14See also pages 383, 384.
15Daniel Taylor, Ph.D., The Myth of Certainty, (Word Books, Waco, Texas, 1986), pp. 29, 30.
16Galatians 5:1, 13, 14; 1 Corinthians 9:1, 19; Colossians 3:17, 23-25.
171 Peter 5:7, NRSV; compare Matthew 6:26-33.
18Matthew 11:28-30; Mark 9:36, 37; 10:13-16; Luke 15:1-7; John 15:11-15.
19Psalm 31:11-16; 55:2-6, 12-14, 22; 60:11, 12; 94:17-22; Romans 5:1-11; 8:31-39.
20Matthew 28:20, RSV.
212 Timothy 2:19, RSV.
22Compare Matthew 13:37-43 with Romans 2:5-10, 16; 14:10-12; 1 Corinthians 4:3-5; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 10:12, 18; 2 Timothy 4:1.
23Acts 10:34, 35.
24Psalm 27:10; compare Psalm 31:11; 38:11; 50:20; 69:8, 9, 20; 73:25, 28.
25Ephesians 4:2, 3, Phillips Modern English translation.
261 Corinthians 16:19; Colossians 4:15; Philemon 1:2; Acts 2:46; Jude 1:12.
27Matthew 7:12, RSV.
28Matthew 22:40, RSV.
29Revelation 19:10; compare 1 Peter 1:10, 11.
30Romans 11:33; Ephesians 3:16-19, NIV.
31Colossians 2:3.
321 Corinthians 13:9, 10, 12, 13, NEB.
33l John 4:21.
34Matthew 20:1-8. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, in connection with Ephesians 6:5 cites the figure of 60 million slaves as likely.
35John 6:68.
361 John 3:18.
37Hebrews 13:6, NIV.
APPENDIX A:
Chapter References
For Chapter 3
The preceding document is the Will prepared by Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watch Tower Society and its magazine, as published in the Watch Tower of December 1, 1916.
For Chapter 5
Following are paragraphs from the May 1, 1996, Watchtower presenting a reversal of position regarding the “alternative service” issue discussed in Chapter 5.
For sake of comparison, sample portions of the 14-page memorandum I submitted to the Governing Body in 1978 are here reproduced. This is, obviously, only a small fraction of the evidence presented then, some 18 years before they finally acknowledged that alternative service should be a matter of conscience.
For Chapter 10
As noted, the approach of the year 2014, marking 100 years since the prominent Watch Tower date of 1914, certainly presents a problem for the organization and its concern to maintain a mindset of date-related urgency among its members.
What appears to be an attempt to introduce a new time-factor that will serve that purpose appears in the December 15, 2003 Watchtower (shown on the following page) which contains major articles that seek to draw a parallel between conditions in Noah’s day and leading up to the Flood and the conditions existing from 1914 on up to the final time of judgment.
As can be seen in the photocopied material, reference is made to the period of “120 years” at Genesis 6:3 and this is followed by the statement, “What about us? Some 90 years have passed since the last days of this system began in 1914.” It requires only elementary arithmetic to discern that 90 subtracted from 120 years leaves 30 years and that 30 years added on to the year 2003 (when the article was published) would lead to the year 2033. Hence, if the parallel drawn had basis in fact and held true, the final act of God’s divine judgment upon the world would be due to occur by that date. Though the publishers of the Watchtower magazine know, from their long experience with failed date predictions, that they should avoid saying precisely that this means that only 30 years remain before divine destruction, they clearly plant the seed for speculation, perhaps seeking to mitigate the effect of the approach of the year 2014, now just a decade away.
A former presiding overseer in Germany, had communication with a Witness who attended an annual meeting at the German branch office and said this man remarked that such implication was already being talked of. The former presiding overseer personally commented on this presentation, saying, “I don’t expect to be alive in 2033. But if I were and nothing happened to support the focus on that date, I have no doubt that a Watchtower article would soon appear, saying, ‘Now remember, it rained 40 days and 40 nights prior to the Flood. So, if we take the rule of “a day for a year” (Ezekiel 4:6) that indicates that we may expect the final destruction to come within 40 years.’ There is a certain viciousness that allows men to play with people’s hopes and lives in that way.
One effort to solve the problem resulting from the passage of time since 1914 is found in the February 15, 2008 issue of the Watchtower. With regard to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:34, an article in this issue says that, while people ‘who don’t have spiritual understanding’ think that there is nothing of “stunning observableness” as to the signs of Jesus’ presence, the faithful brothers of Christ, the present class of John, ‘recognize the sign and understand its real meaning.’ And that ‘as a group. those anointed comprise the present “generation” of contemporaries who won’t pass away “until all these things come to pass.”2
This change in the assigned identity of the “generation” of Matthew 24:34 is clearly one more attempt to hold on to the 1914 date and to cope with the approach of the year 2014. Remarkably, as shown in Chapter 10 of this book, this latest interpretation is one Albert Schroeder (now deceased) made some 30 years ago when on a trip to Europe. As shown in that chapter, on his return, he was reprimanded by the Governing Body and a Watchtower article was published reaffirming the traditional position.
