The Jehovah’s Witness (JW) book The New World (1942) stated:
 

What was the testimony of the "House of Princes" over which religionists of this doomed world gnashed their teeth?

Time magazine reported:
 

The JW book, Salvation (1939) says:
 

In 1919 Judge Rutherford and his "Bible Students" promoted the public sermon Millions Now Living Will Never Die. The sermon was published as a book in 1920.

The "Millions" message was that the ancient Bible heroes would be resurrected to live on Earth in 1925. They would take over and rule the world. Everyone who supported them would get eternal life and prosperity and never be sick again:
 

The "Millions" message was nonsense. It was WTS rubbish. It wasn’t even in the Bible!

In 1926 the "Bible Students" increasingly deserted the cult:
 

Rutherford’s much-criticized drinking problem began at this time, his us-versus-them anti-religion propaganda became more provocative, and his demands for loyalty and unity more vigorous.

Rutherford put the prophecies for 1925 off to 1926 and 1928 — both dates by implication rather than direct statements. This initially slowed the decline. Then in 1928 the outward flow became a torrent.

The world attendance figures for the annual Memorial or Lord’s Supper demonstrate the exodus:

    1919    17,961 (Your Will, 1958, pp 335, 337)
    1922    32,661             "
    1923    42,000             "
    1924    62,696             "
    1925    90,434             "
    1926    89,278             "
    1927    88,500 (Reference not known)
    1928    17,380 (Yearbook of JWs, 1958, p. 284)
    1935    63,146 (The Watchtower 1996, August 15, p. 31)

Rutherford halted the disintegration by advertising for new recruits via radio and by telling remaining followers their salvation depended on them publicly distributing WTS tracts, booklets and books.

Also the Beth Sarim property was purchased in 1926 and the house built in 1929.

Rutherford presented Beth Sarim to his cult as evidence the princes were still coming and that eternal life without sickness or poverty still lay just ahead.
 
 

Beth Sarim included 100 acres of land. The deed, published in the cult’s magazine The Golden Age, said in part:
 

The Messenger, a JW newspaper, stated:
 

Edward Gruss in Jehovah’s Witnesses Their Monuments To False Prophecy cites inside sources that Beth Sarim was also built, "to get the drunken and declining Rutherford out of Brooklyn."
 
 

In 1931 the arrival of the princes was so near that infants would still be children when they arrived:
 

The claim that the two infants would still be "children" when the princes arrived was not inadvertent error. Four years later, in 1935, Rutherford wrote that "universal war", i.e. Armageddon, was only "months" away:
 

The princes did not return and the WTS sold Beth Sarim in 1948.

In 1954 Federick W Franz, then vice president of the WTS, was cross-examined in a Scottish court about Beth Sarim:

Q.-    What has become of the mansion?
A.-    It has been sold.
Q.-    Why?
A.-    Because it was there, and the prophets had not yet come back to occupy it, to make use of it, and the Society had no use for it at the time, it was in charge of a caretaker, and it was causing expense, and our understanding of the Scriptures opened up more, and more concerning the Princes, which will include those prophets, and so the property was sold as serving no present purpose.
Q.- Am I right that it was at one time forecast that in 1925 Abraham and other Prophets would come back to earth?
A.-    They were expected to come back approximately then.
Q.-    But they did not come?
A.-    No.
Q.-    It was published, was it not, to the body of Jehovah’s Witnesses that that was to be expected in 1925?
A.-    Yes.
Q.-    But that was wrong?
A.-    Yes, and Judge Rutherford.
(Walsh vs. The Minister of Labour and National Service, 1954, p.120)
 
 

In 1925 Rutherford had written:
 

When Rutherford wrote this, the emphasis was still on the realization of prophecy in the 1920s. A standard WTS procedure, however, is to promote several dates simultaneously so that when one date fails there’s another "carrot on the stick".

"Twenty five years" terminated in 1950.

The JW leaders often give their failed dates alternative importance — they pretend the date was right but the precise expectation wrong. That’s what they also did in 1950 regarding the princes.

F W Franz addressed 82,600 JWs at their 1950 convention in New York. The official WTS assembly report says:
 

Franz then outlined a new interpretation. The "princes" are Jehovah’s Witness overseers — the guys in charge of individual congregations. Some of these overseers would survive Armageddon and help to rule the post-Armageddon "new world". The Bible heroes would still be resurrected but after Armageddon.

A 16-year-old JW in the audience re-called the occasion years later:
 

The post-Armageddon New World failed to arrive many times after 1950. Failed dates include 1975, the 1970s, "within our twentieth century", and for the period called "this generation".

The princes — by the pre-1950 definition — are still awaited by JWs. Every time Armageddon doesn’t come the arrival of the princes fails again and lots of other stuff fails too.
 
 

In 1942 JWs believed:
 

The ancient Bible heroes didn’t come, nor did Armageddon. Although the WTS held the title of Beth Sarim "perpetually in trust" it was a trust betrayed in 1948 when the place was sold.

Rutherford had wanted to be buried at Beth Sarim. The San Diego County Planning Commission refused. The JW leaders claimed:
 

Had the authorities allowed a cemetery at Beth Sarim it might have been difficult to sell the property. But JW leaders weren’t grateful and didn’t apologize for the above outburst.

Indeed JW leaders never apologize — not for their false predictions, not for the false "Millions" message, not for anything. Theirs is the one right religion and to apologize is inconsistent with being right. An article of theirs titled Only One Right Religion says: