Taken from Christian Sects by Konrad Algermissen

Copyright © 1962 by Hawthorn Books, Inc.

First Edition, June 1962

[Pages 76-101]

 

 

CHAPTER V

 JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

 One of the best known, most pushing and also most antiChristian sects is the one which adopted in 1931 the name "Jehovah's Witnesses". Before that it had called itself the "International Association of Bible Students".

 THE FOUNDER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BIBLE STUDENTS AND HIS BASIC DOCTRINES

The sect was founded by an American tradesman called Charles Taze Russell, who was born in Pittsburg on February 16th, 1852. His parents, of Scottish and Irish descent, were fairly well-to-do. They belonged to the Presbyterian Church and brought up their son as a Calvinist. When Charles was nine, his mother died. His father had him trained for a commercial career. Quite early on the boy showed a taste for brooding over religious questions. He had an emotional temperament and was repelled by the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. At the age of seventeen he joined the Young Men's Christian Association, but did not find peace of mind. He began to disagree more and more strongly with the traditional teaching of his Church.

That he did not completely lose his faith in those critical days could be ascribed, he said later, to his meeting with Adventism. One evening as he was walking through the streets of Allegheny he passed a lighted hall. The Adventists were holding a service there. He went in and listened to the words of the preacher, Jonas Wendell. The result was, in his own words, "that my tottering faith was raised up again by the divine inspiration of the Bible".

Through his meeting with the Adventists Russell's attention was directed to the biblical prophecies about the end of the world. He was particularly interested by the chiliastic problem; that is, the question of the thousand-year kingdom mentioned in the Apocalypse (Apoc. 20. 24). He had been horrified by the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and his Adventist friends' denial of hell gave him some comfort.

By now he was twenty, and helping his father to run a business that had branches in various American states, but his real interest lay in religious problems. He began to collect likeminded people in Pittsburg and Allegheny round him, and formed with them a Bible-study circle. From this circle sprang Jehovah's Witnesses.

The spiritual leader of this Bible society was Russell himself. Neither he nor any other of its members had a proper theological education. Under the influence of Russell's emotional temperament and as a result of his previous religious development it was bound soon to fall into errors.

First of all the twenty-year-old business man became convinced that so far no one had understood the Bible properly, and that he had been called by God to interpret it correctly. With his untutored but prejudiced glance he discovered that the Adventist group which he had joined was right to deny the existence of hell, for St Paul says expressly in his Epistle to the Romans: "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6. 21).

He soon solved the problem of the thousand-year kingdom, too. His basic idea was that this kingdom had a missionary and purifying purpose. It offered those who had died and risen again, in so far as they had not attained perfection in the first life, a second and easier chance to be saved.

The following years brought him the realization that Christ's return at the beginning of the thousand-year kingdom would not be visible, but purely spiritual and invisible. At that moment the Adventists had just suffered another great disappointment. They had proclaimed that Christ would return in 1874, but their prophecy had not been fulfilled. At that time Russell met N. H. Barbour, the editor of the Adventist newspaper Morning Herald. He found him deeply depressed. An interesting exchange of ideas now took place between these two. Barbour took over from Russell the idea that Christ's return would be spiritual and invisible; Russell allowed himself to be convinced by Barbour that the date of the Second Coming could be calculated from the Bible. The date he took over from the Adventists was 1874.

This year plays an important role in the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses. In that year Russell published his first book, under the title The Purpose and Nature of Christ's Return, and he also published in collaboration with Barbour The Two Worlds. For the next four years he worked on the staff of the Morning Herald. At the end of 1878 Russell and Barbour quarrelled. Russell founded his own periodical, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence; today it is still the most important magazine produced by Jehovah's Witnesses.

After his collaboration with the Adventists Russell remained absolutely convinced that 1874 had been the year of Christ's invisible return. He also reckoned that the thousand-year kingdom was due to begin in October 1914. This date was based on the following train of reasoning: the Jewish era ended with the beginning of Christ's public ministry in A.D. 30, but the Jewish state was not destroyed until A.D. 70. The two dates were thus separated by a period of forty years. Russell called this period "the harvest time". The closing stage of the Christian era would last the same length of time. Christ had come down to earth again as an invisible "spiritual being" in October 1874; his thousand-year kingdom was therefore bound to begin forty years later, in October 1914. All human tasks and sufferings would then come to an end. Such was the message proclaimed by the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses from the seventies of the last century onwards.

According to Russell the significance of the forty-year "harvest time" from 1874 to 1914 was that in this period all the saints, that is, those who had attained perfection in the Christian era, would rise from the grave to live and work invisibly with Christ, preparing the way for the thousand-year kingdom which would begin in 1914. The same task was allotted to saints still visible on earth between 1874 and 1914.

By 1914, according to Russell, the latter would have died and been transformed into "spiritual beings". For 1914 marked the end of the period in which perfection in the sense of "divine immortality" could be attained. By 1914 altogether 144,000 souls would have reached this goal. "At the beginning of the thousand-year kingdom those who walked the narrow path will gain immortality. Thus, clothed in the divine nature and power, they will be in a position to undertake in that period the great work of restoring and blessing the world" (Russell: Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. I, p. 206).

