Hi Ozzie,
I think when one wants to determine if the the JWs are "God's" organization, or if they ever were, it is helpful to take a look at how this "organization" came to be.
I saved a post from the old H2O wherein the poster (I thank him/her for posting this, tho I can't remember the name of the poster) gave a comprehensive history of the WT organization.
Read on...
A Short History of the Watchtower
Organization
Jehovah's Witnesses trace their origins to the nineteenth century Adventist movement in America.
That movement began with William Miller, a Baptist lay preacher who, in the year 1816, began
proclaiming that Christ would return in 1843. His predictions of the Second Coming or Second
Advent captured the imagination of thousands in Baptist and other mainline churches. Perhaps as
many as 50,000 followers put their trust in Miller's chronological calculations and prepared to
welcome the Lord, while, as the appointed time approached, others watched nervously from a
distance. Recalculations moved the promised second advent from March, 1843 to March, 1844,
and then to October of that year. Alas, that date too passed uneventfully.
After the "Disappointment of 1844" Miller's following fell apart, with most of those who had looked
to him returning to their respective churches before his death in 1849. But other disappointed
followers kept the movement alive, although in fragmented form. Their activities eventually led to the
formation of several sects under the broad heading of "Adventism" including the Advent Christian
Church, the Life and Advent Union, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and various Second Adventist
groups.
An interesting side-note: The Branch Davidians who died at Waco, Texas, under the leadership of
David Koresh also trace their roots to the same Millerite source through a different line of descent.
In 1935 the Seventh Day Adventist Church expelled a Bulgarian immigrant named Victor Houteff,
who had begun teaching his own views on certain passages of the Revelation or Apocalypse, the
last book of the Bible. Houteff set up shop on the property at Waco. After first referring to his tiny
new sect as The Shepherd's Rod, Houteff and his people in 1942 incorporated and renamed
themselves Davidian Seventh Day Adventists. Houteff died in 1955, and in 1961 his wife Florence
officially disbanded the sect, but a few followers under the leadership of west Texas businessman
Benjamin Roden took over the real estate. Roden died in 1978, leaving behind his wife Lois and his
son George to lead the group. Then, in 1987, David Koresh took over the leadership position, and
the tragedy that followed is public knowledge.
Jehovah's Witnesses, likewise, trace their roots back to the Adventists. But they do not often admit
this to outsiders; nor do many Witnesses know the details themselves. JWs are accustomed to
defending themselves against the charge that they are a new religious cult. They will often respond
that theirs is the most ancient religious group, older than Catholic and Protestant churches. In fact,
their book Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose asserts that "Jehovah's witnesses have a
history almost 6,000 years long, beginning while the first man, Adam, was still alive," that Adam's
son Abel was "the first of an unbroken line of Witnesses," and that "Jesus' disciples were all
Jehovah's witnesses [sic] too." (pp. 8-9)
An outsider listening to such claims quickly realizes, of course, that the sect has simply appropriated
unto itself all the characters named in the Bible as faithful witnesses of God. By such extrapolation
the denomination is able to stretch its history back to the beginnings of the human family-at least in
the eyes of adherents who are willing to accept such arguments. But outside observers generally
dismiss this sort of rhetoric and instead reckon the Witnesses as dating back only to Charles Taze
Russell, who was born on February 16, 1852, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Originally raised a Presbyterian, Russell was 16 years old and a member of the Congregational
church in the year 1868, when he found himself losing faith. He had begun to doubt not only church
creeds and doctrines, but also God and the Bible itself. At this critical juncture a chance encounter
restored his faith and placed him under the influence of Second Adventist preacher Jonas Wendell.
For some years after that Russell continued to study Scripture with and under the influence of
various Adventist laymen and clergy, notably Advent Christian Church minister George Stetson and
the Bible Examiner's publisher George Storrs. He met locally on a regular basis with a small circle of
friends to discuss the Bible, and this informal study group came to regard him as their leader or
pastor.
In January, 1876, when he was 23 years old, Russell received a copy of The Herald of the
Morning, an Adventist magazine published by Nelson H. Barbour of Rochester, New York. One of
the distinguishing features of Barbour's group at that time was their belief that Christ returned
invisibly in 1874, and this concept presented in The Herald captured Russell's attention. It meant
that this Adventist splinter group had not remained defeated, as others had, when Christ failed to
appear in 1874 as Adventist leaders had predicted; somehow this small group had managed to hold
onto the date by affirming that the Lord had indeed returned at the appointed time, only invisibly.
Was this mere wishful thinking, coupled with a stubborn refusal to admit the error of failed
chronological calculations? Perhaps, but Barbour had some arguments to offer in support of his
assertions. In particular, he came up with a basis for reinterpreting the Second Coming as an
invisible event: In Benjamin Wilson's Emphatic Diaglott translation of the New Testament the word
rendered coming in the King James Version at Matthew 24:27, 37, 39 is translated presence
instead. This served as the basis for Barbour's group to advocate, in addition to their time
calculations, an invisible presence of Christ.
Although the idea appealed to young Charles Taze Russell, the reading public apparently refused to
'buy' the story of an invisible Second Coming, with the result that N. H. Barbour's publication The
Herald of the Morning was failing financially. In the summer of 1876 wealthy Russell paid Barbour's
way to Philadelphia and met with him to discuss both beliefs and finances. The upshot was that
Russell became the magazine's financial backer and was added to the masthead as an Assistant
Editor. He contributed articles for publication as well as monetary gifts, and Russell's small study
group similarly became affiliated with Barbour's.
Russell and Barbour believed and taught that Christ's invisible return in 1874 would be followed
soon afterward, in the spring of 1878 to be exact, by the Rapture-the bodily snatching away of
believers to heaven. When this expected Rapture failed to occur on time in 1878, The Herald's
editor, Mr. Barbour, came up with "new light" on this and other doctrines. Russell, however,
rejected some of the new ideas and persuaded other members to oppose them. Finally, Russell quit
the staff of the Adventist magazine and started his own. He called it Zion's Watch Tower and
Herald of Christ's Presence and published its first issue with the date July, 1879. In the beginning it
had the same mailing list as The Herald of the Morning and considerable space was devoted to
refuting the latter on points of disagreement, Russell having taken with him a copy of that magazine's
mailing list when he resigned as assistant editor.
At this point Charles Russell no longer wanted to consider himself an Adventist, nor a Millerite. But,
he continued to view Miller and Barbour as instruments chosen by God to lead His people in the
past. The formation of a distinct denomination around Russell was a gradual development. His
immediate break was, not with Adventism, but with the person and policies of N. H. Barbour.
Nor were barriers immediately erected with respect to Protestantism in general. New readers
obtaining subscriptions to Zion's Watch Tower were often church members who saw the magazine
as a para-church ministry, not as an anti-church alternative. Russell traveled about speaking from the
pulpits of Protestant churches as well as to gatherings of his own followers. In 1879, the year of his
marriage to Maria Frances Ackley and also the year he began publishing Zion's Watch Tower,
Russell organized some thirty study groups or congregations scattered from Ohio to the New
England coast. Each local "class" or ecclesia came to recognize him as "Pastor," although geography
and Russell's writing and publishing activities prevented more than an occasional pastoral visit in
person.
Inevitably, Russell's increasingly divergent teachings forced his followers to separate from other
church bodies and to create a denomination of their own. Beginning, as he did, in a small branch of
Adventism that went to the extreme of setting specific dates for the return of Christ and the Rapture,
Russell went farther out on a limb in 1882 by openly rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity. His earlier
mentor Nelson H. Barbour was a Trinitarian, as was The Herald of the Morning's other assistant
editor John H. Paton who joined Russell in leaving Barbour to start Zion's Watch Tower. The
writings of Barbour and Paton that Russell had helped publish or distribute were Trinitarian in their
theology. And the Watch Tower itself was at first vague and noncommittal on the subject. It was
only after Paton broke with him in 1882, and ceased to be listed on the masthead, that Russell
began writing against the doctrine of the Trinity.
