Judaism, Islam and Christianity all have faced the same problems.
Their total devotion to the supernatural eventually conflicts with everyday life and makes for failure, despondency and conflict.
Each of the 3 religions has reacted to the modern world by the same process. Schism followed by anti-mainstream rhetoric.
For Judaism, in the 1st Century, Jews either clung to the sacrificial system of Priests or formed Messianic apocalyptic cults or went off into the desert away from everybody and everything.
For Muslims, when Muhammed died without naming a successor, schisms led to internal wars and the rise of Shiaa and Sunni struggling for dominance. When swallowed by the Turkish empire, Muslims tried combining politics with religion and failed. They became reactionary against the West and sunk deep into Fundamentalism.
For Christians, after the Roman Empire accepted them and enforced a solidarity through Theological Orthodoxy, they split into an East/West dichotomy. The Catholic alliance with kings for theocracy eventually failed and the Protestant wars began.
Under Luther, "the bible alone" (sola scriptura), denominations split off warring with each other over interpretations of orthodoxy.
The New World filled with religious misfits.
The Puritans tried to become a "shining City on a Hill" and failed.
The Civil War drove a stake into the heart of christian "love" and along came cynical secularity until the GREAT AWAKENING.
From that point forward, radical Christians split off from the main branches of Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, etc and sought finality in END TIMES preoccupations.
William Miller started the ball rolling with actual PREDICTIONS of definite 2nd coming dates.
After two embarassing failures the 7th Day Adventist crackpots rose up totally unwilling to melt back into Mainstream Churches.
THIS IS THE POINT WHERE ANTI-MAINSTREAM wackos began creating a New Myth of Christ's Return in defiance of regular Christianity.
Pastor Russell was wealthy enough to cherry pick the most exciting ideas from the buffet table of weirdo craziness and start his own movement.
Pyramidology, Chart of the Ages, the Divine Plan, Chronology, Dispensationalism---all cut and pasted into Bible Student/Russellism with a target date of 1914.
With the failure of yet another prediction Russell backtracked and died.
Judge Rutherford merely picked up the pieces and kept the Anti-Mainstream ball rolling into a juggernaut of MILITANT ideas.
Rutherford welded the weirdos, bible students, Russellites, Adventists and antii-social misfits into a fighting army of know-it-alls eager to
insult every church member they could find.
Supreme Court cases came one right after another because JW's were challenging the authority of the State to have a say over the Church (mythos vs Logos).
When the smoke cleared, what Jehovah's Witnesses became was the ANTI-EVERYTHING religion. They were defined by what they DID NOT do and what they did NOT believe.
Knorr tried to turn this angry mob into an educational religious society and failed because Freddy Franz was whipping up emotions by returning to the Adventist roots of END TIMES speculations.
After the recent failure of 1975 as Armageddon, JW's are left without any identity at all.
They can't jump back into defininte chronological predictions and they can't attack Muslim fanaticism or Catholic child molestation as issues.
They are too vulnerable!
They feast on the flesh of their own!
Ex-JW's are the new target and weak members the new prey.
In-fighting, censure, policing policies and mind control have replaced Christendom as the preoccupation of the rank and file.
All the can do now is consolidate themselves into mindless robots who follow the whims of their Governing Body ulema and mullas.
Stay and follow orders.....or...get out and die at Armageddon: this is the message of Love from the One True Religion!
The Watchtower is nothing but a dysfunctional religous cult that failed in everything it predicted and has nothing left to pursue but total obedience in its membership.