The year 1914 would see the start of the millennial age, the period of the thousand-year kingdom, which would provide an easier path of salvation for those not yet made perfect. That is what Russell prophesied before the First World War.

However, he was not satisfied with these calculations. By further study of the Bible he "discovered" God's whole plan of salvation for humanity. This plan embraced, according to Russell, three great epochs.

The first lasted from the creation to the flood. It was under the government of the angels, but, to use Russell's own words, "was a failure on the part of the angels", for the devil defeated man at the Fall in the Garden of Eden (Russell: Studies in the Scriptures, Vol. I, pp. 5 and 69).

The second epoch was to last from the flood to the beginning of the thousand-year kingdom, and was divided into three periods; the patriarchal age (from the flood to the death of Jacob), the Jewish age (from the death of Jacob to the death of Jesus) and the Christian age (from the resurrection of Christ to the beginning of the thousand-year kingdom in 1914). This Christian age was called the "Gospel time". Those who passed the test in the nineteen Christian centuries belonged, as the "elect", to the "bride of the lamb", the 144,000 saints of the Apocalypse. After rising from the sleep of death they would be clad in the harvest time from 1874 to 1914, like their bridegroom Christ, in the divine nature. The rest of the human race, that is, those who died in sin, ought to have perished finally at death as a punishment for their sins, but Christ had gained them a reprieve: they only lay unconscious in the sleep of death and would rise again in 1914. In the thousand-year kingdom, when Satan's power was fettered, they would be subjected to a second, easier test.

According to Russell, the beginning of the thousand-year kingdom, that is, 1914, marked the start of the third great epoch, which was to last forever. The first section of this third epoch was formed by the years of the millennium, which would thus last from 1914 to 2914. In this period all the dead not among the "elect" who rose again between 1874 and 1914 would themselves rise from the dead one after the other, the first to rise being the "conquerors of the Old Covenant". These people would not receive the divine nature with Christ, but the leadership of the thousand-year kingdom here on earth, and after that the status of Adam before the Fall. Their resurrection from 1914 onwards would be visible to all, just as all false religious, social and political systems would be destroyed and Satan's power fettered. In this way favourable conditions would be created for the last and final test and salvation of the human race. All the dead would then rise in succession from the sleep of the grave. As the path of salvation would be easier after 1914, almost everyone would survive the decisive testing time of his life here on earth. Their reward would be neither the divine nature bestowed on the 144,000 "elect", nor the status of Adam in paradise given to the conquerors of the Old Covenant, but an everlasting happy life, as "lower spiritual beings", on a new earth. Only a small number of souls, the incorrigibly wicked, who despised the "highway of salvation" in this second test, too, would experience the final reward of sin, namely, complete annihilation at death. There was no such thing as hell. In 2914 the period of this second test, the thousand-year kingdom, would come to an end. Then a new heaven and a new earth would come into existence; this would be the start of the last, everlasting section of the third epoch of God's way of salvation for humanity.

These ideas had been maturing in Russell's mind since; it was now a question of propagating them. For this his commercial temperament and training proved very useful.

In 1879, as we have already indicated, he had founded the periodical Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence. Right up to his death in 1916 Russell wrote all the articles in it himself. In 1881 he founded the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society". Its purpose was to circulate the above-mentioned periodical and Russell's other writings as widely as possible. The headquarters of the society were at first Allegheny, where Russell lived at the time, and later Brooklyn. The typically American way in which this society worked is indicated by the fact that 1,400,000 copies of a pamphlet called Food for Thinking Christians which Russell produced in 1881 were thrust by telegraph boys through the doors of Protestant churches in the United States, Canada and Great Britain on three successive Sundays in the year of publication.

In this same year, 1881, Russell set to work on his literary masterpiece, Studies in the Scriptures; there are seven volumes of these, containing altogether 2,600 pages. In the course of time this work has been translated into twenty languages, and many millions of copies of it have been distributed.

In order to reach the widest possible public with his weekly sermons, Russell had them published by his own newspaper company every Sunday in 2,000 papers.

He also set up his own "Bureau for Bible Readings". This organization had seventy employees, who travelled about as "pilgrims", propagating the new ideas. They received expenses and a small sum as pocket-money. There were also another 700 auxiliary workers; these people devoted only a part of their time to propaganda and were paid nothing. The itinerant pilgrims and colporteurs carried brochures and tracts containing Russell's articles from the Watch Tower. They also tried to win converts by the spoken word.

In 1909 Russell founded another periodical called the People's Pulpit, and at the same time another society to distribute it, the "People's Pulpit Association".

In order to be able to distribute as many copies of his writings as possible free of charge, he founded his own bank. He also used his own fairly considerable fortune to further the movement. For example, to gain the biggest possible circulation for his Teaching of the Bible about Hell, he contributed 40,000 dollars, "so that all might learn that God is a God of love".

By these commercial methods he built up an enormous circulation for the literature of the movement. 500,000,000 copies of a four-paged pamphlet called the Scripture Searcher were given away every year.

