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Applewhite
The Heaven's
Gate Suicides
and
Jehovah's
Witnesses
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Henschel
THE GRIM DISCOVERY of 39 bodies in a San Diego mansion calls to mind a nearby look-alike mansion built in 1929 by the Watchtower organization -- summer home of its second president J. F. Rutherford -- named Beth-Sarim ("House of Princes").
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The Watchtower's San Diego mansion
Under the presidency of "Judge" Rutherford (and of his predecessor C.T. Russell and of his successor N.H. Knorr) the Watchtower Society taught a doctrine very similar to the Heaven's Gaters' hope regarding comet Hale-Bopp.

JehovahÕs Witnesses believed they would go to the Pleiades star cluster when they died because "heaven" was located there. (See Watch Tower Dec. 1, 1896, WT Reprints, p. 2075; Reconciliation p. 14, reproduced below.)
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Hale-Bopp
Jehovah's Witnesses expected
death to take them to the Pleiades
star cluster--just as the Heaven's
Gate suicides hoped to rendezvous
with comet Hale-Bopp
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Pleiades
Witnesses maintained this belief in the Pleiades until the November 15, 1953 Watchtower
(page 703) renounced the Society's long-held viewpoint.


Pleiades as the location of heaven
in Dec. 1, 1896 Watch Tower (Reprints, page 2075)

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The Watchtower Society's 1928 book
Reconciliation, page 14

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While Heaven's Gate guru Marshall Applewhite led a few dozen followers to commit
suicide, current Watchtower president Milton G. Henschel has much more blood on his
hands. "Transplanting organs is really cannibalism," he told Free Press religion writer Hiley
B. Ward in 1968, when he was still rising through the organization's leadership ranks.
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Milton Henschel
Watchtower President
The sect banned organ transplants and even skin grafting for 13 years, but then dropped
the ban suddenly in 1980, without any apology to members who had gone blind refusing
cornea transplants or relatives of those who had died refusing kidneys. However, before
selling the San Diego mansion in 1948, Henschel's associates drew up their ban on blood
transfusions, a ban that has "led thousands to die needlessly" according to charges cited
recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Feb. 5, 1997, Vol. 277, No. 5,
page 425)

While the Heaven's Gate members used drugs, alcohol, and plastic bags over their heads to kill themselves, the suicidal act by Jehovah's Witnesses is aided by a "Medical Alert" card members are instructed to carry in wallet or purse telling doctors that "no blood transfusions be administered to me" even if necessary "to preserve my life."

To assure that these instructions are carried out, a four-page "Health-Care Advance Directive and Power of Attorney" signed by each member declares that even if doctors determine "that only blood transfusion therapy will preserve my life or health, I do not want it." (The exact wording and title of the form varies from state to state, to conform to local legal requirements for a 'living will' or 'right-to-die' document.) The form assigns medical power of attorney to an elder or other dedicated member who stands by to prevent death-bed treatment of an unconscious patient.

The initial Heaven's Gate suicides attracted world attention, because 39 dead bodies were discovered together. Later individual suicides by additional members received less news coverage. The same is true of Jehovah's Witnesses whose blood-refusal deaths usually occur one at a time and seldom make world headlines--thus hiding the sect's similarity to other suicide cults .

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