The Reluctant Apostate: Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses Comes at a Price

by Lloyd Evans

Under cross-examination, it turned out the Judge was not quite the ardent pacifist he had been previously leading people to believe: Rutherford, like other witnesses before him, stated that it was up to a man’s individual conscience whether he would or would not take up arms for the government. “If you ask me individually I say my individual inclination is to go into war, because that has been my ambition from youth to lead an army.” He would judge no man for his decision. This startling piece of testimony speaks volumes about Rutherford’s character. The 1917 presidency coup had already highlighted his burning “ambition” to “lead an army”—an ambition that drove him to act ruthlessly in sweeping aside the four directors, not to mention the last will and testament of the Pastor. Future events, and insights from those who worked closely with the Judge, would further attest to this combative, power-hungry streak.

“when [prosecuting Judge] Oeland pressed him on whether a member could adhere to the draft and remain in good standing with IBSA, Rutherford said no.” When further pressed on the matter, Rutherford gave a convoluted answer to the effect that Bible Students would not have a good standing with Watchtower if they went to war, but he had no problem with other Christians or members of other religions doing so. “For intelligence officers, who tirelessly worked on investigating the IBSA, Rutherford’s statement was evasive,” remarks Strauss.

At the trial, the prosecution inquired if Rutherford approved of the book, in its entirety. Rutherford read the manuscript he received from Woodworth and Fisher from February to April 1917 and at that time endorsed it. The version he saw did not include the lecture by John Hays [sic] Holmes. In fact, he did not read that portion until early March 1918. He assumed the version that would go to print was the manuscript he read and therefore never double-checked. Rutherford claimed he did not even reexamine the book after the Canadian government raised objections to it in early 1918. Hence, several pages that were actually written by a non-Bible Student preacher—pages that formed the basis of much of the government’s case against Watchtower—had not been properly checked by the new president. Even the banning of the book by the Canadian authorities was apparently not considered sufficient incentive for Rutherford to revisit those inflammatory pages or question the wisdom of giving some other preacher’s anti-war tirade widespread distribution.

On September 5, 1919, at a convention at Cedar Point, Ohio, Rutherford announced the launch of a new magazine titled The Golden Age (which, in later years, would be known by the name Awake!). Just as with The Finished Mystery, the launch of a new periodical was a flagrant violation of the Pastor’s expressed wish that “no other periodicals” and “no other publications in any manner or degree” were to be published—but the window for protest had long passed. Within weeks, Bible Students were pressed into door-to-door distribution of this new magazine, described by the Proclaimers book as a “courageous journal.” As quotes supplied in later pages will confirm, the “courage” of the Golden Age writers was necessitated more than anything else by their relentless discharge of incoherent, uneducated ramblings—including voluminous medical quackery, and even the occasional racist outburst.

Just as the Pastor before him had rested everything on the end of human rule coming in 1914, the Millions booklet would unveil the Judge’s own signature false prediction—that 1925 would herald the return of various prominent Bible characters from the Old Testament who would help usher in God’s Kingdom. Page 88 offered the following glimpse of the near future: What, then, should we expect to take place? . . . The chief thing to be restored is the human race to life; and since other Scriptures definitely fix the fact that there will be a resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful ones of old, and that these will have the first favor, we may expect 1925 to witness the return of these faithful men of Israel from the condition of death, being resurrected and fully restored to perfect humanity and made the visible, legal representatives of the new order of things on earth. So confident was Rutherford of his new teaching that it was referred to in his first hardbound book, released the following year, titled The Harp of God. “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other faithful prophets described by the apostle Paul in Hebrews 11” were to be “expected on earth within the next few years” and would “constitute the legal representatives of the Christ in the earth.” A Watchtower book for children by William Van Amburgh, released in 1924 (only a year before the big event) and titled The Way to Paradise, expanded on the teaching even more imaginatively: We should, therefore, exp...

only a year before the momentous date, Watch Tower readers were informed that “1925 is a date definitely and clearly marked in Scriptures, even more clearly than that of 1914.”

