The Great Controversy, page-6

That was only the first part of the reason. What follows is the second.

What about the moral points?

He must like Jesus! Russell then considers Jesus Christ, as he notes that a person who doesn’t believe in God could still think that Christ was the “best and wisest of all men.” However, he explains that he cannot say that Christ was all that wise. He gives several examples of events in the gospels where Jesus acts very strangely. He describes the bizarreness of two of these events here:

“There is the instance of the Gadarene swine where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill to the sea. You must remember that (Christ) was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chooses to send them into the pigs.

Then there is the curious story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember what happened about the fig-tree.
‘He was hungry; and seeing a fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find anything thereon; and when He came to it He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it: “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever,” . . . and Peter . . . saith unto Him: “Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away”.’This is a very curious story, because it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could not blame the tree.”

Russell also argues that no person who believes in eternal torture in hell, as Jesus did, can be all that great of a moral exemplar, as it smacks of a cruel and sadistic side. Russell finally claims that the statements of Christ and behavior of the disciples suggest that the second coming was expected to occur in their lifetimes. Since it didn’t, Russell points out that Christ couldn’t have been all that wise. He does, however, support several of Christ’s moral maxims, such as his pacificism and concern for the poor. Russell doesn’t think that Christ has a monopoly on these ideas though, he points out that Lao Tzu had the same ideas centuries before.