"Ask the Pastor" #2 - part 3

Sorry for the lag in answering this last part of Mary's multi-part question from a few weeks ago.

For those of you not following along at home, Mary asked about Mormons, Islam, and Jehovah's Witnesses. I addressed Mormonism here, and Islam here. Today I'll finish the rest of her question: what about JWs?

First and most importantly, Mary - yes, Jehovah's Witnesses are cultists and not Christian.

Second, let me address the very name "Jehovah". One of the distinctives of JWs is their insistence that God's proper name is Jehovah. They get wildly bent out of shape when an English version of the Bible translates the Hebrew YHWH as LORD. Let me explain a bit further.

The closest thing we have to a personal name for God in the Old Testament is, in Hebrew, YHWH. There were no vowels written down in ancient Hebrew, native speakers simply knew how to pronounce the words. Thousands of years later, a group of scribes known as the Masoretes realized that people were forgetting how to pronounce these ancient Hebrew words, and thus set about the task of adding marks to the text to indicate what vowel sounds were used. So the vowels in a Hebrew Bible that you pick up today are not inspired, they were added in the 10th century (AD!) for the sake of preserving what was believed to be standard pronunciation.

But it gets more complicated. Jews from the beginning have tried not to say God's name aloud, so when they would come across it (YHWH) in the Hebrew text, they would say Adonai - "Lord" - out of respect for "the name" (Ha Shem). If they happened upon a Hebrew text that read "Adonai YHWH", they would "Adonai Elohim" (Lord God). To this day, orthodox Jews that speak and read English will routinely write G_d, instead of God.

Still with me? Okay. So the Masoretes, wanting to indicate pronunciation but not wanting to somehow violate the name of God, did what was common practice - they would say "Adonai". But how to indicate this in writing? They didn't want to actually change the text itself - never! They were amazingly faithful scribes. So instead they added the vowels of Adonai to the consonants of YHWH, which - after hundreds of years of the English language - eventually ends up pronounced "Jehovah". How that happened is a whole other story!

My point is this: the name Jehovah is entirely made up. It's an English corruption of a Jewish traditional practice predicated upon the fusion of consonants from one name and vowels from another! And I'm supposed to make use of the name Jehovah one of the guiding factors of my faith?!?

This alone should tell you a fair bit about JWs, frankly. But this does not make them heretics. Loopy, maybe - but not heretics.

What makes them heretics is their denial of the Trinity. They simply do not believe that Jesus is God. Their official website contains this and this article explaining why Jesus is God's Son but not God. It's almost amusing to read these articles and watch them dance around context and other issues. Almost amusing. Really is sad ... and heretical.

They've conceived their own translation of the Bible to cover up the clear evidence of Christ's divinity - the New World Translation. They publish tons of literature denouncing what they call the "pagan belief" that God exists as three-in-one. For them, the Holy Spirit is merely God's "active force", not the personal member of the Trinity we know Him to be.

Aside from this heresy, they deny the fundamental nature of salvation by grace, instead insisting on a works based/earned salvation.

They also deny the existence of Hell, insisting that non-Christians (which for them means strictly non-JWs) simply cease to exist after death - they are annihilated. Of interesting linguistic note: there is basically no way to express the concept of annihilation in either Greek or Hebrew. The words for this kind of thought simply don't exist. To say "annihilation" in ancient Greek would require at least a few sentences of explanation. Funny how no such explanation shows up in the NT, eh?

There are a multitude of other troubling teachings. An excellent resource is found on this page of Hank Hanegraaff's website (otherwise known as the Bible Answer Man).

In short, JWs are not Christian and I'd personally advise you to avoid them at all cost. They have a training program dedicated to teaching their new converts how to cover up the truth and deceive - that's why you never find just one JW on your doorstep. Ask a tricky question and the "elder" JW will step in to answer with their pre-scripted responses. It gets frustrating fast. Just avoid them. Pray for them, but avoid them.

Hatushili