Phiz,
Thanks for your kind words. They’re really appreciated.
Slim,
Those are the ‘facts’ usually presented, but that’s not what
the record shows. Here is what Russell and his contemporaries tell us:
Russell was familiar with preaching on prophecies before he
met Jonas Wendell, a “Second Adventist” preacher in 1869. Henry Moore, the pastor
of the Plymouth Congregational Church, the church Russell joined as a lad, was
a student of the prophecies and preached on them. He left behind at least one
printed sermon. Others within Russell’s early acquaintance in the Calvinist
community also promoted prophetic speculation. Calvinists in Pittsburgh republished
Archibald Mason’s speculations and date setting and remained interested long
after Mason’s predictions failed. So Wendell’s preaching was not totally surprising
to him. Wendell’s initial sermons were summarized in the Pittsburgh newspapers.
And on that basis Russell would not be surprised by their content.
But what did Russell actually hear from Wendell in 1869? A
careful reading of what Russell wrote on the matter suggests that he was most
impressed with Wendell’s comments on predestination and hell-fire doctrine.
Russell does not mention prophetic content, except in one later reference. But
we know what Wendell preached in 1869. Though Wendell started preaching about
1873 early the next year, in 1869 he was pointing to that year as the probably
end ‘to all things mundane.’ He tells us this in a World’s Crisis article. The
1869 speculation derived from Aaron Kinne, a Congregationalist clergyman who
wrote in the 1830s. W. C. Thruman resurrected it, claiming originality for the ‘research,’
but reading his “Sealed Book Opened,” it becomes evident that he borrowed from
Kinne. Thurman, a Brethren clergyman, became the darling of Second Adventists,
particularly Advent Christians, and many of them adopted the 1869 speculation.
What Russell first heard from Wendell was the last gasp of this belief. Then
the next year he heard Wendell’s proofs that 1873 was the end of the age when
the world would be consumed in fire.
We do not know how Russell received this. But there is
enough evidence to suggest a reaction. By 1871 Russell was reading widely in
prophetic literature. He was introduced to Storrs, Blaine, Dunn, Smith-Warleigh
and a host of other Age-to-Come non-Adventist writers and to Seiss and to Richard
Shimeall, a Presbyterian writer. From them he came to restitution doctrine, the
belief that Christ came to restore paradise to the earth, not burn it up. And
he came to believe in a two-stage, initially invisible parousia. This meant
that speculation about world burning was, in his view, false doctrine. He
writes about regretting the predictions of Wendell and Thurman and others. Who
were the others? He does not say, but someone predicted the end for every year
from 1869 to 2000. Among those who were or became his associates and acquaintances
some pointed to 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 1879 and 1881. Some of these
predictions were on questionable basis, even from Russell’s later viewpoints.
Some were based on a faked Mother Shipton prophecy and one on a supposed
measurement from the great pyramid, and one on a predicted conjunction of planets. Though much is made of Russell’s beliefs
regarding the pyramid, he wrote that it was a poor basis for establishing Bible
chronology, that it should only be used to support what can be derived from
scripture. But that’s something said past the period we’re considering.
Did Russell oppose chronological speculation. It is often
said that he did. What he wrote, however, is that because he believed in an
initially invisible presence, the only way to know when it occurred was through
Bible chronology. In this period his belief was: “It seemed, to say the least,
a reasonable, very reasonable thing, to expect that the Lord would inform his
people on the subject – especially as he had promised that the faithful should
not be left in darkness with the world, and that though the day of the Lord
would come upon all others as a thief in the night (stealthily, unawares), it
should not be so to the watching, earnest saints.”
So it’s not a reliable chronology he rejected, but Adventist
speculation that included world burning and seemed unreliable. He was looking
for a reliable chronological framework. When he received Barbour’s Herald of
the Morning in December 1875 (Not Jan 1876 as usually said) he thought he
might have found one. He also saw that Barbour et. al. had adopted age to come
belief, his belief system and thought they might have progressed beyond
Adventism into ‘truth’ – enlightenment. He wrote to Barbour who wrote back that
he and Paton had been Adventists but no longer were. That they had pursued
other doctrine. The other doctrine was age to come, doctrine Russell had
learned from Storrs, Stetson and a variety of others, some of whom he mentions
directly and some we can surmise from available evidence. What made Barbour’s chronology different was
that it was expressed not in Adventist terms that Russell would reject out of
hand but in Age to Come/ Literalist / One Faith terms that matched Russell’s
theology.
Did Adventism have an effect on Russell. He says it did,
that it helped him to unlearn certain thing we can readily identify as
Calvinist predestination and hell-fire. Did Russell believe he was adopting
some form of Adventism by accepting Barbour’s redefinition of the events of
1873-1874? No. Instead he saw it as a step forward in his Age to Come belief in
restored paradise. Should we see it as an Adventist influence? I think not. Russell
did not adopt Adventist doctrine, and Barbour's chronology was not expressed
in Second Adventist terms. The origin of the 1873-4 date was primarily in
Anglican writings. Barbour even acknowledges this.
