Who Was Charles Taze Russell? The Bible Students and the Roots of Jehovah's Witnesses

Anyone who studies Jehovah's Witnesses soon meets the name Charles Taze Russell, a Pittsburgh clothing merchant who became, for millions of newspaper readers, "Pastor Russell." The magazine he started in 1879 is still printed today as The Watchtower. Witnesses, however, do not call him their founder, and they no longer hold several of the teachings that made him famous.

Critics often reduce Russell to a failed date-setter; admirers present him as a humble Bible student who recovered what Scripture always taught. Both leave things out. This article tells his story from the sources, then offers an Orthodox reading of his teaching.

In brief

Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916), raised a Presbyterian, recoiled from the doctrine of eternal torment and recovered his faith through Adventist preachers, especially George Storrs, who taught that the soul is mortal. In 1876 the Adventist editor Nelson Barbour persuaded him that Christ had returned invisibly in 1874 and that the "Times of the Gentiles" would end in 1914. Russell launched Zion's Watch Tower in 1879, wrote the six-volume Studies in the Scriptures and produced the "Photo-Drama of Creation" in 1914. He expected the Church to be glorified with Christ before the end of 1914, later called this a mistake in print, and saw his book revised. He died on a train in Texas on October 31, 1916. Today's Witnesses honor him but deny that he founded their religion.

Thesis: Russell was a sincere and energetic restorationist who inherited his chronology from nineteenth-century Adventism, publicly admitted that some of his 1914 expectations were mistaken, and taught a view of Christ that the historic Church had already examined and rejected at Nicaea, along with a view of the soul that the Fathers did not share.

A merchant's son with a troubled conscience

Russell was born on February 16, 1852, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now part of Pittsburgh. His parents were Presbyterians; his mother died when he was nine. He later joined a Congregational church because he preferred its views. At eleven he became a partner in his father's men's clothing store, and he went on to run several stores himself.¹

The Witnesses' official history, Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), says the teaching that troubled him was that God would eternally torment all but the predestined. It quotes him: "A God that would use his power to create human beings whom he foreknew and predestinated should be eternally tormented, could be neither wise, just nor loving."² His quarrel began with a Calvinist picture of predestination and hell.

His faith, by his own account, was restored in 1869 when he wandered into "a dusty, dingy hall" and heard the Second Adventist preacher Jonas Wendell. "I confess indebtedness to Adventists as well as to other denominations," he later wrote.³ Around 1870 he and a few friends began a Bible class. Two older men shaped it: George W. Stetson of Edinboro, Pennsylvania, and George Storrs of Brooklyn, publisher of the Bible Examiner and advocate of "conditional immortality," the view that the soul is mortal, immortality is a gift to the faithful, and the wicked therefore cannot suffer eternal torment.⁴ The official history says Storrs's views "had a strong, positive influence" on Russell.

So the denial of the immortal soul and of hell, and the expectation of an invisible return of Christ, did not begin with Russell; he received them from the Adventist world that grew out of William Miller's movement, which also produced the Seventh-day Adventists (see the site's article on Ellen White and 1844).

Barbour, 1874 and the arithmetic of 1914

In January 1876 Russell, then twenty-three, read Herald of the Morning, edited by Nelson H. Barbour of Rochester, New York, who taught that Christ was already invisibly present. They met in Philadelphia. In Russell's words, Barbour "had much to learn from me on the fulness of restitution based upon the sufficiency of the ransom given for all, as I had much to learn from him concerning time." The official history adds that Barbour "succeeded in convincing Russell that Christ's invisible presence had begun in 1874."⁵

