Mark 10:45: "For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."
1 Timothy 2:5-6: "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time."
The Ransom that was Taught for the First 1,000 Years of Christianity
Due to Adamic sin, humans were captive to satan, satan had acquired "ownership" over them, and God "had" to somehow, buy them back from Satan! It's pretty hard to imagine the Creator of the Universe and everything in it, getting over His head in debt to one of his own kids, but that's what they believed. God, being that He is, well "God", would look pretty bad if his credit rating ever dropped below 850, so he must have felt obligated to pay that debt and clear things up. So, in effect, God made a deal with the Devil, his kid.
He made this deal with the Devil by buying his human kids back from Satan by killing his firstborn kid, Jesus. But God was clever. He "tricked" Satan with a "bait and switch" tactic by resurrecting Jesus!
When Satan complained that he got screwed on the deal, God said, "I said I would kill Jesus, but I never promised not to resurrect him almost immediately after. Now give me back my human kids." God can be such a prankster.
This doctrine is what was actually taught for about the first 1,000 years of the Christian era.
Modern Religions Which Teach a Ransom Doctrine Similar to Jehovah's Witnesses
Today, besides Jehovah's Witnesses, there are very few religions outside of the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Protestant World Faith Movement who believe in the Ransom Theory.
Here are two major ones who do:
1) The Eastern Orthodox churches: their leaders are the ones with the big scraggly beards and look like they haven't washed their hair in several months. That is because they haven't washed their hair in several months. When it comes to their dress codes and grooming, think "Taliban." They also have those big garish churches with the domes, spires and goofy colors and are found in cities where the sun never shines through the thick black fog. You know, the kind of buildings you saw in old vampire movies as a kid and that gave you so many nightmares. Think "Red Square" in Moscow and you'll get the picture. If history is any indication, I guess people probably preferred to live under Stalin's Communism rather than have to attend those scary churches and listen to guys with scraggly beards and dirty hair tell them what to do.
2) The Protestant world-faith movement is a very conservative branch of Christianity, which among other things love tent-revivals, whacking crippled people on their heads to make them walk again, lots of screaming, crying and talking in strange languges. But mostly they worship a God who is always (I mean ALWAYS) short on cash and needs more of it. LOTS more of it. But they are REALLY good at doing "the wave" together!
So, to summarize, when it comes to groups who believes in the "ransom" doctrine, Jehovah's Witnesses keep pretty good company.
The Common Christian Teaching on the Purpose of Jesus' Death
Most Christians believe that because of Adam, all other humans were born in sin and pretty much, sin is what humans do best. They believe that to get out of this mess, Jesus came along and died to wash away those sins and take the burden of them upon himself. This was voluntary on the part of Jesus. He didn't have to do it, unless God had yet another "or else" clause in the deal. Yeah. God probably had one of those for Jesus, too.
So Jesus comes to earth, does a few magic tricks, tells some good stories and pisses off almost everyone. So they hanged him. On a giant popsickle stick. A few days later, he's home again except now he's drenched in the sins of everyone alive and everyone who was ever alive. The Bible doesn't quite explain whether he has to be burdened with carrying around all that sin for eternity or not, or whether he can just "wash" it off, but for the moment, everyone was able to dump their sins onto him.
What about the "new" sins, though? What happens to those? I guess they just keep piling on top of Jesus or something. If Jesus only had to carry just my personal sins, that alone would make him a cripple. I shudder to think what he would be like with everyone's sins, especially those of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses(tm), not to mention those of your average politician or real estate agent.
Anyway, for most Christians, that's sorta how it works.
The Watchtower Ransom(tm)
But not Jehovah's Witnesses. They believe Jesus paid a ransom but not in the traditional sense as I've already outlined. No! Not Jehovah's Witneses!
Now, this part is going to get a bit complicated, so bear with me here. When you have a debt, and it is paid, there is no more debt. When someone is taken captive and a ransom is paid, the captive is released. The deal is done.
