Russell a con man and a criminal? (page 2)

THE LATE WALTER MARTIN'S SHAM SCHOLARSHIP AND FALSE ORTHODOXY

In Volume III of They Lie in Wait to Deceive,1 Robert and
Rosemary Brown have thoroughly exposed the dishonesty of the late Walter Martin, the
self-proclaimed "Bible Answer Man," and one of the best- known
"anti-cultists" in the world today. But their critique of him does not really
serve the purpose they intend. Although Martin was a person of monumental ego who gave a
highly misleading picture of himself, that fact in itself says little about the nature of
his scholarship.

Nor does it indicate anything about the claim that he made to speak for
"orthodoxy" within the Reformed tradition.

That Martin's scholarship is bad can be proven by a careful examination of Jehovah of
the Watchtower2 and Kingdom of the Cults,3
two of his best known books and ones which I have studied carefully because of my personal
interest both as a scholar and former Jehovah's Witness. In those works he indulges in ad
hominem arguments, character assassination, and demonstrably unsound reasoning.

But why discuss his scholarship nearly a year after his death?

Would it not be better to let him rest in peace?

Quite frankly, no. His books are sold by almost every Evangelical bookstore in
North America and are still among the primary "anti-cult" publications
distributed today, and they continue to have a major impact on a large number of uniformed
readers. Religious communities such as the Christian Scientists, the Jehovah's Witnesses,
and the Latter-day Saints, whom those books attack, are open to searching criticism, but
such criticism should be fair and scholarly. Un- fortunately, Martin's works are neither,
and the public needs to be warned that they are not to be regarded as such.

Then, too, there is another good reason for outlining just how bad Martin's publications
are. Over the years they have been printed, pub- lished, and distributed by such
Protestant Evangelical publishing houses as Moody Press, Bethany House Publishers, and
Vision House Publishers, apparently without their showing any interest in examin- ing
carefully what they have been selling. Hence those publishers, whose owners claim to be
Christians, need to be reminded that they have an obligation not to engage in what amounts
to the promotion of unsound scholarship and commercialized hate peddling.

So with these thoughts in mind, the following article will give a brief analysis of some
of the inadequacies of Martin's scholarship which seem to reflect, in part at least, his
own strangely warped life.

THE FALSE CHARGE OF PURJURY AGAINST C. T. RUSSELL

A prime example of Martin's bad scholarship relates to the false charge of lying in
court that he levels against Charles Taze Russell, the first president of the Watch Tower
Society. In Jehovah of the Watchtower (Chicago: Moody Press, 1953) Martin and his
co-author, Norman Klann, assert that in March 1913, Russell, committed perjury in a
Hamilton, Ontario, courtroom. But this allegation is a serious distor- tion of the truth.

What happened is that Russell had brought charges against a Canadian Baptist minister, the
Rev. J. J. Ross, because Ross had written a booklet attacking Russell's integrity as a
religious leader. So scathing were Ross's remarks that Russell wanted him brought into
court on charges of criminal libel. However, after a magistrate's court heard the matter
and referred it to a grand jury of the High Court of Ontario, that body ruled that if
Russell wanted to pursue it further, he would have do so by way of a civil suit rather
than through criminal action.4

Thereupon, Ross wrote a second booklet entitled Some Facts and More Facts about the
Self-Styled "Pastor" Charles T. Russell,5 in which he accused
Russell of having committed perjury.

Ross gives the following version of what supposedly occurred in a Hamilton magistrate's
courtroom on March 13, 1913:

"Do you know the Greek?" asked the Attorney. "Oh, yes," was
Russell's reply.

Here he was handed a copy of the New Testament in Greek, by Westcott & Hort, and asked
to read the letters as they appear on the top of page 447. He did not know the Greek
alphabet. "Now," asked Mr. Staunton [sic], "Are you familiar with the Greek
language?" "No," said Mr. Russell without a blush.6

An examination of the relevant portions of the official transcript of record7
indicates, however, that Ross, who accused Russell of "devising falsely" and of
being "a fabricator,"8 was himself guilty of serious
dishonesty.

Prior to the interrogation that Ross recounts above, Russell had already specifically
stated in court that he had not been trained in Greek. When questioned by Ross's lawyer,
George Lynch-Staunton, he had given the following testimony:
Question: "You don't profess, then, to be schooled in the Latin
language?"

