Religion: Marching to Armageddon

The only score card at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds last week was the Bible. Speakers' platforms disguised the diamonds; flower banks decked the pitching mounds; burlap mountains, artificial waterfalls hid second and third bases. New York had never seen a convention so big; even Billy Graham's Yankee Stadium throng last year—100,000, and 10,000 turned away—was small by comparison. From 48 states and 122 foreign countries, Jehovah's Witnesses had gathered 194,000 strong. For eight days they packed both ballparks in a "giant Bible school." Through steamy rain they went on singing hymns, praying, hearing speeches and reports about the fast-growing sect (total members: 719,000) that believes Armageddon is just around the corner.

If New Yorkers expected religious hysteria, they had to wait for baseball to come back. Without a hitch, in orderly procession, the Witnesses arrived aboard two chartered ships and 65 chartered planes, scores of special trains and buses, more than 20,000 cars—and all quickly learned which subways ran to the ballparks. There some 40 doctors and 125 nurses tended occasional dizzy spells or upset children; some 6,000 volunteers served as many as 70,000 meals an hour, and a tireless volunteer cleanup squad of 2,500 polished the parks to perfection at the end of each day. At night not a single Witness lacked shelter—thanks to 13,000 volunteers, who had been ringing doorbells all this spring in a 100-mile radius to find rooms. Many visitors were up early in the morning to walk miles around Manhattan, pushing perambulators and politely peddling their quotas of the Watchtower and Awake! before hurrying off to the assembly grounds. "This is the grandest of news," said Nathan Homer Knorr, head of the Witnesses. "We are living at the end of this worry-filled, problem-racked, loveless old world. We want the new. We are eager to leave the old."

Hose on Hell. The Witnesses' creed is based on what they regard as utter obedience to the Bible ("God's complete word of truth"). They accept the Biblical prophecy that Satan will be defeated in the cataclysm of Armageddon, followed by eternal life for the righteous. Other Christians share that belief, but sharply disagree with the Witnesses' assertion that, as the only true followers of the Bible, Witnesses alone will be saved.

The movement began in 1872 with Charles Taze Russell, a small, intense-looking Pittsburgh merchant who joined the Congregational Church but disliked thinking of hell as fiery and eternal. "Would you hold a puppy dog's tail in the fire three minutes?" he asked. Neither would a just God, was his argument. To "turn the hose on hell," Russell went back to the Bible and found the words: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake" (Daniel 12:2).