The Harp of God — A Summary
J. F. Rutherford, 1921. Full title: The Harp of God — Proof Conclusive that Millions now Living will never Die. “A text-book for Bible study specially adapted for use of beginners; with numerous questions and Scripture citations.” Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Brooklyn. 383 pages, ~115,600 words. Marked “175,000 Edition.”
On the text. A scan with OCR errors, though cleaner than the 1920 book (~3.7% of tokens damaged). Quotations below have had obvious OCR damage repaired and nothing else changed; each was checked against its surrounding context.
One-Page Summary
The Harp of God is Rutherford’s beginners’ textbook, and it is a different kind of book from either The Finished Mystery or Millions Now Living. It is systematic rather than polemical, organised as ten doctrinal “strings” of a harp — creation, justice, the Abrahamic promise, the birth of Jesus, the ransom, resurrection, the mystery revealed, the Lord’s return, glorification of the church, and restoration. Every paragraph is numbered, and each chapter ends with study questions keyed to those numbers. It was designed to be worked through by a beginner, and it became the movement’s standard instructional text for a decade.
Its chronology is Russell’s, reproduced intact. The “time of the end” begins in 1799, dated from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and the papacy’s “deadly wound.” The Lord’s second presence begins invisibly in 1874. The harvest of the gospel age runs 1878 to 1918, paralleling the forty-year Jewish harvest that ended in A.D. 73. Gentile times end in 1914. What is conspicuously missing is 1925 — the date does not appear anywhere in the book, not once, despite the title page promising “Proof Conclusive that Millions now Living will never Die,” a claim that in the 1920 book rested entirely on the jubilee arithmetic terminating in 1925.
That absence is the single most interesting fact about the book, and it is worth stating plainly: the slogan is retained while the calculation that generated it is quietly dropped. In its place the book offers a looser formulation — the old order “has ended and is passing away, and a new and better order is due and will shortly be established,” and the process “will be completed in a few years.”
The book contains the movement’s most explicit statement to date of the channel doctrine. Rutherford argues that Jesus provided an office for a special messenger at his second presence — the “faithful and wise servant” of Matthew 24:45 — and then names its occupant: “Without a doubt Pastor Russell filled the office for which the Lord provided and about which he spoke, and was therefore that wise and faithful servant.” Russell is “the greatest preacher of modern times,” and his Studies in the Scriptures are “the first clear explanation of the divine plan ever published.” The Watch Tower is “the first and only publication that for more than forty years has announced the second presence of the Lord.”
Its most eccentric argument is an alphabetical list. To prove that Christ has been invisibly present since 1874, Rutherford cites Daniel 12:4 — “knowledge shall be increased” — and enumerates inventions dating from that year: adding machines, aeroplanes, aluminium, antiseptic surgery, barbed wire, carborundum, cash registers, celluloid, cream separators, disk ploughs, dynamite, escalators, fireless cookers, linotypes, motion pictures, the North Pole, the Panama Canal, submarines, vacuum cleaners, wireless telegraphy. Sitting in that list, in alphabetical order between “disk ploughs” and “dynamite,” is “Divine Plan of the Ages” — Russell’s own first volume, catalogued among the technological proofs of the Second Advent.
As in 1920, the book opens by disclaiming any recruiting purpose — “There is no disposition, desire, nor attempt to induce any one reading this book to become a member of any organization, sect, or denomination” — and repeats it later: the harvest work “has never had for its purpose the forming of any arrangement by which Christians join anything,” and those gathered “are not the followers of Pastor Russell.”
