The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The “Seven Times” of Daniel 237
Dr. Guinness had predicted that the year 1917 would be perhaps
the most important year in the termination of the trampling of
Jerusalem. When the British general Edmund Allenby on
December 9 that year captured Jerusalem and freed Palestine from
the Turkish domination, this was seen by many as a confirmation
of his chronology. Quite a number of people interested in the
prophecies began to look forward to 1934 with great expectations. 3
Among these were also some of the followers of Pastor Charles
Taze Russell.
A-1: Pastor Russell’s chronology emended
At the climax of the organizational crisis in the Watch Tower
Society following the death of Russell in 1916, many Bible students
left the parent movement and formed the Associated Bible Students, in
1918 chartered as The Pastoral Bible Institute. 4
In the same year Paul S. L. Johnson broke away from this group
and formed The Laymen’s Home Missionary Movement, today one of
the strongest groups to grow out of the Bible Student movement
aside from the parent organization.
Early in the 1920s the Pastoral Bible Institute changed Russell’s
application of the Gentile times, which caused an interesting debate
between that movement, the Laymen’s Home Missionary
Movement, and the Watch Tower Society.
An article entitled “Watchman, What of the Night?” published in
the Pastoral Bible Institute’s periodical The Herald of Christ’s
Kingdom, April 15, 1921, marked a significant break with Pastor
Russell’s chronological system. Mainly responsible for this
reevaluation was R. E. Streeter, one of the five editors of the
Herald. His views, accepted by the other editors, reflected a
growing concern on the part of many Bible Students (as evidenced
from letters received from nearly every part of the earth) who had
experienced deep perplexity “as to the seeming failure of much that
was hoped for and expected would be realized by the Lord’s people
by this time.” 5 Some of the questions which had arisen were:
3 Most of these expositors seemed to be unaware of the fact that Guinness himself
back in 1909, in his book On the Rock, had revised his chronology and “had
calculated that the end would occur in 1945 instead of 1934.”—Dwight Wilson,
Armageddon Now! (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), pp. 90–
91.
4 The Pastoral Bible Institute (P.B.I.) was headed by former board members of the
Watch Tower Society who were illegally dismissed by J. F. Rutherford in 1917
together with other prominent members.
5. The Herald of Christ’s Kingdom, April 15, 1921, p. 115.