A Branch Overseer of an Asian country who happened to be visiting some of his family members in our area, gave a talk this evening in the Hall that I used to attend. I have not been attending meetings for months, but decided to go when my mother, a devout JW, came to visit me last week.
The Branch Overseer had just returned from attending the annual meeting in New York. His talk was Do You Have an Evangelizing Spirit. I paid more than the usual attention to the talk and here are some of the highlights and my own comments in brackets.
JWs are well known worldwide for their knock-on-the-door preaching.
JWs are commissioned to preach from the highest authority Jehovah God himself.
JWs are driven by the Holy Spirit and the angels to preach out of love of neighbor and not for selfish reasons
Jesus was the ultimate preacher and he commanded his disciples to go out and make disciples.
The apostle Paul preached
We are in the 21 century and things are getting worse.
Today, Jesus is enthroned in heaven since 1914 and is having his agent on earth the Faithful and Discreet Slave carry on the feeding and organizing the preaching efforts .
It is imperative to have the sense of urgency to preach
We need to more than double the efforts in comparison with the Israelites marching around once every day BUT SEVEN times the seventh day.
Do you have an evangelizing spirit; in the full time ministry or part time? Jehovah will bless your efforts.
(Throughout the whole talk, the speaker never alluded as to what exactly is the message that suddenly deserves a great urgency to preach. Apart from indirect inferences to imminent destruction and everlasting life, he never gave details as to what constitutes good news.
JWs put a lot of emphasis on the means and not on the ends. For JWs, the actual preaching activity is of itself an act of worship to Jehovah. The act of attending meetings, preparing and underlining the Watchtower or other study publications, placing a tract or a magazine, doing return visits, submitting their monthly service record are all acts of rendering worship to Jehovah.
While all the above may sound impressive and may appeal to the uninformed, however there is one tiny problem with all of this. It is the message. What JWs are preaching today is not what Christ or his apostles preached in the first century. What JWs are teaching and what they are studying is not inline with what Jesus and the apostles taught. Even their adopted name is a misnomer as Christians need to be witnesses to Christ and not Jehovah. JWs openly admit that their message is different from the first century version and yet fail to see the grave implications. When Christ in Mat 24:14, an oft quoted scripture by JWs, referred to THIS good news of the Kingdom he was talking about the message that he and later the apostles were duly engaged in preaching. He was not referring to some altered or embroidered message that would surface some 2000 years later in Allegheny Pennsylvania .
Not only that, but the message that the Society has been preaching had undergone and still does today continual updating and restructuring. What Russell started with back in 1874 is nowhere near what JWs preach today. Whereas, the message that Jesus Christ and later his apostles preached and that is recorded for us in the NT remains unchanged.
It is this unchanging testimony of Christ and his apostles that condemn JWs message as sectarian, biased and detractive. And all the preaching activities, the meeting attendance, and the preparations would therefore become an exercise in futility.
Here is a sample of the ever changing message of JWs:
The indisputable facts, therefore, show that the "time of the end" began in 1799; that the Lord's second presence began in 1874. Watchtower March 1, 1922
Also, in the year 1918, when God destroys the churches wholesale and the church members by millions, it shall be that any that escape shall come to the works of Pastor Russell to learn the meaning of the downfall of "Christianity." The Finished Mystery Pages 484-485Even the republics will disappear in the fall of 1920.... Every kingdom of earth will pass away, be swallowed up in anarchy The Finished Mystery page 258
Therefore we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the faithful prophets of old. Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920 Edition, said on pages 89-90:
There can be no more question about 1925 than there was about 1914. Watchtower May 15, 1922
This chronology is not of man, but of God. Being of divine origin and divinely corroborated, present-truth chronology stands in a class by itself, absolutely and unqualifiedly correct....Watchtower July 15, 1922
Are we to assume from this study that the battle of Armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975, and the long-looked-for thousand-year reign of Christ will begin by then? Possibly It may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years. Watchtower, August 15, 1968 page 499
"Jehovah's prophetic word through Jesus Christ is: 'This generation [of 1914] will by no means pass away until all things occur.' (Luke 21:32) And Jehovah, who is the source of inspired an unfailing prophecy, will bring about the fulfillment."--The Watchtower,May 15, 1984, pgs. 6-7
Honest hearted JWs need only to reevaluate the message that they are preaching and compare it with that of the apostles to see the glaring differences. Upon close inspection, they will realize that the Good News preached by Christ and his apostles is much simpler than all their 120+ years of never ending stream of ever-changing publications. Actually, the Good News preached by Christ and the apostles would nicely fit in one paragraph. Yet, when one fully grasps it, its power is more than anyone can imagine. Its implication is far greater than knowledge of imminent destruction or everlasting life on paradise earth. )
Edited by - Defender on 13 October 2002 3:31:57
Edited by - Defender on 13 October 2002 3:32:56 Edited by - Defender on 13 October 2002 3:44:32Edited by - Defender on 13 October 2002 3:46:16