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15:1

@@@^@0@9Nah. 1:15 — “Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows: for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off.”@7@^Here we are told that at the time the war is fought someone is to be publishing inspired revelations of newly revealed Truth, the Truth of the Judgment of the Living, the which is to forever separate the wheat from the tares (Matt. 13:30), the good fish from the bad (Matt. 13:47, 48), the sheep from the goats (Matt. 25:32), and the wise virgins from the foolish ones (Matt. 25:1-12). These shall “no more pass through” the church, declares the scripture, they are “utterly cut off.” Thus urging Judah, the church, to keep this antitypical atonement feast and to perform her vows to God so as to be found worthy of escaping the judgments of God. Hence God’s plea to His church is now ringing throughout the land, saying, “Awake, awake: put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and unclean.” (Isa. 52:1)

5:2

@@@^After the judgment work in the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17) is completed and the 144,000 guileless servants of God, the first fruits (Rev. 14:4) take their high and exalted post with the Lamb on Mt. Zion (Rev. 14:1), then commences the ingathering of the second fruits. Finally the world’s eyes will come open to the situation, and as one nation invites another nation, the gospel work will intensely speed up. Many will then say, “Let us go up to the mountains of the house of the Lord, to the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we wall walk in His paths.” All the prophets have spoken of this great and marvelous event, but for brevity’s sake I shall quote only from one chapter — Zechariah 2.

9:4

@@@^@0@9Verse 7 — “Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots.”@7@^The house of Jacob to which God is here speaking is again identified by the fact that it dwells in a land that is full of silver, of gold, and of chariots, that there is no end to the number of them. Since there is no land in all God’s world that is as rich with silver, gold and motor vehicular traffic as is this land of the United States of America, very obviously America, the land where the headquarters of the gospel is, is the land to which God refers. He is, therefore, this day, Brother, Sister, in a special way talking to you, to me, to the whole denomination and particularly to the General Conference (the house of Jacob) in newly revealed Truth, and in unmistakable language. Shall you, shall I, gladly comply with the Lord’s wishes? is the great question before us. Soon the Judgment will begin and we must make sure that our cases will stand.

17:3

@@@^The people’s way of thinking and acting in this soon-coming time of trouble, ruin, and adversity of all kinds, clearly reveals that they are not taking God into consideration, — no, not at all. They are trusting in men and goods. They hope that someone can yet remedy the situation, can save them from ruin. Thus by their calling on men to help instead of calling on God, they are acting as if God has forsaken the earth.

18:2

@@@^You know for a fact that there is not one who names himself a Christian that talks outright against God. What professed Christians really do, is say things against God’s revealed Truth, without realizing that they are talking and sinning against the “Holy Ghost,” and thus against God Himself, too.

26:3

@@@^In this particular verse, therefore, God is especially addressing the daughters of the highest officials in the Denomination, the ministry, those that are at the head of the work. Accordingly, He is about to do something because the daughters of Zion are “haughty,” proud. Their pride is made manifest in the fact that they walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes; they are unrestrained, licentious, vain. Then, too, while walking, they mince and tinkle with their feet, — they do not walk naturally, they perform as it were, to attract public attention. As God sees them they are on the streets, not to get where they have started for, not to get their work done, but they are there to be seen. This is the way God sees the state of affairs that exists among the daughters of Zion. He sees them as ringleaders in licentiousness in the church.

31:2

@@@^@0@9Verse 25 — “Thy men shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war.”@7@^If the daughters of Zion fail to reform, then their men shall fall by the sword. Do you want me to tell you why their men will fall by the sword? — Because no sincere Christian boy in his right senses, will ever as much as consider marrying a girl that dresses as a hypocrite dresses. And so if such a worldly-minded girl is ever to get married, what kind of man will she get? — Not an informed Christian in present Truth, I am sure. She will get the kind of man that does not have God’s protection over him, the kind that is to fall in the war, the war that is fought while God’s people are being delivered. (Re-read Tract No. 14.) If you want to save your men, then quit fooling with the Devil. Get to be God’s true representatives.

