The Watchtower and its apologists keep insisting that the Bible gives them no choice but to insist on two witnesses to an act of molestation before they can do anything beyond filing a report with headquarters.
There is very clear teaching in the Bible that the two-witness principle does not apply to this type of situation. Here's the text:
23 If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, 24 you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death-the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you.
25 But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. 26 Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, 27 for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her.
Deuteronomy 22:23-27
This is in the same book of the Bible as the two-witness principle. Let's focus on that second paragraph, 25-27. What's the situation? A woman is raped out in the country. There are no witnesses to the event. It is compared to another crime which rarely has witnesses, namely murder. Because there are no other witnesses, nobody who even could have seen it happen, or even have been close enough to hear if the woman had screamed for help, the man is to be put to death.
If the two-witness rule applied in such cases, that is, if two other witnesses besides the victim or even one other were required, it would not be possible to put the man to death for raping a woman when there are no witnesses. Contrary to the anti-biblical fantasies of the WBTS, it was not only possible, but mandatory under Old Testament law.
As Jesus said to another group of wilfully ignorant religious tyrants, so I say to the WBTS leadership: "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God."
