The Finished Mystery — A Summary

Studies in the Scriptures, Volume VII. Nominally by Charles Taze Russell, published posthumously in 1917; actually compiled and largely written by Clayton J. Woodworth and George H. Fisher, both of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Subtitled “The Winepress of God’s Wrath” and the Fall of Babylon. Marked “850,000 Edition.” Text summarised here: the Project Gutenberg edition, 834 pages.

The full summary covers Revelation, Song of Solomon and Ezekiel in a chapter-by-chapter commentary form. (Roughly 480 of the book’s 608 original pages cover Revelation.) The summary highlights the the complete dated predictions and the strange interpretations, which are concentrated here in the Revelation section.

What this summary covers

The Revelation commentary, chapters 1–22, in full
The Song of Solomon commentary — “The Bridal Anthem” and “The Heavenly Bridegroom”
The Ezekiel commentary, chapters 1–48, in full
All dated predictions, gathered and quoted
The idiosyncratic interpretations, quoted rather than characterised
The passages likely to prove embarrassing, gathered in one place

One-Page Summary

The Finished Mystery is a verse-by-verse commentary on Revelation and Ezekiel in which almost every symbol is decoded as a specific person, denomination, publication or date within recent Western history — and overwhelmingly, within the movement’s own history. The method is announced in the structure itself: a phrase of scripture is printed, an em-dash follows, and an identification is asserted. There is very little argument. There is a great deal of assertion.

The organising scheme is the seven messengers to the seven churches of Asia, read as seven successive epochs of church history with one divinely appointed messenger each: St. Paul at Ephesus, St. John at Smyrna, Arius at Pergamos, Peter Waldo at Thyatira, John Wycliffe at Sardis, Martin Luther at Philadelphia, and — as the seventh and final messenger, to Laodicea — Charles Taze Russell. This is not hinted at. Chapter 3 is titled “Wycliffe, Luther And Russell.” From that identification everything else follows, because once Russell is the last messenger, his writings become the content of the remaining prophecy.

They duly do. The seven angels with the seven last plagues of Revelation 15 are “the seven volumes of Studies in the Scriptures.” The seven thunders of Revelation 10 are the same seven volumes. The great chain that binds Satan in Revelation 20 is “the TRUTH, as contained in the Seven Volumes of Scripture Studies.” The angel of Revelation 17 who shows John the judgment of the great whore is “Volume VII, Studies in the Scriptures” — that is, the book you are reading. The voice from heaven in Revelation 18 is the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Repeatedly, at moments of prophetic climax, the text simply reads: “Pastor Russell was the voice used.”

The polemical target is fixed and unvarying: organised Christianity, called Babylon or ecclesiasticism throughout. Roman Catholicism is the beast; the Protestant denominations affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches are its image; the clergy of both are “the merchants of the earth,” grown rich on proceeds “supplied partly in cash and partly in left-overs from church fairs, suppers, etc.” John Wesley receives unusually contemptuous treatment — “Wesley was given the key to nothing and to nowhere,” “Wesley opened nothing,” “Methodism was no ordinary smudge” — because the Methodist revival must be classed as an ineffective reformation to preserve the scheme in which the true reformation woe is Russell’s.

What gives the book its historical weight is that it does not stop at interpreting the past. It makes falsifiable predictions about the immediate future, with dates, and it makes them insistently. The spring of 1918 will see the glorification of the little flock and the wholesale destruction of the churches; the autumn of 1920 will see even the republics disappear into anarchy; the kingdom will be established in Palestine around 1925. These were published in 1917 by an organisation with hundreds of thousands of adherents, and they are stated not as speculation but as conclusions from arithmetic. It is worth reading the passages themselves rather than paraphrases of them, which is why this summary quotes them at length.

The other feature worth understanding before reading is the interpretive licence. Where a number in the biblical text does not fit the intended conclusion, the number is amended in the printed text — most spectacularly at Revelation 14:20, where the distance blood flows from the winepress is changed from 1,600 furlongs to 1,200 so that it will match, to a tenth of a mile, the commuting distance from the authors’ desks in Scranton to the Brooklyn headquarters. That passage is set out in full below, because no paraphrase conveys it.

The Near-Term Predictions

Every dated prediction in the book, gathered from across both commentaries. Quotations are verbatim.

The timetable

Date given	What is predicted
Fall 1874 – Spring 1918	The Laodicean period of the Church — the final epoch, Russell’s
1 February 1918	End of the Kaiser’s rule — “42 literal months from Aug. 1, 1914”
Winter 1917–1918	The “flight”; a period of proscription begins
Spring 1918 (Passover)	Glorification of the Little Flock; wholesale destruction of the churches
April 27, 1918	A specific date offered for the news to “flash throughout the world”
Spring 1918 – Fall 1921	Three and a half years of “proscription of the Truth”
Fall 1920	Anarchy at full severity; “even the republics will disappear”
Fall 1921	End of the proscription period
1925 (October)	Kingdom established in Palestine; 70 jubilees expire
1931	Kingdom “in power” — thirteen years after 1918

1918 — The Central Prediction

The Laodicean period, the seventh and last church epoch, “extends from the fall of 1874 to the spring of 1918, three and one-half years of preparation, and forty years of Harvest.” Everything in the book converges on that terminal date.

What is expected is stated without hedging. The spring of 1918 “will bring upon Christendom a spasm of anguish greater even than that experienced in the Fall of 1914.” “It seems conclusive that the hour of Nominal Zion’s travail is fixed for the Passover of 1918.” The faithful will be removed from the earth: the text speaks of “the glorification of the little Flock in the Spring of 1918,” and of “the deliverance of the Little Flock about Passover, 1918 [possibly on the Passover day…].”

The fate of the churches is put in the plainest terms the book ever uses. Reasoning from a claimed parallel with the destruction of Jerusalem, the authors write: “so in the parallel year 1918, I infer we should look for the complete overthrow of nominal Spiritual Israel.” Elsewhere, commenting on Ezekiel: “in the year 1918, when God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions, it shall be that any that escape shall come to the works of Pastor Russell to learn the meaning of the downfall of ‘Christianity.'”

The commentary on Revelation 18 reduces the prediction to single phrases. “For [an] THE hour.—The hour of judgment, 1918.” “Come in one day.—The year of 1918.” “For in one hour is thy judgment come.—In the one year 1917-1918.” And: “In one short year, 1917-1918, the vast and complicated system of sectarianism reaches its zenith of power, only to be suddenly dashed into oblivion.”

A precise day is even ventured. Applying Ezekiel’s period of dumbness as a time feature, the authors calculate that the realisation “that Christendom is smitten by the onslaughts of revolution, might be expected to flash throughout the world on or about April 27, 1918, a year, five months and twenty-six days after the death of God’s great watchman” — Russell having died on October 31, 1916.

Readers are advised on practical timing. Commenting on Matthew 24, the text glosses “Pray that your flight be not in the winter” with the interpolation “[of 1917-1918 (?)]” — the question mark is theirs, and is close to the only note of doubt in the book.

The siege imagery of Ezekiel 4 is given the same terminus: the reform element were “continually to keep at the attack upon ecclesiastical corruption until the siege should end in 1918.” A period beginning in 1528 “ends in 1918.” Another, from 1878, ends in the same year. Note that Hebrew reckoning is invoked to shift the start: “The Hebrew year 1918, begins in October, 1917.”

After that date, the language turns to consequences. “After 1918 the people supporting churchianity will cease to be its supporters, be destroyed as adherents, by the spiritual pestilence of errors abroad, and by the famine of the Word of God among them.” Christendom “will be treated by outraged Justice at a moral leper, unclean with incurable iniquity” — the “at” is the book’s own, evidently a compositor’s slip for “as”. And: “The year 1918, with its fearful revolutions and succeeding anarchy, is at the door.”

1920 — The Republics Fall

The second dated wave is anarchy, and it is dated to the autumn of 1920. “We anticipate that the ‘earthquake’ will occur early in 1918, and that the ‘fire’ will come in the fall of 1920.”

The clearest statement is the gloss on Revelation 16:20. “And every island fled away.—Even the republics will disappear in the fall of 1920.” The republics matter because throughout the book they represent the last surviving form of stable government; their disappearance means the end of civil order everywhere. The same date recurs: the masses are “the condition of the whole world in the time of anarchy due in its full severity in the fall of 1920.” A typological argument reinforces it — “the three days in which Pharaoh’s host pursued the Israelites into the wilderness represent the three years from 1917 to 1920 at which time all of Pharaoh’s messengers will be swallowed up in the sea of anarchy.”

There is also a vaguer note: “Some interesting developments in connection with the setting up of the Kingdom may occur in 1920, six years after the great Time of Trouble began.”

1921 — The End of Proscription

“The French Revolution is Divinely provided as a picture of events now at hand, and we therefore expect three and a half years of proscription of the Truth, from the spring of 1918 to the fall of 1921.” A confirming type is offered: “The three days’ (three years—1918-1921) fruitless search for Elijah (2 Kings 2:17-18) is a confirmation of this view.” The seven days before the Deluge are read the same way — “seven years, from 1914 to 1921, in the midst of which ‘week of years’ the last members of the Messiah pass beyond the veil.”

