OUT 0F THE EAST

FRANK L. PAINE

The following amazing account of the coming of Jesus to make His abode, as it were, with an American lady for a period of three months, being seen by her as a never-ceasing vision in all the ins and outs of daily life, has been read by numberless American Christians over recent years, and has been given by her in her testimony all over the United States. Catherine Marshall has told the record of this testimony, in part, in her well-known book: “Something More".

As this visitation of the Lord was found to have a direct, relationship to the Bible's chronology - in other words, to have come exactly at "the appointed time" - we obtained permission from Virginia Lively, and from Guideposts Magazine to use the article (Copyright, by Guideposts Associates Inc., Carmel, New York 10512) for private circulation.

The writer's object is to reveal that the impossible - the thing that none would accept could possibly take place! – HAS ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

The Lord has accomplished two things by His Coming "out of the east" at the time and in the manner described in this article.

He would first appear and make Himself known to one person, taken to represent His whole Church, and then later reveal that by His Spirit He was indwelling other members of His Body. But in a vision given in 1971 He made it clear that His coming was actually as "the Bridegroom" and it is this that the Bible's perfect chronology has so fully confirmed.

But let it be understood that the First Advent of Jesus in Bethlehem was of a very private order - only a small handful of shepherds saw and heard the supernatural side of the matter when the angels appeared at night - just so, the beginnings of His Second Advent appear to have been a very private matter, impossible to speak about at first.

For this reason it seems right that Mrs. Lively's account in her own words should be read and considered before any conclusions are drawn about the timing of it all.

Three Months In His Presence

by VIRGINIA LIVELY

WHEN friends ask how I first discovered that my hands have been given a ministry of healing, I'm sure they don't expect to hear the kind of story which I am about to set down. Apparently the fact that I am a suburban housewife who saves grocery stamps and has to watch her weight seems a poor beginning to a story of divine intervention.

It started the year my father entered the tuberculosis sanatorium in Tampa. We had long since given up hope. He was too bad for an operation and we had seen the X-rays. The last thing on earth that would have occurred to any of us - Mother or my sister or me - was to ask God to step in and change medical facts.

And yet my husband Edward and I were active church members. As a banker, Ed was head of fundraising, our two children went to Sunday school and I belonged to all the groups. We were, in short, typical, civic-minded churchgoers. That is why the tears, when they began, caused Ed and me so much embarrassment.

It was in October, driving home from a PTA meeting, that I suddenly began to cry. I was in charge of the Halloween Carnival that year, and at the meeting there had been some criticism of the plans. When I was still crying at bedtime, Ed put his arms around me and said:

"Honey, all the carnivals in the world aren't that important."

But it wasn't the carnival. Even as I cried I knew that these tears were for something far bigger. I cried myself to sleep and in the morning as soon as I opened my eyes the tears started again. I choked them back while I fixed breakfast. But as soon as Ed and the children left, the tears burst out again.

This incredible state of affairs lasted four days. I took to wearing dark glasses even in the house so that the family would not guess how constantly I was crying. I was sure I was having a nervous breakdown.

It was on the morning of the fourth day, after Ed and the children had left, that a curious change took place. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. Yet, all at once there was power in the air around me. The atmosphere itself seemed to hum and crackle as though I stood in the centre of a vast electric storm. As I try to put it into words it sounds fantastic, but at the time there was no sense that something beyond the possible was taking place.

I had sunk into the high-backed chair in the living room when suddenly through the window I saw the eastern horizon. Trees and houses stood between me and it, but I seemed to see right beyond to the place where earth and sky came together. And there, where they met, was a ball of light.

This light was moving, travelling toward me with incredible speed. It appeared white, yet from it poured all the colours I had ever seen.

And then it was beside me. Although it seemed impossible that anything with such energy could hold still, it took a position at my right shoulder and there it stayed. And as I stared I started to smile. I smiled because He was smiling at me and I now saw that it was not a light, but a face.

