Addition to my Introductory Essay

Up for on-point comments.

            Some, both inside and outside the Watchtower movement, suggest that Russell’s chronological system is Adventist. These are the ‘facts’ usually presented, but that’s not what the record shows. Here is what Russell and his contemporaries tell us:

            Russell was familiar with preaching on prophecies before he met Jonas Wendell, a “Second Adventist” preacher in 1869. Henry Moore, the pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church, the church Russell joined as a lad, was a student of the prophecies and preached on them. He left behind at least one printed sermon on the subject. Others within Russell’s early acquaintance in the Calvinist community also promoted prophetic speculation. Calvinists in Pittsburgh republished Archibald Mason’s speculations and date setting and remained interested long after Mason’s predictions failed. Others among non-Adventist millenarians speculated about the prophetic numbers found in the Bible. American expositors had done so at least from early in the 18^th Century. So Wendell’s preaching was not totally surprising to him. Wendell’s initial sermons were summarized in the Pittsburgh newspapers. And on that basis Russell would not be surprised by their content.

            But what did Russell actually hear from Wendell in 1869? A careful reading of what Russell wrote on the matter suggests that he was most impressed with Wendell’s comments on predestination and hell-fire doctrine. Russell does not mention prophetic content, except in a later reference. But we know what Wendell preached in 1869. Though Wendell started preaching about 1874 early the next year, in 1869 he was pointing to that year as the probable end ‘to all things mundane.’ He tells us this in a World’s Crisis article. The 1869 speculation derived from Aaron Kinne, a Congregationalist clergyman who wrote in the 1830s. W. C. Thruman resurrected it, claiming originality for the ‘research,’ but reading his Sealed Book Opened, it becomes evident that he borrowed from Kinne. Thurman, a Brethren clergyman, became the darling of Second Adventists, particularly Advent Christians, and many of them adopted the 1869 speculation. What Russell first heard from Wendell was the last gasp of this belief. Then the next year he heard Wendell’s proofs that 1873 was the end of the age when the world would be consumed in fire. [I see no need to footnote this. You will find it explained in detail in the first two books in this series.]

            Evidence suggests Russell’s reaction. By 1871 Russell was reading widely in prophetic literature. He was introduced to Storrs, Dunn, Smith-Warleigh and a host of other Age-to-Come non-Adventist writers and to Seiss, a Lutheran, and to Richard Shimeall, a Presbyterian writer. From them he came to restitution doctrine, the belief that Christ came to restore paradise to the earth, not burn it up. And he came to believe in a two-stage, initially invisible parousia. This meant that speculation about world burning was, in his view, false doctrine. He writes about regretting the predictions of Wendell and Thurman and others. Who were the others? He does not say, but someone predicted the end for every year from 1869 to 2000. Among those who were or became his associates and acquaintances some pointed to 1874, 1875, 1875, 1877, 1879 and 1881. Some of these predictions were on questionable basis, even from Russell’s later viewpoints. Some were based on a faked Mother Shipton prophecy and one on a supposed measurement from the great pyramid. Though much is made of Russell’s beliefs regarding the pyramid, he wrote that it was a poor basis for establishing Bible chronology, that it should only be used to support what can be derived from scripture. But that’s something said past the period we’re considering and which we consider later in this volume.

            Did Russell oppose chronological speculation before he met Barbour? It is often said that he did. What he wrote, however, is that because he believed in an initially invisible presence, the only way to know when it occurred was through Bible chronology. In this period his belief was: “It seemed, to say the least, a reasonable, very reasonable thing, to expect that the Lord would inform his people on the subject – especially as he had promised that the faithful should not be left in darkness with the world, and that though the day of the Lord would come upon all others as a thief in the night (stealthily, unawares), it should not be so to the watching, earnest saints.”[1]

            So it’s not a reliable chronology he rejected, but Adventist speculation that included world burning and seemed unreliable. He was looking for a reliable chronological framework. When he received Barbour’s Herald of the Morning in December 1875 (Not Jan 1876 as usually said) the thought he might have found one. He also saw that Barbour et. al. had adopted age to come belief, his belief system and though they might have progressed beyond Adventism into ‘truth’ – enlightenment. He wrote to Barbour who wrote back that he and Paton had been Adventists but no longer were – that they had pursued other doctrine. The other doctrine was age to come, doctrine Russell had learned from Storrs, Stetson and a variety of others, some of whom he mentions directly and some we can surmise from available evidence.  What made Barbour’s chronology different was that it was expressed not in Adventist terms that Russell would reject out of hand but in Age to Come/ Literalist / One Faith terms that matched Russell’s theology. Russell says this, though most who have quoted him have missed the import. Describing his introduction to Barbour’s chronology, he wrote: “It was about January 1876 that my attention was specially drawn to the subject of prophetic time, as it relates to these doctrines and hopes.”[2]

            The “doctrines and hopes” to which Russell refers are his Age-to-Come, non-Adventist expectations of a premillennial advent, initially invisible, and leading to a restored paradise earth, the blessing of mankind. So Russell accepted a chronology with which he was familiar having heard it from Wendell. He did not accept it when expressed in terms of Adventist world-burning theology; he accepted it when expressed in Age-to-Come terms.[3]

            Did Adventism have an effect on Russell. He says it did, that it helped him to unlearn certain things we can readily identify as Calvinist predestination and hell-fire. Did Russell believe he was adopting some form of Adventism by accepting Barbour’s redefinition of the events of 1873-1874? No. Instead he saw it as a step forward in his Age-to-Come belief in restored paradise. Should we see it as an Adventist influence? I think not. Russell did not adopt Adventist doctrine; the chronology was expressed in Second Adventist terms. The origin of the 1873-4 date was primarily in Anglican writings. Barbour even acknowledges this.

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[1]               C. T. Russell: Harvest Gatherings and Siftings, Zion’s Watch Tower, May 1890, page 4.

[2]               ibid.

[3]               As far as I can tell, other than ourselves, no recently published writers who consider Watchtower history have followed Barbour after he left Adventism. Barbour left Adventism for Mark Allen’s Church of the Blessed Hope. Some issues of Allen’s journal, Herald of Truth and Evangelical Messenger, exist. They are not impossible to find. For the most recent writers, this facet of Watchtower history does not exist. This is another example of confirmation bias and lack of curiosity.