The Way to Paradise — A Summary
1924. Full title: The Way to Paradise — A brief history of the 7,800 years of sin, from the time when sin was unknown to the time when again there will be no sin. Brief Scriptural biographies of MICHAEL who became the Christ, and of LUCIFER who became the devil. “In simple, pictorial language with many Scripture citations and quotations, adapted to Intermediate Students of the Bible.” International Bible Students Association. 257 pages, ~66,900 words, twelve chapters. “50,000 Edition.”
On authorship. You noted this is not Rutherford’s, and the book bears that out in an unexpected way: the title page names no author at all. The standard attribution to W. E. Van Amburgh, the Society’s secretary-treasurer, comes from outside the volume. What the book presents to a reader is an unsigned children’s textbook issued by the IBSA — which means the 1925 predictions in it carry institutional rather than personal authorship. Worth registering, because when 1925 failed there was no named individual attached to these pages.
On the text. A scan with OCR damage (~4.4%). Quotations have had obvious OCR errors repaired and nothing else changed.
One-Page Summary
The Way to Paradise is the movement’s textbook for young people — “adapted to Intermediate Students of the Bible” — and its simplicity is precisely what makes it important. It carries the same 1925 predictions as Millions Now Living Will Never Die, in plainer language, aimed at children, and with more specificity than the adult book ever offered.
The structure is a history of the world in three “worlds”: the world before the Flood, the present evil world, and the world to come. Around that frame are hung paired biographies — Michael, who became Christ, and Lucifer, who became the devil — and a running account of why Adam died, what the kingdoms of this world are, and what the New Covenant will be.
Its chronology is startlingly abbreviated compared with everything preceding it. 1874 does not appear. Neither does 1878. The whole Russell apparatus of the invisible presence and the harvest is simply gone. What remains is 1914 — “God’s time limit for the ‘kingdoms of this world’ expired in 1914; and promptly on time he began ouster proceedings” — and 1925.
On 1925 the book is more explicit than its adult predecessor. The jubilee arithmetic is repeated: Israel entered Canaan 1,575 years before Christ, so “there would be 1,925 years of types after Christ, or 1925 A.D.” Then it adds a calendar detail: “The year 1926 would therefore begin about October first, 1925.” And then, where Millions Now Living had said “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old,” this book names sixteen individuals: “We should, therefore, expect shortly after 1925 to see the awakening of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Melchisedec, Job, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, John the Baptist, and others mentioned in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.”
It also supplies something Millions Now Living did not — a schedule for the political transition. “Prophecy indicates that 1925–1926 will see the greater part of the ousting completed,” and “of course it will take some time to get things in smoothly running order after the great stress between now and 1926.”
The Great Pyramid returns as corroborating witness, under the name “The Bible in Stone,” credited with dating the French Revolution to 1789 and the great change to 1914 in advance.
The Dated Claims
| Date | Claim | Source given |
|---|---|---|
| 1575 B.C. | Israel enters Canaan; jubilee counting begins | Leviticus 25 |
| 1789 | French Revolution | “dated beforehand” by the Great Pyramid |
| 1914 | God’s time limit for the kingdoms expired; “ouster proceedings” begin | Bible and “The Bible in Stone” |
| 1925 | Jubilee types end — 1,575 + 1,925 = 3,500 years | Jubilee arithmetic |
| 1 October 1925 | The year 1926 begins | Calendar reckoning |
| shortly after 1925 | Awakening of sixteen named men of old | Hebrews 11 |
| 1925–1926 | “The greater part of the ousting completed” | Prophecy |
| after 1926 | Time needed “to get things in smoothly running order” | — |
Why the specificity matters
Compare the three statements of the same prediction across three years:
- 1920, Millions Now Living: “1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old, particularly those named by the Apostle in Hebrews chapter eleven, to the condition of human perfection.” Three names plus a reference.
- 1921, The Harp of God: nothing. 1925 absent entirely.