How can I put into words the most beautiful countenance I have ever seen? "He is perfect" was the first thought that came. His forehead was high, His eyes exceptionally large. But I could never fix the colour of His eyes any more than I could the colour of the sea.

More, much more, than individual features was the overwhelming impression of life - unhampered life, life so brimming over with power and freedom that all living things I had seen till that moment seemed lumps of clay by comparison.

Not for a moment did I hesitate to call this Life at my side “Jesus”. And two things about Him struck me most. The first was His humour. I was astonished to see Him often break into outright laughter. And the second was His utter lack of condemnation. That He knew me down to my very marrow - knew all the stupid, cruel, silly things I had ever done - I realized at once. But I also saw that none of these things, or anything I would ever do, could alter the absolute caring, the unconditional love, that I saw in those eyes.

I could not grasp it. It was too immense a fact. I felt that if I gazed at Him for a thousand years I could not realize it all.

I did not have a thousand years; I had three months. For as long as that, the face of Jesus stayed before me, never fading, never withdrawing. Many times I tried to tell someone else what I saw but the words would never come. And meanwhile I carried on with my tasks - meals and shopping and the PTA with its carnival - but effortlessly, scarcely knowing I was doing them, so fixed were my thoughts on Him.

At the same time, I had never seemed so aware of other people. My husband, especially. How this was possible when my mind was full of Him alone, I don't know, but it was true. Far from feeling that a third person had entered our marriage, I felt that Christ was the marriage, as though all along He had been the force drawing us together.

And the Bible! All at once I couldn't read enough of it. It was like tearing open a letter from someone who had known this Presence as a flesh and blood person, full of just the kind of specific details I longed to hear. Certain passages in particular had a strange effect on me: when the Bible described Jesus healing someone, the actual print on the page seemed to burn. The hand that touched it would tingle as if I had touched an electric current.

And then one afternoon before the children got home, I was sitting, just looking at Him, when all of a sudden in a patch of sunlight on the wall appeared the X-ray of my father's chest. It was all sear tissue and cavities. Then as I watched a white mist moved slowly up the wall. When it passed the diseased tissue, there appeared on my wall a picture of a healthy lung.

"Then Dad's well!" I said aloud, and at that the Person at my side burst into peal after peal of joyous laughter which said that wholeness was always God's way.

I thought my heart would burst as I waited for next Wednesday’s X-ray. I enjoyed the scene in my mind again and again, imagining the ring of the telephone and Mother's voice stammering with excitement, “Darling . . . the most amazing . . . the most glorious . . . “

But when Mother called, her voice was flat. “The most annoying thing, Virginia. They got the slides mixed up! Poor Dad's got to go back for X-rays tomorrow. Why, they sent down pictures of someone who never even had TB . . . !”

But, of course, the X-rays next day showed no sign of disease either; Dad was healed and lived out his long life in thanksgiving to God.

And it was Dad's healing that convinced me I must try to describe the indescribable that had happened to me. I went to an elderly pastor whom I had known a long time. To my astonishment he understood me at once. He gave me some books which described fairly similar things.

Then he said the words I have wished unsaid so many times. "Don't be surprised, Virginia, if the vision fades after a time. They usually do, you know."

"Fade!" I thought, as I drove home with that joyous Presence beside me. "Oh, it can't, it mustn't!" For the first time in the whole incredible experience my attention veered from Him to myself. And in that instant the vision was diminished, actually disappeared for a second or two, though right away the radiant face was beside me again.

But the damage was done. The seed of self-concern was sown. The bright Presence would sometimes be missing for an hour or more. The more worried I got, the more self-centred I grew. What have I done? What will I do without Him?   When He did return there would be no accusation in His eyes, just a tremendous compassion as though He realized how difficult it had become for me to see Him at all.

At last all that was left of this experience was the strange tingling in my hands as I read the Bible Stories of healing. One day I was visiting a friend in the hospital. She was haemorrhaging and in pain. On an impulse I reached out and touched her. My hand began to burn just as it did during the Bible reading. My friend gave a little sigh of comfort and fell asleep. When the doctor examined her, he found no haemorrhaging.

