Changes and evolution
Who are the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
IN 1881, Charles Taze Russell of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, co-founded Zion’s Watch Tower Tract Society with William Henry Conley as president. The organisation was legally registered in 1884 with Russell as its president.
At age 64, on October 31, 1916, Russell died in Pampa, Texas, but the Watch Tower Society, under the leadership of Joseph Franklin Rutherford, Russell’s successor, continued to publish his writings until 1927. Russell was to introduce many organisational and doctrinal changes in his 25-year leadership, which caused some amount of disquiet.
He centralised the control of the Watch Tower Society, and in 1919, he called for the appointment of a director in each congregation. In 1920, he instructed all members to report their weekly preaching activities to the Brooklyn headquarters. In that same year, he announced that Hebrew patriarchs, such as Isaac and Abraham, would have been resurrected in 1925, the beginning of Jesus’ thousandyear earthly Kingdom.
WIDESPREAD DISSENT
A new emphasis was made on house-tohouse preaching at an i nternational convention held at Cedar Point, Ohio in September 1922, but because of unfulfilled predictions, administrative and doctrinal changes there was a widespread dissents and breakaways under Rutherford’s leadership, and by 1931, approximately three-quarters of the membership pulled away.
Rutherford and the ones who remained with the society renamed it Jehovah’s Witnesses. The announcement was made at a convention in Columbus, Ohio, on July 26, 1931. The decision was based on Isaiah 43 Verse 10, which says, ‘You are my witnesses,’ declares Jehovah ...” The name was selected to set apart their Bible students from those who had broken away and to signal promotional and evangelical changes.
The system of locally elected elders was eliminated i n 1932, t he same year Rutherford postulated that the 144,000 chosen few would not be the only people to survive Armageddon and go to Heaven, but that a great multitude would live in a restored paradise here on Earth. Those who became converts from 1935 would be considered among that multitude. In that year, Ruther ford introduced the term ‘Kingdom Hall’ for places of worship.
Many other changes took place under Rutherford, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ interpretations of some Bible doctrines were poles apart from traditional and established perspectives. One such divergence was centred around saluting national flags. The Witnesses believe this was idolatr y. This led to widespread persecution, outbreak of mob violence, and government opposition in the United States, Canada, Germany, etc.
Yet, the international congregations grew, and at the time of Rutherford’s death in January 1942, membership was over 113,000 in about over 5,000 congregations. Rutherford was succeeded on January 13 by Nathan H. Knorr, whose sojourn in the society started with his becoming a volunteer in September 1923 at the Watch Tower headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.
Knorr commissioned a new translation of the Bible, organised large international assemblies, i nstituted new training programmes for members, and expanded missionary activities and branch offices all over the world. There was also the increased use of instructions that explicitly guide Witnesses in their lifestyle and conduct.
In about 1966, the publications of the Witnesses and utterances at their conventions i ntimated that Jesus’s thousand-year earthly reign might have begun in 1975, or shortly after that. Thus, between 1966 and 1975, there was a significant increase in the number of people who became active members. By 1975, that number exceeded two million. But the numbers gradually declined by the late 1970s as Jesus did not return to Earth.
In 1976, the power of the president of the Watch Tower Society, and by extension that of Knorr, was reduced significantly. Authority for doctrinal and organisational decisions was transferred to the governing body, the ruling Council of Jehovah’s Witnesses, based in the society’s Warwick, New York Headquarters. The body formulates doctrines, oversees the production of written materials, and administers the society’s worldwide operations.
Knorr died in 1977, and was succeeded by Frederick Franz.