Answer: "No, Sir."

Question: "Or in Greek?"

Answer: "No, Sir."

At that point Lynch-Staunton asked Russell if he knew the Greek al- phabet. The
testimony from the transcript of record reads:

Question: "Do you know the Greek alphabet?"

Answer: "Oh, Yes."

Question: "Can you tell me the correct letters if you see them?"

Answer: "Some of them, I might make a mistake on some of them."

Question: "Would you tell me the names of the letters of those on the top of
the page, page 447 I have got here [from Westcott and Hort]?"

Answer: "Well, I don't know that I would be able to."

Question: "You can't tell what those letters are, look at them and see if you
know."

Answer: "My way ..." [At this point he was interrupted by the court and
not allowed to explain.]

Immediately after this, Lynch-Staunton asked Russell the question:

"Are you familiar with the Greek language?"

Russell's reply was an emphatic "No."

Russell explained later what he had meant when he indicated that he "knew" the
Greek alphabet. He had simply developed a schoolboy's ability to recognize Greek words in
Strong's and Young's concordances of the Bible.9 William Whalen, an
advocate of the perjury theory, says as much.10 Probably, too, Russell
could repeat from memory the names of the Greek letters from alpha to omega. More
importantly, before Lynch-Staunton showed him certain Greek letters in Westcott and Hort's
recension of the New Testament, he had already stated that he might not be able to
recognize all of the letters of the Greek alphabet in print. What can therefore be said
with assurance is that when Ross stated that Russell had "claimed to know the
Greek" in court, it was Ross, not Russell, who was lying. The most that Russell
claimed was that he "knew" the Greek alphabet-not a very outstanding claim-and
he admitted that he might not recognize all the letters in print.

Those present at the trial did not seem to think that Russell had perjured himself in any
way. Magistrate George H. Jelfs did not; it was he who committed Ross to appear before the
grand jury of the High Court. The correspondent for the Hamilton Spectator did not; he
simply mentioned questions relating to the Watch Tower president's education in passing.11 George Lynch-Staunton wrote later that he personally felt that Russell
was a "first-water fakir" and stated that he had been led to believe that
Russell had "accumulated a great amount of wealth from his victims."

He admitted, though, that "this was never verified" and said nothing about
Russell's having committed perjury.12 Hence, the perjury story grew
entirely out of Ross's biased and false ac- count, and has been perpetuated by critics of
Russell such as Martin and Klann who did not take adequate time to check all the facts.

In their 1953 edition of Jehovah of the Watchtower, Walter Martin and Norman Klann
quote directly from Ross's Some Facts and More Facts about the Self-Styled
"Pastor" Charles T. Russell. Their account of the trial (p. 19) reads as
follows:

The cross examination continued for five hours. Here is a sample of how the
"Pastor" perjured himself.

Question: (Attorney Staunton) - "Do you know the Greek?"

Answer: (Russell) - "Oh yes."

At this point Russell was handed a copy of Westcott and Hort's Greek New Testament and
asked to read the letters of the alphabet as they appeared on the top of page 447. Russell
did not even know the Greek alphabet. Counsellor Staunton continued -

Question: (Counsellor Staunton) - "Now, are you familiar with the Greek?"

Answer: (Russell) "No."

Here is conclusive evidence, the "Pastor" under oath perjured himself beyond
question.

As made evident by these quotations, Martin and Klann were originally so anxious to
publish Ross's account that they did not bother to check the official transcript of record
of the Hamilton case to determine its accuracy. In a latter version of Jehovah of the
Watchtower (1974), after finally having examined the transcript of record of Russell
v. Ross at Watch Tower headquarters,13 they published an accurate
version of the the portion of the transcript in question. But significantly, they
continued to try to make the old perjury charge stick, as does Martin in his Kingdom of
the Cults.

This evaluation should not be seen as an attempt to whitewash Russell. There was much
wrong with the man. He took ideas from others without giving them due credit; he could be
incredibly naïve; he treated his wife badly; and worst of all, he suffered from spiritual
ar- rogance.14 In charging him with these defects, Martin and Klann are
quite right. Yet this does not excuse their attempt to distort the facts of history
because they think Russell was the founder of a movement that they describe as a
"cult."

There is, however, much more to the matter at hand than this. What is curious is that,
over and over again, Martin charges Russell with a variety of sins of which he himself was
guilty. In fact, the parallels between the things that Martin says about Russell and
Martin's own traits and attitudes are amazing.

THROWING STONES WHILE LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE

Note specifically the following points: On page 15 of Jehovah of the Watchtower
(1974), Martin and Klann publish an unflattering obituary of Russell which was printed
originally in the November 1, 1916 issue of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle "to
illustrate Russell's character." That obituary includes the information that
Russell's wife left him in 1897 and that in 1903 she sued him for separation. Furthermore,
the article in question also repeats the assertion that "there was much litigation
then that was quite undesirable from the 'Pastor's' point of view regarding alimony for
his wife, but it was settled in 1909 by the payment of $6,036 to Mrs. Russell."
However, it is interesting to note that Martin's marital history was much worse than that
of Russell.

Russell was divorced from bed and board once, partly, at least, because he and his wife,
Maria, never consummated their marriage;15 Martin was divorced twice for
cruelty and was married three times.16 While Russell may have been harsh
and arrogant towards his wife, there is no evidence that he threatened her or struck her
in the way that Martin is alleged to have done to his second wife.17
Martin and Klann make much of the fact that Russell was never "ordained by a bishop,
clergyman, presbytery, council, or any body of men living," something which Russell
not only regarded as unnecessary but as wrong. While Martin admits in Kingdom of the Cults
that Rus- sell was elected as the pastor of his local church in Pittsburgh in 1876 (p.
38), he always puts that title before Russell's name in quotation marks to make it seem
that Russell had no right to it.

But again, Russell was far more honest in this matter than was Martin. Russell's followers
elected him their pastor, and while it is true that he was never "ordained" by
any recognized ecclesiastical body, neither was John Calvin. Acting on the basis of the
doctrine of the priesthood of the believer, Russell held that a body of believers had the
right to select their own elders and pastors. But Martin claimed to be ordained by two
Baptist conventions of which he was a member when he was not-a far more serious matter.

Although he had been ordained by the General Association of Regular Baptists in 1951, just
after his first wife divorced him, that ordination was revoked two years later after his
Ordination Council learned that he had remarried. Yet without any shadow of a right to do
so, he later claimed under oath to be "an ordained minister of the American Baptist
Convention in good standing" and "an ordained member of the Southern Baptist
Convention."

Russell never lied about his situation; Martin did.18

In Jehovah of the Watchtower and Kingdom of the Cults, Martin and Klann as
joint authors and Martin as sole author, respectively, make much of Russell's lack of
formal education. On page 20 of the former volume (1974 edition), Martin and Klann state:

"By denying Ross's charges, Russell automatically claimed high scholastic
ascendancy, recognized theological training (systematic and historical), working knowledge
of the dead languages (Greek, Hebrew, etc.), and valid ordination by a recognized
body."

Quoting Ross, Martin makes similar charges in Kingdom of the Cults (pp. 42-46).
It should be noted, however, that Russell never claimed to have had any advanced education
in a university or seminary; Ross's allegations, which Martin promotes, are thoroughgoing
lies. On the other hand, Martin made claims which, from an academic standpoint, are
absolutely despicable. As Robert and Rosemary Brown have shown, he claimed degrees-either
directly or indirectly-that he did not have and granted himself a doctorate before he had
any shadow of a right to it. As a matter of fact, on the paperback cover of Jehovah of
the Watchtower (1974) one can find the following statement:

"WALTER R. MARTIN, president of Christian Research, Inc., is also a well-known
author and lecturer on cults and the occult. Dr. Martin is a member of the National
Association of Evangelicals and is listed in Who's Who in the East."

Yet as the Browns demonstrate, Martin did not get his Ph.D., such as it was, until
1976!19

MARTIN'S LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF HEBREW AND GREEK

It is strange, too, that Martin made so much of Charles Taze Russell's lack of
knowledge of biblical languages, for Martin himself demonstrates ignorance of them. For
example, on page 69 of Kingdom of the Cults (1985 edition), he attempts to exegete
Deuteronomy 6:4 AV- "Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God is one LORD"-so that the
word "one" in Hebrew, that is echod, is understood as "not solitary, but
composite unity." But this old canard, which is used to attempt to show that the
doctrine of the Trinity is present in the Old Testament, will not do.

