About every couple of months, I have the privilege of sharing the gospel
with Jehovah’s Witnesses. There’s a Kingdom Hall two or three blocks away from
my house, so I’ve become quite familiar with a few of them through the years.
It’s easy to get sidetracked in these conversations, but one of the main
messages you want to get across is that Jesus is not simply the first and best
thing God created. No. Jesus is the Lord God manifested to the world. I’ve demonstrated
a couple of the methods I use with Jehovah’s Witnesses to help lead them to
this truth (here and here), but I’ve found that what starts to bring down their
defenses has nothing to do with Jesus’ divinity.
Though their founder was a false prophet and they have some seriously flawed beliefs about Jesus and other things, Jehovah’s Witnesses are generally
really good people. They take the Sermon on the Mount very seriously, probably
much more simply and seriously than most evangelicals. Their strict adherence
to Matthew 5 is one of the examples they
use to prove that they have the truth.
Also, most Jehovah’s Witnesses I speak with have been taught that after
the original Apostles died, the beliefs and practices of the Church were
corrupted. So, I’ve found that I gain some ground with them when I explain that
there are no recorded homicides committed by Christians against unbelievers
until after 380CE, when Roman Emperor Theodosius declared that everyone in the
Empire must become a Christian. They are equally surprised when they learn that
the early Christians were declared enemies of the State and hunted down for
their undivided devotion to Jesus and His teaching.
Tertullian,
one of many early Christian apologists, elucidated this truth well at the end
of the second century.
We are equally forbidden to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, to
think ill of all men. … If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I
have remarked above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to
retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands?
… As those in whom all zeal in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead, we have
no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings; nor is there
anything at all more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state. … We are
charged with being irreligious towards the Caesars, since we neither propitiate
their images nor swear by their genius. We are called enemies of the people. – Tertullian 195CE, ANF Vol. 3, p. 65-67, 196 [CD-ROM]
Clearly, the early Christians posed no physical threat to the Roman
Empire. Depending on the transformative power of the gospel, they refused to
try to change the world through politics or violent revolutions. And yet, they
were furiously persecuted as supposed enemies of the State.
On April 6, 2017, Russia's Supreme
Court upheld a decision by a Russian city to ban Jehovah's Witnesses, labeling
them an extremist group. The ruling arrived during proceedings on a Justice
Ministry suit seeking to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia completely. And why
is that?
Time.com states, “Jehovah's
Witnesses are pacifists, and their religious beliefs require them to abstain
from political activity. They declare allegiance only to God, not to a state or
political entity. They do not vote, lobby, protest, or join military. This lack
of participation can be seen as a threat if a state demands nationalist and
patriotic activity.”
In many respects, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are being viewed as a
threat to Russian national security because of their strict interpretation of
and adherence to the Sermon on the Mount and other words of Jesus.
Don’t get me wrong. I definitely
believe the Jehovah’s Witnesses are one of the many cult groups in the world. That
being said, when a heretical religious group reflects many of the practices of
the early Christians more closely than most modern Western believers, we might
want to take some time to assess the hermeneutics that influence our approach
toward Jesus’ teachings.
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