The Quest for the Lost Jesus Part 1- Answering Muslims

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28 October, 2024

Introduction : The challenge of Jesus

Whether one is Christian or Muslim, there is no getting away from the challenging figure who is Jesus of Nazareth. Yet beyond acknowledging that he was indeed a remarkable figure, Christians and Muslims quickly begin to disagree when talking about Jesus. Christians believe that in Jesus, the God who created the world revealed himself fully to his creation. Muslims, on the other hand, believe him to be merely a prophet; important, yes, but nowhere near as significant as Muhammad himself.

Yet the problem is this. Most Muslims know very little about the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. The Qur’an contains little about him, indeed most of what is recorded are merely extended birth narratives. Whilst it is said that he taught great crowds, little information is given as to the content of that teaching. The Qur’an records no sermons, no parables, none of his gentle words to the poor and dispossessed, none of his cutting challenges to the religious establishment of the day; it is all missing. For that, one needs to turn to the New Testament and to the gospels.

When one raises the question of Jesus, Muslims are often quick to ask “we honour Jesus Christ, why do you not honour Muhammad?” But I would challenge my Muslim friends and readers with this — if I were to say ‘oh, I honour Muhammad, he was a great racing car driver!’ you would look at me as if I were mad; you see, the key concern is not whether one claims to honour somebody or not, but firstly whether one actually knows what they stood for. Until Muslims know what Jesus said, did, and claimed to be, then for them to claim that they honour Jesus is at best misleading. The aim of this series is to help Muslims rediscover their lost Jesus — to investigate for themselves what he did, said, and taught.

Five questions

One of the world’s leading New Testament scholars is N T Wright, whose massive works The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God are required reading for anybody who wishes to be taken seriously in the academic arena. Wright suggests that there are five key questions that anybody wishing to form an opinion about Jesus needs to take seriously and be able to answer [1]. These are:

How did Jesus fit into the Judaism of his day? Did he believe the same as everybody else at the time, or did he stand out? And if so, how?
What were the aims of Jesus? What was he seeking to achieve as he was operating within the Judaism of his day?
Why did Jesus die? Why did the Jewish leadership seek to have him executed, and how did they persuade the Romans to go ahead with it? [2]
How and why did the early church begin? What transformed a bunch of frightened men, after the loss of their leader, into a bunch of fearless preachers prepared to face martyrdom for their message? Why did they begin to preach that Israel’s history had reached its promised climax in Jesus?
Why are the gospels the way they are? One can see that the gospels are, on the one hand, very different from the Jewish background of first century Palestine. Yet they are also significantly different from the early church. (For example, they contain no mention of issues that are of great concern in the later New Testament; speaking in tongues, circumcision, the debate concerning Gentiles and so forth).

To state somewhat simply, as Muslim polemicists tend to, that “Jesus was merely a prophet” or that “the gospels have been corrupted” is to miss the point — rather like travelling to Disneyland, taking a photo of the ticket booth, and returning home again. Unless one can explain Jesus in terms of his historical background, understand what motivated him and drove him to follow through his vocation, and then explain how this gave birth to a new movement called “Christianity”, then it must be a case of back to the drawing board.

Muslims have lost their Jesus, and the aim of this mini-series is to help them recover him, as we examine what he taught, what he did and said, and attempt to constantly hold Wright’s five questions in the back of our minds as we seek to formulate some answers.

Rediscovering the power of story

Even a cursory glance through the gospels will reveal that Jesus was a man who loved stories. He communicated by parables and metaphor. Yet this is something that is singularly lacking in the Qur’anic presentation of him. Perhaps because the Qur’an does not really utilise the genre of “story”[3], Muslims often fail to appreciate that Jesus in the New Testament is a great storyteller — something that is lost when one reduces one’s contact with him to mere proof-texting [4].

If story is one major aspect to the ministry of Jesus, there are two others that we need to take account of as we read the New Testament. The first of these is that of action. Jesus was a man of action; as one reads the gospels we read of arguments with the Pharisees, miracles, prophetic-acting-out, and a range of other things. But these cannot be divorced from what Jesus said and taught. Consider the famous story of Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem in Mark 11. Unless one reads this in its immediate context, then one cannot allow it to be mutually interpreted by the incident where Jesus prophetically curses the fig tree. Why did Jesus clear the Temple? The answer can only be found by reading the actions and statements together. This is cry for a unified Jesus, not a Jesus of the polemic and the proof text.

The third aspect of the ministry of Jesus requires getting your head around the Judaism of his day. In first century Judaism, symbols were one of the big things. And three of the biggest were the Temple, the Torah, and the Spirit. All three were ways of talking about God’s dealings with his people, Israel:

the Temple represented God’s presence with his people; through its system of priests and sacrifices was how one gained forgiveness and was made righteous with the God of Israel.
the Torah represented the way God wanted you to live. It was, in one sense, the very embodiment of divine Wisdom. If as a first century Jew you wanted to live rightly, then you followed the Torah [5].
And most powerfully of all, the Spirit represented God’s way of working in history. Like Islam today, first century Judaism believed in a God who was almighty and transcendent. To protect his transcendence, the Old Testament speaks of ‘God’s Spirit’, inseparable from God himself, which is the way that God gets things done on earth. To speak of God’s Spirit was to speak of God himself; for example, see Old Testament passages such as Genesis 1:2; 1 Sam 19:23; Job 33:4 and many more.

Why is this important? Because, as we shall see later in this series, Jesus himself was a strong advocate of symbols. The way that he acts towards these massively important Jewish symbols of the day, and indeed creates powerful symbols of his own, will help us as we seek to look more closely at Jesus and to ponder Wright’s five questions which we encountered above.

Tell me a story …

Jesus, then as we have seen, was a man who told stories. His stories often connected with the religious symbols of his day. They certainly utilised language, images, and metaphors that his contemporaries could understand. One of the most significant stories he told — one that gives us insight into his mindset — can be found in Mark chapter 12. The context is this; Jesus has just caused a ruckus in the Jerusalem Temple, cleansing it of traders, and prophesying its destruction. The religious leaders challenge him, and ask him from where he derives his authority to do all that is doing. And Jesus tells this story …

“A man planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a pit for the wine press, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.
Again he sent to them another servant, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. And he sent another, and him they killed; and so with many others, some they beat and some they killed.
He had still one other, a beloved son; finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ And they took him and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.”
Jesus asked, What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants, and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture: ‘The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’?” (Mark 12:1-11; RSV translation)

The audience who heard this story would not have been in doubt as to what Jesus meant by it. Even 2,000 years later, it is very clear. What does need explaining however, is that in the Judaism of Jesus’ day, a “vineyard” was a symbol for Israel herself. We can see this in a wide range of Old Testament texts, such as Isaiah 5:1. Indeed, Jesus’ whole story is a very clever retelling of Isaiah 5:1-7, a passage in which God’s judgement on Israel was promised if they refused to do what was right. Once you pick up on that imagery, the rest of the story falls into place:

If the vineyard represents Israel, who does the owner of the vineyard symbolise? The answer is God himself.
The tenants in the story represent the people of Israel, to whom God had given the land (the vineyard).
The servants represent the many prophets that God sent to his people, to persuade them to mend their rebellious ways (a story told in great detail in the many prophetic writings in the Old Testament).
But after all the servants have been ignored, ill-treated, and killed, who comes next? The answer … the son of the vineyard owner.

Why is this important? For a number of reasons, not least that Jesus saw himself as in a different class to the servants (prophets) who had come before. They were merely messengers sent by the vineyard owner (God) to the tenants (Israelites). Jesus, however, saw himself as the obedient son. This already has profound implications for an Islamic understanding of Jesus. Because Jesus does not see himself as one in a line of prophets, preceded by John the Baptist and followed by Muhammad. As far as Jesus is concerned, the line of prophets had ended — John was the last. He, Jesus, is in a different class … he is the obedient son of the vineyard owner.

That Jesus saw himself as in a different league to previous prophets becomes clear when you look at other examples of his actions and his teaching. Remember those three key symbols of Judaism that we spoke about earlier. We mentioned Temple, Torah, and Spirit. No good first century Jew would have anything but the highest respect for those would he not? Yet we find the following …

That in regard to the Temple, Jesus considers it to be defunct — and he actively speaks against it. Indeed, his whole purpose of going to Jerusalem at the climax of his ministry seems to be to speak against it and the religious regime centred upon it.
In regard to Torah, Jesus seems to consider himself free to abrogate or add to many aspects of the Old Testament. In the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapters 5-7, we have some the greatest ethical teaching of Jesus. Several times he says of commands in the Old Testament “you have heard that it was written …” and then precedes to respond “but I say to you …” We see him change the Law regarding divorce, revenge, murder, adultery, and love for enemies. And all on his own authority.
And in regard to God’s Spirit, we see what for a first century Jew would have amounted to blasphemy. Jesus claims authority over the very Spirit of God itself; in John 15:26 Jesus promises that he will send God’s Spirit …“But when the Counsellor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me”.

21st century Muslims tend to miss what would have been blasphemy to a good Jew; how could Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth, claim to send God’s Spirit? Sending the spirit was God’s prerogative alone In the Old Testament, as we have seen, the Spirit represented the very presence and activity of God himself. The claim of Jesus would have been similar to you or I saying “I can command God’s power” or “I can send God’s wisdom” … utterly blasphemous.

As N T Wright, who we encountered earlier, remarks:

‘Judaism had two great incarnational symbols, Temple and Torah: Jesus seems to have believed it was his vocation to upstage the one and outflank the other. Jesus acted and spoke as if he thought he were a one-man counter-temple movement.’[6]

Whatever else he thought he was, Jesus clearly thought he was no ordinary prophet. In the Parable of the Vineyard above, we have seen that Jesus categorically drew a line between himself and the previous prophets. No more prophets could come after the obedient son of the vineyard owner, because after the son God would intervene and do something very different. This fundamental difference between Jesus and all other prophets is also marked out by his attitude to the great symbols of Judaism; Torah, Temple and Spirit. Jesus clearly considered himself, as the obedient son, to have authority over all three of them. This raises profound questions for the Muslim understanding of Jesus. Muhammad cannot, categorically and absolutely, stand in a line of prophets stretching back through Jesus. Jesus did not consider himself as just one of many prophets, and as such he certainly did not expect any other to come after him.

That is because Jesus understood that through him, the God of the Old Testament was bringing about his promised Kingdom, which the Old Testament prophets had looked forward to. One cannot understand Jesus without understanding his teaching about “the Kingdom of God”, a phrase that appears over one hundred times in the gospels. But that is a topic for a later part in this series.

Conclusions

We have seen how it is vital that Jesus be understood in the context of first century Judaism. Muslims commit a perverse twisting of history when they try to suggest he was effectively a seventh century Muslim, preaching an identical message to Muhammad. Jesus was not a Muslim, nor for that matter was he a 21st century American protestant! One needs to understand him in his context; and the only way to do that is to access him through the New Testament gospels.

Secondly, this paper has been a call to read the message of Jesus in its entirety. Sadly, my Muslim friends are very fond of proof texting (Christians are not averse to this error either). The most you will hear most Muslims quoting the gospels is one verse here, one verse there, simply to make a point. However, our understanding of Jesus is only correct if it fits all of the material in the gospels, and addresses the five key questions we studied above. If we can only support our picture of Jesus by quoting one or two verses, lifted out of context, then I would suggest we have the wrong picture of Jesus. A Muslim would rightly argue that a proper understanding of Islam needs to take into account the whole Qur’an; not just one or two favourite verses. I would likewise argue that any presentation of Jesus that does not take account of all of his parables, miracles, and actions is equally flawed and highly skewed. Thus this is a challenge for Muslims to rediscover the New Testament and engage with the Jesus it presents, not pull it apart.

Thirdly, we have seen how Jesus understood himself to be in a class apart from other prophets, and indeed the line of prophets to have finished. Jesus spoke of himself as the obedient son of the vineyard owner, sent by that owner (God) when the line of messengers had failed to prepare people for the coming Kingdom of God. Thus to call Jesus “a prophet like Muhammad” is not so much a travesty as a foolish misunderstanding. You may say Muhammad was a prophet if you wish, but he was certainly not one like Jesus, because future prophets did not fit into the world view of Jesus of Nazareth [7]. If we are to properly understand Jesus, the man and his message, and ultimately who he claimed to be, then we need to understand the total uniqueness that underpinned all that he claimed and did.

The Quest for the Lost Jesus Part 2 – Answering Muslims

The Quest for the Lost Jesus Part 2- Answering Muslims

By

Ogba Victor

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28 October, 2024

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A brief recap

Last time, we introduced the subject of Jesus by making the point that if Muslims wish to say that they honour him then, given the lack of information about him in the Qur’an, they need to invest some time searching for their lost Jesus — by getting to grips with his life and ministry as reported in the accounts contained in the New Testament.

We also looked at a key aspect of the self-understanding of Jesus — the fact that he considered himself to be utterly unique; not just one in a line of prophets, but indeed, in a category apart. We showed this by looking at just one of the parables that Jesus told. To stress the point again; to understand Jesus, it is not enough just to quote a verse here, a verse there, to try to prove your point. Whatever and whoever you understand Jesus of Nazareth to have been, if your understanding cannot deal with all of his teaching, actions, and ministry, then you are building castles in the air. Quoting mere proof-texts to try to show that “Jesus was a good Muslim” is not the way to study Jesus. And, indeed, there is a very good reason why attempts to make Jesus out to be a good Muslim do not work; it is because this was not what he understood himself to be.

Who did Jesus think he was?

So if Jesus did not consider himself to be just another prophet, one in a long line stretching from Adam to Muhammad, who did he understand himself to be? What categories did he use to explain his actions, his teachings, and his ministry? The answer is, at one level, simple. Jesus understood himself to be Israel’s Messiah (in Arabic, ‘al-Masih’, the word that the Qur’an uses). That, however is where the simplicity ends. For to call Jesus the Messiah simply leads to another question; “what does ‘Messiah’ actually mean?” Sadly many Muslims have not given this question the slightest consideration. Yet it is foundational to understanding the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. Muslims are not helped in that the Qur’an makes no attempts to define what ‘al-Masih’ means, to discuss what it means for someone to be ‘al-Masih’, or what Jesus meant by the term.

To explore the answer to this central question concerning Jesus, you need to do some digging. Because when Jesus used the word “Messiah”, he was tapping in to a very ancient Jewish story; a story that informed, guided, and drove the nation of Israel of which Jesus was a part. It is a story that speaks of the God who created the world, who set mankind within it, who guided men and women in order that his purposes might come about. In one sense, this Jewish story recorded in the Old Testament is the oldest story of all! Hence to understand Jesus, indeed, to understand creation itself, you need to understand that story which Jesus, like any good first century Jew, would have been well versed in; it was a story told in the Jewish Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament), acted out at feasts and festivals, celebrated in Temple and Synagogue; it is a story that starts at the very beginning of it all.

In the beginning …

The Jewish story of God’s relationship with the world starts at the very beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis. Shadows of this story can be found in the Qur’an, but as with the story of Jesus himself, fundamental aspects are missing from the Qur’an’s account — this may well be why Muslims have often struggled to recover their lost Jesus, because the key pieces of the jigsaw cannot be found in the Qur’an. Rather you need to turn to the Old Testament, specifically to Genesis 1-3, to start to lay the framework for what Jesus meant when he spoke of being the Messiah.

We read in Genesis 1-2 of how God created the heavens and the earth, and everything that can be found in the created order. What is also significant is what we read after God has completed this creative process:

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

Right at the beginning of the Bible, we read that God’s creation was good — he was pleased with that with which he was made. This is a vital aspect of the Jewish-Christian story of beginnings; God does not divide things into ‘spiritual and good’ and ‘earthly and bad’, a way of thinking found in some religions today. Some religious people think that life is all about doing one’s best to please God, so that you can escape to a ‘better place’ (paradise or heaven). However, this is not what Genesis says. Created things are not bad, indeed the whole of the universe is very good indeed — creation as God first made it, was a very good thing.

But it is what follows next that is of primary importance for understanding the Jewish story and, in our case, understanding what Jesus saw his Messianic role as being all about. For once he has completed the rest of creation, God then creates man and woman:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

God creates man and woman, the very pinnacle of his creation, according to the Bible; but the vital part of the narrative is that mankind was created in the image of God. The result of missing this has massive consequences — it will cause you to misunderstand God, misunderstand humanity, and misunderstand Jesus. Some Muslims have occasionally asked questions like “how can humans be in God’s image — God is utterly different from his creation?” But mixing up creation and the creator is not what this story is about. I know of no Jewish or Christian scholar writing today who would say that this verse suggests humans are in any way divine. Rather, the image of God tells us about the role of human beings in God’s creation. Just as an ancient king would place statues or images of himself throughout his empire, to pronounce to his subjects that it was his power that was supreme, so human beings are in the image of God:

“Adam was meant to represent God within his creation’ [1]

When God makes men and women in his image, ‘he does not mean them to look like him, or to be made of the same stuff. Rather he intends them to be a kind of extension of his own personality, and a fundamental part of his own activity in the world. They are his representatives.’ [2]

The idea that human beings are God’s image or representatives runs through the whole of the Bible like a golden thread. Why does God forbid human beings to murder? Because humans are made in God’s image (Genesis 9:6). Why is God so concerned that human beings live sinless, righteous lives? In order that they may accurately represent him within creation; God is perfect and thus expects his representatives to accurately reflect that perfection (e.g. Matt 5:48).

However, the next part of the Genesis story tells of how Adam and Eve disobeyed God and broke the relationship between humankind and God. Once again, the Qur’an (Surah 2:30-39) has borrowed the biblical story, but misses many of the most important points. The result of the sin of the first human couple is not only that human beings are separated from God but that creation itself was damaged when they rebelled; we have seen how Adam and Eve were the high point of creation, God’s representatives within it. They not only failed God in sinning, but failed their responsibility to creation as well:

Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3:17-18).

And with sin also came, for the first time, human death, as God had warned (Genesis 2:17):

… until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, and to it you will return. (Genesis 3:19)

Central to the whole Bible is the idea that mankind and creation are inseparably linked. Unlike the Qur’an’s account of creation, God did not set Adam and Eve in some heavenly paradise from which they sinned and were cast down to earth (Surah 7:24). Rather, he created human beings to be responsible for and look after the rest of creation, to be his representatives within it. And, unlike the Qur’an, the Bible does not present paradise as an otherworldly place disconnected from reality, but speaks of God restoring the whole of creation to the way it was intended to be.

Adam, Israel, and God’s true humanity

The creation and the sin of Adam is just the beginning of the Jewish story which we need to understand if we are to grasp the mindset of Jesus. God had intended humankind as a whole to be his representatives, but they had failed in this task. So the story of the Old Testament moves on to the person of Abraham (or Abram as he was called before he met God). God had a very special plan for Abraham, when he called him to leave his homeland and travel to a new country:

God said to Abraham … “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

This promise to Abraham is foundational to the rest of the Old Testament and to the understanding that Jesus had of what it meant to be the Messiah. Indeed, one could trace the Muslim loss of Jesus right back to Abraham himself. Understand what God promised to Abraham and how that was fulfilled, the purposes of God behind that promise that the Old Testament reveals, and you are well on the way to correctly approaching Jesus. So important is this promise to Abraham that we find that God repeats it to him on a number of occasions where more of the details are fleshed out:

God said to Abraham, “know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated for 400 years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions.” (Genesis 15:13-14)

God promises to turn Abraham into a great nation through the long-hoped-for son, Isaac. A nation who will indeed be enslaved; the story of Israel’s ill-treatment by the Egyptians and their rescue by God is one of the most important themes in the Old Testament. But a key question to ask here is why? Why did God choose to raise Abraham up into a nation, to miraculously provide him and his wife with a child, Isaac, to do so. What does it mean that all nations on earth will be blessed through Israel? These are important questions, and have to do with the role of Israel in God’s plans and purposes as revealed in the Old Testament [3]. The Bible answers this question for us very clearly in a number of places. Here are just a few of the key verses:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. (Hosea 11:1)

God has declared this day concerning you that you are a people for his own possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, that he will set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honour, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he has spoken. (Deuteronomy 26:18-19)

And God said, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.’
‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:3,6)

What, then, do we see in these verses and throughout the whole Old Testament? We see that God has chosen Israel to be his special people, that they will be holy and set apart, and, crucially, that they shall be a light to the other nations of the earth. Think back to what we saw concerning Adam and Eve, how God had created them to be his representatives. The Old Testament teaches that this role had now passed through Abraham to Israel. As leading biblical scholar Tom Wright has expressed it:

‘Abraham and his family inherit, in a measure, the role of Adam and Eve …we could sum up this aspect of Genesis by saying: Israel are God’s true humanity.’ [4]

“Jewish covenant theology claims that God has not been thwarted irrevocably by the rebellion of his creation, but has called into being a people through whom he will work to restore his creation … Israel is to be the people through whom the creator will bless his creation once more.’[5]

The hope of a nation

Yet just as Adam and Eve rebelled against God, so too did Israel. The people that God had called as his special men and women, those through whom the rest of the world would see his glory fell into sin and rebellion. The prophetic books in the Old Testament recount time and time again how God called his people Israel, through the prophets, back into the kind of relationship with him that would mean they might fulfil their purpose and that the rest of the world might see God revealed through them. In the words of the prophet Jeremiah:

Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord God, I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, I will not be angry for ever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God and scattered your favours among strangers under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, says the Lord God.
Return, O faithless children, says the Lord God; for I am your master; I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.
And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, says the LORD, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord God.” It shall not come to mind, or be remembered, or missed; it shall not be made again.
At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord God, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord God in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart. (Jeremiah 3:12-17)

Note the examples here of all the themes we have been discussing. Israel rebelled and disobeyed God, and in the process one of their most sacred religious objects — the ark of the covenant had been lost. Now the nation of Israel are in exile, yet God has not forgotten them. The promise is clear — if they cease their rebellion and return to God, then he will carry out his promises and prosper them. All nations will gather to Israel because through her they will experience the power of the Lord God himself. It was this kind of promise that kept God’s people hoping and praying during the long years of oppression, exile, and persecution.

This is what the Lord God Almighty says: “Many peoples and the inhabitants of many cities will yet come, and the inhabitants of one city will go to another and say, ‘Let us go at once to pray to the Lord, to seek the Lord God Almighty. I myself am going.’ And many peoples and powerful nations will come to Jerusalem to seek the Lord Almighty and to pray to him.”
(Zechariah 8:20-22)

By the time of the first century, the time period in which Jesus lived, Israel had already lived through one exile, when God carried out what he had promised above and used the Babylonians to punish his people. But now Israel was living under a new oppressor — the Romans ruled Palestine and to those Jews who were still loyal to God, it seemed like they were living in exile once again. But the Old Testament was very clear — God would not abandon his people to their fate but would one day, soon, intervene dramatically in history to vindicate and rescue Israel just like he had done when he had rescued them from Egypt in the time of Moses, over a thousand years before. See how in this passage from the prophet Isaiah, God reminds his people of their time in Egypt, and promises a new rescue plan — a new kind of Exodus. When God acted to rescue his people Israel, all the nations of the earth would see God’s salvation plan in action …

For this is what the Sovereign Lord God says, “At first my people went down to Egypt to live; lately, Assyria has oppressed them. And now what do I have here?” declares the Lord God. “For my people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock,” declares the Lord God. “All day long my name is constantly blasphemed. Therefore my people will know my name; therefore in that day they will know that it is I who foretold it. Yes, it is I.”
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”. Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord God returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.” (Isaiah 52:4-10)

Passages like those from Zechariah, Jeremiah and Isaiah formed the backbone of a passionate hope that was a central feature of Judaism of the first century. And to understand Jesus you need to understand this key idea. The Jews of his day were living in tremendous hope. They knew God had promised to act to rescue them once again, to restore them to kind of people he intended Israel to be. He would restore the fortunes of Israel so that the rest of the world would see God’s power and sovereignty demonstrated through his chosen people. This was a tremendous hope and it was all focussed in the person of the Messiah. The Messiah would be the one who God would use to restore Israel, to defeat the Romans, and to bring his all powerful rule to bear on all the earth:

‘This, then, was the hope of Israel. And it was a strong one. Its roots went far back into their national and religious identity. It was fed by the belief that one day the Lord God would restore the fortunes of Israel. Such an event would take place through the nation in general and through the agency of his chosen leader, the anointed one, the Messiah, in particular.

Their God, then, would rescue them, restore them, make good the desolation, despair and depression they had long experienced. Ruling nation after ruling nation oppressed them, but still the hope remained. A national and collective hope that was located in one particular figure. This figure would be their saviour. The evidence would be seen in what was done. And what was achieved would happen by virtue of being empowered by the very Spirit of God. There had to be the Spirit’s anointing. As such, this individual would be the “Anointed One”: in Hebrew, the word “Messiah”, in Greek, the word “Christ”. [6]

Note the words in bold above. A key thing one must always remember about the word ‘Messiah’ is that to a first century Jew, such as Jesus, it was a very practical word. Being the Messiah was something one was by virtue of what one did. This is why we have spent so much time establishing the Jewish story in the Bible up to the point of Jesus. Because, from a biblical point of view, it is very clear what the Messiah had to do:

Restore Israel so that God’s glory was reflected by his chosen people.
A properly restored Israel would function as Adam should have done, as God’s representative.
Thus a properly restored Israel would be, in effect, a properly restored humanity; the mistake made by Adam and Eve that wrecked the relationship between humankind and God, that spoiled the perfect creation that God had made, would be reversed when God acted through his Messiah.

So what did Jesus make of this concept of Messiah, a word on which were pinned the hopes of over a thousand years of Old Testament history? The answer is a very great deal indeed.

Jesus and the role of “Messiah”

Both Christians and Muslims agree that Jesus understood himself to be the Messiah. But what we have done so far in this paper is to examine what “Messiah” meant to a first century Jew. The Qur’an does Muslims a great disservice in not explaining what Messiah (or ‘al-Masih’) means, because without this background, you will not understand the significance or the uniqueness of Jesus. Here is one of the most famous passages in the Bible where Jesus talks about being the Messiah:

Jesus and his disciples were on the way to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?”
His disciples replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter answered “You are the Christ.”
Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” (Mark 8:27-33)

The passage is extremely interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, the disciples answer to the question of Jesus (“who do people say that I am?”) revealed the wide range of opinions that people had about Jesus. Differing opinions about who Jesus was (as Muslims and Christians disagree today) is not new, but had begun during the ministry of Jesus himself. The popular view seems to have been that Jesus was a famous prophet risen from the dead, perhaps John the Baptist (recently executed by King Herod), or Elijah. But Jesus rejects those answers, pressing the disciples further — “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers clearly, that Jesus is the Messiah. So far, so good. But look what comes next. Jesus begins to outline some of the things that must happen to the Messiah, as far as he is concerned. Jesus states clearly that the religious establishment of the day will reject him, kill him, but that he will then be raised from the dead. This is all too much for Peter. In Peter’s mind, being killed is not what should happen to the Messiah. Quite what Peter exactly believed about the Messiah is unclear, but it seems very likely that, along with many first century Jews, he would have believed that the Messiah should be a powerful military leader, through whom the Romans would be overthrown and God’s people vindicated. This was perhaps the most popular idea of what the Messiah would be like in the first century, yet is was one that Jesus went to lengths to separate himself from. His understanding of what it meant to be the Messiah did not include leading a military campaign against the Romans:

Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. (Matthew 22:21)

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:50-52)

Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king …” (John 18:36-37)

So if Jesus rejected a highly political interpretation of what being the Messiah meant (the popular interpretation, that which would seek to overthrow the Romans by force and bring God’s Kingdom about by violence) what did he understand by the term “Messiah”. How did he interpret “Messiah” in the light of all of the Hebrew story that we have studied? This is the crucial point that Muslims need to grasp. When you speak of Jesus, whatever understanding you have of him needs to make sense of creation and Adam, of Israel and God’s true humanity, and of God’s promises to his people to save them and vindicate them, to use them as a light to draw all the nations to himself. What did Jesus say about his understanding of Messiahship? To answer that question, we need to look at the first public occasion where Jesus announces, for those who are aware and are listening, that he is Israel’s promised Messiah:

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor,
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”
Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21)

Jesus’ words must have shocked the first hearers, but two thousand years on we have lost something of the impact. “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus was not quoting any old section of the Old Testament, but was reading from Isaiah 61:1-2. The passage is a crucial one because it speaks of many of the key themes that we have already seen in our study of the Hebrew Old Testament story. Here is the entire of the passage that Jesus read bits from that day in the synagogue in Nazareth:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor,
He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion –
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord God for the display of his splendour.
They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated;
they will renew the ancient cities that have been devastated for generations.
Aliens will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards.
And you will be called priests of the Lord God,
you will be named ministers of our God.
You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast.
Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion,
and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance;
and so they will inherit a double portion in the land,
and everlasting joy will be theirs.
For, I, the Lord God, love justice, I hate robbery and sin.
In my faithfulness I will reward them, and make an everlasting covenant with them.
Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples.
All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord God has blessed.
(Isaiah 61:1-9)

Like all of the Old Testament passages we examined before, Isaiah 61:1-9 speaks of God acting dramatically to vindicate and save his people, causing all the nations to look to them to see what God has done. When Jesus quoted this passage, and said “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” what he was saying was this — that the promises of God that you have been hoping, longing, and praying for are coming true. Jesus was not proposing a political Messiahship, one that saw the overthrow of the Romans as an end in itself. He was interested in something else entirely; bringing to pass those age old promises of God concerning his people. God intended that Israel would represent his true, normal humanity, as Adam was supposed to have done, and God promised that he would act to bring that about. Jesus was saying that the waiting was over, that this was happening now. And as we shall see in a later part in this series, what was so radical about Jesus was that he said that these promises of God were coming true in and through his own life and ministry. His understanding of what it meant that he was the Messiah can be summed up thus:

‘Jesus’ whole announcement of the kingdom of God indicates that he believed that kingdom to be present where he was, and operative through him personally. He believed that Israel’s destiny was reaching its fulfilment in his life, that he was to fight Israel’s battles, and that he should summon Israel to regroup, and find new identity around him … Jesus, then, believed himself to the focal point of the people of God, the returned-from-exile people, the people of the renewed covenant, the people whose sins were now to be forgiven.’ [7]

In the first part of “The Quest for the Lost Jesus”, we showed why Muhammad cannot possibly have been a prophet after Jesus, unless one is to reject everything that Jesus believed and stood for. Having begun to examine what Messiahship is all about, what Jesus was thinking and doing in claiming to be the Messiah, we see this point even more clearly. If Jesus was right, and he was indeed Israel’s Messiah, then there would be no more prophets. There would be no need. The Parable of the Vineyard that Jesus told (which was quoted in full last time) falls perfectly into place. Jesus understood that his job as the Messiah was to complete the history of Israel, to conclude the story of God that began with creation and God’s desire to have a humanity who accurately represented him within that creation. The job of the Messiah was to restore Israel to be the true humanity she was called to be, and then through Israel the world would know who God was and would come to be saved. There is no room in such a scheme for later prophets, because that was never God’s plan. Jesus was the climax of God’s dealing with the world, his restoring the true Israel to be his people, that all the nations of the world might see him represented by those true people. And what did Jesus consider the badge of membership of God’s true people to be? It depended upon how you reacted personally to him:

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me”. (Matthew 19:21)

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:17-18)

If Jesus was the true Messiah, if he achieved what he set out to do, then God has acted dramatically in the world — and whether or not one is part of God’s true humanity, a “normal human being” as opposed to a broken human being, still trapped in rebellion and sin, all hangs on how one responds to God’s Messiah, Jesus. An invitation to respond that God throws open to all the world.

