In The Beginning
The JW Chronicles
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god”. John 1:1 New World Translation
Sound familiar? Well, no.
Except to me, it does.
Most of you will not be familiar with this particular rendering.
You will notice when you spend time with different flavors of Bible readers, certain verses are emphasized over others. There are the paths worn over familiar grooves around certain passages of scripture that others slightly gloss over.
When this happens, the meaning attached to the words goes deeper than onlookers can usually detect at first glance. There are entire doctrines supported by verses that are oft repeated without needing to go into the entire iceburg.
Of course, there are usually other facilitating thoughts found in God’s word to help uphold the theological structure, however a single sentence or even a paraphrase of it can become the shorthand by which believers can quickly reference an entire worldview.
And this is like the root growing on a hangnail.
It is connected to other similarly intricate and overlapping arteries, and to attempt to remove one or even touch it is tricky business. It is painful to the person, because an entire house will come crashing on their heads if they remove a supporting wall.
So, what looks to you or me like a typo or even just a mistake is not. It is there, and it is written on purpose. You have to go to the sourse, the holy Bible, and change it if you wish to inflict certain beliefs on others.
Why?
Because they simply don’t exist from a plain reading of the text.
It’s important to note these changes are not like other textual discrepancies believers argue over. Genuine biblical debates and scholarship is there to provide clarity not obscure the true meaning. In this case, the resulting heretical positions are possible only when you play cut and paste.
When it appears the Bible is saying what you think it says in a simple fashion, it is bewildering when others tell you different. You actually have to compare the Bibles side by side, and it’s quite startling.
Jehovah’s Witnesses spend an inordinate amount of time reading their Bibles. They study more than you do. Their commentaries and mandatory meetings delve into complicated calculations regarding the end times and which kings were meant in the length prophecies in the book of Daniel.
They don’t shy away from the deep end, and the children are not separated from the adults.
When you meet them in person, they are well-prepared, and this can sometimes come across as a smugness or slight whiff of arrogance. You don’t know you’re about to be theologically destroyed if you attempt to disentangle one of their postulations.
The elderly grandma looking at you on your doorstep has been trained to dismantle your assertions one by one.
There is an answer for every question, and it goes as far as it needs to, interconnected to every other false notion you have never heard of. And these form a Jack and the Beanstalk reality where all is not as it seems.
They’ve practiced every objection you can come up with.
Taking you down is usually not difficult.
And people have different reactions to this. To the ones who want to save the Jehovah’s Witness, understand their place is fragile. They have a lot invested in this and could stand to lose everything they have and be left completely out in the cold if they listen to you.
Proceed with caution.
Being smug in return does not work. They are able to detect it. Sometimes, a person’s world collapses with a simple pin prick as it did with mine. Most fight it away and live with a cognitive dissonance that would shock others if it were ever truly known.
And so, our Bible verse in the New World Translation inserts a key difference between a standard reading of the text that is startling but also tiny and may be easily overlooked.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1 KJV
The only change between their version and ours is a single word, a letter in fact, a. And on this a is constructed a monumental heresy that Jesus is not God.
God the Father alone is God. The Son is not God but merely a god. Lowercase g. Meaning not on the same plane. And what this means is that Jesus has a different identity than the one known in the rest of those who are Christian.
This is a major and fundamental way in which Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe as you do. It may look the same on the surface or like it’s harmless, but it’s not. This also serves to separate them from others and to have difficulty hearing others’ points of view.
They already know the answer, and you don’t, so in their mind, it’s pointless to engage with what you’re saying. Their answers are rehearsed, and so they’re not really listening.
In fact, your words are viewed as a threat if the heat actually is turned up, and they will call in for reinforcements.
Usually, those higher up in the ranks are able to better articulate the arguments so that you lose. And you are primed to lose.
The house always wins.
You put in quarters, thinking if you try, you can succeed, but you can’t.
And if that seems like a challenge, this is why you will succumb to the dumb. Accept your limitations and move on.
There are, however, trap doors that will dissolve the structure like a house made out of cotton candy.
But if you somehow are able to outflank the elders and you’re open to it, those further up the leadership ladder will soon come to visit you.
And there will be studying behind the scenes, boning up on the topic at hand so that you will be decimated.
And so if Jesus is not really God, who is He? He is more like the older brother to all of us. He is the first One whom God made before making angels and all of us.
