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Epiphany Truth Examiner

JEREMIAH—TYPE AND ANTITYPE

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THE PAROUSIA MESSENGER VOL. II
CHAPTER VII

JEREMIAH—TYPE AND ANTITYPE

Jer. 1—20

A MESSAGE ON CHRISTENDOM. ON JUSTIFICATION AND CONSECRATION. ON THE COVENANT. ON LOST PRIVILEGES. ON A FAMINE. ON TABLEAU LESSONS. ON ETERNAL TORMENT. EFFECT OF THESE MESSAGES. 

HAVING finished our study of David in his typing our Pastor as the former's small antitype, the Church being his large one, we now take up the study of Jeremiah in his typing our Pastor as his large antitype. These two types differ as follows: whereas David types our Pastor as his small antitype, and that as the Divinely-appointed warrior-executor for the Lord, Jeremiah types him as his large antitype, and that as God's special mouthpiece to Christendom (Jer. 1:5). It is not our intention to expound Jeremiah in the first application of his words and acts, which, of course, as the type, is the literal application as to Jeremiah, Israel and the surrounding nations, but to give the antitypes as these relate to Bro. Russell and Christendom and to some heathen nations. We will not give details, especially while giving the antitypes of Jeremiah's discourses. Rather, as we did in E10 while expounding the antitypes of Job, particularly of the speeches given in that book, we expect to give short paraphrases of the antitypes. To save space we will not quote the words on which our expositions are based, but will give the numbers of the verses to indicate on what our comments are based. The parallel dispensations and the large parallels of Judah's kings, as well as the facts of the types and the antitypes, make us understand that Jeremiah types our Pastor. The bulk of the book consists of teachings that God gave through Jeremiah (1, Jehovah is exalted), his acts and those related to him,

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who was God's own unique servant (Hilkiah, Jehovah's portion), who was a priest from Anathoth (declivities) in Benjamin (son of the right hand), as typical of Bro. Russell's teachings and acts, and acts relating to him as one who exalted Jehovah as His special portion as a servant, living, with the rest of God's real people, amid many deep falls of Christendom. Josiah's reign was from April, 659 to April, 628 B. C., paralleling April, 1862 to April, 1893; and its 13th year was from April, 647 to April, 646 B. C., paralleling April, 1874 to April, 1875 (2). From the fact that the Lord revealed to Bro. Russell as the first Harvest truth the invisibility of our Lord's Second Advent in Oct., 1874, which he immediately began to preach, according to his statement made to the writer in June, 1914, at the Columbus, O. Convention, we infer that it was in Oct., 647 B. C., that Jeremiah's ministry began; for it was in Oct., 1874, that Bro. Russell's special ministry began. The ministry of each to the nominal people of God lasted 40 years (3; 41:1), each exercising his office some time after the 40 years were over to real fleshly and spiritual Israels respectively (Jer. 40—44). 

From Oct., 1871 to Oct., 1874, through the ministries of George Stetson and George Storrs, 1871—1874 (E10, 518, 522, 523), God anointed our Pastor in antitype of David's anointing, but since in the 13th year of Josiah's reign the call came to Jeremiah to become the prophet, some time before he began to exercise that office, in Oct., 647 B. C., we are warranted in concluding that some time between Apr. and Oct., 1874 the call came to Bro. Russell to become God's mouthpiece to Christendom. And since Jesus hesitated in him a while before undertaking the Second Advent mission (Ex. 4:10-13), i.e., Jesus hesitated therein as long as Bro. Russell hesitated therein, we would not be far wrong, if wrong at all, if we should say that about April, 1874 the call came to him to be God's special prophet to Christendom (4). God foreknew him to be such before his begettal; and before his birth God gave 

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him prenatal training to fit him to become such (5). Lacking self-confidence, he objected that he was not qualified for the office (6). Knowing his too deep humility, God corrected him, saying that he was qualified, charging him to go to all to whom He would send him and to tell everything that God would charge him (7), cautioning him not to fear their anger, since God would be on his side to rescue him (8). Thereupon God gave him the message that he should deliver (9), assuring him that He was then and there commissioning him as to Christendom in church, state, capital and labor, as groups and rulers, to declare [frequently Bible verbs mean to declare a thing, not actually to accomplish it, e.g., to justify or condemn often means to declare just or guilty (Prov. 17:15; Rom. 4:5), to remit or to retain sins means to declare them remitted or retained (John 20:23), to cleanse a leper means to declare him clean (Lev. 14:2, 7, 11, 48), so here to root up means to declare rooting up, etc.] rooting up, pulling down, destroying and throwing over the present evil order of affairs and to declare the upbuilding and planting of the new good order of affairs (10). 

Next God furnished in tableau form representations of the two sides of the message that He desired Bro. Russell to give. He set before him a picture of the Church as God's fruitful elect priesthood, under the symbolism of a rod of an almond tree (T 122, 2), which he recognized as such; and God commended him therefore, adding that He would fulfill the symbol in reality. Next in tableau form of a seething pot facing from the north [not toward the north] God set before him the brewing and the fulfilling of the tribulation of the Time of Trouble, which he understood (13). The Lord explained that from the spiritual sphere, from God as meant for good and from Satan as meant for evil, the great tribulation would issue forth against all members of society (14). God by the secular and religious Truth that He would give and by Satan's and wicked men's misuse of it would 

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occasion the raising up of the four classes of society: state, capital, middle class, and labor, each in the selfish exercise of its rulership, against the leaders of Christendom, against its powers and against its every religious system (15). Against all of these God will utter His thoughts and sentences as to their wrong-doings, as having apostatized from Him, yielded up their choice human powers, once dedicated to Him, to idols of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness, and served their own creations (16). Therefore God exhorted Bro. Russell to prepare himself to serve Him, and to declare to these evildoers all that God would charge him to speak, cautioning him not to quail at their presence, lest God should confuse him before them (17). In appointing him as His mouthpiece the Lord had made him well defended, immovable and strong as against society, against the movements of God's favored (nominal) people, against the four classes of Christendom, particularly in America: rulers, capitalists, middle classes and laborers, against the leaders in each class, against the chief ecclesiastics and against the common people (18). The Lord assured him that these would wage controversies against him, but would fail to overcome him, and He pledged him that He would be on his side to make him victorious (19). The messages that God gives in the following chapters are found elaborated in Towers, Dawns, etc. Jer. 2:1—3:5 gives God's first message; 3:6—6:30, the second; 7:1—10:25, the third; 11 and 12, the fourth; 13, the fifth; 14 and 15, the sixth; and 16-19 give three signs and 20 the effect of these messages. 

Then God charged him to go and to tell in the hearing of all Christendom God's declaration (2:1). He assured them that He recalls His people as servants of the Truth, how they were full of love in their early Christian life, especially after they had entered into the service of the Truth, and their living in isolation from the world in a sphere not worked for fruit by others (2). Then were God's people dedicated to God,

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the firstfruits of God's creatures to Him. God held all guilty that did them evil, and sent punishments upon them, God solemnly averred (3). God exhorted all His people in America and in Europe to attend His word (4), asking them whether their ancestors found any perversity in Him, and therefore apostatized from Him unto vanities which made them unprofitable (5), and did not acknowledge God as their Deliverer from the present evil world and their Leader into a condition of isolation, where there were spheres of barrenness and temptations, of spiritual droughts and danger of second death, truly a sphere where no mere humans pilgrimaged or dwelt (6). Yet God brought them into the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, where they partook of its rich fruitage of the Truth and the graces of the Spirit and its other blessings; but they defiled it with error and its fruits, and made themselves as God's heritage abhorrent (7). The spiritual leaders did not inquire as to God's whereabouts in relation to the Truth and its Spirit; the religious teachers did not appreciate God; pastors of the churches sinned against God; and the preachers proclaimed Satan's message as a power-grasper, and pursued spiritually unprofitable things (8). Despite these things, God pleaded with them, as He solemnly asserted, yea, even to the third generation (9). Reasoning further with them, God asks them to study the Mohammedans and to send messengers among the Jews in diligent search, and learn if they had among them such an apostasy as Christendom had made (10). Had they or any nation exchanged their deities for other gods who are really not gods? But God, the glory of His people, His nominal people have exchanged for unprofitable things (11). Let Christendom's powers of spiritual control be astounded for this, yea, let them greatly fear and be devastated, as responsible for this condition, Jehovah solemnly avers (12); for God's nominal people have done two evils: they have given up God as their God, despite His being the Source of the life-giving Truth, and have developed 

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creeds, full of leaks that do not hold the Truth (13). 

God had not made Spiritual Israel a slave, nor made them one born in His house as a servant. Why, then, had Israel made themselves captives to be sold as slaves (14)? Fallen angels have loudly lifted up their voice against them; and through their human mouthpieces have they uttered their message and made the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit a waste. Their denominations, once honorable women (Ps. 45:9), are to be destroyed utterly (15). State and capital have devoured God's nominal people, once the highest of the high in Christendom (16). Surely they did this to themselves by giving up Jehovah their God, while He yet was leading them in the way of truth, righteousness and holiness (17). No benefit did they get by following the present evil world to appropriate the black teachings of the world's people. Nor did they gain any profit from the nominal church to appropriate as truth the teachings of its peoples (18). They should learn useful lessons from their wickedness, and their fallings away should reprove them; and from experience they should learn that giving up God and their lack of reverence for God are wicked and deeply disappointing things, God solemnly avers (19). Long ago had they given up their consecration and the principles maintaining it, refusing to serve God; but as a symbolic harlot they united with worldlings in every apostate denomination and went after every great leader (20). In every Little Flock movement led by star-members God had made them the branches of the Vine Christ, a true seed of God; but they had perverted themselves against God into degenerate sects, forming the vine of this earth, strange to God (21). Regardless of their using strong means of reformation and cleansing, their sins remain under God's notice, because not washed away in the blood of the Lamb, Jehovah solemnly avers (22). Yet they deny that they are unclean, and that they have served Satan in power-grasping; but in a secret condition they deviously wended their way in

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wrong (23); and in unruliness they did evil in isolation, greedily partaking of unsubstantial things, and yielding themselves to evil unions; and in their wantonness they are easily found by those who would join them in wrong (24). Let them not conduct themselves in misbehavior, and not reject the water of life as the cure of spiritual thirst; but they say that their symbolic lusts cannot be cured and therefore they will play the symbolic harlot with strangers in illicit love (25). 

