In recent years, Orthodox Christians have witnessed the rapid growth of sects of various kinds. The activities of many of them are extremely aggressive. The preachers of the majority of destructive cults that are encountered successfully take advantage of the lack of truthful information about the teachings and history of sectarian societies. There is also no developed polemical apparatus with the help of which an Orthodox Christian could successfully oppose the missionaries of totalitarian religious groups. The republication of anti-sectarian pre-revolutionary works partially helps to remedy the situation. Some help is provided by individual brochures dealing with various aspects of sectarian movements. Unfortunately, it should be noted that all the works of Russian Orthodox authors on these topics are far from complete and insufficient for conducting a comprehensive polemic with sectarians.

The organization of Jehovah's Witnesses, also known as the Watch Tower Societies, is currently one of the most aggressive totalitarian religious associations operating in our country. During its existence, it has gained notoriety in many countries. Thanks to active preaching activity, the missionaries of the society managed to attract many representatives of various faiths to the ranks of this sect. On the territory of Russia, the main efforts of preachers are directed mainly at unchurched and unchurched members of the Orthodox Church, and the activities of sectarian missionaries are quite successful. In this regard, it is very important to identify both the reasons that contribute to the rapid growth in the number of members of the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses in our country, and the reasons for the high susceptibility of our compatriots to the ideas of the Watch Tower Society. It is also important to explore various ways to counter Jehovah's Witnesses.

Several works by foreign scholars are devoted to the activities and teachings of the Watch Tower Society. However, the authors of these studies, being representatives of various Protestant denominations, naturally do not provide an analysis of the teaching of society from the Orthodox point of view. To illustrate this, we can cite the works of G. J. Berry's "What They Believe", W. Martin's "The Kingdom of Cults", D. McDowell and D. Stewart's "Deceivers" and E. Price's "Jehovah's Witnesses", in which the authors do not touch upon some important features of the doctrine of the sect in question. Protestant publications in Russian, of course, have a certain value. But they do not accurately interpret many important doctrinal points. As an example, we can cite the book by P. I. Rogozin "False Witnesses" in the part of explanation 144000 from Revelation 7:4.

The totalitarian nature of the sect and the methods by which it operated evoked sharp criticism from many religious leaders, scholars, and politicians. Already the teachings and life of the founder of the Watch Tower Society, C. T. Russell, were subjected to an objective analysis in the article by J. J. Rossa "Some Facts About the Self-Styled 'Pastor' Charles T. Russell." Later, in Europe and America, a large number of serious works appeared dealing with various aspects of the sect's activities. Of particular value are the works of the members of the Society who left its ranks. For example, the books of the former member of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses - Raymond Franz "Crisis of Conscience" and "In Search of Christian Freedom", César Vidal Manzanares "Memoirs of Jehovah's Witnesses" and other authors. The gravest consequences of being in a sect have also been carefully analyzed by foreign authors. Perhaps the best work on this subject is Jerry R. Bergman's Jehovah's Witnesses and the Problems of Mental Illness. It must be said that many important aspects of the Watch Tower Society's activities have been reflected in the studies of foreign specialists. Unfortunately, most of these works have not been translated into Russian. The St. Petersburg Center for Apologetic Studies is doing a lot of work in this direction, publishing translations of excerpts from the works of Western authors.

There are also several works on Jehovah's Witnesses written by Orthodox authors. For example, the works of Hieromonk German (Dvortsov) "The True History of the Society of Jehovah's Witnesses", the Priest Oleg Stenyaev "Jehovah's Witnesses" - Who Are They?", the Ph.D. thesis of the Polish priest Markevich "The Sect of Jehovah's Witnesses", etc.

This work attempts to fill a gap that has not been sufficiently reflected in the contemporary Orthodox literature on the Watch Tower Society. The author does not claim to cover all the existing material on Jehovah's Witnesses, but he would like to see many little-known facts of the dangerous activities of this sect become more widely known. It would also be desirable to see the developed polemical apparatus find wide application in dialogues with members of the Watch Tower Society.

The main goal of the work is to find out the reason for the success of the activities of Jehovah's Witnesses and to identify the possibilities of countering them. It is also planned to establish the harmful influence of being in this organization on the physical, mental and moral health of the members of the Society and to reveal numerous facts of fraud in the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses. We also examine the erroneous opinions of the sect's leadership and cite arguments, the use of which has a successful effect on Jehovah's Witnesses during polemics with them.

In this work, the word "sect" is repeatedly used. Strictly speaking, in the Holy Scriptures, we encounter only the term "heresy" (Greek Ai}resiw - "capture, conquest, conquest; choice, freedom of choice; aspiration, inclination, gravitation; direction, school, teaching"). The word "sect" appears in the Vulg., where the Greek Ai}resiw is translated as haeresis in Acts 5:17, 15:5, 24:14, and as secta in Acts 24:5, 2 Peter 2:1, Galatians 5:20. The Apostles called heresy any teaching that distorts the God-revealed Truths (2 Peter 2:1-2, 1 Corinthians 11:19). In the period of the Ecumenical Councils, opinions that differed from those of the Church, that is, contradicted the dogmatic definitions of the Church, were also considered heretical. The term "sect" in the modern sense of the word began to be used in the era of the Reformation, when a mass of purely religious societies appeared that fell away from the dominant Church for doctrinal reasons. Thus, the word "sect" denotes a religious community that unites people whose teaching is at variance with the divinely revealed truths of the Universal Church. Accordingly, this teaching is called heresy. Interestingly, in modern Greek, the word "Ai}resiw" means a sect.

Of the organizations currently operating in Russia engaged in proselytism, the greatest danger is posed by totalitarian sects (other names: destructive religious associations, destructive cults), that is, authoritarian hierarchical organizations of any orientation, which have a destructive effect on the spiritual, mental and physical state of a person, and are in confrontation with the established social structures, culture and society. These terms are absent in the legislative framework of our country, but are used by specialists and are found in very authoritative documents 1.

"Jehovah's Witnesses" are, without a doubt, one of the most dangerous modern totalitarian sects. Therefore, the study of various aspects of its activities is carried out in detail, with the involvement of the literature of this organization.