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Tuesday, December 18, 2012

The Russell's Baptism

Today someone commented on a post from 2009. They claimed that Storrs baptized the Russells in 1874. Because the comment is now burried in the archives, I'm posting my relpy here too:

There is no evidence that Storrs baptized the Russells. That is mere speculation. It's also wrong.

Storrs did not see water baptism as important. He wrote against it. Stetson, on the other hand, saw water baptism as vitally important.

There are three good candidates for personage who baptized the Russells. Storrs is not one of them.

While we're glad you read our blog, posting unfounded speculation as fact detracts from our efforts to document the real history. This claim is an example of many speculations given out as fact that find there place on Watch Tower history sites. It is without documentation. You swallowed it whole simply because you read it somewhere.

We are very skeptical historians. If we cannot document something, even if we belive it, we won't include it. This, Russell's "gold mine," claims about his fortune and business, and similar things are usually presented as fact but are at best speculation. Some of the claims made are lies.

Good history is a well documented, connected story. Your claim is fantasy fiction.

2 comments:

jerome said...

It is nice to know that ancient posts still get read on occasion.

I notice that the poster said Storrs baptised the Russells in the summer of 1874. Storrs visited the Pittsburgh group at the beginning of May that year, where he met Joseph Lytel Russell amongst others. In October 1874 (as recorded in the December Bible Examiner) JLR wrote to Storrs expressing appreciation for the May visit, and indirectly indicating they had not seen each other since. Which they would have done, if Storrs had gone back in the summer to baptise them all.

B. W. Schulz said...

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