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1 John 4:1
“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
This week, we turn to two further sets of false teachings that deny the deity of Christ in different ways. Today and tomorrow, we will examine the Jehovah’s Witnesses, an organization that claims nearly nine million adherents worldwide.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses were founded by Charles Taze Russell, a former Restoration movement minister who began publishing his views in 1879 in a periodical eventually known as The Watchtower. Russell rejected several core Christian doctrines as a young man, including the Trinity and eternal punishment, and he developed his own system of teaching about the second coming of Christ, the nature of God, and the destiny of unbelievers. After several failed predictions about the date of Christ’s return, the movement settled into the form that it largely retains today, organized through the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Russell was succeeded by J.F. Rutherford, who consolidated the organization, and by N.H. Knorr, under whose leadership the group’s distinctive translation of the Bible, the New World Translation, was produced.
Two doctrines are central to the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and both stand directly opposed to historic Christian teaching. First, Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the Trinity. They hold that the Father alone is God, that Jesus is a created being—specifically, the archangel Michael in his preexistent state—and that the Holy Spirit is not a person at all but merely an active force emanating from God. The Son, in their teaching, was the first of God’s creations, who later took on flesh in the womb of Mary as a sacrifice for sin. They are willing to call Jesus “a god” but never God in the fullest sense.
Second, they deny the doctrine of eternal punishment. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that the soul is not immortal but dies with the body, so there is no conscious torment of the wicked beyond the grave. Those who reject the Lord will be annihilated, ceasing to exist altogether. Faithful Witnesses are divided into two groups: a special company of 144,000—drawn from Revelation 7:4—who will go to heaven to reign with Christ, and the remainder who will live forever on a renewed earth. Salvation in this system is largely a matter of obedience to the organization’s teaching.
In view of the teaching of John in today’s verse, both denials are gravely consequential. Where the deity of Christ is rejected, the Christ of Scripture is no longer being proclaimed.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The denials of the Trinity and of eternal judgment are not minor matters. They strike at the heart of the gospel, removing the divine Savior, who alone could bear the wrath that our sin deserves. Let us hold fast to the Apostolic Christ, truly God and truly man, and pray for those caught in the system of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
For further study
- Isaiah 9:6
- Matthew 28:18–20
- John 5:18–23
- Revelation 14:9–11
The bible in a year
- Song of Solomon 4–6
- Galatians 2