The Chronology
| Date | Claim | Basis given |
|---|---|---|
| 539 A.D. | Start of the 1,260-year papal period | Justinian’s decree |
| 1799 | “The time of the end” begins | 539 + 1,260; Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign; papacy’s “deadly wound” |
| 1874 | The Lord’s second presence begins, invisibly | Biblical chronology |
| 1878 | Harvest of the gospel age begins | 3½ years from 1874, paralleling Jesus’ ministry |
| 1914 | Gentile times end; old world “ended and began to pass away” | 2,520 years from 606 B.C. |
| 1918 | General harvest of the gospel age ends | 40-year parallel with the Jewish harvest ending A.D. 73 |
| 1917–1919 | “Literally did these Scriptures have fulfillment” | The wartime prosecutions |
| after 1918 | A “gleaning work” continues | The natural-harvest analogy |
| “a few years” | Completion, righteousness fully established | No date given |
What is claimed for each date
1799 carries more weight here than in the 1920 book. It is fixed by counting 1,260 years from 539 A.D., and corroborated by Napoleon: he “began this Egyptian campaign in 1798, finished it and returned to France on October 1, 1799,” and in that year “the beastly power of Rome, predominated by the Papal system, received a deadly wound.” From 1799 forward we should expect Daniel’s promised increase of knowledge and running to and fro — which supplies the warrant for the inventions argument. The claim is made with unusual force: “These physical facts cannot be disputed and are sufficient to convince any reasonable mind that we have been in ‘the time of the end’ since 1799.”
1874 is the pivot of the whole book, and everything about the Lord’s presence hangs on it. It is asserted rather than derived — “1874, at which time, according to Biblical chronology, the Lord’s second presence is due” — with the underlying calculation left to the Studies in the Scriptures. From it the harvest dates follow arithmetically.
1878 comes from a parallel: Jesus spent three and a half years preparing the Jews before the Jewish harvest, so counting “three and a half years from 1874, the time of his presence, brings us to 1878.” During 1874–1878 the Lord “was making preparation for the harvest of the gospel age.” The book adds a second event to 1878, carried over from Russell: the resurrection of the sleeping saints, who “were resurrected and caught up with the Lord Jesus in the air.”
1914 is handled more briefly than in 1920 and with the same softening. The Gentile times “necessarily must end in 1914,” and the verdict is that “the old world (social and political order) ended and began to pass away in 1914.” Note the doubled verb — ended and began to pass away — which performs the same function as “legally ended” did the previous year.
1918 is derived from the forty-year Jewish harvest: “The Jewish harvest covered a period of forty years, ending in A.D. 73. We should expect, then, the general harvest of the gospel age to end in 1918.” Since the book is written in 1921, this is a date already past, and the book must account for the continuing existence of the work. It does so with the gleaning analogy: after the regular harvest “it was customary to glean the field,” so “a harvest period from 1878 to 1918, and thereafter for a time a gleaning work going on, in which a few Christians would be gathered in.”
1917–1919 receives an unusually personal note. Applying Luke 21:12–13 — “they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you” — the book states that “literally did these Scriptures have fulfillment in the years 1917, 1918, and 1919.” Rutherford had been convicted in 1918 and released in 1919; the study question that follows asks the reader to name that fulfilment.
The missing date
There is no 1925 in this book. Given that the title page advertises “Proof Conclusive that Millions now Living will never Die,” and that the 1920 tract of that name derived the claim wholly from jubilee cycles ending in 1925, the omission is worth registering carefully. The phrase “millions now living” appears only four times in 383 pages. The proof offered here is not a date but a direction — the world has ended, restoration follows, and those alive at the transition will be offered life. Whether this is caution, editorial judgment about a beginners’ text, or something else, the effect is that the movement’s most falsifiable claim is carried on the cover while being absent from the contents.
The Channel And The “Faithful And Wise Servant”
This is the book’s most consequential passage for anyone tracking how authority was located within the movement, and it is worth following the steps.
First, a general principle is laid down: the “angels” who gather the elect are “messengers or servants who make announcement of the presence of the Lord.”
Second, an office is asserted: “It would be reasonable to expect the Lord to have some special messenger, as distinguished from others or general messengers, in announcing his presence and the time of the harvest. And such is the case. Jesus said that an office had been provided for such a special messenger and that at the time of his second appearing he would appoint some one to that office and give him the responsibility of dispensing meat to the household of faith in due season.” Matthew 24:45–47 is then quoted in full.