By the time of his death , Charles Taze Russell had traveled more than a million miles and preached
more than 30,000 sermons. He had authored works totaling some 50,000 printed pages, and nearly
20,000,000 copies of his books and booklets had been sold.
Followers had been taught that Russell himself was the "faithful and wise servant" of Matthew 24:45
and "the Laodicean Messenger," God's seventh and final spokesman to the Christian church. But he
lived to see the failure of various dates he had predicted for the Rapture, and finally died on
October 31, 1916, more than two years after the world was supposed to have ended, according to
his calculations, in early October, 1914..
His disciples, however, saw the World War then raging as reason to believe "the end" was still
imminent. They buried Russell beneath a headstone identifying him as "the Laodicean Messenger,"
and erected next to his grave a massive stone pyramid emblazoned with the cross and crown
symbol he was fond of and the name "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society." (The pyramid still
stands off Cemetery Lane in Ross, a northern Pittsburgh suburb, where it reportedly serves as the
focal point of an eerie scene each Halloween as modern-day Russellites encircle it, holding hands, in
a vigil commemorating the day of his death.)
According to instructions Russell left behind, his successor to the presidency would share power
with an editorial committee and with the Watch Tower corporation's board of directors, whom
Russell had appointed "for life." But vice president Joseph Franklin ("Judge") Rutherford soon set
about concentrating all organizational authority in his own hands. A skilled lawyer who had served
as Russell's chief legal advisor, he combined legal prowess with what opponents undoubtedly saw
as a Machiavellian approach to internal corporate politics. Thus he used a loophole in their
appointment to unseat the majority of the Watch Tower directors without calling a membership
vote. And he even had a subordinate summon the police into the Society's Brooklyn headquarters
offices to break up their board meeting and evict them from the premises. (Faith on the March by
A. H. Macmillan, pp. 78-80)
After securing the headquarters complex and the sect's corporate entities, Rutherford turned his
attention to the rest of the organization. By gradually replacing locally elected elders with his own
appointees, he managed to transform a loose collection of semi-autonomous democratically-run
congregations into a tight-knit organizational machine run from his office. Some local congregations
broke away, forming such Russellite splinter groups as the Chicago Bible Students, the Dawn Bible
Students, and the Laymen's Home Missionary Movement, all of which continue to this day. But
most Bible Students remained under his control, and Rutherford renamed them "Jehovah's
Witnesses" in 1931, to distinguish them from these other groups.
Meanwhile, he shifted the sect's emphasis from the individual "character development" Russell had
stressed to vigorous public witnessing work, distributing the Society's literature from house to house.
By 1927 this door-to-door literature distribution had become an essential activity required of all
members. The literature consisted primarily of Rutherford's unremitting series of attacks against
government, against Prohibition, against "big business," and against the Roman Catholic Church. He
also forged a huge radio network and took to the air waves, exploiting populist and anti-Catholic
sentiment to draw thousands of additional converts. His vitriolic attacks, blaring from portable
phonographs carried to people's doors and from the loudspeakers of sound cars parked across
from churches, also drew down upon the Witnesses mob violence and government persecution in
many parts of the world.
