Several beliefs, while not necessarily unique to the Bible Student movement, when taken collectively, outline a doctrinal position that is distinct from mainstream Christianity. Some of these teachings are:

1. Inspiration of the Bible: Bible Students are united in holding that the sacred Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, are inspired and are the final authority for authentic truth. Correct doctrine is to be established in beliefs that harmonize all Scriptures on each subject. No non-Scriptural words may be made an article of faith.
2. Creation: Bible Students believe in Creation, while allowing for some evolution in the animal creation, and that man (and hence, woman) was a direct creation of God, physically and mentally perfect.
3. Original Sin: Believing that Adam and Eve were created perfect, the Bible Student position is that the sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden resulted in all their parents being born under the blight of sin, imperfection, and death.
4. Nature of God: The Bible Student position is neither Trinitarian nor Unitarian. While they believe that Jesus was the Son of God and possesses the nature of God since his resurrection, they do not accept the positions of co-eternity ir co-equality between the Father and the Son. Rather than accepting the doctrine of incarnation, they hold that Jesus was wholly flesh while on earth, having divested himself of his spirit nature. Nor do they accept the concept of the holy spirit being a person: it is the disposition or influence of God.
5. Nature of Man: In distinction from inherent immortality, the Bible Student view is that man is mortal by nature and that immortality is available only be meeting conditions of obedience. They hold that the human soul is not a distinct entity but is the result of the union of the body and the breath, or spark, of life, and that death is the dissolution of these two elements.
6. State of the Dead: Because death is the dissolution of body and breath, the soul that sins dies and goes out of existence until the resurrection process in the future kingdom of Messiah. The Bible “hell” is the grave and neither a place of eternal fire nor of conscious separation from God.
7. Virgin Birth: While Jesus was miraculously begotten by God through the holy spirit in the womb of Mary, the Bible implies that she did not remain a virgin thereafter and probably had children by Joseph after the birth of Jesus. Her nature was the same as others of the fallen race, and there is no biblical implication of an “immaculate conception” of Mary.
8. Ransom and Restitution: The main purpose of Jesus’ first advent was to provide a ransom, or substittutionary atonement for Adam and hence the entire human race descending from him. This Ransom was provided at the cross of Calvary and is efficacious for all who have ever died. It promises resuscitation from death for all humanity in Christ’s 1,000 year kingdom, along with an opportunity to obtain and maintain perfect life for eternity. The ransom also provides for the rehabilitation of planet Earth to perfect Edenic conditions.
9. Resurrection: After Jesus Christ was crucified, he was raised to spiritual life by his Father, God, and given a divine body in the express image of God’s person.
10. The Heavenly Calling: At his first advent, Jesus began calling out from mankind a special class to be his church or bride. To these he promises a part in heaven with him and his Father, and a kingdom role of reigning over mankind with himself for the blessing of all the families of the earth.
11. Second Advent: As with most Christians, the expectation that Jesus Christ would return to finish the work he began two thousand years ago is an important part of their faith. Most Bible Students share the following beliefs in the second advent.
1. Object: That the object of his return is the resurrection of the dead and the establishment of a new world order of peace and righteousness in which all sin, sorrow, and death will be eliminated.
2. Manner: That Jesus returns invisibly, at first unnoticed by the world at large, though eventually manifesting that presence to all.
3. Time: Though not in universal agreement, the majority of Bible Students feel confident that the time for his return was in the near past (1874) and that he in process of finishing his church, evicting the old regime of the adversary, and supervising the preparation of Israel for kingdom work,
12. Return of Israel: The establishment of the nation of Israel and the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland is an indication of the restoration of the favor of God to that nation and an indication of the nearness of Messiah’s kingdom. Bible Students anticipate a return of Israel to the borders promised to Abraham and a final conflict in the Middle East, in which their ancient prophets will be resurrected and God will, through them, bring about an unprecedented miraculous deliverance introducing the worldwide kingdom of Christ, expanding thence to a worldwide dominion of peace.
13. Church Organization: The Bible Student community is organized on a strict congregational basis with each local group being totally autonomous. Each group selects its ministry (elders and deacons) by a local vote of their consecrated members, and co-operates with other congregations as determined by that local group. All expenses are paid entirely by free-will voluntary offerings with no collections nor mandated costs; the ministry serves in a voluntary and non-paid basis.

