Which cometh down out of Heaven from My God.—“A city is a symbol of a kingdom or dominion, and so God's Kingdom is symbolized by the New Jerusalem, the new dominion coming from Heaven to earth. At first it will consist of only the Bride of Christ.”—A. 295; Heb. 12:18-22.
And I will write upon him My new name.—“ ‘Our Righteousness of Jehovah.’ How appropriate is this name to the work and office of our Lord Jesus! Did He not stand as the Representative of God's righteousness and suffer the penalty of Justice as man's Ransom—that God might be just, and yet be the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus? Surely no name could be more appropriate. (Jer. 33:16; 23:6; T. 102.) And that this name will be appropriate to the glorified Church all can readily see: she not only shares her Lord's sufferings for righteousness, ‘filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ’ (Col. 1:24; 1 Pet. 5:9), but is also promised a share in all the glories of her Lord, as a wife shares her husband's honors and name.”—E. 45, 42; Isa. 9:6; Rev. 2:17; 19:12.
3:13. He that hath an ear.—“Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not?”—Mark 8:18.
Let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.—“Let these sayings sink down into your ears.”—Luke 9:44.
3:14. And [unto] BY the angel.—The special messenger to the last Age of the Church was Charles T. Russell, born February 16, 1852. He has privately admitted his belief that he was chosen for his great work from before his birth. His mother died when he was nine years old; and at the age of eleven Charles formed a business partnership with his father, himself writing the articles of agreement under which they transacted business. When he was but twelve years of age, his father found him in the store one time at 2 a. m., poring over a concordance, unconscious of the lapse of time. We give some extracts from his autobiography:
“We begin the narrative at the year 1868, when the Editor, having been a consecrated child of God for some years, and a member of the Congregational Church and of the Y. M. C. A., began to be shaken in faith regarding many long accepted doctrines. Brought up a Presbyterian, indoctrinated from the catechism, and being naturally of an inquiring mind, I fell a ready prey to the logic of infidelity, as soon as I began to think for myself. But that which at first threatened to be the utter shipwreck of faith in God and the Bible, was, under God's providence, overruled for good, and merely wrecked my confidence in human creeds and systems of Bible interpretations. I was led gradually to see that though each of the creeds contained some elements of Truth, they were, on the whole, misleading and contradictory of God's Word. Among other theories, I stumbled upon Adventism. Seemingly by accident, one evening I dropped into a dusty, dingy hall in Allegheny, Pa., where I had heard that religious services were held, to see if the handful who met there had anything more sensible to offer than the creeds of the great churches. There, for the first time, I heard something of the views of Second Adventism, by Jonas Wendell, long since deceased. Thus I confess indebtedness to Adventists as well as to other Bible students. Though his Scripture exposition was not entirely clear, and though it was very far from what we now rejoice in, it was sufficient, under God, to reestablish my wavering faith in the Divine inspiration of the Bible, and to show that the records of the Apostles and the Prophets are indissolubly linked.
“When in 1872 I came to examine the subject of Restitution from the standpoint of the Ransom-price given by our Lord Jesus for Adam, and consequently for all lost in Adam, it settled the matter of Restitution completely, and gave me the fullest assurance that ALL must come forth from their graves and be brought to a clear knowledge [pg 054] of the Truth and to a full opportunity to gain everlasting life through Christ. The years following, to 1876, were years of continued growth in grace and in knowledge on the part of the handful of Bible students with whom I met in Allegheny. We progressed from our first crude and indefinite ideas of Restitution to clearer understanding of the details; but God's due time for clear light had not yet come. During this time, too, we came to recognize the difference between our Lord as ‘the Man who gave Himself,’ and as the One who would come again, a Spirit Being. We saw that spirit beings can be present and yet invisible to men.... It seems that not long after their 1874 disappointment, a reader of The Herald of the Morning, who had a copy of the Emphatic Diaglott, noticed something in it which he thought peculiar—that in Matthew 24:27, 37, 39, the Greek word parousia, which in our Common Version is rendered ‘coming,’ is in the Diaglott translated ‘presence’—evidently the correct translation of the Greek. This was the clue; and following it, they had been led through prophetic time toward proper views regarding the object and manner of our Lord's Return, and then to the examination of the time when the things indicated in God's Word as related to Christ's parousia should take place. Thus God leads His children often from different starting points of Truth. But where the heart is earnest and trustful, the results must be to draw all together.
“There were no books or other publications setting forth the time prophecies as then understood. So I paid Mr. Barbour's expenses to come to see me at Philadelphia (where I had business engagements during the summer of 1876), to show me fully and Scripturally, if he could, that the prophecies indicated 1874 as the date at which the Lord's presence and the Harvest began. He came, and the evidence satisfied me. Being a person of positive convictions, and fully consecrated to the Lord, I at once saw that the special times in which we live have an important bearing upon our duty and work as Christ's disciples; that since we are living in the time of the Harvest, the Harvest work should be done; and that Present Truth is the sickle by which the Lord would have us do a reaping work everywhere among His children. I inquired of Mr. Barbour as to what was being done by him and The Herald. He replied that nothing was being done.”—Z. '16-170, 171.
Pastor Russell took the place of Mr. Barbour who became unfaithful and upon whom was fulfilled the prophecies of Matt. 24:48-51 and Zech. 11:15-17.
“In 1877 Pastor Russell called a meeting of all the ministers of Allegheny and Pittsburgh, showed them the Scriptures which indicated our Lord's presence and urged them to investigate and proclaim the message. All of the ministers of the two cities were present; all of the ministers of the two cities refused to believe. In the same year he determined to give up secular work and devote his entire time and fortune to the work indicated in the Scriptures as incident to the close of the Gospel Age and change of dispensation impending. As a means of determining whether his course was in harmony with the Scriptures, and also as a means of demonstrating his own sincerity, he decided to test the Lord's approval as follows: (1) Devote his life to the cause; (2) Invest his fortune in the promulgation of the work; (3) Prohibit collections at all meetings; (4) Depend on unsolicited contributions (wholly voluntary) to continue the work after his fortune was exhausted. In 1881, 1,400,000 copies of Food for Thinking Christians were distributed free at the doors of the Protestant churches in the United States, Canada and Great Britain on three consecutive Sundays, by A. D. T. messenger boys.”—Obituary.