{{very-strong: Russell took both 1874 and 1914 from Barbour's Adventist chronology rather than discovering them himself.}} The Witnesses' own literature says so: "from the time of his early association with Nelson Barbour," Proclaimers says, Russell was convinced that the Bible's chronology "pointed to 1914 as the end of the Gentile Times." Their literature also dates Russell's first published statement of 1914 to an article titled "Gentile Times: When Do They End?" in Storrs's Bible Examiner for October 1876, which stated: "The seven times will end in A.D. 1914."⁶ The reasoning, set out in The Time Is at Hand (1889), treated the "seven times" of Leviticus 26 (with Nebuchadnezzar's in Daniel 4 as a type) as 7 x 360 = 2,520 years, running from the fall of Jerusalem, which Russell dated to 606 B.C. by working back seventy years from a date for Cyrus in "Ptolemy's Canon," to A.D. 1914.⁷

Russell's starting date was 606 B.C., not the 607 B.C. Witnesses use today; the dispute over 607 versus 587/586 B.C. is covered in 1914 and Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1877 Barbour and Russell jointly published Three Worlds, and the Harvest of This World, which presented Christ's invisible presence as dating from the autumn of 1874.⁸

The partnership did not last. In August 1878 Barbour published an article that, in Russell's judgment, denied the substitutionary value of Christ's death. Russell replied in the next issue, and in 1879 withdrew from fellowship with Barbour.⁹ Russell kept the chronology.

Zion's Watch Tower and a worldwide readership

In July 1879 Russell began his own monthly, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence. The first issue was printed in 6,000 copies; by 1914 each issue ran to about 50,000.¹⁰ In 1886 the first volume of Millennial Dawn appeared, later renamed Studies in the Scriptures; five more volumes followed by 1904.¹¹ A legal corporation, the forerunner of today's Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, was formed in 1884, and the headquarters moved from Pittsburgh to Brooklyn in 1909.¹²

According to the official history, congregations voted him their pastor, beginning with Pittsburgh in 1882 and then "some 500 other congregations," so that "Pastor" was "not a self-assumed title." By 1913 it was estimated that his sermons appeared in 2,000 newspapers with 15,000,000 readers.¹³ W. J. Whalen's New Catholic Encyclopedia entry says instead that he was "assuming the title of 'Pastor.'"¹⁴ Both are partly right: congregations elected him, and a 1915 court called him "an unordained preacher."

He disclaimed originality, presenting truths "not as new, not as our own, but as the Lord's," and as "less a work of origination than of reconstruction, adjustment, harmonization."¹⁵ In 1906 he wrote, "I claim nothing of superiority, nor supernatural power, dignity or authority," while in the same passage describing himself as presenting truths "as God's mouthpiece."¹⁶

The Photo-Drama of Creation

From 1912 Russell prepared a presentation combining film and colored slides with recorded music and lectures. The "Photo-Drama of Creation" ran about eight hours, usually in four parts, and covered history from creation to Christ's thousand-year reign. It premiered in New York in January 1914 before an audience of 5,000. The Witnesses' history reports that by the end of that year it had been shown to audiences totaling over 9,000,000 in North America, Europe and Australia.¹⁷ A 2014 Watchtower article says it aimed to build faith "in an age when belief in evolution, higher criticism, and skepticism had eroded the faith of many."¹⁸

What Russell expected in 1914, and what he said afterward

Russell's fullest statement is the fourth chapter of The Time Is at Hand. A 1907 printing says that the end of the Gentile Times "will be reached in A.D. 1914; and that that date will be the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men." It then lists seven things this would "prove," including that the Kingdom of God "will have obtained full, universal control," and that "some time before the end of A.D. 1914 the last member of the divinely recognized Church of Christ, the 'royal priesthood,' 'the body of Christ,' will be glorified with the Head."¹⁹ Elsewhere the same printing speaks of "the 'battle of the great day of God Almighty' (Rev. 16:14), which will end in A.D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth's present rulership."²⁰

Fairness requires noting that Russell did not predict the end of the physical earth; he expected the end of human governments, the glorification of the Church and God's Kingdom on earth. The official history concedes that "not all that they expected had been directly stated in Scripture."²¹ His associate A. H. Macmillan recalled: "A few of us seriously thought we were going to heaven during the first week of that October."²²

Most striking is Russell's own foreword to a new printing, dated October 1, 1916, a month before his death: "The author acknowledges that in this book he presents the thought that the Lord's saints might expect to be with Him in glory at the ending of the Gentile Times. This was a natural mistake to fall into." He added that the mistake "was evidently not in respect to the ending of the Times of the Gentiles; we drew a false conclusion, however, not authorized by the Word of the Lord."²³ This is a public admission of error in his own name, and it deserves credit.

