Jehovah’s Witness vs. Biblical Christianity
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Introduction
Imagine for a moment, that you are at home this Saturday afternoon watching the Cubs beat Arizona and your doorbell rings.
At the door, 2 ladies and a man nicely dressed in a suit and dresses stand there as you open the door.
The younger lady greets you and tells you she is there to pass out some literature as she holds out a copy of the Watchtower Magazine and a magazine called Awake!
Who are these nicely dressed people?
They are the Jehovah’s Witnesses and perhaps many of you who are here today have at some point had someone knock on your door or know someone who has had a Jehovah’s Witness come to their door.
But if I asked you what they believe, I bet many of you might have some difficulty.
And if I asked you if it was just another Christian denomination, I am sure there would be some who might think so, after all, they use the name Jesus and they are clean cut and appear to be nice, so they must be Christians, right?
Well, just as we saw last week with Mormons, not all you use the name Jesus or say they believe in Jesus are Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses are believing in and preaching a different Jesus than the Bible talks about.
Transition
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If you are joining us for the first time this morning, we are finishing up a series called Faithology that is looking at some various religions around the world and comparing them to Biblical Christianity
so we can see the errors of thinking and not fall prey to them and
so we can stand more assured that Christianity is not something that is just good to believe or beneficial to me, but it is true as opposed to any other religion or system of beliefs.
This morning, as we finish up, we will be looking at the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
As I just said, last week, we looked at the Mormon beliefs and they too, claim to believe in Jesus.
How can someone who claims to believe in Jesus Christ not be a Christian?
Well, as we saw last week, Paul discussed this very issue concerning people who were coming in and preaching about a Jesus who was different than the Jesus who Paul knew and who the Bible describes and talks about.
The Jesus and the gospel that was being preached was not at all good news and just like what Paul talked about in 2 Corinthians 11, the Jehovah’s witnesses are preaching a different Jesus and a different gospel that is not at all good news.
Let me remind you again what Paul said to the Corinthians.
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2 Corinthians 11:3-4
3 But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.
Just as Eve was deceived, there are people today that are being deceived by people who are teaching false things about Jesus.
Some of the things that Jehovah’s Witnesses are teaching are false and they are leading people astray from a belief in the Jesus Christ of the Bible and the salvation that is available only in Him.
This is why it is important that we understand the truth and we understand the false things being preached,
so we don’t get deceived and
so we can help others to see the truth.
So. how did Jehovah’s witnesses begin?
Background of Jehovah’s Witnesses
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Jehovah’s Witness movement is founded on the teachings of Charles Russell in the late 1800’s.
Charles Russell was born in 1852 and attended church with his family. At the age of 16, he began to question his faith and began looking into different beliefs.
A few years after that, he came to believe and taught that Christ would return in 1874, but when that did not happen, he taught that He would return in 1878.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taze_Russell#cite_note-20
Well, that didn’t happen either.
Because of this, a disagreement arose between Russell and some of his associates and they parted ways and
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Russell began publishing his own magazine called Zion’s Watchtower And Herald of Christ’s Presence in 1879 which was the precursor to the Watchtower Magazine now published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
At around this time, he started also preaching that 1914 was the ‘real’ year for Christ’s return.
Well, the year 1914 came without any physical return of Jesus
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and Charles Russell died just 2 years later in 1916, but Jehovah’s Witnesses now teach today that Christ did return invisibly in 1914 and that he is ruling the Earth’s affairs during this time of transition between the time of the Gentiles and the Millennial Kingdom of Christ.
Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Website – The Good News they want you to Hear, Accessed on 4/30/10 http://www.watchtower.org/e/jt/article_04.htm
This is the background and foundation of the Modern Day Jehovah’s Witnesses, but what exactly do they believe and what sets these beliefs apart from Biblical Christianity?
Beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses
Well, there are some things that it would appear that Jehovah’s Witnesses hold in common with Biblical Christianity concerning their beliefs, but there is always some twist that puts it outside the bounds of what Biblical Christianity teaches.
