Matt. 9:37, 38 — The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.
At this very hour millions without hope are wasting and withering away, perishing in the fields of sin, and on the fields of battle, because no one has won them to Christ with the everlasting gospel. Who will go for them? There are no grounds for an “I pray thee have me excused.” Luke 14:18.
Inspiration’s appeal, “Arise and shine,’’ is to every soul. Will you not respond, Brethren? Will you not earnestly pray for yourselves and for other laborers to help gather in the precious golden grain? Or will you fail in this unforgiving responsibility, and forfeit this most lofty privilege?
The issue is of greatest gravity. Christ foreknew it would be, and in supreme concern He projected it in the crowning lesson of His parable of the vineyard. Now that time has come to the last parabolical hour, He has set the parable ablaze with light. Let us look deeper into the parable now while the light of God is shining on it:
The Parable of the Vineyard
Matt. 20:1 -7— “For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into His vineyard. And when He had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, He sent them into His vineyard. And He went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.”
“Again He went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour He went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto Him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.”
How can we know for a certainty in which hour we find ourselves, and if our own call to service has come? We can know only by establishing the time in which the last parabolic hour expires.
To do this, we must first establish the time of the first call for servants, then in turn the time of each successive call, culminating with the last. First, though, pursuant to this end, we must bring into focus the parable’s significant points:
- The “Householder,” as every Bible student knows, is the Lord Himself.
- The Laborers are His servants.
- The penny is their reward.
- His vineyard is the place where they are to labor.
- The day is parabolical — representing a period of time which is illuminated by some great light.
- The period of labor is both preceded and succeeded by a night — else there could be no “early” and no “late” part of the day.
- The Householder hires laborers at five different times.
- There are four three-hour periods.
- In each of the first three periods, only one group is hired.
- In the fourth and last period of three hours, two groups are hired.
- The agreement for a penny a day is made only with the first group.
- The other groups are to receive “whatsoever is right.”
- At the day’s end all are given the same pay — a penny, even though the last worked only an hour.
- The first were paid last; the last, first.
Now to find out in which hour we are told, “Go ye also,” we must here at the outset of this go-to-work study determine wherein begins and ends the
Time of the Parable
To gain this vital knowledge is simply to reckon with the sequentially amplifying facts that the parabolical night which preceded the parabolical day must necessarily be the period before the spiritual “Light of the world,” the Bible, came up — before the light of the Scriptures, the written Word of God, began to shine forth into the hearts of men.
For back there, it must be remembered, the will of God was transmitted, not by the Bible, but orally from father to son, just as the light of the sun at night is transmitted to the earth by the moon, rather than directly by the sun itself. For this reason it has come to be regarded as the time of oral tradition.
But the day of labor obviously represents the period in which “the Light of the world,” the Bible Itself, lightens man’s path. Thus it is that in His parable, the Master, the Lord of the vineyard, regards the Old and New Testament dispensations as the only day period of all probationary time, in which He goes to the market-place at five consecutive times to hire servants to work in His vineyard.
The truth is now become clear that the parable divides the time of salvation into two equal parts of twelve symbolical hours each — the period before the Bible (the night), and the period during the Bible (the day). Lending additional force to the fact that the parable thus divides time, Jesus declares:
John 11:9 — “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the Light of this world.”
Proceeding now, we come to another point of special significance: the first four groups were hired at consecutive intervals three parabolical hours apart; whereas the fifth, the last group, the one hired at the eleventh hour, came only two, instead of three, hours later than the fourth group, and thus only one parabolical hour before the day’s end — shortly before probation closes.
This two-hour period, from the ninth hour to the eleventh hour, is a singularity which comes as a climactic exception to the master pattern of sequential and regular three-hour intervals between calls. It obviously reveals that the last call comes unexpectedly and surprisingly within the period of the ninth-hour group. Hence there are only two parabolical hours for the ninth-hour group, and only one parabolical hour for the eleventh-hour group.
To determine the identity of the laborers participating in each of the five different calls, we necessarily begin our quest with
THE SERVANTS OF THE FIRST CALL:
We have already seen that it is the Bible, the spiritual “Light of the world,” that makes the parabolical day. We all know, moreover, that the Bible arrived with the Exodus movement; also that since the arrival, the Lord never bargained, as it were with another people, and that they were the only ones to whom He ever committed the ceremonial covenants and all their rewards and promises.
At that early hour, as God began to indite the Scriptures (as the Light that lightens the hearts of men began to rise) —
Ps. 105:8–10 — “He…remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations. Which covenant He made with Abraham, and His oath unto Isaac, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.”
Haggai 2:5 — “According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not.”
Inescapably, therefore, the first group of the parable, those who went to labor “early in the morning,” at the rising of the spiritual light, the Bible, and with whom the bargain was made to receive a penny a day, were ancient Israel as they were going out of Egypt, the time of which was early in the parabolical day.
In concord the Spirit of Prophecy declares:
“The Jews had been first called into the Lord’s vineyard….” — Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 400.
Having thus by the first call for servants solidly established the time in which the parabolical go-to-work calls started, we are now to ascertain the call-time and work-period of
THE SERVANTS OF THE SECOND CALL:
The second group, those sent at the third parabolical hour, must necessarily be the ones who were called to the work next. And they were, of course, the early Christians. Significantly enough, too, the Lord was crucified at the third hour of the day:
Mark 15:25 — And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.
