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Chosen no: R-5018 a, from: 1912 Year. |
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"The Harvest Is The End Of The Age"
"The harvest truly is plenteous, but the
laborers are few; pray
ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth
laborers into His harvest."--Matt. 9:37,38.
FOR LONG YEARS many of us thought of the Bible
references to the Harvest, our text included, as applicable to every time. We had not then learned that in order to be understood the Bible must be studied
Dispensationally. Now we perceive that the time of our Lord's first advent was
the Harvest of the Jewish Age; and that as a Harvest this text applied to that
nation only. For more than sixteen hundred years the Law Covenant had been in
operation between God and Israel.
Under it they had been disciplined and schooled, instructed through the Law and
by the Prophets.
Jesus came, not only to be the Redeemer of
mankind in general, but also to offer Himself as King to the Jews, and to make
them His joint-heirs in His Kingdom. Had there been a sufficient number of Jews
in heart-readiness to receive the Gospel Message, according to Divine
agreement, the entire Bride class would have been elected, or chosen, from that
one nation and not a Gentile would have been invited to participate in
the honors of these spirit-begotten ones, called in the Scriptures, the
spiritual "Seed of Abraham." (Gal. 3:29.)
Nevertheless, the Lord knew that Israel would not be ready to
receive Him, and He provided for their rejection and the opening of the door to
membership in the Bride class to worthy Gentiles.
At the close of the Jewish Age, at the time,
therefore, that people should have and did have their greatest degree of
ripeness and preparation, our Lord presented Himself and began to do the
reaping work. He sent forth His disciples as His representatives, two and two;
and later, He sent "seventy also." When these returned, our Lord
declared to them, "I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor;
other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors."--John
4:38.
The Great Teacher tells us distinctly that while
His work was that of reaping, He blended with it a sowing. Seeing that the Jews
were not ready for the Kingdom, seeing that eighteen centuries would be
required for the calling and developing of the saintly, spiritual ones, the Father
started the work of seed-sowing for the New Dispensation. Then, according to
our Lord's parable, He left the work in the hands of His servants and went
"into a far country"--even Heaven itself. Since then He has been
supervising His work and been represented through the faithful members of His
Church, His Bride. He and the Apostles sowed the "good seed" of the
Kingdom, meanwhile gathering the ripe wheat of the Jewish nation into the
Kingdom Class, through the begetting of the Holy Spirit. By and by the harvesting
of the Jewish Age ended completely, when all the wheat of the nation
were gathered into the Gospel Church of spirit-begotten ones, and then came the
"burning of the chaff"--the great time of trouble with which
the Jewish Age ended, in A.D. 70.
Since then the work of seed-sowing, evangelism,
etc., amongst the Gentiles has gone on, not without difficulty, however. As our
Lord's parable shows, Satan, the Adversary, came "while men
slept"--in the night, the "Dark Ages"--and over-sowed the wheat
field with tare seed. As a result, the field looked very prosperous,
although, in reality, the "tares" had a choking and disastrous effect
on the "wheat." Nevertheless, the Lord would not allow the separating
of wheat from tares until the full end of the Age, the Harvest. The Bible
intimates that the tares were so numerous and so intertwined with the wheat in
their various interests that to have plucked them all up would have brought the
disastrous "time of trouble" too soon. Hence, the decree that both
should grow together until the Harvest. "The Harvest is the end of the
Age." --Matt. 13:39. [R5018 : page 146]
"THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN"
Our studies together have led the majority of us
to conclude that we are now living in the Harvest time-- in the end of this
Age. Oh, how glad we shall be if this is true! How glad we are to believe it
true! And, we think, on good evidence. If it is true, as we believe, that the forty
years "harvest" of this Age began in 1874, the implication is that
the trials of the Church are nearly at an end; that the faithful will soon be gathered to the heavenly garner. By the glorious
"change" He will cause them to "shine forth as the sun in the
Kingdom of their Father," for the scattering of the world's dark night and
the ushering in of the New Day. Messiah's Day is to bring glorious
opportunities for earthly blessings to Israel,
and to all the families of the earth through Israel. If our hopes be true, then
they mean a blessing, not for the Church alone, but for the entire groaning
creation, which, if willing and obedient under Messiah's reign, will be
released from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty appropriate
to the children of God.-- Rom. 8:21.
As Bible students we have already seen that the
Jewish nation as a people were prototypes of spiritual Israel in many particulars--that
the period from the death of Jacob to the fall of Jerusalem, in A.D. 70, is the
exact parallel to the period of the Gospel Church from the death of
Jesus to 1915, A.D.
Surely it is not by accident that these
two Ages correspond, nor by accident that Israel
as a people typified spiritual Israel!
Neither will it be by accident if the events of 1915 correspond to the events
of A.D. 70. In
other words, as the Harvest of the Jewish Age ended with a time of
trouble, so our Lord's words assure us that this [R5019
: page 146] Gospel Age and its harvest will end with "a
time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation." (Dan. 12:1; Matt. 24:21.)
That a crisis is nearing everybody admits. That socialists and
anarchists are threatening the very fabric of society, nobody will deny. The Bible alone explains the situation and shows us that the work of the
present Age is about completed; that the elect members of the Bride of Christ
have nearly all been found and made ready. The blessings for the world will be
along material lines and will be ushered in by the "time of trouble,"
which will eventuate in anarchy, according to the Scriptures--a general
leveling of the human family as the initial step of the reign of the glorious
Messiah, whom men will shortly see and recognize with the eyes of their
understanding.
W.T. R-5018a : page 145 - 1912r.