 

Historical and Biographical Sketches

Christians Before the Reformation

There are glimpses of Protestant teachings from earliest Christian times to the Dark Ages. The Epistle of Barnabas explains a typical significance of the Sabbath: “The meaning of it is this: that in six thousand years the Lord God will bring all things to an end. For with him one day is a thousand years. . . . And he rested the seventh day: he meaneth this: that when his Son shall come, and abolish the season of the Wicked One, and judge the ungodly; and shall change the sun and moon, and the stars; then he shall gloriously rest in that seventh day. . . . the Sabbath, says he, which ye shall keep are not acceptable unto me, but those which I have made: when resting from all things I shall begin the eighth day, that is, the beginning of the other world.”¹

Willingness to suffer martyrdom for the cause of Christ is illustrated in Ignatius’ epistle to the Romans (ca. A.D. 110) 2:2-4, “Suffer me to be food to the wild beasts; by whom I shall attain unto God. For I am the wheat of God: and I shall be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather encourage the beasts, that they may become my sepulcher; and may leave nothing of my body; that being dead I may not be troublesome to any.”

Similarly, the contemporary Polycarp writes,² “I exhort all of you that ye obey the rule of righteousness, and exercise all patience; which ye have set forth before our eyes, not only in the blessed Ignatius, and Zozimus, and Rufus; but in others among yourselves; and in Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles.”

We hear of Arius first in A.D. 313 pleading for restoration of primitive purity in an Alexandrian church gone worldly. The leader of the worldly faction, Athanasius, could hardly accuse Arius of being too honorable; so after five years he accused Arius for heresy for not calling God a Trinity.³ Ultimately the Athanasians poisoned Arius to death, and called it the righteous act of God.

About A.D. 538 Jacobus Baradaeus (literally, James of rags, as he declined to spend money on clothing), of Syria, defended the monophysite concept of Jesus at his first advent having just one nature, the human. He ranged from Egypt to Babylon, and ordained 80,000 bishops. (The modern Syrian Orthodox Church descended from him and remains monophysite.)

The Paulicians in Asia were outside the Catholic Church, and began evangelizing in Europe. Likely from them came the modern Cathars (lit. Puritans, though the Catholic hierarchy called them “Ketzer,” heretics). Already in A.D. 1140, in Monteforte, they said Jesus did not have a soul, but by identity he was a soul. They looked forward to the “Rejuvenation Day.”

Other notable pre-Reformation Christians included Peter Waldo and the Waldenses in the Alps; John Wycliffe, who before William Tyndale’s time translated the Bible into English (though it would be incomprehensible a century later), had followers who were called Lollards; Jan Hus in Poland/Czech Republic; and Johann Wessel-Gansfort in the Netherlands, who said, “It is not by works, but in works, that faith lives.” All faced opposition, most were hunted, and some were burned at the stake.

1. Epistle of Barnabas 13:1-10 (Likely the Barnabas who was with Paul.)
2. Epistle of Polycarp (bishop of Smyrna) to the Phillipians 3:5-9.
3. Curiously, the word Trinitatas was invented by Tertullian ca. A.D. 200, but he was outside the main body of professing Christians. Irenaeus did not share the concept, but he was declared a Catholic saint, not Tertullian.

 

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Henry Grew (1781-1862)

Grew was born in Birmingham, England, but moved to Boston with his parents at age fourteen. At age 23 he was elected deacon of the Baptist Church he attended, and was later licensed to preach in Hartford, Connecticut, where he served ten years until he was dismissed for view the church deemed heretical.

He not only preached slavery, but from the Bible alone. Henry Grew determined that the doctrines of the immortal soul, hell-fire and Trinity were not Scriptural. He wrote several books against the doctrines, one of which was picked up by George Storrs, who was later convinced of Grew’s views regarding the state of the dead, Grew’s clear Scriptural exposition and ideas later influenced the Adventists and other individuals, directly to such as George Stetson and George Storrs, and indirectly through these to Pastor Charles Taze Russell.

Although he had only a moderate income, he was able to bestow half his income to charity. He gave a considerable about to missionary work as well as to the poor of the city. He not only cared for their well-being, but also for their spiritual welfare.

