Understanding Jehovah's Witnesses Part 2

Confronting Cults and Counterfeits  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
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INTRODUCTION

There are 6 million Jehovah’s Witnesses today, spread out in 230 different countries. 1 million of them live here in the United States.
They produce massive amounts of literature every year, including The Watchtower magazine, which is printed in 132 languages. They distribute 22 million copies per issue.
They do not give or receive blood transfusions. They do not use tobacco. They do not celebrate birthdays or Christmas or say the Pledge of Allegiance.
They do not service in the military.
And as we learned last time, the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe there is one God, named Jehovah, and they believe that is the only correct name for God.
They do not believe God is Triune.
Instead, Jesus is a lesser god, who is also Michael the Archangel.
The Holy Spirit is not God, but an active force.
These were 3 of 13 major doctrines we were looking at.
But what else can we learn about this group?
That is what we will spend our time on tonight.
We will be investigating their beliefs regarding Bible translation, Satan, man and salvation, the atonement, the resurrection, souls, the return of Christ and the afterlife.
Before we jump into it all, let me offer up a text of Scripture to get us started tonight.
2 Timothy 4:1–4 ESV
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
Timothy is to preach the Word.
In season and out.
Reproving, rebuking and exhorting with complete patience and teaching.
Then, Paul warns that this work is imperative because a time is coming when people will not hold to sound doctrine.
Instead, they will gather teachers to suit their own passions and desires and they will turn away from the truth and wander off into myths.
We have two opposites set up in this text.
The Word
Myths
The truth which reproves, rebukes and exhorts
Myths will scratch itchy ears
As we look at the beliefs of the Watchtower Organization again tonight, I want you to understand—these are myths.
The changes to Scripture...
The adjustment of doctrine...
The contradiction of God’s revealed Word...
These are examples of people turning away from sound doctrine in order to have their ears thoroughly scratched
There is no Good News in their so-called “Gospel.”
Instead, it is cultic system of falsehoods all set up for the purpose of suiting the desires of those who want a god they can control, a salvation they can earn and a divine judgment they can tolerate.
Let’s pray and then jump into the rest of their beliefs.

THE NEW WORLD TRANSLATION

Let’s start tonight by talking more about their Bible—The New World Translation.
With all of these subjects, we only have time for a brief overview.
The last time we were together in this series, we looked at some screenshots from JW.org which showed us the inconsistencies of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctored Bible.
We can look at their English translation and the Greek interlinear Bible on their own website and see where they have added in words that simply are not there in the Greek.
This error-filled Bible translation first had a New Testament published in 1950, while the rest of the Bible was completed in 1961.
Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that their translation is the work of “competent scholars.”
The initial translation committee consisted of five men and only one of them, Frederick Franz had any credentialed understanding of ancient Hebrew and Greek.
And yet, even Franz was lacking in his abilities.

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.

