The Watchtower’s two-tier soteriology—the pampered “little
flock” of 144 000 who alone share in Christ’s covenant, and the earth-bound
“Jonadab class” who somehow skirt Calvary’s blood yet expect paradise—collapses
the moment it is exposed to the light of Scripture, the testimony of the
earliest Church and the most elementary logic.
From the outset the whole arrangement was not exegesis but
marketing. Rutherford’s 1920 “Millions Now Living Will Never Die!” was not a
sober reading of Revelation; it was a sales pitch: skip the inconvenience of
dying—sign here and live for ever on a park-like earth. When 1925, 1935,
1975 and every other Watchtower “end” fizzled, the promise should have been
recognised for what it was: a glossy, undeliverable brochure. Yet the
organisation doubled down, inventing the Jonadab label (a single Old-Testament
passer-by pressed into service as prototype of a second-class believer) and
insisting that these millions were not in the New Covenant, not
covered by the blood, not beneficiaries of Christ’s priesthood
and—astonishing perversity—not even clients of Jesus’ mediation.
That last claim alone brands the doctrine as anti-apostolic.
Saint Paul proclaims “one mediator between God and man, the man Christ
Jesus” (1 Tim 2 5). No asterisks, no class exceptions. To carve out a majority
of humanity from the sphere of the Mediator is to nullify the very “better
covenant” Hebrews exalts. Small wonder the Watchtower must redefine “other
sheep” (John 10 16) as a future earthly horde: only by banishing them from the
sheepfold can Brooklyn reserve the covenantal privileges for its shrinking
anointed cadre.
The textual gymnastics are glaring. In Revelation 7 John hears
the numbered 144 000—twelve squared, multiplied by a thousand, the biblical
idiom for perfect completeness—and then sees a great multitude no one
can count standing before the throne. Not grazing in Galilee; in heaven,
robed and palm-bearing, participating in celestial liturgy. The Watchtower must
deny the plain sequence—must insist that “before the throne” merely means “in
favourable earthly standing”—because to admit the obvious is to concede that
the “great crowd” and the 144 000 are two portrait angles of the same redeemed
people.
Equally tortured is the Jonadab analogy. Jehu’s incidental
travelling companion (2 Kings 10) is pressed into eschatological service only
because Rutherford needed a biblical peg on which to hang his second-class
converts. Nothing in the text suggests Jonadab was barred from Israel’s
covenant blessings; on the contrary, he cooperated zealously in purging Baal
worship. To wield him as proof that a whole swathe of twentieth-century
converts are eternally disenfranchised from Christ’s priesthood is eisegesis of
the crassest order.
The fruit of the doctrine is predictably poisonous. It
manufactures an ecclesiola in ecclesia: a tiny spiritual aristocracy who alone
eat the bread and drink the cup, surrounded by millions of spiritual serfs who
dutifully pass the emblems untouched. The Lord commands, “Take, eat … Drink,
all of you” (Matt 26 26-27); the Watchtower commands, “Pass, reject.” The
Apostle issues a solemn warning against not discerning the body and
blood (1 Cor 11 27-29); the Watchtower enjoins near-universal abstention. If
anything fulfils Paul’s prediction of “doctrines of demons” (1 Tim 4 1), it is
a teaching that forbids the majority of believers to confess Christ sacramentally
and brazenly denies them covenant pardon.
Worse still, the doctrine guts Christian hope. The New
Testament sets resurrection and glorification with Christ as the destiny of all
who belong to Him (Rom 8 17-23; Phil 3 20-21). The Watchtower substitutes an
indefinite camping permit on a refurbished planet—pleasant, perhaps, but shorn
of the beatific vision, theosis, joint-heirship, the very marrow of apostolic
eschatology. Paradise without the direct sight of God is merely Eden replayed,
not redemption consummated.
And what of the organisation’s claim that its earthly
adherents “will never die”? Every coffin lining Kingdom-Hall basements is a
silent rebuttal. The generation Rutherford addressed in 1920 is dust, their
promised exemption annulled by cold statistics. Scripture warns that a tree is
known by its fruit; a prophecy proved false marks its source as false (Deut 18
22). By biblically defined standards the Watchtower’s two-class gospel is a
counterfeit, conceived in failed date-setting, nurtured in eisegesis, maintained
by institutional pride.
Catholic, Orthodox, and the vast majority of Protestant
exegetes—divided on many things, but united here—hold the catholic (i.e.,
universal) hope: one flock, partakers of one cup, heirs of one
kingdom, whether Jew or Greek, male or female, first-century martyr or
twenty-first-century convert. No heavenly ceiling at 144 000, no earth-bound
purgatives stranded outside the New Covenant, no mediatorial fine print that
excludes the very people Christ bled for. The Watchtower’s dualism is not
merely defective; it is a direct assault on the sufficiency of the cross and
the universality of grace.
The tragedy is that countless sincere men and women traded
Christ’s unfenced banquet for a seat in the Watchtower’s segregated auditorium.
Yet grace still calls. The Son of Man remains the single door to the
sheepfold; anyone who enters by Him—no membership card required—“will go in and
out and find pasture.” The invitation stands: drop the Jonadab badge, renounce
the two-storey gospel, and claim the full inheritance won at Calvary, the same
for every saint from Abel to the last soul sealed by the Spirit.