{{strong: The chapter's 1914 statements were revised in later printings, in more than one stage.}} A printing dated 1914 still has "the farthest limit" and the glorification "before the end of A.D. 1914," but its battle already "will end in A.D. 1915." In a 1927 printing that carries the 1916 foreword, "the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men" has become "the disintegration of the rule of imperfect men"; "will have obtained full, universal control" has become "will begin to assume control"; and "some time before the end of A.D. 1914 the last member ... will be glorified" has become "some time before the end of the overthrow."²⁴ Revision is not dishonest, but quotations should name the printing.

Controversy in his lifetime

Some charges against Russell still circulate, and both critics and defenders have overstated their case. His marriage to Maria Ackley Russell broke down, and she sued him in the Pennsylvania courts: the Witnesses call it "a suit for separate maintenance," his critic J. J. Ross a "limited divorce," that is, "from bed and board." Reference works disagree on the dates. The Witnesses' 1953 reply to critics stresses that her attorney said, "We make no charge of adultery."²⁵ None of the sources examined here shows that any court found him guilty of immorality.

The "Miracle Wheat" affair is better documented. Russell's magazine offered readers an associate's seed of this variety at one dollar a pound, the proceeds going to a corporation Russell controlled. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle attacked this (in 1911, by one reference work's account); Russell sued for libel and lost.²⁶ On appeal in 1915 the court noted that the magazine "represented that the yield of Miracle Wheat was 10 or 15 times as great as the yield of common wheat," while government tests "tended to show" it "was no more prolific than brands of wheat in general use," and it upheld the jury's verdict for the newspaper.²⁷ The Witnesses reply that Russell "neither named it nor profited from it" and that refunds were offered.²⁸ {{debated: Whether Russell sought personal gain from Miracle Wheat is not established; the court record does establish that his magazine repeated yield claims that government tests did not support.}}

The charge that he committed perjury about Greek is more tangled than either side admits. It comes from Ross, a Baptist pastor in Hamilton, Ontario, whom Russell had accused of criminal libel. Ross's pamphlet Some Facts and More Facts (1913) says that on March 17, 1913, Russell answered "Oh, yes" to "Do you know the Greek?", could not read letters in a Greek New Testament, and then said "No" to "Are you familiar with the Greek language?" Ross's charge was that Russell had earlier denied under oath that he was ignorant of the ancient languages, then "had to confess that he knew absolutely nothing about them."²⁹ The Witnesses reply that the charge "was not made in court, but in a tract," that Ross reworded the question, and that the court record has Russell answering "No, sir" when asked whether he was schooled in Latin or in Greek.²⁸ Both accounts agree that Russell told the court he did not know Greek; they disagree about the wording of the first question and whether his earlier sworn denials were false. Each side quotes only excerpts (no full transcript could be found online for this article), and the case ended on April 1, 1913, when a grand jury returned "No Bill" on a ground (whether the libel threatened a breach of the peace) that left Ross's claims undecided.²⁹ {{debated: Russell lied under oath about his knowledge of Greek.}}

His death in 1916

Already seriously ill, Russell set out in October 1916 on a western lecture tour. He spoke for the last time in Los Angeles on October 29 and died on the afternoon of October 31, 1916, on a train at Pampa, Texas, aged sixty-four.³⁰ At the Brooklyn headquarters, Macmillan recalled, people asked, "What is going to happen now?"³¹ What happened was a leadership struggle under Joseph Rutherford that divided the Bible Students and led, in 1931, to the name Jehovah's Witnesses.

How Jehovah's Witnesses view Russell today

The Witnesses' website says that "among that group of sincere Bible students was a man named Charles Taze Russell," and that because "Jesus is the Founder of Christianity, we view him as the founder of our organization."³² {{debated: Whether Russell should be called the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses depends on definitions: he founded the magazine, the corporation and the Bible Student movement, but not the name, the later organization or several present doctrines.}} The New Catholic Encyclopedia, for example, calls him the "founder of the movement known since 1931 as Jehovah's witnesses"; Witnesses do not.¹⁴

The organization has since revised several of his teachings.

• 1874. Russell taught that Christ's invisible presence began in 1874. Witnesses now date it to 1914, and their history says the chronology behind 1874 "was flawed," with "a clearer understanding" published in 1943.³³
• The "faithful and wise servant." In 1881 Russell applied Matthew 24:45-47 to the whole body of Christ. Later, says the official history, his wife publicly identified him as that servant, a view "generally held by the Bible Students for some 30 years"; Russell "did not reject their view" but did not make the application himself.³⁴ Since 2013 the Witnesses teach that Jesus appointed the "faithful and discreet slave" in 1919, three years after Russell died (earlier publications had said he appointed it at Pentecost 33 C.E.), and that "in recent decades, that slave has been closely identified with the Governing Body."³⁵ See the Governing Body and the faithful slave.
• "New light." Witnesses explain such changes as growing understanding rather than error; see "New Light" or Doctrinal Revision?, and the wider pattern of dates in The Dates That Refused to Die.

Not everyone followed Rutherford. The Witnesses' own history records that after the leadership dispute of 1917 the opponents "splintered off" in 1918 and "broke up into various sects."³⁶

An Orthodox reading of Russell's theology

The Orthodox Church leaves Russell's soul to God, but it must judge his teaching.

Christ: "the beginning of the creation of God"

In The At-one-ment Between God and Man (1899), Russell called the Trinity a "confusing doctrine of men, for which no authority can be found in the Word of God."³⁷ He taught that the Son, the Logos, was "the beginning of the creation of God," the first being Jehovah made, and that his existence, having begun, "ceased at Calvary for three days."³⁸ The New Catholic Encyclopedia fairly calls these "Arian views of the nature of Jesus Christ."¹⁴

The Orthodox Church confesses, in the Nicene Creed, "one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages ... true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father."³⁹ "Begotten, not made" excludes precisely the claim that the Son is the first and highest creature. St Athanasius, answering the Arians who said "there was once when He was not," replied that "no holy Scripture has used such language of the Saviour, but rather 'always' and 'eternal' and 'coexistent always with the Father.'"⁴⁰ Russell's key texts, such as Proverbs 8:22 and Colossians 1:15, were argued over in the fourth century, and the Church rejected his reading. The site's articles on Arius, the biblical case for the Trinity and whether Jehovah's Witnesses are Christian set out the argument.

The soul and hell

St John of Damascus's eighth-century Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith defines the soul as "a living essence, simple, incorporeal, invisible in its proper nature to bodily eyes, immortal."⁴¹ Russell, following Storrs, denied this. He also set the Fathers aside, urging truth-seekers to "empty their vessels of the muddy waters of tradition."⁴² Yet the Fathers also teach that created spirits are immortal "not by nature but by grace," since God alone is eternal.⁴³ Orthodox and conditionalists agree that immortality is God's gift; they disagree about whether God has given the soul continuing existence beyond death. Nor does the Church share his denial of everlasting punishment: it confesses that Christ "shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead,"³⁹ and hears the Lord's warning of "everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46, NKJV). Orthodoxy, for its part, never taught the double predestination that first troubled him.

Dates and the Church

The Church has always taken seriously the Lord's words: "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority" (Acts 1:7, NKJV), and "of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only" (Matthew 24:36, NKJV).⁴⁴ Russell's 1916 confession of a "false conclusion" is the best commentary on why. His project also assumed that true Christianity had been largely lost and needed reconstructing; the Orthodox Church holds that the apostolic faith has been handed on continuously in a visible community (see the apostolic succession guide and the site's article on the biblical case against total apostasy).