In Hebrew the word echod is used as is the cardinal number "one" and the ordinal
number "first" in English. That is, it is used to denote one unit or one set, or
the first unit or the first set of anything. So there is no necessary concept of composite
unity in the word at all. Any- one doubting this should take a look at George V. Wigram's The
Englishman's Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1970), pages 41 and 42, where the biblical uses of echod are given.

Anyone trying to foist the idea that echod necessarily has a composite meaning is either
dishonest or unaware of the facts. Thus Martin's safari into Hebrew is specious. It is,
however, in his attempt to explicate biblical Greek that he shows real ignorance. In his
attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses, Martin often huffs and puffs about their New World
Translation and various doctrinal positions which they have taken. In some instances,
it must be admitted, he is quite right. The Witnesses can often be guilty of false
reasoning, distorted facts, half truths, and poor translations. Yet what Martin asserts is
too often simply the flip side of the same coin.

Martin frequently makes extreme statements about particular texts or words. For example,
on page 48 of Jehovah of the Watchtower (1974), he and Klann quote John 1:1 from
the King James Version and make the following assertion:

"Contrary to the translations of the Emphatic Diaglott and the New World
Translation, the Greek grammatical con- struction leaves no doubt whatsoever that this
[the King James Ver- sion's translation] is the only possible rendering of the text."

Strangely, he seems never to have read the many learned commentaries on this passage
which disagree with him20 nor the many biblical translations which
differ from the King James Version.21 Otherwise, he would have realized
just how difficult it is to understand what John originally meant in the first verse of
the prologue to his gospel.

On page 52 of Jehovah of the Watchtower Martin and Klann say respecting John 8:58:
"In comparing this with the Septuagint translation of Exodus 3:14 and Isaiah
43:10-13, we find that the translation is identical. In Exodus 3:14 Jehovah, speaking to
Moses, said, 'I AM,' which is synonymous with God." Yet again Martin and Klann are
wrong. Apart from the fact that the Septuagint's translation does not reflect the orig-
inal Hebrew accurately, it does not have Jehovah say that he is "I AM" but,
rather, "I am the being (or existing) one," which in Greek is ego- eimi ho o-n. 22 Martin and Klann run into their greatest difficulty when they at- tempt
to explain certain specific Greek words. For instance, according to them (p. 59) the word
pro-totokos at Colossians 1:15 should be trans- lated "First" rather than
"firstborn"-the standard rendering of that word which appears in the
overwhelming majority of biblical translations in English and other western languages. For
to use "firstborn" would "rob Christ of His deity and make Him a created
being with a 'beginning.'" Hence to give the word the meaning that their theology
requires, they engage in deception and absurdities. They say:

"Further proof of this synthesis [their own] is the fact that the best and most
authoritative manuscripts (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) have protos 'First.' The Alexandrinian
[sic] manuscript, since it possesses no accent marks, should be translated 'Original
Bringer Forth.'" Yet in checking the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament and
Bruce M. Metzger's A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, there is simply no
evidence to show that there is any manuscript problem with Colossians 1:15 or that the
Sinaitic and Vatican 1209 manuscripts give pro-tos rather than pro-totokos. As far as the
Alexandrine manuscript is con- cerned, it is an uncial manuscript [one using
"capital" letters] and as such does not possess accent marks. But it is simply
foolish to suggest that for that reason pro-totokos "should be translated 'Original
Bringer Forth.'"

If this were not enough, there is more evidence to demonstrate Martin and Klann's
superficiality. They reveal that they do not know the simplest things about the Greek
language. On pages 55 and 56 of Jehovah of the Watchtower, they discuss the words
theote-s and theiote-s to which they attempt to give the meanings "Deity" and
"divinity" respectively. In so doing, however, they show rather clearly that
they have no knowledge of how to decline nouns in Greek. In quoting Thayer's Greek
Lexicon (1886), wherein Thayer uses the stems of those two nouns, they do not seem to
realize that he has evidently left off the case endings, and they assume that the stems
are the proper forms of the words in question. When they do use the word theote-s in a way
in which one is required to use the nominative case-that is ho theote-s-they give the
genitive-"Tes Theotetos."

