Understanding Jehovah's Witnesses Part 2
INTRODUCTION
THE NEW WORLD TRANSLATION
The New World Bible translation committee had no known translators with recognized degrees in Greek or Hebrew exegesis or translation. In fact, Frederick W. Franz, then representing the translation committee and later serving as the Watchtower Society’s fourth president, admitted under oath that he could not translate Genesis 2:4 from the Hebrew.
SOULS
SATAN AND HELL AND ANNIHILATIONISM
SATAN
HELL
Hell, meaning a place of “fiery torment” where sinners remain after death until the resurrection, does not exist. This is a doctrine of “Organized Religion,” not the Bible. Hell is the common grave of mankind, literally sheol (Hebrew), “a place of rest in hope” where the departed sleep until the resurrection by Jehovah God.
ANNIHILATIONISM
Eternal Punishment is a punishment or penalty of which there is no end. It does not mean “eternal torment” of living souls. Annihilation, the second death, is the lot of all those who reject Jehovah God, and it is eternal.
ORTHODOX RESPONSE
SALVATION
5. Man was created in the image of Jehovah but willfully sinned, hence all men are born sinners and are “of the earth.” Those who follow Jesus Christ faithful to the death will inherit the heavenly Kingdom with Him. Men of good will who accept Jehovah and His Theocratic Rule will enjoy the “new earth”; all others who reject Jehovah will be annihilated.
ATONEMENT AND RESURRECTION
ATONEMENT
“The human life that Jesus Christ laid down in sacrifice must be exactly equal to that life which Adam forfeited for all his offspring: it must be a perfect human life, no more, no less. . . . This is just what Jesus gave . . . for men of all kinds” (You May Survive Armageddon into God’s New World, Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1955, 39).
Thus, when God sent Jesus to earth as the ransom, he made Jesus to be what would satisfy justice, not an incarnation, not a god-man, but a perfect man, ‘lower than angels’” (Should You Believe in the Trinity?, 15).
RESURRECTION
“Jehovah God raised him from the dead, not as a human Son, but as a mighty immortal spirit Son. . . . For forty days after that he materialized, as angels before him had done, to show himself alive to his disciples” (LGBT, 40).
“Jesus did not take his human body to heaven to be forever a man in heaven. Had he done so, that would have left him even lower than the angels. . . . God did not purpose for Jesus to be humiliated thus forever by being a fleshly man forever. No, but after he had sacrificed his perfect manhood, God raised him to deathless life as a glorious spirit creature” (LGBT, 41).
THE DOOR OF SALVATION
1914 AND THE 144,000
“To receive everlasting life in the earthly Paradise we must identify that organization and serve God as part of it” (The Watchtower, February 15, 1983: 12).