Many writers on Watch Tower history have, in the past, linked the work of Charles Taze Russell (hereafter abbreviated to CTR) to the Adventists. It is now realised that his views on such essential subjects as salvation came from the Age to Come movement. The problem is that one group of Adventists (those that became the Advent Christian Church) used to loosely fellowship with Age to Come believers, and this was true of the group in Allegheny that the Russell family knew. With a mutual interest in Christ’s return and conditional immortality, they rubbed shoulders after a fashion for several decades in the 19th century, as the distinction both evolved and yet at times was blurred. Eventually of course the two groups went their own separate ways. As did CTR.
This
has been partly touched on in two earlier articles on this blog 1874-1875 – “Allegheny-Pittsburgh
– Adventist or Age to Come” and “Charles Taze Russell and The Restitution.”
Even
researchers who acknowledge Age to Come believers have lumped them together as
Adventists. A typical example is the thesis by the late David Arthur of Aurora
University, “Called Out of Babylon,” which discussed people like Marsh and
Storrs under the chapter title ‘Age to Come Adventists.’ George Storrs would
not have approved. However, if you lived at the time, particularly if you were
an outsider or onlooker, it would be all too easy to lump disparate groups
together under one label. Sometimes the groups in question didn’t help matters
by the terms they used. This article tries to illustrate the problem, which can
cloud judgments today.
As
the Advent Christian Church became a denomination with a specific statement of
belief, so Age to Come adherents found associating with them more problematic.
Ultimately, people who had fellowshipped together – albeit uneasily –
increasingly divided into separate parties.
A
letter in The Restitution for July 28, 1880, called Adventists “half brethren”.
Reading through some Restitutions for the 1890s, they weren’t even being awarded
that backhanded honor by then.
And
yet...
On
the ground, there remained some confusion in the public consciousness as to who
was actually who.
However,
first: to illustrate how feelings within the Age to Come community became
increasingly anti-Adventist, here are a few choice quotations from the
Restitution from the 1890s:
From
the pen of W.H. Wilson in Restitution for July 8, 1896, page 1: “There is a
marked distinction between Adventists, and true
members of the Church of God, who believe
and obey the gospel of the Kingdom.
With regard to communing with Adventists, I would say, what fellowship can
obedient gospel believers have with those who destroy the gospel? We must be
firm in the faith, yet kind and gentle to all men.”
Being
a little more specific, one Ira R. Hall wrote in Restitution for August 12,
1896, page 1: “I had rather go into a place where they have never heard
anything, than to go into a Crisis’ Advent community.”
A
Crisis Advent community would of course be their former associates, the Advent
Christian Church.
Such
negative feelings were mutual. Another complaint from The Restitution for May
20, 1896, page 2: “We have a church here. They style themselves Adventists, but
do not fellowship (with) us, so we cannot worship with them. They reject the
glorious doctrine of the age to come.”
And
yet...
For
the public not directly involved with the protagonists, Age to Come people were
still often lumped together with Adventists. A report from evangelist A.H.
Zilmer preaching in Indiana in The Restitution for March 2, 1898, page 3, makes the comment “there is much prejudice against
the Adventists, AS WE ARE TERMED (capitals mine).”
It
may be that just preaching about the return of Christ was sufficient to confuse
the masses, but there was also the problem of nomenclature. Surprisingly (for
this writer at least) some Age to Come congregations still chose to call themselves
Advent Churches into the 1890s.
A
letter from J.S. Hatch in The Restitution for April 15, 1896, page 2, bemoaned the plethora of names in current use amongst
Restitution readers: “I find in my travels in one locality they call themselves
the Advent Church and in some the Church of the Abrahamic Faith, and in another
Church of the Blessed Hope, and still another Soul Sleepers, the name the
enemies of God call us, and some take the name of the One Faith. Is that right,
brethren? Come, let us have one uniform name in all localities.” Hatch then
makes a vigorous argument for them all to stick with the title Church of God.
What
was this? Age to Come congregations calling themselves the Advent Church? Yes. One
such congregation might have been one based in Philadelphia that was regularly
advertised in The Restitution in the latter 1880s as The Church of the Second
Advent. (For example, see The Restitution for December 5, 1888, page 4.)
Another
culprit (if that be the right word) was John T. Ongley, who had been active in
CTR’s home area in the 1870s. Ongley received a special mention in The
Restitution in 1897 (August 4, page 4) in a
letter from the Leader and Secretary and Treasurer of a newly established
group. The letter reads in part: “We had the pleasure of a visit from Elder J.T.
Ongley of Crawford Co. Pa....Before leaving he organised us in a body of ten
members under the following rule of faith: - We the undersigned...identify
ourselves as the Church of God, called SECOND ADVENT, in Batavia NY, organised
this date, July 2, 1897, by Elder J.T. Ongley (capitals mine).”
Funeral
reports from this era sometimes have Age to Come preachers speaking in what is
called The Advent Church, but whether this was their own fellowship or as guest
speakers for the occasion in Advent Christian Churches is not made clear.
Ultimately,
time took care of the confusion. The different titles for congregations thinned
down – at least slightly – and “Advent Church” slipped off the Age to Come radar.
By 1903 The Restitution for January 28, page 1, could
use the term Advent Church and define it with the comment “whose views of Bible
teaching, is voiced, in the main, by the World's Crisis and Our Hope” – clearly now referring to the
Advent Christian Church alone. The term Advent would be left with
those who had embraced it from the start. As the Evangelical Adventists faded
away, Advent without a Seventh Day prefix would generally refer to the Advent
Christian Church and its papers like The Crisis and Our Hope.
During
this time, CTR’s movement continued to grow – drawing fire from his former Age
to Come associates, with any connections long since overlooked and forgotten.
And CTR’s background was obscured by a lack of biographical information in his
own writings. So, being charitable, perhaps some of the past researchers who
did not have The Restitution paper available for consultation can be forgiven
for missing out on the nuances of the situation.
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