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Charles Taze Russell began publishing Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence in July 1879, as its editor and publisher, after breaking with N. H. Barbour over the ransom; the first issue was printed in 6,000 copies.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993
Russell was called “Pastor” after the Pittsburgh congregation voted him its pastor in 1882 and, by the organisation’s account, some 500 further congregations in the United States and Britain did the same. When his libel action against the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reached the New York Appellate Division in 1915, the court described him as “an unordained preacher”.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, 7 May 1915
Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society was formed on 16 February 1881 with W. H. Conley as president and Russell as secretary and treasurer, and was legally incorporated in 1884 with Russell as president, chartered for “the dissemination of Bible Truths in various languages”.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993
Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society was formed in 1881 and legally registered on 15 December 1884; it was renamed Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1896; the Peoples Pulpit Association (later the New York corporation) was formed in 1909 and the International Bible Students Association was incorporated in London on 30 June 1914.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (book), 1993Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026
From 1889 (Studies in the Scriptures vol. 2) through the 1922 Watch Tower and Rutherford's Prophecy (1929), Watch Tower publications taught that Christ's second presence began in 1874.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 2 — The Time Is at Hand, 1889Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 November 1922Source: Prophecy (book), 1929Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 1955
The first edition of The Time Is at Hand (1889) stated as 'an established truth' that the final end of the kingdoms of this world and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God 'will be accomplished by the end of A.D. 1914'.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series II: The Time Is at Hand, first edition, 1889
The same 1889 volume said the 'battle of the great day of God Almighty' would 'end in A.D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth's present rulership', and that before the end of 1914 the last members of the Church would be glorified and the time of trouble would 'end at that date'.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series II: The Time Is at Hand, first edition, 1889Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series II: The Time Is at Hand (Millennial Dawn vol. 2), first edition, 1889
The 1891 volume Thy Kingdom Come devoted a chapter to 'The Testimony of God's Stone Witness and Prophet, the Great Pyramid in Egypt', presenting the pyramid as 'a Storehouse of Truth — Scientific, Historic and Prophetic' that verified the Bible's 'Appointed Times and Seasons'.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 2000Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993
The 1891 volume Thy Kingdom Come taught that God had prepared the Great Pyramid of Giza as an instrument 'for convincing the world of his wisdom, foreknowledge and grace', described the testimony of the building as inspired, saying it would be 'as much disputed as that of the Scriptures', and closed the chapter by answering those who 'scoff at the testimony of this stone “Witness,” as they also scoff at God’s written Word'.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891
The chapter rested on Isaiah 19:19, 20, printed as its epigraph; on p. 318 the verse is quoted with the word ‘pyramid’ inserted in square brackets after ‘pillar’, so that the identification is made inside the quotation of the text itself.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891
The 1891 edition stated that the descending passage measured 3416 inches from a fixed point to the mouth of the ‘Pit’, and that, read at an inch to a year from 1542 BCE, this showed ‘the close of 1874 was the chronological beginning of the time of trouble’.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come (1898 printing), 1898
Three measurements of the floor of the Grand Gallery — given as 1874, 1881 and 1910 pyramid inches — were said to yield the dates October 1874, October 1881 and October 1910, which the book called ‘in full accord with what we have found taught in the Scriptures’.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910
On the strength of the third of those measurements, the 1891 edition stated that the last members of the ‘body’ or ‘bride’ of Christ ‘will have passed beyond the vail before the close of A. D. 1910’, and that the four years from 1910 to the end of 1914 ‘will be quite sufficient for the extreme of all that trouble’.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891
From 1891 a cross-and-crown emblem appeared on the cover of the Watch Tower magazine, and members wore cross-and-crown pins as a badge of identity.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
In July 1894 Zion's Watch Tower told readers who doubted the 1914 date: 'They are, we believe, God's dates, not ours', adding that 'the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of trouble'.
Source: Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 July 1894
The “jellyfish” words attributed to Russell come from Maria Russell’s sworn account, at the April 1906 trial, of what a young woman in the household had told her. Russell denied them, the judge ruled the incident outside the ground of the case and it was struck from the record, and the reported appeal judgment makes no reference to it. The organisation is the source for all of this: it published the words, the denial and the ruling in the 1975 Yearbook.
Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975Source: Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 19 October 1908
On 19 October 1908 the Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the decree entered on a jury’s verdict for Maria F. Russell against her husband, on the ground of indignities to her person. The court described his conduct as “one of continual arrogant domination”, and found he had treated her as a menial in front of servants, intimated that she was of unsound mind, and made her fear proceedings to test her sanity. The decree was a separation, not a dissolution of the marriage: the 1975 Yearbook quotes its words as ordering that the parties “be separated from bed and board”.
Source: Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 19 October 1908Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975
Between printings, the measurement itself was changed: where the 1891 and 1898 printings read '3416 inches' and gave the date 1874, the 1910, 1914, 1915 and 1918 printings read '3457 inches' and give the date 1915, with the sentence altered from 'the close of 1874 was the chronological beginning' to 'the close of 1914 will be the beginning'. From 1898 onward the passage stands on p. 342 in every printing examined.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come (1898 printing), 1898Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,385,000 Edition), 1914Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,104,000 Edition), 1915Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,595,500 Edition), 1918
The revised figure was in print by 1910, four years before 1914 passed; it is therefore not explained as a response to the disappointment of 1914. On the evidence of the printings that survive, the change was made between the 1898 printing and the 1910 ‘839,000 Edition’.
Source: Millennial Dawn, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come (1898 printing), 1898Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910
In the same printing, the statement that the bride of Christ would have ‘passed beyond the vail before the close of A. D. 1910’ was deleted and replaced with the vaguer ‘a trouble chiefly upon the Church may be expected about 1910 A. D.’; elsewhere in the passage ‘must’ was changed to ‘may’.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910
The descending-passage figure was changed without the Grand Gallery figures being touched. In the 1910 printing, pp. 362-363 still give the three Grand Gallery measurements as 1874, 1881 and 1910 pyramid inches and still read October 1874 as the first of the three dates, twenty pages after the descending-passage calculation has stopped pointing to 1874 and started pointing to 1915. October 1874 was therefore removed from one calculation and kept in another, in the same chapter of the same printing.
Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910
In The Watch Tower of 15 September 1910 Russell told readers that someone who set aside his Studies in the Scriptures and went “to the Bible alone” would, within two years, “go into darkness”, while someone who read the Studies and “not a page of the Bible, as such” would still be in the light.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 September 1910
On 15 June 1911 The Watch Tower told its readers that a Bible Student, J. A. Bohnet, would sell “miracle wheat” seed at one dollar a pound and give the whole proceeds to the Society; a follow-up notice on 1 August 1911 reported many orders and quoted bulk prices of twenty-two pounds for twenty dollars. One dollar a pound is the sixty dollars a bushel that the charge against Russell was later put in terms of.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 June 1911Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 August 1911Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975
The widely circulated account in which Russell is said to have claimed under oath to know Greek and then failed to read the Greek alphabet reaches us through Ross’s own pamphlet, where it is narrated with snatches of quoted dialogue rather than transcribed. The tidy question-and-answer version that circulates online is in neither printing of the pamphlet examined — in both, the only place the words “alphabet” or “447” appear is Ross’s narrative — and no court record or contemporary newspaper report of that exchange was located.
Source: Some Facts and More Facts About the Self-Styled “Pastor” Charles T. Russell (of Millennial Dawn Fame), 1913Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1953
No report of the Hamilton prosecution appears in The Watch Tower for 1912 or 1913. The name Ross occurs once in the two years, in a reprinted newspaper item about a Toronto Baptist debate on communion, and the phrases “Hamilton, Ont”, “criminal libel” and “no bill” do not occur at all. Writing on 26 May 1913, Ross complained that Russell had still said nothing about the case in his journal.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1913Source: Some Facts and More Facts About the Self-Styled “Pastor” Charles T. Russell (of Millennial Dawn Fame), 1913
Russell sued the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for libel over a cartoon about the price of “Miracle wheat”. The trial judge ruled the cartoon libellous but left the newspaper’s defence of truth to the jury, which found for the Eagle; judgment on that verdict was entered in the Kings County clerk’s office on 3 February 1913 and a new trial refused on 10 February. The Appellate Division affirmed, with costs, on 7 May 1915.
Source: New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, 7 May 1915Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 February 1913Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975
The Watchtower of 15 May 1953 quotes what it calls “the official record of the case in question (Police Court of the City of Hamilton, Ontario, March 17, 1913)” as recording this exchange: “Q. You don’t profess, then, to be schooled in the Latin language? A. No, sir. Q. Or in Greek? A. No, sir.” It adds, in its own voice, that “Brother Russell had specifically said that he did not know Greek”.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1953
Russell laid a charge of criminal defamatory libel against the Rev. J. J. Ross of Hamilton, Ontario in December 1912 over a leaflet Ross had published. The prosecution failed: according to Ross's own account the grand jury returned “no bill” on 1 April 1913, so the case never reached a trial jury.
Source: Some Facts and More Facts About the Self-Styled “Pastor” Charles T. Russell (of Millennial Dawn Fame), 1913Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1953
A printing of The Time Is at Hand dated 1914 already reads 'near the end of A.D. 1915' and 'will end in A.D. 1915' where the 1889 edition read 1914; a printing carrying the October 1916 foreword keeps the 1915 wording.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series II: The Time Is at Hand, 1914 printing ('1,452,000 Edition'), 1914Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series II: The Time Is at Hand, later printing with Author's Foreword dated 1 October 1916, 1 October 1916
Late in 1914, with the Gentile Times believed ended but the Kingdom not visibly established, The Watch Tower replied to the question whether the Kingdom might be delayed 'five, ten or even twenty-five years': 'we are not a prophet; we merely believe that we have come to the place where the Gentile times have ended'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 November 1914
Russell used measurements of the Great Pyramid as evidence for his chronology, and the figures were altered between editions. On page 342 of the 1891 first edition of Thy Kingdom Come a passage of “3416 inches” yields “A. D. 1874 as marking the beginning of the period of trouble”; on the same page of the 1914 edition the same passage reads “3457 inches” and yields “A. D. 1915”, with “the close of 1914” as the beginning of the trouble.
Source: Millennial Dawn, Volume III — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,385,000 Edition), 1914Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 2000
The evidence at the centre of the appeal was the United States Department of Agriculture’s own record of governmental experiment with the seed, which the Appellate Division held admissible: it “tended to show, as the result of governmental experiment, that Miracle wheat was no more prolific than brands of wheat in general use and of ordinary quality”. The court also recorded “independent evidence that other wheats could be purchased at prices so low in comparison as to make the advertised price of Miracle wheat exorbitant”.
Source: New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, 7 May 1915Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975
In September 1916 Russell mentioned that A.D. 73 'would correspond to April 1918' but added 'we know of no time-limit here' — a cautious remark later hardened by The Finished Mystery.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 September 1916
In a foreword dated 1 October 1916 Russell acknowledged that the expectation that the Lord’s saints would be with him in glory “at the ending of the Gentile Times” had been “a natural mistake to fall into”, while maintaining that the Gentile Times themselves had ended.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series II: The Time Is at Hand, later printing with Author's Foreword dated 1 October 1916, 1 October 1916
In an Author’s Foreword dated 1 October 1916, about a month before his death, Russell wrote that the Great Pyramid ‘has not lost any of its interest to the author’ and that he still believed its structure ‘was designed of the Lord and intended to be a Pyramid and a witness in the midst and on the border of the land of Egypt. (Isaiah 19:19.)’
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,595,500 Edition), 1 October 1916Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1922
The same foreword told readers that the chapter ‘should be read with just as fresh interest as in the first edition, because its lessons have not altered or changed’, and that ‘scarcely a word of the Volume would need to be changed if it were written today’ — although a measurement in that chapter, and the date it was said to establish, had by then been altered between printings.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,595,500 Edition), 1 October 1916Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910
The Watch Tower’s own obituary of Russell says he “was educated in the common schools and under private tutors”. Proclaimers records that at eleven he became a partner with his father in a men’s clothing store. The Watchtower of 15 May 1953 quotes him agreeing in court that he was not schooled in Latin or in Greek, the two languages of the scriptures he spent his life expounding.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1916Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1953
Russell’s will, signed at Allegheny on 29 June 1907 and published a month after his death, put the Watch Tower’s editorial control in a committee of five, forbade any author’s name on articles, allowed no salaries beyond food, shelter and ten dollars a month, and placed his voting shares with five women trustees appointed for life.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1916Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993
The Finished Mystery (1917) stated that 'the Spring of 1918 will bring upon Christendom a spasm of anguish greater even than that experienced in the Fall of 1914', that 'in the year 1918... God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions', and that 'even the republics will disappear in the fall of 1920'.
Source: The Finished Mystery (Studies in the Scriptures vol. 7), 1917Source: The Finished Mystery (Studies in the Scriptures vol. 7), 1917Source: The Finished Mystery (Studies in the Scriptures vol. 7), 1917
Russell died on 31 October 1916. Within weeks two of the five men named to his Editorial Committee had resigned and J. F. Rutherford, whom the will listed only among possible replacements, had joined it; on 6 January 1917 Rutherford was elected president of the Society.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1916
In October 1917 The Watch Tower said the parallel with the Jewish harvest 'would establish definitely that the harvest would close... in the spring of A.D. 1918', so that 'we have only a few months in which to labor'; the year-end report added that 'in all probability the Spring of 1918 will mark the beginning of the closing up of all activities of the kingdom class on this side the veil'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, October 1917Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 December 1917
The organisation’s own history records that during the First World War the conduct of individual Bible Students varied, and that some went into the trenches with guns and bayonets, feeling obliged to obey the secular authorities.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993
A printing of the volume issued after 1914 had passed still carried the sentence ‘the close of 1914 will be the beginning of the time of trouble’ and still said that the four years from 1910 to the end of 1914 ‘will doubtless be a time of “fiery trial” upon the Church’.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (1,595,500 Edition), 1918
Rutherford's Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1920) said 'we may expect 1925 to witness the return of these faithful men of Israel from the condition of death' and 'we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old', and derived the book's title from that date.
Source: Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920Source: Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920
Through 1921 the magazine carried a standing inside-cover advertisement describing Volume III as containing 'a chapter on the Great Pyramid of Egypt, showing its corroboration of certain Bible teachings', including on the cover of the very issue that reported the memorial gathering at Russell's grave.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1921
The Society’s own annual report for 1921 records that at the memorial gathering at Russell’s grave on 31 October 1921 ‘a little souvenir of the plot of ground and the pyramid stone marker had been provided, which was distributed amongst those in attendance’.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 December 1921
The organisation taught that Christ's invisible presence began in 1874 (not 1914) from Russell's time until the 1940s: The Watch Tower of 1 March 1922 called it an 'indisputable fact' that 'the Lord's second presence began in 1874', and the 1 April 1923 issue said 'his second presence was due in 1874'. Proclaimers (1993) dates the corrected chronology to the 1943 book The Truth Shall Make You Free.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 March 1922Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 April 1923Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993Source: The Truth Shall Make You Free (book), 1943
As late as August 1922 the magazine was still defending the teaching. Answering a convention question about the Leipzig battle monument, it argued that God had 'a good reason' to have 'a monument erected in Egypt, the Great Pyramid'. In the same issue it printed, with a commendatory introduction, a reader's letter from Morton Edgar treating a rival journal's abandonment of the pyramid's testimony as a reason its writers were 'not safe guides to the Lord’s people'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1922Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1922
The Watch Tower of 1 September 1922 said 'The date 1925 is even more distinctly indicated by the Scriptures because it is fixed by the law God gave to Israel', and on 15 July 1924 that 1925 'is a date definitely and clearly marked in the Scriptures, even more clearly than that of 1914'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 September 1922Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 July 1924
In April 1923 the Society denied that travelling speakers had been told to stop talking about 1925 and stated: 'Our thought is, that 1925 is definitely settled by the Scriptures, marking the end of the typical jubilees.'
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 April 1923
Until 1923 the movement taught that the separating of the sheep from the goats in Matthew 25 would happen during the thousand-year reign of Christ; in 1923 it was moved into the present.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 2001
Nothing predicted for 1925 occurred. Official publications later record that 'many said: The ancient worthies have not returned' (1926), that '1925 was a sad year for many brothers... their hopes were dashed' (Yearbook 1975), that 'meeting attendance dropped dramatically in some congregations in France and Switzerland' (Proclaimers), and that outsiders 'made fun of the brothers' (Yearbook 1980).
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 August 1926Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993Source: 1980 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1980Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1991
On 1 January 1925 The Watch Tower acknowledged that 'many have confidently expected that all members of the body of Christ will be changed to heavenly glory during the year', adding 'This may be accomplished. It may not be', and that Christians 'should not be so deeply concerned about what may transpire during this year'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 January 1925
Until 1925 the movement read Revelation 12 as a conflict between pagan and papal Rome with the male child representing the papacy; the article “Birth of the Nation” of 1 March 1925 reassigned the vision to the birth of God's Kingdom in 1914.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
By September 1925 The Watch Tower described the expectation that the church's work would be completed that year as possibly reflecting 'a measure of selfishness', and warned that 'Satan will try to inject into the minds of the consecrated the thought that 1925 should see an end of the work'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 September 1925
The movement’s headquarters staff in Brooklyn celebrated Christmas every year until 1926; the organisation’s own histories record that no Christmas was held there after that year, and quote a letter of 14 November 1927 in which Frederick W. Franz wrote that the Bethel family had voted not to have Christmas any more.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
Until 1926 Armageddon was taught to be a social revolution; from 1926 it was taught to be a war in which God demonstrates his power.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
Christmas was celebrated by the Bible Students worldwide, including at the organisation's Brooklyn headquarters, until 1926; the movement had known since 1881 that the date had pagan roots and had not treated that as a reason to stop.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
The first of the two 1928 articles, in the issue of 15 November 1928, could not be consulted: no scan of that issue, and no bound volume for 1928, could be located.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 November 1928 (unverified)
In November-December 1928 the Watch Tower repudiated the pyramid teaching, stating there is 'no justification for applying any of these texts to the pyramid of Gizeh' and that Egypt 'always represents Satan's organization'.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1957Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 November 1928 (unverified)
On 1 December 1928 The Watch Tower stated that 'There is therefore no justification for applying any of these texts to the pyramid of Gizeh' and that 'The pyramid of Gizeh is neither a sign nor a witness unto the Lord of hosts', reading the 'altar' and the 'pillar' of Isaiah 19:19, 20 as the anointed remnant instead.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928
The reasoning given was that the men who originated the theory — John Taylor, Piazzi Smyth and Robert Menzies — were 'giving expression to their own wisdom' and that 'It is not claimed that any of these men were of the Lord’s anointed'. The 1891 chapter had said of Smyth's Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid that 'we are mainly indebted for the data made use of in this chapter', and had credited Menzies with the suggestion that the pyramid is Jehovah's witness.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891
The article attributed the teaching itself to Satan, saying that ‘One of the most subtle schemes Satan has yet adopted … has been and is the use of the pyramid of Gizeh’, and instructed readers that the faithful ‘will avoid the pyramid of Gizeh and its measurements’.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928
The article closed: ‘We now wonder why we ever believed in or devoted any time to the study of the pyramid of Gizeh. Not only will we abandon such a study now, but we will ask God to forgive us for wasting the time that we have put in on it’.
Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928
From 1927-28 the organisation taught that Christmas dishonours God, and since then Witnesses have not celebrated it; the same period produced rulings against Easter, Valentine's Day, birthdays and New Year's Day.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
The published case against Christmas came after the practice was dropped: The Golden Age of 14 December 1927 carried ‘The Origin of Christmas’, and a radio discourse published in The Golden Age of 12 December 1928 set out the fuller argument.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993
The Golden Age of 1 May 1929 (p. 502), sometimes labelled by a discovery site as commending transfusions, is on the scan an anti-vaccination passage ('vaccination is a crime, an outrage and a delusion'); the 1929 volume's OCR contains no mention of transfusion.
Source: The Golden Age, 1 May 1929
The Golden Age of 1 May 1929 (p. 502) published a reprinted article declaring that 'the practice of vaccination is a crime, an outrage and a delusion', and its 13 November 1929 issue (p. 107) advised readers to avoid vaccinations because they 'pollute the blood stream with their filthy pus'.
Source: The Golden Age, 1 May 1929Source: The Golden Age, 13 November 1929
From June 1929 the Watch Tower taught that the 'higher powers' or 'superior authorities' of Romans 13:1 were 'primarily the Most High God and his reigning Son Jesus Christ', not secular rulers.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 November 1950Source: God's Kingdom Rules! (2014), 2014Source: The Watch Tower, 1 June 1929 (unverified)
A deed dated 24 December 1929, published in The Golden Age of 19 March 1930, conveyed the San Diego house Beth-Sarim to J. F. Rutherford for life and then to the Watch Tower Society 'perpetually in trust' for David, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, Joseph, Samuel and 'other faithful men' of Hebrews 11, who were expected to return and take charge of earth's affairs; claimants were to 'prove and identify themselves' to the Society.
Source: The Golden Age, 19 March 1930
Bible Students wore a cross-and-crown pin as a badge of identification, and the same emblem appeared on the cover of the Watch Tower from 1891 until 1931.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
The Golden Age of 4 February 1931 is reported to have stated that 'Vaccination is a direct violation of the everlasting covenant that God made with Noah after the flood'.
Source: The Golden Age, 4 February 1931Source: The Watchtower, 15 December 1952
The name 'Jehovah's witnesses' was adopted by resolution at the Columbus, Ohio convention on 26 July 1931; before that the movement used 'Bible Students', 'International Bible Students' Association' (from 1910) and 'Associated Bible Students' (from 1914).
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (book), 1993Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1955
Until 1932 the Hebrew restoration prophecies were applied to the return of Jews to Palestine; the book Vindication (1932) applied them instead to the organisation's own restoration from 1919.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
The organisation's account of the Bible's central subject changed: God's chief purpose was restated as the vindication of his sovereignty rather than the salvation of people, and the main theme as the Kingdom rather than the ransom.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
From the 1870s to 1932 elders and deacons were elected by the vote of each congregation; in 1932 elective elders were abolished in favour of a service committee under a service director appointed by the Society.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 2006Source: The Watchtower, 1 September 1983Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
For many years the organisation taught that the call to heavenly life had ended in 1931, on the basis of a reading of the parable of the denarius published in The Watchtower of 15 November 1933; that reading was abandoned in 1966.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 2007
Before 1973 tobacco use barred a Witness from headquarters service, pioneering and the travelling ministry, but was not a ground for removal from the congregation; the organisation later described such habits as “at first merely frowned upon”.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
Before 1935 the organisation taught that the “great multitude” of Revelation 7:9 was a secondary heavenly class: anointed Christians who had not been fully faithful, and, on one later account, members of the churches of Christendom who would side with Christ at the end.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 2001Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
On 31 May 1935, at a convention in Washington, D.C., the Watch Tower Society's president J. F. Rutherford announced that the great crowd was not a heavenly class at all but an earthly one, and the change was published in The Watchtower of 1 and 15 August 1935.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1985Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
After the 1935 announcement large numbers of Witnesses who had believed they were of the anointed stopped partaking of the bread and wine at the Memorial; a life story published by the organisation records that in one area “most brothers and sisters” did so.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 April 1990
Between 1928 and 1936 the cross was reclassified: the pins were called objectionable in 1928, idols in 1933, pagan in 1934, and in 1936 the book Riches taught that Jesus died on an upright stake rather than a cross.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
Bible Students kept lists of one another’s birthdays in their Daily Manna books; the organisation records that they gave up birthday celebrations after they had given up Christmas, and dates the earliest published objection to The Golden Age of 6 May 1936.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
The teaching that Jesus was executed on an upright stake rather than a cross was published in The Golden Age of 4 November 1936 and in the book Riches the same year; the organisation’s index records it under the year 1936.
Source: The Golden Age, 4 November 1936Source: Watch Tower Publications Index 1930-1985, 1986Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
Salvation (1939) stated that Beth-Sarim's title was held 'in trust... thereafter to be for ever at the disposal of the aforementioned princes on the earth', and that the house was built as 'tangible proof' of belief that the faithful men of old 'will soon be resurrected'.
Source: Salvation (book), 1939
The organisation dates its settled understanding of Christian neutrality to an article in The Watchtower of 1 November 1939, and its own index lists neutrality among the beliefs clarified in that year.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: Watch Tower Publications Index 1930-1985, 1986
Critics cite The Golden Age (1925) and Consolation of 25 December 1940 (p. 19) as describing blood donation or transfusion approvingly before 1945; none of these passages could be opened in this session.
Source: Consolation, 25 December 1940 (unverified) Source: AJWRB.org, 2026 (unverified) Source: JWFacts.com, 2026 (unverified)
It is widely reported that The Watchtower of 15 September 1941 p.288 described the book Children as 'the Lord's provided instrument for most effective work in the remaining months before Armageddon'; the original could not be opened in this research.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1941 (unverified)
Parker and Dubberstein's standard reference chronology fixes each Neo-Babylonian reign from dated business and administrative tablets. At the change from Nebuchadnezzar II to Amel-Marduk, the last tablet of the old reign and the first of the new are dated to the same day, 7 October 562 BCE; at the change from Amel-Marduk to Neriglissar the gap is six days.
Source: Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), 1942Source: Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), 1942
The date 539 BCE for the fall of Babylon comes from the Nabonidus Chronicle together with the last dated tablets of Nabonidus' seventeenth year: the chronicle records that Sippar fell on 11 October, Babylon on 13 October, and that Cyrus entered the city on 29 October 539 BCE.
Source: Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), 1942Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment BM.35382, 2026
The organisation’s own history records that the prohibition on tobacco applied first to the headquarters staff and appointed representatives from 1935, then to all appointed servants from 1942, and only in 1973 to every baptised member.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993
By 1943 the organisation taught that 'The King's presence or parousia began in 1914', and its 1993 history states that Witnesses 'came to understand that it was in the year 1914 that Christ's invisible presence had begun'.
Source: “The Truth Shall Make You Free” (book), 1943Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993
Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), often cited in transfusion cases, concerned child labour and literature distribution, not medical treatment; its statement that parents are not free 'to make martyrs of their children' is at 321 U.S. 170.
Source: Supreme Court of the United States, 31 January 1944
The organisation's own 1993 history states that the sanctity of blood was discussed in The Watch Tower of 15 December 1927 and that the 1 December 1944 Watchtower 'specifically mentioned blood transfusions', before the full 1945 treatment.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (book), 1993Source: The Watch Tower, 15 December 1927 (unverified) Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 1944 (unverified)
The organisation itself dates its position that Christians must abstain from blood transfusions to The Watchtower of 1 July 1945 ('Immovable for the Right Worship'; pages 198-201 as cited by secondary sources).
Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1987Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (book), 1993Source: The Watchtower, 1 July 1945
Passages widely quoted from the 1 July 1945 article (for example the 'Scythians, Tartars' comparison) could not be checked against a scan and should not be published as quotations until one is opened.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 July 1945Source: AJWRB.org, 2026 (unverified) Source: JWFacts.com, 2026 (unverified)
The organisation’s own list of the earliest references warning against other holidays dates them to 1928 for Easter, 1929 for Valentine’s Day, 1936 for birthdays and 1946 for New Year’s Day.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
The New World Translation began as a proposal by the Watch Tower Society’s president, Nathan H. Knorr, in early October 1946; work started on 2 December 1947; the completed Christian Greek Scriptures were announced to the two corporations’ boards of directors on 3 September 1949 and released on 2 August 1950 at Yankee Stadium, New York.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1950Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015
The Watch Tower Society has never published the names of the New World Bible Translation Committee. In 1950 it stated that the translators had asked to remain anonymous and ‘specifically do not want their names to be published while they are in life or after death’; the request is repeated in the 1993 Proclaimers history and the position is still stated on JW.org.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1950Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
In 1950 The Watchtower said that Witnesses conscientiously refrain from taking part in politics, ‘yes, even from voting’, and consider it improper to exercise the vote, while allowing that where voting is compulsory they may register and enter the booth.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 November 1950
In July 1951 The Watchtower argued that a patient receiving a transfusion 'is eating it through his veins', treating transfusion as equivalent to eating blood.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 July 1951
The same 1951 answer said Witnesses 'do not oppose the people's use of transfusions, but allow each one the right to decide for himself', and mentioned no congregational penalty; the organisation's history dates disfellowshipping for the practice to 1961.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 July 1951Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (book), 1993
In 1951 The Watchtower said 'this generation' in Matthew 24:34 must be taken 'in the ordinary sense... for those who are living at the given period', beginning in 1914, and that the 'time of the end' covers 'a period of many years, those of a generation'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 July 1951
In February 1952 The Watchtower instructed readers to 'meekly go along with the Lord's theocratic organization and wait for further clarification, rather than balk at the first mention of a thought unpalatable to us', and not to 'pit against Jehovah's channel their own human reasoning'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 February 1952
The Watchtower of 1 March 1952 set out formal disfellowshipping and directed that an unrepentant wrongdoer 'has to be set aside, he must be avoided'; a November 1952 Questions From Readers added that a faithful spouse or child would keep natural and legal obligations toward a disfellowshipped family member but have no 'religious communion' with him.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1952Source: The Watchtower, 15 November 1952
In 1952 The Watchtower, answering a question about proposing toasts to God, Christ or the Kingdom, told readers to shun the custom of toasting, traced it to Babylonian, Greek, Roman and Scandinavian drinking rites, and accepted that this would make Witnesses appear narrow-minded.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1952
In June 1952 The Watchtower said those destroyed at Sodom and Gomorrah are 'eternally “cut off”' and that 'by no wresting of scripture can this be made to mean a future resurrection'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1952
In December 1952 The Watchtower said vaccination was for the individual 'to decide for himself' and that it 'does not appear to us to be in violation of the everlasting covenant made with Noah', adding that the Society could not 'take the responsibility for the way the case turns out'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 December 1952
In April 1953 Bruce M. Metzger, then associate professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary and later the most eminent English-speaking textual critic of his generation, wrote in Theology Today that the New World Translation's rendering of John 1:1, 'and the Word was a god', is 'a frightful mistranslation' which 'overlooks entirely an established rule of Greek grammar'.
Source: Theology Today, April 1953
In the same 1953 article Metzger wrote that the word 'other', inserted four times in the New World Translation at Colossians 1:15-17, 'has been unwarrantably inserted', is 'not present in the original Greek', and 'was obviously used by the translators in order to make the passage refer to Jesus as being on a par with other created things'.
Source: Theology Today, April 1953Source: The Bible Translator, July 1964
A review in The Expository Times for November 1953, attributed to the Old Testament scholar H. H. Rowley, concluded of the New World Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Volume I: 'From beginning to end this volume is a shining example of how the Bible should not be translated.'
Source: The Expository Times, November 1953
Walsh v. The Lord Advocate was an action for declarator in the Court of Session in Edinburgh, seeking a declaration that Douglas Walsh was a ‘regular minister’ exempt from national service. Lord Strachan heard the proof from 23 November 1954 and gave judgment on 7 January 1955, holding that Jehovah’s Witnesses are a religious denomination but that Walsh was not a ‘regular minister’. The Second Division and then the House of Lords dismissed the appeal, judgment being given on 19 July 1956.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1955Source: The Weekly Law Reports, 19 July 1956
Three senior Watch Tower officers flew from New York to give evidence at the proof: Frederick W. Franz, vice-president; Hayden C. Covington, the Society’s general counsel; and Grant Suiter, secretary and treasurer. Franz gave evidence first, and the whole of the evidence took seven days.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1955
A widely circulated typescript of the proof records Frederick W. Franz, under cross-examination on 24 November 1954, saying that he did not speak Hebrew and, asked to translate Genesis 2:4 into Hebrew, answering ‘No. I won’t attempt to do that.’ The organisation has never published a response to this passage.
Source: Court of Session, Edinburgh — Pursuer’s Proof, 24 November 1954Source: Crisis of Conscience (4th edition), 2004 (unverified) Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1955
The same typescript records Franz describing how doctrinal changes were published: they went through an editorial committee, he gave his approval after Scriptural examination, and ‘President Knorr has the final O.K.’, with the board of directors not voting on them at all.
Source: Court of Session, Edinburgh — Pursuer’s Proof, 24 November 1954Source: Crisis of Conscience (4th edition), 2004 (unverified)
The typescript also records Franz saying that when the translation was donated to the Society the committee ‘made it known that they did not wish their names to be disclosed’ and that whether the translators were all Jehovah’s Witnesses was ‘part and parcel of the agreement that their names shall not be revealed’.
Source: Court of Session, Edinburgh — Pursuer’s Proof, 24 November 1954Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1950Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993
Samuel S. Haas reviewed the New World Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Volume I, in the Journal of Biblical Literature in December 1955, and is quoted as concluding that although the work 'indicates a great deal of effort and thought as well as considerable scholarship, it is to be regretted that religious bias was allowed to colour many passages'.
Source: Journal of Biblical Literature, December 1955
The Babylonian Chronicle BM 21946 records that in Nebuchadnezzar II's seventh year he besieged 'the city of Judah' and seized it on the second day of the month Adar, capturing its king. D. J. Wiseman, publishing the tablet for the British Museum in 1956, converted that date to 15 or 16 March 597 BCE.
Source: Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956Source: Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment BM.21946, 2026
The same chronicle states the length of a reign directly: 'For twenty-one years Nabopolassar had been king of Babylon', that he died on the 8th of Ab, and that Nebuchadnezzar took the throne on the first day of Elul.
Source: Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956
In September 1958 The Watchtower said serums such as diphtheria antitoxin and blood fractions such as gamma globulin were 'a matter of individual judgment', distinguishing them from blood taken 'as a nutrient'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1958
Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (1959) p.110 is reported to discuss the 1925 expectation; the book is access-restricted on archive.org and not on wol.jw.org, so no wording could be confirmed.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Divine Purpose (book), 1959 (unverified)
For decades the organisation's publications identified individual Bible characters as prophetic pictures of modern classes of Witnesses — for example Rahab as a picture of the great crowd.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 December 1959Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 2015
In 1960 the organisation taught that the “king of the north” of Daniel 11 was Germany, which had filled that role from 1914 and again under Nazi rule.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 February 1960Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), May 2020
In 1961 the Society published a 62-page booklet, 'Blood, Medicine and the Law of God', setting out its position for medical and legal readers.
Source: Blood, Medicine and the Law of God (booklet), 1961Source: Wellcome Collection catalogue, 1961
From January 1961 The Watchtower stated that a baptised Witness who accepted a transfusion and remained unrepentant or persistent was subject to disfellowshipping: 'The inspired Holy Scriptures answer yes.'
Source: The Watchtower, 15 January 1961Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (book), 1993
In August 1961 The Watchtower told a reader that donating one's eyes after death for transplant involved no Scriptural principle and was for each individual to decide.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 August 1961
In September 1961 The Watchtower wrote: 'Lifesaving efforts by unscriptural means can never produce results of lasting good. How foolish it is to think that one can save life by violating the laws of the Life-giver!'
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1961
The frequently repeated quotation that a transfusion may bring 'temporary prolongation of life, but at the cost of eternal life' was not found in either 15 September 1961 article or by a phrase search of the Watchtower Online Library. The nearest verified wording is in The Watchtower of 1 July 1951, pp. 415-416: 'Any saving of life accomplished by transfusions is short-lived. And doing it in disobedience of God's commands could cost one eternal life.' The popular quotation appears to paraphrase it.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1961Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1961
In November 1961 The Watchtower stated that 'the infusing of some blood fraction to sustain one's life is wrong', while leaving vaccines and serums to individual judgment.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1961Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1958
In November 1962 The Watchtower re-identified the 'superior authorities' as 'pagan rulers like Caesar and his governors and kings of individual nations', i.e. secular governments, without mentioning the 1929 position.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 November 1962Source: God's Kingdom Rules! (2014), 2014
Bruce Metzger returned to the subject in a signed review of the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures in The Bible Translator, the United Bible Societies' journal, in July 1964. The review is mixed. He allowed that 'on the whole, one gains a tolerably good impression of the scholarly equipment of the translators (their names are not divulged)' and that 'frequently an intelligent use of critical information is apparent'; he then wrote that 'the introduction of the word “Jehovah” into the New Testament text, in spite of much ingenuity in an argument filled with a considerable amount of irrelevant material, is a plain piece of special pleading', and repeated his 1953 objections to 'and the Word was a god' at John 1:1 and to the fourfold 'other' at Colossians 1:16.
Source: The Bible Translator, July 1964
In August 1965 The Watchtower said 'apparently individuals who used to live in that land will be resurrected', reasoning that only the cities, not the people, were everlastingly destroyed.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 August 1965
Life Everlasting—in Freedom of the Sons of God (1966) said that 'six thousand years from man's creation will end in 1975, and the seventh period of a thousand years of human history will begin in the fall of 1975 C.E.', and that it would be 'appropriate' for God to make that seventh millennium 'a sabbath period of rest and release'.
Source: Life Everlasting—in Freedom of the Sons of God (book), 1966Source: The Watchtower, 15 April 1967
In October 1967 The Watchtower stated that the Bible 'belongs to the Christian congregation as an organization, not to individuals' and 'cannot be properly understood without Jehovah's visible organization in mind'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 1967
In November 1967 The Watchtower stated that a person who accepts a transplanted human organ is 'living off the flesh of another human' and that this is 'cannibalistic', whether the flesh is 'chewed or in the form of whole organs or body parts'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 November 1967
In 1968 The Watchtower said a mature Christian would avoid even imitating false religious rituals when toasts were offered, while closing the same answer by saying that no one else can serve as another Christian’s conscience.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 1968
In 1968 the organisation described 5-6 October 539 BCE as an ‘absolute date’, one ‘proved reliable by secular history’, from which ‘all the other dates in the Hebrew Scriptures can be calculated’; the later reference work Insight on the Scriptures calls the same year a ‘pivotal point’ instead.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 1968Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1968Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
In May 1968 The Watchtower, while concluding that Jesus wore a beard, said that in many lands a beard 'may, in the minds of the majority, classify such a person undesirably with extremists or as rebels against society' and that God's ministers therefore avoid such an impression.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 1968
The Watchtower of 1 May 1968 calculated the autumn of 1975 as 'fully 6,000 years into God's seventh day' and, asked whether 1975 'will bring the battle of Armageddon', answered 'No one can say with certainty what any particular year will bring' — while urging readers to treat the old system as 'a sinking ship'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 1968
Against the defence 'Jesus said no one knows the day or hour': the organisation quoted Mark 13:32 in 1968 while in the same articles fixing the autumn of 1975 as the end of 6,000 years and suggesting the gap to Christ's reign might be 'weeks or months'; the 1924 and 1925 articles likewise paired disclaimers with dated expectations.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 1968Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1968Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 July 1924
The organisation has taught since at least 1968 that 539 BCE is an 'absolute date', and that 'the fixing of 539 B.C.E. as the year when this historical event occurred is based on a stone document known as the Nabonidus (Nabunaid) Chronicle'. The whole of its biblical chronology, including 607 BCE and 1914, is counted back from that date.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1968Source: 'All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial', 1990
The Watchtower of 15 August 1968 ('Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975?') asked whether Armageddon 'will be all over by the autumn of 1975' and answered 'Possibly', saying any gap between the end of 6,000 years and Christ's reign 'may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1968
Awake! of 8 October 1968 ('What Will the 1970's Bring?') said the 6,000 years 'will evidently finish in the autumn of the year 1975', that 'no man can say' this positively points to 1975 as the end, but that 'the 1970's will certainly see the most critical times mankind has yet known' and that divine intervention in the 1970s 'should surely not surprise us'.
