Juan Rivera

Not that it should matter too much to anyone here, but just to get a discussion started, I will happily state that I am in 100% agreement with all the scriptures in this list. And am in 100% agreement with at least 990 of the 997 words (counted by copying the content portion of this to https://wordcounter.net/).
I found only 3 things I'd take a small issue with:
"Professor Jason D. BeDuhn aptly described it when he wrote that" I agree with this point, but I'm embarrassed that such an important list (for our purposes) has the name and opinion of a "secular" professor in it. Jason DeBuhn's name has been on this list since at least 2015 and has never been removed. It's inconsistent with the rest of the list, which otherwise only highlights a simple Bible basis, not some scholar. "A person’s works prove that his faith is alive." This isn't necessarily true. A person can have works that look like they are motivated by faith, but are motivated by self-righteousness, a competitive spirit, a desire to earn salvation and be rewarded accordingly, blindly following men, etc., just to mention some common examples.   (Matthew 7:22) . . .Many will say to me in that day: ‘Lord, Lord, did we not . . . perform many powerful works in your name?’ "He began ruling in 1914." Hmmm. I've probably said before that I can't find this one in the Bible. (And it's just about the only sentence that has no scripture to back it up.)  I wish it had said: "We believe Jesus is now ruling invisibly from heaven." Or, "We believe that we now live in a time when Jesus, from his heavenly throne, is giving special attention to matters of the Kingdom on earth." In addition to those, there are a couple of other things, much less important to me, that I could see changing in the future, and the change wouldn't cause a problem or inconsistency either way. For example, I could see the possibility that the "144,000" is a symbolic number, and might even represent the full number of natural Jewish Christians as easily as it could represent the full number of spiritual Jews. But the list explicitly allows for some expressions to be interpreted symbolically, anyway, so it wouldn't bother me either way to use the expression, "The 144,000 will rule in heaven."  ["We recognize that parts of the Bible are written in figurative or symbolic language and are not to be understood literally.—Revelation 1:1. "]
It's also possible that "blood" in Acts 15 is a symbol for "bloodguilt," such as murder, manslaughter, war, etc., just as "idols" can include things like "gluttony" (Phil 3:19) "greediness" (Col 3:5) and even "pleasing men" (Eph 6:6,7; Gal 1:10)  Personally, for my own conscience, I'm fine with the idea that abstaining from blood transfusions is one way that we abstain from blood. But there's a chance that we as individuals and as an organization should not be imposing this as a rule on the Bible-trained consciences of others.
That idea might already be covered, even if unintentionally, by the very nice idea expressed here: "Our unity allows for personal choice, though. Each Witness makes decisions in harmony with his or her own Bible-trained conscience."
Outside of those few comments, I would be willing to die for the other 990 words out of the 997.

I haven't blocked you. I posted the core beliefs HERE
But I will list them here too, since this a relevant topic here.
God. We worship the one true and Almighty God, the Creator, whose name is Jehovah. (Psalm 83:18; Revelation 4:11) He is the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.—Exodus 3:6; 32:11; John 20:17.
Bible. We recognize the Bible as God’s inspired message to humans. (John 17:17; 2 Timothy 3:16) We base our beliefs on all 66 of its books, which include both the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament.” Professor Jason D. BeDuhn aptly described it when he wrote that Jehovah’s Witnesses built “their system of belief and practice from the raw material of the Bible without predetermining what was to be found there.” *
While we accept the entire Bible, we are not fundamentalists. We recognize that parts of the Bible are written in figurative or symbolic language and are not to be understood literally.—Revelation 1:1.
Jesus. We follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ and honor him as our Savior and as the Son of God. (Matthew 20:28; Acts 5:31) Thus, we are Christians. (Acts 11:26) However, we have learned from the Bible that Jesus is not Almighty God and that there is no Scriptural basis for the Trinity doctrine.—John 14:28.
The Kingdom of God. This is a real government in heaven, not a condition in the hearts of Christians. It will replace human governments and accomplish God’s purpose for the earth. (Daniel 2:44; Matthew 6:9, 10) It will take these actions soon, for Bible prophecy indicates that we are living in “the last days.”—2 Timothy 3:1-5; Matthew 24:3-14.