After Part I of this series appeared last month, I had emails from Muslims asking how best to go about studying more about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. To answer this question, I suggest the following:

Read the New Testament and get to grips with Jesus. In terms of readability, I would usually recommend that you start with Luke, move on to Matthew, and then read Mark and John. As you read, constantly ask the question “why is Jesus saying this or doing that?” In other words, try to engage with and respond to the text. The gospels were not written to be read in a dry academic way; they are designed to bring the story of Jesus vividly to life. If you do not have access to a Bible, you can read one online at http://bible.gospelcom.net/.
For practical information on how to study the Bible and the message of the prophets, have a look at http://injil.org/TWOR/. This helpful web site is written particularly with Muslims in mind, aware that they may never have tried to read the Bible for themselves before.
A good introduction to the historical Jesus of Nazareth can be found in N T Wright, The Challenge of Jesus (SPCK, 2000). Although reasonably academic, the book is much simpler than the other 1,200 pages Wright has written on Jesus. He is presently one of the world’s leading scholars when it comes to studying Jesus and this series has drawn upon his work. You can obtain a copy from any good bookstore, including Amazon.co.uk (or, for US readers, Amazon.com.)

“The Quest for the Lost Jesus” is a new, regular series at Answering Islam. The author will attempt to produce new papers in the series on average once every 8 weeks. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments, please do feel free to email me at andybannister@mac.com. Although I am very busy and may not be able to reply immediately, I will always respond to any emails as soon as possible. Thanks for reading, and I pray that God may guide you as you seek to study and discover more of who Jesus really was.

The Quest for the Lost Jesus Part 1 – Answering Muslims

Jesus showed her mercy after over 30 years of backslide, Demonic torment and perversion

By

Ogba Victor

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25 October, 2024

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Larjoyce Henderson shared her story with Delafe Testimonies on how she was drawn away from God at a young age and lived like a prodigal daughter under demonic torment.

Her back to God story is a powerful testimony that Jesus Christ is the saviour of the world. Our God is full of mercy and love. All he wants from the backslidden is for them to turn back and he will have them again. Enjoy the clip above.

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. Hosea 14:4

A sign of fire – what is hindering you from evangelism, prayer

By

Ogba Victor

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22 October, 2024

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For we walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) is one of the portions of the scriptures that is overblown by believers who do not want to labour in order to grow in spiritual things. But this scripture is in respect to the eternal expectations of the saints of God. By faith, what we desire will be met by God.

There are people who think they will enter heaven because they believe that they will. I heard an elderly preacher speak and say you need to believe that you will go to heaven. But the unfortunate truth is that no one will see God just by believing they will. Heaven is for those who have washed their garments white, who are sold to righteousness and holiness. As it is written, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” – Matthew 5:8

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

These scriptures will put in check the mind that thinks having faith to see the eternal home will result in entering it.

Having fire is one of the signs of a true Christian. One professing to be on fire will not automatically result in having fire. The Christian fire does not happen by faith but by the deposit of the Holy Spirit, and willingness to fan into flames that which we have received from God. It does not come because you believe it; you don’t walk by faith in this matter.

Kingdom power is not just by faith; it is mostly by the deposit of grace and anointing of the Holy Spirit. You cannot heal the sick just by believing that when you pray for them they will recover. There is an anointing that heals the sick. When the anointing comes, faith will blossom when you begin to see your prayers do countless wonders.

While those who are not endued with power most times cannot heal the sick by prayer even if they believe, those who have been anointed with this gift will do much, whether they have faith or not. Faith has its part, and the anointing has its own role.

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. (Acts 10:38)

When one surrenders to Jesus, he receives the power to be called a son of God. By the baptism of the Spirit, he receives power to witness. Why do we need another power to witness when we already have the power of sonship? Why can we not walk by faith, believing that we can win souls and move strongly in evangelism? But Jesus says we need to be empowered to succeed in witnessing and service. Having faith that we will win souls in our outings will not bring souls for God; kingdom work is done by power, anointing and faith not excluded.

So that there is an anointing that heals the sick. There is an anointing that raises the dead; there is an anointing that quickens the feet of the lame; there is an anointing that enables effective teaching and preaching. You don’t walk in these graces by faith but by deposit of the grace of God. Also, you cannot become a prophet and operate the prophetic by faith. You have to be called and anointed into it.

The general point I am shooting at is that believing that you have something doesn’t mean you actually have it. For example, claiming to have the fire of the Holy Ghost doesn’t make it so. And if you truly have this fire, there are signs that must show for it. It is called a sign of fire.

Traits of fire

Fire is an element that burns or heats anything that comes in contact with it. If a material is combustible, fire will burn it. If it cannot be burned, fire will heat it.

There is small fire and big fire. The bigger the fire, the greater the task it can accomplish; the greater the destruction it can do. Fire never takes rest until it has consumed all the things set before it, unless the fire is small. A big or strong fire needs a lot of effort to stop. Sometimes, firefighters leave the task to nature when the fire is too great.

A sign of fire in a Christian

Christian fire is showcased in prayer, evangelism, and other services rendered to God. A chorister could be set aflame for choir ministry. If one truly has fire, we will see it in their eagerness to turn up to their kingdom service unto God.

One of the signs of fire is an undying outing towards the service of God—always wanting an opportunity to do God’s service. Such believers are always there when we call for prayer, evangelism, ministrations, etc. There is what I call “staged fire.” The fire we see when we gather or when one is on performance.

When I was young, we once lit a firecracker and threw it into the bush. Later, we got a report that the firecracker had started a big fire. The fire started small, but it didn’t stop burning in secret until it got big enough to be noticed. People who will not burn on their own, away from public eyes, but only turning up in gatherings have staged fire.

A sign of fire is when we have minimized our excuses for not fulfilling the kingdom duty. This is why some always turn up to God’s service. The very excuses others give is not enough reason for them not to turn up before God. They are not immune to the situations that weaken the feet of others, but the fire in them is real and is burning, able to burn up the foreseeable excuses. This is a sign of fire.

In the years when I still lived with my parents, sometimes we would make a journey and get to our destination very late at night. My mom will make sure to feed the family, then she will retire late. Even if she retires at about 11:00 PM, when you wake up at 1 or 2 AM, you will see her already praying.

Back then, I did not understand such an undying passion for her prayer duty until the Holy Spirit began to do the same with me. And sometimes one could be really sick with a headache and malaria fever but cannot say no when the Spirit wakes us up for night watch. This is a sign of fire.

It is not your job that is keeping you from prayer, evangelism, singing in the choir, and other kingdom service. It is not the lack of time; it is the lack of fire. A man who has fire cannot but burn.

The language of fire when anything is thrown at it is “can I burn this?” If yes, fire will begin to work on what has been set before it. Even if the object thrown into it cannot be burnt, nonetheless, fire will act on it and leave its mark as a sign of fire. Similarly, no task is too big for those on fire for God. Even the ones that are cumbersome they will like to take a shot at it.

It was a fire that caused an 85-year-old Caleb to say, “Give me the mountains.” At 85, he was still lit for kingdom conquest. No excuses, no retreat, no surrender. Age does not diminish the zeal of a Christian who has fire. In old age he may not be able to do rigorous tasks, but one thing is for sure: he will always turn up to his kingdom duty as a sign of fire. Fire does not grow old, men do!

Fire burns at night, day, and midday; it burns every time. Fire burns in cold seasons; it burns in hot seasons. In winter and in summer it burns. In harmattan it burns; in rainy seasons fire burns. There is no time Christians on fire cannot step out and do kingdom work. They labour in season and out of season as a sign of fire.

I also mentioned that fire heats up the immediate environment. If our Christianity and Churching cannot make any impact in our society by steering godly fear and bringing in a consciousness of God in men’s hearts, if the cold believers are not revived, it is a sign of zero fire. Even a little fire should bring a little heat.

A sign of great fire

Finally, we know that the devil is a schemer of evil and the downfall of Christian ministry and kingdom service. And this is where we shall know the size of a believers fire.

Men will labour to stop any great fire. When Satan sets his eyes on a believer with fire. He begins to deploy his arsenals to bring him down and quench his fire. But herein is the test of the greatness of his fire. Even firefighters have fires that they cannot fight. So that when Satan begins to labour with attacks, perils, opposition, trails, and persecution; when the devil begins to stir up turbulent seasons, when men come with ridiculing and cajoling to break our spirit and quench our fire, if a believer will allow these things to stop him from burning in his duty and turning up to his post, it is a sign that his fire was a small fire after all. A big fire can withstand big opposing factors, but a small fire cannot stand in the face of big opposition.

The question is, look at your Christian life; do you see a sign of fire? If so, what is the size of this fire within you?

If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. Proverbs 24:10

10 Common Mistakes Latter-day Saints Make When Reading the Bible

By

Ogba Victor

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18 October, 2024

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While the Bible is part of the four Standard Works, there are some common mistakes Latter-day Saints sometimes make that result in an improper understanding of biblical verses and passages. Let’s take a look at 10 different examples and see why each of these is a problem.

1. Interpreting a verse out of its immediate context

This is by far the most common mistake preventing any students of the Bible from making a proper interpretation. One common rule is to read the seven surrounding verses–both preceding and following–for any verse you want to understand. Reading a verse in its immediate context will prevent most errors that could occur through an improper reading.

James 1:5 was a verse used by Joseph Smith in 1820 to pray about which Christian denomination in his area was true. The verse says, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” Latter-day Saints use this along with Moroni 10:4 in the Book of Mormon to show potential converts how they should pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and, ultimately, the LDS religion.

However, James was not concerned about praying for a religious book or religion. Instead, he was instructing his readers about trials and maturity. When Christians are in need of wisdom, especially when going through hard times, he taught that God will the requested wisdom. Verses 2-3 say, “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.” Verse 12 adds, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.”

Notice how verse 5 talks about gaining “wisdom,” not “knowledge.” Knowledge is the information you can comprehend. Wisdom is the application of that knowledge. In other words, when a believer needs wisdom in dealing with a trial or temptation, God is willing to provide an understanding on how to deal with this sticky situation. When people pray about which scripture or religion is true, they are not praying for “wisdom” but for “knowledge.” James could have easily used another word to make this point clear. There is a difference.

While prayer is definitely important for every Christian’s life, there are some situations where prayer is inappropriate. For example, praying about possibly stealing a neighbor’s car or disobeying parents are not things that should be prayed about. Why not? The scriptures clearly instruct that doing these things would be wrong. If Mormonism were true, this would be evident through its faithfulness to biblical teachings, not through a good feeling that could be received through prayer. If a church’s teachings do not line up with the truth, the problems should be obvious to the careful observer (Gal 1:8-9; 2 Cor 11:4; 1 John 4:1).

Biblical scholar Mark Strauss has an interesting perspective on using a verse out of context:

Does God speak to us through random verses taken out of context? I don’t want to say no too quickly or to sound too negative. I believe God can speak to us in any way he wants. After all, he is God. God could speak to you through a friend’s counsel, through a book you are reading, or even through the message on a billboard at the side of the road. While most Christians would be cautious or even skeptical about these, there is a tendency to assume that if we find something in the Bible—even if it taken out of context—it has some special authority to guide us. But a biblical passage taken out of context has no more authority than a billboard on the side of the road. Could God communicate in this way? Certainly—he can do whatever he wants. Is it likely that he would? I don’t think so (How to Read the Bible in Changing Times, p. 17).

Again, we emphasize that reading a verse out of context is the most common mistake made by Christians, Mormons, atheists, and every other reader of the Bible. Be careful! In order to properly understand the Bible, a person must consider the context and see what the original author intended by what he wrote.

For a Christian Research Journal article that I authored on James 1:5, click here.
Another article to consider is Justification and the Book of James
I also recommend this article: “Never Read a Bible Verse” written by Greg Koukl, the founder of the Christian ministry Stand to Reason.

2. Taking a verse/passage literally when it was not to be taken in such a way

Psalm 82:6-7 says, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” Referring to this, John 10:34 says, “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”

LDS leaders have used these passages to show how people can become exalted beings in the next life. This does not make sense for several reasons. First, we should be careful about taking doctrine directly from the genre of poetry, which is what the Psalms are. Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart write,

While the Psalms contain and reflect doctrine, they are hardly repositories for a doctrinal exposition. It is dangerous to read a psalm as if it taught a system of doctrine, in the same way that it is dangerous to do this with narrative (How to Read the Bible for all Its Worth, p.190).

It also would not make sense for Jesus to identify the Pharisees — whom He called “whitewashed tombs” (Mt 23:27) and “of your father the Devil” (John 8:44) — as “gods” in the present tense. (Not even Mormonism claims that men can be gods now!) In addition, the Bible is very clear that the only true God who exists is God Himself, and He knows of no other true gods (Is 43:10, 44:6-8). If there are no other gods before or after God, then how can humans ever progress to become gods? While Christians will indeed be glorified in the future state, it would not be biblical to call them gods.

Norman L. Geisler and Ron Rhodes further explain,

Jesus’ statement must be understood as part of his overall reasoning here, which is an a fortiori argument: “If God even called human judges “gods,” then how much more can I call myself the Son of God.” Christ had just pronounced himself one with the Father, saying, “I and My Father are one” (10:30). The Jews wanted to stone him because they thought Christ was blaspheming, making himself out to be equal with God (vv. 31-33). (When Cultists Ask, pp. 177-178).

