Marching to Armageddon

The only score card at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds last week was the Bible. Speakers' platforms disguised the diamonds; flower banks decked the pitching mounds; burlap mountains, artificial waterfalls hid second and third bases. New York had never seen a convention so big; even Billy Graham's Yankee Stadium throng last year--100,000, and 10,000 turned away--was small by comparison. From 48 states and 122 foreign countries, Jehovah's Witnesses had gathered 194,000 strong. For eight days they packed both ballparks in a "giant Bible school." Through steamy rain they went on singing hymns, praying, hearing speeches and reports about the fast-growing sect (total members: 719,000) that believes Armageddon is just around the corner.

If New Yorkers expected religious hysteria, they had to wait for baseball to come back. Without a hitch, in orderly procession, the Witnesses arrived aboard two chartered ships and 65 chartered planes, scores of special trains and buses, more than 20,000 cars--and all quickly learned which subways ran to the ballparks. There some 40 doctors and 125 nurses tended occasional dizzy spells or upset children; some 6,000 volunteers served as many as 70,000 meals an hour, and a tireless volunteer cleanup squad of 2,500 polished the parks to perfection at the end of each day. At night not a single Witness lacked shelter--thanks to 13,000 volunteers, who had been ringing doorbells all this spring in a 100-mile radius to find rooms. Many visitors were up early in the morning to walk miles around Manhattan, pushing perambulators and politely peddling their quotas of the Watchtower and Awake! before hurrying off to the assembly grounds. "This is the grandest of news," said Nathan Homer Knorr, head of the Witnesses. "We are living at the end of this worry-filled, problem-racked, loveless old world. We want the new. We are eager to leave the old."

Hose on Hell. The Witnesses' creed is based on what they regard as utter obedience to the Bible ("God's complete word of truth"). They accept the Biblical prophecy that Satan will be defeated in the cataclysm of Armageddon, followed by eternal life for the righteous. Other Christians share that belief, but sharply disagree with the Witnesses' assertion that, as the only true followers of the Bible, Witnesses alone will be saved.

The movement began in 1872 with Charles Taze Russell, a small, intense-looking Pittsburgh merchant who joined the Congregational Church but disliked thinking of hell as fiery and eternal. "Would you hold a puppy dog's tail in the fire three minutes?" he asked. Neither would a just God, was his argument. To "turn the hose on hell," Russell went back to the Bible and found the words: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Daniel 12:2).

Hell discarded, Russell began preaching the Adventist doctrine that the imminent second coming of Christ will trigger Armageddon. He prowled through Scripture to set the date of the second coming, finally settled for 1914.* His following increased. In 1884 he incorporated the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society, now usually known as Jehovah's Witnesses ("Ye are my Witnesses, saith Jehovah," Isaiah 43:10). They deem Abel the first Witness, Christ the Chief Witness and themselves direct descendants.

The Stage Is Set. A tremor shook the society when Russell's wife divorced him in 1911, but worse was the brethren's disenchantment when no second coming occurred in 1914. Russell solved this problem before he died in 1916 aboard his personal Pullman car in Texas (last words: "Wrap me in a Roman toga"). He said the advent must have been invisible--the spirit of Christ had returned to earth without his body. Russell added that this meant Christ established his kingdom in 1914. Satan, he went on, was cast out of heaven in the same year, instead of immediately after the Fall, since God's sentence of death implied deferment ("You shall lie in wait for his heel," Genesis 3:15).

The stage was now actually set for Armageddon, but first there must be a transition period and that, say the Witnesses, is where mankind now finds itself. To the Witnesses, Christ's words on the world's end ("This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled," Matthew 24:34) clearly prove that some who were alive when Christ established his kingdom will see the end of the world. Thus, in the Watch Tower, it is plain that the end must come within the life span of some who were alive in 1914. As he roams the earth, Satan is speeding the end. Since 1914 Witnesses have regarded mounting wars, famines, pestilence and auto accidents as heartening evidence that life everlasting is near. This inspired Judge Joseph Franklin Rutherford, the patriarchal Missouri lawyer who followed Russell as society president, to coin its most famous slogan: "Millions Now Living Will Never Die."

All in Texas. What happens after Armageddon? Jehovah will select 144,000 Witnesses to reign in heaven ("I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand," Revelation 14:1, 3). This "little flock" will be composed only of the especially godly of all ages--including those now living who feel they can indicate publicly that they believe they have been called (16,815, according to one Witness census). The "other sheep" will stay on earth to rule the risen dead for 1,000 years, offering them a final chance to become Witnesses. After that Satan will be permanently vanquished in a second Armageddon. All the faithful, including the risen dead who became good Witnesses, will then inherit the earth. Those who failed to become Witnesses will return to everlasting death, a kind of zero state, their only compensation the fact that it will not be an eternal fiery hell.

