Jehovah's Witnesses: Who They Are, What They Teach, What They Do (1954)
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WITNESSES
Jehovah's Witnesses By the same Author
ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF RELIGION AND RELIGIONS (also American, French, and Spanish editions)
FAITHS OF MANY LANDS
ETHICS OF THE GREAT RELIGIONS
ROUND THE YEAR WITH THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS
SLAYERS OF SUPERSTITION
STORY OF THE CRUSADES
POLITICAL PARTIES AND POLICIES
Associate Editor
THE STORY OF THE BIBLE IN HIS STEPS; THE LIFE OF CHRIST NEW POPULAR EDUCATOR WONDERS OF THE PAST ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE NEW BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE
Editor TWENTIETH CENTURY ENCYCLOPAEDIA Jehovah's Witnesses
Who They Are What They Teach What They Do
BY ROYSTON PIKE
WATTS & CO
JOHNSON'S COURT·FLEET STREET·LONDON EC4 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
Apart from any use specifically permitted under the Copyright Act, 1911, no portion may be reproduced without written permission. Inquiry should be made of the publishers.
First Published 1954 Who they are
THIS football stadium in one of London's inner suburbs is a pretty big place. Just how many thousand people it holds I do not know, but there are very few vacant places on the wooden seats that rise, tier above tier, in the gaunt arrangement of timbers and iron girders. And although the service has begun, the flow of newcomers continues, so that very soon it must be "standing-room only."
Thousands upon thousands of people, assembled not to watch a "League" match or the "dogs," a prize-fight or an evening of "dirt track," but to demonstrate that they have a religion and are not ashamed to say so. They are a good-looking crowd, good-humoured, and thoroughly well-behaved. Often they burst into laughter at something that the speaker says, and they clap vigorously when he has finished and makes way for another. But when they stand in prayer or join in hymns led by the string orchestra over there in the corner, they are obviously very much in earnest. They look like men and women with a mission—as indeed they are. They are JEHOVAH's WITNESSES, and on this Sunday in August they have assembled to renew their allegiance to their Sovereign Lord and to praise his holy name.
Still they come streaming in through the gates, by bus many of them specials, by coach and private car (already the car-park is nearly full, and it must hold several hundred), by train and on foot. All around there are posters and placards and labels announcing that this is the New World Assembly of Jehovah's Witnesses. Every other man and woman, and nearly all of the very numerous youths and girls and children, are wearing little blue-and-yellow cards proclaiming the title of the address that is the Assembly's keynote: "After Armageddon—God's New World." There are no entrance fees, no collections; everyone is welcome, so we are happily assured.
Just within the gates, stewards-sturdy young men for the most part—are ready to show you to a place in the stands. Here is a well-stocked book-table, here a secretary busily taking down the names of volunteers for the hundred-and-one jobs that the holding of such an assembly as this entails. Here are rest-rooms, "Ladies only" and "Gents," sick bays for the indisposed, stewards' rooms, buffets capable of serving light lunches and teas to the multitude. Today, we are told, the helpers expect to make 550 gallons of tea, and housewives and typists and charladies are combining to do the washing-up after serving 2,400 lunches.
"There is no class distinction among our workers," we are told by the officer in charge. "Our helpers are rich and poor. They come from all trades and professions. And they work for nothing, because they love their fellow-creatures."
Now a young man goes past, bearing a placard with the words, "Candidates for immersion this way!" A little fleet of four double-deck buses has been engaged, it is announced, to work a shuttle service between the stadium and the Corporation baths, specially rented for the morning, and already the candidates are beginning to queue up.
A few minutes, and the first bus moves off, with every seat taken.
From my place high up in one of the stands I look down and out on a sea of faces. A great crowd, and a highly respectable one; not a cigarette or a pipe in action—although I think I can detect a little sweeteating. But the evidence is no more than a cheekmuscle's slow motion, and there is none of that disgusting litter with which the ordinary crowd befouls its temporary resting-place.
Now there's a vigorous young fellow standing on a box in the arena, directing and encouraging the hymnsinging. (Is that the right word? The book, I notice, as I share it through the gracious courtesy of my neighbour, who might be one of those good ladies who are the pillars of the Methodist or Baptist or Christian Science cause, is entitled Songs to Jehovah's Praise.)
The choir-leader steps down, and now there comes a voice, multiplied by a score of loud-speakers, from a sort of little pavilion, gaily striped in yellow, that is placed on the grass beyond the flower-beds. "Jehovah— Jehovah—JEHOVAH!" rings out again and again across the vast space, echoes back from the closely crowded stands. We stand as prayers are said to Jehovah; we sit and listen devoutly as he is thanked for allowing us to assemble this day, for having chosen us as his servants and co-workers in the establishment in this world of Jehovah's Kingdom.
In this world. Not in some airy-fairy place up above the bright blue sky, but here, down here, on the earth we know, in which even now we have our home and dwelling-place. Before very long, we are given to believe, there is to be the biggest battle ever, nothing less than Armageddon, in which the forces of Satan (there doesn't seem to be anybody here who doubts that there is any such person!) will grapple with those of Jehovah, captained by Christ Jesus.
What a truly earth-shaking conflict that will be!
So far as I can make out, we shall not be too closely involved in the struggle, but some of us at least are going to live long enough to enter into the thousand years of peace and happiness that are to follow Armageddon.
When? Why, it may be only just round the corner, so to speak. The signs are clear. The Lord has spoken, and his words and ways are sure.
So these are Jehovah's Witnesses, you reflect. These are the people that young man was talking about when he knocked at the door last Sunday morning. You thought he was selling something—but not on a Sunday, surely? There was a smile on his face, and he held out his hand in friendly greeting. You noted that he was quite well-dressed, and that his manner was most pleasant. Yes, he might well be selling shaving-soap or domestic brushes, and when he started undoing the straps of his bulging brief-case you thought with a grin of resignation that you knew what was coming. And you were right: he was a salesman. But of what?
