The transfer of the center of Christian's life from the field of soteriology (the teaching of salvation) to the field of eschatology (the teaching of the end of the world) is a sign of the religious illness of the soul. Beginning in the 1820s, sects were gaining strength, the members of which were obsessed with the desire to announce to mankind the exact time of the Second Coming of Christ.

The earthquake of 1775 in Lisbon, which claimed many lives, was the first significant symptom of the approach of the "tribulation of those days" and was perceived by contemporaries as an important eschatological sign of the coming of the "day of the Lord"1. In 1780, many scientists observed an eclipse of the Sun. All these natural phenomena have been interpreted by those eager to know the timing of the Second Coming as the "fulfillment of the prophecies" of the Revelation of St. John. Moreover, rumors began to circulate in sectarian circles that the Roman high priest was none other than the Antichrist. In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte, as a result of his military successes in Italy, deprived the Pope of his rights to secular domination. Subsequently, sectarians from eschatology will present this event as a sign of the end times. Among the many preachers of the approaching end of the world, Joseph Wolff (1795-1862) soon attracted special attention. For many years he preached his ideas among Europeans, and in 1821 he began missionary work in Egypt, Palestine, Persia, Georgia, declaring the coming of Christ in 1847.

At about the same time, the Englishman William Canignem (1776-1846) traveled around the world with similar sermons. He wrote more than twenty works full of prophecies, biblical chronology and eschatology.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Society for the Spread of Christianity among Jews was founded with headquarters in London. The Society spread among the Jews the ideas of the imminent Coming of the Savior and the need for their conversion to Christianity in connection with the coming events.

In 1819, Henry Draymond and Robert Helden established the Continental Society for the Dissemination of Religious Knowledge, and seven years later the Society for the Study of Prophecy appeared in London. The Protestant Society, created in 1835, was also engaged in eschatological searches. The first Interconfessional Conference convened in 1825 was marked by a pronounced eschatological orientation. In England alone, in the nineteenth century, about 150 titles of books2 were published on eschatology. In a number of countries, magazines devoted to this problem are published with deliberately high-sounding titles: "Signs of the Times", "Cry of the North", "Herald of the Advent", "Bible Observer", "Voice of Truth", etc.

All of them named different dates for the imminent Second Coming. However, the most painful for the newly-appeared eschatologists was the collapse of the prophecy about the end of the world in 1843, which was spreading on the American continent. This movement was led by William Miller, who wrote in 1844: "In the course of 12 years I organized 450 conferences, which gathered about 500 thousand people."3 It was he who named 1843 as the date of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which, however, was later postponed by him twice. At the height of the eschatological movement, it had about 100,000 sympathizers, but after the first failure of the prophecy, many departed from it. In October 1844, it broke up into six independent religious groups, and by 1855 it already represented 25 sectarian groups that had left the "community" of Miller. Some of them preached the doctrine that Christ did come in 1843, but invisibly, being a spiritual being, others taught that he secretly ascended to His heavenly sanctuary.

After the crushing eschatological crisis of 1843, Adventists of various denominations no longer named specific dates for the Second Coming, only noting that it was near.

2. The Root of Lies

The second half of the nineteenth century in the history of religious denominations in the United States was marked by a surge of interest in new forms of biblical revelation. This phenomenon is commonly called the "movement of saints", and numerous adherents of Protestantism hoped to find the lost faith of the Apostles in it. Different religious movements and groups followed different paths in their searches. Some experimented in the emotional-psychic sphere, completely indulging in mystical experiences and ecstatic "inspirations," hastening to pass off their subjective sensations as the action of the Holy Spirit. Others went "from the head", rationally focusing on this or that biblical truth, in the hope of illuminating or opening to the world another new way of salvation.

However, at all times, apostates, having once betrayed the unity of the Holy Church, inevitably plunged themselves into the abyss of pernicious self-government, depriving themselves of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The United States can rightfully be considered the birthplace of Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as many other heresies. The peak of interest in eschatology - the teaching about the end of the world - in the United States fell on the 50-60s of the last century. One such religious group, which focused on searching the Bible for indications of the time of Christ's Second Coming, was led by Charles Russell (1852-1916). Proclaiming the motto, "The Reformation continues," he later became the ideological inspirer of the religious movement known today as Jehovah's Witnesses.

The founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Charles Russell, was born in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA), in the family of an outerwear store owner. His parents were Presbyterians of Scottish descent.4 Until the age of seventeen, Russell zealously professed this teaching, but soon, under the influence of Adventists5, he was completely immersed in the search for an answer to the question that troubled him: When will the Savior come to earth?

As is often the case, Russell did not create something original, but only modified what already existed. Russell himself adhered to the teachings of Jones Wendell, which were popular among believers who turned their searching eyes to the Bible in search of the "end times" - the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the age. The Wendellits, disagreeing with the already announced dates, proposed their own - 1874, but then they "spiritually rethought" this date as well. All this happened after the failure of a number of prophecies of the Adventist William Miller, who first announced 1843 as the date of the Second Coming, and then 1844. It was assumed that the Savior entered public service at the age of 30, so the Second Coming should take place 30 years after His Coming to the heavenly temple.

In 1872, Russell and his friends formed a Bible study group, and two years later his book, Why and How Will the Lord Jesus Christ Come to Us?