This view some minor differences – was also adopted by Charles Taze Russell and his followers. And it is still prevalent among the Seventh‒Day Adventists.

The French Revolution of 1789‒1799 had extraordinary impact extending far beyond French borders. Following the violent removal of the French monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic in 1792, new extremist leaders not only brought about a period of terror and chaos in France itself, but they inaugurated an almost unbroken period of wars of conquest, which lasted until 1815, when Emperor Napoleon I was defeated at Waterloo. The Revolution’s chaotic aftermath in Europe and other parts of the world excited intensified interest in prophetic study, especially as some of these upheavals had been partially predicted by expositors of the prophecies.

Historians recognize the French Revolution as marking a major turning‒point in world history. It brought to an end a long era of relative stability in Europe, uprooting the established order and deeply changing political and religious thought.

Comparing the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte with the earlier Thirty Years’ War (1618‒1648) and the later World War I (1914‒1918), historian Robert Gilpin says of these three wars that “each was a world war involving almost all the states in the [international] system and, at least in retrospect, can be considered as having constituted a major turning point in human history .”⁴⁰

Another well‒known historian, R. R. Palmer, in discussing the momentous role of the French Revolution in modern history, says:

Even today in the middle of the twentieth century, despite all that has happened in the lifetime of men not yet old, and even . . . in America or in any other part of a world in which the countries of Europe no longer enjoy their former commanding position, it is still possible to say that the French devolution at the end of the eighteenth century was the turning point of modern civilization.⁴¹

The resultant uprooting of long‒standing European political and social institutions caused many to believe that they were indeed living in the last days. Men of many backgrounds – ministers, politicians, lawyers, and laymen – became involved in prophetic study. A voluminous body of literature on the prophecies was produced, numerous prophetic periodicals were started, and prophetic conferences were held on both sides of the Atlantic.

The apocalyptic revival commenced in England, but soon spread to the European Continent and the United States of America where, in the latter case, it culminated in the well‒known Millerite movement. Based on interpretations of Daniel 8:14 developed generally pointed to 1843, 1844, or 1847 as the time for Christ’s second advent.

It was in this feverish atmosphere that a new interpretation of the Gentile times was born, in which, for the first time, the oft‒used figure of 1,260years was doubled to 2,520years.

The chart presented on the facing page shows the results that the “year‒day” method of counting prophetic time‒periods produced over a period of seven centuries. Though almost all of the thirty‒six scholars and prophetic expositors listed were working from the same basic Scriptural text referring to 1,260 days, very rarely did they agree on the same starting and ending points for the period’s fulfillment. The ending dates for the Gentile times set by them or their followers ran all the way from 1260 C.E. to 2016 C.E. Tet all of them advanced what to them were cogent reasons for arriving at their dates. What results now came from the doubling of this figure in connection with Jesus’ statement about the “Gentile times”?

In the long history of prophetic speculation, John Aquila Brown in England plays a notable role. Although no biographical data on Brown has been found so far, he strongly influenced the apocalyptic thinking of his time. He was the first expositor who applied the supposed 2,300 year‒days of Daniel 8:14 so that they ended in 1843 (later 1844). article in the London monthly The Christian Observer of November 1810. According to his understanding of the Gentile times, the “trampling Gentiles” were the Mohammedans (or Muslims), and he therefore regarded the 1,260 years so widely commented on as Mohammedan lunar years, corresponding to 1,222 solar years. He reckoned this period from 622 C.E. (the first year’ of the Mohammedan Hegira era) to 1844, when he expected the coming of Christ and the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine. – J. A. Brown, The Even‒Tide, Vol. 1 (1823), pp. vii, xi, 1‒60. Advent movement.⁴² He was also the first who arrived at a prophetic time period of 2,520 years. Brown’s calculation of 2,520 years was based on his exposition of the “seven times” contained in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the chopped‒down tree in Daniel, chapter 4.

TABLE 1: THE MULTIPLE, SHIFTING APPLICATIONS OF THE 1,260 YEARS

The table shows a sample of the many different applications of the 1,260 and 1,290 “year‒days” from Joachim of Floris in 1195 to John Aquila Brown in 1823. It would have been easy to extend the table to include expositors after Brown. However, the table ends with him because at this time another interpretation of the Gentile times began to surface, in which the 1,260 years were doubled to 2,520 years.

John Aquila Brown’s book The Even time were explained to mean 2,520 years.

It was first published in 1823 in his two‒volume work The Even‒Tide; or, East Triumph of the Blessed and Only Potentate, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.⁴³

He specifically states that he was the first to write on the subject:

Although many large and learned volumes have been written on prophetical subjects during a succession of ages; yet, having never seen the subject, on which I am about to offer some remarks, touched upon by any author, I commend it to the attention of the reader, not doubtingly, indeed, but with strong confidence that it will be found still further to corroborate the scale of the prophetical periods, assumed as the basis of the fulfillment of prophecy.⁴⁴

In his interpretation, Brown differed from other later expositors in that he nowhere connects the “seven times” of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream with the “seven times” of prophetic punishment directed against Israel at Leviticus 26:12‒28 “Nebuchadnezzar was a type,” Brown wrote, “of the three successive kingdoms which were to arise.” Of the “seven times,” or years, of Nebuchadnezzar’s affliction, he said:

[These] would, therefore, be considered as a grand week of years, forming a period of two thousand five hundred and twenty years, and embracing the duration of the four tyrannical monarchies; at the close of which they are to learn, like Nebuchadnezzar, by the “season and time” of the two judgements, that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”

Brown calculated the 2,520 years as running from the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, 604 B.C.E., to the year 1917, when “the full glory of the kingdom of Israel shall be perfected.”⁴⁵

Brown did not himself associate this period with the Gentile times of Luke 21:24 based these on Daniel chapter 4, have since played a key role in certain modern interpretations of those Gentile times.

It was not long before other expositors began identifying the new calculation of 2,520 years with the “Gentile times” of Luke 21:24 1,260 days, they came up with differing results.

At the Albury Park Prophetic Conferences (held annually at Albury near Guildford, south of London, England from 1826 to 1830), the “times of the Gentiles” was one of the topics considered. Right from the first discussions in 1826 they were connected with the 2,520‒year period by William Cuninghame. He chose as his starting point the year when the ten tribes were carried into captivity by Shalmaneser (which he dated to 728 B.C.E.), thus arriving at 1792 C.E. as their last or termination date, a date that by then was already in the past?⁴⁶

The Albury Park residence, near Guildford, south of London, the place of the Albury Park Prophetic Conferences, 1826‒1830. At these conferences certain ideas were developed that 50 years later were to become central parts of the message of the Watch Tower Society, viz., the Gentile times as a period of2,520years, and the idea of Christ’s second coming as an invisible presence.

