Preserving Parousia and Epiphany Truth: God's Parousia and Epiphany Watchcare

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

God's Parousia and Epiphany Watchcare

PT. 1986 Pg. 3:

Jehovah led and followed with His watchcare His Parousia people, giving them the necessary Truth as due. He opened the way for Bro. Russell to get much Truth, on the object and manner of our Lord's Return and otherwise. He was given to see after some time that our Lord in His Second Advent is a spirit being, invisible to the human eyes, capable of coming and going as the wind. Thus the way was opened for Bro. Russell to see from prophecy and chronology and to declare that our Lord's Second Presence and the harvest gathering of the elect had actually begun in 1874 and that the message "Behold the Bridegroom" should be preached from 1877 onward. God sustained His people amid the six great siftings—No-Ransomism, Infidelism, Combinationism, Reformism, Contradictionism and (in the Epiphany period) Revolutionism.

Jehovah opened the way and took care of the consequences for His enlightened people in the changed conditions of the Epiphany period, which began in 1914 with the inception of the World War. After Bro. Russell's death in 1916, God led Bro. Paul S.L. Johnson to recognize the close of the door of entrance into the High Calling in 1914, and that the main work thereafter was the developing of the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies for their places in the Kingdom. God's overruling providence is very evident even here in the gradual ending of the Epiphany period and the beginning of the Basileia in its first stage in 1954. He gave Bro. Jolly much additional Truth pertaining to the development of the antitypical Epiphany Court and Camp. We have witnessed how He has led, directed and taken care of the consequences for His faithful people, even since Bro. Jolly's death in 1979.

By the antitypical fiery cloudy pillar—the Truth and its Spirit—and His providences, God has led His loyal people along in their journey to the "rest that remaineth" in antitypical Canaan. Through the ministry of our Lord Jesus as the Good Shepherd He has gone before God's people (John 10: 4), leading them into the green pastures and beside the still waters (Psa. 23: 2). The flock has also been guarded from behind, so that no figurative wolves or other predators can harm or destroy them...

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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