The overwhelming majority of Jehovah's Witnesses are honest, sincere, and kind people. But is it possible to remain such in an organization that, although it pays lip service to honesty and truthfulness, actually applies double standards and sometimes outright deceives the public and its fellow believers?

UN Membership

For example, Jehovah's Witnesses conceal the fact that the Watch Tower Society was a member of the United Nations for 9 years (from 1992 to 2001) as a non-governmental organization. It was only after the publication of articles in the British newspaper The Guardian on October 8 and 15, 2001, exposing their membership in the United Nations, that Jehovah's Witnesses withdrew from the organization. Of course, there is nothing surprising in the fact that some organization is a member of the UN and supports its activities. But any Jehovah's Witness knows that the Watch Tower Society has always portrayed the United Nations as Satan's organization. So the question is, "Why does the Society cooperate with such an organization that they claim to serve the Devil?"

After the above article was published, many Jehovah's Witnesses in Great Britain, the United States, and Europe were outraged by this fact. But the Society remained unperturbed here too. It claims that it did not become a member of the UN in reality, but "pretend" to be able to use the UN library. This explanation does not stand up to criticism, only for the reason that it was possible to get access to the UN library without becoming a member of this organization. In Russia, everyone is somehow silent about this. Including the press. But I think it is necessary to know this so that there are no vain illusions about the "innocence" of the Watch Tower Society.

"The Bible of Macarius"

For several years, I served in the public relations department of Jehovah's Witnesses. I often had to communicate with representatives of the press, radio, television, as well as with officials. All these years, I firmly believed in the honesty and holiness of my organization, including the honesty of the department in which I served. However, recently facts about the activities of this department have become known, which allow us to seriously doubt this.

The case concerns the facts related to the so-called "Macarius Bible", which, with great hype in the media, was published as a separate publication by Jehovah's Witnesses in 1996.  We are talking about the translation of some books of the Old Testament by Archimandrite Macarius (Mikhail Glukharev (1792-1847)), which was carried out by him in 1834-1844. However, it was only after his death that his works began to be published in the journal "Orthodox Review" for 1860-1867.

I remember well how in 1996-97 we enthusiastically conducted a media campaign to popularize this publication, how we made appointments with officials of various ranks to give them this Bible. I remember being overwhelmed with pride in the Watch Tower Society, which was doing what I thought was such a tremendous and useful work. I wrote several articles for newspapers at various levels to draw public attention to the educational and biblical work of Jehovah's Witnesses. I also remember how many publishers in the congregation were genuinely happy about this publication. They said: "At last we have a Bible with Jehovah's name on it." They gladly gave this Bible, when they had the opportunity, to sympathetic people, sincerely believing that they were doing a good deed. However, it is interesting that for some reason the Watch Tower Society assigned all the glory for this difficult work of translating the books of the Holy Scriptures not to Mikhail Glukharev, but to itself? I could not help noticing it then.

Thus, in 1996, Jehovah's Witnesses announced throughout Russia that they had found the magazines "Orthodox Review" for 1860-1867 with translations of Macarius in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, "with the kind permission of which a copy was provided, which served as the basis" for the publication of this work by Archimandrite Macarius as a separate book, with the addition of Psalms translated by Archpriest Pavsky and the Synodal translation of the New Testament. This is how the Macarius Bible appeared, the distinctive feature of which was the restoration of the name "Jehovah" in more than 2,500 places in the Old Testament. This is a positive trend in itself, and it should not cause any objections. However, it turned out that not everything is so simple.

The fact is that at the end of 1997, the staff of the Center for Apologological Studies (CAI) accidentally compared the Pentateuch of Moses in the translation of Archimandrite Macarius, which was published in parts in the "Orthodox Review" in the period from August 1863 to December 1864, with the text published by Jehovah's Witnesses. They "found an incredible number of very serious discrepancies! The spelling of names did not coincide, the numbering of some verses did not coincide, some phrases sounded completely different, and most importantly, the name "Jehovah" was much more common in the publication of Jehovah's Witnesses." Employees of this center sent questions to the Russian Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in the village of Solnechnoye, and received an answer stating that Macarius' translation was published in the 60s of the 19th century in two versions: one was published in the journal "Orthodox Review", and the other - in separately published books. According to Jehovah's Witnesses, 74% of the chapters were taken from the journal "Orthodox Review", which is why they indicated the journal "Orthodox Review" as the only source in the preface to the publication.