"Would you like a thousand years of happiness?" he asked.
A thousand years of happiness! Well, who wouldn't? But as you listened to him standing there, you could not but wonder if he can deliver the goods.
Then, still smiling, he asked you to look at the literature that he whisked out of his case. And as you took it, a book perhaps or more likely a copy of The Watchtower, he really got busy with what in commercial circles is known as sales-patter. He certainly knew his stuff, you must admit that; he knew how to talk, and he "put it across" most effectively.
His statements—and what statements!—were forthright, straight from the shoulder, and his arguments were marshalled like good soldiers on parade. What they boiled down to was that he was the representative of a society or body of persons who (so they say) are in exclusive possession of the message of salvation.
Jehovah's Witnesses: it's a striking name, one easy to say and hard to forget. It stands for one of the strangest of the modern offshoots from the stem of traditional Christianity. In its present form, the Society, as we may properly refer to it, dates from the eighteen-seventies, but it is only of recent years that it has obtained prominence under the name of Jehovah's Witnesses. It is the successor, or rather, it continues the work, of those Christians who found their inspiration and their direction first in "Pastor" Russell and then in "Judge" Rutherford, and it seems to be repeating the success of those very able evangelists of a generation or two ago.
Unlike most of the Christian Churches, it has no record of decline or failure; on the contrary, it claims that its missionaries, those doorstep enthusiasts, are being blessed in their efforts by very substantial gains in membership and influence.
This success is probably greater than meets the eye, for outside their own publications it is very difficult to obtain any reliable information about the Witnesses and their work.
You will search in vain in the works of reference for any adequate mention of the Society—in most cases there is no mention at all. In the newest of British encyclopædias this lack of information concerning them is put down to their being in some measure a "secret" society.
No "outline" of literature refers to their publications, though some of these have obtained a circulation that far surpasses that of the best of best-sellers. No writer seems as yet to have made a Witness a hero or heroine, or even the villain, of a novel. So far as the BBC and the Press go, Jehovah's Witnesses might never exist; the annual assemblies that are attended by tens of thousands of Witnesses are hardly mentioned, when they are not altogether ignored.
The religious papers and the Churches of which they are the organs may be excused, perhaps, from giving publicity to a movement whose methods they dislike and many of whose doctrines they detest, and there is further excuse for their cold-shoulders in the fact that the Witnesses seldom have anything but abuse for their orthodox rivals. Without any hesitation or qualification, they denounce them as being among the spawn of Satan. But this excuse cannot be advanced to explain the very general boycott, the hush-hush attitude of the great organs of public opinion and enlightenment.
Not that the Witnesses themselves are inclined to complain. They have enough on their hands as it is, and seem to be doing very well at it. Their propaganda is aimed at the ordinary people, where it is likely to bring the best results.
Day in and day out, Sundays included and above all, you will find these twentieth-century colporteurs in action in suburban streets and country market-places, outside station entrances and at sports meetings and other popular gatherings. Probably not many of the better educated and well off pay much attention to what they have to say, and even less to what they have to sell. No famous figure in politics or business, the professions or the arts, seems to have joined them. Jehovah's Witnesses is not altogether respectable as a religious body; it still occupies a place very much like that of the Salvation Army before it was taken up by Royalty.
All the same, it is providing a spiritual home for those who would like to believe something and think that they ought to believe something, but who are "put off" by the endless squabblings of the Churches and the silly little differences about clerical costume and the number of candles on the altar and such-like trivialities.
There are numbers of such people about, earnest, thoughtful, thoroughly honest and well-meaning and essentially good people. The Churches appeal to them hardly at all. The political parties likewise have failed to enlist and retain their enthusiasm and active interest: the parties are so much alike nowadays, and one is as bad as the rest, politicians are all "on the make," and put their party before their country and themselves before their party. Local government is similarly depreciated. A career in business smacks too much of money-grubbing. Literature, painting, music, sport of one kind or another: such things, it is felt, are really not worth the attention of a man or woman who is seriously worried about his or her position in a world which is threatened with atomization, who asks such questions as "Why am I here? What's the meaning of life? When I die, is it 'finish'? Is there a God, and if so, how can we account for pain and evil in a world which the Good God is supposed to have made? And does he really care, for me and mine?"
These are the questions that are being asked, and they are not being answered at all satisfactorily. "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed."
But Jehovah's Witnesses say that they know the answers to these questions—so naive some of them, so pathetic in the longing they disclose for certainty in an uncertain world.
And while to the sophisticated their answers must seem crude and all too simple and all too sure in their dogmatism, to the questing soul they are as refreshing springs in the parched desert. Jehovah's Witnesses have never a doubt in their make-up, and as for the differences that perturb and divide other Christians, well, a plague on the lot of them.
"You want Christianity, the only real version, the only really true version? You want the Truth? Well, you needn't look any farther, we have it—here it is."
There's something catching in their positiveness, their absolute assurance that they are so altogether and so completely right. They know; and the man who knows, who is not to be moved from his position by argument and is not worried in the slightest by criticism, is at a great advantage when he comes up against people with no settled convictions. With closed minds themselves, the Witnesses know full well how to put their foot just inside the nearly closed door of the man who thinks "there may be something in this religion business" but isn't at all sure what.
To begin at the beginning, Jehovah's Witnesses maintain that they are the present-day representatives of a religious movement or organization which has been in existence since Abel, the second son of Adam and Eve, "offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than (his brother) Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous" (Hebrews xi, 4). Abel was the first "witness," as he was also the first martyr ("martyr" means "witness"), and other valiant witnesses have been Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist, down to and including, pre-eminent amongst them, Christ Jesus, who is, as described in Revelation iii, 14, "The faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God."
Thus there stretches behind the Witnesses of today a long line of saints and seers who through the ages have preserved inviolate on earth the true and pure worship of God—of Jehovah, as the Witnesses prefer to style the Deity, or, better still, Jehovah God.
