This is the man who made it all happen!

by Terry 90 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  badboy

  TERRY, I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT
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  ICBehindtheCurtain

  Terry thank you so much for your effort in writing that! It was very informative, I had read up on the Millerites but never with so much detail and put into that format. I really look forward to your next installment.

  IC
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  stev

  Barbour and later Russell taught that Miller and the Millerite/Adventist movements fulfilled prophecy. The 1290 days/years of Daniel ended in 1829 with the beginning of Miller's preaching (this was false - Miller began preaching in 1831), see Thy Kingdom Come, the chapter on the Days of Waiting. They interpreted the Parable of the Virgins in Matt. 24 as applying to the Miller Movement - the virgins going out to meet the bridegroom was first fullfilled in 1844 when the Millerites expected Christ's coming in that year. And then they slept. The midnight Cry was, as they claimed, fulfilled in Barbour's 1874 movement. Russell claimed that the 2300 days/years of Daniel were fulfilled in 1846 with the cleansing of the sanctuary, which he interpreted to mean the cleansing from errors; Russell does not give names and details, but apparent that he is referring to George Storrs' preaching on hell, soul, etc. which most of Adventists accepted.

  Barbour's views of Miller can be found in his book The Three Worlds, and Russell in his Object and Manner booklet, and Thy Kingdom Come book. They both viewed Miller and the Adventists as a forerunner. Most of Barbour's readers and hearers were Adventists and former Millerites. Many of the original readers of the Watchtower were from Barbour's movement or Adventists. Russell's Adventist connections have not been fully documented. Many Adventists were against organization, but there were networks of papers and magazines that were read in common. One Adventist might subscribe to several magazines, and pick and choose what he wanted to believe. The Adventist papers had many debates over doctrine. Many even refused the name Adventist. They could have subscribed to Russell's Watchtower and yet not follow Russell on many points. Russell's devoted following in the first decade might have only been a few hundred. The early Watchtower quot e and argue with these other Adventist papers, print letters from Adventists, and Russell travels to and preaches to locations where there are Adventist churches. Eventually the boundaries between the Adventists harden, the loose confederation ends, and Russell by 1890 or so gains non-Adventist hearers. For years Russell's Adventist connections were not known. Russell's name appears in the early 1870's in some of the Adventist papers for acknowledgement of letters received or money sent, which is evidence that Russell read these papers. He likely read widely Adventist writings before 1876. The evidence leads to Russell having an ongoing connection with Adventists from 1869-1876 when he met Barbour. Afterwards he travelled with Barbour and would have met more Adventists or former Adventists.
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  Terry

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/132967/2366294/post.ashx#2366294

  I continue this story...
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  Terry

  Russell's devoted following in the first decade might have only been a few hundred. The early Watchtower quot e and argue with these other Adventist papers, print letters from Adventists, and Russell travels to and preaches to locations where there are Adventist churches.

  I can imagine it came down to a very practical matter eventually.

  Unable to give up on the idea of an urgent return of Christ; the faithful believer shopped around for the best buy, so to speak, on explaining exactly WHEN the day would come.

  Russell had enough money and resources to create a media presentation with charts and such equal to and surpassing what William Miller had used. The groundwork had been done. It was not a case of innovation on Pastor Russell's part. It was a question of presentation and closing the deal.

  Russell had the kind of charisma and a formal education which lent credence to his particular views. Further, the concept of an INVISIBLE COMING made the hanger's on view themselves as CORRECT. It was the splitting of the coming of Christ into two events which made Russell successful.

  Event1: Christ comes invisibly

  Event2: Armageddon.

  This left an interim in which the work had to be done of harvesting.

  The worst thing that ever happened to the faithful follower of Russell was having 1914 correspond with WWI. It was just enough of a world event to justify more SUNK COST.
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  M.J.

  I love this kind of thing! Great writeup.
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  Terry

  http://www.ex-sda.com/cosmopolite.htm

  This link has one of Miller's opponents doing a bang up honest job of taking the false chronology apart bit by bit.

  It has the flavor of the mid-19th century to it and was great fun to read!

  The color and sense of living in those days is to be had from reading it.