No modern sectary has possessed a clearer appreciation of the importance of the written word than Russell. According to the sect's own figures, he himself wrote about 50,000 pages during his lifetime on biblical questions. He also realized that all this literature would not fulfil its purpose without oral recommendation and explanation. Therefore the pilgrims and colporteurs were thoroughly trained as travelling speakers. Skilful advertising usually made it possible to turn the gatherings of Bible Students into mass-meetings. The chief speaker was Russell himself. He roamed the world tirelessly, making speeches and winning converts. In 1910 he was in Palestine, Egypt and Russia; in 1911 in Korea, China, India and Palestine again. According to figures published by the movement, in the course of his travels he gave 30,000 sermons and addresses.

All this written and oral propaganda was complemented by what was then a very modern medium. By making many sacrifices Russell succeeded in producing on his own initiative the Photo Drama of Creation, a film which shows, in four two-hour instalments, and in accordance with the ideas of the Bible Students, the development of the earth from a collection of gases to the fulfilment of the Messianic kingdom. Some of the sequences were photographed in the Holy Land, and the scenario was written by Russell himself.

Russell's adherents called themselves at first "Millennial Dawnists", that is, people who believe in the approaching inauguration of the "thousand-year kingdom of Christ". In 1913 the title "International Association of Bible Students" was officially adopted, and since 1931, as we have already indicated, Russell's followers have called themselves Jehovah's Witnesses.

Systematic propaganda in Germany, England, Australia and Scandinavia began in 1903. Results were at first poor in Germany, better in England and Australia, but best of all in America. When Russell visited Palestine for the second time in 1911, he told the Jews that they would soon possess the Promised Land again. Thousands of Jews gave him a great ovation in the New York Hippodrome when he returned to America.

In 1914 Russell visited Germany, and spoke in a number of cities. Whenever he appeared the tall man with the big white beard, attractive features and friendly but dignified bearing made a deep impression.

Autumn 1914 approached. Then, according to what Russell had prophesied for forty years, the thousand-year reign of Christ would begin. The pagan age would come to an end, all earthly misery cease and Satan's power would be fettered. In October 1914, according to Russell's prophecies, the forty years of the "harvest time" were over. And this also meant the end of the "Gospel period", in which alone the divine nature could be won by the 144,000 "elect"; it was high time for Russell himself to leave this earthly life and to join the ranks of the "bride of the Lamb".

But Russell had worse luck than any other Adventist prophet. In October 1914 he was still alive and the reign of peace did not begin. On the contrary, the first dreadful world war broke out. A bloody era of international conflict and immeasurable human suffering began.

Russell tried to extricate himself from his precarious position. On the basis of fresh study of the Bible he explained that the harvest time did not really end until the spring of 1918, and that it would be followed by a gleaning-time of indefinite duration. But the spring of 1918 gave no signs of being the start of a thousand-year kingdom of peace. The First World War was entering its last and bloodiest stage. When it finally ended in the autumn of that year, discord and suffering by no means disappeared. Dreadful years of revolution and economic shortage followed. An unhappy peacetreaty sowed the seeds of the Second World War. Then came Bolshevism and Nazism, the frightful suffering of the Second World War and the troubles of the post-war years. Even the greatest optimist would hardly dare to suggest that since 1914 Satan's power had been fettered.

A kindly fate saved Russell himself from this continuous series of disappointments. He did not even live to see the spring of 1918. In October 1916, at the age of sixty-four, he was on an extensive missionary tour of the western states of America. Although he was suffering from a painful disease of the bladder he gave himself no rest. He addressed big meetings in Providence, Fall River, Dallas, Galveston and San Antonio. On October 29th he spoke at a large gathering at Los Angeles, and then boarded the Santa Fe pullman for Kansas City. On the journey he worked on the speech that he wanted to deliver there, but death overtook him on the train in the midst of his work. On November 10th the body arrived at New York, where the funeral took place. A lawyer called Rutherford, a prominent member of the movement and Russell's successor as its leader, read at the funeral the sermon which Russell had written for a meeting which had been due to take place in New York that very evening. Its text was taken from Isaias 21. 12: "The morning comes but it is still night."

On November 11th Russell's body was laid to rest in the Rosemont cemetery at Pittsburg, in the section of the cemetery belonging to the International Bible Students. A large crowd attended the burial, and more than a hundred cars followed the hearse, a quite exceptional number for those days.

In Russell there died a curiously gifted man with an enormous capacity for work. He was quite unselfish. Although millions passed through his hands, he spent on an average only eleven dollars a month on his own needs.

Russell was unquestionably a religious man. He prayed before every meal, even at hotels and in trains. But his "religiosity" bore the clear mark of the sectarian with no theological training, who reads his own fantasies into the Bible. At the end of his life Russell called himself the pastor of 1,200 congregations; yet he had never been consecrated as a priest or received any theological or academic training. As a result his work seethes with the grossest theological errors of every kind. His fundamentally religious nature was revealed in his revolt against the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and in the eager longing for salvation which emerges clearly from his interpretation of the millennium. All his thoughts and desires were aimed at showing God in his merciful goodness, at justifying him before all men, and at opening to all men without exception the path to eternal happiness. He was firmly convinced of his prophetic vocation.

Russell's missionary work was typically American in the grand scale on which it was planned, but the methods by which it was carried out reflect a somewhat dubious worldliness. The same spirit was reflected in the affair of his divorce. He met his wife, Maria Frances Ackley, in 1879 and married her three months later. At first his colleague, she soon became his literary and religious competitor. From 1892 onwards their difficulties increased, for both felt themselves called by God to be prophets, but could not agree on the content of their prophecies. In 1903 they parted and in 1906 decided on legal separation. Mrs Russell claimed maintenance from her husband. Russell asserted that he had no money, which was true; for the court established that he had made over his private fortune of 317,000 dollars to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, of which he was president.

All Russell's activities reflect the business-like spirit that is typical of America; but they also reveal his personal integrity, exceptional energy and administrative ability.

 THE FOUNDER'S SUCCESSORS

 After Russell's death the American lawyer Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who had been brought up as a Baptist, became the leader of the movement. In energy and initiative he was not much inferior to Russell; in impudence and unscrupulousness he far outstripped him. He also inherited Russell's business acumen and prophet's mantle. With the help of American money he made use of the disturbances of the postwar years to carry on his propaganda, especially in the defeated countries. The anti-ecclesiastical and anti-clerical mood of the working classes was encouraged by provocative pamphlets of the worst sort attacking the Church and the clergy. Thus the International Association of Bible Students eagerly abetted the movement away from the Churches in the years after the war.

It was no easy task for Rutherford to continue his predecessor's prophetic activity. He displayed enviable courage. Russell himself had helped him over the first years after 1918 with his discovery of the "gleaning time" which would follow the harvest time. But when all is said and done, the gleaning period after a forty-year harvest can scarcely last longer than the harvest itself, and Rutherford himself saw that. He therefore felt called to make some pronouncement about the length of the "gleaning time" and the actual start of the kingdom of peace. In his book Millions of People now Living will never Die he writes: "In 1925 we can expect to witness the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other stalwarts of the Old Testament. They will rise again and be restored to perfect humanity in order to be the visible, lawful representatives of the new order of things on earth" (4th edn., 1920, p. 52).

The year 1925 came and went, but there was no sign of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the other Old Testament heroes. Rutherford wrote a long book called Justification. In it he says:

 God's devoted people emphasized the importance of the dates 1914, 1918 and 1925; but all that it had predicted did not come to pass. Jehovah's loyal servants were disappointed in their expectations for the years 1914, 1918 and 1925, and their disappointment lasted for some time. Later they learned that, although these dates are firmly laid down in the Scriptures in a certain way, they should not fix any more dates for the future or predict what will occur at any given time but, so far as coming events are concerned, rely on God's word, and this they are doing (Vol. I, pp. 143 and 332).

 If human stupidity were not so boundless, the movement would at that point have sunk without trace like a leaking ship. But it did not sink. Attendances at meetings grew bigger and bigger, and in his last book, entitled Hell, Rutherford was able to revive the old worn-out prophecies and give them a new twist by writing: "All things are fulfilled in our day, testifying that the Lord Jesus is present and that his kingdom has come. The resurrection of the dead will soon begin. By `soon' we do not mean next year. But we confidently believe that it will happen before another century has passed."

Rutherford completely abandoned most of Russell's biblical calculations concerning God's plan of salvation for humanity and also the greater part of his signed writings. The seven volumes of Russell's Studies in the Scriptures were allowed to sink into oblivion. The "Watch Tower Society", which Russell had founded as a propaganda body, became under Rutherford the community of those saved before Christ's return, with the task of working as God's nation within all other political, religious and economic organizations and against them, because they are all under the sway of Satan. Of the various titles assumed by the sect-Jehovah's Witnesses (from 1931 onwards), Theocratic Organization, New World Society (from 1953 onwards)-it was the first that persisted; for in 1922 "active witnessing" for the one God and creator Jehovah, "service in the field", as it is known, was laid down as the most important condition of membership. Every member of the sect must be an active "publisher"; there is no such thing as passive membership. As the doctrine of the Trinity is rejected, Rutherford did away with the feast of Christmas and the symbol of the cross. He subordinated all local organizations to the theocratic dictatorship of the Brooklyn headquarters, which is run by the president and seven directors, assisted by forty leading members of the movement.

Rutherford jettisoned almost all Russell's biblical calculations and primitive speculations. He retained the years 1914 and 1918, but gave them a different significance. In 1914, he explained, Christ had ascended his heavenly throne and since then had been leading the final struggle against the satanic powers. In the spring of 1918, as leader of the "Theocratic Union", he had defeated Satan and his followers, and cast them down to earth. Since then Satan had been stirring up the anti-Christian religious, political and economic forces of earth against Christ even more strongly than between 1914 and 1918, but soon all the elements hostile to God-religions as well as nations and economic groups-together with Satan and his retinue, would be completely destroyed in the great battle of Armageddon. The continually increasing political and religious confusion on earth indicated that the end was near.

