Incredible Creed Of The Jehovah's Witnesses.pdf

Incredible Creed of the Jehovah's Witnesses

Incredible Creed

of the

Jehovah's Witnesses

By Rev. Dr. Rumble, M.S.C.

$1 each

The Witnesses of Jehovah constitute one of the most vigorous and spectacular

religious propagandist bodies of the present day. Throughout the world an army of

persistent enthusiasts tramp from door to door, urging people to adopt their

teachings as a matter of life and death. They claim to have made over a million

converts in recent years, chiefly in America; and they have been written up in the

"Saturday Evening Post", "Collier's Weekly" and the "Reader's Digest" as a

phenomenon of both national and international importance.

This new sect originated in the U.S.A., to which the world owes Mormonism,

Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventists, Father Divine, and so many other

strange religious outbreaks. Charles Taze Russell, a draper of Pittsburgh,

afterwards known as "Pastor" Russell, was the founder of the movement in 1872.

Nathan Homer Knorr, its present head, prefers to say, "We broke in on the history

of Jehovah's Witnesses" in 1872. And that leads us to the question of names.

EVOLUTION OF A NAME

No modern movement, in its efforts to establish itself, save perhaps that of the

Communists, can rival the Witnesses of Jehovah in the technique of masquerading

under ever-changing titles.

Russell began by preaching what he termed the "Millennial Dawn," and his

followers soon became known as "Millennial Dawnists." Before long, however,

Russell had adopted the title, "Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society." In 1896 this was

changed to "The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society." In 1909 he thought the

"People's Pulpit Association" sounded better, the headquarters of which he

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Incredible Creed of the Jehovah's Witnesses

established at Brooklyn, New York. In 1909 he resumed the title "Watch Tower

Bible and Tract Society." In 1914 the work was being carried on as the

"International Bible Students' Association."

The same tactics were adopted in the publishing of literature. In 1919 a magazine,

"The Golden Age," appeared. In 1937 this same magazine was appearing as

"Consolation." In 1946 its name was changed to "Awake." These constant

changes compelled those who had refuted the movement under one name to begin

all over again; and whilst they were catching up with current fashions, the

Russellites were enabled to gain enough recruits to get firmly established.

At last came their present and apparently permanent name. In 1931 Judge

Rutherford decided that henceforth the "Millennial Dawnists" would be known as

the "Witnesses of Jehovah."

Nathan Knorr now tells us that "Jehovah God is the Founder and Organizer of the

Witnesses on this earth," and that He Himself indicated this as "the appropriate

designation of His earthly ministers." Surely it is strange that Russell himself, the

founder of the movement, had no notion of that!" For Russell died in 1916, fifteen

years before this discovery was made. And whence came the discovery? In 1931,

Judge Rutherford came across the text in Isaiah 43:10, "Ye are my witnesses, saith

the Lord."

That Isaiah the prophet had the Russellites in mind over 700 years before Christ is

an absurd supposition for which not an atom of proof exists. Anticipating that

difficulty, Nathan Knorr protests, "We have not arbitrarily assumed this God-given

name." Why not? "Well, we are witnessing, aren't we!" is his reply. "What we are

doing proves that the name is applicable to us." But to what are these people

witnessing? Certainly not to the truth revealed by God, as we shall see. If merely

witnessing, no matter to what one witnesses, makes one a messenger of God, then

Communists, who are witnesses par excellence with their world-wide propaganda

on behalf of Marxian Socialism, have more right than the Russellites to pretend to a

divine commission. But Nathan Knorr just by-passes these difficulties. "God," he

writes, "has always had His witnesses. Abel first; then a long line through from

Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah to John the Baptist. Taking pre-

eminence over all is Christ 'the faithful and true Witness,' Who designated others.

"Ye shall be witnesses to Me unto the uttermost parts of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

Jehovah's Witnesses are merely the last of this long line of God's earthly servants."

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Incredible Creed of the Jehovah's Witnesses

There is, of course, no proof whatever that the Witnesses of Jehovah have any

connection with the previous witnesses mentioned. Moreover, their doctrines are a

flagrant contradiction of the teachings of those previous witnesses.

CHARLES TAZE RUSSELL

Charles Taze Russell was born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1852, the son of a draper who

later established his business in Allegheny. Charles became an earnest worker in

the local Congregational Church, but was soon obsessed with an overwhelming

horror of hell and the gloomy prospects of the Calvinist theology of that time held

out the mass of humanity. Charles went about chalking up in all kinds of places

warnings of hell for unbelievers; and in 1869, at the age of 17, tried to convert an

atheist whom he happened to meet. But the atheist destroyed Russell's own faith,

and he became an infidel also. Never again would he believe in hell!

Russell, however, although he had given up attending church, could not leave his

Bible alone, and soon he discovered that the could believe in the Bible without

believing in hell – for the simple reason, he says, that the Bible does not teach the

existence of hell at all.

At the age of 20 he began preaching this "good news," and with "no hell" as a most

attractive plank in his platform, soon gained followers. He sold the draper's

business he had inherited from his father, and in 1878 assumed the title of "Pastor

Russell," founding a new religion of his own.

