time he drew up by-laws intended to give him all our Pastor's powers in the Society, betrayed "desire, ambition, grudge or other item of selfishness" greater than his? If "disruptive doctrines smack of slight of men" and devils, whose disruptive doctrines have smacked thereof more than his? We

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know of no one among the teachers of the Lord's people, appointed through our Pastor, who has done worse in anyone of these particulars than "that evil Servant." The items and passages with respect to which he has rejected our Pastor's teachings and interpretations and on which he has substituted "new views" mount into the thousands, and according to the Bible will continue to increase unto complete darkness. 

In this article we will point out with pertinent refutations the increasing darkening of his right eye on the New Creature and death, and on the parables of the ten virgins and the sheep and goats. On the matter of the New Creature and death he raises the question (Z '23, 247, 248) as to a faithful Christian who dies "Does the New Creature die?" He answers, Yes. The question itself should have been stated otherwise to bring out the two answers rightly belonging to it. The answer given is misleading, because it conveys a partly mistaken and a largely misleading thought. The "method of deceit" in the treatment of the question lies in the fact that the writer uses the term, New Creature, as though it had only one meaning—the person who is Spirit-begotten; whereas the Bible uses the term to mean two things: (1) the person who is begotten of the Spirit (2 Cor. 5:17), and (2) the holy powers begotten and the holy qualities produced in the person who is begotten of the Spirit (Gal. 6:15; compare with Gal. 5:6, which proves that the term New Creature in Gal. 6:15 means the holy powers begotten, and the holy qualities developed in the person who is begotten of the Spirit). Of course the New Creature in the first sense, i.e., the person who has been begotten of the Spirit, dies when a faithful Christian dies. Every passage that is quoted in the article under review, and that proves that the New Creature dies, refers to the New Creature in the sense of the first definition above given to the word But not one of those passages refer 

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to the New Creature in the second sense of the word as given above. 

What answer should be given to the question as to whether the New Creature dies, if the word New Creature is used in the second sense of the word? In harmony with our Pastor's constant teaching, we reply: Yes and No. If the person falls into the second death class, his New Creature dies before his natural man dies; but a person's New Creature never dies, if he is faithful unto death. The person who sins the sin unto death by that very sin annihilates the New Creature in the second sense of the word, both as to the holy qualities developed, and as to the holy powers begotten in him. But when a faithful Christian dies, the New Creature in the second sense of the word does not die—these holy powers and qualities do not pass out of existence. They exist; but are not active or conscious, since their activity would require an organism, which the New Creature, in the second sense of the word does not have between death and the resurrection. Just as our new-creaturely powers and qualities continue to exist, but are inactive and unconscious while we are asleep, so have they continued to exist, though inactive and unconscious, while the faithful were in death throughout the Age. These new-creaturely powers and qualities of the faithful continue to exist in death for two reasons: (1) they are realities, actually created things—real "New Creatures"—not mere abstractions; and (2) these powers and qualities, which constitute the character of the faithful, have maintained the right to live on the Divine plane with the life-rights that go with that right to live. But that which has the right to live never in Jehovah's order of affairs dies except sacrificially, like our Lord's and the Church's humanity, or constrainedly, as in the case of the Great Company's humanity, or ministerially, as in the case of the Ancient and Youthful Worthies after the next Age. But the new-creaturely right to life and

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its life-rights are not sacrificially given up unto death; only the human right to life and its life-rights are. Consequently the New Creature, in the second sense of the word, from and on account of the two viewpoints just given, does not die, either when the faithful Christian dies, or when a Great Company member dies, or when during the Little Season the Ancient and Youthful Worthies die. Such a thought really militates against the Ransom; for if Jesus' New Creature, His holy powers and qualities, died, one might ask whether His New Creature died the Adamic, the Sacrificial, the Constrained, the Ministerial or the Second death—all the deaths we know of. Not the Adamic, for the New Creature was begotten of God; not the Second Death; for that would make Jesus a sinner. Would the Tower teach that Jesus as a New Creature died sacrificially? This would be to deny the Ransom, and would be similar to the Nominal Church view that Jesus died as, a "God-man" and that He gave more than just a human life as the ransom-price and if it should teach that He died the constrained death of the Great Company, or the post-Millennial ministerial death of the Ancient and Youthful Worthies, it would also deny the Ransom, which requires the sacrificial death of a perfect human being as the corresponding price for Adam. 

In Studies, Vol. III (190-197), etc., our Pastor presents a Scriptural, reasonable and factual interpretation of the parable of the ten virgins. Being familiar to our readers, it needs no repetition here. Professing, as in his treatment of the pounds and talents, not to be antagonistic to our Pastor's interpretation, J.F.R. sets forth in Z '23, 291-297 an interpretation of the parable of the ten virgins that, for the reasons that he claims require it, is utterly subversive of our Pastor's interpretation and cannot for the chronological reason given as requiring it, be held in common with our Pastor's. He sets forth the following claims: That the parable 

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could not begin to have a fulfillment until between 1914 and 1918; that all the consecrated slumbered and slept when Christ delayed to deliver the Church in 1914; that the cry, "Behold the Bridegroom," was fulfilled at the Cedar Point Convention in 1919; that the wise virgins went forth with joy [oil in their vessels] to meet the Bridegroom from then on in the various drives of the Society; that the foolish virgins do not go into these services with joy [oil in their vessels] hence do not go into the marriage with Him; that those faithfully doing "the Channel's" work will as wise virgins go in with the Bridegroom; that then the Kingdom door is closed; that the others repent, but too late—all because they did not joyfully enter into the Society's drives! The chief thought that, as a characterization of this interpretation, wells up in the mind of one familiar with our Pastor's interpretation, is that such an explanation is childish, flat and vagarious. 

To make this "new view" seem plausible, the following are some of the perversions that the article presents: that the disciples asked the questions, "When shall these things be?" and "What is the sign of thy presence, and of the end of the world?" (Matt. 24:3), because they desired to know when Jesus would deliver them and the rest of the Church as His bride—a phase of the mystery of which they then understood nothing, it being first revealed to St. Paul; that the goods committed to that wise and faithful servant were kingdom interests, whereas it was the storehouse of Truth; that the word "then" in Matt. 25:1 means after 1914 instead of the Time of the End; that the evil servant is a class instead of an individual (a view that logically makes the wise and faithful servant a class as the Society now teaches to be the case); that all the virgins were anointed (a thing true of the wise only; for the Great Company, though receiving the begetting, does not have the anointing); that oil symbolizes joy, whereas it symbolizes (1) the Holy Spirit

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as a whole (Ps. 23:5; compare with Acts 10:38; Ex. 29:2), and then severally in its various powers and qualities, and therefore joy only as one of these (Lev. 8:12; Is. 11:2, 3; Ps. 45:7; Is. 61:3; Ps. 133:1, 2); and (2) the Word of God (Jas. 5:14; Ex. 25:6; Zech. 4:12); that virgins are wise because of joyfully doing the Lord's will (which means the Society's work), instead of having the Truth and the ability tactfully to apply it; that virgins are foolish because of not joyfully doing the Lord's will (which means the Society's work), instead of having error and acting in harmony with it; that the lamps "represent the will of God as expressed toward His children," whereas they represent the Bible; that all of the virgins have as their lamps "a knowledge of the expressed will of God concerning them, as set forth in the details of the Divine plan," whereas this is true of the wise only; that the Bridegroom tarried in respect to delivering the Church, whereas the tarrying was with respect to His second coming; that an especial trial on the Church began Oct., 1917—"the beginning of 1918"—instead of June, 1917, which is not referred to in the parable; that the expression, all slumbered and slept, means that some slumbered and the others slept; and that the virgins trimming their lamps means the Society's adherents studying the Scriptures to find out that Elijah was transubstantiated into Elisha in 1918 and 1919! 

The reason why he is forced to abandon our Pastor's interpretation is that in the interests of his own original patented gospel of the kingdom—"Millions now living, etc."—he abandoned our Pastor's interpretation of Matt. 24:4-14 as giving a summary of the events of the Gospel Age, and applies these verses to the present period. Keeping this thought in mind, we see that as a matter of course he cannot, as our Pastor did, apply the parable to the Second Advent movement beginning in 1829 and culminating with the sending away of the Great Company from the closed door. 

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He has failed to see that a comparison of Matt. 24:3; Mark 13:4 and Luke 21:7 proves that the disciples asked four, not three questions: (1) when would the temple be destroyed—"When shall these things be?" (2) what special sign-prophesied event—would follow the destruction of the temple and precede the sign of the parousia—"What sign [prophetically fulfilled event, is one of the meanings of this word] will there be when these things [the events connected with the destruction of the temple] shall [have] come to pass?" (3) what would prove His second presence—"What shall be the sign of Thy presence?" and (4) what would prove the harvest time of the Age—"and of the end [synteleia, summing up, consummation] of the world [age]?" 

In Luke 21:8-24, Jesus gives the answer to the first question; in Matt. 24:4-14; Mark 13:5-14 with its special feature in Matt. 24:14 and in Mark 13:10, Jesus gives the answer to the second question; and in the rest of the discourse of Matt. 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, Jesus answers the third and fourth questions, Matt. 25, as well as portions of Matt. 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, being added as a generous feast not asked for by the disciples but required to clarify the subject matter. In the Greek by the word telos, end (Matt. 24:14; Mark 13:7, 10; Luke 21:9), Jesus points out the period Biblically called the Parousia from 1874 until what we recognize to be 1914; and in the Greek by the word synteleia, consummation, summing up (see A.R.V.), mistranslated end in Matt. 13:39 and 24:3, He points out the Harvest in its widest sense as including the Parousia and the Epiphany, 1874-1954, a part of which is the telos, end, or time or reaping, in the widest sense of that word. Repeatedly in this discourse Jesus refers to the telos—end—in distinction from the synteleia—Harvest as the summing up or consummation of the Age—thereby indicating in answer to the disciples' second question its connection with the special 

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sign asked for in the second question. The telos in its widest sense is a shorter period of time than the synteleia, because it is included in the synteleia, as its earlier part; but as distinct from the synteleia, the telos was the first part of the synteleia. In Mark 13:10 (compare with Matt. 24:14), Jesus shows that before the synteleia the Gospel would be preached among all nations; and in Matt. 24:14 He shows us that the telos would be the time after the Gospel would be preached among all nations. Consequently our Pastor was right when he said that in the Bible, translated into all national languages, and sent to all the nations, was this testimony given to all nations. This was fulfilled by 1861 (A 91, par. 2) which was before the synteleia—the Harvest. The Modern Foreign Missionary Movement, which dates from Carey's organizing the first Foreign Missionary Society in 1792, and the Bible Societies, which date from 1804, were the agencies that did the main work of such Bible translation and spreading. Thus before the telos as the first part of the synteleia was this final proclamation made, just as Matt. 24:14 says: "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world [when the testimony would go forth for and unto a world-wide proclamation] … then [after the time of such activities, which began in 1792 and culminated in 1861] shall the end come," which we know came in 1874. 

Thus these passages give the sign—the world-wide Gospel proclamation made by the Bible, translated into the languages of all nations and sent to them—that was according to the second question to follow the temple's destruction; and according to Jesus' explanation many other events were to precede this sign, as well as the sign of His Parousia and the sign of the Synteleia. Doubtless the Lord told of the many events following those connected with the destruction of the temple and preceding this sign itself, in order to impress upon the disciples the thought that this sign would be in the 

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distant future, and in order to encourage amid those many events the brethren who would live after the temple's destruction and before this sign itself. This sign preceding the Harvest, that evil servant's whole setting of Matt. 24 and 25, which is to the effect that they refer to things after 1914, is upset thereby and does not have one leg upon which it and his own original patented gospel of the kingdom—"Millions, etc."—built upon it can stand. 

But this time setting of this sign proves more. It proves that the "then" of Matt. 25:1 may refer to the telos as distinct from the synteleia, i.e., 1874-1914; or to the synteleia, 1874-1954, as distinct from the telos of 1874-1914; or to the Time of the End, i.e., from 1799 to 1954. To determine which of these three time periods is covered by the "then" of Matt. 25:1, we need the light of fulfilled prophecy as a reliable helper. And what do these fulfilled facts prove? They prove that the world-wide Second Advent movement, begun in 1829, reached the climax of its first stage by 1844 in the Bridegroom's beginning what seemed to the watchers to be a delay. Thereafter came the slumbering and sleeping until 1874; then the cry, "Behold [see] the Bridegroom!"—He is here; then the study of the Scriptures on the subject of the Second Advent—trimming the lamps; then the possession of the Truth—the lighted lamps—by some, and of error—the darkness of unlighted lamps—by others; then the wise virgins entered the open door of Harvesting opportunities with the Bridegroom, and continued so to do until the last ones entered it, 1914-1916; in the meantime the others have been and still are seeking the light, but obtain it too late to find an open door to entering into harvesting, because the reaping is ended. Evidently, therefore, the foolish virgins represent Great Company members who will get the Truth, obtaining it as they will after the Little Flock in its entirety had entered the open door. What do these 

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fulfilled facts prove with respect to the "then" of Matt. 25:1? That it refers to the day of Jehovah's preparation; for it refers to events that began 45 years before the telos and synteleia began. These are the actual "physical facts" of the case, while the events that the article under review calls the "physical facts" of the case are not only not referred to in the parable, but even for them to be given that plausibility which Satan always gives his errors, the symbols and statements of the parable must be wildly perverted in the manner that we have shown above. What a glaring and transparent illustration of such perversions is the teaching of the article in review, that the Bridegroom's coming occurred at the 1919 Cedar Point Convention in the revival of the Society's adherents' courage and in the inauguration of the Golden Age, i.e., agitation and securing of subscriptions to start it, which were the things done there. 

The refutation of his "new view" on the parable of the ten virgins is given in Matt. 25:13, where Jesus interprets the scope and purpose of the parable immediately after giving it, in the following language: "Watch therefore, for ye know [beforehand] neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." This verse undeniably proves, by its connection, that it refers to our Lord's Second Coming, which occurred in 1874, i.e., by the word "therefore" immediately following the parable and drawing the lesson that the parable was given to inculcate, it proves that the lesson that the parable was intended to convey is that Christ's followers were throughout the Gospel Age to be on the alert to expect Christ's Second Coming, whereas the "new view" makes the exhortation, which shows the parable's scope as teaching the necessity of expecting Christ's Second Advent, apply entirely after His Coming! The parable illustrates such watching and waiting for the setting in of His Second Coming by the oriental custom of virgins watching and waiting 

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for the coming of a bridegroom for and with his bride whom he had gotten from some distant place. See in the Diaglott a note on Matt. 25:1 which illustrates this custom. This demonstrates that at least a part of this parable refers to events preceding the setting in of our Lord's Second Coming in 1874; while the "new view" allows no application of the exhortation to "Watch, therefore, etc." to anyone living before 1874 or even before 1914. 

We will now discuss briefly his "new view" on the parable of the sheep and goatsgotten from Azazel, from whom he has gotten his thousands of other "new views." This new view is given in Z '23, 307-314, and Z '24, 381, 382. He claims that the parable refers to a passing of a decision on persons of Christendom in the end of the Age, hence before the Millennial reign of restitution is inaugurated; that the goats are the clergy—the shepherds—and their chief supporters—the politicians and commercial men as the principal of the flock; that the sheep are the unconsecrated of Christendom who are inclined to humility and righteousness; that the brethren of the parable are the Church. The decision, according to the parable, should be to life or to annihilation, as the characters of the persons concerned would require; but on this he wobbles and hedges, because he knows that such as he says are the sheep and the goats have not, in the vast majority of cases, progressed in character development or undoing far enough to fit them for everlasting life or everlasting destruction as the case would require, having never yet been on trial for life, which must precede a decision like that of the parable. This very fact should have unanswerably demonstrated to him that his "new view" of the parable is wrong; for it does not permit all his sheep to get the reward or all his goats to get the punishment from the Lord set forth in the parable. 

