Posted by Manazir al-Tabi'iyah (الْمَناظر الـطـبـيـعـيـة) ~ Natural Landscapes
Originally composed by Norgel Richardson
The websites of Kent Steinhaug and Randall Watters made reference to a married couple of former Jehovah's Witnesses named William "Bill" Cetnar and Joan Cetnar. This couple was once at Bethel headquarters, and while they were there, they saw all kinds of red flags that ultimately convinced them that the Watchtower is not God's organization. I used the loan money from my college financial aid to order Bill and Joan Cetnar's book titled Questions for Jehovah's Witnesses Who Love the Truth (1983), along with other books by Raymond Franz, Walter Martin, and Steven Hassan. In their book, Bill and Joan Cetnar said that among the red flags was a lack of genuine Christ-like love for people. They gave at least two accounts of Bethelites who were badly mistreated by Watchtower president Nathan Knorr. One account was of Charles De Wilda, and another account was of a young lady from Thailand. In addition, Bill and Joan Cetnar elaborated about their disagreements with the Watchtower's policy forbidding blood transfusions, and how they were both disfellowshipped because of disagreeing with this policy. Also in their book, Bill and Joan Cetnar published photocopies of the Watchtower Society's past literature. The photocopies exposed the Watchtower's false prophecies and many changes in doctrine. The Watchtower organization falsely prophesied the "end of the world" or "Armageddon" in 1874, 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1941, and 1975. Bill and Joan Cetnar provided the photocopies of the Watchtower publications that originally gave these false prophecies. Charles Taze Russell was responsible for the false prophecies of 1874, 1878, 1881, and 1914. Charles T. Russell practiced pyramidology, numerology, astrology, theosophy and other things associated with freemasonry and the occult. Russell used measurements on the Pyramid of Giza to formulate his 1914 prophecy. Adopting some of the chronology of Nelson H. Barber, Russell believed that the time of the end began in 1799, that Jesus Christ returned invisibly in 1874, and that the end of the world would occur in 1914. Russell's 1914 prophecy failed, but his successor Joseph Rutherford attempted to predict Armageddon in 1918, 1925, and 1941. The most notorious of Rutherford's false prophecies was that of 1925. Rutherford spread the message of the 1925 false prophecy through many public sermons he gave around the world, and through publications such as The Harp of God, Salvation, and Millions Now Living Will Never Die. Rutherford gave so much assurance that his prophecy was true that many of his followers decided not to plant crops in 1925, out of anticipation that the end of the world was near. Plus many people donated vast amounts of their money and property to Rutherford's Watchtower Society to help spread the prophetic news. As was the case in 1914, the 1925 prophecy failed to become reality. Instead of taking full responsibility for the prophecy failure, Rutherford blamed his followers for misinterpreting him and spreading false rumors. Just a few years later in 1929, Rutherford had a mansion built in San Diego, California and named it Beth Sarim (Hebrew for "House of the Princes"). Rutherford predicted that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and other faithful men of the Old Testament would be resurrected back to life, and that Beth Sarim would be their home. This prediction never came true. Rutherford moved into the Beth Sarim mansion himself, and lived their in shameless luxury throughout the Great Depression, until he finally died at Beth Sarim in 1942. Beth Sarim was quietly sold by the Watchtower Society in 1948 in an effort to cover up more of its embarrassing false prophecies. Most of today's Jehovah's Witnesses are unaware of the story of Beth Sarim, although the Watchtower does make mention of it in a sugar-coated fashion in Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom.
