Jehovah's Witnesses Try to Rewrite Their Past: The 1917 Schism

M. James Penton

Because of the belief that whatever Watch Tower leaders have done must be right because they represent Jehovah as His "channel," they have created a false history through which they have attempted to cover over both their prophetic failures and some of their most unethical actions. In particular, they have tried to hide just how vicious they have been toward some of their former brethren and how, despite loud protestations to the contrary, they have hypocritically become involved in various political activities. Although they admit, when forced to do so, that they have made numerous doctrinal "mistakes" which have required "adjustments," they claim that their motives have always been of the highest ethical nature.

For instance, in speaking of the Witness organization as the "faithful and discreet slave," The Watchtower of March 1, 1979 (p. 24) states:

«But let us never forget that the motives of this "slave" were always pure, unselfish; at all times it has been well-meaning.»

Nothing, however, could be a more baldfaced lie, as the facts given below will demonstrate. When J. F. Rutherford determined to make himself a virtual dictator over the Watch Tower Society in 1917, it became necessary for him to violate his predecessor's will and replace a majority of the the Society's Board of Directors with his own personal toadies. He used the legal subterfuge that the four directors in question had not been properly elected to office under Pennsylvania law, and he could therefore replace them by presidential fiat. Rutherford knew, though, that such a legalistic argument might not alone satisfy the Bible Student community. So on the same day that he announced the directors' dismissal at the Brooklyn Bethel (Watch Tower headquarters) head dining room table, he also released a new book entitled The Finished Mystery which was advertised as a posthumous work of Pastor Russell and the "seventh volume" of his Studies in the Scriptures. Consequently, when a bitter, five hour verbal battle occurred over Rutherford's organizational coup, it became possible for him and for Clayton Woodworth, one of the coauthors of The Finished Mystery, to claim that the ousted directors were really basing their opposition to the Watch Tower president on their supposed disapproval of the seventh volume rather than Rutherford's Machiavellian behavior. Hence they were made to appear to many Bible Students as "out of harmony," not only with Rutherford, but with the wishes of the late, revered Charles Taze Russell as well. In an apology for his acts styled Harvest Siftings that was published shortly after the expulsion of the former directors from Bethel on July 27, 1917, Rutherford stated:

"We are reminded of a coincidence that we here mention. This has indeed been a great trial on the family [Bethel staff] and upon other dear friends throughout the country who have heard it. Brother Russell once said that the Seventh Volume would be given to the Church in its hour of direct need, to encourage and comfort them, and the Scriptures point out that there would be murmurers, complainers, etc. The Seventh Volume, as you know, is now published. The first copies were in the Bethel Dining Room at the noon hour on Tuesday, June 17th [sic] and at the conclusion of my statement to the family of what had led up to the conditions, I stated that the Seventh Volume was there to be distributed to any who desired it; and immediately thereafter the attacks began on me by [two exdirectors] Brothers Hirsh and Hoskins."

Even prior to the publication of Harvest Siftings, Clayton Woodworth had made similar allegations to a Bible Student convention at Boston, Massachusetts on August 4, 1917. In a sermon entitled "The Parable of the Penny," which was also published as a small booklet, Woodworth tried to claim that Judge Rutherford was "the steward" of the penny described by Jesus at Matthew 20:1-10 and that The Finished Mystery was the "penny." Thus Woodworth remarked:

«But when the first came. -- When the Bethel workers were summoned to receive the seventh volume of Scripture Studies, at noon, July 17, 1917.

They. -- Five or six of the most prominent brethren at the Bethel, the most highly esteemed, most loved, most appreciated, in some respects, of all the dear brethren in the Truth. All these dear brethren are pilgrims [travelling evangelists], all fully conversant with the histories of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and all know the full Scripture testimony that humility and submission to the Divine will is the only path of acceptability to God.

Supposed that they should have received more. -- at 1:00 P.M., on July 17th, 1917, these brethren all knew they were to get the Penny, but at that instant, one after another, in most vigorous language, they made it plain that they wanted something besides the Penny; more honor, more recognition, more voice in the guiding of affairs.

And they likewise received every man a penny. -- It was theirs, for the taking, from that instant, and they had not then, nor now, any cause for complaint against Brother Rutherford's efficient management of what he was elected to manage.

And when they received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house. -- Against the Lord of the Harvest. Thus the Lord considers it.»