We will now point out the crooked road of perversions 

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over which he had to travel, even to give such plausibility to his "new view" as to embolden him to believe that he could fool his readers into believing it He pervertingly assumes as one of the things making necessary a "new view" that, as should be expected, the clergy and the principal of the flock have not been dealt with in either of the preceding parables; whereas these, as well as their partisan supporters and such others of the Second Death class as were not of the clergy, of the principal of the flock, or of their partisan supporters, were sufficiently dealt with a few days before when Jesus, in the pounds parable largely like that one which immediately precedes that of the Sheep and Goats, told of the slaying—some with the first, others with the second death—of his enemies who would not have Him reign over them (Luke 19:27). He also pervertingly assumes, in the first and the second reasons that he gives for making a "new view" necessary, that the judging of the parable is the pronouncing of a decision only; whereas according to many Scriptures, including this parable, judging implies four processes connected with a trial for life: (1) instruction; (2) testing after opportunities for character-growth are given; (3) reformatory chastisement for measurably wilful failures under the trial; and (4) decision, favorable or unfavorable, as the case may require. He pervertingly assumes as his third reason for making a "new view" necessary that, the Church is meant by the brethren of this parable; whereas they are His greatest brethren being the greatest children of His Father, while the brethren of the parable are His least brethren. He pervertingly assumes as the fourth reason for making a "new view" necessary that, since the restitution class will derive life from Christ, they are not His brethren, despite the fact that God, as in Adam's case (Luke 3:38), and as in the case of Adam's children, had he and they remained sinless, being the Source and Giver of perfect 

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life to all perfect creatures, is thereby their Father, regardless of His using agents to confer that life, and also despite the fact that the brethren of this parable are called His least brethren, which the faithful of the next Age will be. See Rotherham and both Revised Versions on this corrected translation. He pervertingly assumes as the fifth reason for making a "new view" necessary, that the perfection of the restitution class implies that they could not think that Jesus meant Himself personally when He spoke of their benefiting Him or not; whereas the fact of their trial at the end of that Age implies that they will be liable to mis-impressions or incomplete impressions. He pervertingly assumes as the basis of his sixth reason that all of the teachings and facts connected with a prophesied event are entirely given in one passage referring to such an event; whereas the Scripture states such things "here a little, there a little," and therefore the parable shows, not everything connected with the next Age and the Little Season following it, but as its main thought various kinds of conduct which, practiced during the Millennium, will determine the class in which one will find himself in the Little Season, while Rev. 20:7-9 shows how the bad characters formed by the loveless ones during the Millennium, but not mentioned in this passage as having then been formed, will lead them to rebellion after the Millennium. He pervertingly assumes as the basis for his un-numbered seventh reason for making a "new view" necessary, that one cannot be spoken of from the standpoint of a former condition out of which he has forever passed, and therefore claims that those who become brethren in the Millennium cannot be meant, for the reason that these after becoming brethren will not be in prison; whereas the Scriptures do call persons what they no longer are on account of their once having been such, as, for instance, Jesus is called Michael (Dan. 12:1) in an act entered into nearly 2,000 years after He had ceased

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to be Michael, and Satan is called Lucifer (Is. 14:12-14) over 3,000 years after he ceased to be Lucifer. He pervertingly assumes that time considerations require his "new view"; whereas there is between this parable and the two preceding ones, or in this one nothing suggesting a time connection or suggesting that the decision of this parable is before the Millennial reign. He pervertingly assumes that the coming of our Lord with the Church to reign (Matt. 25:31; compare with Matt. 19:28) means the same as His coming with the Church to punish the wicked (Jude 14), the same as His being in His temple and giving the charge to declare troublous times (Is. 6:1-11), which St. John's comment shows began early in both Harvests (John 12:39-41), the same as His being seen with the saints on this and the other side of the vail warring (not coming, as he pervertingly assumes) with the Truth as a weapon against error (Rev. 19:11-16), and the same as the saints executing vengeance, as described in Ps. 149:5-9 (which they actually did while he in a long and unjustifiable absence from the service abstained from the work of smiting Jordan the first time, from 1914 to 1916). He pervertingly assumes definitions for the sheep and the goats that will not hold true of all of either of his classes when used in connection with the rewards and punishments given, e.g., the majority of his goats—the clergy and the principal of the flock, not being begotten of the Spirit„ cannot go into the second death. He pervertingly assumes that the thoughts given in the three parables of this chapter are given by our Lord as the sign of His presence and the synteleia, Harvest (Matt. 13:39; 24:3), in answer to the questions asked by the disciples; whereas the sign of His presence is the Truth (Matt. 24:27, 30) and the sign of the synteleia is the Harvest work; and whereas these two things come out only incidentally and subordinately to other lines of thought in the first two parables, and are not 

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referred to at all in the third parable. He pervertingly assumes as a basis for one of his arguments that a teacher's answer to a number of questions can contain only such thoughts as are asked for; whereas, like other good teachers when circumstances and necessity call for it, our Lord as a generous giver and painstaking helper gave His disciples more than they asked for, because circumstances and necessity called for it as helpful in a general way. He pervertingly assumes that the final decision is given at the end of this Age, yet hedges in such a way that he leaves as a final impression with his readers that it is not given until the end of the next Age, which wobbling overthrows his view. An interpretation based upon such and so many perversions as its necessary foundation must be false. 

Briefly we will give seven lines of thought that demonstrate our Pastor's interpretation to be correct: (1) His interpretation makes this passage harmonious with itself, with all other Scriptures and Scriptural teachings, with God's character, Christ's ransom, and with facts and the Bible's designs, while the one we are refuting more or less contradicts every one of these seven axioms of Biblical interpretation. (2) The opening verse shows that Christ will not be seated on the throne therein referred to until the entire Little Flock is with Him - "all His holy angels with Him" (Col. 3:4; Rom. 8:17; 2 Tim. 2:11, 12). (3) The gathering of all nations before Him is an individual and not a class affair; while class gatherings are assumed by the interpretation under view. (4) Their separation is also an individual and not a class affair, though this individual separation results in the individuals forming two classes; whereas the interpretation under review makes the separation begin with already formed classes, but makes it produce no other classes. (5) Christ's "least brethren" (the literal translation; see Rotherham, and the two Revised Versions, Young, etc.) are the restitution brethren, as His greater brethren in

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an ascending scale are the angels, Spirit-born Youthful Worthies, Great Company, Ancient Worthies and Little Flock; while the interpretation under review cannot be made plausible without having as its basis the false translation of the A.V., "one of the least of these, my brethren." (6) All the faithful restitution class will, as the real sheep, inherit the earth at the end of the next Age; while not all of the sheep of the article under review are real sheep, and thus all of such sheep will not get the everlasting life on earth. (7) All of the goats are the incorrigible of the next Age and go with Satan and his angels into annihilation; whereas not all of the goats of the interpretation under review prove to be real goats, and thus all of its goats do not go into the same fate as the devil. 

The first article of the Feb. 15 Tower, entitled "The Destiny Of The Goats," attempts to defend the "new view" of the Sheep and Goats, and, like every other new view that its writer presents, manifests the increasing darkening of his right eye, even as the Lord has foretold of him (Zech. 11:15-17). By some half-truths he seeks to hide the real issues, and by multiplicity of sophistical words he succeeds in darkening counsel. He tries to evade the logical conclusion of his claim, i.e., that his parabolic goats, being the clergy and the principal of the flock, must all go into the second death, by saying that the class as "goats," not the individuals constituting the goat class, will be destroyed. But how does this agree with the Lord's statements in the parable, "Then shall He say unto them [individuals of a class, not simply a class as such, distinct from the individuals constituting it]," "ye gave Me no meat," "ye gave Me no drink," "ye took Me not in," "ye clothed Me not," "ye visited Me not," "then shall they also [individuals, just like the righteous, a similarity to whose words is by the word 'also' expressly indicated] answer Him, when saw we Thee?" "Then shall He answer them, Verily I say to

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you, Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these, My least brethren, ye did it not unto Me." "These shall go away into an everlasting cutting off; but the righteous into life eternal." The contrast in this last verse is annihilative of his sophistry. Here the righteous [all the individuals of the special class referred to] are contrasted with the wicked [all the individuals of the special class referred to]. The exact opposite classes [in all their individual members] are not only contrasted, but their eternal states are shown to be the exact opposites—all the individuals of the one class enter eternal life; therefore its opposite, eternal death, is entered by all the individuals of the opposite class. The distinction that he makes utterly breaks down in the presence of the personal and demonstrative pronouns that Jesus uses in describing the acts and words of those persons symbolized by the goats in contrast with the acts and words of those pictured by the sheep in view of their contrasted eternal states. 

If he were consistent in the application of his distinction, he could not at all use the parable to teach the second death of the wicked and persecuting clergy and the principal of the flock; for there could be no reference at all to the second death in the parable from the standpoint of his distinction, i.e., that they are destroyed as goats, but not as individuals, just as from the standpoint of a similar distinction the casting of the tares into the furnace of fire for their destruction as tares does not refer to the second death at all. Thus his attempted distinction applied to the goats destroys the use of the parable to prove his contention, i.e., that the wicked and persecuting clergy and the principal of the flock go into the second death; for he makes the distinction to evade the conclusion that all his goats must go into the second death. 

Again, in this article and in Z '24, 382 he tries to evade the force of the ransom argument 'as used against his position by his correspondents to the effect 

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that the ransom guarantees an individual trial for life for every human being, after releasing him from the Adamic sentence, his claim being that very many go into the second death without having the ransom merit imputed or applied for them, if they know of the ransom and persecute the Christ. One of the passages quoted against this new view by his correspondents is Rom. 5:18. To evade the force of the objection, he confounds "the free gift" of this passage with the process of bringing people unto the Millennial justification of life and then at great length proceeds to argue that "a gift is a contract" and that receiving the free gift always requires a consenting acceptance from the receiver, and therefore he argues that the free gift is not given to everybody, despite the fact that the verse says "it shall come to all men." Even a superficial reading of the verse should manifest his sophistry in identifying the "free gift" with the process of being brought up to "justification of life." "The free gift [the forgiveness of sins; Rom. 5:16: 'the free gift is from many offences' - Diaglott] came [shall come, as is evident from the words, 'shall be made righteous' in the next verse] to all men unto [for the purpose of enabling them to use the opportunities its reception gives them to gain] justification of life." The next verse proves that the free gift means the cancellation of the Adamic sin and condemnation, for it gives the reason why this free gift shall come to all men: "for as by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners [partake of the Adamic sin], even so by the obedience of one the many shall be made righteous [of that sin, be forgiven the Adamic sin]." While many gifts do require a consenting recipient before their giving is consummated, his underlying assumption that every gift presupposes not only a giver, but a consenting recipient before the giving is consummated, is a superficial fallacy, as the following examples prove: God gave Adam, his race and every

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other created thing the gift of existence without their consent. Sunshine, rain, cold, heat, day, night, seasons, etc., are also gifts not requiring the recipients' consent. So, too, in the case of the free gift referred to in Rom. 5:18. It is the cancellation of the Adamic sin and condemnation which Jehovah will give the world when Christ applies the ransom merit for the world, and all in Adam will receive that gift without knowing it, and therefore without consenting to its reception at the time. It will be impossible for the majority to know of its bestowal until years afterward; for they will be dead long after the gift's bestowal. 

He is similarly confused on 1 Tim. 2:4-6. To defend his view that justification to life is not essential to a trial for life now and that the ransom doctrine does not guarantee its use for a Millennial trial of life with an accurate knowledge of the Truth for all not having had it in this life, he gives the expression, "God will [literally, willeth to] have all men to be saved," the same meaning that we as a Lutheran gave it before we came into the Truth, and when we thought that all men were on trial for life now, i.e., that God desires the eternal salvation of all! These words have no reference whatever to eternal salvation; they refer, like Rom. 5:18, 19, to universal salvation from the Adamic sentence, which, together with universal enlightenment, the passage says God is determined shall take place. Why do we say this? Because the passage says so, and then gives three guarantees as proving it: (1) the perfect character of God implied in His unity, "there is one God"; (2) the ransom, "the man Christ Jesus … a ransom for all"; (3) the Gospel Age and the Millennial Age for its testimony to the Church and the world respectively, "the testimony in its own seasons."—Diaglott. The writer of the article under review in order to justify his error that people now go into the second death without having been justified to life (the antecedent to a trial for life now),

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is detracting from the ransom. And to call, as he does, the mixture (supplemented by faintly understood and mostly misunderstood Truth witnesses from Truth people) that the Nominal Church gives sufficient knowledge to put unbegotten people into a position of responsibility for life or death eternal, so that many of them will have no trial after this life, is another proof of the darkening of his right eye. Not only Rom. 5:18, 19 and 1 Tim. 2:4-6, but numerous other Scriptures and the entire plan of God contradict, from the standpoint of the ransom and the exclusive trial of the Church now (the firstborns alone being now, in the night of antitypical Nisan 14, in danger of the second death), his new doctrine that many people before and since Pentecost without justification to life go into the second death. 

He offers two examples as proofs that wilful sinners go into the second death without justification to life—Judas and the scribes and Pharisees. He thinks that Matt. 23:33 proves it of the scribes and Pharisees. This passage, as our Pastor held (as can be seen from both quotations from him, given in the article under review but quoted as though they taught the "new view"), teaches no more than that they had so greatly undermined their characters that Jesus almost despaired of their recovery when brought to a trial for life in the Millennium. The passage does not say that they would not escape a sentence to Gehenna. It goes no further than to intimate that the Lord warns that they were in grave danger of not finding an escape from it. On the contrary these very Pharisees were foretold by the Lord as seeing (hence they will be alive again in the Millennium, and are therefore not now in the second death) Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, etc., as of the earthly phase of the kingdom and themselves debarred from such princeship, despite their delusion that they would be the foremost ones among 

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those princes (Luke 13:28). Hence they are not now in the second death. 

With Judas the case is different; for he had what God for the time being considered and treated as exactly equal to justification to life and the Spirit-begettal, i.e., God in accepting the twelve and the seventy as Apostles and Prophets in the Church by the pre-anointing which He gave them (Matt. 10:1; Luke 10:19), shows that He had anticipatorily granted them justification to life; and by giving them these highest offices in the Church had set them in the Body. Thus He shows that He had put them on trial for life. He therefore, before Pentecost, caused their names to be written in the Lamb's Book of Life (Luke 10:20; Heb. 12:23). As a part of the Lord's Goat they were before Pentecost tied to the door of the Tabernacle. Therefore they could pray, "Our Father," and therefore on numerous occasions Jesus called God their Father. The ransom having already been put on the Altar (see comment in Berean Bible on Matt. 9:2, etc.), and they being participants with the Lord in His office and sufferings, God must, under the conditions above mentioned, have anticipatorily given them justification to life. Hence any one of them by fully wilful sin before Spirit-begetting could have gone into the second death. But this danger of going into the second death before Spirit-begettal, was limited to these special 82 persons, a prerequisite for which was justification to life, the pre-anointing, the sharing in the two highest offices in the Church, as Jesus' special helpers and the writing of their names in the Lamb's Book of Life. Since no others had these privileges, they could not have had the dangers attending these privileges—the Gospel-Age dangers involved in being on final trial for life without Spirit-begetting. Hence Judas, believing and knowing that he was betraying the Messiah, made utter shipwreck of his privileges and went into the second death. But with the scribes

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and Pharisees it was entirely different, even as our Pastor indicates in one of the article's quotations from his writings, when he says that not they, but Judas was the real crucifier and was more guilty than Pilate, the Roman soldiers, the Jewish rabble and the Sanhedrin; for they did not believe and hence did not know that Jesus was the Messiah (Acts 3:17; 1 Cor. 2:8); nor were they given the anticipatory justification to life; the pre-anointing, the offices of Apostles and secondarily prophets in the Body and enrollment in the Lamb's Book of Life. Hence their course toward the Lord, Truth and Righteousness, was not a final one. They yet have awaiting them through the ransom merit an opportunity for life, which will be undergone by them amid expiatory stripes and with little hope of reformation on the part of the more wicked among them. Exactly so will it be with those of the clergy and the principal of the flock who have not been justified to life and consequently have not been Spirit-begotten and hence are not now on trial for life, but who against more or less light have sinned against the Christ class. The scribes, Pharisees, clergy, principal of the flock and all other persecutors and mistreaters of the Christ class, who did not believe, and hence did not know the Messiahship of the Christ class, are all represented as salvable. This is evidenced by the man who carried out the bodies of the bullock and goat without the camp washing himself and becoming clean at the end of the atonement day (Lev. 16:27, 28). Nor will the unbegotten wicked clergy, principal of the flock and others, who as the fit man persecuted the Great Company in 1918, for this persecution go into the second death (Lev. 16:26), as the writer of the article under review claims, alleging such Great Company members to be the Little Flock, though doubtless some Little Flock members, mingling with the Great Company, did suffer persecution from the same persecuting persons. By the foregoing we are not to be understood 

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to mean that none of the clergy and the principal of the flock will during the Gospel Age go into the second death. On the contrary, those of them who have been Spirit-begotten and have for example become sifting leaders in any of the six siftings, will go into the second death, as is evident from the type (250 Levites) of those engaged in the fifth—the contradictionism—sifting (Num. 16:35, 38; 1 Cor. 10:10). Doubtless these as of antitypical Judas have persecuted and will persecute the true Church. For such Spirit-begotten ones we have no hope whatever. They will surely go into the second death; but they are not pictured forth by the parabolic goats, which represent those of the second death class who die at the end of the Millennium, but not those of that class who at 100 years are Millennial second deathers. 

As his final and supposedly conclusive proof, the writer of the article under review cites 2 Thes. 1:6-10, which he thinks applies only to the Time of Trouble; and which he claims teaches the punishment of the non-Spirit-begotten persecuting clergy, etc., with the second death in the Time of Trouble. But this text forbids such an application, which presupposes that the expression, "shall come" (v. 10), when applied to the Lord's Second Advent, and the expression, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus" (literal translation, v. 7) as used in these verses, are limited to our pre-Millennial time. As our Pastor frequently pointed out, the entire Millennium is frequently referred to as the period when He comes and of His revelation. The words "shall come" may also apply to the setting in of the Parousia, and the words, "shall come" and His "revelation" may also apply to the entire Parousia and Epiphany. Passages showing that the words "shall come," used of our Lord's Second Advent, apply to the entire Parousia, or Epiphany, or both, are, among others, the following: 1 Cor. 11:26; Luke 12:37; 21:34; 1 Thes. 5:2; 2 Pet. 3:10; Jude 14. Passages 

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showing that the words, "shall come," used of our Lord's Second Advent, apply to the entire Millennium, are, among others, the following: Matt. 16:27; 23:39; 25:31; Mark 8:38-9:10; Luke 17:20. Passages which teach that the revelation of our Lord will be pre-Millennial, among others, are the following: Luke 17:30; Col. 3:4. Passages that refer to our Lord's revelation as both pre-Millennial and Millennial, are, among others, the following, the italics indicating those purely Millennial: Rom. 2:5; 8:18, 19; 1 Cor. 1:7; 1 Pet. 1:7, 13; 4:13. 

In view of these facts we must investigate the meaning of the words, "shall come" and "revelation," as used in 2 Thes. 1:6-10, and from the passage itself find out whether they apply to pre-Millennial or to Millennial things, in so far as its teachings on punishing all of the Church's persecutors are concerned. Vs. 6, 7 and 10 contain such statements as prose that the passage covers the entire Millennium, and not simply the Parousia and the Epiphany. Notice first of all the time statement in v. 7, "at the revelation of the Lord Jesus." What do the foregoing words say will take place "at the revelation of our Lord Jesus"? (1) Not only that the entire Church will have rest from all persecutions as a reward from the Lord; but (2) that all unconsecrated persecutors of the Church from St. Paul's day on will be punished retributively by the Lord. What does this imply? That all such persecutors will be alive again. When will this be? After the day of vengeance is over, during the times of restitution. Hence the expression, "at the revelation of the Lord Jesus," used in v. 7 does not apply, in so far as punishment on such persecutors is concerned, to the Parousia or to the Epiphany, but to the Basileia or restitution time alone; for not until then will such dead persecutors of the Church return from the tomb: Therefore the writer of the article under review has totally misapplied this passage when he uses it to

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prove the second death of the non-Spirit-begotten persecuting clergy, etc., at the end of this Age. Secondly, let us look at v. 10, where another time indication is given, explaining the meaning of the words, "shall come." That time indication is the expression, "in that day." What day is this? The Millennial day, the restitution day. How do we know this? (1) Not merely because this is the usual meaning of that expression; but (2) especially because the expression, "all that believe in that day," is in contrast with the Church, thus proving that the day is the Millennium, in contrast with the Gospel Agethe day of the great salvation. Therefore the expression, "He shall come," in v. 10, is not limited to our Lord's arrival, nor to the Parousia, nor to the Epiphany, but to the entire thousand years - the restitution times, when indeed He will be glorified in His saints and admired by all other believers. Accordingly, the classes referred to as (1) not knowing God and (2) not obeying the Gospel are (A) not only those (a) who will die at 100 years (those who know not God) and (b) those who will die at the end of the Millennium as symbolic goats (those who do not obey the Gospel); but (B) also (a) those Parousiac and Epiphaniac Spirit-begotten ones in the nominal church who sinning the sin unto death never came into the Truth, and thus never really came to know God (those that know not God); and (b) those Spirit-begotten ones in the Truth who sin the sin unto death (those that obey not the Gospel—the Truth, which enabled them really to know God). What does our investigation prove with reference to this passage? We answer, The passage as such cannot be applied exclusively to a period previous to the kingdom, but applies to the whole Millennium, especially to the second and third phases of our Lord's Second Advent—the Epiphany and the Basileia. What follows from this? The complete disproof of the claim of the article under review that it

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applies to the second death of the supposed goats of that article, supposedly including the non-Spirit-begotten persecutors (clerical and lay) of the Christ class. 