Over the next eight years there were dozens, scores of experiences of this kind, all as inexplicable as the first. And yet for me they were still years of emptiness and waiting. “I will always be with your” He had told me when I last saw Him.

"But how will I know if I can't see you?" I called to Him, for He had seemed so far away.

"You will see Me," He said, and then He was gone.

But the years went by and the vision had not come back. And then one day, while speaking to a church group, I saw those love-lit eyes smiling once again into mine. I looked again. The eyes belonged to a lady in the second row. Suddenly the room was full of Him; He was in the eyes of everyone in the room. “You will see Me . . .” He had said.

I used to wonder what would have happened if the old pastor had never spoken of the vision fading. Might I have had it for ever? I think not. I think that the days when Jesus was real to my eyes were the days of the "childhood" of my faith, the joyous, effortless time of discovery. But I do not think He lets it stay that way for long.

He didn't for His first disciples, He doesn't for us today. He gives us a glimpse only. Perhaps He let me look so long because I am slow to learn. But, finally, He takes away all sensory clues. He is bigger than our eyes and ears can make Him, so He gives us instead the eyes of faith, and all mankind in which to discover His face.

***

I read this account by Mrs. Lively in an old Guideposts Magazine, in the summer of 1970, but it was only of passing interest for me, as it wasn't dated.

It appeared to be a true testimony, and I believe I dimly saw then that if Jesus had come, literally “out of the blue”, to a person who was not even watching for Him, or seeking Him, then there must be some deeper reason why He came.

He must have viewed her as a type or representative, of the Church as a whole, I felt, and made Himself known to her in this very vivid way as a sort of beginning of His drawing near as the “Bridegroom” of Matthew 25, and remained with her long enough to prove that this vision of Himself was no fleeting glimpse, such as had occasionally been granted to others, when He manifested Himself perhaps for an hour or so.

What was so obvious was that He didn't go away again. He came to stay! That was proved by the fact that some eight years later He manifested Himself again - but this time in other members of His Body, as Virginia says, "The room was full of Him; He was in the eyes of everyone in the room." And she recalled that she had heard Him say, "You will see Me…”

Yes, it did seem that Jesus had really come to His Church in this simple way. He could not come visibly to ALL the members of His Body, either in America or any other country, and so He had come to one woman, representing all, and later showed that by the indwelling of His Spirit, He would take His place, and increasingly fill His “temple” as a whole - that is, what He calls (in John 2;21) “the temple of His body.”

Well, the whole matter soon passed, to the back of my mind, and I gave myself to the work which had called us to America. This was to condense in a brief manuscript the results of nearly forty years of research into that most neglected side of the Bible - the true timing of its history, from Adam to the present hour.

A small group had been called to engage in this in the early1930s, and what had impressed us really from the first was that no chronologers had ever been able to solve the many difficulties and seeming contradictions with which the Scriptures abound, when they are approached by the puny mind of mortal man.

It was amazing to see how perfectly God had shielded and guarded the actual truth as to time in the Bible from any possibility of man finding it out, that is, apart from the direct guidance and revelation of the Holy Spirit. In the 1920s a few of us - we had been six men - had been brought together to begin to learn how God measured time throughout Scripture. We found it necessary to read widely and see where others who had written on the subject had missed the mark, and. in the end, that is, by the middle of the 1930s, we had had to unlearn practically everything that man had brought forward. This was mainly because each new writer was seen to be in disagreement with the others - they had all been relying on their own ability to unravel the deep things of God!

To illustrate - only recently a Sudanese researcher sent me a list of 75 different estimates chronologers, since the Reformation, had made of the number of years between the Exodus and the Crucifixion of Christ. The earliest of these dated the Exodus prior to 1700 B. C., and the latest around 1100 B.C. - a difference of some 600 years! If anything was needed to prove how hopelessly inadequate the human mind is to tackle such a problem, it surely was this.

