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

Examine Yourself

Are you a Christian? Then do what the Bible says and MAKE SURE! Here is a sermon to help you do just that. The video should play automatically. If that gives you some trouble, go here. Scroll down and look for the green video boxes. The first is a 4 minute sample clip. The second is the full sermon.

I pray this is edifying for you.

Evan

Jehovah's Witnesses

Why You Should Never Tell a JW, "No thanks!"

That might seem like a strange intro for a post, but I really do have a reason for wording it that way. You see, I've realized that when we get people like Jehovah's Witnesses coming to our door to spread their false doctrine, telling them to go away is like saying, "No thanks, I don't have the time or concern to deal with your soul right now, please go infect someone else with your damnable lies." How many of us want to say that? I certainly didn't when one came to my door this Christmas break!

This time I talked to him and asked him lots of questions. If you do not know much about a certain cult (There will invariably be lots of people who belongs to a certain group that you are not familiar with. This is OK! Just ask questions. It is the best way to get information and the best way to find out if they are teaching sound doctrine). Apparently these are really common questions, because he kept saying that all my questions were answered in this little book that he had. He offered it to me, so I took it, wanting to have an authoritative reference book from which to learn JW docrine. It's really small, so I was able to actually read through the whole thing in a relatively short amount of time. What I did was scour through it with an orange highlighter, and marked it up, noticing all the "interesting" things that were said in there.

There were several heresies littered through this book, but I suspect that many Christians would not be able to defend themselves against the lies if a JW should 'witness' to them! It was obvious to me, hearing this man's testimony, that this is what happened with him as he was first approached by JWs. He said that he started seeing things in orthodox Christianity that didn't line up with the Bible. The example he gave was the Trinity! I wonder how many people could defend the deity of Christ and the Trinity from the Bible should someone object (1 Pet 3:15)?

Now, for anyone who might think I'm just being nit picky or overly critical, let me say that this is an absolute essential of the Christian faith, therefore you need to be able to defend it! If you do not believe that Jesus is Divine, you are on a very direct path to hell (John 8:24). You are on the wide road of destruction, and the end does not look good for you. Your Jesus cannot save you. You need to repent and put your trust in the true savior right now. This is not a debatable issue! Yet it is one that JWs deny. They're Christ is not Divine and is a created being; therefore, he cannot save!

It is important to remember to keep things in the proper perspective when dealing with issues such as cult-members coming to your door. They don't have the true gospel; the Christian does. That is a very big deal (Gal 1:8-9)!They need to be evangelized, rather than looked down upon for trying to evangelize others. They're fervor should put anyone to shame who does not pursue the souls of others with the same intensity. Let me encourage you to learn how to defend your faith against the cults, and, furthermore, how to share your faith with cult members so that they realize they are not in the truth and need to be regenerated!

I will do my best to help you to do this is my follow up blog on this topic. Stay strong in the faith. Do not judge in the non-essentials (Rom 14). Do not budge in the essentials. Let's serve the King with our whole hearts.

Home for the Holidays

So I'm home for the holidays! Three precious weeks of freedom. I need to use them well, so I figured I'd spend a little while writing a blog - something I don't do enough. This one is not a really focused blog, just a few little musings about some things that have recently come to my attention.

1) On looking forward to better days

We all know those days we can't wait for. Especially this year around Christmas time that day is obvious. Everyone wants that day when they can rip open their presents to come super quickly. Some of us - yours truly - look forward to said days so passionately that we forget we have been graciously been given this day by God, and all the other days behind us, but not tomorrow. There are no guarantees for tomorrow.

Probably most of us are familiar with the verse in Matthew where Jesus says, "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Matt 6:34). This is speaking of a practical way to tackle everyday life - take it one day at a time! We can apply this principle also to days that are going really well for us. Don't waste your todays looking forward to your tomorrows.

2) On the meaning of what is said

I recently came to the realization that the Bible does not always mean what it says. Now, before you spam me and send me viruses or post evil comments, let me explain. A while ago I had a chat with some guys outside a Harvest Crusade Festival. Their hermeneutic is really interesting. The motto, as I found out later on their website, is "God says what He means and means what He says." I thought, that sounds good. We can finally get away from the allegorically interpretations of Genesis and the gospels and get down to the meat of what the Bible says. Little did I know that they were more than serious about their literalism. Of course, I reject much of their theology (although they do hit the nail on the head in some places), because the Bible simply "doesn't mean what it says" sometimes in the same way that we "don't mean what we say" when we muse that someone "has ants in their pants" or that we are "so hungry could eat a cow" or that our large football playing friends "are tanks."

Apparently to some people, the Bible isn't allowed to use metaphor. "That's what the text plainly says" they will tell you, reminiscent of something I myself have told people many times over. Perhaps you'll be accused of twisting the text to meet your own theology. Foolishness I say. The men in that group at Harvest Crusade actually thought wisdom was a person who stood on rooftops shouting at people (cf. Proverbs)! They then took those verses (which portray wisdom as a female) and combined them with the fact that Jesus is God and that Jesus is called "the wisdom of God." From this they concluded that God was a female. They also concluded that the Bible is Jesus, since both the Scriptures and Jesus are called the Word of God. It has been rightly noted that such wooden literalism could build a fleet of ships! (Mr. Holding's words from his site www.tektonics.org).

Keep in mind that God is called a consuming fire (Deut 4:24), a sun and a shield (Ps 84:11), a rock, a horn, and a fortress (2 Sam 22:3). Perhaps we are to conclude that God is a physical flame. Maybe he's just a huge ball of burning gas. No, no. He is a big metal plate used for blocking arrows with 2 straps in the back to put your arm in. Oh wait, He's actually an inanimate chunk of minerals... for... standing on? You can see how utterly ridiculous this sort of reasoning gets.

So don't twist scripture and turn something historical into something super mystical or secret if it is unwarranted. But come on, when you're reading a Psalm, don't assume that God actually has wings we go under (Ps 17:8). If something sounds weird, check out the context, including the literary context. Word pictures are extremely common everywhere. Paul used them often. Jesus used them often. We should take them as such.

So in that sense I reject the strict literalism of "The Bible says what it means and means what it says."

3) On an old friend's blog

I was going down my AIM buddy list and looking at all the updated profiles. I came across one of an old friend from elementary school. He updates his profile whenever he writes a new blog, and I like reading them to check up on how he's doing. In case you're wondering - not well. He's pretty angry at everything it seems like and has no lack of supply of curse words. This blog was no different, except this one caught my eye because it was named "Karma and Other Meaningless Beliefs." Most of it was angry and insulting (not personally, in general), but he did have some notable points.

Essentially it was a rant about people who basically make up their own beliefs and call themselves "spiritual" but not "religious." The idea here is: what makes you think that all of a sudden you come up with your version of spirituality that has it more correct that everyone else? Most people of course realize the arrogance (and unreliability) of their position and conclude that everyone can pave their own path to God. "I'm not the only right one. I'm just the only person on my path! Everyone else has theirs and they all work!" This, of course, is just plain illogical and a glossing over of the difficulties between opposing views.

My conclusion: We need to gently show people where they have not yet fully thought through their beliefs, help them think through them, and point them to the cross.

There was also a good quote, which I fully agree with him on: "No one can realistically be indifferent to the existence of god." He's right! The common cop outs such as "Hell will be a party!" or "I guess we'll find out when we get there" are not reasonable. It's not fun to be punished. Period. I think that's part of the definition or something. It's also not fun to find out that you are going to be punished for eternity simply because you were too wrapped up in your little sphere of comfortable living to give any substantial consideration to the possibility that God exists and that He will judge all evil. That isn't something you're going to want to find out when you die.

My conclusion: We need to gently show people why Christianity is worth considering, help them consider it, and implore them to accept God's sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins - the only way of salvation.

From the looks of the ending of his post, it's obvious that this is not what my friend had in mind. He is only interested in ridiculing anyone with spiritual beliefs. We don't want to ridicule people, we want to love them and lead them and show them God's forgiveness. That's what this whole season is supposed to be about - God's love for His lost sheep (John 3:17).



Merry Christmas, all!