The Second Woe - Armies of Cavalry - Two Myriads of Myriads

 How can there be two myriads of myriads of this cavalry?  A myriad is literally 10,000. So two myriads of myriads come to 200 million.  Happily, there now millions of Kingdom proclaimers, but their number is far short of hundreds of millons!  Remember, though, Moses' words at Numbers 10:36:  "Do return, O Jehovah, to the myriads of thousands of Israel." (Genesis 24:60) That would mean, literally, 'Do return to the tens of millions of Israel.'  Israel, however,  numbered only about two to three million in Moses' day.  What, then, was Moses saying?  No doubt he had in mind that the Israelites should be unnumbered as "the stars of the heavens and like the grains of the sand that are on the seashore," Rather  than be counted. (Genesis 22:17; 1 Chronicles 27:23) So he used the word for "myriad" to indicate a large but unspecified number.  Thus, the New English Bible renders this verse:  "Rest, LORD of the countless thousands of Israel."  This agrees with a second definition of the word for "myriad" found in Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament; Gesenius' a A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testaent, translated by Edward Robinson.  

Nevertheless, those of the John class still remaining on earth number fewer than 10,000 -less tha one literal myriad.  How could they be likened to countless thousands of cavalry?  To become myriads even in a symbolic sense, would they not need reinforcements?  That is what they have neededm, and by Jehovah's undeserved kindnes, that is what they have received!  From where have these come?

From 1918 to 1922, the John class began to hold out to distressed humanity the happy prospect that "millions now living will never die." In 1923 it was also made known that the sheep of Matthew 25:31-34 would inherit the earth under God's Kingdom.  A similar  hope was held out in the booklet Freedom for the Peoples, released at the international covention in 1927.  In the early 1930's  the upright Jehonadab  class and the 'men sighing and groaning over Christendom's sorry spiritual condition were show to be identical with the symbolic  sheep having earthly prospects.  (Ezekiel 9:4; 2 Kings 10:15, 16)  Directing such ones to the modern-day  "cities of refuse," the Watchtower of August 15, 1934, stated:  "Those of the Jonadab class have heard the sounod of God's trunpet and have heeded the warning by fleeing to God's organization and associating with God's people, and there they must abide." - NUMBERS 35:6.

In 1935 those of this Jonadab class were specially invited to attend the conventi9on of Jehovah's Witnesses in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. There, on Friday, May 31, J.F. Rutherford  gave his famous talk "The Great Multitude," in which he clearly showed that this group of Revelation 7:9 (King James Version) was the same  as the sheep of Matthew 25:33 - a dedicated group with earthly hopes.  As a harbinger of things to come, a that covention 840 new Witnesses were baptized, most of them being the great crowd."

Next time: The Second Woe - Armies of Cavalry - Two Myriads of Myriads

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