Source: Awake!, 8 October 1968
In 1969 The Watchtower said that the Bible does not comment directly on tobacco, that Witnesses strongly discourage its use and regard users as spiritually immature, and that a user would not have the blameless reputation an appointed servant should have and should overcome the habit so as to be available for privileges such as appointed servant or full-time pioneer; it set out no provision for expelling a baptised member who continued to smoke.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 February 1969
Awake! of 22 May 1969 told young readers: 'you also need to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of things... this corrupt system is due to end in a few years', and that 'as a young person, you will never fulfill any career that this system offers', discouraging plans for college.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1969
From at least 1971 until 2015 the organisation taught that “Gog of Magog” in Ezekiel 38 was Satan himself, named Gog after being cast out of heaven in 1914.
Source: “The Nations Shall Know That I Am Jehovah”—How?, 1971Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1988
Election was ended altogether in 1938, and in 1971 the title of elder was restored, with a body of elders in each congregation appointed by the Governing Body; the organisation's own accounts date this last step to 1971 in one place and 1972 in another.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 2006
In April 1972 The Watchtower said Jehovah 'had a “prophet” to warn' Christendom, that 'this “prophet” was not one man, but was a body of men and women' known as the International Bible Students and 'today … as Jehovah's Christian witnesses', and called the group 'the modern-day Ezekiel'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 April 1972
Against the defence 'we never claimed to be prophets': The Watchtower of 1 April 1972 asked 'does Jehovah have a prophet... to declare things to come?', answered 'in the affirmative', and identified that prophet as 'not one man, but... a body of men and women... known as Jehovah's Christian witnesses'; and in 1894 the Society called the 1914 chronology 'God's dates, not ours'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 April 1972Source: Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 15 July 1894
In 1973 Awake! quoted a chess player and Time magazine describing chess as a war game, warned of the time and the competitive feeling it could produce, and asked readers whether playing it had a wholesome effect; it did not prohibit the game.
Source: Awake!, 22 March 1973
The Watchtower of 1 June 1973 ruled that baptised Witnesses who would not give up tobacco “should therefore be removed from the congregation”, and that people still using tobacco did not qualify for baptism.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1973Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
On 1 June 1973 The Watchtower classified nicotine with addictive drugs, barred tobacco users from baptism, gave baptised users a period such as six months to stop, and directed that those who would not be removed from the congregation.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1973Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
In February 1974 the congregation newsletter Kingdom Ministry extended the tobacco ruling to employment: farmers, shopkeepers, salesmen and factory workers whose living came from tobacco were given a period such as three months to find other work, failing which the congregation was to expel them.
Source: Kingdom Ministry, February 1974
Thomas N. Winter, then a classicist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, reviewed the Kingdom Interlinear Translation favourably in The Classical Journal in 1974, writing that 'the integrity of the text is preserved', that 'the translation by the anonymous committee is thoroughly up-to-date and consistently accurate', that 'the book has been very carefully compiled and printed', and recommending that a classicist or Bible student 'bring him in and place an order' when a Witness calls.
Source: The Classical Journal, April 1974Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
Kingdom Ministry of May 1974 reported 'brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service' and called this 'a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world's end'.
Source: Kingdom Ministry, May 1974
In August 1974 The Watchtower said it was 'not right to treat such ones in an inhumane way', allowed an elder to speak words of exhortation to a disfellowshipped person met casually, and stated that how far a family associated with disfellowshipped relatives living outside the home was for 'each family' to decide and 'not something that the congregational elders can decide for them'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 August 1974Source: The Watchtower, 1 August 1974
In 1974 The Watchtower ruled that oral and anal intercourse within marriage fell within the Greek term rendered ‘fornication’, allowed a wife subjected to such acts against her will to seek a Scriptural divorce, and directed that a couple who engaged in them by consent be dealt with by the elders as serious wrongdoers.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 November 1974Source: The Watchtower, 15 December 1972
A commonly cited 1 June 1975 Watchtower statement on haemophilia preparations could not be located; the 1 June 1975 Questions From Readers concerns marriage, and the earliest verified treatment of haemophilia preparations is 15 June 1978.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1975 (unverified) Source: The Watchtower, 15 June 1978
The autumn of 1975 passed without Armageddon; The Watchtower of 1 October 1975 marked that 'mankind then completed 6,000 years of existence on earth' and asked 'Why Delay?'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 1975
The first official response, in July 1976, told anyone 'disappointed' to adjust his viewpoint, 'seeing that it was not the word of God that failed or deceived him and brought disappointment, but that his own understanding was based on wrong premises'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 July 1976
Peak publishers rose from 2,179,256 (1975) to 2,248,390 (1976), then fell to 2,223,538 (1977) and 2,182,341 (1978); average publishers fell from 2,117,194 (1977) to 2,086,698 (1978), baptisms fell from 295,073 (1975) to 95,052 (1978), and the 1979 Yearbook reported 29,893 disfellowshippings in 1978.
Source: 1976 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1976Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 1977Source: 1978 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1978Source: 1979 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1979
Worldwide peak publishers fell from 2,248,390 (1976 service year) to 2,223,538 (1977) and 2,182,341 (1978); the 1979 Yearbook reported an 'overall 1.4-percent decrease' in average publishers (2,086,698 v 2,117,194) and that 'others became inactive'. The 1977 Yearbook had already noted about 16,000 fewer pioneers and 23 million fewer hours than in 1975. The 1980 Yearbook reports increases in 1979 'though not large' in lands such as the United States and Great Britain, and an upswing in Nigeria and the Philippines 'after a few years of decreases in the number of Witnesses in these lands'.
Source: 1976 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1976Source: 1977 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1977Source: 1978 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1978Source: 1979 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1979Source: 1980 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1980
In February 1978 The Watchtower withdrew that rule, stating that the earlier comments had equated such practices with gross sexual immorality, that members had on that basis been subject to disfellowshipping, and that in the absence of clear Scriptural instruction these were matters for the couple themselves and not for elders to control or to expel anyone over.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 February 1978Source: Watch Tower Publications Index 1930-1985, 1986
In June 1978 The Watchtower placed serums used against diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis, rabies, haemophilia and Rh incompatibility in a 'gray area' to be 'resolved by each individual on a personal basis'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 June 1978
The number of symbolic keys Jesus gave to Peter was changed from two to three, the third being used for the Samaritans, in The Watchtower of 1 October 1979.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
In March 1980 The Watchtower said organ transplants were 'a matter for personal decision' and that a congregation judicial committee 'would not take disciplinary action if someone accepted an organ transplant'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 1980
In March 1980 The Watchtower acknowledged that, alongside cautionary statements, 'there were other statements published that implied that such realization of hopes by that year was more of a probability than a mere possibility. It is to be regretted that these latter statements apparently overshadowed the cautionary ones.'
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 1980
Against the defence 'individual brothers speculated': the dated expectations were published in the organisation's own books (1889, 1917, 1920, 1966), magazines (1922-24, 1968), a Kingdom Ministry insert (1974) and a magazine masthead (to 1995); the organisation itself admitted in 1980 that 'statements published' had implied probability.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 1980Source: Kingdom Ministry, May 1974Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 April 1923Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993
In August 1981 The Watchtower said of those who 'say that it is sufficient to read the Bible exclusively, either alone or in small groups at home' that 'through such “Bible reading,” they have reverted right back to the apostate doctrines that commentaries by Christendom's clergy were teaching 100 years ago'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1981
In September 1981 The Watchtower reasoned that 'a simple “Hello” to someone can be the first step that develops into a conversation and maybe even a friendship' and asked, 'Would we want to take that first step with a disfellowshiped person?', applying 2 John 9-11 to disfellowshipped and disassociated persons generally.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981
From September 1981 The Watchtower applied 2 John 9-11 to all expelled persons and warned that 'a simple "Hello" to someone can be the first step that develops into a conversation and maybe even a friendship', asking 'Would we want to take that first step with a disfellowshiped person?'; it also used the word 'shunning' for the practice.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love” (lv), 2008Source: The Watchtower, 15 April 1988
The same 1981 issue created the category of 'disassociation' (leaving by statement or by joining an organisation 'contrary to the Bible'), directed that such persons be announced as 'no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses' and 'treated as are those who have been disfellowshiped'; the Ninth Circuit's 1987 judgment records that this 1981 reinterpretation led former friends to tell Janice Paul 'they could not speak with her'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc., 819 F.2d 875 (9th Cir. 1987), No. 85-4012, 10 June 1987Source: Organized to Do Jehovah’s Will (od), 2019
The 1981 article stated that a member who 'will not cease to fellowship with the expelled person' has 'made himself a sharer' in wicked works and 'must be removed from the congregation, expelled'; the April 2021 elders' handbook (as produced to a public inquiry) still lists wilful association with disfellowshipped or disassociated non-relatives as conduct that 'would warrant judicial action', while association with non-household relatives leads to loss of privileges and judicial action only if there is 'persistent spiritual association' or open criticism of the decision.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: “Shepherd the Flock of God”—1 Peter 5:2 (ks), April 2021 revision, chapters 12, 14, 16 and 22, as produced to the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (document JHV0000012), April 2021Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026
In December 1981 The Watchtower likened adjusted explanations to 'tacking' by a sailing ship and said such adjustments 'seemingly to previous points of view' had 'not actually been the case', adding that they 'often served as a test of loyalty'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 1981
Against the defence 'the light gets brighter' (Proverbs 4:18): The Watchtower of 1 December 1981 acknowledged that explanations 'have shown adjustments, seemingly to previous points of view', insisted that 'this has not actually been the case', compared the process to 'tacking', and said it 'has often served as a test of loyalty'. A reversal that later reverses again (the generation: 1951/1984 lifetime view; 1995 wicked contemporaries; 2008 anointed; 2010 overlapping anointed) is not a straight path of increasing light.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 1981Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1995Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 February 2008Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 April 2010
From the 1960s onwards the organisation taught that the heavenly calling had in general been completed about 1935, and that anyone anointed after that year would be a rare replacement for an unfaithful member of the anointed.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 February 1982Source: United in Worship of the Only True God, 1983
In a 1981 JAMA article reprinted in Awake! (22 June 1982) and the 1990 brochure, the Society stated that Witnesses refuse 'whole blood, packed RBCs, WBCs, or platelets' but that albumin, immune globulins and haemophiliac preparations were for 'each Witness' to 'decide individually'.
Source: Awake!, 22 June 1982Source: How Can Blood Save Your Life? (brochure), 1990
The same 1981/1982 text said 'techniques for intraoperative collection or hemodilution that involve blood storage are objectionable', while dialysis, non-blood-primed bypass and uninterrupted intra-operative salvage were permitted by many Witnesses.
Source: Awake!, 22 June 1982Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1989
In January 1983 The Watchtower, under the heading 'Avoid Independent Thinking', said Satan 'promoted independent thinking' and that such thinking is manifested 'by questioning the counsel that is provided by God's visible organization'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 January 1983
The same 1983 issue acknowledged that 'the organization has had to make adjustments before', labelled the inference 'we have to make up our own mind on what to believe' as 'independent thinking' and 'an evidence of pride', and answered the question whether members can 'get along without the direction of God's organization' with 'No, we cannot!'
Source: The Watchtower, 15 January 1983
In 1983 The Watchtower confined the Greek term rendered ‘fornication’ to conduct outside the marriage, so that a mate’s enforcing such acts inside a marriage no longer gave the other a Scriptural ground for divorce, while adding that practising or openly advocating them could still lead to expulsion under other headings.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 1983
In 1983 The Watchtower said it was inadvisable for a Witness to keep a firearm for defence against people and that anyone who persisted would cease to qualify for congregation privileges, while treating armed employment as a personal decision that most Witnesses decline.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 July 1983Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2005
The number of sheepfolds in John chapter 10 was changed from two to three in The Watchtower of 15 February 1984.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
The Watchtower cover article of 15 May 1984, '1914—The Generation That Will Not Pass Away', applied the generation to people alive in 1914 ('the babies of that generation are now 70 years old or older') and said Jehovah 'will bring about the fulfillment of his Son's words in a relatively short time'; Reasoning From the Scriptures (1985) likewise said all the things foretold would occur 'before the last members of the generation that was alive in 1914 will have passed off the scene'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1984Source: Reasoning From the Scriptures (1985; 1989 revision on wol), 1985
A 1984 Watchtower life story by Governing Body member Karl Klein reports that Rutherford, 'regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925', once said at Bethel, 'I made an ass of myself.'
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 1984
The New World Translation puts the name ‘Jehovah’ into the Christian Greek Scriptures 237 times in the main text, and a further 72 times in the footnotes of the reference editions.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, 1988Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1 January 1985
The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures sets the Westcott and Hort Greek text, a word-for-word English rendering and the New World Translation side by side, and its publishers state that ‘Thus, the accuracy of any modern translation can be determined.’
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1985Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993
The Watch Tower Society's own Kingdom Interlinear prints, beneath the Greek of John 1:1, the word-for-word glosses “and” “god” “was” “the” “Word” — with no indefinite article anywhere in the line — while the New World Translation column beside it reads “and the Word was a god”.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985
The Watch Tower Society's own Kingdom Interlinear glosses προσκυνέω as “worship” where the object is God — Matthew 4:10, Revelation 4:10 — and as “do obeisance” where the object is Jesus — Matthew 14:33 and Matthew 28:9, 17. The Greek verb is the same in every case.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The Greek text printed in the Watch Tower Society's own Kingdom Interlinear places a comma after λέγω and before σήμερον at Luke 23:43 — that is, its own base text punctuates the verse the way other translations do, and the New World Translation column beside it does not.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The Kingdom Interlinear appendix says of Matthew 27:40 that “There is no evidence that the Greek word stau·rosʹ here meant a cross such as the pagans used as a religious symbol for many centuries before Christ”, and goes on to say that the New Testament writers used the word “to mean the same thing as in the classical Greek, namely, a simple stake, or pale, without a crossbeam of any kind at any angle. There is no proof to the contrary.” The standard classical lexicon, Liddell, Scott and Jones, gives as its second sense of σταυρός “cross, as the instrument of crucifixion”, cites Matthew 27:40 among the passages for that sense, and records Lucian describing the shape as the Greek letter T.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell, Scott and Jones), 1940Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The Kingdom Interlinear's appendix moves in a single paragraph from the lexical claim that παρουσία means “presence” to the doctrinal claim that at Matthew 24:3 it “refers to the royal presence of Jesus Christ since his enthronement as King in the last days of this system of things” — that is, to an invisible presence beginning in 1914. Nothing in the lexical evidence supplies that date or that invisibility.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell, Scott and Jones), 1940
Lisa Kosack, twelve, described being transfused at midnight on her first night at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children after she had told the nurse she was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses; the hospital sought a court order the next morning, and after a five-day hearing held at the hospital Judge Main found she had been discriminated against on grounds of religion and age under section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter and that her section 7 right to security of the person had been infringed.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The proceedings the article describes are reported as Re L.D.K. (1985), 48 R.F.L. (2d) 164 (Ontario Provincial Court, Family Division); the Supreme Court of Canada summarised them in A.C. v. Manitoba, recording that two doctors put the odds of a favourable outcome at about thirty per cent and that the judge found forced treatment would cause emotional trauma outweighing the anticipated benefit.
Source: Supreme Court of Canada, 26 June 2009Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
In Re L.D.K. (Ontario, 1985) a judge declined to authorise transfusions for 12-year-old Lisa Kosack, who had leukaemia; she died shortly afterwards.
Source: Ontario Provincial Court (Family Division), 1985Source: Supreme Court of Canada, 26 June 2009Source: jwdivorces.bravehost.com, 19 September 2026 (unverified) Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The New World Bible Translation Committee stated in its own foreword that no translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures is inspired and that ‘No uninspired translator or committee of translators can claim any direct command from the Most High God to engage in translating the divine Word into another language.’
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1 January 1985
The supports cited in the New World Translation’s footnotes for restoring ‘Jehovah’, designated ‘J’ with a superior number, are translations of the Christian Greek Scriptures into Hebrew — made, in the committee’s own words, ‘throughout the centuries’ — and not ancient Greek manuscripts. The committee’s own foreword says so.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1 January 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, 1988
The New World Bible Translation Committee acknowledged in its own foreword that of the 237 restorations of the divine name, one — at 1 Corinthians 7:17 — has ‘no support or agreement from any of the Hebrew versions’ and rests on ‘the context and related texts’.
Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1 January 1985Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1985
From 1985 the second public baptism question asked candidates whether they understood that their baptism identified them 'as one of Jehovah's Witnesses in association with God's spirit-directed organization'; the same wording was still in use in 1997 and 2017.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1985Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, April 1997
In July 1985 The Watchtower stated that 2 John 10 had 'a wider application' than to false teachers, so that Christians 'ought not even greet' with 'a common "good-day"' an expelled wrongdoer or one who rejected the congregation; in August 2024 the organisation stated that 2 John 9-11 'refers to apostates and others who actively promote wrong conduct' and that Paul 'did not state that they must never say a simple greeting'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 July 1985Source: The Watchtower, 15 April 1988Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024
The organisation’s index for 1930 to 1985 lists, by year, the beliefs it regards as clarified, including the pagan origin of Christmas in 1928, the flag salute in 1935, Jesus not having died on a cross in 1936, neutrality in 1939, tobacco in 1973 and unnatural sex within marriage in 1978.
Source: Watch Tower Publications Index 1930-1985, 1986
In March 1986 The Watchtower described the reasoning 'if we have the truth, we have nothing to fear. The truth will stand the test' as a way some 'have fallen prey to serious questioning and doubt', and said reading 'the literature of a known apostate' would be like 'inviting this enemy of true worship right into our home'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 1986
In 1986 The Watchtower listed 'alternative service' alongside military service and flag salute as issues on which 'faithful Christians took the position that there was no middle ground'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 September 1986
The article records that after the Chicago trial court found seventeen-year-old E.G. to be a mature minor it nonetheless authorised transfusion, and that ‘the transfusion was forcibly given to Ernestine in spite of her vigorous protests’.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The “antitypical Jubilee” was moved from the thousand-year reign of Christ to Pentecost 33 C.E. in The Watchtower of 1 January 1987.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
In Paul v. Watchtower (819 F.2d 875, 9th Cir. 1987) the court held that shunning is 'a part of the faith' and 'constitutionally protected', while recognising that 'the harms suffered by Janice Paul are real and not insubstantial' and describing them as 'a price well worth paying to safeguard the right of religious difference'; the Supreme Court declined review; The Watchtower of 15 April 1988 presented the case as confirming that a shunned person 'cannot recover damages'.
Source: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc., 819 F.2d 875 (9th Cir. 1987), No. 85-4012, 10 June 1987Source: The Watchtower, 15 April 1988
Before (1988), during (1991 Awake! series, in descriptive terms) and after (2012, 2013) the NGO association, Watch Tower publications taught that the United Nations is the 'scarlet-colored wild beast' / 'image of the wild beast' of Revelation 17 and the 'disgusting thing' of Matthew 24:15 that God will destroy.
