A Look into the Watchtower and Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses came about from a movement called the Bible Students, which was founded by Charles Taze Russell who was the second president of the Watchtower Society. The Watchtower Society was founded in 1881 by William Henry Conley as a legal entity for the Bible Students. However, it is believed that because he and his wife later broke away from the group because they no longer believed in their teachings, they were disfellowshiped, which is known to be practiced by Jehovah's Witnesses. Disfellowshiping is the forbidding of their followers to speak with anyone who has left the organization. Joseph Franklin Rutherford was elected as the third president of the Watchtower Society in January of 1917. Because of his controversial practices, the Bible Students that remained in the fellowship of the Watchtower Society adopted the name Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford was born a Baptist and later became an atheist due to his pastor condemning his fiancé to hell because she was a Presbyterian. In 1906 he became a Bible Student. For 6 years he preached a lecture series entitled "Millions Now Living Will Never Die." According to these lectures he used what was called Jubilee cycles to calculate that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and other faithful prophets would return in 1925. He had a house built in 1925 to house the prophets when they returned. In 1931 it was decided that they would no longer practice date fixing. In 1948 the house was sold and in 1950 the Watchtower published that it misunderstood the teaching by saying the "earthly forefathers of Jesus Christ would be resurrected after Armageddon." Joseph Franklin Rutherford died alone in 1942. According to the coroner's report, it was several days before he was found dead at the bottom of a stairwell with rat bites on his face and hands.