Posts Tagged ‘Jehovah S Witnesses’
The Founding Witness of Jehovah Flounders
The Jehovah’s Witnesses deserve commendation for the zeal with which they go about their business. They are in a pitiable position though with reference to their doctrinal beliefs and their founder’s bogus claims for himself and his views on the Bible.
The very colourful and even bombastic pioneer of the group now called Jehovah’s Witnesses, was Charles Taze Russell. Russell, while only eighteen years old organized a Bible class in Pittsburgh in 1870 and in 1876 was elected as ‘Pastor’ of the group. After resigning his post as associate editor of a monthly magazine in Rochester, New York, Russell founded The Herald of the Morning which became The Watchtower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom. Russell wrote a series of six books now called Studies in the Scriptures. A seventh book, an edited version of his writings after his death, prompted a split in the organization. The larger splinter group had J.F. Rutherford as its leader with the smaller group, faithful to Russell, remaining by itself. It was after the split that Rutherford’s grouping took for itself the now popular name Jehovah’s Witnesses and the corporate name The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society with international office in Brooklyn, New York.
Charles T. Russell seemed to have had more than his fair share of legal trials, including his not too pleasant divorce from his wife Maria Ackley in 1906 and his trial for fraud in connection with his alleged ‘Miracle Wheat’.
Of particular doctrinal interest is a libel suit which ‘Pastor’ Russell brought against a Baptist Pastor the Rev. J. J. Ross of Hamilton, Ontario who had denounced Russell’s theology and personal life in a no-holds-barred pamphlet. Ross castigated Russell’s teachings in Studies in the Scriptures as “the destructive doctrine of one man who is neither a scholar nor a theologian…who never attended the higher schools of learning…and is totally ignorant of the dead languages [presumably, Latin, Hebrew/Aramaic, Greek, etc.]”.
‘Pastor’ Russell’s simple burden in such a law suit was to prove that the charges in Ross’ pamphlet were not true. Russell lost the case as the court ruled that there was no ground for libel.
Under cross-examination Russell was forced to admit that he went only to public school and left at about age fourteen. Russell was charged for perjury arising from the proceedings and in this trial we encounter fun and games.
Ross’ attorney asked Russell if he knew the Greek alphabet. To which Russell readily said yes but when asked if he could identify the correct letters if he saw them he softened his stance by saying “Some of them; I might make a mistake on some of them.” The lawyer then handed Russell a Greek New Testament and asked him to call the names of the letters of the particular book’s name at the top of the page.
The founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who dares to write books on the meaning of the Bible floundered and said “Well, I don’t know that I would be able to.” Note that Pastor Russell, the Bible teacher, was not being asked to translate a Greek passage from Acts or Hebrews but simply to identify a few letters of the Greek alphabet, AND HE COULD NOT.
As a teacher of New Testament Greek I would be embarrassed to death if one of my beginner Greek students, after a week in class with me, answered the way Russell did.
How then can one take seriously the statement from the Watchtower of September 15, 1910, p.298 that if one reads Russell’s SCRIPTURE STUDIES without reading the Bible one would find more light than reading the Bible alone minus Russell’s SCRIPTURE STUDIES?
In a television broadcast in Barbados over the Christmas period of 2009 the representatives of the Jehovah’s Witnesses waxed warm about John 1:1 and the alleged impropriety of the traditional translation of the third clause “and the Word was God”.
The New World Translation (NWT) of the Witnesses translates “and the word was a god”. The Witnesses defend their translation by arguing that in this clause the Greek word for God (theos) does not have the article (‘the’) before it, hence it ought not to be translated in English with a capital G. Even if this argument was a genuine point in Greek (and it is not) then the persons behind the NWT broke their own invented rule a few times in the same John 1. Verses 6, 12, 13 and 18 all have the word God without the article [Greek has no indefinite article =a, an] yet the NWT translates God with a capital G in all of these verses. Take the reading of v. 6 from the NWT “There arose a man that was sent forth as a representative of God [no article] his name was John.”
There are other passages where theos appears without the article but where the whole context demands a reference to Almighty God. By the whole context I am implying not only the operative principles of sentence construction but as well the author and his beliefs.
