11 - Jehovah Witnesses, Part 1

Well, welcome to the

Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions.

This is our class on an introduction to the major Western religions.

Tonight's class will be lesson number three, Jehovah Witnesses. We're glad to have you with us.

My name is Andrew Rappaport. This is put on and hosted by Striving for Eternity Ministries.

You can go to strivingforeternity .org to get all the information you need about these classes and many others.

You can also go there to pick up a syllabus. If you have a syllabus, I strongly encourage you to take it out now and follow along because it will be helpful.

If you go to the website, you can also pick up my book, What Do They Believe?

A Systematic Theology of the Major Western Religions, which most of this class is based off of the research of 14 years that was put into that book.

I encourage you to watch these classes live Monday nights, eight o 'clock

Eastern Standard Time. Why? Because if you had watched it live, well, you got to see the first recording that didn't record and you knew all that happened.

If you didn't watch it live, well, you get whatever I say now. Just saying.

Technology sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. We're going to hope that it works well.

This time, we needed to do a complete reboot. So, with that, we're going to teach the class again.

Those who are watching it twice get to vote on which one they liked better. Just saying. All right.

So, we are looking through this class and I do want to say up front, I know there are some who are going to watch this that are believing in Jehovah Witness doctrine.

If you're going to criticize us, like the Mormons did and like the Catholics did, the thing

I'm going to ask you is to provide one thing that I state that's incorrect about what you believe.

Just because I compare what you believe to the scriptures doesn't mean

I'm hating you. It means I'm properly defining what the scriptures say as compared to what you believe.

Now, if I say you believe something and your documents don't say that you believe it, that would be an issue and that you should bring to my attention.

However, I've yet to have anyone bring anything to my attention that I'm saying they believe that's inaccurate.

Why? Because not only did I study these things from their documents, but I took it to authorities in these organizations to verify whether my conclusions were correct.

So, with that said, let's start by looking with the

Jehovah Witnesses and let us give some background. The Jehovah Witnesses is an organization that was started by Charles Taze Russell, who at the age of 16 had turned from Presbyterianism and Congregational churches to become a skeptic.

He refused to accept the doctrine of hell and founded what's now known as the

Jehovah Witnesses. The movement really started in a Bible study in Pennsylvania in the 1970s where Russell was teaching and was elected their first pastor, even though he never had any kind of formal

Bible education. Remember, he left his nominable Christianity living at 16.

I always find it interesting these people that want to start new organizations or think that they're authorities on what

Christianity is because they were raised in a Christian home and were against it and by the age of 16 they reject everything that was being taught and they decide that they know better.

With never usually having any study, and I'm thinking of others, I'm thinking of men like Joshua Evans who's a

Muslim and at age 16 he rejected Christianity and knew that Islam was correct.

Things like that. But you have this happen often where just because someone's raised where their parents believe something doesn't mean they're scholars.

That doesn't mean they understand these things. They have to do the study. I don't say that I understand

Jehovah Witness teaching because I met some Jehovah Witnesses. No, I spent 14 years studying these religions.

I spent a lot of time reading these documents, talking with people that are in the religion to understand it accurately.

So after leaving his job, Russell's this is, as an assistant editor to a small monthly magazine he founded his own periodical called

Zion's Watch and the Herald of Christ's Presence. The magazine's focus focused on the teaching that Christ was already present and had been since 1874.

In 1884, it was in 1884 that Russell founded the

Zion Watchtower and Track Society and installed himself as its first president.

Russell followed the teachings of William Miller who taught that the return or the second advent of Christ occurred in 1843.

What happened in 1844? Well, they realized that he didn't come in 1843.

So when that didn't happen, they changed the date to 1844. When Christ failed to return in 1844, some of the followers like Russell believed that Christ had done something crucial in 1844 but had done it invisibly in heaven.

So it was a spiritual return. And Russell taught that Christ's presence would climax in 1914 with God's judgment on all human nations, the end of the

Gentile nations, and establish the kingdom of God. What did happen in 1914?

Well, you had the whole world at war. If you're going to predict a false date and you do it once and you do it twice, do it 60 years out so maybe you'll be dead and gone before anyone realizes that you did it wrong again.

Harold Campion could have learned something from him in that way. But you have a lot of people.

I remember the book, 88 Reasons Why Christ is Going to Return in 1988. And in 1989, the same author wrote a book, 89

Reasons Why Christ is Going to Return in 1989. The 89th reason?

