The modern philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that in socialist teachings, the functions of God are transferred to a kind of dialectical materialism. This false god controls the course of historical development. The object of salvation in Marxist theories is the proletariat, suffering under the rule of evil capitalists. The Communist Party is here an analogue of the Church. The party is preparing its elected people for the "second coming" - the demon of the revolution. The advent of the revolution means the extermination of an enormous number of enemies of the "happiness of mankind." And the victors, under the rule of their false messiah, will live in the "millennium kingdom" - the communist community of nations. We know how many lives the implementation of such projects cost from the experience of our country, which turned into a huge totalitarian sect. We also know what a blow was directed by the builders of this earthly kingdom at the Orthodox Church.

For many decades of the 20th century, a conviction was formed in the minds of the Soviet people about the possibility of building a perfect, happy society on this earth, as a counterbalance to the Church's teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. These ideas, obviously, had deep roots, going back to the theory of "progressive chiliasm", which, thus, indirectly formed the worldview of many generations of Russian people. It can be argued that the consciousness of our compatriots who found themselves in the conditions of post-Soviet society continues to carry the expectation of a future "earthly paradise".

The teachings of the Watch Tower Society, as we shall see later, are to a large extent a modification of the ideas of "progressive chiliasm." The same expectation of an earthly thousand-year-old paradise, the same construction of it, though in a rather strange way - the distribution of the organization's publications. It is important for us to note the coincidence of these ideas, which determine the consciousness of the members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect, with similar ideas formed among the Russian people during the years of Soviet power. Of course, it is necessary to note a significant difference. The Watch Tower Society did not deny the existence of a God who would destroy everything harmful to future earthly life. The ideologists of the domestic form of chiliasm took upon themselves these functions, rejecting the Lord as well. But Tertullian also noted that the soul is Christian by nature, it cannot live without God. Therefore, in the consciousness of the Soviet people there was always dissatisfaction with the construction of an earthly "bright future".

Finding itself in the conditions of the collapse of atheistic ideology, but not overcoming the expectation of an earthly millennial kingdom, the consciousness of modern Russian man becomes receptive to those currents of "progressive chiliasm" that do not deny the existence of God, including the largest of them, Jehovah's Witnesses.

Going back to the time of the Watchtower Society's inception, it was born out of and in close relationship with other similar religious organizations. At the beginning of the 19th century, the apocalyptic forecasts inherent in the doctrine of "progressive chiliasm" attracted the attention of a large number of people living in the United States, who spontaneously united in the Second Coming movement. Later, against the background of the non-fulfillment of various "prophecies" about the end of the world, there was a split in this movement into various groups, most of which continued to set new dates for the return of Christ. One of them was formed around N. H. Barbour of Rochester, New York. For his followers, Barbour published a magazine called "The Midnight Cry" and then "Herald of the Morning". In July 1878, C. T. Russell, the future founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, became assistant editor of the Second Coming magazine, Herald of the Morning. In this publication, he wrote that the "proofs of dates, chronology, etc., which he accepted were the same as those used by the Adventists in 1873." Russell also contributed to another magazine, The Bible Student, which was also edited by the Adventist George Storr. There is no doubt that most of the ideas Russell later put into the foundation of The Watchtower were borrowed from the teachings of Adventism. We should become acquainted with this direction of the movement of the Second Coming in more detail, especially since serious information about Adventism is practically inaccessible to the Russian reader.

1.2. HISTORY AND TEACHING OF ADVENTISM

William Miller can rightly be called the forerunner of the Adventist movement, although he himself was not associated with the most numerous part of this movement, the Seventh-day Adventists. It was his predictions of the date of Christ's return that aroused the interest of representatives of various confessions and contributed to the widespread predilection for "prophetic predictions" in the middle of the last century.

Miller was born in 1782 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was the eldest of 16 children and received a very modest education, consisting of several classes of secondary school. Miller compensated for his lack of knowledge by diligently reading books. Although the family in which the future heresiarch was brought up was distinguished by deep piety, he himself went through a long period of doubt, ending by the age of thirty. From that time on, for two years, Miller studied the Bible and came to the conclusion that only the day and hour of the Second Coming were hidden from people and angels, but not the year. Studying the prophetic verses in detail, he searched for information that would indicate this event. Miler's conclusions were based mainly on the book of Daniel: "From further study of the Scriptures I concluded that the seven times of the reign of the Gentiles must have begun at the time when the Jews lost their independence, from the time of the captivity of Manasseh, which the best chroniclers date to 677 B.C. In addition, I concluded that the 2300 days began with seventy weeks, from 457 B.C. ... and that the 1335 days, beginning with the cessation of the daily sacrifice and the decree of the abomination of desolation (Dan. 12:11), are to be reckoned from the establishment of the papal government, after the removal of the heathen abomination, which I would advise to date, according to the best historians, to about 508 A.D. If all these prophetic periods are counted from a few dates fixed by the best chroniclers for the events from which, obviously, they should be counted, then they will all be completed in the year 1843."10 More precisely, between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844, if we take the 2300 days mentioned in Daniel chapter 8 as years.

In 1831, Miller preached a fervent sermon on the nearness of the Second Coming. Initially, these "revelations" were not successful, and most listeners "ignored them, considering them idle chatter."11 However, in 1833, Miller became an elder in one of the Baptist communities in the state of New York. From that time on, his sermons began to enjoy great success, not only in America, but also in Europe. Adherents of the new teaching began to be called Adventists a little later (from the Latin word adventus - coming). In 1839, Miller gained an important supporter, the famous pastor of the Chardon Street Chapel Church in Boston, Joshua Himes, who contributed much more than Miller to making the Adventist cause a national phenomenon. It was Himes who launched a newspaper campaign in support of Miller's teachings. The first publications in the Boston newspaper "The Sign of the Times" and in the New York magazine "The Midnight Cry" ("The Midnight Cry") mentioned in the previous chapter, marked the beginning of a flood of publications, pamphlets, and books that rushed to all corners of the world.

When the predicted year of 1843 passed, Müller postponed the appearance of the Savior to March 21, 1844. A place was also indicated - a mountain in the state of New York. The followers who believed the "prophet", dressed in white robes, gathered there in large numbers on this day, waited for a long time and unsuccessfully for the fulfillment of the prediction.