FALSE HISTORY
By Jim Penton
Because of the belief that whatever Watch Tower leaders have done must
be right because they represent Jehovah as His "channel," they have
created a false history through which they have attempted to cover over both
their prophetic failures and some of their most unethical actions. In particular,
they have tried to hide just how vicious they have been toward some of their
former brethren and how, despite loud protestations to the contrary, they have
hypocritically become involved in various political activities. Although they
admit, when forced to do so, that they have made numerous doctrinal "mistakes"
which have required "adjustments," they claim that their motives have
always been of the highest ethical nature.
For instance, in speaking of the Witness organization as the "faithful
and discreet slave," The Watchtower of March 1, 1979 (p. 24) states: "But
let us never forget that the motives of this 'slave' were always pure, unselfish;
at all times well meaning." Nothing, however, could be a more baldfaced
lie, as the facts given below will demonstrate. When J. F. Rutherford determined
to make himself a virtual dictator over the Watch Tower Society in 1917, it
became necessary for him to violate his predecessor's will and replace a majority
of the the Society's Board of Directors with his own personal todies. He used
the legal subterfuge that the four directors in question had not been properly
elected to office under Pennsylvania law, and he could therefore replace them
by presidential fiat. Rutherford knew, though, that such a legalistic argument
might not alone satisfy the Bible Student community. So on the same day that
he announced the directors' dismissal at the Brooklyn Bethel (Watch Tower headquarters)
head dining room table, he also released a new book entitled The Finished Mystery
which was advertised as a posthumous work of Pastor Russell and the "seventh
volume" of his Studies in the Scriptures. Consequently, when a bitter,
fivehour verbal battle occurred over Rutherford's organizational coup, it became
possible for him and for Clayton Woodworth, one of the coauthors of The Finished
Mystery, to claim that the ousted directors were really basing their opposition
to the Watch Tower president on their supposed disapproval of the seventh volume
rather than Rutherford's Machiavellian behavior. Hence they were made to appear
to many Bible Students as "out of harmony," not only with Rutherford,
but with the wishes of the late, revered Charles Taze Russell as well. In an
apology for his acts styled Harvest Siftings that was published shortly after
the expulsion of the former directors from Bethel on July 27, 1917, Rutherford
stated:
We are reminded of a coincidence that we here mention. This has indeed been
a great trial on the family [Bethel staff] and upon other dear friends throughout
the country who have heard it. Brother Russell once said that the Seventh Volume
would be given to the Church in its hour of direct need, to encourage and comfort
them, and the Scriptures point out that there would be murmurers, complainers,
etc. The Seventh Volume, as you know, is now published. The first copies were
in the Bethel Dining Room at the noon hour on Tuesday, June 17th [sic ] and
at the conclusion of my statement to the family of what had led up to the conditions,
I stated that the Seventh Volume was there to be distributed to any who desired
it; and immediately thereafter the attacks began on me by [two exdirectors]
Brothers Hirsh and Hoskins.16
Even prior to the publication of Harvest Siftings, Clayton Woodworth had
made similar allegations to a Bible Student convention at Boston, Massachusetts
on August 4, 1917. In a sermon entitled "The Parable of the Penny,"
which was also published as a small booklet, Woodworth tried to claim that Judge
Rutherford was "the steward" of the penny described by Jesus at Matthew
20:1-10 and that The Finished Mystery was the "penny." Thus Woodworth
remarked:
But when the first came. -When the Bethel workers were summoned to receive
the seventh volume of Scripture Studies, at noon, July 17, 1917.
They. -Five or six of the most prominent brethren at the Bethel, the most
highly esteemed, most loved, most appreciated, in some respects, of all the
dear brethren in the Truth. All these dear brethren are pilgrims [travelling
evangelists], all fully conversant with the histories of Korah, Dathan and Abiram,
and all know the full Scripture testimony that humility and submission to the
Divine will is the only path of acceptability to God.
Supposed that they should have received more. -at 1:00 P.M., on July 17th,
1917, these brethren all knew they were to get the Penny, but at that instant,
one after another, in most vigorous language, they made it plain that they wanted
something besides the Penny; more honor, more recognition, more voice in the
guiding of affairs.
And they likewise received every man a penny. -It was theirs, for the taking,
from that instant, and they had not then, nor now, any cause for complaint against
Brother Rutherford's efficient management of what he was elected to manage.
