bedraggled by contact with the earth. Their justification, or robe of Christ’s righteousness, becomes unpresentable. When a spot appears, instead of having it immediately cleansed away, they allow it to remain; and the spots accumulate until their garments become quite soiled. Then at the conclusion of their course, when the examination day comes, their robes are found to be spotted; yet they continue to wear them—they are not divested of that robe of justification. They have not abandoned God and He has not abandoned them; but they have failed to use the means He provided for their cleansing. In the Book of Revelation this class is spoken of as “a great multitude,” hence the Great Company. But to maintain their standing in even this secondary class, they will have to come up “out of great tribulation, and . . . [wash] their robes, and . . . [make] them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Instead of doing a cleansing work day by day, maintaining their justification with God and being ready for the change by means of their faithfulness, they will, on the contrary, be found unworthy of the chief place. Provided they remain loyal, their robes will not be taken from them; but they will be obliged to suffer great tribulation, to wash their robes white in the blood of cleansing, so that they too will be clothed in white and will have pure bodies in their resurrection. Only by passing through this great tribulation can they obtain a state of purification and justification (Rev. 7:9–14). Verse 6: He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. See explanation on pages 34 and 35. Message to Philadelphia (A.D. 1517–1877) Verse 7: And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; . . . As is well known, Philadelphia means “brotherly love.” (An explanation of the appropriateness of this term will be temporarily postponed.) This stage of the Church covers the period from A.D. 1517, the beginning of the Reformation, to the end of 1877, i.e., up to the beginning of the Gospel Age harvest. Soon after the Papacy’s humiliation at Avignon, the popes regained much of their power, so that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, as Mosheim said, “No danger seemed to threaten the Pontiffs.”44 Even the revival of learning, which followed the invention of printing in 1440 and awakened in many the love of truth and liberty, apparently did not make the heads of the apostate Church uneasy. The reason for this fancied security was that none dared to resolutely attack the supposed canonical authority of the Roman bishops. Education had not yet become general, and the great masses of people, still ignorant and superstitious, reverenced the pope as Christ’s vicegerent. With such power at their command, the pontiffs were able not only to punish and coerce the refractory element but also to buy off their more dangerous enemies with honors and rich emoluments. _________________________
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