4:3

@@@^You remember the story of how he started out to deliver them although he was not yet told to do so. He killed an Egyptian, fell into a quarrel with one of the Hebrews, and then fled for his life. So it was that in Midian he obtained a job, became a shepherd, and married his employer’s daughter. During those forty years of shepherd’s life he forgot the Egyptian language, and with it the Egyptian learning. In its place, though, he learned to tend well to sheep. He therefore dismissed from his mind the idea of ever delivering the people of God from their Egyptian bondage. Then it was that God saw him strong and well able, and commanded him to go back to Egypt and to bring out of it His groaning people. You recall that Moses protested against the idea and argued that he had failed at his first attempt, the time he was young and well-informed and that at that late hour of his life he was not trying again, that he could no longer even speak the language. After a prolonged conversation God removed his objections by promising to give him his brother, Aaron, to be his spokesman, and Moses finally consented to return to Egypt.

6:1

@@@^Humanly viewing the situation, they @9were@7 in a precarious predicament. In that moment they forgot their miraculous deliverance from Pharaoh’s taskmasters and their eyes closed to the wondrous cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that had led them all the way. As they saw it, the evidence against Moses’ ability to lead them safely was overwhelming. Insofar as they were concerned, the whole venture appeared doomed to failure. Their hopes of going ahead or of even going back left them, and all because they thought Moses, not God, was their deliverer! How shortsighted, unstable, doubting, and forgetful human beings are! Experience in the gospel work has taught me that God’s people of today have the same tempter to contend with, and similar temptations to overcome if they are to receive the seal of God.

6:4

@@@^Having their failures before us, we should make them our stepping stones to success. Let us therefore wholeheartedly believe that God is in charge of our salvation, of our lives and of our death, too. That He is able to take us to safety even if the earth should drop out of space, that we cannot die if He wants us alive, and that we cannot live if He wants us dead. Let us ever bear in mind that we of ourselves know nothing about God’s plans except as told through His appointed servants, the prophets, and as we witness them day by day. If we daily walk with God, if we commit all to Him, then the responsibility is all His.

8:2

@@@^After Israel crossed the sea, and after the sea closed in on their enemies, they all sang and gave God the glory, but though Pharaoh’s army and the sea were no longer objects of fear but of interest, their trials, doubts, and fears were not yet at an end: Almost immediately after they saw the sea behind and the desert ahead they began to recriminate Moses for having brought them into the desert to starve there for want of water and food. It never entered their minds that if God can dry the sea, He can certainly flood the desert and make it blossom as a rose. Notwithstanding their doubts and their moanings God again performed an even greater miracle: He caused water to gush out of the rock and He brought manna from Heaven!

8:3

@@@^Today as in Moses’ day many are duplicating the sins of that people: Some are all on fire on day, and all on ice the next. Others praise God to the top of their voices while their ship is smoothly sailing, but when the sea becomes rough and the waves start beating against them, then they see only a man at the wheel and rather than expecting God to calm the sea they begin to hunt for a jumping off place. Still others are constantly trying to promote themselves by continual fault-finding against the ones that bear the whole burden of the load. So it is that there must be among us today — antitypical doubters, complainers office seekers and faultfinders, admitting one great truth one day and forgetting it the next day — yet expecting to be sealed with the seal of God and to stand with the Lamb on Mt. Zion!

13:4

@@@^Should we not be glad that while we are being invited to the Kingdom, we are also being told how to get there? Seeing all these, we must never let our confidence in God wane. We ought to be stable, firm in everything, lacking nothing. God’s eleventh-hour servants, says Inspiration, are to be “a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it.” Joel 2:2. They know what they believe, and believe what they know. Most important of all, they know that they are led by God, not by man.

