Ask current Jehovah's Witnesses if they KNOW what happened in 1954 (SHOCKING)

by Terry 24 Replies latest watchtower scandals

Terry

_____________________DO YOU KNOW?

(Referred to below: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society Presidents: Russell, Rutherford, Knorr, Franz )

Did you know that from 1879 until 1954 ...
... the writings of C.T.Russell, J.F.Rutherford, Nathan Knorr, and the Watchtower's own charter...
... agreed ...
that Jesus Christ was to be WORSHIPED?

This fact has been cleverly and dramatically hidden by manipulation of older quotations. Jehovah's Witness in 2020 would never believe this to be true!
______________________________________________________________________

Pastor Charles Taze Russell answers the question for us.
See below Zion’s Watch Tower 1898 Jul 15 p.216

“Question: The fact that our Lord received worship is claimed by some to be an evidence that while on earth he was God the Father disguised in a body of flesh and not really a man. Was he really worshiped, or is the translation faulty?
Answer: Yes, we believe our Lord Jesus while on earth was really worshiped, and properly so. … It was proper for our Lord to receive worship in view of his having been the only begotten of the Father and his agent in the creation of all things, including man."

Judge J.F.Rutherford also taught that Jesus was to be worshiped:

“Jehovah God commands all to worship Christ Jesus because Christ Jesus is the express image of his Father, Jehovah, and because he is the Executive Officer of Jehovah always carrying out Jehovah’s purpose (Heb.:3–6).”

Watchtower 1939 Nov 15 p.339.

Nathan Knorr continued the policy of teaching that Jesus was to be worshiped by all:

"Since Jehovah God now reigns as King by means of his capital organization Zion, then whosoever would worship Him must also worship and bow down to Jehovah’s Chief One in that capital organization, namely, Christ Jesus, his Co-regent on the throne of The Theocracy.”

Watchtower 1945 Oct 15 p.313
___________

WATCHTOWER CHARTER
From the 1945 Charter where it states to worship Christ Jesus.
Not until 1999 that worship of Jesus was finally removed to simply state "arrange for and hold assemblies for religious worship;"

In 1945 Knorr amended the Watchtower Charter. Included within the new Charter is the statement that the purpose of the Watchtower Society is to promote the worship of Jehovah
"and Jesus."
This charter is a legal document that continues to be the Watchtower Charter to this day.
______________________________________________________________________

WHY is this unknown to today's Jehovah's Witnesses?

They believe a lie about their own history.
They have been taught they were selected among all other religious worshipers in 1918 because of their teachings.

Current "TRUTH" standard--marks those earlier teachings as both
apostate and blasphemous!
But wait! It is referred to merely as OLD LIGHT ... not blasphemy.

Yipes!

How have Watchtower leaders been able to keep this fact a secret?

Is it the insidious strategy of avoidance, misquotation, substitutions and omissions?

The quote in the 1971 Watchtower only changes one word ...
... but this is significant as it ~~hides the true meaning~~ of the sentence.
NOTICE THE ... [word in brackets] leading the reader to the ~~incorrect impression.~~

“…for public Christian worship of Almighty God [through] Christ Jesus: to arrange for...” Watchtower 1971 Dec 15 p.760
_________

The Yearbook of 1969 p.50 leaves the words ~~‘and Christ Jesus’~~ out altogether.

HOW?
____
Ellipsis (… or . . .), indicates an intentional omission of a word
_____
“ ... for public Christian worship of Almighty God ... ”

______________________________________________________________________

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

Why the change?
Why stop the worship of Jesus?

The answer comes from the release of the New World Translation by Fred Franz and other secret committee members in 1954.

Franz insisted that contrary to most other translations, this new Bible for Jehovah’s Witnesses translate the word proskuneo as obeisance rather than worship whenever it referred to Jesus. This is despite the fact that in almost every other place the New World Translation translates proskuneo as worship.

Proskuneo occurs 55 times.
Of the 15 times it applies to Jesus it is ~~translated~~ 15 times as ~~obeisance!~~

Franz goes out of his way to remove worship for Jesus and switching worship to Jehovah to bolster his BRAND NAME religion Jehovah's Witnesses.
____

Questions from readers:

“Should we worship Jesus?—G. B., Ethiopia.

" ...the answer to the above question must be that no distinct worship is to be rendered to Jesus Christ now glorified in heaven. Our worship is to go to Jehovah God..." Watchtower 1954 Jan 1 p.31
_____________________________________________________________________

Judge Rutherford had created the title: Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931.