For instance, like Biblical Christians,
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in One God
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BUT, unlike Biblical Christianity, they
Deny the Trinity and the Deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that God is the Father and that Jesus Christ is inferior to the Father and not really God and that the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force and not part of the One True God who reveals Himself through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
On their website they state emphatically that
“Christ is God’s Son and is inferior to Him”
Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Website - What do they Believe? Accessed on 4/30/10 http://www.watchtower.org/e/jt/article_03.htm
It also says that “Christ was first of God’s creations”
Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Website - What do they Believe? Accessed on 4/30/10 http://www.watchtower.org/e/jt/article_03.htm
And in regards to the Holy Spirit, they say,
“This spirit is not God himself but a force that God sends forth, or uses, to accomplish whatever he wishes… the holy spirit is the invisible active force that God uses to fulfill his purposes.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Website – Who is God? Accessed on 4/30/10 http://www.watchtower.org/e/20020515/article_02.htm
Biblical Christianity teaches that there is one God and only one God who reveals himself in the person of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These three are one in essence, equal in power and glory, but distinct in person and function.
Trinity, while not a word that the Bible uses, is a concept that is taught throughout the Bible and is an important and vital aspect of Biblical Christianity.
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From the Old Testament in Genesis 1:26, where God says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” to the New Testament in the Gospels where we see Jesus claim to be God in John 8:58 when He says, "before Abraham was born, I am!"
Here he is using the personal name of God, “I AM” that God used when he spoke to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus. There we see Moses ask God what He is to call Him if anyone asks who sent Moses.
We see in Exodus 3:14-15
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14God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ’I AM has sent me to you.’"15….’ This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
The Jewish people of his day even recognized his claims at deity.
In John 5:18, it says, “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
And Jesus says of the Holy Spirit in Matthew 12:31-32, “every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
That Christ, the second person of the Trinity, recognizes that a person can blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, is a recognition that the Holy Spirit has the rights of God and is God.
Elsewhere we find that the Holy Spirit is eternal (Hebrews 9:14), Omnipresent (Psalm 139:7-9), Omnipotent and Omniscient.
In the last words of Jesus before he ascended into heaven, he gives the Great Commission telling us to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19)
So we have numerous Scriptures that teach the concept of the Trinity, meaning that there is one God made up of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
To defend their teaching that God is not a trinity and that Jesus is not God, they came up with their own translation of the Bible that only Jehovah’s Witnesses use called the New World Translation.
In the New World Translation, they mistranslate a few verses that pertain to the Deity of Christ, like John 1:1.
In every major English translation, and in fact in 100 different English translations from the 1300’s to present, they say the Word was with God and the word was God.
In fact, the King James, the NIV, the NKJV and the NASU all translate John 1:1, exactly the same –
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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1, KJV, NIV, NKJV, NASU)
This would not only be Biblical Scholars who translate the text this way, but any Greek Scholar, even non Christian ones, will tell you that this is the proper translation.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses bible, the New World Translation, makes a seemingly small but doctrinally huge, mistranslation of the Greek.
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It translates John 1:1 as “In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” (John 1:1, NWT)
http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/joh/chapter_001.htm?bk=joh;chp=1;vs=1;citation#bk1
This denial of the trinity and of the deity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, against the evidence and against what proper translation would say, puts Jehovah’s Witnesses outside of Biblical Christianity.
But that is not all.
Because while they seem to agree with Biblical Christianity in that
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Jesus’ death pays for sins
(But,) unlike Biblical Christianity, it is
Only for those who are obedient
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According to their beliefs from their official website, “Christ’s human life was paid as a ransom for obedient humans”
Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Website - What do they Believe? Accessed on 4/30/10 http://www.watchtower.org/e/jt/article_03.htm
How obedient would that be?
You see, this is the problem for every religion that makes our obedience a condition of salvation, is that none of us are obedient, we have all sinned and even after we receive Christ as our Savior, we still sin.
This is why Paul tells the Romans in
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Romans 3:28 - For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.
And why John says in
1 John 1:8 - If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
That is because, even though we have a new nature, a spiritual nature, we are still tied to this fleshly nature.
It is this battle between our spiritual nature and fleshly nature that causes Paul to say, in
Romans 7:21-25
I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
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24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!
