[1] The book used elements of elaborate Bible chronology, prophetic speculation and eschatology to promote the belief that one could determine God's timetable for Jesus Christ's second coming, the rapture of the saints and the restoration of the earth to a paradise-like Eden.

[2][3] Barbour's writings were highly influential in the development of Russell's later teachings, which led to the formation of the Bible Student movement and later, Jehovah's Witnesses.

It drew on the millenarian studies of 19th-century writers in formulating a system that demonstrated remarkable biblical-mathematical "correspondencies" and modified Bishop James Ussher's chronological calculation to declare that 6,000 years of human history had ended in the autumn of 1873 and that a "morning of joy" was about to begin for humankind.

[3] It proposed that Christ's second coming began in 1874, and would be followed by a forty-year harvest period including the rapture of the Saints in 1878, leading up to God's judgment of the nations and day of wrath in 1914.

[7] The pair fell out a year later over the ransom doctrine and Russell withdrew his financial support and began to publish his own magazine, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence.