As more recent articles both in the July 22, 1994 Awake! and in the 1995 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses show, the Watch Tower organization’s willingness to abandon its decades-long pretense was connected with the amendments to the Mexican constitution that have been progressively adopted by the legislative bodies there. The Yearbook (page 212) acknowledges that ownership of property was a factor in the decision to adopt the pretense of being—not a religious organization—but a civil society back in 1943, resulting in replacing the term “congregation” with “company,” calling meeting places “Halls for Cultural Studies,” eliminating audible prayers and “every appearance of a religious service” at meetings there, as well as avoiding “direct use of the Bible” in their door-to-door activity. It states (pages 232, 233) that in the 1980s the organization came under increasing governmental pressure. It acknowledges (page 249) that from December 1988 “one could foresee that there would be a change in policy regarding religion. The conclusion was drawn that it would be advantageous from the standpoint of relations with the government to come out into the open, dropping the pretense of not being a religious organization, and that this was subsequently done in 1989 with Governing Body permission. Under new constitutional amendments, churches were once again allowed to own buildings and property. This was true not only of the Catholic Church but of all denominations.” In view of all this, the evidence is that the opting for a change in status by the Watch Tower organization was made, not primarily because of concern over spiritual issues and principles, but for pragmatic reasons.
The years that have intervened give no evidence of improvement in this area. Recent information has come to light as regards the Watch Tower Society’s affiliation with the United Nations through its Department of Public Information, doing so as a “Non-Governmental Organization [or NGO].” This was done in 1991 and only when it became publicly known and produced adverse reaction did the organization, in October 2001 request that its association be withdrawn. See below:
In a report in the British newspaper The Guardian, Paul Gillies, acting as spokesman for the Watch Tower’s London Branch Office, is quoted as saying: “We do not have hostile attitudes to governing bodies and if we are making representations on issues to the UN we will do so. . . . There are good and bad bodies just as there are good and bad politicians. We believe what the Book of Revelation tells us but we do not actively try to change the political system.”
His reference to the Book of Revelation was evidently due to the fact that Watch Tower publications have, since 1942, identified the League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, with the scarlet-colored wild beast, upon which the harlot Babylon the Great is depicted as riding (See Revelation 16:3-6.) It says of it: “The UN is actually a blasphemous counterfeit of God’s Messianic Kingdom by the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.”22
Thus, the mental outlook that prevailed in the cases cited within this chapter continued. Seen against the background of the organization’s stance regarding Malawi and the issue of alternative service, this association with what the Watch Tower Society deems “a blasphemous counterfeit of God’s Messianic Kingdom” betrays a seriously warped concept of Christian integrity and conscience.
1Details of these attacks and the conditions in the refugee camps are found in the 1965 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, p. 171; Awake! magazine, February 8, 1968, pp. 16-22; the Watchtower, February 1, 1968, pp. 71-79; Awake!, December 8, 1972, pp. 9-28; December 8, 1975, pp. 3-13.
2This argument was presented in the Awake! magazine of December 8, 1972, p. 20. The article I wrote appeared in the December 8, 1975 issue of the same publication.
3New Webster’s Dictionary, Deluxe Encyclopedic Edition.
4Compare Matthew 17:24-27, where Jesus states that a certain tax did not rightly apply to him, but he nevertheless tells Peter to pay it so as ‘not to offend the authorities.’
5Romans 13:7.
6Matthew 5:41.
7These verses say: “Welcome the man having weaknesses in his faith, but not to make decisions on inward questionings. One man has faith to eat everything, but the man who is weak eats vegetables. Let the one eating not look down on the one not eating, and let the one not eating not judge the one eating, for God has welcomed that one.” “But if he has doubts, he is already condemned if he eats, because he does not eat out of faith. Indeed, everything that is not out of faith is sin.”
8From the memorandum submitted by Governing Body member Lloyd Barry.
9From the memorandum by Governing Body member Karl Klein.
10From statements made by Governing Body member Fred Franz and spelled out in a letter by William Jackson to Paul Trask.
11From the Denmark Branch Committee letter (Richard Abrahamson, Coordinator), quoted in Lloyd Barry’s memorandum.
12From statements made by member Ted Jaracz.
13From statement made by member Carey Barber.
14From statement made by member Fred Franz.
15Awake!, February 8, 1968, pp. 21, 22; compare Matthew 7:1-5.
16By this time (1978) Nathan Knorr had died; however, Fred Franz, now president, was at all the sessions involving the discussion of alternative service.
17For further details on this issue, see the sequel to Crisis of Conscience, titled In Search of Christian Freedom, pages 255 to 270, which has been inserted into Appendix B of this 2018 edition of Crisis of Conscience.
18The registration was dated June 10, 1943, in which the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores) authorizes the registration of La Torre del Vigía as a “Non-Profit Civil Association Founded for Scientific, Educational and Cultural Dissemination” (“Asociación Civil Fundada para Ia Divulgación Científica. Educadora y Cultural No Lucrativa”). This arrangement remained in effect over a period of some 46 years.