For when God has said (in Proverbs 25, 2) "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing . . . the heaven for height, and the earth for depth," whatever hope has man, unaided, of searching it out? However, Solomon did go on to say, 'the honour of kings is to search out a matter.," and continued, "and the heart of kings is unsearchable." Evidently, searching the deep things of God is a matter of the heart first, and the mind afterwards.

It would be quite impossible now in these few pages to go into the detail of how the Most High God brought to light the absolutely perfect chronology of His Word in those far-off days of the 1930s,but that He did do so will be apparent to everyone who follows this narrative through with an open mind. For we intend to say enough to reveal how God led us to discern from the Bible the exact day and date of the Coming of Jesus to Virginia Lively, when He appeared as a brilliant light travelling toward her “out of the east.”

To say this may sound fantastic, but, after all, we had been called to watch the movements of the Almighty as He first timed the liberation of the Holy Land from the Turks in 1917, and then dealt with the people of Israel in what He calls His “strange work”, as He passed them through the fires of the Second World War. And we had learnt that every Divine measurement linking the Old and New Testaments with events in our world of today was accurate TO THE DAY, and sometimes to the very hour. We might ask, how could it possibly be otherwise? And so we had learnt to look for absolute perfection in the Bible's time keeping, and looking for it, we found it!

Oh, Hallelujah! God has, indeed, magnified His Word above all His Name" (Psalm 138, 2). He does not intend to let this poor drug-sodden and Sodomite civilization sink into the throes of fiery judgment without giving its inhabitants a chance at least of knowing that His Word is provably "true from the beginning."

When one remembers how many millions of thinking men and women in the Western world have been taught as children to regard the Bible as no more than an interesting piece of ancient literature, founded upon myths and legends, and, of course, thoroughly at variance with the findings of true science, one has the answer as to why we find our civilization precisely as it is today.

Well, it was these considerations and many others which had impelled me to start writing in 1968, and in 1970 the call came to go to Washington, and then Florida, where I happened to read Virginia Lively's testimony. As the year progressed we engaged in occasional ministry, but mainly concentrated on continuing the manuscript which I called, "My Heart Waketh." Others became interested, and one or two steps were taken about securing a publisher; but it was clear to me that the world was gradually drawing on towards a super crisis, when the facts that had been revealed to us in secret would have to be, in the words of Jesus, put on a lampstand, so as to give light to all that are in the house" (Matthew 5;15). We have always borne in mind the statement in Habakkuk 2; 3, concerning the end-time “vision”, that it would not appear until a “time” appointed by God, and that it would certainly “tarry”, and have to be waited for.

So we passed through 1970 and in the autumn of 1971 took meetings in small house-groups, at times using a large diagram Chart when speaking on the outline of the Bible's chronology.

We were nearing the end of our stay in the U. S., but on Oct.29th returned to a house-meeting where I had previously preached and were amazed at a spontaneous burst of worship and praise which arose to God that He should have allowed the actual date of the Birth of His Son to come to light. This was on the very anniversary of the Nativity - October 29th, 1 B. C. - and we were thrilled that the Holy Ghost had Himself borne witness in this way.

It was just two days after this when we heard that Virginia Lively would be speaking that same evening at the Episcopalian cathedral in Jacksonville, so we at once decided to attend. The meeting was packed mainly with Spirit-filled Christians who listened with rapt attention as Mrs. Lively told of the Coming of Jesus out of the east, and described in fuller detail the experience we have already heard. We went again the next evening when she spoke beautifully on the relationship of husbands and wives, taking Christ and the Church as our pattern, and it was then that I decided I must find out the date of her experience, so after the meeting I pressed through the crowd surrounding her at the front.

"Can you tell me the year when Jesus came to you?" I asked. “Oh,” she said I “It was 1950, twenty-one years ago.”