He didn't return in 88. Harold Campion predicts in 1984 that Christ will return in September.

I think it was September 10th and then he got that wrong. Oh, I meant October. Then he does another prediction in, you know, what, 2014.

So you have a lot of people that do this date setting. And when it doesn't come to pass, they change the date and then they say it was a spiritual return.

Campion was no different in that sense than what happened with Jehovah's Witnesses. After Russell's death,

Judge Joseph Rutherford took over the helm in 1917 after a three -month power struggle.

And Rutherford adopted the name that they're known as today, Jehovah's Witnesses. That became the name of the organization. In 1939, the society changed the name of its flagship periodical from Zion's Watchtower and Herald of Christ's Presence to The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom.

So the name change reflects several serious developments, significant changes that reflect their abandonment of Russell's chronology and his teaching that the

Armageddon really was going to happen in World War I because it didn't.

And so we were not in Christ's presence. And so it's looking forward to the kingdom instead of the kingdom being here.

The reality is that the society began teaching that the coming, the presence was really a period of time that did occur in 1914, but it's just a time, it wasn't a climax anymore.

And so the society made this change only after every effort to extend the chronology beyond 1914 had failed.

Most notably, Rutherford claimed that 1925 would mark the date, the world powers and resurrection of Christ and of the dead of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others.

And so what you end up having is, another date would be 1975. And again, that was a spiritual return supposedly.

So that's the founding of the church. And so let's begin by looking at the authority.

That's the first one we're going to look at, the authority.

And here we're going to look at several things. And we do this because we want to say, we want to be able to quote documents and things that are authoritative for these different religions so that this is what their documents say.

This is the only thing we can go by to say what is it they believe. We have to go by what they teach in authoritative writings.

Some Jehovah Witness that you meet on the street is not going to be an authoritative source, but there are sources that are their authorities that you can go to.

So with that, let's take a look at their first letter

A if you're in your syllabus, the Bible and the New World Translation. So let's look at the

Bible. Jehovah Witnesses believe that the Bible is divinely inspired and accurately, that's your blank there, accurately transmits

God's thoughts and will to mankind. So let's put that first slide up if we could.

Thank you. This is from the Bible, God's Word or Man's, 1989, page 12.

There are many strands of evidence proving that the Bible is really

God's Word. Each strand is strong, but when they are taken together, they are unbreakable.

Another is in Can You Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, 1982, page 55, and that states, yes, the

Bible is true. As so many, many examples prove, the

Bible does not contain, does not contain only true history.

Everything it says is true, even when it touches on matters of science, it is miraculous, marvelously accurate.

The emphasis there is in the original. So what you have is that they do believe in the

Bible. Now they will use the King James Translation is the only one that they will use other than the

New World Translation. So what is the New World Translation? The New World Translation of the

Holy Scriptures is the, what they would say, the best, that's your blank there, the best translation of the

Bible because it was accurately translated by faithful men. When you notice this, they talk about the faithful men.

That's going to become important when we look at the organization itself because you're seeing that it's the men that become the trusted source, not the

Bible itself. It's the translation, okay? And so let's put some verses up there if we have.

Thank you. The endeavor of the New World Bible Translation Committee has been to avoid this snare of religious traditionalism.

That is taken from New World Translation of the Greek Scriptures, 1950, page six.

Another quote that we have, outstanding among the

Bibles is the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures.

Accuracy, uniformity, clarity, and up -to -date language mark this excellent work.

Bible study aids without equal. This is an indispensable help to sincere searching students of God's Word.

This is from What Has Religion Done for Mankind, 1951, page 351.

The irony is that the translators of the New World Translation were sued in court, were brought to court, and in court could not read

Hebrew as authorities that were translating it. One of the problems that they have, and you could look that court case up and see different things, but that was an interesting case because they argued under oath that they could read

Hebrew and Greek fluently, and the lawyer gave them a text of Hebrew and asked them to translate it, and the translator could not.

All right, so one of the things I have here with me is several of the copies.

When the New World Translation first started being translated in the 1950s, it came in several volumes.

So as they wrote it, they would produce, so it started with the Greek in 1950, and then they went into the

Old Testament, and you see that there are six volumes of the Old Testament where they have their

Greek manuscripts, sorry, their translation. So the

Greek was done in one volume, the Hebrew in six, and they've updated it.