This, however, is nothing more than nostalgic sentimentalism. Jehovah's Witnesses as we know them are a religious society, organization, or movement (they themselves strongly dislike being called a "sect") which had its origin in a Bible study circle conducted by a young American salesman, Charles Taze Russell, in a suburb of Pittsburgh some eighty years ago. Thus the first interesting fact about the Witnesses is that they are as American in their origin as Christian Science or the Mormons. And they are as unorthodox as either, as will be clear from this description of them that is given in Let God Be True, one of their officially approved textbooks of doctrine and practice.
"Jehovah's witnesses," this tells us, "constitute a body or group of persons consecrated to do the will of Almighty God, under the leadership of his Son, Christ Jesus. They have drawn together for the purpose of declaring that he whose name alone is JEHOVAH is the Universal Sovereign, and that he is the Author and Creator of earth's permanent heavenly government of righteousness for which Christ Jesus taught his disciples to pray to Almighty God. To everyone they point out the only way to that kingdom which shall permanently take the place of all earth's present governments that shall be destroyed soon in Jehovah's battle at Armageddon."
Already we are brought up against the fact that the Witnesses hold theological views of a decidedly peculiar kind, but beyond noting that they omit the capital letter in pronouns referring to the Deity (just as they spell their own name with a small w), let us pass on to make the acquaintance of this young fellow Russell.
PASTOR RUSSELL. Charles Taze Russell, or Pastor Russell as he was generally known, was born at Allegany, now a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pa., USA, in 1852. His parents, Joseph L. and Eliza Russell, were both of Scottish-Irish descent. His father was in the clothing business, and after only a very modest schooling, Charles joined him in running a chain of five shops. His mother died when he was only nine, but he found in his father a steady friend and eventual supporter.
While still a boy he was received into the fellowship of the Congregational Church of which his family were ardent members, and he seems to have been exceptionally pious and orthodox. Then he began to think for himself, after a fashion which he has himself described.
"We begin the narrative at the year 1868, when the Editor (Russell) having been a consecrated child of God for some years, and a member of the Congregational Church and of the Young Men's Christian Association, began to be shaken in faith regarding many long-accepted doctrines. Brought up a Presbyterian, indoctrinated from the catechism, and being naturally of an inquiring mind, I fell a ready prey to the logic of infidelity, as soon as I began to think for myself. But that which at first threatened to be the utter shipwreck of faith in God and the Bible, was, under God's providence, overruled for good, and merely wrecked my confidence in human creeds and systems of Bible interpretations.
"I was led gradually to see that though each of the creeds contained some elements of Truth, they were, on the whole, misleading and contradictory of God's Word.
Among other theories, I stumbled upon Adventism. Seemingly by accident, one evening I dropped into a dusty, dingy hall in Allegany, Pa., where I had heard that religious services were held, to see if the handful who met there had anything more sensible to offer than the creeds of the great churches. There for the first time I heard something of the views of Second Adventism."1
The group to which he refers was composed of the followers of William Miller, who from 1829 indulged in millenarian prophecies which culminated in the statement that the Second Advent of Jesus Christ would occur in 1844. Many thousands of people in the eastern and middle states of America believed what he told them, and when the fateful October 22 drew near a multitude abandoned their homes and businesses, donned gowns of white muslin, and took up positions on roofs and hilltops whence they would have a good view of the approaching Lord. When the appearance did not materialize, many were woefully disappointed and fell away, but some continued in their faith and expectation.
Like Miller, the youthful Russell made a long and close study of the prophetic books of Scripture, Daniel in particular, and like him he came to prophesy that the end of the world, or rather of the age, was coming before very long. Eventually, indeed, he came to the conclusion that the Lord had actually arrived, and that it was just an error in the calculations that had led Miller to suppose that the vital date was 1844; he had been just thirty years out—the actual date was 1874.
Of this discovery we shall have much more to say in due course, but here it should be mentioned that quite early in his spiritual pilgrimage Russell came to abandon a belief that was much more prominent in those days than it is now, when generations of rational and humane criticism have undermined its foundations and exposed its gaunt and horrid frame-belief in the existence of a hell of literal fire and brimstone, in whose undying flames sinners writhe in undying agony at the behest of an offended Deity.
The story runs that one day he was tackled by an "infidel" in a pool-room, who challenged him to defend the doctrine of hell-fire. He did his best, quoting this passage of Scripture and that, but he had a feeling of inadequacy, so that when he got back to his room he looked up the passages in his Bible. Before long he arrived at the conclusion that the doctrine could not be defended on Scriptural grounds, and that it must therefore be rejected. After this he moved on to investigate and to question some other of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity—doctrines that he had been taught at his mother's knee—and decided that they also were without Divine authority and approbation and must be repudiated.
Since there was no church or society or movement which seemed to preach the gospel which he had now come to believe was the true Bible teaching, he and some of his friends—young men like himself engaged in the business world—formed a Bible class in Pittsburgh, in which they thoroughly thrashed out the various problems that most perplexed them. About 1874—the year which, as we have just seen, Russell had "discovered" was one of truly immense importance—he and his associates felt pretty sure of where they stood and published a pamphlet by Russell entitled The Object and Manner of the Lord's Return, in which it was argued that Christ's coming, now imminent, was to be a spiritual and not a physical manifestation, and that it was quite wrong to hold that the world would be destroyed by fire on that tremendous occasion.
The pamphlet had the remarkable circulation of 59,000 copies, and thus was started a work of preaching through the printed page which (so it is maintained) is quite without a rival.
Five years later, in 1879, The Watchtower magazine was launched, the first number's circulation figure being 6,000 copies. Since that date The Watchtower has appeared without a break as the official journal of what is now Jehovah's Witnesses, and the spearhead of its propaganda in all parts of the world.
