James 5:3
James 5:33Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and consume your flesh like fire. You have hoarded treasure in the last days.
Used as part of the Watchtower's "last days" composite sign for 1914 — the hoarders of are read as the end-time wealthy whose accumulated capital becomes evidence of moral decline since Jesus' invisible enthronement. James's own phrase "in the last days" is treated as prophetic, applying to our era.
James says his own audience has hoarded treasure "in the last days." If the last days began in 1914, James's pastoral warning to first-century believers would have been incomprehensible to them. The unanimous New Testament witness — , , , , , , — places the last days in the first century, beginning with Christ's incarnation, ministry, and Pentecost. belongs in that catena. The "last days" are not ahead of us waiting to begin; they are the long age between the first and second comings of Christ, and the moral warning of is pastorally live for every Christian living in that whole period.