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Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Nelson Barbour book ...


To buy our biography of Nelson Barbour, click on the image to the left of your screen. It will take you to the sales page.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Update of Sorts




            We’ve revised our outline, dividing a chapter finished in rough draft in two and enlarging the new chapter. This is difficult writing, so you won’t see much from me for a while. We’re raising issues that some will find ‘sensitive.’ And we’re incorporating material we intended for volume three, shortening the discussion to a few paragraphs.
            Our goal is to clarify the nature of the earliest congregations and fellowships. Most groups were small fellowships, a few individuals who met together, often without clear leadership. We will explore how Watch Tower adherents viewed Russell before 1894. Research has led us in a new direction; or I should say it has taken us into a wider field.
            If you want to help, scour the letters in the early issues of Zion’s Watch Tower of comments about Russell or praise for the Tower and Russell’s other writings – Millennial Dawn, Food for Thinking Christians, Old Theology Quarterly, etc.
            It is essential that we be absolutely accurate. If you can help, that would be stellar.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

AT THE MOVIES


by Jerome

(Republished and updated from Blog 2)

The Bible Students embraced the new medium of motion pictures to spread their message. This article is about six examples that were released between 1914-1922. Some of this information has already been presented in more detail on this blog in years gone by, but this will present a brief overview and give links to where a modern viewer can see in whole or part, five of the six examples.


Photodrama of Creation

This approximately eight hour production, normally shown in four parts on consecutive weeks or evenings, will require no introduction to readers here.

There are a number of places on YouTube where you can watch it, including some surviving films of CTR in action. Sound was on disc so CTR mimed to the recordings, not always with complete success. There are also a number of places where you can buy a DVD set of the production. However, it must be noted that all the work of restoration over the last 40 years has really been performed by one person, Brian K. This has been a labor of love and the work is still ongoing, and an even better version in Blue-Ray will appear in due course.

Unfortunately, because the source material is out of copyright, others have felt no qualms about copying earlier restorations (perhaps from inferior VHS videos) and marketing them commercially. Leaving aside the ethics of this, if you want the very best version possible from surviving material, you really need to obtain one that bears Brian’s name.

Here is a link to one of the films of CTR.



Restitution - Mena Film Company

This writer plans to do a whole article on just this film and its history one day. But in brief, the company was put together by Bible Students in 1917. It had no direct connection with the Watch Tower Society, although the original Photodrama was briefly sold to Mena by the Society before everyone thought better of the deal. Unlike the Photodrama this was commercially produced, and needed to be shown to paying audiences in a commercial setting to succeed. By all accounts, it didn’t. It was shown to a non-paying audience at an IBSA convention in Seattle in July 1918, but then with the difficulties of the day - the Society directors jailed, others leaving association with the IBSA - it sank. It was reissued commercially under a new title The Conquering Christ and by the end of the 1920s one of the former Mena directors, Leslie Jones, was selling off 16mm prints in seven minute segments as a serial, now rebranded as Redemption. Just one of those segments has recently been rediscovered.

The sequence is Herod’s plans to massacre the innocents. While still primitive by modern day standards, film technique had advanced considerably since the Photodrama of Creation. The director, who obligingly also cast himself as Jesus Christ, had worked with D W Griffith on his epic Intolerance.

But enough of such details for perhaps another time. Here is the clip that only recently has been put on YouTube.



Kinemo

Moving forward from 1918, we come to Kinemo. The Society produced a series of three films on the soon to be doomed 17.5mm gauge, and sold them to Watch Tower readers and the public in general via the Kinemo Company. Three were produced. The history and description of this venture, with its ups and downs, has been described in past articles on this blog and can be checked there. They were filmed over 1920-21 but not sold to the public until the fall of 1922.

Here are links to all three films. The Imperial Valley one is missing a bit of footage, the other two appear complete. All three films include footage of J F Rutherford. Perhaps the most entertaining is the end of the pyramid film. It must have been like a furnace inside the Great Pyramid, and JFR apparently ventured inside wearing a three-piece suit. Watch him as he leaves! (15:28 on the video)







Cedar Point

One final film completes this article, but alas, has not come to light. The Kinemo system of 17.5 mm film offered a film from the 1922 Cedar Point Ohio convention. The panoramic view of the audience out of doors hearing J F Rutherford speak includes a film crew. Here is a close-up from that photograph.




The subsequent films were offered for sale in the New Era Enterprise newspaper.




The same paper (October 31, 1922) also mentioned that the original Kinemo films had been shown on a large screen at the Cedar Point convention, along with footage of “the Bible House and other organization buildings and offices in Brooklyn, the Bethel Home, etc. the printing and binding of booklets and pamphlets etc.”

I know for certain that the modern Watchtower Society has no copies of any of this material, and I suspect had never heard of it until it was brought to their attention. While it would be silent footage, it would of great historical interest to see it. That is, of course, if it still exists.


Come on now. Anyone out there?


The Changing Faces of the French Watch Tower


by Franco

The first issue of the French Watch Tower was printed in October 1903 and was identical to the first issue in Italian. It was called:

"LE PHARE DE LA TOUR DE SION
Messager de la Présence de Christ "


The second number was printed in January 1904 and was thereafter published monthly.  (The Italian edition remained a quarterly).


From the January 1905 issue an "et" was added before "Messager" and "LE" was removed before "PHARE."   It now became:

"PHARE DE LA TOUR DE SION
et
Messager de la Présence de Christ "


This title remained until June 1909. Then in July 1909 it became:

"TOUR DE GARDE
et
Messager de la Présence de Christ "

This had 2/3 different covers. This title was used until December 1912.



In January 1913 the magazine changed its cover again and before the title was added a "LA." It was now called:

"LA TOUR DE GARDE
et
Messager de la prèsence de Christ"

This is the cover design that will be familiar to most readers.



(edited by Jerome)


Wednesday, September 6, 2017

French Watch Tower



Prospectus


(previously on Blog 2)


A 1904 edition of Divine Plan of the Ages with the prospectus for all six volumes bound as the covers.