1925 — the Kingdom in Palestine

The furthest date is the most cautiously worded, and the qualification is itself revealing: “there is evidence that the establishment of the Kingdom in Palestine will probably be in 1925, ten years later than we once calculated.” The arithmetic offered is jubilee cycles: “The 70 jubilees, reckoned as 50 years each, expire October, 1925.”

A further three and a half years is allotted after 1921 for the world to reconsider: “This will give the Great Company splendid opportunities for martyrdom and allow another three and a half years, to the spring of 1925, for the world to think the matter over, by which time, doubtless, they will be quite ready to listen to the voice that speaketh from Heaven.”

The temple described in Ezekiel 40–48 is placed on the far side of all this — “a type and symbol of ‘better things to come,’ after the wars, revolutions and anarchy of the period from 1914 to 1925 have passed.”

1931 — A “Stray” Later Date

One passage reaches past 1925. Commenting on Ezekiel’s “in the fourteenth year after that the city (Christendom) was smitten” — the parenthesis is the book’s — the authors write that the establishment of the Kingdom in power is indicated as “thirteen years after 1918, viz., in 1931.” It sits awkwardly with the 1925 material and is not reconciled with it.

How the predictions are framed

Three features are worth noticing. First, the dates are presented as derived, not guessed — from jubilee cycles, from parallels between Jewish and Gospel ages, from the Great Pyramid, from periods stated in Daniel and Revelation. Second, an earlier miscalculation is acknowledged in passing (“ten years later than we once calculated”) without any suggestion that the method producing it might be unreliable. Third, the near-term predictions carry no escape clause; where a hedge appears at all it is a parenthetical question mark.

The Strange Interpretations

The Scranton commute as a prophecy of blood

The outstanding example is the comment on Revelation 14:20, which in the King James text reads “and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”

The authors begin by rejecting the obvious contemporary reading. The winepress “can not be interpreted to refer to the 2100 mile battle line of the world war,” because “a furlong or stadium is not a mile and this is without the city whereas the battle line is within the city.” Having disposed of the Western Front, they ask which city is meant, and answer: “What city more appropriate to refer to then than the Bethel, the Divinely appointed center for the Harvest work, the embryo Kingdom of God on earth?”

Then comes the amendment. The verse is reprinted with the number altered: “By the space of a thousand and [six] TWO hundred furlongs.” The bracketed word is struck and the capitalised one substituted. Sixteen hundred becomes twelve hundred.

The conversion follows: “A stadium is 606-¾ English ft.; 1200 stadii are, mi., 137.9.”

And then the itinerary, given as a table of legs:

Leg	Miles
Scranton work site → Lackawanna station (average of 5 and 25 blocks, “blocks in Scranton are 10 to the mile”)	1.5
Scranton → Hoboken Terminal (143.8 by timetable, less 11 saved by the Lackawanna cut-off of 1911)	132.8
Hoboken Ferry → Barclay Street Ferry, New York	2.0
Barclay Street Ferry → Fulton Ferry, New York (4,800 feet)	0.9
Fulton Ferry, New York → Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn (2,000 feet)	0.4
Fulton Ferry, Brooklyn → Bethel (1,485 feet)	0.3
Total	137.9

The book labels this total: “Shortest distance from place where the winepress was trodden by the Feet Members of the Lord, Whose guidance and help alone made this volume possible.”

The arithmetic is exact. The six legs sum to 137.9 miles; 1,200 stadia of 606¾ feet is 137.898 miles. The match is genuine — and that is precisely the problem, because the match exists only after the biblical number was changed. At the printed figure of 1,600 furlongs the distance is 183.9 miles, which overshoots Brooklyn by some forty-six miles and lands nowhere in particular. The prophecy was made to fit by editing the prophecy.

Note also what is being claimed. The blood of Revelation is glossed as “teachings which though truthful will be death-dealing and seem ‘bloody’ to sectarianism,” and the winepress itself as “the exposition of the prophecies of Ezekiel and the Revelator” — that is, this book. The verse is read as predicting the composition and delivery of the volume in which the reading appears. Even the railway’s capital expenditure gets a mention: the $12,000,000 cut-off of 1911 is credited with shortening the sacred distance by eleven miles.

The Pacific Ocean is seven miles deep

Commenting on Habakkuk’s “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea,” the authors observe: “In places, the water in the Pacific Ocean is seven miles deep.” A metaphor of universality is converted into a depth sounding, apparently to argue that the coming knowledge will be correspondingly profound.

The New Jerusalem as a real-estate subdivision

The measurements of the descending city in Revelation 21 are worked into a property calculation. “This area contains 144,000 building-lots of one thousand square furlongs each—which circumstance may well signify that the 144,000 faithful ones will reign with Jesus during a thousand years (one square furlong representing a year.)” A cube of glory becomes a plat map, with one square furlong standing in for one year of reign.

The seven volumes as the instruments of divine wrath

The most systematic oddity is not a calculation but an identification, repeated until it becomes the book’s spine. The seven angels bearing the seven last plagues are “the seven volumes of Studies in the Scriptures.” The seven thunders of Revelation 10 are the same seven volumes. The great chain binding Satan for a thousand years is “the TRUTH, as contained in the Seven Volumes of Scripture Studies.” The angel of Revelation 17 is “Volume VII, Studies in the Scriptures” — the very book making the claim. The vials poured out on ecclesiasticism are the volumes distributed in order, Volume I first, and the resulting sore is glossed as the reaction of clergy to reading it: the book “seemed to ecclesiastics like an evil and malignant ulcer, a painful, running sore.”

Wesley opened nothing

Revelation 9 requires two ineffective reformation woes, and Methodism is assigned to the role. The treatment is unusually dismissive for a book otherwise sparing with contempt toward individuals. “Wesley was given the key to nothing and to nowhere.” “Wesley opened nothing.” “Methodism was no ordinary smudge.” The smoke rising from the pit is Methodism, obscuring “the sun,” which is the true Gospel.

Denominations decoded as named institutions

The identifications are often startlingly specific rather than typological. Those bearing the mark of the beast are “Roman Catholics”; those worshipping his image are “Protestants affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches.” The ten horns include “the three potential races plucked up to make way for the papacy,” and the seven heads are enumerated as surviving kingdoms — “Spain, Portugal, France, England, Germany, Austria, Greece.” The kings of the earth committing fornication with Babylon are listed by nation: “Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Russia, Spain, Portugal, etc.” The merchants grown rich are “Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Presiding Elders, Reverends, etc.,” their wealth “supplied partly in cash and partly in left-overs from church fairs, suppers, etc.”

The war dead as Babylon’s servants

Commenting on Revelation 19 — where the book prints the phrase with its own emendation, “hath avenged the blood of [His] HER servants” — the text identifies the avenged: “The millions who have perished in the Great War have been the servants of Babylon.” Written in 1917, this reads the casualties of the ongoing war as divine retribution visited upon organised Christianity through its own adherents.

The Great Pyramid as corroborating witness

The Great Pyramid of Giza is treated as an independent confirmation of the chronology, and its evidential value is asserted with a striking argument: “The Pyramid is still there, and the measurements can be made by anybody,” followed by “Pastor Russell’s chronology was written before he ever saw the Pyramid.” Elsewhere: “The Great Pyramid confirms the Bible’s teaching that the time of Harvest has come,” and “the teaching of the Great Pyramid is in full accord with the rest of the book.”

Mineral crystallography as theology

The precious stones of the city’s foundations are described in crystallographic detail, and the crystal geometry is treated as significant — one stone “crystallizes in the most beautiful and wonderful pattern conceivable, consisting of a six-sided pyramid at either end,” another “in double pyramids (base to base) of three sides on each pyramid,” another bounded by “eight equal equilateral triangles; twenty-four angles in all, constituting a perfect double pyramid, set base to base.” The recurrence of pyramid forms in the mineralogy is presented as corroborating the Great Pyramid material.

A running joke at an evangelist’s expense

Not an interpretation but worth noting as a specimen of the book’s tone. Illustrating the fate of those who preach eternal torment, the authors relate that an evangelist called at a house in Scranton, saw a portrait of Pastor Russell in the hall, and declared that Russell “is in hell, and you will be there too, if you follow him.” The lady of the house opened the door, invited him onto the porch overlooking the valley, said “Tell it to the atmosphere,” and went back to her work. The anecdote is offered as commentary on Revelation 16:3.

The Revelation Commentary, Chapter by Chapter

Revelation 1 — The Message For This Day

The book opens by claiming that Revelation was sealed until now and is being opened in the present generation. “The things” John saw are glossed as “the shifting scenes of Church and State, the history of the Gospel and Millennial Ages” — establishing at the outset that the book is read as European church history rather than as visionary literature. The reader who “readeth” is one who “correctly interprets the symbolisms,” which quietly makes correct interpretation a condition of the promised blessing. The seven churches are declared to be “not merely the seven literal congregations mentioned in Verse 11 and elsewhere, but to the epochs of the Church” — the single move on which the entire commentary depends. “Which are in Asia” is expanded to “the Orient, the East, the early path of the sun,” letting geography become chronology. The titles of Christ are handled with care to preserve a subordinationist reading: “which is” means “now self-existent, like the Father,” while “which was” is “the Logos, the Father’s Agent in the creation of all things.” The seven spirits before the throne are “lamps of fire, or eyes” that are “sent forth into all the earth.” The chapter sets the interpretive temperature: assertions arrive without supporting argument, and each is a substitution of a modern referent for an ancient image.

Revelation 2 — St. Paul, St. John, Arius And Waldo

The seven messengers begin here, and the crucial editorial habit is visible in the very first line: the text prints “And [unto] BY the angel,” changing the addressee of the letter into its author, so that the messenger becomes the one through whom Christ speaks rather than the one spoken to. Ephesus is assigned to St. Paul, “the special messenger in the Harvest of the Jewish Age,” and the age is dated from Pentecost. Smyrna is assigned to St. John, and the Greek meaning of the name — myrrh, bitterness — is read as the age of martyrdom. Pergamos is assigned to Arius, the fourth-century presbyter condemned at Nicaea, and the book defends him warmly: his argument that “the Father must have existed before the Son” is quoted approvingly, his excommunication and the burning of his books are recorded as persecution, and “write” is glossed by the observation that “Arius’ writings were destroyed by Constantine.” That an ancient heresiarch is enrolled as a divinely appointed messenger indicates how far the scheme departs from mainstream Christian history. Thyatira is assigned to Peter Waldo, credited with the first translation of the four gospels into a modern language. The Nicolaitans, whose deeds Christ hates, are decoded as “conquerors of the people—the clergy,” making anticlericalism a divine command rather than a polemical stance. A list of popes is inserted “for those who trust in human ordination.” The 835-year gap between Arius and the next messenger is used to argue that the papacy was “slowly rising, pushing itself higher and higher” throughout.

Revelation 3 — Wycliffe, Luther And Russell

The chapter that names the scheme. Sardis is John Wycliffe — “Wycliffe wrote the first translation of the Bible into English,” and the name Sardis, “that which remains,” is applied to a church from which life had gone. Philadelphia is Martin Luther — “Luther wrote the first translation of the Bible into German,” and the name’s meaning, brotherly love, is matched to his character. The test of the overcomer in Sardis “was on the question of transubstantiation,” and those trusting “in sacrifices of the Mass” are excluded from worthiness. Laodicea, the seventh and final epoch, is Charles Taze Russell. From this point the commentary’s logic is closed: since Russell is the last messenger before the end, and the end is imminent, his writings must be the remaining content of prophecy. Everything in the following nineteen chapters that identifies a symbol with the Studies in the Scriptures follows from this chapter. It is worth noting how little argument is offered for the identification itself — the messengers are simply named, one per epoch, as though the list were self-evident.

Revelation 4 — The Author Of The Plan

A pause in the historical scheme for a doctrinal set-piece on God as author of the divine plan. “After this” is glossed as “after this first panorama of the seven stages of the Church had passed,” confirming that chapters 2 and 3 are complete in themselves. The opened door is read as access to understanding rather than as a literal aperture: “it is only as the Lord, who holds the key, opens the door to the understanding of Heavenly things.” The throne is the Father’s, “permanently established,” and the One seated on it is “Jehovah, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” — the Father, carefully distinguished from the Son throughout. John’s being “in the spirit” is glossed as “in a trance condition.” The things that must be hereafter are “the Divine Plan for the permission of evil,” which is the theological problem the whole volume exists to answer.

Revelation 5 — The Executor Of The Plan

The sealed book is treated as a document written on both sides, and the writing “in front” is “the fulfilment of everything prophesied on the outside.” The strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice is “personification of the Law,” proclaiming “in types and shadows, pictures, figures and symbols” from the fall of Adam onward. The search for one worthy to open the book is worked through exhaustively: “no angel had been proven worthy,” “no man on earth was worthy,” “no being in the Universe.” One of the elders is identified as “the deathbed prophecy of Jacob,” and the elders collectively as the Old Testament prophecies, so the heavenly court becomes a personified library. The chapter serves to establish Christ’s unique fitness as executor, and it is one of the least idiosyncratic in the book.

Revelation 6 — Six Seals And The Papacy

The four horsemen are read as successive phases of papal ascendancy rather than as war, famine and death. The white horse is “the doctrines, teachings of the Lord and the Apostles recognized as the one and only rule of faith,” and its rider is “the Bishop of Rome, the embryo Pope, the personal representative of Satan” — the identification is made in the first pages of the chapter and governs the rest. His crown is “great honor and authority in the Church,” and his conquest is “the apparent defeat of Infinite Justice in this first epoch.” Each subsequent seal reveals “the second period of the history of the Antichrist,” and so on. The four living creatures are read as the four divine attributes — Justice as the lion, and the others correspondingly — so that each summons of “come and see” becomes an attribute of God consenting to witness an apparent injustice. Real historical catastrophes are pressed into the sixth seal as literal fulfilments: the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755, “which extended over 4,000,000 square miles” and “slew 90,000 persons”; the dark day of May 19, 1780, “which extended over 320,000 square miles”; and the meteor shower of November 13, 1833, “covering 11,000,000 square miles.” These three events recur throughout nineteenth-century Adventist literature, and their appearance here shows the book’s debt to that tradition.

Revelation 7 — Seventh Seal And Great Company

The four angels holding the four winds are “the Little Flock, commissioned to carry the message of Present Truth to the remotest outposts of civilization,” and the restraint they exercise is read as a delay deliberately imposed on the coming catastrophe. The angel with the seal of the living God is “the Messenger of the Covenant; our Lord Jesus at His Second Advent,” and — in a formula that will recur at every climax — “Pastor Russell was the voice used.” The command not to hurt the earth is glossed as an instruction to the harvest workers: “do not complete the Harvest work too soon, and thus allow the demons to invade the minds of men.” Hurting the earth means to “throw order-loving peoples into desperation”; hurting the sea means to “so enrage the masses, not under religious restraint, as to make it impossible to control them.” This is the book’s persistent social vision — that religious restraint alone holds the masses, and that its removal produces anarchy. The great multitude is distinguished from the 144,000 as a secondary class, the “Great Company,” a distinction the commentary maintains to the end.

Revelation 8 — Four Preliminary Reformations

The seven trumpets are divided between preliminary reformations and the true one. The seven angels are “instrumentalities suitable for the work to be performed,” standing before God and “featuring the Reformation.” A poignant note intrudes: they “waited before the Lord, after the Pastor’s death, ready to do the Master’s will” — the volume was assembled in the year after Russell died, and the fact surfaces in the exegesis. The altar is “the Brazen Altar, the place of sacrifice,” and the incense is “the heart’s best endeavors of the faithful fellow-members of the Body.” The first four trumpets are assigned to reform movements that prepared the ground without completing the work. The chapter’s function is structural: it clears space so that the fifth and sixth trumpets can be spent on Methodism and its successors, and the seventh reserved for Russell.

Revelation 9 — Two Ineffective Reformation Woes

The most openly hostile chapter, and the one where the scheme’s requirements most visibly drive the reading. The star fallen from heaven is John Wesley, dated precisely — “Wesley became a star in the Anglican heavens in 1728, at which time he was ordained a priest.” His movement is granted no divine authority whatever: “Wesley was given the key to nothing and to nowhere,” and “Wesley opened nothing.” The smoke from the pit is Methodism — “Methodism was no ordinary smudge” — obscuring “the sun,” which is “the true Gospel,” and darkening “the air,” which is “the Anglican Church.” Wesley is credited with sincerity but denied significance, on the reasoning that “for many years Wesley had no thought of forming a sect; and yet, unconsciously, he began to do so.” The locusts and the second woe are handled in the same register. The chapter exists because the scheme needs the genuine reformation slot to remain vacant until chapter 10.

Revelation 10 — The True Reformation Woe

The shortest chapter in the Revelation commentary and the pivot of the whole book. The mighty angel comes down from heaven “at the time of the Second Advent, Oct. 1874” — the date on which the entire chronology rests. The little book open in his hand is “the Present Truth message.” Setting his foot upon the sea means he “exerted the strongest power of restraint” upon “the masses not under religious control, who, without the Lord’s control of the situation, would have” — the sentence trails into the familiar anxiety about ungoverned crowds. The loud cry is again attributed: “Pastor Russell was the voice used,” and the first great cry is identified with a specific publication and print run — “Food for Thinking Christians, 1,400,000 copies given away, free.” The seven thunders are “the seven volumes of Studies in the Scriptures.” Within a few pages the true reformation has been identified as Russell’s movement, its instrument as its own literature, and its start date as 1874.

Revelation 11 — The Time Of The End

The measuring reed given to John is “the Lord’s Word,” and the John class is “the Church in the flesh” in the time of the end — a device the book uses constantly to place its own readers inside the vision. The instruction to measure the temple but not the outer court is turned into a directive about attention: “devote all attention to the higher privileges of the ‘Holy’.” The measuring instruments are identified with the movement’s own publications: the several volumes of Scripture Studies and the booklet Tabernacle Shadows are said to be “devoted to the” measuring. The holy city is “the embryo Kingdom of God.” The most consequential gloss concerns the court given to the Gentiles: “with the deliverance of the Little Flock, the condition represented by the ‘Holy’ ceases” — tying the chapter directly to the spring 1918 expectation. The two witnesses and the forty-two months are read as periods of scriptural suppression and recovery within the papal centuries.