And when they received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house.-Against
the Lord of the Harvest. Thus the Lord considers it.17
From that time to the present, Watch Tower spokesmen and "historians"
have repeated Rutherford and Woodworth's accounts of the matter as though they
were gospel. Testifying in the Moyle trial in October 1943, Fred Franz stated:
"I understand that [in July 1917] they had a day of discussion at the table
on the matter of the seventh volume which was published and the objectors thereto
were the ones who held out."18 Alexander H. Macmillan, one of Rutherford's
closest confidants and a man who was actually present at the bitter July 17,
1917 Watch Tower confrontation, wrote in 1957:
The climax came in July of 1917, only six months after Rutherford had been
elected president. He had arranged to produce the seventh volume of Studies
in the Scriptures. Russell had written the first six. The seventh, called The
Finished Mystery, was really a compilation of material from notes and writings
of Russell and was issued as a posthumous work of Russell's. Since, according
to the bylaws, the president of the Society was also manager of the Society's
affairs, Rutherford had not consulted the board of directors and the four who
thought they were members raised vehement objections. As a result, their opposition
to the policy and work of the Society became so bitter that it was impossible
to maintain unity at headquarters as long as they remained. They were asked
to leave the Bethel home or get in line with the work. They chose to leave.19
Under the subheading "Release of 'The Finished Mystery' a Bombshell,"
the Society's official history, Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, published
in 1959, states: "At noon, July 17, 1917, this book was released at the
Bethel dining room table. As Brother Russell had been accustomed to do, Brother
Rutherford gave a present of this book to each member of the Bethel family.
It came as a bombshell. Completely surprised by its release, the opposing members
of the board of directors immediately seized upon this issue and made it the
occasion of a five-hour controversy over the administration of the Society's
affairs."20 The 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, in a history of the
movement in the United States, gives much the same sort of account. Although
it does not say directly that the release of The Finished Mystery was the cause
of the altercation in question, it certainly attempts to leave that impression.
Among other things, it says: "This incident [the release of The Finished
Mystery and the subsequent debate] revealed that some members of the Bethel
family sympathized with the opposers."21 The four former directors, A.I.
Ritchie, J.D. Wright, I.F. Hoskins, and R.H. Hirsh, always contended that the
Watch Tower Society's official account was a lie. In a publication called Light
after Darkness which they and Watch Tower Vice President A.N. Pierson issued
in response to Harvest Siftings, they asserted: "In the first place none
of the Directors who are falsely accused of being 'murmurers' knew anything
about the issuing of the seventh volume in advance of the time it was given
out. Further, the matter of the seventh volume was entirely outside the issues
under discussion on that occasion. None of the brothers accused of being 'murmurers'
said anything about the seventh volume, nor did they entertain any feeling against
the volume.22 Who, then, has given us the truth? Can the facts be determined
with any certainty after all these years? Yes, for when under oath in the spring
of 1918, Judge Rutherford admitted that his statement on the matter in Harvest
Siftings was false. At the time, he and six associates were being tried for
having interfered with recruiting under the terms of the First-World-War U.S.
Espionage Act. When questioned about what had transpired when The Finished Mystery
had been released at the Brooklyn Bethel in July of the previous year, he voluntarily
admitted that its release had nothing to do with the debate that followed. Note
Rutherford's testimony from the transcript of record:
Question: And I think he [the secretary-treasurer of the Watch Tower Society]
said something as to the purpose in concealing the fact that the seventh volume
of "The Finished Mystery" was going to be published. What is the fact
in reference to that?
Answer: No purpose in the world to conceal the fact that it was going to
be published. The reason of it was this. We had considerable difficulty at the
time in our society.
Question: Was the difficulty over "The Finished Mystery"?
Answer: It was not. It did not include "The Finished Mystery" in
the slightest.
Question: "The Finished Mystery," at the time, had not become the
subject of any discussion among any of the members?
Answer: No, sir, had not discussed it with a single person in the society
at the time this trouble started.
Question: That is the trouble you are referring to as the trouble mentioned
in the resolution which you presented to the Board of Directors on the 17th
of July, 1917?
Answer: Yes, sir.
Question: That was some internal dissension in the organization that did
not apply to this "Finished Mystery"?