Showing how Jesus was referencing Psalm 82:6, they write,

Jesus was showing that if the Old Testament Scriptures could give some divine status to divinely appointed judges, why should they find it incredible that he should call himself the Son of God? These judges were “gods” in the sense that they stood in God’s place, judging even life and death matters. They were not called “gods” because they were divine beings. Indeed, the text Jesus cites (Ps. 82) goes on to say that they were “mere men” and would “die” (v. 7). It also affirms that they were “the sons of the Most High,” but not because they were of the essence of God himself. It is possible, as many scholars believe, that when the psalmist Asaph said to the unjust judges, “You are gods,” he was speaking in irony. He was saying, “I have called you ‘gods,’ but in fact you will die like the men that you really are.” If this is so, then when Jesus alluded to the psalm in John 10, he was saying that when the Israelite judges were called in irony and in judgment, he is in reality. Jesus was giving a defense for his own deity, not for the deification of man (Ibid, p. 178).

For a longer answer, click here.
Another verse used to support that people can become divine is 2 Peter 1:4

3. Thinking a particular verse/passage is alluding to the Book of Mormon and the situation in ancient America

There are several biblical passages Mormons have used to support the story of the Book of Mormon. Two of the most popular passages are Ezekiel 37:15-23 and John 10:16. Let’s take a quick look at both.

Ezekiel 37 talks about “two sticks” that are rolled into one. Since ancient writings were often rolled up on narrow poles, LDS leaders speculate that the scrolls they were written on may have been literally called “sticks.” The Hebrew word for stick is “aits,” which literally means a wooden stick or timber; it never means “scroll.” Verse 22 says that the sticks refer to two nations, the northern (Israel) and southern (Judah) kingdoms, as it predicted how they would become united again. This was partially fulfilled after the Israelites left Babylon following the captivity, with the ultimate fulfillment to take place when Jesus returns again. This passage certainly has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon that would come many hundreds of years later.

Meanwhile, John 10:16 says, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” LDS leaders have taught that the “other sheep” is a reference to the Book of Mormon peoples. The context of the Bible, especially when we study the book of Acts, is that this was referring to the Gentile believers who were baptized in the Spirit and were allowed into the “fold” in Acts 10. It took a vision and a stubborn conversation with Jesus (Acts 10:9-15) before the apostle Peter “got it.” Before that time, godly Gentiles were not allowed into the synagogues; even the Christians did not consider them to be fellow believers. This all changed with the outpouring of the Spirit in Acts 10:44-48.

Later, Paul became known as the apostle to the Gentiles; in the Book of Romans, he made it clear that both Jews and Gentiles were equal in their belief. For instance, he said that both Jews and Gentiles were under the power of sin (3:9), yet they had the ability to receive the same salvation. In verses 22b-24, Paul wrote, “There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Norman L. Geisler and Ron Rhodes further explain John 10:16:

The “other sheep” in John 10:16 are Gentile believers as opposed to Jewish believers. The lost Jews in the Gospels had been called “the lost sheep of Israel” (Matt. 10:6; 15:24). The Jews who followed Christ were called his “sheep” (John 10). When Jesus said, “I have other sheep, which are not of this [Jewish] fold” (insert added), he was clearly referring to non-Jewish Gentile believers. The Gentile believers, along with the Jewish believers, “shall become one flock with one shepherd,” not one flock on earth (When Cultists Ask, pp. 175-176).

For more on Ezekiel 37, click here.
For more on John 10:16, click here.
For information on another passage that we didn’t cover in this point, see Does Isaiah 29:4-12 predict the coming forth of the Book of Mormon?
For information on another passage that we didn’t cover in this point, see Revelation 14:6-7: Moroni Delivering the Book of Mormon?

4. Believing that a verse/passage is true just because it was stated, disregarding who said it

Quoting Satan, Genesis 3:5 says, “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Church leaders have used this verse to support the doctrine of exaltation in the celestial kingdom and show how people can become gods of their own right in this next state, with families being together forever. As taught by LDS leaders and church manuals, 2 Nephi 2:25 in the Book of Mormon says that Adam did a positive thing when he “fell,” allowing humans to leave the preexistence and enter mortality. This is called a “transgression” but not a “sin.”

BYU professor Charles R. Harrell writes, “In LDS thought, Adam and Eve’s decision to transgress gradually came to be regarded even more favorably than an innocent error in judgment. It is now seen as a wise and righteous decision made with God’s full commendation” (“This is My Doctrine,” p. 253). We must understand, however, that Satan is called a “liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Should we accept everything he says as true? While Satan did use some truth in his arguments, Jesus certainly didn’t believe him during the time of His temptation (see Matthew 4:1-11). Understanding Satan’s character needs to be understood if we want to properly understand a verse/passage.

Using the example of Jesus, Satan’s words should not be accepted as doctrinal truth but ought to be scrutinized by considering other teachings in the Bible. While Gen 3:22 later shows how Adam and Eve did become “like” God since they now understood the difference between good and evil, Satan was only telling part of the truth. A “half truth” is still a lie, as Paul compares the “cunning” serpent to false teachers who twist the gospel when they teach another Jesus (2 Cor 11:3-4). Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command, “death spread to all men, because all sinned”; from this came judgment that resulted in condemnation for everyone, not godhood (Rom 5:12, 16).

5. Not recognizing the audience to whom the biblical author is writing

Christians like to talk about how it is through faith that a person is saved by grace and not through works (Eph. 2:8-9). A common verse used by many Latter-day Saints in response to this belief is James 2:20, which says, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” Verse 26 adds, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” Thus, some Mormons claim that one’s efforts are required for celestial glory.

Theologian Mark Strauss writes,

Paul says that a person is saved by faith alone, apart from works (Rom. 3:28). James insists that “faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:26), so that faith plus works saves you. These differences can be resolved when we recognize that Paul and James are addressing two different situations. Paul writes against legalists who are claiming that a person can earn salvation by doing good works, or who perhaps are claiming that salvation has come through the “works of the law”—the hallmarks of Judaism such as circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath observance.” James, on the other hand, is writing against those who are abusing the doctrine of free grace by claiming that once you are saved by faith, you can live any way you want. James rejects such libertarianism and insists that authentic faith will always result in actions, so that the two work hand in hand. . . . The key to harmonizing Paul and James is understanding their distinct contexts” (How to Read the Bible in Changing Times, pp. 35-36. Ellipsis mine).

In other words, both Paul and James are correct based on their audiences and situations. Paul says that justification comes only through faith, with grace as the necessary ingredient. Christians believe that good works are also important in the role of sanctification, as Ephesian 2:10 importantly adds that believers were created to do good works from the very beginning of time. Paul’s audience of legalists needed to know that it wasn’t their good works that made them righteous before God. James, meanwhile, needed to communicate that believers cannot consider themselves to be “grace-only Christians” and therefore minimize good works. As Paul said, believers are created “unto” good works. Although they may look contradictory on the surface, both passages are correct when we take a closer look.

For more on this, visit “Doesn’t the Book of James say Faith without Works is Dead?”

6. Ignoring the context of the situation and the purpose of the verse/passage

No verse is more utilized for baptism for the dead than 1 Cor. 15:29. It reads, “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” Since not everyone may have had the chance to be baptized during this lifetime, Mormon leaders place great importance on having their members get baptized in proxy on behalf of those already dead; this is accomplished in a ceremony performed in one of the 160+ LDS temples located throughout the world.

Rather than attempting to introduce a unique teaching in this passage, however, Paul’s focus was on providing evidence for a bodily resurrection. While the passage probably indicates that some people during his day may have practiced a baptismal ritual for the dead, Paul neither endorses nor criticizes the ritual. In verse 29, he used third person plural (“they”) rather than first person singular (“we”), which would be strange if he was referring to fellow believers. In the context, verses 24-25 and 27-28 uses third person singular (he/him) to refer to Jesus, and in verse 30 he uses the first person plural (“we”) along with the second person plural (“your”) in verse 31. He also used first person singular (“I”) in verse 34. So, the question is, why did Paul purposely move over to the third person plural pronoun (“they”) when a first person plural pronoun (“we”) would have identified him and other Christians if this was a valid practice?

BYU professor Charles R. Harrell agrees, writing,

It should be noted that the voice changes from “we” to “they” for this verse only: Else what shall “they” do? And why are “they” baptized for the dead? Then the shift is back to “we”–why stand “we” in jeopardy? Could Paul be alluding to a practice that only “they” (not “we”) were participating in? (“This is My Doctrine,” p. 355).

There is no doubt this is a difficult passage to interpret. Estimating that there may be as many as forty different interpretations that scholars have given to this verse over the years, Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart write,

. . . Paul neither condemns nor condones their practice; he simply refers to it—for a totally different reason from the actual practice itself. But we do not know and probably never will know who was doing it, for whom they were doing it, and why they were doing it. The details and the meaning of the practice, therefore, are probably forever lost to us (Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 2^nd ed, p. 59).

Theologian Mark Strauss calls 1 Corinthians 15:29

one of the most obscure statements in the Bible. It is nowhere else referred to by Paul or any other New Testament writer. It does not appear elsewhere in the early church. Paul does not explain it or affirm it, but merely uses it as part of his argument for the reality of Christ’s resurrection . . . Such an obscure and disputed passage should never be used to develop a theology of baptism for the dead or to encourage a particular pattern of behavior. Fringe passages like this should not be used to establish core tenets for faith or practice (How to Read the Bible in Changing Times, p. 87).

As stated, if baptism for the dead was as important to the early Christians as it is to Latter-day Saints, we should expect that this would have been discussed in further and more complete detail elsewhere in the epistles. However, this is not the case. This teaching is not even found in the Book of Mormon. It is dangerous, therefore, to create a doctrine when there is so much uncertainty.

For more on this verse, click here.
Another verse that is used to support work for the dead is 1 Peter 4:6

7. Reading a presupposed doctrine into a verse/passage

Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” Many Latter-day Saints use this verse to support their presupposition by showing how all people lived in God’s presence in a “preexistent” state before they were born into this world.

BYU professor Charles Harrell explains the interesting aspect of preexistence when he writes,

A distinctive LDS teaching today regarding preexisstence is that all living things–humans, animals, plant life, and even the earth itself–had a preexistence as spirits. The idea that the trillions upon trillions of insects and noxious weeds have spirits that existed for aeons prior to their fleeting and seemingly insignificant existence on earth is a curious thought. Even more astounding is the notion that they will be resurrected in immortal glory at some specified time in the future (“This is My Doctrine,” p. 212).

Of course, this doesn’t seem to make any sense. Regardless, is it possible that souls previously existed before life on earth? Not according to this passage nor the rest of the Bible. First, God is the one who “chose,” “set apart,” and “appointed” Jeremiah to be a prophet. So, while the sovereign God knew Jeremiah, there is no evidence that Jeremiah knew God in the same way. Referring to the LDS interpretation, Christian theologian D.A. Carson writes,

The words of Jeremiah 1:5 could just about be taken that way if there were contextual reasons for thinking that is what they mean, but such reasons are completely lacking. What the Mormons are really doing is appealing to their book Pearl of Great Price for the content of their doctrine, and appealing to the Bible at a verbally ambiguous point and overspecifying what the text says in order to claim the Bible’s authority (Exegetical Fallacies, 115).

For a more detailed answer regarding this verse, click here.
For other passages used to support preexistence, see Proverbs 8:22-31 and Ecclesiastes 12:7 along with John 9:1-3 and Hebrews 12:9

8. Assuming that a passage is referring to “all time” rather than a specific time in biblical history

Amos 3:7 says, “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” LDS leaders have taught that their church ought to be considered true because it has a prophet—just like they had in biblical times—whereas other churches do not.

First of all, the LDS Church has only one “prophet” at a time, but this passage uses the plural word “prophets.” In Old Testament times, multiple “prophets” existed at the same time. Some have suggested that the other top LDS leaders can be called “prophets, seers, and revelators,” but technically there is one prophet/president, along with his two counselors and twelve additional apostles, making up fifteen general authorities at the top of the organization.

Second, this verse is not saying that “prophets” would always exist, but in the day of Amos’ writing, he revealed his secrets to these men called prophets. Norman L. Geisler and Ron Rhodes write,

This verse should not be interpreted to mean that God will always have a prophet on earth. . . . This passage affirms that God had previously warned the Israelites that judgment would follow disobedience, but they had ignored the prophets (cf. 2:12). In context, then, Amos 3:7 simply points to God’s chosen pattern of not engaging in a major action with the Israelites (such as judgment) without first revealing it to the prophets (When Cultists Ask, p. 87. Ellipsis mine).

While Latter-day Saints like to think that the “offices” discussed in the Bible are fulfilled in their church’s structure, this is not entirely the case. Consider those offices in Ephesians 4:11-16 that are not included in the LDS Church, such as evangelists (though someone may say these are “missionaries,” but the Bible seems to differentiate between the two), pastors, and teachers. Meanwhile, the seventy who were sent out by Jesus–the source used by Latter-day Saints for “quorums of the seventies”–was never intended to be a church office. So, it appears that the LDS leaders pick and choose which offices are necessary and which ones are not.

For more on Amos 3:7, click here.

9. Making a verse say something that the speaker/author never intended to say

Perhaps a verse we hear on the streets more than any other is Matthew 7:1 where Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” This verse is often cited when someone doesn’t like an evangelist passing out tracts or witnessing, saying that nobody should judge.

There are several problems with this view. First, we need to understand that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7) has many difficult sayings. In this discourse, Jesus provided the ideal way of living, but we must be careful about taking what He said too literally. Otherwise, people will have no hands or eyes left (Matt. 5:29-30) and they will be left completely naked (Matt. 5:40), among other issues.

Second, if this verse really means that a person should not “judge” another, then who will volunteer to say so? In other words, if you tell someone whose message you don’t like, “You shouldn’t hand out Christian tracts on the street,” then aren’t you judging that person in the same way you are accusing him? (Whenever someone says that it’s wrong to judge, ask, “So why are you judging me?” There is no answer to this dilemma!)

In addition, the words of Jesus are twisted to make Him say something He did not intend to say. Instead, a self-righteous, hypocritical judgment was being condemned (see Rom 2:1-3). If “judging” was not to be done, then why did Jesus command His followers to “judge according to righteous judgment”? (John 7:24) As far as judging other believers, why did Paul say that the Christian is responsible to judge those inside the church (1 Cor 5:9-13, 6:2-5)? Of course, our intentions matter when making righteous judgments, as correction ought to be the goal. We must also keep a humble, non-hypocritical spirit if we hope to be effective.

For a longer discussion on this topic, go to Is Judging Always Wrong? A Closer Look at Matthew 7:1
Also, see To Be or Not To Be (About Perfection in Mormonism)

10. Confusing terms given to mean something completely different

In 1 Corinthians 15:40-41, Paul wrote, “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.” Mormon leaders have turned this (sun, moon, stars) into three kingdoms of glory that awaits humans in the final state.

However, there are a number of problems. For one, if this is supposed to be a run-down of the three kingdoms of glory, then what happened to the telestial kingdom, which is lowest of Mormonism’s three kingdoms? There are, in fact, only two bodies listed here, with not one mention (anywhere in the Bible) of a telestial kingdom. Just like 1 Corinthians 15:29 that we talked about in Point 6, we must understand the context of 1 Corinthians 15. In this chapter Paul was defending the resurrection of the physical body. Norman L. Geisler and Ron Rhodes explain:

The context of the passage very clearly has to do with resurrection bodies (see. V. 35). Paul in this verse is talking about the heavenly (celestial) body as opposed to the earthly (terrestrial) body. He says the earthly body is fallen, temporal, imperfect, and weak (vv. 42-44), while the heavenly body will be eternal, perfect, and powerful (cf. 2 Cor. 5:1-4) (When Cultists Ask, p. 239).