Revelation 12 — The Birth Of Antichrist

The woman clothed with the sun is “the early Church, Nominal Zion,” resplendent “in the full, clear light of the unclouded Gospel,” and her pregnancy is not the incarnation but corruption: she is “with child” as “a result of the Mystery of Iniquity which was working within her.” The child she labours to deliver is Antichrist — she “desired to get rid of the loathsome thing from which, by the machinations of Satan, she was at the” point of delivery. This inverts the traditional Marian and ecclesial readings entirely: the birth in heaven is the birth of the papacy. The great red dragon is “the Pagan Roman Empire, which had its own religious system,” and its tail — which draws a third of the stars — is identified as a single person, “Constantine, last of the Roman emperors to maintain his capital at Rome.” The chapter establishes the book’s central historical claim, that the papacy was conceived inside the church and born of imperial patronage.

Revelation 13 — The Papal And Protestant Beasts

The two beasts are the two halves of organised Christianity. The sea from which the first rises is “the masses not under religious restraint.” The ten horns are counted with unusual specificity, including “the three potential races plucked up to make way for the papacy,” and the seven heads are enumerated as surviving kingdoms — “Spain, Portugal, France, England, Germany, Austria, Greece.” The dragon giving his seat is Constantine “transferring his own headquarters to Byzantium, ‘New Rome’,” and the great authority is dated to the Emperor Justinian. The deadly wound is glossed with a hermeneutical rule the authors apply throughout: “whenever the Scriptures use the expression ‘as it were’,” the thing is apparent rather than actual — so the papacy’s wound was never truly mortal. The earth that wonders after the beast is “the symbolic earth, the people, obedient to the ruling powers.” The second beast is Protestantism, and the image it makes is the confederation of Protestant bodies, which the book identifies elsewhere as the Federal Council of Churches. The mark and the number are worked out in the same institutional terms.

Revelation 14 — The Five Harvest Messages

The chapter of the Scranton calculation, but also of the harvest scheme. Mount Zion pictures “the Return of the Lord… accomplished, the sleeping saints raised,” with the full number gathered. The voice of many waters is “a great outpouring of Truth, in many tongues,” and the voice of thunder is again “seven thunders, the seven volumes of Scripture Studies.” The new song is justified by the claim that in this harvest “out of His Storehouse would come things new” — a standing warrant for novel doctrine. Those redeemed from the earth are marked by the Greek: “agorazo, acquired at the forum.” The five angelic messages of the chapter are read as five successive proclamations of the harvest period, culminating in the winepress. The winepress itself is “the exposition of the prophecies of Ezekiel and the Revelator” — this book — and the blood is glossed as teachings which, though truthful, will be “death-dealing” and seem “bloody” to sectarianism. Blood to the horse bridles means teachings “so deep as to strangle and drown the old false doctrinal hobbies so long ridden,” after which “sectarianism will be the universal laughing-stock.” Then follows the emendation of 1,600 furlongs to 1,200 and the mileage table from Scranton to Brooklyn set out earlier in this summary.

Revelation 15 — The Song Of The Saints

Short and almost entirely self-referential. The sign in heaven is “among God’s professed people,” and it is “great and marvelous” because “very different in tone and contents from other Bible ‘helps'” — the comparison class is study aids, not wonders. The seven angels are “the seven volumes of Studies in the Scriptures,” and their seven last plagues are those same volumes, which “together constitute the third and last woe poured out upon papacy.” The sea of glass is “the Time of Trouble made transparent,” mingled with fire, which is “the coming anarchy.” Those standing on the sea of glass stand “not in among the restless and discontented, but on a higher plane.” Victory over the beast’s number belongs to those “who refuse to let any stand for them in the place of Christ” — anticlericalism again as the test of faithfulness.

Revelation 16 — Ecclesiasticism’s Seven Plagues

The vials are poured out volume by volume. “Pastor Russell was the voice of the Lord thus used”; the seven angels addressed are “the seven volumes of Scripture Studies”; and the first vial is “Volume I… distributed among those already under religious restraint.” The resulting sore is the clergy’s reaction to reading it — the book “seemed to ecclesiastics like an evil and malignant ulcer, a painful, running sore.” The recipients are named without symbolism: those with the mark are “Roman Catholics,” those worshipping the image are “Protestants affiliated with the Federal Council of Churches.” The sea turning to blood prompts a brief excursion into haematology — “after death the blood separates into a watery liquid, called serum, and a solid substance termed clot” — used to argue that the waters became repulsive rather than literally sanguine. The Scranton evangelist anecdote appears here, attached to “every living soul died in the sea.” The chapter closes with the flight of the islands, glossed as “even the republics will disappear in the fall of 1920,” which is the book’s second great dated prediction.

Revelation 17 — The Papacy’s Last Stand

The angel who shows John the judgment of the whore is identified as “Volume VII, Studies in the Scriptures” — the book itself steps into the vision as a character. The one talking with John is “the John class, the Church in the flesh,” which places the contemporary reader inside the scene as well. The whore is “Papacy, the ‘beast’,” the woman is “the Roman Catholic Church,” and the waters she sits upon are “the peoples of the earth.” The wine of her fornication is “the mixed doctrines, part truth and part error, that originally led to the union of church and state.” The scarlet beast she rides is “Pagan Rome, and its successors.” The chapter’s argument is that a final church-state alliance is imminent and will collapse catastrophically, which supplies the mechanism for the 1918 destruction predicted elsewhere.

Revelation 18 — The Fall Of Ecclesiasticism

The longest and most detailed chapter of the commentary, and the one carrying the heaviest freight of dated prediction. The angel crying mightily prompts the exclamation “how apt are these Scriptures that refer to Pastor Russell as a ‘voice’!” The other voice from heaven calling God’s people out of Babylon is “the WATCH TOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY, the corporate body which Pastor Russell personally organized” — an institution reading itself into the text as the voice of God. The kings of the earth are listed by nation: “Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Russia, Spain, Portugal, etc.” Their fornication with her is glossed as having “joined themselves to the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Greek Catholic Churches.” The merchants are “Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Presiding Elders, Reverends, etc.,” and their riches are “supplied partly in cash and partly in left-overs from church fairs, suppers, etc.” — the sneer is characteristic. Into this the dated glosses are set: “the hour of judgment, 1918”; “come in one day.—The year of 1918”; “in one hour is thy judgment come.—In the one year 1917-1918.” The chapter also contains the observation that after the spring of 1918 “it will be as unsafe to tell the lies that have filled Babylon’s exchequers as it will to be a king.” Whatever else it is, this chapter is a call to leave the churches immediately and on a stated deadline.

Revelation 19 — The Overthrow Of Satan’s Empire

The scene shifts to aftermath: “after the saints are glorified and present ecclesiastical systems are destroyed.” The great voice of much people is “the Great Company,” and heaven here means “the only heavenly-minded ones remaining on earth” — that is, those left behind after the spring 1918 removal. Their Alleluia is glossed as “deliverance from the Papacy and other sects has come at last,” and the repetition is treated with dry humour: “the more they think it over, the happier they will become.” The avenging of the blood of “[His] HER servants” — the book’s own emendation — receives the book’s bleakest identification — “the millions who have perished in the Great War have been the servants of Babylon” — making the casualties of the ongoing conflict a judgment on organised religion. The marriage supper, the rider on the white horse and the destruction of the beast’s armies are read as the completion of that judgment rather than as a distinct future battle.

Revelation 20 — The Thousand Years’ Reign

The binding of Satan is the book’s most quoted piece of self-reference: the great chain in the angel’s hand is “the TRUTH, as contained in the Seven Volumes of Scripture Studies.” The dragon bound is not a personal devil alone but “the iniquitous system of civil government which has associated with it the principle of holding the” people in subjection. The thousand years is “the Millennial Day, the Day of the Lord’s rest, following the six thousand years of evil which ended” — the six-thousand-year scheme placing the present at the hinge of history. The seal set upon him is “the Spirit of Truth in the hearts of men; the desire to win the favor of earth’s new King.” The little season of loosing exists “to see who are in heart harmony with the Lord’s will, and who are governed by other motives.” The thrones John sees are “the thrones of present earthly kingdoms,” and the judgment given is “judicial sentence was passed upon them as unfit to longer continue” — the millennium begins with the abolition of existing governments. The general resurrection and the second death are handled in accordance with the movement’s doctrine that the wicked are destroyed rather than tormented.

Revelation 21 — The Descending Kingdom

The new heaven and new earth are read as a new religious and social order rather than a new planet, and “the former things are passed away” means “the reign of Satan, sin and death will have ended forever.” The overcomer inherits “these earthly things.” The vice lists are decoded as spiritual dispositions rather than crimes: the unbelieving are those “who will not trust God, after all the marvels of His grace”; whoremongers are those “not at heart faithful to the Lord”; sorcerers are “dreamers, theorists, pseudo-philosophers, endeavoring to accredit to themselves the great salvation.” The angel showing the city is again one of the seven vial-bearers, with a bracketed aside that they “are still full after they are poured out on ecclesiasticism.” The city’s measurements produce the real-estate calculation described earlier — 144,000 building lots of a thousand square furlongs each, one square furlong standing for one year of the millennial reign. The foundation stones prompt the crystallographic excursion, with pyramid geometry recurring in the mineral structures.

