JW 2: Discerning Truth from Error

This is my rebuttal of Jehovah's Witnesses' most troubling false doctrines, found in the booklet/tract Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life. The numbers in parentheses are page numbers.

Knocking on the door of works-salvation
-"God accepts as his worshipers people from all nations, but only those who conform to his righteous ways - Acts 10:34,35" (30)
-"if we do God's will and avoid activities that reflect this world's spirit, we can have the hope of everlasting life!" (50).

One commonality in every false religion I know of is that you are always trying to earn your way to heaven or a right relationship with God if you are a part of them. Rule #1 of Christian theology: You are not good enough! God has provided His salvation apart from any merit that you can contribute to the equation (Eph 2:8-9). If you are saved, you will do good works (Eph 2:10), but that is not the same as earning God's favor, which is utterly impossible (Is 64:6). Always clear up this discrepancy in pseudo-Christian theology as of first importance. You need to both understand that people cannot earn their way into heaven. If they try to contribute anything at all they are damned (Rom 11:6; Gal 5:4)! This is therefore a very important issue! Make that clear gently.

Denial of the Trinity
-"Therefore, those who accept the Bible as God's Word do not worship a Trinity consisting of three persons or gods in one" (31).
-"In fact, the word Trinity does not even appear in the Bible (John 14:28; 1 Cor. 15:28)" (31).
-"The true God is one Person, separate from Jesus Christ" (31).

I don't know that I've met any person who denies the Trinity with a full and complete understanding of what the doctrine is. I will tell you: It is the teaching that God is three distinct persons, of which the Father is first, the Son is second, and the Holy Spirit is third. This numbering of personages is meant to reflect the apparent authoritative hierarchy contained within the Trinity. Each person is fully God, fully Divine. This is extremely confused for most people because we don't generally think of one being have the property of existing as three distinct persons "at the same time." To help, I will define what it means to be a person.

Personhood in the Trinity means: self-awareness, choice, can reason, love, possessing a will and consciousness, can speak, be lied to, etc.

As we look at the Bible, we clearly see that there are three entities with these characteristics in the Godhead. All one needs to do to find the Trinity in the Bible is to prove that only one God exists (Is. 43:10-11), that Jesus is God (John 1:1; Heb 1:8), that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:4 cf v.9), and that each one is not the other (Matt 3:15-17).

There are many many other verses compounding and solidifying the case for the Trinity, and I invite you to find those on your own.

The most common objection I hear to the Trinity (and one which the JW's love), which is that "it doesn't appear anywhere in the Bible" is simply man's foolishness. The word "monotheism" does not appear in the Bible, yet I'm sure we all can agree that the Bible teaches monotheism.

Denial of Jesus' Divinity
-"The true God is one Person, separate from Jesus Christ" (31).
-"[Some] have distorted Jesus' role, worshiping him as Almighty God" (32).
-"Jehovah created [Jesus] directly" (39, 62).

This is the most common objection to the Trinity that I know of. Many people are not willing to admit that Jesus is God. However, He is. John 1 and Hebrews 1 are great passages to go to, but the JW will undoubtedly have some Greek original language stuffed up their sleeve which the average Joe will not and should not be required to know about. So I've found it's best to go about it like this: Point to Isaiah 44:24 and prove that God didn't get any help making the universe. Then point to John 1 and Colossians 1:16 and prove that Jesus created all things. God created everything by Himself. Jesus created everything. I guess Jesus is God!

The reason this point is so crucial is because Jesus said that anyone who does not believe that Jesus is God is not saved (John 8:24), and also because a Jesus who is not God has no efficacy on the cross! Also, God said that He Himself would be the Messiah in Zech 12:10 - "they will look upon Me, whom they have pierced."

Denial of the Personhood of the Holy Spirit
-"God's holy spirit is not a person. It is Jehovah's active force, used by the Almighty to accomplish his purposes. - Gen 1:2" (31).
-"holy spirit, or active force" (40).

This is the most baffling of all the heresies, but I suppose it goes hand in hand with denying the Trinity. You can't have another person in the Godhead without some sort of unity in plurality. I have several very practical problems with this doctrine.

