Basic Teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses

good morning morning thanks for coming out today we're going to be talking about the jobless witnesses official name of their organization as you can see the Watchtower Bible and tract Society we did talk a little bit about their histories and as you know this gentleman here this is Charles taze Russell founder of the watchtower has a history back into the millerite movement which we discussed and we can see that he got a lot of his ideas about the end of the world and some of his other teachings about Jesus and other things from different followers of William Miller in the millerite movement but today we want to get into some other things we want to talk about subjects like what do they believe what are they doing around the world and that's what I want to start with first let's talk about some statistics to Watchtower Bible and tract society first of all membership things they've been growing pretty steadily since 1959 up into 2013 2013 they had about seven million nine hundred seven million nine hundred members now when we say seven million nine hundred members how many of those do you think are the ones going out knocking on doors I mean we know we see the jaws bonus is out knocking on doors and talking to people at the doorsteps trying to hold Bible studies things like that how many the seven million nine hundred members do you think are doing that number them all of them all of there for you to be counted as a Jehovah's Witness you need to be actively doing this thing called they call field service out there knocking on doors passing out the Watchtower magazines trying to talk to people about Jehovah God so there's a lot more people impacted than just seven million nine hundred thousand it's a pretty big number but the better way to look at how many people are really impacted by the organization that are going to the kingdom holiday holiday Kingdom Hall instead of a church is to look at this thing that they call a memorial mail once a year they have similar we have in our churches a communion service the Memorial meal is that they all come together and participate in the memorial mill and they take numbers then and that's a better determine our determiner of how many jehovah's witnesses there really are how many people are convinced by these ideas or at least being led into the organization so in 2013 there was just over 19 million people at their memorial meal so that shows a much greater impact than just looking at membership alone because 19 over 90 million people are going to the same fold the memorial mill memorial Mills prickers is really interesting you that they invite as many people as they can and will pass out flyers and try to get people to come and it's it's around Easter time but it's according to the Jewish calendar or Passover and people will come out to the kingdom hall and it starts at dusk and in the Memorial meal they'll have a person stand up and present their views this is why they're doing the Memorial meal this is what it means this is what's going on and they make the bread and the wine as it's as close as they can to the weight it would have been in Jesus's day and then they pass it around the congregation what's interesting though and we'll get this a little bit later but you may have heard a they only believed 144,000 people will be going to heaven only the 144,000 are able to partake of the bread and wine so they give this big presentation and then they start passing the bread and wine around and it will go through everybody's hands you take it you pass it on you take it you pass it on usually when you go to a memorial mill nobody for takes well my wife now we're living in Chicago we went to one of these memorial meals and the woman says right in front of me her took and I just like sure I'm like elbowing my wife super touch she said she's one of the anointed class officials look and she took it there's one of them are here but still we look at this 19 million people yeah that's that's a pretty sizable thing and there's not many churches that reach this love but still the impact that the watchtower has in our world is huge not just thinking of their membership alone but this is over seven million people knocking on doors passing out magazines I told you before that they call it Field Service when they're out knocking on doors and talking to people on the doorsteps or in their homes or whatever just looking at the numbers of how much field service hours and they publish this every year that so I get their number of my numbers from them they publish them every year tell us how many hours they put in how many people attended this and that so this chart represents the bottom year from 1977 up to 2013 how many fields service hours they put in now you look at the left hand side and see three hundred seven hundred eleven hundred that doesn't seem a whole lot until I tell you what the scale means these are a million of hours three hundred million hours in 1977 in 2013 1 billion eight hundred and forty-one million two hundred and thirty five over 180 thousand two hundred and thirty-five hours in 2013 I don't know about you but that's hard for me to wrap my mind around 1.8 billion hours spent by the Jehovah's Witnesses in one year knocking on doors passing out their magazines so to try to wrap my mind around this so I take the number 1.8 billion and I divided by 365 to figure out okay well what is this like per day five million hours a day are being in law again by Jehovah's Witnesses they have a time card they have that they feel out and they turn it in once a month to show how much time that they put into Field Service over five million hours a day well that's still hard for me to wrap my mind around so I divide that by 24 and we come up with 210 thousand hours every hours or are you indicative of every hour there are over two hundred and ten thousand Jehovah's Witnesses out there there is no that there is no church out there that even comes close to the amount of impact does the Jehovah's Witnesses have so we might look at the number others only over just over seven million of our almost 8 million of them in the world look what they're doing look at the amount of time they're spending in Field Service out there trying to convince people about doctrines that we really don't agree with Jesus is not God salvation is not by grace many other things this is a lot of time spent when I lived in Chicago I had a friend that was was meeting with the Jehovah's Witnesses and it had been meeting with him for quite a while and he in the end he never joined he wasn't convinced he got really upset with them when they said that your mother's not going to go to heaven he thought his mother was a good Baptist woman and who are they to say that she's not going to be saved even though he wasn't convinced he learned enough from them that he would go around the plant and he would see people who claim to be Christian of a cross or a crucifix Catholics who have whoever and he would just totally blow them away with