Why the Name Jehovah's Witnesses?

JW Chronicles

Rosa A. Hopkins

Jan 23, 2025

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Jehovah’s Witnesses are not followers of Christ.

The very name will tell you this.

In Jehovah’s Witness theology, Jesus is not God and is reduced to an older brother type figure. He is considered to be “a” god, meaning He is not deity.

Although they do refer to Him as the Son of God, it is more that He is the first One created by God and who then created everything else.

Christians do not consider Christ to have been created but to be eternal. In addition, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe His identity to have been that of Michael the Archangel prior to His birth in a manger.

Every thread connects to other, even stranger ideas.

And so, a person is not born again. They are introduced into the Jehovah’s Witnesses via a series of steps that prove one is ready to bear the name. You first have to have a book study where you learn the basic tenets of what they believe.

This usually takes six months on average.

Then you are ready to go door-to-door. They will call you an unbaptized publisher. You have to sufficiently learn the ropes.

I can’t tell you the last few steps since they didn’t want me to officially join. But when you reach that pinnacle, you can then go to a convention and be baptized in front of hundreds or thousands of people.

The conventions are held at various intervals and will vary in size. The twice yearly conventions might hold fifteen hundred people, whereas the larger ones will hold thousands.

I once attended a convention at the Capital Center in Washington D.C. the morning after a Guns N’ Roses concert that held 15,000 people.

And because the salvation experience is nonexistent, there is no personal relationship with Jesus. In fact, I had never heard of such a thing. It would not have made sense to me.

You pray in His name, and that is about it. You might read about Him from time to time.

So, a person doesn’t “follow God’s will”. The concept is foreign. You read the litany of materials that come from the Watchtower organization. You underline the answers to the questions at the end of paragraphs, and you look up referenced Bible verses. You would likely also read your New World Translation version of the holy scriptures.

You spent a great deal of time with other Jehovah’s Witnesses at the five weekly meetings, and you would go door to door as often as you could. You might hold down work, but this was often janitorial gigs that you might get in tandem with other Jehovah’s Witnesses.

People need a flexible schedule if they’re to make all the meetings.

Your life is fairly well mapped out from those things alone. You tried to generally be a good person and to live as moralistically upright as you could. People usually go all in to an extent I have not really seen among Protestants.

But so, if we don’t need Jesus for salvation, and there is no personal calling to do anything but go door to door and attend meetings, devotion to Jesus falls by the wayside. He is appreciated but not worshipped and not included in much.

So, who is Jehovah?

Jehovah is the name of Father God.

Now, remember, there is no Trinity under this belief system. They are separate. The entire religion revolves around God the Father and pretty much only God the Father.

An important distinction is made by not simply referring to themselves as Christians or as a branch of Christianity. Not being a Christ follower is central, though it is subtle and easy for people to miss.

Much of Jehovah’s Witness doctrine is this way.

Isaiah 43:10 in their version of the Bible, The New World Translation says, “‘You are my witnesses’, declares Jehovah. ‘Yes, my servant whom I have chosen. So that you may know and have faith in me. And understand I am the same One. Before me no God was formed. And after me there has been none’”.

And so, the entire purpose of being a part of this religion is to be a witness to Jehovah. You are to bear witness to God the Father and to tell people about Him. So, most of the focus and the direction of the writing is toward Jehovah.

The Old Testament, for this reason, is the main area of interest for the Jehovah’s Witness.

Remembering that the main job for a follower is to consume vast publications by the Watchtower organization, the writings will be geared toward Jehovah, and this is mostly sourced from the Old Testament.

The New Testament is mainly about Jesus, so the emphasis not nearly as heavy.

The Awake! magazine no longer exists but was part of your reading schedule for approximately 74 years. You are to read the Watchtower magazine weekly and to read the study articles.

Additionally, there are various books you are to study for the meetings. You will generally have a particular book that has a study chapter. You might be given assignments to research topics and to offer a defense for the stated worldview.

In the Jehovah’s Witness universe, there are generally answers to every question you could ask. A personal relationship with God is not needed. You just need to find the topic in the Watchtower library spanning back into the early 20th century.

Due to all of this study and reinforcement in the time spent during the week at the Kingdom Hall, Jehovah is the One with whom we hope to establish a rapport. He is the One they tell us will consume us with fireballs if He is not happy with us, so we can’t be too careful.