By this time the differences between the Russellites' gospel and that taught in the Churches had widened into a gulf, and in 1881 it was thought advisable to issue a booklet setting forth the Society's fundamental beliefs—Food for Thinking Christians, it was called—and this, together with many tracts on particular aspects of doctrine, was given a very wide distribution, in America and abroad.
That same year of 1881 saw the formation of Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society, with its headquarters at Allegany, Pa.; this was chartered as a non-profit making corporation, with Russell as its president, and under the style of Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (adopted in 1896) it has continued to this day as the central and controlling organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
In 1878 Russell had become the pastor of an independent congregation at Pittsburgh, and his fame and influence as a preacher (helped by an increasingly patriarchal appearance) and writer grew apace. Between 1886 and 1904 he published six volumes of Studies in the Scriptures, beginning with The Divine Plan of the Ages; these volumes were translated into some thirty languages, and the number of copies that were sold or were otherwise distributed exceeded fifteen millions by the time of Russell's death.
For a number of years a sermon of Russell's was printed each week in some 1,500 newspapers in USA and Canada, with a combined circulation running into millions. His followers hailed Russell as the greatest and most successful preacher of the Gospel in his generation: indeed, in their enthusiastic admiration they ranked him with St Paul, St John, Arius, Waldo, Wycliffe, and Martin Luther, and they seem to have believed, and he seems to have believed himself, that he is referred to specially in Scripture as the "faithful and wise servant" (Matthew xxiv, 45), and the "faithful and true witness" (Revelation iii, 14) who is the messenger in the seventh and last epoch of history.
Then he was chosen pastor by 2,000 congregations in USA, Canada, Britain, and Europe; in London his chief scene of operations was the Tabernacle in Lancaster Gate, which the ignorant sometimes confused with the very much larger Spurgeon's Tabernacle on the other side of the Thames. The pastorates made an impressive showing, but it has been alleged that a number of the "churches" were no more than rented halls or derelict places of worship, while he was not so much a "pastor" as the superintendent of the religious and semi-religious enterprises that were carried on by his agents.
However, there is no denying that the movement of which he was the acknowledged head made considerable progress from year to year. At length it was thought by the directors of the Society that the time had come for an establishment in the metropolis.In 1909 a New York corporation was formed, under the name of the People's Pulpit Association, changed in 1939 to Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Incorporated, and in the same year Russell was provided with a New York pulpit—the Brooklyn Tabernacle, in what had been the Bethel chapel of Plymouth Church.
Then in 1914 the International Bible Students Association was launched, with its headquarters in London, and entrusted with the particular responsibility of spreading the Russellite doctrine overseas.
Russell's position as a free-lance religionist, his incessant and bitter attacks on Christians of other persuasions, his invincible belief in his own rightness, that his message was the only true one, the only one approved by Jehovah—made him a target for much hostile criticism. Furthermore, he laid himself open to attack on other grounds.
In 1879 he had married Maria Frances Ackley, and although in the early years of their union Mrs Russell was a devoted co-worker with her husband, often helping him with his extensive correspondence and addressing gatherings of female disciples in his stead, their relations deteriorated to such an extent that in 1897 there was a separation. There were no children of the marriage. Then in 1909 Mrs Russell decided to sue for a divorce, and in her plea she alleged undue familiarity on Russell's part with women of his congregation, expressing herself with a high degree of bitterness. The divorce was granted, and in the final opinion of the State court in October 1911 it was recorded that Russell's conduct towards his wife had been "one of continual domination that would necessarily render the life of any sensitive Christian woman a burden and make her condition intolerable."
Russell strongly contested the decision, appealing five times against it, each time unsuccessfully.
In fairness to him, however, it should be stated that he always maintained that there was nothing blameworthy in his conduct, and that most certainly he had never been guilty of adultery.
Another matter that brought him into considerable discredit was the so-called "miracle wheat." He was alleged to have maintained that a particular sort of seed, obtained from the western USA, was possessed of very valuable and extraordinary properties, and to have hailed its discovery as one of the many signs that were accumulating that the Lord's blessing had already arrived on earth, that we were on the threshold of the Millennium when the earth will yield her increase to such an extent that sweat of brow will not be necessary in earning one's living. The seed was sold in Russell's Brooklyn Tabernacle at 60 a bushel, when it was really worth (so it was alleged) only about a dollar a bushel. The attack was mainly directed through and by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which published a highly damaging cartoon. Russell sued the newspaper for 100,000 damages—and lost. 1
Yet more unpleasant notoriety was aroused by Russell's sponsoring of a "cancer cure," which on analysis was revealed as being nothing other than a caustic paste of chloride of zinc.
Unfortunately the " cure " was not only ineffective but definitely harmful, so that some unfortunate sufferers may have had their end hastened by its application.
It was while Russell's divorce was threatening that it was decided to transfer the headquarters and principal activities of the Society from Pittsburgh, the scene of trouble, to New York, where the Pastor was not so well known. It is also alleged that, with a view to depriving his wife of the alimony which she was doubtless expecting, the Pastor transferred practically all his property to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, while still keeping it under his own effective control.
But again it is only fair to say that Judge Rutherford, his successor in the leadership of the movement and his trusted associate on the board of directors of the Watch Tower society, stated that he had been entrusted for many years with the payment to Mrs Russell of a sufficient alimony.
Then there is the not very serious charge that Russell pretended to be able to read Greek when in fact he did not know even the letters of the Greek alphabet. This is stated to have been disclosed when he was being cross-examined in a libel suit that he brought in 1913 against the Rev J. J. Ross, a Canadian minister.
One of the most scathing reviews of the Pastor's career is to be found in a booklet entitled Russellism, by J. A. Maynard, DD, that was published in 1926 by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. "Grasping and dishonest in money matters," writes Dr Maynard, "morbid in his approach towards the other sex, untruthful, self-satisfied, fond of litigation, Russell would have been expelled from the ministry of any decent church."
