Looking back: "FACE THE FACTS"

by Nathan Natas 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Nathan Natas

  TIME magazine, issue of Monday, Sep. 19, 1938

  "Face the Facts"

  Jehovah's Witnesses, or the International Bible Students Association, is a sect which believes it is helping to establish God's kingdom on earth, distrusts formalized religion (particularly Roman Catholicism), engages in periodic spats with the law because its members like to peddle anticlerical pamphlets, dislike to have their children salute the flag in school. The longtime pontiff of Jehovah's Witnesses is rawboned Judge Joseph Frederick Rutherford. The Judge is the big money-maker for the sect, which claims that 275,000,000 copies of his writings have been circulated in 80 languages.

  No paupers, Jehovah's Witnesses could well afford last week to hire wire and wireless telephone facilities from American Telephone & Telegraph Co. for a hook-up between Royal Albert Hall in London and auditoriums in 23 U. S., ten Canadian, ten Australian, four New Zealand cities. In those auditoriums, according to Witnesses' calculations, were gathered 100,000 listeners while, in Albert Hall, Judge Rutherford faced most of England's 5,000 Witnesses and 5,000 outsiders who had come to hear what it was all about.

  Judge Rutherford's rambling, worldwide speech was entitled "Face the Facts." Its gist: "A hideous monstrosity is rapidly moving to rule the world by dictators and to regiment the people. God, by His holy prophets, thousands of years ago, as recorded in the Bible, foretold this great menace, its cause, and what will be the result."

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  Monday, Oct. 10, 1938

  Sirs:

  On p. 52 of the Sept. 19 issue of TIME appears an article captioned "Face the Facts" which contains many false and misleading statements concerning the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Jehovah's Witnesses are not a sect or cult. They are true followers of Christ Jesus, and " are engaged in preaching the gospel of God's Kingdom under Christ (Matthew 24:14). They do not "engage in periodic spats with the law because its members like to peddle anticlerical pamphlets." . . . Jehovah's Witnesses are putting forth their best endeavors to aid the people to gain a knowledge of what is contained in the Bible. This is done in part by the publication and distribution of books which ... do not contain the words of a self-constituted "Prophet," as you termed Judge Rutherford, but . . . present a clear consideration of the Bible and well-known facts which show its fulfillment. . . .

  GERALDINE L. CHURCH Washington, D. C.
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  Leolaia

  Ah, that's the talk in which Rutherford prophesied that Britain and the United States were going to fall to Nazi Germany and become totalitarian. He said that it was going to happen, don't even try to stop it. In other words, Churchill should just let Germany invade and not resist because Jehovah was going to come any minute and destroy totalitarian rule at Armageddon. Yeah, that would've really worked out, huh?
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  VM44

  Get ready!.....To be released in audio! --VM44
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  johnny cip

  ah yes 'FACE THE FActs' WAS UP HELD in a few newer wt mag's in the last 10 years as the next best book since the writings of ST. PAUL funny no jw i could find ever seen the booklet. well i just had to get my hands on one, being proper spritual food at the proper time and all. well once i found a copy, after a year of searching, i started questioning jw's about this booklet and how the wt LIED ABOUT IT JUST LAST YEAR . you had to see the jw's heam and horn. at what i was reading them. they just loved the spritual injuction not to have children in 1938. boy did i drive this home. my jw friends hated when i would call them and read from"face the facts" THEN READ THE LATEST WT'S THAT CALLED THIS BOOK/SPEECH GREAT. i hope someone hear posts all the times this book is glorified in wt's in the last few years. then get your copy from LULU . AND LET THE FUN BEGIN be the first at your hall to get your most rightous pride full dub's to try defending this junk as bible truth. your sure to get reactions from , elders with smoke coming out of their ears, to bitchy pioneers sisters sticking thier head in the toilet. and at $7 a copy buy a bunch and start your own saturday study , and bring barf buckets. sure to be fun for the most zealous .
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  darth frosty

  do you by chance know which WT in the last 10 yrs referenced this talk?
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  blondie