Source: Revelation—Its Grand Climax At Hand! (book), 1988Source: Revelation—Its Grand Climax At Hand! (book), 1988Source: Awake!, 8 September 1991Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 June 2012Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 July 2013
Insight on the Scriptures records that the Tetragrammaton occurs 6,828 times in the printed Hebrew text of Biblia Hebraica and Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, while the New World Translation carries the divine name 6,979 times in the Hebrew Scriptures; the 2013 revision gives a whole-Bible total of 7,216, six more than the 1984 edition.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, 1988Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015
The astronomical diary VAT 4956, held in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin and edited by Abraham Sachs and Hermann Hunger as Diary No. -567, opens: 'Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.' The observations it records place that year in 568/567 BCE, which would put Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth year, when Jerusalem was destroyed, in 587 BCE.
Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment VAT.4956, 1988Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment VAT.4956, 1988Source: Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956
The regnal year on VAT 4956 is not a modern restoration of one damaged line: “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon” opens the obverse, the left edge repeats “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar” as a label, and the top edge carries a catch-line giving the opening of year 38 followed by a second, broken “Year 37”.
Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment VAT.4956, 1988Source: Online review (no journal of publication stated), 2008
The whole scheme is anchored to 539 BCE for the fall of Babylon, which the organisation establishes from the classical historians Diodorus, Africanus, Eusebius and Herodotus, from Ptolemy, from dated cuneiform tablets and from an astronomical tablet recording two lunar eclipses.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011
Insight on the Scriptures places Nebuchadnezzar II’s accession in 625 BCE and Jerusalem’s fall in his nineteenth year of actual rule, 607 BCE; conventional chronology places his accession in 605 BCE, so every regnal date in the organisation’s scheme differs from the conventional one by twenty years.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
The organisation states as a principle that where the secular record and the Bible differ on chronology, the Bible is to be followed, and that it does not feel obliged to reconcile its chronology with the Assyrian records at all.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
Insight on the Scriptures accepts that a combination of lunar and planetary positions of the kind recorded in the astronomical diaries ‘would not be duplicated again in thousands of years’ and that the diaries agree with Ptolemy’s canon, but answers that ‘accuracy in astronomy does not prove accuracy in history’ because the regnal years attached to the observations may be a later scribe’s error.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
The 1914 date is produced by a chain of inferences: the ‘seven times’ of Daniel 4 are read as a prophetic period; three and a half times equal 1,260 days at Revelation 12:6, 14, so seven times are 2,520 days; the day-for-a-year rule of Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6 converts these to 2,520 years; and 2,520 years from October 607 BCE reaches October 1914.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: Pay Attention to Daniel’s Prophecy!, 1999Source: What Does the Bible Really Teach?, 2005Source: What Can the Bible Teach Us?, 2015Source: JW.org (Bible Questions Answered), 19 September 2026
The link between Daniel 4 and 1914 depends on identifying the ‘seven times’ with the ‘appointed times of the nations’ of Luke 21:24, and on reading ‘Jerusalem’ there as a symbol of God’s rulership through the Davidic kings rather than as the literal city.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: What Does the Bible Really Teach?, 2005
Insight on the Scriptures states that the March 1880 edition of the Watch Tower identified 1914 as the close of the ‘appointed times of the nations’, some 34 years in advance.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
In 1988 the Governing Body established Hospital Information Services and a network of Hospital Liaison Committees; by 1996 the organisation reported 6,465 trained elders serving on HLCs worldwide.
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), February 2022Source: 1996 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1996
The published rule since 1981 distinguishes relatives in the same household, for whom 'normal family affections and dealings can continue' while spiritual fellowship ends, from relatives outside the household, with whom 'it might be possible to have almost no contact at all' and any contact for 'necessary family matters' is to be 'kept to a minimum'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: The Watchtower, 15 April 1988Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love” (lv), 2008Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026
In June 1988 The Watchtower reversed the 1965 answer, saying a 'recent review' showed Jesus' words 'need not be taken as statements about the future for the people of Sodom/Gomorrah' and that they suffered 'irreversible destruction'; a 2005 answer repeated that they will not be resurrected.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1988Source: The Watchtower, 15 July 2005Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
The magazine printing of The Watchtower of 1 January 1989 p.12 said Paul was laying a foundation for a work 'that would be completed in our 20th century'; the bound volume and the online library read 'completed in our day'.
Source: The Watchtower (original magazine printing), 1 January 1989Source: The Watchtower (bound volume / Watchtower Online Library text), 1 January 1989
In March 1989 The Watchtower left intra-operative cell salvage to the individual's 'trained conscience' where the circuit was continuous, while restating that stored blood later returned to the patient remained excluded.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1989
At a hearing convened at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center on 16 June 1989, a physician testified that if seventeen-year-old the New York seventeen-year-old resisted transfusion he would tie her to the bed with wrist and leg restraints; the article also records that the trial judge would not let her give evidence on the record, though after visiting her he called her ‘obviously very intelligent’ and ‘capable of expressing herself fully’.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The New York court gave the hospital temporary custody of the New York seventeen-year-old on 22 June 1989 for transfusion only if necessary to save her life; the article records that ‘Crystal never needed blood, and none was ever transfused’, and that one doctor had predicted she would be dead on 16 June.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
In September 1989 The Watchtower stated that 'Only Jehovah's Witnesses … as a united organization … have any Scriptural hope of surviving the impending end of this doomed system'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 September 1989
The reported judgments differ from the magazine’s account in two respects: they record that E.G. received several transfusions over about six weeks under a guardianship order rather than one forced transfusion, and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed in part and reversed in part on common-law grounds, expressly declining to decide the First Amendment question, declining to rule whether E.G. herself was a mature minor because the case was moot, and remanding for the finding of neglect against her mother to be expunged.
Source: Illinois Supreme Court, 18 November 1989Source: Illinois Appellate Court, First District (3rd Division), 23 September 1987Source: Illinois Supreme Court, 18 November 1989Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. appeared as amicus curiae in the Illinois Supreme Court in In re E.G., represented by Donald T. Ridley of Brooklyn; the organisation was therefore a participant in the litigation it later described to its readers.
Source: Illinois Supreme Court, 18 November 1989
The 1990 brochure ‘How Can Blood Save Your Life?’ stated that Witnesses ‘do not accept transfusions of whole blood, red cells, white cells, platelets, or blood plasma’, while referring readers elsewhere for minor fractions such as immune globulin.
Source: How Can Blood Save Your Life? (brochure), 1990Source: World Journal of Transplantation, September 2019
Before 2013 the organisation taught that all spirit-anointed Christians 'at any given time collectively make up' the faithful and discreet slave and that the 'domestics' were the same anointed ones individually.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 1990Source: The Watchtower, 1 April 2007Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 July 2013
In Malette v. Shulman (1990) the Ontario Court of Appeal held that a doctor who transfused an unconscious Witness despite her signed card committed battery, upholding $20,000 damages and affirming a competent adult's right to refuse.
Source: Ontario Court of Appeal, 30 March 1990
In June 1990 The Watchtower said injections of blood fractions such as immune globulin or albumin were for each Witness to 'resolve … personally before God'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1990
In Re E (1990, reported 1993) Ward J overrode a 15¾-year-old Witness's refusal, saying the court 'should be very slow to allow a child to martyr himself'; on reaching 18 he refused further blood and died.
Source: High Court (Family Division), England and Wales, 21 September 1990Source: Denning Law Journal, 2007Source: Law & Religion UK (blog), 21 December 2021
The organisation states in its own publications that no surviving early Greek manuscript of the Christian Greek Scriptures contains the divine name: The Watchtower of 1 March 1991 says ‘True, no early surviving Greek manuscript of the “New Testament” contains the personal name of God,’ and Insight on the Scriptures asks in its own sub-heading why the name is ‘not in any available ancient manuscript’.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1991Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, 1988Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1985
The organisation’s explanation for criticism of the translation is that it is attacked because of its publisher rather than its scholarship: ‘the New World Translation is criticized because it is published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, who outspokenly declare that many of Christendom’s doctrines are not found in the Bible.’
Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1991
In September 1991, the year of the DPI application, Awake! ran a three-part cover series on the United Nations that quoted the Secretary-General and the US Secretary of State at length and concluded that 'the United Nations will very shortly be given power and authority'.
Source: Awake!, 8 September 1991
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York applied in 1991 for association with the United Nations Department of Public Information as an NGO, was granted association in 1992, and by accepting association agreed to criteria including 'support and respect of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations' and conducting 'effective information programmes … about UN activities'.
Source: United Nations Department of Public Information, NGO Section, 4 March 2004Source: United Nations Civil Society (Department of Global Communications), 19 September 2026
In Re T (1992) the English Court of Appeal affirmed that a competent adult has 'an absolute right' to refuse treatment for reasons 'rational, irrational, unknown or even non-existent', yet found no valid refusal on the facts because of the mother's influence and the circumstances, so the transfusion was lawful.
Source: Court of Appeal (Civil Division), England and Wales, 30 July 1992Source: Denning Law Journal, 2007
In November 1992 The Watchtower said 'no hard-and-fast rules should be made either for or against extra education' while affirming that the magazine had rightly emphasised 'the dangers of higher learning' because 'much higher education opposes the “healthful teaching” of the Bible'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1992
The organisation describes its structure as 'in no wise democratic' but 'strictly theocratic': a Governing Body (11 members and 49 non-voting helpers across six committees) directs 84 branches, which oversee circuit overseers, who visit congregations run by appointed bodies of elders.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (book), 1993Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026Source: jw.org (Global Communications), 19 September 2026Source: 2025 Service Year Report of Jehovah’s Witnesses Worldwide, 2025
The organisation’s stated purpose for the translation is a version ‘that embodied the benefits of the latest scholarship, one that was not colored by the creeds and traditions of Christendom, a literal translation that faithfully presented what is in the original writings’ and that ordinary readers could understand.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
The organisation's official history (Proclaimers, 1993) concedes that expectations for 1914, 1925 and 1975 were not all fulfilled, that 'some of their time calculations... gave rise to serious disappointments', and that the 1975 idea was 'sometimes stated as a possibility, sometimes more firmly', while maintaining that the Bible Students 'certainly did not err in believing that God would without fail do what he had promised'.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (jv), 1993
For about thirty years the Bible Students generally understood Russell himself to be the “faithful and wise servant” of Matthew 24:45. The organisation records that the idea was publicly expressed by Russell’s wife and that “Brother Russell did not reject their view”, although he avoided applying the text to himself.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993
The organisation’s 1993 history, Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, tells Russell’s life in chapters 5 and 6 without mentioning the Hamilton prosecution, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle litigation, the Miracle Wheat sales or the marriage proceedings — all four of which the 1975 Yearbook had answered at length. A full-text search of the Watchtower Online Library returns no occurrence of “Brooklyn Daily Eagle” or of “Miracle Wheat” anywhere in the book, and exactly one reference to Russell’s wife, who is not named.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975Source: 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1975
The article records that Adrian Yeatts, then fourteen, was asked directly by his oncologist whether he realised he could die without a transfusion and answered ‘Yes’ and ‘If that’s what it takes’, and that after the biopsy the doctor said aggressive chemotherapy with transfusions was the only way he could possibly live.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
In a signed affidavit put before the Supreme Court of Newfoundland, Adrian Yeatts wrote that he knew he could die without blood, that no one had talked him into his decision, and that a transfusion ‘will be like raping me, molesting my body’, ending ‘Please respect me and my wishes.’
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
Wells J dismissed the Director of Child Welfare’s applications, held that blood had ‘not been demonstrated to be essential’ and ‘could be harmful’ in the circumstances, and declared the boy a mature minor whose wish for treatment without blood was to be respected; the Supreme Court of Canada later summarised the same decision, reported as Re A.Y. (1993), 111 Nfld. & P.E.I.R. 91, and recorded that Wells J noted the treatment was less than forty per cent likely to be effective, was not ‘essential’, and was contrary to the mature adolescent’s wishes.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Supreme Court of Canada, 26 June 2009
Doctors told twelve-year-old Lenae Martinez, with her parents out of the room, that transfusions would prolong her life by about three to six months and that without blood she would die within days; she answered that she would not turn away from God ‘for six months of life’.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
After the hearing the treating doctor told Adrian Yeatts he had one or two weeks to live; he lived a further eight weeks, was baptised in a hospital physiotherapy tank on 12 September 1993 and died the next day.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
In Re A.Y. (Newfoundland, 1993) the court declined to order transfusions for Adrian Yeatts (14 at diagnosis according to Awake!, described as 15 in later accounts) as a 'mature minor'; he died on 13 September 1993.
Source: Supreme Court of Newfoundland (Unified Family Court), 19 July 1993Source: Supreme Court of Canada, 26 June 2009Source: Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. (CHILD) newsletter, 2007Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
No court order was sought in Lenae Martinez’s case: a hospital ethics committee at Valley Children’s Hospital in Fresno, including a professor of ethics from Fresno State University, treated her as a mature minor, and she died at 6:30 a.m. on 22 September 1993.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
Lenae Martinez, 12, died of leukaemia in Fresno on 22 September 1993 after the hospital's ethics committee treated her as a mature minor and did not seek a court order.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: jwdivorces.bravehost.com, 19 September 2026 (unverified)
Through the early 1990s every issue of Awake! carried on page 4 the statement that the magazine 'builds confidence in the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away' — a sentence quoted verbatim in Our Kingdom Ministry (Oct 1993) and in Awake! itself (8 Nov 1994).
Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, October 1993Source: Awake!, 8 November 1994
Of the thirty-two pages in the Awake! of 22 May 1994, fourteen concern blood: the two feature articles on pages 3 to 15, and a further item on page 31 about haemophiliacs infected by contaminated blood products in France, Germany, Canada and Spain.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 December 1994
The article closes in the magazine’s own voice: ‘By rejecting blood transfusions that could conceivably have extended his present life, Adrian Yeatts showed himself to be one of the many young people who put God first.’
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The article states that E.G. ‘had no further transfusions, and she did not die from her leukemia’; hers, with the New York seventeen-year-old’s and the three-year-old in Ohio’s, is one of the three outcomes in the issue that are not deaths.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The cover carries the masthead, the date line ‘May 22, 1994’ and, in a panel across the lower third, the title ‘Youths Who Put God First’; three young people are photographed in colour in the foreground, standing before a wall of small portrait photographs of young people printed in a pale tint, some of them overlapping, cut off at the page edge or hidden behind the masthead and the foreground figures.
Source: JWfacts.com, 19 September 2026
A box on page 13 gathers eight quotations on transfusion risk, three of them attributed to a named doctor and none of them carrying a volume, issue or page number; the figure it attributes to the New England Journal of Medicine of 14 December 1989 — that one unit of blood may carry enough virus to cause up to 1.75 million infections — corresponds arithmetically to the mean plasma titre of 3,500 tissue-culture-infective doses per millilitre reported in that issue for patients with AIDS, multiplied by the volume of a unit; a tissue-culture-infective dose is a laboratory measure of infection of cells in culture, and neither paper in that issue discusses transfusion or numbers of people infected.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: The New England Journal of Medicine, 14 December 1989Source: The American Journal of Surgery, September 1986
The same issue carried an item on page 31 reporting the infection of haemophiliacs with HIV-contaminated blood products in France, Germany, Canada and Spain, and the delayed withdrawal of unheated factor VIII in the United States.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The 22 May 1994 issue of Awake! introduced its cover series by stating that youths ‘are still’ dying for putting God first, ‘with blood transfusions the issue’.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The two feature articles in the 22 May 1994 Awake! name six young people who refused blood. The issue records that three died (Adrian Yeatts, 14; Lenae Martinez, 12; Lisa Kosack, 12) and that three were alive at the time of writing (the three-year-old in Ohio, 3; the New York seventeen-year-old, 17; E.G., 17).
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The widely repeated claim that every young person pictured on the 1994 cover died is not supported by the issue itself, which identifies and reports outcomes for six named individuals only and does not say who is pictured on the cover.
Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The organisation published readers’ responses to the series in Awake! of 22 October and 8 December 1994, including a seventeen-year-old in Germany who wrote that ‘Dying doesn’t scare me, but the thought of disregarding Jehovah’s laws does’ and an eighteen-year-old in Nigeria who ‘could not stop crying when I came to see that these faithful children died’.
Source: Awake!, 8 December 1994Source: Awake!, 22 October 1994
The series continued: The Watchtower of 1 July 1994 carried an account of fifteen-year-old Brunella Inconditi of Montreal, and Awake! of 22 January 1995 devoted five pages to Joshua Walker, fifteen, of New Brunswick, whose refusal was upheld by the New Brunswick Court of Appeal and whose death on 4 October 1994 is recorded in the article’s final line.
Source: Awake!, 22 January 1995Source: The Watchtower, 1 July 1994Source: Watch Tower Publications Index 1986-2026, 2026
The organisation stopped speaking of the vindication of God's name and spoke instead of the sanctification of his name and the vindication of his sovereignty; it also replaced “God's plan” with “God's purpose” and “persons of goodwill” with “men whom he approves”.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 1995
For roughly seventy years the organisation taught that Jesus had sat down as King in 1914 and had been judging people as sheep or goats ever since, with everlasting life or permanent death already being decided.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 1995
In The Watchtower of 15 October 1995 the organisation moved the judging of the sheep and the goats out of the present and into the future, after the great tribulation begins.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 1995Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 1995
On 1 November 1995 The Watchtower redefined 'this generation' as 'contemporary people of a certain historical period, with their identifying characteristics' — the wicked people of the last days — and said 'Jehovah's people have at times speculated' about the lifetime of a generation since 1914.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1995
The Watchtower of 1 November 1995 instructed that where an accusation of abuse is denied and there is no second witness, elders should explain 'that nothing more can be done in a judicial way' and 'the congregation will continue to view the one accused as an innocent person'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1995Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
From the 8 November 1995 issue the Awake! statement of purpose dropped both '1914' and 'generation', reading instead that the new world 'is about to replace the present wicked, lawless system of things'; the new wording is quoted in Our Kingdom Ministry of October 1996.
Source: Awake!, 8 November 1995Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, October 1996Source: Awake!, 8 November 1994
In May 1996 The Watchtower said that a Witness who concludes that national civilian service is a 'good work' he can perform makes 'his decision before Jehovah' and remains 'a Christian in good standing', as does one who refuses.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 1996Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
The organisation’s 1997 Yearbook records that in Brazil some baptised Witnesses were disfellowshipped under the 1973 tobacco ruling, and that a number of them later stopped smoking and were reinstated.
Source: 1997 Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1997
The Watchtower of 1 January 1997 stated that 'a man known to have been a child molester does not qualify for a responsible position in the congregation' and cannot pioneer, while also stating that a repentant abuser may 'share in the field service' and that the congregation 'will not protect him' from state sanctions.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 1997
In January 1997 The Watchtower listed as a divine requirement that 'we must serve Jehovah with his spirit-directed organization' and stated that 'there is only one religious organization on this earth that has all these marks of true Christianity—Jehovah's Witnesses'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 January 1997
Before about 1998 the organisation's process required a complainant of child sexual abuse to make the allegation in the presence of the alleged abuser; the 2010 handbook still appeared to require this for 'wrongdoing' generally, and the organisation's written policy now states elders 'never require victims of child abuse to present their accusation in the presence of the alleged abuser'.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016Source: Jehovah's Witnesses' Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection (cpt-E 9/25), September 2025Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 26 July 2017
In 1998 The Watchtower acknowledged that 'some Witnesses have suffered for refusing to share in an activity that their conscience now might permit', giving 'certain types of civilian service' as the example.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1998
Of the publications opened in this pass, the calculation is given in its most precise form in the 1999 Daniel book, which dates the beginning of the “seven times” to Tishri 15 of 607 BCE and their end to Tishri 15, or 4-5 October, 1914.
