Our Lord’s Return — A Summary
J. F. Rutherford, 1925. International Bible Students Association / Watch Tower. 34 scanned sheets containing roughly 64 booklet pages, ~22,000 words of recovered text.
⚠ On the text — read before quoting
This PDF has no text layer. It is an image-only scan, so I ran OCR on it myself (Tesseract, 200 dpi, 34 pages). Two consequences you should know about:
- The scan is two book pages per sheet, and the OCR interleaves the two columns line by line. Sentences from facing pages are spliced together throughout the extracted text.
- Quotation reliability is therefore lower than for the other books in this set. I have quoted only phrases I could read cleanly and verify against the page image context, and I have kept quotation to a minimum. Where I describe an argument without quoting, that is deliberate.
If you need verbatim quotations from this booklet for publication, the page images should be checked directly rather than relying on this summary’s wording.
One-Page Summary
Our Lord’s Return is a short booklet, and it is essentially Chapter IX of The Harp of God — “Our Lord’s Return” — lifted out, expanded and issued separately for readers who wanted the chronological argument without the full textbook. The title is the same, the structure is the same, and most of the distinctive content recurs: the 1,260 years from A.D. 539 to 1799, the invisible presence beginning in 1874, the 2,520 years of Gentile times ending in 1914, the catalogue of inventions as evidence, and the identification of 1917–1919 as the literal fulfilment of Luke 21:12–13.
What it adds is a much fuller treatment of how the return can be real but unseen. The booklet’s central section is a Greek word study distinguishing three terms: parousia, presence; epiphaneia, bright shining or manifestation; and apokalupsis, revealing or uncovering. Each is traced through the relevant New Testament texts, with the argument that the Authorised Version’s uniform “coming” conceals a sequence — the Lord is first present invisibly, then progressively manifested, then finally revealed. This is the linguistic foundation on which the whole 1874 doctrine rests, and it is set out here more carefully than anywhere else in the books summarised so far.
The analogy used to make invisibility plausible is Satan. The booklet argues that Satan is a spirit being who has been the invisible ruler of the present evil world for centuries, and that no human eye has ever seen him though men have felt his influence throughout. If an invisible personal ruler is already accepted, an invisible returned Christ requires no additional concession.
There is no 1925 prediction in this booklet. The date appears only as the year of publication on the title page. A book issued in the very year that Millions Now Living and The Way to Paradise had marked for the resurrection of the ancient worthies says nothing about it at all — the same silence The Harp of God kept in 1921.
The Chronology
| Date | Claim |
|---|---|
| A.D. 539 | Starting point for Daniel’s periods |
| 1829 | The 1,290 symbolic days of Daniel 12 end |
| 1799 | “The time of the end” begins — 1,260 years from 539; Napoleon returns from Egypt on 1 October 1799 |
| 1831 | First locomotive steam engine invented |
| 1844 | The telegraph invented |
| 1874 | The 1,335 days of Daniel 12 close; the Lord’s second presence begins; the harvest begins |
| 1914 | Gentile times of 2,520 years expire; “promptly in August, 1914” the end of the old order begins |
| 1917–1919 | Luke 21:12–13 “literally” fulfilled |
Three features are worth drawing out.
Daniel 12 is worked harder here than in The Harp of God. Both the 1,290 and the 1,335 day-periods are counted from A.D. 539 on the day-for-a-year rule, giving 1829 and 1874 respectively. The booklet invites the reader to “judge carefully how accurately these dates mark the understanding of the vision” — the accuracy of the arithmetic is offered as its own proof.
1799 is anchored to Napoleon. The Egyptian campaign began in 1798 and he returned to France on 1 October 1799, which is treated as the historical marker for the prophetic date derived independently from 539. As in The Harp of God, the argument that follows is Daniel’s “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased,” with technological progress since 1799 as the evidence — the locomotive in 1831, the telegraph in 1844, and the observation that “now by later invention wires are dispensed with, and all over the earth messages are flashed” through the air. The claim is pressed in the same register: these “physical facts cannot be disputed, and are sufficient to convince any reasonable mind.”
1914 gets a month. The booklet says the end began “promptly in August, 1914” — slightly more precise than the surrounding literature, and useful because August 1914 is when the war began rather than when the autumn Gentile-times terminus fell. The formulation lets the outbreak of war stand as the visible marker for a date calculated to the autumn.
The Argument For An Invisible Return
This is the booklet’s real contribution and occupies its central chapters.
The three Greek words. Parousia is glossed as presence and said to be properly translated so at 2 Corinthians 10:10 and Philippians 2:12, where the Authorised Version already renders it that way — the point being that translators knew the word meant presence and rendered it “coming” only in texts about the second advent. Matthew 24:3 is accordingly re-read as “What shall be the sign of thy presence?” Epiphaneia signifies “bright shining, or a manifestation,” and is rendered “appearing.” Apokalupsis means to uncover or reveal. The three are presented as successive stages rather than synonyms for a single event.
