Pastor Russell spoke here twice to large audiences. We report one of his discourses which treated on the difference between human and Divine standards of measurement. He said in part: -
When we were children the days were longer and years seemed interminable. The holidays of the year stood out very seldom to recur. Gradually all this changed as we reached the zenith of our energy. Now the days chase each other and we marvel at the brevity of life. How God regards time we might not know if He had not revealed the matter in His Word. As we read, "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday," and "A day with the Lord is as a thousands years." Our minds assent it must be so! And God's people are blessed in proportion as they are able to take the Divine viewpoint of life and all of its affairs. -
From the Divine standpoint, then, we see that the six thousand years of earth's history, from Adam's day until now, are merely the work-day portion of a great week whose Seventh Day or Sabbath of a thousand years is "the day of Christ," "the last day," "the day of judgment" or trial for the world; the day in which "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to the glory of God;" the day in which "the righteous shall flourish and the evil-doers shall be cut off in the Second Death;" the day during which God will "pour out His Spirit upon all flesh," as He now grants it to His servants and handmaidens.
In the Divinely arranged custom of the Jews the new day began at sunset. Thus we are in the evening or beginning of the great Seventh Day of the Divine Week the day which means so much of blessing, uplifting, privilege, opportunity of Divine favor to our race through Messiah's glorious Kingdom, which throughout this Seventh Day will reign "from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth," putting down everything contrary to the Divine standards and uplifting the world of mankind (bought with the precious blood at Calvary) from sin, meanness, degradation and the tomb up, up, up, step by step to human perfection in a world-wide Eden. The unwilling, resisting Divine favors and privileges, shall be destroyed in the Second Death.
"Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the Seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work." Whoever reads carefully, intelligently, the pages of history, must be struck with the energy which has been manifested by our race and is still being manifested. The pyramids and the ruins of ancient cities, and civilization, all tell us of the ceaseless struggle of humanity against the adverse conditions prevailing in the earth, including the strife against sickness and death, and, by a few, a noble fight against sin and further degradation.
Well does the Prophet express the truth of our observation, saying, "We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth." (Isa. 26:18.) A few have gained fabulous riches, name of fame, place or power, but the majority during all this period have gone down in the strife to the tomb, slain by the great associated monarchies which the Bible declares are now reigning Sin and Death.
And even the comparatively few who have gained eminence and whose victories are most loudly extolled in human history have fallen also'many of them in the [HGL506] very prime of life all of them in comparative childhood. Why is it that a man should not live for a hundred years when we have the Divine assurance that even under the Divine sentence Father Adam resisted death for 930 years so vigorous was his constitution?
From the Divine standpoint the children of Adam, born in sin, shapen in iniquity, of a few days and full of trouble, fall asleep in death like children wearied in their play; albeit it is a play grim with tragedy, in which each actor performs his part most realistically.
From the Divine standpoint human ambition and strife and energy are accomplishing a useful purpose, even though their efforts are usually selfish and often brutish. The lessons now being learned by Adam's children will not all be lost. The greater mellowness of heart and broader views of the majority of those who have thus battled selfishly for even fifty years suggest that, as a whole, our race might do better work in a second century than in the first. Moreover, the Scriptures indicate that the great drama of sin, selfishness and passion being enacted by humanity is furnishing a lesson to angelic hosts respecting the exceeding sinfulness of sin its downward tendency its bitter fruit and the hopelessness of any to escape therefrom except by the Divine assistance.
The forbidden fruit of Eden was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Doubtless the Creator would eventually have given a full knowledge of both good and evil to our first parents. They were merely forbidden an immediate plunge into knowledge to their own disadvantage. Craving knowledge before its due time, Mother Eve disobeyed her Maker and enticed her husband also into disobedience. The result has been that instead of learning the philosophy of good at first and of evil later, they and their race have been precipitated into lessons respecting evil first, with the knowledge of good to come later.
The holy angels, who have never transgressed the Divine Law, have continually the lesson of good an appreciation of the Divine character, the principles of righteousness, etc. Their lessons in respect to evil they are gaining by observation instead of by experience the way recommended to our first parents by the Creator, but in their ignorance rejected.
But God foreknew the course which His human children would take under the influence of temptation; He foreknew that they would fall into sin and therefore would experience its penalty, sorrow, pain and death. While His eye has pitied His poor creatures for six thousand years, nevertheless He has allowed His great original Plan of the Ages to move along slowly to a grand climax the Plan which He purposed in Himself from before the foundation of the world.
That climax in human affairs, we believe, is near at hand. It marks a great change in Dispensation. The six thousand years, the reign of sin and death, are to be completed by a terrible time of trouble which might not improperly be termed the natural result of human selfishness (sin) operating under the influence of the great principles of the New Dispensation now being ushered in. Selfishness, as represented in the accumulated financial power and energy called trusts and combines, is about to come into conflict with selfishness (sin), represented in the combining forces of humanity, labor unions, etc. The head-on collision which thinking people foresee, and which the Scriptures graphically portray, will give to society an earthquake shock; more than this, the graphic picture is of a world-conflagration which will involve the heavens, or ecclesiastical powers, as well as the earth, or social system, and the mountains, or kingdoms of the world. The picture would be too terrible to paint, and useless as well, were it not for the silver lining to the cloud.
The awful shock which God's people are warned to avoid so far as possible by following peace peace and benevolence will merely prepare the way for the glorious blessings of the great Seventh Day, in which man will rest from his own schemes and endeavors and come fully under the control of the great King, Messiah, whose rule of righteousness for human uplift has been prophetically pictured for centuries.