Another way a “third” kingdom is derived is by referencing 2 Corinthians 12:2. It says,” I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.” Commentators are pretty much unanimous in their opinion that Paul was speaking about how he went from the atmospheric heaven (Deut. 11:11) to the starry heaven (Gen. 1:14) and finally up to the highest heaven where God dwells (Isa. 63:15).

If Paul were intent on describing three kingdoms of glory—a rather important teaching in Mormonism—he certainly would have spent more time discussing this concept. Even the Book of Mormon is silent about both baptism for the dead and the three kingdoms of glory. Certainly the early Christians did not believe in these doctrines as Mormons do today!

For a more detailed explanation on 1 Corinthians 15, click here.
For a look at another verse used to support the three kingdoms of glory, go to John 14:2
Check out Doesn’t the Apostle Paul say there are three degrees of glory?

Conclusion

We encourage Latter-day Saints to read their Bibles and do what they can to understand God’s Word for humanity today. However, great care and caution is required. Merely reading one’s presuppositions into a verse or passage will be more dangerous than not reading it at all. It does take work, but 2 Timothy 2:15 says, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

We even suggest finding another version of the Bible that is more readable–two recommendations are the ESV or the NIV–and see if the message doesn’t become more relevant because the writing is not from three centuries ago. You can read these online editions by going to biblegateway.com. (You can control the version at the top right.) It’s worth the effort. Give it a shot.

Perhaps you are a Latter-day Saint and would like to further discuss these issues with us. We would be happy to do so. Write me at eric at mrm.org. We promise to be confidential and keep our conversation on the friendliest of levels!

For more articles related to the Bible, click here.
For more articles related to other mistakes in interpretation, click here.
For more in the “10 Reasons Why” series, click here.

How the agents of darkness use food to cripple your prayer life

By

Ogba Victor

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5 September, 2024

2

We are living in the last days, and all heavenly-minded believers must put away all forms of carelessness and laxity. Our chief enemy- Satan, knows that he does not have much time left to complete his task of bringing all men down with him into hell.

He is a desperate man and is willing to deploy all his arsenals to stop God’s people. As they say, ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’. Our only help against the whiles and powers of the enemy is the Spirit of God. And one of the ways the Spirit of God helps us is by availing us of the knowledge of the schemes of our enemies.

Like the Prophet Elisha who was privy to the move of the King of Syria and forwarded the knowledge he was privy to by the Spirit of God unto the King of Israel, that is also how the Holy Spirit will relate to us of the move and devices of the wicked one and his armies. By this, we shall have foreknowledge on the machinations and devices of the wicked. For where there is no vision the people are bound to perish. And the people will also perish if they lack Knowledge.

In this article, we shall bring to light one of the most effective tools which Satan has been using against the Christian. And we shall not remain ignorant.

Satan is an opportunist, he is a master in taking advantage of situations. You see what you like most, where you like to visit most, what you like to do most, that is often where Satan will wait to strike. Men generally like food and cannot do without food. Therefore Satan seeking a way to plant his seeds, invented what I would call spiritual food poisoning.

It is not that food is bad, but Satan knows we cannot do without it, so he devised how to use food to effect his long-lasting ambition to derail our souls and quench the light of believers.

Yes, food! Do not be surprised. Many of us in the Western world may not be privy to the food sorcery, but it is scarcely so in the black man’s land. It does not mean that witchcraft is wanting in the West, but in the West, people choose to turn a blind eye to signs they cannot understand or scientifically explain.

Unlike the West, here in Africa we are not ignorant and have chosen not to turn a blind eye to things we can see but cannot understand. We are fully aware that spiritual poisoning is real. And many have experienced it one way or the other.

This tool of Satan works in two ways. You can be served from the spirit world which you will usually notice in the dream. Or you could be given a physical food which has been spiritually spelled.

It happened that when I was working in Lagos, I came into a season in which I was experiencing this kind of spiritual attack. Night after night I was eating things in the dream. One night, the Lord opened my spiritual eyes to see a lady inside my apartment. That night she came with a plate of food. When I saw her, then I understood how the eating attack works. When the target goes to sleep, they prepare the meal and bring it close to his/her sleeping position. The meal is possibly placed close to the face of the target, and consequently one will begin to eat the food in the dream.

I have also had experiences where the Lord opened my eyes to meals placed at the place where I was to sleep. If I had not seen the trap and had slept where those things were, I would instantly begin to eat of them in the dream. This is one of the ways spiritual food poisoning works.

Now these are not ordinary spiritual meals. They are well-cooked and prepared in the occult kingdom by witches and forces of darkness. Whatever comes from Satan will amount to losses, death, and destruction. I want to say here that it does not matter how Hollywood or society paints white the dark things of Satan. An example is saying that there are white witches or good sorcerers. The question is, does it emanate from Satan? If Yes, it will only lead to death, theft and destruction.

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy..(John 10:10)

Other times the food itself could be physical food but poisoned spiritually. In both cases, evil could result from the consumption of the spelled meal. And it is easier to harm a prayerless and powerless believer than a strong Christian.

Spiritual poisoning is more dangerous than physical food poisoning. Physical poisoning only affects the body and it can be diagnosed and treated by expert physicians. However, spiritual poisoning could affect both the body and spirit of men. It can affect their spirituality in ways we cannot effectively bring to light. Some things are better experienced than uttered.

One would ask, ‘with what are these foods poisoned?’ It is with charms, spells, enchantments, dark incantations, and demonic elements not visible to the human eyes.

Generally, there are three reasons why spiritual food poisoning is deployed.

1. To cause harm to the physical well-being of the target. This harm may include death or prolonged undiagnosable sickness. Only prayer can help the poisoned individual.

My Mom and Dad had visited a woman whose husband had passed away. This was a pastor’s family. During this condolence visit, some vegetables (garden eggs) were brought before my parents. As my mother shut her eyes to pray for the vegetables they were served, an angel of the Lord appeared to her in a short vision. She was told that there are hair(s) inside the vegetables. Of course, it was not physical human hair, but a spiritually invoked hair element meant to harm my parents.

When my mom opened her eyes, she knew that it was the angel of the Lord that had saved them from the device of the wicked. As they were about to leave, she put the vegetables in her handbag and discarded them on their way home.

Yes! It is true when we say that only strong Christians can survive and overcome the onslaught of Satan. It is also true that some of the strange conditions many people find themselves in result from what they have consumed in error. And I can tell you for sure that if the food is meant to harm after having been poisoned, the casual prayer we make when we want to eat, or the sacred sign of the cross will not stop the evil plot. I have enough experience with spiritual food poisoning to share; please believe me on this.

Another truth on this matter is that the stronger you are ‘in truth‘, the greater probability you have to nullify their works. I said ‘in truth‘ because mainstream Christianity is full of mouth-wise strong Christians. They are full of rhetorical statements about how strong they are, but Satan does not know them. Their prayer and worship do Satan no harm. Their Christianity (if real at all) is of no effect on the plans and schemes of Satan. So that Satan and his demons can make a mockery of them saying, ‘Paul I know, Jesus I know, who are you?’

It is not enough to say ‘I am a carrier of fire!’ Where, and when has it been tested? Some say I am too hot for the devil to handle. Occult people are in our churches menacing the sheepfold of God. They are there when we pray, they are there during worship, and even when we sing, they sing and dance with us. All our prayers and worship have not made them uncomfortable, but we think that we are too hot for Satan who gives power to his agents.

I call it mouthy strength, and it profits nothing on the day that real darkness arises. Religious rhetorics of ‘I carry fire’, ‘I am too hot’, and ‘I am walking in power’ will not help on an evil day. And do not claim that you are strong until you have seen signs of strength and fire in your Christianity. For where there is fire, kites gather; when there is strong fire, people rush to quench it.

For instance, before now I could comfortably sit and pray at night; I could also lie down and pray for hours. But as I write, I dare not sit even for 5 minutes after I have ascended. It is a luxury these days to lie or sit these days because in just a few minutes I would be blown away by the powers of darkness. Now this is a sign of strength and potency and prayer, just the one I would share.

So that when hell is visibly desperate to stop you from calling on Jesus, is a sign that you are menacing the kingdom of darkness; it is a sign of strength when Satan knows your house address.

I have not seen strong people whom Satan does not fight and oppose viciously. So if Satan is not fighting believers tooth and nail, it is not because they are too hot to handle, he simply does not know them.

At a time in my journey as a Christian, I understood that the name of Jesus is stronger in the mouth of some persons. It is the same powerful name we all call, and we all believe in Jesus. But the effect of this name is very much relative. To some, the name of Jesus produces raw power against darkness. To others, the power is minimal and can hardly menace little demons.

I have been in a situation where all my callings and prophetic gifts could not deliver me from mere witches until a woman of prayer intervened. It took her very few minutes of prayer to discomfit the forces that almost had me beaten. That is what I call being strong; tested and trusted. These kinds of people can destroy the installments of Satan in the food they eat because their strength is not by mouth, but by action.

After that experience with witches, I decided what I wanted to be like. I wanted to be a strong man of God, not a powerless one with big useless titles.

Finally, it is good that Christians take time to pray before they eat or drink, especially outside the comfort of their homes and for foods they did not prepare for themselves. It is even better if we will exercise self-control knowing that we are living in the last days.

Exposing the mortar and pestle pounding witchcraft and grand sorcery

By

Ogba Victor

-

21 August, 2024

0

Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Ephesians 5:11-14

Why is it expedient that I expose this technology driven by a wicked spirit? It is because this was one of the tools that was used to fight my prayer life when I began to pastor a church. And the people who ardently wanted to destroy me were churchgoers – dangerous churchmen and women. And the battle was so fierce that had it not been that God was stronger than man and Satan, I would have failed in my calling.

Before I began my pastoral ministry under the direction of the Holy Spirit, I was an established street evangelist with zero interest in pastoral ministry. In those earlier years, we used to live in a large compound occupied by Pastors and their families. It was in this compound that I was privy to the pounding sorcery.

It happened that the Holy Spirit trusted me with night vigil, and I was a faithful warrior. But then I started to take notice of a strange ‘kpo, kpo, kpo…’ sound that was emanating from various locations where people lived. It happened that the number of pounders were subsequently growing. I remember that someone in our compound was also involved in this act of witchery. Back then, almost every night, one could very much hear a pounding noise very close to our compound fence.

Now, this pounding was not just a night thing, it also happens in the afternoon or morning periods. I presume they do this when they are less busy. With all these strange happenings, I became interested to know what these guys were up to, and to understand the meaning of the pounding noise coming from houses where people lived. And because it was mostly done at night time when people slept, I easily knew that it was some form of witchcraft.

At this point, I want to let us know that one of the tools upon which the kingdom of darkness thrives on is secrecy. This is why Paul’s admonition was that we must have nothing to do with them, but rather we must expose them.

There was this night that the pounding was being done very close to our compound and I was trying to pray the operation to a stop, but my prayers did not seem to have any effect. This was not the first time I have vainly tried to use prayer to stop the activity. But as I prayed that night, I heard a voice which said, “I have increased you!’ And immediately after, the pounding seized. From that day till now, I gained power to stop the pounding through prayer.

With what happened that night, and having come to the knowledge that prayer can interfere with the activity of the pounders, it strengthened my belief that this pounding is of darkness and an act of witchcraft.

I remember my mother speaking of one of their former assistant pastor whose family was involved in this kind of thing in a church compound. My mom was privy to this because she was also a night watch. It is a true saying that many things will elude a sleeping Christian who does not know the way of the watchman.

Then he cried, “A lion, my Lord! I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime; I have sat at my post every night. (Isaiah 21:8, NKJV)

At a time I began to ask God to reveal to me the meaning of this witchcraft. It didn’t take long before the Lord began to teach me what was truly happening. He said that it was an attack on people’s spirituality. The reply of the Lord got me to know that a serious work of Satan was going on.

Overall, I know about four families whose hands are in this witchcraft, three of them are homes of pastors. On the street where the church I pastored was located, at night you could hear at least four pounding noises coming from people’s houses. And many of these people attend churches. Yes, witchcraft has creeped into the church while we are still looking for financial growth. But I’m yet to tell you how this technology works.

Witches, occultists and other agents of darkness use this medium to steal people’s spiritual might and strengths. And when those things are stolen, one will begin to suffer loss in his or her spiritual abilities. But the theft is not limited to the spiritualities of believers. Typically this is a dark technology of Satanic thievery, killing and destruction.

The thief comes not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. (John 10:10, NKJV)

When I first arrived at my new parish, I quickly introduced myself as a prayer warrior. Unknown to me, my prayer life was being envied and was a menace to the reign of darkness in that church. Forces of darkness leveraged on the depleted prayer infrastructure of the church. It did not take long before I began to experience drought in praying: I was stuttering whenever the Lord woke me up to pray. Something was off; actually, the correct statement is that something was switched off.

Something was messing up with my head and making it sleepy and less interested in prayer after God wakes me up. I usually was very willing due to the quickening Spirit, but it was not so anymore; my spirit was dull and unwilling. And this spiritual menace continued for about a week. In those days I went to God and asked him for revival and help which he did; Praise God!

But it did not take long before the downfall started again. In those early days, one morning I was praying and the Lord spoke to me and said, “You are blind, pray so that I would open your eyes”. He said this because I was completely oblivious to what I was battling. So I began to pray for God to open my eyes and it did not take long before I figured it out.

One afternoon, I heard a subtle but continuous ‘kpo, kpo’ sound and my mind was instantly rattled. I was not new to witchcraft pounding, I already faced it in my former compound, but not this close. ‘Was this what was being used to attack my prayer life?’ I must have asked myself. So I moved or shifted from my position and just then the source of the sound moved as well. I had to do a more conscious repositioning test to fully become aware that I was being attacked by the source of that sound. From that day I became so conscious of the pounding that was coming from that location. It occurred at daytime and at night time.

Many nights, when I woke up, I would hear the subtle pounding, then I would move and notice that the evil perpetrators moved as well. It would sound like something touching the floor was dragged and repositioned to my new location. I finally figured it out, they were using that mortar and pestle on me when I retired to sleep. So that when I rose to pray, I would experience sapped might and battered spirit like Samson who rose to fight but he was not the same anymore.

Consequently, those who used this sorcery around me were many. I was a threat, a plague to the reign of darkness and I had to be stopped.

Later, I got to associate this wicked sorcery with a particular dream I used to have, where I would be forcefully extorted, or some money taken from me by duress.

Before we move further let me briefly explain the sorcery of spiritual theft. If you have either had dreams where you were robbed, forcefully extorted, or placed in a situation in which you had to give some cash on duress, and then you notice that it comes sporadically or frequently, it is a sign that someone is using witchcraft to manipulate your finances. In my new parish, it happened a lot to me. Men and evil spirits were working against my finances.

I had already been trained by God on how to recover stolen finances. But how could I have known that the mortar and pestle weapon could also be used to project such destruction and theft? It wasn’t until one night when I was once again forced to give out money, as I woke up the Lord told me the person responsible for those kinds of dreams. It was the same people who tried to pound me to spiritual death, they were also trying to rob me of my finances and subsequently, to divert any favour that would come to me. Then it dawned on me that the sorcery of witchcraft pounding could steal more than one’s spirituality.