Satan as the precedent for invisible rule. The booklet observes that Satan is a spirit being who has been “the god or invisible ruler of the present evil world” for centuries, that no human eyes have seen him, and that men have nevertheless felt his influence. It extends this to an invisible order — Satan “is not only the god of this world but the chief one of his wicked, invisible heaven,” meaning the ruling arrangement of fallen angels exercising power over human beings. Against that is set the promised “new heavens and a new earth,” which is the new invisible ruling power, likewise unseen but establishing “visible agencies” on earth.
The ascension as the pattern. Acts 1:11 — that he shall come “in like manner as ye have seen him go” — is turned against the expectation of a visible return. The booklet argues the text does not say those who watched him go will see him come, nor that anyone will; it says the manner corresponds. And the manner of his going was quiet and known only to his faithful followers. So the return is quiet and known only to watchers.
Who perceives it, and when. At the beginning of the presence “only those who are faithfully watching the signs of the times, the fulfilment of prophecy, and who are studying the Word of God” will understand. The perception then spreads: the revealing “will gradually extend to the world and will be made manifest especially to the world in a time of trouble.” Revelation 1:7 — “every eye shall see him” — is handled by taking the Greek horao in Strong’s sense of “discern”: as trouble increases, people will discern the presence of the Lord as its cause.
This is a tightly constructed position, and worth noting for what it accomplishes. It makes the central claim unfalsifiable by design — the return is invisible, its perception is graduated, and failure to perceive it is evidence of not watching rather than evidence against the claim.
Full Summary, By Section
Opening — the fact of the return. Establishes from the gospels that Jesus is the Son of God whose testimony “must import absolute verity,” and that he promised to return: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you,” and “If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father.” The distinction between Father and Son is maintained throughout — “for my Father is greater than I” is quoted approvingly, consistent with the movement’s non-trinitarian position.
The ascension. The appearances after the resurrection are explained as materialisations: he appeared “not in his glorified body, but in a body created by himself for the very purpose of appearing to them” before ascending to the Father. The Mount of Olives departure, the instruction to wait in Jerusalem for the holy spirit, and the two men in white supply the text for the “like manner” argument that follows.
Manner of His Coming. The doctrinal centre, discussed above. The booklet quotes Studies in the Scriptures Volume II directly on the point — that the Lord is no longer a human being, having given his humanity as the ransom; that he was “raised from the dead a spirit being”; that natures are separate and distinct; and that “since he is no longer in any sense a human being, we must not expect him to come as a human being, as at the first advent.” Russell’s volume is cited as the authority, and the booklet defers to it explicitly for the fuller treatment.
The time of the end. The 539–1799 calculation, Daniel’s 1,290 and 1,335 days, Napoleon, and the increase of knowledge and travel. The papal power’s wounding in 1799 is included, with the observation that before then possession of the Bible had been restricted and reading it penalised.
The Harvest. The parallel between the Jewish and Gospel ages, with the harvest beginning at the second presence in 1874. The wheat and tares parable supplies the framework, and the booklet reproduces the servants’ question — “Wilt thou that we go and gather them?” — and the instruction to let both grow until harvest. As in The Harp of God, the claim recurs that “in the year 1874, the date of our Lord’s second presence… the first labor organization in the world was created.”
The End of the World. Gentile times as seven symbolic times of 360 years, “or a total of 2,520 years,” expiring in 1914. The signs of Matthew 24 are then matched to events — war, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes glossed as “literal and symbolic — revolutions in divers places.” The persecution of Bible Students is included as fulfilment: “Literally did these scriptures have fulfilment in the years 1917, 1918, and 1919.”
Typology. A passage on Abraham sending Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac, with Eliezer read as “a type of the holy spirit, whose mission it is to invite” the bride — the standard reading of that narrative within the movement, included here to connect the return to the gathering of the church.
Back matter. Advertising for the Studies in the Scriptures, with the volumes’ contents listed — including the note that the chronology “differs from Bishop Ussher’s,” the seventy weeks, the binding and burning of the tares, and the fall of Babylon.
What This Booklet Adds To The Series
It is the clearest statement of the invisibility doctrine. The parousia / epiphaneia / apokalupsis distinction is the load-bearing linguistic argument for everything dated to 1874, and it is set out here more fully than in The Harp of God, which asserts the invisible presence and moves on.
It confirms the pattern around 1925. Published in 1925 — the year named for the resurrection of the ancient worthies in two prior publications — it does not mention the expectation at all. Combined with The Harp of God‘s silence in 1921, this suggests the 1925 material was concentrated in specific publications (Millions Now Living, The Way to Paradise, Comfort for the Jews) rather than running through the literature uniformly. Anyone assessing how thoroughly the movement was committed to 1925 should weigh that distribution.
It shows the Russell chronology intact in 1925. Where The Way to Paradise had dropped 1874 and 1878 entirely the previous year, this booklet restores 1874 as the pivot and cites Russell’s Volume II as the authority for the manner of the return. The two 1924–25 publications point in different directions on whether Russell’s framework was being retained or quietly retired.