S. Russellism Unveiled
Russellism Unveiled (Commonly Known as “Millennial Darwinism”) By Wm. Edward Biederwolf
It’s a strange thing how easily people are led astray in religious matters. They’ll have good sense in every other way and yet they’ll need a commission on sanity to sit on their case when it comes to religion. They’ll allow themselves to be roped in and to be duped and buncoed and bamboozled and hoodwinked by any old sort of a theory as long as it has a few verses of Scripture in it to make it look like it’s religious.
You would think a man would think a dozen times, or twice anyhow, before he’d throw over-board the simple, genuine faith that saved him in the first place for any new-fangled theory or notion no matter where it comes from or who brings it along.
Then another thing. The average man knows or ought to know that his own opportunity and ability for critical investigation of the Word of God is necessarily very limited, and so you would think that for his interpretation of Scripture he would be more inclined to lean on what practically all the great theologians and scholars and exegetes of all denominations have agreed upon, rather than to jump up and follow the lead of some fanatic or some single individual who appears on the scene with some interpretation of his own and says everybody is wrong but himself, and then go with him or with her, as the case maybe, into all sorts of peculiar vagaries and ridiculous eccentricities and extravagant perversions and religious nonsense in general. But such is not the case.
Let any of these self appointed prophets and self deceived enthusiasts and self-estimated wise ones come along claiming the authority of God’s word for their particular vision or their religious scheme, and like sheep following a bellwether saints from inside of the church and backsliders from outside of the church will run after him and follow him to all sorts of ridiculous and insane conclusions with a “ thus saith the Lord “emblazoned on their banner.
There was old John Alexander Dowie, who thought he had a monopoly on the secrets of God. And there was old Farmer Miller, who had it fixed up that the world was to end on October 22, 1844, and a lot of duped followers had on their white ascension robes the day it was to happen, but the old sun rose in the east, and rolled on through the sky just the same as usual. There’s this shameless religion they call Mormonism, and if the United States doesn’t soon put the clamps to that unclean and devilish thing the time will come when she will wish she had. There’s Madame Tingley with her theosophy out on Point Loma. If you have a sneaking, secretive disposition, you were a cat before you became a woman.
That’s Theosophy all right.
Some of you were elephants and some of you were dogs.
I haven’t time to explain. And there’s the fanatical “Holy Ghost and us” society up in Shiloh, Maine, with its self-deified leader, Rev. Frank Sanford, in the Federal prison at Atlanta.
There are the Bahaists who claim Christ has returned and is incarnated in that ungodly leader Abdul Baha, or Abbas Effendi, as they call him. And then of Mrs. Eddy and Joanna Southcott and Cumming and Totten and Dimbleby and Biden and a whole raft of other faddists, fanatics, fakers and frauds some of them, though some of them have been honest enough, we haven’t time to speak. And now comes one Charles Taze Russell, formerly of Allegheny, and later of Brooklyn, with the most fantastic and far fetched scheme of them all, known as Millennial Dawnism. “Russellism” is a good name for it; for it’s all his. His ardent defense of the inspiration of the Bible, his denunciation of the higher critics and new-thought theologians, his constant appeal to the Word of God, his asserted loyalty to Jesus Christ and His blood, his own apparent consecration and his pious language are all calculated to catch the ears of the pious but unwary people of the Lord.
He makes much out of what he calls the “due time.” God didn’t reveal to the Disciples what He has to Russell because the time wasn’t due. Polycarp and Ignatius and all the early fathers weren’t in it. Augustine and all the other great theologians were clear off.
Luther and all the other reformers were in darkness but now “in due time” the light is shining brightly and Russell has been the first And, with his followers, only man to see it.
Now, when a man comes tearing along as this man Russell has done, and puts a black eye on all the scholarship of the past, and juggles with the Greek as though he were a student of the classics, and claims to be the only right interpreter of the Word of God, it is a natural thing to ask for the credentials of a man like this.
Mr. C. T. Russell was formerly a gent’s furnishing dealer in Pittsburgh. A haberdasher. He was a shrewd man and a man of great business ability. A good deal has been said derogatory to his character, but our concern is with the man’s doctrines and not with the man himself.