The next false prophecy was made during Nathan Knorr's
presidency of the Watchtower, and that false prophecy predicted that Armageddon
would occur in 1975. Frederick Franz was actually the main person promoting the
1975 prophecy. In 1968, the Awake! magazine began
posting articles predicting 1975 as marking 6,000 years since Adam's creation
and that Armageddon would commence in 1975. The number of Jehovah's Witnesses
increased up to about five million within a few years, plus millions of
Jehovah's Witnesses gave up college, employment, and marriage in order to put
more time into spreading the 1975 prophecy from door to door. Many Jehovah's
Witnesses donated their life savings to the Watchtower and also sold their
houses in order to donate to the Watchtower. When the 1975 prophecy failed to
become reality, many Jehovah's Witnesses were deeply disappointed and hundreds
of thousands of them left the organization during 1976 thru 1978. Some of them
remained in severe poverty for years after 1975, as a result of donating the
last of their life savings to the Watchtower. As it was in 1925, the
Watchtower's leadership blamed the members for misinterpreting the message
about 1975 and spreading false rumors. The organization's leadership never took
full responsibility for the 1975 prophecy failure, and this angered Jehovah's
Witnesses even more. The Watchtower has done everything in its power to
hide its many false prophecies, and it seems to have done an excellent job at
fooling me and other JWs. I had no idea that the Watchtower made these many
false prophecies; I was totally oblivious of them until I did the research. I
remembered my negative reaction to the 1995 doctrinal change regarding the 1914
generation, and the discovery of all these past false prophecies moved me to
count that doctrinal change into the bunch of false prophecies. I personally
asked my fellow Jehovah's Witnesses, especially the elderly JWs, about 1975 and
other past prophecies, but none of them admitted that the Watchtower made
prophecies about the end of the world. All of them lied to me and said that the
organization never attempted to predict an exact year for Armageddon. The
Watchtower also predicted that Armageddon would occur by the end the Twentieth
Century, in the January 1, 1989 Watchtower and in Revelation:
It's Grand Climax at Hand (1988 edition), page 246, but most Jehovah's
Witnesses were unaware of the prophecy. I was unaware of the prophecy until I
finally discovered it in 1999. Jehovah's Witnesses seem to completely ignore
the divinely inspired prophecy test of Deuteronomy 18:20-22, which reads "However,
the prophet who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded
him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die.
And in case you should say in your heart: 'How shall we know the word
that Jehovah has not spoken?' when the prophet speaks in the name of
Jehovah and the word does not occur or come true, that is the word that Jehovah
did not speak. With presumptuousness the prophet spoke it. You must not get
frightened at him." (NWT 1984). When I repeatedly read this passage of
scripture to my fellow Jehovah's Witnesses from the New World
Translation we were using during the 1990's, virtually all of them
were completely insensitive to this scripture. Some of them said there was no
way the Watchtower could be a false prophet; instead, they always pointed
fingers at the churches of Christendom as being false prophets.
Speaking of the New World Translation, I learned the truth about the New World Translation, as to how it was created, and the identity of the translators on the NWT translation committee. The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures was first published by the Watchtower Society in 1950, and it has been the official Bible of Jehovah's Witnesses ever since. Prior to 1950, Jehovah's Witnesses used the King James Version and the American Standard Version. The Watchtower Society claims that the members of the NWT translating committee wanted their names to be kept anonymous, saying they wanted God alone, not men, to get glory for translating the New World Translation. However, Bill and Joan Cetnar said in their book Questions for Jehovah's Witnesses Who Love the Truth that they were familiar with all the men who were on the translating committee at Bethel Headquarters, that all of them were Jehovah's Witnesses, and that not a single one of them had a scholarly expertise in Greek or Hebrew. Frederick Franz was one of the members of the NWT translating committee, and he admitted during a 1954 Scotland court case that he was not a fluent reader or speaker of Hebrew and Greek, though he did have limited education in nonbiblical forms of Hebrew and Greek. The Watchtower Society misquoted Julius Mantey and various other biblical language scholars as praising the New World Translation as the most accurate Bible translation, but in reality, not a single formally educated Bible scholar in the world approves of the New World Translation. Virtually every biblical Hebrew and Greek scholar denounces the New World Translation as a gross perversion of inspired scripture, incorrect and dishonest. There was only one so called scholar that agreed with the New World Translation; his name was Johannes Greber, a former Catholic priest and self-proclaimed spiritist. The Watchtower consulted the Johannes Greber Memorial Foundation for counsel on how to translate scriptures pertaining to the person of Jesus Christ, including John 1:1. Johannes Greber was married to a woman who was a spirit medium, and Greber himself was a self-proclaimed spiritist. Spiritism and spirit mediums are condemned by God's Word the Bible as abominations. Despite knowing about Greber's involvement with spiritism and