Watchtower - Most Popular Magazine in the World

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.

Opening Banter and Show Setup

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. Taping the show today here, live in our studio in downtown Burbank, California.

Or somewhere close to Burbank, California.

Two of my children were born in Burbank and two of my children were born in Worcester. So there tends to be fights in our household. And No Compromise Radio was born? Born in the bowels of Auburn, Mass.

Hey, I do have, Steve, I showed myself this the other day, but now I'll show you. I've got the Holy Land olive oil, Holy Land holy soil, and the Holy Land holy water. Just how holy can holy be? Thrice holy.

Now, before we start the show, since Pastor Steve Cooley's in the studio today, I thought I'm gonna have to dab him with a little olive oil. I'll put the holy soil under his feet. What kind of shoes are those again?

They're MBTs. Oh yeah, these MBTs, I think. Main battle tanks. Oh, I didn't know that. I thought MBT was some kind of station off the T in Boston. And then there's holy water here that we could maybe wash your hair with, or as we'd say in the Midwest, wash it.

I don't recommend that because there's no telling what might happen when holy water hits me.

Maybe you'd like to go to Israel with us, if there is an Israel, next year for the Israel trip. No Compromise Radio, Omaha Bible Church, Bethlehem Bible Church, and you could get your own olive oil, holy soil, holy water.

If there is no Israel, where are we going? We would be flying around in the Twilight Zone jet. No place to land except prehistoric Canada. Nice. Today we would like to discuss the New York Review of Magazine's recent article on the most widely read magazine in the world.

Now let's build this up a little bit. If people had to guess what the most widely read magazine in the world, what would they guess? Time Magazine. Time? What was more liberal, Time or Newsweek? Well, lately it's been Newsweek.

You know, it's funny, this apropos of nothing, but I picked up a copy of Newsweek a couple of months ago, and every article, every article had a liberal slant. I couldn't, even the one about Rick Perry, the governor of Texas.

Whom I do not know. But I think he's a listener.

Well, yeah. Do you know what I'm gonna try to do, Steve? You don't know this. Christian Harris has a guy who works with him, and he is a relative of Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones, and I'm gonna send him two shirts, one for himself and one for Keith, and I'm gonna see if I can get a picture of Keith Richards in a No Compromise Radio T-shirt.

Will that earn me some points here with you? I don't know, but what if they went on tour?

No-co, baby. This tool is sponsored by No-co.

He's gonna sing happy with that on. Well, I did find this out in this article, Pastor Steve, that the closest competitor to the most widely read magazine in the world, so this would be number two, the AARP magazine, circulation 24 million, and third most widely read magazine.

National Geographic? That's close. That'd be the most widely looked at. Sports Illustrated? They don't read that, they just look at the pictures. No? Good try, though. Better Homes and Gardens. 7 .6 million.

Now, of course, those magazines you have to pay for unless you have some kind of special insight, so tell us about the most widely read magazine in the world.

It is The Watchtower, published by the Jehovah Witnesses.

That's pretty amazing. The most widely read magazine in the world. Give us some statistics on that.

Well, here you go. Every month, nearly 40 million copies of The Watchtower are printed in more than 180 languages and sent to, can you believe it, 236 countries.

Well, here's what I do when I find a Watchtower magazine. If I go to a doctor's office or a hospital and I find one, I just think, oh, that's interesting. I pick it up, have a quick look-see, and then think, it's not right to leave those things without authorization, so they just find themselves a way out of the hospital.

I look at it as like nuclear fissile material just left unrestrained and it needs to be properly handled.

Yes, and if you're going to have the most widely read magazine in the world, then you'll probably have the most widely discarded magazine in the world, too.

And rightfully so. There's nothing better than recycling The Watchtower.

It's interesting that they are trained, The Watchtower folks are trained, according to this article by, by the way, it's Joel Mears, M-E-A-R-E-S, the most widely read magazine in the world. And since it has something to do with New York Review of Magazines, it must be true.

