Jehovah's Witnesses — notes & resources

Submitted by Suchi Myjak on

Class date: 6/3/18

Brief history

Founded: 1879 by Charles Taze Russell

Background:

Before he got his religious career well underway, Russell promoted what he called "miracle wheat," which he sold at sixty dollars per bushel. He claimed it would grow five times as well as regular wheat. In fact, it grew slightly less well than regular wheat, as was established in court when Russell was sued. Later he marketed a fake cancer cure and what he termed a "millennial bean" (which a wag has said probably got that name because it took a thousand years to sprout).

~ History of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic Answers tract

Founding:

  • Raised Congregationalist, Russell tried to convert an atheist at age 17, but ended up being “converted” to agnosticism instead.
  • Some years later he went to an Adventist meeting, was told that Jesus would be back at any time, and got interested in the Bible.
  • Joseph Franklin “Judge” Rutherford was Russell's main supporter and the second head (1917) of the society; he changed many teachings.
  • The organization went through a few name changes before settling on the present name of The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, commonly known as the Jehovah's Witnesses or JW's.
In common with Protestants
  • They believe that the Catholic Church is wrong. However, they go further than any Protestant church of which I am aware, and say that true Christianity disappeared after the death of the apostles. They say that "after Christ’s Resurrection, ... the devil built up a great empire, the papacy. Later, he inspired the creation of the Protestant churches. [They consider] all Catholic priests and Protestant clergymen tools of the devil and enemies of God." - Who Are the Jehovah's Witnesses?
  • They also use the Protestant canon of Scripture, missing 7 OT books.
  • They insist on their own "translation" of the Bible, the New World Translation, used by no others. (More on this below.)
In common with Catholics
  • They do believe in an authoritative religious organization that can properly interpret scripture. However, they deny that theirs is a religion or a church.
Some distinctive beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses

Authorities

  • JW's deny that they are a religion, a church, or a denomination, instead calling themselves a “society” or an “organization.” They claim this society is uniquely God’s instrument and that all other churches, governments, etc. are of Satan.

"Jehovah God"

Christ

  • They believe that Christ was Jehovah’s first creation. Russell taught that Christ was Michael the archangel, who gave up his spirit-being and became a man in obedience to God.

  • Because their Christ was not God, he did not rise from the dead.

The Holy Spirit

  • They also do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a person, let alone a divine person. Rather, Rutherford taught that the Holy Spirit was any power or influence of God.

Purpose of life

  • The main purpose of life is to evangelize as many people as possible into the JW organization.

The soul and its eternal destination

  • They do not believe that the soul is immortal.

  • Those who die before Armageddon will be recreated and given a second chance of salvation during a literal 1000 year millennium of Christ’s kingdom.

  • They deny the existence of hell. The truly evil will simply be annihilated.

  • They teach that only a literal 144,000 plus Christ will rule in heaven. All the other good guys will go to an earthly paradise. (More on this below.)

Odd & ends

  • They do not permit blood transfusions.

  • One of their odder beliefs (for sheer pointlessness, no pun intended!) is that Jesus was killed on a “torture stake” and not a cross. Stranger still is that this belief was not present in their earliest days, first appearing in the 1930's.

Failed prophecies

  • Russell and his successors have taught that the end of the world as we know it would happen imminently, then repeatedly changed the date when it failed to happen.

Bible

  • They have their own “translation” of the Bible, the New World Translation, which is a travesty prepared by men who were not fluent in the original languages. (One translator studied non-Biblical Greek for 2 years, and taught himself Hebrew. The others had no formal training in any Biblical language.)
  • They have altered the words of Scripture to suit their own doctrinal prejudices, e.g.
    • Jn 1:1 is mistranslated as "... the Word was a god..." rather than correctly as "the Word was God"
    • Col 1:15-17 “by means of him all things were created” is changed four times to “... all other things ....”
    • The Greek word proskuneo is correctly translated as "worship" when it is used with respect to "God" but it mysteriously becomes "do obeisance" if it refers to Jesus.
    • In Mt 14:33 and parallel passages “This is my body” is rendered “this means my body”
    • Translates Greek kyrios (“Lord” as in Kyrie eleison) as “Jehovah” dozens of times, but they are inconsistent even about this mistranslation -- otherwise they would have to admit that Jesus is God (Jehovah in their Bible) -- e.g. when it says “Jesus is Lord” or “Lord Jesus.”

 

Resources for details on the above and more information:

Articles:

About those 144,000

This teaching is based on Rev 7 and 14, the only places in the Bible where the number 144,000 occurs.

If you take these passages from Rev (7 and 14) literally,

heaven would consist of 144,000 Jewish male virgins [without blemish, with the name of the Lamb and the Father written on their foreheads] who were taken from a square-shaped earth and are now worshiping a sheep. This would mean that Peter (not a virgin), the Blessed Mother (not a male), and Jehovah's Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell (not a Jew) could not be in heaven.

~ “Talking to Jehovah's Witnesses”, inserted items are from Rev 7 and 14.

The JWs inconsistently insist that all the other items are figurative, yet the number 144,000 is literal.

Russell (first president) said that all “true Christians” would go to heaven, but there were few JWs until after his death. He said that martyrs were true Christians, but ignored the large numbers of centuries before. He held that the 144,000 would be specially sealed to a higher calling, completed in 1881. In the 1930’s it became clear that JW’s would soon pass the number 144,000. In 1935, Rutherford moved the date of sealing to 1931 and announced that future JWs would only belong to the “earthly class.” Later, this date was changed to 1935. Then in 2007, this teaching was changed again to admit that the Bible doesn’t say when the sealing would be completed.

Are JWs Christian?

Again, that depends on what you mean by the word "Christian."

Although JW's claim that they are Christians -- and in fact they claim to be the only true Christians! -- they deny that Christ is God. This places them definitively outside historic Christianity.

Resources for evangelizing Jehovah's Witnesses
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