The WBT$ certainly puts themselves as mediator between God and mankind..Very unChristian.....In many cases the WBT$ would have us ignore the words of Jesus and have us rely on them,for any meaning the Bible may have..As in the case of the September 15th 1968 Watchtower Artical "Why are you looking foreward to 1975???..The writer tells us "This is no time to be toying with the words of Jesus!"..The end is very near..This was on a thread by another poster a few days ago.....We all know that armageddon did not arrive as predicted by the WBT$ in 1975..But..To work up the 1975 Frenzy,JW`s were told to ignore the words of Jesus.....Is telling people to ignore the words of Jesus,Anti-Christ behavior?..
...OUTLAW
Is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society an Anti-Christ Organization?
by OUTLAW 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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OUTLAW
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Mum
If there is one God and one mediator, namely Jesus, and Jesus is the Christ, I don't think even Robert Shapiro could spin them out of your allegation, Outlaw. Good one!
Maybe they'll put another layer of mediation between themselves and the lowly "great crowd" in the future lest they be called upon to interact personally with the masses.
I am reminded of a verse, most of which I can't recall, about the early New England settlers, that the Lodges spoke only to Cabots and the Cabots spoke only to God (or vice versa).
In the name of the elders and the governing body and all others Jehovah's caste system deems more worthy,
SandraC
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zack
My answer to your question is: YES.
The WTS is anit-Christ.
They deny grace based upon Christ's ransom. They deny all their adherents (save for the die hards who beleive in heaven) a relationship with Christ. They usurp the role of Christ as mediator, as you point out. They substitute works over grace. They do not witness to Jesus. They have changed the Bible to deempasize Jesus. They compel members to confess their sins to 3 men who then decide if they are repentant, thus usurping once again the role of Christ as Savior and Judge. They make all members submit to them, when it is Christ that is the HEAD of EVERY man. I can go on.
They are evil, this bunch. Evil.
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Inquisitor
I think calling them "Anti-Christ" is rather harsh. JWs do not "demote" Christ out of spite. Their theology defines him as Son of God, hence a lesser figure compared to Jehovah, The Father. Their central figure of worship will always be God the Father.
This sets them apart from mainstream Christianity which (esp. Protestant) has strongly embraced the notion that Jesus IS GOD, and to detract any honor from Jesus makes you HERETIC. Teaching from an Athanasian lens, mainstream Christianity has long stamped the face of Jesus on God (though not always historically).
Are Catholics Marian slaves? Do some Christians have a Crucifix fetish? Are JWs anti-Christ? Is it not blasphemous of Christians to say God made a son with a human woman?
It is easy to demonise other people's cherished beliefs if we judge them based on OUR religious priorities.
We're getting ahead of ourselves when accusing JWs of stealing authority from Christ, replacing him with men. I mean, they do that for Jehovah too if you really want to talk about their high-control techniques. When JWs say they raise their kids in the "ways of Jehovah", i.e. no birthdays, no Christmas, plenty of witnessing, no college education, are they not really saying that their parental skills are shaped in the ways of the WTS?
So they're not deliberately going against Jesus. They're not anti-Christ. They're just attempting to worship God the Father, but in reality being manipulated by men.
INQ
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moggy lover
I believe that the WT Leadership have systematically and with demonic cunning expunged all meaningful application to Christ both, in their liturgy as well as their writings. Christ has become merely and adjunct to faith rather than the application of it.
One expresses Christian verities in the form of recognizing the role that Christ plays in the application of this faith. Interestingly, Christ Himself laid down the protocols of worship. When one honours the Son, one honours the Father. It is not the other way around. If one honours the Father, no expression of Scripture permits this to apply automatically to the Son. When one worships the Father alone, one is alone in one's worship. So when True Christians praise and glorify the Son, they are aware that this applies to the Father as well in equal portion. This is something that the WTS has failed to understand. It is somehow conceived that the centrality of Christ that is accorded by True Christians somehow diminishes the place of the Father in worship. This is simply not so. The honour that is required to be applied to the Father is done through the establishment of the place of the Son. The NT does not sanction the bestowal of any honour to the Father without first considering the Son. One does not honour the Son to the exclusion of the Father.
But even here, the place of the Father has been expunged. It is assumed, without any convincing proof, that the use of the mantra like repetition of the word "jehovah" somehow ensures the identity of the Father. The supposed link between jehovah and the Father, is tenuous, at best. In reality, the Father has Himself been reduced to an adjunct, displaced by this someone evidently called "jehovah"
The WTS gives the impression that the name has an ancient pedigree, going back to the dawn of man, and relevant even today. That the name was relevant only in a tribal connotation of a people confined to a sliver of land in the Middle East, and discarded when the message of the Bible went out to the wider world with the attachment of a Grander Name on which salvation was to be attenuated, is casually ignored by the WT Leadership. The impression is established that the 1C AD Christians used this "name" extensively, and indeed the discarding of it ushered in a Great Apostasy in the 2C AD. Somehow, the existence of an unknown remnant of faithful ones who carried the Flame down through the corridors of history till the time of Russell, has begun to take on mythic proportions and is clung to, more in fantasy than reality by today's R&F.
