Whither the
Watchtower?
An Unfolding Crisis for
Jehovah's Witnesses
by David A.
Reed
Summary
Newly
installed Watchtower president Milton G. Henschel,
73, has inherited two
major problems from his predecessor, Frederick W.
Franz. When Franz died on
December 22, 1992 at age 99 he left in power a
Governing Body mostly in their
80s and 90s, who, in turn, are dying off without
eligible successors. Franz also left
in place an official dating system that pointed
Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) to 1975
as the time Christ's millennial rule should have
begun. Turning from these dead
ends will require a major revision of JW beliefs.
With new doctrine and new
leadership up for grabs, Jehovah's Witnesses face the
potential of severe internal
upheaval.
Although it
put him in charge of a corporation with real estate
holdings in New York
City alone valued at $186 million,[1] and comparable
properties elsewhere, the
appointment of Milton G. Henschel as president of the
Watch Tower[2] Bible and
Tract Society made few headlines. Even the Jehovah's
Witness (JW) sect's principal
magazine, The
Watchtower, confined its mention of the new
leader to a single
sentence at the end of former president Frederick W.
Franz's two-page obituary:
"On December 30, 1992, Brother Milton G. Henschel was
chosen as the Society's
fifth president, to succeed Brother Franz."[3] But
the switch in leadership is of
immense significance to Witnesses, as it portends
convulsive changes for the 11.5-million-strong[4]
sect -- namely, doctrinal reversals and
organizational
restructuring on a magnitude not seen since the
shakeup which followed the death
of Watchtower founder Charles Taze Russell in 1916.
CHARLES TAZE
RUSSELL
Russell,
born in Pittsburgh in 1852 and raised a Presbyterian,
was 16 years old and
a member of the Congregational church when he came
under the influence of
Advent Christian Church preacher Jonas Wendell in
1868. Nearly a generation had
passed since the "Great Disappointment" of 1844 when
Christ failed to return as
predicted by Baptist lay preacher William Miller, and
the successors of the Millerite
movement had regrouped and regained respectability as
Second Adventists (a
family of denominations including the Seventh-Day
Adventists and such Sunday-sabbath observing groups
as the Advent Christian Church and the Life and
Advent
Union). Now certain Adventists were pointing forward
to another date, 1874, with
the same expectations. But that year, too, came and
went without the promised
Second Advent.
Russell was
still sharing fellowship with disappointed Adventists
in 1876 when he
learned that a small Adventist magazine, Herald of the
Morning, was affirming
that Christ did indeed return in the autumn of 1874
-- only invisibly -- and that
believers would be raptured three-and-one-half years
later in the spring of 1878.
With money from his successful men's clothing store,
Russell at age 24 provided
financial backing for the struggling magazine. In
return, publisher and editor Nelson
H. Barbour of Rochester, New York, appointed him an
assistant editor.
When the
expected Rapture failed to occur, Barbour came up
with "new light" on
this and other doctrines. Russell, however, began
opposing Barbour. In the
summer of 1879 he made a formal break, using his
nearly three years of
experience with Herald of the Morning -- and a borrowed
copy of Barbour's
mailing list -- to start his own magazine, Zion's Watch Tower and
Herald of
Christ's Presence.
Russell
quickly repudiated the "Adventist" label and
fashioned a distinct
denomination of his own. Followers referred to
themselves as "Bible Students" and
named their organization the International Bible
Students Association (IBSA), but
outsiders called them "Russellites."
The Watch
Tower and Russell's books retained much of Barbour's
eschatological
chronology, focusing on 1874 as the beginning of
Christ's invisible "presence," and
predicting other end-times events by calculating from
that date. He also
incorporated measurements of the Great Pyramid of
Gizeh in his chronological
calculations. Calling it "God's Stone Witness and
Prophet, the Great Pyramid in
Egypt," he figured a year for each inch of
measurement in various internal
passageways, and used these numbers to predict that
believers would be raptured
in 1910 and that the world would end in 1914.[5]
In 1882
Russell began leading Watch Tower readers away from
orthodox theology.