the occult as early as 1956 (Watchtower 2/15/1956 pg. 111), the Watchtower Society still used Greber's translation of the New Testament to justify translations in their own Bible. They began quoting Greber in their publications between 1962 and 1976. Johannes Greber was not the only instance of the Watchtower's involvement in spiritism and the occult. As mentioned earlier, Charles T. Russell practiced many of the same occultic works practiced by Rosicrucians, Mystery Cults, and Freemasons. Such occultic works practiced by Russell included pyramidology, numerology, astrology, phrenology, and theosophy. Russell once taught that God's throne was located on the star Alcyone of the Pleiades Cluster, and that comets, eclipses, and planetary conjunctions could predict future events. Russell used pyramidology measurements on the Great Pyramid of Giza to calculate his 1914 prophecy. The occultic Winged Sundisk appears on some of Russell's books, and the occultic "cross and crown" symbol appears on early Watchtower magazines. Why would the Watchtower leaders seek Christian truth from satanic sources? Watchtower founder Charles T. Russell actually laid the groundwork for this practice in the July 1879 issue of Zion's Watch Tower, where he said, "A truth presented by Satan himself is just as true as a truth stated by God. Perhaps no class of people are more apt to overlook this fact than the Christian...Accept truth wherever you find it, no matter what it contradicts." Jesus said at John 8:44 that there is NO TRUTH in Satan the Devil, who is the father of lies. Despite this, the Governing Body still adheres to Russell's philosophy even as they base certain passages in their New World Translation on the interpretations of occult spiritist Johannes Greber in his New Testament (1937). Johannes Greber claimed that angelic spirits communicated truth to him, and the Watchtower leaders made those same claims during Rutherford's time as well as the present day.
Joseph Rutherford claimed that Pastor Charles T. Russell was
still communicating with the Watchtower Society as a spirit after his death.
Rutherford also claimed that angels communicated with him by placing God's
messages directly into his mind. These acts could rightly be described as forms
of spiritism and necromancy. Other evidence that the Watchtower leaders have
practiced, and still practice, necromancy is shown in their 1988 and 2006
editions of the book Revelation: It's Grand Climax at Hand,
page 125, which reads "This suggests that the resurrected ones of the
24 elders group may be involved in the communicating of divine truths
today." This same quote appears in the Watchtower January
1, 2007. The Watchtower believes these 24 elders are deceased anointed
Jehovah's Witnesses that were resurrected as spirit beings to live in heaven
and rule alongside Jesus Christ. The fact is that, once a person dies, God no
longer allows communication between them and living people on earth. God will
not allow dead ones to communicate with the earthly realm again until AFTER the
New Heaven and New Earth are fully established in the eternal state. However,
demons often masquerade as the spirits of dead people in an effort to
communicate with living people, usually through necromancy. This scared me very
much when I found out about the Watchtower's Governing Body communicating with
demons that masquerade as spirits of dead people. For many decades, the
Watchtower has openly taught cessationism; that is, they teach that the
apostolic gifts of the Holy Spirit, including healing, tongues, interpretation
of tongues, prophecy, and the performing of miraculous signs ended with the
First Century apostles after the Bible's cannon was completed. Cessationism
portrays any and all prophecy, miracles, and inspiration in our modern era as
originating from demons instead of God's Holy Spirit. In the past, during
Rutherford's time, the Watchtower's leadership claimed to have received new
revelations from angels or invisible spirit beings, and that the leadership
does not receive inspired revelations from the Holy Spirit like the prophets
and apostles did thousands of years ago. The Governing Body claims to be
directed by the Holy Spirit, not inspired by the Holy Spirit, yet the Governing
Body demands unquestioning compliance to every doctrine they preach in the
Watchtower publications, as if they are inspired God's Holy Spirit. Anyone can
be directed by God's Holy Spirit if they are genuinely devoted to loving and
serving God; God would not limit His spiritual direction to just one small
group of leaders within an organization. If the doctrine of cessationism is
true, then demonic spirits would be the only spiritual source from which the
Governing Body receives their "new light," otherwise their "new
light" is nothing more than a product of human reasoning relabeled as
divine direction. Among the rank and file Jehovah's Witnesses, there is a great
deal of mystery and secrecy surrounding the Governing Body that gives "new
light" to Jehovah's Witnesses. So many Jehovah's Witnesses consider it a
total mystery as to how the Governing Body gets its "new light" and
are very curious about it. Even I was curious about this mystery when I was a
Jehovah's Witness. The concept of "new light" refers to
"progressive understanding" or "growing knowledge" through
incremental enlightenment from a higher spiritual source. The concept of
"new light" is not a product of true biblical Christianity; it
actually has occultic origins, beginning with the gnostics of antiquity, and
the same basic concept is called by other names in Christian Science and other
gnostic religions that emerged in the Nineteenth Century, as well as Liberal
Christianity, Hinduism, the New Age Movement, Wicca, and Freemasonry.
Subliminal messages that affect the subconscious mind appear in some of
the artwork seen in Watchtower publications, and many of those subliminal
messages are sexual, demonic, or both. One subliminal message I remember very
well from my days as a Jehovah's Witness is the "demon hand" on one
of the anointed saints on page 52 of Revelation: It's Grand Climax at
Hand. As I mentioned earlier, many Jehovah's Witnesses have an intense
fear of demons and the Devil, primarily because of information fed to them
through the Watchtower's publications. One website led me to study the
works of a man named Fritz Springmeier, who wrote The Watchtower and
the Masons (1990). Springmeier pointed out Charles T. Russell's
attachment to the same occult practices, objects, and symbols utilized by
Freemasons, although he may not have been an official Freemason. Springmeier
also pointed the many characteristics that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses have
in common with Freemasonry. For example, masonic lodges were once called masonic
halls, and some masonic lodges are still called masonic halls in some parts
of the world. The Watchtower Society calls its local meeting facilities for
Jehovah's Witnesses "Kingdom Halls." Masonic lodges or masonic
halls have no windows, likewise Kingdom Halls have no windows. The Watchtower
claims that buildings without windows are more secure from burglary, but
Springmeier said that religious groups that gather in windowless buildings
mystically believe that a lack of windows keeps the darkness inside and keeps
the light outside. The average Jehovah's Witness is unaware of this doctrine,
but the Governing Body, the corporate officers, and other high ranking
Jehovah's Witnesses are well aware of this doctrine. The names "Watch
Tower" and "Watchtower" are not unique to Jehovah's
Witnesses; these names have also been used for centuries by Enochian magicians
to identify the elemental forces of the four Watchtowers of Air,
Earth, Fire, and Water. The Enochian magic of the Watchtowers was used not only
for the four elements, but also to contact the spirit world, and to control
sexual desire, hypnotic suggestion, and people's emotions and behavior. Some of
this is reflected in the mind control techniques used by the Watchtower
Society's leadership today. Furthermore, Springmeier also believes that
both Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are gnostic religious groups having
indirect connections with the Illuminati, a mystical occult group
founded in 1776 that has infiltrated multitudes of religious, social, and
political institutions worldwide.
The Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry and Probe
Ministries and Darkness to Light Ministries were
three apologetics websites that helped me to see through the false doctrines I
had been taught by Jehovah's Witnesses. One of the books I ordered in 1998 as a
Bible study aid was Kingdom of the Cults (1965) by
Walter Martin. The Christian apologist Walter Martin was a very good friend of
Bill and Joan Cetnar. Jehovah's Witnesses deny every fundamental doctrine of
historic Christianity, including the deity of Jesus Christ, the bodily
resurrection of Christ, and salvation by grace alone through faith alone. When
I was involved with Jehovah's Witnesses, I was regularly indoctrinated against
the Trinity doctrine by the Theocratic Ministry School and the Service Meeting.
In almost every one of those meetings, someone in the Kingdom Hall would
present either a Trinity proof text, or a straw man argument, and attempt to
refute it. The Watchtower always compared the Trinity doctrine to modalism and
tritheism when refuting it. At that time, I found those refutations very
logical and easy to believe, since I was still unaware of the historic church's
real teachings about the deity of Christ and the Trinity. I had already read
the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation just prior to getting baptized as a
Jehovah's Witness, but I decided to read through the entire Bible again, this
time with a clear and open mind, without referring to Watchtower
interpretation. I found contradictions to Watchtower doctrine the first time I
read through entire Bible, but I accepted the elders' answers to all of my
questions. As one of Jehovah's witnesses, I was taught that no one can learn
God's truth by reading the Bible alone, that the Bible does not shine forth its
life-giving truths by itself. This particular doctrine of the Watchtower goes
as far back as Charles Taze Russell, who said in 1910 that it was possible for
a Bible student learn the full truth of God's Word by reading only Watchtower
literature, even if they had never read a single page directly from the Bible
itself. C T. Russell and his Watchtower successors inadvertently admit that the
Bible alone DOES NOT teach what they claim it teaches. The Watchtower actually
admitted that a person would become convinced that the deity of Jesus Christ
and other doctrines of Christendom are correct if they read the Bible alone.
