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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. Mike Abendroth here. What do we do today? What should we talk about today? Well, let's see. I'm just waiting for God to whisper in my ear some still, small voice.
What was that again? What was that? Do a show on Jehovah's Witnesses. Okay. I have to be obedient to the call. If you don't do what God says, it's sin, right? Well, I wasn't told by God to do anything, but I think it's smart and wise and just appropriate to talk about those religions that would denigrate Christ's work on Calvary, denigrate Christ himself and Christ's work.
And my job is to warn you. My privilege is to warn you. I'm supposed to teach sound doctrine and refute those who contradict. When you think about Jehovah's Witnesses, I think to myself, there is nothing new under the sun.
I say to myself, self, history is valuable. Studying history is valuable. Studying historical theology is valuable. Jehovah's Witnesses are basically Arians from the fourth century. They follow many of the teachings of Arius of Alexandria.
And if you understood him, you understood the battle with Athanasius, you would understand Jehovah's Witnesses. You would understand that if God the Father gave birth to God the Son, Jesus Christ who was born had an origin of existence.
That's what the Arians would say in the fourth century. They would say, therefore, the Son was not. There was a time when the Son was not, that he was created out of nothing, and the Arians could not understand the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
So we are going to be very close to that when we study Jehovah's Witnesses. Listen to what Watchtower Magazine says, 1973, page 402. Consider to the fact that Jehovah's organization alone and all the earth is directed by God's Holy Spirit, our active force.
Only this organization functions for Jehovah's purpose and to his praise. To it alone, God's sacred word, the Bible, is not a sealed book. How very much true Christians appreciate associating with the only organization on earth that understands the deep things of God.
Doesn't it sound the same? Some kind of cult, some kind of theological cult that says we're the only way, everybody else is wrong, we've got the inside scoop, and follow us, or else. Watchtower, 1957, page 274.
If we are to walk in the light of the truth, we must recognize not only Jehovah God as our father, but his organization as our mother. That sounds like Roman Catholicism. Today also, God requires and exacts from his children obedience, honor, and respect.
These must be rendered not only to the living God himself, but to his wifely organization as well. Jehovah's witnesses are not witnesses to Jehovah, and we need to understand a little bit more about them.
And so I always think of what's their source for authority. If you ever want to do cult watching, if you'd ever like to try to examine things, ask them what their authority is. And what you'll find very quickly, that with all these, whether it's Mormons, Catholics, or anyone else, including Jehovah's witnesses, that it's not the Bible alone.
They will deny Sola Scriptura, and they will say things like, you can't understand this without our insight. And I quote from Watchtower, September 1910, page 298. Furthermore, not only do we find that people cannot see the divine plan in studying the Bible by itself, but we see also that if anyone lays the scripture studies, one of their books, aside, even after he has used them, after he has become familiar with them, after he has read them for 10 years, if he lays them aside and ignores them and goes to the Bible alone, though he has understood his Bible for 10 years, our experience shows that within two years he goes into darkness.
On the other hand, if he had merely read the scripture studies with their references and had not read a page of the Bible as such, he would be in the light at the end of two years because he would have had the light of the scriptures.
Now that is sick. That is horrible. That is enough to make you think when you get a knock on the door from the heretics outside your door trying to give you spiritual cyanide, that you ought to say, something's wrong.
My spidey sensors are going off. I should not engage. I should proclaim. At the end of the day, if you've got Jehovah's Witnesses friends, I'm glad you have them as friends, but I hope you evangelize them because their God is not going to save them.
Their God is a made up God. Their God is a God energized by demons. They cannot help you. And they, at least I will give them this credit, that they will say, you better not go to the Bible alone. Go to our stuff for the inside knowledge.
Don't go to the Bible alone. Now the people at the door that come, they won't be educated enough to know that. And they'll say, oh yes, we believe the Bible and all that. But here, don't go to the Bible alone or else pretty much you can't understand God.
The Watchtower describes God as, describes itself as, quote, God's sole collective channel for the flow of biblical truth to men on earth. That's the Watchtower, 1960, page 439. And so you've got Russell, this man, I'll call him, I don't know if I want to call him Mr. Russell or not.
