J. F. Rutherford

“An understanding of the jubilee system which Jehovah inaugurated with Israel throws a great light upon the immediate future events. The Scriptures clearly show that Israel, while God dealt with them for more than eighteen centuries, was a typical people. Their law was typical, foreshadowing greater and better things to come. The Lord commanded Moses to institute the Sabbath system the year that Israel entered the land of Canaan, which was 1575 years before A.D.1 (Leviticus 25:1-12), and that every fiftieth year should be unto them a year of jubilee. This was done on the tenth day of the seventh month, the day of atonement. 'And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim freedom throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you and ye shall return every man unto his possessions and ye shall return every man unto his family'. Other Scriptures show that there were to be seventy jubilees kept (Jeremiah 25:11; 2 Chronicles 36:27-21). A simple calculation of these jubilees brings us to this important fact: Seventy jubilees of fifty years would be a total of 3500 years. That period of time beginning in 1575 before A.D. 1 of necessity would end in the fall of the year 1925, at which time the type ends and the great antitype must begin. [...] The chief thing to be restored is the human race to life; and since other Scriptures definitely fix the fact that there will be a resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful ones of old, and that these will have the first favor, we may expect 1925 to witness the return of these faithful men of Israel from the condition of death, being resurrected and fully restored to perfect humanity and made the visible, legal representatives of the new order of things on earth.””

“Based upon the argument heretofore set forth, then, that the old order of things, the old world, is ending and is therefore passing away, and that the new order is coming in, and that 1925 shall mark the resurrection of the faithful worthies of old and the beginning of reconstruction, it is reasonable to conclude that millions of people now on the earth will be still on the earth in 1925. Then, based upon the promises set forth in the divine Word, we must reach the positive and indisputable conclusion that millions now living will never die.””