At times J.F.R. slurringly alleges that some brethren use their knowledge of Greek and Hebrew to pervert the Truth. His readers understand him to mean especially us. Our readers know that we make use of our knowledge of these languages, but they know that we do so in order to defend and explain the Truth, and frequently to refute his and others' errors. But we would on this point remark that if he thoroughly knew English, Greek and Hebrew grammar, and were not drunken in his use of such knowledge, he would be saved from many a mistake, e.g., his interpreting (Z '24, 58, par. 2) the noun "rest" in 2 Thes. 1:7, which he explains as though it were an imperative verb, but which the Greek most clearly, and the English less clearly, show is a noun and the object of the verb "recompense." This mistake is the means of his completely misunderstanding the Apostle's thought in vs. 6 and 7, and makes him think the Lord's people are exhorted to "rest" during the Gospel Age, whereas the Apostle shows that the Lord will "at the revelation of the Lord Jesus" (Diaglott) recompense (1) tribulation to the Church's unconsecrated persecutors of the entire Age, and (2) rest to the Church of the entire Age, which proves that the recompense for the persecutors is after restitution sets in and the dead return. 

A by far much more drastic evidence of this right eye darkening than the last-mentioned item is seen in his new thought (Z '24, 4, 5) that the reaping period of the Harvest is one of 50 years. Without humbly confessing that he was in error when contrary to our Pastor he for years taught that the reaping began in 1878 and ended in 1918, he tells his readers that the reaping period is from 1874 to 1924. He alleges as proof that the Jews reaped their harvest fifty days, by beginning their reaping on Nisan 16 (as the Bible

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teaches they did, Deut. 19:9), and ending it on Pentecost (which the Bible nowhere teaches). He claims that as Pentecost was the feast of the firstfruits, the reaping was finished on that day; and he argues that this types a 50 years' reaping at the end of the Jewish and Gospel Ages. There is absolutely no connection between his reasons in what he gives as type and antitype, and his conclusions. Pentecost, as set forth in the Old Testament, in so far as it is the feast of firstfruits, types the whole Gospel Age, and from the standpoint of the after-fruits, types the Millennial Age (Joel 2:28, 29), as our Pastor taught and wrote, and not the end of the reaping. (Note the practical identity of the expressions in Lev. 23:17 and Rev. 14:4, "they [these] are the firstfruits unto the Lord [God]," as expressing the fruitage—the 144,000—of the entire Gospel Age; additionally see Ex. 23:16; 34:22; Num. 28:26). What are typed in the New Testament by the fifty days from Jesus' resurrection and Pentecost, we have shown in Vol. V, Chap. I, which please see. 

We now will refute this view of a 50 years' reaping. 

(1) The Bible teaches that the Gospel-Age reaping lasted 40 years. Please see the fifty-six proofs on this point in Note 3 of the Appendix of Studies, Vol. III. Among these proofs we note the following: The first 40 days that Moses stayed in the mount, the 40 days that Goliath defied Israel, the 40 days of Ezekiel's siege of Jerusalem, Jonah's 40 days of denunciation against Nineveh, the 40 days of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and the 40 days of His resurrection experiences before His ascension. Therefore the reaping was not 50, but 40 years. 

(2) The literal reaping was finished before Pentecost each year in Israel: because the gleaning was finished at least a day after the reaping, and because the male gleaners as well as the male reapers had to appear at the tabernacle, and later at the temple at

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Jerusalem, on Pentecost with all other male Israelites (Ex. 23:14-17; 34:18-23). Therefore the reaping was over at least two days before Pentecost in Israel. 

(3) The reaping was finished considerably earlier before Pentecost than these two days, because the reaping and gleaning had to be finished long enough before Pentecost to permit all male Israelites to arrive at the latest a day before Pentecost in Jerusalem for the temple service on Pentecost—"before the Lord"—traveling being unlawful on a holy convocation day, such as was Pentecost. But some parts of Palestine were an eight days' journey from Jerusalem, e.g., those places in north and north-eastern Palestine. Hence this and the former reason prove that the reaping ended before ten days preceding Pentecost. 

(4) The reaping was finished before such journeys ten days prior to Pentecost were begun; because from each habitation (Lev. 23:17) two loaves baked from the firstfruits' flour, ground from the reaped grain and made into leavened dough, had to be brought by each head of a family to the temple. But, as a rule, such dough was kneaded the day before baking so that the dough would have time to rise; and the bread would be baked the day before the journey, which was usually begun at dawn. This consideration makes the reaping end two days earlier than the preceding reason, hence earlier than 12 days before Pentecost. 

(5) The reaping was finished long before this grinding, kneading and baking occurred; because there preceded such acts, and there followed the reaping process six other harvest processes, which required at least ten days' time to complete: (1) sheaving, (2) drying, (3) treading by the oxen, (4) winnowing, (5) sifting and (6) garnering. This consideration combined with the preceding ones requires the reaping to be completed at least 22 days before Pentecost. In all of these points as we have given them we made no allowance for any delays whatever between the ending 

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of one of these processes and the beginning of the next one, while in practice there were, doubtless, often days intervening between the end of the one and the beginning of the next. 

(6) Since only reaping the firstfruit grain (typical of the consecrated) could be used to type the reaping of the Jewish and Gospel Harvests, if the standpoint of the article under review were correct, i.e., that a day of the literal reaping types a year of the antitypical reaping and that the Jewish reaping was from Nisan 16 to Pentecost, then the reaping of the firstfruits would precede the reaping of the after-fruits, and therefore would have been completed much earlier than 22 days before Pentecost. 

(7) Since the Bible nowhere states the number of days that any Jewish reaping, much less any Jewish reaping of firstfruits, lasted, it cannot have intended the number of days of any Jewish reaping period to type the number of years in the Jewish- and Gospel-Age reaping times; for there being no Biblical statement giving the numbers of days in any Biblical Jewish reaping period, there can be no type on which to base an antitype in this matter of days typing years. These reasons overthrow J.F.R.'s pertinent "new view." 

Further, he claims that the fulfilled facts - his definition of his oft used expression, "physical facts" - prove a fifty-year reaping period. This we emphatically deny on the basis of the above-mentioned fifty-six reasons and the following fulfilled facts: 

(1) The reaping began in 1874 and ended in 1914. 

(2) From the Fall of 1914 to that of 1916, the Faithful, following "that Servant's example" (which "that evil servant" did not follow), ceased the reaping work as such and antitypically confessed the sins over Azazel's Goat, smote Jordan, fought Gideon's first battle, bound the kings and princes and pronounced the judgments written, which things were not a part of the reaping work. 

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(3) During most of the time of such activity on the part of the Faithful, the antitypical poor—the Great Company—and the antitypical stranger—the Youthful Worthies—(Lev. 23:22) did the gleaning world completing it by April 18, 1916. 

(4) The Faithful, being thus reaped and gleaned, have since Sept. 16, 1914, and April 18, 1916, as a class (varyingly in its individual members according to each one's case), been undergoing, and will continue to undergo, to a completion the six harvest processed that follow the reaping or gleaning: sheaving; drying, treading, winnowing, sifting and garnering. 

(5) As parts of the World's High Priest these under their Head, have since Nov. 25, 1916, been leading Azazel's Goat to the gate, delivering it to the fit man and letting it fall into Azazel's hands. 

(6) The Great Company has since Sept. 20, 1914, been undergoing the seven parts of its experiences as Azazel's Goat: (1) hearing the High Priest confess the sins over it, (2) being loosed from the door of the tabernacle, (3) led to the gate, (4) delivered to the fit man, (5) led to the wilderness, (6) let go in the wilderness, and (7) falling into Azazel's hands through abandonment by the priests. 

(7) The Lord since April 18, 1916, has continued the work previously begun of calling some Great Company members into the Truth from the Nominal Church and other persons from the Nominal Church and the world into the Truth as Youthful Worthies—partly by the Great Company in the Truth, which work they mistake for reaping the Little Flock, 

These fulfilled facts, therefore, prove the forty years' reaping period and disprove the "new view" of a fifty years' reaping period. 

Shortly after finishing the preceding part of this chapter, our attention was called to the first article of the March 1 Tower entitled, "A Ransom For All." It makes in six pages a most confused attempt to defend 

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his "new view" to the effect that the scribes, Pharisees, the unbegotten clergy and principal of the flock are amenable to the second death. E.g., when he says that the Jews had their responsibility increased by increased light; we agree; but we deny that this responsibility was increased to the ultimate degree; because when the Lord meted out by the law death or other punishments for special wrongs, as in the cases that he cites (Nadab, Abihu, Korah, Dathan, Abiram, Miriam, Uzzah, Moses and David), St. Paul expressly states of the worst of these punishments - death - that it was not the "sorer punishment" the Second Death (Heb. 10:28, 29). Heb. 10:26-30 expressly teaches that only members of Christ's body can during the Gospel Age by wilful sin go into the Second Death: "If we sin wilfully after receiving the knowledge of the Truth there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin"; but "the sorer punishment" remains. If the "new view" were correct, St. Paul would have said, "If any one sins wilfully after receiving some knowledge of the ransom, etc." 

Then (P. 70, par. 2) he quotes John 15:22-24 to prove that the Jewish leaders sinned unto death. He inserts brackets into the last verse as follows: "They had not had [the] sin [the Greek is emphatic here]." It is often painful to one who knows Greek to see one, like J.F.R. who does not know it, tell what is emphatic in Greek! But when he tells us that a thing that is not at all used in the Greek of this passage "is emphatic here," he gives proof of his ignorance and recklessness. The Greek article for "the" is not in the original at all. To make the verse teach that the Jewish leaders went into the second death, he inserts the article "the" before the word "sin," remarking "the Greek is emphatic here," the design being to make the expression "[the] sin", mean the sin unto death. Emphatic indeed?! The pressure of the emphasis of the Greek here must have been so heavy that it forced 

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the supposedly emphatic Greek word for "the," to remain out of the text altogether! And this comment is made by the one who charges those who do know Greek with using it to pervert the Truth! While the presence of the article here would not necessarily prove that the second death is meant, Greek abstract nouns, like German and French abstract nouns, being usually accompanied by the article, in ways not permissible in English (as can be seen from the following texts, in every one of which the Greek article for "the" precedes the word for "sin," though none of them refer to the sin unto death nor to another special sin: 1 Cor. 15:3, 17, 56; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 1:9; 3:4, 5, etc., etc., etc.), its absence, however in this text certainly proves that the sin unto death is not meant. Our Lord's language implies that there was more or less wilfulness against some light on the part of the Jewish leaders from which they would not be excused; but this does not mean that their responsibility was unto the second death. 

He quotes (p. 71, par. 1) our Lord's words, "If ye were blind, ye should have no [flagrant] sin; but now ye say, We see; therefore your [responsibility for your flagrant] sin remaineth." (Brackets ours.) This is true. Certainly whoever sins against any measure of light is to that extent responsible for, and will have to expiate his sin by stripes. But that does not, except for those who are on final trial for life, and who make complete shipwreck of their trial, imply that the responsibility is to the extent of the second death, as the writer implies. In discussing this subject J.F.R. seems to have forgotten entirely that mixed sins exist. 

The article under review further claims (71, par. 3) that the fact that Spirit-begetting will not take place in the Millennium, and that people will nevertheless go into the second death proves that it is not necessary to become Spirit-begotten to commit the sin unto death. How could one who has known the difference 

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in God's dispensational dealings, now spiritual, later human, make such a statement to prove his proposition as applicable before the Millennium, unless he is drunken or his right eye is darkening? The thing that he must prove to substantiate his "new view" is that people can be put on final trial for life or death eternal without the imputation or application of the ransom, a thing that he has most dismally failed to do, and that cannot be done, his failure illustrating this. 

We will now set forth the Lord's Word that destroys his entire "new view" as to the liability of unbegotten persons (apart from the 82 above mentioned) to the second death before the restitution Covenant begins to operate. God never gives a person an opportunity to stand final trial or life apart from a covenant that makes an offer of such a final trial with the possible issue of the Second Death. The only covenants that offer such a final trial are two: (1) the Abrahamic Covenant in the spiritual features that now apply to the Great Company (Judas latterly being treated as of this class), and that in the end of the Millennium will apply to the Ancient and Youthful Worthies; and (2) the New Covenant which will be for human beings in the Millennium. The Law Covenant, while setting before the people life and death, did not do it as a final trial; but the Sarah features of the Abrahamic Covenant offer the Divine Nature and joint heirship with Christ to the Faithful unconditionally, and do not apply to any but the Faithful. It therefore does not offer a trial with life or death eternal as the issues. It puts the measurably unfaithful under those spiritual provisions of the Abrahamic Covenant that offer life unconditionally to the overcoming Great Company members. There being no other present provision in the Abrahamic Covenant, those who fail to overcome as Great Company members of necessity sink into the second death. God passes no final judgment on anybody except in

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harmony with the provisions that mark the covenant operating in the case. The scribes and Pharisees were on trial under the Law Covenant and no other; hence only such a sentence as the Law Covenant could pronounce on its violators could be pronounced upon the scribes and Pharisees, who in blaspheming the Holy Spirit, sinned quite wilfully against the first table of the Law, and in murdering Jesus sinned quite wilfully against the second table of the Law. Therefore the condemnation of the Law Covenant was the only one which fell upon them. Therefore their death was not the second death; for the Law Covenant did not inflict the "sorer punishment," which is the second death. 

In Z '24, 245 it is taught that Enoch died. In defense of this plain contradiction of Heb. 11:5, which teaches that Enoch did not experience death, Heb. 11:13, "These all died in faith," is quoted. The words of Jude 14, 15 are alleged to teach that Enoch was given a vision of the reign of Christ which vision is alleged to be his translation, and that immediately on seeing it God granted him an instantaneous death. Others, but not the Tower article under review, claim the curse compelled Enoch's death. 

Against the last point—that the curse necessitated Enoch's death—we would say that the curse does not forbid in every case the slowing up of the dying process until the ransom merit applied in the Millennium will cancel the death sentence; and therefore without violating justice the Lord could for typical reasons have slowed up the dying process in Enoch's case, inasmuch as the ransom would in due time make up this penalty for Enoch, as we know it will similarly do for those who pass into the Millennium without death. This, as will later appear, God actually did for Enoch. Further, Heb. 11:5 directly teaches that Enoch did not see, i.e., experience, death. To see death means to experience death (Luke 2:26). Therefore Enoch's not seeing death means his not experiencing 

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death. That the expression "and he was not" (Gen. 5:24) does not mean that he died is evident; for St. Paul explains it (Heb. 11:5) to mean that Enoch was not found, though not dead, because, alive, he was transplaced somewhere away from men's abode. Again, the view that we are examining misapplies Heb. 11:13, "These all died in faith," when it includes Enoch among the "these all." The "these all" refer to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Sarah—those who were promised the covenant blessings, but who did not while alive receive them, "not having received the promises." Vs. 13-15 prove unanswerably that the "these all" refer to those only of the ones discussed in Heb. 11:2-13, who were offered the Abrahamic promises. Hence Abel, Enoch and Noah (Heb. 11:4-7) are not included among the "these all." Therefore Heb. 11:13 does not teach that Enoch died; for it refers to others. 

Furthermore, Jude 14, 15 does not say that Enoch saw a vision of the kingdom, as the article under review teaches; but it says he prophesied of Christ's coming with the saints to punish wicked persons. Jude says not a word of Enoch's prophesying that Christ would come to bless, as the article claims. This prophecy is limited to the Parousia and the Epiphany, during which Jesus and the saints will punish the wicked sifters (v. 14). 

Moreover, the article under review contradicts the teaching that Melchizedek did not die; because the Scriptures teach that Enoch and Melchizedek are the same person. The following is the proof: St. Paul says that of Melchizedek "it is witnessed that he liveth" (Heb. 7:8). In so many words it is no where witnessed in the Old Testament that Melchizedek lived on without dying. Enoch, according to St. Paul's explanation, is the only human being of whom the Old Testament "witnessed that he liveth" (Gen. 5:24; compare Heb. 11:5). Therefore these passages and Heb. 7:8 prove that Enoch and Melchizedek 

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are one and the same person. They being the same person, we have a record from which Jude testified of Enoch's prophecy that the Lord and the saints would come to punish the sifters of the Parousia and Epiphany. Enoch did not express this prophecy in words; but in the symbols of the Pyramid, which he as Melchizedek built. The prophecy was expressed symbolically in the following way: The place at the upper end of the Grand Gallery's South Wall that symbolizes our Lord's Second Advent and its date is north of the North Wall of the bottomless pit, i.e., His Second Advent would set in before the bottomless pit condition would be reached, which was reached in 1914. Into the second death—the antitypical bottomless pit—the wicked sifters of Jude 4-16 and 2 Pet. 2:1-22 will be cast after our Lord's return, according to Jude 14, 15, as prophesied by Enoch, who did not deliver this prophecy in words, but in the symbols of the Pyramid, as just described. 

