![]() For being generally offensive they have been getting their heads cracked, their meetings broken up, their meetinghouses pillaged and themselves thrown into jail” ( Saturday Evening Post, Sept. They hate all governments with an enthusiasm that is equally unconcealed. They hate all religions-and say so from the housetops. ![]() Defiance of what others cherish is their daily meat. “For conscientious cussedness on the grand scale, no other aggregation of Americans is a match for Jehovah’s Witnesses. In fact, they get themselves into trouble (often deliberately, for the sake of publicity) by attacking the cherished beliefs of their fellowmen on which our Christian civilization is based and by promoting disloyalty to lawful authority. The Witnesses maintain they are persecuted. Witnesses have no scruples against shedding blood in such a war but they refuse to become involved in the petty squabbles of Satan’s nations. They seem to delight in realistic descriptions of the fate of the wicked who are slain for allying themselves with Satan’s armies. The truth is that they worship a vengeful God who plans the bloodiest war in history, “Armageddon.” They would willingly take up arms for Jehovah in the forthcoming struggle. Some people think the Witnesses are pacifists like the Quakers. Just as among the churches the papacy is the “Beast” par excellence, so amongst the nations are America and Britain. There are two groups in the world, the “Theocratic Kingdom” and “Satan’s Organization.” This latter includes all churches and governments. The Catholic Church, the Church of England, and the Free Churches are the constant butt of abuse in publications of the Witnesses, which deny most of the fundamental Christian doctrines.Īs for civil authority, they say they owe their only loyalty to a “Theocratic Kingdom” and refuse the duties of earthly citizenship. There is no justification, they say, in the Bible for a church or a hierarchy. The Witnesses deny that they are a church or a denomination. So, all Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen are of the devil, enemies of God, Antichrist. Later, he inspired the creation of the Protestant churches. After Christ’s Resurrection, he said, the devil built up a great empire, the papacy. He did not like to admit that the churches were all right till Russell came on the scene. ![]() Russell said that in 1878 God had rejected all existing churches and made the Russellites the only spokesmen thenceforward. The Witnesses have no time for the Christian churches. Christianity is the one, true religion revealed by Jesus Christ who was God himself. For religion dishonors and reproaches the name of Jehovah God.” According to him religion and Christianity are exactly opposite and opposed one to the other. Rutherford declared that “religion was introduced into the world by the devil.” “For more than three years,” he declared, “Jesus continued to proclaim the truth and to wam the people against the practice of religion. They conceive it to be their first duty to denounce all other religious bodies. But they themselves deny that it is a religion. In the orthodox sense the Witnesses are not Christians, for they deny that Christ is God. They claim to be “citizens of a better society, Jehovah’s New World Theocracy.” The Witnesses claim that they have “resigned from the world.” Its problems, wars, and politics are so complex, so pervasive, that they no longer concern the Witnesses. They play on such things as the destructive force of nuclear weapons, the scare of overpopulation, corruption in high places, the spread of pornography, and so forth. Their aim now is to manipulate mankind’s natural feelings and fears. But there is no evidence that they have altered their essential beliefs. If they have not, they still merit the universal condemnation of the works of Charles Taze Russell and Joseph Rutherford by all orthodox Christians. If they have, they stand condemned for having misled all their followers for many years. Some say the Witnesses have altered their creed.
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