I thought back, and immediately light began to dawn as to the actual meaning of this unique visitation of Jesus, coming out of the east like a brilliant light, so as to make a protracted stay with this lady in order that she might get to know Him personally as a constant companion in vision over those three whole months.

THE SEVEN TIMES “888” YEARS OF “JESUS” END

Early in our research we had discovered a hidden “Calendar" of 354-day years, running right through the Bible's chronological structure and reaching completion in the Autumn of 1950. We had called it the "Calendar of the Messiah."

All time from Creation to the Exodus we found was perfectly reckoned in these years of 354 days, and we were given to see the reason for this. This calendar registered many times in Old Testament history and did not change when Israel had to adopt a soli-lunar reckoning after the Exodus, so as to keep their Passovers in the Spring season.

Also we had learnt the number of the Wonderful Name of JESUS; for if, as we are told in Revelation 13; 17 & 18, it is “wisdom” to be able to “count the number” of “the name of the beast” - which is “666” - how much more necessary is it for us to be able to count the number of the Name of Jesus? In Greek this is IESOUS, and the numerical value of these letters is “888”, and their signification is not, like 666 -man deifying himself, like the coming antichrist - but MAN IN RESURRECTION.

So the question with us in this small company of researchers in England was "How would God mark the close of this great calendar of 7 times 888 years (2,616 X 354 days) from the beginning which we knew was in March, 4075 B. C.11”? We expected JESUS to manifest, Himself in some way to us, seeing that we had watched for Him to come for nearly thirty years. But we were disappointed!

In 1971 twenty-one years had passed, but when I learnt that in 1950 Jesus HAD, not just manifested Himself as a passing Vision jn America, but had actually revealed Himself daily to Virginia Lively for some three months, I knew in spirit that this “coming” out of the east was what we had missed in England.

We had no further opportunity of contact with Mrs. Lively before we left America, some ten days after the Cathedral meetings, and it was to be over three years before I was to learn the amazing significance of a vision granted to a woman in the Cathedral on the day when I contacted Virginia and was told that the year had been 1950.

THE FOUR DAYS OF WEEPING HOLD A CLUE

It was, of course, absolutely vital to discover the actual date of the Coming of Jesus, as we knew this could not possibly be at some odd point of time. Why, indeed, had we been given to know with perfect accuracy every main date in the Bible's chain of time right through from Genesis to the present day - so as to be able to reveal the true outline of the Life of Jesus and of the Gospel era and the real date of His death and resurrection - unless now, at the end, the Bible's Chronology proved itself astronomically accurate beyond question?

Providentially, we had a very close friend in Jacksonville who knew Virginia personally, and she had previously stayed with him and his wife. So, back in England, I was able to keep in touch and soon heard that Mrs. Lively had been very interested in our correspondence and had read into my manuscript, but that she had actually forgotten the date in October, 1950, when Jesus had come. I, therefore, sought the Lord and soon enlightenment began to dawn.

It was those “four days” of weeping that were impressed upon me and I knew that in some way they must be connected with the end of the great FOUR DAYS of “a thousand years” which we had, seen brought the Nation of Israel to life in 1948.

We considered again the “FOUR DAYS” of the death of Lazarus in John 11, at the end of which “Jesus wept,” and our thoughts went back to the Second World War. In 1942 we had been shown that we must wait for three more years while God performed His “strange work” with the Nations of Christendom and with Israel, but when 1945 came we were thrilled, indeed, to see the great span of FOUR THOUSAND YEARS ("with the Lord" just "FOUR DAYS" - see II Peter 3; 8) exactly ending from Abram's initial entry into Canaan in 2,056 B- C. Hallelujahl The Jews of Europe were saved from annihilation at the hands of Hitler.

But it was three more years that we had to wait until on May 15th, 1948, "Israel' suddenly came to nationhood in their own land, and to our exceeding joy we were shown that this, to the day, was "FOUR GREAT DAYS" (4,000 Julian solar years) from the Covenant God made with Abram 2,053 B. C. (see Genesis 15).