Jesus is the King of God’s Kingdom in heaven. He began ruling in 1914.—Revelation 11:15.
Salvation. Deliverance from sin and death is possible through the ransom sacrifice of Jesus. (Matthew 20:28; Acts 4:12) To benefit from that sacrifice, people must not only exercise faith in Jesus but also change their course of life and get baptized. (Matthew 28:19, 20; John 3:16; Acts 3:19, 20) A person’s works prove that his faith is alive. (James 2:24, 26) However, salvation cannot be earned—it comes through “the undeserved kindness of God.”—Galatians 2:16, 21.
Heaven. Jehovah God, Jesus Christ, and the faithful angels reside in the spirit realm. * (Psalm 103:19-21; Acts 7:55) A relatively small number of people—144,000—will be resurrected to life in heaven to rule with Jesus in the Kingdom.—Daniel 7:27; 2 Timothy 2:12; Revelation 5:9, 10; 14:1, 3.
Earth. God created the earth to be mankind’s eternal home. (Psalm 104:5; 115:16; Ecclesiastes 1:4) God will bless obedient people with perfect health and everlasting life in an earthly paradise.—Psalm 37:11, 34.
Evil and suffering. These began when one of God’s angels rebelled. (John 8:44) This angel, who after his rebellion was called “Satan” and “Devil,” persuaded the first human couple to join him, and the consequences have been disastrous for their descendants. (Genesis 3:1-6; Romans 5:12) In order to settle the moral issues raised by Satan, God has allowed evil and suffering, but He will not permit them to continue forever.
Death. People who die pass out of existence. (Psalm 146:4; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10) They do not suffer in a fiery hell of torment.
God will bring billions back from death by means of a resurrection. (Acts 24:15) However, those who refuse to learn God’s ways after being raised to life will be destroyed forever with no hope of a resurrection.—Revelation 20:14, 15.
Family. We adhere to God’s original standard of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, with sexual immorality being the only valid basis for divorce. (Matthew 19:4-9) We are convinced that the wisdom found in the Bible helps families to succeed.—Ephesians 5:22–6:1.
Our worship. We do not venerate the cross or any other images. (Deuteronomy 4:15-19; 1 John 5:21) Key aspects of our worship include the following:
Praying to God.—Philippians 4:6.
Reading and studying the Bible.—Psalm 1:1-3.
Meditating on what we learn from the Bible.—Psalm 77:12.
Meeting together to pray, study the Bible, sing, express our faith, and encourage fellow Witnesses and others.—Colossians 3:16; Hebrews 10:23-25.
Preaching the “good news of the Kingdom.”—Matthew 24:14.
Helping those in need.—James 2:14-17.
Constructing and maintaining Kingdom Halls and other facilities used to further our worldwide Bible educational work.—Psalm 127:1.
Sharing in disaster relief.—Acts 11:27-30.
Our organization. We are organized into congregations, each of which is overseen by a body of elders. However, the elders do not form a clergy class, and they are unsalaried. (Matthew 10:8; 23:8) We do not practice tithing, and no collections are ever taken at our meetings. (2 Corinthians 9:7) All our activities are supported by anonymous donations.
The Governing Body, a small group of mature Christians who serve at our world headquarters, provides direction for Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide.—Matthew 24:45.
Our unity. We are globally united in our beliefs. (1 Corinthians 1:10) We also work hard to have no social, ethnic, racial, or class divisions. (Acts 10:34, 35; James 2:4) Our unity allows for personal choice, though. Each Witness makes decisions in harmony with his or her own Bible-trained conscience.—Romans 14:1-4; Hebrews 5:14.
Our conduct. We strive to show unselfish love in all our actions. (John 13:34, 35) We avoid practices that displease God, including the misuse of blood by taking blood transfusions. (Acts 15:28, 29; Galatians 5:19-21) We are peaceful and do not participate in warfare. (Matthew 5:9; Isaiah 2:4) We respect the government where we live and obey its laws as long as these do not call on us to disobey God’s laws.—Matthew 22:21; Acts 5:29.