Objections, fairly stated

"Russell was sincere and humble. Judge him by his fruits."

The evidence supports his sincerity: he spent his own money and admitted error in print. Sincerity deserves honor but does not settle doctrine.

"Every church changes. The Orthodox also developed."

Orthodox liturgy and canon law have indeed developed. But the Church has not redefined who Christ is: the Creed completed in 381 is confessed today in the same words, while Russell's dates and identifications were changed by his own successors.

"Parousia means presence, so an invisible return is biblical."

Russell rendered the Greek parousia as "presence," an idea the Witnesses' history traces to earlier writers.⁴⁵ "Presence" is a legitimate translation, but Matthew 24 describes that presence as public: "if they say to you, 'Look, He is in the desert!' do not go out ... For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be" (Matthew 24:26-27, NKJV).⁴⁶

"World War I proved that 1914 was right."

The Bible Students did point to 1914 before the war began. But the events Russell's 1907 text named, the full control of God's Kingdom and the glorification of the Church before the end of 1914, did not occur, as he himself said in 1916.

What we can say confidently

• Russell was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on February 16, 1852, and died on a train at Pampa, Texas, on October 31, 1916.
• His denial of eternal torment and the immortal soul came through Adventist teachers, especially Storrs; his 1874 and 1914 came from Barbour.
• He taught in print that the Church would be glorified before the end of 1914; in October 1916 he called this "a natural mistake."
• Later printings of The Time Is at Hand changed several 1914 statements; one "1914" had already become "1915" in a printing dated 1914.
• He rejected the Trinity and taught that the Son was God's first creation, a view the Council of Nicaea had condemned.
• Witnesses today do not call him their founder and have revised his teaching on 1874 and the "faithful and wise servant."

What remains disputed

• Whether "founder of Jehovah's Witnesses" is the right description.
• The exact year each revision to The Time Is at Hand first appeared, and whether Russell made all of them himself.
• Whether Russell personally profited, or sought to, from the sale of Miracle Wheat.
• Whether Russell lied under oath about Greek in the 1912-1913 libel proceedings.
• The dates and legal outcome of his marriage's end.
• How far Russell privately regarded himself as the "faithful and wise servant."

Conclusion

Charles Taze Russell loved the Bible, recoiled from the thought of a cruel God, and wanted the world to know that Christ's Kingdom was near. Orthodox Christians can admire his diligence and his candor about 1914, but they cannot follow his teaching about Christ. The Son whom the Church worships is not the first of God's creatures but "Light of light; true God of true God," who became man for our salvation, trampled down death by death, and will come again in glory. That is the answer to Russell's longing for a just and loving God, and it is a faith the Church has kept, not reconstructed, since the apostles.

