There's a pernicious little booklet in the public domain which ought to bear a warning label: "Accepting this could seriously damage your spiritual health". I was sent a copy by my sister who, in turn, had received it after writing a letter to the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society London office. You are more likely to come across it via Jehovah's Witnesses on your doorstep. Although it is not a publication you would likely accept anyway, it would be worth knowing why it is so dangerous, not only to protect yourself but to enable you to help anyone you discover who has read it. The title is "Should You Believe The Trinity?" and, of course, the Watch Tower Society is convinced you should not.
Sadly, many Christians go into automatic switch-off mode whenever the word 'Trinity' is mentioned. This is one reason why the WTBTS wins so many converts. The very people who should be stoutly defending and promoting this fundamental teaching of Scripture don't always seem to grasp it themselves. It's accepted without much question, but due to lack of real understanding, any attack on it goes unchallenged. Well, friends, the WTBTS has issued a challenge to the faith in the form of this nasty booklet and I would urge you to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you in this particular regard. It can be done even though you (like me) may have no formal theological qualifications or training. This short series will not provide teaching on the Trinity doctrine but simply spur you on to do some homework. All I want to do here is detail some of the shocking tactics the WTBTS employs in this booklet. If, like me, you become indignant and angry at the way the Trinity is degraded, you will want to take action to counter this attack.
Misunderstanding: Lots of people misunderstand the Trinity, which is understandable, but when those who have publicly lectured others on it for nearly a century fail to heed correction and continue promoting gross error, their motives can be questioned. Yet those who read their teaching can be forgiven for being convinced this error is fact because of the cunning way error is presented. Our quarrel is not with the sincere JW who knows no better, but with his leaders who ought to. Here are two fundamental errors:
(1) The Trinity doctrine states that within the one Being that is God there exists eternally three coequal and coeternal Persons - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We speak of one what (the Being of God) and three whos (the three divine Persons). Because the WTBTS fails to acknowledge the difference between being (what makes something what it is) and person (what makes someone who he is), they think the Trinity says Jesus is the Father, when it says no such thing. So they major on showing from Scripture the distinct identities of the Son and the Father, as if this disproved the Trinity! What we need to be quick to point out to JWs is that we agree with them here, and that their desire to argue this point only proves they do not know what the Trinity teaches.
(2) Trinitarianism insists that the one Being of God is shared by three Persons. But JWs believe that God's Being is held by only one Person, the Father. This is a typical form of Unitarianism. All JW writing on the Trinity assumes Unitarianism to be true. Many quotations are made from Unitarianists which makes it seem as if the WTBTS has much scholarly support for its claim that the Trinity is wide open to challenge. Yes, many clergymen, liberal scholars and historians do not believe the Trinity. They usually do not believe the Bible to be the unerring Word of God either. If the WTBTS truly believes the Bible to be the only authority and rule for Christians, why are they so happy to depend on such men for support? Should they not feel ashamed to be numbered in their midst? Why are they not prepared to examine the subject purely on the basis of what the Bible says?
Homework: Read the book The Forgotten Trinity by James R White, Bethany House 1998; his papers on the subject in Christian Research Institute 'Journals'.
The Conversion Of A Zealous Jehovah's Witness
In the previous article we highlighted two fundamental misunderstandings the Watch Tower Society displays in its attack on the Trinity doctrine. (1) They cannot grasp that the three divine Persons of the Trinity comprise the one Being of God. (2) They assume Unitarianism is true. Almost all groups which disagree with the Trinity suffer from one or both of these misunderstandings, so that's why it's important for Christians to come to grips with such matters. Now we will move on to even more serious matters. It is one thing to misunderstand, but it is far worse to malign and misrepresent. And it would be worse still for me to make such accusations without solid evidence! So here are examples from the WTBTS publication, Should You Believe The Trinity?
Misrepresenting: The Roman Catholic faith has long upheld the Trinity doctrine yet the WTBTS only quotes negative points about it from Catholic literature. However, the following comment from the WTBTS takes a more distorted liberty here: "If the Trinity is false, it is degrading to Almighty God to call anyone his equal, and even worse to call Mary the 'Mother of God'... Does it honor God to call anyone his equal? Does it honor him to call Mary 'the mother of God' and the 'Mediatrix... between the Creator and His creatures,' as does the New Catholic Encyclopedia?" (pp 3 & 30)
Quite apart from the misunderstanding about equality in the Godhead, notice how the WTBTS links up the Trinity doctrine with calling Mary "the mother of God" and Mary being a "Mediatrix".