As one discovered in the act of stealing others' prerogatives is disgraced, so God's nominal people, exposed as evildoers, are disgraced, together with their leading institutions, their leading men, their leading sacrifices and their preachers (26). Idolatrously they make corruptible humans their fathers and dead churches their mothers, rejecting God and not recognizing Him; but when they are vexed they plead with Him to deliver them (27). God asks them to look for deliverance to the gods that they have chosen, when they are vexed; since their gods are as numerous as their sects (28). God asks why they then plead with Him, since they all have sinned against Him, He solemnly avers (29). No reformation has followed His chastising their children, since they will accept no correction; their own controversies have overthrown their preachers, like a devouring strong one (30). God called upon them to consider His word; for He had not removed Himself from them in isolation or into a sphere of error. Why then did His people claim to be self-sufficient, refusing to come any more to Him (31)? Surely a maid should not forget her ornaments, nor a bride her bridal dress; yet God, who is more than the ornaments and attire of people, has been forgotten by them a very long time (32). Why, God asks, do His people attire themselves to attract illicit lovers, and why have they taught wicked ones their bad ways (33)? God's nominal people have been guilty of the deaths of innocent, needy people by oppressions and persecutions. This is a matter so public that it did not 

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require stealthy search, as is publicly manifest (34). Yet they deny their pertinent guilt and claim innocence, expecting therefore that God's displeasure will be averted from them. Such pleas would result in God's being a convicted partaker and justifier of their wrong, since they say that they have not sinned (35). Their repeating their wrong causes God, figuratively speaking, in surprise to ask them why they so do? For they were ashamed of the present evil world, even as they were ashamed of the nominal church (36). From both the present evil world and the nominal church they will go forth, in mourning and confusion; for God has rejected their expressions of faith in Him, and they did not make either of them prosper (37). As we consider the things said by God in the two chapters so far studied, we will all recognize that they are things set forth repeatedly in our Pastor's writings. 

The third chapter continues to give the contents of the message that God gave Christendom through our Pastor and therefore represents God as the Speaker expostulating with apostate nominal Christians. Jehovah contrasts Himself with a man who divorced his wife, who in turn was joined with another man, and therefore he refuses to take her back again, since it would defile his country socially; yet despite the disloyalty of those who were Jehovah's symbolic wife, because of applying the covenant promises to His children, in that they became illicitly united with other lovers, Jehovah solemnly invites them to renew symbolic conjugal relations with Him (1). But He reminds them to consider the sects, with all of which they were illicitly united, acting as a symbolic public harlot publicly making bids for symbolic adulterous relations, as treacherous therein as traitors in their isolation; for by these adulteries and other evils they defiled the Truth and its Spirit (2). Hence God has withheld showers of grace, mercy and truth from them, making rainless clouds of truth that were ready to shed their heavenly moisture. They have been as brazen as a harlot and refused to feel

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shame over their shameful conduct (3). Afterward they called upon God as their Father, who, they claimed, was their Guide from youth (4). They presumed upon His perpetual longsuffering and watch-care; therefore they continued and prevailed in evil (5). During the period between 1874 and 1893 God asked our Pastor through His Word and acts whether he had seen the deeds of His apostatizing people in their approaching the state in every great kingdom and under every energetic leader and in symbolic fornication uniting with them (6). Despite this God invited them to return, which they did not do. God asked our Pastor to consider His disloyal more favored people who saw His less favored one doing these evils (7); also that he recognize that, after God had given the evidence that He had cast off His less favored people from being His symbolic wife, because of their symbolic fornication in a union of state and church, even His more favored people, unfearful, entered into an illicit alliance with the state (8). This has resulted in the defiling of the Truth and its Spirit; and they have become illicitly united with the state and corruptible men (9). Despite His benefits His disloyal more favored people returned not to Him wholeheartedly, but acted deceitfully, God solemnly averred (10). 

Jehovah revealed to our Pastor that in comparison God's less favored people had shown themselves more just than His disloyal more favored one, because of the latter's sinning against greater light (11). Therefore God solemnly charged him to exhort His less favored one to return to Him, which he did through the worldwide public Truth work, promising to withhold His wrath from them in His mercy, if they would return, since His anger is short (12). Only this did He ask of them, that they recognize their evils, since they have offended against Jehovah, yielding themselves to strangers under every energetic leader and not obeying God's Word, Jehovah solemnly averred (13). Solemnly He entreated them as apostate sons to return to God

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as their former Ruler. He was from them gathering the Little Flock out of the nominal church and from the family of Levites He was gathering the crown-losers and Youthful Worthies; and He was gathering them among His embryo Kingdom as enlightening the world, since in the Parousia all were actually treated as priests, as parts of Zion (14). These He would give faithful pastors, i.e., that Servant, the pilgrims, auxiliary pilgrims and elders of whom He approved; and these would impart to them the Truth and its understanding (15). Then God solemnly promised that after these shall have been increased in their respective places in the Millennial Kingdom and have been fruitful in the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, the world will not have as its due Truth the Bible, it not coming to heart and mind as such to them, nor will they investigate it as had to be done in this Age, nor will it again be made the sole source of faith and the main rule of practice, though, of course, as a past applicable thing they will understand it (16). Instead, all will recognize the Christ, Head and Body, as God's Vicegerental authority and power, to whom all nations shall come, unto the glory of God, even to Christ and the Church as God's religious government; nor will they any more act wilfully from an evil disposition (17). In those days all God's well favored peoples, yea, all Jews and Gentiles, united as the Millennial twelve tribes of Israel, shall come out of the sphere of error and its spirit into the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, like that which the Church had in this life (18). Then God will worthily make them His sons on the human plane, and give them the desirable sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, a lovely inheritance of the warriors of truth and righteousness among the nations, God saying they will call Him Father, never more apostatizing (19). 

But during the Parousia and before, even as an unchaste woman deceives her lover, so have God's people acted treacherously toward Him, a thing that He solemnly averred of nominal spiritual Israel (20).

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Throughout the denominations grief is felt and expressed in the Time of Trouble, because of the barrenness of these sects and their going to ruin. They unite with their weeping earnest prayers for relief and deliverance, as they see everything, especially the things of the nominal church, going to wreck and ruin; these griefs were felt by the more earnest church-members in the Parousia, as they witnessed the desolations in faith and practice there; for surely the whole multitude of them, with rare exceptions, have perverted their ways from the little truth and good life that they had into error and wrong, and thus they demonstrated that they had forgotten Jehovah (21). Therefore God by the Truth propaganda exhorted them as sons to turn about from their ways of error and evil into the way of truth and righteousness, promising to give them such helps as would cause their fallings away to cease. Those giving heed to these kindly exhortations entreated God's favor for coming to Him, acknowledging in word and act that He is their God of perfect wisdom, power, justice and love (22). They will recognize in the trouble time that the help of the kingdoms, however great they are, is entirely fruitless, even from the totality of them, and will recognize that from their God of wisdom, power, justice and love alone can come deliverance for His people (23). Their shameful symbolic harlotry undermined the labor of their predecessors, even from their start in the way of serving God after the manner of the nominal people of God; the same is true of the mediumly developed and the largely developed of God's nominal people; and it is also true of their stronger and weaker ones (24). They will then recognize that they were occupied with what was their shame and that a mixture of truth and error was their symbolic garment, that they had sinned against God, even they and their predecessors, even from the outstart of their religious life, and had refused to obey the Word of their God of wisdom, power, justice and love (25). 

God continues in chapter 4 to expose by our Pastor their 

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evils and entreats them to repent, solemnly telling His sinning people that if they will turn back to Him, and cease doing their horrible misdeeds in His very presence, they will have no reason to repent (4:1). Then they will Millennially make consecrations in truth, in doctrine and righteousness; and in harmony with the Abrahamic Covenant will the nations bless themselves by Abraham's Seed and will boast in God, and not in themselves (2). Changing the subject, the Lord addresses the Parousia nominal people of God of official and unofficial Christendom, urging them to plow the hitherto fallow ground of their hearts and sow there the Truth and its Spirit, but not among worldly cares, pleasures and preoccupations (3), to consecrate themselves to the Lord and to take away sin, error, selfishness and worldliness from their hearts, lest the great tribulation come and destroy them as an incurable evil, because of their great sins (4). Then God urges His harvesters to declare to unofficial and official Christendom, and to sound forth a proclamation everywhere, to come into the Truth as outgathered and assembled people of God and join the Parousia ecclesias as religious governments locally, that are by God protected (5), to set up the Truth as a standard about which God's people might rally to the Church as the light of the world, and to be strong and advance, instead of standing still; for God was determined to bring evil from the spiritual powers and a very great overthrow in the Time of Trouble (6). For Jesus, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, had secretly returned and was by secular and religious truth, unknown to the world, shaping things toward the great tribulation; and Satan, who by the curse is a veritable destroyer of the nations, had arisen in his plots to do what would desolate society, the sphere of error and wrong, and would make the sects a ruin no more inhabited (7). 

On account of the great tribulation, these nominal people of God will be in great mourning, because the fierce anger of the Lord is not rolled away from them

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(8). In that day the courage of combined state and church and of the leaders shall cease, and the chief religious leaders will be dumbfounded and pulpiteers will wonder (9). Then our Pastor said that God had by the way He had managed matters worked in a way that misled the people and Christendom, by making them think that they would have peace, whereas war had touched them to the quick (10). Then it shall be said to the nominal people of God and the combination of state and church that a most distressing war, a figurative dry and dusty wind (a literal one in Palestine is called a sorroco) in which one cannot fan or cleanse himself for comfort, shall strike them, one that cannot be relieved by human effort (11), even a total war which would reach even to Bro. Russell, during which he would participate in pronouncing the judgment written, in Ps. 149:5-9 (12). It (not he), the tribulation, will come as troubles, and its organizations will be like revolutions and anarchies; its principles will be keener than those of the wise. The peoples will mourn at their being made to suffer spoliation (13). The combination of state and church will be besought to cleanse its desires from its evils, in order to be delivered. It will be asked how long unprofitable plans will remain with it (14). From the utmost confines of God's nominal people announcements come, and from His less favored one they publicize this tribulation (15). Let it be told to the nations, and publish it against the combination of state and church, that besiegers approach from recalcitrant labor and agitate against the sects of Christendom (16). They are like those forbidding others to trespass in a field; they besiege her on all sides, because she has sinned against the Lord, He solemnly avers (17). He charges that her teachings and practices have brought these evils to her. This is her trouble, for it is gall and wormwood, reaching into her heart (18). Bro. Russell's sympathies were deeply touched, even to his heart, which beat hard; he could not be quiet, because his very soul heard the strifeful agitations and the call

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of war (19). One destructive battle after another was announced; for all society was illy affected; homes were suddenly despoiled and their walls dismantled instantaneously (20). How long would he see warring flags and alarming announcements of war (21)? He recognized the folly of the people, in not recognizing him as speaking as God's mouth; they were stupidly drunk with error, without intelligence, wise in evildoing, but not understanding to do good (22). 