Our relationships with others. Jesus commanded: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” He also said that Christians “are no part of the world.” (Matthew 22:39; John 17:16) So we try to “work what is good toward all,” yet we remain strictly neutral in political affairs and avoid affiliation with other religions. (Galatians 6:10; 2 Corinthians 6:14) However, we respect the choices that others make in such matters.—Romans 14:12.
https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/jehovah-witness-beliefs/
 

Thanks for the response. I'll be traveling for about two more weeks but will be happy to respond again to this topic when I get back.

Hey JW insider, thank you for the response. I'm interested in this topic(ecumenical dialogue, proselytism vs evangelism)  because I don't really fully understand what is our position as Jehovah's Witnesses(officially) based on what we do on the ministry and our current framework in regards to our dialogue with other religions. I see a few articles on the JW library that bring it up, more specifically Catholic ecumenical dialogue, but I wonder if perhaps those articles are based on a misunderstanding of the Catholic position or of what we do as Jehovah's witnesses in the ministry. I can't figure it out. Perhaps you and others can shed some light on it. Most likely is a misunderstanding on my part. Here's an explanation given by a catholic that clarifies somewhat your point about talking with both sides of their mouth. 
Two Ecumenicisms By Bryan Cross https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/03/two-ecumenicisms/  
"Proselytism connotes coercion, manipulation, a notches-in-one’s-belt approach that fails to respect persons as persons, and fails to affirm their freedom in love and authentic person-to-person friendship. It is, for example, inviting a person to an event portrayed in one way (e.g. a meal, or entertainment), but then springing a sermon on them trying to get them to make a decision for Christ, such that they feel tricked, deceived, coerced, or manipulated.
By contrast, evangelism is by attraction, to the truth in love, not by pressure, which is contrary to freedom, and contrary to love. Pope Francis talked about this in his address to catechists in September, saying, “Remember what Benedict XVI said: “The Church does not grow by proselytizing; she grows by attracting others”. And what attracts is our witness.” He said something similar in May in his Message for World Mission Day, “The Church’s missionary spirit is not about proselytizing ….” He described it again in his address in Assisi in October, and also in his Scalfari interview in that same month. And Pope Francis quoted Pope Benedict XVI on this subject, in Evangelii Gaudium, paragraph 15. If a person does not know the difference between proselytism and evangelism, then Pope Francis’s rejection of proselytism will seem like a rejection of evangelism. But nothing could be further from what he is saying, as is made clear by the fact that his rejections of proselytism are typically in the context of talking about evangelism, and the importance of evangelism."
In the Protestant paradigm there is very little conceptual distinction drawn between evangelism and proselytism. But in the Catholic paradigm, this distinction is prominent and explicit; the Church explicitly distinguishes, and does not confuse, proselytism on the one hand, and evangelism and conversion on the other. The Church condemns the former, but affirms the latter as a command of Christ. All persons, all Catholics included (and myself included) are called to daily conversion. Pope Francis speaks often of the need for all of us to undergo daily conversion.
So when he responds to people asking him if he wants to ‘convert’ them, he is (from the Catholic paradigm) understanding that they are (whether they themselves are aware of it or not) talking about proselytism, and he responds accordingly. He is not saying that he wants them to remain without the Eucharist, or to remain in a state of schism from the Church. Rather, he is saying that he wants them to draw near to Christ, and that he will not proselytize them. From a Catholic point of view, to draw near to Christ means necessarily, as an intrinsic theological implication, to draw near to the Church Christ founded (and thereby draw nearer to this Church those around oneself), because all the elements of salvation (including our shared baptism) come from the Church, have their fullness in the Church, and point back to the Church. So Pope Francis is simply focusing on the telos of ecumenism: union with Christ, as the shared goal, and warding off the worry that he will instrumentalize his conversation and relationship with these Protestants into a means of converting them.
