‘Our World Would Be Different’

The effort to cancel a convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Moscow last August drew considerable attention. (See pages 27 and 28 for details.) Andrei Zolotov, Jr., reported in The Moscow Times of August 21, 1999, that “Vladimir Kozyrev, deputy director of the sports complex, said the administration was not against holding the Jehovah’s Witnesses congress. He said he did not know where the order [to cancel it] was coming from.”

In a letter published in The Moscow Times one week later, a reader complimented the paper for publishing the “truly unbiased” article and said that it “really deserved readers’ attention.” He observed: “Your story on the tremendous difficulties which were faced by Jehovah’s Witnesses in preparation for their annual convention [exposed their] unjust treatment.”

Then the writer of the letter noted that Jehovah’s Witnesses “are well known in the world (and now in Russia as well) . . . They are . . . well known as very nice, kind, and meek people who are very easy to deal with, never put any pressure on other people and always seek peace in their relationship with others notwithstanding their religious beliefs be it Orthodox Christians, Moslems or Buddhists. There are no bribe-takers, drunkards or drug addicts among them, and the reason is very simple: They just try to be guided by their Bible-based convictions in everything they do or say. If all the people in the world at least tried to live according to the Bible the way Jehovah’s Witnesses do, our cruel world would be absolutely different.”

Authorities who have investigated Jehovah’s Witnesses and deal with them directly confirm the above description. Such authorities, for example, granted the Witnesses the permits to build this beautiful new Assembly Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia. At its dedication last September 18, the hall was filled with 2,257 joyful observers, and an additional 2,228 listened to the program at Kingdom Halls in St. Petersburg and at the branch office of Jehovah’s Witnesses in nearby Solnechnoye.