Preserving Parousia and Epiphany Truth: Each Class to Keep within the Bounds Set for It

Monday, June 1, 2009

Each Class to Keep within the Bounds Set for It

PT July-August 1966, p. 54:
"Bro. Johnson expounds in E 11, p. 336, stating in part that Jesus 'severed the classes from one another by peculiar teachings, activities, gatherings and siftings, belonging to each one: the Little Flock distinct from the Great Company, the Great Company from the Youthful Worthies [italics ours], the Youthful Worthies from the justified, the justified from the Campers, and the Campers from those beyond the Camp (set bounds unto the people, v. 12). The charge was to each class to keep within the bounds set for it (take heed to yourselves), and thus not grasp for powers as to the Kingdom not belonging to it (go not up into the mount), nor contaminate anything pertaining to the Kingdom either by false doctrine or wrong practice (touch the border of it)..."

Jesus severed the Little Flock from the Great Company, the Great Company from the Youthful Worthies, etc., showing the proper order of the development of each class. See also PT August 1942, p. 120; E11, Chapter 5; PT July-August 1960, p.58; PT March-April 1976, p. 30.

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Sifters—Who Are The Sifters

Question (1968)—Bro. Russell called Messrs. Barbour, Paton, Williamson, Henninges, McPhail and other similar disseminators of error sifters, and they in turn called him a sifter; Bro. Johnson called J.F.R. and others like him sifters, and they in turn called him the same; and now you speak of certain ones as sifters and they accuse you of being like J.F.R., who “accused Bro. Johnson of being a sifter.” It is rather confusing. Who are the sifters anyway?

Answer.—It should not be confusing if we hold carefully to the Truth as unfolded for us from the Word of God and look for His holy Spirit. In all cases Satan is really the sifter—the one who originates, initiates and carries on persistently a sifting (Luke 22: 31; 1 Pet. 5: 8). Through pride, ostentation, self-exaltation, envy, jealousy, deceit, misrepresentations, falsehoods, slander, favoritism, unfaithfulness to the Truth, malice and other works of the flesh he appeals to God’s people and uses those who respond to Him as his agents to oppose the Truth and to spread error, which of course sifts out the unfaithful ones. We are not to forget that God’s approval or disapproval is manifested through testings and siftings (1 Cor. 11: 18, 19; see also P. ’53, pp. 50, 51). Nations are sifted “with the sieve of vanity,” but “through the voice of the Lord shall the Assyrian be beaten down” (Isa. 30: 28-31). The Assyrian here, as in Micah 5: 5, 6, represents “those who make spoil of God’s people by devastating the Truth and its Spirit” (E. 10, p. 115).

Satan’s emissaries “call evil good, and good evil” and “put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa. 5: 20). Many leaders who once had the truth, given by the Lord through Bro. Russell, on Jesus’ Second Advent, His invisible presence, the Bible chronology and the forty years’ Harvest reaping, now claim . . . that the Bible chronology as given by Bro. Russell is wrong,. . . The Lord’s true sheep will heed only the voice of the Good Shepherd; they will study to show themselves approved unto God, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Tim. 2: 15). They will keep themselves in the love of God and in the most holy faith. The Truth and its Spirit will be the touchstones that will determine for them which is true and which is false. Teachings that do not agree with (1) themselves (2) all other Scriptures, (3) all other Scripture doctrines, (4) with the Ransom, (5) with reason, (6) with facts, and (7) with the purposes of Godliness, should be rejected as erroneous. ’68-46