  *** w03 6/1 p. 25 Joys Beyond Compare!***

  As the clouds of war gathered, Stanley Rogers and I were busy advertising the public lecture "Face the Facts," to be given at London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 11, 1938. Later I shared in distributing this talk in booklet form, along with FascismorFreedom, published the following year. Both booklets clearly exposed the totalitarian ambitions of Hitler’s Germany

  *** w96 6/1 p. 13 The Serpent’s Seed—How Exposed? ***

  In 1937, J. F. Rutherford, then president of the Watch Tower Society, delivered powerful exposés of Satan’s seed in discourses entitled "Exposed" and "Religion and Christianity." The following year, while 50 convention audiences in various lands listened, he gave the discourse "Face the Facts" by radiotelephone from London, England. A month later, an extensive radio network in the United States carried the speech "Fascism or Freedom." These were supplemented by powerful exposés in such books as Enemies and Religion and also in the booklet Uncovered.

  *** g97 5/8 p. 27 Tasmania—Small Island, Unique Story ***"

  But times were not always so good," adds Geoff. "Back in 1938, for example, Tom Kitto, Rod McVilly, and I, all wearing sandwich boards, were advertising the public Bible lecture ‘Face the Facts.’ It was a stinging exposé of false religion to be broadcast from London via a radio network. When I joined my companions, they were being bullied by a pack of youths. And the police were just looking on! I ran to help and promptly got bashed. But a man grabbed me by the back of my shirt and dragged me away. Instead of thrashing me, the man bellowed: ‘Leave them alone!’ Then, to me, he quietly said: ‘I know what it’s like to be persecuted, mate, I’m Irish.’"

  *** g95 8/22 pp. 9-10 The Evils of Nazism Exposed ***

  On June 20, 1937, the Witnesses who were still free distributed another message that was unsparing in its detail about the persecution. It named officials and cited dates and places. The Gestapo were appalled at this exposure and the ability of the Witnesses to carry it off.

  Love of neighbor is what compelled the Witnesses to warn the people of Germany not to be fooled by the grandiose vision of a glorious thousand-year rule by the Third Reich. "We must tell the truth and give the warning," said the booklet FacetheFacts, published in 1938. "We recognize the totalitarian government . . . as the product of Satan brought forth as the substitute for God’s kingdom." Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the first targets of Nazi abuse, but they also loudly decried atrocities against Jews, Poles, the handicapped, and others.

  The resolution "Warning!," adopted at a 1938 convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., said: "The Fascists and Nazis, radical political organizations, have wrongfully seized control of many countries of Europe . . . All the people will be regimented, all their liberties taken away, and all will be compelled to yield to the rule of an arbitrary dictator and then the ancient Inquisition will be fully revived."

  Rutherford regularly took to the airwaves, delivering powerful lectures on the satanic nature of Nazism. The lectures were rebroadcast globally and were printed for distribution by the millions. On October 2, 1938, he delivered the address "Fascism or Freedom," in which he denounced Hitler in no uncertain terms.

  "In Germany the common people are peace-loving," Rutherford proclaimed. "The Devil has put his representative Hitler in control, a man who is of unsound mind, cruel, malicious and ruthless . . . He cruelly persecutes the Jews because they were once Jehovah’s covenant people and bore the name of Jehovah, and because Christ Jesus was a Jew."

  As the Nazi rage against Jehovah’s Witnesses reached new heights, the Witnesses’ denunciations became ever more scathing. The May 15, 1940, issue of Consolation stated: "Hitler is such a perfect child of the Devil that these speeches and decisions flow through him like water through a well-built sewer."
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  darth frosty

  As always Blondie comes thru, thx.
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  johnny cip

  I'm surprised, not many interested in this WT GEM "FACE THE FACTS" 1938 just having this booklet and reading it to your jw family will shut them up fast. john
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  darth frosty

  Well JC you know how witness logic works. You show them that booklet and they start on how its old light and probably fabricated reproduction. Despite the fact that as recently as 2003 the WT$ was talking about it. But it is a good nugget to tuck away.
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  johnny cip

  darth yes your right. and thanks to blondie for finding a few newer wt quotes on 'FACE THE FACTS"