One day I was seriously praying and the same people started again. Then I saw an evil spirit walk up to me and demanding money from me. It talked about money I had in my account. I have been opportuned by the Spirit to see this finance-ripping spirit at work two or three times. They would pound and release the spirit to plunder and fight my finances. They wanted to frustrate my pastoral work.

I was once in a place sleeping one afternoon and someone from a neighbouring compound behind our church whose family was into this voodoo pounded against me. I did not notice quickly enough to get out of the reach of that pounding. That evening, as I went out to buy groceries, I lost my money and my debit card. I quickly knew that I was plundered while asleep.

Typically, when your finances are given away or robbed using this spiritual means, you would begin to lose money mysteriously or get into careless spending or squandering. Once, God showed me a spirit in my room looking for money.

But this sorcery goes beyond money and prayer theft, they once tried to steal my preaching ability. It was in the dream that I saw them trying to take away my microphone. I will not be surprised to know that it was the same act of witchery that was used.

Satan is not just out to steal anything stealable, he has well tutored his followers how to steal. And because the number of voodoo doers are increasing even as the world wraps up in darkness, believers must learn how to arise and pray at night, lest one day, the destinies of our children are stolen and interchanged overnight.

For while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. (Matthew 13:25, NKJV)

Lastly, I also figured out by experience that this voodoo can also work to project lust. Actually how it works is by stealing, destroying and weakening the resistance and strength you have built against lust.

I truly think people are ignorant of the power of sorcery and witchcraft. Ignorance is another wing that the kingdom of darkness rides upon to conquer men. I have heard a supposed pastor preaching that Satan has no power, but it is all ignorance. Satan has power and many devices to hurt, kill, steal and destroy men. We may not be privy to all of them, but at the same time, we must never be ignorant of some of his devices. So the Apostle Paul says “Do not be ignorant of the devices of Satan. (2 Corinthians 2:11)” Why? In ignorance you are already one leg into his trap. So we must let the light of truth and revelation shine to minimize the ignorance of christians and those who are being saved for life.

Finally, I thank God that the battles that were once too cumbersome for me, that he has given me a covering and increased me beyond them because in the time of my great tribulation, I persevered and was steadfast in prayer. The only thing that can conquer witchcraft is the power of a praying Christian. God allowed me to pass through these trials so that knowledge can be brought into the body of Christ concerning the schemes of the enemy. For it is written:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. Now if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or if we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope for you is steadfast, because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

In the next episode, I would write or teach (video) on the tips to conquer this device of the enemy and his people.

10 key biblical doctrines denied by Jehovah’s Witnesses By Rob Phillips

By

Ogba Victor

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5 August, 2024

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This is the second in a three-part series on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Read part one: Who are Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Baptist Faith and Message, available as a free download from sbc.net, features a more complete treatment of Christian doctrines and includes multiple Scripture references.

Our Jehovah’s Witness friends deny at least 10 key biblical doctrines. This is due in part to their reliance on The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, which we discuss in the next column.

1. The Trinity. The Watch Tower says Jesus is a created being and the “holy spirit” is an impersonal force. “The obvious conclusion is, therefore, that Satan is the originator of the trinity doctrine” (Let God Be True).

The Bible tells us there is one true and living God who exists as three distinct, co-equal, co-eternal persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

2. The deity of Christ. The Watch Tower teaches that Jesus was created “just as angels were spirit beings created by God…. The fact is that Jesus is not God and never claimed to be” (Should You Believe in the Trinity?).

The Bible, however, records at least seven ways Jesus reveals His deity: He calls Himself the “I AM;” claims equality with the Father; receives worship; forgives sins; teaches with divine authority; affirms the apostles’ statements of His deity; and fulfills the attributes unique to God.

3. The personhood and deity of the Holy Spirit. Jehovah’s Witnesses liken the “holy spirit” to electricity – an impersonal, powerful, unseen force under the sovereign control of Jehovah.

The Bible, however, clearly establishes the deity of the Holy Spirit as the third person of the triune Godhead. The Bible uses the words “Holy Spirit” and “God” interchangeably. Jesus calls the Spirit “another Counselor,” with the Greek word allos meaning “another of the same kind.” As Jesus is a divine person who comforts His followers, so is the Spirit.

4. Christ’s sacrificial and substitutionary death on the cross. The Watch Tower says that Jesus died as a “ransom sacrifice” to buy back what Adam lost: the right to perfect life on earth. Further, Jesus died on an upright stake or post. The cross, JWs believe, is a pagan symbol embraced later by wayward Christianity.

The Bible, however, is clear that Jesus died on a cross, or stauros in Greek. While this word may refer to an upright stake, its more common meaning – and its clear contextual application in Scripture – is a wooden structure similar to the Greek letter tau (T), the plus sign (+) or, occasionally, two diagonal beams (X).

More important, Jesus’ death on the cross paid our sin debt and purchased our salvation so that everlasting life is received by grace through faith in Jesus.

5. Christ’s bodily resurrection. The Watch Tower teaches that Jesus was “raised from the grave, not a human creature, but a spirit” (Let God Be True).

The Bible, in contrast, reveals that Jesus predicted His bodily resurrection, and then fulfilled it on the third day after His crucifixion.

6. Christ’s physical and visible return. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus began his “invisible presence” on earth in 1914. “Since no earthly men have ever seen the Father … neither will they see the glorified Son” (Let God Be True).

The Bible, however, tells us Jesus is in heaven today, seated at the Father’s right hand. He will return one day physically, visibly, and personally.

7. Salvation by grace through faith. JWs believe salvation is earned through a combination of faith plus good works – specifically, taking in knowledge of Jehovah and Jesus; obeying God’s laws; belonging to and serving with God’s true organization (The Watch Tower); and being loyal to God’s organization.

The Bible tells us that Christ’s death at Calvary paid our sin debt and purchased our salvation so that everlasting life is received by grace through faith in Jesus.

8. Consciousness of the soul after death. The Watch Tower teaches “soul sleep” – that is, the soul rests in the grave with the body until the resurrection. JWs deny that people possess immortal souls.

The Bible tells us there is conscious existence in the intermediate state between physical death and resurrection. Samuel, Moses, Elijah, the rich man and Lazarus all are depicted as alive and conscious following their departures from earth.

9. Everlasting punishment for unbelievers in hell. Jehovah’s Witnesses teach the annihilation of the wicked in hell.

However, the Bible says hell is a place of everlasting conscious existence, where unbelievers are forever separated from God.

10. Heaven as the destination for all believers. The Watch Tower teaches two classes of redeemed people: the “little flock” of 144,000 in heaven, and the “other sheep” who, if worthy, abide forever on a restored earth.

The Bible teaches that all believers have God’s promise of a home in heaven. We go there instantly upon physical death. After our resurrection, we return with Christ to earth, which He purges of sin and makes new.

The Top Ten Errors of the Watch Tower Society (Jehovah’s Witness)

By

Ogba Victor

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5 August, 2024

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Perhaps you have had the experience of being home on the weekend when the doorbell rings, and after peering through the curtains you figure that the two people on your doorstep likely may be Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) ready to instruct you in the doctrines of the Watch Tower Society (WTS), their leadership organization. Perhaps you then turned off the lights and pretended you weren’t home.

It’s perfectly understandable why some people would not want to give their time to strangers who are trying to proselytize them. At the same time, perhaps some people feign absence because they are not sufficiently familiar with the beliefs of JWs and are conscious of the fact that the doorstep dialogue, even though it’s on the “home court,” would put them at a disadvantage.

The purpose of this article is to familiarize the reader with the most notable errors in WTS doctrines. Please note that while I have loosely ranked these errors in the order of their theological significance, all of them touch upon critical doctrines; hence, some readers might assign a different order to them. I began the list with the WTS teachings on the nature of God himself.

Also take note that all of these errors in one way or another are grounded in a distortion of Scripture, a fact that underscores the need for an infallible guide to interpret it for us. This is precisely why Jesus gave us the Magisterium of his Catholic Church.

1.Only the Father is God Almighty.

The WTS has consistently rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and its understanding of the second and third Persons of the Trinity is radically different from our own. It claims that the Trinity doctrine had its origins in paganism and hence must be vehemently rejected by Christians. In its literature, the WTS often makes an emotive appeal that is based on a misrepresentation of the Trinity, such as “Can you imagine a freakish-looking, three-headed god?”

Naturally, such caricatures of the Trinity are not helpful, but JWs sometimes get traction from them with otherwise unsuspecting Christians who might not be as familiar with the doctrine of the Trinity as they should be, especially considering that it is the foundational belief of the Christian faith.

JWs maintain that only the Father is “Almighty God,” and thus only he is divine (in our sense of the word) and only he possesses divine attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and virtues in perfection. For JWs, Jesus is the first being God created, and while they do afford him a place in creation second only to the Father, he nonetheless does not share the Father’s nature and thus ranks as a “mighty god” (as opposed to Almighty God) in their translation of the Bible and in their literature.

Also, it’s important to realize that JWs use the words divine and God/god differently than we do. To them, the Father, Jesus, and the angels are all divine, but Catholics maintain there is a difference in nature between angels and God (creatures versus Creator) and a sameness of nature between the Father and Jesus (both are God).

Also, JWs use the word god (lowercase “g”) in reference to Jesus, effectively meaning he is godlike but not equal in status and nature to the Father, who alone is referred to as “God” (capital “G”). When we use the word god, we are typically using it in the context of mythology wherein the story refers to deities.

We understand that such beings are not true God by nature, and hence why St. Paul says, “Indeed, even though there are so-called gods in heaven and on earth (there are, to be sure, many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’)” (1 Cor. 8:5). In these instances, the beings in question are given the title “god” or “lord,” but they are not truly God. So, what JWs have effectively done is diminish Jesus’ status to that of the deities of pagan myths.

2. Jesus is Michael the Archangel.

Through a convolution of several Scripture passages—references to Michael in the book of Daniel and to an archangel (singular) in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Jude 1:9—JWs conclude that Michael is actually Jesus in his prehuman existence:

This term [“arch-angel”] signifies chief-messenger, and occurs but twice, Jude 9, 1 Thess. 4:16. It is never used in the plural, and altogether seems to teach that there is but one chief-messenger of Jehovah. While we are not directly told who is Jehovah’s chief-messenger, except that his name was called Michael, the thought suggests itself, Can it be that he who was called Michael—Jehovah’s chief-messenger—was none other than our Lord in his pre-human condition?” (Zion’s Watch Tower, June 1883, inter pp. 2-3; Watchtower Reprints, 490).

Doing so effectively relegates Jesus to the status of a creature—however exalted they might consider him to be—and not God himself. Catholics, on the other hand, identify Michael as one of seven archangels, three of whom are explicitly mentioned in the Bible—the other two being Raphael and Gabriel.

JWs have had an equally convoluted history of their approach to Jesus/Michael in terms of whether or not he should be worshiped. In their earliest days JWs were taught that Jesus should be worshiped, but since then the WTS —as it is wont to do—has jumped back and forth on its teachings, resulting in the following subsequent doctrinal positions: Jesus should only receive “relative” worship (that is, the worship of Jehovah through Jesus), relative worship is forbidden, and finally that Jesus should flat out not be worshiped at all.

3. The Holy Spirit is God’s active force.

A natural consequence of the WTS rejection of the Trinity is that the Holy Spirit also is downgraded from the orthodox position of being eternal God, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Holy Spirit fares even worse than Jesus does; while Jesus is a personal entity who is godlike, the “holy spirit” (in WTS publications) is not even a person. Instead, “it” is an “active force” that motivates believers to do God’s will.

The WTS teaching on the Holy Spirit is aptly summed up in this excerpt:

The holy spirit, therefore, was the specific means employed not only at Pentecost but also in all cases of inspiration. God’s holy spirit is his active force and is not a personality. It is God’s energizing force which he uses to produce visible results and to accomplish his purposes. It is manifested in many ways, that is, it produces different visible results, yet it is all the one and same active force originating from God (The Watchtower, April 15, 1952, 244).

Interestingly enough, the doctrines JWs held in their earliest days (late 1800s) bore a closer resemblance to orthodoxy than in later times, and consequently you will find early WTS publications referring to the Holy Spirit as “he” and “him” and ascribing personal attributes to him. About twenty-five to thirty years later, WTS theology changed, and “he” became an “it” that has since been referred to as God’s “invisible power” and which has been compared to electricity as an activating or empowering force.

4. Christ did not die on a cross.

As with masculine/personal references to the Holy Spirit, one can also find plenty of references to “the cross” in earlier WTS publications. In fact, for at least fifty years this was the case. Starting around 1936 (the exact reason for which is obscure, though it was probably rooted in the personal beliefs of the second WTS president, Joseph Rutherford), WTS publications began to refute the traditional shape of the instrument of Jesus’ death.

Jesus, they claim, did not die on two wooden beams placed at right angles to each other; rather, He was nailed with His arms over His head to a single, upright piece of wood that WTS publications refer to as the “torture stake.” You can still find occasional references to the cross in post-1936 publications, but they are rare.

The WTS from that time on further asserts that the Catholic use of the cross (or crucifix) was borrowed from paganism, and hence to use it in any worship or devotional setting is an offense to God. Worse still, in their eyes, is the Catholic practice of wearing a crucifix: “If someone murdered your family member with a gun, you wouldn’t put a small gun on a chain and wear it around your neck, would you?”

Of course, such thinking is inaccurate and misguided. There is an abundance of biblical, historical, archaeological, and patristic evidence that demonstrates clearly that Jesus died on a cross-shaped device, and JWs seem to misunderstand that Catholics are venerating the cross or crucifix as a reminder of what Christ endured for their salvation.

5. Hell doesn’t exist.

The idea that eternal torment awaits those who knowingly reject God through mortal sin is a doctrine clearly taught in the Bible, but JWs find it untenable. They assert it is unreasonable, repugnant to justice, inconsistent with a loving God, unscriptural, and that the doctrine is a lie foisted upon Christians by Satan as part of his master plot to deceive them.

JWs insist the Greek words used in the New Testament to denote places of punishment after death refer either to humanity’s common grave or “everlasting destruction” (i.e., annihilation).

It is true that all who have died from Adam until now have gone to hell. But hell does not mean a place of conscious torture. Wherever the word hell occurs in the Bible, it means the condition of death. Hell is not a place, but a condition. Those who go into the grave are not conscious there; but they have gone into the death condition (The Harp of God, 1921, 51).

In all places where hell is translated from the Greek word Gehenna it means everlasting destruction or extinction (Let God Be True, 1946, 77).

Yet even Jesus himself spoke about hell on several occasions to warn us (e.g., Matt. 5:22, 25:41; Luke 16:24), thus confirming its existence and making it a serious consideration. Emotional aversion to hell based on our own flawed sense of love and justice notwithstanding, God will not redeem us against our will, and it is precisely his perfect justice and respect for our free will that demand the existence of hell. If we choose to reject God, he will honor that request; and since the offense is against an eternal God, the punishment is of eternal duration.

6. The soul is not immortal.

Going hand in hand with the previous error is the WTS denial of the soul’s immortality. After all, if the soul is not immortal, then there’s no corresponding need for a place of unending torment. Rejecting the Catholic understanding of human nature as comprising a physical component (body) and a spiritual component (soul), JWs instead claim a human being does not have a soul but is a soul.

They base this idea in part on Genesis 2:7, which states that after God breathed life into Adam he became “a living soul” (“a living being” in some Bible versions). JWs fail to realize that Scripture sometimes refers to an object—in this case, a man—by means of its principle component—in this case, his soul. Even in our own colloquial speech, for example, we will say that a certain number of “souls” perished in a shipwreck.

JWs also fail to acknowledge the Bible passages that speak of conscious existence after death (they explain them away), which is only possible if humans possess an attribute of their nature that survives beyond death (i.e., is immortal).

7. Only the New World Translation of the Bible is valid.

JWs formerly used any number of Bible translations in their preaching work, but since 1950, when the first portion of their own New World Translation (NWT) was released (subsequent portions were issued in the following years), things have changed. It would be rare today for a JW not to use the NWT.

The problem is, the NWT is a biased translation that mangles some key doctrinal passages to fit WTS theology. To illustrate, one example occurs at John 1:1, where the third clause of this verse in the NWT reads “and the Word was a god” (showing that Jesus is not Almighty God) as opposed to “and the Word was God” in mainline Christian versions (showing that he is).

The NWT’s problems are compounded by the fact that the members of its translating committee were never identified by the WTS because it “wanted the glory to go to Jehovah alone.” This anonymity prevents anyone from ascertaining if the translators had the requisite credentials to do such important work.

Some relatively high-ranking JWs who knew the inner WTS workings but who have left the organization claim to know who those members were, and they have identified five men who worked in the WTS headquarters in Brooklyn. Of these five men, only one—Frederick Franz, the fourth WTS president—had any education at all in Greek (the language of the New Testament), but not in biblical Greek and for only two years.

What this means is the translation committee was woefully ill-equipped for its task, and it explains how the WTS doctrines were able to sneak into the NWT.

8. God’s true name is “Jehovah.”

Perhaps the most well-known aspect of JWs is their insistence on “using God’s name,” which they claim is “Jehovah.” From their perspective, failure to use God’s name shows a lack of respect and indicates ignorance on the part of believers, since God’s name is readily knowable and should be used.

The problem is, “Jehovah” is not God’s name, and, in a twist of irony, the name was the result of an error made by a thirteenth-century Catholic monk—ironic because Catholics are perceived by JWs as particularly misguided.

In the original Hebrew language, God’s name as revealed to Moses at the burning bush is rendered as YHWH—or Yahweh, meaning “I Am.” Ancient Hebrew was a consonantal language (no vowels). Out of reverence for God, faithful Jews would not even speak his name, so when YHWH was written in the biblical scrolls, the scribes would write the markings for the vowel sounds a-o-a for the word adonai (“Lord”) directly over YHWH so that anyone reading the scroll would know to say adonai rather than Yahweh. Along comes our monk and, seeing the vowel markings over YHWH, thought they were part of the actual spelling of God’s name and thus combined YHWH with a-o-a, making YaHoWaH, which eventually became “Jehovah.” So every time JWs insist on the use of God’s name, they are actually promoting a corrupted form of it.

9. The timing of Armageddon can be predicted.

Another characteristic of the WTS is its penchant for predicting dates for Armageddon, the final battle between the forces of good and evil that will occur at the end of human history. Throughout its entire existence the WTS has placed a primary emphasis in its publications—and hence in the JWs’ door-to-door preaching—that Armageddon is imminent. It would seem that JWs are bent on getting converts by scaring them into their Kingdom Halls in order to avoid Armageddon.

At its inception in 1879, the WTS’s main magazine (then called Zion’s Watch Tower) began by speaking of Armageddon as being “already in progress.” Naturally this wasn’t true, and Armageddon has ever since been referred to as being “at the door,” “impending,” “in the very near future,” and “at hand.”

The WTS formally declared Armageddon would occur in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1925, and 1975, and it implied it would occur in 2000. Clearly there was a reason why Jesus spoke of the futility of attempting to know the exact time for the end of the world (see Matthew 24, especially verse 36), because this piece of information is just not available to us, and for his own good reasons the Father chose not to reveal it to humanity.

10. Increasing ‘light’ justifies doctrinal changes.

If anything is consistent about the WTS, it’s the changing nature of its doctrines.

In JW parlance, “light” refers to God’s truths, and in a bizarre twist of Proverbs 4:18 (“But the path of the just is like shining light that grows in brilliance till perfect day” [New American Bible]), the WTS has mistaken the just person’s path, or course of his or her life that improves over time as he or she continues to walk rightly with God, for God’s truth itself. Though the path is compared to an increasingly bright light, it is we who change, not the degree of truth in God’s word.

On the basis of this passage alone, the WTS has foisted countless doctrinal and interpretive changes upon its followers, all in the name of “increasing light”—that is, its alleged gradual improvements in Bible understanding. It has compared this dynamic to a sailboat tacking in the wind—zig-zagging back and forth, but ultimately reaching its destination.

The WTS’s predicament is that its doctrinal history has been all over the map: changes, reversals, novelties, and eliminations. Even a cursory examination of WTS teachings over time will show its proverbial sailboat to be lost at sea, carried by shifting winds and capricious currents.

When JWs Show Up at Your Doorstep

Now that you have a working familiarity with what JWs believe, what should you do the next time they show up on your doorstep? I recommend three simple responses:

1. Don’t slam the door in their faces. They have been taught to expect that response, so when you do that it only confirms in their minds what the WTS has taught them.

2. Thank them for their time and concern for your spiritual well-being. Always be charitable. Let them know, however, that you already have a belief system that you know to be the truth. To help them grasp the reality of your statement, you might ask them, “If I attempted to convince you to leave the WTS, would you?”

3. Pray for them after they leave. Ask the Holy Spirit to break through the WTS conditioning and indoctrination to which they have been subjected.

Mistakes of Jehovah’s Witnesses by Paul K. Williams

By

Ogba Victor

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5 August, 2024

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The Christian’s attitude toward all men is one of love, so my desire for Jehovah’s Witnesses is only the best. I pray for them salvation, the forgiveness of sins, the hope of heaven.

On the other hand, the Christian’s attitude toward false doctrine is one of implacable hatred. David wrote, “From Thy precepts I get understanding Therefore I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:104) And Paul wrote, “If any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:9)

Since false doctrine condemns, the only way we can express our love toward the people who call themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses is to combat the false doctrine they hold in an attempt to deliver them unto the truth which saves. May this little paper help in that effort.

Some History

The movement which finally produced the people known as Jehovah’s Witnesses was begun by Charles Taze Russell. Born in 1852, he early rejected the Bible doctrine of eternal torment for the wicked and started a career of denunciations of “Organized Religions.” He founded the magazine, “Zion’s Watch Tower” in 1879, which is now known as “The Watch Tower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom.” The result of his revolt against organised religion was the founding of one of the most highly organised sects known.

Russell wrote six books called Scripture Studies and declared that it would be better to leave the Scriptures unread and read his books, rather than to read the Scriptures and neglect his books. In The Watch Tower, September 15, 1910, p. 298 he wrote:

“If the six volumes of Scripture Studies are practically the Bible, topically arranged with Bible proof texts given, we might not improperly name the volumes “The Bible in an Arranged Form.” That is to say, they are not mere comments on the Bible, but they are practically the Bible itself. 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, even after he has used them, after he has become familiar with them, after he has read them for ten years—if he then lays them aside and ignores them 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, because he would have the light of the Scriptures.”

It remains true to this day that those who avidly and uncritically study the JW books will be Jehovah’s Witnesses, but those who lay aside those books and study only the Bible will come out from that error!

Judge Rutherford took over the movement in 1917 when there was a split. It was he who gave the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” to the people in 1931. It was he, also, who wrote in 1920 the book, Millions Now Living Shall Never Die, in which he prophesied that people then living would begin to get younger and that Abraham, Isaac and others would return to the earth in visible form in 1923.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Incorporated, of Pennsylvania (U.S.A.) is the governing body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is ruled by a President elected by a Board of Directors. The President holds office for life and has the general supervision and management of the business and affairs of the corporation. And it is a very strictly ruled organisation, even down to the fact that individual JW’s must turn in time sheets showing how many hours each week they spend going from house to house.

False Doctrines

Following are some of the false doctrines and a few scriptures to refute them.

I. The Kingdom

JWs teach: that the Kingdom of God was established in heaven in 1914.

The Bible teaches: The Kingdom of God is the church, which was established when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to the apostles a few days after He ascended back to heaven.

PROOF:

Daniel 2:44—Read the entire chapter to see that God tells of four world empires. First was Babylon, then history tells us of three others—the Medo-Persian Empire, the Grecian Empire, and the Roman Empire. This verse tells us that God will set up His eternal kingdom during the days of the kings of the fourth empire—the Roman kings. This was when Jesus came and set up the kingdom.

Mark 9:1—“And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Thus, Jesus prophesied that the kingdom would come within the lifetime of those people to whom He spoke. Note also: the kingdom was to come “with power.”

Acts 1:8—***“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” ***The power came with the Holy Ghost, and the Kingdom came with power. Therefore when Jesus sent the Holy Ghost on the apostles (Acts 2), the Kingdom began.

Colossians 1:13—“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.” Note: Paul used the past tense. The kingdom was already in existence and all Christians were in it. The kingdom is the church.

II. Hell

JWs teach: the wicked will not be punished eternally but will suffer nothing more than what they call “death,” that is, complete annihilation and cessation of existence.

The Bible teaches: the wicked will be conscious after death and will be tormented forever in hell (gehenna).

PROOF:

Matthew 25:41,46—“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” This is the picture of the judgment scene. The same Greek word is used to describe punishment as to describe life, and it means “eternal”. The Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot meet this scripture, so they have retranslated it in their New World version. They mistranslate it to say, “And these will depart into everlasting cutting off.” This is typical of them. When they cannot face what the Bible says, they change the Bible to suit their doctrine. But the Greek word kolasin means punishment, not cutting-off.

Revelation 14:9-11—Describing the punishment of those who worship the beast, John says that the smoke of their torment goes up forever and they have no rest day and night. A clearer statement of eternal punishment would be hard to make.

Other passages on the subject are: Matthew 8:11,12; 13:42,50; 22:13; Luke 13:24-28; 2 Peter 2:17; Jude 13; Revelation 20:10.

Warning: There are one Hebrew word and three Greek words translated hell in the King James Version. These do not have the same meaning and are translated differently in other English translations. The only word which refers to eternal punishment is gehenna which is found only in the following passages: Matthew 5:22,29,30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33; Mark 9:43,45,47; Luke 12:5; and James 3:6. In most other passages the word hell translates sheol (Old Testament) or hades (New Testament), which literally means “the unseen place.” Those words refer to the place of departed spirits, not to eternal torment. If you do not understand the difference in the meaning of those words, you will get mixed up in your study.

III. The Soul

JWs teach: that man does not have a soul which continues to live after death apart from the body. They say that man IS a soul (which is true) but deny that there is any part of man which lives on apart from the body.

The Bible teaches: that man is a soul who lives in a body here upon the earth but who continues living when this body dies. The easiest way to show this is to use passages which do not use the word soul. This avoids arguing over the definition of the word. Following are four passages.

2 Corinthians 5:8-10—Paul here says that a person can be absent from the body and at home with the Lord. Verse 6 says that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. In this passage, “we” refers to the real person, the body being only the outward tabernacle we are in while on the earth. The real person can be absent from the tabernacle, which is what happens at death.

Philippians 1:21-24—Paul wanted to “depart and to be with Christ; which is far better.” JWs say that Paul did not know what he was talking about. They say that it is impossible to “depart” (this means to die, as you can see from reading these verses) and be with Christ. I think Paul knew more than the JWs.

2 Peter 1:13-15—Peter calls his approaching death the putting off of his tabernacle.

Luke 16:19-31—Jesus here tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, both of whom died and were conscious after death while life was going on for others on the earth. JWs say that this is a parable and give a fantastic interpretation of its meaning. Nothing in the Bible says that it is a parable. If it is a parable, it is not false. A parable was the use of true-to-life events to illustrate spiritual truths. Jesus did not misrepresent the state of the dead.

IV. Name

Judge Rutherford gave the Watch Tower people the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” in 1931. It was not known to them before that time. They claim that Isaiah 43:12 authorises their name. It says, “I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord (Jehovah), that I am God.” But this verse gives no name. It describes what some people were doing. If a man is a printer, “Printer” is not his name. The JWs say that Isaiah 62:2,4, which prophesies a new name (which the text says is Hephzibah), refers to “Jehovah’s Witness.” But the verse describing people as witnesses was previous to that prophecy. That prophecy had to refer to another name.

The name given to God’s people today is Christian. See Acts 11:26 and 1 Peter 4:16.

V. Blood Transfusions

In 1945 the JWs were given another new doctrine—that God forbids blood transfusions. They did not believe this doctrine before that date. This unfortunate doctrine has led to the death of many sincere Jehovah’s Witnesses and their children who might have been saved if blood transfusions had been used.

The Bible teaches that the Jews in Old Testament times were forbidden to eat the blood or fat of animals. In the New Testament, the prohibition of eating animal blood was given because it was associated with the worship of idols (See Acts 15:29). Blood transfusions are not the eating of blood, and not the eating of animal blood, are designed to give life and do not involve the taking of life. Blood transfusions are not in way connected with idolatry. Therefore, blood transfusions are not forbidden by the Bible.

VI. Organisation

The JWs have a most complex organisation, with a President of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, a Board of Directors, Company Servants, Branch Servants and many other offices which are not mentioned in the Bible. They teach that the church is made up of only 144 000 people (who only will go to heaven) and that all the rest of their followers can only be subjects of the Kingdom.

The Bible teaches that the church and the kingdom are the same (see point I of this paper). And the church has been given a definite, but very simple, organisation by her Head, Jesus Christ. He placed in the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11-12). The apostles and prophets made up the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20), and we build on that foundation by following what they gave in the New Testament. Evangelists are preachers with the job of preaching the word (2 Timothy 4:1-5). Pastors, (shepherds) are also called elders and bishops (Acts 20:17,28). Their job is to oversee and feed the local church (1 Peter 5:1-3) and must have the qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3:1-8 and Titus 1:5-9. Teachers are to teach the word, and deacons are servants working under the direction of the bishops. (For deacons see Philippians 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:8-13). No other offices are given by Jesus Christ, therefore the complicated organisation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is wholly without Biblical authority.

VII. Date Setting

The JWs are notorious date setters. Charles Russell prophesied that Jesus would return and set up His kingdom in 1914. When nothing happened, he decided that the kingdom was set up in Heaven and that Jesus came in power, not in visible form. The JWs point to the outbreak of World War I in that year as proof (?) of their contentions.

In 1920, Judge Rutherford wrote Millions Now Living Shall Never Die and prophesied that Abraham and Isaac would return in visible form in the mid 1920’s. The JWs would rather not be reminded about this book.

