Eschatology (religious Movement) - William W. Walter

William W. Walter

William Wilfred Walter was born in Sublette, Illinois on July 13, 1869. Raised in a Catholic family, as a teenager he started to visit other church denominations. He left home at seventeen and moved to Aurora, Illinois. He later returned home and bought a barber shop. There he learned the trade, but soon after returned to his former job in Aurora and at twenty-one married his fiancée Barbara Stenger. The couple had a son who became sick and handicapped. The boy was fourteen when Walter became involved in the Christian Science church. At twenty-seven Walter was a buyer in a department store, a job he held the rest of his life. He never obtained formal education and had fishing as a hobby. The condition of the son depressed him and by thirty Walter caught tuberculosis. In his writings he claims that after seven years of struggling using the Christian Science healing techniques he finally overcame his illness. Walter thus became involved in trying to heal others as a Christian Science practitioner.

Between 1907 and 1910 he wrote three novels about mental healing in plain English for his clients and also for people outside the church. In 1910 Walter published The Christ Way under a pseudonym, in which he presented Christian Science concepts without mentioning Mary Baker Eddy, the founder and spiritual guide of the church. The book was relatively rejected by church members but widely accepted by outsiders. Walter reprinted the book, this time with his real name.

Between 1912 and 1916 Walter wrote several more books. In 1916 he also published his first Plain Talk series booklets, which heavily drew upon Eddy's teaching. In 1917 Walter held a class at his home for his closest followers and started a teaching plan for his Walter Method of Christ Science. He also continued to publish books and booklets for his successive courses. By 1920 some of his students started teaching new students, though Walter always examined them. Walter stipulated that each teacher requested an annual renewal of a permit that he alone granted. He called his teaching "the Science of Eschatology" and, like Eddy did before, claimed that the science was taught by Jesus. However, unlike Eddy Walter never founded a church: he restrained himself to teach the "Science of Life" at his home: a phrase he took freely from Eddy.

In the final chapter of The Sharp Sickle, the official textbook of Eschatology published in 1928, Walter, who had written The Sickle a decade before, sees the biblical book of Revelation as prophesizing his own work, but didn't claim any special mission from a personal God:

"You might ask how he could know that the individual who unveiled his Revelation would bring it out in two volumes. John knew that the individual who would gain sufficient understanding to do the unveiling would also have wisdom enough to be guided by his great wisdom."

Though Walter claimed that it is impossible "to have a leader without a follower" he remained the sole leader of Eschatology. In 1941 Walter died suddenly at 72 at his home in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was survived by his wife and his son Arthur.

Even though the title of this article says that Eschatology (The Walter Method) is a religious movement, this is incorrect. Mr. Walter was very adamant that this study was a *science* and had nothing to do with religion.

Mr. Walter stated in his booklet "Our Plan" that 'the Walter Method, which is nothing more or less than a plain and practical explanation and application of the method of mental healing given the present age by Mary Baker Eddy, and the further unfoldment of actual life as taught in the science of last things, Eschatology.'