Footnote

b Neither Barbour nor Russell was the first to explain the Lord’s return as an invisible presence. Much earlier, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) had written that Christ would return and reign “invisible to mortals.” In 1856, Joseph Seiss, a Lutheran minister in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had written about a two-stage second advent—an invisible pa·rou·siʹa, or presence, followed by a visible manifestation. Then, in 1864, Benjamin Wilson had published his Emphatic Diaglott with the interlinear reading “presence,” not “coming,” for pa·rou·siʹa, and B. W. Keith, an associate of Barbour, had drawn it to the attention of Barbour and his associates.