Finally, Enoch did not die, because God desired that he should not "sleep" in the death condition in order that by his not sleeping in the death state he could be used by God to represent—type—those of the saints who would die after 1878, but would not sleep—they would be translated into the spirit condition without having to remain asleep in the death state. And it was to type this favor of the Lord to those who as the antitypical Enoch would walk with God during the Parousia and Epiphany that God kept Enoch alive. 

In Z '24, 295, 296, the Society's president gives a new view of Ps. 82. We are familiar with our dear Pastor's view of this Psalm, according to which in vs. 1-5 prophetically our Lord in His Second Advent is represented as judging the political, financial, ecclesiastical, industrial, social and labor kings, and in which in vs. 6 and 7 prophetically He is represented as declaring that the Little Flock are mighty ones and sons of God and are privileged to share in the Sin-offering with Him 

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as one of the princes, Adam being the other prince. This excellent interpretation the "new view" corrupts, narrowing it into an arraignment of the clergy alone, who according to this new view will die like Satan, supposedly one of the princes of v. 7! This interpretation is intended to prove that the clergy as the parabolic goats go into the second death. On this perversion, Luther's statement with reference to the pope well applies: "One little word overthrows him." That one little word is: "all of you are children of the Most High" (v. 6). If any one thing is certain, it is that all of the clergy are not "children of the Most High." Therefore as a class they cannot be meant here, though some of them are New Creatures, and thus sons of God; and though others of them, while not New Creatures, are, nevertheless, by Tentative Justification tentative human sons of God in the sense of Rom. 12:1 and Prov. 23:26—a sense of sonship which J.F.R. denies, as he denies Tentative Justification; but very many of them never were even tentatively justified, e.g., many of them were higher critics and disbelieved in blood-atonement at an early age, even before entering college before their becoming ministers. According to his view none are sons of God except New Creatures. Hence, the expression, "ALL of you are children of the Most High," even according to his view proves that the clergy are not as such referred to in vs. 6 and 7. Such language as Ps. 82:6, 7 can apply to the Little Flock alone. These verses, in harmony with the Scriptural principle of hiding God's thoughts—"here a little, there a little" (Is. 28:10)—are, by their sense as applying to New Creatures only, proven to be thrown into the midst of an entirely different line of thought. Moreover, the discussion in John 10:33-36, e.g., "If [Jehovah] called them gods unto whom [literally, with reference to whom] the Word of God came," conclusively proves that the Little Flock is meant in Ps. 82:6, 7. J.F.R.'s perversion of this Psalm is only another 

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example of how his efforts to defend an error, i.e., that the clergy are the parabolic goats, and are going into the second death, lead him to continually increasing error. 

In Z '24, 307-313, he attempts, contrary to our Pastor's teaching, to prove another "new view," i.e., that Satan has as yet in no sense been bound. He darkens the entire subject by covertly assuming that Satan's binding is not a progressive thing, and that it will make him inactive. Hence, from his present activity, he concludes that Satan is not yet in any sense bound from the standpoint of Rev. 20:1-3. Satan's binding is not only progressive, but also is of distinct stages: From 1874 to 1914 he was undergoing binding with reference to the three foundation errors of his kingdom: the Divine right (1) of kings, (2) of aristocrats and (3) of clerics; and its three supporting errors: (1) the consciousness of the dead, (2) their change into spirits at death and (3) their bliss or torment. This stage of his binding was so complete by 1914 that by these six errors he no more could control his empire. Hence, the World War was possible as the weakener of his empire. His binding is now proceeding along the lines of his deception that now in state, church and society, God's kingdom is and should be in power as a dictatorship, and that all of these should operate together. He will be shortly so fully bound in these respects as to be unable to control Christendom thereby. Thereupon will follow the revolution. Hence he will be gradually bound on lines of the deception that the brotherhood of man as expressed in Socialism will bring in the Millennium. That stage of his binding becoming complete and he being no longer able to control his empire by this, its pertinent deception, anarchy will set in, completely overthrowing every vestige of his empire; then follows his final binding's stage, just before Jacob's Trouble; and thereafter in every respect his binding will be complete. So, too, will his loosing be a 

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gradual one, and that by stages. Only from the standpoint of a gradual binding and that by stages can we interpret in harmony with Truth the teaching that he is to be bound 1,000 years—an insuperable obstacle to the "new view" of the ever darkening right eye, which obstacle he seeks to set aside by teaching a direct contradiction of Rev. 20:3, i.e., that Satan will not be bound 1,000 years; but considerably less. The fact that it is the Truth (Rev. 20:1-3) which binds Satan proves unanswerably that his binding is gradual; and the fact that the overthrow of his empire is by three stages—war, revolution, anarchy—proves that his pertinent binding (necessary to bring about each of these three stages) must be one of at least three stages. These facts dispose of his entire position. 

We will briefly answer his perversions on Matt. 12:26-29. He claims boastingly, "without the hope or expectation of successful contradiction," to prove that Matt. 12:27, which treats of binding the strong man, does not refer to the Second Advent. Rather, he claims that Jesus in vs. 25-29 suggests that either (1) the devil (v. 25), or (2) God's Spirit (v. 28), or (3) a human being (v. 29) must be credited with casting out the devils, and that hence Jesus reasons that he must be doing it by God's Spirit, as the other two suppositions are untenable. Our Pastor taught that v. 26 by its contents alludes to the Second Advent, and is introduced in this connection, only because its thought relation to the point under discussion disproves the claim of the Pharisees that Jesus cast out devils by Satan. From this standpoint he correctly held that Jesus' thought was that Satan could not be casting out devils; because that would imply that the Second Advent had set in, at which time Satan's kingdom was for the first time to be divided against itself (Dan. 5:28; see also Rev. 16:19, where a later stage of its division is indicated). Thus the basis of our Lord's first refutation of the Pharisaic accusation is that the

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divided condition of Satan's empire peculiar to the Second Advent could not at His First Advent be prevailing, and that therefore He could not be casting out Satan by Satan. J.F.R. tacitly assumes that v. 29 sets forth a human being as a third possible agent for casting out the devils on this occasion. This is a pure importation into the text. For if such had been the thought, the Greek word for MAN—anthropos—would have been used in v. 29 as required by the thought-contrast with Satan (v. 26) and with God's Spirit (v. 28), but instead the indefinite pronoun anyone—tis—is used, which may apply to God, Christ, good and bad angels, or men. Hence we say that he tacitly assumes, without the least proof, that a third possible agent—man—for casting out devils is here introduced. That the casting out of devils cannot mean the spoiling of the strong man's house is evident from the fact that Satan's house was not then and thereby spoiled, and is also evident from the further fact that his house according to the Bible is not spoiled—literally, thoroughly wasted—until at Christ's Second Advent. That this verse cannot refer to a First Advent work is further evident from the fact that Satan's binding is exclusively a Second Advent work (Rev. 20:1-3). Therefore, his third point—a baseless assumption—is utterly destroyed. His claim that his view as he gives it is required by the context is a mere sophism; because as we saw above from the case of Ps. 82:6, 7, and from the direct statement of Is. 28:10, the Scriptures frequently put into a connection things that are on an entirely different subject or are only in a general way and by remote allusion related to the subject of the context. When, as in the present case, the facts stated in the verse disprove a contextual line of sequential arguments, such a mode of presenting arguments must not be assumed. Hence, our Pastor's thought that our Lord in v. 29 introduces a parable of 

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the Second Advent only remotely suggested by the line of thought in the context is correct. 

Some of the Society friends think that our candid and plain discussions of the new views of the Society's president are proof of bitterness on our part toward him—a thought that he has spread. We desire to assure such brethren that we have bitterness toward no man. Our plainness is due to the Divine purpose for the Epiphany. The Lord declares His Epiphany purpose to be to bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and to make manifest the counsels of hearts (1 Cor. 4:5; 3:12-15; Mal. 3:1-3). Such manifestation cannot be done by ambiguous words. It requires an exact and clear refutation of the revolutionism as to error and arrangement. Inasmuch as revolutionism on the part of the Great Company is involved, we know from their Scripturally described double-mindedness (Jas. 1:8) that their motives in such revolutionism are impure, being an the part of the leaders—antitypical Jambres—unholy ambition, power-grasping, lording it over others, pride, etc. (2 Tim. 3:1-8). Such knowledge, combined with the knowledge that they are exploiting God's people, causes us to expose them, as Jesus exposed the Pharisees, as Savonarola, Luther, Zwingli, etc., during the Reformation time exposed the doctrinal and practical errors of the Papists, and as our Pastor exposed the doctrinal and practical errors of the clergy and of the sifters of his day. But in the Epiphany it must be done with greater plainness to accomplish the Lord's purpose of bringing to clearer light the hidden things of darkness and in making manifest the counsels of hearts. 

But, one may ask, why make the Society's president the chief object of such refutations and exposures? We answer: He is the most guilty of all the members of antitypical Jambres in misleading God's guileless sheep; and he does it with more subtle hypocrisy, cunning and cruelty than is to be found elsewhere in all 

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Church history. So pronounced is he as a revolutionist against the Lord's ways that God has pointed him out individually in Zech. 11:15-17 and in Matt. 24:48-51. Let the brethren who blame us consider the Scriptural, reasonable and factual evidences of God's pointing him out in these passages; and convinced by these evidences, as they are presented in the Appendix of Studies, Vol. IV and in the preceding chapter, they will recognize that we are acting in this matter simply as a mouthpiece of the Lord to rescue the sheep from this wolf in sheep's clothing. 

We have been accused of persecuting him. On the contrary, he has persecuted us, as his Harvest Siftings and many others of his activities prove; and he has done so, because we sought lovingly and righteously to keep him back from a course that Scripture, reason and facts prove unanswerably has been a very wrong one for him, a dangerous one for the Church, a perverting one for the Truth and a dishonoring one for the Lord. Never have we attacked him on personal lines, as he with gross misrepresentations has us. Always have our refutations been against his official errors of doctrine, and our exposures, against his official wrongs of practice. We challenge the production of one sentence from our writings against him as being attacks on his personal conduct as distinct from his official acts and teachings. He has through gross official falsehoods and dishonesty influenced tens of thousands to withdraw fellowship from us. He has pilloried us before the whole Church as of the Judas class; yea, he has symbolically crucified us "without the gate" of his symbolic city. This was accomplished when his propaganda—printed and oral—on the subject was so thoroughly believed as to convince thousands that as rebels and blasphemers against God's channel we and our faithful supporters in the Lord were in the second death class—a thing openly preached in the Rochester Convention in 1923. This 

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fact moved us for a year and a half to cease sending among his adherents any refutations of concurrent new views until Jan., 1925, since when more heed is being paid to our refutations of his errors. 

But we are not in despair, nor are we cast down, through our having been cast out as a supposed blasphemer and rebel against God's arrangements. Those who thus accuse us are in most cases such themselves, some of them wilfully, others blindly so. Our experience in this respect is the experience of God's Priesthood, especially its leaders, and more particularly its Head, from the days of Jesus until now, as we see in the case of Jesus, the Apostles, the angels of the five churches between the Harvests, our Pastor and now ourself. We comfort our heart with the reflection that we are privileged to go the same way as they. Pertinent is the saying of Is. 65:5: "Hear ye the Word of the Lord, ye that tremble [that reverentially stand in awe] at His Word: Your brethren that hated you, that cast you out for My name's sake, said, Let the Lord be glorified [we hate and cast them out for God's glory]; but He shall appear to your joy; and they shall be ashamed!" The Bible teaches that the mouthpiece Priests are special targets, and are crucified "without the gate," both in great and in little Babylon (Matt. 5:10-12; Luke 13:33; Heb. 13:12-16; 2 Cor. 1:12, 13; 4:1-18). 

What do all the facts of the case prove? Do they not prove that we have been faithful throughout the years of the division - from 1917 to the present? Have we not throughout these years stood for the obligatoriness of our Pastor's will and charter in controlling corporational matters among the Truth people, whereas our crucifiers have been unfaithful therein? Have we not throughout these years stood faithful in our advocacy and practice of the Lord's arrangements given through "that Servant" for the conduct of the work, whereas our crucifiers have rebelled

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against every one of those that stood in the way of their gratifying their rebellious ambitions? Have we not stood firm as an ocean rock against the waves of error raised by the windy delusions that our crucifiers have set in motion? Tell us whether we tell the truth or not, when we say that those who amid a sifting maintain complete hold on the Truth previously given, who see clearly the advancing Truth, and who hold it in full harmony with the previously given Truth, are the ones who are given the Divine approval as faithful before and amid the sifting? Tell us whether we tell the truth or not when we say that those who amid a sifting lose large parts of the Truth previously given, and who in their places present opposing errors, are the ones who are given the Divine disapproval as unfaithful before and amid the sifting? These are the real tests in the case. Therefore, let us not allow ourselves to be deceived, if erroneous teachers and wrong practicers are clearly manifested as such by us, when they point to its plain, unvarnished manifestations as a sure proof that we are bitter, are in the Judas class, and as a blasphemer and rebel are a Second Deather. Such accusations are only the "stop thief" cry of the pursued wrong-doer. As for ourself, we have the full assurance of faith that the Lord is now appearing to our joy, that they will be ashamed, and that in due time He will bring forth our righteousness as the light and our judgment as the noonday (Ps. 37:6). With this assurance we rest; and we wish nothing less for our readers than that they may have at least as much of God's joy and peace as we. 

Hence let none take offense at our plain refutations of delusive Azazelian errors and clear exposures of wrong Azazelian practices. They are appropriate for the Divinely ordained Epiphany purposes. They are figured forth, among other things, by Christ's severe and unvarnished exposure of the scribes and Pharisees in Matt. 23. They are spoken and written in the 

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same kind of love as that in which our Lord spoke the rebukes of Matt. 23; and to blame us who are under and by the Lord making their small antitypical rebukes, is in reality blaming Him. 

We desire to set forth the viewpoint from which the gross errors that have been appearing in the Tower from the pen of the Society's president since the Jan. 15, 1925 issue are to be viewed: They are the efforts of a proven fraud to divert attention from the complete collapse of his fraudulent claims—his teachings as respects the antitypical jubilee coming 1925, the Ancient Worthies' resurrection, and the cessation of entrance into the Adamic death state this year [written in 1925]. Events had progressed sufficiently to make apparent even to the simple that his program for this year is impossible of realization. Buttressed by the Parousia Truth, we saw, soon after he stressed this error, wherein it impinged against the Truth: We refuted it by time and sign prophecies. Especially two time prophecies we used against him: (1) the 70 Jubilee years being fully kept—"fulfilled"—during the desolation of the land (2 Chro. 36:20, 21), the cycles this side of the last jubilee before the desolation are jubileeless, and therefore are of 49, not 50, years duration, and therefore reached their culmination in 1874, and did not so do in 1925; (2) the squaring method, which gives the antitypical cycle, leads up to 1874 and cannot in any manner be made to lead up to 1925, The sign prophecies that we cited as against this view required for their fulfillment a very much longer time than the few years from when he first (1918) brought out this view until 1925. The most, and most important, of these sign prophecies have not yet been fulfilled: Antitypical John's beheading, the cleansing of the Truth Levites, the symbolic earthquake, the total destruction of Babylon, the foretold reign again of the beast, the full development of the Youthful Worthies, the Church and the Great Company leaving the world,

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anarchy, Jacob's Trouble, etc. These refutations should have "staid the madness of" this modern Balaam. But he has made it impossible to accomplish this (Zech. 11:17; Matt. 24:51). 

Mr. Barbour prior to the date insisted that without fail Nisan 16, 1878 would witness the deliverance of the entire Church; but when the forecast failed he tried to divert attention from his failure in order to retain his following. In doing this he caused an explosion of figurative dynamite—he renounced the ransom! The Society's president, in spirit allied to him, and guilty of a more apparent fraud, is imitating him in seeking to divert his victims in order to retain them as his followers. This is the viewpoint from which his gross perversions in the Tower since the Jan. 15, 1925, issue are to be regarded. When in 1920 we refuted his perversions on 1925, we told the brethren to be on the lookout for some new delusion with which he would seek to divert attention from his failure in order to retain his following. (P '21, 128, top of col. 2.) Knowing his kinship to Mr. Barbour, his character and his Bible portrait, we felt sure he would so do, and now we see our forecast fulfilling. 

Lawyer-like he sets forth the thought that his 1925 teachings are correct, but would fulfill differently from what was expected! On this point he begins with the Ancient Worthies, in Questions 1 and 2 of Z '25, 23, in which he cautiously seeks to pave the way for the acceptance of the perversion that the Ancient Worthies might return from the dead before the Little Flock and the Great Company leave the earth! However, he sets it forth in a way that he can repudiate the possibility, if driven to it by events. The evident purpose of these two questions is to unsettle faith in the Scripturalness of our Pastor's views on the Ancient Worthies as to the time, order and nature of their resurrection. Of course one acquainted with the former's "methods of deceit" sees just what he sought to dodge. 

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In harmony with our Pastor's view he formerly taught that the Church and Great Company will leave the world before the Ancient Worthies return from the tomb; he also has taught that these two classes will remain in the earth until at least anarchy starts; further, he knows that the revolution, which is to precede anarchy, has not yet come. Hence the cautious setting forth of the possibility of the return of the Ancient Worthies before the Little Flock and Great Company leave the earth; because he knew that the Little Flock and Great Company, as the time drew near, would not leave the earth in 1925. 

Let us see what God says as to the order of the resurrection classes: "But every man in his own order, Christ [the Little Flock; see Berean Comments] the first fruits; afterward they that are [will become] Christ's during his [thousand years'] presence [those who will by the New Covenant become his children, i.e., the Ancient and Youthful Worthies and the obedient of mankind]" (1 Cor. 15:23). "When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death [the Adamic death, in which are the Ancient Worthies as well as the rest of mankind] is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15:54). "The dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together [before others are thus dealt with] with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thes. 4:16, 17). "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection … They shall be priests of God and of Christ and shall reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20:6). These passages clearly prove that the Little Flock precedes all other classes of God's plan in the resurrection of the dead. 