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George Storrs (1796-1879)

While traveling on a train, Storrs picked up a tract be found on the floor which was on the condition of the dead. He found out later that it was written by Henry Grew. In 1842, after a few years of study on this subject, Storrs began to preach this message to many of the Adventists. After writing a  book on the subject, he started a magazine entitled The Bible Examiner for the same purpose. He differed from Grew’s teachings in respect to the wicked. Storrs believed these would go into second death and not be resurrected to judgment. The two debated the matter for years until Henry Grew’s death in 1862.

A decade later, during a severe illness, Storrs reconsidered his views on the wicked, and determined that the Scriptures taught that the wicked would be resurrected to an education in the knowledge of God, to judgment, and that all the families of the earth would be blessed because of the promise to Abraham. He was later surprised to find other individuals teaching these same doctrines, one of whom was Henry Dunn, who a decade earlier had been teaching these things in England, unknown to Storrs. Because of these views, his friends forsook him and Storrs became an independent publisher of these teachings. During these years Pastor Russell wrote for Storr’s magazine until Storr’s death in 1879.

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 Isaac Newton: Bible Student and Scientist ¹

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was born in Lincolnshire on Christmas day nearly two months premature, and posthumous to his father. In the superstition of the day, all three of these circumstances of his birth were considered to portend a child of exceptional abilities, and so he was to prove. He was born in the last year in which a witch was burned at the stake in England. When he went to his grave at age 85, he was and still is remembered as one of the greatest scientists of all time. During the age of Revolution (1796), a declassed French aristocrat, Champlain de la Blancharie, issued a manifesto denouncing England for its failure to honor Newton and proposing to re-date the calendar for the new era from the date of Newton’s birth.

But the advocates of rational thought were inventing a fiction, for first and foremost Newton was a man of faith. The community has long ignored or belittled Newton’s strong commitment to Christianity and earnest non-conforming Bible study. Although it is easy to take exception with a number of details in interpretation, his keenness of mind permitted him to see truths that we might believe were little known until the time of the harvest. Nearly one million words, mostly unpublished even today, range over Biblical prophecy, the Times of Restitution, translation and manuscript errors, chronology, the measurements of Ezekiel’s temple compared against the New Jerusalem, and the Great Pyramid and its measurements as a witness, to name but a few. Albert Einstein, whose reformulation of gravitation three hundred years later has far displaced Newton’s classic work, spent some time in 1940 perusing the Jerusalem-based Yehuda collection of these massive religious writings. Einstein, whose faith in God always was firm but who was uncomfortable with theological dogmatism, took the time to compose a letter praising the papers for the insight they afforded into his famous predecessor’s “spiritual workshop.”

Newton’s public anti-Trinitatian positions and writings continually created difficulties for his patrons. These kept him out of the Royal society and required special royal dispensation for him to hold a post as professor, ironically enough, at Trinity College, Cambridge. Most significantly, he is responsible for the scholarship that challenged the acceptance of the spurious 1 John 5:7 into the Greek NewTestament.

In Of the World to Come Newton shows a clear grasp of the heavenly salvation, the earthly salvation, and “the little season.” He dismisses eternal torment with this opening salvo: “So then the mystery of this restitution of all things is to be found in all the prophets; which makes me wonder with great admiration that so few Christians of our age can find it there. For they understand not the final return of the Jews from captivity . . . and the setting up of a peaceable, righteous, and flourishing kingdom at the Day of Judgment is this mystery . . . First, the earth shall continue to be inhabited by mortals after the day of Judgment, and not only for 1,000 years, but even forever . . . And that the citizens of this city are not the saints raised from the dead, but a race of mortal men like the nations over whom they reign . . . [That after the judgment of Isaiah 66] the saving in these and such like places of Scripture is of mortals at the last day from both misery and death both temporal ad eternal. . . . [for] the rest of his kingdom are the nations that have been saved; and they are mortals remaining on earth.”

Newton castigates misunderstandings arising from “fancies . . .occasioned by understanding in a vulgar and literal sense what the prophets wrote in their own mystical language.” He then goes on to explain that fire and melting of elements are references to social calamities and not to be interpreted literally. He closes by explaining that since Christ after his resurrection made only rare appearances, “so it is to be conceived that at his second coming, he and the children of the resurrection [the Church] shall reign invisibly unless when they see fit upon extraordinary occasions to appear.”

Although he published several seminal scientific works within his lifetime, when Newton died unmarried, the executors of his estate large found his religious writings to be an embarrassment. They kept all but four sequestered where they remained unread until the twentieth century.