In 1910 Russell visited Palestine, and his prophetic conclusions were fortified by what he saw of the progress of the Zionist cause.
Following the unhappy experience of the "miracle wheat" case he went round the world, and in the course of his travels visited some of the more important centres of Christian missionary enterprise in the Orient. But again his detractors were on his track, alleging that he magnified the extent and the number of his "receptions."
"The amount of work that Pastor Russell performed is incredible," we are told in The Finished Mystery, final volume of "Studies in the Scriptures" published posthumously in 1917, "and it is doubtful whether it was ever equalled by any other human being. When he was in his twenties he was refused the lease of a property because the owner thought he would surely die before the lease had expired. For fifty years he suffered constantly with sick headaches, due to a fall in his youth, and for twenty-five years had such distressing haemorrhoids that it was impossible for him to rest in the easiest chair; yet in the past forty years he travelled a million miles, delivered 30,000 sermons and table-talks—many 21⁄2 hours long—wrote over 150,000 pages of advanced Biblical exposition, often dictated 1,000 letters per month, managed every department of a world-wide evangelistic campaign employing 700 speakers, personally compiled the most wonderful Biblical drama ever shown [The Photo-Drama of Creation]; and with all that, he has been seen to stand by his mantel all night in prayer, in one position."
During the last eight days of his life, the writer goes on, the Pastor had appointments in California, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and New York, and " though for several days manifestly dying, with cystitis (caused by excessive travel and speaking), he declined to cancel any engagements, and went out of this life October 31, 1916, on a railroad train en route to his Kansas appointment."
The train was stopped at Pampa, Texas, when he lay dying. In a newspaper account his last words are reported to have been the somewhat strange request to "please wrap me in a Roman toga," and those gathered round his couch did the best they could with the sheets from the Pullman coach.
In his young days Russell was reputed to have been wealthy: it is stated that by the age of thirty he had accumulated a fortune of 300,000. But he died practically penniless, leaving only about 300, "his own fortune"—to quote from The Finished Mystery again—"as well as all the large sums contributed to the cause, having been used up in the Master's service."
JUDGE RUTHERFORD. The second president of the Witnesses (although they were not yet called by that name) was Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who at the time of Pastor Russell's death was the principal legal adviser to the Society. He was born at Booneville, Missouri, in 1869, of farming stock, and became a lawyer in his native State. In the course of his career he was a special judge (for only a few days, his critics alleged) on circuit in Missouri, whence the title of " Judge " which is generally allowed him.
When he joined the Society is not known for sure, but the first mention of him in The Watchtower was in 1909. According to his own account, he was practising law in the Middle West when there came into his office one day a lady, "modest, gentle, and kind," with some books on her arm, which she asked him to buy. At that time he had little or no knowledge of the Bible and did not know that Pastor Russell was author of the books, nor indeed had he ever heard of him. He took the books home, however, read them, and studied them until "the wonderfully sweet, harmonious plan of God thrilled my heart and changed the course of my life from doubt to joy."
Once introduced, Rutherford soon found his way into the inner counsels of the Society. Lawyers, we may suppose, were few and far between in its ranks, and he became its legal officer or attorney, entrusted with fighting the lawsuits which were brought against its members. At the board meeting of the Watch Tower society held in January 1917, following Russell's death, Rutherford was present as one of the directors, and he was proposed for the presidency and elected without opposition.
It cannot have been easy for a layman, and a lawyer at that, to follow in the footsteps of the deceased pastor, and in fact there was some opposition to his election in the rank and file. There were several break-away movements, whose members were of the opinion that the Judge's message was not that of the sainted and saintly Russell who had died so unexpectedly, without seeing the dawn of that Millennium which he had prophesied so long and so eloquently. But in course of time, and sooner rather than later, the disaffected returned to the fold, and the new leader marched from strength to strength.
Within a few months of becoming the Society's president, Rutherford and seven of his colleagues in the upper directorate were indicted at Brooklyn on charges of conspiring to cause insubordination in the military and naval forces of the USA and to obstruct recruiting and enlistment. The United States had just entered the war against Germany, and war fever was running high. All the accused were found guilty of violating the Espionage Act, and Rutherford and six of the others were condemned on each of four counts to twenty years' imprisonment in the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia.
The other man was sentenced to ten years.
Rutherford and his colleagues started their imprisonment in June 1918, and they spent nine months in gaol. It is said that, like the Apostles of old, the Judge organized religious meetings from his prison cell, and that a hundred of his fellow-prisoners attended the Bible class that he conducted. Again after the apostolic pattern, he wrote weekly "letters" which were published in The Watchtower. In March 1919 the eight were admitted to bail, and in May it was decided that a new trial should be arranged. But by now the war had ended, and the authorities thought it best to let the matter slide. From this period of gaol, Rutherford emerged with enhanced reputation, and the Witnesses obtained some very useful advertisement.
For all the years between the two World Wars, Rutherford maintained and steadily improved his position as the Society's arch-propagandist with both voice and pen. A year or two before his death he claimed that he had written ninety-nine books and pamphlets in the preceding twenty years, and he wrote several more before he died. His books were published in seventy-eight languages, and the number of copies distributed exceeded three hundred millions.
Such circulations put even Russell's in the shade, but the Pastor was now just a name, a name that was hardly ever mentioned. His books as they fell out of print were not reprinted, and it was the Judge, and not the Pastor, who was accepted everywhere as the voice of Jehovah. Mention Russell's name to a present-day Witness, and as likely as not you will get an uncomprehending stare, for the Founder is no longer honoured by his foundation.
And here it may be remarked that very much the same fate is now overtaking Rutherford. His books likewise are allowed to fall out of print, and his name is seldom on the lips of any save the older members of the Society.
