Does History Repeat Itself?

Question (1972)—Is it proper to pray for those Epiphany-enlightened Truth brethren who have brought forth serious error and who have been spreading it more or less widely among the Lord’s people, thus doing a sifting work?

Answer.—It depends on whether or not the individuals are new creatures. In E. 4, p. 122, Bro. Johnson says: “All new-creaturely sifters defile God’s Temple... But how about those who consecrated here in the end of the Age, but for whom no crowns were available, the Spirit-enlightened but not Spirit begotten ones, including all consecrators since the Fall of 1914, when the door of entrance into the High Calling closed (see PT No. 515)? Shortly before his death the Epiphany Messenger is said to have remarked that after his death the Youthful Worthies would be tested along the same lines that the new creatures had been tested during the Epiphany, and that he looked for many of them to fall in similar ways (see P. ’55, p. 66, par. 4). This prediction has certainly come true. And the principle given in Prov. 16: 18 (“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”) has been manifested to a large extent by sifting errorists who have arisen from among the Youthful Worthies and have persisted despite expostulations from the Scriptures...