We had heard those words again: “Lazarus, come forth", and had seen the Nation rise; albeit, like Lazarus, "bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and with the "blindness" (signified by "the napkin") still upon them. We knew Jesus had done no more - for it was to others He said, "Loose him, and let him go."

What a type we had seen in those "four hundred years" of Genesis 15; 13, which ended with the miniature Exodus from Egypt; but what a meaning in Abram's “deep sleep” and the “horror of great darkness” which fell upon him. And in verse 17 – “it was dark, and behold a smoking furnace, and a lamp of fire…”

All this of course pictured Israel's deliverance from “the iron furnace” of Egypt, but we had watched the “horror of great darkness” pass over the Jewish world for three years, as the third part of their whole world population was taken away, between 1942 and 1945. In Egypt there had been “three days” of a “darkness which could be felt”, but now the great “exodus” had come. We remembered the “smoking furnaces” of Germany and Poland.

Yes, it had been a great day when Britain, which had proved herself so unworthy to administer the Palestine Mandate, eventually had to give it up and when America on the same night when Israel became a Nation at once granted de facto recognition to the new-born State.

Was this the reason, then, why Jesus couldn't come to Britain as we had been expecting, and had manifested Himself in America instead? But when did He come - what day? This great question had to be answered.

We had but to ask, and instruction was given. “Measure 888 days forward from May 15th, 1948.” The total was reached on OCTOBER 19TH, 1950, and with many confirmatory measurements and time patterns which we need not go into, we knew at once that this must have been the day when Jesus, Whose number is “888”, came out of the east to the side of the American lady.

I at once contacted my friends in Jacksonville and they drove down to Southern Florida and went over the facts with her and told her the date which she was then able to remember clearly, and which was confirmed to her by the Holy Spirit.

Why then was this date of October 19th, 1950, so important, and why was God bringing it to light? The answer to this has only come slowly, but it was not long before we were led to measure back to the first appearance of Jesus in the Temple in I B. C. - just "forty days" after His Birth on October 29th.

THE PROPHECY OF SIMEON TO THE VIRGIN MOTHER

It was on December 8th that Joseph and the Virgin Mary brought the Child Jesus into the Temple to present Him to the Lord. And it was then that Simeon made this amazing prophecy which we have seen wondrously fulfilled in our own day. He said to the Virgin,

"Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for A SIGN which shall be spoken against".

The exact number of days between December 8th, 1 B.C. and May 15th,1948, that is, 711,288, was found to be precisely 801 times 888 days.

(For two days I remember being vaguely disappointed that it had not turned out to be “800” times 888, until the Lord showed me that ALPHA (A) = 1, and OMEGA is 800 in the Greek Alphabet.)

So the Bible's perfect chronology reveals that JESUS, Who is the "Beginning and the Ending" ALPHA AND OMEGA, was the One Who raised up the State of Israel in 1948, at the end of the great FOUR DAYS or 4,000 years from the Lord's Covenant with Abram.

THE TWO DAYS AND THE NINE HOURS OF DEATH

The total of 711,288 days has yet a further meaning. It is composed of 708,000 days, which is 2,000 years of 354 days and 3,288 days, which is 9 solar years, totalling 711,288 days.

These 2,000 years and 9 years express the TWO DAYS and NINE HOURS from “3pm” on the Friday to “Midnight” on the Sunday, when Jesus rose from the dead.

We knew that there was more to follow, but rejoiced to see those last “888” days, following the 801 X 888 from the prophecy concerning Jesus to His Virgin mother, lead directly to His Coming to Virginia Lively (a 'lively virgin", as her name would signify - and she even told me her middle name was "Christine"') How wonderful are God’s ways.

FROM HIS ASCENSION TO HIS RETURN IN 1950

With great expectations we measured the days between June 13th, A. D. 33, when Jesus had ascended into the heavens from Bethany, to the day when He returned out of those heavens in October, 1950. The total was exactly 700,299 days which is 701 times “999” days.