This is in response to the article headed “God’s justice demands hell”: I only recently came across that article written by Karl Jacobs. I was immediately taken aback by the attempted character assassination of one of the greatest Bible students of our time, namely Pastor Charles Taze Russell, even referring to him as a “heretic and religious crackpot” and ignorantly crediting him as the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation.

I use the term “character assassination” so that readers will understand that slander/evil speaking is an assassination of the character of others and that such defamation is robbery of another’s good name. The article was not only prejudicial but grossly inaccurate both along biblical and historical lines, hence my endeavour to shed some light on the subject. Who was Charles Taze Russell? He was born on February 16, 1852, to Joseph and Ann Elisa Russell, Presbyterians of Scottish Irish decent.

His mother died when he was just nine and at a very tender age Charles fell in love with the word of God, which led to an intense study of God’s word. His studies and belief in a loving God led him to disagree with the nominal church’s view that a loving God would sentence millions of humanity to an eternity of torment and torture in a place called hell, while saving a mere few. This resulted in many referring to him as the “no hell man.”

Russell also held the view that the Lord’s second return would be to bless, not destroy, the world (Acts 3:19-22)—“the times of restitution of all things.” He refused to take collection at his meetings, using the phrase “free seat,” which infuriated various religious leaders of the day. He went into business with his father while still a teenager and was a very successful businessman and became a millionaire while in his 20s. At age 29 he sold his five clothing stores worth US$300,000 (estimated at US$5.5 million in 2005), all of which he used in the furtherance of the word of God.

He wrote voluminously before his death and published such books as the six-volume Studies in the Scriptures, Tabernacle Shadows of the Better Sacrifices, Life Death Hereafter, Photo Drama of Creation, to name a few, and published hundreds of Bible tracts, including “What is the soul, and what is hell.” Today “The Divine Plan of the ages...” remains one of the most widely distributed expositions of the Bible and is published worldwide in nearly 20 languages.

Russell’s sermons were printed and published in a syndicate newspaper worldwide, reaching an estimated audience of 15,000,000 in the US alone. After his death in 1916, opposition and controversy arose for the presidency and leadership of the organisation. The presidency and leadership fell into the hands of JF Rutherford (the society’s lawyer at the time) through usurpation and other underhand tactics.

He then began perverting Russell’s teachings and arrangements, even blatantly disregarding Russell’s last will and testament. In order to distinguish himself from those who continued holding to Russell’s teachings, Rutherford in 1931 gave the remaining members the name Jehovah’s Witnesses. Their teachings, ideas, thoughts, practices, etc are as far away from the teachings and writing of Charles Taze Russell as the East is from the West.

Russell never had any affiliation with the Jehovah’s Witnesses organisation. It may be said that he formed the co-operation, whose mission was to be nothing more than what in fact it is, a publishing house for biblical literature, but certainly not the organisation known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is in fact a religious denomination, a practice he strongly discouraged. I hope in the future that Jacobs would desist from connecting Russell to Jehovah’s Witnesses. May God bless you, Jacobs.

R Guy,
Bible student,
Freeport