I was invited, so I went along. It would have been rude not to. My
Jehovah’s Witness friend said: ‘I hope you enjoy the yearly celebration.’
After attending, virtually of course, I cannot say I my overriding emotion
was one of joy; I’d rather describe my feelings as ‘disturbed’ and ‘saddened’.
So, what happened?
After the initial introductions a song ‘A Special Possession’ was sung. The lyrics of the song prepares the ground for the soon to be delivered address:
God has a new creation,
His spirit-anointed sons.
He has bought them from mankind;
His approval they’ve won.
Faithful to their commission,
They gather the other sheep.
To the Lamb they are loyal.
His commandments they keep.[1]
Noticeably absent from the song was Jesus,
the one we had apparently gathered to honour.
The theme for the evening was then announced ‘Appreciate what God
and Christ has done for you’ after which the ‘brother’ who was to give the talk
was introduced.
He began by reading John 3:16 – the New World Translation version:
“For God loved the world so much that he
gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone exercising faith in him might
not be destroyed but have everlasting life.
Christians, who know this verse well, will perhaps notice an extra
word in the NWT version. The addition of the word ‘exercising’ reinforces the
idea that faith alone is not enough, you need to ‘do something’. In this case
the ‘something’ is to be obedient to Jehovah’s organisation.
The brother then spoke about why we were gathered; it is ‘to
show appreciation to Jesus who rescued us from sin and death and gave us a
future.’ He then read:
Luke 22:19-20 (NWT)
Also,
he took a loaf, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying: “This means
my body, which is to be given in your behalf. Keep doing this in
remembrance of me.” Also, he did the same with the cup after they had the
evening meal, saying: “This cup means the new covenant by virtue of my
blood, which is to be poured out in your behalf.
He then said that
Jehovah’s Witnesses gather from around the world to remember what Jesus did for
them. Millions[2] attend each year
because the memorial is the most important meeting of the year. People attend
out of love for what Jesus did for them.
Now the brother said he
would address the following four questions during his talk:
1) How does Jesus’ death
open the way to everlasting life?
2) Who benefit from Jesus’
loving sacrifice?
3) Who partake of the bread
and the wine?
4) Besides attending this
meal, what else must we do to show our appreciation?
Let us consider what was
given as the answer to these questions.
How does Jesus’ death
open the way to everlasting life?
The brother spoke about
Adam and the fall, pointing out that through Adam’s disobedience sin entered
the world, and sin brought death. Adam’s fall affects each one of us. We are
all sinners, and we are separated from God because of this.
To be fair to this ‘brother’, his presentation of the problem facing mankind was thoroughly sound and biblical. I'm afraid I cannot say the same about the solution he presented.
The two greatest acts of
love ever shown.
We were told that Jehovah
was not willing to leave things as they were so, he initiated two of the
greatest acts of love ever shown.
Firstly, Jehovah was
willing to send his first-born son to the earth as a perfect man.
When we understand who
Jehovah’s Witnesses believe Jesus to be, this does not sound as great an act of
love as the Watchtower would have us believe.
The brother said: ‘Jesus
was the first thing that Jehovah created.’ Is this true? Is Jesus just a
thing? If he is only a created thing, was it really a great hardship for
the Almighty God to send him to earth? After all what is this ‘thing’?
According to Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Jesus is an angel. Answering the question: ‘Is the Archangel Michael?’
they respond:
Put simply, the answer
is yes…. Jesus Christ is Michael the archangel…. So Michael the archangel is
Jesus in his prehuman existence. After his resurrection and return to heaven,
Jesus resumed his service as Michael, the chief angel, “to the glory of God the
Father.”[3]
So, the first thing Jehovah created was an angel. Did Jehovah send an angel to be the second ‘obedient’ Adam? Well apparently, not.
Somehow, when the Holy Spirit
overshadows Mary, Michael vanishes. The child born to her is not the Archangel Michael, but
rather a sinless human she is to name Jesus. Where did he come from? If he was
not Michael, then how was he Jehovah’s first-born son? Was he a further special
creation of Jehovah? And where did Jesus, the obedient human, go when, after his
resurrection, he ‘resumed his service as Michael’? More importantly, where is
any of this in the Bible?
The brother said: ‘We
cannot even imagine how close their bond would have been yet, in the greatest
act of love, Jehovah sent him.’ Sent who?
Now if we are to believe what the Bible really teaches, that Jesus was the eternal, not created, Son of God who has existed eternally with the Father – then we could appreciate how gut wrenchingly difficult it must have been for both the Father and the Son. This truly is the greatest act of love and we stand in awe of the one who was willing to go to such lengths to save us. He truly deserves our adoration and praise.
The second greatest act
of love ever shown, according to the brother, was that Jesus would be willing
to give his life for mankind.
Indeed, this was a great
act of love, but only if you have the genuine Jesus. Verses like the ones below
are far more meaningful to those who hold to the faith once and for all delivered
to the saints:
John
15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his
life for his friends.
Romans 5:8 But God shows
his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Historic, biblical Christianity holds that the
Lord Jesus Christ was far more that a created angel:
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and
earth, of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from
the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true
God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.
Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he
came down from heaven; he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin
Mary, and was made human.
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried. The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.
He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will
come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will never
end.[4]
The Jesus of Jehovah’s Witnesses is merely a replacement Adam. An obedient perfect human who got right what the the first disobedient perfect human got wrong, but Jesus was far more than that.
The Bible reveals to
us that the perfect man who died on the cross was not merely a perfect human.
Acts 20:28 ‘Pay careful attention to
yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made
you overseers, to care for the church of God, which
he obtained with his own blood.’
Jesus was the God-Man. He was fully God and fully man.
God so loved the world that He shed His own blood! That is what was needed to redeem fallen mankind.
But what, according to Jehovah’s Witnesses, did Jesus’ death truly accomplish? The brother addressed this question by asking us to
turn to Romans 5:19 (NWT):
For just as through the disobedience of
the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the
one person many will be made righteous.
His comment was that just as through Adam all sin, so through his
obedience Jesus ‘passes on the opportunity to live forever.’
This, probably unbeknown to the brother, is classic Watchtower
eisegesis. The verse must be interpreted through Watchtower glasses.
The verse actually says that many are made righteous, not because of our
obedience, but through the obedience of Jesus. But according to The Watchtower, Jesus' death was only to ‘pass an
opportunity to live forever’.
For them, Jesus’ death only paid for Adam’s sin
and by doing so, he opened the way for obedient humans to possibly live
forever. How miserable!
Why did Jesus’ die?
The brother read Hebrews 2 and verse 9:
But we do see Jesus, who was made a
little lower than angels, now crowned with glory and honor for having
suffered death, so that by God’s undeserved kindness he might taste death
for everyone.
He then said:
'Jesus did not die
because he was a sinner. He was a perfect man offering a perfect sacrifice. Jesus
proved it was possible for a human to be obedient to the point of death. He
paid back what Adam lost. Jesus died that we might have life.
But the question is –
where?'
Find out his answer next week.
[1] https://www.jw.org/en/library/music-songs/sing-out-joyfully/25-a-special-possession/
[2] It
was said that last year 17,844,773 people attended the memorial meal.
[3] “Is Jesus the
Archangel Michael?” The Watchtower,
1 April 2010, p.19.
[4]
The Nicene Creed
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