The greatest benefit to come from Jehovah's Witnesses was the introduction of honest investigation into the
claims of christianity based on the bible.
Exposing error was the gimmick.
Replacing doctrine or ritual with door to door activity was the greatest FAILURE to follow truth where it leads.
Mainstream religion in Pastor Russell's day was set in stone. Dogma was established. It was unquestionable.
Russell dared to question it and expose the flaws, the lies and the corruption.
Unfortunately, his own quirky ideas merely traded places with the uprooted ones in mainstream churches.
With Pastor Russell the End of the World elements and gimmicks of Adventist nonsense were a novelty to capture attention and lure the curious inside.
Russell used his wealth and talent for detail to cherry-pick from among the more sensational ideas of his day.
He used his writing skills to link elements from all sorts of shady and preposterous sources.
Tying it all together into something SCRIPTURAL was his true talent.
The PREMISE of Russellism was the combining of Bible, Adventist charts, Pyramidology, anti-establishment interpretation and leader charisma.
The christians who followed Russell were kept interested by his CLAIMS because he was wrapping it all around a roll of the dice and putting his predictions on the line!
Either those very specific dates were true or it was bunkum, right? Gotta love how brave and certain it all sounded!
But--this was a very shaky foundation for anything but a flash-in-the-pan fly-by-night religious quack.
How could he pretend to be right IF and when things started proving false??
Maria Russell concocted the best reason, however, because it has proved the most durable: the faithful and discreet slave doctrine.
The Doctrine of the Faithful and Discreet Slave rests entirely on interpretation and assertion:
Near the End of Days Jesus would inspect and select among all religions the only one he found worthy of becoming his MOUTHPIECE.
Using that MOUTHPIECE faithful believers could TRUST the instructions being given which would SAVE THEM FROM DESTRUCTION.
Naturally, all of this only meant going along with weird and dysfunctional interpretations!
Next, under President J.F. Rutherford a cult of personality developed with antisocial agendas.
Jehovah's Witnesses was concocted as an iconoclastic, anti-authoritarian (church authority, government authority, etc.) brand name.
The motto could easily have been: IF YOU ARE FOR IT---WE ARE AGAINST IT!
Silly as this sounds it is true.
Most "normal" christian people viewed worship as flowing from the authority of the bible and so did Jehovah's Witnesses.
HOWEVER....
JW's were set firmly in the role of ANTAGONISTS using the scriptures (really: interpretations of scripture) as weapons.
They ranted and raved and criticized and set themselves up to be radical martyrs to gain notice.
All the while spouting DATES for the end of the world!!
Bait and Switch.
Lure people in with urgency to avoid DOOM and switch to a sales work of door to door propaganda spreading!
And so on...
Jehovah's Witnesses ARE the Higher Critics---but--not of actual historical proofs!
They are critics of society, worldwide religion and foundational error in mainstream religious dogma.
IT ALL RESTS MERELY ON THEIR OWN ASSERTIONS.
Mark this one fact and it all falls into place:
The fragility of the bible as a source authority must NEVER be allowed to be discussed!
Why?
It is the bundling of their own peculiar interpretions (under the guise of "mouthpiece") with BIBLE that is the engine that drives the Governing Body's authority.
If people ever really knew facts about the errancy of the Bible and started investigating on their on the house of cards would quickly tumble.
THE BIBLE MUST BE PROPPED UP NO MATTER WHAT!
The Governing Body presents itself as the champion of God's Word. In reality, they are the champions of their own crazy thinking.
The Bible is fragile as an historical document because of 3 main reasons.
1.The scriptures (bible) are man made, man assembled, man copied, man interpreted and man translated.
2.There is no chain-of-custody (provenance) for documents, manuscripts, epistles from Apostles to Present Day.
3.Original manuscripts vanished without a trace. What we today call THE BIBLE is a guess assembled from (not originals or even copies of originals)
various scraps of this and that like so much garbage found in a landfill.
CHRISTIANITY itself is built on a MISREPRESENTATION of inerrancy.
Authority claims cannot be verified!
It threatens their source authority and exposes their counterfeit claims.
The closer you get to discovering that secret the louder they scream and emote curses, threats and doom!
The Catholic Church simply made things up as they went along inventing one doctrine after another.
People all through history who were intellectually honest have researched for themselves and passed through the fire of discovering the LIE.
When the Church could do so they burned them, hanged them, tortured them and labelled them Apostate and Heretic.
With the coming of the Protestants that authority quickly turned into warfare, witch trials, Inquisitions and Reformation.
Pastor Russell started out as an intellectually curious pious man.
He made the discovery that many teachings of the mainstream were based on false ideas, traditions and error.
He exposed this and gained the confidence of other like-minded christians eager to know THE TRUTH.
However---
(and this is very important to realize)
Russell's honest investigations were SIDETRACKED by his crazy obsession with DATE SETTING Adventist ideas!
He was derailed by it!
The Great Pyramid, date setting and personal interpretations wiped out the good in his DISCLOSURE of the LIE of doctrine purity.
Judge Rutherford used Russell's technique of taking on the ESTABLISHMENT and exposing error to build his own empire of crazy ideas.
Jehovah's Witnesses went from a good work of revealing the errors of christianity (based on the fragility of the bible's authority) to a bad work
of REINFORCING that authority so that they could SUBSTITUE their own errors and present them as ABSOLUTE TRUTH.
HIGHER CRITICISM is the number one enemy of inerrantists today.
Jehovah's Witnesses will be found fighting on the side of the Evangelicals against it.
Once the true nature of scripture is actually known---the AUTHORITY of such absolutists vanishes into mere opinion posing as Truth.