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Proclaiming the Lord’s Return (1870-1914)Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom
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Nelson H. Barbour, of Rochester, New York, believed that the object of Christ’s return was not to destroy the families of the earth but to bless them and that his coming would be not in the flesh but as a spirit. Why, this was in agreement with what Russell and his associates in Allegheny had believed for some time!b Curiously, though, Barbour believed from Biblical time-prophecies that Christ was already present (invisibly) and that the harvest work of gathering “the wheat” (true Christians making up the Kingdom class) was already due.—Matt., chap. 13.
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Proclaiming the Lord’s Return (1870-1914)Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom
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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.
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