They have a little background here on how you tell Watchtower folks, JW folks, as you go out door to door, what do you do? And they say, raise a topic of interest. And so, you know, if the government is a hot topic, then you kind of talk about that and then you say the government of Jesus is coming, certainly God could do a better job.

Than some of the people we have today. And you know, I underlined that because I just thought, God, certainly God would do a better job than some of the people we have today. Listen, God is going to be, you know, ultimately ruling and reigning someday.

And I'm pretty confident that he's going to do better than all of the people who are ruling and reigning today.

We actually hope that if you're listening today, you say to yourself, I shouldn't rephrase that, I hope Jehovah's Witnesses are listening today. Well, I hope they are too, yeah. I hope they're going door to door listening to NoCo on their iPods.

You know, some of my best friends when I was growing up, seriously, were Jehovah's Witnesses. This one kid, I used to play football with him all the time. Mike Kiktavy, if you're out there, Mike, how are you?

But, you know, one of our friends who lived right down the street, he actually died when he was like 18. And, you know, Jehovah's Witness, and that was pretty traumatic.

Jehovah's Witness Door-to-Door Methods and House Call Cards

Well, I did not know, Steve, that they have a little system as they go door to door. And so they have something called a house call card. See, I did not know that. Yeah, I didn't either. A house call card.

And they work, you know, of course, in teams. And then on that card, so if they go to your neighborhood, you have a card for your house. And they write things on it like NH. What would NH mean? New Hampshire.

That's what I thought. They love New Hampshire. It means not home. They also have another code, CA, which means? California. Call again. They have one B.

I don't have one for that. Busy, I'm busy. And C. Oh, wait a minute. B, C must be my middle initial and last initial. Oh, BC, British Columbia.

Yeah, it stands for child. When a child answers the door. Yeah, I think you'd want to evangelize a child, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I like what they quote one of their volunteers here who says, quote, you're saving people's lives, going door to door, you know, doing this. You're saving people's lives. And it just so reminds me of these Mormon missionaries going around in my neighborhood back in California.

And our mutual friend, Edwin, saying to one of them, you know, what are you doing? And they said, oh, we're going door to door giving people the good news. So he asked them what they were doing and, you know, what this good news was that they were proclaiming.

And he goes, you know, you're preaching spiritual poison. You don't have any good news. You only have bad news.

Well, it's so true. When we get into the program a little bit farther, we're going to give you some advice on what to do when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door. But I'm kind of curious, Steve, before we do that, what was going on when the Jehovah's Witnesses would teach before they technically were Jehovah's Witnesses by name, but the same group, the same philosophy, same theology, taught that Jesus was going to come back to earth in 1914 to govern the world and get rid of the non-believers and then transform this world into a paradise.

What happened to that whole 1914 thing?

Jesus didn't show up, but then they say, well, wait a minute, he actually did. It's just that nobody could see him.

He came back invisibly.

That's pretty tricky. Well, you know, you make predictions, even though the Bible says no man knows when, I mean, Jesus said that, no one knows, but the Father, when Jesus was going to return. But, you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses apparently thought they didn't.

It was going to be in 1914. And so when you make predictions that are obviously unbiblical, and then they don't come to pass, you have to have some way of kind of explaining it away. So he came, but it was, you know, just nobody saw him because he was invisible.

Isn't there some kind of, they probably have a cartoon character out, Mr. Watchtower or something for the invisible God.

What did Jesus say about how it was going to be when he came back? Did he say, I'm going to come back invisibly?

I think I preached on that just recently in Luke 17. Everybody's going to know, because if you see how lightning is across the sky, that's going to be the effect when Jesus comes back. It will be evident.

It will be obvious.

It will be conspicuous. Well, so obvious and conspicuous, invisible.

The Watchtower's Claims About Jehovah's Organization and Motherhood

Let me give you a quote from the Watchtower. This goes back an age to July, 1973. And here's the quote from the Watchtower, Steve. Consider to the fact that Jehovah's organization alone in all the earth is directed by God's Holy Spirit or active force.

That's just, it just sounds to me cultish.

It does. 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.

Well, okay. Okay. Now I'm going to say something really controversial. May I?

Well, let's see. Since we're always biblical, always provocative and always Steve Cooley on Tuesday's controversial, please do. That sounds pretty Roman Catholic. Oh, here we go again. I'm sorry. One drum over and over and over.

I'm sorry, but that's exactly what they say. Steve, when I'm on by myself, I teach positive, uplifting, K-love topics. Well, that's why you have me in on Tuesday to kind of stir the pot. Yeah, but the info at No Compromise Radio emails come to my address.

They should go to yours. Which is exactly how I drew it up. Do you know what? Let's have a new, Josh, get me a new email for Steve. Tuesdays at nocompromiseradio .com. And so all the negative stuff, just send it to Tuesdays.

Some people name their kids like Mondays, Monday, Thursday. They name their kids Rumor, Destiny. So, you know, who knows? All right, let me keep reading this. Here's another one, Watchtower Magazine, 1957.

If we are to walk in the light of the truth, we must recognize not only Jehovah God as our father, but his organization, that is JW's Watchtower, as our mother. Now, I'll just let you say it again. Doesn't that sound like the.

Roman Catholic Church? Yeah, it's quite bad. Can I just say something about the whole Jehovah thing? Because Jehovah is a Germanization, in other words, a German form of the word Yahweh, but Jehovah itself is wrongly pronounced, and it's a word that never appears in the Old Testament, and I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Well, I'm glad you did.

How to Talk to Jehovah's Witnesses About the Gospel

So let's do this, Steve. Let's say there are people listening today, and they're evangelical, and they have some Jehovah's Witnesses come to their door. How much do they really need to know about Jehovah's Witnesses before they can effectively evangelize them?

The reason why I'm asking the question is because sometimes we think we've got to be experts in cults, and when we say cults, we mean anyone or anything or any organization that calls themselves mother or not that adds works to the finished work of Christ for salvation.

What do you say to someone who's listening today? They hear a knock on the door, Jehovah's Witnesses come. Instead of duck and cover, turn off all the lights, kind of like on Halloween night or something, what could they say?

What should they say? What do they need to know about JW's? Hide behind the sofa.

What do they need to know? I mean, you hit the nail on the head, and people are always like, well, I need to study up so I know what to say to them. If you know the truth, you know enough to talk to Jehovah Witness.

You know enough to talk to anyone on the face of the planet regardless of what their religion is because whatever they believe, you just bring the truth to bear. You know, the contrast will become evident to them that they're not on the same page that you are.

They think that they're Christians, and yet when you bring biblical truth to their minds, they say, well, no, that's not right. Why is that? Well, it's because they're not Christians. Jehovah Witnesses need to hear the gospel.

They need to know who God is because they have a wrong view of him. They need to know who man is. They have a wrong view of man. They have a wrong view of sin. They have a wrong view of Christ. They have a wrong view of redemption.

They have a wrong view of heaven. They have a wrong view of scripture. Basically, they have everything wrong. Yeah, but the word trinity is not in the Bible. Hmm. Well, there are a lot of things that aren't in the Bible.

In fact, immaculate conception is not in the Bible either. Wow. And that's a wrong doctrine. The word Bible is not in the Bible. The word Bible is not in the Bible. Good point. Yeah, the word millennium is not in the Bible.

Not in the Bible. The word rapture is not in the Bible. Nope, and neither is the word Pittsburgh, but. Yeah.

According to Watchtower Theology, Let God Be True, page 101, excuse me, 100 and 102, the obvious conclusion is that Satan is the originator of the trinity doctrine. Sincere 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.

I mean, it doesn't deserve a response, but I'll give it one anyway. We don't believe in a three-headed God. We don't believe in a freakish-looking God. Hydra. And nothing like that. The Bible talks about God is one.

However, it also talks about the Father being God, the Son being God, and the Spirit being God. And yet, here we have these three different persons and we have one God. That's not freakish. That's not hard to understand.

I mean, talk about freakish and hard to understand. And their view of Jesus is hard to understand.

Well, before we get there, what about the whole baptism of Jesus? Remember, Jesus was baptized and he did this according to Matthew chapter three, that he would fulfill all righteousness. It was a righteous thing to do.