They were quoted as saying "From time to time, there have arisen from
among the ranks of Jehovah's people those, who, like the original Satan, have
adopted an independent, faultfinding attitude...They say that it is sufficient
to read the Bible exclusively, either alone or in small groups at home. But,
strangely, through such 'Bible reading,' they have reverted right back to the
apostate doctrines that commentaries by Christendom's clergy were teaching 100
years ago..." The Governing Body published this statement in Watchtower,
August 15, 1981 not long after the "Great Purge" of 1980,
when a large number of Jehovah's Witnesses were disfellowshipped for
independent thinking, independent Bible study, and questing Watchtower
doctrines in the wake of the 1975 prophecy failure and the Raymond Franz
incident. Anyway, I saw that all of the Jehovah's Witnesses around me were
reading the Watchtower literature much more frequently than the Bible itself;
even I was in the habit of reading the literature more frequently than the
Bible. At the Kingdom Hall on Sundays, sometimes an entire hour of the
Watchtower Study would pass by without a single instance of the Bible being
opened and read before the congregation. Nearly 100% of the focus was on the material
contained in the Watchtower magazine. I remember joining other JW
brothers on the home Bible studies they conducted with various people. I
noticed that some of my JW brothers conducted a full hour of study from the
book Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life without even once
having the home student to read directly from the Bible. Before I became a
Witness, all the conductors of my Bible studies, especially Sis. Setsuko, Bro.
Hoagland, and Bro. Bolton, made sure to have me read passages directly from the
Bible itself during my home Bible study. I adopted their method of teaching as
my own once I officially became one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Hence, during the
two home Bible studies I conducted, I made sure to have the person I was
teaching to read at least a few passages directly from the Bible itself; that
is, passages that were relevant to the lesson for that day. After all, I
thought "Why should we regard the study as a 'Bible study' if we spend
a full hour studying information exclusively from a book that is NOT the Bible
itself?"
Well, once again I did read through the Bible over a nine month period, and I did it without the Watchtower's interpretation. Just like the first time, I compared the New International Version, the King James Version, and the New World Translation as I read through the entire Bible from cover to cover. I also referenced back and forth between the websites of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry and Probe Ministries and Darkness to Light Ministries. As I read through the Bible, I saw numerous passages in the Old Testament and New Testament that prove the concept of the Trinity, the full deity of Jesus Christ, and the personality of the Holy Spirit. For example, God refers to Himself as "us" and "our" in Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 3:22, Genesis 11:7, and Isaiah 6:8. The Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit created all things, yet Isaiah 44:24 shows God saying He created the heavens and the earth all by Himself; thus God had no outside help from a created being. God said at Genesis 1:26 "Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness," then the very next verse (vs. 27) says GOD created man in HIS image, as if God alone created man with no help from anyone else. Genesis 18 shows three men visiting Abraham and those three men turned out to be a theophany of God Himself. Genesis 19:24 shows one Jehovah calling fire and brimstone down from another Jehovah who is in the heavens, then Amos 4:11 shows God referring to someone else as God who overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Jehovah said at