This is, let's see, I got this here is my 1970 version. I think this is the 1970 edition, and then this version here in the black is 1984.

And so why is it interesting? Remember I said that they talk about it being translated. Let me pull one verse up to show the inaccuracy of the translation that they say is so perfect and so trustworthy by faithful men.

Colossians 1, 16 and 17. We end up for 15 and 16, I should say.

It says this in verse, really in verse 16 and 17. It says, let me start in verse 15.

He is the, speaking of Christ, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, because by means of him all other things, and the word other is not in brackets here, all other things were created.

Drop down to verse 17. Also, he is before all other things.

Again, the word other is not in brackets. This is 1950. They got called to the carpet because of the fact that the word other is not in the

Greek. It had to be added to their translation because they do not believe that Jesus Christ is

God. They believe he was a created being. And so their inaccuracy of their translation got exposed and in, this is the, what

I say, 1970 version. They add the word other in brackets.

So in verse 16, because by means of him all other things, and other now is in brackets.

Same with verse 17, all other things, and by means of him all things were made.

And the word other is now in brackets. So if these translators are people that we should be able to trust, why did it take exposing their inaccuracies for them to correct it?

Just saying. The fact that there's so many revisions that they had to do, we're going to get to that in a minute, really kind of shows something.

But what's their real authority? The real authority becomes the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.

And the reason that becomes the real authority is because they would say this, there is only one true religious organization administered by the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Believers must submit to this one true organization even if it contradicts their long -held view or appears to them to be unbiblical.

And the reason is because the Watchtower becomes the authority that can do the translation. Let's put up the slide and see.

We acknowledge, this is by the way from Watchtower, their magazine, April 15, 1939, page 125.

We acknowledge as the visible organization of Jehovah on earth, the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and recognize this society as the channel or instrument through which

Jehovah and Jesus Christ give instruction and meet in due season to the household of faith.

So what you see here is they hold this organization.

Well, what do they say about the organization? Well, the JWs, by the way, I'm saying JWs sometimes in place of Jehovah Witness just for time.

JWs believe that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society can correctly interpret

God's word because it is an organizational, that's your blank there, organizational book that cannot be properly understood by individuals without the help of the organization through which

God works. That is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Can you support that,

Andrew? Yes, let me do that. This is from Watchtower, October 1, 1967, page 587.

The Bible is an organizational book and belongs to the Christian congregation as an organization, not to individuals, regardless of how sincerely they believe that they can interpret the

Bible. The Bible cannot be properly understood without Jehovah's visible organization in mind.

Also, this is from Watchtower, May 1, 1957, page 274.

Quote, God has not arranged for that word to speak independently or to shine forth life giving truths by itself.

It is through his organization God provides this light. Now, here is the problem

I have with this. Such a claim substitutes the organization for the

Bible. It raises the organization above the

Scripture because you need the organization to tell you what the Scripture means. So the organization becomes the authority because it is the only one that can tell you what

God's word means. So anything that is the only source of interpretation, that becomes an authority over the thing it's interpreting.

That's just the reality. Does this sound Roman Catholic to you, by the way? Very much so. Just like the

Roman Catholics say you need the Roman Catholic Church to do interpretation, you can't have individuals do an interpretation of God's word.

Same thing here. The difference is this organization didn't start until 1870.

So what did Christians have for 1800 years? They had nothing.

They were waiting for Russell. So they couldn't tell what God's word meant until this organization came on the scene.

But what this does is it diminishes and almost removes completely the ministry of the

Holy Spirit when the illuminating ministry he has. One of the things of the ministry of the

Holy Spirit is he brings to light and understanding God's word to his people. And they supplant that ministry of the

Holy Spirit with their organization. And so they're arguing that we need their organization to understand

God's word. This is, by the way, even if it seems, it looks to be unbiblical, you read what they say and it looks to be unbiblical, they can't be wrong because they have the organization.

And that becomes the authority. And therefore they reject any criticism. This is why it's so hard to explain the truth and witness to Jehovah's Witnesses because they can't accept anything you say.

That's why they won't accept your literature. They can't accept your literature because that's not from the watchtower.

That's the reality. And yet I've already shown one inaccuracy of this organization that is to be trusted.

And if they can't be trusted in their translation of being fair with the text of Scripture, how can we trust that they're going to be fair with the meaning of the text of Scripture?

So you end up seeing that they supplant God's word, totally contradicting

Scriptures that talk about the ministry of the Holy Spirit and his illuminating work.