Rutherford outstripped the founder of the movement in literary activity as well as in subtle biblical calculations and sheer obstinacy. Between 1920 and his death in 1942 he wrote eighteen books of an average length of 350 pages and thirtytwo 64-page pamphlets. Above all he spread his doctrines by means of gramophone records on which he himself spoke, and which were, and still are, played to large numbers of people.

It was Rutherford who was primarily responsible for the conversion of Russell's Bible study sect into a theocratic organization rigidly ruled from the Brooklyn headquarters. But his successor, the present president of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Nathan H. Knorr, has the same talent for organization and propaganda and the same energy as his predecessors, and works in just the same spirit.

 

 GROWTH, ORGANIZATION AND EXPANSION THROUGH THE WORLD

As we have already indicated, since 1922 all the members of the sect have been "publishers"; that is, they all take an active part in winning new members for the movement. As a result, Jehovah's Witnesses have acquired a particular kind of extreme persistence unparalleled in any other sect. Passive members, as we have already said, are not tolerated. This activism, which has risen in times of persecution to a readiness for martyrdom, has made Jehovah's Witnesses into a worldwide sect with a foothold in almost every country in the world. Their numbers are still growing fast. At the beginning of 1925 the sect numbered 65,132 publishers; by 1928 the figure was 89,278, in 1947 it was 176,456, in 1959 it vas 717,088, and by 1960 it was 803,482. In addition, there are 28,688 leaders or "pioneers", of whom 5,442 are paid "special pioneers" on the headquarters staff.

That is unquestionably a remarkable growth in thirty-five years, especially when we reflect that many personal sacrifices, in the way of time given to training and active recruiting, are demanded of every "publisher". In addition, the number of sympathizers is far greater than that of the "publishers".

The active work of the "publishers" is attested by the sales of the literature, the overflowing meetings and the large number of visits to private houses. In 1959 15,500,000 books and periodicals were sold, over 92,000,000 single copies of the magazines, especially the Watchtower, were disposed of, many of them being given away, and 1,247,972 new subscribers were won. The Watchtower was printed in fifty-five languages and the sect's publications as a whole, including the Bible, in about a hundred. Over 630,000 public lectures and meetings were held, most of them attended by large numbers of people. In connection with lectures or house-visits, "publishers" made over 44,000,000 "follow-up visits" and conducted more than 600,000 "home Bible hours". In 1959 every "publisher" put in, on an average, 157 hours of field service and made fiftyfive house-visits. In the same year 86,345 persons were baptized.

We are thus dealing, in the Jehovah's Witnesses, with a movement which aims at world conquest and employs to this end vast sums of money and the most modern methods of propaganda, especially in the way of the written word.

The movement is based in the country where it originated, the United States of America. Of the 803,482 "publishers" registered in 1959, 221,240 lived in America. The Brooklyn headquarters, founded in 1909, is a thirteen-storey building with a printing press and publishing office. It is called Bethel House. The president and seven directors live there, and from there the whole movement is directed; it comprises eighty-fi~ e branch offices, 180 regions, 1,492 circuits and 19,982 congregations or "companies". The Brooklyn headquarters gives authoritative guidance to each individual congregation, indeed, through the chain of regional, circuit and local "servants", to each individual member. A number of men and women live and work at the Brooklyn headquarters as "ordained servants". There and at the "Watchtower Bible School of Gilead" at South Lansing, N.Y., founded in 1943, men and women from all countries are trained as preachers and propagandists for work overseas. There are courses in three languages: English, French and Spanish. The school possesses its own farm and makes its own electricity.

After the U.S.A. the next largest number of witnesses is to be found in Western Germany, where, at the beginning of 1960, there were about 1,285 "pioneers" and 62,400 "publishers". The sect gained its first foothold in Germany in 1903 and grew rapidly after the First World War. When Hitler came into power there were 25,000 "publishers" in Germany, organized in 375 companies, mainly in Saxony. Dresden possessed the biggest local group in the world. The National Socialist regime set out from the start to exterminate the sect, and many of its members were arrested and murdered or thrown into concentration camps. The main reasons for the persecution were pacifist tendencies, refusal to do military service and sympathy with communist economic ideas.

But not all the Witnesses perished at the hands of the Gestapo, and after the collapse of Germany new local groups were founded. The firm resistance of the Witnesses to Nazism had won them considerable sympathy. By 1947 there were 20,871 "publishers" in Germany, organized in 1,441 local congregations, and in that year they received a visit from the president of the movement, Nathan Homer Knorr.

The Witnesses' year-book for 1948 (which cannot be bought through the normal channels) has, on page 124, a passage of some interest to Catholics:

Jehovah's Witnesses ejected from the Eastern zone were settled in the blackest Catholic regions. They began to go from house to house, and now one group after another is being set up in these districts, where no ray of divine truth has penetrated within living memory. More than 1,500 of these true Witnesses of the Lord were brought from Silesia alone into these completely Catholic districts. There, as torchbearers of the Kingdom they scared the ancient nests of the hierarchy and disturbed the monks and priests in their slumbers.

