Conversations with Jehovah's Witness

Hey guys,

I hope this post and the ones to come on Islam and Mormonism are a blessing to you. 1 Peter 3:15 says "But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander."

Before I get started, I want to repeat what I said in my facebook post. When preparing for and dealing with people with other views of Jesus, and therefore God, we must remember Ephesians 6:12 -  "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." With this in mind, we must speak to people with respect and love. The enemy has a grip on their lives, and only the grace of God will change their situation.

This post is not meant to teach you everything you need to know about Jehovah's Witness, but simply to make you aware of some of the key differences, as well as a few ways to deal with their false beliefs when you have the opportunity to share the truth about Jesus with someone in the JW faith.

And now... to the point. Jehovah's Witness are, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous of all false religions. They believe many things similar to historical Christian faith, such as the fact that Jesus is the creator. They also claim to have "THE one true word of God". In fact, they call it the Bible. On the surface, their Bible looks like the Christian Bible; however, when you dig deeper, you realize that the Watchtower Society has taken it's own liberty with God's Word. The problem with making one change to God's Word is that you have to continue to make changes. When the Watchtower Society makes a change, they simply state "the light is becoming more clear". However, they do not believe that Jesus is God. The major problem with this religion is that it continually talks about Jehovah God, but misses the truth about Jesus. In the "JW's teaching" section, I will talk about several of their false beliefs and what the Bible really teaches.

Historical Christianity
Jehovah's Witness claim to be Christians. Historically, however, Christians believe that Jesus is God. Check out the councils of Nicea - Affirmed the eternal diety of Christ(325a.d), Constantinople - Affirmed the humanity of Christ(381a.d), Chalcedon - Two nature of Christ affirmed(451a.d.). All of these deal with who Jesus is. They make statements of faith that Jesus is God. Jehovah's Witness (JW's from here on out) do not believe that Jesus is God. They believe that Jesus is a god - HUGE DIFFERENCE. We will get more into this later.

Jehovah's Witness History
JW's are overseen by the Watchtower society http://www.watchtower.org/. 
"This religion was begun by Charles Taze Russell in 1872. He was born on February 16, 1852, the son of Joseph L. and Anna Eliza Russell. He had great difficulty in dealing with the doctrine of eternal hell fire and in his studies came to deny not only eternal punishment, but also the Trinity, and the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit.  When Russell was 18, he organized a Bible class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  In 1879 he sought to popularize his aberrant ideas on doctrine.  He co-published The Herald of the Morning magazine with its founder, N. H. Barbour and by 1884 Russell controlled the publication and renamed it The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom, and founded Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society (now known as the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society). The first edition of The Watchtower magazine was only 6,000 copies each month. Today the Witnesses' publishing complex in Brooklyn, New York, churns out 100,000 books and 800,000 copies of its two magazines--daily!"(Christian Apologetics and Research ministry)

As go most, if not all, cults, Russel claimed that the Bible could only be properly understood according to his personal interpretation.

The group currently has over 4 million members. Nearly 200,000 new members join yearly.
"The Jehovah's Witnesses have several ‘book studies' each week. "The members are not required to attend, but there is a level of expectation that gently urges converts to participate. It is during these ‘book studies' that the Jehovah's Witness is constantly exposed to counter Christian teachings. The average Jehovah's Witness, with his constant Watchtower indoctrination, could easily pummel the average Christian when it comes to defending his beliefs." (Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry)

JW's Teachings -
There are many things that JW's teach that are simply not Christian. First and foremost is their belief that Jesus is a god. JW's twist scripture and actually change scripture so that their view of Jesus will work with the Bible. For example, John chapter 1 is a major area of debate between Christians and JW's. In the original greek it looks like this -

The New World Translation - the mistranslated manipulated JW's bible - has the word "a" instead of "the". Therefore it reads, "and the word was A god". See the difference? This is done so that their doctrine of Jesus being an angel and not God the Son will work for them. Of course, you then have to change and alter your translation in many other places once this is done. But at this point, no problem, because they have already changed God's word. Just a little sarcasm.
The correct translation is "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  This is how it is translated in the NASB, NIV, KJV, NKJV, ASV, RSV, ESV etc.

Here are a few reasons that the JW's translation, the New World Translation, is incorrect in their understanding of Jesus.They believe that Jesus is an angel created by God, and not God. They believe that Jesus did create the world, but only because God used him to do so.  

Dealing with JW's misuderstanding of Jesus 
1. The Bible teaches that God is one God. (Duet 6:4-9) To claim that Jesus is a god would require that there are many gods.  To this, JW's claim that Jesus is a god, and not "The Almighty God".  JW's says that Jesus is the "mighty God" as is referenced in Isaiah 9:6, "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on His shoulders, and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace."  Therefore, they say that Jesus is the mighty god, but not the Almighty God. The problem with this statement is of course...you guessed it, The Bible.

"YHWH is also called the Mighty God in Jeremiah 32:18 and Isaiah 10:21.  In all three verses, including Isaiah 9:6, the Hebrew word for "mighty" (gibbor) is used.

• Isaiah 10:20-21, "Now it will come about in that day that the remnant of Israel, and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped, will never again rely on the one who struck them, but will truly rely on the LORD, the Holy One of Israel.  ²¹A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God."
• Jer. 32:18, "who shows lovingkindness to thousands, but repays the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them, O great and mighty God, the LORD of hosts is His name."

We can see that the Jehovah's Witness explanation is not valid.  Both the Son and God are called the Mighty God." (CARM)


2. Jesus Himself claimed to be God. (John 14:6, John 8:59, John 10:30, Mark 14:60-62, John 17:3) As well as the I AM statements (John 11:25, John 14:6,  John 15:1, John 8:58, John 10:11, John 6:35, John 8:12).
When you speak to a JW about the fact that Jesus claimed to be God, they will quickly use a few texts such as when Jesus said that the Father is greater than he is (John 14:21), and Jesus' prayer in Mathew 6:9-14 to try and prove that Jesus was not God. You can easily deal with these false understandings in the following ways.
Dealing with John 14:21 -Jesus said that the Father was greater than He was because Jesus was, for a while, made a little lower than the angels (Hebrews 2:9.) Jesus took on flesh and became both fully man and fully God (Phil 2:5-10, Col 2:9).
Dealing with Mathew 6:9-14 - Jesus did not come to earth solely for the purpose of dying. He also came so that in Him we would know God and know how to live in relationship with God. In this passage, Jesus is teaching His people how we should pray. Once again, we must remember that Jesus is fully man and fully God.

I hope that my posts on JW's are helpful to you. Blessings as you read, study, and speak the truth about Christ. Jesus is God! 

p.s. - You may have noticed that I used Carm.org for some of the information. I highly reccomend this website for further study. I am thankful for Matt Slick and the information that he has written.