The author of John’s gospel is a monotheist writing to fellow monotheists and in that context ‘the Word was a god’ would be nonsensical. If the author was a polytheist then the NWT’s translation would be permissible.
Jehovah’s Witnesses argue the way they do because they do not believe that Jesus is God or that he is eternal. Yet John, careful writer that he is, not only hints at the opening words of Genesis in Greek by locating the Word ‘in the beginning’ but carefully chooses his verbs in Jn. 1.1-14.
When he speaks of the Word (Jesus) before the incarnation (at v. 14) he always uses the imperfect tense ‘was’ (Greek: ēn, sound=‘an’ of ‘angel’, suggesting ongoingness in the past, roughly approximating the English ‘used to be’). However when he speaks of an entity coming into being he uses an aorist tense (point action). Hence, “In the beginning was [Greek: ēn] the Word and the Word was [Greek: ēn] with God and the Word was [Greek: ēn] God”. But in v. 3 “All things through him came into being [Greek aorist: egeneto]. Likewise the reference to John in v. 6 uses the aorist egeneto.
Similarly at v. 14 when the Word became flesh John uses egeneto. The Word was eternal Spirit before the incarnation.
If John believed that the Word was not eternal but had a beginning in time he would have said at v.1 “In the beginning the Word came into existence [Greek: egeneto].”
There is no question that the author of John’s gospel sees Jesus as God. In 5.16-18, Jesus attracts Jewish hostility and persecution because he healed someone on the Sabbath.
In v. 17 Jesus declared, to the horror of his Jewish audience, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” (New International Version, NIV). John’s commentary on this declaration is instructive of his view of Jesus as God.
V. 18 says “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making Himself equal with God.” (NIV, emphasis added)
In 8.24 and 28 Jesus makes ‘I am’ declarations [Greek egō eimi, the ‘ō’ is long as in ‘omen’], without a clarifying predicate explaining who Jesus is (like “…the bread of life”) These stark declarations are muted a bit in almost all English translations by the addition of a predicate like ‘He’ (yielding “I am He”, New King James Version) or ‘the one I claim to be’ (yielding “I am the one I claim to be”, New International Version). The Greek simply has egō eimi, thus “…if you do not believe that I am you will indeed die in your sins” (v. 24b), and “…then you will know that I am, and that I do nothing on my own…” (v. 28b).
Yet again in 8.58 our Lord invokes the absolute use of egō eimi (i.e. minus a predicate) when he shocked his listeners with “Before Abraham was [=came into being, was born] I am”. This absolute use of egō eimi would remind the average Jew of the identical declaration by the Almighty in the Greek version of Exodus 3.14, where the Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh is rendered in the Greek Old Testament as egō eimi ho ōn (lit. ‘I am the one/He who is’). In our Lord’s time, the Greek Old Testament was more popular than the Hebrew. In response to this startling declaration by Jesus, his audience took up stones to kill him (v. 59) presumably for blasphemy in line with Leviticus 24.16.
This passage, Jn.8.58, flushes out the fallacies of the NWT. The NWT renders the passage thus, “Before Abraham came into existence, I have been.” So egō eimi is rendered as ‘I have been’ and in the 1950 edition, the NWT defends this mistranslation by saying that egō eimi is “the perfect indefinite tense”. As the late Walter Martin and others have pointed out, there is no perfect indefinite tense in Greek. The later Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures (1969) attempts damage control in a footnote on p.467 thus “I have been= [egō eimi] after the aorist infinitive clause [prin Abraham genesthai] and hence properly rendered in the perfect tense…” I can find no rule in Greek that allows a present tense clause following an aorist infinitive clause to be translated as a perfect tense clause! This is just another Russellite ruse.
Jesus is again threatened with stoning in John 10.31-33. He had just said “I and the Father [we] are one.” The outraged Jews told Jesus they were planning to stone him “…for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God [no article in the Greek].” The Jews would have had no legal basis for stoning Jesus if all he was claiming was to be a god, as Jehovah’s Witnesses claim for the unarticled theos.
Consistent with John’s view of Jesus as God we find the sterling affirmation from Thomas in 20.28 “My Lord and my God.” In Greek ho kurios mou kai ho theos mou. Here theos has the article and Jesus does not rebuke Thomas for declaring blasphemously, though he chides him, mildly, about the reason for his faith in his (Jesus’) resurrection.