Impersonal forces...
1) Cannot be grieved, yet the Holy Spirit can be grieved (Is 63:10).
2) Do not have gender, yet the Holy Spirit has gender (John 14:26).
3) Do not speak, yet the Holy Spirit speaks (Mark 13:11; Acts 13:2).
4) Do not teach things, yet the Holy Spirit teaches (John 14:26).
5) Cannot be lied to, yet the Holy Spirit can be lied to (Acts 5:3).

I think it's pretty obvious that the Holy Spirit has all the attributes that indicate personhood, and the only reason JW's reject this teaching is because they don't like the Trinity.

I hope this helps you bolster your faith in the orthodox and historical doctrine of the Trinity. We serve an amazing and mysterious God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him,
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
John 1:1-3

Resolved

By far the highlight of my year thus far (and for a long time to come, I’m sure!) is the Resolved conference which I had the privilege to attend this year with 13 other people from Christian fellowships on campus. It was an awesome experience hearing the word of God (Ps 119:103) and letting it do its work in my heart (Heb 4:12).

The theme this year was "the gospel." I ask you: could there be a better theme?! I was pumped to hear the central message of Christianity spoken of by such knowledgeable men of the faith. And I was not disappointed in the least (Is. 55:11). I figured at the very least it would help me articulate the message to other people, but the sermons dug deep into my heart and probed depths of the magnificence of the gospel that I never could have dreamed of knowing. If I had to pick a favorite sermon, it would be CJ Mahaney's exposition of Isaiah 53. The line that rings in my head over and over again is: "Heaven doesn't get over the cross!" If you can set aside the cross as a nice little thing that God did for us way back when, you do not appreciate the absolutely astounding nature of Christ's sacrifice. I will definitely be looking forward to the audio recordings of these sermons as they get posted on the Internet.

In all there were 9 sermons and 1 panel discussion, for a total of 12-15 hours of biblical expository preaching. We heard from CJ Mahaney, John MacArthur, John Piper, Rick Holland, and Steve Lawson. We heard about the accomplishments of the gospel (Rom 5:6-11), the supremacy of Christ (Heb 1:1-4), the shamefulness of the message (1 Cor 1-2), atonement and justification (Luke 18:9-14), the suffering servant (Isaiah 53:1-6,10), the cost of discipleship (Luke 14:25-35), God is the Gospel (Habakkuk 3:17-18, and others), humility (1 Cor 4:6-13), and the relationship between missions and God’s glory (Rom 11:36, and others). As I have said already, these were all heart-wrenching sermons, and well worth the time to travel down and listen to them.

I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions this year, but after that conference, I felt compelled to resolve to do something! CJ Mahaney counseled us to focus on maybe 2 or 3 things to take away from the conference and focus, meditate, and work on as we come back to life as it is normally presented to us. These are three resolutions I determined to do follow, and I would appreciate everyone’s accountability in all these things.

1) Resolved, to cultivate within myself a spirit of humility and slay the spirit of pride.

2) Resolved, to adjust my mindset continually to be focused on the person of Christ and His atoning work finished at Calvary.

3) Resolved, to daily meditate on the Word of God not merely as an apologetic but exercise, but as the result of a personal and meaningful relationship between a slave and his Master, the saved and his Savior.

Again, I had a wonderful time there, almost beyond description. It isn’t often that you get together with 3000 Reformed (college aged) brothers and sisters and listen to five godly men who are dedicated to proclaiming the sovereignty of God and the truth of the Word. It was a wild ride indeed, and I highly recommend it! Resolved is coming back next year as well to Palm Springs in mid June. That is right when the quarter system schools get out, so you don’t have to worry about not being able to do schoolwork. The theme will be heaven and hell. Speaking of heaven, I got a book by that name at the bookstore that they had for us down there. It’s by Randy Alcorn, and it looks really good so far, so maybe I’ll let you guys in on a book review when I’m done! Thanks for hanging in there and being faithful to wait for my not-so-frequent blog updates, all. Until next time.

For from Him and to Him and through Him are all things.
To him be glory forever. Amen.
-Romans 11:36