Responding to Jehovah's Witnesses

This argument bypasses the entire 607 BCE / Daniel chronology debate by quoting the founder's own written confession that the dates have no plain Scripture support. The strategy is simple — read Russell's words aloud and ask the JW to evaluate them on epistemological grounds.
Read together, slowly:
"The reader… must not expect to have passages of Scripture pointed out in which these matters and dates are plainly written. On the contrary, he must bear in mind that all these things have been hidden by the Lord in such manner that they could not be understood or appreciated, until the due time had come, and then only by his earnest, faithful children, who esteem truth more precious than rubies." (Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. II, p. 171)
Then ask three questions:

1. "When Russell says 'do not expect passages of Scripture pointed out,'
   what kind of proof is he offering you?" (Answer: none from Scripture
   — only his own claim to special insight.)
2. "Russell says the meaning was 'hidden by the Lord' until 'the due
   time' — and the due time happens to be when Russell arrives. Is that
   a falsifiable claim, or is it a claim that automatically validates
   whoever happens to be making it?"
3. "If a Mormon, a Christian Scientist, or a Seventh-day Adventist
   showed you this same paragraph from their founder, with the dates
   swapped, would you accept it as Bible evidence?"

Then point to Matthew 24:36 — even Jesus said no man knows the day or hour. Russell could not point to passages because Jesus said the passages do not exist. Deuteronomy 18:22 sets the test for a prophet: if the prediction fails, the LORD has not spoken. October 1914 came and went without the visible end of Gentile power Russell had said was certain. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 commands testing all things — and this paragraph fails the test.
Close gently: this is not an attack on the JW or on Russell as a man. It is the founder's own admission, in print, in a book the Watch Tower Society sold by the millions, that he had no Scripture passages to show. If 1914 is the cornerstone of why the Watchtower is God's channel, the cornerstone is a confession.

Read the sentence again. He did not say "the proof is complex" or "the proof requires study." He said "do not expect to have passages of Scripture pointed out in which these matters and dates are plainly written." That is the opposite of a difficult-but-extant proof — that is a written statement that the passages will not be shown. He then offers a substitute: things "hidden by the Lord" and unveiled only to "his earnest, faithful children" — meaning himself and his followers. The substitute for Scripture is authority.

That is a good admission, and it raises a sharper question. The organisation says Russell was wrong about 1874 — yet 1874 was the flagship date in the same book that contains this paragraph. The organisation says he was wrong about the Great Pyramid being God's stone witness — yet the pyramid was used to confirm 1914 for over forty years. If Russell's dates have been quietly revised every generation, what is left of the original "due time" claim? Either Jehovah revealed the dates to Russell — in which case the revisions accuse Jehovah of error — or Russell invented them, in which case the revisions are simply patching a man-made system. Either way the 1914 doctrine cannot stand on Russell's confession that the Scripture proof does not exist.

Then notice what Russell himself wrote about that chain. He did not say "here is the chain from Daniel 4 — follow it." He said "do not expect to have passages of Scripture pointed out." If the Daniel 4 / Luke 21 chain were as clear as the Watchtower presents it today, why did the founder explicitly tell readers they would not be shown the passages? The modern presentation of 1914 was developed after Russell, layered onto a date he originally placed at 1874. The doctrine has been re-justified twice — first when 1874 was moved to 1914, again when 1914's failed predictions were re-explained as "invisible." A doctrine that needs two retrofits and starts with a confession of no proof is not Bible chronology. It is the appearance of Bible chronology built around a date that was decided first.

The Watchtower in 1914 did not just predict "the times." It predicted specific events for October 1914 — the end of Gentile governments, the harvest of the saints, the visible inauguration of the Kingdom. Russell himself, in the Watch Tower of November 15, 1913, began to back away from the specifics and said his previous statements were "opinions" not "knowledge" — using almost those exact words. Jesus did not draw a clean line between "day" and "year"; in Acts 1:7 he told the disciples it is not for them to know "times or seasons" the Father has set by his own authority. The same Greek words — chronos and kairos — cover exactly what the chronology charts try to compute. The objection proves too much: if the saints were merely to "discern the times," Russell would not have needed to confess in writing that he could not show the passages.

Then let us put it in context. The chapter the paragraph appears in is about identifying the dates of the harvest, the end of the Gentile times, and the parousia. The whole purpose of the chapter is to ground those dates. The paragraph appears as a preface to that grounding — and instead of grounding the dates in Scripture, it warns the reader not to expect Scripture. In other words, the "context" is the very moment Russell needed to give Bible proof and openly told the reader he would not. Pollock noticed this in 1912 — five years before Russell's death and twenty years before the JW rebrand. The objection is not a context problem; it is a content problem.

You are right that Russell does say the things will be "proved point by point" and asks the reader to make every point his own "direct from God's Word." That is exactly the test we should apply. So let us apply it. The chain Russell calls his proof runs: Leviticus 26's "seven times" curse on Israel + reading "times" as 360-day prophetic years + multiplying 7 × 360 to get 2520 years + anchoring the start to a 606 BCE date for Jerusalem's fall (recalculated to 607 BCE by the modern Watchtower) + identifying Luke 21:24's "appointed times of the nations" with the same 2520 years. Each link is an interpretive choice — no Bible passage states "Gentile Times = 2520 years," no Bible passage states "Jerusalem fell in 606 BCE" (secular chronology gives 587 BCE and the Watchtower needs 607 BCE for the math to land on 1914), no Bible passage links Leviticus 26 to Daniel 4 to Luke 21. That is why Russell had to begin with the warning that "passages of Scripture pointed out in which these matters and these dates are plainly written" do not exist — because the proof he then offers is not a passage but a constructed interpretive chain. Compare that with the kind of proof an inspired writer gives: when Peter proves the resurrection from Psalm 16 in Acts 2, he quotes the Psalm, identifies the speaker, and connects David's death and tomb to a single line of reasoning. He does not say "the proof is hidden until the due time." Russell's "point-by-point" method is unfalsifiable — every link is a step the reader cannot verify without trusting Russell's interpretive system first.

Find a copy of Studies in the Scriptures Volume 2 (also titled "The Time Is At Hand") — the Watchtower Online Library and the IBSA reprints archive both host it. Read pages 170-175 in their entirety. Then read Matthew 24:36 and 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Ask yourself: is the way Russell talks about his dates the way a Bible writer would talk about a Bible truth?