Isaiah 48:12-16 that He was sent by someone else named Jehovah and His Spirit ("the Lord GOD and his Spirit hath sent me" vs. 16). Psalm 45:6 and Hebrews 1:8 show God addressing Jesus the Son as God ("thy throne, O God, is forever and ever"). I asked myself "How could God be sent by God, or refer to someone else as God, unless He were a plurality of Persons instead of just one Person?" I read where Thomas addressed the resurrected Jesus as "My Lord and My God" at John 20:28, this reply of surprise would have been blasphemy if Jesus were not truly God. Jesus made amendments to God's Law (Matthew 5:21-44), plus Jesus had the power to read hearts (John 2:24, 25), the power to provide rest for one's soul (Matthew 11:28-30), the power to forgive sins (Luke 5:20-26), and the power to save people from their sins and give eternal life (Matthew 1:21; John 10:27, 28). The Bible clearly says repetitively that only God is capable of doing all of these things. Jesus sustains all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3); no one having less than all might can sustain all things, because only an Almighty being can sustain all things. Jesus is omnipotent (Matthew 28:18; Philippians 3:21), omnipresent (Matthew 18:20; Ephesians 4:10), omniscient (John 16:30; John 21:17), immutable (Hebrews 1:12; Hebrews 13:8), and is our only Master and Lord (Jude 1:4). Jesus is prayed to and also answers prayers (John 14:13, 14; Acts 7:59, 60; 1 Corinthians 1:2), and is worshiped on multiple occasions (Matthew 28:17; Luke 24:52; John 9:38; Hebrews 1:6). The word "firstborn" for Jesus at Colossians 1:15 does not mean first-created, instead it means preeminence. I learned that the Holy Spirit is not a mere impersonal active force used by God, but is a real person. If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal "active force", why does the Bible show the Holy Spirit as speaking directly and referring to himself as "I" and "me" in Acts 13:2? If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force, how could the Holy Spirit be referred to as "He" and "Him" in John 16:7- 8 and John 16:13-14? How could an impersonal Spirit bear witness (John 15:26, Acts 20:23); be vexed or feel hurt (Isaiah 63:10); be blasphemed against (Matthew 12:31; Mark 3:29, Luke 12:10); say things to people (Ezekiel 3:24, Acts 8:29, 10:19, and Hebrews 10:15-17); forbid someone to say things (Acts 16:6); plead for Christians with groanings (Romans 8:26); be tested (Acts 5:9); send people (Acts 13:4); be a comforter or helper (John 14:16; 16:7); appoint overseers (Acts 20:28); be insulted or spited (Hebrews 10:29); have a desire (Galatians 5:17); search things out (1 Corinthians 2:10); comfort people (Acts 9:31); be grieved (Ephesians 4:30); or love people (Romans 15:30). Peter said the Holy Spirit was lied to, and that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4). There is no way these things could be possible unless the Holy Spirit were a real person. I saw some of these proof texts the first time I read through the Bible, but I got a much clearer picture of the God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit after reading through the Bible the second time. The Trinity is not a human concept, but a divine concept that is not totally comprehended by the finite human mind. Man-made religions (false religions) always portray their God as something that is easily understandable to finite human beings.
Also, as I read through the Bible a second time, I came to
the full realization that Jesus was in fact resurrected bodily from the dead
(Luke 24:36-43; John 2:19-21; Acts 2:26, 27), that Jesus will return visibly at
the end of the world instead of invisibly (Matthew 24:30; Revelation 1:7), that
the human soul is immortal (Ruth 2:20; Matthew 10:28; Luke 20:37, 38;
Revelation 6:9-11), and that Hell is a real place of eternal fiery punishment (Matthew
25:41, 46; Luke 12:4, 5; Luke 16:22-24; Revelation 14:9-11; 20:10; 21:8).
