The founder of (what is today called) Jehovah's Witnesses was a self-styled "Pastor" Charles Taze Russell.
His family was Scottish Presbyterian. His mother must have inculcated all the fearsome lore of Hell into her son at a very early age. He often chalked on sidewalks warnings of Hellfire for passers by as a child.
Somewhere along the line he tangled with an atheist in a debate and was left torn to shreds by the beating he took. His beliefs were bested by the logic of his opponent. (A noted orator, Robert Ingersoll, lectured with convincing logic on agnosticism and free thought raising the consciousness of many disillusioned religious people in those days. Many were persuaded.)
Russell suffered from the god-sized hole in his heart and wandered about listening in on any lecture he might find which served to counter-persuade him out of his deep funk and loss of faith.
About this time there was a vast unrest among a new generation of Americans who had lost much in the Civil War. God had been fighting for both sides, it seemed, and the chaos and slaughter did nothing to bolster his reputation among the pious who had most suffered.
One tide swelled against religious thought and brought a crashing wave of disbelief, atheism and cynicism. A countervailing tide of crackpot fundamentalism sought to bring crushing arguments against them with apologetics of every persuasion.
This was a time of considerable flim-flam, quackery and hatreds for one group and another orphaned by war and disconnected from mainstream society by ill-will and outright malevolence.
Sidebar: Puritans had settled America with a core belief they would establish a shining city on a hill of perfect Christians whose
piety and perfectionism would entice all peoples and nations to bring about world conversion. Over the decades this
core produced social programs to lift people up and bring them into the state of grace and ethics which all the world
would have to notice. The Civil War brought severe disillusionment this would ever transpire.
Perfectionists turned into cynics. Mothers who lost sons and husbands on the battlefield were bitter and disillusioned. The fervid religious core of American believers were worn out praying for a future reward. People wanted God to intervene in the here and now. Thus was born a new, hungry FRINGE producing Adventism, cultism and a mass hysteria fueled by deep seated animosity of one group for another.
America had hot-spots of insidious conspiracy theories, anti-Catholicism, racism and imaginative End of the World scenarios. These were promoted for money, of course. Lectures would be held in tents and storefronts and the unheard of sum of $1 could be charged and obtained easily from curious folks aiming to acquire ammunition for their own prejudiced views.
After hearing the son of a Presbyterian minister and current Adventist, Jonas Wendall give a stirring lecture on Bible Chronology and the End of the World, Russell felt a renewed enthusiasm.
Russell joined the throng. It was a popular pursuit in post Civil War society to chase after wild and unusual ideas that contained contrived theories and abstract doctrines pertaining to End Times. Eagerness and longing pushed good sense and rational skepticism aside.
Russell joined forces with other former Millerites to publish the most exciting ideas pertaining to the coming advent of Jesus Christ.
(William Miller was a baptist farmer who had predicted Jesus coming and was proved wrong again and again. Miller's followers could not admit to being wrong and searched out many explanations for why they were really right.)
Russell was a dedicated reader of fringe ideas, a purveyor of charts, dispensation theories. Charles Russell had been privately tutored as a boy developing an articulate skill in writing and speaking. He found himself attracted to lunatic fringe people and zealous self-promoters. The self-styled "Pastor" met a radical feminist with fervent ideas whom he married and began a work of publishing various viewpoints which might promote Adventist ideas. They shared extremist views and a vivid writing style in pushing these beliefs forward.
At this time, (post Civil War) a pseudo-historian with extreme hatred for Catholicism named Alexander Hislop published a pamphlet (later enlarged into a book THE TWO BABYLONS) and promoted it by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
This book would play a large and influential role in establishing a methodology for Jehovah's Witnesses in doing their own crackpot pseudo-historical analyses.
Russell's own writing took on a tone of scholarship, reasoning and extrapolation of history, scripture and conclusion so similar to Hislop's that it borders on compulsive.
Russell's successor, J.F.Rutherford, carried on using this methodology by relating scripture, phoney history and imagination as a new Theology.
What was this metholody and how did Jehovah's Witnesses employ it. An article will follow.
(Read this interesting article as background for what follows:)
http://www.equip.org/site/c.muI1LaMNJrE/b.2713769/k.B1E9/DC187.htm