Witnesses, despite bitter international persecution. Yet, by his death in 1942, Rutherford had rebuilt the movement, by then known as Jehovah's When that did not happen, and when Rutherford began revising Russell's teachings and assuming centralized control over Bible Student congregations, a majority of Bible Students broke with him. The cause of this growth was the revised teaching that the millennium would begin in 1925. Following the release of Rutherford and the others on appeal in 1919, the Bible Students grew dramatically until 1926. Rutherford and seven associates were imprisoned briefly in the Atlanta, Georgia, federal penitentiary in 1918, allegedly for opposing conscription. In July Rutherford ousted four board members and increased his control over the society. Shortly thereafter a struggle began at the Watch Tower headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, between Rutherford and a majority of the society's board of directors. In January 1917 Joseph Franklin Rutherford was elected the second president of the Watch Tower Society. Although Christ's kingdom did not replace the nations of the world in 1914 as he had expected, Russell believed till his death two years later that World War I would lead to their destruction in the battle of Armageddon. He then established the journal Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, and in 1884 he and several associates incorporated Zion's Watch Tower and Tract Society to promote a massive publicity campaign.īeginning about 1895 the Bible Students came to regard Russell as the "faithful and wise servant" of Matthew 24:45–47 and the channel through whom "new light" was delivered. In 1876 Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Bible Students, met Nelson Barbour and accepted Barbour's end-times chronology, which asserted that Christ had been present invisibly since 1874, that their fellowship would be taken to heaven in 1878, and that Jesus' millennial kingdom would be established on earth in 1914. They suffered persecution under Nazism and Communism, have been banned in many countries, and were mobbed repeatedly in the United States from 1940 through 1943. The Witnesses have frequently been in conflict with other religions and secular governments. Jehovah's Witnesses deny the Trinity, believe that hell is the grave, teach that only 144,000 elect will receive heavenly immortality, and assert that the rest of saved humanity will live eternally on earth. Later Russell drew most of his "end-times" teachings from Nelson Barbour (1824–1906), a former disciple of William Miller.
Russell was influenced by members of the Advent Christian Church and an independent Second Adventist, George Storrs (1796–1879). In 1870 their founder, Charles Taze Russell, an Allegheny, Pennsylvania, businessman, had started a study group that became a congregation. Jehovah's Witnesses were known as Bible Students until 1931. RELIGION AS A PERCENTAGE OF WORLD POPULATION: 0.24 OVERVIEW
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