The advantage of this latest interpretation is that it leaves the fulfillment of the Watchtower’s claims about 1914 with no definable terminal point, effectively open-ended. For example, among the members of the Governing Body (all of whom are classed as among the “anointed”) some were not even baptized until after 1950. More significantly, rarely does a year now go by without some persons among Jehovah’s Witnesses newly making profession of being of the “anointed” class. In this way this “class” and the organization’s application of “this generation” could extend almost interminably.
For Chapter 12
This is the letter sent in response to the citation for a judicial hearing by the East Gadsden Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses:
Following is the complete letter sent as an appeal from the decision of the Gadsden judicial committee to disfellowship me:
[End of the copy of Peter Gregerson’s letter. What follows is the continuation of my appeal letter.]
A copy of the appeal letter was sent to the Governing Body along with the following letter:
Following is my letter of December 20, requesting a change in the appeal committee selected by Circuit Overseer Wesley Benner:
Copies of that letter were sent to the Governing Body and to the Service Department along with the following letter:
I had now written to the Governing Body three times requesting some expression from them (on November 5, December 11 and December 20), as well as sending letters to the Brooklyn Service Department. In the eight weeks that passed from the time of writing the first letter until my ultimate disfellowshipment, none of these letters were answered. They were not even acknowledged.
1As stated, this is only a small sampling of the 14-page memorandum supplied each member of the Governing Body in 1978. Though not as extensive, several branch offices offered similar evidence. The Governing Body allowed the traditional policy to remain in effect for another 18 years, at a cost of years in prison for thousands of young Witnesses.
2A footnote at the bottom of the page says that ‘this indicates that some of the anointed brothers of Christ will still be alive on earth when the foretold great tribulation begins.
APPENDIX B:
Excerpts from In Search of Christian Freedom
* The following 6 pages published in In Search of Christian Freedom, 2007 pages 72-77 are referred to on page vi of this 2018 edition of Crisis of Conscience, footnote 1. The document below is from the Watch Tower, April 1882.
It did not take long, however, for human reasoning to
suggest something more “practical.” The question was raised if it would not be good to have an “earnest, aggressive organization” (built, of course, “upon Scriptural lines”!) to accomplish more effectively the preaching of the good news? The Watch Tower in March, 1883, presents the question and the answer:
The view that a strong visible organization was desirable was thus portrayed as the product of fleshly thinking, typical of the “natural man” who seeks numerical growth, who admires the power that a visible organization with its own distinctive name can generate. It was thus typical also of the unspiritual man who “cannot understand how a company of people, with no organization which they can see, is ever going to accomplish anything.” The only organization they belonged to, these Bible students again affirmed, was a spiritual one, “invisible to the world.” There was nothing to “go and see” to impress people with any organizational bigness and efficiency and strength and ownership of property and buildings. In place of organizational unity, unity of spirit was the proclaimed goal. They were encouraging people to free themselves from denominational religions with their visible organizations. So how, they asked, could they call on others to do this if they did not do it themselves?
It was, therefore, misleading for the Watchtower magazine of March 1, 1979, under the heading “Modern Day Theocratic Organization,” to quote from a February, 1884, issue of the Watch Tower as though the quotation supported the existing view of organization prevailing among Jehovah’s Witnesses. Notice how the material (page16) prefaces its quotation so as to allow for this idea:
In an attempt to explain away beforehand the statement “We belong to NO earthly organization,” the writer of the March 1, 1979, Watchtower presents this as if it referred only to separateness from “sectarian organizations of Christendom, as well as from political organizations.” They were separate from these—though the thought of “political organizations” does not even come into the discussion; its insertion by the later Watchtower writer is simply the drawing of a “red herring” over the trail, diverting attention from the actual significance of the statements. In the blunt statement, “We belong to NO earthly organization,” the “NO” plainly means none, not just none of the sectarian ones but none that they themselves had set up. They clearly taught that to set up such an organization themselves, with its own authority structure and its own distinctive name, would be to create yet another sectarian system. The only organization they belonged to was the “heavenly organization” whose members’ names are written in heaven. This is made evident by the context. In the following paragraphs, not quoted by the 1979 writer, the 1884 article contained these points:
This makes quite clear that Russell and his associates did not then present an exclusivistic viewpoint, as if considering themselves the only Christians. They rejected the narrow viewpoint that would deny the Christianity of other religious persons because of their not coming within some organizational “fence.” Any who believed in the foundation truth “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” would not be denied the name “Christian” by them.
That this is the meaning of their statements is obvious from earlier issues of the magazines, several of which have already been quoted. An openness to others beside themselves as fellow “Christians” is expressed, for they had said “We are in fellowship with all Christians in whom we can recognize the Spirit of Christ, and especially with those who recognize the Bible as the only standard. We do not require, therefore, that all shall see just as we do in order to be called Christians; realizing that growth in both grace and knowledge is a gradual process.”1 The 1979 Watchtower writer who looked up the 1884 quotation reasonably should have seen these other statements. If so, he would have known that the use he made of the quotation was misleading, contrary to fact.
