By Professor William G. Moorehead, D.D., United Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Xenia, Ohio.
Six rather bulky volumes, comprising in all some 2,000 pages, are published by the “Watch Tower and Tract Society” of Brooklyn, N. Y. The author of this work is Mr. Charles T. Russell. Formerly his publications issued from “Zion’s Watch Tower”. Pittsburgh, Pa. They then bore the somewhat ostentatious title, “Millennial Dawn,” (1886). The volumes now bear the more modest inscription, “Studies in the Scriptures”, (1911). Why the change in the title is made can only be conjectured. Some rather severe criticism and strictures of the views advocated in these books have brought Millennial Dawn into disrepute in the minds of many people, and accordingly we think the former title has been dropped and the later and less objectional one substituted for it. Some color is given to this conjecture by the fact that certain evangelical terms are applied to the movement of which Mr. Russell is the head, as, e.g., “People’s Pulpit of Brooklyn”, “International Bible Students’ League”, “Brooklyn Tabernacle”, “Bible House and Tract Society”, (Our Hope, Feb., 1911). The later title and the various names now freely used tend to allay suspicion and to commend the propaganda of Mr. Russell and his followers to the Christian public.
In the introduction to the first volume we are told that “our Society, realizing the need, is seeking to do all in its power to … lift ‘the Lord’s standard for the people’. It has prepared six sets of Bible studies for Christian people of all denominations. … These are supplied at bare cost”. The whole six volumes, “bound in cloth, embossed in silver”, sell for the ridiculously small sum of $2.25 – 37.5 cents each! The object is to scatter this literature throughout our country, Canada, and other lands, for we are assured that it is translated into no less than a dozen different languages. So it is asserted in the first volume.
Some idea of the circulation may be had from the statement made in the title page of each of the first three volumes: “Series I. 3,358,000 edition”. “Series II. 1,132,000 edition”. “Series III. 909,000 edition”. The enormous circulation of the books serves to show how industriously “Our Society” is propagating its literature, and the vast number of readers it is reaching, i.e., if these figures tell the truth! That the teaching of Dawnism has done immense harm is certain; that it is calculated to subvert the faith of Christians by substituting for the truth of Jesus Christ the calamitous doctrines of Mr. Russell cannot be denied; for the whole system is anti-Scriptural, anti-Christian, and a deplorable perversion of the Gospel of the Son of God. In the discussion of the system it is the doctrines of Millennial Dawn that are arraigned, not the author, Mr. Russell. It is conceivable that he is self-deceived, as some think, and that he believes that what he has published is the truth of the Bible. This is within the range of possibility, of course. Personally, however, the present writer withholds his assent to this opinion. That Mr. Russell is being used of the Evil One to subvert the truth of God, that the Christ he commends to men as an object of trust, love, and worship, is not the Christ of God, is the profound conviction of not a few who are familiar with his views. This is a grave indictment, but it is deliberately made. To establish it beyond peradventure and contradiction is the aim of this paper. A summary of the chief errors and heresies embodied in Millennial Dawn is here submitted.
- Jesus, in His pre-human existence, was a spiritual being, higher than the angels, but a creature. (Vol. I, pp. 177, 178, 179, 188.)
The book expressly teaches that our Lord, prior to His incarnation and during His earthly life, was only a creature, higher in the scale of being than other creatures, but not God. “We are told that our Lord, before He left His glory to become a man, was ‘in a form of God’ - a spiritual form, a spirit being; but since to be a ransom for mankind He had to be a man, of the same nature as the sinner whose substitute in death He was to become, it was necessary that His nature be changed. And Paul tells us that he took not the nature of angels, one step lower down than His own, but that He came down two steps and took the nature of man - He ‘became a man’; He ‘was made flesh’. (Heb. 2:16; Phil. 2:7, 8; John 1:14.)”
“Notice that this teaches not only that angelic nature is not the only order of spirit being, but that it is a lower nature than that of our Lord before He became a man; and He was not then so high as He now is, for ‘God hath highly exalted Him’, because of His obedience in becoming man’s willing ransom. (Phil. 2:8, 9.) He is now of the highest order of spirit being, a partaker of the Divine (Jehovah’s) nature”. The book further asserts: “If this principle be a correct one, it would show that God had no right to create Jesus higher than the angels, and then further to exalt Him to the Divine nature, unless He intended to do the same for all angels and for all men” (p. 188).