 No details of activities in communist countries are given in the year-book, but it claims that there are about 100,000 "publishers" in these lands, including East Germany, so that growth has been relatively strong there, too, in spite of the restrictions and persecutions of the communist regimes.

Outside the U.S.A. and Western Germany the sect is most widespread in England, where there are 40,884 "publishers". Then come, before the other European countries, African and Latin American lands; Rhodesia has 39,000 members, Nigeria almost 27,000, Mexico 18,000, Brazil about 16,000, South Africa 15,500, Nyasaland over 14,000 and France about 13,000. There are over 11,000 "publishers" in Holland and Cuba, 9,000 in Denmark, 8,000 in Sweden, 7,500 in Finland, 6,500 in Greece, 6,000 in the Argentine, 5,500 in Belgium and about the same number in Austria. The smallest numbers are to be found in Spain (1,200), Portugal (500) and Ireland (200). This incomplete survey shows that even predominantly Catholic countries are not safe from the large-scale and intensive propaganda of the Witnesses. Even where the movement is officially rejected and opposed-for example, in the communist countries and Greece-it has been able to overcome the difficulties and to make progress.

A religious body which after eighty-five years of existence numbers about 800,000 members cannot be regarded as a mass-movement from the point of view of numbers. But we must remember that every member is active as a propagandist, that the movement is making immense efforts in the direction of world-conquest, and that in consequence the number of countries covered (at present 175) and of "publishers" and "pioneers" is continually growing. The menace of the Jehovah's Witnesses, which consists in the worldwide extension of their errors, must therefore not be underestimated.

 THE DOCTRINES OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES

The great concern of the sect's founder was to proclaim to humanity a God who was kinder than the one described in Christian teaching. In reality, however, he and his successors have destroyed the true picture of the one and only God as the absolute, infinite spirit, and they have done this by misinterpreting God's revelation as recorded in the Bible. For them, the centre of the divine revelation is not Christ as the incarnate Son of God and redeemer of humanity, forecast in the Old Testament, but God's supposed plan for the redemption of humanity, which they construct quite arbitrarily out of inferences drawn from the Bible. We shall disregard the crazy prophecies of modern inventions which Russell claimed to find in the Bible and which he explained in such an anomalous way in the seventh volume of his Studies that his successor suppressed the whole book, the chief work of the sect's founder. But Rutherford and Knorr and their colleagues have themselves degraded the Bible into a collection of riddles and are ready to make big personal sacrifices in order to give it a wider circulation.

One or two small examples will be sufficient. According to the present teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses the creation of the first man took place in the autumn of 4025 B.C. The sect is not the least disturbed by the fact that conscientious scientific investigation has proved that the existence of men on earth, and in quite separate areas, goes back tens of thousands of years and probably 500,000. Historians showed long ago, for example, that the Egyptians introduced the reformed calendar in 4241 B.c. According to Jehovah's Witnesses there were no men on earth at all at that time. The year 1874 they connect with Daniel 12. 12, which says: "Blessed shall his lot be that waits patiently till thirteen hundred and thirty-five days are over." This passage refers to the time between the abolition of the daily sacrifice in the temple at Jerusalem by Antiochus IV and its restoration. Russell and his successors simply turned the days into years, like the modern Adventists. They explained that in A.D. 539 the Ostro-Goth empire had fallen and that then, with the "beginning of papal domination", the "bestial order of things" had started. 539 plus 1,335 certainly equals 1,874; but all the rest is rubbish. Daniel is talking about days, not years. The Ostro-Goth empire ended in 553 with the death of King Tejas, not in 539. The papacy was not founded in the sixth century; it had been guiding the Church for centuries by then. But these facts do not bother Jehovah's Witnesses.

The year 1914 is calculated from the Bible in this, way. The last king of Israel, Sedecias, was dethroned in 606 B.c. In the third book of Moses (i.e. Leviticus) 26. 18 following, God proclaims that he will exact sevenfold punishment for Israel's sins. According to Jehovah's Witnesses, this "sevenfold" means a period of seven ages. "Days" are a prophetic expression for years, and seven times 360 years is 2,520 years. If you reckon the pagan age as starting in 606 B.c., and add on 2,520 years, that brings you to 1914, the year in which the righteous of the Old Testament will rise again and start to rule in the "thousand-year kingdom". In reality Sedecias' reign ended in 586 B.c., not 606 B.c. To construct a period of 2,520 years out of a sevenfold punishment is a mathematical masterpiece that only Jehovah's Witnesses could achieve.