Notes

1. Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1993), chap. 5, "Proclaiming the Lord's Return (1870-1914)," pp. 42-43, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101993006. ↩
2. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 43, quoting Russell. ↩
3. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 43, quoting Russell's own account. ↩
4. Proclaimers, chap. 5, pp. 44-46, including the box on George W. Stetson (p. 45). ↩
5. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 46. ↩
6. "Paradise Restored to Mankind: By Theocracy!" (Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1972), chap. 19, pp. 328-344, footnote a, citing Bible Examiner 21, no. 1 (October 1876): 27, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101972029. On Barbour and 1914, Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 60. ↩
7. Charles T. Russell, The Time Is at Hand, Studies in the Scriptures, Series II (Allegheny, PA: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1889; 1907 printing), Study IV, pp. 79-93, archive.org item timeisathand00russ. ↩
8. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 47. ↩
9. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 47; Russell's letter to Barbour of May 3, 1879, is quoted in the same chapter. ↩
10. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 48. ↩
11. Proclaimers, chap. 5, footnote e. ↩
12. W. J. Whalen, "Russell, Charles Taze," New Catholic Encyclopedia, via Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/russell-charles-taze; on Brooklyn and "Bethel," Proclaimers, chap. 5. ↩
13. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 58, and the box "Why Called Pastor," p. 54. ↩
14. Whalen, "Russell, Charles Taze," New Catholic Encyclopedia. ↩
15. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 49, quoting Russell. ↩
16. Zion's Watch Tower, July 15, 1906, p. 229, as quoted in Proclaimers, chap. 10, "Growing in Accurate Knowledge of the Truth," p. 143, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101993012. ↩
17. Proclaimers, chap. 5, text and box. ↩
18. "A 100-Year-Old Epic of Faith," The Watchtower (Study Edition), February 15, 2014, https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20140215/photo-drama-of-creation/. ↩
19. Russell, The Time Is at Hand (1907 printing), Study IV, pp. 76-77. ↩
20. Russell, The Time Is at Hand (1907 printing), Study IV, p. 101. ↩
21. Proclaimers, chap. 5, closing section. ↩
22. Proclaimers, chap. 6, "A Time of Testing (1914-1918)," p. 61, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101993007. ↩
23. Russell, "The Author's Foreword," The Time Is at Hand, dated Brooklyn, October 1, 1916, checked in a 1927 printing (Internet Archive, in.ernet.dli.2015.173447) and at https://www.thestudiesinthescriptures.com/Pages/English/Eng%20V2/Eng%20Vol%202%20TC%20Fwd.htm. ↩
24. Compare, in Study IV, the 1907 printing (Internet Archive, timeisathand00russ), pp. 76-77 and 101; the "1,495,000 Edition," dated 1914 on its title page (Internet Archive, bwb_08-BRG-119), pp. 79 and 101; and the 1927 printing (Internet Archive, in.ernet.dli.2015.173447), pp. 77 and 101. The revised text is also at https://www.thestudiesinthescriptures.com/Pages/English/Eng%20V2/Eng%20Vol%202%20Ch%204.htm. ↩
25. "Questions From Readers," The Watchtower, May 15, 1953, p. 319, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1953371; for the critic's description, Ross, Some Facts and More Facts, pp. 20-21 (see note 29). ↩
26. Russell v. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 168 A.D. 121, 153 N.Y.S. 450 (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dept., May 7, 1915), at 122-123; for the 1911 date, "Charles Taze Russell," Encyclopedia of World Biography, via Encyclopedia.com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/protestant-christianity-biographies/charles-taze-russell. ↩
27. Russell v. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 168 A.D. at 123. ↩
28. "Questions From Readers," The Watchtower, May 15, 1953, p. 319, which on the Greek question quotes the record of the Police Court of the City of Hamilton, Ontario, March 17, 1913. ↩
29. J. J. Ross, Some Facts and More Facts about the Self-Styled "Pastor" Charles T. Russell (Winnipeg: North-West Bible and Tract Depot, [1913?]), pp. 18-19 and 39, scan at https://watchtowerdocuments.org/wp-content/documents/1913_Some_More_Facts_About_Russell_.pdf (catalogue record: https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.87677). On the "No Bill" of April 1, 1913, its ground, and the absence of a full transcript online: "Legal History," watchtowerdocuments.org (a site critical of the Watch Tower Society), https://watchtowerdocuments.org/legal-history/, which cites Russell's own account in The Watch Tower, October 15, 1914. ↩
30. Proclaimers, chap. 6, p. 63. ↩
31. Proclaimers, chap. 6, p. 63, quoting A. H. Macmillan. ↩
