The Rasselites did not forget about their daily bread. In 1913, the International Tract Society actively advertised wheat seeds (at $1 a pound),29 promising that miracle wheat was guaranteed to yield five times as much as ordinary wheat.30 For the caricature that the Eagle magazine placed on Russell with his miracle wheat, he sued the publishers, but lost the case - the wheat turned out to be of poor quality. In the light of these revelations, the public accusations of the American Baptist pastor John Ross Hamilton against Charles Russell became particularly acute, revealing the destructiveness of the teaching invented by a man who was neither a scientist nor a theologian. Russell sued the pastor for libel and stated that he had a higher scholastic education, that he was a specialist in historical and dogmatic theology, that he was fluent in ancient Greek and Hebrew, etc. But when he was unable to name the letters of the Greek alphabet that had been shown to him, it became clear that Russell had once again become a major disgrace.32 It turned out that his entire education was limited to seven years of school, which he dropped out of at the age of fourteen. It turned out that Russell had lied when he claimed to have been ordained a priest. Therefore, if the reader happens to meet modern very respectable gentlemen from the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses, remember that this truly destructive teaching is originally based on lies.

Despite its vigorous activity on virtually every continent, the Watch Tower Society had only 5,100 active preachers by 1914.

We have already mentioned some of the scandalous trials that shook the Society. It is worth mentioning one more thing. In 1897, the wife of Charles Russell, who had previously declared herself his ideological follower, broke off all relations with her husband, accusing him of repeated adultery with other followers of the Society. This time there were no divorce proceedings - Russell promised his ex-wife a solid lifetime financial compensation. The scandalous case was hushed up. However, soon the former spouses had mutual financial claims. The chief Jehovah's Witness refused to provide his wife with material assistance, for which M. Russell filed a lawsuit to the court for the division of property, where the main motive for divorce was the infidelity of her husband, confirmed by numerous testimonies. The court found Russell guilty and satisfied the claim of his ex-wife. Russell's position was further complicated by the fact that, on the advice of friends, he managed to donate a large part of his disputed property to the Society he headed before the court decision was made, and thus deprived his wife of a large part of the share of the property.

But then came the long-awaited year of 1914 for Jehovah's Witnesses, and with it the First World War. The Jehovah's Witnesses, in the name of the International Tract Society, solemnly declared that this war would develop into Armageddon.

Section II: New Deadlines and "Old Disappointments"

1. Armageddon is canceled

In 1916, Charles Russell dies before Armageddon and the establishment of the millennium. The Jehovists of America were headed by Joseph Rutherforth (1869-1942), who joined the sect in 1906 and then became a close friend and legal adviser to Russell. It was Rutherforth who Russell entrusted to defend his interests in the divorce proceedings.33

It was not easy for the second president of the Society to convincingly substantiate the new system of theological views of the Jehovah's Witnesses, adopted after the end of the First World War. The unfulfilled aspirations of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who eagerly awaited the beginning of the millennium in 1914, prompted many of them to leave the Society. Some moved to other religious denominations, others simply became lukewarm believers, and still others began to create their own "societies" of Jehovah's Witnesses, simultaneously accusing Rutherforth of misinterpreting Russell's teachings. In 1918, Rutherforth expelled Paul Johnson from the ruling corporation of the Society for continuing to preach about the final determination and resurrection to spiritual life by 1914 of the righteous among the "heavenly class", a total of 144 thousand. At the same time, Johnson referred to Russell. According to the teaching updated by Rutherforth, the gathering of the "body of Christ" is not yet over and many of the living have a chance to get into the coveted "class". As for Russell's prophecy regarding 1914, there was a complete forgery. Thus, soon after 1914, in the new edition of the second volume of the works of C. Russell, the words "the deliverance of the saints must take place some time before the onset of 1914." were changed as follows: "The deliverance of the saints must take place shortly after 1914."34

In an attempt to justify Charles Russell, Rutherforth argued that his predecessor had been misunderstood because he had predicted a symbolic Armageddon, the First World War of 1914. According to his explanations, in 1914 Christ took the throne of heaven and threw Satan down to earth. He started World War I, and Jehovah only suspended the war in 1918 to prepare the people for Armageddon. Nevertheless, many believers, feeling deeply deceived, indignantly perceived the attempts of the leaders of the sect to find an excuse for the failure of Russell's prophecies. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the leaders of the Society made harsh anti-war (according to other sources, anti-government) statements in the press, for which some of them, including Rutherforth, were sentenced to several months in prison. Soon, due to religious and political differences, a split occurred in the Society. Three Jehovah's Witnesses were formed independent of the Brooklyn Center. One of them took the name Epiphania (from Polish - advent, appearance); another is the Committee now called the Society for the Study of the Scriptures, and the third is known as the Society of Free Students of the Scriptures.

In an effort to convince his co-religionists that there was a natural process of cleansing the Bible students of those who had fallen into heresy, Rutherforth published a pamphlet in 1919, Babylon Has Fallen, from which it followed that all religions, including Christianity, were an invention of Satan.36

Even the short-term imprisonment of several Jehovah's Witnesses was declared prophetically predicted in the biblical books of the prophet Daniel and the Apostle John the Theologian, and their release from custody was likened by Rutherforth to the liberation of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity.

As soon as the creation of the International League of Nations was announced in 1919, the Jehovah's Witnesses hastened to announce37 that in this way the prophecy of Daniel, who announced the coming "abomination of desolation" (Dan. 9:27), had been "fulfilled."