He by the prophetic Word saw society destroyed, the powers of spiritual control in full error (23), the absolute monarchies quaking and the limited monarchies and republics removed (24). He perceived that there would be no civil leaders, nor ecclesiastic adventurers (25). He foresaw that places of prosperity were made desolate, and all the sects were overthrown, by God's hostile presence and fierce wrath (26). This he announced as God's declaration: All society is dissolved; yet will God not destroy the entire race (27). Therefore society will mourn and the powers of spiritual control will be clothed in mourning attire, because God's Word tells of it; and He determined it and will not change His mind or procedure, in reversal of His course (28). The entire religious government of Christendom shall flee because of the agitation of controversial theorists and the debaters of sharp sayings; they shall hide themselves in secret places and mount upon the strong fortresses of society; every sect shall be abandoned and no longer have leaders to comfort in them (29). God by Bro. Russell asks what the nominal church will do when she will be the victim of spoliation. Despite her putting on her best qualities, despite her arraying herself in the attractive powers once Divinely given her, and though she beauty-parlor her uncomely qualities and acts to make them appear attractive, she will in vain make herself look beautiful; her former lovers, national, aristocratic, capitalistic, bourgeois, industrial and poor, will disrespect her and seek to destroy her (30). God by our Pastor heard in the world 

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pangs that come intermittently and increasingly, like the pangs of childbirth, yea, like the deepest anguish of a mother undergoing a very laborious first birth. It is the voice of nominal Zion in utmost mourning, lamenting over her progressive destruction, pleading for deliverance, but finding none, bemoaning her woes, and worn out by ruthless slaying of her supporters (31). 

In chapter 5 God continues to describe, by Bro. Russell's writings and oral discourses, the fallen condition of Christendom. He charges that people go to and fro through Christendom's thoroughfares and other public places in search of a class or leader who practices righteousness and searches for God's Truth; if such are found God promises to forgive it (1). Though they profess consecration, their vows are false ones (2). Disappointed in his search and that of others, Bro. Russell cries out to God that He is intent on the Truth and its Spirit. He declares that God had afflicted His nominal people to bring them to their senses, but that they had not felt that godly sorrow for sin that worketh repentance not to be repented of; that He had piecemeal diminished them, but they had rejected reformation. They have hardened themselves like flint; they have refused to return to their first love (3). Bro. Russell as God's mouth said of God's nominal people that they were lacking in God's riches and were given to folly; for they know not the conduct nor the teachings that God approves (4). Therefore as God's servant he concluded to investigate their leaders by mingling with them in conversation as such as know the conduct and teaching that God approves; but he found that these had given up their profession of consecration, after wilfully violating it, and casting its obligations from them (5). Therefore by the three great parts of the great tribulation: war, revolution and anarchy, would God respectively slay, devastate and tear them to pieces, because of their many sins and their increased apostasies (6). As God's mouth he cries out, How can God forgive the nominal church for such wilfulness? 

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Her members have given up God and have consecrated themselves to various forms of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness, after God had satisfied their hunger and thirst with the bread and water of life. They then supported an unholy alliance with the world and joined in great numbers the church systems as symbolic harlots (7). They, like fully fed horses that feel their oats and neigh after mates, seek illicit unions with church systems joined to others as symbolic wives (8). 

Logically God asks whether He should not punish them for such offenses, and whether His very being should not be vindicated on such an unholy people as these (9). Addressing the true Church, God charges them to go up upon the nominal church's powers and do a demolishing work there, but not to complete the destruction, and overthrow her fortifications of error and wrong practices, since they are not God's (10); for both the Lord's less and more favored movements have been very treacherous against Jehovah (11). They have misrepresented God to the degree that they have denied Him, thinking that no ill effects will come to them therefore, nor that they would experience physical or symbolic war and famine (12). The preachers will become effectless, since they lack the Truth. Such will be their fate (13). Since they were so conditioned God declares that the Bible in the nominal church's mouth will become destructive and her members combustible and that that Word will devour them in their standing as professed Christians (14). Therefore God threatened to bring upon His nominal people the revolutionistic conservative labor class, which is strong and of long standing, whose theories the former do not know and appreciate (15). The arsenal of their sharp sayings is deadly; for they are powerful in their theories (16). They will devour the nominal church's ingatherings and her theories, which her strong and weak ones should have as their mental pabulum. They will devour their mediumly and strongly developed members and every one of her fruitage. They will make poor all her 

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sects, however strongly defenced, despite her confidence in their combative powers (17). However God will not complete the destruction of those who are her members, though destroying them as imitation Christians, tares (18). God then instructed Bro. Russell to answer, when the nominal Christians would ask him why their God of wisdom, power, justice and love did these things to them, that just as they had apostatized from God and devoted their human all, that they had consecrated to Him, to foreign idols in the sphere of God's Truth and Spirit, so God was determined that they would be subject to strangers in a sphere of teaching and living that would not be the one that God gave them (19). 

God then charges that the following message be delivered to His European and American nominal people (20): Should not His nominal people, who are foolish and undiscerning, having unperceiving eyes and ununderstanding ears (21), fear the Lord and tremble at the presence of Him who is so mighty and wise as to have by eternal decree set the sand as an impassable limit to the sea, despite its tossing waves, which are held in check; and despite their roars they cannot pass that limit (22). But while the sea cannot thus rebel against God, yet God's nominal people have an apostate and rebellious heart. They have revolted and continue to revolt (23). Neither do they say with desire, Let us now reverence our God of wisdom, power, justice and love, who gave the Truth first in the Jewish Harvest and now the second form of it in the Gospel Harvest, and that as due in each case, and who has kept for us the appointed seasons of the Harvest of the Gospel Age (24). Then God caused to be declared to them that their errors had turned away from them the Truth as due, and that their sins had caused the special Harvest favors to be withheld from them (25); for among God's nominal people had appeared evil leaders, who in Satanic cunning hide themselves in ambushes, like those who set snares and traps to catch the guileless (26). As some cages are full of birds that defile these,

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so are their systems full of defiling errors and deceptions. Therefore in this world's esteem they are counted great and rich (27). So have they luxuriated, that they have become magnified and attractive; they even surpass in evil the deeds of notable evil men. They give not justice to the case of the symbolic orphans; despite this they prosper in man's sight; neither do they render justice to those in need (28). Should not God punish them for these evils, and be vindicated on such a people as this (29)? Besides all this a marvelous and abominable thing is committed in the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit (30); for the preachers preach error and the superior clergy are by the influence of these kept in ruling positions, and God's nominal people desire it to be so. What, God asks, will they do when the final reckoning must be made thereover (31)? 

Chapter 6 continues the second message, addressing here God's real people, exhorting them to leave the nominal church and to issue a warning message, and by the Truth on God's wrath to signify that upon Christendom, devoted to destruction, will come this wrath; for in the sense above set forth from both spiritual powers, the Christ beyond the veil and the Satan system, this destructive evil will come (1). God likened nominal Zion to a beautiful and polished woman (2), against whom Truth leaders and their flocks would come, besiege and make prey of (3). These would be exhorted to wage a Truth war against her in clear light of the Bible, bringing woe upon her members increasingly as the Parousia day would be drawing to its end, and its night (4). These at the Epiphany's beginning would attack her in Jordan's smitings, overthrowing her main teachings (5). God charged that His real people prepare and use pertinent teachings for her besiegement, since this religious government is to be punished, because she is a complete oppressor (6). Like a spring pouring forth its waters, she brings forth sin, error, selfishness and worldliness. She is infamous for her violations and devastations as to Truth and its 

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Spirit, which, causing sorrow and wounds, cry continually to the Lord for stripes (7). Yet God tells her to learn unto reformation, lest He forsake, desolate and bereave her of inhabitants, as the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit (8). Guaranteeing that He would gather out of her by gleaning and gathering all the Lord's real people (9), God asks as to who it is to whom He should appeal, since their ears of understanding are those of the unconsecrated—unhearing. The Word is a blame to them, in which they have no joy (10). This greatly displeases God, whose forbearance is ended. Hence He will pour out wrath upon her unassembled babes and assembled youths, as well as upon allianced state and church and her wise counselors (11). Their denominations will be given to federations, unions and world conferences, together with their fields of labor and state-allianced churches, because, God solemnly declared, He will stretch forth His power against their sphere of teachings and its spirit (12). For great and small alike are devoted to avariciousness; preachers and main leaders alike deal erroneously (13), pretending to heal easily the ills of God's nominal people, by assurances of prosperity, of which there was none (14). They were not ashamed of, nor did they blush for their abhorrent acts. Therefore God declares that they would fall and be abased with the falling, when He would make requisition as to their evils (15). Therefore God exhorted all to abide in whatever of truth they had, and to seek for it as revealed in the Bible, made clear as due by God's mouth, which is the good way to be traveled and which brings rest to the seeker; but God's nominal people refused so to do (16). God also set teachers, Bro. Russell and the pilgrims, among them, who exhorted them to give heed to the message, which they refused to do (17). Therefore God exhorted the nations and the nominal church to recognize what was in their midst—wrath (18); for addressing all society, God warns that He was going to bring tribulation upon the whole people, since they

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refused and rejected God's words and law (19). 