The same is manifest from the picture of the marriage of the Lamb and His Bride and the marriage supper of the Lamb. The order of events is as follows: 

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First the marriage—the first resurrection—takes place, then the marriage supper comes, to which the bridesmaids—the Great Company—are as guests brought after their resurrection. After the marriage supper is over, the children are begotten and born. The first class of these children are the Ancient Worthies, whose begettal is their awakening from the dead perfect in faculty. The Sin-offering picture proves the same thing: for the Little Flock and Great Company must first be brought back from the dead before the blood of the antitypical Goat is available for the rest of the race, first and chief among which will be the Ancient Worthies. The Mediator figure proves the same thing. Thus we see that both Bible passages and Bible doctrines prove that the Little Flock and Great Company precede the Ancient Worthies in arising from the death state. And when the Society's president says that the Scriptures do not teach such precedence, but that we reach such a conclusion by a process of analysis only, he shows, to say the least, his unpreparedness and untrustworthiness as a Biblical interpreter. When he says that Heb. 11:40 refers only to the perfection of the Ancient Worthies' character, he greatly errs. It refers to perfection, physical, mental, moral and religious, therefore includes their awakening from the dead perfect in all their faculties; after which they will be quickly perfected in character. 

Of course they will be awakened before the New Covenant is made manward, for they are the first ones with whom it will be so made; but they will not be awakened until after it is made [sealed by Christ's blood] Godward. Thus by ambiguous language—his "methods of deceit"—he seeks to hide the Truth. His claim that Ps. 45 does not present the classes in the order of their resurrection, in the light of the above, is seen to be another delusion; for the order of the class resurrections there is as we found them above to be Biblically taught. Moreover, while it is true that

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there is a distinction between awakening and resurrection in the case of the world; in the case of the Little Flock, the Great Company and the Ancient and Youthful Worthies, however, their awakening and resurrection are synonymous. His claim that the better resurrection of the Ancient Worthies consists of their change to spirit nature at the end of the Millennium is a palpable error. How do we know this? Because while alive they knew nothing whatever of God's purpose to make them spiritual at the end of the Millennium. They, therefore, could not have hoped for it, their hopes being earthly altogether. Therefore, their being "tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection," as an expression of their hope, cannot mean their resurrection as spirits but as humans at the beginning of the Millennium! 

In Z '25, 35-41, the darkening of his right eye on the meaning of the robe of Christ's righteousness is set forth. In this article he denies that the robe of Christ's righteousness is that righteousness of Christ which is actually imputed to us at the vitalization of our justification—his human righteousness, or, in fact, any other kind of righteousness. On this point we answer as follows: Christ has only one other kind of righteousness—His righteousness as a Divine being, which He could not give us; for that would divest Him of righteousness altogether. This simple answer destroys his contention. He quotes a large number of Scriptures, none of which in the remotest degree proves his contention; for by not one passage has he connected the expression "robe of righteousness" with his definition of it—God's approval since 1918 of the faithful course in cooperating in Society, drives on the part of New Creatures, and their coming under the robe of protection and blessing and joy. According to this the robe of righteousness was not worn previous to 1918. He has given us a definition, we repeat it, 

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which no Scripture connects with the expression, "robe of righteousness." 

The following is a brief discussion of the robe of Christ's righteousness: Christ's righteousness may be understood in two ways: (1) the perfect harmony of His human character with the Divine law, and (2) the perfect harmony of His Divine character with the Divine law. To exist forever as a human being He must have the former, and to exist at all as a Divine being He must have the latter. He now exists as a Divine being, and therefore has not given or imputed to us His righteousness as a Divine being. He does not now exist as a human being, and therefore can use its righteousness—His only righteousness other than His Divine righteousness—to impute to us. His human righteousness He is Scripturally taught to have bestowed by imputation upon us. The Bible teaches that He has imputed His human righteousness to us to cover the imperfections of our flesh, so that the New Creature receive no prejudice or condemnation through this fallen flesh. The following Scriptures teach this thought expressly: Rom. 3:24-26; 4:5-8; 10:4; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9. The expression, "faith [faithfulness, one of the three Scriptural meanings of the word faith] of Jesus," also means the human righteousness of Christ, as the following passages show: Rom. 3:22; Phil. 3:9; Gal. 2:16; 3:22. This is the only righteousness of Christ that the Scriptures teach is imputed to us. Its covering us is seen in the expression, robe of Christ's righteousness. 

The expression, the robe of righteousness, is a figurative one. In this expression, the word righteousness is not figurative; but the word robe is figurative, the word righteousness here being explanatory: It tells just what the robe is—it is the righteousness which covers our human imperfections. This is just what St. Paul says Christ's righteousness does as the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:5-8). This figurative usage 

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will become clearer from some explanations. In Scripture symbols nakedness is used figuratively to represent sin and manifest sinfulness (Rev. 16:15; 3:17, 18; Is. 47:3; Ezek. 16:37; Hos. 2:3). This figurative nakedness in the believer is covered, as by a robe, by the imputation of Christ's righteousness (Rom. 4:5-8), and righteousness is represented as a robed or clothed condition as opposed to a naked one (Job 29:14; Rev. 19:8; Ps. 45:8, 13, 14). Three times, and only three times, is righteousness Scripturally referred to as a robe. This is said (1) of Job's righteousness (Job 29:14), and (2) and (3) of Christ's righteousness (Luke 15:22; Is. 61:10). There can be no doubt that the robe in Luke 15:22 is Christ's righteousness as a human being; and we can demonstrate the same to be the case in Is. 61:10, to which the article under review gives the false definition which we above briefly refuted. 

In Is. 61:10 the term is self-definitive: it tells just what the covering is—it is righteousness. The article under review says that Is. 61:10 teaches that Christ is the giver of the garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness. But the verse says that Jehovah is the Giver of these: "I will greatly rejoice in Jehovah. My soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation; He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom priesteth [literal translation; he arrays himself as a priest] it with ornaments [literally, head dress], and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels." The speaker here is the Christ, Head and Body. This is not only apparent from vs. 1-3, but also from the allusion to the Bridegroom and the Bride (2 Cor. 11:2; Rev. 19:6-8; 21:2, 9). Since this Bridegroom needs not another to give Him a robe of righteousness, the robe of righteousness here referred to must cover the Church, the Body of the Speaker. Therefore the head dress must be that of the Bridegroom, the Head 

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of the Speaker. We further note that since the robe of righteousness belongs to the Bride, or Body, the garments of salvation must belong to the Head, or Bridegroom. We, therefore, understand that in this verse the garments of salvation represent our Lord's official powers whereby He is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, and that the robe represents the righteousness that now covers the Church—Christ's righteousness. What is there in this text to justify the definition of the article under review for the garments of salvation, as being "joyful obedience, etc."? Their wearer is Jesus beyond the vail now; and, of course, not joyful obedience, but His official powers as the deliverer of the Church are meant. So viewed, the passage teaches us certain Gospel-Age privileges and powers of Christ and the Church. The definition that the article under review gives the robe of Christ's righteousness—the Lord's approval upon those who since 1918 do joyfully and obediently the Society's work, and the Lord's protection and blessing and joy—is neither Christ's righteousness nor righteousness of any kind. Therefore it is a misnomer to call it righteousness of any kind. Hence it is evidently neither a correct definition nor explanation, of the term. It is an eisegesis. 

We will now answer individual points in the article: It says that the robe of righteousness cannot be justification because both justification and consecration precede Spirit-begetting, and the robe is worn by the New Creature. We reply: The robe is justification and is ours by imputation of Christ's merit at the vitalization of our justification just prior to Spirit-begettal. The flesh, which is sinful, not the New Creature, which is sinless, is covered by it, and it protects the New Creature from the faults of the flesh until the flesh is completely laid down in death by the New Creature; hence it is justification, and is received before Spirit-begettal. It is tentatively worn

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in many cases years before consecration, and for an instant by the humanity before Spirit-begettal, after vitalizing of justification. 

The writer of the article under review has finally given us a definition of what he means by Christ coming to His temple—our Lord's entering into the work of testing or reckoning with the Church from 1918 onward. He quotes in corroboration, "Judgment must begin at the house of God." We agree with the teaching of this Scripture, and assert that it began to apply at Passover, 1878, when the first great Harvest sifting—that on no-ransomism—began to test the Church. Furthermore, it applied in the other four harvest siftings of the Reaping period, and also applies to the sixth sifting from 1917 onward, in which sixth sifting the writer of the article under the review is the chief sifter. The troubles that involved the Society leaders and their partisan supporters in 1918 were fit-man experiences given them for the purpose of cleansing them. His definition of the Lord's coming to the temple ignores the five great Harvest siftings of the Parousia; and the Scriptures are vocal with the fact that our Lord came to the temple in 1874, parallel to His coming to the typical people in 29 A.D., and that He began the testing work in 1878, as our Pastor clearly taught, and as facts cited in Vol. V, Chap. II, demonstrably show, which prove him wrong. 

His claim that the robe of righteousness was given since 1918 is a baseless and unfactual supposition in defense of which, therefore, no Scripture or fact has been, nor can be given. Let him give us but one time or sign prophecy to that effect, if he can! His statement that the work of the Parousia through "that Servant" was a preparation for, and, therefore, subordinate in importance to, what the Society has been doing and suffering since 1918, is an illustration of his utter lack of perspective and sense of the fitness of things. The Little Flock gatherings, preparatory for,

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and subordinate to, what has been proven to be the Azazelian work of the Great Company! 

The wedding garment is not Christ's righteousness, according to this article, but a joyful conformity to the Lord's arrangement in preparing for the wedding—doing the Society's work! In conformity with this definition the parable of the wedding garment is tortured into a flatness that is characteristic of the writer's vagaries; while the sublimely beautiful, true and factual interpretation of that parable given through "that Servant" goes by the board! This parable now applies since 1918, and that to brethren in relation to the Society's work! He who casts off the garment is he who since 1918 refuses joyfully to do the Society's work! How do we know such a setting of the parable to be false? It implies that crowns are lost and re-assigned in every country since the tribulation began to involve it, while the Bible shows that the wind did not blow in any country until all the elect in that country were sealed. We have given 63 proofs to the effect that Spirit-begetting ceased by Oct., 1914, and that the sealing of the Elect in their foreheads ended Passover, 1916. See 56 of these in Note III of the Appendix of Studies, Vol. III. Hence such a setting as the article gives to this parable is false. 

And what is the sum-total—the meat in the kernel—of the whole article? O! joyfully and obediently (to "the present management") enter into the Society's various drives, and you will be ushered into glory, otherwise you will be put into the Great Company or the Second Death class! Do we not see the cloven hoof? What is the purpose of the article? Ah, its writer knows that, as to 1925 expectations, he is increasingly looked upon as a misleader of the brethren by thousands of brethren in the Society; and to keep them from doing what their sad experience through his deception should lead them to do—repudiate him as a teacher and executive—he is trying alternately to

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draw them on by new erroneous hopes and to hold them back from leaving him and his erroneous doctrines and practices by implied threats of loss of crowns, Judas class and the rest of the stock-in-trade terrors that Little Babylon uses to bully the weak, unsuspecting sheep, as her counterpart to Great Babylon's threats of purgatory and eternal torture to the supposed heretics and disobedient. 

Boastingly he claims that the Society is the only agency that is doing anything for the Lord's Truth. We, of course, recognize that they are doing "great works." But we humbly say that the Epiphany-enlightened saints are doing a more effective and important, if not so large, noisy and sensational a work. Our annual report for the last ten years show that on an average over $15,000.00 a year have been expended in this work through the Epiphany Bible House alone. About 10,000,000 Herald Extras—four-page tracts, 9 x 12 in., and tens of thousands of books and booklets have been circulated in this time. Public lectures and pilgrim visits have been and are being given. The Present Truth is being published in five languages. Our tracts of Bro. Russell's authorship are being printed in seven different languages. A yearly average of about 50,000 Present Truths and 20,000 Heralds of the Epiphany are being circulated. 1297 newspapers carried our eight weeks' service against the Eternal Torment and Consciousness of the Dead theories, and 65 others carried John's Rebuke, to millions of readers. Our interview against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Spiritism propaganda was brought before 20,000,000 readers. In view of these facts, let the Tower cease boasting that the Society alone among Truth people is doing anything for the Lord, and thus claiming that it is the only agency that the Lord is using—another of its "methods of deceit" whereby uninformed brethren are kept in line by 

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the implied threat, to leave the Society is to be cut off from service, which the brethren dread. 

In Z '25, 51-59, there is an article by the Society's president on The Year of Jubilee. He still persisted in setting forth the proven error that the antitypical jubilee begins in Oct. of 1925, instead of having begun in Oct., 1874, as was clearly proven by "that Servant." Above we summarized the evidence that disproves such an idea, hence will not repeat it here. Rather in this review we will take up certain other errors of the article in question. It cites Jer. 25:11, 12; 29:10 and Dan. 9:2, which speak of the desolation of the land as lasting 70 years, as proofs that there were to be 70 jubilees, These passages do not mention the word jubilee at all, let alone say that there would be 70 of them; and only by indirect inference, and that by light gotten from other passages, notably Lev. 26:33-35 and 2 Chro. 36:20, 21, can they be brought into connection with the thought of 70 jubilees. Why did not the writer while attempting to demonstrate 70 jubilees, cite in this their most appropriate connection 2 Chro. 36:20, 21, and Lev. 26:33-35; which former passage is the only one in the Bible to mention the exact number of jubilees as 70? Was it because this passage teaches exactly when the 70 jubilee were fulfilled—fully kept—during the 70 years' desolation of the land? Was it because he desired to keep from his readers' minds the thought that if the 70 jubilees were fully kept at that time, they would not be kept again—repeated—in the cycles following the last jubilee before that desolation set in, and that, hence, his counting 51 of them twice to get to 1925 is a gross violation of the teaching of this passage? Why else would he cite on this point indefinite passages to prove what 2 Chro. 36:20, 21 clearly proves, if not to hide from his readers' eyes its refuting his view. Nor can he plead ignorance of Lev. 26:33-35 and 2 Chro. 36:20, 21; for in other connections he

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refers to them. "Methods of deceit" are these indeed. 

Again, he sets forth the thought that Israel's entrance into "the land which I [Jehovah] give you" (Lev. 25:2), was in April, 1575 B.C. Of course, Israel then crossed the Jordan and first entered the part of the land given them by God west of the Jordan; but six months before they had entered the part of the land which God gave them east of the Jordan; and since God gave them the land on both sides of Jordan and the passage (Lev. 25:2) states that they were to begin to count the year for the jubilee from the entrance into "the land which I [Jehovah give you"; the counting must begin in the Fall of 1576 B.C. See Appendix of Studies, Vol. II, page 401, 402. Here we will but briefly summarize the proof; it was exactly 38 years to a day from the time that Israel, for their murmuring at Kadesh-barnea after the spies returned, were turned back to wander in the wilderness, until the day that they crossed the river Arnon into, about 12 days before they began to possess, "the land which I [Jehovah] give you" (Deut. 2:14, 18, 24, 25, vs. 20-23 being parenthetical, as indicated). A comparison of Lev. 25:2; Deut. 2:24 and Num. 21:12-15, proves that it was a four- or five-day journey from the brook or valley of Zered, or Zared, to the river Arnon, Israel's southern boundary east of the Jordan (Judg. 11:18-23). The time the messenger spent going to, remaining with, and returning from Sihon, king of the Amorites, was about six to seven days, The spies started out at the time of the ripening of the first grapes (Num. 13:20) and returned after 40 days with late summer fruits (Num. 13:25). Palestinian grapes now first ripen in late July, and late summer fruits about the middle of September. Probably in ancient times grapes first ripened about the middle of July and late summer fruits about Sept. 1. The season of the first ripe grapes lasts from two to three weeks. The spies, therefore, returned sometime from

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about Aug. 25 to Sept. 15. Two days later (Num. 14:1, 25) Israel turned back to the wilderness. Hence, 38 years later to a day brought them to the late summer of 1576 to the Zered; and about 12 days later, the day after the day of atonement, Israel first entered "the land which I give unto you." 

The article under review makes the Times of the Gentiles begin about Aug. 1, 607 B.C., when Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar, and the return of the Israelites seventy years later, supposedly about Aug. 1, 536 B.C. But God, Himself, says that the seven times, as well as the seventy jubilees, would begin with the desolation of the land and Israel's first absence from the land, which occurred the first day of the seventh month, about Oct. 1 (Lev. 26:28, 32-35, 43; Jer. 41:1, 4, 16-18). The official uncrowning of Zedekiah (Ezek. 21:25, 27) occurred at Riblah about the first day of the seventh month; for Riblah was a five weeks' journey from Jerusalem, which was left by the Babylonians on the 23rd of the fifth month, 607 B.C. (Jer. 52:9-11, 30, corrected reading). With this uncrowning the Times of the Gentiles began. Jer. 25:11, 12 identifies the period of the desolation with the seventy years of Babylon's supremacy, the translation "at Babylon" being properly set aside for the translation, "for Babylon" in almost all versions of Jer. 29:10. For details on these points please see Vol. VII. These facts prove that the Times of the Gentiles and the desolation of the land began at the same time, i.e., about the first day of the seventh month. The data given in Ezra 2:70; 3:1 are as to the first passage indefinite as to date. Therefore it cannot be used to prove that Israel reached Palestine from Babylon about Aug. 1, 536 B.C. The statement that they dwelt in their cities evidently meant that they pitched their tents in the places where they desired to live; for a camp of tents is also Scripturally called a city (Num. 13:19). The thought of Ezra 2:70; 3:1 is that they

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made tent cities for their temporary abodes that they might at once repair to Jerusalem and begin to build the temple as Cyrus decreed. This they did the first day of the seventh month; consequently they erected their tents the day before and dwelt that day and night in them, hastening the next day to Jerusalem. Thus viewed these passages perfectly agree with the right thought on the period of the desolation of the land—seventy years, its desolation beginning the first day of the seventh month, the date of Zedekiah's official uncrowning. Therefore, in making the Times of the Gentiles end about Aug. 1, the Society's president is in error. Our Pastor was right in starting this period about Oct. 1. Pages 394-401 of Studies, Vol. II, we give a number of striking parallels with which the reign of David's house gradually came to an end; and they prove the above claim of our Pastor. 