Judge Rutherford was a highly capable organizer, and whatever we may think of his literary style, there can be no two questions about his ability to "put it across." Then as a speaker also he was first-rate, with some pretensions to oratory. Here his presence helped him considerably, since he looked "much more like a Senator than most Senators look," as one newspaperman put it. He was over six feet and of heavy build, baldish, and clean-shaven. He dressed like a lawyer, with stand-up collar and black bow tie, and carried his eyeglasses on a long black silk ribbon. Photographs show him striding along between his bodyguard of two hefty young men, all carrying canes and obviously ready to tackle any thugs or gangsters who might be egged on to attack him by the Roman Catholic hierarchy or the followers of Satan in general. His heavy, booming voice carried well, and great audiences thronged to hear him in America and in Britain, where the Albert Hall was not too big for the crowds who wanted to hear him explain the statement that was blazoned on the posters outside—"Millions now living will never die!"
In 1931 there was a highly significant break with the past, when the movement which had at various times gone under the names of Russellites and Millennial Dawn and Bible Students now assumed the designation of Jehovah's Witnesses. This was at the convention held at Columbus, Ohio, under Rutherford's leadership, and we may be sure it was at his suggestion. The name is taken to be altogether appropriate, since in Isaiah xliii, 10, Jehovah himself declares, "Ye are my witnesses."
Towards the end of his life the Judge became increasingly aloof, and seldom made a public appearance other than at the annual assemblies, and even then he was hedged about by very efficient secretaries. He always discouraged impertinent inquiries into his private life, and he had no entry in Who's Who in America. He was married, but his wife, Mary Rutherford, took no active part in the movement. And if their son, Malcolm G. Rutherford, was ever a full-time worker he does not seem to have held any position of importance.
When at the Society's headquarters at Brooklyn, the Judge lived in the "Bethel" hostel with the employees of the Watch Tower companies, and he is stated to have received the standard rate of pay of $10 a month, plus board and lodging and travelling allowances. He sat at meals with the staff in the dining-room, and before his place at the high table stood a microphone so that any words of wisdom that fell from his lips might be heard by everyone. But sometimes the hall echoed with nothing more significant than "Please pass the salt."
The Judge's last public appearance was at the international convention of the Witnesses held at St Louis, Missouri, in August 1941. Over 100,000 people are reported to have been present in the arena when he delivered his presidential address on "Comfort all that mourn," and at a meeting for young people he spoke on the subject of his latest book, Children, and handed out some thousands of free copies.
Soon after the convention, the Judge was taken ill and he retired to Beth Sarim, the country house or mansion belonging to the Society at San Diego, California. Here on January 8,1942,he died.In accordance with his last wishes, he was buried in a crypt dug in the hillside adjoining Beth Sarim, but some months later his remains were re-buried in the Society's burial plot at Rossville, New York.
NATHAN H. KNORR. On January 13, 1942, the directors of the Watch Tower society of Pennsylvania, the controlling organization, and its New York companion society, met in the reception-room of the administrative building at 124 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, and after earnest prayer and a thorough discussion of "the issues involved and the Theocratic proprieties," unanimously elected Nathan Homer Knorr as the president of both corporations in succession to Judge Rutherford.
Mr Knorr was born in Bethlehem, Pa., in 1905, and first began to associate with the Witnesses when he was a youth of sixteen, in the early days of Rutherford's leadership. Within two years he was a full-time preacher among them, and he was appointed to a position on the headquarters staff at Brooklyn. After nine years of efficient service, he was given the post of general manager of the publishing office, and in 1934 he was elected to a seat on the board of the Watch Tower society in New York. The next year he was appointed vice-chairman. Then in 1940 he was given the same appointments in the society in Pennsylvania, so that by the time of his succession to Rutherford he must have had a very good working knowledge of the business side of the organization.
To what extent he has contributed to the literature of the movement we cannot determine, since all the post-Rutherford publications are anonymous, being produced apparently by a committee. (And it may be noted that, as in Russell's case, books by the Judge are rapidly going out of print, and only two are now available out of the scores that he wrote.)
With America in the War since the close of 1941, Jehovah's Witnesses were in trouble, since they regarded the struggle as none of their business. They were not pacifists; they were, they bluntly declared, just neutral. They refused to be drafted into the armed forces; they refused point-blank to salute the flag, since they regarded it as an idolatrous image. They refused to take any part in the nation's war effort. Furthermore, unlike some other Christian sects, they refused to keep quiet about their disaffection. They blazed it abroad, and in every way possible seemed to be doing their utmost to make themselves thoroughly obnoxious to patriotic citizens.
Possibly many of them courted "martyrdom," deeming that this would constitute yet another proof of Jehovah's favour and the fulfilment of Scriptural prophecy. If this was indeed their wish, they were not disappointed. In all parts of the country they were ridiculed as ignorant fanatics, attacked as fifth-columnists, Fascists, spies, and saboteurs; and while they were being hounded by the mobs in the United States some 6,000 of German Witnesses were suffering, and many of them dying, in Hitler's concentration-camps.
At length the American Solicitor-General, Mr Francis Biddle, felt obliged to utter a public warning against the spread of popular hysteria. "A religious sect known as Jehovah's Witnesses," he said, "has been repeatedly set upon and beaten. They had committed no crime, but the mob adjudged they had, and meted out punishment. The Attorney-General has ordered an immediate investigation of these outrages. There is no cause for mass hysteria, no justification for mob violence."
There can be no doubt that much of the hostility had a religious basis, since the Witnesses were on thoroughly bad terms with Christians of the traditional churches, the Roman Catholics in particular.
Time after time they appealed to the American Constitution in defence of what they held to be their rights, and although the Supreme Court ruled against them when they contested the requirement that every American school child should be required to salute the flag, they won a notable case on the issue of liberty of religious propaganda.
Three Witnesses, father and sons, had been advised to "move on" when, in a street in New Haven, Conn., inhabited as to ninety per cent by Roman Catholics, they had persisted in making what were described as vicious attacks on the Catholic faith. The three took the issue to court, and lost at every stage until the question arrived at the Supreme Court. Then Mr Justice Roberts in a remarkable expression of political liberalism reversed the decisions of the lower courts.
