Charles Taze Russell: Quotes about Christ

“God's Word reveals the fact that the nominal church, after its fall from his favor and from being his mouth-piece (Rev. 3:16), will gradually settle into a condition of unbelief, in which the Bible will eventually be entirely ignored in fact, though retained in name, and in which philosophic speculations of various shades will be the real creeds. From this fall the faithful sealed ones will escape; for they will be "accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand" - not fall, in the time of the Lord's presence. (Luke 21:36.) In fact, many are already thus settling, - retaining the forms of worship, and faith in a Creator and in a future life, but viewing these chiefly through their own or other men's philosophies and theories, and ignoring the Bible as an infallible teacher of the divine purposes. These, while retaining the Bible, disbelieve its narratives, especially that of Eden and the fall. Retaining the name of Jesus, and calling him the Christ and Savior, they regard him merely as an excellent though not infallible exemplar, and reject entirely his ransom-sacrifice - his cross. Claiming the Fatherhood of God to extend to sinners, they repudiate both the curse and the Mediator.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 167.

Life , Men , God , Faith

“Some of God's children, the "holy people", the writer among the number, though not associated with the "Miller movement", nor with the denomination subsequently organized, which calls itself the "Second Advent Church," have been looking at and "earnestly waiting" for Michael's Kingdom; and gladly we bear testimony to the "blessedness" of the wonderfully clear unfoldings of our Father's plan, at and since the fall of 1874 - the end of the 1335 days.
Words fail us to express this blessedness! Only those who have been refreshed in spirit with this new wine of the Kingdom could appreciate it, if we could describe it. It is therefore something to be felt, rather than told. It was at and since the ending of those 1335 prophetic, symbolic days that the previous views of the Lord's presence, and the fact that we are even now living in the time of the "harvest" of this Gospel age, and in the time of the setting up of our Michael's (Christ's) Kingdom, came to be known.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 88.

God , Children , People , Age

“The reason for not attempting to purify the nominal systems is that no amount of cleansing would make the unconsecrated mass of "Christendom" and their organizations, civil and ecclesiastical, suitable to the Lord's work, now to be commenced on this earth. During the past eighteen centuries he has been selecting the truly consecrated, the worthy ones, and now all that remains to be done is to select from among the living those of the same class - and they are but few - as only a few are lacking to complete the fore-ordained number of members in the body of Christ.
The reason for discarding all human organizations, and not reforming the least objectionable one and calling out of all others into it, now, is shown by our Lord's treatment of the various Jewish sects in the harvest or close of their dispensation; for then, as now, all were rejected, and the "Israelites indeed" were called out of all, into freedom and taught the will and plan of God by various chosen vessels of God's own selection.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 159.

God , Freedom , Past , Christ

“The writer, and co-laborers, proclaimed the fact of the Lord's presence, demonstrating it from prophecy, and on charts or tables, such as are used in this book, until the fall of 1878, when arrangements were made for starting our present publication, ZION'S WATCH TOWER, and Herald of Christ's Presence. By the Lord's blessing, millions of copies of this publication have carried abroad the tidings that the time is fulfilled, and that the Kingdom of Christ is even now being set up, while the kingdoms and systems of men are crumbling to their utter destruction.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 93.

Men , Books , Time , Christ

“Firmly incased in this solid rocky structure, beyond the power of nature's storms or of the ruthless hand of the destroyer, the outline drawings of God's great plan have stood for four thousand years, prepared to give their testimony at the time appointed, in corroboration of the similarly revealed, but for ages hidden, testimony of the sure Word of Prophecy. The testimony of this "Witness to the Lord in the land of Egypt," like that of the written Word, points with solemn and unerring precision to the final wreck of the old order of things of the "Pit" of oblivion, and to the glorious establishment of the new, under Christ Jesus, the great Chief Corner-stone of God's eternal building, in conformity with the lines of whose glorious character all things worthy of everlasting existence must be built up under him. Amen! Amen! Thy Kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!”

