 | Jehovah's Witnesses splinter groups: Encyclopedia II - Jehovah's Witnesses splinter groups - Second crisis : Pastor Russell's death
Jehovah's Witnesses splinter groups - Second crisis : Pastor Russell's death
After Charles Taze Russell's death in 1916, Joseph Franklin Rutherford was elected second president of the Watchtower Society and immediately started an intensive work of restructuring the movement which, by 1928, led to nearly three-quarters of the membership departing association with the Society. One of Rutherford's most controversial moves was the expulsion of four members (R. H. Hirsh, I. F. Haskins, A. I. Ritchie, and J. D. Wright) of the seven-member Board of Directors appointed by Pastor Russell, with his own appointees in July 1917. After their expulsion, these four members eventually formed the Pastoral Bible Institute, and started publishing The Herald of Christ’s Kingdom, edited by R. E. Streeter.
The Australian Berean Bible Institute also formally separated from the Watchtower society in 1918.
In December 1918, Charles E. Heard and some others, considered Rutherford's recommendation to buy war bonds to be a perversion of Russell's pacifist teachings, and founded the Stand Fast Bible Students Association in Portland, Oregon.
In 1917, Alexander F.L. Freytag, Branch manager of the Swiss Watchtower Society since 1898, founded the Angel of Jehovah Bible and Tract Society (also known as the Philanthropic Assembly of the Friends of Man and The Church of the Kingdom of God, Philanthropic Assembly) and started publishing his views; he was ousted from the Watchtower Society by Rutherford in 1919.
Paul S. L. Johnson founded the Layman's Home Missionary Movement in 1919.
In Germany, Ewald Vorsteher was disfellowshipped in the early 1920s after refusing to follow instructions from the Watchtower Society. He published "WahrÂheitsfreund" ("Friend of Truth"). His home was searched by the Gestapo in 1933 and the discovery of papers critical of the Nazi regime was used as a justification the persecution of both Bible Students, and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
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