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Kingdom Come

Elizabeth Buchanan

he room is huge – as big as a college basketball stadium – and it’s packed. An hour ago, the wide aisles were teeming with a joyous multitude: men in neat suits, women with long hair and skirts, polite gangs of well-dressed children roaming together across the lushly carpeted lobby. Two women would spot each other across the crowded room and sprint together, meet, and embrace, sometimes knocking over bystanders in their enthusiasm. Husbands would follow more sedately, grinning and clapping shoulders over the squeals of their excited wives. The sound was like a crowded train station, a chimeric roar cobbled together out of hundreds of competing conversations. It felt as if a family reunion and a tent revival were being held all together in the same giant hotel lobby.

But after three increasingly stern requests to be seated, broadcast over the PA system that can be heard everywhere in the building including the bathroom, most of the throng have found their places among the padded stadium seats and the room has grown quiet, except for the occasional cry of a baby. On the vast, raised stage in the front of the room, two women with microphones sit and face one another. A stack of books is on the table between them. The whole room is listening.

“Hello Tracy,” says the younger woman. “I am glad to see you again. How are you since we last talked?” She is dressed in blue and holds a closed Bible. She leans towards her Tracy, who sits with her hands primly folded on her lap.

  “Well Linda, I am just depressed.” Both women are speaking with a scripted cheerfulness, pronouncing each syllable carefully as if auditioning for a corporate training video. “Reading the news, we see all the destruction in Iraq and the damage they say is happening to the environment and the high oil prices. It is so bad, I just feel that the world is heading towards Armageddon.”

“You know Tracy, I am glad you said that. A lot of people use the word ‘Armageddon’ these days. But do you know what that word means?”

“Gosh Linda, I guess I really don’t.”

“Well, many people use that word as a code for death and destruction. But in fact, the Bible links Armageddon with a happy new beginning. In fact, let’s look at Jeremiah 25.”

As Linda leans forward to show the passage to her friend, there is a sudden noise like a thousand moths flapping as the entire room flips through the soft pages of their Bibles to reach Jeremiah and read along. The man in front of me is taking notes. On the wall behind the women are two round plaques, like giant cartoon speech bubbles. “Store Up Your Treasures in Heaven!” says the first.  “The Great Day of Jehovah Is Near!” says the second.

This is the regional assembly of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Connecticut circuit 1B. These people are studying how to save me.

…

The Apocalypse is near at hand, but if you haven’t heard, don’t worry – you’re on some Witness’s to-do list. They don’t give dates for Armageddon these days: the end did not come in 1970, the last year they bothered forecasting it, just as it did not come in October 1914, the original date set by Charles Taze Russell who founded the ‘Bible Students’ movement that eventually became the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both failed prophecies cost the movement some members, but the remaining faithful accused the deserters of being more concerned with their own salvation than with doing the will God. “Brethren,” Russell wrote in an issue of his Watchtower Magazine in 1916, when it at last it was fairly certain the world had not come to an end, “those of us who are in the right attitude toward God are not disappointed at any of his arrangements.”

…

            “There are no contradictions in the scriptures,” Dan Broman tells me. Dan is an elder of the Witness congregation in South Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the “mature Christian men” who are elected to act as leaders within Witness community. Dan is in his late thirties, mostly bald with a sharp nose and small bright eyes that make him resemble a Hollywood cliché, the evil henchman. He speaks very softly.

“If we try to apply modern standards of social behavior to the Bible, you might try to read in a contradiction. But if we’re open and allow ourselves to submit to what the Bible has to say…” Dan smiles and moves his hands apart, like a magician making a coin disappear. “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

            Dan and Patricia, the older woman he brought with him and whose participation so far has consisted of turning to the Bible passages Dan cites and showing them to me, serve as Special Forces in the battle for my salvation. They have agreed to meet with me in their congregational meetinghouse – called a ‘Kingdom Hall’ - to discuss their belief with me, a skeptical student, in the polite and noncommittal language of the “participant observer”. “We love students,” Dan reassures me. “In a way, we’re all students. We’re all looking for the truth.”