Henry Drummond, owner of Albury Park and host of the conferences, who also published annual reports on the discussions (Dialogues on Prophecy).

Many biblical commentators counted the “seven times of the Gentiles” from the captivity of Manasseh, which they dated to 677 B.C.E. This was obviously done so that the Gentile times would end at the same time already being assigned to the 2,300 day‒years, that is, in 1843 or 1844.⁴⁷ Pym published his work, A Word of Warning in the Past Days, in which he ended the “seven times” in 1847. Interestingly, he builds his calculation of the 2,520 years of Gentile times on the “seven times” mentioned in Leviticus 26 times” of Daniel 4

In other words, the judgements threatened by Moses, which should last during the seven times, or 2520 years; and the judgements revealed to Daniel, which should come to an end by the cleansing of the sanctuary after a portion of the greater number 2520.⁴⁸

Others, however, were looking forward to the year 1836 C.E., a year fixed on entirely different grounds by the German theologian J. A. Bengel (1687‒1752), and they tried to end the “seven times” in that same year.⁴⁹

Illustrating the state of flux existing, Edward Bickersteth (1786‒ 1850), evangelical rector of Watton, Hartfordshire, tried different starting‒points for the “seven times of the Gentiles,” coming up with three different ending dates:

If we reckon the captivity of Israel as commencing in 727 before Christ, Israel’s first captivity under Salmanezer, it would terminate in 1793, when the French revolution broke out: and if 677 before Christ, their captivity under Esarhaddon (the same period when Manasseh , king of Judah, was carried into captivity,) (2 Kings xvii. 23, 24.2Chron. xxxiii. 11,) it would terminate in 1843: or, if reckoned from 602 before Christ, which was the final dethronement of Jehoiakim by Nebuchadnezzar, it would terminate in 1918. All these periods may have a reference to corresponding events at their termination, and are worthy of serious attention.⁵⁰

One of the best known and most learned millenarians of the 19th century was Edward Bishop Elliott (1793‒1875), incumbent of St. Mark’s Church in Brighton, England. With him, the date of 1914 first receives mention. In his monumental treatise Horae Apocalypticae (”Hours with the Apocalypse”) he first reckoned the 2,520 years from 727 B.C.E. to 1793 C.E., but added:

Of course if calculated from Nebuchadnezzar’s own accession and invasion of Judah, B.C. 606, the end is much later, being A.D. 1914; just one‒half century, or jubilean period, from our probable date of the opening of the Millennium [which he had fixed to “about A.D.1862”]. (London: Seeley, Bumside, and Seeley, 1844), Vol. Ill, pp. 1429‒1431. Elliott’s work ran through five editions (1844,1846, 1847,1851, and 1862). In the last two he did not directly mention the 1914 date, although he still suggested that the 2,520 years might be reckoned from the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

One factor that should be noted here is that in Elliott’s chronology 606 B.C.E. was the accession‒year of Nebuchadnezzar, while in the later chronology of Nelson H. Barbour and Charles T. Russell 606 B.C.E. was the date assigned for Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem in his 18th year.

The leading British works on prophecy were extensively reprinted in the United States and strongly influenced many American writers on the subject. These included the well‒known Baptist preacher William Miller and his associates, who pointed forward to 1843 as the date of Christ’s second coming. It is estimated that at least 50,000, and perhaps as many as 200,000 people eventually embraced Miller’s views.⁵¹

Virtually every position they held on the different prophecies had been taught by other past or contemporary expositors. Miller was simply following others in ending the “Gentile times” in 1843. At the First General Conference held in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 14 and 15, 1840, one of Miller’s addresses dealt with Biblical chronology. He placed the “seven times,” or 2,520 years, as extending from 677 B.CE. to 1843 CE.⁵² Christ was expected no later than 1844.

The date predicted for so long and by so many, with claimed Biblical backing, came and went, with nothing to fulfill the expectations based on it.

After the “Great Disappointment” of 1844, some, and among them Miller himself, openly confessed that the time was a mistake.⁵³ Others, however, insisted that the time itself was right, used by William Miller (inset) and his associates in presenting the 1843 message. Miller presented fifteen separate “proofs” in support of his 1843 date, most of which were calculations based on the various year‒day periods, including the 2300 and 2520 year‒days. but the event anticipated was wrong. Expressing what has become a familiar justification, they had expected “the wrong thing at the right time.”

E. B. Elliott’s Apocalypticae, Vol. Ill (1844). E. B. Elliott was most probably the first expositor to reckon the “times of the Gentiles” from 606 B.C.E. to 1914 CE. It should be noted, however, that in his chronology the starting‒point, 606 B.C.E, was the accession‒year of Nebuchadnezzar, while in the chronology of Barbour and Russell this was Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year. Their chronologies, therefore, were conflicting, although the dates accidentally happened to be the same.

The “1843” chart

This position was taken by a group which later came to be known as the Seventh‒Day Adventists. They declared that Jesus, instead of descending to earth in 1844, entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary as mankind’s great high priest to introduce the antitypical atonement day.⁵⁴ separated from the rest of the “Second Adventists” in the end of the 1840’s, caused the first major division within the original movement.

Some leading Millerites who also held to the 1844 date – among them Apollos Hale, Joseph Turner, Samuel Snow, and Barnett Matthias – claimed that Jesus had indeed come as the Bridegroom in 1844, although spiritually and invisibly, “not in personally descending from heaven, but taking the throne spiritually. ’Tn 1844, they declared, the “kingdom of this world” had been given to Christ.⁵⁵

Thus, following 1844, the Millerite “Second Advent” movement gradually broke into several Adventist groups.⁵⁶ dates began to appear: 1845, 1846, 1847, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1870, 1873, 1875, and so on, and these dates, each having their promoters and adherents, contributed to even greater fragmentation. A leading Second Adventist, Jonathan Cummings, declared in 1852 that he had received a “new light” on the chronology, and that the second advent was to be expected in 1854. Many Millerites joined Cummings, and in January, 1854, they started a new periodical, the World’s Crisis, in advocacy of the new date.⁵⁷

Other factors besides dates began to play a role in the composition of the Second Advent movement. Right up to the present time they appear as distinctive features among a number of movements that developed from Second Adventism, including the Seventh‒Day Adventist Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and certain Church of God denominations. These factors included the doctrine of conditional – not inherent – immortality of the soul, with its corollary tenet that the ultimate destiny of those who are rejected by God is destruction or annihilation, not conscious torment. The trinitarian belief also became an issue among some sectors of the Second Adventists. (For further details on these developments and their effect in contributing to division among the offshoots of the Millerite movements, see the Appendix for Chapter One.)