Like Russell, Rutherford tried his hand at prophecy and predicted that biblical patriarchs Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob would be resurrected in 1925 to rule as princes over the earth. (Millions Now
Living Will Never Die, 1920, pp. 89-90) They failed to show up, of course, and Rutherford quit
predicting dates. In fact, referring to that prophetic failure he later admitted, "I made an ass of
myself." (The Watchtower, October 1, 1984, p. 24)
Vice President Nathan Homer Knorr inherited the presidency upon Rutherford's death in 1942 but
left doctrinal matters largely in the hands of Frederick W. Franz, who joined the sect under Russell
and had been serving at Brooklyn headquarters since 1920. Lacking the personal magnetism and
charisma of Russell and Rutherford, Knorr focused followers' devotion on the 'Mother' organization
rather than on himself.
After decades of publishing books and booklets authored by its presidents Russell and Rutherford,
the Watchtower Society began producing literature that was written anonymously. But it was not
impersonal, since the organization itself was virtually personified, and readers were directed to
"show our respect for Jehovah's organization, for she is our mother and the beloved wife of our
heavenly Father, Jehovah God." (The Watchtower, May 1, 1957, p. 285)
A superb administrator, Knorr shifted the sect's focus from dynamic leadership to dynamic
membership. He initiated training programs to transform members into effective recruiters. Instead
of carrying a portable phonograph from house to house, playing recordings of "Judge" Rutherford's
lectures at people's doorsteps, the average Jehovah's Witness began receiving instruction on how to
speak persuasively. Men, women, and children learned to give sermons at the doors on a variety of
subjects.
Meanwhile Fred Franz worked behind the scenes to restore faith in the sect's chronological
calculations, a subject largely ignored following Rutherford's prophetic failure in 1925. The revised
chronology established Christ's invisible return as having taken place in 1914 rather than 1874, and,
during the 1960's, the Society's publications began pointing to the year 1975 as the likely time for
Armageddon and the end of the world.
The prevailing belief among Jehovah's Witnesses today is that the Society never predicted "the end"
for 1975, but that some over-zealous members mistakenly read this into the message. However, the
official prediction is well documented. See, for example, the article titled "Why Are You Looking
Forward to 1975?" in The Watchtower of August 15, 1968, pp. 494-501. Allowing for a small
margin of error, it concludes a lengthy discussion with this thought: "Are we to assume from this
study that the battle of Armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975, and the long-looked-for
thousand-year reign of Christ will begin by then? Possibly, but we wait to see how closely the
seventh thousand-year period of man's existence coincides with the sabbathlike thousand-year reign
of Christ. . . . It may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years." (p. 499) For several
other quotes pointing specifically to 1975, see the book Index of Watchtower Errors (by David A.
Reed, Baker Book House, 1990) pages 106-110.
Knorr's training programs for proselytizing, plus Franz' apocalyptic projections for 1975, combined
to produce rapid growth in membership, the annual rate of increase peaking at 13.5 percent in
1974. All of this pushed meeting attendance at JW Kingdom Halls from around 100,000 in 1941 to
just under 5 million in 1975. Growth since then has been slower, but fairly steady in most years, with
the result that nearly 11.5 million gathered at Kingdom Halls in the spring of 1992 for the Witnesses'
annual communion or "Memorial" service commemorating Christ's death with unleavened bread and
red wine.
During the 1970's changes took place at Watchtower headquarters in regard to presidential power.
First it became accepted in theory that the Christian Church (which Jehovah's Witnesses see their
organization as encompassing) should not be under one-man rule, but rather should be governed by
a body similar to the twelve apostles. The 7-member board of directors of the Watch Tower Bible
and Tract Society of Pennsylvania had previously been portrayed as fulfilling this role, but in 1971
an expanded Governing Body was created with a total of eleven members, including the seven
Directors. The aim was to demonstrate that the leadership derived authority from an apostolic
source, rather than from Pennsylvania corporate law.
This new Governing Body was displayed as further evidence of the sect's being the one true church,
but in actuality Nathan Knorr continued to rule Jehovah's Witnesses much as Russell and Rutherford
had done before him. That is, until 1975, when Governing Body members began insisting on
exercising the powers granted to them in theory but that had never really been theirs in practice.
