Jehovah's Witnesses

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Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Hi, and welcome to Renewed Mind.
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I'm your host, Romul Ghussein, and today we have with us Dr. James White, who will be discussing with us the very important subject of the
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Jehovah's Witnesses. First of all, welcome to the show, James. Great to be with you again. Thank you.
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Now, you've heard the subject. We've been able to discuss a number of different subjects, and what I would like to talk about today is the
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Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower Society. Let's start off by asking the question, who are they?
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What are they about? Well, it's truly an American -grown religion. Its initial growth was primarily in the
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United States. It grew out of what was called the failed Millerite movement in the middle of the 19th century, where Miller had gathered a group of people around him and predicted the coming of the
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Lord. Not the first time that's happened, and it continues to happen even to our day. When the
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Lord didn't return, he spiritualized what had happened, and a number of different groups grabbed hold of that and made it a part of their aberrant theology.
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One of those groups developed out of that is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is based in Brooklyn, New York.
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But it has truly become a worldwide religion. I mean, if we're going to give them any positive comments for anything, they are certainly a group that reaches out to every nation on the earth, and there isn't any racism that I can detect in the
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Jehovah's Witnesses as far as that goes. They certainly, most of their growth today is outside of the
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United States, especially in the continent of Africa and places like that. So they're a very zealous group.
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They're very actively involved in the promotion of their beliefs, as almost anyone can testify who has been interrupted while trying to sleep in on a
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Saturday morning when they get a knock on the door. So they're very, very zealous in their promotion of their beliefs.
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And that's quite interesting. I mean, the reason, I think, the primary reason for their growth has been due to their zealousness in evangelical activity or outreach.
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Going door to door. Yes. In fact, when we talk about numbers of Jehovah's Witnesses, they do not have membership roles.
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You don't go down and shake somebody's hand and sign on a dotted line and become a Jehovah's Witness. The only way you are counted as a
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Jehovah's Witness is if you put in a certain number of hours over a certain period of time to be considered what's called an active publisher.
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And so when we look at the numbers that Jehovah's Witnesses themselves provide, those represent the people that are actually going door to door.
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Imagine for most of our churches what our numbers would look like if it's only based upon the number of people who actually show up a certain number of Sundays a month.
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Make a big difference for a lot of us. That's true. Yes. So who was its founder? What are their numbers? Well, you know, it goes back to there were two big names.
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For most religions to get a real start, you have to have a charismatic founder, and then you have to have the second generation.
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So you go back to Charles Taze Russell and Judge Rutherford, and it's sort of like Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
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If Joseph Smith doesn't have a Brigham Young, the religion doesn't continue on. You can have the one good guy at the beginning, but you have to have a second generation.
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And these men lived at a time where there was a lot of prophetic speculation going on.
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And one of the things that has fundamentally defined Jehovah's Witnesses is they've always been looking forward to a very imminent return of Christ.
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And so there's been this tiptoe expectancy, and also combining it with the teaching that only our group is going to be saved when
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He comes. So if you dare question us, and you're not in our group, and it does happen tomorrow, so much for you.
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And over the course of their history, they have predicted the coming of Christ for 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, 1943, 1975.
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And then they got the idea, this doesn't work well. And so while they keep the imminent idea, they've had to start adjusting a little bit to the reality that, well, after the 1975 failed prophecy, over a million people left the movement.
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And they don't want to lose a million people again. And so they've basically stopped setting dates while keeping the anticipation very, very high.
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But they're having to struggle with the fact that, remember I said 1914 was the first time they had done this.
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They had said that Christ had returned back in the 1800s invisibly, and then
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He was going to come physically at that time. Well, what they did is they changed that teaching over time to where Christ returned invisibly in 1914.
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This they got from the old failed Millerite movement. And they had been teaching until just a few years ago that the generation that saw the events of 1914 would not pass away until Christ returned.
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Well you think about that, that generation's pretty old these days. You're talking 97 to have been born there, and initially they said you had to be old enough to have understood the events.