  Enjoy!
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  Terry

  btt
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  DannyHaszard

  Mark this! In 2007 Watchtower say's 1914 is Jesus second coming Who are the Jehovah’s Witnesses? •Regular people and not part of a cult. •People who want others to know about God and the Bible. •Believers that these are the last days before Armageddon and that it is urgent for people to develop a relationship with God. •People who don ... Reading Eagle

  Key dates for Jehovah’s Witnesses 1870s: Charles Taze Russell starts the modern-day organization from a Bible study group in Allegheny, which is now a part of Pittsburgh. Members were known as “Bible Students.” 1881: Russell forms the Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society, which begins to publish religious material for Bible students. 1893: First publicly advertised meeting in Chicago. 1914: The Second Coming of Jesus Christ, who now rules in heaven. 1935: Name of group changed to “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” based on Isaiah 43:10. Also changed the name to distinguish the religion from Christian denominations. 1930s-40s: Jehovah’s Witnesses take a series of cases to U.S. Supreme Court. The group wins decisions allowing members to preach without a license, not say the Pledge of Allegiance and other rights. Source: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

  Source: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania •Contact reporter Sarah Tompkins at 610-371-5031 or [email protected]
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  AndersonsInfo

  Thank you Terry for discussing the Millerite Adventism connection to Russell.
  
  However, after Russell died, who in the organization was a Millerite man at heart? For what it's worth, it was none other than Fred Franz. I found out the connection when I was working in the Writing Dept. doing research for the Proclaimer's book.
  
  When I was going through each of the books in Fred Franz's personal library searching for some material that was thought to be there, I saw that Franz had extensive reading material about the Millerite movement. Much later after I left Bethel and was no longer attending the meetings, I was reading the book "MILLENNIAL FEVER AND THE END OF THE WORLD, A STUDY OF MILLERITE ADVENTISM” by Georg R. Knight, (1993) and read statements that opened my eyes to where Franz's unusual interpretive “oracle” style of preaching came from--It was William Miller. In fact, when I was a new Witness attending one of my first large conventions, I'll never forget Fred Franz's oratory. In one talk he bombastically told the audience that the initials "D. D." written after a clergyman's name does not stand for Doctor of Divinity, but stood for "Dumb Dogs." (Everyone applauded.) I don’t know if Rutherford ever used that statement, but I do know that Franz was a writer and researcher with the WT since the 1920s. In fact, he penned many of Rutherford’s lectures.
  
  Getting back to when I was reading Knight's book; I found a paragraph on page 53 I'll never forget because it helped explain to me where Fred Franz got his material.
  
  "From time to time he [Miller] felt himself pushed too far or too hard by his critics and would lash out. Thus he could refer to the clergy as 'DUMB DOGS,' 'ravening wolves,' 'Wise-heads,' and 'wiseacres' who loved the word 'reverend' attached to their names. God, he held, would ultimately deal with such 'priestly dandies,' who had their 'consciences cased in corsetts of steel.''
  
  Of great interest to me was Knight’s explanation of the Millerite movement found on page nine that could be explaining the Witness movement under Franz's direction:
  
  "Beyond the usual sociological explanations that highlight external factors for that success, the present work argues that the vital internal dynamic that thrust the Millerites into the flow of history was a deep certainty, based upon concentrated study of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation, that Christ was coming soon and an impelling conviction of personal responsibility to warn the world of that good yet fearful news. In short, the Millerites were mission driven because they saw themselves as a prophetic people with a message that the world desperately needed to hear. That perception appears to be the internal mainspring that led the Millerites to dedicate their all to their task.
  
  "Such a deeply held conviction seems to be a precondition to success in all types of millennial movements. Without that prophetic certainty and its accompanying sense of urgent responsibility, millennial movements begin to atrophy; with their main-spring absent, they lose their dynamic for vitality and growth."
  
  From about the late-1980s, WT literature began to be devoid of this interpretive millennium excitement which resulted later in our seeing A LACK OF VITALITY AND GROWTH BECAUSE THE "MAIN-SPRING" WAS ABSENT.
  
  What happened to cause this change? Fred Franz was put in the Bethel Infirmary. He no longer could write; he was blind and ill. He dictated long, rambling disconnected information into a recorder which information the Writing Dept. never used and then he died in 1993. Franz was the MAIN-SPRING that pushed the movement along with his dynamic messages. (Although when I look back now those messages were quite silly for our day and age, but they were different and that attracted people.)
  
  Now, two decades later we can see the atrophy in the Witness organization which I believe BEGAN with Franz’s decline and death. He was the Millerite connection in our age. What we see now in the beliefs of the Witnesses are some residual beliefs, but nobody is really carrying on the dynamic Wm Miller tradition like Freddie Franz did. (To forestall any criticism of this thought, I'm not saying it is a loss, just a fact.)
  
  Barbara