CHAPTER 1. THE BACKGROUND OF THE WATCHTOWER SOCIETY.

1.1. HISTORICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES FOR THE EMERGENCE OF A SECT.

Those who have been in close contact with Jehovah's Witnesses know that the greatest effect in a conversation with them can be achieved not by using quotations from the Holy Scriptures, but by referring to the history of this sect. And the wisest thing to do is to recall the many predictions about the specific dates of the Second Coming, thanks to which the Watchtower Society was a resounding success. The history of this sect testifies to the great numerical growth of the ranks of its members every time new dates of the end of the world were announced. It can be assumed that the sermon found a response, first of all, among those Christians in whom eschatological expectations were strong. Such people were among representatives of all generations who lived for many centuries. Suffice it to recall the reaction to the predictions of Bernard of Thuringia, Vincent Verve, Arnaud de Villeneuve, Stofler, Father Pierre-Louis, and others.

With the rise of many Protestant denominations, the research of their members in the field of eschatology led to the emergence of theories linking the events of the Second Coming with the doctrine of the earthly millennium. The founder of one of the new trends in chiliasm was the English biblical scholar of the XVIII century Joseph Mead. Based on a literal interpretation of the text of Revelation, he asserted that the construction of the "Kingdom of God" would be completed within the framework of earthly history. The Revelation of the Holy Apostle John described, from the point of view of this theologian, the progress of mankind. At first glance, this theory resembled the teaching of some of the early Church Fathers, but the similarity here is apparent. The chiliasm of the first centuries implied the Second Coming of the Savior for the judgment of sinners and for the salvation of the righteous in a world mired in sin. Mead's doctrine of "progressive chiliasm" is essentially the opposite, since humanity itself must cope with the task of building the "Kingdom of God." By the 18th century, the theory of "progressive chiliasm" had become dominant in many Protestant denominations. It was shared by the Anglican polemicist and commentator on the New Testament Daniel Whitby (1638-1726), who corrected his Translation and Commentary of the New Testament (1703) from the point of view of this teaching. In America, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) became very famous, developing this concept in detail in his unfinished work "The History of the Work of Salvation". The author expected the opening of the Kingdom of Christ in America in the 20th century. The role of the United States, in the construction of the Kingdom of God, was assigned by theologians of the 19th century very significant. This is a characteristic paradigm of Protestant theology of that time. A typical speech delivered in 1840 by the Presbyterian pastor Samuel Koch to an English audience was: "in America, the state of society is without parallel in universal history. . . . I really believe that God has got America within anchorage, and that upon that arena, He intends to display his prodigies for the millennium" 7.

Modern Western civilization, even in a completely secularized form, is still the heir to Christian culture. Therefore, it is difficult for secular Western scholars to completely abandon the way of thinking that has been developed over a long period of time in the church environment. In this regard, it is not surprising that many social-reformist ideologies, trying to scientifically develop concepts of the future ideal order of life, bear traces of consciously or unconsciously perceived Christian influence. The various projects for the movement of mankind towards an ideal state, which appeared in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, contained nothing new. The idea of a messianic millennial kingdom left its mark on them. The German philosopher of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant, when discussing the possibility of building an eternal world and an ideal state, described his concept as "philosophical chiliasm." Tribute to the ideas of the millennial kingdom was paid by such utopian thinkers as Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier. Karl Marx and Engels, in their Communist Manifesto of 1848, contemptuously referred to the social theories of these philosophers as the twentieth edition of the New Jerusalem, although it should be noted that Marx's Communist doctrine itself, in spite of its militant atheism and dogmatic materialism, has obvious features of "progressive chiliasm."

The modern philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that in socialist teachings, the functions of God are transferred to a kind of dialectical materialism. This false god controls the course of historical development. The object of salvation in Marxist theories is the proletariat, suffering under the rule of evil capitalists. The Communist Party is here an analogue of the Church. The party is preparing its elected people for the "second coming" - the demon of the revolution. The advent of the revolution means the extermination of an enormous number of enemies of the "happiness of mankind." And the victors, under the rule of their false messiah, will live in the "millennium kingdom" - the communist community of nations. We know how many lives the implementation of such projects cost from the experience of our country, which turned into a huge totalitarian sect. We also know what a blow was directed by the builders of this earthly kingdom at the Orthodox Church.

For many decades of the 20th century, a conviction was formed in the minds of the Soviet people about the possibility of building a perfect, happy society on this earth, as a counterbalance to the Church's teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. These ideas, obviously, had deep roots, going back to the theory of "progressive chiliasm", which, thus, indirectly formed the worldview of many generations of Russian people. It can be argued that the consciousness of our compatriots who found themselves in the conditions of post-Soviet society continues to carry the expectation of a future "earthly paradise".

The teachings of the Watch Tower Society, as we shall see later, are to a large extent a modification of the ideas of "progressive chiliasm." The same expectation of an earthly thousand-year-old paradise, the same construction of it, though in a rather strange way - the distribution of the organization's publications. It is important for us to note the coincidence of these ideas, which determine the consciousness of the members of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect, with similar ideas formed among the Russian people during the years of Soviet power. Of course, it is necessary to note a significant difference. The Watch Tower Society did not deny the existence of a God who would destroy everything harmful to future earthly life. The ideologists of the domestic form of chiliasm took upon themselves these functions, rejecting the Lord as well. But Tertullian also noted that the soul is Christian by nature, it cannot live without God. Therefore, in the consciousness of the Soviet people there was always dissatisfaction with the construction of an earthly "bright future".

Finding itself in the conditions of the collapse of atheistic ideology, but not overcoming the expectation of an earthly millennial kingdom, the consciousness of modern Russian man becomes receptive to those currents of "progressive chiliasm" that do not deny the existence of God, including the largest of them, Jehovah's Witnesses.

Going back to the time of the Watchtower Society's inception, it was born out of and in close relationship with other similar religious organizations. At the beginning of the 19th century, the apocalyptic forecasts inherent in the doctrine of "progressive chiliasm" attracted the attention of a large number of people living in the United States, who spontaneously united in the Second Coming movement. Later, against the background of the non-fulfillment of various "prophecies" about the end of the world, there was a split in this movement into various groups, most of which continued to set new dates for the return of Christ. One of them was formed around N. H. Barbour of Rochester, New York. For his followers, Barbour published a magazine called "The Midnight Cry" and then "Herald of the Morning". In July 1878, C. T. Russell, the future founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, became assistant editor of the Second Coming magazine, Herald of the Morning. In this publication, he wrote that the "proofs of dates, chronology, etc., which he accepted were the same as those used by the Adventists in 1873." Russell also contributed to another magazine, The Bible Student, which was also edited by the Adventist George Storr. There is no doubt that most of the ideas Russell later put into the foundation of The Watchtower were borrowed from the teachings of Adventism. We should become acquainted with this direction of the movement of the Second Coming in more detail, especially since serious information about Adventism is practically inaccessible to the Russian reader.