The Gates Ajar and Charles Taze Russell

by slimboyfat 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  slimboyfat

  I was listening to Beyond Belief yesterday, a Radio 4 programme that treats religious ideas as worthy of consideration and discussion. Yesterday they were talking about belief in the afterlife.

  They mentioned something I'd never heard of before. One of the most popular books of the nineteenth century was a book about the afterlife called "The Gates Ajar" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. The central character is sad about having lost loved ones and is disappointed with mainstream churches and teachings. She comes up with her own conception of afterlife which is essentially a reunion of old friends and family in ideal conditions, a perfect earth except with all the wicked removed. This book was published in 1868 and was a huge bestseller in the US and the UK. This was around the same time Charles Taze Russell was rejecting mainstream churches, forming his own Bible study groups and developing an eschatology involving a cleansed earth and reunion through resurrection.

  Has anyone explored any possible influence here?
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  Diogenesister

  Very interesting...wish I'd caught the programme. I wonder if this book is available on project Gutenburg??
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  DATA-DOG

  WOW. I bet CTR had that one on the shelf!

  DD
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  transhuman68

  Yeah, but what about this guy?

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorovich_Fyodorov

  He believed that people could live forever and the dead could be resurrected.

  C. T. Russell jumped onto a very popular bandwagon; complete with ideas that seemed plausible in his
  
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  Je.suis.oisif

  Slim, thanks.

  Diogensister, if you have BBC iplayer you can catchup on that.
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  blondie

  There were several religions that came about in the last part of the 19th century.

  19th century[edit]

  • Christian Universalism/Unitarianism
    • Universalist Church of America, 1793
    • American Unitarian Association, 1825
    • Unitarian Universalism, 1961
  • Latter Day Saint movement/Mormonism, 1830
  • New Thought Movement, 1830s onward
    • Divine Science, 1888
    • Unity Church, 1889
    • Religious Science, 1927
  • Adventist/Millerites, 1840s
    • Seventh-day Adventist Church, 1863
  • Spiritualism, 1840s
  • Jehovah's Witnesses, 1870 (1931)
  • The Theosophical Society (Eastern Theosophy), 1875
  • Ethical Culture, 1877 onward
  • Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), 1879
  • Polish National Catholic Church, 1897
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  slimboyfat

  Here's a link to the programme:

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06sggdt
  
• 

  slimboyfat

  From the Wikipedia entry:

  The novel represents heaven as being similar to Earth (but better). In contrast with traditions of Calvinism, Phelps's version of heaven is corporeal where the dead have "spiritual bodies", live in houses, raise families, and participate in various activities.[7]The idea was not original to Phelps; at least one earlier book, the anonymous Heaven Our Home, was advertising as early as 1863 about its vision of "a Social Heaven in which there will be the most Perfect Recognition, Intercourse, Fellowship, and Bliss.[8]

  On the radio they described it as a cleansed earth with all the bad people removed. I wonder if there is reference to it in the early WT literature. They'd probably censure it for its spiritualist elements while ignoring striking similarities to their own views.
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  eyeuse2badub

  In those days, silly religious ideas sold. Today it takes naked women to sell something!

  I'm content with today's marketing!

  just saying!

  eyeuse2badub
• 

  OrphanCrow

  diogenesister: I wonder if this book is available on project Gutenburg??

  There are several copies listed at archive.org. This book is available in several formats.

  https://archive.org/search.php?query=the%20gates%20ajar

  Utopian literature of the late 19th century would have influenced Russell's writings, for sure. After all, Russell didn't set out to create a religion, he wanted to sell his books. The religion happened after his books were written, not before.

  Here is another utopian book that was popular around the same time - it was written just prior to "Gates Ajar" and could have been on Russell's bookshelf as well.

  "Gates Wide Open" by George Woods.

  https://archive.org/details/gateswideopenors00wood
  

  An edition of this work, entitled " Future Life ; or, Scenes in Another World," was published by Derby and Jackson in the fall of 1858. The firm failed in the spring of 1859, and the plates were resold to the author, and have remained in his possession unused until the present time, when the recent popular and attractive book of Miss Phelps, entitled " The Gates Ajar," suggested its republication and the change of title which is now made. The Author hopes his readers will be gratified witli this attempt to picture the Scenes and Society of Another World. Washington, May 1, 1869.

  Russell was not a great prophet - he was a just a product of his culture who took advantage of the free capitalist market in America in the late 19th century. Utopian (and dystopian) literature was quite popular at the time.

  *to add - Phelps published two sequels to Gates Ajar:

  "Beyond the Gates"

  https://archive.org/search.php?query=beyond%20the%20gates

  "The Gates Between"

  https://archive.org/details/thegatesbetween30540gut