He became a prolific writer, at first borrowing his ideas from the works of J. H.

Paton, of Michigan, USA, published under the title of "Day Dawn". Russell

proclaimed these ideas as his own divinely-inspired doctrines, merely substituting

the title "Millennial Dawn" for "Day Dawn" to distinguish his system from Paton's.

Later he changed to the less recognizable Studies in the Scriptures.

Russell claimed to have written more explanatory books on the Bible than the

combined writings of Paul, John, Arius, Waldo, Wycliffe, and Martin Luther, whom

he said to have been the six great messengers of the Church preceding himself.

He began, as did the founders of so many other Adventist sects, with the idea that

the Second Coming of Christ and the Final Judgment were near at hand; and then

ranged over the whole of Sacred Scripture, claiming an infallibility far beyond that

claimed by any Pope, as an interpreter of God's revelation. His followers accepted

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Incredible Creed of the Jehovah's Witnesses

him as the "Seventh Messenger" or "Angel" referred to in Ezekiel 9, and held that

he would rank next after St. Paul in the "gallery of fame" as an exponent of the

Gospel of Christ, the Great Master.

Yet, what kind of a man was this Charles Taze Russell? He was certainly an expert

at making money, whether in the drapery business until he sold it, or by

investments in mines and real estate, or by the selling of his books, and of "miracle

wheat." Unfortunately, he was legally compelled to restore to the purchases the

money he had obtained for his miracle wheat, on the score that it had been

dishonestly extracted from them. But honesty was not Pastor Russell's

predominant virtue. Under oath in court at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in 1913, he

declared in support of his claims to be an expert Scripture scholar that he knew

Greek. Handed a Greek New Testament, he was forced to admit that he did not

know even the Greek alphabet; and that he knew nothing of Hebrew or of Latin,

despite his pretensions to a knowledge of those languages also. Not to know such

languages is no crime, of course. But to make lying pretensions to a knowledge of

them is scarcely in keeping with claims to be a prophet of God; whilst to do so

under oath is the still worse sin of perjury.

Not less unbecoming in this self-styled prophet was the fact that his wife divorced

him in 1897 on charges of adultery with two different women, a stenographer and a

housemaid; and that the judge flayed him, after granting the divorce, for his general

ill-treatment of his wife. To avoid payment of the alimony ordered by the court,

Russell promptly transferred his property, worth over $240,000, to the "Watch

Tower Bible" and "Tract Society."

Russell died on October 31, 1916, in a Santa Fe train near Pampa, TX on his way

to Kansas City; and he is now seldom mentioned by the Witnesses of Jehovah.

This man, once held by his followers to rank next after St. Paul in the "gallery of

fame," has been practically forgotten by the later generation dominated by his

successor.

JUDGE J.F. RUTHERFORD

At the time of Russell's death there was a man named Joseph Franklin Rutherford

serving a prison sentence in Atlanta on a charge of sedition during the first world

war then raging." This man, on his release from prison, took over control of the

Russellite organization.

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Incredible Creed of the Jehovah's Witnesses

Rutherford was born in 1869, and became a lawyer in 1892. Chosen as attorney

for the organization, he was shrewd enough to see its possibilities, and threw in his

lot with it. As president, he wished to be known by the impressive title of "Judge

Rutherford," though he was never officially appointed as a judge. His forceful

personality set the movement definitely on its feet. He poured out unending books

and pamphlets to keep the publishing business going, teaching new doctrines of

which Russell had never heard and often quite opposed to what Russell himself

had taught. It was he, as we have seen, who devised in 1931 the new title

"Witnesses of Jehovah." The prominence he gave to the slogan, "Millions now

living will never die," brought crowds flocking to hear him wherever he was billed to

speak. But, alas, he was not one of the millions fated not to die.

On January 8, 1942, Judge Joseph Franklin Rutherford bade goodbye to this world

in the palatial villa he had built at San Diego, CA, as an official residence pending

the return of the Lord to judge the living and the dead.

NATHAN HOMER KNORR

On Rutherford's death, Nathan Homer Knorr was elected as president of the Watch

Tower Organization. Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1905, he was converted

to the Russellites at the age of 16 through reading some Watch Tower

publications. In 1923, aged 18, he became a full-time preacher on Sundays,

working as a packer and shipper at the Brooklyn headquarters on week-days and

devoting his evenings to the study of the Bible as interpreted by Russell and

Rutherford. In 1932 he became general manager of the Brooklyn publishing

offices; in 1934 was elected to the Board of Directors; and in 1942 was chosen as

successor of Judge Rutherford, in whose place he still reigns supreme.

"THE NEW CHRISTIANITY"

The Witnesses of Jehovah conceive it to be their first duty to denounce all other

religious bodies. Rutherford declared that "religion was introduced into the world by

the Devil." "For more than three years," he declaimed, "Jesus continued to

proclaim the truth and to warn the people against the practice of religion." "For

religion," declared Rutherford, "dishonors and reproaches the name of Jehovah

God, whilst Christianity honors and vindicates the name of Almighty God. This is

why true Christians are always persecuted by religionists."

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