10:2

@@@^(2) In addition to this great and grand work, while in God’s hand as a battle ax (Jer. 51:20), He is with it to break the Gentiles’ yoke which now rests upon the shoulders of God’s people. With it He is to emancipate His people from Gentile rule: “from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea....” (Isa. 11:11). With it He is to “set up an ensign for the nations,” and to “assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” Isa. 11:12. To get this work done we are to be at first the “many fishers,” then the “many hunters” (Jer. 16:16). Thus it is that the first fruits are to be gathered “one by one.” Isa. 27:12. We are now in the hunting days — going from city to city, from village to village, and from door to door, a thing which has never before been done. Besides fishing and hunting we also are to make “a highway for the remnant of His people which shall be left, [after the first fruits are gathered] from Assyria; like as it was to Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt.” Isa. 11:16. After this hunting is over and the highway built up, then it is that the second fruits will flow to the mountain of the Lord’s house. One nation, as it were, will say to another nation, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Mic. 4:2.

13:2

@@@^Many honestly believe that they are doing God’s work, or at least helping in it. But if they will examine their daily accomplishments, their motives, their aims and purposes, some will find that they are not working for God, but that they are either killing time, or working for self. Actually, now as in Moses’ time, there are occasions when one is at a loss to know whether saints or devils are busily engaged in God’s great work. Stop, listen, think. Check up on yourselves. It will be well worth your time and your energy. Find out @9who@7 you are, @9what@7 you are, and @9where@7 you are.

20:2

@@@^Let us now realistically consider why the builders’ efforts and the king’s decrees at first failed, and why at last they succeeded: Before Haggai and Zechariah were called to the prophetic office, many of the Jews returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, although the majority remained in Babylon; that is, the builders voluntarily went to build only because the captivity had ended, and because the king had decreed that the temple of God should be built. But both the builders’ and the king’s efforts were a complete failure — all came to naught. Then it was that through His prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, God directed the work, and then it was that they quickly finished. In other words, not before the Lord took the reins in His Own hands through the Spirit of Prophecy did the work prosper. In fact, sacred history proves that nothing has ever prospered in God’s work without the living Spirit of Prophecy in its midst.

25:2

@@@^@0@9Verses 22, 23 — “Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.”@7@^Obviously, the ten men are a representative figure of universality as are the ten virgins of Matthew 25. If so, then the church as a body will speak all the languages of the nations. Their taking hold of the one that is a Jew, and saying, “We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you,” definitely points out that someone, a descendant of the Christian Jews, will proclaim God’s ingathering message in the time of the end, and that he will be recognized as such.

27:1

@@@^Since Zechariah’s prophecy met only partial fulfillment in the days the Jews returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, and since his writings speak interchangeably of another such movement, the which is to be greater than the former, there is, therefore, no doubt but that the latter is the antitype of the former. Hence, the revival and reformation of Zechariah’s time is to repeat in our time. The builders’ failure to continue with the work and to bring revival and reformation before Haggai and Zechariah were called to the prophetic office, and their success after God through the prophets took over, perfectly demonstrates that without the living Spirit of Prophecy in the midst no revival and reformation efforts can succeed, and that is why they all heretofore have failed. The type also perfectly demonstrates that since God has now risen from His holy habitation, and has taken the reins in His Own hands, revival and reformation is sure to triumph. It is, therefore, useless to agitate revivals and reformations while one knows not what and how actually to revive or to reform. It is commendable to hold up the standard but it certainly is not in God’s order for one to “work up” something and to call it revival and reformation.

2:2

@@@^M.B., p. 161 — “The will of God is expressed in the precepts of His holy law, and the principles of this law are the principles of heaven.... But in heaven, service is not rendered in the spirit of legality. When Satan rebelled against the law of Jehovah, the thought that there was a law came to the angels almost as an awakening to something unthought of. In their ministry the angels are not as servants, but as sons. There is perfect unity between them and their Creator. Obedience is to them no drudgery. Love for God makes their service a joy. So in every soul wherein Christ, the hope of glory, dwells, His words are reechoed, ‘I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart.’

2:4

@@@^We should now pray that the law of God be written in our hearts; that we obey the law because we want to, not because we have to; that we realize that our keeping God’s commandments is for our own good. And above all, let us pray that our highest joy may be in doing His will. Thus may God’s will be done on earth as it is done in heaven.