LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE
SUMMARY AND REVIEW OF THEO 678 WESTERN AND NEW RELIGIONS
PROFESSOR: DR. FRED SMITH
BY
YOUNG CHAN KIM
LYNCHBURG VIRGINIA
29 JANUARY 2010
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Summary
Jehovah’s Witnesses, officially known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract
Society, claim to be the second largest apocalyptic sect, behind Mormonism, in America.
Like the early Seventh-day Adventists, early Jehovah’s Witnesses were started by the
American Adventist teachings in the late nineteenth century.
Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, honored William
Miller who gained the distinction of being America’s first Adventist, knew about the
English Irvinites, and adopted some beliefs of John Nelson who taught Joseph Bates, one
of two founders of the Seventh-day Adventists.1 However, Russell did not adopt the
Seventh-day Adventists’ teachings such as Sabbath worship, sanctuary doctrine, or health
theories. In 1879, Russell started his own publication, Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of
Christ’s Presence. He affirmed the central doctrines of American Adventists:
corporealism and soul sleep. To these, he added an Arian conception of Christ as Logos
(Jesus was a man and not a god). Most of his beliefs still guide contemporary Jehovah’s
Witnesses. He believed 1874 as the beginning of Jesus’ second ministration to the world
(he was invisibly present), 1878 as the final judgment of Jesus on the world, and 1881 as
the completion of Jesus’ church (144,000 called members).He taught 1914 as the
beginning of the millennial age ruled by Jesus. For this calculation of the end times, he
did not limit his sources to the Bible; in the 1880s, he had used the Great Pyramid of
Gizeh. 2
After Russell’s death, the directors of the society elected Joseph F. Rutherford ad
1
Paul Conkin, American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity (Chapel Hill: Univ of
North Carolina Press, 1997), 146.
2
Ruth Tucker, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 124.
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president. However, those who were most loyal to Russell and most resistant to the
dictatorial leadership of Rutherford left the movement. They formed their own groups
such as the Dawn Bible Students Association, the Standfast Movement, the Layman’s
Home Missionary Movement, the Eagle Society, the Elijah Voice Movement, and the
Pastoral Bible Institute of Broklyn. After this chaos, Rutherford drove the movement to a
very different religious movement, and he renamed it Jehovah’s Witnesses. He began to
emphasize door-to-door evangelism. Rutherford abolished the elected elders and set up
district overseers. He established a highly centralized religious organization, referred to
as a theocracy. Witnesses believe that the church age is past and that these days are in the
kingdom age. They also believe that the era of human government is over, and they do
not pledge allegiance to flags, governments or nations. Over forty cases concerning
Jehovah’s Witnesses have come before the Supreme Court: the case involving
schoolchildren who refused to salute the flag, the case of the door-to door evangelization,
the case of denying blood transfusions, and so on. In World War II, around 4,500 Witness
youths went to jail due to draft violations.
After Rutherford’s death the Watch Tower Society elected Nathan Homer Knorr
as president. Knorr established an eleven-member governing body for the society,
restored the local elders, and set up a rotation among the overseers at the district. In his
last years, he also fell into the trap of his two predecessors. He thought that Armageddon
would begin in 1975. His successor, Frederick W. Franz, had already taken the lead in
developing a new translation of the Bible, the New World Translation completed in 1960.
It reflected Witness doctrines in that they changed all references to “God” in the New
Testament to “Jehovah”. Under Franz and a conservative leadership in Brooklyn, the
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Witnesses resisted innovations of any type and their social relationship was limited
within the church. Unlike the Seventh-day Adventists, they have not set up their separate
schools and colleges, and unlike the Mormons, they have not made a diversity of clubs
and activities for all age groups. Until did Michael Henschel replace Franz in 1994, the
society had only four presidents in 120 years. Don Adams became the fifth president (if
Russell is regarded as a president, he is sixth) of the society in 2000.3 Under Adams, the
organization has increased, and the results have brought rapid growth outside the North
America.
