Updated Preface. Still a work in progress ...

Comments please:



This temporary post has been deleted

Also on ebay

Rufus Wendell was Jonas Wendell's nephew and a long-time associate of George Storrs.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1886-The-HOLY-BIBLE-Rufus-Wendell-REVISED-VERSION-vs-KING-JAMES-Diacritical-/272833039759?hash=item3f861dcd8f:g:bxEAAOSwZrtZqNi7

On ebay

Some of you may be interested, though the price is very high

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Second-Adventists-Terrys-Island-1873-ASCENSION-END-of-WORLD-Art-Print-Engraving-/362129184058?hash=item545094d53a:g:v8QAAOSwPK1ZPZ9F

Bunches of Questions ...

            I don’t feel well, and I belong in bed, but I’m writing this anyway. We sometimes get research questions in the comment trail. A reoccurring one is, “Where can I find that online?” or “Send me a link to that please.” Some things are online. Many more are not. If they’re not on the Internet somewhere, we usually have no way of sharing material with you.

            You are responsible for your own research. My students tended to use me as a living encyclopedia. I learned years ago to respond to questions with: “Where have you looked? What did you find? Where will you look next?” I usually can’t do more for you here. But I have some suggestions.

           Someone asked where they can find books such as those in the video. Ignoring the cost, which is immense, I suggest:

            1. Ebay. Items such as you saw in the archive video show up on ebay. Many of them cost more than a sane person will spend. But let’s assume you’re filthy rich. So currently on ebay you can buy a single page of a Latin Bible published in 1500. The opening bid is 250.00 US dollars. Or you can buy the 1837 reprint of Tyndale’s Bible for a surprisingly low $750.00. Or the 1938 reprint for $600.00

            Rarer Watchtower items show up too, mixed in with the more common material. The full set of Studies in the Scriptures in red binding, pocket edition is on ebay for $850.00. We have that set, and ours includes the first printing of The Finished Mystery. I’d happily sell it to you for $400.00. Not that I expect any takers. The 1910 heart bookmark from the convention that year is on ebay for about $300.00. I have one. Want it? How about $200? Ridiculous, no? But if you want these things, that’s where you find them. Be patient, a lower-priced version may show up.

            We built our research collection when prices were lower, and occasionally we had kind help from interested parties. In the preface posted below, B mentions The Christian Observer and The Literalist. Both show up on ebay, usually for enough money to make one blink twice. But be inventive. Use search terms beyond “Watchtower.” And sometimes you will find a scarce item for cheap. Our red covered What Say the Scriptures about Hell came to us for $5.00 because it was improperly described.

            2. Online book search. There are several. These include

                        abe.com ; addall.com/used ; bookfinder.com and alibris.com

Again, expect to pay for what you find. One of Morton Edgar’s books on the Great Pyramid shows up on bookfinder for a relatively reasonable fifty dollars. But be aware that the online book market is awash with modern reprints. These are sometimes more expensive than an original.

            3. So you don’t want to spend your life’s savings for a book? You’d be happy with a good scan? Search the title put in quotations: “the truth will make you free.” Hathitrust, google books, and other archives have scanned copies of thousands and thousands of books. We expect you to do your own search. Usually, we cannot photocopy things for you. And we’re in the same boat you are. I found this book on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-1836-Athens-TENNESSEE-imprint-Presbyterian-Minister-Prophecies-Beast-TN-/162708495037?hash=item25e22e9abd:g:8rgAAOSwTw5Z3ZZH

I’ve been looking for this book for maybe three years. I want this book. It is important to our research. I cannot afford it.

            4. So ... you can’t find what you want from one of the internet archives? Do it the old fashioned way. Major libraries have their catalogues online. The Library of Congress, the British Library and others allow online searches. If you live in the United States, much of the material in the Library of Congress is available through Interlibrary Loan. However, most of the items you may want to see will not be, and you’ll have to pay very high copy fees.

            Many libraries share their catalogues through the OCLC system. [The Ohio Catalogue of Library Catalogues.] You can access it at worldcat.org . You will need to be inventive, and it won’t take you to a scan of the book you want. It will tell you which libraries, if any, have it. A few libraries will scan for free if your request is small and they think you’re a serious researcher. I always tell them why I want something, what I intend to do with it, and I sign my email with my professional title. That’s a bit of overkill, but it paves the way. Usually, there’s a huge fee. We had to pay fifty-five dollars for a photocopy that I could have made myself for about four dollars. But, then, I don’t live in Georgia, USA. So If you want to see something – be prepared to pay.

            5. Ask. Much of our research library came from smiling sweetly and asking if anyone had something relevant. Big chunks of it were just given to us. Most of my personal copies of The Watch Tower back to 1919 were a gift.

