VON LEERS: In Jehovah’s Service

In West Germany, 50,000 new Jehovah’s Witnesses have just had themselves baptized. This is something to think about, especially given their unyielding hostility and the conversion mania they have unleashed worldwide with stubborn zeal. So here are the essentials about what this sect teaches and what it aims for.

The U.S. is the land of the most and the wildest sects. Yet none of them has ever shown the same fire and fanaticism as the “International Bible Students Association.” It was founded in 1872 by a dry-goods merchant named Charles Taze Russell from Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He was a fiery speaker who supposedly sold no fewer than 13 million copies of his writings.

“Pastor” Russell’s successor was Judge J. F. Rutherford, who quickly turned himself into the absolute ruler of the movement and gave it the new name “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” the name by which it has been known worldwide ever since. His writings come from the “Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of the International Bible Students Association.” The headquarters sit at 117 Adams Street, Brooklyn, N.Y., with branches in every major city in the U.S. and Europe. In 1940, two years before he died, Rutherford claimed he had put more than 300 million pieces of his literature into circulation. His three-volume book Rechtfertigung [“Justification”] alone saw 1,600,000 copies printed in its first German edition. Still, it would be a mistake to judge membership numbers by sales figures; the actual following is relatively small, yet all the more fanatical and utterly closed to reason.

Just like the Jews, the Bible Students draw a sharp line only between Jews and non-Jews; the Jews of course get the first chance at blessing, and later the non-Jews may also seek Jehovah in Jerusalem.2 What a “real Jew” means is spelled out on the opening pages of the booklet Favored People. Every true Christian must become a Witness of Jehovah and thereby join the elect covenant people. Jesus, the servant of Jehovah [!]—not the Son of God—, came from the tribe of Judah. The word “Jew” itself comes from Judah, which means “praise Jehovah.” And since Christ Jesus always praised Jehovah [?], he is therefore a true Jew.

The Bible Students are furious enemies of every other religion, claiming all of them come from the devil and that the churches are run by Satan. They condemn the Christmas tree3 and Mother’s Day as well; they also refuse to salute the American flag or any other.4 Their refusal to celebrate Mother’s Day makes perfect sense, because in their organization—exactly as among the Jews—the woman is kept in a completely subordinate place to the man.

This sect is nothing but a camouflaged pseudo-religious outfit for the PROPAGATION OF JEWISH WORLD DOMINION. Their God is the vengeance-snorting, nation-devouring Jehovah or Yahweh, the old Jewish tribal deity; he is lord over the nations marked for destruction. Judah is the one people of God, and all other peoples are meant to be subject to it;5 for all salvation comes from the Jews.6 That is why the Bible Students have been waiting since 1889, when the Schriftstudien [“Studies in the Scriptures”] first appeared, for the year of salvation—1914—hoping the rule of Judah would finally break through. They waited in tense, almost breathless longing until the birth arrived: the birth of the nations of righteousness, of Zionism.7 Zionism will flourish, and the people of Israel will take a leading place in the world.8

In 1914 Satan’s rule ended and Christ entered the temple—that is, Jehovah set him on the throne. But first the devil still managed to push the nations into the World War, which Jehovah then stopped in 1918, mainly so that the Lord’s faithful covenant people, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, could stand up before the whole world and testify that Jehovah is Lord and the Kingdom has come.

Now we are treated to some interesting revelations about the rotten Christian nations that are ripe for destruction. Among other things we read: The Christian creeds are products of Satan. So the Bible Students preach the coming destruction of Christendom,9 which they call the chief of all hypocritical religions.10 Because Christianity will stand on Satan’s side in the final battle, it will be judged and placed under the rule of Judah.11

Christianity, then, has gone to seed, while the Jews are the elect. Spiritual Israel is now the holy nation, the nation of nations; Jehovah’s favor is returning to it.12 The Jewish people has been highly honored and specially favored by God;13 it is God’s own possession among all peoples, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So it is only natural that pride among the Jews produced the desire to become the first nation, since they considered themselves fully capable of ruling and teaching.14

Just how deeply Judah hated the Germans and Germany before 1933 is clear from their own writings. We read, for example:

“The persecutions the Jews suffered for long centuries in Germany, Russia and elsewhere are too terrible to put into words. The shameful acts of those so-called Christians have made Christianity stink in the nostrils of many decent people.”15