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So they're talking even being at least 10 years old or more. That generation's pretty much gone.
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And so they are having to adjust their beliefs to the reality of the calendar in essence.
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And it's fascinating to watch the things that they were emphasizing as I spoke with Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1980s, no longer emphasizing them today.
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Now their core theology has stayed the same, but the thing that drives them in this soon imminent coming of Christ, that has changed a lot over that period of time.
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And that's a real problem isn't it? Because the scriptures teach that we believe in a God that does not change,
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He's immutable. And so when we have a particular group who takes hold of the name of Christ and say that look, we've got to change our position now, well we need to sort of, alarm bells need to ring in our minds and we need to look at them a little bit more closely.
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And we do these things in love. I mean the Word of God tells us to speak the truth in love. But most
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Witnesses don't know what we're talking about today. Most Witnesses don't know that they had prophesied 1914, 1915.
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Because the society really controls its people and it used to be able to very effectively control the information that was available to them.
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One of the reasons for this change is called the internet and cable television and things like that.
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Back before that they could control the information that their people were being exposed to. So you could cover over your false prophecies of the past.
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You can't really do that as easily anymore when you've got the internet and cable television and things like that. So are the
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Jehovah's Witnesses, are they a Christian based group? Would you consider them to be saved, a group of people who are going to heaven?
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No, I would not. I would not for a number of reasons. Well first of all, they would not want to be included in what's called
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Christendom. From their perspective, the only people who are going to be saved are those who follow their perspective.
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So we are a part of Babylon the Great. They consider the rest of everyone who calls themselves
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Christians to be part of the great whore of Babylon. That's the first thing. How do you know who a
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Christian is? Well they worship the one true God, they believe in Jesus Christ, they believe in the
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Gospel of Grace. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that there is one God Jehovah, and the first thing he created was
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Michael the Archangel. And through Michael the Archangel, he created all other things.
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So there's only one thing that Jehovah God created directly, that's Michael, and then used Michael as the means by which he created everything else.
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Then, at a certain point in time, Michael ceased to exist, and Jesus came into existence on earth.
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There isn't a real connection, because from Jehovah's Witness perspective, we do not have a spiritual element.
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Even though Michael is a spirit being, it's not like a spirit being came down and dwelt a human body, because they don't believe that there is that spiritual element.
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Michael ceases to exist, Jesus comes into existence, he lives for 33 years. He dies on a torture stake, not a cross, it's a big thing they like to argue about, it's not overly relevant, but they like to argue about it.
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He died on a torture stake. He ceases to exist, and Michael the Archangel comes back into existence.
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There is no real resurrection of Jesus Christ, because resurrection means that which died coming to life again.
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Jesus' body, they don't tell us exactly what happened, but some of the theories they've put forth in the past is that it's on display somewhere in the universe as a memorial to God's love, and others that it was dissolved into gases.
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But there is no resurrection of Jesus physically from the dead, instead now you have Michael the Archangel, which is a spiritual being through whom all of the things were created.
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So this is their doctrine of who Jesus is. The Holy Spirit is not a person. The Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force.
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So much so that in the New World Translation, their own translation of the Bible, which is a perversion of the
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Bible, it's not a translation of the Bible, it's a perversion of the Bible, as I can demonstrate, whenever it makes reference to the
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Holy Spirit, speaks of it and says, for example, they were baptized in Holy Spirit.
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Because from their perspective, Holy Spirit is like electricity, or like water running through a dam or something like that.
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It's an impersonal active force of God. So they deny the doctrine of the Trinity. They deny that Jesus Christ is truly the
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Son of God in the sense of deity. He's Michael the Archangel. And they believe that there are three classes of human beings.
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There is the anointed class of 144 ,000 individuals. Now you know what the term anointed is in Hebrew, it's mashiach.
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It is the Christ class. And so you have the anointed class of 144 ,000 individuals, and it's a literal number.