Source: Pay Attention to Daniel’s Prophecy!, 1999Source: What Does the Bible Really Teach?, 2005
The organisation's published answer to the charge that the translators were unqualified is that they asked to remain anonymous so that the translation would 'exalt the name of the living, true God', and that a translation should be judged by its own characteristics rather than by its translators' names.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 1999Source: The Bible Translator, July 1964
On 1 November 1999 The Watchtower stated that whether a Witness personally votes for a candidate is a decision made on his Bible-trained conscience, and that what a Witness does in the polling booth is between him and his Creator.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1999Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love”, 2008
In current literature the episode is covered in two places: a pair of paragraphs in The Watchtower of 1 January 2000, which calls it 'a false idea' held 'for some decades', and one sentence on p. 201 of the 1993 history Proclaimers, in a box headed 'Practices That Have Been Abandoned'. Those are the only two references the organisation's own index gives for the Great Pyramid.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 January 2000Source: Watch Tower Publications Index, 19 September 2026
In 2000 (the organisation's media statement dates the change to April) the congregation no longer initiated disfellowshipping for accepting a transfusion; an unrepentant receiver was instead treated as having disassociated, which the organisation said had 'the same effect'.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses — Official Statement to the Media on Blood Transfusions, 15 June 2000Source: Deseret News (Associated Press), 24 June 2000Source: The Guardian, 15 June 2000
In June 2000 The Watchtower stated that accepting whole blood 'or any of those four primary components' (red cells, white cells, platelets, plasma) 'violates God's law', while fractions were for 'his own conscientious decision before God'.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 June 2000
In June 2000 The Times and The Guardian reported that the Governing Body had voted to allow members to accept transfusions if they repented; the organisation replied that the doctrine had not changed and that only procedure had.
Source: The Guardian, 15 June 2000Source: The Times (London), 14 June 2000 (unverified) Source: Jehovah's Witnesses — Official Statement to the Media on Blood Transfusions, 15 June 2000Source: Deseret News (Associated Press), 24 June 2000
In October 2000 The Watchtower stated that Witnesses ‘do not donate blood, nor do we store for transfusion our blood’, and that the practice of depositing one’s own blood before surgery ‘conflicts with God’s law’.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 2000
At the October 2000 annual meeting Governing Body members stepped down as directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, and in 2001-2002 three new US corporations were announced: Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses, Religious Order of Jehovah's Witnesses and Kingdom Support Services, Inc., operating alongside the Pennsylvania and New York corporations.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 January 2001Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, January 2002
The Guardian reported the association on 8 October 2001; the Society's main representative to the UN requested termination in October 2001 and DPI disassociated the Society as of 9 October 2001.
Source: United Nations Department of Public Information, NGO Section, 4 March 2004Source: The Guardian, 8 October 2001Source: The Guardian, 15 October 2001
The organisation explained to its branches and to The Guardian that the NGO registration was to keep access to the UN library, that no signature was required in 1991, and that the UN 'years later' published 'Criteria for Association' requiring support for UN goals, after which it withdrew.
Source: Watch Tower (World Headquarters) letter to Branch Committees, 1 November 2001Source: Jehovah's Witnesses Office of Public Information (Britain) — letter to the editor, 22 October 2001
In a retrospective cohort of 300 surgical patients who declined red-cell transfusion for religious reasons (operated 1981-1994), no deaths occurred at post-operative haemoglobin 7.1-8.0 g/dL (upper 95% CI 3.7%; 9.4% had a morbid event), but 34.4% (95% CI 18.6-53.2%) died at 4.1-5.0 g/dL; after adjustment, the odds of death rose about 2.5-fold for each g/dL fall. Later cohorts treated with modern patient blood management (2003-2012; 2008-2021) report lower overall mortality at haemoglobin of 8 g/dL or below (8.2% and 3.1%) with the same graded relationship (adjusted odds ratio 1.82 per g/dL for death; 1.48 per g/dL for death or morbidity).
Source: Transfusion, July 2002Source: Transfusion, 2014Source: Transfusion, 2024
Bethany Hughes, 16-17, was transfused under Alberta court orders in 2002 (about 38 transfusions) after the court found she could not make a free choice; the treatment failed and she died in September 2002. Her father's later action against the Watch Tower Society was dismissed.
Source: The Globe and Mail, 6 September 2002Source: Alberta Court of Queen's Bench, 10 April 2002Source: Alberta Court of Appeal, 25 May 2009Source: Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. (CHILD) newsletter, 2007
In Truth in Translation (University Press of America, 2003) Jason BeDuhn, then associate professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University, compared nine English New Testaments across a set of disputed passages and concluded that, 'while it is difficult to quantify this sort of analysis', the New World Translation 'emerges as the most accurate of the translations compared', with the New American Bible 'a close second'.
Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 2004
In an appendix to the same book BeDuhn wrote that, 'having concluded that the NW is one of the most accurate English translations of the New Testament currently available', he 'would be remiss' if he did not mention 'one peculiarity of this translation that by most conventions of translation would be considered an inaccuracy' — the use of 'Jehovah' in the New Testament. He described the reasoning behind it as 'conjectural emendation' rather than translation, and said the translators' own rule was applied inconsistently at 2 Thessalonians 1:9, 1 Peter 2:3 and 1 Peter 3:15.
Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003
Scholarly opinion on the New World Translation is genuinely divided rather than uniform: the same rendering of John 1:1 that Bruce Metzger called a 'frightful mistranslation' in 1953, and 'not justified' again in 1964, was defended by Jason BeDuhn in 2003 as the more literal reading of the Greek; and the insertion of 'other' at Colossians 1:16-17 that Metzger called unwarranted on both occasions was judged by BeDuhn to be justified by what the Greek implies.
Source: Theology Today, April 1953Source: The Bible Translator, July 1964Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003
The names commonly given online for the translation committee come from a memoir by Raymond Franz, a former member of the Governing Body, who wrote that the other members were Nathan Knorr, Albert Schroeder and George Gangas and that his uncle Frederick W. Franz ‘was the only one with sufficient knowledge of the Bible languages to attempt translation of this kind’. The organisation has never confirmed or denied any name.
Source: Crisis of Conscience (4th edition), 2004 (unverified) Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
The genuine disagreement among historians about the destruction of Jerusalem is between 587 and 586 BCE, a single year, and turns on whether Judah counted regnal years from Tishri or Nisan. One survey found eleven scholars on each side. No mainstream chronology of the period allows a twenty-year difference.
Source: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47/1, March 2004Source: Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011
The UN's 2004 letter states that the criteria — including support for the UN Charter and an information programme about UN activities — were agreed 'by accepting association' in 1992 and quotes the paragraph 'included in all letters sent to NGOs approved for association in 1992'; a 2002 DPI letter reproduced by a discovery site adds that 'the criteria for association for NGOs have not been changed since 1991'.
Source: United Nations Department of Public Information, NGO Section, 4 March 2004Source: United Nations Department of Public Information, Public Liaison Service, 18 March 2002
In June 2004 The Watchtower restated that Witnesses 'do not accept transfusions of whole blood or of its four primary components—plasma, red cells, white cells, and platelets', with fractions left to individual conscience.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 June 2004Source: The Watchtower, 15 June 2004
The organisation’s own 2004 Watchtower article acknowledges that Jason BeDuhn was ‘critical of some of its translation choices’ while praising the translation overall; the JW.org FAQ page quotes only his praise.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 2004Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
The Watchtower of 1 December 2004 said BeDuhn 'examined and compared for accuracy eight major translations'; the book compares nine, and BeDuhn himself refers on page 133 to 'the other eight translations we are comparing'. JW.org's later FAQ gives the number correctly as nine.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 2004Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
The current official teaching is that in October 1914 'the appointed times of the nations ended, and Jesus Christ was installed as God's heavenly King' — an invisible event marking the beginning, not the end, of the last days.
Source: What Does the Bible Really Teach? (book), Appendix, 2005Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1995
In October 2005 The Watchtower described university campuses as 'notorious for bad behavior', recommended short vocational courses instead, and urged young people to consider 'full-time service as a career'.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2005
In 2005 The Watchtower still listed employment connected with the promoting of tobacco products, along with gambling and the misuse of blood, as work that is in clear violation of Bible principles and should be avoided.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2005
A November 2006 Our Kingdom Ministry insert asked each Witness to decide in advance about fractions and own-blood procedures; the insert is no longer available on the organisation's online library.
Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, November 2006 (unverified) Source: Keep Yourselves in God's Love (book), 2008
In 2007 The Watchtower stated that Jehovah’s Witnesses do not share in toasting, on the ground that raising a glass can be viewed as asking ‘heaven’ for a blessing.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 February 2007
In The Watchtower of 1 May 2007 the organisation stated that no date can be set for the end of the heavenly calling, and that a person who begins to partake of the Memorial emblems “should not be judged”.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 May 2007
The translation committee works under the Governing Body: The Watchtower records that ‘in September 2007, the Governing Body gave approval to revise the English text’, that ‘approval was given’ for the changes to ‘Sheol’ and ‘soul’, and that a member of the Governing Body announced the release in October 2013.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015
Emma Gough, 22, died at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on 25 October 2007 after refusing blood following the birth of twins; the inquest pathologist said that with a transfusion 'the probability is very strongly in favour of the fact she would have survived'.
Source: Shropshire Star, 5 November 2007Source: Shropshire Star, 7 April 2008Source: Shropshire Star, 8 April 2008Source: The Daily Telegraph (copy on culteducation.com), 6 November 2007
Dennis Lindberg, 14, died of leukaemia in Seattle on 28 November 2007 hours after a Skagit County judge refused the state's motion to compel transfusion, saying the boy knew he was 'basically giving himself a death sentence'; his birth parents opposed the refusal.
Source: HeraldNet (Everett Herald), Associated Press, 28 November 2007Source: CBS News (Associated Press), 30 November 2007Source: The Seattle Times (Associated Press), 28 November 2007Source: Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. (CHILD) newsletter, 2007
The 'Keep Yourselves in God's Love' appendix directs members to tell doctors that 'no blood transfusions (whole blood, red cells, white cells, platelets, or blood plasma)' are to be given, while fractions, haemodilution and cell salvage are personal decisions.
Source: Keep Yourselves in God's Love (book), 2008
The 2008 study book “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love” placed toasting among celebrations that displease God and described the custom, in its own study question, as unacceptable to Christians.
Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love”, 2008
The most sustained defence of 607 BCE by a trained Semitist is Rolf Furuli’s Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian Chronology, volume II (Oslo: Awatu Publishers, 2nd ed., 2008), issued by a small non-academic press. Hermann Hunger, co-editor of the standard edition of the astronomical diaries, wrote a detailed review of it in which he rejected Furuli’s readings of a number of cuneiform signs and described the suggestion that VAT 4956 had been tampered with as “utterly groundless”.
Source: Online review (no journal of publication stated), 2008Source: Under One Sky: Astronomy and Mathematics in the Ancient Near East (AOAT 297), 2002
A single-centre New York series (391 deliveries over 11 years) recorded two maternal deaths among Witness women, a rate of 512 against 12 per 100,000 live births (risk ratio 44, 95% CI 9-211; the interval is wide because it rests on two deaths). A Dutch nationwide case-note study (deaths 1983-2006) reported a maternal mortality ratio of 68 per 100,000 among Witnesses: a six-fold increase overall and 130-fold for death from major obstetric haemorrhage, and a 3.1-fold increase in serious morbidity from haemorrhage (14 v 4.5 per 1,000). The abstract gives no confidence intervals and the estimate rests on a small number of deaths.
Source: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2001Source: BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 2009
In A.C. v. Manitoba (2009) the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal of a 14-year-old Witness who had been transfused under a court order in April 2006, holding that a minor's views carry increasing weight with maturity on a 'sliding scale of scrutiny'.
Source: Supreme Court of Canada, 26 June 2009Source: CRIN Legal Library (Child Rights International Network), 26 June 2009
The 2010 elders' handbook told elders to call the branch office immediately on learning of an accusation, never to suggest that anyone should not report to the police, and to say that whether to report 'is a personal decision for each individual to make' and 'his or her absolute right'.
Source: "Shepherd the Flock of God" (ks10-E), elders' handbook, 2010 edition, 2010Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
In April 2010 The Watchtower explained 'this generation' as anointed ones alive in 1914 whose lives 'would overlap with the lives of other anointed ones who would see the start of the great tribulation'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 April 2010Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
The generation was redefined again in 2008 (the anointed who see the sign), 2010 (two groups of anointed whose lives 'overlap') and 2014 (the second group must have been anointed while the first, 1914-era group was still alive); in 2015 a Governing Body member illustrated this with a chart anchored on F. W. Franz (1893-1992).
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 February 2008Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 April 2010Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 January 2014Source: JW Broadcasting (tv.jw.org), monthly programme, September 2015, September 2015
In Jehovah's Witnesses of Moscow v. Russia (2010) the European Court found no evidence that the community coerced families to break up, saying estrangement flowing from a believer's 'independent and free decision' cannot be attributed to the religion; that passage concerned relatives of converts, and the Norwegian Supreme Court noted in 2026 that the Strasbourg court has not ruled on the shunning of former members.
Source: European Court of Human Rights, Jehovah’s Witnesses of Moscow and Others v. Russia, no. 302/02, 10 June 2010Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026
In July 2011 The Watchtower called apostates 'mentally diseased' and stated that avoiding false teachers means members 'refuse to read their literature, watch TV programs that feature them, examine their Web sites, or add our comments to their blogs'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 July 2011
The reading of Jeremiah 29:10 is load-bearing for the organisation's date of 607 BCE for Jerusalem's destruction: if the seventy years are Babylon's period of supremacy rather than Judah's period of exile, the calculation that places the destruction seventy years before 537 BCE does not follow.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
In the same two articles that question classical historians, Ptolemy’s canon and astronomical tablets, the organisation establishes 539 BCE from Diodorus of Sicily, Herodotus, dated cuneiform tablets and a Babylonian astronomical tablet, BM 33066, which the standard catalogues describe as an observation text of lunar and planetary data, edited by the same scholars and in the same series as the astronomical diary VAT 4956, and which the article itself says “contains some errors regarding the astronomical positions”.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment BM.33066, 2026Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1968
The kings the organisation says Ptolemy’s canon omits do not lengthen the stretch that matters. Ashur-etel-ilani and Sin-sharra-ishkun were recognised in Babylonia before Nabopolassar took the throne there in 626 BCE, so adding them lengthens the period before the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, not the span between Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year and the fall of Babylon; the Adad-guppi inscription already counts Ashur-etel-ilani’s third year separately, and before Nabopolassar. The one omitted king who does fall inside the dynasty, Labashi-Marduk, is named by the article itself, and Parker and Dubberstein date his first and last tablets to 22 May and 20 June 556 BCE and conclude that he “seems to have been recognized as king only in May and June, 556” - weeks, not years.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020Source: Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), 1942
The organisation's case for 607 BCE is that the Bible requires a literal seventy-year desolation of Judah ending when the exiles returned in 537 BCE, and that counting back seventy years from 537 gives 607. It holds that where secular chronology conflicts with that reading, the secular evidence is the weaker.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 15 August 1968Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in October 607 BCE, twenty years earlier than the date of 587 or 586 BCE accepted by historians and archaeologists.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988Source: JW.org (Bible Questions Answered), 19 September 2026Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
The organisation reads the seventy years of Jeremiah 25:11, Jeremiah 29:10, 2 Chronicles 36:20-21 and Daniel 9:2 as seventy years of Jewish exile during which the land of Judah lay completely desolate and uncultivated, beginning in the month Tishri after the remaining inhabitants fled to Egypt.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
The 2011 series acknowledges the alternative rendering of Jeremiah 29:10 — seventy years ‘for Babylon’ rather than ‘at Babylon’ — and the corresponding reading that the seventy years were a period of Babylonian domination from about 609 to 539 BCE, and sets it aside on the ground that the Bible presents the seventy years as a punishment aimed at Judah.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011
The organisation treats the autumn of 537 BCE as the year the first exiles returned to Jerusalem under Cyrus’ decree, and this is the fixed end point from which 607 BCE is counted back.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
The 2011 series places the burden of proof on the secular evidence, concluding that the classical historians and Ptolemy’s canon ‘hardly provide enough proof to overturn the Bible’s chronology’.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011
Part One argues that the conventional date rests on two pillars, the classical historians and the canon of Ptolemy, and attacks both: Berossus for factual errors about Assyrian and Babylonian reigns, and Ptolemy for omitting rulers attested in the Uruk King List and in economic tablets.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011
The organisation's description of the editorial history of line 3 of VAT 4956 is accurate: the tablet reads 'the 9th', and Sachs and Hunger print that reading while marking it in translation as an error for the 8th.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment VAT.4956, 1988
The organisation concedes in print that dated business tablets exist for every year traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian kings, and that adding those reigns up from Nabonidus backwards gives 587 BCE for the destruction of Jerusalem. Its answer is that an unrecorded king might have reigned between two of them.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
A footnote to the organisation's own article states: 'None of the secular experts quoted in this article hold that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E.'
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
The date 607 BCE is not derived from any document that dates the destruction; it is obtained by taking 537 BCE as the year the exiles returned and subtracting the seventy years of Jeremiah’s prophecy.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
Part Two argues that the Babylonian chronicles cover only about 35 of the roughly 88 years of the Neo-Babylonian period and so cannot establish a continuous chronology.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 1988
Part Two argues from dated business tablets that reigns appear to overlap at the transitions from Nebuchadnezzar II to Amel-Marduk and from Amel-Marduk to Neriglissar, and suggests that unrecorded rulers or gaps between reigns could add the missing years to the Neo-Babylonian period.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
In a footnote the same article concedes that business tablets exist for every year traditionally assigned to the Neo-Babylonian kings, and that totalling those reigns back from Nabonidus yields 587 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
The 1 November 2011 Watchtower states in a footnote that none of the secular experts it quotes holds that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 BCE.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
The organisation claims that the astronomical diary VAT 4956, which is headed ‘Year 37 of Nebukadnezar, king of Babylon’, fits 588/587 BCE better than the conventional 568/567 BCE, and that it therefore supports 607 BCE for Jerusalem’s destruction.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011
The two 2011 Watchtower articles remain the organisation’s fullest published defence of 607 BCE; later publications assert the date and cite those articles rather than restating the evidence.
Source: JW.org (Bible Questions Answered), 19 September 2026Source: What Does the Bible Really Teach?, 2005Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2014Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2014Source: Examining the Scriptures Daily—2024, 31 December 2024
The organisation’s central published argument, the one both 2011 articles rest on, is that the Bible states a seventy-year exile, that both the Bible and secular history place the return in 537 BCE, and that a destruction in 587 BCE would leave an exile of only about fifty years.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2011Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2011
Appendix A1 of the 2013 revision states five principles: sanctify God’s name by restoring it; convey the inspired message accurately; translate literally where the target language allows; convey the correct sense where a literal rendering would distort or obscure; and use natural, easy-to-understand language.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: The Watchtower (public edition), 1 May 2008
The organisation states in its own publications both that ‘Yahweh’ is favoured by most Hebrew scholars and that ‘We simply do not know how God’s ancient servants pronounced this name in Hebrew’; it retains ‘Jehovah’ because the form is familiar in English.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, 1988Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1991
The meaning the organisation assigns to the divine name changed between editions: the 1984 reference edition said it means that God ‘causes himself to become the Fulfiller of promises’, while Appendix A4 of the 2013 revision says the meaning ‘is not limited to what he himself chooses to become’ but ‘also includes what he causes to happen with regard to his creation’.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The 2013 revision changed several doctrinally loaded renderings: ‘Sheol’ and ‘Hades’ became ‘the Grave’; neʹphesh and psy·kheʹ are no longer rendered uniformly as ‘soul’ but by sense; and ‘impaled’ became ‘executed on a stake’ or ‘nailed to the stake’.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015
At John 1:1 the New World Translation reads “and the Word was a god”, where the great majority of English versions read “and the Word was God”. The Greek clause is καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, in which θεός has no definite article and stands before the verb.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References, 1984Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Colossians 1:16, 17 and 20 the New World Translation adds the word “other” five times — “all other things” — where the Greek reads only τὰ πάντα, “all things”, and where no major English version adds it.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The 1984 Reference Bible printed the added word as “all [other] things”, in square brackets marking it as supplied; the 2013 revision prints “all other things” with no brackets and no footnote.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References, 1984Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 2013
The same change of practice appears at Acts 20:28: the 1984 Reference Bible read “with the blood of his own [Son]”, with a footnote referring to Appendix 6C, while the 2013 revision reads “with the blood of his own Son” without brackets.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References, 1984Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Acts 20:28 the New World Translation's rendering “with the blood of his own Son” is identical to that of the New Revised Standard Version and the NET Bible, and the Kingdom Interlinear appendix openly concedes that “with his own blood” is grammatically possible.
Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985
At John 8:58 the New World Translation renders ἐγὼ εἰμί as “I have been”, where every major English version consulted renders it “I am”. The Kingdom Interlinear's own word-for-word line under the same Greek reads “I am”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Hebrews 1:6 the New World Translation renders προσκυνέω as “do obeisance to him”, where the majority of English versions read “worship him”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Titus 2:13 the New World Translation reads “of the great God and of our Savior, Jesus Christ”, treating the phrase as referring to two persons. The Greek has a single article τοῦ governing both nouns, joined by καί — the construction covered by Granville Sharp's rule.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At 2 Peter 1:1 the New World Translation reads “the righteousness of our God and the Savior Jesus Christ”, inserting the article before “Savior”. The American Standard Version of 1901 reads almost identically: “in the righteousness of our God and the Saviour Jesus Christ”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: Matthew Poole’s Commentary on the Holy Bible, 1685Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985
At Philippians 2:6 the New World Translation reads “did not even consider the idea of trying to be equal to God”, a rendering from which its own study note draws the conclusion: “If Jesus ‘did not even consider the idea of trying to be equal to God,’ it must be that he was never equal to God.”
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026
At Luke 23:43 the New World Translation punctuates “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise”, attaching “today” to the act of speaking. The major English versions place the comma before “today”, attaching it to the promise.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References, 1984Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At John 14:14 the New World Translation reads “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it”, omitting the word “me”. The Greek text printed in the Watch Tower Society's own Kingdom Interlinear contains με, and the Society's own word-for-word line renders it “me”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Romans 9:5 the New World Translation punctuates the verse so that the doxology refers to God rather than to Christ: “God, who is over all, be praised forever.” This is genuinely disputed among translators: the New American Bible, the Good News Translation and the Contemporary English Version punctuate it the same way, while the NIV, ESV, NASB and NRSV do not.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985
At Zechariah 12:10 the Masoretic Hebrew reads אֵלַי (’elay), “to me”, but the New World Translation renders “they will look to the one whom they pierced”. The New Revised Standard Version and the New American Bible also avoid “me” here, so the rendering is not peculiar to the New World Translation.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: Bible Hub Hebrew text analysis, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Genesis 1:2 the New World Translation renders רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים (ruach elohim) as “God’s active force”, with a footnote “Or ‘God’s spirit.’” The New Revised Standard Version and the New American Bible also render the phrase impersonally, as “a wind from God” and “a mighty wind”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: Bible Hub Hebrew text analysis, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures—With References, 1984
In the New Testament the New World Translation refers to the holy spirit with the neuter pronoun “it” — for example at John 14:17, “the spirit of the truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
At Matthew 24:3 the New World Translation renders παρουσία as “presence”, where nearly all modern English versions read “coming”. Liddell, Scott and Jones give “presence” as the first sense of the word and “arrival” as the second, so the rendering is lexically defensible; Young's Literal Translation of 1862 also reads “presence”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985Source: A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell, Scott and Jones), 1940Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985
At Jeremiah 29:10 the New World Translation reads “When 70 years at Babylon are fulfilled”. The Hebrew is לְבָבֶל (lə-ḇā-ḇel), with the prefixed preposition lamed. Most modern versions, including the Jewish Publication Society's own Tanakh, render it “for Babylon”; the King James and New King James Versions read “at Babylon”.
Source: Bible Hub Hebrew text analysis, 19 September 2026Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026
The New World Translation uses the name Jehovah 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. The figure is the organisation's own, stated in Appendix A5 of the 2013 edition.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, 2013
Not all 237 occurrences fall in quotations of the Hebrew Scriptures. The New World Translation's Appendix C3 lists the remaining verses, which “do not contain either a direct or an indirect quotation from the ‘Old Testament’ that uses the Tetragrammaton” and where the name is supplied on contextual grounds.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The “J” references cited in the New World Translation's footnotes for the divine name are, on the organisation's own account, translations rather than Greek manuscripts: J2 is Shem-Tob ben Isaac Ibn Shaprut's Even Bohan of about 1385, and the rest run from 1555 to 2012.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi, 2020Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
Across these passages the organisation's published explanations repeatedly turn on doctrine rather than on grammar alone: at Colossians 1:16 that a literal rendering “could give the impression that Jesus was not created”; at Hebrews 1:6 that “worship” would give “the impression that Jesus is God”; at Luke 23:43 that the alternative punctuation “harmonizes with … teachings found elsewhere in the Scriptures”.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1985
Several New World Translation renderings that are often criticised are in fact shared with mainstream translations: Acts 20:28 “the blood of his own Son” matches the New Revised Standard Version and the NET Bible; Romans 9:5 matches the New American Bible; Genesis 1:2's impersonal reading matches the NRSV and NAB; Zechariah 12:10 “the one whom they pierced” matches the NRSV; 2 Peter 1:1 is close to the American Standard Version; and Jeremiah 29:10 “at Babylon” matches the King James Version.
Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026Source: Bible Hub parallel translations, 19 September 2026
The New World Translation uses the name Jehovah 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. Appendix A5 of the 2013 edition gives the reason: that the surviving Greek manuscripts are all later copies in which, the translators judge, the Tetragrammaton had already been replaced by the Greek word for 'Lord'.
Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), Appendix A5, 2013Source: The Bible Translator, July 1964
In July 2013 The Watchtower replaced the long-standing teaching that the 'faithful and discreet slave' is all anointed Christians since 33 CE with the teaching that it is 'a small group of anointed brothers' appointed in 1919 — the Governing Body — and called it the 'channel' on which members' 'spiritual health and … relationship with God depend'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 July 2013Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1981
In July 2013 The Watchtower redefined the faithful and discreet slave as 'a small group of anointed brothers' (the Governing Body) selected by Jesus 'in 1919', and redefined the 'domestics' to include 'the great crowd of other sheep'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 July 2013Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
The Hebrew Scriptures followed in five volumes from 1953 to 1960; a revised one-volume complete Bible appeared in 1961, ‘made available for distribution for just one dollar (U.S.)’; a large-print reference edition with 125,000 marginal references and 11,400 footnotes followed in 1984; and the most extensive revision was released on the weekend of 5 and 6 October 2013 at the Society’s 129th annual meeting.
Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015
In November 2013 The Watchtower told readers that direction from 'Jehovah's organization' during a future attack 'may not appear practical from a human standpoint' and that 'all of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 November 2013
Fifteen years after voting became a matter of personal conscience, the 2014 history God’s Kingdom Rules! still described Witnesses corporately as people who ‘do not vote, support political campaigns, or lobby politicians’.
Source: God’s Kingdom Rules!, 2014
A letter dated 29 March 2014, published in transcript by an ex-member blog, reportedly told congregations that Kingdom Hall loans would no longer need to be repaid while instructing elders, in a postscript not to be read to the congregation, to set a monthly contribution 'at least the same amount as the current monthly loan repayment'.
Source: JW Survey / JW Watch (blog), 7 April 2014 (unverified) Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, September 1983
In the scripted conversations written for use with non-members the chronology is asserted rather than argued: the 2014 two-part conversation answers the objection that the Bible never mentions 1914 by appealing to Daniel 12:9, and states the 607 BCE starting point without supporting it.
Source: The Watchtower, 1 October 2014Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 2014
In The Watchtower of 15 March 2015 the organisation stopped assigning prophetic “antitypes” except where the Bible itself does so, conceding that “Humans cannot know which Bible accounts are shadows of things to come and which are not.”
Source: The Watchtower, 15 March 2015
In Conti v Watchtower a 2012 California jury awarded about $28 million ($7m compensatory, $21m punitive, the latter reduced by the trial judge to $8.61m); in 2015 the Court of Appeal affirmed liability for failing to supervise a known abuser's field service but reversed the punitive award, holding the elders 'had no duty to depart from Watchtower's policy of confidentiality and warn the members of the Congregation'.
Source: California Court of Appeal, First District, Division Three, 13 April 2015
The organisation's stated rationale is that disfellowshipping protects the congregation's moral cleanness and God's name, and disciplines the wrongdoer so that he 'may come to his senses'; it calls the arrangement 'a loving provision' and asks all in the congregation to show 'principled love by avoiding contact and conversation with the disfellowshipped person'.
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 April 2015Source: The Watchtower, 15 July 1995Source: Awake!, 8 September 1996Source: How to Remain in God’s Love (lvs), 2017Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026
In The Watchtower of 15 May 2015 the organisation withdrew that identification and said that Gog of Magog is not Satan but a coalition of human nations.
Source: The Watchtower, 15 May 2015
In A v Trustees of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society [2015] EWHC 1722 (QB), the High Court held the organisation and two Loughborough congregations vicariously liable for a ministerial servant's abuse of a child in 1989-1994 and for elders' failure in 1990 to protect her after learning he had abused another child.
Source: High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, 19 June 2015Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021
Files produced by Watchtower Australia to the Royal Commission recorded allegations, reports or complaints of child sexual abuse against 1,006 members since 1950, and the Commission found no evidence that the organisation had reported a single one of them to police or any other secular authority.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 29, 9 November 2015
Of the 1,006 alleged perpetrators recorded in the Australian files, 579 had confessed to child sexual abuse; 108 were elders or ministerial servants at the time of the first alleged abuse; 28 were appointed as elders or ministerial servants after an allegation; and 230 of 401 disfellowshipped for child sexual abuse were later reinstated.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
Governing Body member Geoffrey Jackson gave sworn evidence to the Australian Royal Commission on 14 August 2015, including on whether the Governing Body regards itself as God's spokesmen; the transcript should be quoted by the safeguarding section.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Australia), 14 August 2015 (unverified)
Asked by Counsel Assisting whether the Governing Body sees itself as 'Jehovah God's spokespeople on earth', Governing Body member Geoffrey Jackson replied: 'That I think would seem to be quite presumptuous to say that we are the only spokesperson that God is using.' The Commission noted this 'seems to be inconsistent with the documentary evidence' that members regard the Governing Body as the 'channel' of Jehovah's will.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 29, transcript Day 155, 14 August 2015
Geoffrey Jackson told the Royal Commission the two-witness rule has a scriptural basis ('Absolutely', citing Matthew 18:16), that it applies 'only' to 'setting up a judicial committee', that a policy requiring elders to report where others are at risk 'is a possible thing for us to consider', and that 'it would certainly be a lot easier if we had mandatory laws on that'.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 29, transcript Day 155, 14 August 2015Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
The organisation submitted to the Royal Commission that familial abuse is not institutional abuse and that, because it runs no schools, youth groups or day-care, 'there can be no safer "institution" than one that does not present opportunities for predatory behaviour'; the Commission rejected both submissions, noting that in both survivor cases an official of the organisation was the perpetrator.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 29, 9 November 2015
The organisation describes the 2013 revision as ‘by far the most extensive’ revision of the translation, with about ten per cent fewer English words than the previous edition.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
The organisation states that the original translation was based on the Hebrew Masoretic text and the Westcott and Hort Greek text of 1881, and that in the 2013 revision ‘some changes were based on the weight of manuscript evidence rather than on the strict adherence to a single master Greek text’.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), 15 December 2015Source: The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1985 edition), 1 January 1985
The Delaware Attorney General sued the Laurel congregation and two of its elders, alleging that they had failed to report a sexual relationship between an adult woman and a 14-year-old member; the Superior Court refused to dismiss the case on the elders’ ‘priest and penitent’ privilege argument, and the case was reported to have settled in 2018 without any finding against them.
Source: State of Delaware v. Laurel Delaware Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses and two elders (C.A. No. N14C-05-122 MMJ), 26 January 2016
The 2016 'Remain Loyal to Jehovah!' regional convention included a video officially titled 'Loyally Uphold Jehovah's Judgments—Shun Unrepentant Wrongdoers', featuring a disfellowshipped daughter, 'Sonja', and her parents' 'loyalty'; the September 2017 meeting workbook asked congregations to watch it and discuss 'How did their loyalty to Jehovah benefit Sonja?'
Source: Life and Ministry Meeting Workbook, September 2017Source: jw.org Newsroom, 4 May 2016Source: JW Survey / JW Watch (ex-member blog), 2016 (unverified)
On 3 August 2016 the organisation closed the sale of its 25/30 Columbia Heights headquarters complex (about 733,000 sq ft, bought from Squibb in 1969 for $3 million) to a Kushner Companies / CIM Group / LIVWRK partnership; reporting and public records put the price at $340 million, a figure the organisation's own release did not disclose.
Source: jw.org Newsroom, 5 August 2016Source: The Real Deal, 4 August 2016Source: Brownstoner, 1 June 2017Source: The Real Deal (magazine), 1 April 2016
In September 2016 The Watchtower said that in some cultures a neatly trimmed beard 'may be acceptable' but that in others beards 'are not considered acceptable for Christian ministers'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), September 2016
The Royal Commission found it was the general practice of the Jehovah's Witness organisation in Australia not to report allegations of child sexual abuse to police or other authorities unless required to do so by law, and that this practice 'demonstrates a serious failure by the organisation to provide for the safety and protection of children'.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
The Royal Commission found that the organisation's retention and continued application of the two-witness rule to complaints of child sexual abuse 'is wrong', that the rule 'will more often than not operate in favour of a perpetrator', and that it should be revised and modified at least in child sexual abuse cases.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 29, 9 November 2015
Because only men may serve as elders, all decisions in the organisation's internal process on whether child sexual abuse occurred are made by men; the Royal Commission called this 'a fundamental flaw' that 'increases the potential for further traumatisation of a survivor', and IICSA noted that some women 'may find it impossible to discuss such matters with a man'.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021
The Royal Commission heard that fear of being shunned deters members from leaving, and that survivor BCG and her three children 'were completely shunned, ostracised and actively avoided by members' of her former congregation after she left; the Commission listed shunning of those who wish to leave among the organisation's problematic policies.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
The Royal Commission declined to accept the opinions of Dr Monica Applewhite, the expert engaged by the organisation, because her report did not identify the facts and assumptions relied on, compared the organisation with unidentified other religious bodies and did not consider the survivors' experiences.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, October 2016
The Australian Royal Commission found in October 2016 that shunning is 'an inextricable component of the institutional response to child sexual abuse', that the practice 'has the very real potential of putting a survivor in the untenable position' of choosing between sharing a community with the abuser and losing that community, that it 'makes it extremely difficult for a person to leave', and listed the policy among the organisation's problematic practices; Governing Body member Geoffrey Jackson had testified that leaving can be 'personally devastating'.
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Australia), Report of Case Study No. 29: The response of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia Ltd to allegations of child sexual abuse, October 2016
Reported prices for other Brooklyn disposals include $375 million for a package of former Witness buildings in Dumbo (Kushner/RFR/LIVWRK, 2013), $345 million for the 85 Jay Street site (closed 20 December 2016) and $87.5 million for 107 Columbia Heights (Clipper Realty, 2017); a December 2015 AP report cited an estimate of '$1 billion or more' for the remaining portfolio.
Source: The Real Deal (magazine), 1 April 2016Source: The Real Deal, 4 August 2016Source: DNAinfo New York, 15 February 2017Source: jw.org Newsroom, 20 December 2016Source: CBS News (Associated Press), 13 December 2015
The 2017 study book that replaced it, How to Remain in God’s Love, kept a section on the origins of toasting but dropped the statement that the custom is unacceptable and gave no instruction to avoid it.
Source: How to Remain in God’s Love, 2017Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love”, 2008
In the 2017 daily-text volume chess appears as an ordinary school activity, the point of the account being a young Witness’s use of his time rather than anything about the game.
Source: Examining the Scriptures Daily—2017, 2017
The counsel against Halloween was carried substantially unchanged from the 2008 study book into the 2017 book that replaced it, in the same chapter in which the counsel against toasting was softened.
Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love”, 2008Source: How to Remain in God’s Love, 2017
In February 2017 The Watchtower stated that the Governing Body 'is neither inspired nor infallible' and 'can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction', noting that the Watch Tower Publications Index heading 'Beliefs Clarified' lists adjustments since 1870.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), February 2017
In February 2017 The Watchtower stated that 'The Governing Body is neither inspired nor infallible' and 'can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), February 2017
In July 2017 The Watchtower told readers to 'stick to Jehovah's organization and loyally support the leadership he provides—no matter what imperfections may surface' and not to be 'shaken' by 'attacks by apostates … however plausible their charges may seem'.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), July 2017
The Charity Commission found misconduct or mismanagement by the trustees (elders) of the Manchester New Moston congregation, including treating a 1990s allegation as 'a matter between 2 teenagers', failing to open internal proceedings in 2012, and allowing a man convicted of indecently assaulting two girls to question his victims at a 2014 appeal hearing; its investigations head said victims 'were badly let down by the charity'.
Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 26 July 2017Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 26 July 2017Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021
Between 2008 and 2017 the organisation progressively specified the outside-household rule: 'Loyal Christian family members do not look for excuses to have dealings with a disfellowshipped relative not living at home' (2008 book), 'Do not look for excuses to associate with a disfellowshipped family member, for example, through e-mail' (January 2013), and 'we must avoid normal contact with a disfellowshipped family member by telephone, text messages, letters, e-mails, or social media' (October 2017).
Source: “Keep Yourselves in God’s Love” (lv), 2008Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 January 2013Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), October 2017
In Padron v Watchtower a San Diego court sanctioned Watchtower $4,000 per day from April 2016 for refusing to produce the responses to its 14 March 1997 letter asking elders about members 'known to have been guilty of child molestation'; the Court of Appeal affirmed, describing Watchtower's 'abuse of the discovery process'.
Source: California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division One, 9 November 2017Source: California Court of Appeal, Fourth District, Division One, 14 April 2016Source: Letter to All Bodies of Elders, 14 March 1997
In its Final Report the Royal Commission recommended that the Jehovah's Witness organisation abandon its application of the two-witness rule in cases involving complaints of child sexual abuse (16.27), revise its policies so that women are involved in investigating and determining such allegations (16.28), and no longer require members to shun those who disassociate for reasons related to being a victim of child sexual abuse (16.29).
Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, Volume 16 Religious institutions, Book 3, 15 December 2017Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 54 (Institutional review of the Jehovah's Witnesses), transcript Day 259, 10 March 2017Source: ABC News (Australia), 10 March 2017
In Highwood Congregation v. Wall (2018 SCC 26) the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously held that courts cannot judicially review a religious organisation's membership (disfellowshipping) decision, even where the member says the resulting avoidance by co-religionists damaged his business.
Source: Supreme Court of Canada, Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Judicial Committee) v. Wall, 2018 SCC 26, [2018] 1 S.C.R. 750, 31 May 2018
Published policy distinguishes an 'inactive' member who simply stops attending or preaching, who is not announced or shunned and is to receive 'appropriate spiritual assistance', from one who disassociates; the organisation told the Australian Royal Commission that an inactive person remains subject to its discipline and must disassociate to be free of it, which the Commission found leaves such a person 'no alternative but to actively leave'.