After our interview, Dan and Patricia give me a brief tour of Kingdom Hall that ends at the literature distribution center. Along the back wall of the building is a line of mailboxes. Each is labeled with a name, the number of magazines and in which language, that Witness has paid for that week. There are about forty boxes in all. Dan hands me an issue of Watchtower magazine out of his box, then decides to bring out the heavy artillery.

“We have that on cd too, if you’re interested. MP3 cd and the regular kind.” He leads me to the other side of the room, where several vast bookshelves are set into the wall, crammed with what they call “Life-Saving Literature.” Dan hands me two cds in shiny plastic sleeves, then something else on the shelf catches his eye. “Oh, this is a good one. This will help you.” It’s a DVD, a double feature – ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses: Organized to Share the Good News’ and ‘Our Whole Association of Brothers.’

“We have that on VHS too, if you prefer.”

‘Jehovah’s Witnesses: Who Are They? What Do They Believe?’ is a magazine-sized pamphlet on newsprint; ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses: Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom’ is a 700 page textbook with a hard cover. When Dan learns that I’m bilingual, he happily adds the Spanish and Mandarin Chinese versions of the latest magazines to my stack. ‘Sing Praises to Jehovah’ is a pocket-sized hymnal, with a space for me to write my name in the front. ‘What Does the Bible Really Teach’ also comes on DVD, in sign language. As Dan adds to my rapidly growing stack of information, Patricia stands behind me, nodding in approval.  “Oh yes, that’s a good one,” she says, “that will help you understand.”

They’re enjoying this, of course, but you can’t really blame them. Almost every baptized Jehovah’s Witness in the world has ‘gone into service’ or ‘Witnessed’ –preaching about their beliefs in public, often to strangers, usually door to door. It isn’t often they have the advantage of such an attentive audience. What they do have, when the right listener finally asks the right questions, are the answers. Translated into 310 languages, with accompanying full color illustrations. Want to know what’s wrong with the world? Worried about the future? The Witnesses have news for you:

There is a God. His name is Jehovah. And he’s coming. He’s coming really, really soon.

…

Janet Avery’s business card declares her to be a ‘Retired Wonder’ and ‘Volunteer Bible Instructor.’ She’s been a baptized Jehovah’s Witness for 33 years, but when a Witnesses arrived at her door in 1974, she had recently converted to Catholicism.

“I was studying the Bible all the time, teaching catechism to little kids. I wanted to get things right, you know? If a Mormon had come to my door I would have invited them in.” Janet laughs, in the manner of all Jehovah’s Witnesses when conversation turns to Mormonism. (“Their literature has a number to call for more information,” one Witness told me indignantly, “A number! Any Witness would at least be willing to talk to you face to face.”) The Witness at Janet’s door asked if she thought humankind could solve what was wrong in the world. “We were talking about inflation and other things like that. And I remember this very clearly – she asked if I thought human beings could solve this thing and I said, no. ‘No, I think only God can take care of this.’ I surprised myself when I said it, because I was very political at the time.”

Janet began to study the Bible with the Witnesses right away, and was baptized within the year, much to the dismay of her Catholic husband. “He’d been so happy that I converted. I don’t think he was upset by the end of the world thing nearly as much as he was by my doing something he didn’t want me to do.” She pauses for a moment. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not hold with divorce. One Sunday’s lesson, titled “Wives Deeply Respect Your Husbands,” suggests that married women whose spouses are not believers should strive to be particularly attentive and obedient, to demonstrate the joys of good Christian living and convert their husbands by example. In Janet’s case, it didn’t happen that way. “He tortured me about it 32 years until he died,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “And now he’s dead.”

Janet sees her story as a natural progression, a march towards the truth she had instinctively known was in the Bible all along. Witnesses seek to avoid beliefs based on “mere human speculations or religious creeds;” they take every word of the 66 books in their canonical Bible as God-given truth. Thus the name of the movement, from Isaiah 43.10: “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah.” Thus their refusal of blood transfusions - Acts 15.28: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit…that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood.” Thus also their eager anticipation of Armageddon and the subsequent joys of an afterlife spent on earth. But when I ask what qualities are essential for a student to become a Witness, Janet says that correct Biblical interpretation comes later, after study.

“No, the most important thing for someone who wants to become a Witness…well, we call it ‘heart condition’. Having a good heart condition means they have to be humble. Not arrogant. Not sure that they know the truth. They have to be willing to submit.”

…

Except for the entry hall and a small conference room, the Kingdom Hall in South Amherst consists of one big sanctuary - a long rectangular room with dull, pink carpet. There is no cross, no statue of a dying Jesus – Exodus 20.4: “You shall not make for yourself an idol” – the walls are white and unadorned. In the front of the room there is a small stage and a wooden podium. The rest of the space is crowded with rows of benches that remind me of expensive lawn furniture: sturdy steel frames and upholstered cushions the color of hotel curtains – pink, with a pattern of decorative smudges to hide stains. It’s a dreary room, windowless and colorless. It’s not meant to be empty.

It’s 9:30 on a Sunday morning and the Hall is filled with Witnesses waiting for the group Bible study to begin. Some of the men, Elders mostly, are gathered in a loose huddle near the front of the room, ties swinging forward as they put their heads together. Generally, Sunday worship consists of a Bible study and a talk on some selected topic of importance. Today’s featured speaker has been delayed by the weather. While the Elders confer, the rest of the congregation mills about. The room is packed with people standing in groups of two or three, talking and laughing together. They find my research very interesting.

“Elizabeth chose this topic on her own.” Patricia, who in Dan’s absence has taken it upon herself to be my liaison, is introducing me to a man she calls Brother Martin. “She could have chosen to study any religion!”

“She could’ve studied the Mormons!” Brother Martin laughs, shaking my hand. Brother Martin’s Columbian wife holds my hands as we’re introduced, then gathers me into a smothering hug. Soon, the news of my visit spreads and a larger crowd gathers. The Witnesses flock around me like curious puppies.

“I’ll remember you because I have a sister named Elizabeth,” one woman tells me when I say my name, “She lives in Indiana.” Sister Martin returns for a second hug and the other woman greets her joyfully. “You’ve met my Reina?” she asks. Then they hug too.

Eventually, Patricia passes me off to a Witness my own age – Susan Cho, a sophomore enrolled at Amherst. Susan is standing at the back of the room where they keep the “service reports”, timesheets that record how many hours each individual Witness has spent proselytizing that month. With her school schedule, Susan tells me, there isn’t as much time as she’d like for Witnessing.

“I was an Auxillary Pioneer over the summer, when I had the time. That’s like a level – when you say you’re an Auxillary Pioneer that means you spent over 50 hours that month in service. The next level up is Pioneer – to be a Pioneer, you have to spend 70 hours a month.” I’ve heard these terms before. At the Natick Assembly, a speaker asked all those present who had been Pioneers in the last three months to please stand up. In a group of over a thousand people, at least 250 stood. A total of 17,500 hours in service.

Susan is Chinese, She’s studied with the Witnesses off and on since she was five, but was only baptized a year ago. “My mother started studying with the Witnesses because she heard it was a good way to learn English. But by the time I was in high school, my parents were very against the whole idea.” They forbade her from studying with the Witnesses, but when Susan left for college and found herself free to do whatever she wanted, she immediately began attending meetings. Now she has a list of spiritual goals, which she shyly explains.

“First, I’m an art and literature major, so my dream is to work in the art department at Patterson Bethel. It’s difficult because, I’m good at art and everything, but they don’t look just at the art qualifications…there are spiritual qualifications. You have to be on a certain level spiritually to work there.”

Bethel, which is in Brooklyn, is the administrative and publishing hub of the Witness organization. In the early days of the movement, most of the articles in The Watchtower and the other Bethel publications were written by Charles Russell or a close lieutenant; the emphasis of the movement was less evangelical then. Jehovah’s Witnesses expect that after the Apocalypse, a select band of 144,000 “faithful Christians” will join with Jesus and ascend to heaven to rule over the earth forever. When Russell was alive, the movement was small enough that any given Bible Student could expect to be among that select number. After Russell’s death, the numbers of believers slowly rose; literature began to emphasize the joys of ‘Paradise Earth’ where the remaining faithful would live happily for all eternity. As the number of Witnesses increased, so did their literature production. Around 1942, when the society’s third president N.H. Knorr declared the present (last) age as an “era of education,” there ceased to be author’s credits on any written work coming out of Bethel. Today, there is no way to know who wrote or illustrated the texts the Witnesses preach and study. It’s as if they were sent directly from God.

