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By a curious telescoping of events and ideas, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Biblical prophecies govern all earthly events. They, under Judge Rutherford's leadership, distrust formalized religion, lump clergymen with financiers, politicians, the League of Nations and Lucifer, the last of whom they believe to be actively at large. In their scrutinies of Holy Writ, the Bible Students have concluded that three "cosmos" divide history. Cosmos I began with Adam, ended with the Flood. Cosmos II ended in 1914. The Bible Students once predicted that Cosmos III would end with the Kingdom of God in 2874 but currently they are more concerned with Judge Rutherford's prophecy that a universal war is looming. (And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground—Jeremiah, 25:33.) As to when the universal war will occur Judge Rutherford is vague. Few years ago he came a cropper by prophesying such a cataclysm for 1928. Two years later he deeded in perpetuity a ten-room house, two-car garage and a pair of automobiles in San Diego, Calif, to King David, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, Samuel and other Biblical worthies, declaring he was confident they would shortly reappear on earth (TIME, March 31, 1930).
Jehovah's Witnesses call themselves "remnants" ("unworthy strivers after the kingdom of the Lord"), "Jonadabs" ("workers in the Lord's vineyard"), "pioneers" (those who have dropped all other work except that of Jehovah), and "publishers" (those who do Jehovah's work along with their own). Last Sunday, remnants, Jonadabs, pioneers and publishers, to say nothing of the thousands of plain Bible Students, listened bug-eyed in Washington Auditorium to a speech by Judge Rutherford broadcast and rebroadcast to the ends of the earth by radio, wire and wireless at a cost claimed to be $200,000. They applauded lustily when Judge Rutherford referred to the Roman Catholic Church as a "foreign foe" whose head had ordered that Jehovah's Witnesses be crushed; when he declared that "Jehovah has expressly declared the League of Nations a fraud and a snare and it shall be destroyed"; when he reminded them that though Satan's time on earth is up, he "refuses to get out" and so must also be destroyed, under the leadership of Jesus Christ. Burden of Judge Rutherford's rambling remarks, delivered in a clear voice with a trace of Southern accent, was that the Day of Armageddon is at hand. "My language." said the Judge, "is wholly inadequate to describe that battle. But quotations will give you an idea." Thereupon he produced from Scripture a series of lurid pictures of plagues, storms, flashings of fire, quenchings of sun, moon and stars, and a rain of blocks of ice. "That," concluded Judge Rutherford, "will convince them that Jehovah is doing the fighting."