Where it all went wrong for the WT - JF Rutherford (page 4)

Anony Mous

Wasn’t Russel sued over Miracle Wheat and Millenial Beans too and lost?

LoveUniHateExams

Wasn’t Russell sued over Miracle Wheat and Millenial Beans too and lost? - Maybe so.

But that pales into insignificance compared to people dying of blood transfusions, the WTS covering up child sex abuse, etc.

NB - I've never claimed Russell was great, just not as bad as what followed.

One thing leads to the other. CT Russell was accused by his wife of having sex with their underage foster child, and many others admitted him being cruel towards people in his immediate vicinity. He was a con-man at best and a swindling child molester psychopath at worst.

Not that that proves anything, but most historians find this person to be very unimportant (as are JWs today) so he is largely forgotten, most of what we do know is either from public records or rewritten by the WTBTS or a few detractors, so I doubt we will ever get the true picture.

You have to be some kind of special to put yourself above even God himself to become the Supreme Leader of any kind of cult, and from reading contemporary accounts and the old publications, that is what he made himself out to be and many people called it a cult. It wouldn’t surprise me a lot of things were swept under the rug by believers at the time as they do today and there may be paper records of investigations of authorities that ran into stonewalling by believers but now are slowly rotting away because this person is wholly unimportant to the majority of the world.

Earnest

Anony Mous, you write such rubbish without any substantiation.

Anony Mous : Wasn’t Russel sued over Miracle Wheat and Millenial Beans too and lost?

No.

Anony Mous : CT Russell was accused by his wife of having sex with their underage foster child, and many others admitted him being cruel towards people in his immediate vicinity.

Maria (Russell's wife) never accused Russell of having sex with anyone, but did accuse him of hugging and kissing their foster daughter, Rose Ball, who was then 25.

Russell sued both the Chicago Mission Friend and the Washington Post for libel for charging him with immorality and both papers settled out of court in his favour.

slimboyfat

As I understand it he was given the name pastor by the ecclesias in a vote. That’s where it came from and claims legitimacy.

You didn’t answer what theological school Peter, James and John attended. Or address the fact that Paul says God specifically chooses to use uneducated people.

There are many complex ways of reading the book of Ecclesiastes. I thinks it’s you who is pushing a simplistic line.

You seem to be avoiding your earlier claim the booklet you cited was published in 1881. I am sorry you appear stubborn as well as uninformed. I can’t justify wasting more time on this.

vienne

A secular biography of Russell said he had private tutors beyond 7th Grade. You fail to understand that he was educated under the now defunct "Common School" system which expected work from 7th graders that many of today's Jr. College students could not do. Uncle B wrote (Separate Identity, vol 1, p 29-30):

The YMCA gave him the opportunity to “do some good.” The YMCA was not the social club it is today. It existed to rescue sinners and to promote Christian work. He joined the Association in 1865 or 1866. The Pittsburgh Association was originally founded in 1854 but had become moribund. It was reorganized in 1865 and became a social force in the two cities. The Association offered evening classes in Commercial Law, Public Speaking and Parliamentary Law, Engineering Mathematics, Arithmetic, Working Mathematics, Electricity, Metallurgy, Chemistry, Architectural Drawing, Mechanical Drawing, Freehand Drawing and Designing, French, Spanish, German, Italian, English, and Spelling, Vocal Music, Bookkeeping, Stenography and Penmanship. To us this strongly suggests what Russell meant when he said he was educated by “private tutors.”

Ordination among Baptists and other denominations in the mid 19th Century through the 1930s was by congregation election that differed in no respect and required no more theological training than Russell had. When his opposers put pastor in quotes, it meant no more than that they did not recognize his ordination. But the Methodist ministry would not recognize a Lutheran's ordination either.

Russell debated E. L. Eaton in 1903. In the press he was called Dr. Eaton. In fact, though he was ordained a Methodist clergyman he had never graduated from a seminary, attending one briefly. His so called doctorate was an honorary degree. He had no more training than did Russell. There is way too much fakery and not enough history in this discussion.

