The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

The Time Hidden

The patriarchs were in possession of some knowledge concerning the restoration and the promised Seed; but when or how long before he should come was still hidden from them. As the posterity of Jacob multiplied in Egypt, and the Assyrian-Pharaoh (Isaiah 52:4)—who “knew not Joseph,” ²¹ oppressed them, their minds naturally reverted to the 400 (actually 430) years mentioned to Abraham as the period covering their afflictions and their sojourn as strangers, hoping that deliverance from these would usher in the promised inheritance. GSAM 43.1

When Moses was born, his parents saw that “he was a proper child.” ²² Light must have been given them that he was to be, under God, Israel’s deliverer from their cruel bondage. Undoubtedly this knowledge was imparted to Moses; for when, at the age of forty years, he decided fully to go with the oppressed Israelites, and suffer affliction with them rather than to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and heir to the Egyptian throne, ²³ and when he began to plead the cause of his people, and in their defense slew an Egyptian, he marveled greatly that they failed to recognize his work; “for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them.” ²⁴ GSAM 43.2

When the Lord’s time came for the Israelites to leave Egypt, they departed, and on the predicted time to a day. Exodus 12:40, 41. They could not have considered Moses as their final ruler and the seed to whom the promise was made, for he was of the tribe of Levi, and had not Jacob in his inspired prediction declared that Judah should be their ruler until the Shiloh should come? GSAM 44.1