Revelation 22 — The River Of Grace And Truth

The closing chapter is read as the millennial restoration in progress. The street of the city is “the Highway of Holiness,” and the river’s banks are “nourished and blessed by the life-giving Waters of Truth.” The tree of life is “the Christ, Head and Body” — the church included in the healing agency. The twelve manner of fruits yielded every month produce a characteristic piece of arithmetic: “twelve kinds of fruit, twelve times a year, for a thousand years—a total fruitage of 144,000,” making the number of the elect emerge from multiplication rather than enumeration. Much of the chapter is given to the Great Company, whose “beautiful inheritance” it describes, and whose memories of “her dark night will be very keen” at first. The light they no longer need is “light from the Church in the flesh,” since that class will have gone. The commentary ends where the book began — with the claim that the prophecy is now open, that its meaning is available in seven volumes, and that the events it describes are months rather than centuries away.

Stage 2 — the Ezekiel commentary (chapters 1–48, including “Pastor Russell’s Divine Ordination,” the siege chronologies, the temple plans and the appendices) — to follow.

The Song Of Solomon Commentary

Sitting between the end of Revelation and the book of Ezekiel, and easily overlooked because it is not numbered by chapter, is a commentary on the Song of Solomon running to some 38 pages and roughly 9,750 words. It comprises two parts: “The Bridal Anthem”, a verse-by-verse commentary, and “The Heavenly Bridegroom”, a poem.

The Bridal Anthem

The reading is allegorical throughout: Solomon is “type of Christ in glory, as David was a type of Christ in the flesh,” and the Bride is the church — specifically the Little Flock destined for glorification. The Song is introduced as “the harmony of harmonies—the assembling in one beautiful picture of many of the most beautiful figures” of scripture.

The method is the same substitution used elsewhere, but the tone changes completely. Where the Revelation and Ezekiel commentaries are polemical and dated, this section is devotional and almost entirely undated. There are no predictions here, no calculations, and almost no attacks on named denominations.

The identifications run as follows. The Bridegroom’s mouth is “His Word, the Scriptures.” Wine is “a symbol of doctrine,” so that love “better than wine” becomes divine assurance valued above doctrine itself — a striking concession in a book otherwise preoccupied with correct doctrine. The good ointments are “The Holy Spirit, the holy anointing oil of the priesthood,” poured “At His baptism upon the Head, at Pentecost on the Body.” The virgins who love Him are “The pure in heart.” The King’s chambers are “the ‘Holy,’ the spirit-begotten condition, the first heavenly condition.”

The Bride’s declaration — the book prints the lemma simply as “I am black” — receives the section’s most interesting handling. The commentary observes that “The bride of Moses, Zipporah, type of the Bride of Christ, was an Ethiopian woman—a Gentile,” using the blackness to argue for Gentile inclusion rather than treating it as a defect to be explained away. The daughters of Jerusalem are “Professed children” of the Kingdom, and the tents of Kedar are traced to “one of the children of Ishmael, and the name thus stands for the Ishmaelites, or Bedouins.” When the Bride says “look not upon me, because I am black,” the gloss follows Leeser’s translation — “Because I am somewhat black (Leeser)” — and adds that “the Bride does not deny her imperfections, but is not disposed to” dwell on them. The sun that has looked upon her is “The searching light of the true Gospel which exposes every defect,” and the darkening is judgment: “Judgment must begin at the House of God.” Set beside the Ham passage in Ezekiel 38, this is the same book using blackness as a figure of election rather than degradation, which is worth registering.

The middle chapters are largely a catalogue of endearments read as spiritual conditions. The neck is “The yoke-bearing member,” and the yoke is glossed with unexpected intimacy — it is built for “Jesus and one other.” Chains of gold are “The Divine nature.” Spikenard is “Devotion, as Illustrated by Mary’s alabaster box.” The night in which the Beloved lies between the Bride’s breasts is “During this dark time while evil is permitted.” The cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi prompts a geographical note — Engedi is “Located on the shore of the Dead Sea, in one of the hottest of climates” — so the refuge becomes “a cooling, fragrant shade, a refuge from the fierce heat.”

The lily among thorns yields the section’s one piece of polemic: the thorns “scratch, tear and wound,” and the daughters among whom the Bride stands are “Nominal church organizations.” The apple tree among the trees of the wood carries the same edge — the wood being trees “Which run largely to leaves, professions.” Otherwise the commentary is content to elaborate: dove’s eyes are “Heavenly wisdom—the wisdom of the Holy Spirit,” the green bed means “Our rest will be everlasting,” and the beams of the house are glossed “the Head of Christ is God.”

The Heavenly Bridegroom

The section closes with an original poem rather than commentary, signed with the initials G.W.S. and dated June 25, 1917 — one of the few internal dates in the volume, placing composition a few months before publication. It is written in the Bride’s voice and stitches together phrases from across the Song: “Thine eyes as Heshbon’s fish-pools, and like flocks Upon Mount Gilead are thy spiced and flower-decked locks,” and the Bridegroom’s summons, “The winter’s past, My Dove, come, come with Me away, Far spent the night, make ready for thy nuptial day!”

The Bride answers with the movement’s central expectation in devotional form: “Throughout the many-centuried night I’ve longed for Thee. I’ve waited for the dawning light.” It closes on glorification — “Oh! miracle of grace, to seat me on Thy Throne.”

Read against the dated predictions elsewhere in the book, the poem is poignant. “Make ready for thy nuptial day” was written in June 1917 by someone who expected the marriage to take place the following spring.

Why this section matters to an assessment of the book

It shows the authors could write in a register other than denunciation. Nothing here attacks the Kaiser, blames the clergy for the war, or computes a distance. The absence of those features across 38 pages makes their presence elsewhere look like a choice rather than a temperament.

It contains no dates, which is notable in a volume where the dating is otherwise load-bearing. The Song is read as describing a relationship rather than a timetable.

And it treats blackness as a figure of election, via Zipporah, in a book that elsewhere calls the peoples of Africa “sinful, degraded.” Both passages are in the same volume, published the same year, by the same editors. Anyone characterising the book’s racial attitudes should account for both rather than selecting whichever suits the argument.

The Ezekiel Commentary

Ezekiel occupies roughly 270 pages, chapters 1 through 48. Where the Revelation commentary reads church history forward from Pentecost, Ezekiel is read almost entirely as a prophecy of Pastor Russell personally and of the destruction of the churches in and after 1918. It is the more startling of the two commentaries, because it makes the identification of Russell with the prophet explicit and sustained rather than implied.

The governing identification: Ezekiel is Russell

Ezekiel 1 — God’s Character And Plan

The opening vision is read as a portrait of the divine attributes rather than as a theophany. The four faces of the living creatures become the four attributes of God — justice, wisdom, love and power — and “each of the four attributes has four characteristics or attributes; and each has the Word of God” as its expression. The wheels within wheels become the Divine Plan of the Ages, a reading the commentary returns to whenever wheels appear. Ezekiel’s prostration is glossed with the observation that the throne “and He that sat thereon were surrounded by all the colors of the rainbow.” A note of self-justification enters early: “men do not raise themselves up to become great and honored agents in God’s outworking of the Divine” purpose — the point being that Russell did not appoint himself.

Ezekiel 2 — The Rebellious House And The Book

The rebellious house is Christendom, and the prophet’s thankless commission is applied to Russell’s. “The work of Ezekiel among the Hebrews in captivity proved a thankless task,” and the parallel is left to do its own work. The impudent children of the vision are the clergy — “few things are more trying than a family of impudent children.” The chapter is short and functions as a bridge to the claim made in the next.

Ezekiel 3 — Pastor Russell’s Divine Ordination

The chapter is titled that in the book’s own table of contents, and the title is not a summary imposed by later readers. Eating the scroll is glossed directly: “as Ezekiel ate the book in the hand of God, so the ‘faithful and wise servant’ of this day absorbed, assimilated, the Plan of the Ages which was in the power (hand) of the Almighty.” The identification is total — Russell is the antitype of the prophet, and the roll he consumes is his own theological system. Testimony is introduced as corroboration: “I never knew any one so willing to do the will of God,” said his private secretary and travelling companion. The commentary insists the learning was not his own achievement — “it was not of himself that he learned and taught the Divine Plan; but God Himself caused him to learn, believe and teach.” Ezekiel’s instruction to hold nothing back becomes “like Ezekiel, Pastor Russell was to hold back, pervert, or wrest nothing.” The scope of the mission is narrowed in a way that matters for the movement’s self-understanding: “Present Truth was not to go to the heathen, the drunkards, unbelievers, but to the Christian people” — the message is for churchgoers, and the churches are the target. Of them: “Christendom has never hearkened unto God.”

Ezekiel 4 — The Papal And Protestant Sieges

The two sieges Ezekiel enacts by lying on his side become two historical campaigns against ecclesiastical corruption, and the chapter supplies one of the book’s more elaborate date schemes. The iron pan between prophet and city is “between besieging Protestantism and beleaguered ecclesiasticism.” The period runs from 1528 to 1918, and the choice of start year is defended at unusual length: “the year 1528 is one of the turning points of history,” when “Protestantism in England and in Germany was in the balance.” Two events are cited — the German princes’ armed action forcing indemnity from a Catholic bishop, and Pope Clement’s appointment of legates Correggio and Wolsey to conduct the divorce trial of Katherine of Aragon at Henry VIII’s request. A historian, Dr. Peter Bayne, is quoted at length: “How thoroughly is the whole pageant of that war, 1528, erased from the memory of the present generation!” A second period, 1878 to 1918, is overlaid on the first, so that both terminate in the same year. The defiled bread of the vision becomes the mixed spiritual diet available during those centuries — “the spiritual food, poor as the mixture was, was to be thoroughly defiled.” The reform element were to “keep at the attack upon ecclesiastical corruption until the siege should end in 1918.”