Instead of "Christians" the Watchtower was encouraging identification with a brand name for a newly minted religion distinct from the Bible Students of Russell's day.

Peculiar doctrines were introduced effectively creating martyrs to publicize this new religious Brand.
Almost everything a Jehovah's Witness "stood for" was contrarian and provocative.
Judge Rutherford weaponized his new religion.

Mainstream Christians were mocked, scorned and labeled "satanic' and business and military institutions single out for attack.

Now, in 1954, the transition from Christian to Jehovah's Witness cult came full circle.
_______

THE OLD SWITCHEROO

Publicly changing Christianity's worship from Jesus Christ ...
... and REPLACING Jesus ...
... with a weird newly-minted entity...
... called"faithful and discreet slave" (i.e. governing authority of men) ...
... a switcheroo toppled Jesus from his throne and a substitute religious scheme
with Jehovah and his band of merry frauds were newly installed.

BEFORE: CHRISTIAN
AFTER: JEHOVAH'S WITNESS
BEFORE : JESUS
AFTER : FAITHFUL & DISCREET SLAVE (Watchtower leader/leaders)

Thus, false worship was officially instituted by Fred Franz for Nathan Knorr and later himself.

IDOLATRY

Current Watchtower teaching makes it absolutely clear that Russell, Rutherford and Knorr were (by their new standard) committing idolatry!

BLASPHEMY (Defined: taking what belongs to God and giving it to someone else)

The entire history of Jehovah's Witnesses as "chosen" as a "mouthpiece of God" and guided by The Truth is demonstrated to be blasphemous falsehood!

Nothing Christian remained.

Governing Body became the MEDIATOR between God and man replacing Jesus Christ.
Watchtower says Jesus is mediator for just the 144,000 anointed.
"So in this strict Biblical sense Jesus is the "mediator" only for anointed Christians." Watchtower 1979 Apr 1 p.31
"Likewise, the Greater Moses, Jesus Christ, is not the Mediator between Jehovah God and all mankind. He is the Mediator between his heavenly Father, Jehovah God, and the nation of spiritual Israel, which is limited to only 144,000 members." Worldwide Security Under the "Prince of Peace" (1986) pp.10-11

Loyalty to the GB instead of Jesus permeated the organization.

This religion became, in effect, Anti-Christ!

From 1966 through 1975 the entire worldwide work of these Jehovah's (non-christian) Witnesses consisted of warning people of the most important date in human history about to take place in their own lifetime: 1975--THE END of six thousand years of human history!

False Prophecy created by a False Religion that won't even call itself
Christian by title!
Ask current Jehovah's Witnesses if they KNOW what happened in 1954.
cofty

Excellent research Terry.
It's interesting to read the oldest song books like Hymns of The Millennium Dawn and see how much explicit worship of Jesus there was in practice.
carla

Thanks Terry!
caves

Thanks. I'm glad I read this. Marked.
Maybe a stupid question, but was Rutherford just a man that really was searching for meaning within the bible and thought he found it? Or was he just as manipulative as Knorr and his lot. Or does it just boil down to a long line of WT elites that kept a publishing company going off the backs of members knowing full well what they are doing?
Finkelstein

Yes excellent work on that Terry.
One thing the WTS has always tried to do particularly when Rutherford took over the organization is distinctively separate from Christendom's practice of worshiping Jesus.
Christendom got it wrong we have it right.
The WTS men essentially placed themselves between Jesus and mankind, salvation through Jesus comes through them, not Jesus individually to mankind, righteousness in the eyes of god can only be achieved through them.
So you can see they strategically placed themselves in a position of power over all mankind.
Atlantis

This is a great post Terry! You should write a book on these subjects. If you do, I'll be first in line to purchase a copy.
Petra!
Half banana

