Arising from an Adventist Bible study group in America in 1870 led by Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916), 12.9 million people world-wide attended the annual memorial meal of Jehovah’s Witnessesin1996. Over five million baptised members actively seek converts (up 4% on 1995 and 75% over a decade), with 366,000 baptisms and almost five million ‘studies’ in 1996. They are expanding rapidly in countries with low literacy levels and in the former communist bloc, and outnumber churchgoers in Japan. In the UK, there are around 130,000 baptised members (static over 1995 but up 33% over a decade); 220,000 attended the memorial meal and they conducted 50,000 ‘studies’ and nearly 5,000 baptisms in 1996 (R1 – see reference list). Around two-thirds of their converts are believed to have once had at least nominal involvement with mainstream Christian churches. In view of how often Jehovah’s Witnesses visit, Christians would do well to spend a little time learning about this group. They would then be able to protect themselves (and family and friends) from being deceived by them, and witness to them when they call. It is worth noting that they consider ‘spiritual endangerment’ (i.e. trying to influence one’s spouse to cease involvement with the group) to be grounds for a marital separation – (R2).
It is not correct for evangelical Christians to view Jehovah’s Witnesses as just a denomination of Christianity because Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves view all other religions as being of Satan. They claim to believe the Bible, however, they deny some of the fundamental beliefs of evangelical Christians such as, the omnipresence of God, the deity of Christ, His death on a cross and His bodily resurrection. In addition, they deny the Holy Spirit is God or personal, the hope of heaven for all believers, and the existence of hell. They believe that only an elite handful needs to be born again and take communion, and view speaking in tongues as being possessed by demons. They now claim that Michael the Archangel, whom they previously taught was the antichrist (R3), is Jesus.
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