Bridge of Reason

  In my last Watchtower Wednesday we looked at the Watchtower understanding of Romans 10:13 asking, Who is 'the Lord' in this verse? Is it Jehovah? Is it Jesus? How would you talk about this teaching to a Jehovah's Witness? Most Bibles translate, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (ESV) The New World Translation gives us, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.’ Paul here is quoting a text from Joel 2:32, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’ (ESV) We know that Joel is referring to Jehovah, but who is Paul writing about? I want to point out four things. T he Name First, t hey give the familiar argument about Jesus using the name: ‘ God’s name was important to Jesus Christ. The very first words in his model prayer were: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified,” or made holy. ( Matthew 6:9 ) Jesus also showed that we must come to know, obey, and love the Person behind that name if w...

  In our latest Watchtower Wednesday on the Facebook page we saw that, according to Watchtower teaching, Jesus is the first creature God created. On their website they write: 'God created Jesus before creating Adam. In fact, God created Jesus and then used him to make everything else, including the angels. That is why the Bible calls Jesus “the firstborn of all creation” by God,—Read Colossians 1:15, 16.' It is worth noting that anyone new to a faith, any faith, has a lot to take in and is understandably not especially discerning. They put a lot of trust in the people teaching them and this places a huge responsibility on those teachers (James.3:1). The new Jehovah’s Witness will typically look at this explanation of Colossians 1:15,16 and feel they are having a lightbulb moment. ‘ That makes sense,’ they might think, uncritically embracing this new knowledge. Sadly for Jehovah’s Witnesses, the organisation strives to keep them in this infant state, where their minds a...