The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The History of an Interpretation 57
February 15, 1916: “In STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES, Vol.
IV, we have clearly pointed out the things now transpiring, and the
worse conditions yet to come.” 75
April 15, 1916: “We believe that the dates have proven to be
quite right. We believe that Gentile Times have ended, and that
God is now allowing the Gentile Governments to destroy
themselves, in order to prepare the way for Messiah’s kingdom.” 76
September 1, 1916: “It still seems clear to us that the prophetic
period known to us as the Times of the Gentiles ended
chronologically in October, 1914. The fact that the great day of
wrath upon the nation began there marks a good fulfilment of our
expectations.” 77
In November 1918, however, the First World War suddenly
ended—without being followed by a worldwide Socialist
revolution and anarchy, as had been predicted. The last member of
the “divinely recognized Church of Christ” had not been glorified,
the city of Jerusalem was still being controlled by the Gentiles, the
kingdom of God had not crushed “the Gentile image,” and the
“new heavens and the new earth” could not be seen anywhere by
trouble-tossed humanity. Not a single one of the seven predictions
enumerated in the book The Time is at Hand had come true. 78
Pastor Russell’s “Bible Students” were confused, to say the least.
Yet—though not among the predictions— something had
happened: The World War. Could it be that the time was right,
after all, even though the predictions had failed? The explanation
resorted to by the Adventists after 1844 and by Barbour and his
associates after 1874—that they had expected “the wrong thing at
the right time”—now seemed even more appropriate. 79 But how
could the time be right, when all predictions based on it had failed?
For years many of Russell’s followers experienced deep perplexity
because of the non-arrival of the predicted events. After the lapse
of some years, J. F. Rutherford, Russell’s successor as president of
75 Ibid., February 15, 1916, pp. 51, 52 (= Reprints, p. 5852).
76 Ibid., April 15, 1916 (= Reprints, p. 5888).
77 Ibid., September 1, 1916, pp. 263, 264 (= Reprints, p. 5950).
78 See above, pages 50, 51. For a long time after 1914 it was held that the “time of
trouble” (Matt. 24:21, 22) really began in that year, but this view was finally
abandoned by the Watch Tower Society in 1969. (See The Watchtower, January 15,
1970, pp. 49–56.)
79 A. H. Macmillan, Faith on the March (New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1957), p.48.
57