Jehovah's Witnesses: beliefs and core teachings

Jehovah's Witnesses

Jehovah's Witness

The Jehovah's Witness movement began in 1869 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania by Charles Taze Russell, however its name based on Isaiah 43: 10-12, was not adopted until 1931 (Neubauer).

Russell, born to Presbyterian parents, joined a Congregational Church when he was fifteen years old, yet soon became troubled by certain doctrines, such as predestination and eternal punishment, and by the age of seventeen was a skeptic and disbelieved the Bible (Neubauer). As Russell stated in the Watchtower magazine in 1916, "...that which at first threatened to be the utter shipwreck of faith in God and the Bible was, under God's providence, over-ruled for good, and merely wrecked my confidence in human creed and systems of Bible misinterpretations" (Neubauer). His faith was re-established when he heard a Second Adventist preacher, Jonas Wendell, speak at a Bible study in 1870 (Neubauer). Russell believed that the Second Adventists were "called of God," however due to a miscalculation concerning the Second Coming of Christ, he began to re-evaluate their teachings and to form his own Bible study group in which they concluded that Christ's return would be an invisible and spiritual one (Neubauer).

When Russell discovered that N.H. Barbour shared similar ideas, he joined him in editing the periodical The Herald of the Morning (Neubauer). In 1877, Russell and Barbour wrote and published Three Worlds and the Harvest of This World, in which they set forth "their belief that Christ's second presence began invisibly in the fall of 1874 and thereby commenced a forty-year harvest period...then set forth the year 1814 as the end of the Gentile times" (Neubauer).

However, two years later, due to disagreements of theology, Russell disassociated himself with Barbour and began publishing his own magazine, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence in 1879 (Neubauer). This periodical proved so influential that within one year, there were thirty congregations born in seven states, and in 1881, Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society was established as an unincorporated body, and three years later was organized as a corporation (Neubauer). Many consider December 13, 1884, which was the date of the corporation, to be the birth of the Jehovah's Witness movement (Neubauer).

According to Russell's writing in what is now known as the Studies in the Scriptures, the purpose of the society as a corporation was "the dissemination of Bible truths in various languages by means of the publication of tracts, pamphlets, papers and other religious documents, and by the use of all other lawful means" (Neubauer). When Russell died in 1916, Joseph Franklin Rutherford took over the leadership and adopted the name "Jehovah's Witnesses" in 1931, and after Rutherford's death in 1942, Nathan Homer Knorr rose to the position of president (Neubauer). One of Knorr's major accomplishments includes the founding of the Watch Tower Bible School of Gilead in the state of New York, which is dedicated to equipping missionaries through intense scriptural study and learning evangelistic techniques (Neubauer).

Frederick Franz was elected after Knorr's death in 1977 and is currently president of the group (Neubauer).

When Rutherford became leader, he modified the society's doctrines to his own designs and adopted the slogan "Millions now living will never die" (Jehovah's). At his death in 1942, a board of directors took control and it was then that the Witnesses began to expand rapidly, supported by a flood of publications, increasing from 100,000 in 1942 to one million in 1960 (Jehovah's). Throughout the changes, the group remained very authoritarian and socially conservative, and even today members are encouraged to distance themselves from outsiders, except when witnessing (Jehovah's). This sectarian character has attracted much controversy in the Wet and members have often faced serious persecution by authoritarian regimes throughout the world (Jehovah's).

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that their God is the God of the Old Testament, who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everlasting, and refer to Him as Jehovah (Neubauer). They do not believe in the Trinity, and believe that Jesus is the first creation of God and is fully human, while the Holy Spirit is a force which intervenes for God on earth (Neubauer). They believe that Satan is the enemy of God, who afflicts pain and sorrow, and that man is born with sin, and his soul is mortal, in that when he dies, his spirit dies as well, however some will experience eternal life when they are resurrected in flesh and soul simultaneously (Neubauer). While most Christian traditions believe that salvation is achieved by accepting Christ as Lord, and that once saved, always saved, Witnesses believe that failure to exercise fidelity to God's requirements can result in the loss of salvation (Neubauer).

Heaven is where Jesus and other True Christians will live and rule over the kingdom on earth, however only 144,000, called the Great Crowd, will gain access to heaven and live forever on the new earth (Neubauer). Hell is non-existent and those who do not qualify for heaven and the kingdom on earth will simply disappear as if they had never existed (Neubauer). The Kingdom of God is the unique government that rules over the earth from heaven, and when Jehovah fulfilled His promise to Jesus that he would rule in 1914, Jesus became king, and Satan and his evil angels were kicked out of heaven and sent to inhabit the earth (Neubauer). This is how Witnesses explain all the wars, crime increases, and other "bad" things which are happening in the world, and indicates that Jesus has established his reign and the world is in its last days (Neubauer).

