The Society likes to boast about the rich spiritual heritage of their history, pointing out all their organizational improvements and accomplishments since the founding of the religion, and since Jesus' reign began in 1914. Let's get a sense of historical context by looking at the state of technology during the lifetimes of three end-time prognosticators who set the stage for the modern Jehovah's Witness religion.
Miller's, Barbour's, and Russell's lifetimes
William Miller (1782-1849) started the Millerite movement, predicting the end of the world would come in 1844. He died five years later. He was not connected to C. T. Russell directly, but he was a founder of the Adventist movement that influenced Russell.
During Miller's life: In 1844 they didn't have the telephone, record player, or refrigerator. Babbage's unfinished crank-driven calculator was the most advanced mechanical technology in the world. The only successful organ transplant so far was a small skin transplant. The word "photograph" was coined in 1839.
Nelson H. Barbour (1824-1905) calculated that the end should come in 1914 based on the 2,520 year calculation that the WTB&TS still uses.
During Barbour's life: In 1878, an early light bulb was demonstrated (almost thirty years after W. Miller died). The year N. H. Barbour died, Einstein suggested that E=mc^2, and our understanding of physics finally began to move beyond Newton's formulas of 1687.
Charles T. Russell (1852-1916) founded the Bible Students movement by publishing literature from his company, Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society. Russell associated Barbour's 1914 calculation with the end of the Gentile Times, expecting governments worldwide to fail in that year. Russell died two years later.
During Russell's life: The first demonstration of a car on an American road was in 1893. The Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903, and the tank was invented the year after Russell died. About 8 years after Russell's death, Edwin Hubble demonstrated that the distant smudges in the telescope were not gas clouds, but entire galaxies outside our own.
Anniversaries
Years since Miller's Great Disappointment: 170 (as of Oct. 22, 2014).
Years since Russell's Great Disappointment: 100 (as of Oct. 2, 2014).
Years since the founding of the WTBTS: 130 (as of Dec. 15, 2014).
Since 1914 and Russell's death in 1916
- We have learned the age, mass and size of the universe, estimated the count of its galaxies and stars and begun to map its structure, and man has stood on the surface of the Moon and built a science station in Earth orbit.
- Practically every part of the body has been successfully transplanted, and now we are developing the ability to grow new organs from the patient's own tissue. Penicillin and countless other basic medicines have been invented.
- Einstein's theories have allowed the harnessing of nuclear power, and the building of GPS networks and particle accelerators, and have in turn been supplemented by quantum theories.
- The computer advanced from being crank-driven and gear-based in Miller's and Russell's time to using electricity and vacuum tubes, then to using transistors and the integrated circuit, and perhaps soon will use qubits; most of the world has been connected by a network of virtually instantaneous communications through undersea cables and geosynchronous satellites.
- Thanks to a theory that formally originated in 1876 when C. T. Russell was 24, we can now reconstruct some of the original documents that went into making the Old Testament by using linguistic analysis and historical comparisons, allowing us to see it as a flawed, man-made collection of centuries of Jewish writing by disparate groups.
Meanwhile, millions of people worldwide are still following the modern continuation of writings by men who thought they could find the time of the end using Bible math, and who found cars and light bulbs to be ingenious new devices.