What about Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Question 60019
The Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the most visible and active religious organisations in the world. Their door-to-door evangelism, their distinctive publications (particularly The Watchtower and Awake!), and their refusal of blood transfusions, military service, and national flag salutes make them recognisable in most societies. They present themselves as the true restoration of New Testament Christianity. They use the Bible extensively. They speak of God, of Jesus, of the kingdom, and of salvation. But what they mean by these words is fundamentally different from what the Bible teaches, and the differences are not secondary matters on which Christians may agree to disagree. They go to the very heart of who God is and who Jesus is.
Origins and History
The movement that became Jehovah’s Witnesses was founded by Charles Taze Russell in the 1870s in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Russell was heavily influenced by Adventist theology and became convinced that mainstream Christianity had departed from biblical truth. He rejected the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the existence of hell, and the immortality of the soul. He published prolifically, and his Bible study movement grew into the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. After Russell’s death in 1916, leadership passed to Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who reorganised the movement, introduced the name “Jehovah’s Witnesses” in 1931, and consolidated the centralised authority structure that defines the organisation today. The Governing Body, based in Warwick, New York, exercises near-absolute authority over doctrine, practice, and the daily lives of members worldwide.
The movement has a troubled history of failed prophetic predictions. Russell predicted Christ’s invisible return in 1874 (later revised). The organisation predicted the end of the world in 1914, 1925, and 1975. Each failure was reinterpreted rather than acknowledged as error. The 1914 date was reframed: Christ did return invisibly in 1914, and we are now living in the “last days” that began at that point. This pattern of prophetic failure and subsequent reinterpretation is significant, because the organisation claims to be God’s sole channel of communication on earth. Deuteronomy 18:21-22 provides a clear test for prophetic claims: if the thing does not come to pass, the Lord has not spoken it.
What Jehovah’s Witnesses Teach
The central doctrinal claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses is that Jehovah (their preferred rendering of the divine name YHWH) is the one true God, and that Jesus Christ is not God but a created being. Their theology teaches that Jesus is Michael the Archangel, the first and greatest of God’s creations, through whom all other things were made. The Holy Spirit is not a person but God’s active force, comparable to electricity or wind. The Trinity is explicitly rejected and is described in Watch Tower literature as a pagan doctrine imported into Christianity from Babylonian and Greek sources.
This is supported by their own translation of the Bible, the New World Translation (NWT), which has been altered at critical points to support their theology. The most well-known example is John 1:1, where the NWT renders the Greek kai theos en ho logos as “and the Word was a god” rather than the standard “and the Word was God.” The insertion of the indefinite article “a” has no basis in the Greek text and is rejected by the overwhelming consensus of Greek scholars across every theological tradition. Colossians 1:16-17, where the standard text says that “by him all things were created,” is rendered in the NWT with the word “other” inserted four times (“by means of him all other things were created”), implying that Jesus is part of creation rather than its author. The word “other” does not appear in the Greek. These are not translation choices. They are theological insertions designed to make the Bible say what Jehovah’s Witness doctrine requires it to say.
Salvation in Jehovah’s Witness Theology
Jehovah’s Witness soteriology is complex and layered. They teach that only 144,000 individuals will go to heaven to rule with Christ. This “anointed class” (also called the “little flock”) was almost entirely filled by the early twentieth century, and members of this group partake of the bread and wine at the annual Memorial (their observance of the Lord’s Supper, held once a year). The vast majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses belong to the “other sheep” or “great crowd,” whose hope is not heaven but everlasting life on a paradise earth after Armageddon.
Salvation is not by grace through faith in the biblical sense. It requires faith in Jehovah, association with and obedience to the Watch Tower organisation (described as “God’s visible organisation on earth”), regular participation in field ministry (door-to-door preaching), attendance at meetings, and adherence to the organisation’s moral and doctrinal requirements. Leaving the organisation, or being “disfellowshipped” for doctrinal or moral reasons, results in complete shunning by family and friends who remain within the movement. The effect is a system in which salvation is mediated through the organisation, making departure spiritually and socially devastating.
A Biblical Response
The deity of Christ is not a secondary doctrine. It is the foundation on which everything else stands. If Jesus is not God, His death cannot atone for sin, because only an infinite sacrifice can satisfy the demands of an infinitely holy God. The New Testament’s testimony is consistent and emphatic. John 1:1 identifies the Word as God. Thomas addresses the risen Jesus as “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Colossians 2:9 states that “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Hebrews 1:8 records the Father addressing the Son: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” Titus 2:13 speaks of “our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.” The cumulative weight of this evidence is not ambiguous. The New Testament presents Jesus as God, and the Jehovah’s Witness denial of this teaching requires the systematic alteration of the biblical text to sustain itself.
The Watch Tower’s claim to be God’s sole channel of truth on earth is equally unsupported by Scripture. The New Testament knows nothing of a centralised human organisation through which all divine truth must be mediated. The Holy Spirit indwells every believer (Romans 8:9). Every believer has direct access to God through Christ (Hebrews 4:16). The Bereans were commended for testing Paul’s teaching against Scripture (Acts 17:11), an activity that the Watch Tower organisation effectively discourages when applied to its own publications.
So, now what?
If a Jehovah’s Witness comes to your door, they are not your enemy. They are a person created in the image of God who has been taught a distorted version of the gospel. Many are sincere, devout, and genuinely seeking to please God. The most effective response is not argument for its own sake but a clear, gentle presentation of who Jesus actually is, grounded in Scripture they claim to honour. Ask them to read John 1:1 in a standard translation. Ask them to explain Thomas’s words in John 20:28. Ask them what Colossians 2:9 means if Jesus is not God. The Word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12), and it can penetrate the theological system that has been built around it to obscure its plain teaching. Pray for them. Be patient with them. And be ready to explain the hope that is in you with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1