Jesus, for John, is indeed God and he affirms this from the first chapter and throughout his gospel. This is the witness of the New Testament documents on the whole, as they provide both direct and indirect testimony to the deity of Jesus Christ.
Jehovah’s Witnesses need to supplement their commendable zeal with solid biblical knowledge.
Second Coming Hype
Date-setters had a field day you may recall as the year 2000 approached. The same was true as the year 1000 approached. Long before this there was Maximilian, one of the leaders of the mid 2nd century group called the Montanists who declared “After me there will be no more prophecy: only the end of the world.” The Montanists emphasized the 2nd Coming and the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work of inspiration and revelation of truth. Even the great Tertullian was once a Montanist.
The celebrated reformer Martin Luther confidently expected Jesus’ return in 1530 so he argued “for it is certain from the holy Scriptures that we have no more temporal things to expect. All is fulfilled. The Roman Empire is at an end, the Turk has reached his highest point, the pomp of the papacy is falling away, and the world is cracking on every side as if it would fall apart.”
Yet the same Luther only three years later strongly opposed an opponent called Stifel for daring to predict that the 2nd Coming would happen at 8.00 am on October 19, 1533.
William Miller who is associated with the origin of Seventh Day Adventism had set 1843 as the year of Christ’s return based on his study of Daniel and Revelation.
Perhaps the most notorious date-setters have been the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The group has been forced by the realities of history to modify it’s position on the 2nd coming. It must be noted that the Witnesses insist that the Greek word parousia does not mean ‘coming’ but ‘presence’ but their date-setting obsession re end-time issues is still there. I’ll now provide some representative quotations from their literature. Where the word presence is mentioned think invisible presence.
“The time of the Lord’s second presence dates from 1874…From 1874 forward is the latter part of the period of ‘the time of the end’. From 1874 is the time of the Lord’s second presence.” (The Harp of God, 1928 ed. 236, 239-240)
Concerning the Battle of Armageddon, the founder Charles Taze Russell wrote, “The ‘battle of the great day of God Almighty ‘ (Rev. 16:14), which will end in 1914 with the overthrow of earth’s present rulership is already commenced.” (The Time is at Hand, 101).
Further, “In the year 1918, when God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions, it shall be that any that escape shall come to the works of Pastor Russell to learn the meaning of the downfall of ‘Christianity’.” (Russell, The Finished Mystery, 1917 ed., 485).
Russell died in 1916. History was not cooperating with Russell’s predictions so the organization had to modify his dates yet again. In The Watch Tower of July 15, 1924 at p. 211 we read, “The date 1925 is even more distinctly indicated by the Scriptures because it is fixed by the law God gave to Israel. Viewing the present situation in Europe, one wonders how it will be possible to hold back the explosion much longer; and that even before 1925 the great crisis will be reached and probably passed.”
Ponder this telling backpedalling from their earlier posture that anyone born by 1914 will live to see Armageddon. This is from the Watchtower of Nov. 1, 1995, 17-20, “Eager to see the end of this evil system, Jehovah’s people have at times speculated about the time when the ‘great tribulation’ would break out, even tying this to calculations of what is the lifetime of a generation since 1914. However we ‘bring a heart of wisdom in’ not by speculating about how many years or days make up a generation…’This generation’ apparently refers to peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ’s presence but fail to mend their ways.”
As the venerable Michael Green says in his commentary on Matthew “Jesus did not tell us to get out our calculators and polish our crystal balls, but to live a holy life in preparation for meeting him.” (257)
An allied belief to date-setting that is all too popular amongst Evangelicals is the unbiblical view that before our Lord’s return a prophesied 3rd Jewish Temple must be built and the sacrificial system restored. Respected researcher and specialist on prophecy, Grant R. Jeffrey argues this position in his 2007 book The New Temple and the Second Coming. On p. 88 Jeffrey says, “Daniel prophesied that the rebuilt Temple would serve as the center of Israel’s worship—complete with the resumption of the ancient animal-sacrifice system.”