Good point Terry but funny how JWs aren't that interested in anything which might undermine their faith?
It is interesting to reflect that it was not as if Russell, Rutherford and Knorr (who happened to be born in a town called Bethlehem) had the exclusive rights to "true religion" before 1954. But since the "Jehovah" brand was selling like hot cakes after the War: forget the second raters like Jesus.
Because of its suppressed pagan origins, Christianity suffers from an intractable ambiguity in the relationship between the Father and the Son.
The tedious arguments fill tomes of theological gobbledegook going back to the seminal convocations of the fourth and fifth centuries. Fostered earlier by Tertullian (d.prob.220 CE), who incidentally couldn't make up his own mind on the ranking of Father and Son, the Church demanded a mystical resolution in formulating the doctrine of the Trinity. This was fully accepted among the Catholic faithful by the end of fourth century.
You need a torniquet on your brain to believe that an invisible god and his invisible son have a third co-equal, co-eternal invisible partner called Holy Spirit.
By this time in history (fourth cent.) because of the absence of concrete facts at the central focus of the religion they condemned logic and demanded that the way forward for followers of Christ was by putting faith in the wisdom of the Catholic governing body called the Magisterium. After all its head was the Pontiff or Pontifex Maximus, the 'great bridge maker' who could connect between the earthly and the spirit realm.
Faith was to be valued above mere human reason.This obedience came with extravagant, exhibitionist and often fatal displays. What was desired was to be with Christ -- and therefore God. It was sought by death in an arena with heavenward eyes and a smug smile on ones face whilst being eaten by a lion. Great propaganda for the Church but was it worth it for the individual?
Can anyone tell me what on earth is the point of worshipping anything?
Terry

caves :10 hours ago
Maybe a stupid question, but was Rutherford just a man that really was searching for meaning within the bible and thought he found it? Or was he just as manipulative as Knorr and his lot. Or does it just boil down to a long line of WT elites that kept a publishing company going off the backs of members knowing full well what they are doing?
____________
SORRY ABOUT THE LENGTH OF THIS REPLY