That this attitude continued is seen a decade later, when the September 15, 1895, issue the Watch Tower stated in quite blunt terms the attitude toward human organization. Responding to inquiries from those wanting advice as to the most profitable way to conduct group meetings, it presented this as one of its initial points:
These were the early statements, the early positions.2 How then did such a remarkable metamorphosis take place, producing an almost complete reversal of position, one that prevails to this day? In the 1980s, Ron Frye, a former circuit overseer and a Witness for 33 years, having spent “years of agonizing” over the Watch Tower’s teaching as to its authority, did intensive research into its validity. Contrasting the past and the present, he wrote:
Today, more than a hundred years from Russell’s start, the Witnesses are outstandingly organization-minded. The organization always comes first. In the Watchtower of March 1, 1979, the article “Faith in Jehovah’s Victorious Organization” the expression “theocratic organization” appears fifteen times in just the first eleven paragraphs.3 This kind of mesmerizing repetition is constantly used by the Society to condition Jehovah’s Witnesses to think that it is wrong for them to question anything the Society ever published as truth. In contradiction to this attitude toward the organization, Russell and his early associates were actually anti-earthly organization.
* This page was published in In Search of Christian Freedom, 1991, page 149 which is referred in Chapter 3, footnote 27 of this 2018 edition of Crisis of Conscience.
Watch Tower headquarters staff celebrating Christmas in Brooklyn Bethel dining room, 1926. J.F. Rutherford at head of center table.
* Pages 498-505 are from In Search of Christian Freedom 2007, pages 78-84, referred to in Chapter 3, footnote 28 of this edition of Crisis of Conscience.
Yet here was a man whom, Jehovah’s Witnesses still argue, God used to revive the great teachings of Jesus and his apostles. Why don’t they study his books today in the congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses, even from a historical standpoint? Because much of it, if not most of it, would be considered heresy today.
That there is a basis for such an assessment can be seen in what did happen while Russell was yet alive. If one looks back over the various quotations earlier presented in this chapter, it may seem difficult to believe that the man who was the source of them all was the same man who in 1910—when he had become recognized by thousands of persons internationally as their “Pastor,” when the Watch Tower magazine he had founded had attained a history of three decades, and when his writings were circulating by the thousands of copies in many nations—now said that the person who read the Bible alone without using the Scripture Studies he had written would, according to experience, ‘go into darkness within two years,’ whereas the one reading his Scripture Studies without reading any of the Bible itself would still be “in the light” at the end of that time. Though a man might spend “weeks and years” in personal Bible study without the use of Russell’s writings, “the chances even then are that when he does light on something he will have it all wrong.”4
There were qualifying remarks made in connection with these claims. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the ability of the individual Christian to understand God’s Word by personal study was deprecated and the whole thrust was to represent the Watch Tower publications as God’s exclusive channel for light and truth. It is difficult to conceive of a more immodest, sectarian attitude, to conceive of a sadder departure from the lofty principles earlier advocated.
Nor was the attitude a onetime, momentary expression. That it had been developing is evident from material published in the Watch Tower the year previous, 1909. In its October 1 issue, Russell, the founder and editor of the magazine, the sole “Pastor” recognized by the Bible Students, discussed Matthew chapter twenty four, verse 45, and its reference to “that servant” and his “fellow servants.” Using, as he commonly did, the editorial “we” in place of “I,” he acknowledged that fourteen years earlier the term “that servant” (referring to the faithful and wise servant of the parable) had been applied to him by another Watch Tower affiliate (actually his wife, according to the July 15, 1906 issue of Zion’s Watch
Tower) and that he had not entered into the discussion that developed over this application. But he states that the person who had first applied this designation to him now asserted that “while we did occupy such position we have forfeited it, lost it to a successor.” He then presents a discussion of the issue but does it indirectly by the method of presenting first what his “friends” say and then what his “opponents” say, limiting his own direct comments to the close. He presents his “friends” as saying:
It must be remembered that the Watch Tower was Russell’s own magazine. He started it, he controlled it, he determined what went into it as its sole editor.5 It was essentially a vehicle for his writings. Previous to his death, in a “last will and testament” he stated that, while he had donated the magazine to the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (a corporation which he also controlled as by far the dominant shareholder), this was done “with the explicit understanding that I should have full control of all the interests of these publications during my life time, and that after my decease they should be conducted according to my wishes.”6 So, when he speaks of attitudes toward the magazine or the Society, or applies the term “channel” to the Society or the magazine, he is actually referring these things to himself in the most personal sense. The entire context of the article confirms this. That he was the only one recognized as “Pastor” adds force to this application. He had earlier referred to himself as “God’s mouthpiece” and “agent” for revealing truth.7 So, when he speaks of the “one channel” through which persons (his “friends”) had received their enlightenment, he clearly means the writings of Charles Taze Russell. He shows this also by saying that “it would be the privilege of others of the Lord’s faithful ones to be ‘fellow servants’ (co-laborers)” with this “one special channel” chosen by the Lord.8
Crisis of Conscience Page 44