I guess I can, Mr. Russell. And he would be seen as God's channel for the truth. He would see this organization as God's only instrument for delivering truth. 1922, page 132, Watchtower. There is no one in present truth today who can honestly say that he received a letter of knowledge, excuse me, a knowledge of the divine plan from any source other than by the ministry of Brother Russell.
And I quote Russell, either directly or indirectly, end quote. If your only source is the Bible, you won't come up with these crazy things that they come up with, these things that denigrate Jesus Christ.
But if you've got some other machinations, if you've got some other kind of revelation, if God has revealed himself allegedly in another way, it's going to contradict scripture, especially when scripture says the canon is closed.
How did Christ view the scriptures? I think that would be a good question that would answer a lot of this. But we don't have time. I've already done shows on how Christ would use the scriptures. And I don't think Jesus saw the scriptures plus other things.
I don't see Jesus acting with the Old Testament. 22 books of the Old Testament in the Hebrew canon are the 39 in our canon. I don't think it was, well, you've got to know this other stuff in order to know the Bible.
And since the Jehovah's Witnesses weren't around for a long, long time, I don't know how anybody could understand the Bible, but I need to get to the second issue when it comes to looking at cults. I think of S's, source.
What is the source of truth? And for cults, it's never the Bible alone. Secondly, second S, the Savior. Who is the Savior according to the Jehovah's Witnesses? And you will see very, very quickly that they do not believe in the triune God.
Let God be true, page 100 and 102, published in 1952. The obvious conclusion is that Satan is the originator of the Trinity doctrine. Page 102, since persons who want to know the true God and serve him find it a bit difficult to love and worship a complicated, freakish-looking, three-headed God.
And I wouldn't even finish the rest of the sentence. So what does the Jehovah's Witness do? They say that the Trinity represents a complicated, freakish-looking, three-headed God. They will say things like the Trinity is not in the Bible.
Well, that is a statement of ignorance. That is a smokescreen. The word Jehovah is not in the Bible. The word Bible is not in the Bible. The word rapture is not in the Bible. The word millennium is not in the Bible.
Theocracy is not in the Bible. And yet these terms are biblical terms. That is to say they represent biblical truth. It's just a way of using words so we can summarize biblical truth. And so just because the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, it means absolutely, categorically, positively nothing.
It means nothing. There are no English words in the Bible. How about that? The word the is not in the Bible. The word dumb is not in the Bible. The word cult is not in the Bible. No English words are in the Bible because it's written primarily in Hebrew, followed by Greek with a little bit of Aramaic.
The Bible clearly teaches the unity of God, one by nature. Deuteronomy 6, 4, Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And it uses the word not just one, but it uses the word only. And so instead of a unified word like one by nature, it uses a word only.
The exclusivity of God and God alone. Deuteronomy 4, To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord, He is God, and there is no other besides Him. Know therefore today and take it to your heart that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below, there is no other.
There's only one God. So with words like one and with only, we don't worship some complicated, freakish-looking, three-headed God. We don't do that at all. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. We're 10 minutes into the show today about Jehovah's Witnesses.
I don't think I'm gonna finish today, so this is gonna have to be a two-parter. I like two-parters, don't you? I like two-parters. Isaiah 43, Before me there was no God formed, and there will be none after me, even from eternity, I am He.
It is so clear that the Bible teaches there's one God. Isaiah 44, I am the first and I am the last. There is no God beside me. Is there any God beside me? Or is there any other rock? I know of none. Isaiah 46, I am God and there is no other.
I am God and there is no one like me. Even when it comes to the Ten Commandments, you listen to the priority of the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, you shall have no other gods before me. Even in the New Testament, Jesus, as he reiterates the Shema, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one.
First Corinthians chapter eight, We know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there were, there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.
Yet for us, there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for him. And the Bible clearly teaches that there's a unity to God, a oneness of God. Now, what do we do with the Trinity?
How do we reason three gods, three persons, one God? What do we do? Well, first of all, I'd like to say that it is very, very important that you believe the Trinity. Peter N. says, the Trinity of God is the doctrine that is fundamental to Christian faith.
Belief or disbelief in the Trinity marks orthodoxy from unorthodoxy. Human reason, however, cannot fathom the Trinity nor can logic explain it. And although the word itself is not found in scriptures, the doctrine is plainly taught in the scriptures.
The early church was forced to study the subject and affirm its truth because of the heretical teachings that arose opposing the Trinity. The term Trinity is not the best one because it emphasizes only three persons, but not the unity within the Trinity.
The German word for three slash oneness better expresses the concept. A proper definition then must include the distinctiveness and equality of the three persons within the Trinity, as well as a doctrine of unity within the Trinity.
And so, one God, three persons. But that easily turns into tritheism. Three gods, we would not believe that. John Askinages and John Philoponus taught that there were three gods. We would deny that. We would deny modalism, where there's one God but three modes of existence.
He first was the Father, he came down as the Son, and now he is the Spirit. And we would deny Arianism, which had its roots in Tertullian, who somehow had the Son so subordinated to the Father that he was some created being that was not equal to God by nature or essence.
We believe there is one and only one God who is eternal and immutable. We believe there are three persons, eternal persons described in the Scripture, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And we believe that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.
We believe that the Bible teaches that God is one, that the Father is taught as God, the Father is God, the Son is God, is taught in Scriptures, and the Spirit of God is God, taught in Scriptures. But they are not the same.
The Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. You see some examples where all three must exist. When Jesus is baptized, the Father says, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
Jesus is in the water. I don't think he's throwing his voice, I don't think he's being some kind of, what was Candace Bergman's father's name, Mr. Bergman, some kind of throwing his voice kind of thing.
And then the Spirit, in the form of the dove, comes and sits on Jesus' shoulder. But you can see some of the stuff even in the Old Testament. And you'll see things like Isaiah 48, 16, the Lord God, the Father has sent me, the Son, and his Spirit, Isaiah 48, 16.
And in the New Testament, you're going to see that the Father is God, John 6. Even God, the Father, has set his seal. You'll see the Son is God. Hebrews 1 .8, here's a good verse for your Jehovah's Witnesses friends.
But of the Son, the Father says, Hebrews 1 .8, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. Can you imagine? The Father calling the Son God. They would have to be equal, there'd have to be a triunus to God, because otherwise there is another God, we've got two gods.
No, there's only one God. And we believe the Holy Spirit is God as well. He is not a force, he is a person. And you can read Acts chapter 5 and quickly find out that they have lied against God and they have lied to the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit, therefore, is God. You find in the Bible, as you study the Trinity, the three persons are recognized as equal. They are recognized as equal, even in the Great Commission, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
In the name, a singular name, not in the names of, that would be three gods, but in the name of, singular God, three persons. The name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You'll see it in 2 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
These members of the Trinity, Erikson would say, while the three members of the Trinity can be distinguished numerically as persons, they are indistinguishable in their essence or substance. They are distinguishable as persons, but one and inseparable in their being.
They are distinct. I think of 1 Peter chapter 1, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood.
Now back to the Jehovah's Witnesses. When it comes to their denial of the Trinity, you can't have the Holy Spirit as some person because that's going to throw a monkey wrench in their theology. So what do you think they'd do with the Holy Spirit?
They would make a he into an it. They would take he, the Spirit of God, never called an it in the Bible, the Holy Spirit they'd say is not a person, in their book called Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life, published in 1995, page 31, it is Jehovah's active force used by the Almighty to accomplish his purpose.
So you have some kind of spiritual energizing force. From Jehovah's Witnesses' official website, we have this statement, no, the Holy Spirit is not a person and it is not part of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God's active force that he uses to accomplish his will.
It is not equal to God, see how they call it an it, but is always at his disposition and subordinate to him. But friends, the Holy Spirit has a personality. The Holy Spirit is a he. The Holy Spirit acts like a person would act.
The Holy Spirit can be shown as an identifiable person in relation to other persons. And he is an important person, not some kind of impersonal force. That's the conclusion. That's what Trevor Cragen says in his theology syllabus at Master's Seminary.
He's an important purpose. And he has intellect, the mind of the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 2. He has emotions, Romans 15, 30. Does a spirit energizing force have emotions? I urge you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, he has a will, 1 Corinthians 12, but one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually, just as he, the Spirit, wills.