It is Jesus Christ who rescues us because we in fact are unable to be completely obedient. That is why we are to continually confess our sins, so that we can be cleansed.
Now to be fair, Biblical Christianity does teach that when we come to Christ, He changes us, we are transformed by the indwelling Holy Spirit, to grow in godliness, to mature and to sin less, though in this life we will not become sinless.
I would agree though that as we mature, there should be change in us and a desire to be obedient that is evidence (called fruit) of the work that Christ has done in us, not as a requirement to be saved, but simply as the result of the Spirit of God that lives in us.
But the gift of salvation is just that, a gift. It does not depend on our ability to be obedient. Salvation depends upon the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross and His resurrection and His power to save us, not our power to be obedient.
So Christ died for all, and when we come to Him and receive Him by faith, He saves us apart from anything we have done or can do, not in accord with our obedience to Him, but completely as an act of His grace.
Another problem is that
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus resurrected
But
Only in Spirit and not Physically
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“Christ was raised from the dead as an immortal spirit person”
Jehovah’s Witnesses Official Website - What do they Believe? Accessed on 4/30/10 http://www.watchtower.org/e/jt/article_03.htm
The Bible tells us otherwise. When Jesus first appeared to the disciples together, they were thinking they saw a ghost, a spirit. Listen to what it says in Luke 24:37-39
Luke 24:37-39 - 37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."
Jesus was raised physically from the dead. Yes, his body was different in that his body was glorified and like the body that we will someday have when Christ returns to rapture the church.
But to deny his physical resurrection is to deny an essential aspect of belief and denies the truth of Jesus’ resurrection.
And as we saw on Easter, Jesus’ resurrection is one of the best attested events in all of history for those who care enough to look into it.
We can trust Jesus because He did what He said He was going to do, He rose from the dead, not in just some mystical spiritual way, but He rose physically where He could be seen and touched, and because of that, we too can look forward to the eternity that we will spend with Him.
Transition
There are other beliefs within the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses that are not in line with Biblical Christianity that become offshoots of the aberrant teaching concerning these essential beliefs.
144,000 only
Like they believe that only 144,000 people will go to heaven and be with the Lord. Those 144,000 have already been decided so that people who die today will not be with the Lord but live on a restored earth.
Biblical Christianity teaches that while there will be a Millennial Kingdom on earth, ultimately we will all be with the Lord and we shall see Him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:13; 1 John 3:2). His presence with people is not reserved for only 144,000, but for all who trust in Him by faith.
No Hell
They also believe that there is no hell, that people who are not Jehovah’s Witnesses are just annihilated.
This is opposed to Jesus’ teaching throughout the Bible that says there is a real place called hell that those who refuse Christ’s invitation to receive Him by believing in Him will go to for eternity.
Some question how a loving God can do that. It is a loving God who makes it possible for anyone to not spend an eternity in a hell that we all deserve.
It is people who choose hell when they fail to trust in the way that our incredibly loving God made through His own sacrifice, so that nobody would have to experience that, but instead be with Him for eternity experiencing the glory of heaven that they didn’t deserve.
Conclusion
As we have looked at these various religious systems over the past month, it is important to understand that each one relies on some form of works
to be able to be good enough to be saved,
to reach nirvana, or
whatever the end is as they see it.
Biblical Christianity is alone in teaching that you can’t do enough or be good enough to deserve an eternity with the God of the universe.
So if we could sum up all of what we have learned, it is basically that
all other religions teach that you need to trust in your works for salvation vs.
Biblical Christianity teaches that you need to trust in Jesus’ work on the cross for your
Salvation.
It is Satan that is behind every belief system other than Christianity, because he does not care what you believe in as long as you don’t put your trust solely in Jesus Christ for salvation.
This is why it is imperative that we know the truth of Christianity as well as what others are believing so we can share the truth of the real gospel, the real good news, the real Jesus, with them.
Do you know the real Jesus?
Have you turned from you sin to Him, the only hope, the only One who can bring salvation?
He is the one who is able to save us.
He is the only One who is Mighty to Save.
We are going to close singing Mighty to Save.
Worship Him who is truly the only one who is mighty to save.
Stand with us as we worship.
