Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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.