Dawn,
Not only was the very Jesus/Michael idea unheard of before Russell, but the Bible explicitly rejects the possibility of it.
For example, the author of Hebrews states: "To which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my son? . . . Let all the angels of God worship him. . . . Your throne, O God, stands firm forever. . . . O Lord, you established the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands’ . . . to which of the angels has he ever said ‘Sit at my right hand . . . ’" (Heb. 1). Here, the author of Hebrews separates Jesus from angels, and commands the angels to worship him (Rev. 5:13-14,14:6-7). The obvious problem is this: Archangels are creatures, but the Bible forbids any creature to worship another creature. So, either the Bible is in error by commanding the angels to worship an archangel, or Jesus is uncreated and cannot be an archangel. Since this gave the WT a tremendous problem, they even had to change their Bible translation, to eliminate the references to worshipping Christ. (The 1950, 1961, and 1970 editions of the NWT read "worship" in Hebrews 1:6.) Beyond this, Jesus has the power to forgive sins and give eternal life, but no angel has this capacity.
2. Jesus: Creature of Creator?
The doctrine that most clearly sets the WTS apart from Christianity it they maintain that Jesus is actually a creature—a highly exalted one at that—but not God himself. Scripturally, the evidence is not in their favor.
John 1:1 states unequivocaly, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This verse gave the JWs tremendous difficulty, and so in the NWT they render the end of this verse as, "And the word was a god." One great difficulty with this translation is how it contradicts passages such as Deuteronomy 32:39, which says, "I alone, am God and there are no gods together with me." Further contradictions can be seen in Exodus 20:3, "Have no other gods besides me," and Isaiah 43:10, "Before me no god was formed nor shall there be any after me." When a particular translation so clearly opposes other verses in Scripture, one can know immediately that it is inaccurate.
In John 20:28 Thomas says to Jesus, "My Lord and my God." In the original Greek it literally reads, "The Lord of me and the God of me." It would be nothing short of blasphemy for Jesus not to rebuke Thomas if he was wrong. Jesus does nothing of the sort, but instead accepts Thomas’ profession of his identity as God.
The Bible indicates that God alone created the universe (Is. 44:24), and "he that constructed all things is God" (Heb. 3:4). However, Jesus created the heavens and the earth (Heb. 1:10). This passage by itself proves that Jesus is God, since an Old Testament reference to God (Ps. 102:26-28) is now given to him.
In John 8:58, Jesus takes the name of God, "I AM" (Ex. 3:15-18), and applies it to himself. Only God may use this title without blaspheming (Ex. 20:7, Deut. 5:11), and the punishment for someone other than God to use the sacred "I AM" is stoning (Lev. 24:16). Thus in verse 59, Jesus’ audience picked up stones to kill him, because they correctly understood his use of "I AM" as his claim to being God and hence thought he was guilty of blasphemy. This verse also proved to be difficult for the WT to combat, and so they changed "I AM" to "I have been." They call this rendering the perfect indefinite sense, but such a tense does not exist in the Greek language. So, the WTS went so far as to invent a new Greek tense in order to change Jesus’ words and consequently rob them of their significance. It should also be noted that it would be rather strange for people to stone Jesus for saying that he "had been."
The WT maintains that only Jehovah God may be prayed to. But Stephen prayed to Jesus in Acts 7:59, and so one must conclude that Jesus is God. Otherwise, Stephen blasphemed while filled with the Holy Spirit (7:55). Now the WT will assert that Stephen was praying as a result of the vision he originally beheld, where he saw God and Jesus in heaven (verse 55). However, verse 58 says that Stephen was dragged out of the city to be stoned, so clearly the vision had ended, for his stoning took place in a different location and at a later time. It is in the context of this later setting when Stephen clearly prays to Jesus that he might "receive [Stephen’s] spirit."
The WTS would have their schlemiels believe that Jehovah and Jesus are necessarily different beings, though the Bible tells another story. Jesus is called Mighty God in Isaiah 9:5, and in the very next chapter the same title is given to Jehovah in verse 21.
Other shared titles include:
King of Kings (compare with Rev. 17:14)
Lord of Lords (Deut. 10:17; Rev. 17:14)
the only Savior (Is. 43:10-11; Acts 4:12)
the First and the Last (Is. 44:6; Rev. 22:13)
the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 1:8; Rev. 22:13-16)
Rock (Is. 8:14; 1 Pet. 2:7-8)
Shepherd (Ps. 23:1; Heb. 13:20-21)
Jesus and Jehovah have much more in common than titles, though. They are both:
worshipped by angels (Heb. 1:6, Neh. 9:6)
They are both unchanging (Heb. 13:8, Mal. 3:6)
They both created the heavens and the earth (Heb. 1:10, Neh. 9:6)
They are both all-knowing (John 21:17, 1 John 3:20)
Both give eternal life (John 10:28, 1 John 5:11)
both judge the world (John 5:22, Ps. 96:13)
To them every knee will bend and every tongue confess (Phil. 2:9-11, Is. 45:23).
The Great and Powerful Oz:
pay no attention to the man behind the curtain