From that time to the present, Watch Tower spokesmen and "historians" have repeated Rutherford and Woodworth's accounts of the matter as though they were gospel. Testifying in the Moyle trial in October 1943, Fred Franz stated:

"I understand that [in July 1917] they had a day of discussion at the table on the matter of the seventh volume which was published and the objectors thereto were the ones who held out."

Alexander H. Macmillan, one of Rutherford's closest confidants and a man who was actually present at the bitter July 17, 1917 Watch Tower confrontation, wrote in 1957:

"The climax came in July of 1917, only six months after Rutherford had been elected president. He had arranged to produce the seventh volume of Studies in the Scriptures. Russell had written the first six. The seventh, called The Finished Mystery, was really a compilation of material from notes and writings of Russell and was issued as a posthumous work of Russell's. Since, according to the bylaws, the president of the Society was also manager of the Society's affairs, Rutherford had not consulted the board of directors and the four who thought they were members raised vehement objections. As a result, their opposition to the policy and work of the Society became so bitter that it was impossible to maintain unity at headquarters as long as they remained. They were asked to leave the Bethel home or get in line with the work. They chose to leave."

Under the subheading "Release of 'The Finished Mystery' a Bombshell," the Society's official history, Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, published in 1959, states:

"At noon, July 17, 1917, this book was released at the Bethel dining room table. As Brother Russell had been accustomed to do, Brother Rutherford gave a present of this book to each member of the Bethel family. It came as a bombshell. Completely surprised by its release, the opposing members of the board of directors immediately seized upon this issue and made it the occasion of a five-hour controversy over the administration of the Society's affairs."

The 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, in a history of the movement in the United States, gives much the same sort of account. Although it does not say directly that the release of The Finished Mystery was the cause of the altercation in question, it certainly attempts to leave that impression. Among other things, it says:

"This incident [the release of The Finished Mystery and the subsequent debate] revealed that some members of the Bethel family sympathized with the opposers."

The four former directors, A.I. Ritchie, J.D. Wright, I.F. Hoskins, and R.H. Hirsh, always contended that the Watch Tower Society's official account was a lie. In a publication called Light After Darkness which they and Watch Tower Vice President A.N. Pierson issued in response to Harvest Siftings, they asserted:

"In the first place none of the Directors who are falsely accused of being 'murmurers' knew anything about the issuing of the seventh volume in advance of the time it was given out. Further, the matter of the seventh volume was entirely outside the issues under discussion on that occasion. None of the brothers accused of being 'murmurers' said anything about the seventh volume, nor did they entertain any feeling against the volume."

Who, then, has given us the truth? Can the facts be determined with any certainty after all these years? Yes, for when under oath in the spring of 1918, Judge Rutherford admitted that his statement on the matter in Harvest Siftings was false. At the time, he and six associates were being tried for having interfered with recruiting under the terms of the First World War U.S. Espionage Act. When questioned about what had transpired when The Finished Mystery had been released at the Brooklyn Bethel in July of the previous year, he voluntarily admitted that its release had nothing to do with the debate that followed. Note Rutherford's testimony from the transcript of record:

Question: And I think he [the secretary-treasurer of the Watch Tower Society] said something as to the purpose in concealing the fact that the seventh volume of "The Finished Mystery" was going to be published. What is the fact in reference to that?

Answer: No purpose in the world to conceal the fact that it was going to be published. The reason of it was this. We had considerable difficulty at the time in our society.

Question: Was the difficulty over "The Finished Mystery"?

Answer: It was not. It did not include "The Finished Mystery" in the slightest.

Question: "The Finished Mystery," at the time, had not become the subject of any discussion among any of the members?

Answer: No, sir, had not discussed it with a single person in the society at the time this trouble started.

Question: That is the trouble you are referring to as the trouble mentioned in the resolution which you presented to the Board of Directors on the 17th of July, 1917?

Answer: Yes, sir.

Question: That was some internal dissension in the organization that did not apply to this "The Finished Mystery"?

Answer: Yes, sir.

Despite this frank acknowledgement in a court of law, Rutherford never did attempt to set the record straight among his followers, and the Watch Tower Society has continued to perpetuate the falsehoods published in Harvest Siftings and The Parable of the Penny. Thus, instead of admitting candidly that the reason behind the bitter debate of July 17, 1917 was an organizational power struggle in which Rutherford was the victimizer rather than the victim, the Society has left Jehovah's Witnesses with false history. A decade and a half before the Nazis came to power in Germany, Rutherford and his allies were already using the technique that Josef Goebbels made famous as the "Big Lie." Their successors have been doing so ever since.