Humans have been taken "captive" by sin. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. When one dies, the "wages" are paid. I mean, what MORE could a human give in wages than his own life? If this verse is to be believed to mean what it says, then there would have been no need for any "ransom." Just let everyone die. Done deal. Clean slate. Debt paid. Maybe in that case, the "ransom" could be considered a "down payment" on eventual eternal life for humans.
But a real world ransom is never a down payment. It is the ENTIRE payment. Then again, who believes that Jehovah's Witnesses live in any real world?
But as usual, nothing is as easy as it should be in dubland. In dubland, it is taught there are some people who will never see another second of life in all of eternity, DESPITE the fact that they paid the wages of sin by dying, AND the fact that Jesus died and "ransomed" them from their sin. No! In dubland, not only is ONE payment not enough, but TWO payments, including one made by Jesus Christ himself is not enough!
Let's take a quick look at the "reasoning" of the ransom doctrine as taught by the WTS. Keep some meclizine and dramamine handy as you may get dizzy and nauseous from reading what is to follow:
Adam "lost" the right to eternal life for mankind.
Oh, wait! He didn't "lose" it because he didn't have it yet. He would have only had it to "lose" if he had eaten of the "Tree of Life", which he didn't do. So, logically he couldn't "lose" what he didn't have to "lose."
At any rate, God killed Adam by making him die when God didn't have to kill Adam for making him die since Adam really didn't "lose" anything for the human race. What he lost was God's favor. That is NOT a good thing to lose. Adam would verify that fact if he could.
So God punishes billions of people by not giving them eternal life because Adam "lost" something he didn't have. Do you understand this VERY important point? Adam couldn't have "lost" something he didn't have to "lose" in the first place! God punished people for a bogus reason according to WTS doctrine!
So in order to fix what already is a "false cause fallacy" about losing the right to life Adam didn't have in the first place and then making people die, God comes up with a novel solution. The way to "fix" people losing the right to live is to kill someone. Better yet, to kill his own kid!
To put this in human terms so even a dummy like me can understand it, let's say my second-born kid did a really bad thing, like disobey me. So I decide the best way to resolve this problem is to kill that second born and then kill all of the future offspring of my second born after letting them lives for a few years. Then a few thousand years later also go ahead and kill my FIRST-born kid who did nothing wrong, and then I say "that settles the score."
But the problem here is that does NOT settle the score. Besides, people get killed for no sensible reason and certainly not because anything was their fault. In the real world, when a person is taken hostage and a ransom is demanded and paid, the hostage is then immediately released. Fair deal. It's extortion, but at least both parties benefit. But Bible God of the Watchtower is WORSE than one just demanding extortion. He doesn't even keep his end of the deal.
Humans were taken hostage by Adam and because of that, billions suffered and died. Then the "ransom" was paid and humans are STILL screwed up 2,000 years and billions of more deaths later. No Adamic Paradise has been returned. No perfect life has been returned. No eradication of old age, death and misery has been returned. After 2,000 years there is NOTHING to show, and I mean NOTHING to show for that "ransom" that was "paid" 2,000 years ago. No! Now the best (and that is an iffy "best") that can be expected is another 1,000 years of testing and then a "final exam" which is supposed to be the worst "final exam" in the history of mankind. THEN the "ransom" is paid-in-full. But even after that, if you screw up, you're toast.
But it is even worse than that! Jesus didn't really pay a ransom for you and I directly. We get NO benefit from the mediator of mankind unless we go through the mediator's mediator for mankind, to wit, the Watchtower Printing Corporation. Without them, Jesus' ransom doesn't mean squat for anyone. To put it in a nutshell, in order to get the benefit of Jesus' life insurance policy you have to go through his exclusive agent, and even then, your chances of collecting on it are pretty slim. The fees for that agent are very steep to pay and they've never paid out on a single claim. Ever.
Some "ransom."
Farkel