The Background to the Book

(Miracle of Time)

by E Joy Paine (June 1993)

When Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, set His face to go up to Jerusalem He knew He must die there. As the Lamb of God, He was to redeem all who put their faith in Him. His hour had come, the hour at which the Son of man should be glorified. This 'hour' was not just a metaphor, or figure of speech. It was literally true that there was just one particular day and hour, and no other in all time, when the Messiah had to die.

This book seeks to bring forth some amazing discoveries in God's Word that show the wonderful and miraculous way in which God has planned and ordered time. Many of these discoveries were made by a group of men whom God called together to study the prophetic scriptures and to understand the time measurements in His Word.

The story of this call of God began in 1917 when the Balfour Declaration was announced. Arthur Eustace Ware (1885-1978), who was working at the YMCA at the time, discerned in the Declaration a step towards the return of the Jews to their Biblical Homeland, and that the time for the return of Jesus for His Church was drawing near. Some thirty years before, Dr H Grattan Guinness, an eminent astronomer and writer, and a student of Biblical prophecy, had written books suggesting that 1917 would be a key date in God's restoration of the State of Israel. Arthur Ware then began a study of the Bible in relation to its prophetic predictions for the last days and the chronology of events contained within its pages. He was to continue this study for the rest of his life. During the 1920s he held meetings at which he spoke on prophetic subjects.

The author of this book, Frank Lawrence Paine, (1906-83), the only son of a civil servant was born in Wood Green, North London, and educated at the City of London School. His chosen career in banking had to be abandoned due to severe attacks of rheumatism; instead he worked in an Automobile Association office in London. Around 1927 he began to attend Arthur Ware's meetings, and felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit as to the reality of what he was hearing. In l932 he married Ellen Kathleen Champion, the youngest daughter of a minister of the Gospel. At about this time Frank, and a small group of others, felt the call of God to leave their secular employment and join Arthur Ware in comprehensive Biblical research. The events recorded in this book will give the reader something of their history over the following years, and the actions they believed they were led to take by the Lord.

Over the years Arthur Ware was often away seeking the Lord in quiet places while the group of men also spent long hours in prayer and in the study of God's Word. Mr Ware believed that he was given keys to the understanding of the calendars that God uses in His Word. As the group studied these they were able to trace the dates of all the principal events in Scripture, right back to the first days of creation in Genesis 1.

Beneath the surface of Scripture lie extraordinary numerical designs. In the Hebrew and Greek languages each letter has a numerical value. When in 1890 Dr Ivan Panin, a Russian agnostic who was a brilliant mathematician living in the United States, was studying the Old and New Testaments, he was astonished to find the imprint of the divine authorship of the Scriptures. He discovered that, in every logical division of a passage, if the letters' numerical equivalents were substituted amazing designs based on the number seven came to light. God Himself is the Master Mathematician so it should not surprise us to learn that the Bible holds within its pages a perfect chronology that does not have to depend on secular chronological data for substantiation.

Returning to the little company whom God called aside to reveal to them His time measurements: in 1940 the men and their families moved to the Lake District. During the War Frank Paine and two others were eligible for military service. Against what might be thought of as normal worldly judgment, they discovered that their work on Biblical Chronology exempted them from conscription! That they were looking into fundamentally important matters was clearly the way their Lord saw it too: He was watching over His watchmen. The panel's decision seems to have been a clear case of the working of God, so that His work might continue and so be ready for the last days when its truths would be needed. Arthur Ware said in court to the judge: “Have you heard of the Person of The Holy Ghost?” The court went silent! As a result they were able to continue to pray and meet together as they followed the course of the war, the rise of the State of Israel, and the critical stages in the subsequent history of that little nation, all in relation to God's time programme. In the 1950s many of Arthur Ware's writings were published.

The manuscript of this book was written in the 1970s and early 1980s but never published in the author's lifetime. He believed it would be published at God's appointed time. Many faithful ministers of God are today speaking of the nearness of the return of Jesus for his Church, and showing that conditions on the earth are ripe for the rise of the Antichrist and the outpouring of God's wrath as the prophetic scriptures foretell. We trust that these pages will give added authority to such expositions.

It may be that not all our readers will have the mathematical skills to check the arithmetic for themselves. However, we hope that all will be excited to learn how perfectly Jesus fulfilled the Levitical Feasts of the Lord now that the true dates of His birth, death and resurrection have been restored. They will also learn how all the events of the restoration of Israel have been in accordance with God's perfect plan and timing.

My father, who was profoundly deaf by the time of his death (at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of November, the eleventh month, in1983!), was, owing to his affliction, often shut away from the conversation going on around him but he spent hours in the Bible and communing with the Lord over the wonders of His time measurements.

I once went into his room while he was resting on his bed, near the end of his life, to see his face aglow and to hear his lips pouring out worship to God in unknown tongues. He would have no other desire than that, with the distribution of this book, the Lord he loved and served from when he was a young man, should have all the glory. We pray it shall indeed be so.