Today’s topic can be a stone-in-the-shoe question:

  • Can a person be saved without first becoming a Jehovah’s Witness?

Try to pin Jehovah’s Witnesses down to answering that question.

You don’t have to be obnoxious in the way you ask it.

You can say:

  • Some religions teach that you have to be a faithful member of their organization in order to obtain everlasting life. I’m just asking what Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in that regard.

On its website, the Watchtower denies that it believes that only Jehovah’s Witnesses will be saved.[i]

In one sense this is true, because Watchtower teaching is that people who die before God’s impending judgment day of Armageddon without an adequate opportunity to learn “the truth” will be resurrected and given a chance to learn it during the coming 1000-year reign of Christ.

However, that statement is misleading in three ways.

First, the Watchtower teaches that during the millennial kingdom, such persons must come to accept the truth as presented by Jehovah’s Witnesses or be annihilated by God.

Second, the Watchtower teaches that people who die before Armageddon but who did have a fair opportunity to hear and understand Jehovah’s Witnesses’ message must have accepted their message in this lifetime or be destroyed by God without any resurrection hope at all.

In other words, those who “willfully disbelieve” will not be resurrected.[ii]

Third, the Watchtower also teaches that God’s judgment at Armageddon is coming any day now and that “only Jehovah’s Witnesses, those of the anointed remnant and the ‘great crowd,’ as a united organization under the protection of the Supreme Organizer, have any Scriptural hope of surviving the impending end of this doomed system dominated by Satan the Devil.”[iii]

Ask Jehovah’s Witnesses the stone-in-the-shoe question:

  • Do you believe that a person can be saved by coming directly to Jesus?

If they are honest, their answer will be no.

Bible students need to get acquainted with the organization of the ‘one flock’ Jesus spoke about at John 10:16. They must appreciate that identifying themselves with Jehovah’s organization is essential to their salvation (Revelation 7:9, 10, 15) Therefore, we should start directing our Bible students to the organization as soon as a Bible study is established.[iv]

If they tell you this or something similar, have them read aloud the verses cited. If necessary, ask them to show you verses from the Bible that say that you cannot come directly to Jesus for salvation.

Then you can say:

  • I don’t see anything there about an organization being essential to salvation. In fact, they say nothing about an organization at all.

 The Watchtower actually reads itself into some of the salvation scriptures and in so doing supplants Jesus Christ.

Loyalty to Jehovah God requires that we also be loyal to his servants on earth, our fellow Christians… The imperfections of others may test our loyalty in this regard. For instance, when they have been offended, some have manifested a weakness in their loyalty to Jehovah’s organization by staying away from Christian meetings…

Furthermore, suppose a person was to separate himself from Jehovah’s people. Where could he go? Is he not faced with the same issue that confronted Jesus’ apostles when he asked them if they also wanted to leave him? The apostle Peter rightly replied: “Lord, whom shall we go away to? You have sayings of everlasting life.” (John 6:68) There is nowhere else to go but to “Babylon the Great,” the world empire of false religion, or into the clutches of Satan’s political “wild beast.”[v]

…the record that the “faithful and discreet slave” organization has made for the past more than 100 years forces us to the conclusion that Peter expressed when Jesus asked if his apostles also wanted to leave him, namely, “Whom shall we go away to?” (John 6:66-69) No question about it. We all need help to understand the Bible, and we cannot find the Scriptural guidance we need outside the “faithful and discreet slave” organization.[vi]

If the Witnesses refer you to Peter’s statement, have one of them read the verses aloud and ask:

  • Was Peter talking about coming to a religious organization run by men like him or to Jesus himself?

Summary

Watchtower salvation is organizational.

As we study the Bible we learn that Jehovah has always guided his servants in an organized way. And just as in the first century there was only one true Christian organization, so today Jehovah is using only one organization (Ephesians 4:4, 5; Matthew 24:45-47) Yet there are some who point out that the organization has had to make adjustments before, and so they argue: “This shows that we have to make up our own mind on what to believe.” This is independent thinking. Why is it so dangerous?

Such thinking is evidence of pride… If we get to thinking that we know better than the organization, we should ask ourselves, “Where did we learn Bible truth in the first place? Would we know the way of the truth if it had not been for guidance from the organization? Really, can we get along without the direction of God’s organization?” No, we cannot![vii] (emphasis added)

The Watchtower sums up its claims this way: “We will be impelled to serve Jehovah loyally with his organization if we remember that there is nowhere else to go for life eternal.”[viii] (emphasis original)

 Consider using The Come to Jesus Approach from my book, Getting Through to Jehovah’s Witnesses to try to show them that Jehovah’s arrangement for salvation is not coming to an organization but rather coming to Jesus himself.

 

[i] “Do Jehovah’s Witnesses Feel That They Are the Only People Who Will Be Saved?

[ii] Awake! “Time to Return to Truth,” 11/8/72, p. 7

[iii] The Watchtower, “Remaining Organized for Survival into the Millennium”, 9/1/89, p. 19

[iv] Our Kingdom Ministry, “Directing Bible Students to Jehovah’s Organization,” November, 1990, p. 1

[v] The Watchtower, “Serving as Jehovah’s Trusting Fellow Workers,” 3/15/88, p. 18

[vi] The Watchtower, “Do We Need Help to Understand the Bible?” 2/15/81, p. 19

[vii] The Watchtower, “Armed for the Fight Against Wicked Spirits,” 1/15/83, p. 27

[viii] The Watchtower,  “Serve Jehovah Loyally,” 11/15/92, p. 21

 

 

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