I have an ESV Bible here. A quick Google search will show the names of the 15 men who were on the Translation Oversight Committee.
All of them credentialed. All of them qualified.
A stark contrast to the New World Translation
Last time we were together, we saw the liberties taken with John 1 and Colossians 1.
Beyond that, we also have the name Jehovah being inserted into the New Testament over and over, despite the fact that we have thousands of manuscripts showing us that the tetragrammaton is nowhere to be found in the Greek New Testament.
We have all of the gymnastics they’ve done to make out the Holy Spirit as an active force, including removing the prefix “the” throughout the Scriptures so that the “holy spirit” would sound impersonal.
We have them adding words and taking words away. Here are a couple of examples:
Colossians 1:27 ESV
To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
to whom God has been pleased to make known among the nations the glorious riches of this sacred secret, which is Christ in union with you, the hope of his glory.
Colossians 1:27, New World Translation
They add the words “union with,” because they don’t believe Christ can be “in you.”
There is nothing in the Greek that gives them license to do this.
Matthew 28:16–17 ESV
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.
However, the 11 disciples went to Galʹi·lee to the mountain where Jesus had arranged for them to meet. When they saw him, they did obeisance, but some doubted.
Matthew 28:16-17, New World Translation
The word “worshiped” has been traded out for “obeisance.”
Obeisance is a gesture of deep respect before a King.
Worship is what you do before a God.
But they don’t believe Jesus is God, therefore, they simply change the Scripture. The very Word of God.
We have examples of them wrongly translating with full knowledge of what they are doing.
They correctly translate “ego eimi” as “I am” throughout the New Testament.
As they should. That is correct.
But when they get to John 8:58, they translate it as “I have been.”
John 8:58 ESV
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Jesus said to them: “Most truly I say to you, before Abraham came into existence, I have been.”
John 8:58, New World Translation
This is a passage where Jesus is saying, “Before Abraham was, I am,” —as in, “I AM the Great I AM that has always existed.”
This does not fit with their quasi-incarnate version of Jesus, therefore they simply translate the verse incorrectly.
I could go on, but you can see how short the NWT falls.
And you can see that it falls short in important places—like the places where Jesus is claiming to be God or being worshipped as God.
They will try to tell you it is the most accurate translation on Earth.
I once had a woman tell me that 60 Minutes said it was most accurate Bible translation—something I couldn’t find anywhere by the way.
But the manuscripts don’t lie. The New World Translation is more than shabby. It is devious.

SOULS

This moves us along to our 5th Major Doctrine and that is the human soul.
As Christians we believe that we have bodies of material dust inhabited by immaterial souls.
John Calvin gave five reasons as to why these immaterial souls are immortal:
The immortality of the soul proved from, 1. The testimony of conscience. 2. The knowledge of God. 3. The noble faculties with which it is endued. 4. Its activity and wondrous fancies in sleep. 5. Innumerable passages of Scripture.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
Jehovah’s Witnesses that the souls of humanity are not immortal. They believe they can die.
And they believe animals have souls in the same way that people have souls, but that we are preeminent because we are God’s special creation.
​

SATAN AND HELL AND ANNIHILATIONISM

...Which leads us to The sixth, seventh and eighth areas we will look at : Satan and Hell and Annihilationism

SATAN

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Satan was a great angel who rebelled against Jehovah. He came for His throne. And it is through Satan that sin and death came upon humanity.
Their beliefs on Satan probably sound less strange than their beliefs on other things.
It sounds much more tame than when we get to Mormonism and we have the Church of the LDS telling us that Jesus and Satan are spirit brothers.
What happens to Satan in the end?
Then what? “The Devil who was misleading them was hurled into the lake of fire and sulphur.” (Rev. 20:10) What does that mean? Revelation 21:8 answers: “This means the second death.” He will be gone forever!
JW.org

HELL

Notice that they say he will be “gone forever.”
This brings us to the issue of Hell and annihilationism.
When we speak of Hell as historically biblical, orthodox Christian believers, we talk about it like this:
The bodies of men after death return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous being then made perfect in holiness, are received into paradise, where they are with Christ, and behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell; where they remain in torment and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day; besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.
1689 London Baptist Confession
But when a Jehovah’s Witness talks about Hell, they say that it is just the grave. Here is Walter Martin:

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.

So they say that there are not two places of eternal existence—a heaven for the redeemed and a hell for the unrepentant.
Instead, there is a temporary holding place where the soul sleeps—this is the grave. This is Hell.
At the end of time, everyone will be release from Hell—or the grave—and they will face God.
Those who died in rebellion against God will be annihilated. He will simply destroy them and they will cease to exist.
This includes everyone from a random person to Hitler to Satan himself.