What is even less excusable, though, is that they assume that prepositions in Greek have
case (rather than governing case) and that the rough breathing sign over an initial vowel
can be ignored when Greek words are transliterated into the Roman alphabet. On page 63
they say: "The Greek word para (with) is used in the dative case at John 17: 5
...." And on pages 54, 63, and 124, they transliterate a number of words incorrectly.
They transliterate hypostasis as upostaseos (again using the genitive rather than the
nominative case), hyparchon as uparchon, and harpazo- as arpazo when anyone who has had
even a smattering of elementary Greek would know better.

MARTIN'S FALSE "ORTHODOXY"

What, then, about Martin's vaunted "orthodoxy"? Does it pass muster from a
traditional Reformed stance or that of the other great churches of Christendom since the
Council of Nicaea? Surprisingly the answer is an emphatic "No." In the very area
in which Martin attacks the "cults" with the greatest vehemence-that is the
nature of God and the divinity of Christ-he is in heresy himself!

He never seems to be quite sure who Jehovah is. In most cases he equates Jesus with
Jehovah, thus virtually slipping into modalism-the idea that the one person of the God of
Israel appeared to mankind in different modes or guises at different times. In at least
one case, however, he identifies Jehovah with God the Father. Hence one never quite knows
from his writings whether the name Jehovah denotes the first person, or the second person
of the Trinity, or the Trinity per se. Yet insofar as this doctrinal confusion is
concerned, Martin is no more inconsistent nor unorthodox than the vast majority of
theologians, both Catholic and Protestant. Where he does deviate seriously from
trinitarian orthodoxy, however, is in his denial of the doctrine of the eternal generation
of the second person of the Trinity, the Son, from God the Father.

On pages 115-117 of The Kingdom of the Cults (1985 edition) where he discusses the
meaning of the Greek term monogene-s Martin talks about the fourth-century Arian
Controversy and remarks:

Arius derived many of his ideas from his teacher, Lucian of Antioch, who in turn
borrowed them from Origen, who himself had introduced the term "eternal
generation" or the concept that God from all eternity generates a second person like
Himself, ergo the "eternal Son." Arius of course rejected this as illogical and
unreasonable, which it is, and taking the other horn of the dilemma squarely between his
teeth reduced the eternal Word of God to the rank of a creation! It is a significant fact,
however, that in the earliest writings of the church fathers dating from the first century
to the year 230 the term "eternal generation" was never used, but it has been
this dogma later adopted by the Roman Catholic theology which has fed the Arian heresy
through the centuries and today continues to feed the Christology of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Later, in the same discussion, Martin also says:

The Scripture nowhere calls Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God, and He is never called
Son at all prior to the incarnation, except in prophetic passages in the Old Testament.

The term "Son" itself is a functional term, as is the term "Father"
and has no meaning apart from time. The term"Father" incidentally never carries
the descriptive adjective "eternal" in Scripture; as a matter of fact, only the
Spirit is called eternal ("the eternal Spirit"-Hebrews 9:14), emphasizing that
the words Father and Son are purely functional as previously stated. Many heresies have
seized upon the confusion created by the illogical "eternal Sonship" or
"eternal generation" theory of Roman Catholic theology, unfortunately carried
over to some aspects of Protestant theology.

Finally; there cannot be any such thing as eternal Sonship, for there is a logical
contradiction of terminology due to the fact that the word "Son" predicates time
and the involvement of creativity. Christ, the Scripture tells us, as the Logos, is
timeless. "... the Word was in the beginning"not the Son!

Now these are quite amazing statements from one who constantly paraded his
"orthodoxy" within the Reformed tradition. Not only are many of his supposed
"facts" wrong, but in some ways he plays his tune on Arius's fiddle as much as
do Jehovah's Witnesses.