The article says that July 17, 1917 (the day of the Divinely and humanly illegal ousting of the four directors by the Society's president) was a marked date. In a sense totally different from its writer's claim, it was indeed a marked date—a date that marked his beginning the counterfeit small miniature Millennium as the little pope in the little Catholic Church in Little Babylon, corresponding to 799 A.D., when Great Papacy began its counterfeit Millennial reign in Great Babylon. Some day we will present to the Church detailed proofs that the period of the manifestation of the Levites under the bad leaders was exactly as many days long as the Gospel Age up to 1920 was years long, and that on the corresponding days and years of these respective periods exactly the same things in principle were done by the faithful and by the measurably unfaithful. And in what we will call the small miniature Gospel Age—a period, the days of which correspond to respective years in the Gospel Age—the Society's president in principle did the many evils that the popes during the Gospel Age did in the corresponding 

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years. This fact will help to make clear why we have in these columns frequently referred to him as the little pope, and his organization as the little Catholic Church in Little Babylon. By these terms we were not hurling opprobrious epithets at him and his organization, but were declaring a sober and demonstrable truth, arranged for and given by the Lord. From this fact it need not surprise us that when Satan learned of the real small miniature Gospel Age, he set about to create counterfeitly dated events, in which the Society, its leaders, conventions, etc., figured, and used these counterfeitedly in counterfeit periods to bolster up the 1925 delusion of the Society mouthpieces, as we note in his article on the birth of a nation as to the 1260 days, now to be reviewed. 

So blind is the article's writer becoming, that he thinks that the rain of Zech. 14:17-19 may be literal rain. It refers to restitution blessings, which will be obtained only by coming into harmony with the kingdom - Jerusalem, as shown by our Pastor in Z '11, 152. While, as he says, no Scripture teaches that dying will cease everywhere in the earth as soon as the earthly phase of the Kingdom is setup at Jerusalem, he has in his "Millions" booklet, etc., publicly taught that the earthly phase of the Kingdom will be set up at the hands of the Ancient Worthies in 1925, and that thereafter no one need any more die! As to whether 1925 is a prophetic date or not, it is certain that it is not such from the standpoint of the jubilee, which he claims it is. His warnings against special trials that year are intended to intimidate his followers, lest they repudiate him because of his false teachings as to that year's jubilee expectations—the return of the Ancient Worthies, the establishment of the Kingdom and the cessation of the Adamic death. 

In Z '25, 67-74, the same writer borrows from the theatrical world a title—The Birth Of A Nation—for an article that repudiates as much of our Pastor's 

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teachings as any single article of his with which we were at that time acquainted. Knowing that it would so strike his readers, he began the article with the plea—a lawyer's trick—for tolerance of the "new view." His next statement, that prophecy is not understood until fulfilled, is only half true. Some of it is, and some of it is not. It never is when connected with a trial on the Church. His statement that the devil's privilege to rule the world without interference ceased in 1914 is an error. God always interfered with Satan's rulership when it sought to transgress the Divinely fixed hindrances to its free course beyond certain limits. The history of the wane of the papacy since the days of Boniface VIII, 1294-1303, is full of marked illustrations of God's hindering Satan's world-rule ambitions. The Lord, according to the parallel dispensations, took unto Himself His great power and reigned in 1878, not in 1914; though in this latter year His wrath more markedly came upon the angry nations. He claims to have offered Scriptural proof that the Lord came to His temple—which he defines as beginning to give it its crucial tests—in 1918. He has not offered even one verse that proves this. The parallel dispensations, the antitypical jubilee cycle and Daniel's 1335 days, with their Pyramid corroborations, prove that He came to His temple in 1874, and the parallel dispensations, and the Pyramid as well as the siftings prove that He began the testing work in 1878. The flashes of Truth that he says were to have been expected since 1918—at the Lord's supposed coming to His temple—have been shining with increasing brightness since 1874; while what he claims is the advancing Truth since 1918 is proven error. 

He says that Rev. 11:17-19 belongs to chapter 12—a gross mistake—and applies to events from 1914 onward. Had he not lost the Truth on the seventh trumpet as sounding from 1874 onward, he would never have thought of teaching that the verses apply

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only from 1914 onward. It is, however, on chapter, 12 that his "folly" reaches its height of absurdity and stupidity. He repudiates our Pastor's marvelous and fulfilled explanation of Rev. 12 (see notes in the Berean Bible) and applies the woman in part to glorified fled saints in heaven and in part to the Society's officers as representatives of the Church on earth. This organization, he claims, gives birth to the new nation the Millennial government of the earth—the birth of a nation. If the article is studied carefully, it will be seen that he uses the term nation—the one that he says is born—in the sense of the Christ's governmental machinery whereby Satan's empire is to be overthrown and the world is to be ruled Millennially. His use of the term shows, therefore, that the idea of a nation in the sense of God's Kingdom—the Christ, Head and Body—is not meant, but that the machinery that they use and will use to accomplish their purposes is meant. This definition is utterly false. The man-child that Is. 66:7 says is to be born is the Christ class, not their governmental machinery. Moreover, the birth referred to in this and the following verse is a figurative one. It is the Little Flock and Great Company being delivered from Babylon—Nominal Zion—the former class before "the wind," etc.—the part of the tribulation which began Nominal Zion's travail would strike the countries where they were, and the latter class after such tribulation, even as our Pastor has explained. The real birth of the Christ class in the Body—the Kingdom—began by the resurrection in 1878, is yet progressing, and will be completed when the last member of the Christ goes beyond the vail. 

His claim that stars cannot symbolize nominal leaders contradicts Jude 13, Matt. 24:29, etc. His claim that Satan was not before 1914 debarred from, but appeared in, heaven, God's abode as distinct from the symbolic heavens, which he seeks to prove from Satan presenting him self before God in Job 1 and 2, 

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shows the superficiality of his views. Jesus contradicts this, speaking of a pre-human experience of His, "I saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven." To be, or to present oneself, before the Lord, means to enter into some religious activity relating to God in some way, like Israel, the Levites and the Priests presenting themselves before the Lord—it does not mean their having gone to heaven in the sense of God's abode, as the article under review would make that expression mean. He does this in order to set aside the Biblical teachings that Satan and the other fallen angels are confined within the atmosphere about this earth, and to make room for his vagary that Satan and his angels were battled with in God's abode from 1914 onward, and were then cast out of heaven. Such is his war in heaven in Rev. 12! His claim that Satan had the right to rule until 1914 is a double error. Satan never had the right to rule; he usurped the power to rule, which fact proves that he had no right to rule. The Gentile nations had a lease to rule until 1914; but Satan never! His further claim that Jesus did not have the right to rule until 1914 is also a double error. He had the right to rule throughout the universe on His resurrection (Matt. 28:18), and began in 1878 to exercise His Millennial right to rule, and in 1914 in the further exercise of it began to overthrow Satan's empire. 

His claim that March 27, 1919, to Sept. 8, 1922, are the 1260 days of Rev. 12 needs only to be stated to show its folly, and betrays an utter lack of an insight into the fitness of things. Bail was made admissible for the imprisoned brethren March 21, 1919. On March 25 they were released from prison, not on March 26, as he says (Z '19; 118). They gave the bail March 26, during the day, the court not being in Session at night. This fact disproves the 1260 days' proposition, making it 1261. But conceding him right in starting with March 27, 1919, the following answers are conclusive: Our remark above on Satan's 

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making counterfeit periods is the key to the refutation of his 1260 days' claim. Things do not fit a wilderness condition in his 1260 days; for some of the greatest and most widespread Society drives occurred during those times. Against his taking the days as literal, we would say that while all the numerals of Revelation are literal, the nouns that they modify are symbolic; Hence the 1260 days are symbolic—1260 years being meant, as taught by our Pastor. The flat interpretation that they left the wilderness condition September 8, 1922, when another of the Society's numerous drives was started, needs only to be stated to show its absurdity. If the earth, as he says, swallowed false teaching—the supposed water out of the serpent's mouth—persecution, not freedom therefrom, would have resulted; because the people would have acted out the errors thus swallowed. And the banner incident at the Convention is presented as a starter out from the wilderness experience! Nay, it was only part of their Azazelian wilderness experiences. 

But what does the 1914 birth of the nation—the inauguration of the governmental machinery to overthrow Satan's empire and to administer the Millennial Kingdom, as he defines it, afford, that was not had by the Christ class beyond the vail before 1914, i.e., from 1878 onward? Absolutely nothing. Therefore, it is merely a later start of what had existed nearly forty years before; and is their presentation as some new wonderful thing! But what is back of this application of a many years' long existing set of machinery to a date nearly forty years later? This is one of the gestures to hold wavering Society adherents in line, as though they were endowed under the Society's rulership with special powers which were not theirs during "that Servant's" day! In other words, it is one of the things now being used to bewitch and enchant, in order to divert attention from the dismal failure of all the Society's 1925 claims. This and

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nothing less is its meaning and purpose. Therefore, it should be acted toward accordingly. Let us watch and see what other diversions will be brought forth. We may expect more; for the condition is desperate for the Society's president, since thousands of his followers are beginning to see through his religious frauds. 

In Z '25, 91, the following question is asked: "If the offer of life to Israel was bona fide, and any one who measured up to God's requirements would have been given life, would it not be true to say that God is at liberty to grant life on compliance with any conditions He chooses to impose?" The answer states that any one who would have kept the Law would have gotten everlasting life without a ransom, because nobody but Adam was under sentence, though all were under condemnation. In the first place, to be under the condemnation of God is to be under sentence; and in the second place the statement that Adam alone was under sentence is false (Rom. 5:12-19). We give our answer by a question and answer: 

Question: Was Israel under a death sentence inherited from Adam before coming under the Law Covenant, and did their failure to fulfill the Law Covenant also bring upon them a sentence of death? 

Answer: Yes, we give as our answer to both questions. They were of the race of whom it is written, We "were by nature [heredity] the children of wrath [the death sentence, Rom. 1:18, 32], even as others" (Eph. 2:3). The Apostle most clearly shows (Rom. 5:12-19) that the whole race not only shares death, but also shares the death sentence with Adam. This becomes clear from the whole section, especially as we notice the run of thought between vs. 16 and 18. V. 16 shows that the Adamic judgment was a condemnatory sentence; and v. 18 elaborates this by showing that this condemnatory sentence came upon all men through Adam: the result of the one man's offense was a 

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condemnation upon all men. Hence the whole race inherited not only death, but the death sentence, from Adam. This is also apparent from 1 Cor. 15:22: "As all in Adam die." This passage does not mean that all in Adam will actually enter the death state, but that all in Adam actually come under the death sentence. The whole Plan of God, more particularly its central feature, the Ransom, is pivoted upon the thought that the whole race is under the sentence of death in Adam, and that it is dying, not only because of having inherited an imperfect life from him, and must spend its existence amid imperfect surroundings conducive to death, but also because there is resting upon it the sentence of Divine justice unto death (John 3:36), which it has inherited from Adam. While this sentence came upon all in Adam, indirectly, i.e., through him, its involving them, even if indirectly, is nevertheless an actual involving of them in that sentence. To deny this proposition is logically to deny the Ransom. We therefore consider the denial of the actual condemnation of the race in Adam in the Aug., 1920, Tower to be a clear denial of the Ransom, and as such to be in most violent opposition to the Holy Scriptures and to our Pastor's masterly expositions on this subject. There was no injustice, which that article claims there would have been, in God's conditionally offering Israel life when He knew it was impossible for Him to give them life on the proffered condition. This is apparent from several reasons: (1) because He knew they could not fulfill the condition, and therefore knew that He would never be called upon by the eventuality of such fulfillment to give them what His justice forbade; (2) because He knew that their efforts to gain life by the Law would benefit them by uplifting them above the rest of mankind—symbolized by the Pyramid's First Ascending Passage—and thus He knew His offer would benefit, not injure them; (3) because no injustice ever befell any of them by reason 

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of being under that Covenant; (4) because He knew that their failure to keep the Law would make them feel the need of a Savior; (5) because He knew that their failure, with conjoined teachings and experiences, would prepare the faithful to receive the Savior when He should come, and would benefit the rest in the Millennium; (6) because He knew that their experiences would be helpful in influencing Gentiles toward the Savior; and (7) because He knew that the Law Covenant would become the means of Jesus' maintaining His life-rights under the Law, and that this would sanction these life-rights becoming available for delivering them from the Law's condemnation, and that this would gut Him into a position to give them life under conditions that He would enable them to fulfill. Most fallacious, therefore, in the reasoning of the above-mentioned article in ascribing injustice to God, if He had offered to give the Jews life on condition of keeping the Law, though He could not in justice have given it because of their being under the Adamic sentence. The condition in which Israel was, and the purposes that the Lord had in mind did justify Him in making them an offer that was impossible for Him to realize for them, if they could have fulfilled the conditions, which He knew they could not do. 

In Z '25, 131-137 is an article from his pen on the subject, For The Elect's Sake. This article repudiates our Pastor's explanation of Matt. 24:21, 22, which teaches that the shortening of the period of tribulation is at its end, and that the expression translated, "for the Elect's sake," should be rendered, on account of the Elect," i.e., that the Elect beyond the vail will interfere and prevent anarchy and Jacob's trouble—the last parts of the tribulation—from running their full and natural course, and thus prevent the annihilation of the human family. Certainly the Bible teaches this with respect to Israel, whose deliverance from destruction at the hands of the anarchistic remnants is

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expressly credited to miraculous Divine interposition (Ezek. 39). Matt. 24:21, 22 teaches the shortening of the length of the trouble, not as the article under review teaches, the shortening of the war feature of the trouble. The article under review claims that in all the countries involved in the World War there were, long after the war began, people who were of the Elect, or who could be made of the Elect, but who were not yet reaped—sealed in their foreheads; that the war conditions prevented their being reaped; and that the Lord brought the war to an abrupt end for the sake of reaping these elect or electable ones. Thus the war was, according to this new view, shortened in order to win these brethren. This, the article teaches, is meant by our Lord's statement that on account of the Elect the Time of Trouble would be shortened. Against this new view, which we all recognize repudiates our Pastor's view, we offer the following objections: 

(1) The text says that the duration of the trouble—"those days," the Time of Trouble—and not the first features of the trouble (as was the war), is the thing that is to be shortened. The shortening of the war would not necessarily shorten the duration of the trouble; nor has it actually shortened it, else it would now be over; for the Time of Trouble has been going right on since the war ended, though up to the present time with less intensity than during the war. Had the war been the last feature of the trouble, then to have shortened it would have shortened the duration of the trouble. Therefore the explanation that the article under review gives does not show a shortening of the Time of Trouble. 

(2) According to the Bible (Rev. 7:1-3), the Elect of each country must all be sealed before the war would strike that country. Therefore there could be no unsealed Elect in any war-involved country after the war involved that country. This refutes the assumed, but unfactual, view that the Lord abruptly 

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ended the war, and that in order to seal the war-involved countries' supposedly unsealed Elect whose sealing could ostensibly not be done during the war; and thus it refutes the new view that the shortening of those days means shortening the war in order to seal the remainder of the Elect in the war-involved countries. To escape this conclusion the article under review, contradicting our Pastor's known definitions of the winds and the wind of verse 1 (see Berean Comments), confuses a number of things: (a) the winds of v. 1, which are the fallen angels, with its wind, which is the World War (1 Kings 19:11; Ps. 48:7; 107:25); (b) the winds, which are the fallen angels, but which are in the article falsely defined as destructive power, with the whirlwind, which is the revolution and anarchy of the Time of Trouble (Jer. 25:30-38); and (c) the four winds of Jer. 49:32-36; Ezek. 5:10-12; 17:21; Dan. 11:4, which stand for the four points of the compass with its falsely defined symbolic winds, wind and whirlwind. 

(3) The Bible also teaches that the reaping would end shortly before the war would reach the reaper (Studies, Vol. III, 387-404). 

(4) The war did not come to an abrupt end as claimed in the article under review; for every informed person knows that it tapered off gradually. It certainly began suddenly: Austria's 48 hours' ultimatum and Germany's 12 hours' ultimatum made it begin suddenly, as the Scriptures teach it would (1 Thes. 5:3); but the Bible and the parallels nowhere teach that it would end suddenly. The figure here used disproves it; for birth pangs during the delivery taper off gradually. That the war tapered off gradually is evident from the following facts: (1) Bulgaria on Sept. 27, 1918, appealed for terms and, receiving them, surrendered Sept. 30, 1918; (2) Turkey on Oct. 14, 1918, asked for terms of surrender and accepted those granted by the Allies Oct. 30, 1918; (3) Austria asked for terms of surrender on Oct. 31, 1918, and accepted 

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the Allied terms Nov. 1, 1918; and (4) Germany on Nov. 7, 1918, sued for an armistice, which was granted Nov. 11, 1918. (See the Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 28, 459-452.) Thus the war was about a month and a half in closing—from the first appeal for terms of surrender until the last terms were accepted, which proves clearly that it did not end abruptly. For several months the defeats and famines of the Central Powers presaged their collapse. The article under review stresses its fictitious claim of an abrupt ending to the war in order to inculcate the thought that God supernaturally interfered Nov. 11, 1918, in order to free the Society people from restraints so that they might allegedly finish the sealing of the Elect. Again, the article under review, with very ambiguous language, juggles the dates for the Jewish-Roman war so as to make them parallel with 1914-1918, in order to instill its thought of a Divine interposition ending the war Nov. 11, 1918, in order to reap and glean the rest of the Elect. Of course any informed person will at once recognize this jugglery. Cestius Gallus came up against Jerusalem in 66 A.D. (paralleling 1912, not 1914), by which the Jewish-Roman war began. April 18, 70 A.D., the siege of Jerusalem under Titus began. The last part of the city was taken Sept. 11, 70 A.D. Only three fortresses in all Palestine remained untaken after the capture of Jerusalem. Of these Masada fell as the last after a siege of ten days, April 1, 73 A.D. Moreover there is no parallel between April 1, 73 A.D. and Nov. 11, 1918; for this period is more than 7 months longer than the parallel time—1845 years. J.F.R., again, parallels wrath with grace acts! Nor was there any conversion work done in Palestine after the war, for the Jews were driven out. Thus the parallel in its dates and events does not fit the setting that the new view requires for its proof from the parallel. Accordingly, this new view, like his other new views, collapses.