It is history, however, that both the lower and higher court to which he appealed granted his wife a separation and described his conduct toward her as insulting and domineering.
It is history that the testimony in court charged him with improper conduct with other women. It is only fair to say, however, that he was not proven guilty of any immorality It is history that he tried to defraud his wife of her dower interest by transferring all his property to certain corporations, over which, of course, he had full control, and that he tried to defraud her of the alimony fixed by the court by fleeing from one state to another.
It is history that he has secured enormous funds to carry on his propaganda by persuading people that this age is soon to end and that they should dispose of their property to him for the furtherance of the true Gospel.
It is history that he has encouraged dealing in what was called “Miracle Wheat,”which was supposed to grow about fifteen times as much as the average wheat and which was sold only to the faithful for sixty dollars per bushel. But if what a man teaches is true, it is worth our while to stop and consider it regardless of the character of the man who teaches it. That Mr. Russell is the author of one of the most colossal systems of religious error of the present day we now propose to show. The second coming of Christ is the pivotal point of his whole teaching. Around this it all centers.
He says that Christ’s second coming took place in 1874 and that all true Christians then in their graves were raised in 1878.
He says that Christ and these Christians are here now but unseen, carrying on a special work and that in October, 1914, Christ will set up His Millennial reign and all present governments will then be overthrown.
Now, in trying to bolster up this doctrinal fad of his he becomes guilty of perverting well nigh all the teaching of the Bible concerning the person of the Christ and undermines practically every great fundamental of the Christian faith. To begin with, the theory itself of the Second Coming which he teaches is all wrong.
1. In the first place the day of the coming of Christ is unknown. Whether it be secret and invisible or otherwise, Matthew says “Of that day and hour knoweth no man “ (Matthew 25:36), and any attempt to fix it definitely is to assume a knowledge which the Son of God declared He himself did not possess (Mark 13:32).
2. 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and First Thessalonians, teach plainly that the resurrection of the saints takes place immediately upon Christ’s coming.
Russell says Christ came in 1874 and the saints were raised four years later in 1878.
3. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 teaches that the saints on earth shall, after being changed” in the twinkling of an eye,” be caught up at once with the resurrected believers to “meet the Lord in the air.”Christ, therefore, could not have come in 1874, because there are Christians here now who we reliving as Christians then.
4. When Christ comes and the saints are changed and caught up into the air to be with Him, those who are left are surely going to miss them. “Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken and the other left.
Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken and the other left “ (Matthew 24:40-41). Did anything of this kind take place in 1874? Did anything unusual take place then? If Christ came in 1874 no one ever knew it but Russell.
5. Haldeman adds to these reasons two others. The first of these is that Seven years (Daniel’s Seventieth Week) after Christ’s Second Coming (His parousia, that is, His coming for His saints) He will publicly appear on Mt. Olive and usher in the Millennium. Nearly six times seven years have passed since 1874, says Haldeman, and therefore Christ could not have come at that time.
6. The other reason given by Haldeman is that when Christ comes, the Holy Spirit who now “restraineth the Man of Sin” will be “taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7), and as it is evident that the Holy Spirit is still here hindering the power of lawlessness, it is also evident, therefore, that Christ has not yet come.
7. The word plainly teaches and the old-fashioned people of God have always believed that when Christ comes to establish the Millennium, with the saints caught up to Him in the air, this stupendous even twill be an extraordinary one when the Son of God will come in His glory garments and earth and heaven by signs astonishing will proclaim the glad even t while the on-looking and awe-stricken world will behold the plentitude of His majestic splendor.
Matthew 24:30 says, “And they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” and Revelation 1:7 says, “Behold, He cometh with the clouds and every eye shall see him.” Could anything make plainer the fact that His second coming, His comin to establish the Millennium, is thus to be a visible one? But Russell will not have it so. His coming to establish the Millennial reign is to be an invisible one and only gradually will the world come to recognize the fact that He is here, though not to be seen with the literal eye (Vol. II, pg. 103). Of course, the words, “Every eye shall see him,” as well as many other passages are fatal to Russell’s theory, and so he must get rid of them. But this is dead easy for him.
