Alexander H. Macmillan, who had been baptized in September 1900, later recalled: “A few of us seriously thought we were going to heaven during the first week of that October.”a In fact, recalling the morning that Russell announced the end of the Gentile Times, Macmillan admitted: “We were highly excited and I would not have been surprised if at that moment we had just started up, that becoming the signal to begin ascending heavenward—but of course there was nothing like that.”

[Box on page 62]

“Some of Us Had Been a Bit Too Hasty”

As October 1914 approached, some of the Bible Students expected that at the end of the Gentile Times they, as spirit-anointed Christians, would receive their heavenly reward. Illustrating this is an incident that took place at a convention of the Bible Students in Saratoga Springs, New York, September 27-30, 1914. A. H. Macmillan, who had been baptized 14 years earlier, gave a discourse on Wednesday, September 30. In it he stated: “This is probably the last public address I shall ever deliver because we shall be going home [to heaven] soon.”

However, two days later (on Friday, October 2), Macmillan came in for some good-natured teasing back in Brooklyn, where the conventioners were to reconvene. From his seat at the head of the table, C. T. Russell announced: “We are going to make some changes in the program for Sunday [October 4]. At 10:30 Sunday morning Brother Macmillan will give us an address.” The response? Macmillan later wrote: “Everybody laughed heartily, recalling what I had said on Wednesday at Saratoga Springs—my ‘last public address’!”

“Well,” Macmillan continued, “then I had to get busy to find something to say. I found Psalm 74:9, ‘We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.’ Now that was different. In that talk I tried to show the friends that perhaps some of us had been a bit too hasty in thinking that we were going to heaven right away, and the thing for us to do would be to keep busy in the Lord’s service until he determined when any of his approved servants would be taken home to heaven.”