I agree that for some, the gospel is best shared wordlessly. But I think (at least in my experience) in general what these persons find offensive is proselytism (as the sense defined above), not authentic, respectful, and mutually free communication of the truth about Christ and His Church. The call to repent requires that the hearers recognize both the authority, charity, and trustworthiness of the speaker. Apart from divine miracles, it takes time to establish one’s authority, charity, and credibility. The call to repent requires that the hearers recognize that there is such a thing as sin, and that they have sinned against God, and that the evangelist has the authority to speak on God’s behalf in calling them to repent. It requires that they see in this person God’s love, which leads us to repentance. Otherwise, it *is* offensive, because in such a case the person is presuming to speak on God’s behalf regarding our violation of divine commands, without even taking the time to learn what the other person knows or does not know about these things, whether he is sorry for his sin, etc., and thus he both elevate himself above the hearer, and engages in hortatory coercion. The natural response is the same given to Moses: Who made you ruler and judge over us?
Regarding proselytism, Pope Francis recently said, “The Lord does not proselytize; He gives love. And this love seeks you and waits for you, you who at this moment do not believe or are far away. And this is the love of God.” (source) On our being called to daily conversion, according to Pope Francis, see here. He spoke again about proselytism on November 7, 2014. At end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, in 2015, Pope Francis spoke again about proselytism, saying:
What Pope Francis is saying here has to do with the necessary personal dimension of authentic ecumenism, apart from which apologetics reduces to competitive debate. He’s not rejecting authentic apologetics, or the sort of dialogue in which we come together in personal respect and charity, having already recognized and affirmed our common ground, to evaluate evidence and argumentation by which to overcome what still divides us. In saying that we should “put aside all polemical or apologetic approaches,” he is speaking of an approach that is fundamentally defensive and polemical, rather than first and primarily relational. Catholic apologetics takes its rightful place only in a context of personal dialogue and the intersection of persons meeting as persons, not in the impersonal combat of ideologies.
When we approach Pope Francis’s comments with charity and in the hermeneutic of continuity, we can see clearly that it is impossible for Pope Francis to be prohibiting apologetics, or evangelization, especially given that he wrote an entire encyclical on evangelization. Instead, he is talking about “approaches.” And he is criticizing approaches that start from the combative or defensive stance, rather than by meeting first as persons, finding common ground, and building on that common ground. I have described this approach as one of “debate” (in contrast to that of dialogue) in my post titled “Virtue and Dialogue.” By contrast, Pope Francis is here teaching that the practice of Catholic apologetics takes place rightly in the context of the meeting of persons in the second-person (I-Thou) dimension, bonded by charity, and authentic dialogue. Combative approaches are uncharitable, and are in this way contrary to the gospel we are called to defend.
In my experience, Catholic priests and bishops, whatever else their weaknesses and flaws, are keenly aware of the distinction between proselytism and evangelism, and are very cautious to avoid proselytism, as something contrary to the Gospel itself. Protestant pastors (and Protestantism in general) tend to be less aware of this distinction. Without that distinction, however, some Protestants mistakenly attribute a Catholic leader’s rejection of proselytism, and public decision not to proselytize, as if it is a rejection of evangelism and conversion. But that’s often a misinterpretation of the situation, because of the paradigm difference. Pope Francis sees his every daily action (apart from his sins) as the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit and thus as living evangelism, as an incarnate call to union with Christ, and with His Church.
Some priests seek to make sure a person isn’t being coerced, and try to put on the brakes, to make sure a person really knows what he is doing. (Having worked in RCIA a number of years, there are people who show up claiming to be ready to become Catholic at that moment, and you have to slow them down, in order to make sure they know what they’re doing and have counted the costs. A good priest isn’t interested in “sheep-stealing,'” or adding notches to his belt. He is aware of his ecumenical relationships with the Protestant pastors in his community, and wants a person to become Catholic only for the right reasons, and only when properly understanding what he is doing. Sometimes the “active discouragement” is just to see how serious the person is. And sometimes it could be because of a faulty understanding of ecumenism, in which ecumenism leaves no legitimate place or role for evangelism, in large part because since Vatican II, the Catholic stance toward Protestants is consciously and explicitly distinct from the Catholic stance toward pagans, on account of our shared baptism. And possibly some priests have not yet figured out how that distinction works in practice, because since VII the performative stance toward inquiring Protestants has not yet been become standard, universal practice, balancing between the increased respect and rightly acknowledged elements of salvation existing in these communities on the one hand, and their continuing state of separation from full communion and from the fullness of the truth of the gospel and the full means of salvation deposited in the Catholic Church.