Most of these developments had already taken place by the time that Charles Taze Russell, still in his teenage years, began the formation of a Bible study group in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. From the end of the 1860’s onward, Russell increasingly got into touch with some of the Second Adventist groups which developed. He established close connections with certain of their ministers and read some of their papers, including George Storrs’ Bible Examiner. Gradually, he and his associates took over many of their central teachings, including their conditionalist and anti‒trinitarian positions and most of their “age to come” views. Finally, in 1876, Russell also adopted a revised version of their chronological system, which implied that the 2,520 years of Gentile times would expire in 1914. In all essential respects, therefore, Russell’s Bible Student movement may be described as yet another offshoot of the Millerite movement.

What, then, was the most direct source of the chronological system that Russell, the founder of the Watch Tower movement, adopted, including not only the 2,520 year‒period for the Gentile times, its ending in 1914, but also the year 1874 for the start of an invisible presence by Christ? That source was a man named Nelson H. Barbour.

Nelson H. Barbour was born near Auburn, New York, in 1824. He joined the Millerite movement in 1843, at the age of 19. He “lost his religion” completely after the “Great Disappointment” in 1844 and went to Australia where he became a miner during the gold rush there.⁵⁸ to America by way of London, England. In a retrospect Barbour tells how his interest in the prophetic time periods was again aroused during this voyage:

The vessel left Australia with an advent brother [Barbour himself] on board, who had lost his religion, and been for many years in total darkness. To wile away the monotony of a long sea voyage, [an] English chaplain proposed a systematic reading of the prophecies; to which the brother readily assented; for having been a Millerite in former years, he knew right well there were arguments it would puzzle the chaplain to answer,even though the time had passed.⁵⁹

During this reading Barbour thought he discovered the crucial error in Miller’s reckoning. Why did Miller begin the 1,260 “year‒­days” of Revelation 11 in 538 C.E. and start the 1,290 and 1,335 year‒days of Daniel 12 years earlier in 508 C.E.? Should not all three periods start at the same date? Then the 1,290 years would end in 1828 and the 1,335 years in – not 1843 but – 1873. “On arriving in London [in 1860], he went to the library of the British Museum, and among many other extensive works on the prophecies found Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae” in which Elliott reproduced a table, “The Scripture Chronology of the World,” prepared by his friend, Reverend Christopher Bowen. The table showed that 5,979 years since man’s creation ended in 1851.⁶⁰ 5,979 years, Barbour discovered that 6,000 years would end in 1873. This he saw as a remarkable and stirring confirmation of his own calculation of the 1,335‒year period.

On returning to the United States, Barbour tried to interest other Second Adventists in his new date for the coming of the Lord. From 1868 onward he began to preach and publish his findings. A number of his articles on chronology were published in the World’s Crisis and the Advent Christian Times, the two leading papers of the Advent Christian Association. In 1870 he also published the 100‒page pamphlet Evidences for the Coming of the Lord in 1873; or the Midnight Cry, the second edition of which has been quoted above.⁶¹ monthly of his own called The Midnight Cry, and Herald of the Morning, the circulation of which within three months ran up to 15,000 copies.⁶² 1873 had nearly passed, Barbour advanced the time of the second advent to the autumn of 1874.⁶³ But when that year, too, came and went, Barbour and his followers experienced great concern:

When 1874 came and there was no outward sign of Jesus in the literal clouds and in a fleshly form, there was a general reexamination of all the arguments upon which the ‘Midnight Cry’ was made. And when no fault or flaw could be found, it led to the critical examination of the Scriptures which seem to bear on the manner of Christ’s coming, and it was soon discovered that the expectation of Jesus in the flesh at the second coming was the mistake . . ..⁶⁴

One of the readers of the Midnight Cry, B. W. Keith (later one of the contributors to Lion’s Watch Tower),

. . . had been reading carefully Matt, xxiv chapter, using the ‘Emphatic Diaglott’, a new and very exact word for word translation of the New Testament [translated and published by Benjamin Wilson in 1864]; when he came to the 37th and 39th verses he was much surprised to find that it read as follows, viz.: ‘For as the days of Noah thus will be the presence of the son of man’.⁶⁵

Keith thus found the Greek word parousia, usually translated “coming,” here translated as “presence.” A widely held idea among expositors at this time was that Christ’s second coming would take place in two stages, the first of which would be invisible!⁶⁶ come in the fall of 1874, though invisible, and been invisibly present since then?

To Barbour this explanation not only seemed attractive, but as he and his associates could find no faults with their calculations, they saw in it the solution to their problem. The date was right, although their expectations had been wrong.

Once again, it was seen as a case of having expected “the wrong thing at the right time”:

It was evident, then, that though the manner in which they had expected Jesus was in error, yet the time, as indicated by the ‘Midnight Cry,’ was correct, and that the Bridegroom came in the Autumn of 1874 . . ..⁶⁷

Most readers of the Midnight Cry, and Herald of the Morning magazine, however, could not accept this explanation, and the 15,000 readers rapidly “dwindled to about 200.” Barbour himself was convinced that the Millennial morning had already begun to dawn, and therefore he thought that the Midnight Cry no longer was a suitable name for his paper. He remarked: “Will someone inform me how a ‘Midnight Cry’ can be made in the morning?⁶⁸ The paper, which had ceased publication in October 1874, was therefore restarted in June 1875 as the Herald of the Morning, thereby dispensing with the first part of the earlier title.

In one of the very first issues (September, 1875), Barbour published his calculation of the Gentile times, making them terminate in 1914 C.E.⁶⁹

In 1870, as an 18‒year‒old businessman in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Charles Taze Russell, together with his father Joseph and some friends formed a class for Bible study.⁷⁰ an outgrowth of Russell’s contacts with some of the former Millerites mentioned above, especially Jonas Wendell, George Storrs, and George Stetson.

Wendell, a preacher from the Advent Christian Church in Edenboro, Pennsylvania, had visited Allegheny in 1869, and by chance Russell went to one of his meetings and was strongly impressed by Wendell’s criticism of the hellfire doctrine. Russell had been brought up a Calvinist, but had recendy broken with this religious background because of his doubts in the predestination of the 2,520 years and hellfire doctrines. He was in a serious religious crisis at this time and even questioned if the Bible really was the word of God. His meeting with Wendell and his subsequent reading of Storrs’ magazine, the Bible Examiner, restored his faith in the Bible. Articles published in this magazine seem to have been regularly discussed in Russell’s study group.

Herald of the Morning of September 1875 in which N. H. Barbour first published the year 1914 as the end of the 2,520 years.

Although Russell knew that some Adventists, including Jonas Wendell, expected Christ in 1873, he himself rejected the whole concept of time settings and fixing of dates. Then, in 1876, he began to alter his position:

It was about January, 1876, that my attention was specially drawn to the subject of prophetic time, as it relates to these doctrines and hopes. It came about in this way: I received a paper called The Herald of the Morning, sent by its editor, Mr. N. H. Barbour?⁷¹

Russell states he was surprised to find that Barbour’s group had come to the same conclusion as his own group about the manner of Christ’s return – that it would be “thieflike, and not in flesh, but as a spirit‒being, invisible to men.