Over the objections of Fred Franz the Body that he had been instrumental in creating actually began
governing, so that when Nathan Knorr passed away in 1977 Franz inherited an emasculated
presidency.
Franz also inherited an organization troubled by discontent over the obvious failure of his prophecies
of the world's end in the autumn of 1975. Even at Brooklyn headquarters little groups meeting
privately for Bible study were beginning to question not only the 1914-based chronology that
produced the 1975 deadline, but also the related teaching that the "heavenly calling" of believers
ended in 1935, with new converts after that date consigned to an earthly paradise for their eternal
reward.
The hitherto fast-growing sect actually began losing members for the first time in decades, as people
who had expected Armageddon in 1975 became disillusioned. When membership loss grew into
the hundreds of thousands-a fact masked by new conversions in figures released by the Society, but
reported in an investigative article in the Los Angeles Times of January 30, 1982 (pp.
4-5)-president Franz and the conservative majority on the Governing Body took action. In the
spring of 1980 they initiated a crack-down on dissidents, breaking up the independent Bible study
groups at headquarters, and forming "judicial committees" to have those seen as ringleaders put on
trial for "disloyalty" and "apostasy."
By the time this purge culminated in the forced resignation and subsequent excommunication of the
president's nephew and fellow Governing Body member Raymond V. Franz (a development Time
magazine found worthy of a full-page article, Feb. 22, 1982, p. 66) a siege mentality took hold on
the world-wide organization. Even Witnesses who left quietly and voluntarily for personal reasons
were denounced as disloyal and were ordered shunned, former friends forbidden to say as much as
"a simple 'Hello'" to them.
Thus, although Frederick W. Franz served as the sect's chief theologian for some fifty years-from
the start of Knorr's presidency in 1942 until his own death on December 22, 1992-the fact that he
outlived his failed prophecies by more than fifteen years required him to impose a mini-Inquisition on
the membership in order to keep his doctrinal and chronological framework in force for the
remainder of his lifetime.
Milton G. Henschel's selection as fifth Watchtower president on December 30, 1992, is truly
significant for the 13 million now attending Kingdom Halls. At first glance the choice of a staunch
conservative for the post may seem to guarantee a continuation of the status quo, with little change
in the offing for Jehovah's Witnesses. But a closer look reveals this appointment as the conservative
old guard's last stand-an indication that radical change in the sect's leadership and doctrines is
imminent.
At age 72 Henschel became the second-youngest member of the Governing Body, and he was
selected to lead by men several years older than he is. (Both the average age and the median age at
the time of Henschel's appointment calculated out to about 82 years.) With members in their eighties
known to sleep through meetings and to vote on matters upon being awakened (See eyewitness
Raymond Franz's account in his book Crisis of Conscience, p. 40.) the Body is losing its ability to
provide purposeful and decisive leadership. Henschel was no doubt chosen in part due to his having
vitality others lacked. Obviously, these aging leaders will not be able to hold the reigns of power
much longer. The men who shared in building the Watchtower into what it is today will soon leave it
behind for others to run.
In the decades following the death of founder Charles Taze Russell, his successor J. F. Rutherford
found himself forced to re-write many of the sect's major doctrines. Much the same can be
expected when JWs of a new generation inherit the positions currently occupied by Milton Henschel
and his fellow elderly Governing Body members. When new leaders eventually take over, will they
drop the ban on blood transfusions? Only time will tell. But, even if they do, it will make no
difference for those who have already died, nor for those Witnesses continuing to die while the
teaching remains in place.
Adapted from the book "Worse Than Waco: Jehovah's Witnesses Hide a Tragedy" copyright ©
1993 by David A. Reed, P.O. Box 819, Assonet, MA 02702. For a more detailed account of
Watchtower history see the book "BLOOD ON THE ALTAR" by David A. Reed (Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Publishers, 1996).
Presented by: Jehovah's Christian Witness. e-mail [email protected].
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