Ezekiel 5 — The Severed Hair Calamities

The prophet’s shaved hair, divided into thirds, becomes the fate of the churches’ membership. The cutting is located “after the days of the siege… in antitype after Romanism’s and Protestantism’s siege is ended in 1918.” The interpretation is explicit that people are meant: “in Samson’s case the hair represented his strength; and here the hair cut off signifies that the people who are the strength of Christendom shall be cut off in the brief but terribly eventful period beginning in 1918.” The cause assigned is the union of church and state — the punishments come “because of churchianity’s illicit union of church and state.” The prediction is comprehensive: “Christendom is to be laid waste by war, revolution, anarchy, famine (Luke 21:26), and pestilence.”

Ezekiel 6 — Sword, Famine, Pestilence

Brief and almost entirely predictive. “This chapter relates to the Divine wrath, after 1918.” The claim is stated without qualification: “all state churches are to be destroyed, literally by the sword, and by the truth about them.” The mechanism of collapse is desertion — “after 1918 the people supporting churchianity will cease to be its supporters, be destroyed as adherents, by the spiritual pestilence of errors abroad, and by the famine of the Word of God among them.” A note of mercy closes it: “after the trouble is over, the survivors will have a thousand years in which to recognize” what has happened.

Ezekiel 7 — Dawn Of The Evil Day

The evil day is 1918 and after. “The year 1918, with its fearful revolutions and succeeding anarchy, is at the door.” Those who will suffer most are identified by disposition rather than denomination — “the chiefest sufferers will be those setting affections on earthly things, earth dwellers.” The feeble hands and knees of the vision are read as failure of power. There will be “no peace with God, or peace among the conflicting elements of society.” Satan himself is included among the mourners: he “shall mourn the downfall of his power, as will the heads of the savage, beastly governments.”

Ezekiel 8 — Molech, The Torment Deity

A polemic against the doctrine of eternal torment conducted through the vision’s idolatries. The chapter announces its scope — “chapters 8 to 24 continue the recital of the sins of Jerusalem, Christendom, and the Divine punishment.” The hole in the wall prompts an architectural excursus on Solomon’s temple. The women weeping for Tammuz produce a characteristic etymological flourish: “Tammuz means ‘perfect (tam) by burning’ (muz)” — the derivation is dubious but it lets the authors identify Tammuz worship with the doctrine of hellfire, and thereby to charge Christendom with worshipping Molech. The secret abominations done in the dark are “these departures from true Christian belief… carried on ‘in the dark’.”

Ezekiel 9 — The Man With The Inkhorn

The chapter that would matter enormously to the movement later, since the man with the inkhorn was identified as Russell personally here and only reinterpreted as a class in 1931. The marking work is Russell’s: “Pastor Russell was faithful to his great task of writing and publishing the Truth and imprinting” the mark. The six men with slaughter weapons are the coming violence — “here are depicted the savagery of the revolutions and the anarchy succeeding the great war.” The beginning of the slaughter at the sanctuary is turned against both confessions: “on account of the light of the Gospel of Love they possess, both Romanism and Protestantism are” the more culpable.

Ezekiel 10 — Scattering Coals Of Fire

The identification becomes explicit to the point of naming: “Ezekiel, typing Pastor Russell, sees himself as acting in the manner here described.” The glory of the Lord departing the temple becomes Russell’s perception of it — “Pastor Russell saw more clearly than any one in this end of the Age the glorious Gospel of God.” The voice of the Almighty is “the sounding forth of the Word of God through Pastor Russell’s proclamation.” The wheels are again “the Divine Plan of the Ages,” and the emphasis of the vision on them is read as divine endorsement of the Plan.

Ezekiel 11 — The Wicked Counsel

The princes giving wicked counsel are the clergy — “the false teachings of the clergy are nothing new.” The east gate types Christ. The sword brought upon them is read doubly, as literal violence and as scripture: “the devotees of established priestcraft fear both the literal sword and the Sword of the Spirit.” The chapter’s second half is turned into consolation for the movement’s own adherents — verses 14 to 25 are “the message of comfort and hope to those who are now out of harmony with ecclesiasticism,” and the exiles despised by those in the holy city become the Bible Students despised by churchgoers. God “especially favors the honest-hearted, humble-minded, however far they may now be from Him.”

Ezekiel 12 — Christendom’s Blind Flight

Ezekiel digging through the wall becomes leaving the denominations: “he dug through the creeds walls and thus ‘came out of her’,” with Revelation 18:4 supplied as the warrant. The destruction is social as well as religious — “the governments (cities) shall be destroyed and the social order desolated in anarchy.” The chapter carries the book’s sharpest statement about imminence, glossing the prophecy’s insistence that the vision is not for far-off days: “Jehovah’s Word shall come to pass promptly, in the present day,” and “none of the words spoken through His servant Pastor Russell shall wait any longer.”

Ezekiel 13 — The Gaps In The Wall

An attack on preachers, in the book’s plainest register. “O Christendom, thy preachers will be like cunning foxes, finding profit in the desolation.” They “have misrepresented Jehovah,” and “wherefore God is against them.” The untempered mortar becomes self-interest, and its destruction is dated to the coming upheaval: “I will destroy your defense with a furious storm of war and revolution,” so that “the defense of Christendom exists no more, neither they that plastered it with showy self-interest.”

Ezekiel 14 — Insincere Inquirers

Anticipates clergy approaching the movement in bad faith after the collapse begins: “there will come certain of the clergy of Christendom to the Truth people to listen and inquire.” The warning is turned inward as well — “if any preacher—even one of the Truth people—shall get so wrong in heart that he is deceived,” God will deal with him. A remnant is allowed: “there shall be left from the anarchy a few who shall be brought through into the Kingdom as samples.”

Ezekiel 15 — Fit For Fuel Only

Twenty-three lines, the shortest section in the book. The useless vine is “ecclesiasticism, which imagines itself to be the true vine (John 15:1) with the sects as branches.” The conclusion is in the title.

Ezekiel 16 — Unfaithfulness Of God’s People

The extended marriage allegory is applied to the church’s history: God “loved these people and espoused them, He caused the church to grow beautiful,” and they “became renowned for their holy, kindly characters.” The fall is dated — “God has now, since 1878, brought the powers of judgment against the apostate church,” 1878 being the movement’s date for the rejection of the nominal church. Samaria and Sodom are read as Baal-worshippers, and the chapter’s harshness is softened at the close by the everlasting covenant: “nevertheless, God is faithful.”

Ezekiel 17 — Parable Of The Eagles

The king of Babylon is identified flatly as Satan, who “has already come to ecclesiasticism and taken captive the ruling” element. Ecclesiasticism’s faithlessness is doubled: it “has been faithless to Jehovah and will be faithless to its newly acquired” master too. The tender twig planted on the mountain becomes the earthly phase of the Kingdom under the ancient worthies — “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.— over the earthly phase of that Kingdom.”

Ezekiel 18 — “The Soul That Sinneth”

A doctrinal chapter on individual responsibility, used to argue against inherited guilt and for universal opportunity. The Father “will beseech each sinner to repent and turn from his transgression.” The timing is tied to the movement’s scheme: this “will be true of individuals as soon as the last member of the spirit-begotten Body of Christ” has been glorified — that is, after the spring of 1918.

Ezekiel 19 — The Lion’s Whelps

“Chapter 19 has the form of a dirge.” The whelps are read as revivalism, and their caging as its suppression: “revolution and anarchy will place a complete restraint upon the revivalists, and bring them to their end.”

Ezekiel 20 — The Hypocritical Ecclesiastics

The elders who come to enquire of the prophet are refused, and the refusal is made programmatic: “Present Truth will refuse any favorable answer to ecclesiasticism.” Israel’s history in Egypt and the wilderness is recast as the church’s — God “chose them, made Himself known to them, and lifted” them out of the world. The wilderness becomes the condition of separateness from the denominations, which most Christians have rejected: “as a class, professed Christians have rebelled against being in the wilderness condition of separateness.”

Ezekiel 21 — The Thrice-Doubled Sword

The sharpened sword is read simultaneously as modern weaponry and as scripture, and the doubling is the point. “Modern weapons of destruction are brought to a hitherto unknown efficiency, as is the Sword of the Spirit.” Both will do their work: “the weapons of war will make a frightful slaughter among men; and the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God,” will do the corresponding damage to false doctrine. The certainty is emphasised — “all the people shall know that the trouble has come from Jehovah, and that its consummation is a certainty.” The chapter is written in 1917, with the Western Front in its fourth year, and the confidence that the war is the opening of the end is total.

Ezekiel 22 — The Melting Pot Of War

The furnace into which the dross is gathered is the war itself. “In Christendom all the rulers, in the mania for war, have used every power to promote bloodshed.” The charge extends to the churches’ complicity: “they have used the gifts of God for evil purposes, even to slay God’s holy martyrs.” Christendom’s collapse is imagined as public humiliation — “she shall be profaned, desecrated and destroyed in the sight of earth’s nations.”