Russell at once wrote to Barbour about the chronology, and later in 1876 he arranged to meet him in Philadelphia where Russell had business engagements that summer. Russell wanted Barbour to show him, “if he could, that the prophecies indicated 1874 as the date at which the Lord’s presence and ‘the harvest’ began.” “He came,” says Russell, “and the evidence satisfied me.”⁷²

It is apparent that during these meetings Russell accepted not only the 1874 date but all of Barbour’s time calculations, including his calculation of the Gentile times.⁷³ Philadelphia, Russell wrote an article entided “Gentile Times: When do They End?” which was published in George Storrs’ periodical the Bible Examiner in the October 1876 issue. Referring to the “seven times” of Leviticus 26:28, 33 and Daniel 4 on page 27 of the Examiner, he determines the length of the Gentile times to be 2,520 years which began in 606 B.C.E. and would end in 1914 C.E. – precisely the same dates Barbour had arrived at and had begun publishing a year earlier, in 1875.

What, exactly, would the end of the “Gentile times” mean for mankind? Although monumental events relating to Christ’s return were proclaimed to have taken place in 1874, these were all said to be invisible, occurring in the spirit realm unseen by human eyes. Would 1914 and the termination of the Gentile times be the same, or would it bring visible, tangible change for the earth and for human society on it?

In the book The Time is at Hand, published in 1889 (later referred to as Volume II of Studies in the Scriptures), Russell stated that there was “Bible evidence proving” that the 1914 date “will be the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men.” What would be the consequences of this? Russell enumerated his expectations for 1914 in seven points:

Firstly, That at that date the Kingdom of God ... will have obtained full, universal control, and that it will then be ‘set up,’ or firmly established, in the earth.

Secondly, It will prove that he whose right it is thus to take dominion will then be present as earth’s new ruler ...

Thirdly, It will prove that some time before the end of A. D. 1914 the last member of the divinely recognized Church of Christ, the ‘royal priesthood,’ ‘the body of Christ,’ will be glorified with the Head ...

Fourthly, It will prove that from that time forward Jerusalem shall no longer be trodden down of the Gentiles, but shall arise from the dust of divine disfavor, to honor; because the ‘Times of the Gentiles’ will be fulfilled or completed.

Fifthly, It will prove that by that date, or sooner, Israel’s blindness will begin to be turned away; because their ‘blindness in part’ was to continue only "until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in’ (Rom. 11:25

Sixthly, It will prove that the great ‘time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation,’ will reach its culmination in a worldwide reign of anarchy ... and the ‘new heavens and new earth’ with their peaceful blessings will begin to be recognized by trouble‒tossed humanity.

Seventhly, It will prove that before that date God’s Kingdom, organized in power, will be in the earth and then smite and crush the Gentile image (Dan. 2:34 the power of these kings.⁷⁴

These were indeed very daring predictions. Did Russell really believe that all these remarkable things would come true within the next twenty‒five years? Yes, he did; in fact, he believed his chronology to be God’s chronology, not just his own. In 1894 he wrote of the 1914 date:

We see no reason for changing the figures–nor could we change them if we would. They are, we believe, God’s dates, not ours. But bear in mind that the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of trouble.⁷⁵

Thus it was thought that the “time of trouble” was to commence some years before 1914, “not later than 1910,” reaching its climax in 1914.⁷⁶

In 1904, however, just ten years before 1914, Russell altered his view on this matter. In an article in the July 1, 1904 issue of Zion’s Watch Tower, entided “Universal anarchy – just before or after October, 1914 A.D.,” he argued that the time of trouble, with its worldwide anarchy, would begin after October, 1914:

We now expect that the anarchistic culmination of the great time of trouble which will precede the Millennial blessings will be after October, 1914 A.D. – very speedily thereafter, in our opinion – ‘in an hour,’ ‘suddenly,’ because ‘our forty years’ harvest, ending October, 1914 A.D., should not be expected to include the awful period of anarchy which the Scriptures point out to be the fate of Christendom.⁷⁷

This change caused some readers to think that there might be other errors in the chronological system, too – one reader even suggesting that Bishop Ussher’s chronology might be more correct when it dated the destruction of Jerusalem as having happened in 587 B.C.E. rather than in 606 B.C.E. This would end the 2,520 years in about 1934 instead of 1914. But Russell strongly reaffirmed his belief in the 1914 date, referrmg to other claimed “time parallels” pointing to it:

We know of no reason for changing a figure: to do so would spoil the harmonies and parallels so conspicuous between the Jewish and Gospel ages.⁷⁸

Answering another reader, he said:

The harmony of the prophetic periods is one of the strongest proofs of the correctness of our Bible chronology. They fit together like the cogwheels of a perfect machine. To change the chronology even one year would destroy all this harmony, – so accurately are the various proofs drawn together in the parallels between the Jewish and Gospel ages.⁷⁹

These arguments were further backed up by articles written by the Edgar brothers of Scotland.⁸⁰

So in 1904 Russell was still as convinced of his dates as he was in 1889, when he wrote that the understanding of these time features was the “sealing of the foreheads” mentioned at Revelation 7:3

As the 1914 date drew nearer, however, Russell became more and more cautious in his statements. Answering an inquiring Bible student in 1907, he said that “we have never claimed our calculations to be infallibly correct; we have never claimed that they were knowledge, nor based upon indisputable evidence, facts, knowledge; our claim has always been that they are based on faith.⁸¹

The dates no longer seemed to qualify as “God’s dates,” as he had stated thirteen years earlier; now they might be fallible. Russell even considered the possibility that 1914 (and 1915) could pass by with none of the expected events having occurred:

But let us suppose a case far from our expectations: suppose that A.D. 1915 should pass with the world’s affairs all serene and with evidence that the ‘very elect’ had not all been ‘changed’ and without the restoration of natural Israel to favor under the New Covenant. (Rom.11:12 Would not that prove our chronology wrong? Yes, surely! And would not that prove a keen disappointment? Indeed it would! . . . What a blow that would be! One of the strings of our ‘harp’ would be quite broken! However, dear friends, our harp would still have all the other strings in tune and that is what no other aggregation of God’s people on earth could boast.⁸²

Another point of uncertainty was whether a year 0 (between 1 B.C.E. and 1 C.E.) was to be included in the calculation or not. This matter had been brought up by Russell as early as 1904, but gained in importance as the year 1914 approached.

The 1914 date had been arrived at simply by subtracting 606 from 2,520, but gradually it was realized that no year 0 is allowed for in our present calendar of era reckoning. Consequendy, from October 1, 606 B.C.E. to the beginning of January, 1 C.E. was only 605 years and 3 months, and from the beginning of January, 1 C.E. to October 1914 was only 1913 years and 9 months, making a total of 2,519 years, not 2,520. This would mean that the 2,520 years would end in October 1915, rather than October 1914.⁸³ out in Europe in August 1914, it apparently seemed ill‒timed to correct this error. It was allowed to stand.