Here goes:
_________

First, Pastor Russell had joined Adventist bible students in their enthusiam for End Times chronologies.
Next, Russell teamed up with leading Adventist thinkers like George Storrs and Barbour to publish these chronologies and apologies.
Finally, Russell used his private wealth to cut and paste ideas from all over the religious map into his own peculiar name-brand version of Adventism which included pyramidology.
Local congregations kept autonomy. Russell would have it no other way. But, Russell had died in 1916.
Judge Rutherford crept in to wrest control of the Watchtower for himself and begin a new agenda which would transform local congregations of bible students into a cult of mind-controlled salesmen serving a religion of Business Organization.
This is what happened.
Rutherford's key strategy succeeded in wresting a personality cult (Pastor Russell) away from "creature worship" and transforming it into a business concern or Organization which could claim and demand loyalty in terms of statistical productivity (preaching and book sales.)
If you produce you get more responsibility. If your productivity wanes, you get fired. (Disfellowshipped.)
ORGANIZATION to Jehovah's Witnesses is serving a faceless corporation headed by God himself who keeps them on permanent probation whereby they may be fired (destroyed at Armageddon) if they don't keep their productivity at maximum and loyalty as unquestionable.
The transformation was dramatic and sinister, taking these former Adventists from being cast-off apostates of mainstream christian churches to followers of a charismatic ex-clothing store owner and, finally, captives of a man hellbent on creating a cult of complete and utter mind control.
Under Adventism, after the failures of William Miller's predictions and other johnny-come-lately end times guessers, sincere christians with a knack for believing seemingly ironclad chronologies found themselves in local congregations with autonomy beyond the control of any central authority.
Indeed, Pastor Russell would have it no other way! He himself experienced an evolution of sorts from Presbyterian to Congregationalist to Adventist and, finally, inventor of his own domain.
Russell would brook no central organization! Like the other Adventists who followed his writings, the Pastor identified the Roman Catholic Church with the "whore of Babylon" and would have no authoritarian organization such as it was invading his christian freedom.
But, Russell died and J.F.Rutherford squeezed himself in gradually to Russell's shoes under Russell's teachings...just long enough to secure himself and begin changing everything he could lay his hands on!
In 1932, Rutherford finally did away with the local, elected elders. For a time, many elders had been opposed to the growing emphasis on the preaching and book-selling work that took up more and more of the movement’s focus. Even though Rutherford had weakened their positions by centrally appointing special ‘service directors’ responsible for magazine sale, in theory a congregation was still independent and chose its own pastors, or elders. The main articles in The Watch Tower for August 15 and September 1, 1932 should put an end to that. The elders were for a time replaced by a special service committee still elected locally, but in 1938 this arrangement was also replaced by one in which the leadership were centrally appointed. While the JWs reestablished a form of elder arrangement again in the early 1970s, these were – and are – centrally appointed.
When the Bible Students group began to form around Russell and his teachings, Russell made clear his opposition to creating any Central Governing Body.
Each congregation of Bible Students, Millennial Dawn fellows or Russellites elected their elders and leaders locally by vote and not by appeal to Russell.
This continued until 1938!
Russell died in 1916 and J.F.Rutherford commenced a long range effort of consolidating power under himself alone as leader.
Rutherford's scheme for control was in three parts.
1.Get himself elected to the Board of Directors and make other administrators mere puppets and rubber stamp committees.
2.Appoint travelling "service directors" as organizers, sales trainers and magazine promoters. (Much like later Circuit Servants.)
3.Replacing local election and control with a centrally appointed leadership and elder arrangement.
Russell's faithful followers were united in hatred for the Roman Catholic church and its central authority and organization. Previously, as Adventists, they had railed against the RC church as "the whore of Babylon".
For J.F.Rutherford to go against Russell's view of central authority and "organization" he had to overcome a huge built-in abhorrence in the local congregations.
This began in earnest in 1938 (the year before WWII commenced in Europe.)
Rutherford’s control of the headquarters and publishing arm had been undisputed since the early 1920s at latest. Now he also had a direct control into the lives of every Jehovah’s Witness. Rutherford decided what they should learn at the meetings – less devotional and more commercial than ever – and what they should sell and say.
Rutherford also told JWs that ‘character building’; emphasis on personal Christian qualities, virtue and morality was quite unimportant and indeed a form of ‘creature worship.’ It is very illustrative to look up the word ‘adultery’ in the Watch Tower Publications Index 1930-1985.
(Here you will not find a single reference to sexual adultery anywhere in the WTS literature before 1947. Later, in the 1950s, and until this day, articles denouncing all sorts of sexual sins flourished. In Rutherford’s vernacular, the word ‘adultery’ was reserved for his opponents’ religious sins.)
Under Rutherford a crackdown on controlling the personal behavior of local congregations began after the embarrassment of 1925 failed to produce a resurrection of "ancient worthies" as Rutherford had predicted.
Rutherford's obsessive preoccupation with tightening the screws on every person involved in his empire ratcheted up from 1926 onward commencing with the eradication of birthday celebrations (denounced as pagan).
******* ****** ********
Birthdays and practically all religious celebrations were condemned as of ‘pagan origin.’ The Bible Students celebrated Christmas for the last time in 1926 (Proclaimers 200; Yearbook 1975, 147-9). The cross, until then an almost universal symbol for Christianity, was rejected as a pagan symbol. The Watchtower Society has since then insisted that Jesus was executed on an upright ‘torture stake’ without a crossbeam.
Rutherford could bend non-ambiguous scriptures into corkscrews in order to enforce his personal interpretation of how things should be done.
This trend towards a growing alienation & hostility towards the world culminated in Rutherford’s reinterpretation of Romans chapter 13, published in The Watchtower, June 1 and June 15, 1929. Here Rutherford insisted that the "higher authorities" to which Christians should subject could not be the earthly authorities. These "higher authorities," he argued, had to be God and Christ. This only increased the Bible Student’s hostility towards the secular state, which was now openly denounced as demonic (Penton 1985, 65).
