They Hope for Armageddon

...I thought it interesting, too, that the total number of hours (28,772) spent by Sierra Leone's Witnesses working for the organization during the year 1953 was reported in the January 1, 1954 issue of The Watchtower...

...they frankly assert that democracy??no less than dictatorship--is of the devil, and that the United Nations is a "religio-political conspiracy of Christendom's clergy" which has been prophesied in the Bible as "the disgusting thing of Matthew 24:15...

...Then I noted the phrase "opposers of Mr...

...I was told that the article had been submitted by the Witness organization itself, and that it constituted, in effect, an official press release...

...Cole's book is no more objective about the Witnesses than the Dean of Canterbury was objective about Russia...

...Take this matter of statistics, for instance...

...The editor, like most other people, had been under the impression that Negroes were, in fact, accepted as equals in the group, and had printed the article as an interesting report on an interesting group...

...and in one of its rare direct references to Negroes, the organization has declared itself against racial intermarriage...

...This Witness fanaticism has origins similar to those of the Nazi and Communist movements: a dissatisfaction with things as they are, a spiritual alienation from the prevailing social order...

...the group can truly boast that it is "monolithic...

...The pay-off, though, came in a way which the Witnesses can hardly guard against...

...Jehovah's Witnesses believe that they will live right here on this earth forever...

...While I was reading the book, I made notes on some expressions I thought a little quaint: "the chiefest of all indications," "the antifreedom laws," etc...

...Perhaps with all the publicity, the book will be instrumental in making some unhappy ones aware that there is an organization that promises a New World and that declares the cares and worries of the present one to be irrelevant...

...About half of U.S...

...Cole's book...

...I had noticed for some time that the Negro press has nothing but praise when it covers Witness doings...

...Human nature--even the Witnesses' human nature--being what it is, there are always some who resent this business of order-taking...

...they are "disfellowshipped" (expelled) from the organization, and are given to understand that henceforth they can no longer expect to survive Armageddon...

...Like the Communists, the Witnesses have their own stylistic peculiarities that give them away every time...

...The Witnesses make no secret of their disdain for democratic procedures...

...The Witnesses are fond of gathering exact figures on the most inexact subjects...

...They have established, for instance, that "evolution cannot be true," that "for the first 1800 years of mankind's existence there was but one language, Hebrew," and that blood transfusions will cause jaundice...

...The Witnesses have been told to buy this book, and their good discipline and true devotion has put Mr...

...Witnesses are Negroes, even though the organization treats its colored members rather shabbily...

...To compensate for what they feel as the coldness and unfriendliness of the world, Witnesses have erected a tight little universe all their own...

...Maybe there is nothing wrong with this kind of public-relations practice...

...Witnesses believe that they have found a key to the future in their own interpretation of the Bible...

...even as far north as Asbury Park, N. J., Negro Witnesses are segregated...

...There are, however, a great many tiny dissident groups of former members who spend their time and energies handing out denunciatory tracts in front of Witness meetings and conventions...

...To be sure, it is a highly interesting document, for the Witnesses are quite frank about some matters which any other organization would hide...

...But when we read how they envisage the world after the defeat of their enemies, there appears a frightening similarity between Witness fantasies and modern totalitarian states: "The survivors of this war of the great day of God the Almighty will be his lovers, the New World Society...

...I myself know of at least fifteen such groups of Jehovah's Trotskyites...

...the issue reached me in the last week of December 1953...

...It was in connection with the Negro question that I stumbled across the clue that solves, in my opinion, the mystery of Mr...

...A million little details give the book away as an official hand-out...

...Until recent years, Negroes were not allowed to attend regular conventions of the organization but were furnished, instead, with separate Jim Crow assemblies...

...But Mr...

...Cole's name on the best-seller list...

...Witness doctrine assures its devotees of the inevitable and early defeat of all existing (Satanic) governments...

...For these, punishment is swift and automatic...

...Death will continue to strike, but only at the believers of false (non-Witness) religion...

...and after some killing-off of the Witnesses' enemies at Armageddon, the faithful expect immortality amid the pleasures of an earthly paradise...

...but the Public--especially the Negro public --knows the Witnesses now only through their own distorted publicity...

...Despite all their fantasies of imminent world-wide bloodshed, the Witnesses are a pretty innocuous lot...

...Cole reports all such figures with great seriousness and with considerable awe...

...There are all sorts of cranks among them, but also many who are exceptionally sensitive to the harshness of our social order...

...Reviewed by Werner Cohn Contributor, "The American Scholar" The 150,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in this country walk among us, work, dress, eat and sleep as we do, and yet in many ways are as far removed from us as any monk in Tibet or commissar in Russia...

...Consequently, there are never any expressed differences of opinion within the Witnesses...

...To this day, there are separate "companies" (local groups) for Negro members in all Southern and border states...

...When I visited the Brooklyn headquarters of the organization about two years ago, only two out of more than 400 on the headquarters staff were Negro...

...The top national leadership of the organization is completely white...

...The Witnesses have their greatest appeal to people who have been disinherited by their environment or who feel estranged from the normal, everyday-workaday routines of the world...

...The numerous Negroes in the organization make it important news for Negro newspapers, and Witness conventions are treated almost as if they were gatherings of the NAACP...

...they serve no totalitarian government, and nowhere do they exercise actual physical power over people...

...Cole's book, too, has all the earmarks of Witness public-relations efforts...

...Chapter Six, especially, is fascinating: It explains why opposition cannot be tolerated in the organization and gives an illuminating example of how Rutherford, a former Witness leader, used legalistic subterfuges in order to expel opponents from the leadership...

...Nevertheless, the article had a personal by-line, and purported to speak from the point of view of an objective outsider...

...What seems true to the world is false to the Witnesses, and what seems utterly fantastic to outsiders is the Gospel truth to the members...

...Russell," and when I turned to my newspaper the next morning, I saw Nathan H. Knorr, Witness top leader, quoted as having castigated other Christian denominations collectively as "the chief opposer of God's Kingdom...

...The Witnesses' private universe of knowledge covers all fields of human endeavor...

...The book also gives interesting (and reliable) information on the persecution of Witnesses all over the world, on the many Supreme Court battles they have won on behalf of free speech, and on the Witness affiliation of Eisenhower's parents...

...When one of the best Negro periodicals some time ago spoke of the Witnesses as "the religion of [racial] integration," I felt that I had to contact the editor...

...They have established, for instance, that Adam's creation took place "in the fall of 4025 B.C...

...Their machine is organized with military precision, and orders must be obeyed without question...

...After the battle they will go forth and look upon the carcasses of those whom Jehovah has slain, unburied, the food of worms that will not die or cease from swarming over the odious carcasses until they have eaten the bones clean, the food of fire mixed with sulphur that will not be extinguished until it has completed the consumption of all remnants of the carcasses...

...Jehovah's Witnesses are not a totalitarian organization...

...As long as we have the kind of world which make some people bitter enough to hope for an Armageddon, we might perhaps be thankful that the 150,000 American Witnesses show such energy and devotion to Jehovah rather than to the memory of Hitler or Stalin...

...But Mr...

...They also report very exact figures on total attendance at their Yankee Stadium sessions, though when I attended there were no tickets, no turnstiles, nobody counting: I was able to learn, nevertheless, that I had been one of 72,469 people in the stadium on that particular day...