And here, our substitute, here, our representative was living this perfect life, obedient to the law in all God's demands and commands. And so, Jesus is baptized. And I don't think it's a freakish, three-headed monster.

I think it might be some kind of ventriloquist thing where Jesus is there in the lake, in the river, Lake River, you know, it's like in New England where something looks like, to me, it's a lake. They call it a pond.

So he's baptized in the Jordan River. Then the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests upon Christ. And then the Father says, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. So did Jesus throw his voice?

Did he have like a, kind of a Benny Hinn mastery over doves to fly down?

No, and their view of it is really inexplicable. But again, their view of many things is inexplicable and unbiblical. And I mean, it's the only religion I know that actually has the audacity to change the Bible and tell everybody else that the Bible, you know, that their Bible is the only correct one.

Isn't it interesting that you can add one letter to John 1, verse one, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a God and change everything. That just shows you how little poison it takes, how little poison of works righteousness it takes to damn a people because then it makes grace no longer into grace.

The Gospel Versus Works Righteousness in Evangelizing Witnesses

Let's get back to the knocking on the door, Steve. By definition, we want to give people who come to our house good news. And so what good is work harder, work longer, work more? What kind of news is that?

We tell them the good news. And so if I was a Jehovah's Witness and I knocked on your door and said, hi, my name is Charles Taz Russell. And I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the Watchtower magazine.

Are you interested in government and all that stuff? What would you say?

I'd say, no, thank you. But my friend, Mike, would love to hear from you. Let me give you his address.

No, Tuesdays at nocompromiseradio .com. Would you say, oh, come on in, get the weight off your feet and here have a nice cold Mountain Dew and go ahead and rest? I would say, you know what?

I'm glad you came here because obviously it is God's purpose and design for you to be here today, probably so that you could hear me tell you the truth for the first time in your life that your ears might be opened, that you might hear what the Bible actually says instead of what you've been deceived into believing.

Jehovah's Witness doctrine,.

Quote, no, the Holy Spirit is not a person and it is not part of a Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God's active force that he uses to accomplish his will. It is not equal to God, but is always at his disposition and subordinate to him.

It is Jehovah's active force used by the Almighty to accomplish his purpose.

And yet he, the Holy Spirit is grieved. He distributes spiritual gifts just as he wills. I mean, the number of illustrations of the personhood of the Holy Spirit are numerous throughout the Bible. And so that idea, you know, as one politician used to say, that dog won't hunt.

I'm trying to think of a retort. Even the Holy Spirit called he. Right. He, I even have some personal actions here, Steve. He calls to service, he convicts of sin, he directs, he forbids, he intercedes.

I guess, what kind of force intercedes in Romans chapter eight on behalf of the people? It's a force field. Yeah. If somebody came to my house, and many Jehovah's Witnesses have come to my house over the years.

My favorite one, Steve, is when I lived in Los Angeles. And for some reason, they tend to seek out those who speak other languages and maybe are minorities, whether that's racial minorities, cultural minorities, some kind of diversity kind of folks.

The non-whites is what I mean. And so somebody came knocking at my door and they said, is Mr. Abendroth here? And I said, speaking. And they said, no, is Mr. Abendroth here? And I said, well, what do you mean?

And they were French Jehovah's Witnesses, but my first name is spelled M-I-C-H-E-L. And they thought I was like some kind of Frenchman because that's the last name of a Frenchman. And I said, oh, I'm not French, but I would love to talk to you.

Oh, we don't speak English. I thought you were gonna say, but I'd love to be French. Yeah.

And I said, you speak English because you just were talking to me, asking me my name and who lived here and all that stuff. I said, you are coming to my house, trying to damn me and damn my family with a doctrine that says it's Jesus' blood and righteousness, death on the cross, plus something else.

And when you do that, that's not good news. The good news is that we cannot save ourselves, that we are sinful, we're fallen, we're corrupt. And Jesus, by the love of God, the love of the Son, the love of the Spirit, he comes and he dies on behalf of sinners.

