Today's WT lesson (covered by blondieHERE), referred briefly to the split in the Society between Rutherford's group and his opposers, saying:
Worse, after Brother Russell’s death in October 1916, opposition arose from inside the organization. Four of the seven directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society rebelled against the decision to have Brother Rutherford take the lead. They tried to cause division among the brothers, but in August 1917, they left Bethel—a cleansing indeed!
I've decided to bump this particular thread because it has some very good points, but you'll notice that blondie also links from the aforementioned thread to some other theads on the subject. In one of those threads, Lady Lee writes, "In the end, there were none from either side who were entirely blameless." Having skimmed the main documents issued from Rutherford, the four ousted board members, and P.S.L. Johnson, this seems to be quite accurate. I feel it is important to take an unprejudiced view of this issue and to weigh both sides if we're going to claim to be better informed and more objective than the Witnesses about this history.
As Band on the Run states above, there seems to have been little reason why the ousted board members did not legally contest what was done to them, except perhaps on account of lack of funds. Certainly they were thrown out of the headquarters, and it sounds as if they were affected by this just as much as if someone today were thrown out of Bethel, without preparation to fend for themselves in the outside world. But they should have had the law on their side, if they had tried to fight. It could be that they were attempting to follow a meek Christian course. Then too, it sounds as if Bethel was mainly on Rutherford's side, and they felt that the "people had spoken".
This Brother Johnson was a real ch aracter. It's difficult to tell from his defense statement, "Harvest Siftings Reviewed", whether he was in his right mind at the time he attempted to take control of London Bethel or not. He claims it was the branch itself that was basically apostate, and that they framed him by sending misleading telegrams to Rutherford. However, Johnson himself apparently sent this telegram to Rutherford:
"Surprised at cablegram. Have you not received my letters second, eleven, twenty-one, January? Shearn, Crawford, leading sixth sifting. Ezekiel Nine Beware. Cablegram campaign engineered Crawford, Shearn, Ezra Nehemiah Mordecai experience type mine here. Since January Twenty-eight am Steward Matthew, Twenty, eight. Shearn, Haman then hanged on gallows for me. Was then given Esther Eight, Two Fifteen powers like Russell's. Crawford, Sanballet, Shearn, Tobiah. Guard Senior, Gishen. Will you be my right hand? Must keep my hands on "Johnson."
One can't help but question the sanity of someone who would write this. He admits to being sleep-deprived at the time, and to having had a nervous breakdown a few years before when he was sleep-deprived. He was clearly a neurotic fellow. The feelings that the London brothers had about him are shown by the fact that he ended up being barricaded in his Bethel room with boards placed against the door. He escaped by partly breaking the door down, and shortly after, he dropped down from a balcony to escape. He manages to make all of this sound quite reasonable in his defense, but I suspect that he was in fact somewhat unhinged and Rutherford was right to recall him and try to reign him in.
However, Rutherford went further and associated Johnson's supposed attempt to seize power with the disagreement he was having with the four board members. The board members deny that they had much of anything to do with Johnson. Rutherford then made the famous coup, as described above, by claiming that they were not legal board members in the first place. His beef with them was apparently that they tried to direct the work in ways that the board was not supposed to. It's entirely possible that after Russell died, some of them did become more bold and thought they could exert more authority.
So who was at fault? Was this all a Machiavellian plot by Rutherford? It's clear from his success in situations that required votes and popular approval that a lot of the Bible Students supported him. It's entirely possible that this situation was no different from the death of Alexander the Great. Shortly before he gave in to his mysterious illness, Alexander was asked who should succeed him. You often hear that his response was, "To the strongest". What's interesting is that Alexander's voice was supposed to be nearly gone in the days before he died. "Strongest" in Greek is "kratistos", and "Craterus" was a trusted general who Alexander had appointed regent of Macedonia. Because of his station, Craterus was not present for Alexander's death in Babylon. It's quite possible that the generals who claimed to hear "the strongest" were hearing what they wanted to hear. The wars over the territory that followed are famous.
Similarly, it could be that there was a general rush for control in the vacuum that Russell left behind. Rutherford claimed that he was simply performing the same duties as Russell, who was chiefly in control of the Society, and that this was the only effective way to get things done (he also listed some examples of how he had saved the Society thousands of dollars because he was able to make quick, unilateral decisions, a very business-like way of making the case for leadership of a religion). At the very least, this shows a lack of modesty on Rutherford's part, aside from all the other presumptuous things he did, such as publishing and mailing out copies of the seventh volume of Studies in the Scriptures before the board knew it was even in print. But then again, Johnson briefly proclaimed himself the "faithful steward" of Jesus' parable. And the other board members seemed to like the idea of the board assuming more control in the absence of Russell.
So the only conclusion that I can come to, based on what I've read so far, was that Rutherford was "the general who won" in the war of succession after Russell. What's so surprising is that, as Quendi describes above, for a while it must have seemed that Rutherford had lost. How he turned things around I have no idea, though it probably had a lot to do with the corporation's material advantages over whatever was possessed by the ones who left or were kicked out. But here we are today, ex-members of a millions-strong organization, and where are the Bible Student "offshoot" groups? All they have left as proof of their existence are the websites a few members have created -- though I'm glad they have preserved these documents. At the least, we can clearly see that the split that occurred back then was not a simple "cleansing", as the Watchtower says. But, as always, since they have the printing presses and the opposers are long-dead, the Watchtower gets the last word.
