On May 8, 1918, together with other "Russellites," he was arrested under the Espionage Act and later sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment for spreading insubordination and disloyalty in the American Navy and Army. In 1914 the name became "International Bible Students' Association." Russell died in 1916.Īfter Russell's death he was succeeded as head of the sect by a man named Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who called himself "Judge" although he had never held an official appointment as such. Russell had begun by preaching the "Millennial Dawn." His followers then became known as "Millennial Dawnists." Soon Russell adopted the title "Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society." In 1896 this was changed to "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society." For a time he thought the "People's Pulpit Association" sounded better. In 1911 the Brooklyn published a caricature of Russell and beneath it this question: "If Pastor Russell can get a dollar a pound for miracle wheat, what could he have got for miracle stocks and bonds as a director in the old Union Bank?" Russell sued the for libel. He sold what he called "miracle wheat" at sixty dollars a bushel to credulous farmers, the fraud being eventually stopped by the federal authorities, who made him refund the money (Leslie Rumble,, 2:1,352). He was an expert, too, at making money by investments in mines and real estate, and by selling his books. By the time he was thirty he had sold out the chain for 250,000 dollars, which in the 1880s was equivalent to more than a million dollars today" (Marley Cole,, 73). Before he was thirty years old he had expanded his father's clothing store in Alleghany, Pennsylvania and rapidly established four more. His followers write: "Russell must have had a rare capacity for business. Nor did Russell lead a saintly life such as we might expect of the founder of a religious sect. Russell was never a scholar in the accepted sense of the word. He wrote on the Bible, but every acknowledged Scripture scholar in the universities of the world today will agree that Russell's explanations are for the most part quite contrary to the obvious meaning of the words of the Bible. Handed a Greek New Testament, he was forced to admit that he did not know even the Greek alphabet. Under oath in court at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1913 he declared in support of his claims to be an expert Scripture scholar that he knew Greek. Russell was not a Scripture scholar, learned in the Greek language. Aged twenty, he began preaching "the good news" with "no hell." He assumed the title "Pastor Russell" in 1879 when he was founding his new religion. Even as an atheist he could not leave the Bible alone. He had been obsessed by the thought of the horror of hell. At the age of seventeen he tried to convert an atheist but lost his own faith. He became an earnest worker in the Congregational Church. Russell was born in 1852 of Scottish and Irish descent. "I knew I would definitely be shunned by friends, but I honestly didn't think my siblings would shun me because of what we'd all been through together," Ms Whitby said.The Jehovah's Witnesses are a sect founded in 1879 by Charles Taze Russell, a Pittsburgh draper. In 2017, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found the total social exclusion known as "shunning" made it difficult for abuse survivors to leave the organisation, was "upsetting" and "particularly devastating" for those who suffered child abuse and left because their abuser remained in the congregation. They remain cut off from their families and closest friends: those they love the most. The people who break away from the Jehovah's Witnesses like Amy Whitby and Theresa Clare pay a terrible price. Ms Flynn's firm, Shine Lawyers, is representing 10 former Jehovah's Witnesses who allege they were abused within their congregations. In a statement to Four Corners, the Jehovah's Witnesses said, "The organisation responds directly to any claim for compensation in a caring, fair and principled manner". "That continuous denial, the continuous delays certainly has a significant impact on our clients," Ms Flynn said. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander crisis support line 13YARN on 13 92 76.Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467.In Australia, a similar pattern is being seen. They say the organisation drags cases out until the last possible moment, then settles to avoid a courtroom examination of its practices. Lawyers who have battled the Jehovah's Witnesses in the US and UK have told Four Corners the organisation has a global problem with both child abuse and the way it responds to victims. "We think that the Australian courts will make that same determination when they're called on to do so." Lisa Flynn is the national practice leader for Shine Lawyers.
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