He sure does hold the championship belt for exegetical jugglery. He can make “white” read “black,” change a mountain into a molehill or vice versa. If it suits his purpose, and his whole absurd dreams bolstered up by explanations which ridicule human reason and make out of human language little more than a “double-tongued deception. When it says, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be (Matthew 24:27).
“Lightning,” says Russell, means “bright shining,” and the passage refers to the gradual dawning of the truth of His invisible presence. A gratuitous and strictly Russellonian type of exegesis! When it says, “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, etc, “this master of Scripture manipulation makes it mean that He will really be “concealed,” and when it says “Every eye shall see him,” but “that in due time all shall recognize his presence invisible, His power and His authority” (Vol. 2, pg. 153). And these are only samples of his numerous other interpretations by which he twists and distorts the word of God to create support for his fantastic and insubstantial teaching.
Now let us just see where his false teaching concerning the Second Coming of Christ leads us.
Let us first admit for the moment that Christ did come as a spirit-being in 1874. What is a spirit-being? Any dictionary will give you a good definition.
Read what Christ said about a spirit in Luke 24:36-40.
Then here is a question: If Christ returned in 1874 only as a spirit being, what became of the body of Christ after His resurrection and before His return to this earth in 1874 and where is it now?
Here is where Russell gets himself in a hopeless mess and makes himself the laughing stock of all right and careful thinking people.
1. He begins by declaring that Jesus Christ was the creation of God. That He was created a spirit being just as the angels were.
He declares in the plainest language on page 188 of Volume I that God created Jesus Christ, and on page 84 of Volume 5 he emphatically and unblushingly says that the Lord Jesus Christ was a created angel, and that before he came into this world he was none other than the Archangel Michael.
Think of it! A created Archangel conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary instead of the uncreated, eternal Son of God as we have been taught in holy revelation to believe, and that instead of worshipping this ever blessed and only begotten One, it has been after all only an Archangel who has been the object of our love and our adoration! Not only is this repulsive in the extreme, but it flatly denies to our Lord Jesus Christ His eternity, His co-existence with God, His deity. If He was created He was not coexistent with God. There was a time when He did not exist. He was not the eternal, uncaused, unbegun personality. He was not before all things and by Him all things were not made that were made. He Himself was made. God made Him. But this unwarrantable and inexcusable contention in the face of the plainest statements of Scripture is little less than contemptible.
It seems well-nigh like blasphemy. Around the person of Christ the Bible pours all the wealth of its matchless revelation. His pre-existence and His Deity is declared openly and unmistakably. He is the everlasting and self-caused One, the alone fullness of the eternal Being.
John says “In the beginning was the Son and the Son was with God and the Son was God” (John 1:1). In the beginning was; not “was created.” “With God;” Co-existent; not brought into existence. “was God” not a subordinate, created being.
Christ Himself claimed that He had always existed. “Before Abraham was I AM” (John 8:58), the ever existent, ever-present One. When Christ asked the Jews why they stoned Him, they said, “Because being a man, thou makest thyself God.” But Russellism teaches that our Lord Jesus Christ was not God. It teaches that He never was God. It teaches that He had a beginning. It teaches that God created Him. It teaches that He is not the uncaused, self-existent second person of the everlasting and triune Godhead. And in thus denying to the Christ His eternal existence and consequently His deity.
Russellism not only robs Him of the glory due Him, but it brands Him as a shameless falsifier, guilty of blasphemous treason against the eternal God, or it makes Him the victim of hopeless self-deception and thus sends Him down the ages under the smarting scourge of unholy imposture or mental degeneracy.
Against His eternal existence, against His deity all the powers of hell and all the enemies of the Godhead on earth, from Arius the Lybian to the modern Unitarian, have combined to discredit the existing and divinely given system of Christian faith, and now Russellism becomes out-spokenly one of the instruments of this unholy assault.
II. Next, Russellism declares (Vol. 1, pg. 179) “That Christ at His incarnation gave up His spirit being, and that while He walked on earth He was nothing more than ‘a perfect human being’.”
These are his exact words (See Vol. 5, pg. 98).
He did not have two natures on earth. “Neither,” says Russell “was Jesus a combination of two natures, human and spiritual” (Vol. 1, pg. 179). But this denies His divinity, and robs His incarnation of all its worth.