his arguments that he learned from the 12 witnesses so even if they put in all this time they're not making tons of converts they're impacting the world with a negative doctrine about who Jesus is so this campaign against Jesus being God's salvation being grace is being spread across our world two hundred and ten thousand jehovah's witnesses every hour or out they're doing this very thing so what are they past half the people the watchtower magazine in 2011 there were 42 million watchtower magazines in publication this is this is a monthly publication 42 million every month and they were publishing these in 190 different languages there is nothing that comes close to the publication amounts of the Watchtower magazine there is no political no economic no public education publication nothing comes close to this of what the watchtower puts out and this is every single month things that we can compare it to here I look this up on the Internet AARP magazine 22 million so I'm just half you know that the next ranking magazine is half but no I had I had to look that up on how many here knows what the AARP magazine is yeah I'll know more about it here and about a year birthday comes alone so Game Informer magazine third place 7.8 million drops pretty quick Better Homes and Gardens I thought was interesting pretty high in the Reader's Digest 5 million that they put out in 21 languages compare that five million in 21 languages compared to the watchtower 42 million in 190 languages so that's the Watchtower magazine but they publish a lot more than just the Watchtower magazine their companion publication is the awake whereas the watchtower deals more with doctrinal issues awake magazine deals more with social interests kind of things as you can see we've got two awake magazines here how to deal with burnout and keys to a happy life and still look at the numbers for the publication in 2011 there were 41 million publications in 80 languages so nothing rivals the awake magazine let alone the watchtower so you can look at their number two publication and it's still blows away anything that's out there another thing to know about all these publications here these are free where those other things Reader's Digest Better Homes and Gardens you know those those cost money people have to pay for subscriptions watchtower and awake their version of the Bible don't give to you for free now I've been in their meetings and I've heard heard them tell their people now you need to try to get a donation for these still they are free you don't have to give a donation you can get them for free all right and also of course we have the New World Translation the New World Translation is produced and published by the Jehovah's Witnesses the watchtower society and people sometimes want to know well is this reliable is this a this a translation of the Bible that we can trust absolutely not I mean they they they twist many different verses they change things like just just for instance and this is one most people know about John chapter one verse one a lot of us know what it says in our Bibles but in the New World Translation it says this in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was a God so there's one very significant change one small letter but you see the letter a there the word was a God now we we know that when it's talking about the word there is talking about Jesus because as it says in verse 14 the word became flesh and dwelt among us it's talking about Jesus so now when it says and the word was a God well that totally changes the sentence of what John was trying to say so this plus many other verses in the New World Translation has been changed another another good way to know well is a Bible a good one a trustworthy one if you have a if you see that somebody's using the Bible that only that religion uses that should be a red flag if nobody else anywhere says you know what hey that that translation is great especially if no scholars stand behind it now Watchtower will try to quote some scholars saying that this is a good translation but some of those scholars had to come out and say no they kind of twist what I had to say we don't stand behind this the New World Translation the first edition that was published was in 1950 1950 was just the New Testament than the Old Testament was kind of published over the next several years and in 1961 their first publication of the New World Translation and had a green cover but in 1984 they published this edition the with the black cover on it and in 2013 now they've published a new edition the the different editions do not change a whole lot in them I mean there are some changes that are give some significance to them but still not a whole lot of changes I give you the one example of John 1:1 earlier we'll we'll look at some other examples after a little bit here the New World Translation has been published in 120 different languages some of them are only partially translations but from what I understand about 64 languages have full translations of the New World Translation and by May 2014 they have published two hundred and eight million three hundred and sixty six thousand nine hundred and twenty eight of the New World Translation that's a huge number now another thing that we can look at the watchtower produces is many other books and brochures so not just the watchtower magazines do they produce but things that we would call like tracts smaller things and they publish these things in over 700 languages okay it's hard to compete with a group like this 700 languages that's just amazing well let's talk about their doctrine what do they believe so we've heard some of their history some of the things that they're doing right now what about their doctor what do they believe and when you're talking about some of these belief system you always need to start with authority when I went to Bible College in systematic theology you always start with the first classes always bibliography what is our authority with our source of authority because that defines everything you know if you don't believe the Bible is the authority well then something else has to be authority and that's going to define your beliefs so with the Jehovah's Witnesses their view of the Bible first of all like I mentioned before they would say the New World Translation is the most accurate so that's the best Bible they'll use other Bibles if you say no I want King James or whatever NIV they might use those but the New World Translation that's the best that's the one that's going to teach you the best of the Bible they'll say that the Bible is authoritative its inerrant infallible and inspired that's those are the kind of words that we like to put in our doctrinal statements and that usually surprises a lot of people because they think well Jehovah's Witnesses that's that's not a Christian religion so they must have it in a bad view of the Bible you know such as the Mormons the Mormons would say oh you can't you can't really trust the Bible you don't know if it's translated correctly you don't know