In fact there is simply no proof that this was ever so. There is no evidence whatever that apostolic Christianity and afterward ever attached any importance to the pronunciation of the Sacred Name. It is a misplaced belief of those who put their trust in unscrupulous men who exploit this notion. In fact the records of the early Christians are extensive and detailed and no such evidence of Sacred Name usage is available. In fact we even have a piece of literature written in about 90AD 1Clement, which details the practical aspects of 1C AD Christian worship at about the time John was writing his words. And no mention is ever made of any reference to the importance of the name "jehovah" in the primitive Christian community. When 1C AD Christians evangelized the world of their day the name they bore, with pride and devotion to the point of death, was Jesus. Indeed there were Hebraic structured Christians in those early years, and their existence is recorded, but their concern was with the ritualization of Judaism, in the recognition of such festivals as Passover, and the Sabbath, not in any fascination with the Name. The Jewish name for God was as alien to them as were pagan rites. They bore no resemblance to the artificially created religion of today which we call Watchtower-ism.
In fact attention to the Sacred Name is purely a modern phenomenon. By the start of the nineteen twenties at least three men began a "restoration" of the Sacred Name in regard to prayer and worship, Andrew Dugger, Clarence Dodd, and Squire Traina, who in 1922, started a group called the Assembly of Jehovah, which advocated the use of the name. He published pamphlets to this effect. He was not in any way connected with the WTS. In fact the group he identified with was the Church of God.
By 1935, when the then WT president Rutherford, expressed his interest in this name, we know of at least three groups who were already into their second decade of this belief having been given prominence. In one of those few moments of sobriety that Rutherford effected, he admitted coming across the name Jehovah. Of course he does not tell us where, he came across this, but quite likely it was one of Traina's pamphlets. Somehow it struck a cord in the deepest recesses of Rutherford's psyche, and, claiming a divine revelation while reading Isa 43:10, invented the identity that marks the current WTS, "Jehovah's Witnesses". That Rutherford was violating even the most basic principles of bible interpretation is totally ignored. With far greater financial resources than that of these Sacred Name groups, Rutherford began his relentless propagandizing of his new found belief. In this he somehow suggested a sense of originality to his claims.
Improvising his theology as he went along, Rutherford invented the most fantasmagorical applications of the word "jehovah". Evidently the message of the hour was neither the redemption that is in Christ, or even the Primacy of the Father, but the "vindication" of this name, jehovah, an issue unknown to Christ, or even in a modern context, Rutherford's mentor, CT Russell. Even the Eden incident was invested with the determinative of this name. The gospel to be preached was not the one that Paul preached, that Christ died for our sins and rose again,[1 Cor 15:1] and which was nominative of apostolic Christianity, but that of something called "jehovah's kingdom"
This undiluted humbug, entrenched in the minds of the R&F, has been successfully induced only by the constant and mesmerizing effect of WT literature, the reading and application of which is skillfully inculcated as incumbent on the R&F. The invocation of the name jehovah is somehow considered of sacramental benefit, as if its very usage ensures religious distinction.
In this respect, the WT Leadership have invented a completely new religion, courtesy of a drunken lout and bigot of the first water, which, with its tenuous beliefs and impermanent doctrines, brings dishonour not only to the Son, but the Father as well.
Cheers
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emptywords
Inquisitor I agree with what you have said, but would add that their treatment of the r/f is unchristian, they overlook Jesus authority as the head of the congregation and add rules and regulations that are not scriptual, desiding for us what to watch what to wear, what to read, have an opinion against the GB then you are out. This sort of dictatorship is not christ like so in a sense they are being anti-Christ by not following closely in his footsteps. I find the org has become political, its rules on obeying the GB ahead of God is itself apostacy, its policing of the b/s and shunning is neither scriptual or christlike. Do as I say not as I do.
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heathen
that is a tuff question when you look at how they run the religion. On the one hand they do say that jesus had come in the flesh and was the christ , which is essential according the apostle John in determing the antichrist ones. On the other hand the majority reject the emblems at the lords evening meal and also a means to enter the christian covenant. I think they only recently started calling themselves , Jehovahs christan witnesses, where as earlier they called themselves spiritual jews as if the sacrifice christ made didn't apply to everybody. Then people could only be saved by obedience to the book publishing corporation rather than faith in God and christ. I have said on other threads I think they are satanic .
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Inquisitor
emptywords,
The WTS has much to answer for their Pharisaical abuse of the RnF. I take that very seriously.
But calling JW behaviour unChristian (which appears to be the point you are trying to make) is very different from calling them the Anti-Christ! Their manipulative techniques, their use of conservative codes to punish "sinners", their politics - are these traits completely absent from other churches?
Has the basis of judging that JWs are the antiChrist been applied equally to the Vatican and the right-wing evangelical lobby groups in the USA?
INQ
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Vernon Williams
Is the Pope Roman Catholic?
V
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snowbird
I believe that the WT Leadership have systematically and with demonic cunning expunged all meaningful application to Christ both, in their liturgy as well as their writings. Christ has become merely and adjunct to faith rather than the application of it.
The above is a quote from Moggy Lover. When I read those comments, I recalled a scan of a letter on Paul Blizard's website WATCH the TOWER. It was from a professor of Greek who graduated from Northwestern Theological Seminary.
He was writing to someone about the New World Translation, and he stated that JW's HATE Jesus Christ because they had tried to remove all reference to His deity from their Bible. I am very technologically challenged and can't find the reference today. Maybe someone else can.
Snowbird