Some sociological aspects about the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Malta

Abstract

The group known today as Jehovah’s Witnesses is just over one hundred years old. Former President Nathan Homer Knorr [who] did not like it said that this organization was “founded” only in 1872; he preferred to say that the Witnesses “broke in on history” a century ago, thereby suggesting a continuity preceding 1872. The year 1872 marked the commencement of a Bible study class conducted by a twenty-year-old draper’s assistant named Charles Taze Russell. Having listened to a Second Adventist meeting held in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, two years earlier, the young Presbyterian-turned Congregationalist was very impressed by their teaching on the imminence of Christ’s Second Coming. He began an intense study of the Bible, especially the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation, and two years later he felt competent enough to form his own study class with a handful of like-minded Bible devotees. When the Adventist predictions for the expected return of Christ were not realized in 1874, but invisibly. Russell himself had been thinking along these lines, and he was delighted that someone else was of the same mind. Barbour had reached his conclusion through the study of Benjamin Wilson’s newly published ‘Emphatic Diaglott’, a Greek-English interlinear translation of the Bible. Wilson had translated ‘parousia’, the Greek work for ‘coming’, as ‘presence’, and in accenting this rendering of the Greek, Barbour concluded that Christ could be ‘present’ without being seen. Finding themselves in complete agreement on the supposed invisible presence of Christ, the Pittsburg Adventists under Russell decided to amalgamate with Barbour’s Rochester Adventists so that they could provide a more effective witness to Christ. After giving some much-needed capital to Barbour’s ailing ‘Herald of the Morning’ magazine, Russell became its co-editor. With Second Adventism built on the belief that Christ’s return was imminent, it was natural to expect that there would be further speculation as to when this would occur. Russell had already written a booklet on the supposed invisible Second Coming, called ‘The Object and Manner of the Lord’s Return’, but it still left unanswered the question of the visible manifestation of Christ at the end of time. Realizing the consequences of failure, Russell was content to remain uncommitted on an exact date for Christ’s Second Coming, but not so with Barbour. The Rochester Adventist leader remained firmly convinced that the exact date of Christ’s visible manifestation was hidden somewhere in the Bible and that it was only necessary to find the right key to unlock the secret knowledge that the Scriptures tell us is know only to God (cf. Mt 24:36; Acts 1:7). Further juggling of Scripture passages from the book of Daniel led Barbour to believe that 1878 – three and a half years from the invisible return of October 1874 – was to be the date of the Second Coming. [...]