subscribe change something over the years and people think oh maybe that's the same with the Jehovah's Witnesses I had a friend named Mike years ago who chosen witnesses came to his door and they gave him a Watchtower magazine and on the cover it said can you trust the Bible and Mike said oh man I am going to read through this and I when they come back I am going to get on them and I'm going to show them everywhere where they're wrong in here because he just he assumed that they were going to attack the Bible and say you can't press it said Mike you're going to kind of surprise they're going to give you a lot of really good apologetics in that magazine so really he went read it and he said you're right man has some great stuff in it to argue that the Bible is good we trust pudding so they would say all this about the Bible but the problem is you can't understand the Bible on your own you need jehovah's witness material you need to Watchtower Bible and tract society to tell you what it means so that you can know what it means one of the examples they use is from the book of Acts where you have Philip is walking along and he meets the Ethiopian eunuch we familiar with the story he's walked along he sees the guy and I says hey what are you reading there he was reading something from Isaiah about Jesus he's reading this and the guy says you know I don't know who he's writing about here is he writing about himself is he writing about somebody else so Philip jumps up there with them and sits down and explains Jesus to him and then the guy fully understands what goes what's going on so the the jobs witnesses will use that passage didn't take you see you have the Bible but you can't understand it unless God's people come to you and tell you what the Bible means here now there's a problem with that argument I think first of all how can you use a Bible passage to show me that I can understand what the Bible means do you see the problem okay you can't understand what the Bible means see look at this passage it will prove it well how can I use that passage another thing if they're right if I can't understand the Bible without God's people coming to tell me what it means well then how do I know which people are right I've had other religious groups tell me this very same argument of Philip in the Ethiopian eunuch so should I believe the Jehovah's Witnesses or should I believe the other group because they all said I can't understand Bible unless they tell me what it says but let's look at some quotes here the watchtower September 15th 1910 so not only do we find that people cannot see the Divine Plan and study in the Bible by itself but we see also that if anyone lays the scripture studies aside which the scriptures studies these were Watchtower publications they were books written by Charles taze Russell so they would see these on the level of the Watchtower magazine so we see scripture studies think of watchtower materials that's saying the same thing if anyone lays the scripture studies aside even after he is read them for 10 years our experience shows that within two years he goes into darkness so if you read the Bible buyers by itself and you stop reading Watchtower publications you're in darkness how much Bible reading does it take for you to know the truth it doesn't look like any more help can you mean on says on the other hand if he had merely read the scripture studies with the references and had not read a page of the Bible as such he would be in the light at the end of two years because he would have the light of the scriptures and this is what we want the light of the scriptures so how do you know what the truth is you have to go to the Watchtower Bible and tract society so if you've ever had conversations would you have as witnesses they come into your home and you sit down and you start the dialogue right I believe Jesus is God I don't believe Jesus is God I've got this verse you've got that burger discovers first verse verse back and forth and you think at the end why did not work I mean it seems so clear on the page what it was saying see they're playing a different game than you are to you you're looking at the verse as it's written on the page trying to understand it what the Newton the God gave you understand it in context understand it the way people have always understood it they're not playing that game to them when they look at that verse in the Bible they're living that and they're thinking what did the watchtower tell me this verse means sometimes it doesn't matter how much context how many commentaries how many you know Greek resources or whatever you can show them they're not convinced because in their mind they can't understand the Bible and your problem is you think you can so that's why it doesn't seem like it goes anywhere when we try to argue with them what does this verse really mean because they're looking at it very differently yeah the Bible teaches something very different on this doesn't it it doesn't say that yet you have to wait for God's people to come and explain what what it means is very interesting in Acts chapter 17 you have Rhea pasal Paul can you imagine being taught by the Apostle Paul the Apostle Paul in acts 17 II he's teaching these people and it says of them that that that they were more noble minded than the other people from the other town Thessalonica they were they were noble minded and why because they examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was telling them was the truth Paul didn't say now wait a minute you can't understand that stuff you just listen to me no they were noble minded because they went to the Scriptures daily to see if what they were being told true and that's the way we need to be as Christians go to the scripture and we go to other people in our church as well Michael or pastor we can go to Bible commentaries but we can go to the Bible directly also we don't need the mediator ship of another organization telling us with the things mean so that's a review of the Bible it's trustworthy however you can't trust yourself to know what it means the next thing is under their authority is the watchtower which we've already mentioned what is their view of the watchtower wallets it's it's complete it would say the watchtower is God's channel of communication so when God wants to speak to people of the world he uses a channel of communication starting from him to Jesus to the governor governing body of the Watchtower Bible and tract society and then through the world through the Watchtower magazines we're going to see some quotes here in a minute on that one of the things that they like to call themselves are the faithful discreet slave this is from a verse Matthew 24:45 through 47 just look at this verse Matthew 24 says who then is a faithful and wise servant now that they're their version of the Bible says the faithful discreet slave so that's why they call themselves the faithful discreet slave our Bibles is faithful and wise servant who then is the faithful and wise servant whom his master made ruler over his