Errors of Russellism

A brief examination of the teachings of Pastor Charles T. Russell, as set forth in his “Studies in the Scriptures”

By J. E. Forrest

GOSPEL TRUMPET COMPANY

anderson, indiana, :: u. s. a.

Copyright, 1915,

by

Gospel Trumpet Company

INTRODUCTION

After reading the six volumes entitled Studies in the Scriptures, written by Pastor Chas. T. Russell of Brooklyn Tabernacle, New York City, the noted millennialist of the present day, and finding a number of fundamental errors relating to the doctrines of the gospel and involving the final destiny of thousands of souls, I have decided to set these errors, in their true light, before the public.

Briefly stated, Mr. Russell’s “Plan” is as follows: That we are now living in the closing up of the “gospel age”; that during the gospel age the object of God’s plan has been to select a few saints, whom Mr. Russell terms “the church,” “the bride,” “the Lord’s elect,” “members of the Lord’s body,” and of the “high calling”; that the call to these special favors closed A.D. 1881; that Christ has already returned to earth in his glorified and invisible body; that the kingdom has been set up in power, the dead saints have been resurrected, and the millennium has begun; that the “times of the Gentiles”; that is, “Gentile dominion” (present forms of government among the nations of the world), ends with 1914. The date he fixed for the Savior’s second coming was 1874, and for the setting up of his millennial kingdom, 1878. The gospel age, according to his interpretation and application of Scripture, closes with a “time of trouble,” or “day of vengeance,” such as the world has never known. This period is to continue forty years, beginning A.D. 1874 and ending 1914.

The millennium, he has attempted to show, is the “times of the restitution of all things,” during which period (one thousand years) the dead are to be raised up to Adamic perfection of being; not to inherit immortality as the “gospel church,” the “bride” of the “special” “high calling,” but to obtain everlasting life, conditioned upon obedience to “kingdom” laws. All who have lived and died without Christ, including the Sodomites, the heathen, the Jews, are to have another opportunity to obtain the benefits of the atonement. At the close of the millennial age all sin and evil, including the incorrigible wicked and the devil and his angels, will be forever blotted out. Russell’s hell, or “second death,” is extinction of being.

If Mr. Russell’s Plan of the Ages is really “divine,” and a correct revelation of truth, we all should know it; if it is not, we all should know it; therefore this investigation can do no harm.

It will be seen that frequent reference to Mr. Russell’s work is made, together with direct quotations. This has been done that the reader may have the opportunity of making the comparison and drawing his own conclusions.

Quotations from Mr. Shaw’s book, Dying Testimonies of Saved and Unsaved, also quotations from Dr. Nelson’s Cause ...