And likewise, Pentecost came at the third hour of the day:
Acts 2:15 — For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is [but] the third hour of the day.
Note that there was no bargaining with the second company. They went, having confidence in the “Goodman” that they would receive whatever was right.
The call of the Gentiles was not based upon any special agreement. They responded, trusting in God’s generous promise to Israel, as it was recorded in the Scriptures. Therefore, the call of the Apostles, and the Gentiles, is represented by the “third hour call.”
Precedents for New and Distinctive Revelations
Another point of significance of which we should take note is the fact that the messages borne by these first two groups, by ancient Israel and by the early Christians, were not of a reformatory nature; they were not old, forgotten truths in process of revival and restoration; rather each was a new revelation, “meat in due season” — present Truth especially adapted fully to meet the needs of the people in their respective times.
- The former group were inspired and commissioned to teach and practice the truths of salvation as embodied in the ceremonial system.
- The latter group were inspired and commissioned to teach and practice the same immutable truths in their advanced light — advanced from typical to antitypical representation, from the ministration in the earthly tabernacle to the ministration in the heavenly one; that is, from the sacrifice of a lamb of the flock to the sacrifice of Christ Himself, the Lamb of God.
Since the messages of the first two groups (the one carried by the Exodus Movement, and the other carried by the Christians) were each in their respective times fresh from glory, that fact logically establishes itself as Divine precedent and pattern for all the messages of the parable.
Accordingly, each of the three remaining groups must likewise be entrusted with a message of new and distinctive revelation, of “meat in due season” — truth adapted especially and fully to meet the needs of God’s people at the time then present — which would have made it necessary on each occasion for another company — “laborers.”
The Protestant Reformation, being purely an endeavor to restore old, down-trodden truths, and not to reveal new, advanced ones, had no new message of its own–nothing that had not already been taught in times past. It therefore follows that the third group and message must be sought during the years following the Reformation.
As Israel and the Gentiles in the first and second calls comprised God’s church in the vineyard, then the third, fourth, and fifth calls must represent the church in the vineyard as well. The “woman” of Revelation 12:1, 6, 14, being a symbol of the church, was given the wings of an eagle to fly into the wilderness for 1260 years (538 A.D. to 1798 A.D). Therefore, while she was in the wilderness there could have been no church in the vineyard, and no call for laborers in the “vineyard.”
God, through the service of the faithful reformers, was to bring the “woman” (church) from the wilderness and prepare the way for the third call, at the sixth hour. Thus, the three last calls in the parable must have met their fulfillment after 1798, at which time the “woman” was to return from the “wilderness.”
THE SERVANTS OF THE THIRD CALL:
The only revelation of new prophetic truth, subsequent to the Reformation, is the announcement of the year in which was to begin the work of cleansing the sanctuary, primarily in behalf of the dead (based on Daniel 8:14, but not then fully understood).
Daniel 8:14 — And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.
As its announcement was made by the First-day Adventists, it necessarily follows that they were the third group of servants with a new and distinctive message. And as is well known, they started proclaiming it in the year 1833, announcing that the cleansing of the sanctuary was to commence in the year 1844. Therefore, the message by Miller was represented by the company hired at the “sixth hour.”
THE SERVANTS OF THE FOURTH CALL:
The statement, “Again He went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise,” in speaking of the two calls, not singly, or separately, as in the cases of the two preceding calls, but conjointly, shows that the “sixth hour” message and servants were to be closely related to and associated with the message and servants of the ninth hour call. Therefore, the ninth hour call must come after Miller’s work came to an end.
So it was that the sixth-hour group and message, that of the First-day Adventists, and the ninth-hour group and message, that of the Seventh-day Adventists, fused into one because the message of the former was in itself Divinely designed to bring the message of the latter to light.
Moreover, as soon as the end of the prophetic “2300 days” (Daniel 8:14) was reached in October, 1844, just then the the Seventh-day Adventists first proclaimed the Sanctuary truth and the “the investigative judgment of the dead”, bound in the first, second and third angel’s messages of Revelation 14:6–11.
Consequently, the ninth-hour group in the parable can be none other than the Seventh-day Adventists, who were then on foot to proclaim that “the judgment was set, and the books were opened” (Dan. 7:10).
THE SERVANTS OF THE FIFTH CALL:
Now that for the first time the parable is ablaze with light, none but the eye that is hopelessly gone out in dungeon darkness can fail to see distinctly that the message with which we Seventh-day Adventists were entrusted in 1844, at the ninth hour, is not the eleventh-hour message, not the message of the judgment of the living, but rather only of the judgment of the dead.
The next decisive point of truth is that the judgment of the dead was to be proclaimed to:
Rev. 10:11 — And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.
Mark the word “many.” It never means “all” (Matt. 24:14), and never means “every” (Rev. 14:6).
Since this verse of scripture foretells the expansion of the ninth-hour group and message, it will highly repay each one carefully to examine what Revelation 10:11 says on the subject. You dare not add to the Word nor subtract from It.
Then compare it with the scriptures to follow in the next article, foretelling the expansion of the eleventh-hour group and message, and you will have the whole truth in reference to the finishing of the work.
4. The Eleventh-Hour Call - The eleventh hour call is the last on record, and only an hour before sunset — millennium. The time for its deliverance to the world is shorter than any universal message ever given. Though the time is the shortest, its area over the earth’s surface is more extensive than any.… 
