Jehovah's Witnesses View of Jesus Compared to the Early Church

by cofty 148 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  David17 - Let's accept every word of your post without question.

  Let's agree for the sake of argument that Jesus was created by Jehovah who is his god and father.

  Everything in my opening post still stands.

  Jehovah's Witnesses do not speak about Jesus in the same manner as early Christians did. The apostles described themselves as witnesses of Jesus, they called him their only owner and Lord, and the one to whom they belonged. They were baptised in his name, led by his Spirit, rejoiced in his blessing and overflowed with praise for him. All of these statements are incompatible with the beliefs and practice of Jehovah's Witnesses. Even if an individual Witness may feel comfortable with such expressions they could never voice such sentiments in the hearing of others. There can be no doubt that if a Jehovah's Witness were to go back to a meeting of early Christians they would feel profoundly out of place.

  Even if as a JW you allow that the trinity is a false doctrine and that Jesus was created by the Father, how do you explain this gulf in the way you view Jesus as compared to the place he had in the lives and worship of the New Testament Church?
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  unstopableravens

  david do you believe the first part of john 1:1 in the beginning the word was, do you believe thats ?the verb here is was, so was is a past tense verb, that being said reread it in the beginnig the word was(past tense). john is telling us that the word is before the start of creation.
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  designs

  What is mostly left out of Western thought and discussion are the Jewish Christian groups such as the Ebionites, Nazarrenes etc. who were Torah observant and did not follow Pauline thought and considered Paul an Apostate, see James the Just.

  Like with Wt. Leaders rewriting their history what you hold in your hand as the NT is likewise a revision of history. Sitz im Liben
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  cofty

  The advantage of the approach in the OP is that we don't need to go anywhere near the trinity with all the grammatical complications of predicate nouns in John 1:1.

  We can allow a JW to believe that Jesus was created and that Jehovah is "the god and father" of Jesus. We can even let them go on assuming that the NWT is an honest translation.

  We can concede all of that for the sake of argument and still ask them why they don't describe themselves as witnesses of Jesus, call him their only owner and Lord, get baptised in his name, refer to the Holy Spirit as Spirit of Jesus, pray to Jesus or sing praises to him.

  The moment you stray from that and try to preach Jesus' divinity you give them the opportunity to fall back on all the arguments we are so familiar with.

  I notice David hasn't returned to answer the question.
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  unstopableravens

  cofty: i agree with u. its just hard for me to do that beacuse what the truth is about john 1:1 and who jesus claimed to be! but you mention that in ur opening post. jw seem to me to be defence lawyers there job is to defend the wt even if they know the wt is wrong. ill rather be a detective and search for truth!
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  cofty

  The "truth" about John1:1 is by no means beyond dispute. This is a way to avoid all of that.
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  unstopableravens

  another thread lol i think one reason jw dont give jesus the honor that they do is because the org replaces jesus in almost every aspect.
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  Vanderhoven7

  The moment you stray from that and try to preach Jesus' divinity you give them the opportunity to fall back on all the arguments we are so familiar with.

  Exactly, it's Bible ping-pong all over again. Better to stick with the fact that they do not have a biblically normative relationship with Jesus Christ. And yes, they would be totally out of place in any NT congregation.
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  designs

  The NT is not normative.
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  Vanderhoven7

  <<The NT is not normative.>>

  OK Designs, how did first century Christians view and relate to Jesus Christ?