ANNIHILATIONISM

So Hell is the grave. Everyone goes there.
In the end, God will judge and those who are not destined for paradise will be annihilated, including Satan himself. Here is Walter Martin again:

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

Of course, we reject these conclusions as believers in Christ because of what His Word says:
Jude 6–7 ESV
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
For rebellious angels, the end result is eternal fire.
And then, we have these words from Jesus talking about the human soul:
Matthew 10:28 ESV
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Or this as He talks about judgment:
Matthew 25:45–46 ESV
Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
This is a tough thing to talk to many Witnesses about, because for the ones who were not raised in it, but joined up as adults—many of them came because of this doctrine.
They don’t like the idea of eternal Hell because they believe God cannot be eternally loving, while also being eternally just.
This distorted view of God led away from orthodoxy to the Kingdom Hall.
It is something to keep in mind as you talk to them. The ones I have met who were converts later in life get very emotional when talking about this doctrine.

SALVATION

Now, what their whole system of last things and afterlife shows us is that they do believe in sin. They do believe in judgment. And if they believe in judgment, they are going to believe in some system of salvation.
And indeed they do.
Here is another helpful summary from Walter Martin:

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.

Follow Jesus and inherit eternal life. Sounds like us, right?
This is where you have to poke and prod because the cult-ish tactic of language confusion is strong.
As we think about this ninth doctrinal area, Let’s consider words from their own web site. Let me give you half a sentence:
To gain salvation, you must exercise faith in Jesus
JW.org
Sounds pretty evangelical, doesn’t it? Well here is the rest of it.
To gain salvation, you must exercise faith in Jesus and demonstrate that faith by obeying his commands.​ The Bible shows that you must have works, or acts of obedience, to prove that your faith is alive.
JW.org
There’s that good, old works-righteousness that we expect to see out of every manmade religion!
You must do good works in order to be saved.
Now, as Bible-believing Christians, here is what we believe:
We believe saved people will have good works.
It will be the spiritual byproduct of God’s regenerating work in their lives.
But we do not believe that it is faith AND works that saves you.
It is just faith.
The works are fruits and evidences of saving faith.
But the Witnesses say that not only must you do good works, but if you cease to do them, you are unsaved.
You are like a person who jumps back in the water after being rescued from a drowning incident:
Just as a person saved from drowning could fall or jump back into the water, a person who has been saved from sin but fails to keep exercising faith could lose out on salvation. For this reason, the Bible urges Christians who have received salvation “to put up a hard fight for the faith.” It also warns those who have been saved: “Keep working out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”​
JW.org
So when they show up at your door on a Saturday offering you some free literature, understand that it is not just about concern for your soul. It is about concern for their own.
If you stop knocking on doors...
if you stop attending meetings at the Kingdom Hall...
If you stop supporting the organization...
That annihilation is coming!
So what might sound similar to solid, confessional, biblical doctrine, is actually just works-righteousness where you must believe in a distorted version of Jesus and keep doing everything his organization says or you will be destroyed.

ATONEMENT AND RESURRECTION

With that said, let’s look at Doctrines 10 and 11—Jesus’ atonement and resurrection.
What sort of work of Christ are they supposedly trusting in—along with their own good works?

ATONEMENT

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that when Jesus was born, all of His life came from God and all He got from Mary from a body.
Jesus’ life is not seen as an incarnation though.
God transferred Jesus’ life to Mary’s womb, but He is not a God-Man. He is just a man whose life-force (for lack of better term) is a secondary god.
When He dies, He pays a ransom to God that is applied to all who accept it by becoming Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Jesus’ death removed the effects of Adam’s sin from who who believe and lays the foundation for a new world to come.
Once again, there is plenty of room for language confusion here, so let’s look closer at their own words about Jesus’ death:

“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).

Notice what they say: human life, no more, no less...
Meaning—Jesus is not God.

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).

Again—in their explanation of the atonement, they deny the deity of Christ.
Now here is why this is so devastating theologically—because if Jesus is not God, He cannot pay any ransom.
The Heidelberg Catechism, Questions 16 and 17 will help us here:
Q: Why must he be a true and righteous man?
A: He must be a true man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner he cannot pay for others.
The Heidelberg Catechism, Question 16
So He must be man. And He must be righteous.
Q: Why must he also be true God?
A: So that, by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God’s anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.
The Heidelberg Catechism, Question 17
He must be God to actually bear the wrath.
No one else could do it.
No one else could bear an eternity’s worth of God’s wrath for sin on a Cross in a matter of hours.
And if He hadn’t done it, we would have no righteousness. We would have no hope of eternal life.
In denying that it was the God-Man who died on the Cross, the Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the power of the Gospel to save.
And in its place, they create a new gospel that is devoid of Good News because it lacks a Christ who can redeem.