Clearly and forcefully J.F.Rutherford had taken a small group of Adventist bible students enamoured of Pastor Russell's chronology and pyramidology and compacted them into a mind-control cult obsessed with proper behavior and adherence to rules, regulations and quirky interpretations from a central authority.
Under Rutherford, the almost "universal salvation" beliefs and teachings of Pastor Russell darkened into a vicious and vindictive ideology of blood and destruction.
Perhaps the most striking turnaround in JW doctrine in this period was Rutherford’s view of salvation compared to Russell’s. Russell was very close to teaching universal salvation and was not at all eager to condemn people to destruction (the existence of hell, we remember, he dismissed). Rutherford, perhaps partly due to the persecution he had experienced in the war years, should take a much stricter view of salvation. Gradually he came to argue that only Jehovah’s Witnesses had any real chance of surviving Armageddon, Jehovah’s war against Satan and – in effect – mankind. A part of this was Rutherford’s new doctrine about "The Vindication of Jehovah’s Name," still a central tenet of JW beliefs. Unlike Russell, who held that the redemption was the central doctrine, Rutherford preached that God’s vindication, by wiping out his enemies Old Testament-style in a large battle, was more important than individual salvation.
Between Rutherford and his crony C.J.Woodworth, the Watchtower and the Golden Age (Awake!) began publishing anti-medical anti-science articles fomenting radical faddist notions and downright crackpot denunciations.
(There was a limit, however. Woodworth, the eccentric editor of The Golden Age, found that limit when he, in 1935, tried to persuade Rutherford and the JW community to abandon pagan month and day names. Rutherford harshly censured and ridiculed Woodworth in front of the whole ‘Bethel family,’ a spectacle that shocked many who may nevertheless have agreed with the sanity of Rutherford’s decision to not force such a radical change (Penton 1985, 66-7).
Woodworth was second only to Rutherford as an important influence on the JWs in this period.
One oddity about him was his burning hatred for medical professionals. He considered the compulsory vaccination programs a Satanic and commercial conspiracy to weaken Christians by introducing animalistic tissue into their veins, and he even rejected the germ theory of disease, preferring strange ‘electronic’ and ‘radio’ based apparatus instead. Actually, the Watchtower Society at one time marketed and sold alternative ‘medicine’ through The Golden Age. The only part of these ideas that remain in the JW organization and culture is the blood prohibition – which still gives the movement tragic headlines in the press worldwide – and perhaps a tendency among JWs today to be preoccupied with homeopathy and other ‘alternative’ quasi-medical procedures.
The downward spiral of madness, cult control, anti-science and hatred of other religions mark the Jehovah's Witnesses of this period as followers of lunatics who, themselves, were anti-social misfits hellbent on putting their thumb in the eye of every OTHER authority on earth!
Further, the doctrinal changes Rutherford ordered were often based on whim, personal animus and pressure from reality threatening to disprove the Judge's theology.
For example:
Under Russell the 144,000 little flock were glorified resurrected christians who went to heaven along with non-glorified Great Crowd christians who also went to heaven.
Rutherford saw his membership figures climbing beyond 60,000 and threatening to exceed 144,000.
This would be embarrassing. Consequently, a doctrinal change or "new light" emerged making the Great Crowd an earthly group of Jehovah's Witnesses distinct in kind and nature from the heavenly anointed.
Now, in 1935, Rutherford changed this doctrine and started to teach that the members of the ‘Great Multitude class were all followers of the Watchtower movement, but they would be saved to live eternally on paradise Earth. It was the duty of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, then, to preach to all people and ‘harvest’ this ‘Great Multitude class.’ That there was any possible salvation outside the Watchtower movement was thus finally denied. Somewhat later, the term ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’ should come to include this secondary class as well.
What does this signal? The CULT was fully formed as an "Only JW's will survive Armageddon" group of True Believers!
Pastor Russell took personal pride in self-financing his preoccupation of publishing due to his private fortunate. Rutherford, however, had no such money at hand.
Rutherford schemed to control local congregations and turn the membership into salesmen collecting funds from householders and passersby through peddling his books (of which there was an unending stream.)
Thus, the worldwide evangelizing work began in earnest as a way for Rutherford to establish cash flow and make his megalomanical empire financially sound.
Russell’s productivity of publications was no match for Rutherford’s. The first major bestseller, The Finished Mystery, was marketed as Russell’s posthumous book. Already in 1920 Rutherford managed to create his own first major international bestseller, the booklet Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Already the next year came The Harp of God, a book that would eventually reach a circulation of 5,819,037 copies in 22 languages.
As a lawyer steeped in legalism and terminology, Rutherford chose the name witnesses to construe a testimony in a Universal court on behalf of Jehovah. But, his worldwide witnessing was for cash which began flowing into the coffers of his enterprise with himself in sole control.
Rutherford's key strategy succeeded in wresting a personality cult (Pastor Russell) away from "creature worship" and transforming it into a business concern or Organization which could claim and demand loyalty in terms of statistical productivity (preaching and book sales.)
If you produce you get more responsibility. If your productivity wanes, you get fired. (Disfellowshipped.)
ORGANIZATION to Jehovah's Witnesses is serving a faceless corporation headed by God himself who keeps them on permanent probation whereby they may be fired (destroyed at Armageddon) if they don't keep their productivity at maximum and loyalty as unquestionable.
( The above information is distilled from the Master's Thesis of Jan S. Haugland http://home.broadpark.no/~jhauglan/rutherford.htm )
Acer21

All the JW's I know would never dare to read the information you have so carefully prepared, or even hear it, as it would potentially undermine their faith in the organization (notice how I did not say faith in Jesus, or faith in God).
Fadeaway1962

Thanks for that info
As a parody I often think what the conversation would be in heaven between the 1st century anointed ones , Russell's cronies, Rutherford and his cronies and Franz and Knorr and their cronies and Jesus with all the flip flopping and changes in each one ideas of what the truth is .
Would there be peace and unity in heaven?

Ask current Jehovah's Witnesses if they KNOW what happened in 1954 (SHOCKING)

caves :10 hours ago

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