Paul S. L. Johnson

Paul Samuel Leo (formerly Levitsky) Johnson (1873 – 1950) was an American scholar and pastor, the founder of the Layman's Home Missionary Movement. He authored 17 volumes of religious writings entitled "Epiphany Studies in the Scriptures," and published two magazines from about 1918 until his death in 1950. The Movement he created still carries out his work and publishes his writings, operating from Chester Springs Pa.

He was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania in October 1873, to Jewish parents who had recently immigrated from Poland. His father was a prominent Hebrew scholar,^{[citation needed]} and eventually became president of the Titusville synagogue. His mother died when he was 12, and his father remarried, both of which caused him distress; he ran away from home several times.

He eventually converted to Christianity and joined the Methodist Church.

In 1890, he entered the Capital University of Columbus, Ohio, and graduated in 1895 with high honors. Records in that University's Library show him enrolled as Paul Levitsky;^{[citation needed]} he then went to the Theological Seminary of the Ohio Synod of the Lutheran Church and graduated in 1898. He pastored a Lutheran church for a short time in Mars PA, and then was transferred back to Columbus Ohio and St. Matthew's Lutheran Church on Sullivant Ave, which would eventually be razed to make way for highway infrastructure. He in a short time built a new church building there and was noted (by the Capitol Univ. Synod Records)^{[citation needed]} to have baptized more people and collected less money than any other pastor in the synod.

In May 1903 he left the Lutheran Church as a consequence of changes in his beliefs, and began fellowship with the Columbus Ecclesia of the Watch Tower Society. The Lutheran Church later claimed they had disfellowshipped him for heresy, but he had already left them of his own free will. One year later (to the day) Pastor Charles Russell appointed him as a Pilgrim of that movement. He eventually served as his personal secretary. In time, he became Russell's most trusted friend and advisor.^{[citation needed]} He suffered from a nervous breakdown in 1910 as a result of withstanding sifters from within who were challenging the teachings of the Society's President.^{[citation needed]}

Johnson left the Watchtower Society when Joseph F. Rutherford took over its direction after Russell's death. He then founded the Layman's Home Missionary Movement in 1919, and served on its board of directors from 1920 to his death in 1950.

External links

• Biography
• History of various Bible Students groups, with a few notes on Pastor Johnson (also [1]).