It started out in field service. I had talked with many people who were very knowledgeable about the Bible. They challenged the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses from all angles and directions. This began to plant little seeds in my brain that something is not quite right here. If the Bible had the Truth, and the Society made that Truth plain, then why were there so many reasonable alternative interpretations about the same passages of scripture. To me, that meant the Bible was a problem here. But that also made me ask the question "Who has the infallibly correct understanding of the Bible, so that I could be confident in the interpretations and explanations being given.
This opened me up to alternative thinking. The Watchtower Society/Governing Body claimed to be the only Organization on this earth who was teaching the real truth from the Bible. You could not understand the Bible without the inspired guidance of the Society. But the Catholics claimed that only they had the authority to act and speak in the name of God. Their stamp of authenticity was "Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church." Apostolic succession carried on from the time of Peter until now. "And the gates of Hell would not prevail against my (Jesus') Church". The head of the Church would be given the infallible direction of the Holy Spirit, and when the First Bishop (Pope) stands in his official capacity as head of the Church, he would be given such protection. Therefore, you could not understand the Bible without the Catholic Church, with the Pope as its head. Then along came the Mormons. They likewise claimed that they "believed the Bible to be the Word of God insofar as it was correctly translated." But there was a Great Apostasy- a falling away from the Church and of the Church. The Authority to act in the name of God, namely the Priesthood of God, was removed from the earth until the latter days, when it was purportedly restored once again to the earth, thru the person of Joseph Smith, and those than came after him. He became Prophet, Seer and Revelator, the instrument thru which the fulness of the gospel was restored and revealed. In the end I converted to Mormonism. The JW's simply did not have any evidence or basis to claim they had the Authority to speak in God's name, or to interpret the scriptures. There was absolutely nothing in terms of evidence that could demonstrate that they and they alone fit the profile "by their fruits you will know my disciples.", for there were many examples of people outside the JW's that fit this description better than the JW's did.
In the final analysis, "Authority to act in the name of God" was the cardinal issue, the deciding issue about which Church or Religion was right, and it certainly was not the Governing Body of JW's. Not their history, not their doctrinal interpretations and not their fruits. It was entirely without foundation.
I hasten to add, that while I converted to Mormonism, it was much later that I discovered many lies and cover-ups and rewriting of their history and scriptures that caused me to question and challenge their authority and teachings as well. In many respects, this was even worse than the JW's because of the complexity and cover-ups.
Anyway, some of the things that caused me to have serious doubts about JW's while I was still one of them included the Soul Doctrine and also the change in teachings about Subjection to the Superior Authorities.
With the Soul Doctrine, notwithstanding the over 6000 scriptures they claimed disproved the notion that we do not have a soul or spirit that lives on after death, I found that they were interpreting things out of contexr. The scriptures they cited were not doctrinal in nature, but rather in the Hebrew and Greek were merely speaking of man as a living soul or being, which was subject to hunger, thirst, emotions, death, etc, and had no preeminence over the beasts. As one dieth, so dieth the other. The soul that sins shall die.....And so on. These have no bearing on the doctrinal question about the nature of the soul. Other religious scholars continually pointed this out with some pretty convincing and credible arguments. Now, it does not matter if you are an atheist, an agnostic, an evolutionist or whatever. You do not have to accept the notion that you have a spirit that lives on after death. The main thrust of my argument here is that the JW's have relied entirely upon the scriptures from the Bible to justify their teachings about the soul. But they have relied on scriptures that simply have nothing to do with the doctrinal argument. There are a few scriptures, however, that do raise some serious doctrinal questions about the Soul. For example "Do not be in fear of he who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul..."
From the standpoint of logic, it simply did not make sense to me that according to Watchtower teaching, when we are dead, we are dead. But then in the resurrection we are brought back to life. How? God is supposed to raise up a whole new body, into which He implants all that was "You" or "Me" while we were alive in mortality. God has this "perfect recollection" of your entire personality, and all your life experiences while you lived, and this is what God puts into that "resurrected body". But this is NOT YOU. This is only a duplicate of You. It is your clone. So once you die and go out of existence, what do you care if you get resurrected into the New World or not? To me, this was proof that the JW's cannot be true.
I believe it was around 1963 when they came out with this new booklet, which they presented at an Assembly: "The Word, Who is He According to John?" This article also appeared in the Watchtower around that time. In it was a whole new interpretation of what the Bible in the Book of John, meant by the "Superior Authorities". During the Second World War, the JW's were taught that the "Higher Powers" (King James Version) or the "Superior Authorities (NWT) were Jehovah God and Christ Jesus. These were the ones the true Witnesses of Jehovah owed their allegiances to, and not the Earthly Governments and Rulers. With this new release, they came to the understanding that the scriptures needed to be interpreted in a "new light', namely that the Earthly Governments and Rulers were, in fact, the Higher Powers or Superior Authorities. But you see, the older interpretation was the basis that the male JW's went to jail for refusing to go to war in obedience to their subjection to the Higher Powers. The governments brought in biblical scholars to inform the JW's that they were misinterpreting their scriptures upon which they based their argument for not going to war. But these sincere JW's, following the leadership and interpretation of the Governing Body, said that the clergy were all wrong, they did not know the true meaning of the Bible, and the Society did, so they will go to jail in obedience to their allegiance to Jehovah and Christ Jesus. Now here we were in 1963, for the first time acknowledging that the clergy were right in their interpretation of those particular scriptures after all. The implication is that the JW's went to jail on the basis of an erroneous interpretation of the scriptures. Now, the article went on to say from other scriptures that this was a "relative subjection" rather than an "absolute subjection" and so when a law of man comes into conflict with a law of God, then a JW still must "obey God as ruler rather than men." But, you see, the religionist leaders have never disagreed with that principle. Just the erroneous interpretations of the JW's on quite a number of scriptures which they have used to justify their positions on many issues, but which are, in fact, no justification at all. The point is, they are simple not right or true.
Since all that, I have encountered dozens of other examples and topics which need to be questioned and challenged. But that is another story!
Rod P.