"In the realm of religious faith and in that of political belief," he said, "sharp differences arise. In both fields the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbour.
"To persuade others to his point of view, the pleader, as we know, may at times resort to exaggeration, to vilification of men who have been or are prominent in Church and State, and even to false statement.
"But the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history that, in spite of the possibility of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of a democracy."
Such victories as this were few, however. For the most part throughout the war years and since the Witnesses have been exposed to strong and sometimes violent opposition. And it can hardly be maintained that this has always been altogether undeserved.
In Britain, too, during World War II (as in lesser measure in World War I) the Witnesses came into conflict with the law, and sometimes their sneering references to the War brought them something more than hard words from the crowd. But the authorities had the experience of the previous war to guide them, and they never let the situation get out of hand. In spite of their hostility to the national war effort, the Witnesses were not suppressed, and many of their members who refused service in the armed forces were directed to farm work and other non-combatant activities.
All the same, the Government kept them under close observation. When in March 1942, at a particularly dark and dangerous period of the War, the attention of the Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison, was called in the House of Commons to the case of a woman Witness who had refused to take employment as a wardmaid in a hospital, stating that she had "signed a covenant with Jehovah only to preach the Gospel," Mr Morrison replied that he had recently had to review the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses, and while he thought it would be an exaggeration to describe the organization as a cloak for fifth-column activities, the potential dangers of its misuse, at any rate in wartime, could not be overlooked. He had recently given instructions for the internment of certain aliens of enemy nationality who were reported as having taken an active part in the organization, and he would continue to keep a careful watch on it.
In the following August it was reported in the Press that the Home Secretary had issued an order, that the leader of Jehovah's Witnesses in Britain must return to America, since his claim to be regarded as a fully ordained Christian minister had been disallowed and he had declined to comply with the order that he should report for farm work in Kent.
A few weeks later a three-day conference of the Witnesses that was to have been held at Nottingham was banned under the Defence Regulations, as being "likely to cause serious public disorder and promote disaffection."
Early in the War the Governments of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand banned the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses on the ground that these were deemed to be prejudicial to the defence of the country or to the efficient prosecution of the War. The Witnesses protested vigorously, and were not slow to see and find in the ban the hand of their determined enemies, the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. They strongly resented the charges flung against them, that they were disloyal, that they were seditionists, that they were causing disaffection and doing what they could to secure the country's defeat and the triumph of Hitler.
Very often their protests were disregarded, and throughout the War the Witnesses were subjected to much hostility. But it could not be denied that at the same time that the Society was being banned or hampered in the Democratic lands, thousands of Witnesses were suffering for their faith in Hitler's Europe (as they suffer today in Eastern Germany and other parts of the Communist empire). They were not pacifists, they urged, and they refused to claim the advantages, such as they were, that attended a claim to be recognized as conscientious objectors. The stricter ones among them refused absolutely to bear arms in what they held to be a foreign quarrel, but many of them did enlist, and many more performed the duties of citizens in fire-fighting and the rest.
Nor with the end of the War have their troubles come to an end, since the obligation to perform national service in the armed forces has been retained. The Witnesses still refuse to render such service, or at least those who regard themselves as properly ordained ministers of Jehovah still refuse; they have taken an oath of allegiance, they assert, to the Heavenly Sovereign, and it would be treachery and disloyalty to serve another monarch. So we may read now and again of some young fellow (hopelessly misguided and unreasonably obstinate, his friends and neighbours will generally consider him) who refuses to attend for medical examination, returns or disregards his calling-up papers, and in due course is fined £5 or sent to prison for a month or two.
The explanation of this behaviour, so strange, so unpatriotic as most readers will regard it, will be given in a later page. Here it is stated as a fact, as one of the most important features in any account of the Witnesses in the modern world. But now let us move on from what the Witnesses are to a study of what they believe, of the ideology that is the inspiration, the driving-force, the beginning and the end of what they do and are.
What they teach
EHOVAH'S Witnesses believe in God. They hold most strongly that the Bible is God's Word, and that it contains the whole and the only authoritative message of salvation. In their teaching one finds frequent mention of Adam's fall and Christ's blood shed for a ransom, of the resurrection, the Day of Judgment, and the Second Coming. They accept the Christian ethic, and we have every reason to suppose that in their daily lives they strive to put into practice the teaching contained in the Sermon on the Mount.
But in all these things they tend to adopt an interpretation which is peculiarly their own, one which often separates them from the great body of Christian believers. While they use the same terminology, they often mean something very different.
So marked, indeed, are these differences in meaning and emphasis that there may sometimes be noticed a reluctance on the part of members of the long-established Christian communions to allow Jehovah's Witnesses the Christian name.
But as a matter of history, the Witnesses derived from the preaching and teaching of Christian pastors, and they themselves would seem to have no doubt that they belong to the Christian fold.
Where they differ most from other Christians is just where they are most strongly convinced that they are in the right and other Christians have gone wrong. With a certainty not to be shaken by question or moved by argument, still less affected by denial, they maintain that theirs is the really primitive belief, the really authentic practice. They are firmly persuaded that they are in the possession of truth, the Truth, in an altogether exceptional degree, measure, and manner. Thus at the outset of our inquiry we have impressed upon us that the really important thing is belief, right belief.
Let no person think that he can earn the right to endless life and happiness by keeping the Ten Commandments, we are told. The man who claims that since he is doing his best to keep them is therefore all right, is deceiving himself. Obedience is the really important thing, and you cannot obey Jehovah and secure his approbation unless you know his will and purposes, and what in particular he wants you to do.
