Publisher of NJN Network, Stephen has covered pop, jazz, folk and rock music since 1964, and spent 2 decades as the founder of serial IT startups. He has a great wife, 10 children, a growing number of grandchildren and is passionate about music and disability advocacy.
ResLight
Charles Taze Russell was not a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses; he did not believe in such a sectarian and authoritarian organization, and actively preached against such organizations. He believed the true church could be found amongst all of the various Christian denominations. The message that he preached is almost the opposite of what the JWs preach. He certainly never preached any idea such as “join us or be eternally destroyed.” He believed that Adam, as well as every man, woman and child who have been condemned in Adam, will be blessed, so that the glad tidings he preached really was to all the people, and almost the opposite of the bad tidings of woe of eternal destruction for most of the people in Armageddon that the JWs preach. Russell was certainly NOT the founder of that which he did not believe, and that which he preached against.
Stephen Pate
That’s bogus revisionism from Russellites. Charles Taze Russell found the religion that was renamed Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are quite proud of the lineage with the Witnesses and it is widely reported in accounts of their history.
RR
Saying that Charles Taze Russell founded the Jehovah’s Witnesses is like saying Jesus founded the Catholic Church, nothing can be further from the Truth. C.T. Russell founded the Bible Students, and incorporated the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society as a means of publishing Bible based literature that the Bible Students would use in their studies. After his death in 1916, there was a corporate takeover, by then Watch Tower lawyer, J.F. Rutherford, who illegally took control, ousted the board of directors and began transforming the Watch Tower Society into his own Vatican. As a result Bible Students the world over began to abandon the Society. After Rutherford purged the Society of Russell’s supporters, he then began to transform his followers and in 1931 to differentiate them from the Bible Students renamed them Jehovah’s Witnesses. And while the Witness claim Russell as one of their own, were he alive today, he would 1. not recognize the organization he founded, and 2. be disfellowshipped for holding contrary views, since the Witnesses no longer publish his wrtitings or even adhere to the,
ResLight
Bible Students were not renamed “Jehovah’s Witnesses”. The Bible Students, as a whole (represented by the vast majority), had, by 1928, rejected Rutherford’s new organization, and his new teachings.
Stephen Pate
You are dreaming
Stephen Pate
Rutherford waa just completing the same ruthless takeover that C.T. Russell did when he stole Barbour’s Watchtower publishing business.
Again your history of the Witnesses has a certain delusional quality that doesn’t match the facts.
ResLight
Charles Taze Russell did not take over Barbour’s Watchtower publishing business; Barbour had no Watchtower publishing business to take over. Barbour did publish a magazine which mostly financed by Russell, but this was before Russell began publishing his Watch Tower magazine. Russell did not take over Barbour’s magazine, but rather withdrew from Barbour’s magazine. Russell’s own summary of these events in appeared in the Supplement to the first issue of the Watch Tower magazine.