First, he does not seem to realize that Arius was much more in harmony with earlier
Christian writers than was Athanasius.23

Second, Arius's connection with Lucian of Antioch and Origin is historically rather
tenuous.24

And, most important, while Martin is correct in assuming that the idea of eternal
generation did not come into Christianity until the third century, he seems quite unaware
of the fact that it was a major aspect of trinitarian orthodoxy from the beginning. Not
only was it defended with vigor by Alexander and Athanasius,25

Arius's two Alexandrian episcopal adversaries, but it is included in the Nicene Creed of
325 C. E. That creed, as amended at Constantinople in 381 C. E., reads: "I Believe in
one God THE FATHER ALMIGHTY; Maker of heaven and earth, and all things visible and
invisible. And in one Lord JESUS CHRIST, the only begotten [Greek: monogene-s; Latin:
unigenitum] Son of God, begotten [Greek; gennethenta; Latin: natum] of the Father before
all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one
substance with the Father ...." Thus the doctrine of eternal generation became a
basic concept of "orthodox" Christian doctrine which virtually all main-line
Protestants have accepted with equally as much fervor as have Catholics. Luther, Zwingli,
Bullinger, Calvin, and the divines of both the Church of England and the English
Presbyterian Church all taught it.

It is stated as an article of faith in Luther's Small Catechism, the Second Helvetic
Confession (Bullinger), the French Confession of Faith (Calvin), the Belgic Confession of
Faith (De Brès), the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, and the Westmin- ster
Confession of Faith.26

What is rather amusing about Martin's "orthodoxy" is that, had he lived in
sixteenth-century Geneva during the time of John Calvin, he might well have been
dispatched for heresy and condemned to eternal hell-fire by the very people whom he long
regarded as his spiritual forebears. Note that on October 26, 1553, Michael Servetus was
executed for denying the Trinity and the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. As
he died in terrible agony while being burned to death at the stake, he cried: "Jesus,
Thou Son of the eternal God." However, Calvin's colleague and fellow pastor,
Guillaume Farel, who was standing by at the time, asserted that Servetus could not be
saved.

Had he called out, "Jesus, Thou eternal Son of God," perhaps he could have been.
But he put the adjective "eternal" in the wrong place, denied the doctrine of
eternal generation, and was therefore eternally damned in the view of Farel, Calvin, and
most Protestants.27

MARTIN'S WORKS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CHRISTIANITY

What is clearly evident, then, is that besides being hate literature, Martin's works
are filled with bad theology from almost everyone's standpoint. Because they attack
religions which themselves have been guilty of teaching many false and twisted doctrines,
what they have to say is often taken at face value. But because they have sometimes
exposed movements that deserve to be exposed, that does not make them any better. Bearing
false witness against others-regardless of their moral qualities or teachings-is simply
inexcusable from a Christian standpoint. Thus Martin's books need to be shown for what
they are. Furthermore, their nature needs to be brought to the attention of those who
market them. As has been pointed out above, they too have an obligation to see that the
public is not fed with what amount to bad scholarship, distortions, and outright lies.

1 Mesa, Arizona: Brownsworth Publishing, 1986.

2 Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, Jehovah of the Watchtower
(Chicago: Moody Press, 1953, 1974). The 1974 edition was revised and updated by Martin.

3 Water Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults (Minneapolis: Bethany House
Publishers, 1965, 1977, 1985).

4 J. F. Rutherford, A Great Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens (New
York: printed privately, 1915) gives the full details of the case. Although Rutherford,
who had acted as Russell's attorney, is quite often an untrustworthy witness, in the case
of Russell v. Ross the information which he gives accords with that of other sources,
particularly newspaper reports.

5 J. J. Ross, Some Facts and More Facts about the Self-Styled
"Pastor" Charles T. Russell (Philadelphia: Philadelphia School of the Bible,
1913). Strange as it may seem, Ross did not even bother to get his lawyer's name right.
The man's name was George Lynch-Staunton, not Staunton. Martin and Klann repeat Ross's
mistake in all versions of their Jehovah of the Watchtower.

6 Ibid., p. 18.

7 The only copy of the transcript of record of Russell v. Ross was long
possessed by the Watch Tower Society at its Brooklyn headquarters. It was made available
to Marley Cole when he prepared his Jehovah's Witnesses (New York: Vantage Press, 1955)
and later to Walter Martin, as Martin states. For further details on this matter, see note
10 below. When I was researching my Jehovah's Witnesses in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan of
Canada, 1976) in the early 1970s, I was informed that that copy had been lost. Repeated
attempts to find another copy proved unfruitful. Thus I found it necessary to piece
together quotations from the transcript from secondary sources, specifically from Cole,
pp. 70-71 and from Martin and Klann's 1974 edition of Jehovah of the Watchtower. There is
no reason to doubt the accuracy of those quotations.