19The government of Mexico, in reality, showed considerable leniency toward Jehovah’s witnesses, for it must have been known that their presentation of themselves as a non-religious “cultural” organization was simply a subterfuge.
20In the 1970s, my wife and I attended an international assembly in Mexico City and we were lodged at the Society’s Branch office. President Knorr was also there and during our stay he conducted a group of us on a tour of the various buildings of the Mexican branch. During the tour, he commented directly on the legal status of a “cultural organization” held in Mexico and he specifically mentioned as a primary reason for this unusual status the fact that it allowed the organization to keep control of its properties in that country.
21Daniel 6:1-11.
22See the book Revelation—It’s Grand Climax at Hand, pages 246-248.
7
PREDICTIONS AND PRESUMPTION
When the prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah and the word does not occur or come true, that is the word that Jehovah did not speak. With presumptuousness the prophet spoke it. You must not get frightened at him.
— Deuteronomy 18:22.
WHEN it comes to attitudes about the promised return of Christ Jesus, eagerness is certainly to be preferred to apathy. Early Christians were definitely not apathetic about that hoped-for event.
Some years ago I watched a television broadcast in which a public relations representative of the Canadian Branch Office of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Walter Graham, responded to questions about the failure of certain predictions regarding Christ’s return. He said that if any fault was to be found with Jehovah’s Witnesses in this respect, then it was only due to “our enthusiasm of seeing God’s name vindicated and his Kingdom rule the earth.”
Most persons, I think, will agree that it is only human to make the mistake of saying things on the spur of the moment, to let wishful thinking or perhaps strong desire and enthusiasm sway our judgment, causing us to jump to hasty conclusions. Somewhere in our lives we have all done that. Surely if that were all that is involved, no one should have cause for great concern.
Personally I do not believe that that is all that is in
volved here, however. The issues go deeper and the factors related have far greater significance than some common, incidental mistake that we all commit at times. This is particularly so because of the way the predictions involved have affected people’s most vital interests.
A factor that cannot be treated lightly is that the Governing Body views Jehovah’s Witnesses, at least those of the “anointed class” (to which the Governing Body members all belong), as cast in the role of a “prophet,” assigned to that awesome responsibility by God.
Thus, the April 1, 1972, issue of the Watchtower magazine, page 197, carried an article titled, “They Shall Know that a Prophet Was Among Them.” It raised the question as to whether in modern times Jehovah God has had a prophet to help the people, “to warn them of dangers and declare things to come.” The answer given was, yes, that the record showed there was such a prophet.
More recently, the May 1, 1997 Watchtower, on page 8, said:
The first Watchtower quoted states that the proof of the role of modern-day prophet (filled by the body of anointed Jehovah’s Witnesses) is to be found in the “record.” The second provides the criteria that Jehovah identifies his true messengers by making their messages “come true.,” while exposing false messengers by ‘frustrating their signs and predictions.’ Applying these standards, what do we find?
The “record” is worth reviewing. That it reveals mistakes even the headquarters organization will acknowledge. One morning in 1980, when serving as chairman for the daily text discussion at the Brooklyn Bethel home, Fred Franz, then the Society’s president, recounted to the headquarters family his recollections of expectations held regarding the year 1925, forecast as the time when Christ’s millennial rule would be fully manifest on earth. He quoted Judge Rutherford as having said afterward about his own predictions: “I know I made an ass of myself.”1
The organization, however, treats these mistakes as mere evidence of human imperfection and also as evidence of great desire and enthusiasm to see God’s promises fulfilled. I believe that the “record” shows there is more to it than that. It is one thing for a man to make an “ass” of himself because of wanting to see something happen. It is quite another thing for him to urge others to share his views, to criticize them if they do not, even to question their faith or impugn their motives if they do not see the matter as he sees it.
It is still more serious for an organization representing itself as God’s appointed spokesman to all mankind to do this—and to do it, not for a few days or months, but for years, even decades, repeatedly, on an earthwide basis. The responsibility for the results can surely not be shrugged off with simply saying, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
No one is, but every one of us bears a responsibility for what we do. And that is especially so when our actions may dramatically affect something as important and personal as others’ relationship with God.
No less serious is it when a group of men have divided views on predictions related to a certain date and yet present to their adherents an outward appearance of united confidence, encouraging those adherents to place unwavering trust in those predictions.
I suppose I must credit my experience with the Governing Body for also bringing home to me the reality of these matters. During the first twenty years or so of my active association with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I had at most a hazy idea about any failures in past predictions and simply did not attach any great importance to them. I had no interest in literature attacking our teachings on this point. From the late 1950s onward, certain Society publications, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (a history of the organization), and the Society-sponsored book Faith on the March, did mention these failures, but they did so in a way that made them appear as of minor consequence and I viewed them in that same light.
