What Is Wrong with the Jehovah's Witnesses?
A lot of you are looking for quick, strong arguments to use with the Witnesses. I'll add more over time, but here's some that most Witnesses don't know and won't have a prepared answer for.
Please, before you go to those arguments, skim through the rest of this page. Surely you've heard the saying, "Win the argument, lose the person." Don't do that!. The content down below will help you.Quick, Strong Arguments:
Some are links. Some are short enough to be written out here.
- Zechariah 2:8-11: Two Jehovah's
- Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus did not rise bodily. In Luke 24:36-43 Jesus specifically told the apostles that he was not a ghost and that he had flesh and bones. If you bring this up, the Jehovah's Witness will be forced to tell you that Jesus was deceiving the apostles in order not to scare them.
- I ran across this one by accident. There's hardly a page in the Bible that the Witnesses don't misinterpret. Matthew 27:50-53 says that saints rose from the dead when Jesus died, and they walked in Jerusalem. Not to the Witnesses! I got one of the most bizarre attempts at reinterpreting Scripture I ever ran into. They conclude that this passage says that the earthquake disturbed the graves, and people walking by saw the dead bodies laying on the ground.
Fruit
Jesus said you will know a prophet by his fruit. Our first attention must always be to the results of someone's preaching. What are their followers like? How do they live?
Nowadays, our first reaction to "cults" is to fight them Scripturally. This is not what Jesus said to do. In fact, the apostle Paul said something very similar:
If anyone . . . does not consent to sound words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the teaching which is according to godliness, then he is proud and knows nothing. (1 Tim. 6:3-4)
Paul goes on to say that such people are "obsessed with debates and empty arguments" (v. 4, translated by me). Let's not be like them. Jesus said we should simply look at the results they produce.
So What Is the Jehovah's Witnesses' Fruit?
Here's where you and I may run into a problem. What I am about to say applies almost as much to Evangelical churches as it does to the Witnesses. I came to Christ in an Evangelical church, but we need to judge ourselves by Jesus' standards as well.
The Jehovah's Witnesses' fruit is pretty much the same as any other American religious group. They abstain from certain sins and practice varying levels of morality, but they look nothing like the apostolic churches.
LoveLove is the primary and first fruit that Jesus is looking for. It is the first fruit listed among the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), and Jesus tells us that the greatest commandments are love. John calls it the new commandment, and Paul says it is the fulfillment of the Law. Love is the primary fruit.
The Witnesses do not have it; not like the apostles churches did.
That may seem like a harsh judgment, but the Gospel is "the power of God" to salvation. The gospel produces something, and what it produces is a love greater than that of any earthly family.
If that is lacking, then there is a problem with the gospel being preached.
The early church was a family. They knew that Jesus said that it is unity that is the primary way his disciples prove the Gospel message (Jn. 17:20-23; see also 13:34-35).
We see specific examples of the way they shared and took care of each other in the Book of Acts, but the Book of Acts is not the only testimony to the love that the apostles' churches were known for.
Note: I'm not only speaking of the church in Jerusalem when I mention Acts. When the prophet Agabus predicted a famine in Jerusalem, the Gentile churches took up a collection to help. All the early churches believed in the need to share.
The apostles' churches had love. Over one hundred years after the last apostle died, their churches were still so full of brotherly love that Tertullian, a north African Christian lawyer (yes, there used to be such things!) was able to write:
It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand on us. "See," they say, "how they love one another," for [the Romans] are animated by a mutual hatred. . . . They are angry with us, too, because we call each other brothers. . . . Perhaps it is on this account that we are regarded as having less claim to be considered true brothers, that no tragedy causes trouble in our brotherhood, or that the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us. One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. (Apology 39)
You can read all the writings of the early Christians in the The Ante-Nicene Fathers 10-volume set, which can be read online at ccel.org/fathers.
This sharing and love was so common among the early churches that it was commanded in books that they considered Scripture. The Letter of Barnabas (don't confuse this with the gnostic Gospel of Barnabas) says:
You shall share all things with your neighbor; you shall not call anything your own, for if you are sharers in common of things which are incorruptible, how much more of those things which are corruptible? . . . You shall love, as the apple of your eye, everyone who speaks the Word of the Lord to you. . . . Every day you must seek out the faces of the saints. (ch. 19 of the version found in .
Obviously, The Letter of Barnabas did not make it into our Bible. That's alright. My point is simply that many of the apostolic churches considered it Scripture. That would not have happened unless they believed what it teaches is accurate apostolic doctrine.
The JW's are not known for their love for one another. They are known for going door to door, for having some rather bizarre doctrines, and for refusing blood transfusions. They are also known for refusing to talk to family members who leave the Witnesses and . . .
False Prophecy
The Watchtower organization, the "Bible students" portion of the Jehovah's Witness empire and their unquestioned teachers, has been guilty of numerous false prophecies. They have predicted the return of Christ in 1914, 1917, 1925, 1930, and latest time as recently as 1975.
Obviously, none of these prophecies came to pass.
It's probably worth bookmarking this page and having it handy when you have a Witness on your doorstep. It's a list of false prophecies by the Watchtower, complete with references from their Watchtower magazine and their various pamphlets.
You can also purchase the book Index of Watchtower Errors from Amazon, which is an even more thorough reference of their false prophecies.
They deny they made these prophecies, by the way. It's a good thing to have the web page I mentioned or the book available to prove your claim.
They do admit to prophesying Christ's return in 1914, but they say that actually happened. Jesus began his work of judgment, says the Watchtower, in 1914, and it will be completed before the generation that was alive that year all dies.
Of course, they're running out of time on that claim as well. The last I heard, ten years ago, they were saying that the work of judgment would be completed and Christ would come before the last person who was 8 years old in 1914 has died.
These sort of things are not just bad Bible interpretation. These things are dishonesty and silly games, and for those who claim an authority that rivals that of the pope, it is bad fruit. If the fruit is bad, the tree is bad, too. I recommend you avoid the Jehovah's Witnesses.
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Apologetics: How to Answer Cults
