期刊名称：Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Dergisi
出版年度：2005
卷号：XXI
出版社：Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, İlahiyat Fakültesi
摘要：The history of Jehovah's Witnesses began more than a hundred years ago, in the early
1870's. The name Jehovah's Witnesses was adopted in 1931. Previously, they were
known as International Bible Students. Today the Watchtower Society has over 6 mil-
lion active Jehovah's Witnesses spreading its doctrines in 235 countries.
A highly centralized structure frames the whole organization. Orders and reports come
from and move back to the society’s headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, directly or
through various levels of authority: branch officies in important countries supervise the
work and channel the distrubition of publications; district and circuit servants regularly
visit local congregations to meet local servants, pioneers, and publishers. In the branch
offices, there are Branch Committees of about three to seven members to supervise the
work in the lands under their jurisdiction. The country or area served by each branch is
divided into districts, and the districts, in turn, are divided into circuits. Each circuit
has in it about 20 congregations. Congregations are consisting of from a few to some
200 Witnesses.
According to the last report, today, the number of Jehovah’s witnesses in our country
is 1784, the number of congregation is 32, and the number of those who joined the an-
niversary meal is 3,298. They use every possibility to activate in our country, and their
number increase day by day.
Our aim in this paper is to give detailed information about the Jehovah’s Witnesses
and show how they work all over the world, especially in Turkey, in order to spread
their religious ideas.