We get to look up to Him, and He’s really cool and is someone Who gets us. If you’re a younger sibling in your family of origin, this concept isn’t hard to understand.
For the three decades I was around Jehovah’s Witnesses, I did not notice the name of Jesus mentioned much. We were sort of uncomfortable and didn’t know what to do with Him.
The scripture about the Almighty God that refers to Jesus was rendered mighty in the New World Translation. It was impossible to make the passages in Revelation not describe Jesus, so there were some alterations that demoted Him to a god.
It was then Jesus who created everything else. Even so, while we thought that was interesting, it still didn’t gain much press. It was Jehovah we always wanted to talk about. He was the One we concerned ourselves with and whom the narrative was always leading to.
In fact, it was often difficult to determine what role Jesus really had.
If He’s our older brother, then where does that really leave us in terms of importance? No one really wants to take orders from a sibling, do they? We respected Jesus and even liked Him, but the situation was awkward.
There was no concept of a personal Savior that was taught, either. And so, I wondered, why did He have to die? What was the need for this to happen?
I learned it was to cancel out Adam’s sin, to restore the cosmic balance. It was for God, essentially, and had nothing to do with us.
So, because Adam sinned, there was a debt against heaven. Jesus came to pay it. He did, and it worked out, I guess.
It wasn’t something to be pondered out, really, unless one were particularly interested in digging. People don’t go door to door because they really enjoy it — there is no other path to salvation.
Jesus doesn’t save. He isn’t God. He is a god. He has power but is not someone we rely on for much. Father God is who we depend on. Jesus is kind of like a friend. We pray in His name, and that is about it.
In fact, Jehovah’s Witnesses will get nervous if you suggest that Jesus is God.
This segues into the Trinity, which Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in. There is One God, and that is God the Father. Their doctrine reduced the Holy Spirit to a force, much like electricity, that powers us.
There is in this an odd amount of respect for God the Father that wants to hold him distinct, and you will scare a Jehovah’s Witness if you plough forward.
Jesus is also only Jesus after coming to the Earth. He was someone else beforehand.
Michael. The archangel.
This means that the one fighting over the body of Moses when he died was Jesus. This would also put Jesus in the book of Daniel.
It also gets into dangerous territory because in scripture, Michael would not confront the devil.
Without Jesus as God, you have to rely on works, and this is what they do.
Jehovah’s Witnesses know they have to be careful, and they’ll tell you you can’t earn a place in God’s kingdom. They’ll tell you it’s a free gift. This, however, is arbitrary and up to God.
We can’t know God’s plans, so it pays to earn as many points as possible so that He chooses you. You don’t know where the finish line is, so you hustle just as much as you can.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a book entitled, The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, and it is about Jesus. We did studies on it, and it often was a favorite. Jesus shines through the words of scripture, even when it is twisted. He still is compelling and draws us to Him.
It was one of the few times we focused on Him, and yes, we paid lip service to Jesus, like we can’t forget about Him, but it wasn’t that important. You spent your time trying to cozy up to your Father and not your older brother.
The result was chronic and frequent exhaustion. Stress. Anxiety. Wanting to stop, to take a break but not being able to. You could die at any moment, and what then? Your service record be lacking, and you can’t have that.
People routinely went on less sleep than they should in order to clock in more hours in the door-to-door ministry. The treadmill constantly running, the clock was always ticking down the entry way to destruction.
And so, we see the very foundation of the religion is on shaky ground and changes the identity of Christ completely. Not only that, but also His character and purpose. He was almost like an extra character in the narrative.
And when Jesus is superfluous and people claim Jehovah’s Witnesses are a valid branch of Christianity, that simply isn’t true. These are not orthodox beliefs, and a great deal of error is spread about in this manner.
You lose access not only to the power found in Christ but also in that the passages about Jesus as mediator just are not emphasized. You can be forgiven for sins but not in the sense that you are God’s child who has been kept under Christ’s forgiveness in being born again.
The term born again does not exist in the Jehovah’s Witness lexicon.
It matters that Jesus is God. The Son of God but also God. There is power in the name of Jesus, and for Jehovah’s Witnesses that is nearly nonexistent.
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About the Author
Rosa A. Hopkins has hosted radio shows on 11 Christian stations, is a writer of gospel songs, has promoted Heartbeat legislation, and is a singer and songwriter. Her writings can also be found on her Facebook page. Join over 31,000 other readers here.
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