John 16, 13, 1 John 2, 17 that talk about that role.

Moreover, Ephesians 1, 17 and 18 state the Spirit will provide wisdom and illumination to the revelation of God in the

Bible. 1 Corinthians 2, 12 says, we have not received the

Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what

God has freely given us. Paul indicates that one stands approved by God through diligent study of the

Scriptures, 2 Timothy 2, 15. If Paul the

Apostle was judged by Scripture by the Bereans in Acts 17, 11, then surely we can use those same

Scriptures to judge the watchtower. But they argue that the watchtower is the judge over the word of God.

And so, this is one of the areas why I have such disagreement with the watchtower because what they end up doing is saying that the organization becomes the authority and they end up removing the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. If you want to see more and where we expound on that, you can take our class in the

School of Systematic Theology, the lessons on the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the

Holy Spirit. We go over the passages that talk about the illuminating work of the

Holy Spirit and how that's important. This ends up being a major thing.

This is one of the things that we see in Jeremiah 31, in Ezekiel 24 -28 where it talks about the

New Covenant and the sign of the New Covenant would be that the Holy Spirit would indwell

God's people and no longer would we need men to tell us His word, but the

Spirit Himself would indwell us and tell us

God's word Himself. That's the reality. And so, they violate, they break really the meaning of the

New Covenant that God made with us. So, what are some other publications? Some other publications that we have here,

I mentioned this New Living Translation. So, this is the

Bible published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society for Jehovah Witnesses.

It was first published between 1950 to 1960. It was revised in 1961 and again in 1970.

And like I said, if it had to be revised, how accurate was it? I mean, it was revised, it's finished in 1960 and they had to revise it a year later.

Okay, they put it into one volume at that point, but they did do some revisions. And then again, nine years later after that revision, so that wasn't an updating of language.

And as I exposed to you, just from 1950 to 1970, you end up seeing how the dishonesty that they had in their first translation got exposed and they had to correct things.

So, they believe that the New World Translation was written to restore the name Jehovah in the

Old Testament where the consonants YHWH appear. Also, they insert the name

Jehovah in the New Testament where the text refers to God the

Father. The Watchtower Society claims that this is the best translation available today.

If it was the best translation, they wouldn't have had the dishonesty of having to add a word other into Colossians 1, 15 and 16 because without the word other, their doctrine of Christ breaks down clearly and they recognize that and that's why they had to add that word that doesn't appear in the

Greek. So, what's with the name Jehovah? Okay, so in Hebrew, you don't have vowels or you didn't have vowels at the time.

And so, what you had was consonants and the way you pronounced things told the

Jews when they added vowels what vowels to add. But when you have a word like what we would say

Yahweh, we have these consonants and what we don't have is we don't have the pronunciation.

Why? Because in Exodus, the name of God was so holy that it was said, do not say

God's name in vain. And so, what Jews stopped doing was they wouldn't say the name for Yahweh.

When they see that name, they substitute Adonai, another name for God which means

Lord or Master. So, they would commonly do that. Commonly in the

Old Testament, you will see if you have a New World Translation, you'll see it will say Lord Jehovah or God Jehovah or Jehovah God.

And what you have in New King James, King James, New American Standards, some of these translations, you will see the consonants

YHWH in all capitals. Whether it's Lord or God, it'll be in all capitals and that's an indicator that it's that way.

So, sometimes you see Lord God and Lord or God will be in all capitals. That means that it is this word

Yahweh or Jehovah. And so, what the translators would do or people would do is take the consonants and they would either add the vowels for Adonai or the vowels for Elohim, two of the names for God.

And so, you end up getting that and you end up with Jehovah. This is a special name.

They've added that back in and so that is why they think this translation is so accurate.

Another thing that you have is the number two in your syllabus, the Kingdom of Interlinear Translation of the

Greek Scriptures. This was first published in 1969, revised in 1985.

Again, why would you need the revision? Well, you need it if people are exposing the inaccuracies of your work.

It presents, according to them, a reliable text of the

Greek New Testament. They base it on, for those scholars, the

Westcott -Hort Greek text and the Watchtower's word -for -word

English rendering underneath the left side of the page with the New World Translation on the right.

An interlinear, what it is, is you have your Greek or Hebrew and the

English equivalent and you have that word -by -word and then a lot of times they'll have on the side a translation,

New King James, King James, ESV, New World Translation. So, that's not uncommon.