Charles Taze Russell

Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891)

God , Age , Nature , Time

“Thus we see clearly that the Papacy has substituted a false or sham sacrifice, in the place of the one everlasting, complete and never-to-be-repeated sacrifice of Calvary, made once for all time. Thus it was that Papacy took away from Christ's work the merit of being rightly esteemed the Continual Sacrifice, by substituting in its stead a fraud, made by its own priests. It is needless here to detail the reason why Papacy denies and sets aside the true Continual Sacrifice, and substitutes the "abomination," the Mass, in its stead; for most of our readers know that this doctrine that the priest makes in the Mass a sacrifice for sins, without which they cannot be canceled, or their penalties escaped, is at the very foundation of all the various schemes of the Church of Rome for wringing money from the people, for all her extravagancies and luxuries. "Absolutions", "indulgences", and all the various presumed benefits, favors, privileges and immunities, for either the present or the future life, for either the living or the dead, are based upon this blasphemous doctrine of the Mass, the fundamental doctrine of the apostasy. It is by virtue of the power and authority which the sacrifice of the Mass imposes upon the priests, that their other blasphemous claims, to have and exercise the various prerogatives which belong to Christ only, are countenanced by the people.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 102.

Life , Money , People , Penalty

“Judaism was a divinely appointed type of the Millennial Kingdom of Christ which will control and regulate all matters; hence Judaism was properly a union of church and state - of religious and civil government. But, as we have already shown, the Gospel Church was in no sense to be associated in, or to have anything to do with, the government of the world, until her Lord, the King of Kings, comes, assumes control, and exalts her as his bride to share in that reign of righteousness. Neglecting the Lord's words, and following human wisdom, theories and plans, the great system called Christendom, embracing all governments and creeds professing to be Christ's (but a miserable counterfeit of the true Kingdom of Christ), was organized before the time, without the Lord, and of wholly unfit elements. The fall of Babylon as an unfit church-state system, and the gathering out of the worthy wheat, therefore, can be and is well illustrated by the fall of Judaism.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 153.

Wisdom , World , Sense , Time

“We have thus shown that 1799 began the period called the Time of the End; that in this time Papacy is to be consumed piece-meal; and that Napoleon took away not only Charlemagne's gifts of territory (one thousand years after they were made), but also, afterward, the Papacy's civil jurisdiction in the city of Rome, which was recognized nominally from the promulgation of Justinian's decree, A. D. 533, but actually from the overthrow of the Ostrogothic monarchy, A. D. 539 - just 1260 years before 1799. This was the exact limit of the time, times and a half of its power, as repeatedly defined in prophecy. And though in some measure claimed again since, Papacy is without a vestige of temporal or civil authority to-day, it having been wholly "consumed". The Man of Sin, devoid of civil power, still poses and boasts; but, civilly powerless, he awaits utter destruction in the near future, at the hands of the enraged masses (God's unwitting agency), as clearly shown in Revelation.
This Time of the End, or day of Jehovah's preparation, beginning A. D. 1799 and closing A. D. 1914, though characterized by a great increase of knowledge over all past ages, is to culminate in the greatest time of trouble the world has ever known; but it is nevertheless preparing for and leading into that blessed time so long promised, when the true Kingdom of God, under the control of the true Christ, will fully establish an order of government the very reverse of that of Antichrist.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 59.

God , Age , World , Knowledge

“How strong the expression, "She is become the habitation of demons, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." How true it is, that the most execrable of society seek and wear the garb of Christian profession and ceremonialism, in some of the various quarters (sects) of Babylon. Every impure principle and doctrine, somehow and somewhere, finds representation in her. And she is a "cage" which holds securely not only the Lord's meek and gentle doves, but also many unclean and hateful birds. Of all the defaulters, and deceivers of men and of women, how many are professedly members of Christ's Church! and how many even use their profession as a cloak under which to forward evil schemes! It is well known that a majority of even the most brutal criminals executed die in the Roman Catholic communion.”

Charles Taze Russell

Source: Milennial Dawn, Vol. III: Thy Kingdom Come (1891), p. 162.

Women , Men , Hate , Bird