Ezekiel 23 — Two Apostate Church Systems

Oholah and Oholibah become Catholicism and Protestantism. “Their names are significant,” the commentary notes, before assigning them. Protestantism’s decline is described as loss of political utility: “being no longer attractive or useful to the ruling powers, she will perforce cease her advances toward” the state. Its fate is to inherit Rome’s: “she has walked in the way of Papacy; therefore will God give to her also Papacy’s cup of tribulation.” The war fever is included in the indictment — “Protestantism shall be intoxicated with the war spirit” — and the cup will be drained to the dregs.

Ezekiel 24 — The Boiling Caldron

Two things happen here, and the second is remarkable. The caldron is Jerusalem-as-Christendom, from which the meat is removed before the empty pot is set on the fire — “innumerable will be the opponents of churchianity, and blazing hot their wrath,” and her corruption “was in her desire to become prominent and powerful through the power of earth’s great ones.” Then the prophecy of the death of Ezekiel’s wife, whom he is forbidden to mourn, is applied to Russell’s marriage. The gloss reads: “he continued his addresses and writings to the Lord’s people; his wife became to him as one dead: and he continued uninterruptedly in the work of the ministry.” The following verse is turned into a rhetorical defence: “why was Pastor Russell caused by his Father to endure the fiery trials and ecclesiastical falsehoods in connection with this incident of his life?” Russell’s separation from Maria Russell, and the litigation and press coverage that followed, are thus presented as divinely scripted — a prophetic type rather than a marital breakdown. It is among the most self-serving readings in either commentary.

Ezekiel 25 — Recompense Upon The Tares

The nations surrounding Israel become the non-Christian elements within Christendom who will profit from its fall. Rabbah is decoded etymologically into a social class — “I will make the lordly clergy class (Rabbah, great) waste and abandoned.” The Ammonites become “the aggressive class,” and the anarchists will overcome them. Edom-Idumea receives the same treatment, falling “from end to end.”

Ezekiel 26 — Downfall Of Philosophy

Tyre becomes philosophy. “Chapter 26 depicts ecclesiasticism in the guise of an elaborate system of philosophy,” and that system’s non-Christian character will be exposed “when Christendom (Jerusalem) falls at the hands of the revolutionists in 1918.” Its end is permanent: “philosophy, falsely so-called, shall be utterly desolated, and shall be built up no more forever.” The sea that rises over it is anarchy.

Ezekiel 27 — Philosophy’s Utter Ruin

Tyre’s merchant fleet becomes a “gallant ship” of pagan philosophy, and the extended cargo list of the original is read as the components of that system. “With thine errors were mingled God’s Truth to make up thy mixed doctrines” — the book’s standing charge against Christendom, that it is not simply false but adulterated. The clergy are dismissed with a sailor’s insult: those affiliated “shall quake at the shoutings and threatenings of thy sky-pilots.”

Ezekiel 28 — Destruction Of The Devil

The prince of Tyre is priestcraft, destroyed “by the sword of revolution and anarchy.” The king of Tyre, from verse 11 onward, is Satan himself, and the passage is read as his biography: “before thy fall thou wast appointed the care-taker (coverer) of the innocent pair in Eden.” The charge is pride — “because thou hast set thyself up in pride to be as God, claiming to represent Him.” The chapter title states the outcome the movement expects: not the eternal torment of the Devil but his destruction.

Ezekiel 29 to 32 — The Egyptian Chapters

Egypt becomes worldliness, and Pharaoh becomes Satan. “This message is against Satan, the Devil, the king of this present evil world, and against all worldliness.” God is “against thee and thy churches, and will utterly destroy worldliness from end to end.” Pharaoh’s two broken arms are the collapse of Christendom’s supports — “all supporters of worldly Christendom shall fall; her pride of power shall be humbled.” Chapter 31’s great cedar is Christendom’s self-regard: “in Christendom’s egotism there was nothing equal to her in this age or the next,” and she “felt itself the envy of everything, present and to come.” Chapter 32 carries a dated gloss: “when God shall put out Christendom’s light in 1918, He will blind the minds of ecclesiasticism.” The heathen religions are described as lamenting her fall, and Satan is “gone down finally to oblivion, as one polluted.” The four chapters end with the promise of peace — “then will God give the people peace (deep waters), and make their course to run with quiet smoothness.”

Ezekiel 33 — Why Ecclesiasticism Must Perish

The longest section in the Ezekiel commentary, and the one carrying the April 1918 calculation. The watchman passage is applied to the clergy, with the responsibility falling squarely on them — “the clergy have an awful responsibility” — while “the people who have heard the warning have only themselves to blame.” Christendom is addressed directly: “O house of nominal churchianity, the time has come for God to Judge you, to recompense you double.” The chapter then uses Ezekiel’s period of dumbness, which ends when a fugitive arrives with news that the city has fallen, as a time prophecy. Reckoning from Russell’s death on October 31, 1916, the authors calculate that the news “might be expected to flash throughout the world on or about April 27, 1918, a year, five months and twenty-six days after the death of God’s great watchman.” It is the most precise date the book offers, and it is offered with a hedge (“if an application of Ezekiel’s period of dumbness is valid here”) that is immediately abandoned. The same chapter contains the claim that in 1918 “God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions,” and that survivors “shall come to the works of Pastor Russell to learn the meaning of the downfall of ‘Christianity’.”

Ezekiel 34 — The Unfaithful Shepherds

A sustained indictment of the clergy as shepherds who feed themselves. “Ye have done this for centuries; and God permitted you to continue, because the time had not come.” The direct address is unusual even for this book: “therefore, ye clergy, hear the Word of the true God, Jehovah,” and “thus saith Jehovah God; Behold, I am against the clergy.” Against this is set the promise to the faithful remnant: “God will feed His Little Flock, first on Present Truth and then, at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb,” and will give them “the peace that passeth understanding.”

Ezekiel 35 — Edom A Type

Edom becomes socialism, and the chapter is unambiguous about its fate. “The Socialistic state shall be utterly destroyed, and its various forms of government (cities) go to oblivion.” The distinction drawn is between religious and non-religious radicals — “the then non-religious Socialists, laborites, etc.” are the target. The judgment is permanent: “when the Times of Restitution of all things come, one of the things not to be restored is the Socialist” order. Read alongside the expectation that the republics will disappear in 1920, this gives the book’s political vision its shape — every existing form of government, radical or established, is to be swept away and replaced by theocracy.

Ezekiel 36 — Christendom’s Early Restoration

The mountains of Israel are addressed as the coming order. Socialists and labourites are again excluded by divine oath — “Jehovah has sworn (lifted the hand) that the Socialists, laborites, etc.” shall not inherit. The restoration described is industrial as well as spiritual: “God will multiply useful workers in industries, and the invention of labor-saving machinery.” The permanence formula recurs — “never shall this be any more, says God.”

Ezekiel 37 — The Valley Of Dry Bones

The bones are read inclusively: “the dried bones represent all the Hebrews, Fleshly Israel, and all the professing Christians, Spiritual” Israel. The two sticks joined become the reunion of both — “the reuniting of the Hebrews and of the divisions of Christians will be by the power of God.” Over them “shall be Christ Jesus, the Beloved Head of His Body the Church.” This is one of the few genuinely hopeful chapters in the commentary, and it is notable that the hope is offered to the same Christendom condemned for the previous thirty chapters — after its institutions are destroyed, its people are restored.

Ezekiel 38 and 39 — Gog, Magog And The Overthrow Of Pride

The final battle chapters, and the ones where the book’s assumptions are least defensible to a modern reader. Gog is decoded etymologically as “high, mountain” and applied to “the proud, lofty rulers,” against whom “the Truth people, the reformers, are to set themselves.” The invading coalition is then given an ethnic reading that is straightforwardly racist: the forces are described as “the dark peoples of Africa (descendants of Ham, typical of sinful, degraded peoples), trained and equipped” for the assault. The identification of African peoples with Ham, and of Ham with degradation, was a commonplace of nineteenth-century Anglo-American exegesis, but it is stated here without qualification and forms part of the argument rather than sitting in the background. The attack is dated to “the closing years of the Time of Trouble,” and directed at the Hebrews in Palestine — the campaign is anti-Semitic in the book’s reading, and its perpetrators are called “the self-exalted anti-Semite crusaders,” who will be given “a place of burial in Palestine.” The weapons left behind are so numerous the Hebrews will need years to dispose of them. The outcome is the end of evil: “thus shall be the day of the end of evil and the final establishment” of the Kingdom.