JEHOVAH GOD. The ground and substance of their faith is belief in Jehovah, or Jehovah God, as they prefer to call him. They choose to employ the ancient Hebrew name for the Deity because, if the Scriptures are to be taken as a guide, it is the name that he himself has chosen to be known by. It is his personal name, the name whereby he is distinguished from other "gods." It appears 6,823 times in the Old Testament as the name of the God of Israel, and the Witnesses are not in the least concerned about whether or not Jehovah is the correct pronunciation of the Hebrew word. Jehovah is quite certainly the divine name par excellence.
From all eternity to all eternity Jehovah exists. His existence is assumed as something so obvious that no reasoning, no reasonable, man can possibly doubt it.
How can you look up into the sky with a telescope, or even with the naked eye, and suppose for a single moment that the order, the beauty, the immensity of creation, that you see there—and remember that what you can see is but a tiny fraction of what lies beyond the powers of human perception—is due to something called Chance? Surely anyone who thinks so must be what the Scripture very rightly calls him, a fool.
Jehovah is the Creator. He is the Greatest Personality in the Universe, the Great Theocrat, the Unfailing Purposer, the True and Living God, the Eternal, the Great Spirit, the Supreme Intelligence, the Great Architect of All Creation, the Divine Constructor, the Great Scientist of the Universe, the Being who is the Almighty and the Supreme One, who exercises dominion throughout all that is, and is entitled to demand and to receive the love and homage and devoted service of all his creatures.
Jehovah's four great attributes are Justice, Power, Love, and Wisdom, and we are perhaps justified in saying that the Witnesses value and revere them in this order. Of a surety, there is very much more of Jehovah's sense of justice in their teaching than there is about his love, and his power is stressed even more than his wisdom is extolled. In their conception of God there does not seem to be very much of the Heavenly Father who is slow to anger and quick to pity his erring creatures.
THE BIBLE, THE WHOLE BIBLE. This doctrine of the Godhead, and every other doctrine of their body of belief, the Witnesses draw from the Bible.
They accept the Bible as God's Word—the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. In this respect at least they are fundamentalists of fundamentalists.
The Bible is the oldest book on earth, and by far the most precious. With the utmost confidence they affirm that in its pages Jehovah himself speaks, and that therefore it has the indelible stamp of divine truth. The sublimity of its poetry is matched by the profundity of its philosophy, the accuracy of its history by the reliability of its prophecies, some of the most important of which are finding fulfilment to the letter in our own day.
For the Witnesses the generations of Bible critics have toiled in vain; the conclusions of the Higher Criticism are quietly shelved when they are not rejected with disdain as "bunk." To them Adam and Eve are just as historical as William the Conqueror and Joan of Arc; the Patriarchs really did live so long in the land; the miracles that are recorded really happened, to real people, at a particular time in a particular place. They refuse to question statements put down on paper as fact by men (starting with Adam himself) whose pens were moved by the invisible fingers of Jehovah's messenger. Jesus, it is clear, held the Old Testament to be God's Word, or he would not have quoted from it as such; and where Jesus believed, what room is there for us to doubt? And with solemn assurance they quote St Paul's saying, "Let God be true, but every man a liar . . ."
At the same time it should be said that the Witnesses are not committed to the acceptance of any one version of the Scriptures as the only authoritative text. In their literature—which is as plentifully besprinkled with Scripture texts as were the sermons of the old Puritan divines—they quote most usually from the Authorized Version, what is generally referred to in the United States as King James's Version, but they also very frequently make use of the American Standard and Revised Standard versions, the versions of James Moffat, Smith and Goodspeed, J.
N. Darby, Ferrar Fenton, Monsignor Ronald Knox, and J. B. Rotherham; the "Emphatic Diaglott" New Testament, translated by Benjamin Wilson, a Christadelphian, and published in New York in 1864; the Roman Catholic Rheims and Douay version; and the "New World" translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, specially made for the Witnesses, of which the New Testament volume appeared in 1950 and the first of the three Old Testament volumes in 1953. It need hardly be said that it is in the "New World" volumes that the peculiarly distinctive doctrines of the Society find especial countenance, but the "Emphatic Diaglott" also buttresses their teaching on most issues.
Announcement of the publication of the successive volumes of the "New World" translations is made at the international assemblies and received with sustained acclamation. Witnesses are adjured to read it themselves and to recommend it to inquirers, and large numbers of the 800-page volumes are sold. It is claimed on its behalf that it is the first to be published in the universal or international language of the twentieth century—English; and we read in a recent issue of The Watchtower, "We trust that this Bible translation will survive the coming war of Armageddon with other good Bible translations in English, besides all useful ones in other languages used by the New World society, for at least the temporary use of the Armageddon survivors of various languages."
All the same, the writer goes on, it is reasonable to await the production of a uniform translation of all the Holy Scriptures "in the one universal language which will be created by God and taught to all earth's inhabitants."
There is no possibility that the Bible will ever become a "dead book." All the living will want a perfect Bible, while many of those who are to be "resurrected from the memorial tombs will be quite uninformed about much or all of the Bible and will want to learn what the Bible teaches and what God said in it and how accurately he said it."
From the Bible there is no appeal. Every teaching is checked and tested against the written word. Strange as some of their doctrines may appear to other Christians, the Witnesses are never at a loss to quote chapter and verse in their defence and justification. One of the most recent of the Society's publications is Make Sure of All Things, a compilation of extracts from the Bible under a number of headings "to enable the searcher for truth to ascertain the fundamental doctrines and be assured thereof."
There is no question of there being a Church or any other body of persons endowed with the right and power of authoritative interpretation of God's Word. The Bible preceded the Church, it is confidently affirmed, and the claims made by Roman Catholics for the Pope, that he is granted by Heaven exclusive powers of interpretation in matters of faith, are flatly repudiated. The Bible, and only the Bible, is the authority. This is the absolute basis of the belief and teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses, and they are firmly persuaded that any matter in dispute is as good as settled if they can bring a text or two of Scripture to support their view. But if the infallibility of Holy Writ is questioned or denied, then they may throw up their hands in wonderment, perhaps in shocked dismay, at so perverse an attitude.
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