The songbook when I last attended had about three fourths of its contents devoted to Jehovah.

Jehovah’s Witnesses know that the name of God is not included in most Bible versions but that it is rendered LORD.

They also know the two instances where all Bibles do contain the name Jehovah. This is a sticking point.

It is not uncommon that the average householder will not know what the name of God is when they are asked. This simple test demonstrates that the Jehovah’s Witness has the true religion and that you do not.

In fact, your Bible doesn’t even use His name except for twice.

It is why they will likely not believe anything you have to say. This is a hurdle for the Jehovah’s Witness to believe there is any truth in outside groups.

They will just point to your Bible’s use of LORD and declare you don’t have it right. And with that, many a person is converted.

There, however, is more than meets the eye.

In Revelation, there is a passage that details Babylon the Great and tells of her harlotry with the nations. You are to cut any ties you have with Babylon the Great when you become a Jehovah’s Witness.

All associations with groups who promote beliefs they consider to be apostate are called false religion. They give the term Christendom to all forms of Christianity that do not adhere to their interpretation.

They particularly consider this any who believe in the Trinity, the immortality of the soul, the existence of hell, and those who use any religious symbolism.

Publications down come particularly hard on the Catholic church.

This becomes tricky because of the areas in which Christians do not adhere to the Bible. It can make it tempting to think the Jehovah’s Witnesses are correct in their assertions because they correctly point out where some have accepted practices that are not biblical.

It is absolutely true that the church in large swaths is lukewarm and even engages in sin. There is no doubt about this and is a primary reason witnessing to a JW can be difficult. If true believers act like this and don’t even respect God on Sunday by showing up in khaki shorts, then how can they possibly have truth?

The truth is so simple. The gospel message can be understood by a child, and it is not meant to be complicated. If you have to sit through six months of book studies first and jump through other hoops first, what they are selling is not the gospel.

It is something other, a type of careful indoctrination.

A Methodist can often find common ground with a Baptist. Other denominations can generally understand a great deal of what a different group might preach. This is not so with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The entire structure is fundamentally different at nearly every level.

It appears to be biblical when you use a version of the Bible that has been doctored.

If it requires months and months of conversations to get you to view their skewed conclusions, it isn’t true.

The Bible is not that densely packed with tangled thorns as they would make you think. They use Acts 8:30-31 to let you know you cannot understand the Bible through a plain reading of the text.

“Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked. ‘How can I,’ he said, ‘unless someone explains it to me?’ So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”

You need the Watchtower material to make sense of it for you. You cannot put it together on your own.

And they’re right. You can’t. You would never come to the conclusions they make on your own. Because the text, even in their translation, does not say that very often. You have to deny what you see in front of you with your very own eyes and believe what they are telling you instead.

When I stopped doing that, I saw that the words were saying what most other Christians agreed that they said. One publication even said that sometimes people fall away from the religion with so-called Bible reading.

The first part of John 17:3 in the New World Translation used to say, “this means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of” God and Jesus. Taking in knowledge was to represent book studies, i.e., learning about God and Jesus. This is where you needed to attend meetings and read the materials.

Taking in knowledge was a pervasive, all-consuming activity.

This meant the gospel was not preached. John 17:3 in the NIV says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

To know God is to have a personal relationship with Him by trusting in Jesus as Savior. It has nothing to do with getting on a hamster wheel of going door to door.

The name Jehovah’s Witnesses takes attention away from Jesus. We revere God the Father, of course, but we are to preach Jesus. We are to proclaim His name. He is the name by which every man is saved. There is no other under heaven.

I also believe the name of God is important. I don’t disagree with that. I do know, however, that their means of exposing the weaknesses of various Christian religions is often the way they sink their unorthodox beliefs into people.

And it’s often the most sincere people with the earnest desire to please God. It is scary to tell someone they are engaging in false religion when they only what to be close to God. And because the Jehovah’s Witnesses come armed with lengthy and intimidating proofs, it can throw a person off balance.

God calls us to a personal one-on-one relationship through Christ and in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit. We don’t all have a standardized walk but a call that is tailored to us. We walk with Him by His power day by day in the path He would lead us on. It is walked by faith and by spending time in His presence and in the Word to determine next steps. It requires quiet. It is not already written out in a book or set of books created by any religious group or sect.

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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 32,000 other readers here.