It is shown that the family Russell was influenced by many preachers and thoughts that where spread in the 19th century. Already in the 15th and 16th century several people were not happy with what the Roman Catholic church preached and distantiated themselves from their ideas. It was only a tiny minority who really tried to understand Gods Word and took enough time to study it. In the 16th and 17th century there were Bible Students who considered them selves to be Brothers of Christ or Brothers in Christ. In the Anabaptist and baptist movements there were many people convinced that the Holy Trinity was a reprehensible heathen thought. Lots of those Baptist preachers had to flee Belgium, went up north and crossed the see from Amsterdam going westward to England and New England. In America the non-Trinitarian preachers independently went cross the country and tried to reach as many people as they could. John Thomas came in contact with many of those itinerant preachers and put order in their ideas. Thomas succeeded to get some more people interested to travel all round to preach the Gospel and to show the people that there was only One God and that it was He who send His son to save all mankind. The Russell family came in contact with those teachings and agreed mostly with them but Charles Taze Russell as a good businessman new how to get better to the people then those Christadelphians. His financial means were also perhaps better than Dr Thomas his possibilities.
Russell must well have been very eloquent and have had a good understanding of how to approach the people in that time. He encountered a lot of people who were in a kind of religion vacuum or did not believe at all. Charles managed to get them interested by his 'shows' and with the flyers and many tracts. He built a beautiful association to witch many stayed faithfully, but found also men and women who just clung at a group of men, that could give them them social peace. Especially the doom-mongering attracted a lot of frightened people. Lots of people wanted to secure or insure their future. That we live "in the last days" "the day of the Lord" — "the end" of the Gospel time and consequently, in the dawn of the "new" time, became facts named that not only perceptibly were through those who took the Bibles at hand to study. According to Russell could the student of the Word, become led by the Spirit, but for him the signs of the end times, that were recognizable through the world, carried the same testimony, and must we be desiring that the "master of the household of belief" totally awake showed us to the fact that — "We live in a very important time".
Charles went into lots of discussions, found some interested people who wanted to come together with him to study the Bible. He had a time of constant growth in grace and knowledge and love of God and his Word.
What he did with it you can read in Charles Taze Russell and what he started.
Dutch, Flemish and South-African speaking people can read more in:
Nederlandstalige lezers kunnen meer vinden over C.T. Russell in de onderstaande artikelen:
Nederlandstalige lezers kunnen meer vinden over C.T. Russell in de onderstaande artikelen: