The final line in Gerard's quotation asks: "DO YOU DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH ?" Now, anyone who knows me knows that I abhor the Watchtower's lies. However, I also hate it when anyone fails to tell the truth, or get their facts straight, or misrepresent issues. The material that Gerard presented is full of such things. Here are some comments:
: They believe & teach
: THAT all religions except theirs are of Satan, and your Pastor or Priest is under the Devil's control.
True.
: THAT the Watch Tower Society is the only source of truth on earth today, and all churches teach error and will be destroyed at Armageddon.
True.
: THAT the cross is a pagan symbol of sex worship,
True.
: and that all buildings or persons displaying the cross are likewise pagan.
Not at all. They teach that such persons are dishonoring God and are false Christians, not that they are pagan.
: Jehovah's Witnesses deny that Jesus died on the cross.
True.
: However, recent "new light" in the WatchTower Magazine now admits they are not certain about the cross, but will continue to deny it anyway.
I know nothing of this.
: THAT no one goes to heaven but 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses,
Partly false. They teach that only 144,000 Christians will go to heaven. These Christians have lived from Jesus' time through today. Also, "Jehovah's Witnesses" are a specifc religion that the Watchtower Society now acknowledges came into existence not earlier than 1879. There may be some confusion here over the term "Jehovah's Witnesses". Until about 1977 the Watchtower Society used the term "Jehovah's witnesses" -- with a lowercase "w" -- for their religion. But this term is also generic, meaning "witnesses of Jehovah", which certainly might not include people who call themselves "Jehovah's Witnesses". The Society used to try to argue that the modern religion called "Jehovah's witnesses" was just an extension of a long line of generic witnesses of Jehovah going all the way back to Abel. I have no doubt that J. F. Rutherford chose the name largely to capitalize on this ambiguity.
: and your soul will be destroyed if you refuse their organization.
True.
: THAT the Christ child was only an "IT", not a "HE". See the New World Translation, Luke 2:16,17.
So what? I believe that the Greek preposition was "IT" to begin with. Some languages have no masculine or feminine pronouns, only neuter. This no more means that the NWT translator thought of Jesus as an "it" as opposed to a "he" than a Frenchwoman thinks of "la table" as a female.
: THAT Jesus was not the Christ (or Messiah) until age 30, even though their own bible says in Luke 2:11, "because there was born to you today a savior, who is Christ the Lord."
This is a stupid argument. Language is not a precise thing. It is evident that a newborn is not a Messiah because it cannot do anything but eat, sleep, cry and coo. The obvious meaning of the cited passage is that there was born one who would become a savior.
: THAT after Jesus was buried in the tomb, Jehovah dissolved his body into gases and it disappeared forever.
True.
: THAT Jesus rose invisibly in three days, so Jehovah had to "materialize" a fake body for him complete with fake nailprints so His disciples would believe it was really Jesus risen.
True. But JWs have a good argument that the tradition that the Watchman Expositor people seem to espouse produces its own problems. "Flesh cannot inherit the Kingdom" or whatever, meaning that fleshly bodies don't go to heaven, whatever that is. My point is that simply stating that something seems dumb, without showing why, is just as dumb.
: THAT Armageddon and Christ's second coming were foretold to happen in 1874, 1914, 1925 and 1975 by this "non-prophet" organization.
Whoever wrote this is completely mixed up. 1874 was taught as the date of Christ's "second presence" from Russell's early publications (1877) until between 1931 and 1943 (the latter is the WTS's official date for the change). Between about 1877 and 1904 Russell taught that Armageddon had begun in 1874, but his notion of it was quite different from the modern JW notion. The statement about 1914 is ok, except that the time frame is not given. From about 1904 to 1914, the date was supposed to be the beginning of Armageddon. It was only used for the beginning of Christ's (second presence) in some JW publications from 1931 onward. 1925 and 1975 were never taught to be dates for the "second coming", but both were taught as certain dates for Armageddon.
: THAT when Christ failed to show up in 1914 The Society claimed in later years that He had come invisibly--of course, and all Jehovah's Witnesses believe this today.
True.
: THAT Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob etc. were to be back on earth as perfect humans in 1925.
True.
: The Society built a palacial home for them BUT when the patriarchs failed to show up, the President of the Society moved in.
Highly misleading. The patriarchs failed to show up alright, in 1925 or any time after that. In 1929 Rutherford's buddies figured out that the drunken sot was doing a lot of harm, and so they convinced a rich Bible Student to contribute $75,000 to build a house as far from Brooklyn as they could get, in San Diego. They hoped he would stay out of harm's way a good part of the year. They apparently convinced Rutherford that he ought to go out there for health reasons (he had trouble with respiratory infections in the cold New York weather). Apparently they all figured out a way to justify to the naive Bible Student community why they were spending so much money (remember that this was $75,000 in depression era dollars), which was to claim that the house was for the "ancient worthies" who were soon to arrive. Of course, we all know that the house was for Rutherford, but they had to fool the Bible Students into going along with their spending an exhorbitant sum on keeping a drunken sot out of the way as much as possible. By this time, Fred Franz and Nathan Knorr were probably very much in charge of everyday affairs.
: THAT their light gets "brighter and brighter", allowing for many changes and "about faces" on their doctrines. Yesterday's error is today's "truth". Often the "light" bounces back and forth from old to new views and back again! Does real light return to darkness?
True.
: THAT the Watch Tower Society and its followers are all prophets of God today and the Governing Body is directed by angels from God.
True, but some clarification needs to be made. They teach that rank and file JWs are "prophets" in the generic, virtually meaningless sense that because they "proclaim God's messages" (i.e., the Watchtower version of "truth"), they comprise a sort of "prophet organization". They teach that the Governing Body is virtually inspired, meaning that they refuse to use the term "inspired", but in practice attribute inspiration to those men because they claim that their teachings are "divinely directed".
: THAT salvation for Society members consists of doing good works of selling Watch Tower books and magazines and winning converts.
Not quite. It doesn't consist of doing those things, because they teach that more is required, but that those things are necessary for salvation because anyone who does not do them will be killed.
: THAT soon Jehovah God will become a GRANDFATHER and Jesus will be promoted to "EVERLASTING FATHER"!
True, but this is just a dispute between trinitarians and non-trinitarians. Neither view is entirely consistent with the Bible.
: THAT Jehovah God is not omnipresent, but still Almighty. Think! How can this be?
"The Lord works in mysterious ways." Big deal.
: They have NOT been told -- By the leadership of the Society ....
: THAT when they translated their New World Translation of the Bible they deliberately altered almost every scripture on the deity of Christ, to make him only a creature.
A grossly biased, trinitarian view. Trinitarians can be accused of exactly the same 'deliberate alterations'.
: THAT the Society used a translation by a SPIRIT MEDIUM, Johannes Greber, to support their rendering of John 1:1 with full knowledge that his sources were DEMONIC.
True. However, the implication that this somehow throws cold water on the Watchtower rendering of John 1:1 is false. What is true is that this proves that Watchtower writers will deceive their readers if possible, by using bad source references.
: Greber was exposed in the Feb. 15/56 Watch Tower.
True.
: However in 1961 they released a translation based on his occult one,
False. The 1961 NWT was not based on Greber's translation. A 1950's Watchtower article merely used Greber's, along with a number of other translations, to justify the NWT rendition of John 1:1.
: then denied they knew what they were doing on page 31 of the Apr. 1, 1983 Watchtower!
True.
: THAT none of their "translating committee" knew Biblical Greek or Hebrew. No scholars at all.
False. The actual translator, Fred Franz, was quite fluent with academic written Greek and Hebrew.
: That Fred Franz, who for many years headed the Society, perjured himself under oath in Scotland in a court trial, by saying he could read Hebrew, and then failing a simple Hebrew test.
Misleading to the point of being false. Franz's knowledge of Hebrew was limited to translating written Hebrew into English. This is true of many good scholars, who have no need ever to attempt to speak ancient Hebrew, any more than Assyriologists need to try to speak ancient Akkadian. They only need to be able to translate it. Such translators are extremly narrow in their knowledge, and often are hard put to translate from English into the target language simply because they rarely have to do it. The test Franz was given was to translate an English sentence into spoken Hebrew -- one which a good many Hebrew scholars would also fail.
: THAT the following encyclopedias consider the name "JEHOVAH" to be FALSE: ...
Another stupid argument. What does it mean for a translation of a name to be "false"? The concept is meaningless. The name "Jehovah" is certainly not an exact rendering of the original Hebrew, but if anyone knows that exact rendering today, they're not telling. Translations of names into other languages rarely are, or even try to be, exact. This is often because speakers of other languages are unable to properly pronounce the sounds. So the English "Joseph" is "Jose" in Spanish and "Guiseppe" in Italian. All are pronounced differently. Are any of them "false"? Of course not. The fact is that "Jehovah" has been used as the translation of the Hebrew name of God into English for centuries. As in any language, the fact that large numbers of native speakers use it, automatically makes it correct. I would suggest that Watchman Expositor offer its own ideas on what a "true" name of God would be, and justify its choice.
: J.W.'s own "Aid" book admits on pages 884 & 885 that "Jehovah" originated with a Catholic monk about 700 years ago!
So?
: THAT the date 1874 was taught for Christ's invisible presence by the Society right up till 1929. (See their book, "Prophecy", page 65).
Actually it was taught in some publications up through the official date of abandonment of 1943. Most JW publications until the 1993 Proclaimers "history" book either failed to mention this date at all, or mentioned it in such a way that most JWs failed to notice its signficance. In any case, a modern JW is taught to minimize the date's significance.
: THAT top executives of the Society have admitted under oath that they forced their members to accept false prophecies or face disfellowshipping and be found worthy of death.
True.
I really wish that critics would get their act together. This presentation by Watchman Expositor contains the same sort of misrepresentations as many JW publications do about other religions. It's the pot calling the kettle black.
AlanF
