The Watch Tower Society’s first president, Charles Taze Russell, as chairman of the IBSA (International Bible Students Association) committee of seven, first visited the Orient early in 1912 “to see the conditions of the heathen,” reported The Watch Tower of December 15, 1912.
... The Watch Tower of August 15, 1914, printed a fascinating letter addressed to Brother Russell, stating: “I am a stranger to you in one sense; but I came to a knowledge of Present Truth through your writings just twenty-two months ago.