Resultlessly do they sacrifice their choice human powers in missionary work to the Jews and heathen. What they bring as evidences of God's acceptance of Christ's sacrifice for them is not acceptable, nor is He pleased with their services (20). God determined to stumble these unworthy ones, e.g., by the six great siftings, the Truth, His people, His Harvest of wheat and tares, etc., whereby religious fathers and sons would fall and religious neighbors and friends would die (21). God declared that spirit beings, good and bad, would sally forth against the nominal church; and servants of these would spring up from the distant parts of society (22). They would use sharp sayings and pen-products, would be hard-hearted, merciless, would agitate as revolutionists, progress on theories and array themselves as warriors against nominal Zion (23). The nominal people will say that they have heard of the report of these and that they themselves are weak; and anguish intermittently and progressively unto a climax will seize them (24). They will exhort their members not to leave the churches for the world, nor to go into the Truth; for the nominal church's enemies are armed with controversial weapons which arouse fear everywhere (25). They cry out to the nominal church to put on the qualities of grief and feel the most abject mourning and deepest grief, even as one mourns for the death of an only son—deepest lamentation, because the great tribulation shall suddenly strike it (26). Jehovah told Bro. Russell that He had made him a strong and impregnable one among His nominal people, that he may recognize and test their course (27). God declared of it that it consisted of sorrow-producing revolutionists, engaging in slander of God and His servants, especially Bro. Russell, that they are strong and powerful in evil and that they corrupt truth, righteousness and holiness (28). Affliction laid upon them is ineffective; the dross is uselessly melted in the trouble; the reformer works in vain upon them; for these evil 

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ones have not been reformed (29). They shall be called rejected crown-losers; for God cast them off (30). With this the second message came to an end. 

Now comes, in chapter 7, a message (1) delivered at the entrance of the Lord's house—a message as to justification and consecration, the special entrances into the Church, a message applicable to all people contemplating or professing repentance toward God, faith in our Lord Jesus and entire consecration to the Lord's service (2). The Lord called upon them to reform their characters and acts, promising them that if they would so do, He would bring them into, and continue them in the Truth and its Spirit (3). He urged them not to believe the erroneous teaching that the Greek, Roman and Protestant Churches were God's Church (4). He reminded them that if they would thoroughly mend their characters and works, live out the Bible's doctrines in their relations with one another (5), not burden crown-losers and Youthful Worthies, those who have lost their spiritual fathers (elders) and the churches that have been bereaved of their leaders, not kill the spiritual life of the guileless brethren in the Church, nor give themselves up to serve the idols of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness, very injurious to them (6), then God would cause them to remain in the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, which God had given to the faithful forerunners, as their lasting portion (7). But He called their attention to the fact that they believed unprofitable and erroneous teachings (8). Challengingly He demanded whether they would rob God of His glory, hate their neighbors, be in illicit unions, violate their consecration vows, use up their best human power in power-grasping and lording, serve sin, error, self and the world, which they should not own (9), and despite these evils presume to appear among God's people as His temple devoted to God's honor and claim that they have been saved, so as to indulge in such detestable things (10). Should they make His people, as His temple on whom His glory 

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rests, a den of robbers to themselves? God Himself solemnly avers that He has witnessed such conduct (11). Let them attentively consider the primitive Church, in which His glory at first rested, and consider what He did to it for the wickedness of its nominal members (12). But since they had committed such things against God's zealous and prompt protests, to which they gave no heed, and despite God's calling them to repentance, they responded not (13); therefore God would do to His temple, in which His glory was, in which they trusted and which He gave them and their forerunners, as He did to the primitive Church (14), casting it utterly away, even as He had done to the less favored people of God (15). 

Then God forbade Bro. Russell to pray for the nominal people, neither supplication, entreaty, nor intercession; for God would not answer him as to them (16). He then asked him whether he saw what they were doing in the denominations and in the public ways of the cooperation of state and church (17). All, from the least and medium to the greatest, were working on services for illicit unions within each denomination, between all denominations and between state and church, to set forth in service easier teachings unto creed idols, unto God's displeasure (18). Are they really angering God, and not rather bringing shame upon themselves (19)? Therefore God's displeasure and wrath shall be poured out upon the church (nominal), upon the false prophet and antichrist systems, upon great worldlings, upon the works of society; it will unquenchably consume (20). Jehovah solemnly averred that they should add acceptableness to their sacrifices and really use up their humanity in their sacrifices (21); for God did not make obligatory as matters of justice the suggested privileges as to sacrifice in acceptableness, when He brought the brethren out of this present evil world (22). But as matters of justice He demanded obedience, pledging that when rendered He would be their God and they His people, charging 

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them to walk in all His ways and promising them following blessings (23). But they neither listened nor inclined their hearts Godward; instead they walked after their plans and the speculations of their depraved dispositions, retrograding instead of progressing (24). Ever since calling their predecessors out of the present evil world God had been sending them His star-members and their special and non-special helpers, quickly and continually (25); but instead of giving a willing hearing, they stubbornly set their wills to the contrary, even worse than any of their predecessors (26). 

Despite their not hearing nor responding, Bro. Russell should declare this message and call to them (27). Furthermore, God charged him to accuse them of being a people disobedient to God's Word, rejecting reformation; in consequence they were losing the Truth that they had, and that was being taken away from them as God's former mouth (28). God's nominal people would lose the Truth and its Spirit by their evils, and would come into the greatest lamentations in their denominations; for God has cast them off as a people to whom His wrath has come (29), because nominal Christians have done evil as to matters of the Lord, Jehovah solemnly avers; they have even in the Church of God's glory set up their detestable things, polluting it (30). They have developed denominations teaching eternal torment as taking place in hell and have offered their strong and weak savelings as victims of eternal torture, a thing that God never charged, and that did not come within the compass of His character of wisdom, power, justice and love (31). Therefore, because of this blasphemy God solemnly averred that this doctrine of eternal torment in hell would be given up and it would be rightly considered as the death condition of unconsciousness; for they will find it in the Time of Wrath an abounding condition swallowing nearly the entire race (32). Unburied, the dead of revolution and anarchy times will be food for birds and beasts of prey, none troubling themselves thereover (33). In that 

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Time of Trouble God will cause to cease from the denominations and the concourses of state and church God's good tidings of great joy, the message of Christ the Bridegroom and of the Church the Bride; for their sphere of teaching and spirit will be desolate (34). 

Chapter 8 continues the public message of Bro. Russell on justification and consecration. In the anarchy time of the trouble out of the dead past the memory of the evil deeds of the alliance of state and church leading movements, their leaders, their leading sacrificers, their preachers and the members of the allianced state and church shall be brought forth (8:1); and they shall discuss them in detail very publicly before the Roman and Protestant hierarchs and clergy, whom they loved, served, followed, chose and reverenced. These shall not be given the respect due the dead, but in their deeds will be accounted as refuse everywhere in society (2). Rather than live in the troubles of the great tribulation, they who escape of these evildoers will prefer to die wherever the Lord by that trouble will drive them, God solemnly avers (3). God charged Bro. Russell to declare that from their fall and apostacy they would arise and return (4). Despite this assurance the question arises, Why do they backslide continually, keep to their error and refuse to repent (5)? Though God desired their return, none did speak the Truth, none reformed from sin, blaming and upbraiding himself. Everyone, as horses practiced to rush into battle, went on habitually in sin (6). Wanderers amid the powers of spiritual control observe the laws and customs of such powers, but God's nominal people do not recognize His teachings (7). God demands of them as to how they could say that they were wise in God's Word; they made vain that law and the writings of their learned are false (8). They have become ashamed of their writings, confounded and made captives; for they cast off God's Word and hence have no wisdom (9). Therefore their members as their associates will be given to the Great Company and Youthful Worthies 

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for members in their Epiphany sects, and their ministries to the same as their inheritance, since all of those wise ones are covetous in character; from the preacher to their main leaders every one deals in error (10). Little healing have they made for the ill of God's people by their boasts of non-existing prosperity (11). 

They were not ashamed nor did they blush while doing detestable things. Therefore in the testing time of God's appointing they would fall with the fallen, Jehovah solemnly averred (12). God declared that He would devour them; for in the vine of the earth no fruit will be found, nor fruit in fleshly Israel at that time; all their professions will fade away; and the favors that God bestowed upon them will by them be lost (13). They reproach one another as doing nothing and agitate that people join the churches as defendable places, but maintain silence at the Truth attacks by which God silenced their arguments, and gave them bitter disappointment to drink for their sins against Him (14). Their hopes for prosperity met disappointment; their hope of healing gave way to trouble (15). From the utmost limits of Christendom the agitations of foreign theories were heard; all society trembled at the message of the theories' strong leaders. They spread everywhere and devoured the sphere of the nominal church's teachings and spirit and everything therein, including the religious government and its upholders (16). For God would send subtle and poisonous theories—evolution, higher criticism, etc.—that the nominal people cannot cope with and that would injure them, Jehovah solemnly avers (17). Bro. Russell, desiring comfort, found his heart faint over these evils (18). The nominal people cry out because of these and other attackers whose sphere of teaching and spirit is far from them. They cry out, Is not Jehovah in the (nominal) Church? Is not Christ in her? Yet God answers, asking why they have displeased Him with their creeds and useless practices (19). Some of their crown-losers, too late, will recognize that the reaping work was passed

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and the favorable time of growth that it offered was gone forever, without their gaining the high-calling salvation (20). Bro. Russell was deeply hurt because of the evil of God's (nominal) people. He was deeply astounded at their course (21). He in his distress cried out, Is there among the remedies of the Word not something to soothe the evil; can no healer of it be there? Why then are they not cured (22)? 

Chapter 9 still continues the message as to justification and consecration in relation to God's (nominal) people. Bro. Russell was greatly pained at the fallen condition as to justification and consecration in God's nominal people, wishing to bewail them with weeping, and crying over them as really slain ones (9:1; Ezek. 9). Then he longed to be away from them even in a temporary way; for he found them to be in illicit unions with the world and very treacherous as combinations (2). They prepare for use weapons of error, and are not brave for the Truth in society. They progress from one to another evil, and in heart do not know the Lord (3). On account of treachery God bids His real people not to trust nominal neighbors, even professed Truth brothers are in many cases untrustworthy; for they will seek to take others' places and slander them (4). These false brethren deceive their brethren, determined not to speak truthfully, having taught their utterances to be, and wear themselves out to do, wrong (5). Bro. Russell was told by the Lord that his sphere of activity was in the midst of error, which prevents its holders wilfully from knowing God, He solemnly avers (6). Therefore God was determined to put them into a crucible for a fiery trial, to burn out of them the lead of error. Difficult was it to know how to reform them (7). Their theories shot forth are sharp sayings, speaking error. They speak words of peace, but their hearts lie in ambush to do evil (8). Surely for these things God must punish them, God avers; His very being must be vindicated on such a people (9). God would bewail the autocratic

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kingdoms; and for those who are outcasts He would take up a mourning, because of their destruction, which makes passage through them impossible. Their substance of all kinds is destroyed; the powers of spiritual control are gone and the antichrist systems are overthrown (10). God will turn the cooperation of state and church into rubble and a desolate thing, and will turn the denominations into desolations with no members therein (11). God asks, What wise man will understand this? Who as God's mouth, having heard it from Him, will declare it—as to why the sphere of teaching and its spirit has perished and is destroyed like a condition of impassable isolation (12)? God answers that these things happen, because His (nominal) people have abandoned His Word and have not obeyed it, nor conducted themselves according to it (13). They have conducted themselves according to the notions of their desires, in power-grasping and lording, taught them by their predecessors, by word and example (14). Therefore God was determined to give them a bitter experience and an unbearable portion (15). 