A major logic flaw is attacking the man when you cannot attack his teaching. Stop it.

In Separate Identity vol 2, uncle B wrote:

In a footnote [Chapter 1; note 3] he [Rogerson] wrote: “The title ‘Pastor’ was purely honorary as far as Russell was concerned, he never graduated from any theological school.” [Comma fault is his.] This is a commonly made claim, and indeed Russell was not educated in any theological school.

In the United States it was common for ordination to be by congregation election. Many ‘Pastors’ especially among Methodists and Baptists were marginally educated, called to preach by licensure and election rather than by graduation from a religious college, some of which met no real academic standard. While this was changing, especially among Methodists, this practice persisted into the 20th Century. Distinguishing between Russell’s election as pastor by Bible Student congregations and a country Baptist’s ordination by the same means is stupid. Someone suggested to us that ‘ordination’ implied a ceremony, and since he knew of no ceremony in Russell’s case he was not ‘ordained’ in any sense. I suggest that formal election as pastor is a ceremony.

In 1913 a survey of Indiana churches done by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions found that “thirty seven per cent of the ministers have had no more than a common school [i.e.: a seventh grade] education.”49 Liston Pope’s analysis of clergy education in Gastonia County, North Carolina, illustrates my point:

The policy of the Baptist churches has been even less exacting. The denomination has never erected an educational requirement for its ministers, or maintained an informal standard, or insisted on a course of study. In 1869-70 there were only two college graduates in the Baptist Association which included most of the churches in Gaston County. In 1903 few Baptist preachers in the county had even a high school education and college men were almost unknown. The tendency in more recent years has been to give preference to better-educated men, but only 56 per cent of them at present have college degrees and only 18 per cent have completed a seminary course.

The newer sects in the county are led by ministers almost wholly uneducated. Several of them find it necessary to have some more literate person read the Scriptures in their services. Others did not go beyond the fourth or fifth grade in the public schools; none have college degrees. Most of them are on sabbatical leave from jobs in cotton mills. There are no established educational requirements for preachers in the sects with which they are affiliated, though there are trends in that direction. As compared with Presbyterian and Lutheran standards, Methodist demands have been relatively low. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, did not establish a college degree as a prerequisite to ordination until 1934, and it was possible until 1940 to circumvent this requirement. Less than half of its preachers in Gaston County at present have had seminary training; most of them now have college degrees, but several older men, representative of past standards, have only a high school education or less.

We can add that the Mennonites did not establish a theological seminary until 1912, and with the exception of two men, none of their clergy had graduated from college, and most of them had no more than a “grade school education” which was “about normal.” Criticizing Russell for what was common among several denominations is pure hypocrisy. Bible Students saw Russell as ordained. Prentis Gerdon Gloystein [January 6, 1887 – April 19, 1956], writing to The Twin Falls, Idaho, Times, described Russell as the “duly elected-ordained pastor” of several Bible Student congregations including the largest of these. Gloystein wrote as one “intimately acquainted with Pastor Russell, having lived for a number of years in his home town ... besides being an associate worker with him at his present headquarters in Brooklyn, N. Y.”

This is footnoted to sources in Separate Identity. Read it and learn something. Some months ago a troll who haunts this board questioned Bruce's education. You might note that he is an Fellow of the Royal Historical Society [London] which speaks both to his education and to his standing among other historians.

LoveUniHateExams

Another thing I forgot to mention: Russell believed that Armageddon would destroy the wicked (murders, rapists, etc.) and the worldly organisations. He didn't believe the average person would be destroyed.

The doctrine of annihilationism came after, under Rutherford.

There is an obvious pattern here ...

Where it all went wrong for the WT - JF Rutherford

Anony Mous

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Anony Mous

Earnest

slimboyfat

vienne

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slimboyfat

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