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The article introduces many false assertions germane and not germane to its central thought—the stopping of the war in order to reap and glean the rest of the Elect. Contrary to our Pastor's thought, J.F.R. understands the dragon of Rev. 16:13 to be Satan, and the beast to be the civil, ecclesiastical and business powers. He fails to state his thought on the false prophet of this verse. He is expecting a war greater than the World War, in proof of which he quotes approvingly from various secular writers. The Scripture, under the symbol of the wind, refers to the World War as the greatest of all wars (1 Kings 19:11). Doubtless the great earthquake will be greater than the World War, but it will be a revolution and not a war. While doubtless small wars will continue to occur, no great war like the World War will come. He applies Is. 24:22, which refers to the prisoners of the tomb, who will in the great day be recovered therefrom, to the imprisonment of Satan (Rev. 20:3). 

In Z '25, 163-168, J.F.R. has an article entitled, Light in Darkness. It contains considerable darkness amid some light. It correctly designates a number of things that will lead one out of the Truth into darkness. But the main thing that has caused him and other leaders in the Truth to go into darkness he fails to mention, i.e., grasping for power and lording it over their brethren. The Lord charges him in Matt. 24:48-51 with three great offenses: (1) sinning against the Lord—"my Lord delayeth"; "therefore I will run ahead of Him in self-will"; (2) sinning against the brethren—"smite his fellowservants"; and (3) sinning against the Truth—"eat and drink with the drunken." In Zech. 11:16 the Lord charges him with gross sins of omission and commission, and for these sins pronounces upon him as punishments the utter loss of influence among New Creatures and Youthful Worthies and complete blindness in his theories. It is for this reason that every new view 

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that he brings forth is erroneous and every attempt to extend his power makes him lose it as respects New Creatures and Youthful Worthies. He is right when he says, "Only saints will continue to walk in the light until the perfect day." And by this token he is proven to be no saint; for he has for years increasingly been going further and further away from the light that he once enjoyed into contrasted darkness, unto which he is Divinely sentenced. When he who is walking in darkness writes on the conditions necessary to walking in the light, we are forcibly reminded of the words of the Lord (Ps. 50:16-21): "But to the wicked [Matt. 24:48] God saith, What has thou to do to declare My statutes, or that thou shouldst take My covenant in thy mouth? seeing thou hatest instruction [richly given him by "that Servant"] and castest My words behind thee [by inventing new views whereby he casts away formerly held truths]. When thou sawest a thief [the not unusual corporation plutocrat of our day who through tricky lawyers defrauds fellow directors] then thou consentedst with him [by stealing the controllership in the Society from its directors and ousting the majority for opposing his power-grasping] and hast been partaker with adulterers [practicing in Little Babylon the principle of the union of church and state in the union of a corporation and the Church]. Thou, givest thy mouth to evil [teachings], and thy tongue frameth deceit [against the Truth]. Thou sittest [in the office of president] and speakest against thy brother [who protested against your wrong teachings and practices]; thou [falsely] slanderest [in Harvest Siftings] thy own mother's [Rachel's] son! These things thou hast done, and I kept silence [so far as putting you out of power is concerned]; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself (that I was using you for my special representative as the head of the "channel"];

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but I will reprove thee, and set him in order before thine eyes [vindicate him in your presence]." 

In this same article he refers to the wedding garment as the preparation for the Kingdom, instead of Christ's righteousness, a thing that we have refuted above. In this article, as well as in numerous others, he sets forth a doctrine as to God's organization that makes it consist of the working machinery of the Church beyond the vail and the Society this side of the vail, while God's organization is the Church—provisional while in the flesh, permanent when in the spirit. See Chap. II. 

In Z '25, 179-185 is an article on, The Way To Life. In par. 7 J.F.R. falsely defines as meaning morning star the word, Lucifer, which means light bearer. In pars. 14 and 15 he denies that Lucifer usurped authority over man, because, he alleges, God gave him authority over man. We deny both his claim and the reason he gives for it. Satan never was given authority over man by God—never was by God made man's ruler. He was as the covering cherub commissioned by God to protect man in Eden (Ezek. 28:14); but this did not make him man's ruler, any more than the commission of the good angels to protect the saints makes them the rulers of the latter (Matt. 18:10; Heb. 1:14). While functioning as man's protector and not as his ruler, Lucifer "meditated a usurpation," a fact that is not only impliedly stated in Phil. 2:6 in contrast with our Lord's course, but is directly stated in Is. 14:15, 16: "I will sit upon the mount of the congregation [the kingdom of the people] … I will be like the Most High [found a kingdom like God's]." Accordingly, Lucifer was not only untrue to his trust in Eden, but as the two passages just quoted prove, he became untrue to his trust by attempting a usurpation of authority over man. He was not content to act merely as man's protector—"covering cherub"—but as others since have done, 

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a notable example of them being J.F.R., he usurpatorily grasped for power and lordship over man, even to the extent of sinning and plunging man into sin and death in order to accomplish it. Satan never had the right to rule over man. Every whit of power that he has exercised and still exercises over man is usurped. When Satan told our Lord that the kingdoms of this world were given to him he falsified. He usurped them; and as his usurped kingdom he was permitted, not authorized, by the Lord under certain restraints to rule. The article under review errs when it limits the expression "morning stars" in Job 38:7 to the Logos and Lucifer; for the parallelism of this verse shows that by that expression all the angels are meant; for the expression, "the morning stars sang together," is paralleled by the expression, "all the sons of God shouted for joy." 

In paragraphs 23 and 24 the writer contrasts iniquity with error. What is said of iniquity is good enough; but error is defined in such a way as to include departure from both truth and duty. This is too wide. Error contrasted with wickedness is false belief and teaching. Wrongs against duty are matters of wickedness, not of error. This false definition of error is given, because the writer desires to make the expression, "the error of the wicked," cover the refusal to do the work of the Society, or to do a work not done, but disapproved by the Society, calling it selfishness in paragraph 61. In following parts of the article this false definition of error is made to serve just this office. On the contrary, the expression, "the error of the wicked," is the false teaching of apostates from the Truth, like J.F.R. Against his error, as well as against that of other sifters—antitypical Jannes and Jambres—the Lord warns us in 2 Pet. 3:17. 

The article under review quotes Is. 14:12 as a proof that Satan's casting out of heaven means his supposed final defeat, i.e., from 1914 on. It denies 

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that it refers to him from the time of his introducing sin in Eden onward, on the ground that there were no nations then. This reason is shallow; for it overlooks the way in which Satan then weakened the unborn nations. A mere beginner in the Truth knows that by bringing sin and through it death upon man in Eden, Satan weakened the unborn nations. How do, we know that in v. 12 Satan's casting out from heaven is meant by the words, "How art thou fallen from heaven [Luke 10:18], O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground [confined to the earth as his sphere of existence], which didst weaken the nations!" We answer, the following verses give as the reason for his being cast out of heaven and being confined to this earth the unholy ambition that prompted him to grasp for power over men and angels, which had its beginning in Eden: "for thou hast said in thy heart." Here Satan's unholy ambition in grasping for power, which he began in Eden, is given as the reason for his being cast out of heaven into the earth - a thing that Jesus said He saw occurring in His prehuman condition (Luke 10:18). Thus Is. 14:12-14 undoubtedly proves that Satan was cast out of heaven just after his sinning in Eden. 

In the article under review (pars. 50-57) a new view of the antitype of the murderer fleeing to the city of refuge and of the avenger of blood is given. Our Pastor taught (see Berean Comments) that the murderer is the Adamic sinner, the one murdered is the principle of righteousness set aside by this sin, the avenger of blood is justice and the city of refuge is Christ. The lesson is that the sinner's only escape from death at the hands of justice in his flight by faith and consecration to Christ, and his remaining in Him until His high-priestly work on his behalf has come to an end, when he will be forever safe. This beautiful, fitting and true antitype is set aside by the preposterous interpretation that the murderer is the New Creature,

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that Satan is the avenger of blood and that the humanity of the New Creature is the one murdered - murdered forsooth at consecration! In elaborating this preposterous view the article says that Jehovah has appointed Satan to the office of ruling over the race, and that this makes him the nearest kinsman of all men! While permitting the usurper to execute the race, God would appoint him to nothing except destruction. If Satan were God's appointed ruler of the race, God would be responsible for Satan's sinful rule. Jesus says that Satan is the murderer of the race, its worst enemy, not its next kinsman - vindicator against injury (John 8:44). 

He warns (par. 61); on the basis of 2 Tim. 3:1, of our perilous times. He (2 Tim. 3:1-9) more than any other living person has made them perilous. When he says that some brethren having selfishly sought to shine above others is the cause of the strife that makes our times perilous, he tells the truth; but truth forces us to say that he is the most guilty of all such; for more than all others has he grasped for power and lordship over the brethren and ruthlessly trampled upon all other prominent brethren who stood in the way of his gaining and retaining such usurped power. Moreover, his desire to shine as the inventor of "new views" continually leads him to propound errors against which the faithful are duty bound to contend in the interests of the Lord, the Truth and the brethren (Jude 3); and thus he is the cause of the most strife among God's people. Blessed are they who contend against him earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints and now being corrupted by him. 

In an article entitled, The Remnant, in Z '25, 211-218, there are several further repudiations of our Pastor's teachings on the part of J.F.R. and the substitution of "new views" in their stead. We will note several of these: One is found in pars. 31-33. There he sets forth the thought that the separation of the 

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tares from the wheat, and the bad fish from the good, as set forth in Matt. 13:41, 49, is something that occurs now as distinct from the time before the war, and means the separation of some of the Truth people from what he and his supporters consider the Lord's true people—the Society supporters. That his application cannot be true is evident from the fact that the wheat and the tares are first separated, then the tares are bundled and thereafter cast into the fiery furnace. The casting into the fiery furnace, which is the tribulation, began with the World War in 1914. Therefore the bundling of the tares must have preceded that time. As a matter of fact the bundling of the tares nationally began in the formation of the Triple Alliance, from 1879 to 1881, and received its completion in the formation of the Triple Entente, brought into being from 1891 to 1904. That this explanation is true is evident from the fact that Jesus uses verses 41 to 43 to explain verse 30. With his usual superficial, slipshod and Greek-ignorant thinking, J.F.R. seizes on the expression, "They [the tare gatherers who began this gathering before 1879 when the bundling began] shall gather [together] out of [away from] His kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity," as a proof of his new view. The proper translation is "they shall gather together away from [for the Greek ex in the sense of away from please see Rev. 14:13; 2 Tim. 2:26; 2 Pet. 2:21; John 8:42; 12:32; 17:15; Acts 12:7; 15:29] His kingdom, etc." As our Pastor explained, there is a twofold viewpoint of the separation of the wheat and the tares, dependent on whether the tare gatherers or the wheat gatherers are regarded as the actors. If the wheat gatherers are regarded as the actors, then the wheat was regarded as being separated from the tares "Come out of her My people"; but if the tare gatherers are regarded as active, and this is the viewpoint of verse 41, then the tares are regarded as being separated from the wheat - the 

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"kingdom." This explanation makes all clear on this part of the parable and of Jesus' explanation of it, while the interpretation under review confuses everything, making the separation follow the bundling and burning of the tares. 

We desire to say something on his perversion of Zech. 14:1-3, set forth in known opposition to the proper interpretation of our Pastor. The article explains the Jerusalem there treated as "God's organization"—the Society, of course; and the battle there referred to is explained as their conflict with the civil powers, especially during the war. It will be recalled that our Pastor treats this section as referring to Jacob's Trouble. The article denies our Pastor's views on the flimsy and alleged reason that it is not reasonable to apply it to regathered Israel, whose unbelief and whose small numbers are alleged as making the application to them unreasonable. Why should it be unreasonable that the remnants of anarchists left in all nations after anarchy, will go up to plunder Israel in Palestine? Why should Israel's final punishment be considered as unreasonable in coming to them in their unbelief? It is their very unbelief that makes such an experience reasonable, yea necessary, to humble them out of their unbelief. And it is their comparatively small numbers combined with their great wealth that will lure the anarchistic remnants from all nations to their own final punishment in devastating regathered Israel, even as Ezekiel 38 and 39 teach. 

In Z '25, 243-248 is an article entitled, Protection And Deliverance. Like other articles of J.F.R., it contains erroneous "new views." One of these (pars. 16-20) is given to bolster up his false view of the robe of righteousness refuted above. It gives a false application to Zech. 3:1-3, where Joshua, in type of the Christ, Head and Body, is presented as clothed in body, not in head, in filthy garments, and is given a change of garments. Our Pastor explains this vision properly 

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in Z '93, 13. As Aaron was robed in beauty and glory at consecration prospectively to show the future glory of the Christ, so this vision represents the Christ in its Body, not in the Head, but retrospectively before the imputation of Christ's merit, when all our righteousness was as filthy rags, and then, dropping the retrospective view, it shows the same class after that imputation, represented as the change of garments in the picture. That these filthy garments cannot refer to this class after the imputation of Christ's merit, as the article under review claims, is evident: (1) because then they are in clean garments - the robe of righteousness, represented by the white, clean garments of Aaron's sons at the consecration service; and (2) because filthy or spotted garments cause one to forfeit his place in the Christ class (Jude 23; Rev. 7:14; Num. 8:21). We agree with his application of Ps. 32:9, 10 as referring to stubborn, heady brethren who misuse the Truth (par. 23), and would add that he is the foremost of such stubborn, heady ones who misuse the Truth, as practically every article that he writes shows; and the many sorrows that this passage pronounces against such misusers of the Truth, the Lord says will come upon him individually (Matt. 24:51). 

In par. 33, and frequently in later articles, he uses the words, "time is no more," in false paraphrase of Rev. 10:6, "that there should be time [delay] no longer," to mean that "no longer are we to deeply concern ourselves about time." The connection of Rev. 10:6 shows that the expression applies before 1874; for it shows that the beginning of sounding the seventh trumpet was still future. Hence the words cannot mean what he uses them to mean; for God's people are commended for earnestly studying (Rev. 1:3), among other things, certain time features subsequent to the angel's oath, of which these words are a part. But why this anxiety to discourage the diligent study 

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of time features? "Ah, there is the rub!" In his delusion on the Seventy Jubilee Cycles, against which we gave him very early warning, he insisted on five things that were to occur by Oct., 1925, and that have failed to occur: (1) the deliverance of the Church and Great Company; (2) the end of the tribulation; (3) the return of the Ancient Worthies; (4) the establishment of the earthly phase of the kingdom; and (5) people no more needing to die—"Millions, etc." His positiveness on this date ought to have aroused distrust of his views, and did in many sober minds. Of course he now agitates that they are not to be deeply concerned about time features! Indeed, he would like them to forget all about his having deceived them on the subject! But they should not forget his deception of them. They should hold it against him as a sure proof that he is an unreliable teacher. Now he, pope like, decries criticism of his proven errors as quarrelsomeness! And, true to Little Babylon's counterpart to hell-fear, he threatens such alleged quarrelsomeness with loss of the crown! And he bids his misled followers to busy themselves in the "great works" of he Society as help against falling from steadfastness! 

Some other repudiations of "that Servant's" teachings and substitution of erroneous views in their stead are made in an article entitled, Diligence and Fervency, in Z '25, 259-263. In this article (par. 5), he faults those who were misled by the false expectations that he himself gave them on 1925. He charges their expectation as originating in their selfishness and rebukes them for it. But undeniably he was himself the one that raised such expectations; still he utters not one word of sorrow or confession as to his sin in this respect. In par. 6 he reiterates the claim, for which he has not offered one scintilla of pertinent proof, that in 1918 the Lord first came to His temple, which He has explained as meaning His entering into the testing of His people. Our Pastor clearly proved by 

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the parallel dispensations, etc., that the Lord came to His temple in 1874, and began to test His people in 1878, in the first harvest sifting; and the Lord has been continuing it in the five subsequent siftings, the last beginning in 1917 and still continuing. 

Just as the papacy, while pretending great reverence for the Apostles, has gradually set aside their teachings and arrangements, so he, while pretending great reverence for "that Servant," has been setting aside his Divinely sanctioned teachings and arrangements. Beloved brethren of the Society, for you longer to follow this great errorist, whom God Himself calls "that evil servant" and "the foolish and unprofitable shepherd," is at the great peril of your New Creatures! He can only lead you into further darkness, disappointment and loss. And his berating you as manifesting unfaithfulness with consequent loss of your crowns, if you do not do what he calls in par. 10 "the work that is yet to be done," is a Satanic effort to keep you in line as victims of further delusions and as frantic workers in his further drives. Your overcoming depends indeed upon your faithfulness to the Lord unto the end in harmony with the Truth, which will lead you to repudiate him - the most dangerous and deceitful enemy of the Truth on earth. And his plea in par. 26, coupled with "time is no more," that this requires you to persevere in what he desires you to do as God's work finds its parallel in similar pleas of the papacy to deceived Catholics, and will lead to the same general consequences, if followed as many Catholics follow the papacy's pleas—to disappointment and chagrin, in comparison with which the disappointment and chagrin as to the 1925 error are small. 

The King In Action, is the subject of an article in Z '25, 275-278, which calls for some comment. In par. 8, J.F.R. quotes Heb. 10:12, 13, "sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool," as a proof that 

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"Jesus must remain inactive as against the devil up to a time certain, which time was fixed by His Father." Elsewhere he tells us that this time was not before 1914, when He supposedly battled with Satan and drove him out of heaven—God's Court. In harmony with St. Paul (1 Cor. 15:24-26), we understand the expression, to make His enemies His footstool, i.e., to put them under His feet, to mean to destroy them; and since the Adamic death is the last of His enemies to be destroyed (1 Cor. 15:25), and since Satan and the post-Millennial wicked will be destroyed after the Adamic death is destroyed, he, the fallen angels and wicked men, are not included in the expression, to make His enemies His footstool. Therefore this passage cannot mean that "Jesus is to remain inactive as against the devil up to a time certain"; for it does not refer to the devil at all. The passage, as that Servant interpreted it, means that while exercising [sitting] Jehovah's power and enjoying His chief favor [right hand], Christ, during the Gospel Age, must wait until the Millennium, when gradually He will destroy His enemies—"all rule and all authority and power," i.e., every effect of Satan on mankind (1 John 3:8). 