What this experience and portion will be God now proceeds to tell them. He will disperse them among warriors, revolutionists and anarchists, all unknown in their mode of action to their predecessors; and violence will pursue them until they cease to be imitation wheat (16). These things, Jehovah avers, will call out mourning of the most exaggerated kind, such as the ablest mourners alone can imitate (17). Their mourning will come suddenly and rapidly; and they will take up a mourning with overflowing sorrows manifest to all as full and overflowing (18). This is due to lamentation in nominal Zion. They will cry out as unexampledly bootied and confounded, all because of having given up the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, and because their systems in their ruin have cast them out (19). Continuing to stress the great lamentation God providentially will call the church systems to listen to His forecasts of a time of mourning and bid them to teach 

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their sectlets grief and their fellow systems wailing (20). They will acknowledge that death has entered their viewpoints and their main teachings, to cut off their youngest and adolescent members publicly in their ways (21). Their leaders, God desires them to be told, will as refuse fall in their public spheres of labor, and will be as the wasted handful of grains falling from the harvester's hand, none attempting to gather them for burial (22). God makes a solemn affirmation, exhorting the learned not to boast of his wisdom, nor the warrior of his strength, nor the wealthy of his riches (23). But if any should boast, let him do so for understanding and appreciating God as Jehovah, who in power exercises love, wisdom and justice in society; for as the expressions of His character does God take pleasure in these things (24). Then God declares that the time is coming when He will punish all the measurably unfaithful consecrated—the crown-losers—with the unconsecrated (25). The latter are worldlings, (nominal) church-members, Jews, clericalists, autocrats and all the obscure ones and the isolated ones; for all of these classes are unconsecrated and all the captive (nominal) church-members are also unconsecrated in their hearts (26). 

Chapter 10 brings to a conclusion God's messages to and through Bro. Russell on justification and consecration, which chapters 7-10 show were grossly violated by the nominal people of God. God's nominal people are exhorted to hear the word that God was by Bro. Russell speaking to them (10:1). He exhorts them not to learn heathen teachings, as many have been doing; nor should they be distressed at heathen signs, which are of Satanic origin, made by him to dismay the heathen, and which have succeeded in distressing them (2). These heathen ordinances are useless; for they are man-made beliefs, idols symbolized by the literal idol-makers who cut down a tree with an axe (3). Thus these false ordinances are made to look as attractive as possible and are given as firm a standing as the

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creed-builders can give them (4). While they look righteous, they cannot give forth the Divine plan, and must be constantly defended, because they are non-productive and non-active. God's people should not be afraid of these creed-idols gotten from the heathen in the dark ages, since they can neither curse nor bless (5). Indeed, there is none like Jehovah, who is great in wisdom, justice and love, and whose character is full of strength for wisdom, justice and love (6). All will in due time—the Millennium—reverence God as the King of all nations; for majesty belongs to Him, since among all the wise of all nations and in all their kingdoms there is none equal to God (7). But the creed-idols are all brutal, teaching eternal torment, and foolish, since they are erroneous; for these creed-idols are a vain teaching (8). They have some truth, more or less human, interspersed among their teachings and something from God Divinely spread over them, made by the creed builders and makers. There is something of faithfulness and royalty in their character teachings; but after all they are the product of human and devilish wisdom (9). But Jehovah is alone the true and living God, the eternal King. At His wrath society trembles, and the nations will be unable to stand His indignation in the Time of Trouble (10). 

Then God charged Bro. Russell to declare to them that their various idols, not having created either the literal or symbolic heavens and earth, shall be destroyed from both kinds of heavens and earth (11). God by wisdom, power and skill made both sets of heaven and earth (12). His command brought from the molten mass the seven earth-girdling canopies, in each of which there was water, increasingly in each successive one. He also made lightning and rain and caused the winds to blow from their depositories (13). Each creed-leader was Satanic in his views, e.g., human immortality, the consciousness of the dead, eternal torment, trinity, absolute predestinarianism, etc.; and his creed dumbfounded and refuted the creed-maker, whose 

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creed is error and destitute of God's Spirit (14). They are unprofitable, error-produced and will perish in the day of wrath (15). The Truth that God gave the Church, and that He only worked, differs radically from them; for God made spiritual the people of His inheritance. His character is the blending of dominating wisdom, power, justice and love in the self-existent One (16). God admonished the people to gather their valuables from society (17), since He was about to drive them out therefrom very soon and would make them feel the accompanying distress (18). The nominal people felt the injury very deeply, but determined to bear it (19). Their entire structure of state, church, capital and labor is ruined and lies prone; their subjects have left it and are dead to it; and nobody will seek to rebuild it (20). The nominal-church pastors have become earthly-minded, not seeking God, hence they do not prosper and their symbolic sheep are scattered (21). Alarming reports come, and great agitations from good and evil spirits, resulting in desolation to the denominations of Christendom and turning them into wastes (22). Bro. Russell recognized that man is not the source of the Truth for himself, and that even one walking the narrow way could not of himself order his course (23). He prayed God to correct him by the Truth long-sufferingly, lest he go to ruin (24). He prayed that God would expend His wrath on the national and church organizations, which respectively did not appreciate and invoke His character; for it was these that thoroughly consumed spiritual Israel and desolated the Church (25). This ends for a while the discussion of justification and consecration begun with chapter 7; and it proves that nominal spiritual Israel had grossly violated the implications of both, hence had to bear the woes of the day of wrath. 

In chapters 11 and 12 the broken covenant is the subject. God gave to Bro. Russell a message (1) which He charged him and the Church to speak to the religious leaders of Christendom and to the members in 

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the alliance of state and church (2). Particularly Bro. Russell was to declare to them God's message, that the breakers of the covenant were devoted to punishment (3), even the covenant of sacrifice which God gave to His Gospel-Age people on delivering them out of Satan's kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His dear Son, even out of the afflictions of the curse,—namely that they give up self- and world-will and take and obey His will. So doing, they would be His people, and He would be their God (4). And this in order to perform His Oath-bound Covenant to give them the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, wherein were present blessings and sweet hopes of the future, even as the covenant of sacrifice and the Oath-bound Covenant still operated in the Parousia. To this Bro. Russell replied with a hearty Amen (5). Then He charged him to make known among Christendom's denominations and in the concourses of church and state the words of the covenant, and to charge the people to keep them (6). Earnestly had God charged His people throughout the Age at their consecration and deliverance from Satan's empire, even into the Parousia, giving prompt and zealous activity to it, saying, Keep your consecration to fulfill my word (7). But many, very many, consecrators did not fulfill their consecration vows, but lived selfishly and in worldliness, as their evil heart devised. Therefore God said that He would hold in punishment all of the teachings of the covenant given to, and disregarded by them (8). God revealed to Bro. Russell that an agreement to do evil was found to exist among the nominal-church leaders and those who were members in an alliance of state and church (9). These had reverted to the evils of the earlier nominal-church members, who refused to keep their consecration vows, but made them sect and creed idols, as well as church and state idols. Thus both European and American consecrators violated their covenant of sacrifice, which God commended to all spiritual Israel throughout the Age (10). Hence

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God determined to bring upon them an unescapable evil, amid which their cries to Him will be unheeded by Him (11). They will then resort to their sect, creed and state and church idols, to whose service they have given their choice human powers; but these shall not deliver them at all in their trouble (12). Each sect has its own creed idol; and each concourse of state and church has its own denomination, as the church by whose encouragement choice human powers are sacrificed to power-grasping and lording in Satan's service, a shameful thing (13). Accordingly, God charged Bro. Russell not to pray for these covenant violators, not even in entreaties and supplications; for God would not hear his or their prayers in trouble (14). 

The apostate nominal-church crown-losers were once as Truth servants a part of Jehovah's symbolic wife (Is. 54), but were cast off as not any longer of His house, since they had been guilty of symbolic adultery with many, which defiled their consecrated humanity and made it unfit as priestly sacrifice, they even rejoicing in their wickedness (15). Once their characters were holy dispositions, beautiful and fruitful, but during the day of wrath God subjected their characters to symbolic fire which consumed their dross (16); for God, who gave them the Spirit-begettal, announced for their unfaithfulness and that of the whole less and more favored nominal people of God, by the latters' participation in the formers' evils, all of them have injured themselves, since they provoked God by offering their choice human powers to power-grasping and lording in Satan's service (17). Then Bro. Russell recognized that Jehovah had enlightened him on these matters with assured knowledge, by God's revealing to him their acts (18). But they persecuted him, altogether innocent of their evil designs, even as a lamb or bullock is brought thus to the slaughter, saying of him, Let us disfellowship this great one with his fruitage from among God's people, and thus blot out his remembrance from among them (19). Knowing that God's will for such evildoers was to

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destroy by chastisements their fleshly minds, Bro. Russell, recognizing the propriety of God's pertinent course as the Tester of motives and dispositions, asked God to let him see such reformatory chastisements meted out to them; for he presented his case as to them to God (20). Therefore God solemnly averred of these crown-losers who were embarked in devious activities against Bro. Russell to cut him off as to his office, by forbidding him to speak as God's mouth in reality, or they would cut him off from the exercise of his office (21), declaring that He would punish them: the controversialists would be refuted in controversy; and their movements and powers would famish from lack of nourishment (22). Nothing would be left to them of what they had before; for God was determined to bring calamity upon these men of declivitous designs—even the Time of Trouble (23). 