Third, the office is filled. A biography of Russell follows — his study “about 1870,” his conviction of the Lord’s presence “about 1875,” the booklet The Object and Manner of Our Lord’s Return, the founding of the Watch Tower in 1879, the six volumes written between 1881 and 1904, and the seventh in 1917. The credentials are quantified: pastor of “upwards of 1,200 congregations at one time,” Studies translated into “about thirty languages” with “combined circulation exceeded 11,000,000 copies,” sermons published weekly “in more than 2,000 newspapers, with a combined circulation of 15,000,000 readers; and in all about 4,000 different newspapers published his sermons.” A friendly notice from The Continent is quoted comparing his newspaper circulation favourably with “the combined circulation of the writings of all the priests and preachers in North America.”
Fourth, the conclusion: “Without a doubt Pastor Russell filled the office for which the Lord provided and about which he spoke, and was therefore that wise and faithful servant, ministering to the household of faith meat in due season.”
Two supporting claims follow. The Watch Tower is “the first and only publication that for more than forty years has announced the second presence of the Lord.” And the Studies in the Scriptures “are the first clear explanation of the divine plan ever published.”
Immediately after this, the book denies that any of it constitutes a following: the work “has never had for its purpose the forming of any arrangement by which Christians join anything,” and “These Christians are not the followers of Pastor Russell, but are followers of the Lord and rejoice to feed upon the food that the Lord has provided for them through his wise and faithful servant.” The denial and the claim sit in adjacent paragraphs.
The preface makes the underlying epistemology explicit, and it is the same move as in 1920: “God’s plan could not be understood until his due time to reveal it. His due time is here.” Understanding is not presented as a scholarly achievement but as a dispensational event — which locates revelation in the present moment, and therefore in whoever is teaching in it.
The Eccentric Arguments
Inventions as proof of the Second Advent
The centrepiece. Daniel 12:4 — “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” — is read as a prophecy of technological progress, and the progress is then offered as evidence that Christ has been present since 1874. The reasoning is made explicit by a rhetorical question the book poses to its student readers: “Why did not Solomon give the world great inventions such as we now have?” The answer is that “there is no one living in modern times who is wiser than Solomon; yet during the past 125 years there has been a great development in invention… because it is due time.”
The list itself is alphabetical and reads as a period inventory: adding machines, aeroplanes, aluminium, antiseptic surgery, artificial dyes, automatic couplers, automobiles, barbed wire, bicycles, carborundum, cash registers, celluloid, correspondence schools, cream separators, Darkest Africa, disk ploughs, Divine Plan of the Ages, dynamite, electric railways, electric welding, escalators, fireless cookers, gas engines, harvesting machines, illuminating gas, induction motors, linotypes, match machines, monotypes, motion pictures, North Pole, Panama Canal, Pasteurisation, railway signals, Röntgen rays, shoe sewing machines, smokeless powder, South Pole, submarines, radium, skyscrapers, subways, talking machines, telephones, typewriters, vacuum cleaners, and wireless telegraphy.
Three entries are not inventions at all. “Darkest Africa” and the two Poles are expeditions; and “Divine Plan of the Ages” is Russell’s own book of 1886, placed in the sequence by alphabetical accident between disk ploughs and dynamite. Whatever the intention, the effect is that the movement’s founding text is listed among the technological evidences of Christ’s return.
The first labour organisation
A smaller instance of the same habit: “It was in the year 1874, the date of our Lord’s second presence, that the first labour organisation was created in the world.” The coincidence is offered as corroboration — the year of the invisible advent is confirmed by the founding of organised labour.
Speed of travel as fulfilled prophecy
Daniel’s “running to and fro” is taken literally and quantified. “Before 1799 the means of transportation were such that a man could travel only a short distance in a day,” whereas now “it is no uncommon thing for one to travel at the rate of 75 and 100 miles per hour; and particularly is this true by means of a flying machine, which is a very modern invention.” Telegraphy receives the same treatment: messages once required wires, “but now by later invention wires are dispensed with and messages are flashed through the air.”
Full Summary, Chapter By Chapter
The book is organised as ten “strings” of a harp, each a doctrine, with numbered paragraphs and study questions at each chapter’s end.
