“All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NWT)
‘Jehovah’s Witnesses will express strong agreement with this passage….But, in practice, they don’t really believe the latter half of it. They don’t believe that a man of God is fully competent and completely equipped, unless he has their organization’s books and magazines. The Bible alone is not enough.
We Christians also have Christian magazines, books, concordances, Bible dictionaries, and so on. We see this literature as helpful and instructive, but we don’t feel that we need these supplements in order to understand the gospel message, come into God’s favor, and gain eternal life…
Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, believe that one must have their organization’s literature in order to be saved. In commenting on the Society’s own Scripture Studies book, The Watchtower (9/15/10, pg. 298) said:
Furthermore, not only do we find that people cannot see the divine plan in studying the Bible by itself, but we see, also, that if anyone lays the Scripture Studies aside…and goes to the Bible alone, though he has understood his Bible for ten years, our experience shows that within two years he goes into darkness. On the other hand, if he had merely read the Scripture Studies with their references, and had not read a page of the Bible, as such, he would be in the light at the end of two years.
Have Jehovah’s Witnesses of today abandoned that view expressed in the words of their organization’s founder, Charles Taze Russell, back in 1910? Compare that quote with this more recent statement in The Watchtower (12/1/81, pg. 27):
But Jehovah God has also provided his visible organization, his “faithful and discreet slave,” made up of spirit-anointed ones, to help Christians in all nations to understand and apply properly the Bible in their lives. Unless we are in touch with this channel of communication that God is using, we will not progress along the road to life, no matter how much Bible reading we do.
The thought is the same! The inspired Scriptures alone do not make a person “fully competent and completely equipped” (2 Timothy 3:17) in the eyes of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
What happens if a JW does read the Bible alone, without Watchtower Society books and magazines? The organization made an amazing admission about this, when it stated the following about ex-members:
They say that it is sufficient to read the Bible exclusively, either alone or in small groups at home. But, strangely, through such “Bible reading,” they have reverted back to the apostate doctrines that commentaries by Christendom’s clergy were teaching 100 years ago…[The Watchtower, 8/15/81, pp. 28-29].
So, the Watchtower Society itself admits that Jehovah’s Witnesses who begin reading the Bible alone stop believing Watchtower doctrines and return to the doctrines taught in Christian churches. Whose doctrines, then, are the ones that are truly based on the Bible? The answer is obvious, by the Society’s own admission.’[1] (Bold and abbrev. Added)
[1] JEHOVAH’S WINESSES ANSWERED VERSE BY VERSE, David A. Reed; 1986; Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49506; pp.98-100
No comments:
Post a Comment