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Then, and those are only Jehovah's Witnesses today. I'll tell you how we know about how many there are in just a moment.
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But then below them, you have what's called the great crowd. The great crowd is, well, unless you live in Brooklyn, New York, the
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Jehovah's Witness knocking on your door is a part of the great crowd. That's right. It's very... They're a part of the kingdom.
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I mean, that's a part of the reason why when we go to a kingdom hall as opposed to a church, that's what they call their place of worship, right?
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Kingdom hall, right. You know, so you actually go there. And so to me, it seems as though that they're trying to set up the kingdom of God on earth preempting his return.
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Would that be correct to say? No, I wouldn't put it that way. What I would say is they believe they're building the kingdom of God.
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But that he's doing so only within this structure of the 144 ,000 anointed, then the great crowd, which is 99 .9
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% of all Jehovah's Witnesses. These people do not have what's called a heavenly hope. They do not believe that they will go to heaven.
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Only the anointed class will be in heaven with Christ. In fact, Christ, who's now Michael the
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Archangel again, is one of the 144 ,000. He's part of the anointed class. The 99 % makes up the approximately, well, as of 2010, there were 7 .5
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million active publishers in Jehovah's Witnesses. That's people who put in the time to actually be going door to door.
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Now the religion's bigger than that because we can tell that by looking at how many people attended what's called the memorial supper.
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On the 14th Nisan, the day of the Passover, Jewish calendar, they gather.
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All Jehovah's Witnesses gather at one time. Now, if you've ever seen a kingdom hall, you know that they have different congregations that meet there over the course of the week.
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So if they all showed up at one time, there wouldn't be room for everybody. So they have to rent halls and rent other places when they all get together at one time for this one meeting once a year on Passover, basically.
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Which is huge. I mean, usually they hire out stadiums and great venues. They have to because last year, 18 .7
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million people worldwide gathered for the memorial supper. That gives you much more of an idea of how many
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Jehovah's Witnesses there are and who's influenced by them. So 7 .5 million active publishers, 18 .7
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gather for this Lord's Supper. Now, this supper, this memorial supper, the elements will be passed through the congregation.
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Passed by. And no one will partake. Except of the 144 ,000, right? Except of the 144 ,000.
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And they count the number of people who partake. Now, if you just happen to wander in and you partook and they didn't know who you were, and you're not one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you don't count.
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But they do account and they try to figure out how many people are claiming to be of the anointed class.
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Because the anointed class, the last one was called into the anointed class in 1935.
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Wow. So that number each year gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.
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So there wouldn't be a lot of room left, I would imagine. The only way there's any room opened up is if someone apostatizes.
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If someone apostatizes, there is an opening. But that would be a very, very, very small. The only people who are taken seriously as being in the anointed class are leaders in Brooklyn, New York itself, basically.
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If you have to have been a Witness, it's pretty much your entire life to be taken seriously in your claim to be amongst the anointed class.
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You also mentioned that they don't have an understanding of the grace of God. And I want to touch on that for a moment also because it seems to me that it is a very much works -based religion.
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Would that be correct? It is. When you... I'll never, ever forget. I think I can illustrate this with a personal story.
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I started corresponding with one of Jehovah's Witnesses many years ago. He was well -known for being able to attack the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And so I was corresponding with him to learn, well, you know, if he's world -famous for this, why is that?
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And we had started to talk back and forth. And one day when we were on the phone, I just decided to ask him,
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I said, are you in Christ? And there was this silence. This is a guy who would just... He'd just have answers like this for everything about the
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Trinity and deity of Christ. What do you mean? I said, well, Paul in Ephesians 1 talks about being in Christ Jesus.
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Ten times in the first 13 verses, in him, in Christ. Are you in Christ? Well, well...
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And finally he said, that's not important. Let's get back to something that is important. And if you would look...