Chapter I — The Harp of God (pp. 11–26)
The governing metaphor is set out: the divine plan is a harp of ten strings, and understanding comes from hearing them sounded in order rather than one at a time. Rutherford’s complaint about existing Bible teaching is pedagogical before it is doctrinal — people “have merely learned the text and not the meaning of the text,” and “like the prophets of old, they have heard but understood not.” The failure is dated rather than blamed: the plan “could not be understood until his due time to reveal it,” and “His due time is here.” The chapter establishes the book’s method, which is to build cumulatively from creation forward, and its audience, which is beginners rather than the already-persuaded. The disclaimer about not recruiting anyone into any organisation appears in the preface, alongside the statement that the sole purpose is “to aid honest seekers for truth.”
Chapter II — Creation (pp. 27–34)
The first string. God as creator, the earth made “to be inhabited” rather than destroyed, and man created for an earthly rather than heavenly destiny. The argument matters for everything that follows, because if Adam’s inheritance was earthly then restoration must be earthly too. The chapter is brief and largely uncontroversial by the standards of the rest of the book.
Chapter III — Justice Manifested (pp. 35–62)
The longest of the early chapters, and the one carrying the movement’s distinctive doctrines about death. Adam’s sentence is presented as just, and its execution as literal death rather than transfer to another realm. The dead are unconscious — the chapter’s subheading is blunt about it — and hell is the grave rather than a place of torment. The argument that Christ “did not remain in hell” is offered as “proof conclusive that hell is not a place of eternal torment,” and the unconsciousness of the dead is said to “absolutely disprove… the immortality of the soul.” The polemical target throughout is the doctrine of eternal torment, treated as the central corruption of Christendom’s teaching.
Chapter IV — The Abrahamic Promise (pp. 63–72)
The oath-bound promise that in Abraham’s seed all families of the earth shall be blessed, presented as the organising covenant of the whole plan and as still unfulfilled. The seed is defined as Christ, head and body. The chapter is short and functions as a hinge between the doctrines of the fall and the machinery of redemption.
Chapter V — The Birth of Jesus (pp. 73–114)
An extended treatment of the incarnation, notable for its insistence on the poverty of the setting: the condition of Joseph and Mary, and of the shepherds, “was the only fitting way that we should expect the Lord would have it,” since “all the pomp and glory of earthly preparation would have been but tawdry tinsel.” The chapter includes a version of the movement’s characteristic Christology — the Logos transferred from the spirit to the human plane, not part God and part man — and connects the nativity to the present: the world “is now entering its darkest period, and when mankind reaches the point of extremity, then will be God’s opportunity.”
Chapter VI — The Ransom (pp. 115–150)
The doctrinal centre. The ransom is defined as “exact corresponding price,” which requires that the redeemer be a perfect man and nothing more. Jesus at thirty is described as “perfect in body, perfect in mind, perfect under the law, in every respect an absolutely perfect human being; hence qualified to be the ransomer or redeemer of Adam.” The insistence on exact correspondence is what rules out both a part-divine Christ and any notion that the ransom purchased a heavenly rather than earthly restoration. The chapter’s certainty language is heavy — “absolutely necessary,” “absolutely perfect.”
Chapter VII — Resurrection (pp. 151–180)
The general resurrection of both just and unjust, argued from 1 Corinthians 15 and Acts 24:15. The chapter maintains that the resurrection of Christ is the guarantee of everyone else’s, and that the appearances after the resurrection were in materialised bodies rather than the body that died — a point on which the study questions press the reader. This is the chapter that makes the millions claim intelligible: if the dead return, the class of people who never die is a subset of a much larger restoration.
Chapter VIII — Mystery Revealed (pp. 181–210)
The church as the mystery hidden from ages and generations. The “called-out class” is distinguished sharply from denominational membership, and the selection of the body of Christ is presented as the work of the entire gospel age — the reason the kingdom did not arrive earlier. The chapter also supplies the framework for the harvest that follows: if the selection has a beginning it has an end, and the end is datable.