More dangerous from a religious point of view are their teachings about God and Christ. On page 195 of the first volume of his Studies Russell writes: "We cannot imagine our divine Father, any more than our Lord Jesus, as a great spirit without a body. Their bodies are splendid, spiritual bodies." So, according to this, God is a spiritual-corporeal being, and those men who are among the 144,000 "saints" receive the essential divine nature. Such a primitive conception of God is in contradiction to the intellectual recognition of the absolute perfection and unchangeability of God. It is also in contradiction to the clear words of the Bible, expressly emphasizing God's pure spirituality: "God is a spirit; and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4. 24). The short confession of faith printed in the Watchtower says nothing of Russell's primitive ideas about God's nature and mentions only his eternity and creative power. Obviously the "Theocratic Organization" is trying to suppress its founder's teaching on this point, too, or at any rate to let it sink silently into oblivion. Nevertheless Jehovah remains a bloodthirsty and arbitrary God who is interested only in the modem "Theocratic Organization" of Jehovah's Witnesses, and condemns to destruction all men who do not belong to it, that is, members of all other Churches and religions, and the representatives of all political and economic organizations. The Armageddon of the Apocalypse (16. 16, corresponding to Judges 5. 19) is quite falsely interpreted by the sect to suit their own ideas and interests.

Jehovah's Witnesses also deny the mystery of the Trinity, although it is clearly defined in the Bible at all the decisive moments in the story of the redemption. At the incarnation the angel said to Mary: "The Holy Spirit will come upon thee, and the power of the Most High will overshadow thee. Thus this holy offspring of thine shall be known for the Son of God" (Luke 1. 35). At the beginning of Christ's public ministry "heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down like a dove and resting upon him. And with that, a voice came from heaven, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3. 16). Before his public ministry ended, Christ said: "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to befriend you .... It is the truth-giving Spirit" (John 14. 16). When he departed from the earth Christ gave this command: "You, therefore, must go out, making disciples of all nations, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28. 19). Three separate persons are named here, but baptism takes place in the name of one God and one single divine being.

From the rejection of belief in the Trinity the denial of Christ's essential divinity follows of its own accord. According to the sect's teaching, Christ is Jehovah's first created creature. As a so-called perfect "spiritual being", that is, a perfect being with a spiritual body, he had a pre-human existence and by being born of Mary became a pure human being. In his "redemptive sacrifice" his human existence was annihilated; at the resurrection he received a new spiritual body from Jehovah, and, as a reward, the divine immortality which Jehovah has always possessed. Christ is regarded as the real founder of the "Theocratic Union"; in 1914 he assumed the direction of the "Theocratic Union", at first invisibly in the higher regions, then, since 1918, directly but still invisibly, and is now making ready, as avenger and judge, the exterminating battle of Armageddon, which will take place in our generation. The significance of Christ as the real Son of God, redeemer of humanity from sin, and merciful saviour, are thus completely distorted in the interests of a sect which is tiny in comparison with the billions of people who have lived, and still will live, on this earth of ours. By denying the truth of the Trinity, the essential eternal divinity of Christ and the essential divinity of the Holy Spirit, Jehovah's Witnesses put themselves outside the basic Christian truths.

Their teaching about the nature of man is also erroneous and un-Christian. They deny the essential difference between men and animals; Russell says that it is only "thanks to his better body and finer organization that man possesses a higher intelligence" (Studies, V, 327). They deny the purely spiritual nature of the human soul and with it its natural immortality. In their writings Jehovah's Witnesses confuse immortality with eternity and uncreatedness, although even in the Old Testament the essential difference between body and soul is clearly expressed: "Back goes dust to its parent earth, and the spirit returns to the God who gave it" (Eccles. 12. 7). That is why Christ speaks of those "who kill the body, but have no means of killing the soul" (Matt. 10. 28).

According to Jehovah's Witnesses, the death that God threatened in paradise and decreed as punishment relates to both the body and the soul of man. There is not a word in their writings of the soul's supernatural life of grace, and the natural immortality of the soul after the Fall is denied. As a result of Adam's original sin every man is completely annihilated at death.

As the most highly organized creature, Christ was capable of gaining immortality for the "elect" by his obedience; for "at his baptism he dedicated himself to Jehovah's purpose".

Because Satan's might prevails in the "Gospel age", only a small section of humanity will attain immortality in this age of history. Only from 1914 onwards will a second and easier testing-time start in the thousand-year kingdom. In these thousand years all the dead will rise again. Satan's power is then fettered and an easier path to salvation is granted. But on this easier path men will not gain a share in the divine happiness, in the visio beatifica; they will attain a purely creaturely, earthly happiness. The first righteous men of the Old Testament to rise again will rule as leaders and princes in the thousand-year kingdom; thus the Jews will rule in this realm and at the end of the thousand years they will attain the status of the first men in paradise. All the rest of mankind who pass the test in the thousand-year kingdom will be happy forever on a new earth. The few unconverted will be finally destroyed; they sink back into nothingness and are completely annihilated. There is no such thing as hell. Only the 144,000 "sanctified" of the "Theocratic Union" or "New World Society", the real "bridal class of Christ", will reign with Christ in heaven. They are the "Witnesses of Jehovah", who have cut every link with the religious, political and economic powers of the earth, refuse to do military service, devote themselves entirely to intensive "proclamation of the kingdom" to the "Theocratic Organization", fully obey the moral law, abstain from all earthly pleasures, avoid the use of narcotics, and do not send their children to secondary schools, in case they fall a prey to earthly vanities and devote their energies to the pursuit of earthly positions instead of serving as witnesses.