household to give them food and due season blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing so as we saw from the millerite movement where he would take a passage like the parable of 10 versions and turn this into this timeline we can see the watchtower today taking a versus this parable of and yeah this one of endtime stuff but they take this in a plant to themselves they're saying that that Jesus is talking about this this class of people that would be giving this as food in due season their their version of the Bible says meat in due season what organization is giving people meat and do season the food that you need the spiritual nourishment that they need well it's the Jehovah's Witnesses that say so who is the faithful and wise servant or the faithful and discreet slave class that would be the Jehovah's Witnesses and how do we know because they're teaching all the stuff that we're going to get into here that's how they know there they are the faithful discreet slave products watchtower August 1st 2001 says a mature Christian does not advocate or insist on personal opinions or hard or private ideas when it comes to Bible understanding rather he has complete confidence in the truth as it is revealed by Jehovah God through His Son Jesus Christ and the faithful discreet slave so there you can see that channel of communication starts with Jehovah God then through the Sun and then through the faithful discreet slave printed in Watchtower magazines in the spread throughout the earth this is how God sits as truth out there makes you wonder why he even made a Bible to begin with doesn't it because you cannot trust yourself in reading the Bible so for our next topic then now that we have authority down who's the authority is the watchtower well what do they teach about God as Christians we like to think in terms of God's nature when we define who God is God is everywhere present God is all-powerful we think in terms of his nature and we define him that way Jehovah's Witnesses don't think that way when they think about God the closest that I've ever seen them come is a lot of their books when they talk about God they will say that this principle attributes or love wisdom justice and power I've seen this quoted many times in their books and I don't know why that that's so important to them then always point it out but it's love wisdom justice and power why these are his principal attributes I'm not sure to them but I would say it's it's a pretty piece of list however they as I said they don't think in terms of nature and that becomes one stumbling block when we try to talk to them about the Trinity or the deity of Christ since they don't think in terms of nature when we talk about Jesus being God they don't see how how could Jesus be Jehovah these are two different individuals if you can get them to think about God as in nature which we're going to do some of that later you give them the thing about God is in nature and then see how Jesus has that nature it makes a connection for them that's much more powerful than just showing verses that say that he's God we need to show what nature is and how he can be part of that so though they don't know describe God as nature let's let's look at the way persons do and see how they line up we we like these words Omni when we describe God right God is omnipresent he's omniscient and omnipresent and what this means is he's omnipotent means that he has all power and the Jehovah's Witnesses would agree with that Jehovah God has all power however he's not omniscient he doesn't know everything now he could have known everything but he decided not to know everything the Jehovah's Witnesses have said that they that God did not have did not start his plan of redemption until Adam and Eve sinned because he didn't know that they were going to do that now he knows all things possible I'm sure they would say they knew that it's possible that this would happen however he did not have this set foreknowledge that this is going to happen exactly this way so he did not set up his plan of redemption until humanity fell from sin so he doesn't know everything and he's not on the present meaning he's not everywhere at once he can only be in one place at one time so there is no God that's here right now and I remember talking to a Jehovah's Witness about this years ago in my living room and I said well I believe God is is everywhere and I cook them to this verse here Jeremiah 23 and just looking at the second sentence here it says do I not fill the heavens and the earth declares the Lord and I'm thinking to myself I got me a great verse does that look like a great verse God builds Evans in the air when you're talking with Jehovah's Witness or people of any faith it's different than the Bible when you ask them questions don't think that you have a sledgehammer and yeah I'm going to just nail it in there because you'll be surprised they'll come up with creative ways to look at verses that you've never follow so approach them humbly and say well what about this is it I mean this to me seems to say how about you you know his answer was he he said that well I see it differently when he says that he fills the heavens of the earth you know God created the heavens and the earth absolutely he God created everything and then when he created the universe then he filled it with planets over here stars over there God filled the heavens in the earth so you see how he answers that well that's a pretty interesting answer so basically when he sees the work field he's taken it as decorated got decorated the universe ever he made it but let's step back and think is that what it's saying let's even back up to the verse before that verse 23 and think about what he's saying is he saying this God is God everywhere present or does God decorate verse 23 if I had God who is near declares the Lord and not a god far off summarized out we can say I'm the god that's close to you I'm close I'm near not far off beginning the 24 can a man hide himself in hiding places so I do not see him declares the Lord can you get away from God no so first of all we have verse 23 I am close number 24 you cannot hide from God and then he says I decorate everything glendan you make any sense why would he even bring that up in context I think it makes much more sense to say I'm a god that's close to you you cannot hide from me why because I'm everywhere I fill the heavens of the earth is why I believe that God is omnipresent one very important thing about God that they will really want to point out is that he has a name you know God has a name right it's Jehovah they'll tell you and when when we get into talking about the Trinity I'm going to get into the the word Jehovah a little bit more at that point but to them I mean this is the key thing we have to know that his name is Jehovah if they come to your door and they say well you know what God's name is if you say of course it's jehovah oh they'll get excited when you read the Bible if you if you're in the Old Testament if you notice when you see the word Lord