Jehovah's Witnesses
www.JWSurvey.org
http://jwfacts.com/
The Jehovah's Witnesses claim to be Christians. Founded by Charles Taze Russell,
the sect publishes the Watchtower magazine and Awake! Because of their
deviations from traditional Christian teaching, they are not considered to be
true Christians.
“Was Moses the mediator between Jehovah God and mankind in general? No, he was
the mediator between the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the nation of
their fleshly descendants. Likewise, the Greater Moses, Jesus Christ, is not the
Mediator between Jehovah God and all mankind. He is the Mediator between his
heavenly Father, Jehovah God, and the nation of spiritual Israel, which is
limited to only 144,000 members.” (Worldwide Security Under the Prince of Peace,
page 10). This makes it impossible to regard the witnesses as Christians.
Christianity has made a core doctrine out of Jesus being the mediator between
God and humankind.
The cult's most notorious doctrine is how blood transfusions are absolutely
forbidden.
Blood transfusions are supposed to be sinful as life is so sacred that blood
must be treated as sacred. The sect argues that blood transfusions desecrate
blood and that the deaths that happen due to the ban are justified for they are
uncommon and unintended. It is like, "Blood is sacred. The ban on blood
transfusions is good and the deaths are unwanted and unintended side-effects".
This is the same hypocrisy as the Catholics use in relation to euthanasia. If
somebody who could live for years is given painkillers to deal with their agony
and the painkillers poison them so that they die in a few months, the Church
pretends that it is fine as long as the intention was to ease pain and not to
hurry the death of the person! Hypocrisy in such a tragic situation is truly
vulgar.
The sect is sometimes in the news when parents keep their children out of
hospital as they fear they will get blood. Children have died as parents refused
to allow them to be given blood. The issue of whether or not a Jehovah's Witness
adult should be forcibly given blood in hospital against their express wishes is
hotly debated among ethicists. The trouble with their refusal is there is a
chance they might change their minds when they are at deaths door. Also, how
free is their choice? They are told they are dying and they are afraid of
Jehovah their judge.
Hypocritical Jehovah's Witness doctors and nurses believe that its okay to give
blood transfusions if the person is not a Jehovah's Witness! If they really
believe that blood is sacred, then they are allowed to desecrate it for
unbelievers! This is really permission to do what is wrong in order to keep the
peace with people who demand that religion does not impose its principles on
them.
The witnesses deny the doctrine of eternal punishment and the divinity of Christ
and the Trinity. The Bible certainly does teach the existence of eternal
punishment. Jesus said we must be born again to enter the heavenly kingdom of
God and they say only 144,000 will be born again and enter Heaven while the rest
of the just will live on Paradise Earth. The only place where this number is
mentioned is Revelation 7. But all it says is that the people will be selected
for sealing from the twelve tribes of Israel and then says that the author saw a
great innumerable crowd clad in white before the throne and the Lamb. So, it
will be more than 144,000. It is not even said that they will be in Heaven only
that they will be sealed on earth.
Interestingly the Jehovah's Witnesses give out "Bibles" not Bibles. They have an
altered Bible that they lie is a true translation. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have
issued a Bible, the New World Translation, which is full of deliberate
mistranslations to back up the doctrines of the sect. An organisation that does
something like that with its central work, promoting scripture, should not have
charitable status. I wonder how far I would get if I put a faked version of the
Aeneid out there! The reality is that the organisation takes money off the
people to put a fake Bible out there.
The notion of God opening Heaven only to that number is ridiculous. God would
not keep us at a distance from him on a Paradise Earth. And why could God not
become man instead of sending an angel to become Jesus and die for the world?
God put the dirty work on Jesus. They argue that since Jesus is said to be a
spirit now that he never rose bodily from the dead. But the Bible may mean
spiritual body by spirit. This is a material body that is more spirit than
matter but Jesus is not just a spirit. They illogically argue that since Jesus
is a spirit now that his second coming will be invisible which is sheer
nonsense. Nothing in the Bible says such a thing. They take Revelation
figuratively when it says every eye will see Jesus coming back. They say this is
the eye of understanding but one rule of interpretation is not to assume that
something that might be literal is figurative. This example shows how the
Witnesses approach the Bible.
It is thought that since the Witnesses say that Michael the Archangel stopped
being a spirit and became the man Jesus and then that Jesus became a spirit
again three days after he ceased to exist at death that there are really three
Jesuses here. But God could use a time warp so that the same mind is preserved
through the different transformations. He could arrange that when Jesus died
that his mind was instantly transferred to the spirit that rose from the dead as
if there was no time in-between. Time is elastic and relative and God can change
it. As for the transformation of Michael, God could turn my mind into the mind
of a dog and still keep me the same person.