In my opinion, Pope Francis’s exhortation (EG) is exactly what the Church needed regarding evangelism, because it elevates in the mind of the whole Church the importance of evangelism, the essence of evangelism, and the compatibility of evangelism and ecumenism. That’s something we’ve needed for some time, I think. It would be easy to become focused on the economic sections, and miss the message of evangelization contained throughout the whole document."
 
-Juan

Γιαννης Διαμαντιδης,
I believe that Ann O'maly has stated the truth about the U.N. involvement about as well as anyone can. I know the brother who got the Society involved with the UN DPI/NGO, and have spoken to him several times since I left Bethel in the 1980's. I know that the paperwork was approved by others including a member of the GB (mentioned by Ann).
It was definitely a mistake. And it has definitely stumbled people. I'm not here to defend it, and I'm not here as one of those Witnesses who will claim that Jehovah has allowed certain mistakes just to filter out those who are disloyal, or those who are looking for an excuse to leave the Organization. People still say this about some of the mistakes of the past, and will likely say such things about mistakes made in the future.
I just searched through the jw-archive site, because I know that we have discussed this before, and I didn't want to just keep re-writing things "from scratch" over and over again -- which is something I have a tendency to always do. In fact, this is the very first time I will be quoting myself from a previous post: I'm no expert on this, and perhaps I don't have all the facts either, but the information is from people I trust.
 
A portion of the discussion from https://disqus.com/home/discussion/jwarchive/jw_archiveorg_by_the_jw_comic_strip_52/#comment-2009424381
(I made the UN joke because the timing was close to "Sternstorm." The WTS applied for the NGO status through their DPI (Dept of Public Info.) in 1991 and received it in 1992. I believe we requested disassociation in 2001, just after an investigative journalist exposed the NGO/DPI connection.)
If you are asking about the UN, then unfortunately, the answer is Yes. The Watchtower joined the UN as an NGO. I know the brother who spearheaded the effort, still in Writing (last I spoke to him), and also knew others who approved it at the time (now deceased). They meant no harm, but it proved to be an embarrassment. They didn't really need the NGO status, for the original purpose -- access to informational materials, but the status seems to have given them quicker information about conferences and events that could have even helped the Watchtower Society learn more about the behind-the-scenes political circumstances of our brothers in various countries. The most embarrassing part, of course, was getting "disfellowshipped" by the UN. (That really happened, but it happened just after the WTS requested it.) Also, for a while, the Watchtower Society was supposed to write one informational article per year that informed our audience of some of the work the UN was doing. (That's one of the ways the DPI works.) So while the Watchtower magazine bashed them negatively, a small piece here and there in the Awake! magazine was doing articles on UNICEF etc that were between neutral and positive.
...
I should also say that I don't think this started out as anything very big. But those who got involved should have realized that almost everything goes public and becomes searchable. For a while you could even search the U.N.'s site and see which Awake! articles had been submitted for NGO/DPI compliance.
My motto: If you think you'll have trouble defending it, just don't! (Don't start something you might have to defend later.)
But I have to say that even in 1976, I was doing some follow-up research on Mr. Banda, the president of Malawi who had allowed widespread persecution of the Witnesses for several years just prior. And it turns out that he made some anti-JW statements that blamed the Witnesses for their own troubles -- saying that the problem was not just the 25 cent political party card. I only found this info in some heavy encyclopedic U.N. publications that no one in Writing had seen or heard of -- although these publications were at a large university library. It's quite possible that, 15 years later, a couple brothers were convinced that this type of information, although available without the NGO/DPI connection, would become more accessible. (I don't know if that would really be true.) Or, even more likely, that if we could gain a respectable status with THEIR researchers, we could merely request things to be xeroxed and mailed to the WTS, rather than traveling over to DPI repositories, and hardly knowing where to start.