So you have mind, intellect, emotions, will. You grieve the Holy Spirit if you sin, that's in Hebrews 4. You can insult the Holy Spirit, Hebrews 10. You can lie to the Holy Spirit, Acts chapter 5. You can obey the Spirit, Acts 10.
You can resist the Spirit, Acts 7. You can test the Spirit, Acts 5. I don't think you can grieve a force. I don't think you can insult the force unless you believe in some kind of nonsense from Star Wars, the force.
Do you know you can blaspheme the Holy Spirit? You can't blaspheme an energizing force. I just blaspheme the lightning. I just blaspheme the electricity in my outlet. No. Did you know the personal actions of the Holy Spirit?
He calls people to service, Acts 13. He convicts of sin, John 16. He directs, Acts 8. He forbids, Acts 16. He glorifies Christ, John 16. He guides into truth, John 16. He intercedes for us and prays, John chapter 8.
He leads us, Romans chapter 8. He regenerates us, John chapter 3. He restrains sin, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. He speaks, he teaches, he testifies, he works. I don't think forces can do that. There would even be personal association, listen to Acts chapter 15, with the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church.
This is what's said, for it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. Now let's make that some kind of energizing force. It seemed good to electricity and to us.
That is ridiculous. But if you've got a certain doctrine, you've got to reinterpret these verses. And it helps if you put tradition, writings, Russell's works, on par with scripture because then if you've got a tie, well then you go with what fits your theology because you've got to have a cult system wrapped up like this.
So before I go on any further, here's what I would say. If you're in a Jehovah's Witness organization, if you hand out Watchtower magazines, if you do, you need to be saved from your sins. You need to be saved from the nonsense that puts the Bible on par with tradition.
You need to be saved from the cloaked, ignorant statement that says, we are the only church, we're the mother of all churches, and you've got to go through us. If somebody ever says that, that's a first time to run.
I don't think you're going to make it to any further bit of truth because when I hear you're the only deal, I'm out of there. That is not good. That is not true. And if you're in the Jehovah's Witnesses, you need to get out.
And you need to say, you know, there's something more important than carrying on this tradition, something more important than being a vital part of the family, there's something more important than my friendships at Kingdom Hall.
I need to do what God says, and that is look to the Son as the God-man. And see, here's what they forget. Jesus had to be both man and God. Why? Well, he was the eternal God, and in time he cloaked himself with humanity so he could identify with us as a substitute for humans because he had to be a human.
And he also had to live a life that humans would live, a perfect, acceptable life, living a righteous life before God at all points of the law, in all points of the law, doing all points of the law, so he could be our substitute.
But he had to be God as well, because if you've got a man who lives a perfect life, then he can't die for a bunch of sinners. Maybe he's a substitute for one sinner, but how can he be a substitute for lots of sinners, a world full of sinners from every tribe and tongue and nation, people that need to be redeemed of their sin?
How can he die for more than one other person? And the answer is, because his righteousness is not just human righteousness, it's an infinite human righteousness because he is God, so he has a righteousness that's infinite, and it's able to be dispensed to as many as the Father is pleased to dispense, through faith.
Not the Father's faith, but through people's faith. And so if you deny Jesus as God, you don't have a substitute who can forgive you all your sins. So then you need to figure out a way to work yourself into heaven, hence we have the works that try to earn people their spot into heaven.
We'll talk about the 144 ,000 and all that next time. And so once you denigrate the Scriptures, and once you denigrate the work of Christ, you're hopeless, and you're without God in this world. You're not going to heaven.
So lay down your arms, lay down your watchtower, lay down your Kingdom Hall attendance, and ask God for clemency based on the work of another, and take his word for it that if you look to the Son, Jesus Christ, the God-man, the one who the Father calls in Hebrews chapter 1 .8, God, then there's hope for you.
And while you're alive, there's hope. So as you get ready to face your Creator and surely die one day, and then judgment, you need the risen Savior. You need the Savior who can save as many as would look to Him and live, and who dispenses His goodness and His pleasure by the work of the person named the Holy Spirit.
He is your only hope. And so you want to look to Him and live. It's Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio Ministry. Write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.
And we'll see you next time.