When Pastor Russell was asked how the earth would hold all the risen dead (total world dead to date, the Witnesses believe: well over 250 billion), he did some calculations that showed how. By standing up, he said, they could comfortably fit into an area the size of Texas.

Satan's Work. The Witnesses today are impressively organized. At the top is a board of directors, which annually elects the president. Since the death of Rutherford in 1942, the president's post has been held by Pennsylvania-born Nathan H. Knorr, a Witness at 18 who developed administrative ability "in the ranks." Though Knorr, 53, is paid only $14 a month, he has complete control of all Witnesses, lives at the society's expense at Bethel Home, its ten-story headquarters on Columbia Heights in Brooklyn. Every Witness is considered a minister ("because we all preach"), but there are two major kinds: part-time "Publishers" and full-time "Pioneers." Pioneers are obligated to work a minimum of 100 hours a month, ringing doorbells in assigned areas to "place" their 15-ton daily outpour of literature. Every Witness personally pays for the literature he distributes, sending what he collects back to Bethel for more literature. Each leaflet placed may push another innocent toward salvation.

What makes Witnesses feel especially useful is opposition by the rest of the world, which they call "Satan's main work." Watch Tower statisticians report that during World War II Witnesses were attacked by 2,500 mobs in 44 states, usually because, as "ministers," many refuse to serve in the armed forces; about 4,000 Witnesses served jail terms for refusing military service. They also refuse to salute the flag (a graven image), to participate in politics or to undergo blood transfusions ("That ye abstain . . . from blood," Acts 75:29). They have won 36 of 50 test cases in the Supreme Court since 1938, achieving such rights as house soliciting and street preaching without a license, exemption from the draft, jury service. After meeting in New York City last week, the American Legion of New York State protested against all the publicity reaped by the Witnesses, "an organization which refused to raise a hand to protect its country."

Record Baptism. Undeterred, the Witnesses cheered a 103-missionary graduating class of their Watchtower Bible School of Gilead (South Lansing, N.Y.), whose members will spread the word from Sweden to Samoa. With crisp precision, they sent 7,136 converts (aged 9 to 84) in 58 buses to Orchard Beach in The Bronx for a baptism that broke the Witnesses' own record of 4,640 in 1953, eclipsed the mere 3,000 baptized on the feast of Pentecost in A.D. 33 (Acts 2:41).

Thunderously they approved daily addresses by President Knorr, who predicted that the United Nations will fail to forestall Armageddon. "The 82 members of the U.N. will not relish this pronouncement from the word of Jehovah God," he cried, and added that Communism will perish in the coming holocaust. "Have they refrained from opposing and fighting against Jehovah God and his Witnesses? They will not go free of punishment."

But the real villains for the convention were the leaders of organized Christianity. "They are most responsible for world conditions," declared Vice President Fred W. Franz. He even specified which churchmen are most responsible by virtue of supporting the U.N.--Pope Pius XII (or "the pope of Vatican City" as Knorr calls him), Monsignor Thomas A. Donnellen, vice chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the Rev. Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell, pastor of Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Overwhelmingly, the assembly approved a resolution denouncing such leaders who "turn their backs on Jesus Christ." These leaders, said the resolution, "have not directed the people to the only means of salvation ... All the blind peoples who follow these blind religious guides will suffer execution with them at God's hands."

In a windup exhortation to a record crowd of 253,922, President Knorr asked what seemed merely a rhetorical question: "God's kingdom rules--is the world's end near?"Answer: Yes, very near. Eagerly the faithful flocked back to their little churches across the earth, the Kingdom Halls, more than 16,000 of them, where shelter is assured when Armageddon strikes.

* Key: "Jerusalem shall be trodden down . . . until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Russell decided the "times" began when Nebuchadnezzar overthrew Jerusalem (in 586 B.C. according to historians, in October 607 B.C. according to Russell). Since Israel was to suffer "seven times" for its sins (Leviticus 26:18), Russell had to measure the length of a "time." Revelation, he reasoned, calls 1,260 days 3 1/2 "times," so he doubled that to make seven "times" equal 2,520 days. Discouraging result: 600 B.C. Later he found Jehovah saying (Ezekiel 4:6): "I have appointed thee each day for a year." So Russell changed the 2,520 days to years, subtracted 606 (dropping 607's last two months), got 1914 as the date of Armageddon.

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