Watch Tower Publications

C.T. Russell founded the magazine Zion’s Watch Tower in 1879 and published all his ideas with circulation of about 6000 copies. He also wrote six out of the seven volumes of ‘Studies in the Scriptures’ which was sold over twenty two millions in 1960. It is said that Russell wrote books totalling over fifty thousand pages.

J.F. Rutherford, the second president, produced one book a year. During his leadership of about 25 years, 300 million copies of his books were produced and circulated. He wrote many booklets and these booklets were printed in a few million per year.

Every year two books are produced and circulated with a maximum printing of one million copies. In 1961, they produced their own Bible called ‘The New World Translation’ and millions of copies of this Bible has been printed and circulated. Their Bible study booklet by name ‘The Truth that lead to Eternal life’ was translated into 115 languages and it was the third most published book of all time. 

Now they operate a printing press in Brooklyn, New York with all modern facilities for printing and packing their literature. Now they release two magazines. They are ‘Watch Tower’ for their members and ‘Awake’ for non-members. The ‘Watch Tower’ is printed in about 110 languages and it has the circulation of over 20 million copies.

More than twenty five million copies of ‘Awake’ are printed and sold by millions of their members in about 250 countries. They have branches in nearly all the countries of the world, and distribute or sell their publication through their highly motivated members.

It is no wonder that they increased from 115,000 members in 1942 to 2 million members in 1977. Mr Patrick Johnstone wrote that they grew 9.3% annually between 1990 and 1992, and there are about 2.2 million members in USA alone and 25,700 members in India. Are not their publications and their growth a challenge to you, and all Christians?