Description and History of the
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Part One
It is quite clear that the Jehovah’s Witnesses are an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventists. Jan Van Baalen remarks: “One wonders why Charles Taze Russell was so unwilling to acknowledge his sources when his system of errors reveals so plainly the traces of Mrs. Ellen G. White.”[1]
Charles Taze Russell (1852 –1916)
The similarity of the Witness system to Adventism is corroborated by the conversion experience of Charles Taze Russell, the modern founder of the cult. The Allegheny, Pennsylvania boy had been reared in the Reformed faith of the Covenanters. At first he took their doctrines seriously, especially the doctrine of hell. As Charles Ferguson observes, “Evidently his youth was dominated by morbid pictures of a sizzling hell, for as a boy he used to go around the city of Pittsburgh every Saturday evening and write signs with chalk on the fences, warning people to attend Church on the following Sabbath that they might escape the ghastly torments of everlasting fire.”[2] From this fiery orthodoxy, Russell, when he found himself unable to answer certain questions of a skeptic, passed over into a frigid unbelief. It was then that he met the Seventh-day Adventists[3], and his faith in Christianity, and especially in the Second Advent, was restored.
Before this encounter, which started
Russell on his way to forming and becoming a Jehovah’s Witness, he had been a
haberdasher (clothier) on the North Side of Pittsburgh. This is a simple matter
of fact, but for some reason, the Witnesses are defensive about it. While there
is certainly nothing dishonorable in being a haberdasher, it hardly fits one for
being called the greatest biblical expositor since the apostle Paul, as is
claimed by Russell himself on numerous occasions.
A few years later Russell wrote his first
significant book. Russell had worked out his modifications of Adventism, adopted
some of his background based on his experience with the Covenanters, and his own
interpretation of the Bible. The Russellites cult was born in the 1870s as the
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society and later renamed the Jehovah’s Witnesses
in 1931 under Russell’s successor, J.F. Rutherford.
The next years were big ones in
Russell’s life and work. He wrote voluminously. “It was claimed that
Russell’s ‘explanatory writings on the Bible are far more extensive that the
combined writings of Paul, John, Wycliffe, and Martin Luther, who preceded
him’ and ‘that the place next to the Apostle Paul in the gallery of fame as
expounder of the Gospel of the Great Master will be occupied by Charles Taze
Russell.’”[4]
He spoke incessantly – often six and eight hours a day – traveled as
much as Asbury and the Apostle Paul combined[5],
averaging, according to Braden, 30,000 miles per year.[6]
Russell’s life was marred by a number
of incidents that affected the Witnesses. He was tried for shady dealings in
wheat, summoned to court for various fabrications, and he was forced, on one
occasion, to confess to open falsehood:
“On the witness stand, under oath, he
answered, “Yes” to the question, “Do you know Greek?”
He was handed a copy of the New Testament
in Greek. When requested to identify the letters of the alphabet, he could not
do so. At that point Russell’s attorney became agitated, apparently fearing
that his client would be indicted for perjury. Thereupon, he pressed him, “Now,
are you familiar with the Greek language?”
Russell caught the hint and answered,
brazenly and unblushingly, “No.”[7]
Above all, as Ferguson puts it, “his
domestic life was far from tranquil.” In 1897 he was separated from his wife,
and in 1913, he was divorced on the grounds of adultery. His wife continued her
opposition to his ministry and the whole situation threatened to destroy the
movement.[8]
In summary, his theological opposition to the doctrines of the Trinity and eternal punishment led him to form the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a sect to promote his heretical ideas. He was also obsessed with fixing a date for the Second Coming, which he asserted would be in 1884 and, when that did not materialize, in 1914. He was proven wrong both times. In 1884 he set up Zion’s Watchtower Tract Society in Pittsburgh to produce literature for his followers.
Other Leadership
Judge J. F. Rutherford
(1870-1942)
In 1916, Judge J. F. Rutherford, was
elected president of the organization. Little is known of his contacts with the
Witnesses prior to his election.
His election to succeed “the greatest
expositor since the apostle Paul” did not meet with universal approval as the
break-off of a half dozen small sects from the larger sect shows quite clearly.
Rutherford assured them that they would suffer destruction for their departure.[9]
Rutherford’s writings, through The
Watch Tower publication system, were even greater in number and scope than that
of Russell. “The catalogue states that from 1921 through 1940 a total of
337,000,000 copies of his books and pamphlets were distributed, an average of
almost 20,000,000 per year.”[10]
Although he was very quiet and withdrawn
(never giving a first hand interview) Rutherford was the chief mobilizer of the
Witness movement. He died in January 1942, at seventy-two years of age. It was
known that his last few years were spent at Beth-Sarim, the House of Princes,
which the Witnesses have since enlarged to palace dimensions as a dwelling for
David and the other Old Testament leaders when they return to rule the earth for
Christ.
N. H. Knorr
In 1942 N. H. Knorr, who actually had
been running the Brooklyn office for the last few years of Rutherford’s reign,
was elected his successor. Knorr was definitely less conspicuous that Russell
and Rutherford, both as a speaker and writer.
We do, however, get some insight into the drift of things from the
article he submitted to Vergilius Ferm’s Religion in the Twentieth Century.
Knorr apparently regarded his distinctive emphasis to be educational.
“Jehovah’s Witnesses, “ he said, “Are trained for the ministerial work.
Not that they attend seminaries – neither did Jesus or the apostles. But
intensive private and group study in the Bible and Bible helps equips them. Such
training as been stressed particularly since J. F. Rutherford has been succeeded
in the Society’s presidency by N.H. Knorr….”[11]
It also appears highly significant and
indicative of the future of the Witnesses that Knorr made only a slight
reference to Russell and Rutherford, listing only a bibliography in the article.
It would seem that Knorr intended to ignore Rutherford as Rutherford ignored
Russell before him, Indeed, many modern Witnesses do not even recognize the
names of these pillars of their faith.
[1] Jan K Van Baalen, The Chaos of Cults, 1938 edition, p.190
[2] Charles W. Ferguson, The Confusion of Tongues, p.66
[3] See The Watchtower, July, 1906
[4] Elmer T. Clark, The Small Sects of America, revised edition, pp45f
[5] Ferguson, Confusion of Tongues, p.65
[6] Charles Samuel Braden, These Also Believe, p.361
[7] Dan Gilbert, Jehovah’s Witnesses, p.16
[8] Van Baalen, Chaos of Cults, 1956 edition, p.233
[9] Stroup, Jehovah’s Witnesses, pp.14f
[10] Charles Samuel Braden, These Also Believe, p.363
[11] N. H. Knorr, “Jehovah’s Witnesses of Modern Times,” in Vergilius Ferm’s Religion in the Twentieth Century, pp.386