Indeed Russell makes no bones about it. He says (same page), “He was not exalted to the divine nature until the human nature was actually sacrificed—dead.” By what sort of Scripture wresting must a man come to such a conclusion?
Russell most assuredly is an expert exegetical contortionist of marvelous type!
It seems almost an insult to reason to spend time with such unwarrantable interpretation of the Word of God. The Jews stoned Him because He claimed to be divine (John 10:33). He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Isaiah prophesied, “Unto us a child is born and his name shall be called the Mighty God” (Isaiah 9:6). Paul says, “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16). John said, “And the Word (the Son of God), was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). He did not cease to be the Son of God in doing so. He changed His form, for He was in the form of God, but His person He did not change, and He was both God and man, two natures in one person as the Bible teaches and the church has always believed. But Russellism teaches that while on earth the Son of God had only one nature and that was human. It teaches that in order to become the Saviour of men He gave up His divine nature. It teaches that He was only a man like Adam was before he fell. And so it degrades His glorious person and virtually says there was no Incarnation at all.
III. Following this, Russellism must, of course, declare that the work of Christ on the cross was only the work of a mere man. Does Russellism draw back? Does it tremble at the thought of making such a statement? No! Listen, while Russell speaks. Mark well his words! You will find them in Vol. II, page 107 and 129.
“As a human being he gave himself a ransom for me n.” It was His flesh, His life as a man, his humanity, that was sacrificed for our redemption.” The italics are Russell’s.
There was no divinity on the cross! No deity there!
Ours was only a human Saviour! Is it necessary to say that this denies the atonement, and robs it of its power? Do not the Scriptures testify that no man by his wealth, his self-sacrifice or his character can redeem himself, much less redeem any one else? Could you trust the redemption of your soul to any mere man, however wise, however great, however holy or perfect or Adam-like before his fall? But Russellism does not stop here. It declares that we ourselves as the children of God through our sacrifice are a part of the ransom price for sin. Russell says, “We, as members of Christ’s body, are yielding up our lives in sacrifice during this age, and these sacrificial lives counted in with His constitute the blood of Christ which seals the new covenant between God and the world!”
Oh, cross of Christ bearing away my sin! That cross where broke the matchless heart of the Son of God! That cross where centers all the eternal wisdom and unfathomable love, all the inexorable justice and infinite mercy of the everlasting God is one supreme and successful effort to save a lost world! And now comes Russellism with its audacious effrontery and unreasoning bigotry and thoughtlessly degrades it as the death instrument of one who was only a man!
IV. Russellism Next Declares That Jesus, After or Upon His Resurrection, Became Once More A Spirit Being! In Vol. I, page 231, it is said, “Jesus at and after His resurrection was a spirit—a spirit being, and no longer a human being in any sense.” But this is a denial of the resurrection of His body. Russellism declares that the body of Jesus crucified and buried in Joseph’s tomb was never resurrected. What then became of Christ’s body?
Russell says “We know nothing about what became of it” (Vol. II, pg. 129). He says it was “supernaturally removed from the tomb because if it had remained there it would have been an obstacle to the faith of the disciples” (same page) Supernaturally slipped away! The chief priests invented the lie that His disciples stole it to deceive the people. Now comes Russell with the bigger lie that God did it to deceive the disciples.
What did God do with it? He either dissolved it into gases or has it in His possession as a corpse. Russell says he doesn’t know. His exact words are, “Whether it was dissolved into gases or whether it is still preserved somewhere as the grand memorial of God’s love, no one knows.”
Dissolved into gases!
Shocking blasphemy! Preserved as a corpse! Base, trifling, daring and sacrilegious speculation! And some day God is to produce this corpse and expose it to the world — put it on exhibition! “ It will not surprise us,” says Russell, “if this be true.” And all this silly and absurd nonsense in face of the fact that Jesus said He would raise His body from the dead (John 2:19, John 2:22), and “showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs” (Acts 1:3), and that the disciples saw Him alive in His own body, talked with Him, ate with Him and walked with Him by the way.
