January 1919 IBSA Convention Now Online

cabasilas

If Watchtower history is not your cup of tea just ignore this thread.

Recently our family got a new scanner. In my files I had a photocopy I'd made of the January 1919 IBSA Convention booklet years ago. So, I decided to scan it in and make a pdf. I'm still new at this but thought I'd share it with history buffs here. The booklet contains all the talks of the Convention and minutes of the Annual Meeting and also some extra talks by Woodworth and Fisher before they went to jail.

This is from a critical time in IBSA/JW history. Rutherford and 6 others were in prison in Atlanta. The convention was held in Pittsburgh, PA. The Brooklyn office was closed. The convention also included the annual meeting where Rutherford was reelected. The first part of the booklet describes the visit many made to Russell's gravesite and the plans for erecting the pyramid memorial. (I once had a Bethelite acquaintance tell me that it was the "evil slave" Bible Students who put the pyramid up and not the WT Society...this would have corrected him.) There are several anecdotes regarding 1914 and the Finished Mystery book. The last couple of pages contain some interesting parallels some Bible Students saw between the imprisonment of the brethren and Jesus' crucifixion.

All in all, there's a wealth of historical information in here and this document is not generally available as far as I know. Theologically speaking, this was a special time in JW history. According to them this was just after Christ had come to the Temple and was deciding to appoint the WT Society for the final harvest work. So this booklet gives an idea of what these Bible Students were up to at this critical time.

The link I'm providing is for a reduced size of this document (about 17MB) that should work for Adobe Reader 5 or later. It's at:

http://www.catholic-forum.com/members/popestleo/Jan1919IBSAConvention-Reduced.pdf

I do have a larger size of the document available which should work for all versions of Adobe and also includes searchable capability. (Some of the OCR did not work so well but most of it does.) If you would want that send me a private message and I'll provide the URL for that. It's about 73MB however.

I'm new at scanning so there may be a few mistakes here or there. (A couple pages of the photocopy cut off some lettering...sorry about that.)

I can't guarantee how long I'll keep the file up so if you're interested in it you should download it now and save it for future reference.

Leolaia

Thanks for your work on getting this available. I downloaded it several weeks ago and found the information very interesting, especially the reports on the Brothers' experiences behind bars.

cabasilas

Leolaia,

Question: page 62 mentions "Sister MacMillan" relaying a message from A.H. MacMillan behind bars. Wife? Sister? I don't remember any mention of a wife in his book. Anyone know?

BTW, I fixed the rotation problem in the document.

Leolaia

BTW, I fixed the rotation problem in the document.

So did I in my copy.

Question: page 62 mentions "Sister MacMillan" relaying a message from A.H. MacMillan behind bars. Wife? Sister? I don't remember any mention of a wife in his book. Anyone know?

Yeah, that would've been his wife Mary MacMillan, who was interestingly 5 years his senior. They also had a son named Albert MacMillan who was 11 years old at the time.

cabasilas

Thanks! I never knew he had been married. Do you know if Rutherford's wife was living with the Bethel family then or was she already in California? Just wondering if Malcolm and Albert were friends?

I forgot to mention that on page 55 Woodworth gives an explanation of how he came up with the 1600 Furlongs from Bethel to Scranton, PA in the Finished Mystery. He even says "The Lord put that in the book." Unfortunately, this is one of the couple of pages in the photocopy which cut off some of the letters. Most of it can be figured out, however.

VM44

In MacMillan's book, Faith on the Watch, MacMillan's wife is noticable NOT mentioned in most of the book.

I vaguely recall a post that mentioned that she left him sometime around the beginning of the 20th century.

Does anyone have the exact details?

--VM44

VM44

Woodworth gives an explanation of how he came up with the 1600 Furlongs from Bethel to Scranton, PA in the Finished Mystery. He even says "The Lord put that in the book."

Woodworth was not a rational person.

--VM44

Jerry1

cabasilas / leolaia / and or vm44 It seems to me that WT history is their soft spot. I was never a JW and my interest in them is related to getting my daughter and son-in-law out. I have made many mistakes in my effort, mainly trying to make Bible points but those days are over. I now see that history is the way to go. Since you guys are very knowledgeable I would like to get your thoughts on my approach. These are some questions i have been thinking of. I realize the approach has to be low key and with love, i learned that the hard way also.

questions: who was the person that initally learned of the appointment of the faithful and descreet slave? was it the person / persons himself or did someone else realize it and contact the slave with this monumental news?

How was the news of the appointment conveyed? If they say holy spirit OK but what method did hs use? Angel? Dream? was the newly appointed slave reading Matt 24:45 and get burning in bosom? i wont use sarcasm but i'm just saying....

When did it happen? 1919? Fall of the year maybe but seems like the second coming of Jesus would be major event just 3 years before and the appointment would be documented well.

Where was the slave when this was shown him/them? New York? Pittsburg? where?

In the past I have been blind sided by responses I didn't expect so any input you have would be great. What would you have answered? Maybe you could try these on your relatives for a real world test. Anyway thanks for your work and thanks for the .PDF jerry

cabasilas

I just noticed the January 1919 Convention Report is online in a HTML version at:

http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/booklets/1919convention/1919convention.html

Some particular sections worth reading are Woodworth's explanation of how he came up with the 1,600 furlongs being the distance from Bethel to Scranton, PA:

http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/booklets/1919convention/1919convention10.html

and Hudging's "Why I Accept the Seventh Volume":

http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/booklets/1919convention/1919convention8.html

Hudgings reveals that the book was almost named "The Fall of Babylon."

This site also has a complete scan of the "Fall of Babylon" tract which was published as an issue of Bible Students Monthly:

http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/tracts/babylon/babylontract.html

January 1919 IBSA Convention Now Online

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