that it's it most a lot of the times the word Lord is in uppercase letters that's to let you know that in the Hebrew is the word for that we have for Jehovah or Yahweh we don't know the real pronunciation of it but they signify that to know that that is the divine name there in the Hebrew so when I'm with the job is what this is I'm reading my new American Standard I see the Lord in all caps I'll say Jehovah just to let them know that I know that that's what that's about oh they love that they're like hi this guy knows his Bible he knows that that's Jehovah even though I'll show them it doesn't say to her but I know that that's what it means and I know with divine name is and we'll receive later how we can use this in the witnessing situation to them about the deity of Christ so now to a topic that's important to us now who is Jesus for the terms witnesses Jesus obviously is not God we know that already originally he was Michael the Archangel says in 1st Thessalonians 4:16 says for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God and that's why they think that he's Michael the Archangel because in context at first Thessalonians 4:16 when it's talking about this fellow it said we know that it is Jesus and it says that he descends from heaven with a shout with the voice of an archangel well who's the Archangel in the Bible it's Michael so therefore Jesus is Michael the Archangel however I'd like to point out it says that he comes with with the voice of an archangel it doesn't say he comes as an archangel he has the voice of an archangel but still ok whatever will let them go it's important to define when you're talking with them like what what is it you want to get across and you know they want to say Michael the Archangel yes they if they drama ended ok we can talk about this but I think there's more important things we can get to Michael is the only thing that Jehovah God created directly everything else it was created in the universe was created through Michael so you can say the Jehovah God is a creator but you can also say Michael is career because Michael the Archangel created using Jehovah God's power and through him so it's almost like Jehovah God was the you know the designer or the concept guy and then Michael the Archangel put everything in the plan so he begins as an angel and when he comes here on earth born in Bethlehem now he is just human so this is very different from the way we understand Jesus as God has always been God and when he comes here on earth he's fully God and fully man now they're not saying he's fully angel employee man he stops being angel completely as powerful being Michael the Archangel and now he's just Jesus the human being so he is human and only human while he's here if he does anything miraculous is because he's still tapped into Jehovah God's power so he's only human at this point and he's not even the Christ until he's baptized by John and Jordan at that point now he's Jesus Christ and then he dies on a torture State after he does his three-year public ministry or so he dies but not on a cross with his arms outstretched he dies on a torture stake so it looks something like this the first day now you see the word stauros here on letter d he died on a torture stake the Greek word for cross is stauros and what their argument is is they will look into hit the history of the word stauros and they will show that star Ross was used as an upright beam that tortured people and put them to death and they will say so you see look Jesus wasn't put to death on the cross we know actually from historical records he was put to death on a torture stake an upright being and I this doesn't upset you you know what they're right when you look at the history of the word stauros it was used as an upright beam but not always see so don't be upset because sometimes it was used as a bright beam but during the period where Jesus lived when he was put to death on the stauros at the time it was cross as we think of it even if you think about the way that it's described in the scriptures and zooming in on these fellows here putting Matthew 27 37 it says the sign was placed above his head does that sign placed above his head above his hands and also John 20 25 Thomas said unless I see the nails the nails in his hands put my finger where the nails were and put my hands into his side I will not believe how many nails are through their wrists when they put on a torture snake one so the Bible talks about nails plural more than one nail and it says the sign is above his head but ultimately does it matter if Jesus died on a torture State for our sins would that mean oh we're lost it wasn't a cross being now let's see what what what groups like this do is the one a major on the minors they want to have to believe that they had the special knowledge to teach people and to draw them in before we know what really happened when Jesus died and uh I don't care what it was that he died on and I'm not going to argue this point I can throw these verses out but I'm not going to I'll just say like oh no all right well that's an interesting point and then I'll try to move on so this doesn't matter ultimately but they will try to make some of these points so he dies on the torture stake when he rises from the dead he and they'll using word resurrection but it's not what we understand the resurrection debate he was recreated not resurrected see when he died he stopped existing we're going to see the same thing happens to people when you die you stop existing and then God recreated him and now he's back to like what he was before he's no longer called Michael he's still called Jesus but God created him to be the way he was before so now he is back the way he was what happened he is original physical body they're not sure maybe God dissolved it into gases just me to go away but when he was resurrected he didn't come back with the physical body he only came back with a spiritual body how about the Holy Spirit well if we're going to mess with Jesus you know we've got to mess with the Holy Spirit too so they will say the Holy Spirit is not a person so when they talk about the Holy Spirit they always talk about the Holy Spirit as an it and they usually don't say the well you know when Holy Spirit comes instead of saying the Holy Spirit because it's it's not person instead of a person but the Holy Spirit is a source like electricity no we in a lot of groups that deny the Trinity they do this with the Holy Spirit is not a person it's a force like an electricity and they use several different arguments to try to show why the Holy Spirit is not a person they will say that there is there's impersonal references about the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit's doing things that no person can do like Pentecost there was a noise like a rushing wind well that doesn't sound like a person noise like a rushing wind how can that be the Holy Spirit it's a spirit person it sounds more like a non-person well God is often described in the Old Testament as with sounds of nature things like