page_title: Joseph Franklin Rutherford
section_title: Watch Tower Society
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Franklin Rutherford / Watch Tower Society
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of Joseph F. Rutherford from the 1911 Bible Students Convention Souvenir Booklet. At the time this picture was taken, Rutherford was serving as chief legal counsel for Pastor Charles Taze Russell. Rutherford became President of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society in 1917 and later renamed the movement Jehovah's Witnesses. Rutherford died in 1942.
context_page_description: Joseph Franklin Rutherford, also known as Judge Rutherford, was the second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. He played a primary role in the organization and doctrinal development of Jehovah's Witnesses, which emerged from the Bible Student movement established by Charles Taze Russell.
  Rutherford began a career in law, working as a court stenographer, trial lawyer and prosecutor. He became a special judge in the 14th Judicial District of Missouri at some time after 1895. He developed an interest in the doctrines of Watch Tower Society president Charles Taze Russell, which led to his joining the Bible Student movement, and he was baptized in 1906. He was appointed the legal counsel for the Watch Tower Society in 1907, as well as a traveling representative prior to his election as president in 1917. His early presidency was marked by a dispute with the Society's board of directors, in which four of its seven members accused him of autocratic behavior and sought to reduce his powers.
context_section_description: In 1894 Rutherford purchased the first three volumes of Charles Taze Russell's Millennial Dawn series of Bible study textbooks from two colporteurs who visited his office. Rutherford, who then viewed all religions as insincere, shallow and hypocritical, was struck by Russell's sincerity and his sentiments towards religion, which mirrored his own view. Rutherford immediately wrote to the Watch Tower Society to express appreciation for the books. He was baptized twelve years later and he and his wife began holding Bible classes in their home. In 1907, he became legal counsel for the Watch Tower Society at its Pittsburgh headquarters, and from around that time began to give public talks as a "pilgrim" representative of the Society. As Russell's health deteriorated, Rutherford represented him on trips to Europe and in April 1915 he was deputized to speak at a major debate with Baptist preacher J. H. Troy over four nights in Los Angeles before an audience of 12,000, debating various subjects, including the state of the dead, hellfire and Christ's Second Coming. Rutherford wrote a pamphlet, A Great Battle in the Ecclesiastical Heavens, in defense of Russell and served as chairman of the Bible Students' Los Angeles convention in September 1916.
caption: Joseph F. Rutherford (1911)
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