When hopes for 1925 proved to be not quite as “absolutely and unqualifiedly correct” as had been suggested, the Judge executed a stunning U-turn, insisting he had never expressed his prediction with any certainty to begin with: Question: Have the ancient worthies returned? Answer: Certainly they have not returned. No one has seen them, and it would be foolish to make such an announcement. It was stated in the “Millions” book that we might reasonably expect them to return shortly after 1925, but this was merely an expressed opinion; besides it is still shortly after 1925. Hence, what had so recently been a “proven certainty” was now “merely an expressed opinion.” If Bible Students had been too excited by the prospect of Bible heroes soon returning and ruling over the earth, this was their own fault. Privately, though, the Judge knew he had been caught out just as the Pastor before him. Decades later, a footnote in a 1984 Watchtower would reveal that Rutherford gave Bethel workers the admission he should rightfully have offered to all his followers when he told them, regarding 1925: “I know I made an ass of myself.”

Only two years later, in 1927, the organization would cease printing of Studies in the Scriptures. By 1931, the editorial committee had been dissolved entirely and the 1933 Year Book would proclaim this development as evidence that “the Lord himself is running his organization.” With the Judge having finally purged the last remnants of Russell’s influence, he set about slowly transforming Watchtower from a loose-knit “brethren” into a centralized “Theocracy.”

In the decades following this incident, beards would become a major taboo among Witnesses. Illustrated publications released both during and following Rutherford’s presidency would depict Bible characters clean-shaven (yes, even Jesus!) and it would become generally understood that Witness males who insisted on sporting facial hair could expect diminished responsibilities.[146]

within little over two decades of the Pastor’s death, the Judge succeeded in fashioning a movement that was almost unrecognizable both organizationally and doctrinally from that which he inherited. Instead of Christ dying on a cross, it was decided he had died on an upright tree, or stake. Armageddon was not some period of anarchy and civil unrest preceding Christ’s rule—it was a “universal war” during which “the very ground will revolt against the presence of the wicked horde . . . and it will heave up and shake itself against the enemy.” The vindication of Jehovah’s name through preaching, rather than character development or sanctification through works of Christian grace, became the primary goal incumbent on all true worshippers. Christmas was no longer a harmless celebration, but “of the Devil” and part of Satan’s scheme to get the Christian church to “pander to all the pride and vanity and selfishness in the human family.” Those who saluted the flag were deemed “covenant breakers” who are “guilty of death.”[148] Even singing Christian songs at meetings would be abolished, for the reason that these “often express much that is out of harmony with the truth of and concerning God’s kingdom.”[149] Given such sweeping changes, a total rebrand was only to be expected. Rather than thinking of themselves merely as Bible Students, from 1931, followers of Watchtower were to identify as “Jehovah’s witnesses.” Moreover, since they were advertisers of God’s Kingdom, from 1935 even...

At some point in 1932, just as anti-Semitism in Europe was being fanned by fascism into a blaze of hatred that would engulf the continent, a switch was flicked inside Rutherford’s mind and he began firmly aligning himself with those same dark forces in a stunning U-turn from his previous Zionist position. Life was withdrawn from circulation, and in the second volume of his three-part Vindication series of books the Judge offered the following “wisdom”: The Jews were evicted from Palestine and ‘their house left unto them desolate’ because they rejected Christ Jesus, the beloved and anointed King of Jehovah. To this day the Jews have not repented of this wrongful act committed by their forefathers. Many of them have been returned to the land of Palestine, but they have been induced to go there because of selfishness and for sentimental reasons. During the long period elapsing from the time of their expulsion to the present day the Jews have not “borne the shame of the heathen” for Jehovah’s sake, nor for the name of Christ. . . . In 1917 the Balfour Declaration, sponsored by the heathen governments of Satan’s organization, came forth, recognized the Jews, and bestowed upon them great favors. In this the seventh world power took the lead. Now Big Business and other wings of Satan’s organization place the Jews alongside of and in the same category as the Gentiles. Heretofore even God’s people have overlooked the fact that the affairs of God’s kingdom with reference to the thin...