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I remember once looking at the index of the articles published in the Watchtower magazine, which, of course, comes out every two weeks, and that's what they study in their meetings is the
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Watchtower magazine. If you look at the index, the section on gospel or salvation or things like that would be minuscule compared to the section on prophecy in 1914 and the errors of the
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Trinity. And getting ready. A big part of what they do is getting ready for that kingdom.
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Well, because you see, when Armageddon takes place, if you are in the
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Watchtower society, if you are associated with the anointed class, then you will be saved from Armageddon.
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If you are not, then you will be destroyed at Armageddon and you will not be resurrected in the millennium.
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If you die, let's say, heaven forbid, you died today, and Armageddon took place next week, you would have an opportunity of being resurrected.
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When I say resurrected, I need to define that. For Jehovah's Witnesses, when you die, you cease to exist.
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Soul sleep. You're gone. You just cease to exist. Because there's no spiritual element to you. What happens at your resurrection is
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God has a perfect memory of who you were, and you are recreated based upon the memory of that.
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I don't know about you. That frightens me. Because there's no connection. Just like there's no meaningful connection between Michael and Jesus, and then
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Jesus and Michael, there's really no meaningful connection. There's a zombie guy that's going to be recreated in the millennium that's going to look like me and think he's me, but there's really no connection because when
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I die, I cease to exist. It's a sad thing. From their perspective, if you die before Armageddon, then the memory of you, you will be resurrected during the millennium, you'll be taught
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Jehovah's ways, and then tested at the end of the millennium to see if you can live forever in a paradise on earth.
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The great crowd only lives in a paradise on earth, the anointed class in heaven.
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So you will not be able to be in heaven. You look to the anointed class, and you fellowship with the anointed class.
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They are the ones through whom you receive the benefits of God. Which is so uncharacteristic with the
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God that we know. He is a God who even refused to give titles to people because He said,
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The very thing that I want people to categorize you by is by your love, the love which
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I give to you. And the only title that we know that He gave to them was that you would be called disciples or apostles.
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And so that even when the disciples argued among themselves about who would be the greatest, what did the
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Lord Jesus do? He went and got this little child. He said, you can't enter the kingdom of God unless you're like this kid that I'm carrying here, in essence.
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And so we need to be careful not to create classes. And we find that not only in Jehovah's Witnesses, but even it's rampant in Christendom where they try and create classes of people, differences between clergy and laity and so on.
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But what I do find about the Jehovah's Witnesses is that they are hard workers. They are really hard workers.
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So James, tell me, do they go, do they follow the Bible that we hold dear to our hearts?
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They will say they do. But one of the most difficult things in witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses is the fact that they use their own translation.
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They will call it a translation. The average Jehovah's Witness thinks it is the most scholarly thing that has ever come down the pike.
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What's wrong with that? Well, because in 1954 a trial took place where we learned who the translators of the
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New World Translation are. And of the entire committee, you had one person who was self -taught in Greek and had a little bit of Hebrew.
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And that was it. There were no scholars involved with the production of the New World Translation. It is a horrific mistranslation of the
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Bible. To call it biased is to insult the word biased because that's a tremendous understatement.
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It is specifically intended, well, just reading it is as enjoyable as chewing aluminum foil.
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I mean, it just is a very difficult translation to read. Why do you say that? Are they trying to purposely push their own doctrines and agenda?
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The translation itself is very poor, but the mistranslations only happen to appear at exactly the places where Jehovah's Witnesses differ from historic biblical
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Christianity. So they mistranslate John 1 .1 as the word was a God. When you go to Colossians 2 .9,
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it describes Jesus as deity. They come up with a rendering of deity that no one's ever heard of before.
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They mistranslate the Granville Sharp Constructions in Titus 2 .13, where he's called our great God and Savior. There are just all these places.
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Even in Philippians 2, it says, Jesus gave no consideration to a seizure, namely to be made equal with God.
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I mean, it is so patently obvious that the translators are specifically attempting to react against the
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Christian doctrine of the Trinity and to mistranslate these texts, and yet your average
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Jehovah's Witness believes that this is the best translation and that what you have, whatever it might be, is a perversion of God's Word.