Contrary to Watchtower doctrine, there are NOT two classes of Christians with
two different destinies (heaven/paradise earth); instead, ALL Christians are of
ONE BODY and are destined for ONE HOPE instead of two (Galatians 3:28;
Ephesians 4:4); and that one hope is the heavenly calling (Hebrews 3:1;
Revelation 19:1). God promises to create an eternal new heavens and new earth
filled only with righteousness (Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13). Despite the many
analogies and descriptions given in Isaiah and Revelation, no one knows exactly
for sure what the new heavens and new earth will be like, but all of its
inhabitants will be in the direct presence of God, and God Himself will dwell
with them (Revelation 21:3; Revelation 22:1-5). Jehovah's Witnesses deny the
substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ for our sins, plus they deny the
doctrines of imputed righteousness and the indwelling of Christ in the
believer. According to the Watchtower, Jesus' death paid only for Adamic sin
(original sin), not for our personal sins. They teach that Jesus' ransom
sacrifice cancelled out Adam's debt of original sin on the human race to open
the door for believers to work their way to salvation and eternal life on the
paradise earth. This forces the individual Jehovah's Witnesses to add their own
good works to the perfect work of Jesus Christ in hopes of becoming saved, and
there is no assurance of salvation in the Jehovah's Witness religion. The truth
is that the Blood of Jesus Christ the Son cleanses us from ALL sin, cleanses us
of ALL unrighteousness (1 John 1:7-9). That includes both original sin and
personal sins. Jehovah's Witnesses are part of salvation system that is based
almost entirely on one's own good works. The Watchtower said in Lesson #88
of The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, that "God will
not provide special signs or miracles to convince people. They must read and
apply the Scriptures if they would obtain his favor." Reading and
applying the scriptures to obtain God's favor is intrinsically a works-based,
highly legalistic salvation system. The organization placed little emphasis on
salvation by "grace," which is salvation by God's unmerited favor.
Mercy is God's undeserved forgiveness; grace is God's unmerited favor. The
Watchtower never told me about Isaiah 64:6, which says that even our most
righteous deeds are like filthy rags to God; therefore, our works cannot
justify us, nor can they count toward our salvation. As we have faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ, we are robed with the perfect righteousness of Christ at the
moment of salvation (Isaiah 61:10), and the righteousness of Jesus Christ is
imputed to our account (Romans 4:20-25). Having faith in the grace of God is
sufficient for salvation. Furthermore, good works are the FRUIT of salvation,
not the ROOT of salvation (Ephesians 2:10; Colossians 1:9-14; Titus
2:11-14; 2 Peter 1:3-9). Also, as I read through the entire Bible the
second time, I picked up on many more passages where God promised to never
leave or forsake the nation of Israel and the Jews (Genesis 17:4-9; Jeremiah
31:31-37; 32:37-41; Ezekiel 37:1-28; Amos 9:11-15; Zechariah 14:9-11; Matthew
19:28; John 4:22; Romans 11:25, 26; Revelation 7:3-8). In addition, I
visited the home of a Jehovah's Witness family, the Stevensons, that possessed
a large collection of Watchtower literature dating as far back as C.T. Russell.
I read through some of their past literature and saw just how often the
Watchtower Society changed its interpretations of scripture. I saw that the
Watchtower Society also flip-flopped on some of its doctrines, such as the
resurrection of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Faithful and Discreet
Slave, the identity of Jesus Christ, the time of Christ's invisible presence,
salvation doctrines, the higher powers of Romans 13:1-7, who has the right to
marry, blood transfusions, and so on. Charles T. Russell was a Zionist who
believed God still favored the Jews, but later generations of the Watchtower
Society abandoned Zionism and created their own version of replacement
theology. As I was doing this research, I began to think that, if the
Watchtower Society were truly God's organization, their doctrines would be far
more truthful and consistent. Furthermore, Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong about
the Great Apostasy. Their Apostasy Gap Theory claims that the true
Christian faith was totally eradicated by extreme, widespread apostasy after
the death of Jesus' original apostles and was nonexistent for centuries until
God used Charles Taze Russell to restore it. Nearly all pseudo-Christian cults
use an apostasy gap theory to validate the establishment of their
religion; even the Mormons use one to validate Joseph Smith as their founder.
Although apostasy did develop and spread during the early history of the
Church, such apostasy did not completely eradicate true Christianity. From the
time Christianity was first established by Jesus Christ in the First Century AD
until the present era, there have always been people becoming saved in Jesus
Christ and martyring themselves for true Christianity. Jesus said the gates of
Hell will not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18). Plus Charles H.
Spurgeon said "The Church may go through her dark ages, but Christ is
with her in the midnight; she may pass through her fiery furnace, but Christ is
in the midst of the flame with her."
Originally composed by Norgel Richardson
Posted by Manazir al-Tabi'iyah (الْمَناظر الـطـبـيـعـيـة) ~ Natural Landscapes
Originally composed by Norgel Richardson
Posted by Manazir al-Tabi'iyah (الْمَناظر الـطـبـيـعـيـة) ~ Natural Landscapes