Russellism explains the appearance of Jesus by saying that as an unperceived and unperceivable spirit, “He instantly created and assumed such body of flesh and such clothing as He saw fit for the purpose intended,” and that what the disciples saw was not his own spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44), but a materialization which again dissolved into thin air. “Necessity is the mother of invention! “ If that proverb had not seen the light before Russell’s advent, it certainly could not have remained unborn after he got through.
If Jesus was only a spirit and “was no longer human in any sense or degree” (Vol. II, pg. 107), He had no right to say to His disciples, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it isI
Myself; handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have” (Luke 24:36-40); for whatever the nature of His resurrected spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:44), Jesus here denied that He was nothing but a spirit.
Russellism denies the resurrection of the body of Christ, the great fundamental upon which the validity of Christianity as a supernatural system rests, and if Christ be not so risen from the dead then are our hopes in vain, and of all men we are most miserable (1 Corinthians 15:19).
V. Following this, Russellism must, of course, declare that the Christ in glory, the ascended and exalted Saviour, is only a spirit and that He has no humanity whatsoever, as He now sits at the right hand of God. This is only another item of the calamitous teaching of this strange and absurd perversion of Scripture truth.
Russell says “We must bear in mind that our Lord is no longer a human being” (Vol. II, pg. 107). Again (same place) he says, “He is no longer human in any sense or degree.” But this is a plain denial of Christ’s high-priestly intercession. To say nothing of the fact that the disciples saw Him ascend in His humanity (Acts 1:9), and that the Scriptures declare that the martyred Stephen saw the Son of Man standing by the side of the glory of God, and that Zechariah, by the Spirit, reveals to us that when He comes again, “one shall say to him, ‘What are these wounds in thy hands,” all of which proves His now existing humanity—to say nothing of all this Paul expressly declares that “there is one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
And, furthermore, all this arbitrary subversion of the Lord’s high-priestly function is made in face of the fact that it was upon His human nature that it was based. But Russellism will not have it so. It teaches that Christ lost His spirit being at His incarnation and became only a man. It teaches that Christ lost His human nature at His resurrection and became again only a spirit being. It teaches that Christ was not divine before His incarnation nor during it. It teaches that Christ became divine only after or upon His resurrection. It teaches that Christ in glory, now, is only a spirit being.
VI. After all this inane trifling with the holy word of God in order to pave the way for its absurd notion that Christ returned to this earth a spirit being in 1874, Russellism next proceeds to pronounce its infallible (?) dictum on the coming disposition of the souls of men.
If anything could be more reckless, more presumptuous, more soul-sickening than the far-fetched and unpardonable teaching already reviewed, we are now about to be treated to it by this ingenious and daring manipulator of biblical testimony. To prepare the way for some other startling propositions about to be set forth, Russellism begins by postulating repeatedly and emphatically the doctrine that death always means the extinction, the cessation of being,—annihilation. But this is anti-Christian and absolutely without one scintilla of evidence in the word of God. It opens the way for all sort of senseless speculation and is the rock upon which Russellism builds the dreamy super-structure of its whole unhallowed theory.
Over and over in sermon, book and magazine, Russell emphasizes and reiterates that death in the Scripture always means extinction of being; annihilation. Do you want to hear Russell’s definition of death? Then turn to Vol. 5, page 329 and you will find it there standing forth in all its cold-blooded ghastliness.
He says, “Death is a period of absolute unconsciousness—more than that it is a period of absolute nonexistence.” Then again the same volume on page 347 it is stated, “The dead are dead, utterly destroyed. “Let us notice this claim a moment before passing on.
1. Scores of Scripture passages refute it. (a) Jesus said “Let the dead bury their dead” (Luke 9:60). Here the first mentioned “dead” are alive; else how could they perform the act of burial for the second mentioned “dead” who had ceased to live. The first word “dead” is used figuratively. (b) Jesus said, he that believed in His Father, “hath passed out of death into life” (John 5:24). How could he have believed if he were not in existence?