All Jehovah's Witnesses are received into the "Theocratic Union" through baptism by immersion without any special baptismal formula; however, baptism is not regarded as a sacrament; it simply possesses the character of a reception-rite by which the neophyte confesses that he is a sinner and gives himself to God. The Lord's Supper is not a sacrament either; it is simply an intensification of the surrender to God in baptism. Communion is only dispensed once a year, after sunset on the 14th of the Jewish month Nisan. Only a minority of the "publishers" are admitted to communion, so that the number of the 144,000 "sanctified", the "royal priesthood", the "little flock", the "brides of the Lamb", is not exceeded. The other "publishers" are admitted to the Lord's Supper only as spectators.

The sect displays not only immense energy in making converts, but also an exceptional readiness for sacrifice and martyrdom; this springs from the doctrine of "election" and the proximity of the destructive battle of Armageddon. The layman must cooperate with the priest in correcting the errors of this sect, for he is in much more frequent contact with the Witnesses and with those endangered by their teaching.

In the struggle with this sect Catholics must be taught that the God proclaimed by Jehovah's Witnesses is a distorted image of the one and only God, the absolute, infinite, immeasurable spirit, the infinitely merciful being, who has called all men to eternal happiness and given to everyone the unmerited, yet sufficient, grace to reach this goal. Catholics must realize that the true Son of God is degraded by this sect to a creature and the Bible completely falsified. Even the sect's name is an error; there is no question of their being witnesses of Christ, and the very word "Jehovah" is a false form of the Hebrew "Yahweh". Just as the nature of the true God with these persons is distorted, the significance of Christ debased and the Bible falsified, so man's nature is degraded by the denial of his spiritual, immortal soul.

In short, the "Theocratic Organization", "New World Society" or sect of Jehovah's Witnesses systematically destroys all the basic doctrine of Christianity. The spiritual, infinite God of the Bible is rejected, the mystery of the Trinity ridiculed, the eternal essential divinity of Christ denied and the belief in the natural immortality of the human soul abandoned. The Christian Churches are attacked with hatred and slander, the sacraments robbed of their worth, teaching about the Last Things completely distorted, and the spirit of hatred and provocation spread abroad in place of Christian love and harmony.

OFFSHOOTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL BIBLE STUDENTS

 The founder of the Bible Students died in 1916. The autocratic behaviour of his successor, the lawyer Joseph F. Rutherford, led to a split as early as 1917. Communities of "Free Bible Students" were formed; in some countries they united in national associations. The "Free Bible Association", as it is known, agrees in principle with Russell's speculations, but has added new, false calculations to the earlier history of the world. It does not display the radicalism of Jehovah's Witnesses and does not require converts to leave their previous Church. It does not even insist on a fresh baptism by immersion. It lays particular emphasis on a moral imitation of Christ based on the Bible.

A further split occurred after Russell's death with the foundation of the "Dawn Bible Student Association", a quite free and unorganized association of circles of particularly active Bible students.

Yet another offshoot sprang up in 1917, the "Laymen's Home Missionary Movement", which accepts all Russell's biblical calculations and goes on spreading his writings. Like the two above-mentioned bodies, it is just a loosely-organized but international association of followers of Russell. Its members believe that the coming thousand-year kingdom will almost have the significance of an (apokatastasis panton), that is, that it will bring salvation and happiness for all men, because in it all men will be sanctified by the Holy Spirit and only those who fall away again will be destroyed for ever. For the rest, this body's teachings about the Last Things agree with those of Russell.

In 1920 a Swiss adherent of Russell called F. L. Alexander Freytag founded the "Church of the Kingdom of God". Its headquarters are at Cartigny near Geneva. Its bi-monthly magazine, the Kingdom of Righteousness Advertiser, is printed at Cartigny in six languages in an edition of 100,000 copies, and some of Freytag's works have been published in editions of 200,000 copies. The number of members or sympathisers is therefore probably between 100,000 and 150,000. According to this sect, which follows in essentials the basic ideas of Russell, death has lost its meaning as a punishment for sin, in accordance with Rom. 6. 23. By following the "world law of universal and selfless love" and truly imitating Christ, man will regain, with the help of reforms in his mode of life, the sixth sense which he lost through sin. This sixth sense consists of a divine fluid, which bestows the capacity to receive physical immortality.

When Freytag died in 1947, his teachings underwent a change in the direction of those of Jehovah's Witnesses. The 144,000 "elect" are now regarded as forming the "little flock". Their death is a voluntary atoning sacrifice, like Christ's. Their whole life consists of perfect submission to God and devotion to their fellow-men. Freytag may not be regarded as an incarnation of God, but his writings are valued more highly than the Bible. The "Church of the Kingdom of God" has baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper, but, as in the case of Jehovah's Witnesses, they are not regarded as sacraments. The Lord's Supper is celebrated every year on Good Friday as a Passover meal. A higher value is attached to the "Vow of Consecration" to complete self-sacrifice and submission. Only those who keep this vow are permitted to take the cup at communion, and these people form the "little flock" of 144,000 "elect". The modern Bible-study movement has here united with sectarian perfectionism.