The greatest and the most oppressive empire on earth is the Anglo-American empire. By that is meant the British Empire, of which the United States of America forms a part. Rutherford was convinced that the “Anglo-American empire,” not Hitler’s regime, was the real threat to world peace in the 1930s. And he would cling to his delusion that America and Britain were the true bad guys on an irreversible slide toward fascism until his final years. In his “Face the Facts” lecture at London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 11, 1938 (apparently, when the Judge had something to say, it was a “fact”), he informed his audience that the USA, “once the bulwark of democracy, is all set to become a part of the totalitarian rule.” In a style more reminiscent of the wide-eyed screeching conspiracy theorist Alex Jones than a font of Christian grace and wisdom, Rutherford grimly foretold: When the totalitarian Catholic combine gains control of the British Isles, which it is certain to do, then all liberties of the people will be at an end. But all of that was to come. Back in 1933, the Judge had a would-be genocidal maniac to appease, and he knew he had common ground in their mutual loathing of Jews. Hot on the heels of his condemnation of the United States and Britain, Rutherford included the following in his declaration: 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 n...

A 1998 Awake! article defended both Rutherford’s “Declaration of Facts” and other little-known details concerning the event at which it was unveiled. For example, most Witnesses are unaware that, according to at least one credible eyewitness account, when German Witnesses arrived for their 1933 convention to hear the declaration being read out they were greeted by the spectacle of swastikas hanging at the convention venue, and even opened their program with a hymn that had a melody identical to the German national anthem (or Deutschlandlied)—giving the event the look and feel of a Nazi party rally.

Critics further state that the Witnesses opened the convention with the German national anthem. Actually, the convention began with “Zion’s Glorious Hope,” Song 64 in the Witnesses’ religious songbook. The words of this song were set to music composed by Joseph Haydn in 1797. Song 64 had been in the Bible Students’ songbook since at least 1905. In 1922 the German government adopted Haydn’s melody with words by Hoffmann von Fallersleben as their national anthem. Nevertheless, the Bible Students in Germany still sang their Song 64 occasionally, as did Bible Students in other countries. The singing of a song about Zion could hardly be construed as an effort to placate the Nazis.

As for the “critic” on whose firsthand testimony the convention story is based, this was none other than Konrad Franke—a now-deceased branch overseer for Watchtower in Germany. In a recorded, two-part lecture he recounted his arrival at the 1933 convention to hear the Judge’s declaration: When we entered, we found the hall bedecked with swastika flags! But not only that: when the meeting started, it was begun with a song that we had not sung for years, especially not in Germany, because of the melody. Though the lyrics were fine, the melody—well, the musicians who are here will recognize that the notes were [taken from] the melody of “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles”! Can you imagine how we felt? Many could not join in the singing. It was just as though their throats were throttled. What kind of leaders did we have who brought us [into] such dangers—and the danger of faltering under these circumstances—instead of helping and supporting us, so that we could take a fearless stand [against Nazism]. May all elders who are here among us learn something from these examples, and may they recognize their responsibilities in such matters in the near future.[153]

After reading the Awake! article, Anthony Morris III would laud Joshua’s martyrdom as “a good example of faith in the face of incredible stress and persecution.” (It would appear that by doing everything they could to save Joshua’s life, his doctors were persecuting him.) “And when he’s resurrected you’ll hear more from him, because Jehovah loves that little fella,” added Morris to applause from the convention audience. In their hijacked minds, Joshua must be making his comeback in the near future, because one seventh of Jehovah’s “faithful and discreet slave” has just said so.

Suicide, it was advised, was preferable to having your tonsils removed. (“It’s cheaper and less painful,” suggested a 1926 Golden Age.)