birthdays officially renounced in subsequent years. In 1928, Rutherford discarded Russell's teaching that the natural Jews would be restored to Palestine and return to God's favor, despite having declared ten years earlier that prophecies of their restoration were already being fulfilled with the British takeover of Palestine from Turkey during World War I. He denied there was a role for Jews in God's Kingdom arrangement and by 1933 he had reversed Russell's earlier teaching, claiming that prominent Jewish business leaders were "arrogant, self-important and extremely selfish," and would gain no favored standing with God. The teaching that God would restore the Jews to Palestine was discontinued around the same time. Russell's teaching that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built under God's direction was overturned in 1928, when Rutherford asserted that it had been built under the direction of Satan for the purpose of deceiving God's people in the last days. The announcement prompted further defections among long-time Bible Students. In 1930, Rutherford published a systematic reinterpretation of the book of Revelation. Many of the symbols recorded in the book were applied to events following 1918, specifically to Watch Tower conventions held in the years 1922 through 1928. These reinterpretations reflected both a wholesale rejection of his own earlier views as well as the historicist interpretations of Pastor Russell. At a Washington, D.C. convention in 1935, Rutherford rejected Russell's teaching that the "great company" of Revelation 7:9 was a "secondary spiritual class" composed of millions of Christians who would be resurrected to heaven apart from the 144,000 "elect", and instead argued that the "great multitude", the "sheep" of Matthew 25 and the "Jonadabs" of 2 Kings chapter 10 all picture the people who could potentially survive Armageddon and receive everlasting human life on earth if they became Jehovah's Witnesses before it began. In 1935, Rutherford objected to U.S. state laws requiring school students to salute the flag as a means of instilling patriotism; in the 1936 Yearbook he declared that baptized Jehovah's Witnesses who did salute the flag were breaking their covenant with God and were thus "guilty of death". In 1940, children in 43 states were expelled for refusing to salute the flag and the Watch Tower Society took most cases to court, with Rutherford personally leading the unsuccessful case of Minersville School District v. Gobitis. Controversy over the flag salute issue escalated and mob attacks became prevalent in