By 1913, with 1914 on the doorstep, the cautiousness regarding that year had increased. In the article “Let Your Moderation Be Known,” which appeared in the June 1, 1913 issue of The Watch Tower, Russell warned his readers against spending “valuable time and energy in guessing what will take place this year, next year, etc.” His confidence in his earlier published scheme of events was no longer evident: “This is the good tidings of God’s grace in Christ–whether the completion of the church shall be accomplished before 1914 or not.”⁸⁴ He expressed himself still more vaguely in the October 15 issue of the same year:

We are waiting for the time to come when the government of the world will be turned over to Messiah. We cannot say that it may not be either October 1914, or October 1915. It is possible that we might he out of the correct reckoning on the subject a number of years. We cannot say with certainty. We do not know. It is a matter of faith, and not of knowledge.⁸⁵

Earlier, 1914 had been one of “God’s dates,” and “to change the chronology even one year would destroy all this harmony.” But now they “might be out of the correct reckoning on the subject a number of years,” and nothing on the matter could be said “with certainty” This was truly a volte‒facel If it was indeed “a matter of faith,” one can only wonder in what or in whom that faith was to be based.

Russell’s own tottering faith in his chronology was further brought to light in The Watch Tower of January 1, 1914, in which he stated: “As already pointed out, we are by no means confident that this year, 1914, will witness as radical and swift changes of dispensation as we have expected, “⁸⁶ The article “The Days Are At Hand” in the same issue is especially revealing:

If later it should be demonstrated that the church is not glorified by October, 1914, we shall try to feel content with whatever the Lord’s will may be. . .. If 1915 should go by without the passage of the church, without the time of trouble, etc., it would seem to some to be a great calamity. It would not be so with ourselves. ... If in the Lord’s providence the time should come twenty‒five years later,then that would be our will. ... If October, 1915, should pass, and we should find ourselves still here and matters going on very much as they are at present, and the world apparently making progress in the way of settling disputes, and there was no time of trouble in sight, and the nominal church were not yet federated, etc., we would say that evidently, we have been out somewhere in our reckoning. In that event we would look over the prophecies further, to see if we could find an error. And then we would think, Have we been expecting the wrong thing in the right time? The Lord’s will might permit this.⁸⁷

Again, in the May 1, 1914 issue – forgetting his earlier statements about “God’s dates” and of “Bible evidence proving”that the predicted developments would occur in 1914 – Russell told his readers that “in these columns and in the six volumes of STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES we have set forth everything appertaining to the times and seasons in a tentative form; that is to say, not with positiveness, not with the claim that we knew, but merely with the suggestion that ‘thus and so’ seems to be the teaching of the Bible.”⁸⁸

Two months later Russell seemed to be on the point of rejecting his chronology altogether. Answering a colporteur, who wanted to know if the Studies in the Scriptures were to be circulated after October, 1914, “since you [Russell] have some doubts respecting the full accomplishment of all expected by or before October, 1914,” Russell replied:

It is our thought that these books will be on sale and read for years in the future, provided the Gospel age and its work continue. . .. We have not attempted to say that these views are infallible, but have stated the processes of reasoning and figuring, leaving to each reader the duty and privilege of reading, thinking and figuring for himself.

That will be an interesting matter a hundred years from now;and if he can figure and reason better, he will still be interested in what we have presented.⁸⁹

Thus, by July 1914, Russell now seemed ready to accept the thought that the 1914 date probably was a failure, and that his writings on the matter were going to be merely of historical interest to Bible students a hundred years later!

With the outbreak of the war in Europe in August 1914, Russell’s wavering confidence in the chronology began to recover. Although the war itself did not exactly fit into the predicted pattern of events – that the “time of trouble” would be a class struggle between capital and labor, leading up to a period of worldwide anarchy – he saw in the war the prelude to that situation:

Socialism is, we believe, the main factor in the war now’ raging and which will be earth’s greatest and most terrible war – and probably the last.⁹⁰

Later in 1914, he wrote:

We think that the present distress amongst the nations is merely the beginning of this time of trouble. . .. The anarchy that will follow this war will be the real time of trouble. Our thought is that the war will so weaken the nations that following it there will be an attempt to bring in Socialistic ideas, and that this will be met by the governments – [etc., leading up to worldwide class struggle and anarchy].⁹¹

Like other millenarian authors, Russell believed that the expiration of the Gentile times would mean a restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine. Toward the end of 1914, however, Palestine and Jerusalem were still occupied by Gentiles. It seemed obvious that the restoration would not begin to occur in 1914 as had been predicted. In the November 1 issue of The Watch Tower, therefore, Russell tried to reinterpret the end of the Gentile times to mean the end of the persecution of the Jews:

The treading down of the Jews has stopped. All over the world the Jews are now free – even in Russia. On September 5, the Czar of Russia issued a proclamation to all the Jews of the Russian Empire; and this was before the times of the Gentiles had expired. It stated that the Jews might have access to the highest rank in the Russian army, and that the Jewish religion was to have the same freedom as any other religion in Russia. Where are the Jews being trodden down now? Where are they being subjected to scorn? At present they are receiving no persecution whatever. We believe that the treading down of Jerusalem has ceased, because the time for the Gentiles to tread down Israel has ended.⁹²

However, the relief for the Jews in Russia and elsewhere referred to by Russell turned out to be only temporary. He could not, of course, foresee the coming fierce persecutions of the Jews in Germany, Poland, and other countries during the Second World War.

From the outbreak of the First World War and up to his death on October, 1916, Russell’s restored confidence in his chronology remained unshaken, as demonstrated by the following extracts from various issues of The Watch Tower during the period:

January 1, 1915: “...the war is the one predicted in the Scriptures as associated with the great day of Almighty God – ‘the day of vengeance of our God.’”⁹³

September 15, 1915:“Tracing the Scriptural chronology down to our day, we tind that we are now living in the very dawn of the great seventh day of man’s great week. This is abundantly corroborated by the events now taking place about us on every hand”⁹⁴

February 15, 1916:"In STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES, Vol.

IV, we have clearly pointed out the things now transpiring, and the worse conditions yet to come.”⁹⁵

April 15, 1916:“We believe that the dates have proven to be quite right. We believe that Gentile Times have ended, and that God is now allowing the Gentile Governments to destroy themselves, in order to prepare the way for Messiah’s kingdom.”⁹⁶

September 1, 1916:‘It still seems clear to us that the prophetic period known to us as the Times of the Gentiles ended chronologically in October, 1914. The fact that the great day of wrath upon the nation began there marks a good fulfilment of our expectations.”⁹⁷

In November 1918, however, the First World War suddenly ended – without being followed by a worldwide Socialist revolution and anarchy, as had been predicted. The last member of the “divinely recognized Church of Christ” had not been glorified, the city of Jerusalem was still being controlled by the Gentiles, the kingdom of God had not crushed “the Gentile image,” and the “new heavens and the new earth” could not be seen anywhere by trouble‒tossed humanity. Not a single one of the seven predictions enumerated in the book The Time is at Hand had come true.⁹⁸ Russell’s “Bible Students” were confused, to say the least.

Yet – though not among the predictions – something had happened: The World War. Could it be that the time was right, after all, even though the predictions had failed? The explanation resorted to by the Adventists after 1844 and by Barbour and his associates after 1874 – that they had expected “the wrong thing at the right time” – now seemed even more appropriate.⁹⁹ be right, when all predictions based on it had failed? For years many of Russell’s followers experienced deep perplexity because of the non‒arrival of the predicted events. After the lapse of some years, J. F. Rutherford, Russell’s successor as president of the Watch Tower Society, began to explain, step by step, what “really” had been fulfilled from 1914 onward.

In the address “The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand” at the September 5‒13, 1922, Cedar Point Convention, Rutherford told his audience that the Kingdom of God really had been established in 1914, not on earth but in the invisible heavens!¹⁰⁰ And three years later, in 1925, he applied Revelation 12 to this event, stating that God’s Kingdom was born in heaven in 1914 according to this prophecy.¹⁰¹

Previously the Watch Tower’s predictions had all been of an obvious, clearly visible, takeover of earth’s rulership by Christ. Now this was presented as something invisible, evident only to a select group.

Also at the Cedar Pomt Convention in 1922, Rutherford for the first time presented the view that “in 1918, or thereabouts, the Lord came to his (spiritual) temple.”¹⁰² Earlier, Russell and his associates had held the view that the heavenly resurrection took place in 1878. But in 1927 Rutherford transferred that event to 1918.¹⁰³ Likewise in the early 1930’s, Rutherford changed the date for the beginning of Christ’s invisible presence from 1874 to 1914.¹⁰⁴

Thus Rutherford gradually replaced the unfulfilled predictions with a series of invisible and spiritual events associated with the years 1914 and 1918. Ninety years after 1914 Rutherford’s “explanations” are still held by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The interpretation of the “Gentile times” as having been of 2,520 years, beginning in 607 B.C.E. (earlier, 606 B.C.E.) and ending in 1914 C.E., was not some divine revelation made to Pastor Charles Taze Russell in the autumn of 1876. On the contrary, this idea has a long history of development, with its roots far back in the past.

It had its origin in the “year‒day principle,” first posited by Rabbi Akibah ben Joseph in the first century C.E. From the ninth century onward this principle was applied to the time periods of Daniel by several Jewish rabbis.

Among Christians, Joachim of Floris in the twelfth century probably was the first to pick up the idea, applying it to the 1,260 days of Revelation and the three and one‒half times of Daniel. After Joachim’s death, his followers soon identified the 1,260‒year period with the Gentile times of Luke 21:24 interpretation was then common among groups, including the Reformers, branded as heretics by the church of Rome during the following centuries.

As time passed, and expectations failed when earlier explanations proved to be wrong, the starting‒point of the 1,260 (or, 1290) years was progressively moved forward, m order to make them end in a then near future.

The first to arrive at a period of 2,520 years was apparendy John Aquila Brown in 1823. Although his calculation was founded upon the “seven times” of Daniel 4 periods with the “Gentile times” of Luke 21:24 termination date. By using different starting‒points, other biblical commentators in the following decades arrived at a number of different terminal dates. Some writers, who experimented with biblical “Jubilee cycles,” arrived at a period of 2,450 (or, 2,452) years (49x49+49), which they held to be the period of the Gentile times.

The accompanying table presents a selection of applications of the 2,520 (and 2,450) years made by different authors during the last century. The calculations were in fact so numerous, that it would probably be difficult to find a smgle year between the 1830’s and 1930’s that does not figure in some calculation as the terminal date of the Gentile times! That a number of expositors pointed to 1914 or other years near to that date, such as 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1922 and 1923, is, therefore, not a cause for astonishment.

TABLE 2: APPLICATIONS OF THE 2,520 (OR 2,450) YEAR

The 1914 date would most probably have drowned in the sea of other failed dates and been forgotten by now had it not happened to be the year of the outbreak of the First World War.

When, back in 1844, E. B. Elliott suggested 1914 as a possible terminal date for the Gentile times, he reckoned the 2,520 years from Nebuchadnezzar’s accession‒year, which he dated to 606 B.C.E. N.H. Barbour, however, reckoned the 2,520 years from the desolation of Jerusalem in Nebuchadnezzar’s 18th regnal year. But as he dated this event to 606 B.C.E., he, too, in 1875, arrived at 1914 as the terminal date. Since their chronologies not only conflicted with each other, but also conflicted with the historically established chronology for Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, their arriving at the same terminal year was simply a coincidence, demonstrating how arbitrary and gratuitous their calculations really were.

Barbour’s calculation was accepted by C.T. Russell at their meeting in 1876. Barbour was then fifty‒two years old while Russell was twenty‒four – still very young. Although their ways parted again in the spring of 1879, Russell stuck to Barbour’s time calculations, and since that time the 1914 date has been the pivotal point in prophetic explanations among Russell’s followers.

The information presented in this chapter has been available to the Jehovah’s Witnesses since 1983, when the first edition of this book was published. In addition, the same information was summarized by Raymond Franz in chapter 7 of his widely known work, Crisis of Conscience, published in the same year. Thus – after 10 years – in 1993 the Watch Tower Society finally felt compelled to admit that neither the 2,520‒year calculation nor the 1914 date originated with Charles Taze Russell as it had held until then. Further, the Society now also admits that the predictions Russell and his associates attached to 1914 failed.

These admissions are found on pages 134‒137 of Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, a book on the history of the movement published by the Watch Tower Society in 1993. Prior to 1993 the impression given had been that Russell was the first to publish the 2,520‒year calculation pointing to 1914, doing this for the first time in the October, 1876 issue of George Storrs’ magazine the Bible Examiner. Also, that decades in advance Russell and his followers foretold the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and other events associated with the war. Thus the earlier organizational history book Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose quoted some very general statements made in the book The Plan of the Ages (published in 1886) about the “time of trouble” (originally believed to extend from 1874 to 1914) and claimed:

Although this was still decades before the first world war, it is surprising how accurately the events that finally took place were actually foreseen. (Emphasis added.)¹⁰⁵

Similarly, The Watchtower of August 1, 1971, made the following pretentious statements on page 468:

From the Bible chronology, Jehovah’s witnesses as far back as 1877 pointed to the year 1914 as one of great significance. . ..