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They really do believe that, and that creates a tremendous barrier in our efforts to seek to communicate the truth.
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So one of the first things you would suggest to a Jehovah's Witness would be to actually read some of the translations that predate or have been around for much longer than the translation that they actually use?
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They are still going to take those translations as being perversions because they were done by Trinitarians.
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They really do believe that we are Babylon mystery religion, and so they're actually almost physically afraid of those things.
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What you need to do is be aware of where the mistranslations are, and in fact, if you're well prepared, you can use the
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New World Translation to witness Jehovah's Witnesses. For example, one of the things they did, since they weren't doing original translation work, they're borrowing from what other people had done, the center column references in their own
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Bible, they took from elsewhere. So there are actually certain center column references you can use in their own
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Bible to show the deity of Christ, which is printed in their own material, as long as you know where it is. But trust me,
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I want to say to Christians, these folks spend five hours a week preparing to deal with you.
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And how many of us spend five minutes a week preparing to deal with them? That's right. So they take their stuff quite seriously.
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And that's one thing, I mean, I'd like to touch on that point, is that they are such zealous people. They are really hard workers, and it would be such a shame for them to not understand, really, the truth about Christianity.
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Can you please, in a minute or two, share with us what the grace of God actually is, and how they can receive it?
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The main thing you want to communicate, especially to these folks when you have the opportunity of doing so, is that the grace of God in Jesus Christ, they will talk about that.
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They will mention the grace of God in Jesus Christ. They will talk about their need of salvation. But what they won't talk about is a
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Savior who can actually save them. You see, when Armageddon takes place, it is their faithfulness to the
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Watchtower Society that will determine their obedience. And even then, they have a doctrine,
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I can only call it a doctrine of eternal insecurity, because even then, they leave open the door that maybe in Paradise Earth, if there's ever any evil found in them, they'll be destroyed.
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And so they have no assurance, because they cannot be truly united with Christ, so that His death becomes their death,
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His resurrection, their resurrection. It all becomes focused upon themselves. So while they say, I need grace, in reality, they don't understand that that grace can actually save.
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Does God give us that assurance? Most certainly does. In the Scriptures, God's grace is a powerful thing.
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It is not merely God trying to save. It is God saving. And His grace does not fail.
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We have been saved by grace through faith. And as Paul says, if you add anything to that grace, it's no longer grace.
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If you try to earn, if you try to add the merit, you try to add all the works that these poor people are doing, and I see them.
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I see them where I live. I live in a desert climate, and I see these people out on a summer's day. And it's 114 degrees in the shade.
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I don't know what that is in your Celsius stuff, but it's about 45 or something like that in the shade.
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And they're going door to door. And I just know they are thinking in themselves, Boy, Jehovah's being pleased with me today.
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And Jehovah isn't pleased with that kind of thing, because while you may be zealously trying to serve
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Him, unless you've been made right with Him in the way that He has provided in Christ Jesus, then all of our righteous deeds are as filthy rags before the
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Lord. And they really don't understand that. It's just a shame to see. I mean, we'd be taking on the position of the
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Savior if we're trying to merit somehow our own salvation. All we can really do is receive it and say,
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Yes, I know that you are the Savior. You've saved the world. I want to receive that. And so I really hope and pray that people who have been able to watch this episode, if they are truly born -again believers, they now understand who the
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Jehovah's Witnesses are, and they can actually engage with them. They can talk to them about some of the things they believe.
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But perhaps you're a Jehovah's Witness, and you don't really know. This is the first time that you've been able to see someone who is in opposition,
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Christianly speaking, to what you believe. Please investigate. Please be challenged by what you've just listened to.
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Don't close the book on it, and find out what traditional Christianity is about. James, we thank you for your time.
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Thank you very much for having me. Please stay in tune for the very next episode of Renewed Mind. And may