that and also it says the Holy Spirit fills people you can't fill people if you're a person this has to be like this this energy this force that God uses wait a minute what do we just look at Jeremiah 23 24 who fills the heavens in the earth Jehovah God Jehovah God can fill people why can't the Holy Spirit if he's gone too so therefore I think the Holy Spirit is a person they'll also say well look Jesus has a name Jehovah has a name but the Holy Spirit was this person can have name too well not having a name doesn't mean that you're a person on how about many of the demons that Jesus confronts he doesn't call them by name they might not have things we don't know having a name does it mean that your person or not so a lot of their arguments that they use might sound good to those who are may be unaware haven't thought true but there's a problem with a lot of them and they like to use great arguments to know beware of anybody who uses Greek arguments even if they're in your own church is I hear ambassadors sometimes we'll use a Greek argument oh boy I don't think that's what it works said or it's almost like using the Greek we'll drive home a point when it really didn't say anything different in the English but they'll say in the Greek the Holy Spirit is is neuter you know you have in in grammar you have masculine and feminine and neuter the Holy Spirit is is it's it's neuter and and the the the article before draw is always neuter so therefore he's not a person because it's in a neuter case well that doesn't prove if it's a person or not because demons guess what that they're neuter their persons so it sounds good on the outside a it convinces people however there's problems theologian Millard Erickson he says the Holy Spirit does somebody we agree with the Holy Spirit engages in moral actions and ministries which can be performed only by a person among these activities are teaching regenerating searching speaking interceding commanding testifying guiding illuminating and revealing these are things only a person can do Joe's witnesses will try to take any kind of passage where it looks like he's a person and say well this advisors a figure of speech called personification oh it is personification okay and that usually stops people right they're like okay well it's personification well well figures of speech are used for a particular reason I've told them you don't just throw out a figure of speech for no reason and then just move on with it like for perhaps for an example when I was a younger guy I got bought a Camaro when I was a teenager I thought pretty hot stuff I thought this this red Camaro would make me look really cool important and I named it the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars and you know I gave it a name it became like this part of me like this person I mean now that's personification the way I treated the car and what does the personification mean that figure speaks personification it meant the closeness and the importance that that car had in my life I've got a wonder if when the Bible is talking about these things they call personification Lord what is the author's point so if like in the beginning of Acts when it says that Ananias and Sapphira lied to God and if Emma says you lied to the Holy Spirit what does that mean you lied to electricity why don't you make sense what does the personification mean if it says you lied to the Holy Spirit if the Holy Spirit is really just a force like electricity or Russian women it doesn't make sense the best way to make sense of it to me is to understand all these things as a Holy Spirit as a person the second comforter that Jesus sent after the death so for us as humans what do we have first of all we're inclined to sin so kind of like original sin the way we would see it however we can make choices and we can clean up our lives and do things that we have no immortal soul so after you die you're gone and that's it and we call that annihilation so if you don't do what you're supposed to do in this life you don't measure up when you die you're gone you're a memory for Jehovah God and for anybody else who's alive in the lay dying so it's an annihilation and just like Jesus if you are going to be qualified for eternal life you'll be recreated if not resurrected see in the mind of Jehovah God he remembers everything about you and he can recreate you exactly the way that you are now so if you do qualify for everlasting life as they call it you can be recreated but let me explain the problem with the idea of annihilation if when you die you're gone completely and then jabba God recreates you yeah what's the big deal does that really change anything it really impacts quite a bit let's say see I was talking to Jehovah's Witnesses about this and I was talking to the husband mainly the wife was listening and it was not as happy with our conversation as the word was going I said to him now if you want to understand Joel got it he remembers absolutely everything about you and then he just he makes somebody who looks exactly like you and things like you and believes that he's you right right so well let's just say this doesn't happen in the future let's say something happens now and and for our class your lips let's use Gary for example if I can let's say if Gary if if God was able to do this in the future recreate somebody who looks like Gary and thinks he's Gary what happens if Jehovah God were to do that right now or maybe there's some brilliant scientist who figures out how to clone and he does that very thing he makes somebody who's acting like Gary and takes all of his memories all the experiences all everything about Gary and puts it into this new person but the point is that I think you can see is the other guy's not Gary interestingly he thinks he's Gary he has no idea that he's not Gary both Gary's would think exactly the same about the other one probably they wouldn't even know which one was row one I mean even even even the copy wouldn't be able to tell for sure was I the original one or not he's got all the memories and everything so then the question is if Gary does everything that he is supposed to in this life in order to be saved some other guy who thinks he's him is going to get the benefit of it instead of him mm-hmm is that good news you saved somebody else not yourself you did all the works of Jehovah God required of you and in the end you were gone somebody else was made and that they were saved so what do we have to do in order to to be recreated what is required for us for salvation well first of all you need to have accurate knowledge in order to be saved people wonder why do you chose witnesses know their stuff so well let's part of your salvation you need to have an accurate knowledge and understanding of God in order to be saved in a New World Translation John 17:3 reads like this this is Jesus's prayer he says this means everlasting life taking in knowledge of you the only true God so how do you get everlasting life you take in knowledge and what does it mean to take in knowledge learn stuff