newchapter - o yea you'll love the true story then. that's a huge file. the condensed version is that he violated the espionage act i believe, and things he had printed about either the government or to refuse military or something amounted to sedition as well, he broke government laws and him and those they felt involved in that were all jailed for it. it had nothing to do with being targeted for persecution, but he was publishing things and distributing to people all over the country, in violation of the law.
Help please, The original letters on both sides of rutherford taking over by force, and court documents/etc of the real reason he was jailed
by EndofMysteries 22 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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EndofMysteries
and he then ordered the controversial pages to be ripped out and tried to do what they said or fix what they complained about but it was too late. so he didn't stand up for what he printed either, he caved right in.
You also might like to know he sent letters to adolf hitler in WW2 saying how he shared the same view on the jews and how they shared the same values, how witnesses were not enemies of germany or jew lovers, etc. you can find pdf's of that too.
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Fencing
Didn't have anything to do with property. There were a handful of pages in The Finished Mystery that came out very strongly against patriotism and basically said a true Christian would not enlist in the military. I'm greatly paraphrasing, but that's the import of it. At the time, during WWI, the US had passed the Espionage Act of 1917. This criminialized any attempt to disrupt the recrutment efforts of the military. The government interpreted those passages in Rutherford's book as an attempt to prevent enlistment in the army. They went after Rutherford and some of the other directors for it.
What the society doesn't like to talk about, and you can discover in the trial transcripts, is that Rutherford actually tried to capitulate and willingly censored The Finished Mystery by having those few pages physically removed from copies of the book, and not including it in further printings. However, a good number of them had already been distributed and the government went after them anyway.
They also were never "exonerated" of the charges like the Society likes to claim today. They got the verdirct set aside on appeal over a procedural matter. The war ended shortly thereafter, and since the war ferver that led to the Espionage Act had died down, it wasn't worth the government's time to proceed with a new trial and they dropped the charges.
In hindsight, it probably would have been overturned by the Supreme Court over First Amendment issues if it had made it that far, anyway.
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Leolaia
Rutherford and others at Bethel told drafted Bible Students at boot camps to disobey orders. That was part of it.
The problem was that Russell refused to adopt any sort of creed, or to have his group registered as a sect or religion. He believed that Christians should not organize into earthly organizations with visible "heads" (as he said, the membership list is in heaven). So what that meant was that there was no religion that the conscripts could say they were a member of. The Watchtower Bible & Tract Society was just a book publishing company. A person selling its books wasn't a member of it. So that made it harder for a conscript to show to the draft boards that he belonged to a pacifist religious group like the Quakers.
And Rutherford told the conscripts that they must refuse even peaceful alternative service.
They also were never "exonerated" of the charges like the Society likes to claim today. They got the verdirct set aside on appeal over a procedural matter.
The judge got pissed off at a witness (a secretary) who refused to identify that a stamp from Bethel that she used every day, which bore Rutherford's name, was in fact the stamp she used. Things like that. There was the claim made, I think, that the judge was biased against the Bible Students on account of his religious background. I don't know what the truth is about that.
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NewChapter
wow, did I get a sanitized version---naturally. It seems I will never learn all the ways they lied to us.
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Desilusionnee
Thx for bringing that point again.
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Fencing
It can be really dry, but I highly reccommend reading Rutherford's testimony in the trial. There are some absolute gems in there.
The one that stood out to me was where, while trying to make himself appear to respect the military, he says that it had always been his dream since a kid to lead his own army.
Kind of puts his mentality and how he ran things in perspective, doesn't it?
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EndofMysteries
Yup, his quote on his dream to lead an army is my favorite gem in the whole trial lol. Lead an army of people selling his books and got his nice car, mansion, fully stocked bar, he lived very well on their dime!
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EndofMysteries
I also like the clipping at the end of some literature how if they bulk order, they can charge a certain amount and keep some money for their own commission.
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WinstonSmith
This is excellent, thanks for bringing this up EndofMysteries. Another example of the WTS sanitising their past. They have done such a good job of this that this is the first time that I, and I am sure many others haved heard the other side of the story about the famed imprisonment.
I see some similarities too with the Conti case. Some JWs say they know about the case, but their conversation shows they have not read the court docs. They say 'Why is the WTS being punished, they didn't abuse her!?' which shows they don't understand that it was the WTS policies that were being called into question.
What I find especially interesting here is that most JWs would use the the 'he printed it because he obeys God as ruler rather than men' when in fact the truth is Rutherford folded and tried to remove the offending information. Perhaps his lawyer-sense trumped the direction of 'the spirit'......?
The info you have presented above needs to be spread far and wide. Perhaps those with websites and blogs will find this useful.
Great work team, more info to show that this is an organisation of book publishing men, and in no way spirit directed.