            6. Final thought: If you live in Mexico, Central or South America, expect what you order to be stolen out of the mail. Pay for registered, insured mail. This is true if you live in some areas of Europe, especially Russia and Eastern Europe. The Middle East is hopeless, except for Israel. But mail to and from Israel transits through Italy. If it is not registered-insured, you won’t see it. I do not mean to insult any country, but this is a fact of life.

Temporary Post for Comments

This in very rough draft is an extract of Bruce's preface to volume 2 of Separate Identity. It is here for comment. We need your input. ... So be really nice and leave a comment up or down, critical or helpful. Just comment.

This post has been deleted.

A Reminder ...

Opposition voices are part of Watch Tower history. We need scans of tracts and articles written by those opposing the Watch Tower. We're interested in any, no matter how silly, up to 1940.

We also need scans of J. W. Brite's tracts. We've located some but cannot afford the copy fees. If you have one, please scan it for us.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHpsUfzihjo

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGBMw45CBk&feature=youtu.be

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)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zIClU8TQtM&t=11s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onCebb9bg6Q&t=24s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2snV8SyQVU&t=22s

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)

Please review

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.

Henry Grew

We need a readable scan of Grew's Bank Street tract from 1836. Anyone?

Up to adventure, the challenge of research ??!!

I'd accept a well researched article on Russell's Jewish mass meeting .... Even two or three if they're well researched and footnoted. Up to it?

Someone in the Pittsburgh area ...

This may be of doubtful worth but we'd like a copy

In the Peter E. Soderbergh Collection of Jehovah's Witnesses Materials, AIS.1972.08, 1914-1995, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh.

Box 1

Item

1

Jehovah's first witness: Pastor Charles Taze Russell, by Peter A. Soderbergh, 1966

Claude Brown

Do any blog readers have any information about Claude Brown, outside what can be found in the Society's Watchtower library? He was a Jamaican, a conscientious objector during WW1 who served time in a British prison (Wandsworth) and went to Africa to support W R Brown (Bible Brown) in missionary work in Nigeria, Gold Coast (Ghana), Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc.

We need this and can't afford it. Anyone have it?

http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.330863

S. O. Blunden

From: The Independent Press and Bloomfield [New Jersey] Citizen, November 1915.

The Independent Press [Bloomfield] May 23, 1913

On Blog 2

For those readers who have access to the restricted blog, there is an article up there now called Pictorial Memories. This is made up from photographs (with a bit of text) that have recently come my way relating to individuals in the UK. Since there might just be the potential for privacy issues with individuals and descendants, I have put it there rather than on this open blog.

Not from the Era we Research but Intersting

From Roberto

Roberto continues to research the events of 1881:

Barbour, Russell, and the year 1881, another point of contrast.

Barbour and Russell finally separated in June 1879 over the doctrine of the ransom. They had another point of contrast over the year 1881. With the article “THE PARALLELS” published in the June1880 Herald, Barbour denied the thought of an invisible Parousia. According to him the second presence didn’t begin autumn of 1874, nor would there be a later invisible presence. Jesus would personally come in the Autumn of 1881, not seen by the world, but seen by his true disciples, that is, the Herald of the Morning believers.

Russell immediately replied with the July issue of the Watch Tower, confirming his belief that Christ’s invisible presence began in October 1874. Here’s extracts from the two magazines.

Herald of the Morning, June 1880, pp. 85-86, “THE PARALLELS”

“The scapegoat work in cleansing the sanctuary, is an invisible work, seen only in its manifestations; but the appearing of our High Priest, “unto them that look for him,” is never spoken of directly or indirectly, in a way in which we have the least authority to suppose that he will come in an invisible manner. But always the contrary; “He will appear to (optomai, be seen of) us;” he comes in the manner they saw him go, etc. It is true. He will not show himself to the world, when he comes to his church, but he will “be seen” by them that look for him, is the teaching of the law and the testimony.

I warn our readers not to be deceived in this matter; Christ left the church as her High Priest; and he returns to her as such. And after ascending into the presence of God there is no intermediate personal coming in any way, to his church, until he shall appear to them that look for him, Heb. 9:28.

Again, there was a separation of chaff and wheat, and a gathering of the wheat out of the rejected Jewish church, after the crucifixion: and there was a remnant of time still due, for that purpose. And although the half week was left obscure, and there is an equal want of absolute Scripture here pointing us to the end of this last half of the harvest, still the parallel, and the clear indication that the work belonging to this part of the harvest is in process of fulfilment, in the cleaning of the sanctuary, not only by the separation of wise and foolish virgins , but between the letter and the spirit, in all our views; is, all together, evidence enough to make us “look for him, to appear to us in the autumn of 1881.”

