SECT OF JEHOVISTS (RIGHT HAND BROTHERS).

Before proceeding to the history of the creation of the Watch Tower Society, it will be interesting for us to recall the chiliastic sect of Jehovah's Witnesses, or "right hand brothers," that arose on Russian soil. The latter name was applied by the "brothers" to themselves, since they believed that after the Second Coming of Christ, their place was at the right hand of the Lord.

The most surprising thing is that the teaching of these Russian Jehovah's Witnesses is very similar to the theories that we will later encounter in Russell's works. Moreover, the idea of any borrowing is completely implausible, since our sectarians have not been in contact with Jehovah's Witnesses.

The founder of the right brothers was the staff captain of artillery Nikolai Sazontovich Ilyin. He graduated from the Jesuit College in Polotsk. He was inclined to mysticism. Having become an engineer at the Barachinsky factories in the Urals, he broke with Orthodoxy and wrote the work "Zion's News" with rude attacks on the Church and the government. The manuscript was distributed in copies and excited minds, for which the author was put on trial in 1856. According to the court ruling, Ilyin was recognized as mentally ill and exiled to Solovetsky, and from there in 1873 to the Suzdal Spaso-Evfimiev Monastery. He died in 1879 in Mitau (Courland) under police supervision.

At first, the sect spread to the Urals, where in the 90s it broke up into the sects of peacemakers and avengers, who called for the destruction of Christians, as the offspring of Satan, in order to bring closer the onset of Jehovah's kingdom. Later, its representatives appeared in the Vladimir and Poltava provinces, in the Caucasus and in Courland.

The teaching of the sectarians is set forth in Ilyin's works "The Zion News", "The Ray of Light of the Dawn", "Universal Human Truth". They distort the doctrine of the Trinity. The Hebrew god of gods is called the Father, God the Son is the god Jehovah who rules the solar system. God the Spirit is the state of people who are part of the right hand brotherhood. The soul of a person lives in his blood, that is, it is mortal. For 6000 years, Jehovah as the god of immortals and Satan as the god of mortal men have been opposed. At the end of this period, Jehovah, according to Ilyin's teaching, will defeat Satan, put him in chains, cast him into the abyss, establish peace, and also give freedom and prosperity to all nations for 1000 years under the world domination of the Jerusalem Republic. A city made by heavenly people will descend from heaven into Palestine. In the middle of it will be a palace for Jehovah. All the streets are lined with gold. In the middle is a river, with fruit trees growing along the banks. People will live there without aging. "Yehovah will divide this country of Israel into 12 parts in strips. Starting from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. And their Jerusalem republic will prevail over all the kingdoms and peoples on earth... From Zion even to the Chinese city of Canton there will be a railway with luxurious stations and beautiful gardens... There are no barbaric sciences, no recruiting schools, no riots, no jokes... There are no police, no judges, people are holiness everywhere... ranks and red trousers are the foolishness and charm of Satan."[AK1].39 At the end of a thousand years, Satan and all Satanists, i.e., Christians, will be destroyed. Then a new planet will be created, on which Jehovah and all his immortal "right brothers" will live for 280,000 years in a state of inconceivable happiness. The Bible, from Ilyin's point of view, is "a satanic mixture of lies and truth." The Orthodox Church is called the "of Babylon." Divine services are rejected, but joint prayers are prescribed, which can be said at any time and in any place. The cult of the Jehovah's Witnesses consists in evening meetings, and they also had confession. Ilyin himself invented the rite of "vespers", "mass", as well as "repentance without a confessor". These ranks include cantes called "the bomb of God's artillery", "the march of the people of God", etc. Sectarians held great reverence for the image of the name of Jehovah in Hebrew letters, as well as a cross with the image of the name of Jehovah on the triangle. They also honor the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.

We will see later that the main features of the teaching of the "right hand Brethren" are very similar to the essential points of the dogma of Jehovah's Witnesses. As noted above, the simultaneity of the emergence of these sects in different parts of the world and the similarity of the terminology they use are surprising. However, our interest in Ilyin's followers is purely theoretical, since they have practically disappeared in Russia. Already at the beginning of the XX century, the number of these Jehovah's Witnesses living in the Urals, North. Caucasus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, was negligible.

CHAPTER 2. HISTORY AND FEATURES OF THE ACTIVITIES OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES