From The Bible Champion, February 1922

 Usual lies and distortions. Your detailed observations will be helpful.

The Bible Champion

February 1922 

Russellism - Editorial by Frank J. Boyer

THIS cult has in its makeup considerable modernism but not enough to prevent its having a classification of its own. It is a compound of some truth with much error. The man who stands at the head of this cult is the late Charles Taze Russell, author, lecturer and minister. He gave himself the title, Pastor Russell. He had a remarkable career and a large following. The articles in his “Watch Tower,” a semi-monthly publication, were written almost exclusively by himself and are said to have had a circulation of seventy-five thousand in New York and Brooklyn alone, and were published in five different languages. It is claimed that his pamphlets and books had more than fifteen million readers. There were published of his book entitled “About Hell,” nearly three million copies and nearly five million of his “Divine Plan of the Ages.” Other of his writings are said to have been translated into thirty-five different languages. His sermons were handled by a newspaper syndicate that controls two thousand newspapers with a circulation among another fifteen million readers. His words therefore had a larger circulation every week than those of any other living man in this or any other country, in this or any other age. He was an independent worker, a free lance as we should say, and his announced purpose was to reach not only Protestants, but Catholics, Jews and Free-Thinkers; in fact, all classes. His nominal salary was eleven dollars per month. His work was carried on financially by voluntary contributions from personal friends and from those who believed or were pleased with his teaching. He never allowed himself a vacation and left no estate when death ended his laborious career. He died away from home, on a railway train, October 31, 1916, at sixty-four years of age, while on a lecture tour through our Southern and Western States. Such were the life work and death of Pastor Russell. 

We hope to be pardoned for this rather extended notice of Pastor Russell; it is prompted in part by the fact that the author has had for him a measure of personal sympathy growing out of a similarity in an early religious experience. It was an eclipse of faith by reason of unwise religious teaching. This was followed in both his case and in that of the author by an era of downright skepticism. But later upon a re-examination of Bible revelation our paths diverged. In the author's case orthodoxy became sane and solidly scientific and philosophical, while Pastor Russell's teachings became such that we have been led to enumerate some of them as being among the most unorthodox and dangerous theories of the present day. His views have some features of attractiveness that made them popular. He advocated the worship of Jehovah and believed the Bible to be a divine book. His mistakes grew out of his faulty and unscholarly methods of interpretation. His opinion as to the Lord Jesus Christ was altogether unorthodox. He taught that Christ before His advent and while on earth was human. His body did not rise from the grave but may have turned into gas. Russellism denies the deity, incarnation, resurrection, ascension and intercession of Christ. Pastor Russell had nothing to say of the mission and work of the Holy Spirit. His teaching as to the future of the sinner is equally unorthodox. Some of the wicked dead will be raised and “made perfect and innocent like Adam before he fell; other sinners will have a second chance”; “the more wicked men have been in this life the more likely they will be, through the experience of sin, to be saved by the gospel of a second chance”; “those who accept the second chance will have life everlasting”; “those who do not want to live forever will have the privilege of being asphyxiated in a lake of fire”; the finally impenitent, that is, the incorrigible, are “extinguished at death and annihilated sometime hereafter.” 

In Rutherford's biographical sketch is the following quotation from Pastor Russell: “A God who would use his power to create human beings whom he foreknew and predestinated to be eternally tormented could be neither wise, just, nor loving.” 

Another one of his officials writes that “Pastor Russell was a most strenuous opponent of the hell of eternal torment. According to his creed, whatever hell there may be will pass away and there will be an end of all pain, death and sorrow, in case of both saint and sinner.” 

Pastor Russell taught that man has a soul, or rather is a soul, but is not immortal. He taught that the death of the body carries along with it the death of the soul unless released through a “ransom price” provided by Christ's atonement, and that man in order to be saved by the ransom price must be consecrated to God and His service. Pastor Russell taught that there would be a millennial reign of Christ for a thousand years and that some time during those years all men, saints and sinners, will be awakened from sleep to a conscious life. Sinners then will have a second probation, or a second chance to reform.

During several years of his early ministry Pastor Russell predicted with great assurance that the millennial reign of Christ would begin during the autumn of 1874; that was forty-seven years ago. He was self-consistent in this, that he kept on preaching that Christ began his millennial reign in that year. But one may well wonder if Pastor Russell were to witness the conditions now existing the unholy strife, the selfish ambition, with honesty, purity, sanctity and religion laughed at and ignored by multitudes, with a pall of perplexity, strife and misery settling down over the whole world-yes, one may well wonder if witnessing these conditions Pastor Russell would still claim that the millennium had come and that Satan is chained. 

It is not altogether easy accurately to characterize Russellism. We are sure, however, that it is unphilosophical, unscientific, unscriptural, and a perversion of New Testament theology. It has been represented as a combination of Unitarianism, Universalism, Restorationism, Second Probationism. Swedenborgianism and Annihilationism. 

Pastor Russell was accustomed to denounce foreign missions. Also the creeds of every orthodox church, and all clergymen who did not agree with him. In this respect he was one of the most uncharitable of men. 

“Tell me what a man thinks and I will tell you what he will do,” is a maxim based upon general observation which finds a sad illustration in Pastor Russell. Shadows, two or three of them, rest upon his memory. He falsely represented himself as a competent Bible student and exegete, but it was shown in the Brooklyn Eagle suit, December 9, 1912, that he had no knowledge of Hebrew, or of Greek, or of Latin; that he never had taken a course in philosophy or in systematic theology, and never had graduated from any high school of learning; that he never passed an examination before any ecclesiastical body and never was ordained to the ministry. Nor is this the worst of it. In 1879 he married Miss Marie F. Ackley, spoken of as a most estimable woman, who divorced him a few years ago on the ground of cruelty and of having wrong relations with other women. In court, improprieties were proved between Pastor Russell and Miss Rose Ball. On one occasion his wife found him locked in a room with a servant girl named Emily Matthews. These facts and others of a financial character were published in the Brooklyn Eagle, also in a pamphlet by the Rev. J. I. Ross, of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It also was charged by the Brooklyn Eagle that Pastor Russell, by misrepresentations, had been defrauding his wife out of her dower. These charges were so damaging that he was urged by his friends to bring suit against both the Eagle and Mr. Ross. He did so, but in both instances the courts decided against him. The case as to the paying of alimony he fought for five years, appealing it twice. On the third trial he not only lost his case but the alimony was increased and all costs levied upon him. Under oath he made these confessions: “I am a jelly fish. I float around here and there; I touch this one and that one, and if she responds I take her to myself, and if not I float on to others.” Such is the man who had an immense following and who taught his people that there is no hell, no demons and no punishment for sinners. It is nothing strange that such a man should, disbelieve in the doctrine of hell and demons. How can his success be accounted for? is a question very naturally asked. No great difficulty is in the way of finding an answer, which is this: Pastor Russell had more than ordinary natural ability; he was a most energetic worker and was immensely conceited. Let such a man be boldfaced, pretending to know· 

the revelations of the Bible better than almost any one else, and let him assure those who know they are sinners that they have nothing to fear in the future, that there is no hell, and that ultimately there will be even for incorrigible sinners nothing worse than a wished for non-existence-let a man of some intellectual ability preach with the utmost assurance such views and he will have a following, at least for a time, that will outdistance that of the average orthodox preacher. Such teachings as these suit unbelievers, and so rich sinners became Pastor Russell's chief financial supporters. 

All things considered, therefore, it need occasion no surprise that Pastor Russell met with remarkable success, such as it was; and one discovers also why he abandoned orthodoxy and was left to believe a lie.

But on the other hand, if he had believed what the Bible clearly teaches, and had acted up to that belief, his achievements in some respects would have been, none the less, the good he would have done might have been vastly greater, and there would have been no such clouds as those that will forever rest upon his name and reputation. It is clear, therefore, that he must be classed among the most unsafe, if not among the most unworthy, of religious teachers. 

The impression, however, should not be left that Russellism died with the death of its founder. There is still a following; the leading representative at the present time is Judge J. F. Rutherford, who is president of “The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society,” that was founded by Pastor Russell. In recent lectures given before large audiences the Judge faithfully affirms the teachings of his predecessor. 

At a recent meeting in Boston held in the National Theatre that was filled to its utmost capacity the judge, while speaking of the end of the world, made this Russellian prediction: 

“It can now be positively announced that millions living on earth will never die. Because the world has ended, the old order is rapidly passing and the new order is coming in. As 1914 is a date definitely fixed (a prediction as to the world war), so is 1925 another date definitely fixed. The world having ended and the reconstruction being due to begin in 1925, without doubt there are millions now living on earth who will still be living then. The time is coming when the old man will be restored to youth, bald heads will disappear, and all the imperfections of mankind will vanish. When that time comes we won't need doctors; undertakers will have to hunt for another job and drug stores will have no further use. The population will be used to beautify the earth. The Lord will put the whole human race to work, but there won't be any labor unions, or any profiteers, or any clergymen. The whole human race will be lifted up from sickness, sorrow, and death, to the day of youth.” 

Russellism will continue to have a following so long as men dislike those doctrines of Bible Christianity that have any thing to say about hell and demons, and so long as they seek in some way to escape the responsibilities of a selfish and sinful life. And Russellism will continue to have its advocates even after Judge Rutherford shall have followed Pastor Russell into the unexplored and invisible world to which all are hastening and where the truth will be known. 

What conclusion, therefore, can be reached other than this: If the teachings of Pastor Russell, whose name is beclouded, are true, then those of Christ-”the Adorable One”-are false; and if Christ's teachings are true, then those of Pastor Russell are false. And if his teachings are false then an astonishing and overwhelming disappointment on the day of judgment when the books are opened, must await those who have been led astray by this cult called Russellism.