As Bro. Russell early in his ministry considered these covenant breakers, he could not understand their seeming prosperity. Therefore, recognizing God to be righteous, though at the time unable to understand His operation in this matter, he pleaded with God for the privilege of communing with Him as to His judgments respecting such evildoers, asking why these wicked ones prosper and the very treacherous ones are happy (12:1). He recognized that in Spirit-begettal God placed them among His own, that they were being sustained among them, that they abounded and obtained results from their work, that they talked favorably of God, but their motives were not His (2). He knew that God appreciated and observed him and tested his disposition as approved by God. Hence as His faithful one persecuted for that faithfulness he desired that God's will to abase them as sheep for the slaughter and to fit them for the disciplines of the Time of Trouble be fulfilled (3). He asked how long the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit would be in distress, and its growth wither on account of the wickedness of the apostate crown-losers in that sphere; even the antichrists and clericalists are injured by

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their course, since they hold that God will not observe and put an end to them (4). If the nominal church in a contest was wearied by the less swift outside enemies, how could she win out in a contest with the more swift, the Truth people; and if in the comparatively peaceful days of the Parousia her assailants overpowered her, what would she experience when, in the Time of Trouble, the curse would reach its climax against her (5)? God made known to him that brethren of his, children of God, have treated him treacherously. They gave full assurance of loyalty, but he was not to trust them. Cases to the point are A. H. MacMillan, who conspired with A. E. Williamson for a while on ousting Bro. Russell, Clayton Woodworth, who wrote, but refrained from publishing, a pamphlet against him, W. E. Van Amburgh and J. Hemery in the 1908 sifting (6). Hence God forsook obstreperous crown-losers as of His house and heritage and delivered them over to Azazel (7). Thus like destructive and powerful ones they have roared against God as acting in Bro. Russell; hence temporarily God abhorred them (8). It is like an offending clergy against whom men gather and call on antichrists to injure them (9). 

Many of the clergy have marred God's field of labor, treading down His people, and making them desolate in isolation (10). They have made the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit a desolation unto its mourning unto God; all of it is desolated and none in the nominal church care (11). Sifters, starting among the Truth people, have spread everywhere and have defiled the sects, for which reason the punishment will consume society from one end to the other, and none shall have peace (12). Their labors shall result in evil, and shall be in vain and unprofitable; and of their seeming gains they will be ashamed, because of God's displeasure in the time of wrath (13). Hence God speaks against all evil ones professing to be friends, that contaminate the Truth and its Spirit, which God gave spiritual Israel to inherit. He will pluck these covenant-breakers out of the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, and will sever the

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nominal Church from among them (14). After casting them out of the Little Flock and its sphere of Truth and its Spirit, God will return to, and have compassion on the Azazel-afflicted crown-losers and return them to that sphere, every one to his place therein (15). God promises that if they faithfully study His ways of truth and righteousness as the ways of His people, and faithfully keep their consecration vows, even as they had mistaught God's people to consecrate to, and fulfill their vows to Azazel as power-grasper and lord, God will build them up in grace, knowledge and fruitfulness in service among His people (16); but if they will not, God will destroy them in the second death. 

In chapter 13, under the symbol of a girdle long unused in an untoward condition and thereby marred, God pictures the nominal church, which God appointed to serve Him, but because of unfaithfulness set it aside from His service in a corrupting condition; and in that condition it became very much corrupted. This line of thought God gave by Bro. Russell in tableau, having him symbolize God's taking the nominal church as His serving mouthpiece during the Gospel Age, but not cleansing it during that time (1), which he did (2). Then God had him symbolize God's casting off that church in 1878 and secreting it as such among the corrupting peoples of Christendom (3, 4), which he did (5). Then God, late in the Parousia, called upon our Pastor to symbolize His taking up for examination the nominal church (6), which he did, especially from 1910 to 1916, and it was found, so far as the Divine service was concerned, rotten and useless (7). Then God gives the interpretation to Bro. Russell (8): In this manner, God solemnly averred, He would mar that church, which served Him as His Gospel-Age mouth, its highest glory, even as it had been exercised in Christendom and in alliance with the state (9); for evilly this people refused to heed God's Word, and did according to its own selfish imaginations, conducting itself as false creeds taught, obeying and serving them, hence are a useless servant (10). For as a literal girdle

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binding one's loins furthers him for service, so God used His less and more favored people as one furthering Him in service as a serving mouthpiece, that they might be His people for His credit, reputation and honor; but they refused to obey (11). Then God charged him to use a wine-filled bottle as an illustration, i.e., that every bottle would be filled with wine, a thing that the nominal-church people said they understood (12). But they did not understand. Then God charged our Pastor to say that God declared that it symbolized what He would bring upon His nominal people, their movements, which were seated in the Apostles' seat, their chief leaders, the preachers and all who dwell in the alliance of state and church—even the drunkenness of error and the spirit of the world (13). As a result God would pit them against one another in strife, old and young, God averring that He would give them no indulgence, but destroy them (14). Then He charged them to be attentive and humble, since it was God who was speaking to them (15): Let them reflect credit upon God by obedience, lest He allow error to come, and they stumble therein in the error-filled kingdoms, and while they look for Truth, He allow death-dealing and gross errors to overtake them (16). But if they would not hear, God in grief would hide Himself, because of their pride, from them, which grief would be, because God's flock would be carried away captive (17). 

Bro. Russell was to exhort state and church to be humble and lie in the dust; for their powers will be brought low, even their high honor (18). Even the best of the sects will be besieged unto a completion; and the nominal church shall be carried into captivity in its totality (19). Let them take note of the evils that the good and evil spirits are bringing upon them. He asked where was the Little Flock, that once was in her midst, even those beautiful in holiness (20). What will the nominal church say when God punishes her? Even if she has put certain ones as leaders as her chiefs, nevertheless sorrows shall overtake her

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suddenly, intermittently, progressively, unto a climax (21). If she will ask why these sufferings have come upon her, God will answer that because of her great sins her evils are revealed and her shame is recognized (22). As the heathen cannot make themselves pure and the papacy cannot make white its spots, so God's nominal people as habitual sinners cannot do good (23). Therefore God will scatter them as useless growths whose fruits have been gathered before a war coming out of isolation (24). This is to be her fate, her fit recompense, solemnly averred God, because she gave up God and trusted error (25). Therefore God would publicly cause her evil qualities to be completely exposed, and thus her shame to be seen (26). God has seen her illicit unions with the world, her flirtings, the unchastity of her harlotry, her detestable things in republics and in the world. Miseries come upon the allianced state-church. Should she not cleanse herself? When will it ever be (27)? 

Chapters 14 and 15 treat of the famine of the Word of God that has come upon the nominal church and her people. On this subject God made the matter clear to our Pastor, who set it forth in Dawns, Towers, etc. (1). Churchianity and those that led people into it were famished for Truth; for this they were spiritually diseased; and the cry of spiritual hunger has gone up in the allianced state-church (2). Thirsty themselves, their leaders sent humbler ones to the Bible for Truth; they came to its deep pages, but got no Truth therefrom; they returned with no Truth in head and heart, whereof they were ashamed, confused and in disgrace (3). Dried up was the sphere of the Truth, for no Truth was due for this evil society; those who worked upon it to produce food gained none and were ashamed and confused (4). Pastors, unable to give their new converts non-existent food, for lack of Truth, forsook them (5). Roaming evangelists in their stations among the sects, very thirsty, could only snuff up the hot dry air; their eyes of understanding became dim, because there was no spiritual food, in the absence 

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of the water of life (6). These conditions made the nominal people of God see that their sins witnessed against them; yet they pleaded for the Truth for the Lord's honor, despite their unworthiness through many backslidings and sins against God (7). Appealing to God as the Hope of His people and their Savior in the time of tribulation, they asked Him why He acted as a stranger in the sphere of their teaching and spirit, and as a traveler that turns away from them to tarry elsewhere in trouble times (8). Why, they asked, should He be as one astounded, as a strong one unable to deliver? They pleaded that they are His dwelling place, that they are His chosen, and urged Him not to forsake them (9). In answer God through Bro. Russell said to them that they delighted to err, and withheld not their steps from forbidden paths. Hence God would not accept them; on the contrary, He would now remember their errors and punish their sins (10). Thereupon God again charged Bro. Russell not to ask for blessings upon them (11), declaring that in their self-denials He would not heed their cries, that what they would give as sacrifices allegedly indicative of God's acceptance for Christ's merit and other offerings He would not accept, but would consume them by controversy, drought of Truth and plagues of error (12). 

Then Bro. Russell lamented to the Lord, asking Him to note how the preachers were saying that the nominal people of God would not experience controversy nor famine of the Word of God, but that He would give them certain prosperity in their sphere (13). To this God answered that the preachers were teaching deceptions, allegedly in His name; God disclaims having sent them or charged them or spoken to them; that they teach a false plan and doctrines of devils, vanity and their deceitful desires (14). Therefore He solemnly averred of the preachers who allegedly taught in His name, whom He did not send, and who say that controversy and famine of the Word of God shall not be in the sphere of the nominal church's teachings and spirit—that by such controversy and

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famine the preachers would be consumed (15). And those to whom they so preach will publicly in the allianced state-church's concourses be cast out as dead spiritually from such famine and controversy, none giving them respect, together with their helpers, movements and powers; for God would pour out on them punishment for their sins (16). He also charged Bro. Russell to tell them of God's continual grief for their sins and punishments, because His people are greatly broken with a severe stroke (17). Without, in the world, God saw those refuted by controversy; within, in the church, He saw those sick because famished for the bread and water of life. Yea, both preachers and chief leaders go into an unknown sphere of teaching and spirit, in exile (18). Therefore the nominal people of God cry out, Has God entirely cast off the (nominal) Church and does He abhor (nominal) Zion? Anxiously they inquire why God has smitten them. Is there to be no healing for them? They assert that they looked for prosperity, but no good came; and for a time of healing and health, but instead trouble came (19). They make confession of their sinfulness and their predecessors' errors; for they have sinned against God (20). They plead that He abhor them not, for His glory's sake; they plead that He do not disgrace His glorious throne; they plead that He remember and break not His covenant (21). They acknowledge that none of heathen vanities can cause the Truth to come, that none of the false powers of spiritual control can give it, that only God, their God, can give it. Hence they will wait upon Him, the Maker of all things (22). 