“In Germany the Jews were stripped of rights […] plundered […] tortured […] and because the Jews feel the whole world is at war with them, this has not lessened their national pride at all; it has only widened the gulf between the Jews and their heathen neighbors everywhere.”16

The more the nations move against the Jews, the more brutal the Jews become. As compensation for their sufferings they are promised:

“Their enemies will melt away before them […] Some kind of example will be made of the people that persecutes them. [See Russia!] Peoples with strong national feeling are especially marked by Judah for destruction; for the times of the nations ended in 1914. The Jewish age is a type of the reality of the GOSPEL AGE IN WHICH WE NOW LIVE.”17

“The days of waiting are over; we are seeing the beginning of the return of divine favor to Israel. That favor is taking clearer shape every day in the Zionist movement.”18

“For the other nations the word of Jeremiah holds: I will turn the captivity of the tents of Jacob. His sons will be as they were before, and I will punish all their oppressors.”19

This visitation began in 1914 and reached its height in 1918. From that moment the nations were supposed to collapse, and the Jews were to take power.20

The start came in 1917 in Russia, when the people of the Lord seized the government and the violation of the Russian people began. What non-Jews can expect is spelled out in Rechtfertigung:21 So too will Satan’s organization be swept away, flung across the face of the earth and left as food for dogs and carrion birds. Gather yourselves and come, assemble from every side to my sacrifice that I am slaughtering for you, a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel; eat flesh and drink blood!22 That was when the great work of Jehovah began with the slaughter of at least 20 million non-Jews (according to Churchill) as the first installment; for Jehovah’s law of retribution is just and right. Violence must be repaid with equal violence. Eye for eye, life for life.23

Finally, note this prophecy that appeared in the U.S. in 1917:24 After 1918, when Christendom as a system, together with the revolutionary republics that follow it, is to sink into oblivion (Sheol), God will bring mourning on the nations. Because of the fall of Christendom every man-made system in the world will waste away. God will make the nations tremble with gigantic revolutions when he hurls Christendom down into Sheol.

In the proud certainty of their own election they also feel entitled to lecture governments and set them on the right path.

The reaction, of course, varied. Rutherford writes: Not one country on earth gave God’s faithful people any help or support during the hardships of the World War, nor did those nations pay any attention to the truth God’s believing people proclaimed. The famous world conscience stayed silent then. But when it came to Germany, the Jewish world conscience suddenly woke up and became sharp-eared. From every corner of the globe the voice of Jehovah cried out, and on Feb. 9, 1934 Rutherford declared, among other things:

“If by March 24, 1934 no answer is given to this serious demand [the release of the Jehovah’s Witnesses from protective custody] and the government does nothing to ease the situation of the Witnesses in Germany, then God’s people in other lands, under every nation on earth, will publish the facts of Germany’s unjust treatment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, outraging all decent people and dishonoring God’s name; we will lay our case before Jehovah God and leave it to him, through Christ Jesus, to punish the guilty in his own good time and way.”

On Oct. 7, 1934 thousands of telegrams rained down on Berlin with this wording:

“Your harsh treatment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses outrages all good people and dishonors God’s name. Stop persecuting Jehovah’s Witnesses or God will destroy you and your national party […]”

Signed, Jehovah’s Witnesses in […]

By 1945 they could write in triumph: These people ruled by demonic powers have received a preliminary answer: the terrible end of the Nazi leaders, the downfall of Berlin! “For the foreseeable future Greater Berlin must be wiped from the map”, a newspaper note says today. And the almighty God has not yet spoken his last word.

Strangely, their writings contain not a single word against Jewish Communism. Could Jehovah perhaps have entered the temple in Moscow? The following lines at least allow that conclusion:

“To the men of the East, including the anointed ones on earth, has been given the task of carrying out God’s judgment, to take vengeance on the nations and punish the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with iron fetters, to execute on them the written judgment! This is the honor of all his holy ones. Praise Jehovah!”25

Original Title: Im Dienste Jehovas

Attributed Author: Martin Faustus (known alias of Johann von Leers)

“Der Weg” Issue: Volume 8, Issue 8 (August 1954)

Page(s): 579-582 [Scan LINK]

Der Weg - El Sendero is a German- and Spanish-language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Germans with ties to the defeated Third Reich.

Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.

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