JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES. - A sect that separated from the Adventists in 1879. It was founded by Charles Russell with the aim of announcing to the world the imminent coming of paradise on earth. Its name was at first "the Watch Tower," and its adherents called themselves "Bible Students."
Having arisen in America, the sect spread to Europe in 1930, especially in France. In July 1931, Russell's disciples decided to take the name of Jehovah's Witnesses. Russell was succeeded by a certain Judge Rutherford, who fixed the doctrine of the sect in several publications and died in 1942. At present the head is Nathan Knorr. The sect's headquarters are in Brooklyn, near New York, where it owns a 12-story building and a radio transmitter that broadcasts programs for 6 hours a day.
The doctrine of Jehovah's Witnesses, set out in the book: Let God Be True (circulated in millions of copies), is summarized in the following points: 1) the end of the world is near. The seven days of creation, in fact, meant that the world must last 49,000 years. Now, 48,000 years have already passed. There must be 1,000 years of earthly paradise. Therefore Jesus will come as soon as possible to seek his little sheep, who are Jehovah's Witnesses, and to separate them from the goats, who are all other men; 2) the soul is not immortal. There is neither hell nor purgatory. Jesus is not God, but he merited a "higher position" for his faithfulness to Jehovah, and he received the spirit of God at the Baptism in the Jordan. 3) God is not One in three persons, because a three-headed divinity is nothing but a monster. Furthermore, God made man in his image; now man is monocopite, the Trinity is therefore absurd; 4) worship entails only Baptism by immersion, the annual celebration of the death of Jesus Christ on the 14th of Nisan, and the reading of the Bible; 5) Jehovah's Witnesses hold in error not only the Catholic Church, but the present world in its every expression.
Bibliography
Leone Cristiani