Chapter 15 continues the subject of the spiritual drought. Jehovah averred to Bro. Russell that if Jesus and the Church were to intercede on behalf of His nominal people, His determination toward them could not be changed from casting them off from His favor and letting them depart from Him (15:1). If its members should ask him whither they should go, then he was to tell them that God solemnly averred that in the trouble time such as were for the Adamic death, or for 

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the second death, were to go thereto, that those who were for controversy and war were to enter them, and that those who were for spiritual or physical famine were to enter it, and such as were for spiritual or earthly captivity were to go thereto (2). Four evils would God make to come upon them: controversy and war, symbolic and literal partisans—revolutionists, devastators in the powers of spiritual control, and anarchists in secular and ecclesiastical matters (3). God would scatter them among all secular parties, for the wickedness of the anti-infidelistic movement that followed the Bible-spreading movement (4). Who would give relief to the allianced state-church or mourn for it, or who would put himself to pains to inquire about it (5)? Having forsaken God, it has retrograded. Hence God would exercise His power against it for its destruction, since He is weary of changing His procedures in its favor (6). He would publicly punish it with the great tribulation and bereave it of members. He would destroy His nominal people from being His people, since they did not reform (7). The three stages of the trouble certainly will make innumerable widows. Against His nominal people as the mother of the young warriors fighting for it God has brought up sifters during the Parousia. Suddenly have they fallen upon it and caused terror throughout the allianced state-church (8). It has developed the true Church in its seven stages, yet comes to anguish and will cease to be. The New Testament became darkened to it in the Parousia time, which put it to shame and confusion. And what is left of her shall be religiously slain by the Truth and later by instruments of physical death, in the presence of her enemies, Jehovah solemnly avers (9). Bro. Russell lamented that the nominal church had developed him into a controversialist and debater throughout society. He had neither used others selfishly, nor allowed himself to be used so by them, yet all of God's nominal people spoke evil of him (10). God, however, assured him that the Little Flock in his care would prosper; for He would truly cause his 

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enemies to change their attitude, which they did toward the end of his ministry, amid the scenes of the World War, Phase I; for they recognized that he had properly forecast it (11). 

Christendom's power would be unable to overcome the powers coming from the spirit powers in the trouble (12). All its possessions would God make to become spoil without payment, because of its sins on all hands (13). God would cause it, in captivity to its enemies, to go into an exiled condition not previously experienced; for God's wrath raised up against it destructively the great tribulation (14). Bro. Russell's persecuted condition appealed to God, who knew the situation, to keep him in mind to help him, to vindicate him against his persecutors, longsufferingly to make him stand, since God knew that for His sake he was reproached (15). He tells the Lord by word and act that he had come to know the truths as due and had appropriated them, which became his gladness and heart's delight, since he was becoming more and more like God in wisdom, power, justice and love (16). He assembled not nor rejoiced with those who derided God's being, character, word and work. He was made isolate because of God's service, since God had filled him with displeasure at the ways of apostates (17). The nominal church inquires why her suffering is so long and her injury incurable, refusing to be cured. Will God really break His word to her, as one who disappoints (18)? God from 1874 to 1878 offered to mend her, if she would return to Him, and let her still officiate for Him; and if she would separate the wheat from the tares, God would make her His mouthpiece still, exhorting her to wait for the return of the fallen, but not to go to them (19). Then God would make her powerful for the nominal people, who would fight her, but would not be victorious against her, since God would be on her side to shield and rescue her, God solemnly averred (20), promising to rescue her out of the power of the wicked during the Parousia and of the terrible ones bringing the great tribulation (21). 

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Chapters 16 and 17 give a tableau on Bro. Russell's not becoming one with, and fathering movements and powers by the nominal church—nominal-church movements and powers. God charged (1) Bro. Russell not to become one with the nominal church, nor by it to develop movements and powers for it (2); for God solemnly averred of such movements and powers, of those who would develop them, and of those who start them in the nominal church's sphere of teaching and spirit (3), that they would cease to be by wretched extinctions, without any mourning over, or giving them respect, but in society they would be as refuse. They would fall by spiritual controversies and physical war and by spiritual and physical famine, and their possessions would become prey for those who plunder the powers of spiritual control and for religious and secular anarchists (4). God urges His faithful people not to feel distress, grief and sorrow over them, since it is God who has removed prosperity from His nominal people, which, He solemnly avers, means His benefactions and compassions (5). Both the powerful and weak shall pass away in its sphere of teaching and spirit. They will be given no respect, no mourning nor expressions of greatest grief (6). None shall rend his graces for them in grief, comfort the bereaved, nor offer them experiences of comfort to drink for those that started and those that developed them (7). God also charged Bro. Russell not to attend nominal-church banquets and share in its teachings and spirit there (8); for God solemnly averred that in the nominal church, publicly, in the sight of its members and in the days of those that Bro. Russell addressed, He would cause a glad and joyous message, even the message that Jesus and the Church gave in the Parousia, to cease to be heard (9). After he would declare all these teachings to them, and after they would ask why God has sentenced upon them all these great calamities, or what their errors and sins, committed against God, have been (10), he should say to them: Because your predecessors have forsaken God, and have conducted 

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themselves according to, reverenced and served demons, apostatizing from God and His law (11), and because they had surpassed their predecessors in evil, since they were conducting themselves after the speculations of depraved hearts, to not obeying God (12). 

Therefore God would cast them out into a sphere of teaching and spirit unknown hitherto to them and their predecessors, and there they would serve foreign teachings continually; and there God would do them no favors. Certainly, during the Epiphany we see this punishment fulfilling in the ever-multiplying errors coming into the nominal church (13). Therefore God forecasts that the time would come, in the Millennium, when they would no more consecrate themselves to God as having by Gospel-Age justification and consecration delivered His people from the present evil world into the Kingdom of God's dear Son (14); but they would consecrate themselves to Him as the One who will bring Millennial Israel from the Adamic curse in all its spheres whither God has dispersed the race and will bring them into the original condition of Adam and Eve in sinlessness, as pledged to their predecessors (15). He solemnly avers that He will do the first beginnings of this work by the Church in the Parousia preaching restitution, and thereafter by the operators of the great tribulation, which will bring them away from every absolute kingdom and from every limited kingdom and republic and from their refuges in society's strong fortresses (16), since God has been observing carefully their misconduct and errors (17). But before this He would punish their errors and sins by Armageddon and anarchy, because they had defiled the sphere of the Truth and its Spirit, and had filled His Church with their deadly errors and sins (18). Then Bro. Russell by word and act acknowledged Jehovah to be his Power, his Strengthener and his Protector in the Parousia afflictions, and by his sermons, lectures, books, booklets, magazines, tracts, etc., set forth the thought that all nations shall approach God, acknowledging that their predecessors had

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received errors, harmful and unprofitable things (19). This moved God by His acts to ask, Should one make idols of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness for himself, things that are not really gods (20)? Therefore He by repetition emphatically declared that He would in the great Time of Trouble cause His nominal people to recognize His power and strength and His character as one of perfect, balanced, dominating and crystallized wisdom, power, justice and love (21). 

Chapter 17 continues the discussion begun with chapter 16, i.e., of a misused mouthpieceship. The sin of churchianity is very legibly and finely inscribed; it is by habit very strongly fixed in the dispositions of its adherents and in their powers as a church (17:1); while their young keep in mind their false churches and heathen spheres of illicit unions under vital leaders in its various states (2). As to God's nominal kingdom in the world, He will give up all its possessions and prerogatives as spoil and its sects for evil everywhere (3). It will cease having its heritage of mouthpieceship, which God gave it; and He will cause it to be a slave of its enemies, in a strange and unknown sphere of teaching and spirit; for its adherents have aroused God's devouring wrath, which shall make perpetual destruction (4). Woe to the man that trusts in a human being and in human strength, whose heart apostatizes from Jehovah (5)! The nominal kingdom will become a desolated sphere, never enjoying prosperity, but will have a drought-stricken sphere in isolation, in eternal desolation and uninhabited (6). Favored is the one who trusts in Jehovah, whose desire and expectation is Jehovah (7). He shall be a great one planted beside God's truths, having deep and widespread avenues of nourishment at the river of life, who will not experience a destructive temptation, who will make living professions, who will not be worried, if spiritual drought comes, and who will not cease fruit-bearing (8). But the desires of the fallen flesh are very misleading and incurably depraved. Those who have such can understand them (9). Therefore 

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God examines human hearts and tests their motives, in order to render to each one according to his character and the fruits of his works (10). Like the bird that sits on unvitalized eggs and hatches nothing, so is one who amasses wealth by wrong-doing. He shall lose it before time; and his gain is that of a fool (11). As God's exalted throne His sanctuary exists from its beginning (12). God is the hope of His real people. All who apostatize from Him shall be put to shame; and they will be disposed to earthly things, because of their apostasy from God, the Source of vital Truth (13). Therefore Bro. Russell prayed for Divine healing from his natural depravity, which would insure a real healing, and to be saved from evil unto good, which would make him saved indeed. He said this because God was gracious (14). Unbelievers challenged his interpretations of the Word as error and demanded their fulfilment (15). As for him, he did not hurry to get rid of pastoral duties according to God's mind, nor desire the Time of Trouble, as God knew; for his teachings were true and just. Therefore he prayed that God be not an object of terror to him; for He was his hope in times of trouble (17). He by attitude prayed that his new-creaturely persecutors be foiled, but that he be not nonplussed. Let them, not him, be affrighted; and since they were second-deathers his attitude was in harmony with God's will that they be destroyed (18). 

God by His Word, Spirit and providences charged him to take his stand publicly at the gate of justification and consecration, where the Lord's people, small and great, enter into the embryo Kingdom of God (19), and invite the leaders of the embryo Kingdom and all the rest of the real Church who enter it by its entrances to hear God's Word (20). Jehovah solemnly exhorted them to be careful and not to sin against the rest of justification, nor introduce such sins through those admitting into the true Church (21), nor commit any external sin against the rest of justification, nor do any work of the curse, but live in harmony with the rest from the curse, the peace of justification, as God 

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charged their predecessors (22). But they violated the peace of justification, nor gave a willing hearing to it, but became stubborn unto disobedience, not allowing themselves to be taught (23). But if they would heed and live justly, not violating the rest from sin with the leaders into the true Church, but maintain the peace of justification and not engage in sin (24), then there would enter by leaders of God's people into the sphere of executiveship for Divinely favored movements with leaders acting with God's authority cooperating with Bro. Russell in his work organizationally and teachingly, in these movements, Truth leaders and ledlings being in the sphere of executiveship, and that executiveship abiding to the end of the Age (25). These would come out of the sects, from conditions about the allianced state-church, from those already in the Church, but not yet in the Truth, from the low and the high and from some in the world, bringing the evidences of God's acceptance of Christ's sacrifice, their consecrations, services of the deeper truths, their choice human powers and services flowing out of the graces, to the embryo Church (26). But if the people would not heed to keep the rest of justification and avoid sin, even violating justification in the act of consecration, then God would show wrath against such consecrations which would lastingly devour the main teachings of the nominal church (27). Certainly, the lines of teaching in chapters 16 and 17 are in line with the thought of discarding the nominal church as a marred mouthpiece and the taking of the true Church as such. 