Herald of the Morning, July 1880, p. 4, “HAS CHRIST COME?”

“The Parousia, or presence of Christ, when “he shall appear (optomai, be seen),” by “them that look for him,” demands his personal presence; and this is his return in, not the invisible antitypical scapegoat work, but as the High Priest in person. And this coming of Christ, or his parousia, we have reason to expect, will occur in the autumn of 1881. That he did not come, in the autumn of 1874, or at the beginning of the gospel harvest, as we once supposed, is as certain as is the word of Jesus himself.”

The Watch Tower July 1880, p. 2, “AS THE LIGHTNING”

“ … the Lord informs us that there will be in these "days of the Son of man," false teachers who will be very powerful and exercise much influence upon the church, . . . We believe we find them in those who claim that Jesus is to appear shortly in the wilderness of Judea (Palestine) and that all who love him and expect to be part of his kingdom should go there and be on hand to receive and welcome him. . . . But there is to be more than one of these deceiving teachers; While one says He is coming in the desert, another says: "Behold he is in the secret chambers." Do we find teaching of this kind now, in the days of the Son of man? Yes, it seems to us that this is being fulfilled; a brother whom we knew well and loved much, thinks that God has given him what he terms "New Oil" (perhaps he does not notice that the virgins of Matt. 25, do not get any new oil; it is the same oil they had at first). But this brother is we think fulfilling this scripture. He is teaching that after 1881, Christ will appear in the flesh secretly, to be seen only by himself and those who believe exactly as he believes. This teaching not only leads to unscriptural expectations, but seems to open the minds of those who receive it to a perilous snare of the devil, which snare is referred to in the "Three Worlds," a book written by this very brother, in 1876, now out of print but possessed by many of our readers, extracts from which will follow this article. The wide diversity of views as stated in that article, and his present view as stated above seems to make good his claim that he has new oil; but it does not commend itself to us as being as good as the old "The old is better."

An Obituary

(revised from material first published on Blog 2)

When John H Paton died it was to be expected that the local paper, The Almont Herald, would publish an obituary. Unfortunately the Almont library holdings are missing the key year 1922. However, it has recently been discovered that the obituary was picked up and re-published by the Yale Expositor (Yale, Michigan) on Thursday, September 21, 1922.

There is one piece of information this supplies that was previously unknown, namely that George L Rogers conducted the funeral service. This makes a lot of sense, as noted in the paragraph below from an old blog article about the township of Almont and its connection with both Watch Tower and Universalism.

(quote) As John H Paton’s Universalist ministry wound down another Scots immigrant living in Almont, George Lawley Rogers fired up. Rogers had been a Baptist minister in Almont but then supported the Concordant Publishing Concern, a Universalist group which attracted a number of former Watch Tower adherents. These included Fredrik Homer Robison (who lived at Brooklyn Bethel with CTR and was imprisoned with JFR in 1918), Walter Bundy (one time Pilgrim) and Menta Sturgeon (CTR’s traveling companion on his last journey). Robison and Rogers became friends and often spoke on the same Concordant platform over 1923 and 1924. (end quote).

(Note: Robison shared the same address for a number of years as CTR, and Rogers took the funeral of Paton who had officiated at CTR’s wedding way back in 1879. It’s a small world sometimes. No doubt Robison and Rogers had a number of things to talk about.)

To read the full article about all these connections you can go to:

http://truthhistory.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-watchtower-and-universalism-almont.html

1881 - The coming of Christ

"Chicago Daily Tribune March 21 1881"

Several people in America and all around the world expected the coming of Christ and the Millennium in the Autumn, 1881. Rev. Rounds, an Adventist, was among them. Russell had a very different point of view about that year. 

George Stubbs, Sr - Click Image to see full view

From the December 16, 1910, Oceana Herald.

Back to George Stubbs

Can you add more?

George Stubbs, Jr. was born April 18, 1855, in Fullarton, Ontario, into an English immigrant family. He was the second of eight children and seems to have lived an unremarkable life. We know he married Harriet Cole and that they had four children but little else. His father, George Sr., moved the family to Shelby, Michigan, in 1867. According to his obituary George Sr. was noted for his piety and studiousness:

No extended eulogy is deemed necessary of this good man that has lived so long in our midst – certainly no more than has often been said of him in life. Converted at an early age, his character appeared to become more beautiful as the years lengthened. A deep student of the Bible his delight was to expound the beauties therein which are hidden from the casual reader. Withal his christianity [sic] was a practical every day kind. ... This influence will live after him.