People who do not know any better would think that Catholic teaching that Mary is God's mother and a mediatrix was part of Trinity teaching. It isn't. Both those ideas are fairly recent compared with the era when the Trinity was gradually clarified. In the first few centuries of the Christian Church there was no such corruption of teaching. Catholicism only introduced those unbiblical ideas comparatively recently and biblical Christians abhor them. The WTBTS has not really misrepresented Catholicism but it certainly has misrepresented the Trinity doctrine.
For many years the WTBTS used to refer to Hislop's The Two Babylons when attempting to prove how 'pagan' the Trinity is. Not any longer. They have eventually realised that this book exposes the falsity of Catholic distortions about the Trinity and thereby protects the Christian doctrine from charges of paganism. Therefore their continued attempts at inferring that Catholic deviations constitute authoritative doctrine, and that the Trinity is pagan, are inexcusable.
Maligning: Under the heading "What the Ante-Nicene Fathers Taught", the WTBTS purports to quote from Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen to prove that "the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for several centuries thereafter." (p 7) However, they do not give the sources for their partial quotations. The only reference given is a book by an Alvan Lamson who seems to support their anti-Trinitarian bias. I wrote to the WTBTS in 1978 for help to obtain his book. It was published in 1860 they said and is now out of print but even so, the WTBTS did not give me page numbers or photocopies although they had a copy. Now, 20 years later, they continue to use this questionable source as "proof". They must be scraping the bottom of the barrel but choose to keep using this source as nobody will be able to check if they are quoting out of context or giving partial quotes which distort intended meanings. There is abundant documented evidence that the WTBTS is guilty of much scholastic dishonesty and regularly employs such underhand methods to fool people.
I have pages of quotations (with references) proving the exact opposite to those WTBTS claims about the Church Fathers. All of these Church Fathers believed in the deity of Christ as opposed to him having been created. The WTBTS brazenly maligns these ancient worthies, confident nobody will bother to check their questionable quotations out. I can supply the counter-quotations to all who request them. robert@tags.co.uk. Next month we will look at the misleading and mocking nature of the Watchtower Society's depiction of the Trinity.
Mormons mislead others, trying to get Christians to think they, too, accept the Trinity doctrine. At least, with JWs you know where you stand, for they make no pretence of agreeing with it. Yet they remain guilty of misleading others in the way they explain the doctrine. Unless anyone knows clearly what the Trinity teaches, he is unlikely to spot just how misleading some of the statements are in the Watch Tower Society's publication, Should You Believe The Trinity?
Misleading: The WTBTS depends on its disgraceful mistranslation of the Bible to persuade readers that Scripture shows Jesus to have been created by God, and that he can only be "a god". In order to get uninformed readers thinking theirs is but one of many translations saying this, they list eight others which appear to agree with their rendition of John 1:1. Further, they challenge "Colwell's rule" of Greek grammar for this verse. They also argue against the personality of the Holy Spirit (pp 20-28). Anyone who is troubled by such specious arguments can contact me for detailed refutation robert@tags.co.uk. But consider the following points:
Whereas JWs criticise the Trinity for promoting polytheism (worship of more than one God) when it does no such thing, their relegation of Jesus to demi-god status certainly does! The misleading nature of such teaching comes out when JWs are challenged about having two Gods. They quickly deny that they actually worship Jesus. They claim to give him due honour, respect and obedience, but say their worship goes only to Jehovah. In that case, Jesus cannot even be "a god"! A god receives worship, even though other "gods" may receive more. They agree with Isaiah ch. 9 that Jesus is called "the Mighty God". Yet they have nothing to say about Isaiah ch. 10 calling Jehovah "the Mighty God" as well! It's worth showing this confusion to JWs because they have fallen between two stools here. If the Trinity is being debated, they will try to sit on the "Jesus is merely 'a god'" stool, but if polytheism is raised, they will try to move on to the "Jesus is not to be worshipped" stool. Instead of misleading you, JWs need to be shown how misled they are.
Mocking: Clergymen are mocked in this booklet. On p 4 they are called confused, with six quotations given as proof, then 1 Corinthians 14:33 quoted: "God is not a God of confusion ". The inference is that these clergymen cannot really explain the Trinity because it is (and they are) confused, but God does not promote confusion so the Trinity and clergymen cannot be of God. But on p 31 the WTBTS says, "And the Trinity doctrine also serves the interests of clergymen who want to maintain their hold on people, for they make it appear as though only theologians can understand it." Well, which is it to be? Clergymen who are confused and cannot explain the Trinity clearly, or clergymen who want to control people by their impressive grasp of the doctrine? The WTBTS cannot have it both ways. Two Watchtower magazines have even taken Jeremiah's statement about "the burst open figs that cannot be eaten for badness" and applied it to all the clergymen of Christendom.