8 Ross, p. 20.

9 The Watch Tower, 1914, pp. 286-91.

10 William J, Whalen, Armageddon around the Corner (New York: John Day
Company, 1962), pp. 42-43.

11 Hamilton Spectator, March 17, 1913.

12 Letter to Ernest Chambers, June 17, 1918. This letter may be found in
the National Archives of Canada at Ottawa in file CPC 206-B-6.

13 On page 21, Martin and Klann state: "In order to clarify the
evidence as irrefutable, we refer any curious doubters to the files of the Watchtower
Society itself, Russell vs. Ross-'defamatory libel,' March 17, 1913. The authors have
personally seen this transcript and compared it with the copy we obtained. Jehovah's
Witnesses cannot deny this documentary evidence; it is too well sub- stantiated. This is
no 'religionist scheme' to 'smear' the pastor's memory; we offer it as open proof of their
founder's inherent dishonesty." Yet it is evident that the two Baptist authors were
not being fair. They do not note that the earlier "copy" of the transcript that
they had used was from Ross's Facts and More Facts, or that they had made an important
change in the 1974 edition of their book in reporting what the transcript said. The Bethel
librarian at Watchtower headquarters stated to me in 1975 that the transcript of record
had disappeared immediately after Walter Martin had examined it. Although the librarian
believed that Martin had taken it, in all fairness that seems unlikely. Had he done so,
why would he have quoted from it accurately, thereby weakening his own case? It seems more
probable that it was simply lost somewhere within the labyrinth of Watchtower Society
headquarters.

14 For a discussion of some of these matters, see M. James Penton,
Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1985), pp. 33-46.

15 For the details of Russell's relations with his wife, see Ibid., pp.
35-40.

16 For the details of Martin's marriages and divorces, see Robert and
Rosemary Brown, Vol. III, pp. 3-7, 193-217, 293-302.

17 Ibid., pp. 193-217.

18 Ibid., pp. 1-27.

19 Ibid., pp. 29-65.

20 It is interesting to note that both Justin Martyr and Origen expressed
very different points of view from Martin on this matter, and so, too, do many modern
scholars. See Edwin R. Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr (Amsterdam: Philo Press,
19680, pp. 141-7 and Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Eerdman's, 1971), Vol 2, pp. 551-3 for comments on these ancient church fathers.
For a contemporary discussion of the problems surrounding John 1:1, see Raymond E. Brown,
The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New Translation and Commentary in the Anchor Bible
series (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 4,5, 24-25.

21 These include Moffatt, Goodspeed, the New English Bible, and the
Revised English Bible. Besides that, The New American Bible for Catholics says in a
marginal commentary on John 1:1: "Was God: lack of a definite article with 'God' in
Greek signifies predication rather than identification," a statement that indicates
that the New American Bible translators agree more with Moffatt, Goodspeed, the New
English Bible, and the Revised English Bible than with the King James Version. All of
these translations except the Revised English Bible were in existence when Martin and
Klann published Jehovah of the Watchtower in 1974.

22 For further details on this subject, see my article "The 'I AM'
of John 8:58." The Christian Quest, 1, no. 1 (Winter, 1988): 49-64.

23 This point is generally recognized by the scholarly community today.
For a brief sketch of Arius's life and ideas, see Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to
Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1983), pp.58-64. See also Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism: A View of
Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981).

24 Ibid., p. 164.

25 See Athanasius's "Orations against the Arians." Book 1, 13
and 14 in William G. Rusch, trans./ed., The Trinitarian Controversy 75-77. Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1980.

26 To find all these creedal statements, except the one in Luther's Small
Catechism, see Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House,
1977), Vol I.

27 Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael
Servetus, 1511-1553 (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1960), pp. 210-215

Russell a con man and a criminal?

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SickofLies

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THE FALSE CHARGE OF PURJURY AGAINST C. T. RUSSELL

THROWING STONES WHILE LIVING IN A GLASS HOUSE

MARTIN'S LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF HEBREW AND GREEK

MARTIN'S FALSE "ORTHODOXY"

MARTIN'S WORKS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CHRISTIANITY

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