Source: Organized to Do Jehovah’s Will (od), 2019Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Australia), Report of Case Study No. 29: The response of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia Ltd to allegations of child sexual abuse, October 2016Source: “Shepherd the Flock of God”—1 Peter 5:2 (ks), April 2021 revision, chapters 12, 14, 16 and 22, as produced to the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (document JHV0000012), April 2021
The 2019 Organized book defines disassociation as either a statement that one no longer wishes to be known as a Witness or renouncing one's place 'by his actions, such as by becoming part of a secular organization that has objectives contrary to Bible teachings' (citing Isaiah 2:4 and Revelation 19:17-21); the book does not name military service, and a 1999 Questions From Readers treats voting as a personal conscience matter, so neither 'joining the military' nor 'voting' is stated in current published text as an automatic disassociating act.
Source: Organized to Do Jehovah’s Will (od), 2019Source: The Watchtower, 1 November 1999Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981
The organisation's public position since at least 2019 is that two witnesses are not required before an allegation can be reported to the authorities, and that elders comply with reporting laws and call the branch Legal Department immediately even where the allegation rests on one witness.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), May 2019Source: "Shepherd the Flock of God"—1 Peter 5:2, elders' handbook, April 2021 revision (chapters 12, 14, 16, 22), April 2021Source: Jehovah's Witnesses' Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection (cpt-E 9/25), September 2025Source: Associated Press (via WESA, Pittsburgh), 20 April 2023
In an official JW Broadcasting video first published on 19 August 2019, Gary and Beth Septer recount that their son Jerod was diagnosed with lymphoma in mid-1991 aged 11, that neither they nor Jerod would accept a blood transfusion, and that he died at home in June 1992. The video does not state whether a transfusion was medically recommended or what role, if any, refusal played in his death.
Source: JW Broadcasting (JW.org video), 19 August 2019
No surviving Greek manuscript of the New Testament contains the Tetragrammaton, in either Hebrew or Greek characters, at the places where the New World Translation reads “Jehovah”.
Source: In die Skriflig / In Luce Verbi, 2020Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013
Current scholarship places the whole Neo-Babylonian dynasty, six kings from Nabopolassar to Nabonidus, between 625 and 539 BCE, with Nebuchadnezzar II reigning 604-562 BCE. Adding twenty years to that period would require twenty years for which no dated tablet, chronicle entry or royal inscription exists.
Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020Source: Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), 1942Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020
In Lancashire County Council v E & F [2020] EWHC 182 (Fam), elders told in 2016 of a father's alleged abuse of his daughter did not report to police until July 2019 while he remained in the household; Lieven J spoke of 'very great concern about the safeguarding of children within the Jehovah's Witness community', and IICSA said a referral 'should have been made by the elders when they first learned of the complaint'.
Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021
A Montana jury awarded $35 million (including $31m punitive) to a woman abused after elders had handled an earlier report about the same man internally; in January 2020 the Montana Supreme Court reversed, holding the elders were exempt from mandatory reporting because their doctrine required the communications to be kept confidential.
Source: Montana Supreme Court, 8 January 2020
A Utrecht University study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security (via the WODC) received 751 reports of sexual abuse within the Jehovah's Witnesses community; about 80% of respondents had told elders, 27% had reported to police, and 75% were dissatisfied with the internal handling (average 3.3/10), with the researchers attributing problems to the community's closed culture.
Source: Utrecht University news, 23 January 2020Source: WODC (Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek- en Documentatiecentrum) / Universiteit Utrecht, 23 January 2020Source: DutchNews.nl, 5 August 2020
The District Court of Central Netherlands refused the organisation's application to block publication of the Utrecht report, holding that the public interest in the report outweighed its objections 'also because those objections are largely incorrect'; the Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal rejected the appeal in August 2020.
Source: Rechtbank Midden-Nederland (District Court of Central Netherlands), voorzieningenrechter, 23 January 2020Source: Universiteit Utrecht nieuws, 10 August 2020Source: DutchNews.nl, 5 August 2020
The Dutch Minister for Legal Protection told Parliament the report presented an 'extremely concerning' picture in which reporting to police is hampered by the community's closed character, urged the leadership to set up an independent reporting point, and announced he would meet them.
Source: Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, Kamerstuk 34843 nr. 39, 27 January 2020
The organisation later applied the same prophecy to the Soviet Union, and in 2018 the Governing Body identified Russia and its allies as the king of the north, a change published in the May 2020 study edition of The Watchtower.
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), May 2020
A 2021 peer-reviewed interview study of six former Witnesses (Ransom, Monk & Heim, Journal of Religion and Health) reported that ostracism after leaving 'can be associated with diminished mental health', that participants likened the loss of family and friends to grieving the living, that one participant reported two suicide attempts and another self-destructive behaviour, and that one described a son’s suicide after he was disfellowshipped.
Source: Journal of Religion and Health, 61(3): 2458-2480 (online 19 Jan 2021; issue June 2022), 19 January 2021
The elders' handbook still provides that, absent a confession, 'there must be two or three eyewitnesses... no action can be taken if there is only one witness', although witnesses to separate incidents of the same kind of wrongdoing may be combined.
Source: "Shepherd the Flock of God"—1 Peter 5:2, elders' handbook, April 2021 revision (chapters 12, 14, 16, 22), April 2021Source: The Watchtower (study edition), May 2019Source: "Shepherd the Flock of God" (ks10-E), elders' handbook, 2010 edition, 2010
The current elders' handbook instructs that when elders learn of an accusation of child abuse, 'two elders should immediately call the Legal Department for legal advice' to ensure compliance with reporting laws, in all listed circumstances including where 'the alleged abuse is based on the testimony of only one witness'; the caller is then transferred to the Service Department.
Source: "Shepherd the Flock of God"—1 Peter 5:2, elders' handbook, April 2021 revision (chapters 12, 14, 16, 22), April 2021Source: Jehovah's Witnesses' Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection (cpt-E 9/25), September 2025Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021
The congregation announcement for both disfellowshipping (now removal) and disassociation is the single sentence '[Name of person] is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses'; reinstatement is announced as '[Name of person] is reinstated as one of Jehovah's Witnesses'; the elders' handbook (April 2021 text) states the removal 'takes effect at the time of making the announcement', that a seven-day appeal period must elapse first, and that a 'Notification of Disfellowshipping or Disassociation (S-77)' form is sent to the branch.
Source: Organized to Do Jehovah’s Will (od), 2019Source: “Shepherd the Flock of God”—1 Peter 5:2 (ks), April 2021 revision, chapters 12, 14, 16 and 22, as produced to the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (document JHV0000012), April 2021Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026
The elders' handbook text produced to the New Zealand inquiry (April 2021) directs elders to counsel a member known to have 'unnecessary association with disfellowshipped or disassociated relatives who are not in the household', to withhold congregation privileges if he does not respond, and to take judicial action only for 'persistent spiritual association' or open criticism of the decision; the Norwegian Supreme Court quoted the same paragraph from the 2019 edition.
Source: “Shepherd the Flock of God”—1 Peter 5:2 (ks), April 2021 revision, chapters 12, 14, 16 and 22, as produced to the New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (document JHV0000012), April 2021Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026
IICSA concluded that the two-witness rule 'has no place in any response to child sexual abuse', that the internal disfellowshipping process 'bears no relationship to how sexual crime happens', and that continuing to use the rule 'lacks compassion for the victim, and serves to protect the perpetrator'.
Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 4 August 2023
The organisation's records showed allegations concerning 67 individuals reported to its Britain Branch Office in the previous ten years (25 against elders, 32 against ministerial servants), against a membership of more than 131,700 in England and Wales.
Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 4 August 2023
The organisation's internal Branch Office guidelines state that if the victim or another minor is still in danger, elders 'should report the matter to the secular authorities even if there is not a legal obligation to do so', and its public statement says the branch office 'will instruct the elders to report the matter if the victim or another minor is in danger of abuse'.
Source: Child Sexual Abuse—Guidelines for Branch Office Service Desks, 1 December 2021Source: Jehovah's Witnesses' Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection (cpt-E 9/25), September 2025Source: Jehovah's Witnesses' Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection (cpt-E 12/20), December 2020
A 2023 interview study of ten former Witnesses (Luther, Pastoral Psychology) concluded that shunning 'has a long-term, detrimental effect on mental health, job possibilities, and life satisfaction', with loneliness, loss of control and worthlessness common after leaving.
Source: Pastoral Psychology, 72(1): 105-120 (online 31 Dec 2022), 31 December 2022
In elective and inpatient settings with patient blood management, matched studies and meta-analyses find Witnesses' short-term mortality similar to that of patients who accept transfusion (cardiac surgery: 2.6% v 3.6%, not significant, 2016; pooled odds ratio 1.13, 95% CI 0.74-1.73, 2023). One Johns Hopkins cohort reported lower unadjusted mortality (0.7% v 2.7%), but after risk adjustment bloodless care was not an independent predictor of death or morbidity. The 2016 meta-analysis authors caution that 'the suboptimal quality of available studies prevents conclusive results'. None of these studies includes uncontrolled haemorrhage.
Source: Transfusion, 2014Source: Transfusion, 2016Source: Current Problems in Cardiology, 2023
A multi-year Pennsylvania statewide grand jury investigation into abuse within Jehovah's Witness congregations produced criminal charges against at least fourteen individual men between October 2022 and July 2023; the Attorney General said the investigation of the organisation itself was ongoing. Press releases from the Attorney General’s office report that some defendants have since pleaded guilty or been convicted; those releases could not be opened during research, so the individual outcomes are not verified here.
Source: Associated Press (via WESA, Pittsburgh), 20 April 2023Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 July 2023
After a nine-year statutory inquiry (2014-2023), prolonged by the charity's litigation up to the Supreme Court, the Charity Commission concluded that Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain is no longer the body responsible for safeguarding in congregations, that its child-protection policy is a global policy prepared at World Headquarters, and that the trustees' responses 'have not been as straightforward and as transparent as they should have been'.
Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 4 August 2023Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 4 August 2023Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, 10 June 2014
A 2023 online survey of 424 former Witnesses in Austria, Germany and Switzerland (Thoma et al., Mental Health, Religion & Culture) reported that one third had suicidal thoughts and 10% had attempted suicide, with clinically significant symptoms and low quality of life, especially among women and those who left because of abuse.
Source: Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 26(7): 644-662, 9 August 2023
From November 2023 congregation publishers were 'no longer … asked to report all their activity in the ministry', a change announced at the annual meeting of 7 October 2023.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), May 2024Source: JW Broadcasting — 2024 Governing Body Update #1, 26 January 2024
In December 2023 the Governing Body announced that whether a brother wears a beard 'is a personal decision', that appointment as an elder or ministerial servant does not depend on it, and that 'neither the elders nor any other Christian should feel compelled to judge a brother who chooses to wear a beard'.
Source: JW Broadcasting — 2023 Governing Body Update #8, 15 December 2023
In Belgium the Ghent criminal court convicted the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses on 16 March 2021 of inciting discrimination and hatred against former members and imposed a fine of EUR 96,000 (a EUR 12,000 base fine with the statutory eightfold surcharge); the Ghent Court of Appeal acquitted on 7 June 2022, holding the avoidance policy did not literally call for discrimination, hatred or violence; the Court of Cassation rejected Unia's appeal on 19 December 2023 (P.22.0971.N), finding, according to Unia's summary of the judgment, that the policy strongly discourages contact with ex-members and treats it as sinful but does not incite the breaking of parent-child or spousal bonds.
Source: Unia (Belgian Interfederal Centre for Equal Opportunities) case-law database: Correctionele rechtbank Oost-Vlaanderen, afdeling Gent, 16 maart 2021, 16 March 2021Source: Unia case-law database: Hof van beroep Gent, 7 juni 2022, 7 June 2022Source: Unia case-law database: Hof van Cassatie, 19 december 2023, P.22.0971.N, 19 December 2023Source: VRT NWS, 16 March 2021Source: The Brussels Times, 16 March 2021Source: The Journal of CESNUR, 8(1): 79-105 (January-February 2024), January 2024
On 4 March 2024 the Oslo District Court upheld Norway's refusal of state grants and registration, holding that the exclusion practice infringed baptised minors' right of free withdrawal ('nearly impossible' for them to exercise it) and amounted to psychological violence, and ordered the organisation to pay costs of about NOK 1.14 million.
Source: Oslo tingrett (Oslo District Court), judgment TOSL-2022-186588 / TOSL-2023-23178, 4 March 2024Source: jw.org Newsroom, 28 March 2024Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026
On 15 March 2024 the Governing Body announced that publishers may 'use their Bible-trained conscience to decide whether to give a simple greeting' to a disfellowshipped person attending a meeting, may invite such a person to meetings, and that 2 John 9-11 is now understood to describe 'apostates and others who actively promoted wrong conduct'.
Source: JW Broadcasting — 2024 Governing Body Update #2, 15 March 2024Source: The Watchtower (study edition), August 2024
In March 2024 the Governing Body announced that sisters may wear slacks and brothers may omit a tie or jacket in the ministry and at meetings, assemblies and conventions, with the local 'standard of dress' retained for programme parts and Bethel visits.
Source: JW Broadcasting — 2024 Governing Body Update #2, 15 March 2024Source: JW Broadcasting — 2024 Governing Body Update #3, 3 May 2024
On 15 March 2024 Governing Body member Mark Sanderson announced that publishers may 'use their Bible-trained conscience' to give 'a simple greeting' to a removed person who attends a meeting, may invite such a person to a meeting, that elders will revisit removed persons 'after a few months' and visit those removed long ago, and that two elders (rather than a committee) will first meet a baptised minor and parents; he added that 'we don't socialize with those who are removed from the congregation'.
Source: jw.org (Governing Body Update video), 15 March 2024Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024
In May 2024 The Watchtower said 'We have said that for such individuals as those in Sodom and Gomorrah, there is no hope of a future resurrection' but that the organisation 'cannot say for sure' that none will be resurrected, and the NWT study note on Luke 10:12 now says 'at least some' may be.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), May 2024Source: New World Translation Study Bible — study notes, Luke chapter 10, 19 September 2026Source: JW Broadcasting — 2024 Governing Body Update #2, 15 March 2024Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
In May 2024 The Watchtower said the Flood account should no longer be treated as a prophetic type because 'there is no direct Scriptural support for doing so', and that people who see Babylon the Great destroyed may 'have a change of heart' after the great tribulation begins.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), May 2024Source: JW Broadcasting — 2024 Governing Body Update #2, 15 March 2024Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
From August 2024 the organisation stopped using the term 'disfellowshipped' and now says a person is 'removed from the congregation', citing 1 Corinthians 5:13.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), August 2024Source: jw.org FAQ, 19 September 2026Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
In August 2024 the organisation said that 'marking' (2 Thessalonians 3:14) is an action for individual Christians rather than direction to the elders, who had previously given congregation warning talks.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), August 2024
Reinstatement requires a written request considered by a reinstatement committee of the original congregation, after 'clear evidence of repentance' over 'many months, a year, or even longer, depending on the circumstances' (2019); since March 2024 elders are to offer a follow-up meeting 'after a few months', seek out those removed 'perhaps many years ago', may arrange a Bible study before reinstatement, and are told a repentant person 'can be reinstated without delay', with 'especially careful' handling for child abuse, apostasy or marriage-breaking.
Source: Organized to Do Jehovah’s Will (od), 2019Source: jw.org (Governing Body Update video), 15 March 2024Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024Source: The Watchtower, 15 April 1988
In August 2024 The Watchtower stated 'We will no longer refer to such ones as being disfellowshipped. In harmony with Paul's words recorded at 1 Corinthians 5:13, we will now refer to them as being removed from the congregation'; the jw.org FAQ was retitled and moved from /faq/shunning/ to /faq/removed-from-the-congregation/ (the old URL now redirects).
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026Source: jw.org (Governing Body Update video), 15 March 2024
The 2024 adjustments did not change the core rule: members still 'stop keeping company' with a removed person, 'not even eating with such a man', do not socialise or hold 'an extended conversation', still do not greet or invite 'apostates', the announcement is unchanged, disassociated persons are still treated alike, and no 2024 publication revised the guidance on relatives outside the household; in 2026 the Norwegian Supreme Court recorded as 'undisputed' that contact with non-household relatives is 'permitted only in necessary family matters' and that 'the threshold for such contact is relatively high'.
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024Source: jw.org (Governing Body Update video), 15 March 2024Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026
Since 2024 a baptised minor who commits serious wrongdoing first meets two elders together with his parents; the elders 'might decide that it is not necessary to take the matter any further' if the parents are 'reaching him', and a committee (with parents present) is convened only if the minor 'unrepentantly persists'; removal of a minor remains possible, and no published text says a minor's removal goes unannounced or that minors are exempt from shunning by non-household relatives.
Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), August 2024Source: jw.org (Governing Body Update video), 15 March 2024Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1981Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), 15 August 2013
The August 2024 issue also changed 'marking' (2 Thessalonians 3:14) from an elders' warning talk to a personal decision not to socialise with a 'disorderly' fellow believer, who is expressly not treated as removed and is still associated with at meetings and in the ministry.
Source: The Watchtower (study edition), August 2024
Of the dates the pyramid measurements were said to confirm — 1874, 1881, 1910, 1914 and 1915 — only 1914 is still taught. It is now derived from the 'seven times' of Daniel 4 counted from 607 BCE, with no reference to any measurement: the corroboration was withdrawn and the conclusion it had supported was kept.
Source: Studies in the Scriptures, Series III — Thy Kingdom Come (839,000 Edition), 1910Source: Millennial Dawn / Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 3 — Thy Kingdom Come, 1891Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1928Source: Examining the Scriptures Daily—2024, 31 December 2024
On 14 March 2025 the Borgarting Court of Appeal unanimously reversed the District Court, finding the State had not demonstrated that baptised minors actually experience pressure not to withdraw or that the practice amounted to psychological violence or negative social control, and awarded the organisation costs.
Source: Borgarting lagmannsrett (Borgarting Court of Appeal), judgment of 14 March 2025, 14 March 2025Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026Source: jw.org Newsroom, 27 March 2025Source: Rett24 (Norwegian legal news), 14 March 2025
The Governing Body update that withdrew the toasting rule in July 2025 presented it as part of a general preference for principles over rules, illustrated by a child who no longer needs to hold a parent’s hand to cross the road.
Source: JW Broadcasting — 2025 Governing Body Update #4, 4 July 2025
In July 2025 the Governing Body said that, although Witnesses had 'for years' avoided toasting and clinking glasses because of possible false-religious origins, 'there is no need to make a rule' and each Christian may decide.
Source: JW Broadcasting — 2025 Governing Body Update #4, 4 July 2025
On 22 August 2025 the Governing Body said it wished 'to clarify our understanding' that whether to obtain additional education — expressly including university and college courses — 'is a matter for personal decision' and that 'no Christian—including the elders—should judge' that decision.
Source: JW Broadcasting — 2025 Governing Body Update #5, 22 August 2025Source: Jehovah's Witnesses and Education (brochure, jw.org), 19 September 2026
The principal UK entities file public accounts: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain (1077961) reported total gross income of £130.21m (2021), £88.97m (2022), £100.90m (2023), £120.65m (2024) and £38.46m (2025); International Bible Students Association (216647) £71.81m–£40.58m over the same years; The Kingdom Hall Trust (275946) £133.23m (2021) then £25.77m–£30.92m; none reports government grant income.
Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 31 August 2025Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 31 August 2025Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 31 August 2025
For the 2025 service year (1 Sept 2024 – 31 Aug 2025) the organisation reported a peak of 9,205,326 publishers, an average of 9,047,083, 304,643 baptisms and a Memorial attendance of 20,635,015; it counts as 'Jehovah's Witnesses' only those who report preaching activity each month, so the headline figure excludes non-preaching attenders and differs from census self-identification.
Source: 2025 Service Year Report of Jehovah’s Witnesses Worldwide, 2025Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026
Since the 2015 hearings the organisation has replaced its 2012 elders' letter (August 2016), published a public child-protection statement (2018, revised 2020 and 2025), issued a Watchtower study article for all members (May 2019), rewritten the elders' handbook with a dedicated child-abuse chapter (2019 onwards), and adopted branch guidelines directing a report to authorities whenever a minor remains at risk; it has not changed the two-witness rule, the men-only judicial process, or shunning.
Source: Jehovah's Witnesses' Scripturally Based Position on Child Protection (cpt-E 9/25), September 2025Source: The Watchtower (study edition), May 2019Source: "Shepherd the Flock of God"—1 Peter 5:2, elders' handbook, April 2021 revision (chapters 12, 14, 16, 22), April 2021Source: Child Sexual Abuse—Guidelines for Branch Office Service Desks, 1 December 2021Source: Letter to All Bodies of Elders, 1 August 2016Source: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 54 (Institutional review of the Jehovah's Witnesses), transcript Day 259, 10 March 2017Source: Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), 2 September 2021
The organisation’s current cumulative index, the Watch Tower Publications Index 1986-2026, still lists Adrian Yeatts, Lisa Kosack, Joshua Walker and Brunella Inconditi by name, each tagged ‘(blood case)’, with the page range of the article about them; the 1994 and 1995 articles remain published on the Watchtower Online Library.
Source: Watch Tower Publications Index 1986-2026, 2026Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
Civilian practice moved away from whole blood after the Vietnam era in favour of component therapy; low-titre O whole blood has since returned mainly in military and civilian trauma resuscitation.
Source: Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open, 2026
No reliable global total of deaths attributable to transfusion refusal exists: the organisation publishes none, death certificates record medical causes, and comparative data exist only for specific cohorts.
Source: AJWRB.org (Advocates for Jehovah's Witness Reform on Blood), 23 July 2026 (unverified) Source: Transfusion, July 2002Source: BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 2009
On 20 March 2026 (2026 Governing Body Update #2) the organisation stated that the Bible does not comment on the use of a person’s own blood in medical and surgical care, making the collection, storage and reinfusion of a patient’s own blood a personal decision.
Source: JW.org News, 20 March 2026Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026Source: Associated Press, 20 March 2026Source: AABB (Association for the Advancement of Blood & Biotherapies) News, 24 March 2026
On 20 March 2026 the Governing Body described the use of a patient's own blood, including stored blood, as a personal decision, presenting this as a clarification of its position.
Source: JW.org News, 20 March 2026Source: Associated Press, 20 March 2026Source: JW.org News, 18 September 2026
On 30 April 2026 the Supreme Court of Norway (HR-2026-1009-A), by three to two, held the refusals of registration and grants invalid: all five justices found infringement of children's rights unproven; the majority found the shunning practice 'may entail a clear psychological pressure not to withdraw' but not 'improper pressure' under Article 9 ECHR; two justices found the right to withdraw infringed; the court described current practice as no association with former members, including relatives outside the household except in 'necessary family matters'.
Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026Source: jw.org Newsroom, 8 May 2026Source: Religion Clause (law blog by Prof. Howard M. Friedman), 7 May 2026
Norway's County Governor denied Jehovah's Witnesses their state grant for 2021 (NRK reported about NOK 16 million and 12,686 grant-eligible members) on 27 January 2022 and deregistered the community on 22 December 2022 over its exclusion practice; the Oslo District Court upheld the State (4 March 2024), the Borgarting Court of Appeal reversed (March 2025) and on 30 April 2026 the Supreme Court held 3-2 that the decisions were invalid, with back-payments that NRK reported at roughly NOK 100 million.
Source: NRK, 27 January 2022Source: Lovdata (Oslo tingrett), 4 March 2024Source: NRK, 30 April 2026Source: jw.org Newsroom, 8 May 2026Source: jw.org Newsroom, 28 March 2024
The New Zealand High Court declared that the Abuse in Care Royal Commission's 2024 Jehovah's Witnesses case study was unlawful because it exceeded the inquiry's terms of reference, while rejecting the organisation's freedom-of-religion and natural-justice complaints.
Source: High Court of New Zealand, Wellington Registry, 15 May 2026
A 2026 UK study of 21 officially shunned former Witnesses (Grendele, Bapir-Tardy & Flax, Pastoral Psychology) found shunning 'may significantly impact individuals' physical and emotional well-being' but that most participants showed resilience and psychological growth through adaptive coping.
Source: Pastoral Psychology (online 4 June 2026), 4 June 2026
Recognised medical bodies describe transfusion as giving donor blood by vein and state that donations are usually separated into red cells, platelets and plasma so patients receive the component they need; 98% of donations in high-income countries are separated into components.
Source: NHS (nhs.uk), 16 January 2025Source: NHS Blood and Transplant (blood.co.uk), 2026Source: World Health Organization fact sheet, 12 June 2026
AJWRB estimates roughly 1,220 excess deaths a year (2016 basis) and about 33,000 between 1961 and 2016, by multiplying the publisher count by an assumed transfusion-need rate and a 1% excess mortality; this is an extrapolation, not a count.
Source: AJWRB.org (Advocates for Jehovah's Witness Reform on Blood), 23 July 2026 (unverified)
The Governing Body update of 18 September 2026 that made the four primary blood components a personal decision makes no reference to anyone who died under the previous position and none to the 1994 or 1995 articles; it refers to the past only to describe the organisation’s own earlier application of the principle and its 2026 Governing Body Update #2; its official English caption file contains no occurrence of ‘1994’, ‘young’ or ‘minor’.
Source: JW Broadcasting, 18 September 2026Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026
On 18 September 2026 the Governing Body announced that whether to accept red cells, white cells, plasma or platelets from another person’s blood is now a personal decision for each Witness, in all medical and surgical care.
Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026Source: JW.org News, 18 September 2026Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026Source: Associated Press, 18 September 2026
The prohibition on transfusion of whole blood, and on donating blood to be used as a whole-blood transfusion for another person, remains in force after the September 2026 change.
Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026Source: Associated Press, 18 September 2026
Since 18 September 2026, whether to donate blood ‘for the clearly expressed purpose of providing components or fractions for use by another person’ is a personal decision; donating blood for whole-blood use remains prohibited.
Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026
The organisation’s own announcement describes the September 2026 change as ‘an adjustment to our position on blood components’, and the accompanying article says the Governing Body recognises it ‘is not authorized to “go beyond the things that are written”’.
Source: JW.org News, 18 September 2026Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026
The official 2026 chart ‘Products Derived From Whole Blood’ lists four components and six fractions with their approximate percentage of whole blood, function and origin, and poses questions for the reader; it does not label any product as acceptable or unacceptable.
Source: JW.org chart, 18 September 2026
Components that official publications classed as unacceptable from 1990 until September 2026 (red cells, white cells, platelets and plasma) may now be accepted as a personal decision. For a Witness patient today, the options that can be chosen without congregational consequence are therefore materially different from those available to the young people described in 1994 and 2019.
Source: How Can Blood Save Your Life? (brochure), 1990Source: The Watchtower, 15 October 2000Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026
The organisation reports more than nine million Witnesses worldwide in more than 200 lands; the Associated Press gives 9.2 million worldwide and 1.3 million in the United States for 2025.
Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026Source: Associated Press, 18 September 2026
On 18 September 2026 the Governing Body announced 'an adjustment to our position on blood components': accepting red cells, white cells, platelets or plasma from another person became a personal decision.
Source: JW.org News, 18 September 2026Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026
Since September 2026 each Witness may decide whether to donate blood 'for the clearly expressed purpose of providing components or fractions'.
Source: JW.org (Questions From Readers), 18 September 2026Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026
The organisation frames the 2026 changes as a 'clarification' (own blood) and an 'adjustment' (components) resting on the reasoning that the Bible does not comment on such decisions, the same reasoning it applied to fractions in 2000.
Source: JW.org News, 18 September 2026Source: JW.org News, 20 March 2026Source: JW.org Global News (press release), 18 September 2026Source: The Watchtower, 15 June 2000
On 18 September 2026 the Governing Body announced 'an adjustment to our position on blood components' (handled in the blood section).
Source: jw.org news — 2026 Governing Body Update #6, 18 September 2026
The organisation's current public position is that removed persons are treated 'with respect', are 'welcome to attend our religious services, where he may be greeted', may request elders' help, and that a removed person's spouse and young children in the same house keep 'normal family affections and dealings'; the FAQ does not address relatives living elsewhere, and applies the 'no greeting' text of 2 John only to those who 'actively try to undermine' the congregation.
Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026
The jw.org FAQ on the subject has been retitled at least twice: a 2022 version was 'Do Jehovah's Witnesses Shun Those Who Used to Belong to Their Religion?' (quoted by the Norwegian Supreme Court), the current version is 'How Do Jehovah's Witnesses Treat Those Who Used to Belong to Their Religion?', and the /faq/shunning/ URL now redirects; an earlier title 'Do You Shun Former Members of Your Religion?' is reported by ex-member sources but could not be verified because archive services were inaccessible.
Source: jw.org, Frequently Asked Questions, 18 September 2026Source: Supreme Court of Norway (Høyesterett), judgment HR-2026-1009-A (case no. 25-089326SIV-HRET), official English translation published 16 July 2026, 29 April 2026Source: Watchtower Investigated UK (blog), 22 March 2014 (unverified)
In the United States, churches, conventions or associations of churches and their integrated auxiliaries are not required to file the annual Form 990 information return, so US-based Watch Tower entities have no comparable public filing obligation to UK charities.
Source: Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov), 19 September 2026Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026
The principal legal entities are the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (formed 1884), Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses and Kingdom Support Services, Inc. (US); and in Britain the International Bible Students Association (charity 216647), Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Britain (1077961) and The Kingdom Hall Trust (275946).
Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026Source: The Watchtower, 15 January 2001Source: Our Kingdom Ministry, January 2002Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 31 August 2025Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 31 August 2025Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 31 August 2025Source: Charity Commission for England and Wales, Register of Charities, 19 September 2026
jw.org's FAQ on the Governing Body describes it as 'a small group of mature Christians who provide direction' who 'yield to the influence of God's holy spirit', but contains no statement about inspiration or infallibility; the only explicit disclaimer located is in the February 2017 study article.
Source: jw.org (FAQ), 19 September 2026Source: The Watchtower (study edition), February 2017
Because the names are not published, the translators’ qualifications in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek cannot be examined by anyone outside the organisation, while the organisation itself cites named scholars’ praise of the translation’s accuracy.
Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: The Watchtower, 15 September 1950Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993
JW.org answers criticism of the translation by listing favourable comments from Edgar J. Goodspeed, Allen Wikgren, Alexander Thomson, Charles Francis Potter, Robert M. McCoy, S. MacLean Gilmour, Thomas N. Winter, Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein and Jason David BeDuhn.
Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026Source: Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, 1993Source: The Watchtower, 1 March 1991
The JW.org page 'Is the New World Translation Accurate?' quotes BeDuhn's favourable verdict from pages 163 and 165 of Truth in Translation, and does not mention the appendix beginning at page 169 in which he calls the translation's use of 'Jehovah' in the New Testament an inaccuracy.
Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003
Two citations repeated constantly in this debate are inaccurate. Thomas Winter's review is in The Classical Journal volume 69, number 4 (April-May 1974), pages 375-376, not volume 66, which covers 1970-71. Bruce Metzger's review in The Bible Translator occupies pages 150-152 of volume 15, number 3, not 150-153; the review ends, over Metzger's signature, on page 152.
Source: The Classical Journal, April 1974Source: The Bible Translator, July 1964
No academic survey ranking English Bible translations by accuracy and placing the New World Translation last was located in this research; the one book-length comparative accuracy study that includes it, BeDuhn's Truth in Translation, placed it first of the nine translations examined for the passages studied.
Source: Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament, 2003Source: The Classical Journal, April 1974Source: Theology Today, April 1953
The statements attributed to the Greek grammarian Julius R. Mantey against the New World Translation circulate from an undated audio recording published by an apologetics organisation and from a letter to the Watch Tower Society that could not be traced to any archive, court record or scholarly publication. His own published statement of his views, Depth Explorations in the New Testament (Vantage Press, 1980), is cited by almost none of the websites that quote him, and has not been read for this research.
Source: Christian Research Institute, Statement DJ265Source: Depth Explorations in the New Testament, 1980 (unverified)
JW.org gathers nine favourable comments under the heading 'Positive comments about the New World Translation from non-Witness scholars'. Four are cited to journals or reference works (Allen Wikgren, Robert M. McCoy, S. MacLean Gilmour, Thomas N. Winter), one to a scholarly monograph (Jason BeDuhn), and four to a private letter of 1950, a privately circulated magazine, a general-readership book and an undated personal statement (Edgar J. Goodspeed, Alexander Thomson, Charles Francis Potter, Benjamin Kedar-Kopfstein). A footnote adds that the comments apply to editions before the 2013 revision.
Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
The organisation publishes no image of this cover: the JW.org page for the issue serves a generic placeholder, the Watchtower Online Library carries the text without illustrations, and the official publication file for the issue contains no images at all.
Source: JW.org / Watchtower Online Library, 19 September 2026Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
The widely repeated statement that the cover shows twenty-six children who all died refusing blood cannot be established: the figure appears nowhere in the issue, the one site opened for this record gives no source, the only cover image on one of those sites is a cropped derivative rather than a scan, and the background portraits in the one scan located cannot be counted reliably because they overlap and are partly obscured.
Source: AvoidJW.org, 20 March 2026 (unverified) Source: JWfacts.com, 19 September 2026Source: Awake!, 22 May 1994
As of 19 September 2026, the day after the announcement, the JW.org FAQ ‘Why Don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses Accept Blood Transfusions?’ explains the position in terms of ‘blood transfusions’ and does not yet mention components, fractions or the 2026 changes.
Source: JW.org Frequently Asked Questions, 19 September 2026
Jeremiah 25:11-12 describes the seventy years as the period during which 'these nations' serve the king of Babylon, ending when God punishes the king of Babylon and his nation. Read that way the period is one of Babylonian domination, running roughly from Babylon's ascendancy after Carchemish to its fall in 539 BCE, rather than a count of years of Judean exile.
Source: World English Bible, 2000Source: The JPS TANAKH: Gender-Sensitive Edition; Hebrew text 'Miqra according to the Masorah', 2023
Jeremiah 29:10 has the Hebrew preposition le- attached to 'Babylon'. Most modern translations render it 'for Babylon', making the seventy years Babylon's period; the New World Translation reads 'at Babylon', as the King James Version also does. The preposition alone cannot settle the question.
Source: The JPS TANAKH: Gender-Sensitive Edition; Hebrew text 'Miqra according to the Masorah', 2023Source: New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), 2013Source: King James Version, 1611
The teaching is current, not historic: jw.org still states that the ‘seven times’ began in October 607 BCE and ended in October 1914, and refers readers to the two 2011 Watchtower articles for the 607 BCE date.
Source: JW.org (Bible Questions Answered), 19 September 2026Source: Examining the Scriptures Daily—2024, 31 December 2024Source: What Can the Bible Teach Us?, 2015
jw.org currently states that Jehovah's Witnesses 'are not opposed to vaccination' and quotes Awake! of 22 August 1965 as saying vaccination 'is something for personal decision'.
Source: jw.org FAQ, 19 September 2026Source: Awake!, 22 August 1965
As of 19 September 2026 the online text of Organized to Do Jehovah's Will (chapter 14) still uses 'disfellowshipped', tells the congregation 'to stop associating with that person', and contains none of the 2024 greeting or invitation guidance.
Source: Organized to Do Jehovah's Will (online text), 19 September 2026
The online Insight on the Scriptures entry 'Faithful and Discreet Slave' now reads that the slave 'was to be appointed in the time of the end', reflecting the 2013 teaching rather than the wording of the 1988 printing.
Source: Insight on the Scriptures, vol. 1 (online text), 19 September 2026
The online texts of You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth (p. 179) and Revelation—Its Grand Climax At Hand! (box, p. 273) both state that the people of Sodom will not be resurrected or underwent 'eternal destruction'.
Source: You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth (online text), 19 September 2026Source: Revelation—Its Grand Climax At Hand! (online text), 19 September 2026
jw.org explains changed beliefs as adjustments 'as our understanding of the Scriptures has been clarified', cites Proverbs 4:18, and says the changes are recorded under 'Beliefs Clarified' in its publications index.
Source: jw.org FAQ, 19 September 2026Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
The 'Beliefs Clarified' index records the Sodom, civilian-service, faithful-slave, superior-authorities, generation, great-tribulation and removal changes, but contains no line matching 'transplant', 'vaccin' or 'beard'.
Source: Watch Tower Publications Index (Research Guide) — 'Beliefs Clarified' entry, 2026
Several commonly repeated citations are inexact: the 'filthy pus' vaccination line is in The Golden Age of 13 November 1929 (p. 107), not 1 May 1929 p. 502; the 'tacking' article is in The Watchtower of 1 December 1981; and the 1952 Sodom paragraphs fall on pp. 335-336 by the library's page markers.
Source: The Golden Age, 13 November 1929Source: The Golden Age, 1 May 1929Source: The Watchtower, 1 December 1981Source: The Watchtower, 1 June 1952
The organisation’s present position is that the Bible does not prohibit toasting or clinking glasses, and a 2026 study article illustrates a Witness joining a toast at a work dinner with a clear conscience.
Source: Frequently Asked Questions About Jehovah’s WitnessesSource: The Watchtower (Study Edition), November 2026
The dispute over Titus 2:13 long predates the New World Translation. The nineteenth-century volume on the Pastoral Epistles in Meyer's critical commentary series, written by Johann Eduard Huther, concluded that the question “cannot be decided on purely grammatical grounds”, and noted that “There are instances enough of two distinct subjects standing under one article only”.
Source: Critical and Exegetical Hand-book to the Epistles to Timothy and Titus (the Pastoral Epistles volume of Meyer’s Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar series)
An inscription of Adad-guppi, the mother of King Nabonidus, set up at Harran in the sixth century BCE, measures her life by the regnal years it ran between: from the twentieth year of Ashurbanipal, in which she says she was born, through his forty-second year, then the third year of Ashur-etel-ilani, the twenty-first of Nabopolassar, the forty-third of Nebuchadnezzar II, the second of Amel-Marduk and the fourth of Neriglissar — and calls that span “ninety-five years”. The named years are the points the count runs between, and they add up exactly: 22 further years of Ashurbanipal, then 3 + 21 + 43 + 2 + 4 = 95.
Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020
Because the Adad-guppi inscription counts the reigns of Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II, Amel-Marduk and Neriglissar consecutively within one woman's lifetime, it leaves no room for an additional twenty years or an unrecorded king between them.
Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020Source: RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020
A seventy-year period of divinely decreed abandonment was a known formula in Mesopotamian religious writing. An inscription of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon says Marduk wrote that Babylon's abandonment should last seventy years but then 'reversed the numbers' and ordered its reoccupation after eleven.
Source: RINAP 4: The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 BC), 2011
The organisation today still names Russell, still prints his history warmly in current magazines, and still uses the formula first printed in his own obituary in 1916: that he “was not the founder of a new religion”. Proclaimers quotes the 1916 sentence directly, and the current jw.org answer to “Who Was the Founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses?” repeats it and adds: “Since Jesus is the Founder of Christianity, we view him as the founder of our organization.”
Source: Frequently Asked Questions About Jehovah’s Witnesses (jw.org)Source: The Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, 1 December 1916Source: Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993), 1993Source: The Watchtower (Study Edition), February 2018