1. This synopsis is based on the highly recommended The Religion of Isaac Newton by Frank E. Manuel, Oxford (1974). See also H. MacLachlen, Isaac Newton (1950).
   

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Henry Dunn (1801-1878)

Four articles by Henry Dunn appear in Zion’s Watch Tower (Reprints, ppg. 644, 649, 653, and 796). All come from Dunn’s book, The Study of the Bible, written in 1871. “Bros. George Storrs, Henry Dunn and others were preaching and writing if ‘the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets’ (Acts 3:21) and that ‘In the ages to come God would show the exceeding richness of his grace’ (Ephesians 2:7).” − Charles Taze Russell, Supplement to Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, July 1, 1879.

For many years Dunn was secretary of the British and Foreign School Society and was identified with the history of public education in England. After retirement he went to Italy and joined the Protestant missions there, devoting his life to a study of the Scriptures and the writing of Christian literature. He published his own magazine, The Interpreter, in 1860-61 and was have said to be heard to “express his obligation to a remarkable book, never much known and now almost forgotten: Dunbar Isidore Heath’s Future Human Kingdom of Christ. It was this book that inspired Dunn’s Destiny of the Human Race that is credited by both George Storrs and Charles Russell as helpful in the thoughts on the doctrines of two salvations and times of restitution. Shortly before his death, Dunn wrote a series if articles for Storrs’ magazine, The Bible Examiner. Pastor Russell wrote that on these doctrines both Storrs were influential in his thinking.

 

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Dunbar Isidore Heath (1816-1888)

Dunbar Isidore Heath was a Reverend at Cambridge, elected scholar in 1836, and again in 1843. As a recognized authority on Egyptology, he was one of the early translators of the papyri in the British Museum. In 1852 Health wrote The Future Human Kingdom of Christ in which he distinguished the “saved nations from the glorified saints” by outlining an early concept of “the two salvations.” He was prosecuted for heresy in 1861 by the Bishop of Winchester and sentenced by the Court of Arches for publishing these ideas. He would not recant and tried to appeal his sentence by attempting to defend his character and doctrine from the Scriptures through the writing of several booklets. All of this failed and as a result of this prosecution he suffered not only the loss of his profession, but sustained heavy financial losses as well.

 

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George Stetson (1814-1879)

The first Stetsons arrived from England in 1634; fourteen years after the Mayflower and the pilgrims arrived in America. For over 40 years he followed in the footsteps of Christ and associated with Henry Grew and George Storrs in his early ministry and even later with Jonas Wendell and Charles Russell (Reprints, p. 3821). He was not only a minister, but also a school teacher and physician. As a member of the Advent Christian Church he and Wendell worked together in several churches throughout Pennsylvania and Ohio in the 1870’s. They also wrote for George Storrs’ magazine The Herald of Life and the Coming Kingdom, and for other magazines such as The World’s Crisis.

“He had been a faithful under-shepherd, ever holding before his hearers, as the great incentive to holiness and purity of life, that which filled his own soul with joy and peace and helped him to live ‘above the world’ − viz: the appearing of the Heavenly Bridegroom − the King of Glory, and our gathering together unto him Our brother was a man of marked ability, and surrendered bright prospects of worldly and political honors to be permitted to preach Christ when the glories and beauties of God dawned upon his heart. The truth cost him much, yet he bought it gladly” (Reprints, p. 46).

For ten months during 1872 Stetson pastured the church in Pittsburgh, where he met young Charles Taze Russell. Then he led the Edinboro, Pennsylvania for six years until his death. His dying request was that Pastor Russell give his funeral sermon (Reprints, p. 46) where over twelve hundred attended and heard the good news of the kingdom of God.

 

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Jonas Wendell (1815-1873)

Jonas Wendell became a Christian in 1843. “About 1845 he came into the truth of life and immortality in Christ only, of his soon coming, and reign with the saints on earth renewed, and the everlasting destruction of the impenitent wicked. He began preaching these views at Syracuse in 1847.” − The World’s Crisis, September 10, 1873.

It is quite possible that he had some association with George Storrs through letter he wrote to the Bible Examiner in the 1850’s. He was committed to the date 1854 for the return of the Lord and was so disappointed that he went astray for several years. In the winter of 1864-1865 he faith was restored by a traveling preacher friend, and he resumed preaching for the Second Adventists in the Advent Christian Church in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and New England from 1865 to 1871. Like Nelson Barbour, he set upon 1873 as the date for the soon coming of the Lord. In 1870 he wrote a booklet advocating his 1873 views entitled The Present Truth or Meat in Due Season.

