Daily Inspiration Quote by Joseph Franklin Rutherford

The sting in Rutherford's line is how bluntly it kneecaps the modern dream of self-made salvation. "By his own efforts" is the phrase doing the disciplining: it names the idol of hustle, willpower, moral improvement, then dismisses it as structurally incapable of delivering "true and desired riches". He isn't merely warning against greed. He's attacking the whole logic of autonomy: that a person can climb, earn, optimize, and thereby arrive at what actually matters.

As a clergyman and a major figure in the early 20th-century Jehovah's Witnesses movement, Rutherford was speaking in an era that marketed progress as destiny - industrial growth, new consumer pleasures, self-help uplift, patriotic faith in institutions. His sentence reads like a counter-sermon aimed at that mood. "Riches" is strategically ambiguous: it can mean money, security, status, even inner peace. That breadth lets him sweep away both the obvious target (materialism) and the subtler one (spiritual merit badges). The implication is uncomfortable: even your best intentions, pursued solo, are part of the problem.

The subtext is dependency - not on leaders or systems, but on divine provision. In Rutherford's theology, the "true" wealth is bound up with God's Kingdom rather than personal achievement, and the desired life is something granted, not manufactured. The rhetorical effect is to humble the listener while also offering a release valve: if you can't earn the thing you most want, you can stop pretending you should. It turns exhaustion into doctrine, and doctrine into comfort.