All Things Seen & Unseen

As I mentioned last time, Don Cameron 1 , a one-time Jehovah's Witness (JW) elder, has tabled 48 doctrines which the Watchtower Society (WtS) was teaching from 1876 to 1919 but now no longer teaches. The WtS believes now that Jesus Christ returned invisibly in 1914 and began inspecting the societies, organisations and religions of the world according to various criteria. Four criteria were to be applied to the teachings of these organisations according to the JW historian of the WtS, Frederick Franz, in Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom ( Proclaimers ) (1993) * (free pdf download from the Internet) p. 47 : a) teaching must be correct b) teaching must be at the proper time c) teaching must be found in the Scriptures d) teaching must be rejected if found to be based on tradition (as summarised by Cameron). We can't cover all the 48 beliefs cited by Cameron but I will cover 3 of them in some detail below and then list others below these below. ...

A former Jehovah's Witness (JW) elder, Don Cameron 1 , says that the Witnesses are 'captives of a concept': JWs believe that they are connected to the only organisation in this world chosen by God to speak for him!  Is this not a preposterous claim! It's not only a highly inflated view, it's false. But, to testify adequately to JWs, evangelicals need to know that Witnesses believe this lie about the Watchtower Society (WtS) itself because all JWs receive their doctrine and teaching from the Society.   But, how did the WtS come by this preeminence in God's plan you will surely ask?

The first important date for the Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs) was 1799. Charles 'Taze' Russell (1852-1916), the first leader of what later became the JWs promoted 1799 as the 'beginning of the time of the end'.  The organisation kept teaching the date until 1928 ( http://bit.ly/1PjtDEc ) which included time under the JWs second leader Joseph Franklin 'Judge' Rutherford (1969-1942) . 1874 was the next important date and, according to Russell, was to be the year of Christ's coming or 'invisible presence'; the year in which Jesus Christ began to reign on His throne in heaven. 1914 was first prophesied by Russell as the end of the battle of Armageddon (Rev 16.14-16) . So, although you may have heard 1914 published as the year in which Christ's secret presence in the heavens took place, initially, for the first leader of the JWs, it was not so. His presence would mean that in 1914 all the kingdoms of the earth would be struck down and abolis...