right this is not what it sounds like you learn stuff you take in knowledge and that's the way it's worded and in the world translation all right in NIV renders it very differently now this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God that's a very different kind of sound to a doesn't it knowing someone and taking in knowledge of someone there's a big difference in there the Greek word here which I told you don't always listen to people bring up this stuff but here I go again the Greek word for for the word know here is ganache Co and it means basically to know now there is a word that they could the Bible could have used its meaning taking knowledge that's this other word gnosis means information where we get to work Gnostics they're League Gnostics who believe that you're saved through information through learning certain principles about the world but it wasn't gnosis in this passage it's good no schoo it means a very personal kind of feel to it Jesus is saying eternal life is knowing God not just learning stuff about him but this is the first step of their salvation is you gotta learn accurate knowledge a lot of people have heard of this guy FF Bruce he's one of the very things well known and well respected Christian theologian you know there's theologians that some some groups like better than other some groups like this theologian FF Bruce usually crosses a lot of lines and this is what he says about this verse in John 17:3 this knowledge is not a matter simply of intellectual apprehension it involves a personal relationship the father and the son know each other in a mutuality of love and by the knowledge of God men and women are admitted to a mystery of this divine love so Jesus is talking about a personal relationship just by the word to know this is eternal life is to know him so once you get accurate knowledge then you need to join God's government jeshu God's Jib government is Watchtower Bible and tract society it's them and you would start learning this is the path that you would you would normally get on they come to your door you accept them in you start a Bible study or they call it a Bible study it's actually a book study it's one of the books they publish and you work through that and what we're going to look at some of their books here maybe the next week or two and you get into their their book study and after a while you start to get convinced you might even be allowed to go out and do some field service although it won't be counted it as under those numbers that we saw how many hours would you put on there you're not really Joe's witness yet so you need to do some of those those works but once you're convinced and you want to be a Jehovah's Witness you the door is baptism you need to join Watchtower Bible and tract Society through baptism they ask you many questions you need to be a blast answer them correctly and then you can join God's government now if you think of the terms they use government God's government we have there the theocratic Ministry school something they go to to learn Bible truth and then they have Kingdom Hall's you know they have all these government sounding things there focuses you need to be part of God's government not assuming government so if you go and vote for someone what are you saying you go down and you think I think Mitt Romney or I think these other guys I think they can do it well you're saying you think that humans can govern themselves but they'll say no the Bible teaches God that God is the only one who can govern God is the governor you need to be part of his kingdom you don't go and vote because you're saying you think humans can govern themselves base history is a it is is just one big illustration to show that we cannot govern ourselves and since God set things up in 1914 through Charles taze Russell cause government has been established through Jehovah's Witnesses and that's the government we need to be involved with so you don't you don't say the Pledge of Allegiance you don't salute the American flag you don't join the military because then you have to really obey the government when I was in the Air Force I had a I knew a guy who became a Jehovah's Witness and he was able to get out of his commitment to the military because he became a Jehovah's Witness they call it a conscientious conscientious objector and say I do not agree before I am belong to a religion that says this is wrong so I was able to get out so the the next step for your salvation would have to be field service or the door-to-door work going out knocking on doors passing out watchtower and awake magazines trying to establish Bible studies in people's homes and if you are Jehovah's Witness there are several different categories which you might be if you're in the work of doing field service first of all they call the jobs witnesses individually they're publishers if you do 1 to 10 hours a month you're a publisher and there's about 7.7 million of publishers last last year in 2013 and that's an average amount so at some points of the year they have hire maybe up to 8 million sometimes lower but about 7 point 7 million average publishers last year and you have to have about one hour that you need to report once a month but you know it when you're in a system like this and you have to turn in a time card every month to show how much time you put into field service now you want to make sure that not many people see if you only put one there you know you see all your friends are putting in 8 hours a month it's going to look pretty bad you want you want to put higher numbers on there but that's just for a person who is a publisher under certain situations you you might be able to do less they you have to report in full numbers like full hours you one hours two hours but under certain have certain health restrictions or something like that once in a while they will let some people put in 15 minutes half hour or something like that but usually has to be whole numbers so the next category here I have is pioneers pioneers or those that are doing full-time work 70 hours a month and in 2013 there were just over 1 million pioneers so over 1 million people putting in 70 hours a month there are some folks that can't go full-time into being a pioneer which oh by the way I just read recently they reported that one in every eight publisher is a pioneer so one out of eight Jehovah's Witnesses is a pioneer and puts in 70 hours so quite a bit if you can't do a full 70 hours they have these of this other category of folks auxilary pioneers they can do 30 to 50 hours a month in 2013 they had almost 500,000 of these folks and still they have this last group of people special pioneers these people are definitely the full-time dedicated 130 hours a month these folks put in these people might be missionaries in remote locations perhaps doing special work for the watchtower maybe working in some of their facilities so your build service is important for your salvation and how much you do depends on what kind of person you are here so our next category here is end