And you need to look away from yourself, trust God's word, repent, and believe in the resurrected Jesus. That's what you need, and you need to get off my property. You know what I say to him all the time, Steve?

If you're gonna be on my property, I talk, you listen, or you leave. That's, and then I smile. Oh, no, no, no. You know, it's a dialogue. No, my house, my property, I talk, or you leave. And so then off we go, and they don't like it.

You don't have to be so mean. Well, I'm here to tell you the truth. You're here to try to damn me, and so it's my house, my property. Get off my property, or I'm calling the cops. I'm calling Pastor Cooley.

And that'll probably work. I just, I found so much, this really was a good article, and some good information in it. And it's just interesting to know that, you know, they have nine kind of leaders of the church, and

Number nine. Number nine, number nine. But they all claim to come from the little flock. That's in quotation marks, that's what they're called. Those are the 144 ,000 Jehovah Witnesses who will actually go to heaven.

Everybody else only gets to be here on the earth, you know, on the renewed earth, and which always seemed odd to me anyway. I mean, how do you decide who's the 144 ,000? I guess those are the people who really, really are serious and work hard.

Big givers.

Yeah, I It's a rich organization, by the way. Yeah, well, they talk about it. Well, I mean, just imagine,.

They mentioned this one building in New York where they have, what, 500 people who live there, and all they get is a small allowance in addition to their room and board and their medical needs taken care of.

So what are we talking about? You know, we're talking about a massive organization that pays its people very little. And, you know, when you're doing something like that and you're collecting a lot of money, you're gonna be very rich.

Watchtower Works Righteousness, the 144,000, and Denial of Resurrection

Watchtower Magazine, 1989. In doing God's, he must now persevere in doing God's will and continue to adhere to all of God's requirements for the rest of his life. Only then will he be saved to eternal life.

It's so sad. I mean, it really is this work, work, work, work, work, work, and then God will like me. Then God will care about me. Then God will even love me. My friend, a really, really bright guy, super guy, wound up not going to college because college was seen as a waste of time.

So he opened up, nothing wrong with working. He opened up a janitorial service. I'm sure he's doing very well for himself. But the point is, you know, he put all his eggs in the basket of the world's gonna end anyway, so why go to school?

Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, page 85, quoting the Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses deny the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and claim instead that he was raised a divine spirit being or an invisible spirit creature.

I guess that is, it goes together with he's come back. He came back invisibly in 1914, so he was raised invisibly too. He'll come back the way he was raised.

It's just so unbiblical. I mean, you know, they have to torture scripture to come anywhere close to the meanings that they've extracted from it. And when it doesn't meet with what they want, they just change it, like you said in John 1 .1.

You know, they put a word a god, and you know, it's interesting because I had a Jehovah's Witness on the porch one day and was talking to him and I said, well, you guys have even changed the Bible. He says, well, what are you talking about?

So I brought up John 1 .1 with him and I said, do you know that that Granville Sharp construction, you don't change the interpretation anywhere else in the New Testament except for right there. Why is that?

And of course, he had no idea what I was talking about, but you know, I got to prove how intellectually superior I was.

Granville Sharp, wasn't that the precursor to the Grand Old Opry?

Yeah, yeah, well, and then it got canceled because low ratings. Oh, like hee-haw.

Listen, if you're a Christian today, you're not any better than Jehovah's Witnesses. We're not better than Jehovah's Witnesses. We have been graced and we have been given faith and eyes to see. So when they come to your door, you say, I get to evangelize today and open up the door and tell them about the beauties of Christ, his finished work, his literal resurrection, his soon return in a literal body, and tell them the good news and tell them to repent and believe in the Jesus of the Bible and don't do this whole, well, what about this verse?

What about that verse?

You're gonna be arguing for no reason. Yeah, you really, you cannot win a conversation like that. They've even changed verses in the Old Testament that I would try to go to. You just need to proclaim the truth to them and pray the Spirit would open their eyes.

The word of God saves, so you don't have to rationalize anybody into the kingdom. Preaching.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE in staff or management.