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As many of you that visit this channel know, the Jehovah's Witness religion does not allow people to have freedom of thought and belief. If a person changes their viewpoint and questions the JW hierarchy and leadership then they will be sanctioned. If a member adopts an "unacceptable" opinion or conviction and dares to speak of it, then the local religious leaders (called Elders) will come after them, using an iron fist in a velvet glove to bring them back in line. If that fails, then they will cut the person off and ostracize them before everyone, announcing them from...

Witnesses of Jehovah 1351. Are the Witnesses of Jehovah an offshoot of the Russellites? They are rather a continuation of the Russellites. The present leader of the Witnesses of Jehovah, who calls himself Judge Rutherford, is but the successor of Pastor Charles T. Russell, who founded the movement.1352. Russell was a pious, devout Christian, and a faithful follower of Christ. Pastor Russell was born in America in 1852. He was first a Congregationalist, then dabbled in Seventh Day Adventism, and finally set up for himself as a prophet announcing the Second Coming of Christ. His piety was not true...

The Jehovah’s Witness New Testament An ex-Jehovah’s Witness, now Catholic, who we at Catholic Answers helped to come to Christ in his Church, gave me some wonderful gifts by way of old books, many of them first edition, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the publishing arm of the Jehovah’s Witnesses run by the leaders of their sect. Of note among these great gifts is a first edition copy of The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, the official Jehovah’s Witness translation of the New Testament, first published by the Watchtower in 1950.It is not the...

“Who Are the April Fools? How Do You View Jesus?” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” “On the foal of a donkey”: I thought about that phrase, and then I thought about the fact that this is April 1, and so I considered doing a sermon on “April Foal’s Day” . . . and then I decided against it. But this is April Fools’ Day,...

When I come by my friends house they are always there. They are polite to me but act like I'm interfering. Anyone here associated with them or been to their church? Thanks.

Our house has become a frequent stop for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  More than likely it is because my beautiful wife smiles, listens, and takes their literature.  Her feeling has always been that it is better for us to take The Watchtower than to have it in the hands of someone else. At any rate, I rarely read it, but the subtitle on the front cover this month was, “What Are the Marks of the True Christianity?”  I’ve always known that, like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses consider themselves “Christians” but the rest of Christendom does not for lack of their profession...

they differ from Protestant religions in many significant ways. In fact, The Encyclopedia of Religion refers to Jehovah’s Witnesses as being “distinctive.” Consider three ways in which they are different. First, although Protestant faiths reject certain features of Catholic worship, Reformation leaders retained certain Catholic dogmas, such as belief in the Trinity, hellfire, and the immortality of the human soul. Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, believe that those doctrines not only contradict the Bible but also promote a distorted view of God.—See Exposed: Six Myths About Christianity. Second, the religion that Jehovah’s Witnesses advocate is, not one of negative protest, but one...

Founder: Charles Taze Russell Overview Jehovah's Witnesses trace their origins to the nineteenth century Adventist movement in America . That movement began with William Miller, a Baptist lay preacher who, in the year 1816, began proclaiming that Christ would return in 1843. His predictions of the Second Coming or Second Advent captured the imagination of thousands in Baptist and other mainline churches. Perhaps as many as 50,000 followers put their trust in Miller's chronological calculations and prepared to welcome the Lord, while, as the appointed time approached, others watched nervously from a distance. Recalculations moved the promised second advent from...

What would happen if a pair of Mormon missionaries showed up on the doorstep of a dedicated Jehovah’s Witness? This humorous but insightful fictional dialogue is what it might sound like. Elder Hawkins grinned as he approached the door. He and Sister Sarah had placed the Book of Mormon in four homes already this morning, and it wasn’t yet noon. He rang the doorbell and stepped back. A tall, balding man wearing a large smile opened the door. Elder Hawkins saw the Watchtower magazine in the man’s hand and his grin vanished.(By David Washburn, This Rock Magazine, 1992)“Come in, come...

It is amazing how easily we as human beings can lose our objectivity. We become lost in our own little world. It is like looking in a mirror which reflects an inaccurate image of reality. What we see in the mirror is not a true reflection of our condition before God. It is almost like someone has cast a spell over us. We need to look in a different mirror in order to break the spell. We need a mirror that will help us to see ourselves correctly and in a new light. This is what can happen for a...

Here they come, walkin' down the street. They get the funniest looks from everyone they meet. Hey, hey, it's the Watchtower, and they're not monkeyin' around. This former JW explains how the world's most effective door-to-door conversion machine is targeting you. It's early 1956, and I'm seated in a long, narrow building in Venice, California, that used to be a laundromat. It still looks like one. The walls are bare of decorations, painted some nondescript pastel color. Small windows near the ceiling let in some sunlight, but the main light comes from the rows of fluorescent lights that hum and...

Raymond Franz, former leader of JW and author of Crisis of Conscience The teaching of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society that Armageddon will come before the "generation of 1914" passes away is causing increased anxiety among Jehovah's Witnesses as 2014 approaches and there are still no clear signs of how and when Jehovah will bring an end to this evil "system of things."According to the teaching that the Jehovah's Witnesses have held for decades, people who were alive in 1914, when Jesus began "invisible rule" in heaven (an event marked by the outbreak of the first world war), will...

I used to spend a lot of time on the subject of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. It was the second major group I tackled and studied. I still have a huge number of their old, old books, shelves of them, actually. I also have a whole set of what are called "bound volumes," yearly compilations of all of the Watchtower and Awake! magazines. Of course, much of this is now available digitally on the Watchtower Library CD Rom (which isn't easy to get hold of, but not impossible). Anyway, I just checked the dark corner of one of...

This is my 17th Easter. For the first 38 years of my life I did not celebrate Easter because I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a pseudo- Christian group with a very strange economy of salvation. It is not easy to describe life in a cult like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is very dark. Even their light is darkness. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in the Trinity, so they do not believe in the deity of Christ. They believe that Jesus was Michael the Archangel before he came to earth, and that after he was resurrected, he went back to being...

Since its inception in 1881, the Watchtower Bible and Tract society, A.K.A. Jehovah’s Witnesses, has proclaimed that only 144,000 human beings will go to heaven. They get that number, of course, from Revelation 14:1-5, where we read that they are those who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are chaste; it is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes; these have been redeemed from mankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are spotless. They are identified as “male virgins” who have not defiled themselves with...

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Trinity The doctrine of the Holy Trinity has been consistently misunderstood, probably more than any other teaching of the Bible. Frequently investigation into the doctrine of the Trinity has been dismissed from serious discussion or study by invoking the time-worn assertions - "It's a great mystery" or "This is incomprehensible" - thus discouraging many from investigating the scriptural basis of the doctrine. Due principally to this attitude as well as certain complex aspects of the Trinity doctrine itself, there has been a revival of anti-Trinitarian heresies during the past one hundred and fifty years, and they...

WEST PALM BEACH, FL -- If you feel like the world has been crumbling down around you lately, the Jehovah's Witnesses say - you're right. It is. In fact, beginning this weekend, they'll be holding a series of public lectures entitled "How to survive the end of the world". "It's imminent. It's at hand," says local Jehovah's Witnesses spokesman Travis Telfair. Local Witnesses will be holding 14 consecutive 'conventions', as they call them, at their convention center on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard - formerly the West Palm Beach Auditorium. They hold such gatherings each year, but this year's theme is,...

AUGUSTA, GA - I grew up thinking the Jehovah’s Witnesses were a cult. In eighth grade, at the Christian school I attended, I took a world religions class. I thought it would open a window and shed light into the unknown. Turns out, the class was just closed-minded and dogmatic indoctrination. As a result, I spent the next 10 years wary of anyone who knocked on my front door, as though they would lure me with winning smiles only to brainwash me into believing bizarre, unholy practices. Luckily, life experience changes superstitious prejudices. A couple of Jehovah’s Witness friends in...

If you live in Southern Arizona — whether it's in an apartment, trailer, house or ranch — you should expect a knock during the next three weeks. It doesn't matter whether you rent or own, whether you are in Oro Valley or Sahuarita, or whether your house is high on a hill surrounded by a wall and a mile from the road. It doesn't matter whether you are in a gated community or a retirement home. The Jehovah's Witnesses are pledging to personally deliver you an invitation to their regional convention in July. On Friday, Tucson-area Jehovah's Witnesses began a...

What do you guys think of Jehovah's Witnesses? I talk to them all the time, I don't think that they will comment because they are not allowed to discuss politics.