Repeatedly a restitutionist mode was invoked to leap across decades and even millennia to the 16th and 1st centuries in the cause of church reform.

In 1876, Russell met Nelson H. Barbour; later that year they jointly produced the book Three Worlds, which combined restitutionist views with end time prophecy.

The British Museum has refused to return these artefacts, stating that the "restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world".