See also 1 John 3:14. (c) Paul speaks of people who were still in existence as “being dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). (d) Paul speaks of people who are dead and alive at the same time; “dead while she liveth” (1 Timothy 5:6). (e) Jesus tells us in Luke 16:1-31 of a rich man who died and was buried and afterwards “lifted up his eyes in hades.” Evidently then he had not ceased to exist. Lazarus, the poor man, he likewise shows in Paradise, figuratively called “Abraham’s Bosom,” and Abraham himself, who died 2,000 years before” and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 25:8-9) is likewise made known to us in this same place. The continued existence of these three men and of others mentioned elsewhere is fatal to this theory of Russellism. (f) Jesus expressly stated that the soul continued to exist after the body was dead. He says, “Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). The body may be destroyed but the soul, the real person, lives on. (g) Moreover, if death means extinction of being, what then became of Jesus Christ when He died on Calvary? The inevitable logic of this unholy premise leads you to the cold-blooded, ghastly, soul-sickening conclusion that He became extinct, that He ceased to be, that He was annihilated.
Jesus Christ, your Lord and your Saviour, annihilated on the cross!
Listen to these terrible words: “Our Lord’s being or soul was non-existent during the period of death” (Vol. 5, pg. 362). Then listen to these other words that chill the blood as you read them. “It was necessary, not only that the man Christ Jesus should die, but just as necessary that the Man Christ Jesus should never live again, should remain dead to all eternity. ”Indeed, if the sentence of death imposed upon Adam and upon all men (Romans 5:12) meant annihilation, if Christ was to be the perfect substitute He must needs have been annihilated. So, approached from either angle, the deliberate avowal of Russellism must be and is the annihilation of Him whom we know as the redeemer of the world.
Russellism says that the Lord’s soul was non-existent during the time of His death. Then let Russellism answer this question: What is the nonexistence of that which once existed, if it is not annihilation or extinction? Then who was the Christ who after the supposed resurrection walked the earth and communed with the disciples? Certainly, by the inexorable logic of its own frightful premise, not the Christ who had died, but another Christ, a Christ brought into existence, a newly created Christ!
Thus, admit for one moment that Russellism is right about the meaning of the word death and you see immediately something of the destructive, blasphemous but inevitable conclusions to which it must lead. This is furthermore seen in Russell’s disposition of the whole question of the hereafter.
First, in Regard to Believers. Russellism teaches that the holy apostles and all true Christians who died prior to 1878 we’re raised in the spring of that year, that is, in the spring of 1878 (See Vol. III, pgs. 234-235 and pgs. 302-306).
It teaches that those so raised and the true Christians to be raised or changed in 1914 comprise the Bride of Christ, the “Overcomers,” the “little flock.” It teaches that these have the “divine nature,” are like Christ and are immortal and shall reign with Christ during the Millennium. But notice, it teaches that such Christians as were raised in 1878 and those to be raised in 1914. were raised and are to be raised as spirit-beings without a body. But this is a flat denial of the resurrection of the body. And all this in the face of the unbroken testimony of the Scriptures to the contrary.
One reference is enough. “But some will say, ‘How are the dead raised up and with what body do they come?’ It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:35, 1 Corinthians 15:44).” But Russellism will not have it so. It is a spirit without a body capable of manufacturing a body and a particular suit of clothes according to the fashion of the day, for whatever the occasion may be on which the said spirit wishes to present itself.
2. But now comes a difficult problem. But none too difficult for the inventive genius who is the author of Millennial Dawnism. The problem is this: If death means always extinction of being, annihilation, etc, where do these spirit beings come from whom Russellism declares were raised in 1878, and whence are to come the spirit beings of those who died since 1878? And here is the answer, These beings are created over again! Of course. How else could they come into existence? What inane, silly, senseless speculation! But notice where it leads you. If at death being becomes extinct, if the being who dies ceases to be, how can this same being be created over again? That which does not exist cannot be re-created. Ex nihil nihil fit. These spirit beings, therefore, which are created are not the same beings which once existed and then went out of existence and ceased to be. They must be new beings and other personalities.
There is, therefore, logically no resurrection at all. Neither was there a resurrection of Christ, nor will there ever be of any one else. And the Christ who came in 1874, or is to come, is not the same Christ, not the Christ born of the Virgin, not the Christ of Gethsemane, nor the Christ of Calvary, but another Christ, as we have said before. May God in His infinite mercy save His people from such error.