This passage does not teach that Christ during the Gospel Age must remain inactive as against Satan. Compatibly with God's purpose in permitting evil to the Church and the world, Jesus often during the Gospel Age hindered and thwarted Satan, e.g., the Reformation was a mighty hindrance put upon Satan by Christ—"whom [papacy is Satan's special representative] the Lord [Jesus] will consume by the spirit of His mouth [in the Reformation]" (2 Thes. 2:8). It is true that before 1874 Jesus did not begin to bind Satan preparatory to overthrowing his empire; but ever since that time He has been binding him and in 1914 had so far bound him in national respects as to begin to overthrow his empire by the World War; and the pre-revolution phase of the binding is now 

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going on. The new view that Satan was not cast out of God's heaven until 1914, and was not acted against by our Lord until 1914, has no foundation in Heb. 10:12, 13, nor in any other Scripture. 

To his question in par. 14, "Did the world end in 1914?" we answer, No, not specially. In a sense it ended in 1874, in another in 1878, in a third in 1881, in a fourth sense in 1914, in a fifth it will end in 1954, and in a sixth in 1956; for this world ends and the next begins lappingly into one another, as that Servant taught. It is true that 1914 ended the Times of the Gentiles; but the present evil world is not yet finally ended. The fight between Christ and Satan for the overthrow of Satan's empire began very soon after our Lord's return, and not in 1914, though at that date a very important stage in the fight for the overthrow of that empire was entered. None of these facts are in the remotest degree related to Satan's being cast out of heaven, which the Scriptures teach occurred just after the sin in Eden. 

In par. 15 he states that the first work of Christ [in 1914] was to cast the devil out of heaven, which in the March 1 Tower he defined as God's Court. Then he attempts a proof of this from 2 Pet. 3:12, where the symbolic heavens—the powers of spiritual control—are referred to as being dissolved. According to his application, God's abode in the Pleiades will burn up! He evidently does not understand the heavens of 2 Pet. 3:12 to mean the powers of spiritual control; for he includes the latter as the "ecclesiastical elements" "in the earthly part," in contrast with the heavens from which, according to him, Satan was cast out in 1914. Here is a proof that he considers the heavens of 2 Pet. 3:12 not to be the symbolic heavens, but God's own abode, and according to this worse than the nominal church view, God's abode is to be dissolved. 

In Z '25, 323-327 is an article on, A Call To Action, 

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that in parts calls for a reply. Its writer, J.F.R., in pars. 6-9, perverts Is. 62:10, which we will quote and briefly explain: "Go through [the gate of consecration; Matt. 7:13]; go through [the gate of death, by carrying out consecration] the gates; prepare ye the way of the people [by sacrificing, that there may be a highway of holiness]; cast up, cast up the highway [by teaching restitution truths]; gather out the stones [of error]; lift up a standard (of truth and righteousness) for the people." The bracketed comments give that Servant's thought on this text. Thus understood, it is an exhortation especially applicable to the Lord's people during the Harvest, even as he so applied it; and without any doubt the Lord's people then fulfilled it. But the pars. under review seek to apply it to the time since 1918 to "the nation," whose "birth" we examined above. Par. 26, considered in connection with his hundreds of repudiations, casts reflection on "that Servant" by saying: "Some would now dishonor the Lord by saying that He committed every detail [This is a cunning and mischievous misrepresentation of the teaching that the entire storehouse was placed in "that Servant's" charge] of His Truth to [a] man ["that Servant"] and that the light of Truth, instead of shining more and more according to promise; ceased to shine in 1916 [the year of "that Servant's" death]; and that since then there is nothing more to do." This quotation sets up a man of straw and kicks it over. Its purpose is to convey the thought that the light has been shining right on through J.F.R. It is only the shallow and the ill informed who would teach that "that Servant" gave the full light unto the perfect day. The light has been shining on since his death; and because what he gave was light and not darkness, the succeeding light has been in harmony with and has flowed out of that which he gave us. It has not, like J.F.R.'s teaching, given darkness on hundreds of subjects made bright and clear by "that Servant's" 

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writings. He has presented instead of the formerly given light ever increasing darkness, claiming it to be advancing light. This has been the claim every sifter from Mr. Barbour, the first harvest sifter, to J.F.R., the leading sifter of the last harvest sifting. Let none of God's people be deceived: The Society's president as Satan's chief servant among Truth people is, like his master, putting light for darkness and darkness for light. If what he is teaching is light, then what "that Servant" gave was very largely darkness. To accept his "new views" as light inevitably implies the rejection as darkness of an ever increasing amount of light given by "that Servant." But which of the two—for they are in direct contradiction on hundreds of subjects—has given the light? God says that "that Servant" gave it (Luke 12:42-44; Matt. 24:45-47; Num. 4:16). And God says that J.F.R. is drunk with error and increasingly blinded with darkness (Matt. 24:48-51; Zech. 11:15-17). 

In par. 38 the article grossly misinterprets Is. 30:26, which we will quote with bracketed comments: "Moreover the light [teachings] of the moon [the Old Testament] shall be [as clear] as the light [teachings] of the sun [New Testament], and the light [teachings] of the sun [New Testament] shall be sevenfold [perfectly clear] in the [finished Harvest] day that the Lord bindeth up [heals] the breach [made by error] of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound [made by Great and Little Babylon)." The article under review pervertingly defines the moon as representing the expressed will of God and claims that the passage teaches that God's expressed will is as clear as the sun to His people now. It is not true that the Lord's will is now as clear as the sun. On the contrary, the Word is now "a lamp to our feet and a light to our path" amid much uncertainty and darkness—"a light shining in a dark place," until by the end of the Epiphany everything in the Bible will be clear.

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The article under review defines the sun as the light of the kingdom of the Lord. 

One of J.F.R.'s champion articles for putting darkness for light, and for rejecting that Servant's teaching in the interests of his own "new views," is the article on, The Holy Spirit Poured Out, in Z '25, 339-344. In this article he grossly perverts the clear interpretation of Joel 2:28, 29 given us by that faithful and wise Servant. Beautifully clear is the latter's setting given to this passage, i.e., that verse 29 describes the outpouring of the Spirit for the Church in the Gospel Age, and that verse 28 describes the pouring out of the Spirit for the world in the Millennial Age. But the article under review denies this twofold application, and applies both verses to the Gospel Age. According to it the servants and handmaids are such literally of the Jewish brethren in the beginning of this Age, and the all flesh are the rest of the Jewish brethren; additionally also they are the Gentile brethren gathered out of all nations during the Gospel Age, especially since 1918! His main argument is that St. Peter quotes this passage in Acts 2 and applies it to the Gospel Age. To this argument we reply that St. Peter's quotation of the passage was not for the purpose of interpreting it, nor to show to what Age or Ages it applied, but to refute the accusation of drunkenness made by the Jews against him and his fellow Apostles (Acts 2:13). St. Peter denies that the phenomenon that the Jews witnessed was drunkenness (v. 15), and asserts that the phenomenon was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, not a sinful but a Divinely approved thing, prophesied by Joel (v. 16). He then proceeds to quote the entire section of Joel treating of the outpouring of the Spirit; but makes no interpretation or application of the passage further than to use it to prove that the Jews were not witnesses of drunkenness, but of the outpouring of the Spirit. If St. Peter's purpose in making the quotation and his 

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use of it are kept in mind, we will at once recognize that there is nothing in St. Peter's use of the passage to limit its application to the Gospel Age, as the article under review contends, and that after the manner of certain nominal church interpreters—post-Millennialists. Similarly, if in the next Age the outpouring of the Spirit would be represented as drunkenness, the passage could with equal propriety be quoted to disprove the charge; but such a use of the passage would not limit its application to the Millennium. St. Peter did with this passage what in perfect propriety has been done with other passages—use them to refute an error or to prove a truth, without giving the full application of the passage. E.g., St. Paul in Heb. 10:15-17, to prove the forgiveness of our sins, quotes from Jer. 31:33, 34, which gives many details on the New Covenant, among which details is one with reference to the forgiveness of sins—which is the thing to be proven. St. Paul's argument was that our faith justification reckoning us as living after the Millennium, and therefore as having all the New Covenant blessings reckoned to us, we must have forgiveness of sins, for it is one of the New Covenant blessings. But the section on the New Covenant establishment is quoted, not to prove that the New Covenant applies now or later, but to show that we enjoy forgiveness of sins, which is only one of the New Covenant blessings mentioned in Jer. 31:33, 34. But how foolish it would be for us to use this quotation as proving that the New Covenant applies to the Gospel Age! In a similar manner St. Peter quotes Joel 2:28-32, not to apply the whole passage to the present time or to any other time, but to prove that the phenomenon that the Jews witnessed was not drunkenness, but the outpouring of the Spirit. Hence he does not limit it to the Gospel Age. 

Having thus disposed of his main argument, we next take up his second chief argument, that the expression all flesh cannot apply to the Millennium. 

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It does apply to the whole race, but its work of blessing must be limited to certain ones, because the whole human family will not receive the Holy Spirit in the Millennium; for then as now only those who obey will receive it (Acts 5:32). We agree that all flesh will not receive the Holy Spirit in the next Age. Then as now, only the obedient will receive it, Those who then refuse obedience, e.g., those who die at 100 years, will not receive the Holy Spirit. But this does not prove his claim that the passage applies only to the Gospel Age; for the reasoning used by him in making it inapplicable to the Millennial Age makes it inapplicable to either Age; for it is true that in neither Age will all receive the Holy Spirit. The purpose of his point is shattered completely when the passage is properly translated. It should be rendered: "After this I will pour out My Spirit for all flesh,"—not on all flesh. The Hebrew word al, among other things, means for in the sense of on behalf of (Gen. 19:17; Judges 9:17; 2 Kings 10:3; 1 Kings 2:18; Esth. 4:8, 16; 7:7; 8:11; 9:16; Dan. 12:1; Job 42:8; Neh. 1:16; 2 Chro. 30:18; 29:21; Ezra 8:35, etc.). It is very frequently used in connection with the Hebrew word kepher, to make atonement, to point out in whose interest the atonement is made. With this translation we see that no limitation is required to be put on the expression, all flesh. On the contrary, it should be taken unlimitedly, unless the passage or some other Scripture should limit it; but the passage itself does not limit it; and the Scriptures are vocal with the teaching that an opportunity to get Millennial blessings, one of which is the gift of the Spirit, will be available for everybody, in contrast with the limited number for whom the elective salvation is available. Therefore, we conclude that, like his chief argument, his second argument collapses; and with the collapse of his foundation arguments, his whole superstructure 

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falls down. We call attention to J.F.R.'s superficial thinking as exposed in the above refutation. 

But let us look at the verses preceding Joel 2:28, 29 and from them we will see the time setting enabling us to construe properly the time indicated by the word "afterwards" in v. 28. V. 23 points out a twofold time of the coming of the former rain—the high calling truth. Its coming the first time "moderately" was in the Harvest of the Jewish Age. This refers to a giving that occurred before Zion was bidden to rejoice: "for He hath given, etc." Zion's rejoicing time was from 1874 onward. The next sentence of v. 23 tells of a giving of the former rain future to its first giving, which future rain (note the strange expression, if it applied to the natural rain, which it of course does not) would occur at the same time as the giving of the latter rain—restitution truth: "He will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain and the latter rain in the first month." When were both of these rains due to come at the same time? and when did they actually come together? We reply, In the reaping time, 1874-1914. V. 24 then shows the harvest gathering following the former and the latter rain coming together: "the floors shall be full of wheat," as it also shows the accompanying presence of much refreshing Truth (wine) and the Holy Spirit (oil). V. 25 shows that, then the havoc wrought by the symbolic locust, cankerworm, caterpillar and palmerworm, will be undone, set aside, and compensating blessings of grace and Truth will take their place. ("I will restore to you the years, etc.") What is pictured by these four devastators? Turning back to Joel 1:4, we see that in the order named they would do a devastating work. Undoubtedly Joel 1 refers to the Gospel Age between the two Harvests. The things represented by these four devastators have in succession as named destroyed the growing products of the Gospel Age. What four things have done this to the growing Truth, 

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Spirit of the Truth and the Lord's people? We reply: (1) episcopism (the palmerworm), (2) papalism (the locust), (3) Antichristism (the cankerworm) and (4) Protestant sectarianism (the caterpillar). Truth people will not dispute that these four institutions have devastated the Truth, the Spirit of the Truth and the Lord's people, and have brought about the havoc wrought in the Gospel Age between the Harvests, as described in Joel 1. Accordingly, v. 25 proves that during the reaping time, 1874-1914, the undoing of the pertinent evils and the bestowment of their opposite goods would take place so far as God's faithful people are concerned. This we know did take place in the reaping period. Vs. 26 and 27 continue to describe the blessings, the condition, the activities of the Faithful, and their consciousness of the Lord's favor during the Harvest. This we also know to have been true of the period of 1874-1914. Therefore vs. 23-27 refer to the reaping time, 1874-1914, as also do verses 21 and 22. Consequently the word "afterward" of v. 28 refers to a period after the Harvest is over, i.e., to the Millennium. The connection, therefore, demonstrates that v. 28 refers to the Millennium, and therefore proves that Servant's view of v. 28 to be correct, and therefore proves J.F.R.'s view to be false. 

One of the straw men that the article under review sets up and kicks over ostensibly in refutation of the Truth on this subject may now engage our attention. It gives as a reason (par. 11) that v. 28 cannot apply to the Millennium the fact that then none will be begotten of the Spirit. This straw man we set aside as follows: No qualified teacher among us has ever claimed it would; for the pouring out of God's Spirit and the begetting of God's Spirit are not coequal terms. The Spirit poured out for us (Is. 11:2-5) is one of begettal and anointing, but the Spirit poured out for the world is one of sanctification and righteousness (Ezek. 35:25-27). The former gives 

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the image of God on the Divine plane, the latter on the human plane; but in both cases it is God's Holy Spirit given or poured out. The next argument of the article (par. 14) is the statement that "the text plainly says that it is before the great and terrible day of the Lord that the Spirit will be poured out on all flesh." This argument is a misstatement of facts. V. 31 says that the sun [New Testament] will be turned into darkness [will give the Nominal people no light], and the moon [Old Testament] into blood [its sacrifices and history will appear bloody to the Nominal people] before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. Through infidelity from 1835 up to 1874 and through the five slaughter-weapon men this did occur before 1914. But v. 31 is a sentence by itself, and several sentences intervene between it and v. 28. Therefore, the passage does not plainly nor in any sense whatever say that the pouring out of the Spirit for all flesh precedes the great and terrible day of the Lord. His third and fourth arguments—that St. Peter interprets Joel 2:28, 29 as the article under review does—are his main arguments, and are refuted above. 

His fifth argument is that the facts require that vs. 28 and 29 be not reversed chronologically. Not actual facts, but some butcheries that he has committed against various parts of the text are alleged as facts requiring his view: (1) that "all flesh" does not mean all flesh, but means certain saints, first from Israel and later from Gentile nations, i.e., all flesh means some flesh; (2) that brethren long in the Truth and not engaged in his drives are indulging in day dreams and air castles (!)—the old men that dream dreams; and (3) his claim that St. Peter interpreted the passage when he only quoted it (without further explanation) to refute a false charge—to show that the phenomenon that was misunderstood as drunkenness was not such at all, but was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. These three things are not facts at all; they are gross

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untruths—misinterpretations of facts—given as facts. There is every reason in fact and in God's plan to make v. 28 follow v. 29 chronologically; for above we have shown that the harvest period is described in vs. 21-27. Nor is the Spirit poured out for all flesh until the Millennium. Hence the "afterward" of v. 28, which is correctly translated by the A.V., must apply to a period subsequent to the period described in vs. 29-31, or there would be no reference to the Gospel Age in the entire section, vs. 28-32, in which case St. Peter could not have truthfully said that the phenomenon that the Jews misunderstood as drunkenness was the outpouring of the Spirit, an outpouring that Joel prophesied would take place. (Incidentally we mention that the article interprets the "times of refreshing" (Acts 3:19) as applying to the Harvests, not to the Millennium—another repudiation of "that Servant's" teachings, and in plain contradiction of Acts 3:19-21!) The silly applications that he makes in paragraphs 30-34 of the sons, whom we understand to be the Millennial believing Jews, the daughters, whom we understand to be the Millennial believing Gentiles, the old men, whom we understand to be the Ancient Worthies, and the young men, whom we understand to be the Millennial Youthful Worthies, we will pass by without further comment than that complimentary things are said of all four of these classes as operations of the Holy Spirit in them; but the article interprets so as to make the Spirit cause one of them to indulge in evil things—"day dreams" and "air castles"! In paragraph 40, smoke is defined as confusion, whereas it means teachings—memories (Rev. 15:11; 15:8). 

We caution the Society adherents against believing the glowing reports that J.F.R. issues from time to time. E.g., in the Annual Report, Z '25, 366, the following statement is made about the work in Poland: "It is the pleasure of the Society to report that the Polish work is now in better shape than at any other time in Poland. There are now 9 pilgrims on the list rendering service." 

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This statement is a most glaring misrepresentation of facts. The Present Truth is published in Polish; and we have a large correspondence with leading Polish brethren. They assure us that fully 85 per cent of the Society adherents have left the Society in the last year. In the Warsaw class 287 left the Society and considerably less than 50 remained. The country over like proportions have left the Society. That the Society has 9 pilgrims on its list in Poland may be true, but full truth requires it to be said that the ablest Polish pilgrims have left the Society, and that it is rushing elders into the pilgrim service in a frantic effort to save the storm-tossed, battered and foundering ship from sinking! Nor from the wording of the report on Sweden are the Tower readers given the slightest hint that over half of the Swedish brethren have left the Society this last year. The revolt against the Society's president is rapidly increasing (his arm in drying up) and will be world-wide in due time; for, not only is he to go utterly blind in his right eye, but his influence is to dry up entirely among all New Creatures and good Youthful Worthies, those perseveringly remaining with him either losing their New Creatureship or their Youthful Worthiship, as their standing is. 

The "new view" on Satan's remaining in heaven as a member of Jehovah's Court until 1914 has provoked much resentment in Society circles. Among other arguments that J.F.R. has had brought to his attention is the following: the complete disharmony of such a view with the third petition of the Lord's prayer—Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven [God's abode]. This argument proved a staggering blow that made J.F.R. groggy as a figurative boxer, as can be seen from Z '26, 25, pars. 45 and 46. These two paragraphs are like the wild and ineffectual pawings that a groggy and staggering pugilist feebly opposes to a winning fighter who has given him a blow that prepares for the next, the knock-out blow.