Person

Charles Taze Russell

Founder of the Watch Tower Society (1852 to 1916), whose writings fixed 1914 as the end of the Gentile Times.

Charles Taze Russell was a Pittsburgh publisher and Bible teacher who founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society in the 1880s. His six-volume Studies in the Scriptures presented an interpretation of Bible chronology that pointed to 1914.

He died on October 31, 1916. Leadership passed to Joseph Rutherford, under whom the movement later took the name Jehovah's Witnesses (1931).

Predictions in this timeline

1914 The Watch Tower Society and the end of the Gentile Times in 1914 Charles Taze Russell and the Watch Tower Society · Later reinterpreted From 1889, Watch Tower publications taught that Bible chronology showed the "Gentile Times" would end in 1914, and early writing expected major changes to follow, including the end of existing governments.