Object and Manner of Our Lord’s Return
Tabernacle Shadows
1876 Russell’s “Gentile Times” article in The Bible Examiner (commentary) This is on the ad1914.com site and will open in a new tab.
Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1920)
The Harp of God
The Laodicean Messenger (1923) – A Bible Student publication after separation from the Watch Tower Society
Our Lord’s Return (1925) – a 64 page booklet
Holy Spirit vs Flashes of Light (Commentary 1920’s publications) on the reduction of mentions of “Holy Spirit” during this time period, as Rutherford proposed that Jesus is no longer leading or directing through Holy Spirit, but it is now more through some kind of direct, or angel-delivered enlightenment, “flashes of lightning.” Today these are considered “holy spirit” but at the time this was rejected because Jesus had said that
Comparison of the Songbooks (Hymnals) for the above
Faith on the March
Rutherford’s Rainbow:
Note on LM below:
The Laodicean Messenger is not a Watch Tower publication. Its title page reads “Published by The Bible Students Book Store, Chicago, Ill.,” copyrighted 1923 in Chicago — not the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in Brooklyn. That places it with the Bible Students who separated from Rutherford after 1917 and remained loyal to Russell’s memory. Its subtitle is “being the Memoirs of the Life, Works and Character of That Faithful and Wise Servant of the Most High God,” so it is a book-length elaboration of exactly the claim The Harp of God stated in a paragraph — but made from outside Rutherford’s organisation, by people contesting his succession. That changes what it’s evidence of: not the Society’s view of Russell, but a rival claimant’s.
I’ll flag that prominently in the summary rather than letting it read as a Watchtower text.
One thing I do need to raise before starting three more books:
Ran a command · 1 note
Cleaner text than the scans (proper text layer). “Laodicean” appears 154 times, “messenger” 165, “that servant” 35 — the channel claim is the book’s entire subject. Let me get the rest of the structure and harvest.
Ran 2 commands · 1 note
The Ordination chapter claims his Greek and Hebrew “was far greater than any acquired by any youth in a four years’ course at a college” — which is worth checking against the Ross libel trial, where Russell was examined on exactly that.
Ran 3 commands, read a file · 1 note
The Laodicean Messenger delivered — 155 sentences, 39 quotations verified. The provenance warning sits at the top in a callout box so it can’t be missed.
Four findings that matter for your thread:
The book’s purpose is the succession fight, and it says so. Chapter VIII: the office of “that servant” was to be filled by “an individual, and not by a collective number of individuals, as some contend, and was so filled.” That’s aimed directly at Brooklyn, which was moving toward the class interpretation it formalised in 1927. Every superlative about Russell in this book is load-bearing for the argument that the office died with him.
“From before his birth.” Reported as private testimony: “In private Pastor Russell admitted his belief that he had been chosen for the great work he had accomplished, as ‘that Servant,’ from before his birth.” No Watch Tower publication in your set makes that claim.
The ordination chapter contradicts itself within three paragraphs. It asserts his Greek and Hebrew “was far greater than any acquired by any youth in a four years’ course at a college” — then quotes Russell saying “Not only do I not claim very special knowledge of either language.” It answers the criticism without ever mentioning the 1913 Ross libel trial, where he was examined on exactly this under oath.
And it preserves the origin story the Society’s own textbooks drop. Russell’s autobiographical account is here in full: Barbour and Paton were Second Adventists, and when 1874 passed “without the world being burned up, and without their seeing Christ in the flesh, they were for a time dumbfounded.” The date was rescued when a reader noticed the Diaglott rendered coming as presence. Set that against The Harp of God, which presents 1874 as settled chronology with no history at all — the loyalists kept the awkward origin, the Society lost it.
Also worth knowing: chapters III–IV read Russell’s character from his skull shape in the idiom of phrenology, and the chapter following his funeral is titled “He Is Risen.”