Answer: Yes, sir.23
Despite this frank acknowledgement in a court of law, Rutherford never did
attempt to set the record straight among his followers, and the Watch Tower
Society has continued to perpetuate the falsehoods published in Harvest Siftings
and The Parable of the Penny. Thus, instead of admitting candidly that the reason
behind the bitter debate of July 17, 1917 was an organizational power struggle
in which Rutherford was the victimizer rather than the victim, the Society has
left Jehovah's Witnesses with false history. A decade and a half before the
Nazis came to power in Germany, Rutherford and his allies were already using
the technique that Josef Goebbels made famous as the "Big Lie." Their
successors have been doing so ever since. Another example of false history is
even more serious. That involves the attitudes of Watch Tower leaders towards
Nazism and the Jews. Over the years Jehovah's Witnesses have been taught that
while the German churches were guilty of compromise with Hitler and the Nazi
Party, their German brethren, then commonly known as "Earnest Bible Students,"
stood solidly against the principles of the Third Reich. Because of the brave
stand taken by German Witnesses in the face of a terrible persecution which
cost many of them their lives in Hitler's concentration camps, they have rightly
been praised by secular historians. For example, The Watchtower of October 1,
1984 (p. 8) reported the findings of Christine E. King and Michael Kater to
the effect that the number of Witness imprisonments and deaths brought about
by Nazi persecution had been greatly underestimated. Quoting Dr. King, it stated:
"'Theological principles were adhered to; Witnesses remained 'neutral,'
they were honest and completely trustworthy and as such, ironically, often found
themselves employed as servants of the S.S.'" What has not generally been
known either by most Jehovah's Witnesses or many independent scholars, however,
is that while ordinary German Witnesses did quite generally maintain their integrity
and commitment to principles, their leaders-Rutherford, Knorr and high German
Watch Tower officials -did not. Furthermore, Rutherford and his lieutenants
tried to save the German arm of their movement by scapegoating the Jews. During
the first half of the Bible Student-Jehovah's Witnesses' history, they were
notable for their philo-Judaism. Like certain late nineteenth and twentieth-century
American Protestant premillennialists, C.T. Russell was a thoroughgoing supporter
of Zionist causes. He refused to attempt the conversion of the Jews, believed
in the Jewish resettlement of Palestine, and in 1910 led a New York Jewish audience
in singing the Zionist anthem, Hatikva.24 For a time Judge Rutherford followed
in his footsteps. In 1926 he wrote a small book entitled Comfort for the Jews
which suggested that Jewish migration to the ancient Holy Land was a fulfillment
of biblical prophecy. Four years later he produced a similar but larger volume
called Life. But suddenly Rutherford repudiated his beliefs respecting the Jews.
Life was withdrawn from circulation, and in 1932 Rutherford proclaimed that
"fleshly Israel" had no specific role to play in salvation history.25
Perhaps the Judge was simply anxious to assert that Jehovah's Witnesses were
the "true Israel of God," but he may have had other reasons for making
such a dramatic doctrinal switch. During the late 1920s and early 1930s anti-Semitism
was becoming rampant in the United States and Canada with the rise of a variety
of movements both religious and political.26 Then, too, with the start of the
Depression in 1929, it began to appear possible that the violently anti-Jewish
Nazis could come to power in Germany-something which happened on January 30,
1933. So Rutherford may well have been anxious to dissociate the Witnesses from
the Jewish community in any way possible. Yet that can in no way excuse what
the Watch Tower president and his aids were shortly to do in the first year
of the Third Reich. Early in April 1933 the Nazis moved against Jehovah's Witnesses.
Their branch headquarters at Magdeburg were seized and their religious activities
temporarily stopped. But on April 28 the German authorities returned the properties
to the Watch Tower Society, and the Witnesses began to meet together once again
and to carry on their door-to-door proselytizing.27 However, Witness leaders
and Jehovah's Witnesses in general knew that they were not popular with the
Nazis. So, it was at that time, according to standard Witness accounts, that
Judge Rutherford and the German Witness community decided to take a bold stand
against the Hitler dictatorship. Jehovah's Witnesses in The Divine Purpose states:
Judge Rutherford had been watching the German situation closely and was well
acquainted with its development as it affected the witness work. With this serious
turn of events he lost no time in going to Germany, accompanied by N. H. Knorr,
to see what could be done. On June 25 ..., a convention was called in Berlin.
There a Declaration of Facts was presented to the 7,000 in attendance in protest
against the Hitler government for their highhanded interference with the witness
work of the Society, and was unanimously [sic] adopted. The declaration was
mailed to every high officer of the government from the president down to the
members of the council, and 2,500,000 copies were given public distribution.