In other words, within a certain time frame, exactly 144,000 faithful followers will join Jesus and assist him in his reign, and after Jesus judges his people, then Jehovah will rule again (Neubauer). Believing that these celebrations grew out of ancient false religions, Witnesses do not celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, or any other holidays, except one day as the Memorial of Christ's Death during Passover (Neubauer).

There are similarities with the Arians of the early church and the Adventist churches, however the Witnesses are divided into two classes, the 144,000 anointed ones or inner witnesses and the ordinary other sheep (Jehovah's).

Witnesses believe in conditional immortality, and that the soul cannot exist apart from the body, thus humanity faces absolute death, except for the Great Crowd (Jehovah's). Denying the trinity, they believe that Christ is the first and highest created being, who was resurrected spiritually, not bodily, and that Christ is currently reigning in a spiritual sense in preparation for the Battle of Armageddon and is assisted by anointed ones who have been resurrected in angelic bodies (Jehovah's). Witnesses believe that the world is currently under Satan's control through servants that lead the established churches, national governments and big businesses (Jehovah's). At the Battle of Armageddon, the hosts of Jehovah, including the anointed ones, will overthrow Satan and his supporters and humanity will die in the chaos (Jehovah's). Those who died before Armageddon will be physically resurrected and live in a paradise Earth for a thousand years until the final Judgement, when only those who are worthy will be given immortality for eternity and all others will be annihilated (Jehovah's). Essential precepts for Witnesses are a "faith in the ransom Christ paid for his death, baptism by immersion and a duty to witness Jehovah's message to outsiders as much as possible...Only those who have the inner witness are allowed to attend the annual Lord's Supper" (Jehovah's).

The Witnesses' symbols tend towards austerity: since they believe in the worldly dominance of Satan, thus they refuse to salute the flag, hold political office, or register for the army (Jehovah's). Russell viewed the nations involved in war as demonically controlled, and bitterly condemned other churches for acting as recruiting agents for the military, and urged his followers, when conscripted to refuse to serve (Lawson). During World War II, many Witnesses were intimidated, beaten, and even imprisoned for refusing to salute the flag or serve in the armed forces (Peters). Moreover, they replaced the cross with a stake, thus rejecting the central symbol of Christianity for an unique alternative (Jehovah's).

Witnesses urge members to refuse blood transfusions and to not allow them to be given to their children (Robinson). This is based on four Bible passages in which they interpret as prohibiting the consuming of blood:

Genesis 9:4 "But flesh (meat) with...blood...ye shall not eat"

Leviticus 17:12-14."..No soul of you shall eat blood...whosoever eateth it shall be cut off"

Acts 15:29 "That ye abstain...from blood..."

Acts 21:25."..Gentiles...keep themselves from things offered to idols and from blood..."

Robinson).

The group interpreted "eating" of blood to include accepting "transfusion of whole blood, packed [red blood cells] RBCs, and plasma, as well as [white blood cells] WBC and platelet administration" (Robinson). L.C. Cotton, associate director of Jehovah's Witnesses hospital information services, said: "We feel that the Bible clearly indicates that blood is sacred and it is not to be used for human consumption. Though it doesn't discuss it in medical terms...Witnesses feel that would preclude the acceptance of it in a blood transfusion" (Robinson).

All other Christian and Jewish groups interpret these same passages as referring to dietary laws, to the actual eating of meat containing blood (Robinson). Witnesses also urge to "discontinue their chemotherapy treatments when platelet transfusions are needed" (Robinson). Moreover, they believe that any blood that leaves the body must be destroyed, thus they do not approve of an individual storing his own blood for a later auto-transfusion (Robinson).

An important tension within the Witness discourse is the "transformative and revolutionary potential of the Society's iconoclastic millennialism" (Elliot). They believe that "A Christian, being realistic, must face life as it is - not as he wishes it might be," and that "Christians cannot change prevailing human customs, prejudices and laws," and basically should just put up with them, therefore interracial marriages are not formally wrong, but are considered unwise given the nature of prejudice (Elliot).

The headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses is located in Brooklyn, New York and is called Bethel, meaning the "House of God" (Neubauer). A governing body of eighteen men meet weekly to discuss issues, and there are five committees which aid the governing body in decision-making (Neubauer). Below the committees are district and circuit overseers who accompany Witnesses to home meetings and visit congregations twice a year (Neubauer). Congregations meet five times a week in Kingdom Halls where elders or overseers, lead the congregations voluntarily (Neubauer). The principal self-defining characteristics of Witnesses are: "learning the official doctrines, showing willingness to proselytize actively, participating in all congregational meetings, and being baptized into the Watch Tower faith" (Neubauer).