- 1924, The Way to Paradise: sixteen names listed individually, a date for the start of the following year, and a two-year window for the completion of the political transition.
The trajectory is not toward caution. It is toward greater precision, in a book written for children, in the year before the deadline.
The 1914 retrofit continues
The formula has changed again, and it is worth noting the wording: “God’s time limit for the ‘kingdoms of this world’ expired in 1914; and promptly on time he began ouster proceedings.” The legal metaphor from Millions Now Living — a lease expiring — has hardened into litigation. An ouster proceeding is a process with a beginning, a duration and an end, which is exactly what the claim requires: something demonstrably began in 1914, and its incompleteness in 1924 is evidence of the process rather than of failure. The book then dates the conclusion of that proceeding to 1925–1926, which is the one thing the earlier formulations avoided doing.
The great commotion since 1914 is explained in the same terms: it “is incident to the turning out of everything that is not founded upon justice and righteousness.” And a note of impatience with the public: “If the people really knew what is coming, they would rejoice and be glad, instead of trying to hinder.”
The Great Pyramid As “The Bible in Stone”
The book pauses its narrative to “take a peep at the great pyramid of Gizeh in Egypt.” The claim made for it is evidential: “The pyramid also outlines in its own peculiar way the same plan of God that we find in the Bible, and it dated beforehand some of the most notable events that have occurred in the history of mankind.” Isaiah 19:19 — “it shall be for a sign, and for a witness unto Jehovah of hosts in the land of Egypt” — supplies the scriptural warrant, and the monument is christened “The Bible in Stone,” which the book calls “a very appropriate name.”
Two dates are credited to it. “It gives the date of the French revolution as 1789, and the great World War as 1914, besides many more.” And the corroboration is stated as a pairing of independent witnesses: “The Bible and ‘The Bible in Stone’ give the date 1914 for the beginning of the great change.”
This is presented to children as archaeological confirmation of prophecy — a second scripture, in masonry, agreeing with the first.
Full Summary, Chapter By Chapter
I. The Story of the Bible (pp. 1–24)
An introduction to the Bible as “not a single book, but a library of books,” with the Pentateuch explained etymologically from pente and teuchos. The dating is confident and specific: the first five books were “written by Moses, during the forty-year wanderings of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, between the years 1615 and 1575 before Christ,” closing “with the death of Moses, 1575 before Christ.” The historical books then “continue the history of the Jewish nation for approximately eleven hundred years.” The chapter establishes the typological method that the 1925 calculation will later depend on, quoting 1 Corinthians 10:11 — “all these things happened unto them for types.”
II. The Creation of the Earth (pp. 25–44)
Creation presented for young readers, with the earth made to be inhabited rather than destroyed — the premise that makes an earthly paradise the goal rather than heaven.
III. The Creation of Man (pp. 45–58)
Man as a physical creature made for earth, not a soul temporarily housed in a body. The doctrine matters for everything downstream: if man is earthly by design, restoration must be earthly too.
IV. Why Did Adam Die? (pp. 59–76)
The fall and the sentence, with the movement’s characteristic insistence that death is death rather than transfer to another realm. Written simply, but the doctrinal content is identical to the adult books.
V. World Number One (pp. 77–98)
The world from Eden to the Flood — the first of the three “worlds,” ended by water.
VI. World Number Two (pp. 99–124)
The present evil world, from the Flood to the kingdom. The long middle of human history, and the setting for the Lucifer biography that follows.
VII. The Prince of This World (pp. 125–150)
Lucifer’s biography — his fall, his rule over the present order, and his identification as the invisible power behind the world’s governments. The paired-biography structure promised on the title page is realised here, opposite the Michael material.
VIII. The Kingdoms of This World (pp. 151–174)
The political chapter, and where 1914 does its work. Human governments are Satan’s organisation, their lease has expired, and the ouster is under way. The distress since 1914 is read as eviction rather than collapse.
IX. The New Covenant, or Contract (pp. 175–186)
The covenant explained in contractual language suited to a young reader — terms, parties and conditions — which is a characteristic move of this book: theology rendered as agreement and procedure.
