Preserving Parousia and Epiphany Truth: December 2013

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Permanent Marker Series: E5, P. 502

"Through the ministry of that Servant the Lord gave as the Parousia Truth those teachings that won and developed the last members of the Little Flock and started the Youthful Worthy call, also those teachings that laid the foundations of those that are now developing the Great Company and continue to develop the Youthful Worthies, and also those that were then due on the justified, Israel and the world. The Epiphany Truth consists of such truths as are needed by the Little Flock to equip her for her Epiphany work, as are needed to furnish the superstructure of Truth required to develop the Great Company and continue to develop the Youthful Worthies, and as are needed to complete the pre-Millennial Truths respecting the justified, Israel and the world, due for God's people to know during the Epiphany."

We've said it before and we'll say it again. There are many references from Bro. Johnson like the one above that mention both the Great Company and the Youthful Worthies in parallel context. Both were developed AS CLASSES in the Epiphany. That context needs to be changed if we are to believe that one of them is now called as a class in 1878. So, we added some text. The Executive Trustee really messed things up. A quick glance at his modified, confusing Chart of the Ages proves it.

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