Susan’s other spiritual goals  involve spreading the Word in person. “I know Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese, from my family, and I know a little Spanish from school. So I’d like to go into service in some place those languages are needed. Also, I’d like to go to Gilead. Our missionary school. After graduating there I could be asked to go anywhere in the world to teach. Of course, to do that I’d have to be married.” She shrugs a little nervously, smiles. “And I…uh, I don’t know about that.”

…

The South Amherst Elders finally decide to do without the scheduled talk, and the congregation takes their seats. Up front, on the carpeted stage, a tall man with bad posture slumps into a microphone and reads aloud from the issue of The Watchtower that Dan and Patricia gave me.

“Another evidence that Jehovah appreciates and values our expressions of Godly devotion can be seen in what the Bible says about prayer. ‘The prayer of the upright ones is a pleasure to [God]…In Jesus’ day many religious leaders prayed publicly, not out of genuine piety, but out of a desire to impress men.” He finishes the paragraph and stops; everyone looks up from their magazines – they’d been reading along. One of the Elders, who is standing behind the podium, reads a question from the article’s footnotes.

“As demonstrated by Jesus, what kinds of prayers does Jehovah appreciate?” Hands go up. He waits a moment, scanning the crowd. “Sister O’Connor?”

A man with a microphone walks to the very back row of benches, to a woman with a yellow hat. Sister O’Connor takes the mic from him and holds it in front of her with both hands.

“Jehovah appreciates prayers from our hearts.”

“Thank you, Christine.” The hands go up again and this time he points to a young boy. “Tyler?” The microphone makes its way down the aisle.

“If the Pharisees were praying in public, they didn’t go any farther.”

“Very good, Tyler. Thank you.” The boy grins, and his father lays a hand proudly on his shoulder. There are no separate Sunday school classes for Witness children – every activity, from these group Bible studies, to the ‘theocratic ministry school’ (practice for public speaking) that I saw demonstrated back in Natick, involves everyone in the congregation, youngest to oldest. The South Amherst Elder calls on a few more hands, then signals for the next paragraph to be read. Finding myself a little bored, I flip forward to the end of the article – there are 22 paragraphs in all. I sit up straight and try my best to pay attention.

…

Every Sunday, Christine O’Connor wears the same bright yellow hat, yellow suit jacket, and long, flowered dress. She always sits in the back of the Hall and when the congregation begins to sing her voice rises over the others, a distinctive soprano ringing a note higher than what’s written, flat. When Patricia introduced us on my first visit to the South Amherst congregation, Christine pulled me aside to talk about her house.

“In the Amherst College library, in their special map collection, I found an old map of the land along Route 116 that was made in the 1700s. And the house where I live now, and the house across the street that I grew up in – they’re both on that map. They were there when I left home when I was eighteen years old. And when I came back from my adventures in the world, they were still right there.” She smiles like a cartoon rabbit – goofy, with big front teeth. She laughs like an emergency siren – so suddenly and so loud that for a few seconds everything stops and waits. She was baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness in 1982.

“I was listening to a lot of those radio programs, you know, and I considered myself a nondenominational Christian. Growing up in the 60s, you know, the church was just as bad as the government, sending people off to die. One of the things I admire about those early Jehovah’s Witnesses – did you know, they used to stand on street-corners, wearing sandwich boards that said, “Religion is a Snare and a Racket!”

One Sunday evening, after services, Christine invited me to her house for tea. We sit in the large kitchen of her house, a Colonial cabin loving restored and maintained. Her elderly father is washing dishes in the sink behind us. It is to this house that she and her children returned in 1980, when Christine’s marriage took an uncertain turn. She hesitates before telling me what came next.