In chapters 18 and 19 under the imagery of a potter making and unmaking vessels God shows that He can and does make and unmake, according to the responses that His people make to His Word. On this subject God's Word came to Bro. Russell (18:1), charging him to consider a potter at his work, where God would make known something to him (2). He, therefore, considered a potter's work (3), noting that a vessel was marred in the potter's hand, who accordingly as he chose made the lump into another vessel (4). There

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upon God drew Bro. Russell's thoughts to consider certain teachings of the Lord (5). Could not God, the Master Worker, do to His people as the potter had done to his clay? Verily so; for as the potter had power over the clay, so God had power over His people (6). At any time that God would speak of His procedure to uproot, tear down and destroy a people or rulership (7), if that people against which He had so spoken would be converted from their sin, God would change His procedure of punishing it, though He had thought so to do (8). And at any time that God would speak of a people and rulership, to develop and establish it (9), if it should do evil before the Lord, not obeying His Word, then He would change His procedure of blessing it with the promised benefits (10). Then God by His Spirit, Word and providence charged Bro. Russell to deliver a message to His nominal people and to the members of its allianced state-church. Solemnly God assures them that He was planning something against them; hence He advised them to repent of their evil course and make their conduct and acts good (11). But they said that there was no hope of amendment, but they would conduct themselves according to their own plans and after the errors that they desired (12). Therefore God said, Inquire among the heathen, if they ever heard of such a thing; for nominal spiritual Israel has done a very abominable thing (13). Will one give up the refreshing waters that are experienced in justification, or forsake the deeper Truth that comes in consecration (14)? Since God's nominal people have put God out of their minds, used their choice human powers for the vain idols of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness, have caused themselves to stumble in their course from the old paths to go in paths not by God constructed (15), making the sphere of Truth and its Spirit desolate and a lasting repudiation, astounding every passer-by unto wagging his head (16), God decided that He would allow the World War in its two phases to scatter them before their enemies, showing them disfavor in their calamity (17).

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Thereupon these evildoers encouraged one another to make plans against Bro. Russell; for they felt sure that he was in error, since they were confident that God's Word would not cease to be with their main leaders, nor a true plan with their wise men, nor the true preaching with their ministers. Therefore they encouraged one another to smite him with their knowledge, and pay no attention to any of his teachings (18). This led him to pray by his acts and attitude that God attend to him and heed the words of those who contended against him (19). His attitude asked, Should evil be rewarded for good? His attitude asked this, because they were inventing slanders against him. His attitude asked God to remember that he acted officially before God, working for them the bestowal of good and the warding off of evil from the Lord (20). Therefore he was willing that God's purposed wrath express itself in delivering their ledlings to religious and physical famine, that He take their religious life by controversy and their physical life by the trouble, that their churches be bereaved of members and become widows, that their older ones be put to death as tares and die in the trouble, that their creed-warriors be refuted in controversy (21), that distress be uttered from their churches, when symbolic and literal armies are by the Lord suddenly brought upon them; for they prepared slanders against Bro. Russell, and sought to entrap him into misfortune (22). His attitude told the Lord that He knew all their conspiracy against him to assassinate his reputation by their false slanders. His attitude, being one against second-deathers, appealed to God not to forgive them their errors, nor to blot out their sins from His sight; it was willing that they be overthrown in matters of God; and asked that He so do with them in the time of His wrath (23). 

God then charged him to take up the doctrine of eternal torment, an earth- (not heaven-) born doctrine, and attract the attention of elders of His nominal people and elders of the main leaders (19:1), and to give his thoughts to contemplating the subject of hell, which 

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is maintained by the creed-makers as eternal torment, and to declare there the teachings that God would reveal to him (2). By quoting pertinent Scriptures he was charging the leaders in the nominal church and the ledlings in the allianced state-church to hear God's Word, declaring that God would bring calamity upon the nominal church of such a kind as would burn human ears (3), because they had apostatized from God and perverted the true into the nominal church, and had used up their choice human powers in serving the foreign gods of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness, that neither their predecessors nor the former leaders of God's people had previously recognized, and had consigned saints to eternal torment (4), and had developed sects for power-grasping and lording in Satan's service, to consign members of their churches to eternal torment as sacrifices manifesting God's acceptance of Christ's sacrifice, all however as a service to Satan, things that God neither commanded, spoke of nor devised as a part of His plan (5). Therefore God averred that the time was coming that they would no more call the punishment for sin eternal torment in literal fire and brimstone, nor hell a wailing condition, with the nominal-church idea attached to that term; but it will be called the condition of death by judicial sentence—the condition of the eternally slaughtered (6). God declared that He would make empty the idea of the nominal church and its allianced state-church as to this condition, and would cause them to be refuted in controversy thereover by their enemies and by the power of those who would seek their official lives; and the memory of them would be devoured by the scavengers of the powers of spiritual control and the religious and secular anarchists (7). Therefore Jehovah would make the allianced state-church desolate and disapproved; to all considering it would be an object of astonishment and disapproval, because of its wanderings into error and punishments (8). In it each sect will consume the substance of its movements and powers and the substance of one another because of the 

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siege and hardships that this allianced state-church will experience from its religious and secular enemies; for those who seek the official life of its great ones will heap hardships upon them (9). 

Thereupon God charged Bro. Russell utterly to destroy by Biblical, reasonable and factual arguments the doctrine of eternal torment, publicly before the eyes of understanding of those (v. 1) who considered the subject with him (10); furthermore God charged him to say as God's Word that in like manner God would destroy His nominal people as tares and the allianced state-church as such, so that, as one, destroying an earthen vessel, cannot mend and make it perfect again, these broken ones shall be remembered as tares in eternal annihilation (Tophet, burning) in vast numbers (11). Thus, God declared, would He make the allianced state-church and all tares, as such, as members of it, making it to be eternally in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone—in eternal annihilation (12). The erroneous teachings of the allianced state-church and those of its movements shall be unanswerably proven erroneous, as was the doctrine of eternal torment, because of all of the erroneous doctrines publicly held and publicly used, for which choice human powers were sacrificed in the interests of the erroneous powers of spiritual control, and for which easier teachings were spread in the interests of sin, error, selfishness and worldliness (13). Thereupon Bro. Russell stopped treating of the real and false punishments of sin, on which God had directed him to preach, and took up for discussion publicly matters on justification (14), for whose violations the God of his people told him to declare that upon the allianced state-church and all its sects would come all the calamities that God had pronounced upon it, because they had hardened their wills to disobey His teachings (15). 

Chapter 20 gives the persecuting reactions of the chief clergy and God's and Bro. Russell's pertinent reactions. The eloquent (Immer), analytical (Pashur) leading clergy took note of the teachings of Bro. Russell 

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(20:1) and attacked and made him a gazing stock, restraining him in his services and conduct before those who led the consecrated toward the allianced state-church, near God's house (2). Later these higher clerics removed the worst features of such restraints from him. Thereupon Bro. Russell declared of them that the Lord had not given them the office of eloquent analysists, but had given them the office of wrecker of all their surroundings (Magor-missabib), for their course would lead the nominal church to ruin (3). God solemnly averred that they would cause by their course a terror to themselves and to all their familiars, who would be refuted by the Truth; and these higher clerics would experience it; and God would deliver all Christendom to the power of Satan, the god of this present evil world, who would lead them captives in ever-increasing error and would slay them in the trouble time (4). God further declared that He would give up all the allianced state-church's power, products and truths and all the valuables of the movements of God's favored people, into the control of its religious and secular enemies, who would despoil them and make them serve greater confusions (5). As for the analytical higher clerics, God said that they and all their followers would become captive in greater than their own confusions and there would pass away officially and vitally, and would be remembered as such with their familiars, to whom they have taught errors (6). Bro. Russell's humanity did not react favorably to his persecutions. It had expected approval for its uses in sacrifice and felt that it had been woefully deceived even by God. In its struggles against being sacrificed it recognized that God by His New Creature was stronger than his flesh and had overcome it; for surely he was daily derided and mocked by everyone of note in the nominal church (7); for from the time of his speaking for God he cried out, yea, he cried out violence and spoliation. This made him reproached for God's Word and derided daily (8). His flesh urged that he no more speak for God, nor speak as His

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special representative. But in his New Creature His Word was as a hot fire shut up within his new-creaturely faculties; hence it tired of refraining and stopping to speak it forth (9). His flesh shuddered at many falsely defaming him; all were in fear of him. Some threatened that if he would make disparaging reports of them, they would do so of him. Former friends, now enemies, looked to see him limp unto defeat, hoping that he might be tricked into deception, and they be avenged for their supposed mistreatment from him (10). 

His New Creature gave him the assurance that God was on his side as one mightily causing terror and stumbling to his persecutors, who would not and could not overcome him. Instead, great disgrace would befall them and failures would be the result of their endeavors. Eternally would their confusion come up into men's minds (11). He recognized that it was God who was testing the righteous, knowing their motives and dispositions. He asked God to let him see his vindication as against them; for he had truly set forth his case before the Lord (12). He called upon the Truth people to reflect credit upon God by declaring His Word and by showing forth His Spirit, because He had delivered His humble servant from the power of evildoers (13). His humanity under its load wished that the day of his birth be blotted out and not be accounted as a happy one (14). It wished that the man had never lived who announced to his father that a son had been born to him, rejoicing his heart (15). It wished that that man had been and would continue to be as non-existent as the cities of the plain were then non-existent, overthrown changelessly forever by the Lord. If he were not destroyed, Bro. Russell's flesh was willing that distress be his portion on awaking and in the height of his activities (16), because of his not cutting him off at his birth, or from having been conceived after his begettal, or from having come to birth (17). His humanity could see no reason for his birth, in view of its great labor and sorrow and in view of its being consumed by the shame hurled upon him (18).