In 1869 when preaching in Pittsburgh he rekindled the faith of a young man who stumbled “seemingly by accident” into a dirty, dingy hall where he was preaching (Reprints, p. 5909). That person was Pastor Charles Taze Russell who wrote: “Though his Scripture exposition was not entirely clear . . . it was sufficient, under God, to re-establish my wavering faith in the divine inspiration of the Bible, and to show that the records of the prophets and apostles are indissolubly linked. What I heard sent me to my Bible to study with more zeal and care than ever before, and I shall ever thank the Lord for that leading; for though Adventism helped me to no single truth, it did help greatly in the unlearning if errors, and thus prepared me for the Truth” (Reprints, p. 3821).

On August 7, 1873, Wendell fell down a flight of stairs and received severe internal injuries from which he never recovered.

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R. E. Streeter (1847-1924)

R. E. Streeter was one of the founding fathers of the Pastoral Bible Institute and an original member of the editorial board of The Herald magazine. He became a Christian in 1877 and originally associated with the Free Baptist Church. Finding denominational restrictions too binding he left that church and joined the Evangelical Advent Church. He first received The Divine Plan of the Ages in 1896 but rejected it as a false teaching. The following year he was sent on a successful missionary assignment to South America and the West Indies where he received another copy of that book and read it on his return journey. This time he accepted its message.

As editor in 1892 of a small journal, The Testimony of Jesus, he continued its publication and presented to his readers the new views he was learning. Eventually he discontinued the magazine and in 1902 entered the pilgrim ministry under Pastor Charles Taze Russell.

He was a member of The Herald’s editorial committee beginning in 1918 and was elected a trustee in 1923, serving in that capacity until his death the following year. He was a deep student of prophecy and was the author of Daniel, the Beloved of Jehovah and The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

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Dwight Moody (1835-1899)

Speaking of Dwight Moody and his associates, Pastor Russell wrote: “It is our thought that the Lord used these men, and through their ministry the fore-ordained number was completed at the fore-ordained time, 1881” (Reprints, p. 4303).

Moody was born seventeen years before Pastor Russell. He was one of the most successful evangelists of the nineteenth century. His ministry differed somewhat from those of his contemporaries in that he laid stress on a full commitment to God rather than merely the “believe and be saved” formula of his peers. He urged his hearers to find a way to leave their earthly careers and spend their full time in service to God.

Moody was never endorsed by a seminary, disdaining such ordination as a qualification for the ministry of the Gospel. Though an aggressive fund raiser, Moody refused to be personally financed by members of his audiences. Influenced by a strong personal friendship with the Jewish Christian, Joseph Rabinowitz, Moody was vitally interested in the development of Israel as a nation headed for a great destiny in the plan of God.

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W. Norman Woodworth (1891-1976)

W. Norman Woodworth became a Bible Student in the last decade of the nineteenth century and devoted his life to his convictions. After serving for several years as a colporteur in the maritime provinces of Canada and the state of Maine, Pastor Russell asked him to come to Bethel to learn to operate a movie projector and assist in the developmental work of The Photo-Drama of Creation. He presented the Drama in the Ohio cities of Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo before being assigned to Chicago where his first day’s were 1,500 in the afternoon and 3,500 in the evening.

After the death of Pastor Russell, his duties were temporarily suspended until he received an invitation to re-enter the ministry in 1923. He soon became involved in developing a radio program for the IBSA. Music was an important part of early programming and he played a trombone in the Bible Student orchestra that accompanied the broadcast.

He was soon asked to prepare one of the programs and developed the format for Frank and Ernest in 1924. Disagreement with the new teachings of the Society soon led to his disassociation with the IBSA. In his new surroundings he found other brethren to assist in reviving the program and $1,300 was raised for a broadcast on WOR in New York for thirteen weeks. The first of these programs in 1931 produced over 200 responses. From twenty-two stations carrying the programs in 1941, the coverage reached a high of 352 stations on the MBS network in 1950.

To follow up the responses, the New York ecclesia published a small pamphlet, Radio Echoes. This grew into the magazine The Dawn by 1932 and Norman Woodworth volunteered to do the printing. He remained the editor and wrote many of the articles until his death.