32. "Who Was the Founder of Jehovah's Witnesses?" jw.org, https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/founder/. ↩
33. Proclaimers, chap. 10, footnote i. ↩
34. Proclaimers, chap. 10, p. 143, quoting Zion's Watch Tower, October-November 1881. ↩
35. "Who Really Is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?" The Watchtower (Study Edition), July 15, 2013, pp. 20-25, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2013533. ↩
36. Proclaimers, chap. 6. ↩
37. Charles T. Russell, The At-one-ment Between God and Man, Studies in the Scriptures, Series V (1899), Study II, p. 54, text at https://www.thestudiesinthescriptures.com/Pages/English/Eng%20V5/Eng%20Vol%205%20Ch%202.htm. ↩
38. Russell, The At-one-ment, Study III, "The Mediator of the Atonement: The Only Begotten One," pp. 86-90, text at https://www.thestudiesinthescriptures.com/Pages/English/Eng%20V5/Eng%20Vol%205%20Ch%203.htm. ↩
39. "The Creed: The Symbol of Faith," Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/prayers/symbol-of-faith. ↩
40. Athanasius, Discourse I Against the Arians 11, trans. John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson, NPNF2 vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/28161.htm. ↩
41. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith II.12, trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, NPNF2 vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33042.htm. ↩
42. Proclaimers, chap. 5, p. 54, quoting Millennial Dawn, vol. 1. ↩
43. John of Damascus, Exact Exposition II.3 (said of the angels), same translation. ↩
44. Acts 1:7 and Matthew 24:36, New King James Version. ↩
45. Proclaimers, chap. 5, footnote b. ↩
46. Matthew 24:26-27, New King James Version. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• Russell, Charles T. The Time Is at Hand. Studies in the Scriptures, Series II. Allegheny, PA: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1889; 1907 printing. Internet Archive, timeisathand00russ.
• Russell, Charles T. The Time Is at Hand. "1,495,000 Edition." Brooklyn: International Bible Students Association, 1914 (title-page date). Internet Archive, bwb_08-BRG-119.
• Russell, Charles T. The Time Is at Hand, with "The Author's Foreword" dated October 1, 1916. 1927 printing, Internet Archive, in.ernet.dli.2015.173447; text also reproduced at thestudiesinthescriptures.com.
• Ross, J. J. Some Facts and More Facts about the Self-Styled "Pastor" Charles T. Russell. Winnipeg: North-West Bible and Tract Depot, [1913?]. (A hostile pamphlet by the defendant in Russell's libel case.)
• Russell, Charles T. The At-one-ment Between God and Man. Studies in the Scriptures, Series V. Allegheny, PA: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1899. Text reproduced at thestudiesinthescriptures.com.
• Russell v. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 168 A.D. 121, 153 N.Y.S. 450 (N.Y. App. Div. 1915).
• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• "The Creed: The Symbol of Faith." Orthodox Church in America. oca.org.
• Athanasius. Four Discourses Against the Arians. Translated by John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892.
• John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Translated by E. W. Watson and L. Pullan. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 9. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1899.

Other scholarship (including scholars who disagree)

• Whalen, W. J. "Russell, Charles Taze." New Catholic Encyclopedia. Via Encyclopedia.com.
• "Charles Taze Russell." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Via Encyclopedia.com. (Consulted for its observation that studies of Russell are "some laudatory, some denunciatory, few balanced"; its specific dates for the marriage were not relied on.)
• "Legal History." watchtowerdocuments.org. (A site critical of the Watch Tower Society; used for the outcome of the Ross case and the state of the transcript.)
• Penton, M. James. Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses. 3rd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. (A critical history by a historian and former Witness; listed for further reading, not quoted.)

Sources from the tradition discussed (Jehovah's Witnesses)

• Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom. Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, 1993. Chapters 5, 6 and 10. wol.jw.org.
• "Paradise Restored to Mankind: By Theocracy!" Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1972. Chapter 19. wol.jw.org.
• "Questions From Readers." The Watchtower, May 15, 1953, p. 319.
• "Who Really Is the Faithful and Discreet Slave?" The Watchtower (Study Edition), July 15, 2013, pp. 20-25.
• "A 100-Year-Old Epic of Faith." The Watchtower (Study Edition), February 15, 2014.
• "Who Was the Founder of Jehovah's Witnesses?" jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions.