AA Big Book
Page 570
Everlasting Ignorance = Contempt Prior to Investigation
Page 49 we beg you to lay aside prejudice
even against organized religion.
Page 87 there are many helpful books,
these may be obtained from ones priest,
minister or rabbi.
Page 87 be quick to see where religious
people are right, make use of what they
offer.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Studying A.A. History
A.A. History Study Meetings
Capsule No. 1
© 2004
You may want to call your meetings “The James Club” or “The Big Book/Bible Study Meeting”
Dick B.
P.O. Box 837, Kihei, HI 96753-0837
Email: dickb@dickb.com; URL: http://www.dickb.com/index.shtml
Studying A.A. History, Bible Roots, Big Book, and Twelve Steps
How you and your A.A. and 12-Step friends can meet freely to study, learn, compare, and discuss our basic roots and text
Abstract
This is for individuals who believe in, want to investigate, wish to learn, or study to understand the basic Bible verses and Biblical ideas studied by A.A. pioneers. And compare and contrast them with the teachings of A.A.’s mentors and with the basic ideas and principles that were incorporated into A.A.’s Big Book and Twelve Steps. Many AAs and 12-Step groups have written me asking where and how they can begin “Big Book/Bible Study” meetings and groups. Here we tell you where such seekers—if they want to follow the footsteps of our founders—should focus and read as a group in the Bible and the Big Book. We suggest reviewing the sources that propelled the basics into the A.A. Fellowship. We give you specific places read, which we believe will help every member, leader, facilitator, group, speaker, or student. We show what the founders read and did and what you can do to understand better the “spiritual” recovery program in the Big Book and Twelve Steps. If you are asking about recovery and cure, this is the guide for you. Discover right now where you should start, what you what you should read, and how you and your friends or group will benefit by learning the specific resources adopted and used in pioneer A.A.
________________________________________________________________________
Parts of the Good Book A.A. old-timers considered “absolutely essential”
What Dr. Bob said about our beginnings
“Dr. Bob, noting that there were no Twelve Steps at the time and that ‘our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak of,’ later said they were convinced that the answer to their problems was in the Good Book. ‘To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James,’ he said.” (DR.BOB and the Good Oldtimers. NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980, p. 96).
“Members of Alcoholics Anonymous begin the day with a prayer for strength and a short period of Bible reading. They find the basic messages they need in the Sermon on the Mount, in Corinthians and the Book of James” (quoted in an Akron, Ohio, A.A. pamphlet of the 1940’s—published by the Friday Forum Luncheon Club of the Akron A.A. Groups; and see Dick B. Cured: Proven Help for Alcoholics and Addicts. HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2003, p. 4).
Why this guide is needed
In the last fifteen years, A.A. members—and a great many recovery groups—have shown a long overdue and certainly promising interest in early A.A.’s beginnings. The trend can easily be recognized in the growing number of books, articles, websites, forums, conferences, and groups which have made 12-Step history a major priority or at least a subject to be learned.
But the new historical zeitgeist has yet to reach and motivate recovery professionals, 12-Step groups or individuals, or their meetings to a flourishing application of the spiritual program that marked early A.A. cures.
The following are among the reasons for the obvious historical vacuum: (1) Unfamiliarity with, or lack of access to, informative, accurate, comprehensive historical materials. (2) Preoccupation with this or that dynamic that promotes a particular medical, psychological, religious, therapeutic, treatment, or rehab program approach. (3) Prejudice against mention of religious matters above a whisper. (4) Inordinate concern over who, what ideas, and what literature should be excluded from recovery talk and meetings. (5) A present and recognizable tendency to place universalism, “treatment,” stereotyped secular practices, and profitable book sales above those things which originally produced such remarkable cures among seemingly helpless and hopeless, “medically incurable” alcoholics. (6) A zeal for medical, psychological, government, and religious grants which push to the side the primary purpose of A.A., which is to reach out to, and help newcomers. (7) Absence of informed, effective teachers and facilitators. (8) A tendency to argue about, and suppress any writing or talk that conflicts with present-day views. Phrased differently, claiming that history, God, and religion endanger the “simple” detritus being hurled into the scene today—to replace the tried and true early A.A. components such as the Bible, Christian literature, the teachings of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, and Oxford Group literature and principles (9) Outright rejection of the historically significant observations in the journal of Anne Ripley Smith, Dr. Bob’s wife. (10) Omission of the pioneers’ emphasis on Quiet Time with its Bible study, prayers, seeking of guidance, use of devotionals, and reading of religious literature—all of which enhanced an understanding of the “spiritual.”
I have received thousands of communications by letter, phone, fax, and email from people wanting to know where and how to begin and continue their education about our history, the Bible, and the relationship of each to the program as it exists today. The writers often ask about the success rates (75% to 93%) in early A.A. and the success rate in today’s A.A. (1% to 5%). Most inquirers lack an effective guide—usually none at all. Many lack a solid cadre for group study. Most can find no willing leadership. Almost all forget that early A.A. and just about every continuing A.A. group today sprang from very humble beginnings—involving as few as two or three members in search of relief from the curse of alcoholism. These early birds were not experts, were not afraid to learn from medicine and religion, willingly sought God’s help, and abstained from liquor and temptation while relief was on the way.
On the other hand, those of us in direct touch with religious, medical, and scholarly inquisitors, as well as thousands of still-suffering alcoholics and addicts, know that there is a loud thundering today for facts. Facts about early A.A., its roots, and its astonishing pioneer success rate. Facts explaining what the pioneers meant when they said they were cured. Facts explaining how and whether individual religious convictions can be squared with an ever-growing secular trend and secularist intrusions into the recovery groups as well.
This capsule will briefly discuss A.A.’s tools, the sources of the tools, experiences, hindrances, and specific ideas about how to organize a study meeting or group; how to conduct its meetings; how to use resources that will form the basis for education and instruction; and how a leader, facilitator, chairperson, or individual can move out on studies right now.
Begin with the Bible itself
I can offer no better place to begin than with the Good Book itself. Dr. Bob’s wife wrote in the journal she shared with early AAs:
Of course the Bible ought to be the main Source Book of all. No day ought to pass without reading it (See Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, 1933-1939, 3rd ed. HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1998, p. 82).
Dr. Bob said that old timers believed the answer to their problems was in the Bible, which he and they called the Good Book. He also stated emphatically that A.A. took its basic ideas from their study and effort in the Bible.
From the outset keep your study objectives simple.
Begin where the pioneers began. Begin where both Dr. Bob and Anne began. Make sure your studies are grounded in the Bible. Obtain a copy of the King James Version of the Bible. Bring it to the meeting, and keep it in front of you and in front of every person studying with you. This means, of course, that every student should own and bring, or be provided by your group with, the Bible. Don’t leave home without it!
Stick with the King James Version, whatever else may be your preference, because King James is what the pioneers used. You will relate better to their thinking and practice if you use it.
Previously we have quoted Dr. Bob’s statements that three parts of the Bible were considered “absolutely essential” in the early program—the Book of James, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 to 7), and 1 Corinthians 13. We now know that Anne Smith read to Dr. Bob and Bill every day in the summer of 1935. And A.A.’s own literature
tells us that Bill Wilson said Anne frequently read from the Book of James, which Bill said was “our favorite.”
I therefore believe that your first attention should be directed to study of the Book of James
James
As Bill Wilson himself said: Anne Smith read to Dr. Bob and Bill every day in the summer of 1935 when Bill was living with the Smiths in Akron. She frequently read from the Book of James.
Snippets from James can still easily be spotted in the Big Book. For example: (1) “Father of lights” (James 1:17). (2) “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (James 2:8). (3) “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). (4) And the “confess your faults” language in James 5:16.
That’s why this guide begins with James, and I suggest that you start your meetings in the Book of James. It is simple, easy to understand, and a clear mirror of what the pioneers saw in the Bible.
First, pursue all chapters and every verse in the Book of James. Spend more than one meeting on this book if you wish. Follow our suggestions; and you can later apply those suggestions to your studies of the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13
As stated, Anne Smith read to Dr. Bob and Bill from the Bible every day in the summer of 1935. She often read from the Book of James. And DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers reports the following thoughts and remarks of Bill Wilson about these matters:
“For the next three months, I lived with these two wonderful people,” Bill said. “I shall always believe they gave me more than I ever brought them.” Each morning, there was a devotion, he recalled. After a long silence, in which they awaited inspiration and guidance, Anne would read from the Bible. “James was our favorite,” he said, “Reading from her chair in the corner, she would softly conclude, ‘Faith without works is dead’,” This was a favorite quotation of Anne’s, much as the Book of James was a favorite with early A.A.’s—so much so that “The James Club” was favored by some as a name for the Fellowship.” (DR. BOB, supra, p.71).
Second, study all the verses in the Book of James
I’ve usually suggested to men I sponsor that the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Don’t try to read the entire Bible at or even after beginning. Don’t even focus on the Gospels, Acts, or the church epistles. Just one chunk of reading at a time.
Open every meeting with prayer and ask all present to pray specifically that God guide and bless the reading and illuminate your understanding of it.
Take your Bibles. Open them to the Book of James. Don’t start until everyone has found the correct page. Appoint one person to read the Book of James out loud while others silently read along in their Bibles as the speaker reads aloud from it.
Eyes on the page! Don’t try to read all the chapters of James at one session unless the flow is smooth and within your time limits. No questions. No teaching. No discussion. Just a reading of the Book of James. Your leader should read aloud, all or as much as you like, of the Book of James. Others silently read along with the speaker.
Before proceeding further, you and your leader might want to read the same material more than once. Don’t hesitate to do just that.
[Note: When you have completed all segments of your study of James, including the instructions in the following paragraphs, you are then ready and able to do the same thing with the Sermon on the Mount, and then with 1 Corinthians 13].
Here we resume again with your instructions as to studying James.
Third, study the part of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why
that reviews and explains the verses in James you have just read. Compare each relevant segment in my title with the part or parts you have just read in James.
I have reviewed the Book of James, verse by verse, thoroughly in several of my titles. But I believe the best and most recent analysis is in my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications Inc., 2003). Your greatest benefit will come if each student has a copy of that resource.
Appoint one person to read the explanatory resource out loud just as was done with the Bible itself. To begin, turn to page 51 of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. At the first James session, your leader should read my commentary aloud, beginning at page 51. He or she should then continue reading until he or she has read as much of the relevant commentary as deals with what the leader covered in the reading from James. Other students should silently follow the reading in their own copy of the resource. No questions. No teaching. No discussion. Not yet!
The reason for keeping audience silence during any reading by the leader is that interrupting questions and discussion often divert attention from the speaker, from the content being read, and from audience concentration on the intended instruction at hand. The desired answers and explanations may often come in the very next sentence or chapter that is to be read. Moreover, opinions, criticisms, and questions by a student will seldom bless either the seeker or the speaker or the others in the meeting.
Remember that your meetings have a plan to be followed. Stick to it. There is no record that Bill Wilson cross examined Anne Smith before, during, or after she read from her Bible or from her journal. To the contrary, Bill said to T. Henry and Clarace Williams:
I learned a great deal from you people, from the Smiths themselves, and from Henrietta [Seiberling]. I hadn’t looked in the Bible up to this time, at all. You see, I had the experience [conversion experience at Towns Hospital] first and then this rushing around to help drunks and nothing happened (Dick B. The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 64).
Bill and Bob just listened to Anne’s reading and comments, and they learned. Discussions certainly were held between Bill and Bob for many hours over many days, but not when a reading by Anne was in progress.
