On the Religious Community of Jehovah’s Witnesses

The independent religious group of Jehovah’s Witnesses can be categorised with chiliasm.1The notion is derived from Greek ‘chilioi’ and means ‘thousand’. It refers to the millennium. Based on the Revelation of John (20:1-10) in the New Testament, chiliasm originated with early Christianity. The early Christians expected Jesus to establish a peaceful kingdom, before the end of the last days, that would last a thousand years and that would bring about the restoration of paradise on earth and to return all things to their original state.2In characterising the religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I mainly focused on a scholar of religious studies, Gabriele Yonan.

A characteristic of the chiliastic way of thinking is the concept of a united world in the last days, seeing the present as a time of trials and tribulations. Equality is anticipated in the coming society of the thousand-year kingdom reign.3See Yonan 1999, p. 10.

According to the history of religion one can especially see chiliastic beliefs in Christian minority groups and marginalised groups. In the age of Enlightenment chiliastic ways of thinking mostly disappeared. They only resurfaced in the 19th century in North America and England within revolutionary-socialist and religious movements.4Adventists and Mormons are examples of religious communities that base their faith in the apocalyptic statements in the Bible and came into being in the 19th century.

One of the youngest chiliastic groups is the religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who originally called themselves ‘Earnest Bible Students’ at the end of the 70s in the 19th century. The central theme of their religious world view is the belief in an apocalyptic victory resulting in the destruction of the antichrist. The belief that history is predestined with a continuous run of time forms the basis for this chiliastic expectation. The theory of this independent religious community is marked by the time of the end and is focused on the proclaimed ‘kingdom’ of God, that under Jesus Christ’s direction all problems of humanity will be resolved by the establishment of his reign of peace. According to Jehovah’s Witnesses the end of our days is determined by the decisive battle of ’Har-Magedon’, in which God will defeat the power of Evil, resulting immediately in the ‘thousand-year reign of Christ’.5See Yonan 1999, p. 10 f. and Malle 2002, p. 13. True worshippers of Jehovah will live in this new paradise on earth and the 144,000 ‘anointed’ will rule with Christ in heaven.

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