The Jehovah's Witnesses was begun by Charles Taze Russell in 1872. He was born on February 16, 1852, the son of Joseph L. and Anna Eliza Russell. He had great difficulty in dealing with the doctrine of eternal hell fire and in his studies came to deny not only eternal punishment, but also the Trinity, and the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit. When Russell was 18, he organized a Bible class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1879 he sought to popularize his aberrant ideas on doctrine. He co-published The Herald of the Morning magazine with its founder, N. H. Barbour and by 1884 Russell controlled the publication and renamed it The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom, and founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society (now known as the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society). The first edition of