It's the confusion and control tactics of the WTBTS which need pointing out. Anyone who insists that the Trinity teaches 1+1+1=1 when it's really saying 1x1x1=1 is either confused or out to promote confusion. They do not understand the Trinity doctrine, they do not depend on the Bible's teaching, they mock the Holy Spirit's personality and deity, and they actively dis-courage their members from checking out the Trinity doctrine by blackening the clergy. If you make a good job of explaining the Trinity to them, they are likely to then black-list your home and Witnesses will stop calling. But don't let that put you off! It was a revelation of the deity of Christ which led to my becoming a Christian and breaking away from the WTBTS. Discovering the scholastic dishonesty of the WTBTS caused me to read another translation of the Bible and I was amazed at then seeing the deity of Christ in verses I had previously thought taught the very opposite. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ, and who knows but that the next JW on your doorstep is in the process of questioning JW beliefs and crying out to God for help. Thousands leave every year. Pray God to send one your way so that you can point to the divine Christ.
"I Have My Own Church"
This excuse must have been made to me thousands of times during my JW door- knocking days. A nervous householder, upon seeing my "Watchtower' and "Awake!" magazines, would say, "Oh, I have my own church, thank you," and shut the door. "There must be an awful lot of rich people around," I would mutter, going to the next door, undeterred.
Not many Christian people know how best to deal with JWs. Most try to get rid of them politely, but quickly. A few get angry and tell them to clear off, and even fewer listen then spend as much time as they can trying to reason with them. Sometimes it is wise not to get involved. It is never right to get angry and/or rude. More often than not it is good to try to reach out to them, in love.
Times when it is not wise to get involved would be if either you, or someone else in your household, could be at risk of being influenced by JW teaching. Their literature should never be left around for others to read, and if you do read any of it yourself, you must be well enough grounded in the Bible to know where JW error lies. Because there is quite a bit of biblical truth in their literature, those errors are not always easy to spot. Before getting involved, therefore, you should have swatted up on JW beliefs and know why their main teachings are wrong. I have leaflets on this, so feel free to contact me for a supply.
It is also good to avoid contact if you are going through a traumatic or emotional time, e.g. bereavement or a wedding. Many JW converts result in contact after a death; JWs are most sympathetic and assure the person they will soon see their lost loved one on a paradise earth. My own parents were lured with this hope after their first son was killed, aged five. That was about 60 years ago. It was a false hope, but three generations of JWs resulted. And if you are in the middle of a wedding, forget it! You just won't have the time. Refer them to the minister instead!
So, assuming you have the time, the love, and enough basic knowledge, why should you bother (because it will be a lot of bother!) It may surprise you to know that hundreds of thousands of JWs leave the movement, and many of those people have become Christians. Even from the elite ranks of their exclusive Governing Body (about a dozen elderly men) at least one has become a Christian and left. Most JWs are sincere people who genuinely love God's Word and want to please Him. They have been deceived, and once this deception becomes clear to them, they usually leave. Sadly, many leave and have nothing more to do with religion because they have been so badly hurt. The next JW who comes to your door may seem zealous and confident, but may be in the throes of re-evaluating his beliefs, or feeling insecure with doubts. You won't be able to tell. But right now, the Society is changing some end-time teaching and a lot of JWs are disturbed by this. There is also an internal rebellion against the "no blood transfusions" stance, and a challenge to the 144,000 teaching. Again I have leaflets on those points.
Secondly, consider the uninvited JW on your doorstep to be a God-given opportunity to share the gospel. Many Christians would like to share the gospel but feel they rarely get the chance. When the chance comes in the form of a JW, don't panic and come up with feeble excuses; pray on the spot and trust the Lord to guide you with the right words. Some of the most effective contacts have been where only a few words were spoken. One lady felt such love for two young JW girls on her doorstep, she just said, "You know, the Lord loves you. He loves both of you," and the girls burst into tears. JWs have no experience of the love of the Lord; they are just cogs in a big machine. Sharing something of God's love is a good idea and should not involve you in any arguments.
One thing you should never mention, however, is my name. That will guarantee they never come back and they may even blacklist your home and avoid it from then on. I don't want anyone using my name as a cop-out! Even to say you know an ex-JW will likely ensure they don't return. They have been warned that all who leave will either be apostates or involved with evil, worldly practices, and they must shun them. They have been told to bin all literature which criticises their Society - it will have been written by apostates. I do have leaf- lets which avoid criticising their Society and which can be offered to them, with a fair chance they will look at them.
Finally, you need to know how to avoid them taking you down their planned route of conversation (which is designed to end up with you agreeing to a free home "Bible" study) whilst you gently steer them towards considering who the real Jesus is, and that their claim to being Christians could be a deception which is blinding them to their real need.