times first of all currently the watchtower would say Jesus came back spiritually in 1914 when we talked about the movement of Miller ISM we saw that in the beginning Charles taze Russell actually taught that that 1914 would be the end of Armageddon but of course now they're saying this is the beginning of Jesus's spiritual reign here on earth and the end will come very very soon remember these are a strain of Adventists doing back to William Miller they're always looking towards the end that's part of the gospel the late dr. Walter Martin no relation to me but he used to I heard that he would call the Jehovah's Witnesses Armageddon incorporated because they're always looking for the end times they're always thinking the end is right around the corner they predicted the end of the world to be 1914 1918 1925 many times they predicted the end of the world and later in the course we might get into some of that and look at some of their publications to see when they've done that so if you've done everything that you're supposed to do then you would be saved and remembered resurrection is more like recreation if you if you don't do everything you're supposed to do then annihilation you're just going to go away and be gone but if you've done everything you're supposed to do you're going to end up in one of this two class system we've mentioned this a little bit before 144,000 people who are saved will reign with Jesus from heaven sometimes these are called The Anointed class or the spiritual class the hundred the number 144,000 comes from the book of Revelation in chapter seven in chapter 14 however it's not talking about some kind of anointing class that they're the only ones going to heaven for many different reasons we're not going to get into that but just to show you these are these are the top ranks they get to go to be with Jehovah God in heaven and reign through Jesus if you're not going to be saved and be part of the anointed class you can still be saved but be part of what the earthly class everyone else will live on paradise earth earth will be transformed into what it is now into a complete paradise Watchtower will refer to people that become part of this second class system as other sheep remember Jesus's other sheep I have not of this fold in the Gospel of John that he was talking about this earthly class of people that are going to stay here so he was talking to anointed people saying I have other sheep who are going to be saved and it's these people that are going to remain on earth or they might refer to the people of the earthly classes the great crowd they get the term great crowd from the book of Revelation chapter 7 verse 10 as I saw and look a great crowd which no man was able to number so you see the term great crown it's not 144,000 because you can number that the great crowd that were unable to number and where are they supposed to be earth however if you read the rest of the verse it says that this great crowd was standing before the throne and before the lamb dressed in white robes where does it sound like the great crowd is in heaven well that's something they you know they've seen that verse they have that verse in their New World Translation so they've had to wrestle with it I've had some Jehovah's Witnesses say to me it's like well just like you know Barack Obama is our president and you know we're not standing right in front of him but but we're before the president you know keys we're in the country that he rules so we're before the president kind of like that this this book of theirs reasoning from the Scriptures which is they carry with them when they go door to door they have this with them and if there's any hard questions they get at the door they can they'll pull out this book and it'll help them answer this is how they deal with it this is the description of them is standing before the throne indicates not necessarily a location but an approved condition so you make sense so I just means that God approves of them doesn't mean that they're anywhere well that doesn't sound like the verse that we just read in fact if you read the next verse sounds even just as clear it says and all the angels who talk about the great crowd now it's saying and all the angels were standing around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures and they fell upon their faces before the throne and worshiped God does that mean that they were just an approved conditioned also or were they actually before the throne and worshiping God before the throne see you can't take verse ten and say before the throne is approved condition in verse eleven means you they're actually there it's the same phrase that they're using and even just a few verses later verse 15 and this talking about the great crowd again it says they are before the throne of God and they are rendering him sacred service and night in his temple this is where the great crowd is so if I'm talking to Joe Joe's witnesses in my home and and the subject of salvation comes up and then they say also you you say that your you believe you're one of these people that are saved and that you're going to heaven and I'll say oh if you're asking me if I'm going to be what if I'm part of the hundred forty-four thousand no I'm not going to be I'm not one of the anointed class and they'll go they go wow this this guy no such stuff he knows he's not part of 144,000 I'll say no no I'm not part of him for 200 forty-four thousand I'm going to be part of the great crowd as I understand it and then I can show them these verses and say see where the great crowd is this is where I'm going to be I'm part of the great crowd I'm going to be with Jehovah God in heaven so you have to be careful when you're talking with Joe's witnesses that we don't use our normal terminology of how do you know if you're going to be saved and be with God in heaven because they don't believe anybody's going to have an unless you're part of the hundred and forty four thousand so we talking should talk in terms of how do we know that we're going to be save or we're going to be resurrected at some point in the future so that ends our discussion of the watchtower and their doctrine and some of their statistics I hope that's helpful for you now just to point out though knowing what they believe and knowing how we disagree isn't doesn't always equate to how do we witness to them often Christians here where we're different from Jehovah's Witnesses and we think that that means okay all's we have got to do is tell them what the Bible really teaches and that's going to really help it often doesn't this is just kind of a basis to help us were they to know where they are and then we'll try to get into later what how we might respond to them and teach them thank you

Channel: Tim Martin

Views: 69,873

Rating: 4.4327989 out of 5

Keywords: Jehovah's Witnesses (Religion), Jehovah (Deity), The Watchtower (Magazine), Arianism, Bible, Jesus, Christ, Tim Martin, CFAR

Id: 6OH2TYTqJGc

Length: 61min 43sec (3703 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 06 2014