The four presidents of the watchtower society (Jehovah's witnesses) by edmond c.gruss

Kojack57

Just received this book in the mail and you can't make this stuff up. It's awesome. Talk about exposing these morons it's incredible. You guys have to buy this book.

Kojack

FatFreek 2005

Don't forget an easily overlooked fact -- Number 1 was not Russell.

Len

Kojack57

Len: That's right! In March 1879 Russell married Maria Frances ackley; in may, because of doctrinal differences, he withdrew his support from N.H. Barbour and the herald of the morning rag.

Kojack

InterestedOne

If I recall correctly, the first president was William Henry Conley. Why does the Watchtower not mention him?

Conley is generally not taken into consideration as he is irrelevant and was out of place, being a trinitarian and so forth. His beliefs hardly resembled the Watchtower, so why include him? This was back in the very early days when Russell hobnobbed with several clerics and trinitarians.

If you want to be technical, yes, but otherwise it adds nothing to the real story. IMO. Russell got him out of the picture anyway.

Randy

link to book: http://www.freeminds-store.com/books/the-four-presidents-of-the-watch-tower-society.html

but Fatfreak it's good to point that out just to surprise the JWs with something shocking. :-))

thanks,

Randy

Dogpatch

I forget the main interviewee of Gruss that was Knorr's right-hand man. It might have been Maximus, who years ago posted on JWD. It's been so long I forget. But several oldtimers on this board know him. Gruss promised him he wouldn't give his name out, but "Maximus" is not his name anyway. So I'm not "outing" him. I think I talked to the poor fellow once or twice on the phone, but he was fairly ill. He knew more about Bethel back then than Knorr!

Randy

Kojack57

Hell, let's cut to the chase, the real first president should have been Russell's wife Maria. She was the real brains of the operation.

She was the "Associate editor" of Zion's watchtower. She authored and edited watch tower articals. Co authored the first four books of the Studies in the scriptures. C.T.Russell was brain dead in my opinion.

Kojack

Dogpatch

Kojack, you are absolutely right. Barbara Anderson has a lot of info on that on her Maria cd-rom:

http://www.watchtowerdocuments.com/

more specifically:

http://www.watchtowerdocuments.com/docs/maria-russell.html

Randy

RayPublisher

I got that book and read it in detail about a year ago. A lot of unflattering details on Russell, that surprised me. But some of Gruss'es references are dubious and we really don't know for sure on several of the stories.

But no doubt much of it is true. Sounds just like the National Enquirer!

The four presidents of the watchtower society (Jehovah's witnesses) by edmond c.gruss

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