No Apologies | JW

Discussing Other Religions, #3 is JW

Popular religion with some very famous people following, you might now some of them:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Michael Jackson

Venus and Serena Williams

Terrance Howard

Donald Glover

So it has a reputation and is actually pretty popular of a religion but let’s go to the beginning.

HISTORY

1870’s started by Chad Russell. Why? He didn’t believe that Hell could be eternal. His disagreement with the Bible led to an entire offshoot of religion.

He also didn’t believe in the Trinity, and when all this happened he wasn’t even 18 yet.

When he WAS 18, he started a Bible study.

He then started publishing his ideas in a newspaper called The Herald of the Watchtower

By 1884 He controlled the whole company and renamed it The Watchtower

you may have heard of it.

When he started this up, they were printing 6,000 copies a MONTH, so about 200 a day.

Now they’re printing 100,000 BOOKS and 800,000 COPIES per DAY. A HUGE increase.

So most of that sounds pretty alright, right? This guy started a company to share his interpretation of the Bible and help people understand it, that’s good right? I mean you guys come to youth group and church on Sunday to hear someone interpret the Bible and to help teach you, is it different? Well, yeah. Here’s where it gets interesting.

Russell decided that ‘normal’ people couldn’t ever hope to properly interpret the Bible and basically made the only acceptable interpretation his own, the Jehova’s Wittnesses are FULLY dependent on the watchtower’s publication to give them biblical insight.

We believe that God reveals His truth to us individually as well as in a group settings. We talked about how pastors are responsible for equipping the saints but going to church doesn’t replace reading the Bible for yourself, if my interpretation is the only one you’re getting then I’m worried for you because I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not always right. I’m not perfect and I get things wrong, so if I say something and you’re not sure about it I WANT you to challenge it, ask me questions, and we can learn together.

The Watchtower Society has admitted that people who read the Bible alone end up believing the teachings of the orthodox churches rather than the unique doctrines of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

David A. Reed

(David A. Reed was a former JW who left the church in 1982. If you guys have time I highly recommend looking him up and reading more of what he was to say)

So there’s a couple differences already, and some pretty big ones, but let’s move on.

There are roughly 8 Million JW’s today. They study out of a version of the Bible called the New World Translation. Make a note of this, it’ll be important for later.

They go to church 5 days a week to hear from their leaders and then they go door to door to share their belief’s. They say it takes 740 knocks to recruit 1 person, and they add about 200,000 new members every year, that’s a LOT of knocking.

Now honestly that one’s pretty cool, that shows commitment, dedication, and faith, to spend that much time and energy sowing seed for such small results. Every year between all of them there are 148 MILLION knocks or more based on their statistics.

BUT, they believe that Christians aim to deceive people and that our gospel isn’t true, so they do their best to spread their truth as much as they can, believing that they are guiding people to the truth.

So they think that Christians are deceiving people, but they call themselves Christians themselves.

They CALL themselves Christians, but we’ve only scratched the surface of the differences.

1. Belief About God

One area that Jehovah’s Witnesses differ from us is their belief about God.

JWs believe there is one God that is a spirit being with a body but not a human body. Whereas, Christians believe there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. JWs don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is God; they believe that He is a force that comes from God. JWs don’t believe Jesus is God, but a god. They believe Jesus is Michael the Archangel who became a man. This is totally different than what true Christianity believes, because we believe Jesus is God.

John 1:1 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The New World Translation says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god. (John 1:1 NWT)

The only difference is one word and one letter, a. but that little difference has HUGE meaning right? We believe that Jesus is God, the perfect Son of God, who came to die for us, but they believe two major issues here,

1. they believe that angels are gods,.

2. They believe that Jesus wasn’t the God of the Universe but just a god.

This is NOT a translation error, it’s a modification to scripture to fit what they believe, it’s not an accident.

It’s important to understand their text though, because we know our bible doesn’t contradict itself but when you modify what God said to fit your views, you’ll end up with some.

A friend of mine told me this story, I’m going to read it as if he’s telling it. Ready?

When a JW came to my door, I asked them if I could hold their Bible. I turned to John 1:1 and said, “You believe that Jesus is a god, right?” They said yes. “You believe Jesus is inferior to God, right?” They said yes. After that, I brought their attention to another verse in their own translation talking about Jesus and asked for them to explain how He was inferior. Here’s what the verse said:

John 1:3 NWT

All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.

There was a belief in the 2nd century that was created by a guy named Arius. His famous quote was, “There was a time when He wasn’t.” By this quote, he was implying that Jesus was not God and that He was a created being. Every church council said this was wrong, and throughout history, the church has denied this belief.

We believe that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are God. We don’t believe in three Gods, but we believe in one God in three persons. I don’t have the time to do a whole lesson on the Trinity right now, but I will say that it takes the entire Trinity to save us from our sin. God the Father sent Jesus to die for us, and the Holy Spirit lives inside of us, so we can grow in our faith, and we are sealed in the Holy Spirit until Jesus comes back.

We don’t have time for a WHOLE lesson on the trinity, BUT:

Did you know that these two verses create a solution so simple that you can use a napkin to refute it? I i’ll do it on a napkin but I also have slides for it just so you all can see it as well.

Napkin Illustration

Everything that exists

Box 1: All things that Never came into being (i.e. always existed)

Box 2: All things that were made

Ask them: Where do you put God?

If they say ‘never came into being’ they’re right! So let’s put God there.

And on the other side, we can put “all created things”

Now THEIR Bible says the same thing as ours, that all things were created by Jesus right? So if God created Jesus, how does that make sense?

God didn’t create, Jesus did, so how did Jesus come to be? Did he create himself? Did he always exist but like just not as God?

So there you go, you can now argue the trinity, and the Godhood of Jesus with nothing but a napkin and a pen.

2. About Afterlife

JW’s don’t believe in hell.

JW’s believe in what is called annihilationism, which is the belief that, once you die, your soul ceases to exist. Instead of putting your soul in hell for all eternity, you simply cease to exist.

We believe that Hell is real, and the Bible doesn’t just tell us that it is, it tells us about it

Revelation 20:11–15 ESV

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

It’s not just mentioned in Revelation, Jesus talks about it in the book of Matthew also.

Matthew 18:8 ESV

And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.

And so does Paul

1 Thessalonians 1:9 ESV

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,

3. About Salvation

JW Belives Salvation requires

Faith In Christ

Association with their Religion

And Obedience to it’s rules

They’ll SAY that they believe salvation is a free gift, but they don’t mean it. Look at what the Watchtower says

“When a person, on the basis of the Scriptural knowledge he has gained, has belief in Christ as the Savior whom God provided and shows that faith by his works, he can consider himself as being on the way to salvation. It would be a mistake for him to think that he is now saved and cannot fall. He must show by his endurance in the Christian faith that he is worthy of salvation. ‘Let him that thinks he has a firm position beware that he does not fall.’ 1 Cor. 10:12 . . . Salvation from death is a gift from God to those that obey him, not to those that disobey," (Watch Tower, March 1, 1960, p. 134).

Let’s dive further into these.

There are four major beliefs that they hold when it comes to salvation.

4 Requirements for Salvation

1. Accurate Knowledge

To have “accurate knowledge” is a mixture of understanding their Bible, Basic Watch Tower doctrines, and how the church works. They also believe that only 144,000 people will be in this elite crowd of Witnesses who will be able to rule in heaven with God and Jesus. These people are actually born again and have everlasting life, while everyone else is called the “little flock.” Those in the “little flock” will have eternal life, but they will still need to sleep and eat and do stuff here on the new Earth.

2. Avoid Debauchery

They use this verse to describe debauchery

1 Corinthians 6:9–10 ESV

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

They use this verse, but they didn’t feel like the list was good enough, so they added a few of their own.

Blood Transfusions

Smoking

Boxing

Participating in a Raffle

Voting

Joining the Military

This is why JWs don’t really celebrate holidays or even birthdays. It gets really messy when they need medical help, because their religion doesn’t allow them to do life-saving procedures, like blood transfusions.

3. WatchTower Membership.

Being a part of “God’s organization” means you have to be baptized. You have to publicly confirm that you are associating yourself “with God’s Spirit-directed organization.”

They believe that God deals with and teaches the people through the organization of the Watch Tower Society directly. God gives the leaders in Brooklyn guidance, and the guidance makes it way down to the everyday people through the various leaders.

This is why many call the JWs a cult. Loyalty to the organization is required to be saved. You can’t be saved unless you go to their Bible studies and understand the Scriptures as they teach them from the organization. They don’t believe you and I are able to understand Scripture properly without the guidance of Jehovah’s organization.

4. Proselytism

(the act of persuading and making converts)

What makes JWs so famous is the way they go door-to-door to spread their literature and share their faith with others.

"God requires that prospective subjects of his Kingdom support his government by loyally advocating his Kingdom rule to others." (Watch Tower, February 15, 1983, pp. 12-13)

They go door-to-door, because they want to spread their belief, but there is also the part that their salvation is at stake. They believe that it is Jesus, plus works, that saves them. At the end of the day, this is the most important issue. Jehovah’s Witnesses are lost in a cult that has them stuck believing that their salvation is based on their own effort, and their understanding of God is clouded by a group of individuals in Brooklyn.

Acts 16:30–31 ESV

Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”

Paul just said believe in Jesus. He didn’t bring up a specific sin they should work on or do any kind of ritual. They needed to simply believe in Jesus and that He died for their sins, and they would be saved.

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Salvation is a free gift from God alone. The only thing you have to do in order to get this free gift is be a sinner. God saves you and rescues you in spite of you. True salvation will bring life change and devotion.

I will close with this: I think many JWs are good people who want to be saved and are seeking truth. How and why they ended up there, I don’t know, but they are in a cult that prevents them from reading their Bible and understanding it themselves. Because they are dependent on a governing body to interpret the Scripture for them, they are stuck in a lie they don’t know is wrong. There is enough truth in their translation of the Bible to doubt. However, there is all the truth in better translations of the Bible.

If you have a friend who is a JW, love them, and show them that the Bible is something you can read for yourself and understand. Let God do the illuminating. I don’t know a better way to explain this than when Francis Chan did this a couple years ago.

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