“I believe I had a manic episode brought about by demon activity. Well, I didn’t have my first diagnosed manic episode until after I became a Witness but looking back I think that’s what it was. I thought I was Jesus Christ reincarnated as a woman.” She watches my face for a reaction, then breaks again into a long laugh. “Well, I was Christine, wasn’t I?”

When the mania subsided, Christine began looking for answers. The Jehovah’s Witnesses were the first group she found who stood up to her scrutiny.  Now she relishes conducting Bible studies of her own.

“Helping someone – studying the Bible with someone and really helping them come to understand truth and the personal love that Jehovah holds for them…it’s just a blessing. I mean, being in this group of people I have found such a feeling of freedom. I can be who I truly am. There’s such acceptance and love.”

This is a theme I’ve heard before - spoken to me during my interviews, repeated over and over in the illustrations from my massive pile of complimentary literature. In a picture of the Apocalypse, in any given Witness publication, there is no suffering. The dead rise to life and embrace each other. They stand about in colorful, culturally diverse costumes, rejoicing in the light of Judgement - all races, all ages, all smiling. The message is clear. Whoever you are, wherever you are: if you believe in Jehovah and follow all the rules, you too can be part of this loving brotherhood. “After all I’ve been through,” Christine tells me, “I don’t think I could’ve survived without these people.”

…

On my last visit to South Amherst’s Kingdom Hall, the featured speaker manages to show up. An Elder stands and introduces him. “Brother Logan will now speak on the topic ‘Paying Attention to the Prophetic Method.” 

Brother Logan makes his way bashfully to the podium, accompanied by polite applause. He gives a short lecture full of footnotes – “Now, in 2nd Timothy, chapter 3 we find ‘Know this, that in the last days, critical times hard to deal with will be here.’ Now does that sound like any age you know of?” After about half an hour, he steps back from his notes.

“Now, a lot of you know that I play the piano.” There are some chuckles from the crowd. “Now, one of the things I like to do is go to nursing homes – my mother is in a nursing home – and I like to play the piano for the folks there. They enjoy it, I enjoy it - it’s a lot of fun. But one day I was there playing, and I looked up and saw this woman just sitting in her chair in front of me. She wasn’t watching. She wasn’t listening to the music. She wasn’t doing very much of anything, except breathing. And that just broke my heart.”

“ A lot of persons out there are living because they haven’t died yet. They’re not waiting for anything. They have no hope. And that’s what prophecy gives us. Knowing prophecy, truly understanding prophecy – it gives us a reason to hope.”

After the service, Christine insists on driving me the half-mile back to school. “I’m so glad you’re doing this project on the Witnesses,” she tells me. “When I first came back here from my adventures in the world, I tried to get some students from Hampshire College to be interested in religious study, but – nothing. When they have to drop something, religion is the first thing to go.” She shakes her head sadly. “And the school atmosphere teaches them that that’s okay.”

We drive in silence for a while, until the library building comes into sight at the end of the long driveway. “It’s like Brother Logan said today,” Christine starts suddenly. “Some people are living because they haven’t died yet. It’s terrible. I’ll never forget that, not to the end of my days.” She pulls the car to the curb and looks slightly disappointed when I open my door to get out. Then she bursts into her world-stopping laugh and rolls down the window.  “I’ll see you again soon!” she yells and waves. Then the car peels away down the driveway and curves out of sight, leaving me - for the first time this morning - alone.

 

Sources and Further Information

There is very little neutral scholarly information on the Jehovah’s Witnesses; available books are generally either written by disillusioned ex-Witnesses or are published by the Watchtower Organization. A valuable source for basic information was Paul Conkin’s American Originals (University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

All publications cited in this piece are copyright the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, published by Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. and the International Bible Student’s Association in Brooklyn, NY.

The extended quote on page 10 comes can be found in the February 1, 2007 edition of The Watchtower (“Must We Always Tell The Truth?”), Page 19 of the article “Jehovah Is An Appreciative God”.

More information on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, in their own words, can be found at watchtower.org

 

Illustrations:
Cover of an early issue of Zion's Watch Tower, October 1, 1907 Public Domain

Engravings from Gustav Dore´s Gallery of Bible Illustrations,1891. Courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

Photo:
Kingdom Hall, South Amherst, © Michele Turre, 2008.