X. World Number Three, the Kingdom of Christ (pp. 187–214)
The world to come, with the marriage of the Lamb and the wedding supper in heaven described first, since the earthly arrangements follow from it.
XI. Princes in All the Earth (pp. 215–236)
The chapter that carries the 1925 material, and the most consequential in the book.
It opens from Psalm 45:16 — “Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth” — and asks who these fathers are. The answer inverts the genealogy: Jehovah is telling Christ that “Abraham and David and others entitled to be called ‘the fathers’ shall no longer be considered by him as his ancestors; but that he is to think of them, and they shall think of themselves, as his children; and that they shall be given places of honor as princes in all the earth.”
Their position is defined precisely: “They will hold those places as princes during the time of Christ’s reign on earth,” and “they will be in the visible part of the kingdom, as princes; while the haughty scribes and Pharisees, who expected the honors of the kingdom, will be thrust out.” The class is named — “sometimes referred to as the ancient worthies — ancient in the sense that they lived in a period prior to the Gospel age; worthy in that, as the Apostle says, ‘having obtained a good report through faith'” — and promised a “better resurrection.”
The jubilee argument then runs its course. Israel was to count fifty-year jubilees “when they entered the land, which was the year 1575 before Christ.” God foreknew they would fail to keep them, and said so in Leviticus 26:34–35 — the land would take its sabbaths in captivity instead, seventy years’ worth at once, per 2 Chronicles 36:21. The jubilees “were only a type of something far better to follow later.” Since they entered Canaan 1,575 years before Christ, “there would be 1,925 years of types after Christ, or 1925 A.D.” — and “the year 1925, therefore, would have been the last jubilee the Jews would have kept, if they had remained faithful to their covenant.”
Then the predictions: the calendar note that “the year 1926 would therefore begin about October first, 1925”; the list of sixteen named men expected shortly after 1925; and the political timetable, “1925–1926 will see the greater part of the ousting completed,” with time needed afterwards “to get things in smoothly running order after the great stress between now and 1926.”
A note on John the Baptist closes the section, resolving the difficulty that he is called both greatest among those born of women and least in the kingdom: “the one holding the lowest position in the spiritual plane of life will be greater than the greatest one on the human plane.” He appears in the list of sixteen — an earthly prince rather than a heavenly one.
XII. The Kingdom of God, God’s Perfect Work (pp. 237–257)
The closing chapter, describing the completed restoration and the end of sin — the terminus promised by the subtitle’s “7,800 years of sin… to the time when again there will be no sin.”
What This Book Adds To The Series
1925 returns, and hardens. The date vanished from The Harp of God in 1921 and comes back in 1924 with more detail than it ever had in 1920 — sixteen named individuals, a start date for 1926, and a two-year completion window for the political transition. Whatever caused the 1921 silence, it was not a settled retreat.
Russell’s chronology is dropped. No 1874, no 1878, no invisible presence, no harvest. The scheme has been reduced to 1914 and 1925. For a movement whose identity had rested on the 1874 parousia since the 1870s, its total absence from an official teaching text is a substantial change, and it happens without comment.
The 1914 hedge evolves again. 1920: “legally ended.” 1921: “ended and began to pass away.” 1924: “expired… and promptly on time he began ouster proceedings,” with the proceedings scheduled to conclude in 1925–1926. The metaphor now has an end date attached — which removes the very open-endedness that made the earlier formulations unfalsifiable.
The audience is children, and no author is named. The most specific predictions in the movement’s literature to this point appear in an unsigned textbook for young students, over the imprint of the association rather than a person.
A Note On Length
Chapters I–X are simplified retellings of doctrine already covered at length in The Harp of God and The Finished Mystery, written for young readers; almost everything distinctive to this volume — the 1925 material, the named list, the ouster timetable, the pyramid, and the disappearance of Russell’s dates — is concentrated in Chapters VIII and XI and in the sections above, treated in proportionately much greater depth.