Still looking from Divine standpoint at the six great thousand-year days in which sin and death have reigned, we perceive that one effect has been as foretold to Mother Eve, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy conception." We perceive that our race has multiplied much more rapidly than it would have done had it remained perfect as at first, for the first children, even in the days following the fall, were frequently born when the father was an hundred years old.
We have already referred to the lesson respecting the sinfulness of sin which comes to all mankind most fully, most consciously to those favored by contact with the people of God who have received the Divine Revelation. The enlightened ones have been but a small portion of the whole. After two thousand years of the reign of sin and death God foretold in an obscure manner the blessing He intended to bring subsequently to the race: To Abraham He said, All the families of the earth I will bless through thee and through thy Seed. That message, followed in Israel by the giving of the Law Covenant, has been the Light of the world. For eighteen centuries it was the only light of hope, of prospect. Then, in partial fulfillment of that promise, same Jesus, the first practical expression of Divine love and pity for our race. No longer would God content Himself merely with promises. He would now begin the-
But if any hoped that world-wide blessings would immediately spring up as the result of Jesus' work, he was mistaken. On the contrary, Jesus Himself was combated by the Prince of darkness and his deluded subjects. And the same principle has obtained for nearly two thousand years all followers of Jesus have been obliged to take up their cross and suffer for righteousness, for godliness, in the midst of a crooked and perverse people, amongst whom [HGL507] they have shone as lights and whom, to some extent, they have assisted in enlightening, civilizing, etc.
Thus the six days of the week, so far as light, truth, knowledge of God is concerned, have all been dark days. The lights which God provided in His followers have been as candles set upon candlesticks. They have indeed reproved the darkness, but they have been powerless to scatter it. Nor did God so intend. His declaration through the Prophet is, "Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psa. 30:5.) Again, "Darkness covers the earth, gross darkness the people;" but "the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His beams." Isa. 60:2; Mal. 4:2.
This promised Sun of Righteousness which is to scatter the darkness of earth, we are told distinctly, consists of Jesus and those who have walked in His footsteps throughout this Gospel Age. These, approved of the Father, will be glorified beyond the
veil by a resurrection to glory, honor and immortality. Then speedily these will "shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father." (Matt. 13:43.) This will mean the ushering in of the great Seventh Day Messiah's Day.
From this Divine viewpoint God is not slack concerning His promises. Only six days of the week have yet passed. The glorious Seventh Day in which the great Mediator between God and men will assume His Kingdom powers is just at hand. Instead of thinking that God is neglecting and forgetting to fulfill the Messianic promises, we should with the eyes of faith realize that He is working all things according to the counsel of His own will. We should consider the matter from the standpoint that God has exercised great patience with humanity in not blotting out the race; He has been long-suffering. An this assures us that the Unchangeable One would prefer that none of His creatures should perish in death, but rather that all, if they would, might turn unto Him and live. Eze. 33:11.
The great opportunity for the masses of our race to turn to the Lord and attain everlasting life will be after the darkness shall have passed, when the Sun of Righteousness shall be shining forth; after the Highway of Holliness shall have taken the place of the Broad Road to destruction; after Messiah, the great King, shall have dethroned Satan, the Prince of darkness, from the world's control; after the Prince of Peace shall have established peace upon a proper basis. Who cannot sing heartily with the poet:
"A thousand years, earth's coming glory, 'Tis the glad day so long foretold,' 'Tis the glad morn of Zion's glory, Prophets foresaw in times of old!'"
Our race was generated by Father Adam as well as condemned to death through his disobedience. What the race needs is another father or life-giver, and this is exactly what the word Savior signifies Life-Giver, Father. The Redeemer, at the cost of His own life, became the purchaser of Adam and his race with a view to their resuscitation, their resurrection from sin and from death. Is not one of the Redeemer's titles "The Everlasting Father" the Father who gives everlasting life. Unquestionably He has not yet fulfilled this glorious office of Life-Giver to Adam's race; He will fulfil it, however- "in His Day."
Speaking to His faithful disciples, His followers in the narrow way, Jesus promised them, "In the regeneration ye shall sit upon twelve thrones." (Matt. 19:28) That regeneration period corresponds exactly to St. Peter's "times of restitution," or years of restoration (Acts 3:19), and both of these periods agree to the general teachings of Scripture respecting a resurrection at the last day Messiah's day the thousand years of regeneration, resurrection restitution, which will afford Adam and his race fullest opportunities for attaining perfection of human nature in an Edenic world-wide Paradise.
The Lord through the Prophet assures us of the wonderful success which will attend the establishment of the New Empire of earth, the dominion of the Prince of Light, which will supersede the dominion of the Prince of darkness, when Satan shall be bound for a thousand years, that he may deceive the peoples no more. Thus it is written, "He shall lay righteousness to the line and justice to the plummet and the hail (Truth) shall sweep away the refuge of lies." (Isa. 28:17)
But why the delay, do you ask? Ah, we answer, God did not permit Adam to begin the establishment of his race until first He gave him Eve as his bride, his wife. The word needed not merely a life-giver but a mother, a care-taker, a helpmate.
Similarly in the Divine arrangement God has provided that the restitution time, the world's uplifting period, the regeneration epoch for mankind, shall not begin until first the true Church, the "little flock," the Bride of Christ, shall be completed and be united or married to the Heavenly Bridegroom beyond the veil made partaker with Him of glory, honor and immortality the divine nature.
Thus, my dearly beloved, the great Plan of Ages, timed by Infinite Wisdom, has delayed long enough to permit you and me and all of God's Spirit-begotten children to make our calling and our election sure to a share with our Redeemer in His glorious work. How glad we are that the door of opportunity to this "high calling" still stands open and that the Heavenly Father and the Kingly Redeemer are beckoning us to share the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, but which are reserved for us and for all who love Him sincerely more than they love houses or lands, parents or children or self.