Religion: Marching to Armageddon

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Hell discarded, Russell began preaching the Adventist doctrine that the imminent second coming of Christ will trigger Armageddon. He prowled through Scripture to set the date of the second coming, finally settled for 1914.* His following increased. In 1884 he incorporated the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, now usually known as Jehovah's Witnesses ("Ye are my Witnesses, saith Jehovah," Isaiah 43:10). They deem Abel the first Witness, Christ the Chief Witness and themselves direct descendants.

The Stage Is Set. A tremor shook the society when Russell's wife divorced him in 1911, but worse was the brethren's disenchantment when no second coming occurred in 1914. Russell solved this problem before he died in 1916 aboard his personal Pullman car in Texas (last words: "Wrap me in a Roman toga"). He said the advent must have been invisible—the spirit of Christ had returned to earth without his body. Russell added that this meant Christ established his kingdom in 1914. Satan, he went on, was cast out of heaven in the same year, instead of immediately after the Fall, since God's sentence of death implied deferment ("You shall lie in wait for his heel," Genesis 3:15).

The stage was now actually set for Armageddon, but first there must be a transition period and that, say the Witnesses, is where mankind now finds itself. To the Witnesses, Christ's words on the world's end ("This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled," Matthew 24:34) clearly prove that some who were alive when Christ established his kingdom will see the end of the world. Thus, in the Watch Tower, it is plain that the end must come within the life span of some who were alive in 1914. As he roams the earth, Satan is speeding the end. Since 1914 Witnesses have regarded mounting wars, famines, pestilence and auto accidents as heartening evidence that life everlasting is near. This inspired Judge Joseph Franklin Rutherford, the patriarchal Missouri lawyer who followed Russell as society president, to coin its most famous slogan: "Millions Now Living Will Never Die."

All in Texas. What happens after Armageddon? Jehovah will select 144,000 Witnesses to reign in heaven ("I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand," Revelation 14:1, 3). This "little flock" will be composed only of the especially godly of all ages—including those now living who feel they can indicate publicly that they believe they have been called (16,815, according to one Witness census). The "other sheep" will stay on earth to rule the risen dead for 1,000 years, offering them a final chance to become Witnesses. After that Satan will be permanently vanquished in a second Armageddon. All the faithful, including the risen dead who became good Witnesses, will then inherit the earth. Those who failed to become Witnesses will return to everlasting death, a kind of zero state, their only compensation the fact that it will not be an eternal fiery hell.

When Pastor Russell was asked how the earth would hold all the risen dead (total world dead to date, the Witnesses believe: well over 250 billion), he did some calculations that showed how. By standing up, he said, they could comfortably fit into an area the size of Texas.