Jeffrey’s logic is suspect in far too many places and his abuse or misreading of Scripture is very disappointing. On p.9 Jeffrey draws attention to Mt. 24:32-34, our Lord’s fig-tree parable then he says, “The fig tree was well known as a symbol of Israel…” This is flat out not true at all. The parable does not refer to Israel becoming a nation once again because Israel is not usually described, in the Bible, as fig tree but as olive tree. Note as well that Luke’s version of the Olivet Discourse says “and all the trees”( 21.29).
With all due respect to Brother Jeffrey he is at his worst in logic and reading of Scripture on p. 100 under the subheading Israel’s Rebirth and the Third Temple.
Jeffrey argues “Isaiah foretold that the Temple of God would stand again in the latter days.” He immediately quotes Is. 2:2 thus “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it”.
This text is not about the Lord’s house per se but about the mountain of the Lord’s house, i.e. Mt. Zion. ‘The mountain’ is the subject controlling the verb ‘shall be established’, ‘of the Lord’s house’ is simply a modifying phrase.
Barry Webb in the Bible Speaks Today commentary series on Isaiah informs at Is. 2.2 “Mountains played an important part in the religions of Israel’s neighbours. They were the points where heaven and earth were thought to meet and were therefore highly favoured as sites for altars and temples…Isaiah here foresees the day when one holy mountain will stand supreme, reducing all others to utter insignificance…” (45)
Otto Kaiser in the Old Testament Library commentary series on Isaiah at 2.2 concurs with Webb when he says “Mount Zion, on the peak of which the temple stands, will tower over all mountains and hills.” (26).
Jeffrey has simply misunderstood the meaning and essence of Isaiah’s text. Jeffrey’s poor reading and interpretation of Scripture continues on p. 100 when he writes “The prophetic clock started ticking in the countdown to the Messiah’s return. Israel, the ‘fig tree’ of Christ’s prophecy, was reborn in 1948. And according to Jesus’ prophecy, the generation living when Israel was reborn can hope to live to see the return of Christ (see Matthew 24:32-34). Some readers may naturally ask how we can be certain that the fig tree putting forth leaves is God’s prophetic symbol of Israel’s rebirth. In both the Old and New Testaments, the symbol of the fig tree is used exclusively for Israel (see judges 9:10; 1 Kings 4:25; Luke 13:7; John 1:50).”
Here is a shocker, not one of these passages mentioned by Jeffrey supports his point about Israel being described as ‘fig tree’. Ponder these texts from the New King James Version.
Judges 9.10 “Then the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come and reign over us!’” There is nothing about Israel here in Jotham’s metaphor of a variety of trees (olive, fig, vine, all the trees and even a thornbush) as he spoke with the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo who had gathered to crown Abimelech King.
1 Kings 4:25 “And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, each man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan as far as Beersheba, all the days of Solomon.” No Israel as fig tree here either.
Luke 13:7 “Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’” Jeffrey has misread this text too.
John 1:50 “Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” Not here either.
Jeffrey’s problem is that he is hooked on a theory and so sees evidence for the theory even where it is absent. Very sad but all too popular a malady within Evangelical circles. We need to learn to read the Bible responsibly and meaningfully.
Israel as an endtime marker has been too dominant in the theology of Evangelicals. As Barry Webb rightly says “Jesus gave no political predictions whatsoever for Israel. Therefore the physical return of Israel (or a fraction of Israel; there are more Jews in New York than in the State of Israel!)is theologically irrelevant… We are not to politicize the promises made to Israel in the Old Testament. The promise to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed finds its fulfillment through Christ in his Church, not in Israel’s return to Palestine in 1948, fascinating though that is.”
We would do well to remember that in the Olivet Discourse in Mt. 24, Mk. 13 and Lk. 21 after Jesus prophesied that the Temple would be destroyed the disciples asked him not only or primarily about the 2nd coming but they asked and got answers to 3 questions.
“When will these things be?” = When will the buildings of the Temple be destroyed? (Mt. 24.3; Mk. 13.4; Lk. 21.7)
“What will be the sign that these things are about to be fulfilled?”= What will be the sign that the buildings of the Temple are about to be destroyed? (Mk. 13.4; Lk. 21.7)
What will be the sign of your coming, and/even of the end of the age? (Uniquely Mt. 24.3)