James Stuart Russell's, 'High Praise For The Parousia', is an excellent work that looks at the New Testament teaching of the second coming of Jesus Christ, and the book of Revelation tells of those events leading up to and including his coming. Luke 23, verse 28. But Jesus turning into them said. 'Daughters of Jerusalem weep not for me, but weep for your selves and for your children. 29. For behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. 20 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains fall on us and to the hills cover us. 30. For if they do these things in the green tree what shall be done in the dry? The book of Revelation is a prophecy that Jesus gave to the Apostle John before the Neuronic persecution in 66 .A.D. He was told to write and inform the seven churches in Asia about those things that were shortly about to come to pass in his day. It relates to those things leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and immediately afterwards. It told of the judgement God, styled the Day of Vengeance, on the city called Babylon for her sins and breach of the first Covenant. This Babylon was the city of Jerusalem who's people and leaders had rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and turned their back on the Mosaic covenant. The day of vengeance was day when the cup of God's wrath that was poured out on her who was called Mystery Babylon, The Mother of Harlots and this was to bring an end of rule of the Mosaic Law, bringing it to its fulfilment as Jesus had said I come not to destroy the law but to furl the Law and to bring in the New Covenant order called the law of Christ. It is impossible to understand the book of Revelation if one takes for granted that the date of its writing was after the fall and destruction by Titus, in 70 A.D. Most scholars assume the book was written about 96 A.D. 16 years after the event and so it has become impossible for them to establish a correct interpretation of the book.
About the Author: James Stuart Russell, the son of a pious Scotsman, was born at Elgin, Morayshire, on 28 November 1816. He entered King's College, University of Aberdeen, at the age of twelve and when eighteen he completed his M.A. degree. His religious decision dates from about his sixteenth year under the influence of his older brother. For a time he served in a law office. Then to prepare for a Christian ministry he studied in the Theological Halls of Edinburgh and Glasgow, ultimately finding his way to Cheshunt College. In June 1843 Russell became an assistant minister at the Congregationalist Church in Great Yarmouth before taking over as minister. In 1857 Russell transferred to the Congregational Church in Tottenham and Edmonton. While holding this position, Russell visited Belfast to observe the working of the great Irish Revival and came under its influence. On his return a similar awakening occurred in his own church. After a stay of five years in his second church, Russell was attracted to a new church in the rapidly growing Bayswater, whose chapel in Lancaster Road was built in 1866. Here he continued to serve until his years and failing health led to retirement near the end of 1888. Russell was not only an able preacher, but also a man of kindly deportment. He was gifted with winning personal characteristics, which secured for him a devoted following. His pleasant manners and genial spirit, his native humor and genuine wit, his extensive reading and wide knowledge and most retentive memory, made conversations with him agreeable and profitable. Russell's fervor stretched beyond the limits of his own pastorate. He was present, in 1843, at the formation of the Evangelical Alliance, with whose aim and operations he remained in warm and active sympathy to the last. He had an ever-deepening sense of the importance of the temperance movement, and he was the first chairman of the Congregational Total Abstinence Association. Both the National Temperance League and the United Kingdom Alliance counted him among their members. His advocacy of the good cause was in frequent demand for meetings in London and the suburbs.