It was not until the late 1970s that I learned just how far the matter went. I learned it then, not from so-called “opposition literature,” but from Watch Tower publications themselves and from active, respected Witnesses, including fellow members of the Governing Body.
1914 is a pivotal date on which a major portion of the doctrinal and authority structure of Jehovah’s Witnesses rests. Jehovah’s Witnesses today hold the following beliefs tied in with that date:
That in 1914 Christ Jesus became “present,” invisible to human eyes, but now beginning a judgment period for all his professed followers and for the world.
That in 1914 Christ Jesus now began active rulership toward all the world, his kingdom officially taking power.
That 1914 marks the start of the “last days” or the “time of the end” foretold in Bible prophecy.
That three and a half years after 1914 (in 1918) the resurrection of Christians sleeping in death, from the apostles onward, began.
That about that same time (in 1918) Christ’s true followers then living went into spiritual captivity to Babylon the Great, being released the following year, 1919, at which time Christ Jesus acknowledged them collectively as his “faithful and discreet slave,” his approved agency for directing his work and caring for his interests on earth, his sole channel for communicating guidance and illumination to his servants earthwide.
That from that time forward the final “harvest” work has been in progress, with salvation or destruction as ultimate destinies.
To weaken belief in the significance of the foundation date of 1914 would weaken the whole doctrinal superstructure (described above) that rests on it. It would also weaken the claim of special authority for those acting as the official spokesman group for the “faithful and discreet slave” class.
To remove that date as having such significance could mean the virtual collapse of all the doctrinal and authority structure founded on it. That is how crucial it is.
Yet few Witnesses today know that for nearly half a century—from 1879 to the late 1920s—the time prophecies published in the Watch Tower magazine and related publications were essentially contrary to all the beliefs just outlined. I for one did not realize it much of my life. Then I found that for nearly fifty years the “channel” of the Watch Tower had assigned different times and dates for every one of the things just listed, and that it was only the failure of all the original expectations regarding 1914 that led to an assigning of new dates to those claimed fulfillments of prophecy.
As discussed in a previous chapter, the research I had to do in connection with the book Aid to Bible Understanding brought home to me that the Society’s date of 607 B.C.E. for Jerusalem’s destruction by Babylon was contradicted by all known historical evidence. Still, I continued to put trust in that date in spite of the evidence, feeling that it had Scriptural backing. Without 607 B.C.E. the crucial date of 1914 would be placed in question. I took the view that the historical evidence was likely defective and argued that way in the Aid book.
Then, in 1977, one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Sweden, named Carl Olof Jonsson, sent to the Brooklyn headquarters a massive amount of research he had done on Biblically related chronology and on chronological speculation. Jonsson was an elder and had been actively associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses for some twenty years.
Having had experience researching chronology myself, I was impressed by how deeply he had gone into the matter, also by the completeness and factualness of his presentation. Basically he sought to draw the Governing Body’s attention to the weakness in the Society’s chronological reckonings leading to the 1914 date as the end point of the “Gentile Times,” referred to by Jesus at Luke, chapter twenty-one, verse 24 (called “the appointed times of the nations” in the New World Translation).
Briefly stated, the 1914 date is arrived at by the following process:
In the fourth chapter of Daniel’s prophecy, the expression “seven times” occurs, applied there to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and describing a period of seven times of insanity the king would experience.2 The Society teaches that those “seven times” are prophetic of something greater, namely, of the period of time extendin
g from Jerusalem’s destruction (placed by the Society at 607 B.C.E.) down to the end of the “Gentile Times,” explained as meaning the period during which the Gentile nations exercise “uninterrupted” dominion over all the earth.
The “seven times” are interpreted as meaning seven years with each year consisting of 360 days (12 lunar months of 30 days each). Seven multiplied by 360 gives 2,520 days. However, other prophecies are referred to that use the expression “a day for a year.”3 Employing this formula, the 2,520 days become 2,520 years, running from 607 B.C.E. to the year 1914 C.E.
As noted earlier, the Society’s present teachings about the beginning of Christ’s kingdom rule, the “last days,” the start of the resurrection and related matters are all tied in with this calculation. Not many Witnesses are able to explain the rather intricate application and combination of texts involved, but they accept the end product of this process and calculation.
Most of Jehovah’s Witnesses for many decades believed that this explanation leading to 1914 was more or less unique with their organization, that it was initially understood and published by the Society’s first president, Pastor Russell. On its inside cover, the Society’s publication Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, published in 1959, contained these statements:
1870
Charles Taze Russell begins his study of the Bible with a small group of associates
1877
The book “Three Worlds” is published identifying the date 1914 as the end of “Gentile Times”
The impression given here, as well as that presented within the book, was that this book “The Three Worlds” (which Russell actually only financed) was the first publication to contain this teaching about 1914.
Crisis of Conscience Page 20