Review
Whether a movement is considered as a cult or not depends on whether the
movement acknowledges the authority of the Bible. Unlike the Mormons, who claim a
prophet founder and extrabiblical scriptures, the Jehovah’s Witnesses make no such
claims. They recognize Russell only as the initiator of the movement that became
Jehovah’s Witnesses. His successors were also mere persons who carried on his teachings.
However, Tucker pinpoints that they have other extrabiblical authority. He says like this,
But it is important to realize that there is only a subtle difference between
the extrabiblical authority given to prophet and scriptures by the Mormons and the
same type of authority given to the Governing Body at Bethel headquarters.
Indeed, in the minds of many, the Bethel power base in Brooklyn is an authority
unto itself that is beyond the challenge of scholarly biblical debate. …The local
congregations are tied organizationally to Bethel headquarters through the
supervision of district and circuit overseers.4
Unlike the Mormons, while Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have extrabiblical
scriptures, they do have their own version of the Bible. They insist that they are clearly
3
Mark Hager, “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” in The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics, ed. Ed
Hindson, and Ergun Caner (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2008), 292.
4
Ruth Tucker, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement, 136.
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interpreting the Bible as the early Christian did before heresy entered into the church in
the third and fourth centuries. Therefore, they regard themselves as “the religion, the only
pure religion.” They insist that correct translation is found in the New World Translation
of Christian Greek Scriptures (NWT), published in 1950 by the Watchtower Bible and
Tract Society. It is their source of truth and can be understood only by elite governing
body at Bethel Headquarters through continued revelation provided by Jehovah.
Therefore the Jehovah’s Witnesses can lay claim to being the first of the cults to produce
its own translation of the New Testament.5
The reason that they insist that the only New World Translation includes the
correct translation is that they deny the concept of the Trinity and the deity of Christ.
Jehovah’s Witnesses emphasize the unity of God and equate Jesus with Michael the
archangel. According to them, the Holy Spirit is God’s impersonal active force. They also
deny the historic orthodox view of Christ’s resurrection. They insist that Jesus’
resurrection was spiritual and not corporeal. Russell assumed that Jesus’ body might have
been dissolved into gasses and Rutherford believed that God removed it miraculously and
has it preserved somewhere for emergence during the millennial age. Therefore, their
salvation is not from Jesus’ atonement but is believed to be impossible apart from
obedience to the Watchtower and working hard for the reward of eternal life.
Jehovah’s Witnesses insist that the Greek word theos must have a definite article
when it refers to God the Father (Jehovah), and that it refers to a god, without the article.
However, the New World Translation is inconsistent in following its own rule. John 1:18
has no definite article in the Greek for Theos in either of the instance it appears. Yet the
NWT translates the verse as follows: “No man has seen God at any time; the only5
Ibid., 143.
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begotten god who in the bosom position with the Father is the one that has explained
him”. John 20:28, having Greek word Theos accompanied by a definite article, is
translated by NWT as the following: “My Lord and a god”. The Gospel of John, from
their own version (NWT), has so many verses that teach a truth that Jesus is true God; for
instance, John 5:18 teaches that Jesus was “making himself equal to God, John 5:22
exhorts that Christians should “honor the Son just as they honor the Father”, and John
10:30 shows that Jesus emphatically asserts, “I and the Father are one.”
Even though early Jehovah’s Witnesses started from an apocalyptic sect, they
have developed into an apocalyptic cult. Like other cults, they also have some problems
of authority and interpretation of the Bible. Like Satan tempted and challenged Eve in
Eden (Genesis 3) and Jesus in the desert (Matthew 4) against the word of God and also
through misuse of God’s word, almost all cults have the problem of challenging against
the word of God by their own revelations or scriptures and even God’s word. Jehovah’s
Witnesses are no exception.
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Bibliography
Conkin, Paul, American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity, Chapel Hill:
Univ of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Hager, Mark. “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” in The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics, ed.
Ed Hindson, and Ergun Caner, 291-294. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers,
2008.
Tucker, Ruth, Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions, and the New Age Movement,
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.
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