 
----- and in another place on jw-archive, it came up again ------
 
There is additional evidence or information that I'm sure you can find from others, but what I write below is based mostly on what I know personally and have seen with my own eyes. It is mixed with a few things I have learned from other trusted and current Witnesses.
A very interesting man in Bethel's Writing Department is best known for some of his non-outline talks that he has given in hundreds of congregations. You can find many of his recorded talks on the Internet. He is a good speaker with a "dramatic" personality. I know the man well, and still count him as a friend although we rarely speak. I have seen him outside Bethel, in NY, NJ, even PA, oddly enough, buying books for his own library and for the Bethel libraries. (I have been a book collector for 30 years, and still take on research work for authors, so we have often frequented the same places.)
From the time I first knew him, 1976, this brother was in the Service Department and finally moved to the Writing Department. He was quickly given a lot of autonomy under the supervision of Lloyd Barry because he did more research and book purchasing than pure Writing compared with most others in Writing.
The brother I am speaking about was very highly embarrassed over the fact that it was mostly his own idea that got this thing started. I have not talked about it with him. He began using the UN library regularly in 1990, then weekly in 1991, and initially signed up with the UN's "Department of Public Information" (DPI) in 1991 (and officially accepted 1992) for easier access to library materials, but in the process of accessing those materials he learned a lot about different types of access to conferences and areas of interest that aligned with the Society's interests outside of just the library resources. (It was thought that association might have made it easier to publicize JW human rights violations, learn more about what other religions were doing when they had similar issues with religious persecution in many countries. It made it easier to get information about international religious taxation issues, and Holocaust publicity, etc.)
Brother Barry agreed with him that these other areas of access were also valuable, and they continued the association as an "NGO" (non-governmental organization). The names of both of these brothers, including the GB member, and another direct report to a GB member from the Service Dept are still on some forms at the UN.
They also had to agree to produce articles that helped to promote the work of United Nations' initiatives. The first one was the September 8, 1991 Awake! One initiative that the WTS could most easily agree with was UNICEF. The December 8, 2000 Awake! for example prints out the entire UN Declaration of the Rights of a Child in a single issue that mentions UNICEF 10 times (in a positive context). I'll quote it below.
But first notice by using the 2014 Watchtower Library CD for example that in the 10 years that the WTS was associated with the UN it mentioned UNICEF about 75 times (from 1991-2001). After a leak by the Guardian, the WTS was disassociated from the UN in 2001 when it was exposed to the UN that the Watchtower was simultaneously speaking out AGAINST the UN at the same time the Awake! was speaking positively about it.
(UNICEF has been mentioned just 11 times in the much longer time period since 2001, and always just to quote negative statistics.)
I have seen a list that included articles that were presented to the UN/DPI as proof that the WTS was keeping it's agreement by publishing at least one positive article per year. I don't have a copy of it, and don't know if anyone else does. I forget whether it included the issue below from 2000. I wish I had kept a copy. As I recall, it had references to about 10 different issues of the Awake! over a period of several years.
*** g00 12/8 p. 5 An Ongoing Search for Solutions ***
The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child:
● The right to a name and nationality.
● The right to affection, love, and understanding and to material security.
● The right to adequate nutrition, housing, and medical services.
● The right to special care if disabled, be it physically, mentally, or socially.
● The right to be among the first to receive protection and relief in all circumstances.
● The right to be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty, and exploitation.
● The right to full opportunity for play and recreation and equal opportunity to free and compulsory education, to enable the child to develop his individual abilities and to become a useful member of society.
● The right to develop his full potential in conditions of freedom and dignity.
● The right to be brought up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, peace, and universal brotherhood.
● The right to enjoy these rights regardless of race, color, sex, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, and property, birth, or other status.
 
 
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Back to your current post. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think we need to cover up anything. A mistake was made, and we ultimately resolved it. I don't see what it proves to keep bringing it up. It does not show that we supported the U.N.  It shows that we found areas of agreement. We used the relationship to our advantage and the "cost" to us was the need to write about ways in which another organization was also trying to resolve world problems. For all we know, we would have been writing about such things anyway. Personally, I think we ended up looking more reasonable by discussing what the world was trying to do, and how it was at times making progress. Even their limited progress still highlighted the need for a more comprehensive solution.
So it's not like any JWs really needed to take their focus off the Scriptural reasoning for resolving the world's problems. Perhaps it made us more sympathetic and knowledgeable about the viewpoint of others. In the more distant past, we often did nothing but show derision for such efforts. Surely we are better off now for such research. I don't see this whole thing as a one-sided proof of hypocrisy with no up-side. I believe the posts also show that (through the mistake) we discovered avenues and venues for involvement in human rights awareness that we were not aware of previously.
 

(Giannis, Robert King is disfellowshipped so it's unlikely that loyal JWs will read anything he says.)
I remember the controversy when it broke and researched the matter for myself at the time.
The issue wasn't so much that Watchtower became a NGO, but that it also became associated with the UN's Department of Public Information which required assenting to the UN Charter (read it to see what that involved) and promoting the UN's work, aims and values. Every year, as the rules stood, the Organization had to provide evidence to the DPI that it was doing that in order to continue association. This is why the articles in the Awakes during the 1990s softened their anti-UN stance and put the UN's accomplishments in a more positive light.
It's easy to minimize the Watchtower's involvement as the actions of one Bethelite, but he and the other named representative were high-up Bethelites. At least one GB member was aware because he was also listed as one of the representatives on the accreditation forms (W. [Lloyd] Barry). Not only that but, 
"Each article in both The Watchtower and Awake! and every page, including the artwork, is scrutinized by selected members of the Governing Body before it is printed." - w87 3/1 p. 15 par. 18.
So any 'spiritual food' that promoted the UN's work (in contrast to the usual contempt about it) was checked and signed off by members of the GB. It would be those kinds of articles that were provided to the DPI so the Org. could continue its association.
Given that the UN has long been viewed as the 'disgusting thing' of Daniel and the 'scarlet wild beast' of Revelation, it's understandable why many would be stumbled by the Org's actions.

I don't follow the "Org," I appreciate the organization for how it has been instrumental in currently helping millions of people build their faith on a solid foundation: faith in Jehovah, Christ Jesus, and the words and teachings of the Bible. I appreciate that it very efficiently and effectively has been instrumental in teaching tens of millions more, and getting the word out to hundreds of millions. (I.e., setting an example for preaching and teaching "good news" about a time under the Kingdom when there will be no more war, no more divisive politics, no more racism, and a time when Jehovah's provisions will make all things new, returning heaven and earth to His original purpose.)
I don't believe we need worry too much about the history of an organization, as if that is what Jesus meant by building on a solid foundation. What the organization was back between, say, 1884 and 1935, or even between 1935 and 2021 is also not of such great concern to me. I'm interested in the history mostly to the extent that I want to make sure that what we currently teach about that history is accurate and not distorted.
I have other interests in history, more generally, because I find it fascinating. Not just religious history, but all kinds of history. I always learn about various mundane themes (sociology, class, leadership, politics, psychology) that seem relevant as historical situations tend to be repeated.
Also, my great-grandfather was a "Pilgrim" in the Chicago Bible Students who traveled with Russell to speak at conventions, and he continued on under Rutherford. He said that most of the Chicago Bible Students were "Russellites," as he himself had been, and most of them left under Rutherford. Some of his "brethren" had left even earlier. Some had left in 1909 over doctrinal issues (New Covenant, "The Vow") some in 1914 and 1915 over failed predictions and expectations. So I admit that some family stories and "artifacts" of the Bible Student era hold my interest for more mundane reasons, too.
Even if the original organization had been no more than another faction of Catholicism or Protestantism that didn't believe in Trinity, Hellfire or War, that would be more than enough of a good start. My only expectation, historically, is that it would continue to progress, to put off more and more false teachings. Then we should find some evidence of Jehovah's blessing as it should attract more people who are looking for a kind of Christianity with a reasonable core of Biblical values and therefore find a brotherhood that encourages and promotes Christian conduct and activities. But the foundation is Christ, not the Organization.