But this is where they end up trying to argue and they will go to this to argue for the

Greek. Now, here's the thing. They often don't know Greek. What they have is these sort of things that they argue for and they argue that this is where they're going to know their

Greek. So, with that, if you know Greek, you can have a real lot of fun.

I mean, I had Jehovah Witnesses came to my door. They wanted to argue that the word other in Colossians 15, 16, 17, well really 16 and 17, that the word other is in the

Greek. Really? Wait a minute. I walk into my office, grab my

Greek New Testament off of my shelf, walk over to them, open it up to Colossians 1, turn it around, point to verse 16 and said, show me.

And they go, ahumada, ahumada, ahumada, ahumada. If you're going to make an argument from the Greek, at least understand a little bit of the

Greek more than just reading in, well, in a literary or in what some

English document says. Especially when it comes from a group that in court it was proven they didn't know the languages.

Just saying. All right, number three, insight on the scriptures. This is a Jehovah Witness official Bible encyclopedia.

It comes in two volumes, published in 1988. Reasoning the Scriptures, I have that here.

Where is that? Here we go. Reasoning the Scriptures is a topical handbook which answers the most commonly challenged

Watchtower interpretations and teachings from the scriptures. It was published in 1985 and revised in 1989.

It is arranged alphabetically by topic and is one of the JW's most important booklets.

Why? Because it tells them how to respond to us. I was sitting outside in New York at my father -in -law's house reading the scriptures.

Jehovah Witness walked by. He happened to give me my copy. Then he wanted to make me pay for it.

I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, was this a gift? He was like, yes, yes, yes, yes. But it costs money. I said, if it's a gift, it should be a gift, not payment.

I said, but that is kind of like your doctrine of salvation. You say it's a gift, but you have to earn it.

If this was a gift, I shouldn't have to pay for it because there was no way I was paying him for it. Also, there was no way

I was giving this back. This was a great resource because this is what tells me how they are going to answer my arguments.

Now I'm prepared. You can get, if you want to get the multi -volumes of the New World Translation or get this book,

I would encourage you to go on eBay now. Back when I got this, eBay wasn't around. Internet wasn't a thing.

I know some of you don't even know what time was like before the internet, but this is a great resource to have because what it does is it provides for you how they're going to respond to your arguments so you can be prepared.

When you get that knock on your door, you're ready and they don't like that.

That's one of their most important books. Number five, Should You Believe in the Trinity is another essential book that they have.

This is a booklet that seeks to refute the doctrine of the Trinity. Here's the thing, most people become

Jehovah Witnesses that are first generation Jehovah Witnesses come to believe in Jehovah Witness doctrine because of the doctrine of the

Trinity. They usually come out of Roman Catholicism or some

Christian group, but they really were never Christian, never really taught, never taught to defend their faith, and so they do not know how to answer the doctrine of the

Bible and show you where we find support for the doctrine of the Trinity. So, they read this booklet Should You Believe in the

Trinity from the Jehovah Witnesses and what you end up with is they have this really good argument where they say, see, this is not biblical.

It's not from Scripture. People go, they must be right. They must be true. We need the watchtower to interpret

God's Word and they start believing it and that's why that book is so important. The Awake Magazine, number six, this is the semi -monthly magazine that targets mostly to the unbelievers, those that are not

Witnesses, and focuses on non -biblical trends and topics in society.

There are nearly 13 million copies printed bi -weekly into 75 languages.

It is designed to inform the Witnesses about current issues and to attract non -Witnesses to the religion.

This is when they come knocking on your door, what they're going to offer you. They're going to offer you an Awake Magazine. They deal with cultural issues and things like that to get your interest.

Another publication there is number seven, The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom.

This is the semi -monthly magazine and chief means of instructing

JWs in doctrine and practice. There are over 16 million copies printed into 120 languages bi -weekly and these numbers may have gone up since I saw them.

So, that's their main magazine that's going to give them their doctrine. These are published by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, therefore they must be authoritative because they're the only ones that can do the interpreting.

There's numerous other booklets and pamphlets used to introduce the teachings of The Watchtower to society and prospective members for conducting

Bible studies, and I use that term loosely because they don't really study the Bible, they study

The Watchtower, and interested parties and newly baptized. I have a couple of them here, and I have a lot of them, but these are just two that I grabbed.

