30 Years a Watchtower Slave: The Confessions of a Converted Jehovah's Witness by Schnell William J

Author:Schnell, William J. [Schnell, William J.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780801063848
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

UPHELD BY THE COURTS

■ Suspicions Aroused

As the worldwide campaign to sell the Watchtower books, booklets and magazines continued, there were those who began to recognize it for the racket which it was. Officials and other groups were beginning to suspect that perhaps the enormous sales of this Watchtower merchandise and religious goods under the guise of practicing religion, were no more than business sales without a license. Here and there articles in the press and in magazines raised questions. There was, for instance, in the year 1940 an article by Stanley High, in the Saturday Evening Post entitled, “Armageddon, Inc.” Being subjected to this sort of publicity, the Watchtower High Command had to counteract.

The Watchtower Society knew that the opposition came from those who were basically religious and valued religious freedom. In designing countermoves to destroy the growing impression that the Watchtower campaign was a racket, the Society took this fact into account. Whenever Jehovah’s Witnesses were arrested for selling books without a license, legal action was immediately begun to establish that this was merely preaching by use of the printed page instead of the spoken word. This claim of religious freedom as a justification for their practices was repeated again and again, despite numerous defeats. They were much too astute to give up this chain of court trials and subsequent convictions, arrests and rearrests, and mass actions followed by still more arrests.

This surefire pattern served its purpose well. It slowly but surely began to create the impression that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were being persecuted for practicing their “religion,” and the accusation that they were conducting a racket gradually fell away. At the same time the Organizational leaders hoped that they were now beginning to realize the fondest dream of the Watchtower Society, to be recognized as the religion of the land and then of the whole world.

This dream was first visualized by the Judge, during his arrest and subsequent conviction and the dissolution of the Society. This was and remains the goal toward which the whole Organization gravitates, which is, to make the whole world a New World Society. They knew that they could ride a long way toward this goal on the widespread innate sympathy for the underdog. Before this campaign started the people had begun to refuse to buy books any longer in ordinary house-to-house work. Now many again became interested if for no other reason than to support Jehovah’s Witnesses in the fight.

How this actually worked out in practice is illustrated by an experience I had while witnessing in Plainfield, New Jersey. I had just left one house, having placed two bound books there, when I noticed a police car moving slowly toward the curb. The officers called to me, but I pretended that I did not hear them. I proceeded to the porch of the next house. A man watching from the window quickly opened the door for me even before I knocked, and I entered. I thus got unsolicited aid in foiling the attempt of the police to arrest me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.