Chapter IX — Our Lord’s Return (pp. 211–278)
The longest chapter and the chronological core of the book; almost everything a modern reader would want from it is here.
The manner of the return is established first: invisible, in the sense that Christ returned as a spirit being and cannot be seen by human eyes, so the evidence must be circumstantial rather than visual. This is the premise that makes the whole chapter necessary — an invisible presence must be proved by its effects.
The proofs are then assembled. The 1,260 years from 539 A.D. give 1799 as the beginning of “the time of the end,” corroborated by Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and the wounding of papal power. From 1799 we should expect Daniel’s increase of knowledge and running to and fro, and the chapter supplies both: the alphabetical catalogue of inventions since 1874, the speeds of modern travel, and wireless telegraphy. The 2,520 years from 606 B.C. give 1914 for the end of Gentile times. The three-and-a-half-year parallel gives 1878 for the beginning of the harvest, and the forty-year Jewish parallel gives 1918 for its end, with a gleaning work following.
Then comes the “faithful and wise servant” argument set out above — the assertion of a divinely provided office, the biography and statistics establishing Russell as its occupant, and the conclusion that he “was therefore that wise and faithful servant.” The chapter also notes the incorporation of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1884, “intended by him to continue the work of the harvest after his earthly career was finished, and which is yet carrying it on” — the institutional succession stated in a single sentence.
The chapter closes with the wheat and tares, applied to the present: since 1878 “there has been a tendency on the part of all denominations to bind themselves into leagues and combines, associations, Interchurch World Movement, etc.,” which is read as the binding of tares into bundles for burning. The gathering of “eagles” to the carcass is the gathering of Bible Students to the spiritual food. And the wartime prosecutions of 1917–1919 are identified as the literal fulfilment of Luke 21:12–13.
Chapter X — Glorification of the Church (pp. 279–318)
The completion of the church’s selection and its removal to the heavenly phase of the kingdom. The 1878 resurrection of the sleeping saints appears here in its fullest form — that shortly after the second appearing “these dead saints in Christ were resurrected and caught up with the Lord Jesus in the air, to be for ever with him.” The doctrine matters for the book’s chronology, because it places the first resurrection forty-odd years in the past rather than in the future, and leaves only the living remnant to be glorified.
Chapter XI — Restoration (pp. 319–383)
The final string, and where the title’s promise is redeemed. Restoration is the return of the human race to what Adam lost — life, liberty and happiness on earth — administered through the glorified Christ during the millennial reign. The dead are raised in order and given a full opportunity; the living pass into the new order without dying. The proof offered is cumulative rather than calendrical: the old order has demonstrably ended, the new is arriving, therefore those alive at the transition may live through it. The chapter closes the argument the title page opened, and does so without ever naming 1925.
The book’s final assessment of the present is dated to its year of publication: “No one will attempt to gainsay the fact that just now, in the year 1921, all the nations are in distress and the people in all branches of business — socially, politically and otherwise — are in perplexity and know not” which way to turn. The remedy is the kingdom, and the timetable is “shortly.”
The Study-Question Apparatus
A feature worth noting because it shapes how the book was used. Every paragraph carries a number, and each chapter closes with questions keyed to those numbers — “Enumerate some of the great inventions and discoveries since 1874, marking the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy, and the Lord’s presence, and the ‘time of the end’.” “What fulfilment of these prophetic utterances of the Master took place in 1917, 1918, and 1919?” “Was there any increase of travel shortly after 1799 A.D.?” “Why did not Solomon give the world great inventions such as we now have?”
The questions do not ask what a passage means or whether a reading is sound. They ask the student to reproduce the conclusion already stated in the numbered paragraph. A reader working through the book is being drilled rather than persuaded, and the drilling covers the chronology as thoroughly as the doctrine — the dates are examinable material.
This matters for assessing the movement’s later difficulties with 1925. The Harp of God was the standard beginners’ text through the 1920s, and it trained a generation to treat 1799, 1874, 1878, 1914 and 1918 as established facts of the same order as the ransom or the unconsciousness of the dead. The chronology was not presented as an interesting speculation attached to a doctrinal system; it was taught as part of the system.
