What to Expect …
We do not
have a release date for volume two of this work. If one measures by our current
outline, it’s about half complete. Ultimately, this is not a good measure.
Experience has taught us that we will stumble into the hidden closets and
passages of history. This will force us to revise existing work and perhaps to
add new chapters. But in a broad way I can tell you what to expect.
For readers
of Zion’s Watch Tower the years from 1879 to 1887 were tumultuous. They
set the course for a new religious movement for decades. With some exceptions,
volume two is limited to these years. Zion’s Watch Tower was launched.
Russell and his associates traveled, visiting small groups, preaching their
message and trying to sway their hearers to their point of view. A Year Book
history asserts the formation of congregations. We will tell you what these
groups were like. In most cases, they were not at all like what the Year
Book suggested.
The dispute
of the nature of salvation, ransom, and atonement continued. It intensified as
the movement fragmented. Paton, A. D. Jones, and others left. Each
fragmentation has the unexpected effect of unifying what remained. Issues were
openly debated between key periodicals.
With Russell’s blessing, Jones
started Zion ’s Day Star, soon to be
renamed simply Day Star. Within a short time Jones was swayed by Josephite belief,
the claim that Jesus was the biological son of Joseph. Jones fell into wealth,
squandered it, and then turned to fraud to recoup.
W. Conley drifted into the
Faith-Cure movement, becoming entangled with a rogue Christian and Missionary
Alliance clergyman who seduced and molested the women connected with Conley’s
Faith-Cure home. Conley had other issues. We tell you what they were and how
they affected his relationship with Russell.
We consider early interest,
focusing on new evangelists, their work, and the push to alter Russell’s views
in key areas. We tell you of new doctrinal developments, a key one being the
change from belief in a two-stage advent to a belief in a totally invisible
advent. L. A. Allen played an important role in this. As far as I know, no-one
has ever documented this.
We explore the publication of Food
for Thinking Christians. There is a hugely unexplored story here. While this
did not open the “foreign field” (There was prior interest in Canada ,
the United Kingdom ,
and France ), it
expanded if largely. We tell you in detail about the early work in the UK ,
Canada , China ,
Liberia and
elsewhere. We explore the roots of foreign language work within the United
States . These chapters restore names and
biographies to people long forgotten. They give, we think, a clearer insight
into the nature and cohesiveness of the earliest Watch
Tower adherents.
We tell you about their
expectations for 1881. Watch Tower
readers were neither the first nor the only group to focus on 1881 as a year of
prophetic significance. You will see that among Watch
Tower readers expectations
differed. The 1881 failure was disastrous for Barbour. It shook Jones loose
from his spiritual moorings. Russell promulgated a new doctrine which some
readers found disturbing.
This period is one of developing
self view. We’ve detailed some of that in this volume. We explore it more fully
when we chronicle the division between Russell and Paton.
We tell you about the publication
of Plan of the Ages, exploring Maria Russell’s claim to joint-authorship. We
tell you about the first booklets and tracts. We explore the influence of Smith-Warleigh.
We present a biography of one of Russell’s early associates, an English writer.
The last chapter, as we have it in
our outline now, is a consideration of the first congregations. We explore
their nature and development. We tell you something of the individuals who
helped found them. This is an interesting story that takes us to a ship’s
captain, a man who fled a murder charge to become a newspaper editor, and
others equally colorful.
You will find a more complex, more
interesting story than is usually told. Personally, I like volume two. I think
this volume is important for the background it presents, the clearer picture of
Russell’s youth and of those who influenced him. But the story we tell in
volume two explains the nature of the movement started with the publication of Zion’s
Watch Tower, and that is the heart of this history.
1 comment:
I am still waiting for volume one. To all practical purposes, I think, I will be one of the first buyers. Surely the first Italian.
But I am already curious to follow you in the next steps.
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