Right off the top: Jehovah’s Witnesses are not Christians. They preach a false Christ.
Let’s examine some of the beliefs, which are peculiar to the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
- They Deny the Divinity of Christ.
- They Deny Hell and its Eternity
- No Clergy
- Corrupted Bible (New World Translation)
- Jesus is an Angel
- The 144,000 Elect alone have Immortal Souls
Then there are other beliefs that are just weird, like no Blood Transfusions and insisting that God's name is Jehovah..
First, a backdrop: The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a sect founded in 1879 by Charles Taze Russell, a Pittsburgh draper. Russell was born in 1852 of Scottish and Irish descent. He became an earnest worker in the Congregational Church.
Russell was not a Scripture scholar, learned in the Greek language. Under oath in court at Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1913 he declared in support of his claims to be an expert Scripture scholar that he knew Greek. Handed a Greek New Testament, he was forced to admit that he did not know even the Greek alphabet. Neither did he know Latin or Hebrew. He wrote on the Bible, but every acknowledged Scripture scholar in the universities of the world today will agree that Russell’s explanations are for the most part quite contrary to the obvious meaning of the words of the Bible.
After Russell’s death he was succeeded as head of the sect by a man named Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who called himself “Judge” although he had never held an official appointment as such. On May 8, 1918, together with other “Russellites,” he was arrested under the Espionage Act and later sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for spreading insubordination and disloyalty in the American Navy and Army.
Rutherford was succeeded as head of the Jehovah’s Witnesses by Nathan Homer Knorr. He had been on the board of directors since 1934. Knorr began a face-lifting and public relations program which paid dividends in converts. Door-to-door evangelists no longer carried portable gramophones and collections of Rutherford’s records. They were given a thorough training in speech, apologetics, and salesmanship which enabled them to deliver their own Bible talks.
Witnesses are not Christians, for they deny that Christ is God. The Witnesses have no time for the Christian churches. Russell said that in 1879 God had rejected all existing Churches and made the Russellites the only spokesmen thenceforward.
As for civil authority, they say they owe their only loyalty to a “Theocratic Kingdom” and refuse the duties of earthly citizenship. There are two groups in the world, the “Theocratic Kingdom” and “Satan’s Organization.” This latter includes all churches and governments. Just as among the churches the papacy is the “Beast” par excellence, so among the nations are America and Britain.
Let’s examine some of the beliefs
- They Deny the Divinity of Christ.
Sooner or later, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are going to knock on your door. This tract gives the low-down on their beleifs, and how to respond to them.
www.catholic.com
Is Christ God?
- “Christ is God’s Son and is inferior to him.” Given in support of this position are these verses: “And lo, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matt. 3:17). “I proceeded and came forth from God” (John 8:42). “If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28). “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). “The head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one” (1 Cor. 15:28).
At first glance these citations seem imposing. It does seem that Christ is inferior to God the Father in some sense. But the New Testament also has verses which clearly show Christ and the Father to be equals. For example, there is John 10:30: “I and the Father are one.” Or, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Or, “The Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath but also called God his Father, making himself equal with God” (John 5:18). Or, “[Jesus], though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil. 2:6). These seem to contradict the other verses.
How do we make sense of all this? By keeping in mind that Jesus is both God and man. Some verses, such as these last four, refer exclusively to his Godhead. Others refer to his humanity. So far as he is God, Jesus is equal to the Father. Christ’s human nature, though, is created and is therefore inferior to the Father. But to focus on this aspect of Christ to the exclusion of his divine nature is a gross misunderstanding of who and what the Bible says Jesus Christ is. Other verses cited by the Witnesses, such as Matthew 3:17, show merely that Christ is God’s Son, not that he is inferior (in fact, John 5:18 shows that being God’s Son is being equal to God).
Was Christ Created?
- “Christ was the first of God’s creations.” Verses cited by Witnesses in support of this claim include: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15). “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen [Christ], the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation’” (Rev. 3:14).
In the first of the two verses, Witnesses think that “first-born” implies succession and inferiority. But the title “first-born” refers to Christ’s place as the chief and unique Son of God (cf. Rom. 8:29).
Further, the Greek of this verse can also be translated as “the first-born
over all creation,” as in the New International Version of the Bible.
Regarding the second verse from Revelation, it’s hard to see how it helps the Witnesses at all. It merely says Christ was the source of creation. This implies Christ is divine.
The fact that there was no time when the Son did not exist is indicated in John 1:1–3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” This passage also shows that the Son is not a creature because all created things were made through him.
More to come