Notable Individual Claims
On the 1878 resurrection. The claim that the sleeping saints were raised in 1878 is stated as settled fact and slipped in without argument: shortly after the second appearing, “during the time of the shout of encouragement that was going on among the peoples of earth, these dead saints in Christ were resurrected and caught up with the Lord Jesus in the air.” An event of the first magnitude is asserted to have already happened, invisibly, four decades earlier.
On the papacy’s deadly wound. “In 1799 the beastly power of Rome, predominated by the Papal system, received a deadly wound.” Napoleon’s campaign supplies the historical anchor for a date otherwise derived by arithmetic from 539 A.D.
On denominational union as prophecy. “Since 1878 there has been a tendency on the part of all denominations to bind themselves into leagues and combines, associations, Interchurch World Movement, etc., thus fulfilling this prophetic statement of the Lord of binding together the merely nominal Christians preparatory for the great fire.” Ecumenism is not merely criticised but read as an eschatological sign — the tares gathering themselves for burning.
On the Watch Tower’s uniqueness. “This is the first and only publication that for more than forty years has announced the second presence of the Lord.” The claim is narrower than it looks — it concerns continuous announcement over forty years rather than priority of the idea — but it is offered as evidence of divine appointment.
On the Studies in the Scriptures. “These books are the first clear explanation of the divine plan ever published.” Given that the Studies are elsewhere described as the food the faithful servant dispenses, the claim amounts to saying that the divine plan was not clearly available to anyone in eighteen centuries of Christian history until 1886.
On what remains. The book’s forward-looking claim is deliberately unquantified: the old order “has ended and is passing away, and a new and better order is due and will shortly be established,” and the process “will be completed in a few years and righteousness fully established.” “A few years” is the closest the book comes to a date.
Tracking The Series
Reading this immediately after Millions Now Living Will Never Die makes three shifts visible.
1925 disappears within twelve months. The 1920 tract derived its entire argument from jubilee cycles ending in 1925 and named “about April 1, 1925” for the resurrection of the Ancient Worthies. The 1921 textbook — carrying that tract’s slogan on its title page as “Proof Conclusive” — does not mention 1925 once. Nothing in the book explains or withdraws the earlier calculation. It is simply absent, while the conclusion it supported is retained.
The certainty is redistributed rather than reduced. The strongest language in 1920 attached to 1925: “of necessity,” “positive and indisputable.” In 1921 the strongest language attaches to 1799 and to Russell’s office: physical facts that “cannot be disputed,” and a servant identified “without a doubt.” The register did not soften; it moved to claims less exposed to the calendar.
The channel doctrine hardens. The Finished Mystery had identified the Society’s publications with objects of prophecy but was coy about the mechanism. Millions Now Living spoke only of “due time.” The Harp of God states the mechanism outright — an office provided by Christ, filled by a named man, with the Watch Tower and the Studies as the food he dispenses, and a corporation founded to continue the work after his death. Everything needed for an institutional claim to prophetic authority is assembled here in a beginners’ textbook.
The pattern to carry into The Laodicean Messenger is the third. That book is a memorial biography of Russell as the seventh and final messenger to the church, which means the claim stated in a paragraph here becomes the subject of an entire volume there — and the question worth asking of it is whether the authority is presented as having passed to the Society on Russell’s death, or as having ended with him.
A Note On Length
This summary runs to roughly 250 sentences against the book’s 383 pages. Chapters II through VIII are systematic doctrinal exposition — creation, justice, ransom, resurrection — covering ground that is largely conventional within the movement’s theology and repeated at greater length in the earlier Studies. Almost everything distinctive to this book, and everything bearing on chronology, prophetic claims, eccentric argument or the channel doctrine, is in Chapter IX and in the sections above, which are treated in proportionately much greater depth.
Not fully repeated are the arguments about hell, the soul, the ransom mechanics and the resurrection appearances, each worked through paragraph by paragraph.