The Greatest Man That Ever Lived, Man's Search for God. So, you can see these are books that The Watchtower produces on a regular basis that they will meet weekly.

JWs will meet weekly, and they will discuss the scriptures, sort of scriptures.

I mean, basically they're really discussing these, but these booklets, because they come from The Watchtower, are their scriptures.

So, this, as you see, they end up lifting the organization. This is the real issue

I have with it. The organization supplants God, God's Word, the

Holy Spirit, and the organization becomes the authority. You can't know what God says to you without the authority.

Alright, so let's move to the next doctrine, the doctrine of God. This doctrine that we see here, the doctrine of God, you can put it back on me.

Thank you. Alright, this is where we're going to discuss their view of the

Trinity. I said that Jehovah Witnesses do not believe in a triune God. Now, they define the

Trinity as, and this I'm going to give you right out of Let God Be True, 1946 edition, page 100.

Remember, this is from their authoritative source, The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, that is most accurate and the only true organization that we can rely on to interpret

God's Word, and this is what they say, quote, the doctrine in brief is that there are three gods in one,

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. All three equal in power, substance, and eternity, unquote.

Yikes, that's not it. Let's see what it says. Put those up, thank you.

Nowhere in Scripture is even any mention of a Trinity. This is from Let God Be True, 1946, revised in 1952, page 111.

Also in the 1946 version on page 101, it says, the obvious conclusion is therefore that Satan is the originator of the doctrine of the

Trinity. Wow. So, they argue that our

Trinity is a doctrine of demons. They argue this because the word

Trinity does not appear anywhere in the Bible. Okay, well, neither does the word omniscience, omnipresence, or for that matter,

Jehovah. Many words do not appear in the Bible, but they are theological words, theological terms, that we use and understand to describe

God and to describe theology. And Jehovah Witnesses and Christians alike use these terms.

Is God all -powerful? He's omnipotent, but it doesn't appear in the text.

Is He omniscient? Yes, but it doesn't appear in the text. Is He omnipresent? Yes, but it doesn't appear in the

Bible. By the way, the Bible doesn't appear in the Bible, so therefore the

Bible can't be the Bible because it's not in the Bible by that definition. Right?

I mean, if that's the argument, there's a whole lot of things that have problems. All right?

So, we would sit there and realize also that because man can't comprehend

God, the Trinity, doesn't mean it's not true. If God is greater than us, we'd expect

Him to be greater than our ability to understand. And therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that we can't comprehend the

Trinity. Now, I do want to notice that the Jehovah Witnesses misdefinition that I gave you is three gods and one

God. Remember that was from Let God Be True? That's page 100.

Well, this makes an easy strongman argument for them to refute, which they do later on page 102.

However, they can't be consistent with themselves because in their book, Can God Live Forever in Paradise on Earth?

1982, page 39, they properly define the Trinity as, quote, three persons and one

God. And that's the definition of the Trinity. The Trinity is three separate, distinct, individual people, persons, in one unified

Godhead. That's the proper definition. So, you see this source that can't be wrong, the source that's the ultimate ones that we should be trusting and most accurate, can't even properly define and stay consistent with their definition of our definition of the

Trinity. In 1946, they're wrong in their definition. What do they do in 1982?

They correct it. Why? Because it was exposed that they were wrong, okay? This is what you end up seeing over and over with them.

So, their view of the Trinity is something that they're getting from a misdefinition, alright?

Now, let's look at their view of the Holy Spirit. Is the Holy Spirit God? JWs believe that the

Holy Spirit is God's active force, that's your blank there, active force that accomplishes

God's will and not a personal being. The Holy Spirit is described as an impersonal energy that God uses and that He gives to His people to empower them to obey

Him. They believe only a force could fill that many, so many people at the same time.

Well, if God, if the Holy Spirit is God and He's omnipresent, there's no problem with Him filling that many people at once.

But maybe this is where George Lucas got the Star Wars Jedi force from,

Jehovah Witnesses, that the Holy Spirit is the force that guides the universe.

Where is that we see this is in Let God Be True, again 1946 edition, page 108.

The Holy Spirit is the invisible active force of the Almighty God that moves His servants to obey

His will. And in fact, they liken the Holy Spirit to electricity.

Let me quote that, this is from Should You Believe the Trinity, 1989, page 20.

The Bible's use of Holy Spirit indicated that it is a controlling force that Jehovah God uses to accomplish a variety of purposes.

