Awake!
magazine
Awake! is an illustrated religious magazine published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. It is considered to be a companion magazine of The Watchtower, and is distributed by Jehovah's Witnesses. The Watch Tower Society reports printing in more than 269 languages & a worldwide circulation of more than 33.2 million copies per issue.
History
The magazine was originally published bimonthly from October 1, 1919, under the title The Golden Age. It was founded for use in the Bible Students' new door-to-door ministry, though the founder of the movement, Charles Taze Russell, had indicated in his will that the Watch Tower Society would not publish any periodicals other than The Watch Tower. Clayton J. Woodworth was editor of the magazine, and later went on to serve on the boards of several corporations of Jehovah's Witnesses. On October 6, 1937, the magazine was renamed Consolation and continued to be published biweekly until July 31, 1946.
On August 22, 1946, the magazine was renamed Awake!, drawing its new title from Romans 13:11 (ASV): "... it is time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed".
The public source identifies “Awake!” as magazine. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Awake and magazine.
Why this record matters
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q726402. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1937 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Awake!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.