Now (Note: This paper was written in about 1971–PKW) they are predicting the end of all things before or during the American autumn (Sep. 21-Dec. 21) of 1975. They are certain that the accepted order of things, political and economic, will be destroyed by that time and that only those who are JWs will escape death in the great tribulation which will precede that time. They look forward to living forever on the earth in peace after that date. It is this bold claim which is causing so many to work so hard at this time, and many are being converted to their religion because of the so-called imminence of this time of terror.

In setting their dates, the JWs have twisted numerous passages of the Bible. Speaking of the time when He would come again, Jesus said, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” (Matthew 25:36) The JWs say they cannot predict the day or the hour, but they can predict the season of the year! This is nonsense. Jesus was saying that there will be no sign of His imminent return. All things will continue as they did in Noah’s time until He comes. The lesson is that we must be ready at all times because He will come without notice.

It is my sincere hope that God will spare this world until after 1975. Perhaps there will be many sincere Jehovah’s Witnesses who will as a result have their eyes opened to the false doctrines of that religion and will come out of it. I pray so. (Note: My prayer was answered and many Jehovah’s Witnesses left that organisation after the failure of this prophecy.—PKW)

The Christian’s attitude toward all men is one of love, so my desire for Jehovah’s Witnesses is only the best. I pray for them salvation, the forgiveness of sins, the hope of heaven.

On the other hand, the Christian’s attitude toward false doctrine is one of implacable hatred. David wrote, “From Thy precepts I get understanding Therefore I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:104) And Paul wrote, “If any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:9)

Since false doctrine condemns, the only way we can express our love toward the people who call themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses is to combat the false doctrine they hold in an attempt to deliver them unto the truth which saves. May this little paper help in that effort.

Some History

The movement which finally produced the people known as Jehovah’s Witnesses was begun by Charles Taze Russell. Born in 1852, he early rejected the Bible doctrine of eternal torment for the wicked and started a career of denunciations of “Organized Religions.” He founded the magazine, “Zion’s Watch Tower” in 1879, which is now known as “The Watch Tower Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom.” The result of his revolt against organised religion was the founding of one of the most highly organised sects known.

Russell wrote six books called Scripture Studies and declared that it would be better to leave the Scriptures unread and read his books, rather than to read the Scriptures and neglect his books. In The Watch Tower, September 15, 1910, p. 298 he wrote:

“If the six volumes of Scripture Studies are practically the Bible, topically arranged with Bible proof texts given, we might not improperly name the volumes “The Bible in an Arranged Form.” That is to say, they are not mere comments on the Bible, but they are practically the Bible itself. 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, even after he has used them, after he has become familiar with them, after he has read them for ten years—if he then lays them aside and ignores them 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, because he would have the light of the Scriptures.”

It remains true to this day that those who avidly and uncritically study the JW books will be Jehovah’s Witnesses, but those who lay aside those books and study only the Bible will come out from that error!

Judge Rutherford took over the movement in 1917 when there was a split. It was he who gave the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” to the people in 1931. It was he, also, who wrote in 1920 the book, Millions Now Living Shall Never Die, in which he prophesied that people then living would begin to get younger and that Abraham, Isaac and others would return to the earth in visible form in 1923.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Incorporated, of Pennsylvania (U.S.A.) is the governing body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is ruled by a President elected by a Board of Directors. The President holds office for life and has the general supervision and management of the business and affairs of the corporation. And it is a very strictly ruled organisation, even down to the fact that individual JW’s must turn in time sheets showing how many hours each week they spend going from house to house.

False Doctrines

Following are some of the false doctrines and a few scriptures to refute them.

I. The Kingdom

JWs teach: that the Kingdom of God was established in heaven in 1914.

The Bible teaches: The Kingdom of God is the church, which was established when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to the apostles a few days after He ascended back to heaven.

PROOF:

Daniel 2:44—Read the entire chapter to see that God tells of four world empires. First was Babylon, then history tells us of three others—the Medo-Persian Empire, the Grecian Empire, and the Roman Empire. This verse tells us that God will set up His eternal kingdom during the days of the kings of the fourth empire—the Roman kings. This was when Jesus came and set up the kingdom.

Mark 9:1—“And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Thus, Jesus prophesied that the kingdom would come within the lifetime of those people to whom He spoke. Note also: the kingdom was to come “with power.”

Acts 1:8—***“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.” ***The power came with the Holy Ghost, and the Kingdom came with power. Therefore when Jesus sent the Holy Ghost on the apostles (Acts 2), the Kingdom began.

Colossians 1:13—“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.” Note: Paul used the past tense. The kingdom was already in existence and all Christians were in it. The kingdom is the church.

II. Hell

JWs teach: the wicked will not be punished eternally but will suffer nothing more than what they call “death,” that is, complete annihilation and cessation of existence.

The Bible teaches: the wicked will be conscious after death and will be tormented forever in hell (gehenna).

PROOF:

Matthew 25:41,46—“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” This is the picture of the judgment scene. The same Greek word is used to describe punishment as to describe life, and it means “eternal”. The Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot meet this scripture, so they have retranslated it in their New World version. They mistranslate it to say, “And these will depart into everlasting cutting off.” This is typical of them. When they cannot face what the Bible says, they change the Bible to suit their doctrine. But the Greek word kolasin means punishment, not cutting-off.

Revelation 14:9-11—Describing the punishment of those who worship the beast, John says that the smoke of their torment goes up forever and they have no rest day and night. A clearer statement of eternal punishment would be hard to make.

Other passages on the subject are: Matthew 8:11,12; 13:42,50; 22:13; Luke 13:24-28; 2 Peter 2:17; Jude 13; Revelation 20:10.

Warning: There are one Hebrew word and three Greek words translated hell in the King James Version. These do not have the same meaning and are translated differently in other English translations. The only word which refers to eternal punishment is gehenna which is found only in the following passages: Matthew 5:22,29,30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33; Mark 9:43,45,47; Luke 12:5; and James 3:6. In most other passages the word hell translates sheol (Old Testament) or hades (New Testament), which literally means “the unseen place.” Those words refer to the place of departed spirits, not to eternal torment. If you do not understand the difference in the meaning of those words, you will get mixed up in your study.

III. The Soul

JWs teach: that man does not have a soul which continues to live after death apart from the body. They say that man IS a soul (which is true) but deny that there is any part of man which lives on apart from the body.

The Bible teaches: that man is a soul who lives in a body here upon the earth but who continues living when this body dies. The easiest way to show this is to use passages which do not use the word soul. This avoids arguing over the definition of the word. Following are four passages.

2 Corinthians 5:8-10—Paul here says that a person can be absent from the body and at home with the Lord. Verse 6 says that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. In this passage, “we” refers to the real person, the body being only the outward tabernacle we are in while on the earth. The real person can be absent from the tabernacle, which is what happens at death.

Philippians 1:21-24—Paul wanted to “depart and to be with Christ; which is far better.” JWs say that Paul did not know what he was talking about. They say that it is impossible to “depart” (this means to die, as you can see from reading these verses) and be with Christ. I think Paul knew more than the JWs.

2 Peter 1:13-15—Peter calls his approaching death the putting off of his tabernacle.

Luke 16:19-31—Jesus here tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, both of whom died and were conscious after death while life was going on for others on the earth. JWs say that this is a parable and give a fantastic interpretation of its meaning. Nothing in the Bible says that it is a parable. If it is a parable, it is not false. A parable was the use of true-to-life events to illustrate spiritual truths. Jesus did not misrepresent the state of the dead.

IV. Name

Judge Rutherford gave the Watch Tower people the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” in 1931. It was not known to them before that time. They claim that Isaiah 43:12 authorises their name. It says, “I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord (Jehovah), that I am God.” But this verse gives no name. It describes what some people were doing. If a man is a printer, “Printer” is not his name. The JWs say that Isaiah 62:2,4, which prophesies a new name (which the text says is Hephzibah), refers to “Jehovah’s Witness.” But the verse describing people as witnesses was previous to that prophecy. That prophecy had to refer to another name.

The name given to God’s people today is Christian. See Acts 11:26 and 1 Peter 4:16.

V. Blood Transfusions

In 1945 the JWs were given another new doctrine—that God forbids blood transfusions. They did not believe this doctrine before that date. This unfortunate doctrine has led to the death of many sincere Jehovah’s Witnesses and their children who might have been saved if blood transfusions had been used.

The Bible teaches that the Jews in Old Testament times were forbidden to eat the blood or fat of animals. In the New Testament, the prohibition of eating animal blood was given because it was associated with the worship of idols (See Acts 15:29). Blood transfusions are not the eating of blood, and not the eating of animal blood, are designed to give life and do not involve the taking of life. Blood transfusions are not in way connected with idolatry. Therefore, blood transfusions are not forbidden by the Bible.

VI. Organisation

The JWs have a most complex organisation, with a President of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, a Board of Directors, Company Servants, Branch Servants and many other offices which are not mentioned in the Bible. They teach that the church is made up of only 144 000 people (who only will go to heaven) and that all the rest of their followers can only be subjects of the Kingdom.

The Bible teaches that the church and the kingdom are the same (see point I of this paper). And the church has been given a definite, but very simple, organisation by her Head, Jesus Christ. He placed in the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (Ephesians 4:11-12). The apostles and prophets made up the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20), and we build on that foundation by following what they gave in the New Testament. Evangelists are preachers with the job of preaching the word (2 Timothy 4:1-5). Pastors, (shepherds) are also called elders and bishops (Acts 20:17,28). Their job is to oversee and feed the local church (1 Peter 5:1-3) and must have the qualifications found in 1 Timothy 3:1-8 and Titus 1:5-9. Teachers are to teach the word, and deacons are servants working under the direction of the bishops. (For deacons see Philippians 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:8-13). No other offices are given by Jesus Christ, therefore the complicated organisation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is wholly without Biblical authority.

VII. Date Setting

The JWs are notorious date setters. Charles Russell prophesied that Jesus would return and set up His kingdom in 1914. When nothing happened, he decided that the kingdom was set up in Heaven and that Jesus came in power, not in visible form. The JWs point to the outbreak of World War I in that year as proof (?) of their contentions.

In 1920, Judge Rutherford wrote Millions Now Living Shall Never Die and prophesied that Abraham and Isaac would return in visible form in the mid 1920’s. The JWs would rather not be reminded about this book.

Now (Note: This paper was written in about 1971–PKW) they are predicting the end of all things before or during the American autumn (Sep. 21-Dec. 21) of 1975. They are certain that the accepted order of things, political and economic, will be destroyed by that time and that only those who are JWs will escape death in the great tribulation which will precede that time. They look forward to living forever on the earth in peace after that date. It is this bold claim which is causing so many to work so hard at this time, and many are being converted to their religion because of the so-called imminence of this time of terror.

In setting their dates, the JWs have twisted numerous passages of the Bible. Speaking of the time when He would come again, Jesus said, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” (Matthew 25:36) The JWs say they cannot predict the day or the hour, but they can predict the season of the year! This is nonsense. Jesus was saying that there will be no sign of His imminent return. All things will continue as they did in Noah’s time until He comes. The lesson is that we must be ready at all times because He will come without notice.

It is my sincere hope that God will spare this world until after 1975. Perhaps there will be many sincere Jehovah’s Witnesses who will as a result have their eyes opened to the false doctrines of that religion and will come out of it. I pray so. (Note: My prayer was answered and many Jehovah’s Witnesses left that organisation after the failure of this prophecy.—PKW)

BACK2GODOutreach.ng

BACK2GODOutreach.ng

Introduction : The challenge of Jesus

Five questions

Rediscovering the power of story

Tell me a story …

‘Judaism had two great incarnational symbols, Temple and Torah: Jesus seems to have believed it was his vocation to upstage the one and outflank the other. Jesus acted and spoke as if he thought he were a one-man counter-temple movement.’[6]

Conclusions

A brief recap

Who did Jesus think he was?

In the beginning …

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

“Adam was meant to represent God within his creation’ [1]

When God makes men and women in his image, ‘he does not mean them to look like him, or to be made of the same stuff. Rather he intends them to be a kind of extension of his own personality, and a fundamental part of his own activity in the world. They are his representatives.’ [2]

Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3:17-18).

… until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, and to it you will return. (Genesis 3:19)

God said to Abraham … “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

God said to Abraham, “know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated for 400 years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions.” (Genesis 15:13-14)

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. (Hosea 11:1)

‘Abraham and his family inherit, in a measure, the role of Adam and Eve …we could sum up this aspect of Genesis by saying: Israel are God’s true humanity.’ [4]

“Jewish covenant theology claims that God has not been thwarted irrevocably by the rebellion of his creation, but has called into being a people through whom he will work to restore his creation … Israel is to be the people through whom the creator will bless his creation once more.’[5]

The hope of a nation

Jesus and the role of “Messiah”

Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s”. (Matthew 22:21)

Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king …” (John 18:36-37)

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me”. (Matthew 19:21)

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:17-18)

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. Hosea 14:4

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. (Acts 10:38)

Traits of fire

A sign of fire in a Christian

It is not your job that is keeping you from prayer, evangelism, singing in the choir, and other kingdom service. It is not the lack of time; it is the lack of fire. A man who has fire cannot but burn.

A sign of great fire

If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. Proverbs 24:10

1. Interpreting a verse out of its immediate context

2. Taking a verse/passage literally when it was not to be taken in such a way

3. Thinking a particular verse/passage is alluding to the Book of Mormon and the situation in ancient America

4. Believing that a verse/passage is true just because it was stated, disregarding who said it

5. Not recognizing the audience to whom the biblical author is writing

6. Ignoring the context of the situation and the purpose of the verse/passage

7. Reading a presupposed doctrine into a verse/passage

8. Assuming that a passage is referring to “all time” rather than a specific time in biblical history

9. Making a verse say something that the speaker/author never intended to say

10. Confusing terms given to mean something completely different

Conclusion

This tool of Satan works in two ways. You can be served from the spirit world which you will usually notice in the dream. Or you could be given a physical food which has been spiritually spelled.

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy..(John 10:10)

One would ask, ‘with what are these foods poisoned?’ It is with charms, spells, enchantments, dark incantations, and demonic elements not visible to the human eyes.

Then he cried, “A lion, my Lord! I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime; I have sat at my post every night. (Isaiah 21:8, NKJV)

The thief comes not, but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. (John 10:10, NKJV)

For while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. (Matthew 13:25, NKJV)

This is the second in a three-part series on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Read part one: Who are Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Baptist Faith and Message, available as a free download from sbc.net, features a more complete treatment of Christian doctrines and includes multiple Scripture references.

1.Only the Father is God Almighty.

2. Jesus is Michael the Archangel.

3. The Holy Spirit is God’s active force.

4. Christ did not die on a cross.

5. Hell doesn’t exist.

6. The soul is not immortal.

7. Only the New World Translation of the Bible is valid.

8. God’s true name is “Jehovah.”

9. The timing of Armageddon can be predicted.

10. Increasing ‘light’ justifies doctrinal changes.

When JWs Show Up at Your Doorstep

Some History

False Doctrines

I. The Kingdom

II. Hell

III. The Soul

IV. Name

V. Blood Transfusions

VI. Organisation

VII. Date Setting

Some History

False Doctrines

I. The Kingdom

II. Hell

III. The Soul

IV. Name

V. Blood Transfusions

Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king …” (John 18:36-37)