by Calebs Airplane 15 Replies latest watchtower scandals
When Jesus supposedly came down to the earth in 1918 to accomplish his inspection of all religious denominations, he supposedly chose the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society.
Well thats what the leaders of the WTS. ( J Rutherford ) said, but in reality it was a self marketing promotional tool expressed to
enhance the WTS.'s literature distribution.
I'm sure Jesus would choose and approve of a group of people or organization that was teaching Pyramidology !
According to the August 15, 2012 Watchtower (page 6, paragraph 12), in 1914, there were only 1,200 congregations worldwide....
I would have to say thats a bit of an exaggeration, the IBSA was still using people's homes to meet at or other venues.
The use of the word congregations is a bit overly used, better would to haved use organized associations, such as a dozen people or less.
The use of the word congregations is a bit overly used, better would to haved use organized
associations, such as a dozen people or less.
History gets re-written each time a religion "clarifies" its past, and that's not always prompted by a desire to fudge matters either.
Keep in mind, the word "congregation" only came into widespread use among the JWs in the 1950s. Before that, kingdom halls comprised "companies" of witnesses rather than congregations. Literally speaking, even home meetings could count as "congregations" because the word simply refers to groups of believers meeting at the same place. Whether there's two, three individuals in those "congregations" matters not.
I do not think that the Watchtower's accounts of how many "congregations" there were at that specified time (1918) is deliberately inflated or designed to create the impression of greater attendance. As I said in my previous post in this thread, the composition of the "companies" of Bible Students (or, if you prefer congregations of Bible Students) was radically different from what it was to become during Rutherford's "reign" which, in turn, gave way to other permutations of "memberhip".
Would it be fair to say the IBSA was more focused on attracting adults toward their organization as possible candidates
for the Colportage work of the WTS ?
As AnnOMaly pointed out, many ecclesias broke away after the succession crisis of 1917, so there probably were fewer congregations in 1918 than there were in 1918. It also should be recognized that prior to Cedar Point in 1919, the Society taught (such as in the Finished Mystery book published in 1917) that the harvest had essentially come to an end. So that is why there were so few preachers. It wasn't until August 1919 when the Watchtower advanced the idea that a large preaching work still lay ahead, and it wasn't until the 1 July 1920 Watchtower when Rutherford offered a new understanding of Matthew 24:14 that contrary to Russell claimed that the fulfillment of this scripture still lay in the future.
A more accurate measure of congregation size was Memorial attendance. There are not stats for 1918 but the 1919 report shows that there were 172 ecclesias with 30 people or more attending the Memorial. (Smaller congregations existed but were not counted in the final report) Counting the figures together provided in the report, we find a total of 18,259 in those 172 congregations, yielding an average of 106 members per congregation who took part in the Memorial. The true average would have been somewhat smaller if those uncounted congregations were taken into account, such as around 90.
Honestly, doesn't it sound like a whole different religion than JWs today?
My ex-in-laws, who became JWs in the early '50s, "studied" with a couple who took them to strip clubs for the study. 
http://scottleblog.wordpress.com
The Odd Life of Jehovah's Witnesses