To a certain extent, it can be likened to electricity, a force that can be adopted to perform a great variety of operations.

You know, the Holy Spirit is something that you can grieve.

I can't grieve electricity. I mean, the Bible does in fact describe the Holy Spirit as a person often in the scriptures.

John 14, 16 -17. John 15, 26. John 16, 13 and 14.

The attributes of the Holy Spirit are attributes of a personal being. Romans 15, 30.

Ephesians 4, 30. The JWs do not understand the Holy Spirit and how

He could be omnipresent and therefore they create a Holy Spirit that they can understand because they can't understand how the

Holy Spirit can indwell so many people. Well, He is omnipresent. That's the answer.

So, this is something where when we look at this, we see that there's many misunderstandings that this infallible source of authority, one that we should trust more than the

Bible itself, more than God's Word, this authority again gets it wrong with the person of the

Holy Spirit. So now, let me tell you really quick in the couple minutes that we have left how to get the

JW to stop knocking on your door. Maybe you're annoyed when they come by.

Well, if you start understanding these things, get my book, What Do They Believe?,

and read what they believe and argue from their sources and you're going to see that when they come upon a

Christian that knows what he's talking about, they mark the house. What I do whenever I move to a new town is

I call the Mormons, I call the JWs, I go, can you send me a Book of Mormon? Can you send me a

New World Translation? And you know what they do? They would send a person with the book.

That gives me one shot at talking to them. Why? Because I immediately get that house marked and they're like, oops, uh oh,

Andrew Rappaport's house, avoid it. That's why I don't give my last name anymore when

I order it because they know the name. So the Mormons last time, you know, the last time, the previous time

I moved, they just sent the Book of Mormon in the mail because I gave my last name. The last time

I moved, since they required my last name, they didn't send anything.

I think they just marked the house. But I moved into this house that I live in now in New Jersey and what

I found out was that one of my neighbors, his sister's a Jehovah Witness, and so they would come by every Saturday morning or afternoon for five years before I moved in.

And when I moved in, they came to my door. I had a nice little lovely chat with them.

They marked my house immediately and the next week they went from this neighbor to that neighbor and they avoided my house and I felt bad.

So what did I do? I quickly picked up my New World Translation. I ran out. Why do I use New World Translation?

Because I want to use their translation to show them the errors of their doctrine because the truth of God's word is still in this translation even though it's not as accurate as they say.

But what I end up doing is I run out and I say, hey, why did you avoid my house? Oh, you're not on, as one

Jehovah Witness said, you're on our do not disturb list. I go, no, no, no, I want to be disturbed. It's you that don't want to be disturbed.

You don't want to hear what I'm going to say and so you're not allowed to come to me. I understand, but I'm going to come out after you.

And so what they would do is they'd go to my neighbor's house and I would stand behind them and they would be, what are you doing here?

And I would say, well, I'm going to explain the truth as you lie to my neighbors. I'm going to tell my neighbors what the

Bible actually says and I'm going to use your translation to do it. And so as they knock on the door and the neighbors would open the door, they'd see me and I'd be like, hey neighbor, how you doing?

I'm not with them. I'm just going to correct the errors that they tell you from what God actually says.

Go ahead. And they start talking and as they're talking, I just start saying that's not what

God's word says and I start quoting scripture. What they end up doing is when they realize that if I see them coming down the block,

I'm going to come out. You know what they ended up doing? They skipped our entire street. One of my neighbors thanked me because they realized that it's because of me that they avoided the entire street.

Really a bummer because now I have to drive around and look for them. Where are they? Where are they? They've actually started avoiding the entire community.

But that's something you do if you really want to challenge them. It gets them to stop knocking on your door at least so you don't have to avoid it.

So that's what we have next week. We're going to continue looking at their view of Jesus Christ and their view of man specifically, really sin and man's sin nature.

If you have any questions about this or any other topics, you can email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

Again, if you would like to pick up the book, the syllabus for this class, you can get that at store .strivingforeternity

.org. Also there you can pick up my book, What Do They Believe?, and this goes into all of the detail.

If you want to have all the quotations that I did not give you in class, they're all in the book. You can also go there and sign up to host a

Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar. One of our seminars to help people understand the rules of interpretation that the

Watchtower should have been following, but really it teaches you the rules of interpretation so you can interpret languages, so you can interpret books, specifically the

Bible. So until next week, remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.