Ezekiel 40 to 48 — God’s Temple And River Of Truth

The longest single section, 856 lines, and the most architectural. The temple is located literally — “the Temple was seen in the ‘land of Israel’—in Palestine” — and the possibility of actual construction is entertained: it “is an architectural possibility, as shown in the accompanying illustrations, (and may be erected at Jerusalem).” But its primary meaning is symbolic, and placed after the whole predicted sequence: it is “a type and symbol of ‘better things to come,’ after the wars, revolutions and anarchy of the period from 1914 to 1925 have passed.” The guide with the measuring reed is identified once more: “the one who showed the Temple to the Church, the Elijah class, was ‘the man in linen’—Pastor Russell.” The measurements are given in detail and treated as meaningful — the reed of nine feet comprising six great cubits, the sanctuary square of 500 cubits with its 50-cubit border, the inner court 200 cubits by 300, the temple platform 60 by 100, the holy place twenty by forty cubits and the most holy twenty cubits square. A textual difficulty is noticed and resolved in passing: Ezekiel 45:2 gives the exterior wall as 500 cubits while 42:16-20 gives 500 reeds, and the authors prefer the Septuagint’s “cubits” because “the former agrees minutely with the internal measurements.” The land allocation is worked out as real geography — a central strip across Palestine “25,000 reeds or about 42.6 miles wide” devoted to sacred and governmental use. Directions are assigned meanings: “the north points to spiritual things, the south to earthly things, the east to Christ and His ransom sacrifice.” Numbers throughout “are used as symbols of completeness or perfection, or their opposite.” The river flowing from the temple is the truth spreading outward, and the commentary ends with restoration rather than judgment.

What Stage 2 adds to the picture

Three things emerge from the Ezekiel commentary that the Revelation material only implies.

The first is the completeness of the identification of Russell with the prophet. It is not a comparison but an equation, announced in a chapter title — “Pastor Russell’s Divine Ordination” — and sustained through the marking of foreheads in chapter 9, the departing glory in chapter 10, the dumbness in chapter 33 and the man in linen in chapter 40. The consequence is that Ezekiel’s biography becomes evidence about Russell, which is how the death of the prophet’s wife comes to be a prophecy of Russell’s marital separation.

The second is the political programme. It is easy to read the book as merely anti-clerical, but chapters 35 and 36 make clear that socialism and organised labour are to be destroyed alongside the churches, and Revelation 16 has already disposed of the republics. Nothing existing survives — not the denominations, not the monarchies, not the republics, not the radical movements that would replace them. Only the Kingdom does.

The third is that the dating is not incidental to the argument but load-bearing. Remove 1918 and the siege chronology of chapter 4 has no terminus, the severed hair of chapter 5 has no date, chapter 6’s wrath has no beginning, chapter 32’s darkness has no year, and chapter 33’s April calculation has nothing to calculate toward. The book cannot be read as timeless prophecy with the dates treated as ornament. The dates are the structure.

Passages Most Likely To Prove Embarrassing

Gathered in one place, with sources, so they can be checked rather than taken on trust. Several were also the very material cited against the Society in the 1918 Espionage Act prosecution — which makes this section directly relevant to the Macmillan memoir.

A defamatory claim about a named living head of state

Commenting on Ezekiel 21, the book asserts as fact that the German Emperor was demonically controlled:

“The ex-Czar of Russia was a spiritualist, and maintained mediums for consultation. Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, for years prior to the great war, followed the guidance of a demon which spoke to him clairaudiently, urging him to his present course. A surprising number of prominent men consult spirit mediums.”

Elsewhere: “The great war now raging is most certainly the work of evil spirits, and the Kaiser is not the only clever ruler who has been deceived by evil spirits, as history will sometime show.” Both were published in 1917, about the sitting sovereign of a nation the United States was at war with, in a book distributed in the hundreds of thousands. To the book’s credit it declines the obvious next step — “what folly it would be to try to see in the German Kaiser, or any other one man, the foretold Antichrist” — but the demon claim is stated flatly and without qualification.

A dated prediction of the Kaiser’s fall, missed in the year-by-year harvest

Because it names no year, this one does not surface in a search for “1918,” yet it is among the book’s most specific forecasts. Commenting on the forty-two months of Revelation 13:5:

“As a secondary fulfilment, we may see the end of the rule of the Kaiser and others of his mouthpieces in 42 literal months from Aug. 1, 1914.”

Forty-two months from 1 August 1914 is 1 February 1918. Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November 1918 — nine months later. The prediction was wrong, but far less wildly than the others.

Blaming the clergy and church members for the World War

In the commentary on Ezekiel 8:

“It is the church—clergy and members—who brought on the barbarous world-war. They could have stood like a rock for peace; but the clergy, with devilish exhortations, urged their fellow-savages to bloodshed. The Divine judgment has gone against them and soon will swallow them up in the earthquake (revolution) and fire (anarchy) of the Time of Trouble.”

Note the phrase “their fellow-savages” — the congregations are included in the charge, not only their ministers. Passages of this kind, published in wartime and circulated to men of draft age, are what the Department of Justice memorandum quoted in Macmillan’s Faith on the March had in view when it called the book “one of the most dangerous examples of this sort of propaganda… written in extremely religious language and distributed in enormous numbers.”

The racial material, in both directions

The single worst passage is in Ezekiel 38, where the invading coalition is glossed as “the dark peoples of Africa (descendants of Ham, typical of sinful, degraded peoples), trained and equipped” for the assault. The Hamitic identification carries its full nineteenth-century freight and is used as part of the argument, not as background colour.

Honesty requires noting that the book is not uniform on this. Elsewhere it argues the opposite: “Some tribes in Africa are more moral sexually than are whites, and explorers have noted the natural kindness of the negroes of Nyassa and Soudan.” That sentence appears as a rebuke to Christendom’s self-satisfaction, and it sits awkwardly beside the Ham passage. Anyone quoting either should quote both, because presenting only one misrepresents the book — in whichever direction.

[Also note the mention of the black bride in the Song of Solomon commentary within this same book, that is considered a positive representation of the Bride of Christ in its fulfillment.]

The word “savage” is used throughout for the belligerent nations of Europe, not for colonised peoples: “the savage ‘Christian’ governments of the world,” “the most barbarous warfare ever known.” The book’s contempt is aimed primarily at Christendom.

Faith healing and hypnotism as demonic

“We have already pointed out that to our understanding these cures are effected by hypnotic influences and that hypnotism is but another form of Spiritism.”

Faith cures, including those of other denominations, are attributed to demonic agency rather than to fraud or suggestion. The Foskett fire-handling demonstration is recounted in the same register, with physicians examining the subject afterwards and finding “not the slightest trace of a burn or blister” — offered as evidence of spirit power rather than of stagecraft.

Claims about mental health

Citing “Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, federal pure food and drugs expert,” the book states that “nearly every man and woman at some time in their lives border on insanity” — a view it says is “also indorsed by the famous Dr. William A. White, head of the United States government hospital for the insane” — and attributes widespread nervous collapse to drink and drugs. These are presented as established fact in support of the argument that the Time of Trouble is producing mental derangement.

The self-serving readings

Three deserve to be listed together, because their cumulative effect is what a hostile reader will notice:

The book identifies its own seven volumes as the seven angels, the seven thunders, the seven plagues and the chain binding Satan — and identifies itself, Volume VII, as the angel of Revelation 17.
It identifies the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society as the voice from heaven of Revelation 18.
It reads Russell’s marital separation — the subject of litigation and hostile press coverage — as the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s forbidden mourning for his wife, asking rhetorically “why was Pastor Russell caused by his Father to endure the fiery trials and ecclesiastical falsehoods in connection with this incident of his life?”

The 1918 material, restated as the central liability

The predictions section above lists these in full, but the point bears repeating here: the book states that in the spring of 1918 the faithful will be removed from the earth, that “God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions,” that the news will “flash throughout the world on or about April 27, 1918,” and that “even the republics will disappear in the fall of 1920.” None of this happened. There is no hedge anywhere in the book substantial enough to absorb the failure — the nearest thing is a parenthetical question mark. The one admission of a previous miscalculation, “ten years later than we once calculated,” concedes the error while leaving the method that produced it entirely intact.

Closing Assessment

The Finished Mystery is best understood not as a commentary that happens to contain predictions, but as a set of predictions with a commentary built around them. Strip out 1918 and the structure collapses: the siege of Ezekiel 4 has no terminus, the severed hair of Ezekiel 5 no date, the wrath of Ezekiel 6 no beginning, the darkness of Ezekiel 32 no year, and the calculation of Ezekiel 33 nothing to calculate toward. The dates are not decoration on a devotional work. They are the load-bearing structure.

The interpretive method has one consistent shape. A symbol is matched to a modern referent, and the referent is almost always drawn from a narrow field: the Roman and Protestant churches, the movement’s own literature, and Russell himself. Where the fit is imperfect, the fit is improved — most nakedly at Revelation 14:20, where the biblical number is amended so that a prophecy of blood becomes a measurement of the authors’ commute. That single passage is worth more than any general characterisation, because it shows the direction of reasoning: the conclusion was in place first, and the text was adjusted to reach it.

The book is also a historical document of a specific moment. It was written in 1917, in the fourth year of a war its authors believed to be the opening of the end, by two men in Scranton working from the notes of a leader who had died the previous autumn. Its confidence is total and its hedging almost non-existent. Within a year of publication, eight officers of the society that issued it — including its two editors — were sentenced to eighty years in federal prison, on the strength of passages this summary quotes. Within two years the spring of 1918 had passed without event; within three, the autumn of 1920; and 1925 came and went with no kingdom in Palestine.

What the book is not is stupid. The chronological schemes are internally consistent, the historical material on the Reformation is often well sourced, and the Song of Solomon commentary is genuinely devotional. That combination — real learning, real conviction, and a method that could make the Book of Revelation predict a train journey to Brooklyn — is what makes it worth reading rather than merely dismissing.

Not summarised: the publisher’s advertisements (pages 790–808) and the footnote apparatus, which are catalogue and citation material rather than commentary.