JW 3: Discerning Truth from Error

Time flies way too fast! If you people actually want information from me on a more regular basis, someone will have to jump on my back about it. …Ok well let’s not resort to physical violence, but I think you get my meaning. I figure I might as well address a few more issues I have with the Watchtower organization, so that we can be done with that segment of my blog. Bear in mind, however, that these issues are not the fault solely of JW’s. Some “mainline Christians” may be guilty of the same things. Do let me know if I am guilty of these things. First off I’d like to mention a couple things I’m happy about in JW theology.

They said some hard things

"God is not obligated to show favor or mercy to anyone" (30).

Some people think that God owes them happiness, or a good life, or a ticket to heaven. Otherwise they claim He’s unloving or unforgiving. The definition of grace implies that He is not obligated to give it. Yet He still chose to give it! That is so mind boggling to me. Anyways, on this point the JW’s are solid.

"The Bible condemns premarital intercourse and homosexuality" (122).

I think that’s pretty clear! Refreshing to know how clear the Bible is on the topic especially in this day an age when it seems like everyone and their brother is jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon and sex is treated like an everyday biological function – no more than scratching an itch or feeding a hungry stomach. They even used the word condemn. Those judgmental JW’s… someone needs to sue them for hate crime… (/sarcasm).

Now, on to the many things to be wary of.

Happiness as a reason to accept the(ir) gospel

1. "Calling on Jehovah...can lead you to endless happiness" (27).

This stuff really gets under my skin. Let me make clear that I do not think God is a cosmic kill joy. In fact, He is the only true source of joy (Gal 5:22; Ps 16:11)! I just never see anyone in scripture giving that as a reason to call on Him and be saved. If you do, let me know. Indeed, God did make things for us to enjoy (1 Tim 6:17). However, that is not why we submit to His Lordship and turn from our sin. Not only does an unregenerate person not have a desire for the things of God (Rom 3:11; so they are guaranteed not to be made happy with the “eternal pleasures at [His] right hand” - Ps 16:11), but this simply centers the gospel on man and thereby minimizes the gospel. I’ll say it loud and clear: Jesus did not die on the cross to make you happy! He died to satisfy the wrath of God. Go to the cross because you’re so thankful that He would do such a thing for you. Repent of your sin and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay the due penalty for your active rebellion against God.

The appeal to the reader in order to determine spiritual truths

"Is this not the kind of God that you want to worship?" (15).

Rom 3:11 – “There is none who seeks after God.” Also see 1 Cor 2:14. But they will seek after they’re own gods. This is a huge red flag, tipping you off to the fact that the JW god is not the God of the Bible, but a God of man’s own making. Watch out for people everywhere with this mindset. Mankind has not gotten tired of making a god to suit himself. If I have done this, let me know. Now… the following section contains some frankly odd phrases that I found in the book. You just need to take a look at them for yourself. Perhaps you can help me out with them.

Weird Stuff

"The work of witnessing to Jesus" (49).

Witnessing to Jesus? I checked the context. I have no idea what this means. Ideas?

"...sin was deeply engraved into the genes of our first parents" (58).

Sin is a physical problem?

"...only 144,000...will God take to heaven...(Rev 7:4; 14:1)" (88).

The funniest thing about this is that in verse 9 of chapter 7 there is a numberless quantity of saints standing before the throne of God in heaven… Why they interpreted the 144,000 sealed of Israel to be the only ones who go to heaven, I have no idea.

Legalism

"We must make sure that we avoid religious holidays and other customs that violate God's principles (1 Thess 5:21)" (49).

Since they’re quoting the “test all things” verse (I don’t know how it supports their position), I’ll be doing just that… oh look. Here’s an interesting verse… "Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath." – Col 2:16

Maybe they just missed it…but I doubt it. Also check out Rom 14.

Annihilationism

"Martha expressed no thought about an immortal soul living on elsewhere after death"

"...the Bible never uses the expression 'immortal soul'" (84).

A lesson in logic: this is what we like to call the Argument from Ignorance fallacy. Not having a record of Martha expressing belief in immortal souls is quite a weak reason to make a blanket statement that they definitely don’t exist. First of all, Martha could simply be ignorant. There’s no reason to believe that she had all her theology right. Second of all, the objection that the Bible never says “immortal soul” is like objecting that the Bible never uses the term “monotheistic” to describe “Fundamental Evangelical Christianity” (another term that isn’t used in the Bible). We use words to embody concepts that we deduce the people of scripture believe after taking in the whole of scripture.

"Nobody would need to be resurrected, or brought back to life, if an immortal soul survived death" (84).

This is an excellent example of “human reasoning.” Whether or not they understand the purpose of resurrecting a body and rejoining the soul with it, the Bible says we have souls, and that they can be separated from the physical body (by death) , and that they can be rejoined with the body (by resurrection). (Phil 1:23-24; 2 Cor 5:8; Rev 6:9).

Misused Scripture

"You will be with me in Paradise."-Luke 23:42,43

They subtly leave out “today,” a word that absolutely destroys annihilationism. They take from the word of God where it suits them so that they can hold on to their theology. Rest assured, believer. When you die, you will be with the Lord immediately.

Misunderstanding of Jesus' Mission on Earth

"A stable world government...was the theme of Jesus' preaching. He called it 'the kingdom of God'" (90).

A stable world government? The kingdom of God is “a stable world government?” I wonder why I never interpreted it that way. Oh yea, it’s because Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Jesus did not come to set up a world government! Nor did He come so that we would strive to set up a world government! Anyways… I’m done with my rant.

Perhaps you can sense a little anger in my tone. It’s there. It’s because these people have distorted the truth of God’s word to suit themselves (2 Pet 3:16). They do this to their own destruction, and to the destruction of those who follow them. This simultaneously breaks my heart and provokes it. I hope it is with a righteous anger. As I have said before, if it is not, let me know.

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.