Thursday was the most important day of the year for Jehovah’s Witnesses
Thursday marked the most significant date on the calendar for Jehovah’s Witnesses: the Memorial of Jesus’ Death. Guided by local member Sharon Hurford, I joined the congregation to observe this global commemoration, which takes place annually on the night of Passover.
The event serves as a major outreach milestone for the faith. In the weeks prior, invitations depicting a welcoming family greeting newcomers are distributed widely; one such leaflet recently arrived through my own letterbox, leading me to the Kingdom Hall in New Brighton for the occasion.
At the door, I was met by Sharon and her husband, Chris. The middle-aged couple from Moreton are lifelong Witnesses who, despite being relatively new to the area, have quickly established their community within the hall.
The building itself, repurposed from a former laundry on a Wallasey back street, reflects a functional and modest philosophy. The interior is defined by magnolia walls and sparse furniture.
Three prints hang on the wall outside the main chamber. The images inside are non-descript: a kind of orange-beige watercolour reminiscent of a sunset. Two doors marked ‘school’ lead off to the side just before the entrance to the main hall. Like the main hall, these rooms are beige and bare, apart from rows of chairs and a window onto the hall.
Inside the hall, there are no icons, no candles, no incense, no crucifixes (Witnesses believe Jesus died on a single stake), and not even an altar. A lectern is placed at the front of a low stage, and two TVs are screwed to the wall behind it.
There was a lot of welcoming into the fold. A lot of handshakes. A lot of smiling. Many people were keen to welcome an unfamiliar face before I was invited to sit between Chris and Sharon. The service starts with a hymn whose lyrics are about Jehovah’s Witnesses across the world being brought together for God.
Brother David Bratherton leads the service, which explores the basic tenets of the faith. Witnesses believe that only 144,000 people will be permitted to enter heaven, and the rest will live on an earth “restored” to “perfect conditions”.
“Adam and Eve could have lived forever in the perfect world that Jehovah created,” said Brother Bratherton, who was born into the faith and has led these meetings for a few years. He goes on to recount how Adam disobeyed God and is responsible for the conditions we inhabit today.
“Jehovah could have abandoned the world but he did not — the greatest act of love,” said Brother Bratherton.
All four of those who speak during the service, whether to offer prayer, Bible analysis or housekeeping, are men. It’s the same all across the world, with women unable to lead prayers or teach at Kingdom Halls.
Brother Bratherton launches into an analogy to explain why Jesus had to die for Adam’s sin. He said: “If you went into Currys and tried to buy a £500 washing machine but only had £200, you wouldn’t get it for £200. Jesus had to repay what humanity never could.”
He went on to promise “incredible conditions in the future”, reading from the Book of Revelation. He added: “What stands out to me is that there are none of the cares that we see today.”
Three wine glasses and three plates of flatbread sit on a small table on the stage. Only those with the ‘heavenly hope’, those called by God, get to partake of the bread and wine.
“How does a person know that they have received the heavenly calling? They know,” said Brother Bratherton, before launching into another analogy. He says that a bride does not worry, during her wedding day, that she is the person her groom has asked to marry; she can be certain of it.
The plates of bread are passed along, snaking their way around the congregation before coming to me. Sharon tells me they are large, flat pieces of bread made without yeast, as they would have been in the first century. Not feeling called, I pass the plate along to her.
The same thing happened with the wine glasses. When they reach the front, all three are level and look just as full as they were before they made their way around the congregation.
The service ends with a song called ‘Grateful for the Ransom’. First-timers in the congregation are invited to enquire about one-on-one Bible study. Those who have returned after an absence are asked to attend more regularly.
At the end of the service, I am encouraged to return, given details of services, times, and what is discussed, and then Chris tells me it’s time to go and escorts me off the premises. The doors are closed behind me.
Window cleaner Mike Lancaster, from Wallasey, told the ECHO: “People are having many struggles, and faith gives me a purpose in life. People from all backgrounds are here, especially tonight, with people coming for the first time.”
Who are the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
The organisation that became the Jehovah’s Witnesses was founded in 1871 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society by haberdasher Charles Taze Russell. Russell believed Christ had returned to earth invisibly in the autumn of 1874 and was busy gathering his followers.
He published more than 50,000 pages on Christianity, including predictions that the “gentile times” would end in 1914 and that the earth would be “restored” to the conditions God had first created. Witnesses are Adventist Christians who believe in the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ and the unfolding of events as prophesied by John of Patmos.
The Witnesses claim there are more than nine million Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide, with 144,116. The organisation says it only counts “those who are actively preaching the good news of God’s Kingdom each month”. The religion is most popular in the United States, where there are 1.3 million witnesses.
The organisation’s literature states that all Christians must fulfil the “God-given mandate to preach and teach the good news”. Witnesses report their preaching to their congregation at the Kingdom Hall each month.
Witnesses can often be seen gathered on street corners around stands advertising “free Bible study”. The ‘good news’ they preach is that God will “end suffering” by “clearing the earth of bad people” and replacing “all human governments with his own government”.
Witnesses believe that the word of God “foretold the conditions that now threaten mankind” and that “current events indicate that God’s time to act is close.”
Witnesses abstain from blood transfusions due to their interpretations of various parts of the Old Testament. On its website, the organisation states: “True, some may not like it that you are receiving help to understand the Bible. But the opportunity of a better future is too good to miss.”
In the frequently asked questions section of its website, the Witnesses state that they hold the one true religion and that those on other paths will not be saved if they choose not to begin serving God in the way they have set out.