An excellent Catholic booklet, Jehovah’s Witnesses, tells us that the name of
God is more likely to be Yahweh than Jehovah. And Father is a more important
name for God so the witnesses overstress it for they put so much emphasis on it
and on knowing it that they even put it into the name of their sect. God is
never called Jehovah or Yahweh in the New Testament. Their translation of the
phrase “And the Word was God,” becomes, “The Word was a god” in their New World
Translation. The whole world of Greek scholarship is against them in this.
They could translate, "In the beginning was the word and the word was with THE
GOD and the word was GOD NOT THE GOD." The word is the description of God.
The word is God not in the identity sense but in the descriptive sense.
The society argues that since the two birthdays recorded in the Bible were not celebrated by believers in God that birthdays are immoral and forbidden by the Bible. That is appalling logic.
They say that when Jesus said it is better to lose a limb that draws you to sin than to be thrown into Gehenna that Gehenna means the grave. But Jesus meant more than that for sin does not instantly kill you and you will die anyway. So why be afraid of the grave? If you lost a limb in those days you were almost certain to die through infection and blood loss so when he says sin is worse he means it has worse consequences for you than anything earthy.
Against all the evidence the Jehovahs think that the fall
of Jerusalem happened in 606 BC and they start counting from the 2520 years
indicated in Daniel 4 to get the year 1914 which they say ended the times of the
Gentiles and started the prophecies of Jesus coming true about the world going
into its worst ever calamities and which was the year of Jesus’ invisible second
coming which now makes him guide the world through guiding the Watchtower to
make infallible Bible interpretations (page 80, Jehovah’s Witnesses). (See also,
Crisis of Conscience.) The year should have been 1935 for it has been proven
that the fall took place in 587 BC. The year 1914 is as important to the sect
and its credibility as the papacy is to the Roman Catholic cult.
The witnesses got the legal right in 1943 to refuse to salute the flag. For the
witnesses, such salutes are idolatrous. They got the right in the landmark case
West Virginia State Board of Education versus Barnette. "If there is any fixed
star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty,
can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or
other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith
therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not
now occur to us."
The Watchtower is apostate Christianity for it says it adheres to the Bible
alone doctrine which is not true. Worse, the society claims to be prophesied in
scripture and to be infallible when it thinks it can tell when the end of the
world will take place. It has got that wrong many times. It is a false prophet -
speaking words in the name of God that he never uttered.
WORKS CONSULTED
Christendom Astray, Robert Roberts, The Dawn Book Supply, 1958
Christian Deviations, Horton Davies, SCM, London, 1955
Christianity in Crisis, Hank Hanegraaff, Nelson Word Ltd, Milton Keynes, 1995
Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture
Press, Bucks, 1983
Crisis of Conscience, Raymond Franz, Commentary Press, Atlanta, 1992
Cults and Isms J. Oswald Sanders, Zondervan Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI, 1962
Dianetics, The Modern Science Of Mental Health L Ron Hubbard New Era
Publications, Surrey 1986
Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, Ecclesiastical Parties and Schools of Religious
Thought, by Blunt, Gale Research Company, Book Tower, Detroit, undated
Health And Happiness, EG White, Inspiration Books, Phoenix, Arizona, 1974
Heresies Exposed, William C Irvine Loizeaux Brothers Inc, New York, 1973
His Eye, The Bookkeeping of God, Universelles Leben, Wurzburg, Germany, 2000
Jehovah of the Watchtower, Walter Martin and Norman Clann, Bethany House
Publishers, Minnesota, 1974
Jehovah’s Witnesses, John Wijngaards, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1998
Joseph Smith and Money-Digging, Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Utah Lighthouse
Ministry, Salt Lake City, 1970
Some Modern Faiths, Maurice C Burrell and J Stafford Wright, Intervarsity Press,
Leicestershire, 1988
The Challenge of the Cults, Maurice C Burrell, IVP, Leicester, 1983
The Four Major Cults, AA Hoekema, Paternoster Press, Carlisle, 1992
The Secret World of Cults, Jean Ritchie, Angus and Robertson, London, 1991
The Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of
Pennsylvania, Watchtower, New York, 1968
What is a Jehovah’s Witness? Rev John Wimbish, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, 1956
William Branham – the Man and His Message, Carl Dyke, Western Tract Mission Inc,
Saskatoon, Canada, 1984
www.kevinquick.com/kkministries/books/reasoning/nwt.html
Reveals the deceptive translation of the Bible of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