Second, In Regard to Unbelievers. In Vol. I, page 105, Russell says, “The prevailing opinion is that death ends all probation; but there is no Scripture which so teaches.” What then is Mr. Russell’s idea about this matter? Russellism teaches that the wicked dead have ceased to be, but at the beginning of the Millennium in 1914, they will be recreated. It teaches that they will be re-created, and then be given another chance to accept Christ after which they are to be made morally and physically perfect as Adam was before he fell.
It teaches that they will have this chance for 100 years, and if they do not accept it they will be annihilated. This is the Second Death (Vol. I, pg. 144).
It teaches that if they accept Christ during this 100 years they will be put on probation for 1,000 years. It teaches that if they fail during this 1,000 years they will be annihilated (Second Death), but if they prove faithful they will be given everlasting life (Vol. I, pgs. 107, 144).
It teaches that there is a difference, however, between this everlasting life and immortality. Only Christ and the true Christians before the Millennium (“the little flock,” the “overcomers,”) will have immortality. It teaches that immortality is inherent life, self-existent life, life sustained without food. This is some thing better than everlasting life which those saved during the Millennial age receive, and which, though lasting forever, is to be sustained by eating food and this food is to be the fruit of the tree of Life of which Adam ate before he sinned. This is all very attractive to the wicked and unbelieving, the man who wants to live in sin. But where in the word of God is there any warrant for all this fantastic and man-concocted arrangement? Where does the Bible say the wicked are to have another chance? The Bible says, “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). A second chance?
No! Unto damnation or unto judgment whose issue is the opposite of life (John 5:28-29). The Bible says, “The dead in Christ shall rise first,” and that “the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished” (Revelation 20:5). But Russellism says the wicked dead are raised at the beginning of the thousand years. What does it do with the phrase then, “the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years we refinished, “for this stoutly and flatly opposes any such teaching.
Driven at last in a corner and brought to bay, this ghoulish heresy, having defiled nearly all the hallowed ground of divine revelation, turns about in its desperation, shows its sacrilegious teeth, and says the passage before it is spurious. But every critical Greek text but one from Griesbach to the present day contains the words, “nor,” as the learned Dr. Moorehead says, “does one of these scholars cherish the slightest suspicion of its integrity.”
Russell’s whole theory is concocted and all of its unwarranted teachings are carried forward solely for one purpose. That purpose is that he might give to those dying in sin a second chance in the age to come. He says, “Men, not God, have limited to this age the chance or opportunity of attaining life” (Vol. I, pg. 131). No matter what the individual has been in this life; he may have been the vilest of profligates and she the most shameless of unclean women; murderers, adulterers, liars, thugs, reprobates or what not, they are all to be raised at the Millennium morning and “enjoy a full opportunity to gain everlasting life” (Vol. I, pg. 131). The italics are Russell’s.
We are supposed to read out of the word of God what it really contains, but if a man is to be allowed the license to read into it whatever he pleases in order to make it sponsor for some fine spun theory of his own making, then havoc will be played with the divine revelation from one end of it to the other, and a man with the ingenuity and seeming lack of conscience of a C.T. Russell will find an easy and delightful task before him. But against this iniquitous perversion of God’s holy word the faithful minister must not cease to warn his people, The trouble is people who are led away by these latter day fascinating heresies do not take the time or have not got the time to thoroughly investigate and carefully diagnose them.
While no one knows the exact time of the Lord’s coming, it does seem and is generally accepted that we are living in the “latter times,” and we cannot be surprised at the appearance of these cunningly devised doctrinal speculations, for of these the “Spirit expressly speaks.” But alas, for the numbers who have been misled. May God in His infinite mercy, if you have been caught in the meshes of Russellism, release you from its entanglement and lead you by His Holy Spirit to the pure worship of Jesus Christ, His Son, the complete manifestation of the infinite Godhead from all eternity, in whom is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, God of God and very God of very God, who is and who was and who is to come.
Mislead a soul. A series of sermons was published in Scotland. They twisted and distorted the Scriptures and taught perverse doctrines and we recalculated to unsettle one’s faith. They were republished in the United States and a young lady of pure faith and much influence in the city of New York read them, became confused and lost her faith.