The momentous year of 1914 came, and with it World War I, the most widespread upheaval in history up to that time. It brought unprecedented slaughter, famine, pestilence and overthrow of governments. The world did not expect such horrible events as took place. But Jehovah’s witnesses did expect such things, and others acknowledged that they did....

How could Jehovah’s witnesses have known so far in advance what world leaders themselves did not know? Only by God’s holy spirit making such prophetic truths known to them.True, some today claim that those events were not hard to predict, since mankind has long known various troubles. But if those events were not hard to predict, then why were not all the politicians, religious leaders and economic experts doing so? Wly were they telling the people the opposite? (Emphasis added.)

Unfortunately for the Watch Tower Society, none of these claims are in accordance with the facts of history. Whether deliberate or the result of ignorance, each represents a serious distortion of reality.

Firstly, although there were a number of predictions in the Watch Tower publications as to what would take place in 1914, none of them came close to a prediction of the outbreak of a world war in that year.

Secondly, political and religious leaders, contrary to the statements in The Watchtower quoted above, long before 1914 expected that a great war sooner or later would break out in Europe. As early as 1871 Otto von Bismarck, the first Lord High Chancellor of the German Empire, declared that the “Great War” would come one day. For decades before 1914, the daily papers and weeklies were constandy occupied with the theme. To cite just one example among many, the January 1892 issue of the highly respected English weekly Black and White explained in an editorial introduction to a fictional serial on the coming war:

The air is full of rumours of War. The European nations stand fully armed and prepared for instant mobilization. Authorities are agreed that a GREAT WAR must break out in the immediate future, and that this War will be fought under novel and surprising conditions. All facts seem to indicate that the coming conflict will be the bloodiest in history, and must involve the momentous consequences to the whole world. At any time the incident may occur which will precipitate the disaster.¹⁰⁶

I.F. Clarke, in his book T Tices Prophesying War 1763‒1984, explains to what an extent the First World War “was being prepared in fact and in fiction”:

From 1871 onwards the major European powers prepared for the great war that Bismarck had said would come one day. And for close on half a century, while the general staffs and the ministries argued about weapons, estimates, and tactics, the tale of the war‒to‒come was a dominant device in the field of purposive fiction.... The period from the eighteen‒eighties to the long‒expected outbreak of the next war in 1914 saw the emergence of the greatest number of these tales of coming conflicts ever to appear in European fiction.¹⁰⁷

The people of that time, therefore, could not avoid being confronted with the constant predictions of a coming great war in Europe. The question was not if but when the Great War would break out. Here there was room for speculations, and many of the imaginative tales and novels suggested different dates. Specific dates were sometimes even pointed out in the very titles of the books, for example, Europa in Flammen. Der deutsche Zukunftskrieg 1909 (”Europe in Flames. The Coming German War of 1909”), by Michael Wagebald, published in 1908, and The Invasion of 1910, by W. LeQueux, published in 1906.

Politicians and statesmen, too, sometimes tried to pinpoint the specific year for the outbreak of the expected great war. One of the more lucky was M. Francis Delaisi, a member of the French Chamber of Deputies. In his article “La Guerre qui Vient” (”The Coming War”), published in the parish periodical La Guerre Sociale in 1911, he discusses at great length the diplomatic situation, concluding that “a terrible war between England and Germany is preparing.” As shown by the following extracts from his article, some of his political forecasts turned out to be remarkably accurate:

A conflict is preparing itself compared with which the horrible slaughter of the Russo‒Japanese war [in 1904‒05] will be child’s play. In 1914 the [naval] forces of England and Germany will be almost equal. A Prussian army corps will advance with forced marches to occupy Antwerp. We, the French, will have to do the fighting on the Belgian plains.

All newspapers will print in headlines as large as your hand these prophetic words: THE BELGIUM NEUTRALITY HAS BEEN VIOLATED. THE PRUSSIAN ARMY IS MARCHING UPON LILLE.¹⁰⁸

In the religious area, it was especially the “millennarians” that were then presenting predictions of the approaching end of the world. This movement included millions of Christians from different quarters, Baptists, Pentecostals, and so on. Pastor Russell and his followers, the “Bible Students,” were just a small branch of this broad movement. Common to them all was their pessimistic view of the future. In his book Armageddon Now! Dwight Wilson describes their reaction to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914:

The war itself came as no shock to these opponents of postmillennial optimism; they had not only looked toward the culmination of the age in Armageddon, but anticipated ‘wars and rumors of wars’ as signs of the approaching end.¹⁰⁹

Wilson then goes on to quote one of them, R. A. Torrey, dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, who, in 1913, one year before the outbreak of the war, wrote in his book, The Return of the Lord Jesus: ‘We talk of disarmament, but we all know it is not coming. All our present peace plans will end in the most awful wars and conflicts this old world ever saw!”¹¹⁰

As Theodore Graebner tells in his book War in the Light of Prophecy, the war of 1914 had scarcely begun before a great host of writers from different religious quarters arose, claiming that the war had been foretold:

Soon the announcement was made by several investigators: IT HAS BEEN FORETOLD. Immediately thousands of Bible Christians became interested. Immediately, too, others set to work on Gog and Magog, Armageddon, the Seventy Weeks, 666, 1,260, etc., and soon religious periodicals, in this country and abroad, contained the message, announced with greater or less assurance, IT HAS BEEN FORETOLD. Pamphlets and tracts appeared promulgating the same message, and soon a number of books were on the market, running to 350 pages each, which not only contained most circumstantial ‘proof for this assertion, but announced likewise the exact time when the war would come to a close, who would be the victor, and the significance of the war for the Christian Church, now (it was said) about to enter into her millennial period.¹¹¹

Graebner, who felt incited to examine a great number of these contentions, after a very thorough investigation concludes that:

. . . the entire mass of millennial literature that flourished during the First World War – and a tremendous mass it was – was proved definitely, completely, absolutely, false by the events. In not a single point did the First World War develop as was to be expected after reading the chiliastic [millennialist] interpreters. Not a single [one] of them predicted the outcome of the war. Not a single [one] of them foretold the entrance of the United States. Not a single [one] of them foretold World War II.¹¹²

Pastor Russell’s speculations about the coming great war in Europe did not differ appreciably from those of the contemporary novel‒writers and millenarian expositors. In the Zion’s Watch Tower of February, 1885, he wrote: “Storm clouds are gathering thick over the old world. It looks as though a great European war is one of the possibilities of the near future.”¹¹³

Commenting on the prevailing world situation two years later he concluded, in the issue of February, 1887: “This all looks as though next Summer [1888] would see a war on foot which might engage every nation of Europe.”¹¹⁴ 15, 1892, he had postponed the war to “about 1905,” at the same time stressing that this generally expected Great War had nothing to do with 1914 and the expectations attached to that date. In 1914 he expected – not a general European war – but the climax of the “batde of Armageddon” (which he thought had begun in 1874), when all the nations on earth would be crushed and be replaced by the kingdom of God. He wrote:

The daily papers and the weeklies and the monthlies, religious and secular, are continually discussing the prospects of war in Europe. They note the grievances and ambitions of the various nations and predict that war is inevitable at no distant day, that it may begin at any moment between some of the great powers, and that the prospects are that it will eventually involve them all. . ..