Retaliation came quickly. Three days later, on June 28, for the second time
the Society's property was seized and occupied, and by government decree its
printing plant was closed.28
But was the seizure of Watch Tower property and the complete banning of Jehovah's
Witnesses at the same time by the German government really because the Declaration
of Facts was a bold protest against Nazi actions? No, quite the contrary: it
was nothing short of a cowardly, self-serving statement in which Rutherford
and his henchmen tried to ingratiate the Witness community with the Nazis by
attacking Great Britain, the United States, the League of Nations, and, above
all, the Jews. Under a sub-section entitled "Jews," it reads:
It is falsely charged by our enemies that we have received financial support
for our work from the Jews. Nothing is farther from the truth. Up to this moment
there never has been the slightest bit of money contributed to our work by Jews.
We are the faithful followers of Christ Jesus and believe upon Him as the Savior
of the world, whereas the Jews entirely reject Jesus Christ and emphatically
deny that he is the Savior of the world sent of God for man's good. This of
itself should be sufficient proof to show that we receive no support from Jews
and therefore the charges against us are maliciously false and could only proceed
from Satan, our great enemy. The greatest and most oppressive empire on earth
is the Anglo-American empire. By this is meant the British Empire, of which
the United States of America forms a part. It has been the commercial Jews of
the British-American Empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as
a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations. This fact
particularly applies to the cities of London and New York, the stronghold of
Big Business. This fact is so manifest in America that there is a proverb concerning
the city of New York which says: "the Jews own it, the Irish Catholics
rule it, and the Americans pay the bills." We have no fight with any of
these persons mentioned but, as witnesses for Jehovah and in obedience to his
commandment set forth in the Scriptures, we are compelled to call attention
to the truth concerning the same in order that the people may be enlightened
concerning God and his purpose.29
That was not all. Besides damning the League of Nations, the declaration
said: "The present government of Germany has declared against Big Business
oppressors and in opposition to the wrongful religious influence in the political
affairs of the nation. Such is exactly our position." Then it proclaimed:
"Instead of being against the principles advocated by the government of
Germany, we stand squarely for such principles, and point out that Jehovah God
through Christ Jesus will bring about the full realization of these principles."30
Of course, as the Witnesses were soon to discover, the Nazis were not impressed
and unleashed a wave of persecution against them almost immediately.31 But it
was then, and only then, that Rutherford, the Watch Tower Society, and German
Witness leaders decided to oppose Nazi policies in an uncompromising fashion.
The Watch Tower Society still boasts of the fidelity of German Jehovah's Witnesses
to Christian principles under the Third Reich. But it also continues to try
to hide its leaders' attempt to compromise with the Nazis in 1933. Although
The Watchtower of October 1, 1984 quoted from Christine King's The Nazi State
and the New Religions, it failed to note what Dr. King had written about the
Society's Declaration of Facts. For example, in a brief evaluation of that document,
she makes what, from a Witness standpoint, is a rather damning remark. She states:
"The document is a master of its kind and worthy of the other four sects
[the Christian Scientists, the Latter-day Saints, the Seventh-day Adventists
and member of the New Apostolic Church, all of whom supported, in one way or
another, the Nazi state." Then, in another paragraph, she says: "Having
attempted to assure the authorities by the Declaration of Facts, of their good
citizenship, having interpreted and explained their teachings in a way, which
given the preoccupations of the regime, was designed to allay fears and offer
a hint of compromise, the Witnesses seemed to have expected little further harassment.
Had the Declaration not condemned with the Nazis, the League of Nations, had
it not described National Socialism as standing out against the injustices Germans
had suffered since 1919 and had it not ended with a personal appeal to the Führer?"32
So it is hardly possible that the present-day leadership of the Society can
be ignorant of the Declaration and its compromising, anti-Semitic nature. Yet
when confronted with the facts, Watch Tower Society spokesmen deny them categorically,33
and the June 8, 1985 Awake! (p. 10)-after damning the clergy of other churches
for supporting Nazism-proclaimed: "However, there was one group in Germany
that courageously championed Christian principles. That group was Jehovah's
Witnesses. Unlike the clergy and their followers, the Witnesses refused to compromise
with Hitler and the Nazis. They refused to violate God's commandments. They
would not break their Christian neutrality in political affairs. (See Isaiah
2:2-4; John 17:16; James 4:4.) They did not attribute Heil, or salvation, to
Hitler, as did the overwhelming majority of their flocks." How the leaders
of a religious organization which claims to be God's sole channel of truth on
earth can be guilty of such lying and outright hypocricy is hard to image, but
they are. The facts speak for themselves. But there is more to the matter than
what is discussed above. For because of their outrageous pretentions, the men
who have ruled and rule Jehovah's Witnesses have been guilty of far more terrible
sins.
|