After Trinitarian assistant editor John Paton broke
with Russell and ceased to be
listed on the masthead, Russell openly rejected the
doctrine of the Trinity as
"totally unscriptural."[6]
The Bible
Students viewed Russell himself as the "faithful and
wise servant" of
Matthew 24:45 and as "the Laodicean Messenger," God's
seventh and final
spokesman to the Christian church. But he lived to
see the failure of various dates
he had predicted for the Rapture, and finally died on
October 31, 1916, more than
two years after the world was supposed to have ended.
Followers buried Russell
beneath a headstone identifying him as "the Laodicean
Messenger," and erected
next to his grave a massive stone pyramid emblazoned
with the cross and crown
symbol he was fond of, and also with the name "Watch
Tower Bible and Tract
Society." (The pyramid still stands off Cemetery Lane
in Ross, a northern
Pittsburgh suburb, where it serves as a tourist
attraction.)
JOSEPH FRANKLIN
RUTHERFORD
According
to instructions Russell left behind, his successor to
the presidency would
share power with the Watch Tower corporation's board
of directors, whom Russell
had appointed "for life." But former vice president
Joseph Franklin ("Judge")
Rutherford noted that the formality of re-electing
the directors at an annual
meeting of the corporation had been omitted, and he
used this technically to
unseat the majority of the Watch Tower directors
without calling a membership
vote. He even had a subordinate summon the police
into the Society's Brooklyn
headquarters offices to break up their board meeting
and evict them from the
premises.[7]
After
securing the headquarters complex and the sect's
corporate entities,
Rutherford turned his attention to the rest of the
organization. By gradually
replacing locally elected elders with his own
appointees, he managed to transform
a loose collection of semiautonomous, democratically
run congregations into a
tight-knit organizational machine controlled from his
office. Some local
congregations broke away, forming such Russellite
splinter groups as the Chicago
Bible Students, the Dawn Bible Students, and the
Laymen's Home Missionary
Movement, all of which continue to this day. But most
Bible Students remained
under his control, and Rutherford renamed them
"Jehovah's Witnesses" in 1931 to
distinguish them from these other groups.
Meanwhile,
he shifted the sect's emphasis from individual
character development to
public witnessing work. By 1927 door-to-door
literature distribution had become
an essential activity required of all members.[8] The
literature consisted primarily of
attacks against government, Prohibition, "big
business," and the Roman Catholic
church. Rutherford also forged a huge radio network
and took to the airwaves,
exploiting populist and anti-Catholic sentiments to
draw thousands of additional
converts. His vitriolic attacks blaring from the
loudspeakers of sound cars also
drew down upon the Witnesses mob violence and
government persecution in many
parts of the world.
Rutherford
largely avoided end-times prophecies after the
failure of his prediction
that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be resurrected
in 1925.[9] In fact, referring
to that prophetic failure he later admitted, "I made
an ass of myself."[10]
NATHAN HOMER KNORR
Vice
President Nathan Homer Knorr inherited the presidency
upon Rutherford's
death in 1942. Doctrinal matters, however, were left
largely in the hands of
Frederick W. Franz, who joined the sect under Russell
and had been serving at the
Brooklyn headquarters since 1920. Lacking the
personal magnetism and charisma
of Russell and Rutherford, Knorr focused followers'
devotion on the organization
rather than on himself.
A superb
administrator, he initiated training programs to
transform members into
effective recruiters. Instead of carrying a portable
phonograph from house to
house and playing recordings of "Judge" Rutherford's
lectures, the average
Jehovah's Witness began receiving instruction on how
to give persuasive sermons
at people's doorsteps.
Meanwhile
Fred Franz worked to restore faith in the sect's
eschatological
teachings. His revised chronology moved Christ's
invisible return from 1874 to
1914.[11] And, during the 1960s, the Society's
publications began pointing to the
year 1975 as the likely time for Armageddon and the
end of the world.[12]