RESURRECTION

And what about when this Jesus resurrected?
What do they believe about that?
Well, they say that Jesus was resurrected as a divine spirit creature.

“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).

So He did not resurrect with a physical body.
Instead, He was a spirit creature who materialized like an angel in the Old Testament.
And in terms of the ascension, they do not believe He remains in any sort of flesh today:

“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).

They believe this resurrection showed God’s power over death. It showed Jesus had ransomed the souls of believers. And it showed there is access to eternal life and hope for humanity.

THE DOOR OF SALVATION

We have already talked about the errant view of salvation that Witnesses have, but it is only driven home more as we see just how much they miss the realities of the Cross and the Resurrection.
Something you’ve heard me say a few times before is that the Cross and Resurrection are the hinges that the door of salvation swings upon.
If you lose one of the hinges, that door won’t swing.
If you lose both, you don’t even have a door.
There is no door of salvation when it comes to the teaching of Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is nothing being offered up that can save you.
They don’t have the real Jesus
They misrepresent the Cross
The misrepresent the Resurrection
There is no Good News to be found here.

1914 AND THE 144,000

Just two doctrines left now. Let’s first talk about 1914 and the 144,000. We will close up talking about government.
As I talked about in our first session, the official doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is that Jesus came back invisibly in 1914 and that we now live in the harvest time.
This is the time which God is gathering His true people—ie. everyone who follows the teachings of the Watchtower Organization
When the end comes, there will be a sort of two-tiered heaven.
There is heaven, which is where Christ will reign and there will be 144,000 reigning with Him.
These are like the best of the best Jehovah’s Witnesses on the block.
I’m assuming Charlie T. Russell himself will be there.
Judge Joe Rutherford. Maybe some of the prophets he said would resurrect that never resurrected...
But these will be the cream of the crop
Then there is paradise on earth, where most of the Jehovah’s Witnesses will live

“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).

And again, for anyone else, it’s just annihilation. You only exist in God’s memory.

KINGDOM AND GOVERNMENT

And in our final doctrine of the night, when it comes to this Kingdom that will be fully established in the end—the Jehovah’s Witnesses see themselves as being a part of that Kingdom now.
And because of that, they distinctly see themselves as NOT being a part of any other kingdom.
They look at all human government as “The Devil’s Organization.”
This is why they will not serve in the military
They will not say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag
They aren’t standing up and saluting at the baseball game

CONCLUSION

As we close tonight, I think there should be a bit of heaviness on our hearts.
To think of 6 million people buying into these lies is disheartening.
To think that last year, they collectively spent 1.5 billion hours going door to door with a damning message is disheartening.
But let me leave you with words from Tony Brown, a brother in Christ who left the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Before I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian helped me. He was kind and patient towards me. He had his church praying for me from the moment he met me!
Tony Brown
So who did God use to help this man find freedom from this false teaching?
A Christian.
Someone just like you.
Brown says that in order for a Christian to play this role in the life of a Witness, they will need to do the following things:
Friendship: For a Jehovah’s Witness to leave the organization, they will need friendship because they will likely be shunned by all their family and friends inside the cult.
Practical Support: They may struggle to make their way in the world outside of the organization, depending on how much their lives were wrapped up in it.
They may need financial support, emotional support and maybe even help getting set up with Christian counseling
Patience: They are going to have to break away from things they have believed for years and that may not be a linear process.
They might take two steps backward after taking one step forward.
It is important that with anyone leaving a cult, you are patient in your discipleship.
Love: And finally, we need that Christian virtue which binds everything together.
We need love.
Let’s close in prayer and ask that God would give us the opportunity to reach people who in or around the Jehovah’s Witness organization.
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