But, notwithstanding these predictions and the good reasons which many see for making them, we do not share them. That is, we do not think that the prospects of a general European war are so marked as is commonly supposed. . .. Even should a war or revolution break out in Europe sooner than 1905, we do not consider it any portion of the severe trouble predicted. . .. [The] ever‒darkening war cloud will burst in all its destructive fury. This culmination we do not expect, however, before about 1905, as the events predicted will require about that time, notwithstanding the rapid progress in these directions now possible.¹¹⁵

The generally expected Great War finally came in 1914. But probably none, and in any case not Charles Taze Russell and his followers, had predicted that it would come that year. The very different events that he and his associated “Bible Students” had attached to that date did not occur. Like the predictions of the many other contemporary millennarian writers, their predictions, too, were proved “definitely, completely, absolutely, false by the events.”

To claim afterwards, as the W atch Tower Society repeatedly did up to 1993, that they and they alone “accurately,” “by God’s holy spirit,” had predicted the outbreak of the war in 1914 and other events, and that “all the politicians, religious leaders, and economic experts” had been “telling the people the opposite,” is demonstrably an outright lie.

As explained earlier, some of those pretentious claims were finally, in 1993, withdrawn in the new book Jehovah’s Witnesses – Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom. The book was introduced at the district assemblies of Jehovah’s Witnesses that year as a “candid look” at the history of the movement. The admissions, however, usually are contextually surrounded by a minimum of background information which, moreover, is so apologetically slanted and warped that it often conceals more than it reveals.

True, the Society finally admits that Russell took over his calculation of the Gentile times from Nelson H. Barbour, who had published it one year before Russell “in the August, September, and October 1875 issues of the Herald of the Morning.”¹¹⁶ In the preceding paragraph the book even seeks to enlist the 19th‒century expositors of the 2,520‒year calculation as supporting the 1914 date. This impression is further enhanced by the bold‒typed statement to the left of the paragraph: “They could see that 1914 was clearly marked by Bible prophecy.” The presentation of the history, however, is narrowly limited to a few carefully selected expositors, the calculations of whom are partially obscured, adjusted and arranged so as to create the impression that the 2,520‒year calculation uniquely pointed forward to 1914. None of the many other terminal dates arrived at by expositors before Kussell are mentioned. Thus, although John A. Brown is stated to have arrived at the 2,520 years “as early as 1823,” his particular application of the period is completely veiled and distorted in the subsequent sentences:

But he did not clearly discern the date with which the prophetic time period began or when it would end. He did, however, connect these ‘seven times’ with the Gentile Times of Luke 21:24

Page 134 of Jehovah’s Witnesses – froclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), the Watch Tower Society’s new book on the history of the movement.

Quite to the contrary, as shown in the chapter above. Brown expressly stated as his firm conviction that the 2,520‒year period began in 604 B.C.E. and would end in 1917. Further, despite the Society’s italicized statement, Brown did not connect the 2,520 years with the Gentile times of Luke 21:24 out in the chapter above, he held the Gentile times referred to in this text to be 1,260 (lunar) years, not “seven times” of 2,520 years. (See footnote 20 calculation, then, are demonstrably false.

In addition to John A. Brown, the Society in the same paragraph refers to Edward B. Elliott and Robert Seeley, both of whom mentioned 1914 as one of the possible dates for the end of the “seven times.” Both of them, however, actually preferred 1793 (later changed to 1791 by Elliott) as the terminal date.¹¹⁷

Finally, an unnamed publication edited by Joseph Seiss and others is stated to have set out calculations that pointed to 1914 as a significant date, “even though the reasoning it contained was based on chronology that C. T. Russell later rejected.”¹¹⁸

The fact is, however, that this holds true of all four expositors mentioned by the Society. All of them used a chronology that dated the desolation of Jerusalem to 588 or 587 B.C.E. (not 606 B.C.E. as in Russell’s writings). Brown arrived at 1917 as the terminal date only because he reckoned the 2,520 years from the first year of Nebuchadnezzar (604 B.C.E.) instead of his 18th year, as did Barbour and Russell. And the other three arrived at 1914 by counting from Nebuchadnezzar’s accession‒year, which they dated to 606 B.C.E. (instead of 605 B.C.E., the date established by modern historians).¹¹⁹

Although all of them based their calculations on chronologies that were rejected by Russell and his followers, the Society claims that these expositors “could see that 1914 was clearly marked by Bible prophecy.” How they “could see” this “clearly” by using chronologies that the Society still holds to be false is certainly puzzling. Of course, for a reader to discover such inconsistent reasonings, he or she has to check the works of these expositors. The problem is that the Society’s authors commonly avoid giving specific references. This practice makes it virtually impossible for the great majority of readers to discover the subtle methods used to support indefensible interpretations and cover over embarrassing evidence.

As just mentioned, the Society, contrary to earlier claims, concedes in the new book that the predictions attached to 1914 failed. As was shown in the chapter above, the very specific and distinct predictions about 1914 were summarized in seven points on pages 76‒78 of Vol. II of Millennial Dawn, originally published in 1889. These predictions were there put forward in no uncertain terms. The discussion is teeming with words and phrases such as “facts,” “proof,” “Bible evidence,” and “established truth.” That 1914 would see “the disintegration of the rule of imperfect men,” for instance, is stated to be “a fact firmly established by the Scriptures.¹²⁰

What does the Society’s new history book do with the pretentious claims and the very positive language that originally encapsulated these predictions? They are totally smoothed over or concealed. Referring to the above‒mentioned discussion of the Gentiles times in Vol. II of Millennial Dawn – but without quoting any of the actual statements made – the Society asks: “But what would the end of the Gentile Tinies mean?” The surprising answer given is that the Bible Students “were not completely sure what would happen”!

Although some of the predictions are briefly mentioned, the Society carefully avoids terming them “predictions” or “prophecies.” Russell and his associates never “predicted” or “foretold” anything, never claimed to present “proof’ or “established truth.” They just “thought,” “suggested,” “expected,” and “earnesdy hoped” that this or that “might” happen, but they “were not completely sure.”¹²¹ wrapped up in language that completely masks the true nature of the aggressive doomsday message proclaimed to the world by the International Bible Students for over a quarter of a century before 1914. Disguising the presumptuous predictions in such vague and unassuming words and phrases, of course, makes it easier to “humbly” concede that these failed.