She became ill and died of a lingering disease. The pastor called repeatedly upon her and tried to reestablish her faith, but he couldn’t do it, and she died. In less than one year after her death, the author of these sermons was tried for heresy, and he asked a little time to reconsider, and then said that he was convinced that he was wrong and that he desired to retract nearly all of what he had said. But the woman who had become entangled in the labyrinth of his speculations had died in darkness.
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Some Sleight of Hand Work With the Calendar This article was first published in 1911, three years before that all-important, world-trans-forming date of Russellism which was to mark the end of this age, i.e, October 1914. It will be interesting to see how far Mr. Russell’s prophecies as to what was to occur in 1914 have really materialized.
Note what Russellism has to say about this tremendous date. “ We consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the kingdom of God, will be accomplished at the end of A.D. 1914,” (Vol. 2, pg. 99).
“The present governments must all be over-turned about the close of A.D. 1914 “ (Vol. 2, pg.242).
“The ‘Battle of the great day of God Almighty’ will end in A.D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth’s present rulership “ (Vol. 2, pg. 101).
“The Gospel age harvest will end October 1914 and the overthrow of ‘Christendom,’ so-called, must be expected to immediately follow” (Vol. 2, pg. 245).
“Sometime before the end of A.D. 1914 the last member of the divinely recognized Church of Christ, the ‘royal priest-hood,’ the ‘body of Christ,’ will be glorified with the Head” (Vol. 2, pg. 77). The “reign” of the “heirs of the heavenly kingdom”: over the world “can date only from A.D. 1914 — when the times of the Gentiles have expired” (Vol. 2, pg. 81).
“The times of the Gentiles will run fully out with the year A.D. 1914, and... at that time they will be overturned and Christ’s kingdom fully established” (Vol. 2, pg. 170).
It is now in order to ask of the followers of Charles T. Russell the following questions, Has the “times of the Gentiles run fully out?” Has Christ’s kingdom now been fully established? Has the final end of the kingdoms of this world already come? Has the last member of the body of Christ been glorified with its Head? Has theregn of the heirs of the heavenly kingdom over this world commenced? Has the “complete overthrow of earth’s present rulership” taken place? Has the over throw of Christendom taken place and did it take place immediately after A.D. 1914? The followers of Mr. Russell k n ow that none of these things have taken place. Russellism stands self-convicted. Out of its own mouth Russellism condemns itself. In the Watch Tower of October 1, 1907, Mr. Russell said, “But let us suppose a case far from our expectations; suppose that A.D. 1914 should pass with the world’s affairs all serene and with evidence that the ‘very elect’ had not all been ‘changed’ and without the restoration of natural Israel to favor under the New Covenant. What then? Would not that prove our chronology wrong? Yes surely” (the italics are Russell’s).
He said in this same article that such a failure “would work irreparable wreck” to his system. In fact, it seems he saw the elaborate structure, he had wrought so long and with such pains to erect, about to fall in “irreparable wreck” upon his own head, and yet, although he had said, “Be it distinctly noticed that if the chronology, or any of these time-periods, be changed but one year, the beauty and force of the parallelism would thus be utterly destroyed “ (Vol. 2, pg. 243), as A.D. 1914 drew near and the time for fulfillment of his predictions was getting a bit too close for comfort he changed, by as or to fun scrupulous trickery, his date from 1914 to 1915.
If you will compare the edition of 1914 with any of the previous editions, you will see that wherever the date 1914 occurred a new line of type has been inserted slightly distinguishable from the regular type and instead of the date 1914, presto change, it is 1915.
What late changes Russellism would have made to save its face, had its accomplished (?) religious founder and leader been permitted to live, cannot be known. No comments is necessary. The marvel of it all is that the followers of Russell could, after this “irreparable wreck” of his laboriously conceived, presumptuous and unsubstantial chronology, have any confidence in his prophetical reckonings or champion any further the doctrinal vagaries of this bold and reckless exegetical juggler, who has so “wrested the Scriptures” that he has left scarcely one great truth or fundamental doctrine untouched with his unholy, and unwarranted conclusions, — this is the marvel of it all!