The ecclesiastical system of Rome, and particularly its leaders, for a thousand years and more thought that the earth is fixed and that everything else revolves about it.

Macmillan however related details of Rutherford's home preaching in 1905 or 1906 when he was baptized and a 1975 article quoted several Witnesses relating their experiences with Rutherford in the house-to-house ministry in the 1920s. This included an operation on November 5 1941 some two months before his death which found "carcinoma of the rectal sigmoid" and was given less than six months to live. In 1928 Rutherford began to teach that the Cedar Point convention and the events resulting from it fulfilled the prophecy of the 1290 days at Daniel 12:11.

He also instituted training programs for public speaking as part of their weekly meetings for worship. Rutherford began a career in law working as a court stenographer trial lawyer and prosecutor. He wrote twenty-one books and was credited by the Society in 1942 with the distribution of almost 400 million books and booklets.