In your meetings, first comes the opening prayer, then the reading from James, then the reading from When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, then the use of any suggested collateral literature, and finally audience participation.
Fourth, consider reading collateral literature
Devotionals: As you complete study of each Bible segment and my commentary on it, you might gain greater understanding or mental challenge by checking out the devotionals the pioneers used daily to enhance their spiritual growth on that particular subject.
For example, you could go through The Runner’s Bible, look for its comments on the James verses you have read. Then silently read those Runner’s comments while the leader reads them aloud. You will thereby see and hear the very same interpretations the pioneers saw and heard.
You may even wish to do the same thing with at least four other devotionals that were pioneer favorites: (1) The Upper Room by Nora Smith Holm. (2) My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. (3) Daily Strength for Daily Needs by Mary W. Tileston. (4) Victorious Living by E. Stanley Jones.
All five devotionals were owned, used, recommended, and circulated by Dr. Bob. Several were even mentioned later in A.A. “Conference Approved” publications.
Commentaries: There are several important commentaries on two of the three “essential” Bible segments that Dr. Bob read and recommended. These books pertain to the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13. But we haven’t found any for the Book of James. There is, however, a further relevant collateral area you can pursue.
Shoemaker’s titles: If you wish to see the degree to which many basic ideas from James influenced our founders and their mentors, you will find many specific references to James in the books written by Rev. Samuel Shoemaker, Jr.
Other Literature: To sum up the collateral reading possibilities, you could use, and profit from reading, DR.BOB and the Good Old-timers; Sam Shoemaker’s Realizing Religion; and my titles New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A, and The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Fifth, open the meeting to relevant audience participation. Let
individual students participate by presenting any desired discussion, comments, or questions about the James verses, or about the portions of my commentary they have just read, or about suggested collateral literature.
Audience participation often has its place. It may help build mutual interest, friendships, and the feeling of belonging. It may, at the proper time, permit someone to let off steam. It may bring to the light similar questions others have in mind. But it will probably be a rare moment if truly significant points are raised or answered. The leader should keep all participation short. Those who do present questions or comments should share with humility, patience, and tolerance. All should keep criticism, verbal reproofs, and lofty pronouncements to a minimum.
Three more suggestions: (1) Pray before you speak—whether you are the leader or a member of the audience. (2) Keep difficult and extended questions for presentation or discussion until the meeting concludes. (3) You may even find it helpful to seek some additional resource or religious authority for possible explanations.
As Bill Wilson wrote in his Big Book:
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., p, 87).
Dr. Bob’s wife Anne suggested the same type of further research. In her journal, she specifically named and recommended a number of books for reading, but she added:
See your ministers for others if you desire (Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, 1933- 1939, 3rd ed. Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1998, p. 85),
AAs in recovery are seldom experts in either religion or medicine, and their A.A. friends know it. Early AAs had good literature to help and instruct them. They had Biblical books by the hundreds. They also had excellent teachers like Rev. Sam Shoemaker, Anne Smith, Henrietta Seiberling, T. Henry Williams, and his wife Clarace.
Today most groups would probably refuse admission to the likes of these proctors.
And that is a sorry fact, though probably true. Suggest to people in your study meetings that they might want and need to invite outsiders to help in understanding the verses in James. But you had better place your shield in front of you, and expect an onslaught. The days when the likes of Father Ed Dowling and Rev. Sam Shoemaker were invited or even permitted to speak to AAs in meetings or conferences are, sad to say, all but at an end. It’s hard enough to conduct a history conference without naïve objections and hindrances.
It’s much harder to stimulate learning about the Bible and its relevance to the Big Book if you attempt to do so inside A.A. meetings. Such an objective involves different and substantial challenges. There are wolves in the woods who don’t like God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, religion, or church. They frequently turn a deaf ear to those subjects. Few members of this howling pack know anything about our history. Such bleeding deacons--frequently outspoken, bold, rude, and insulting--do not control, govern, or speak for A.A., its groups, or its meetings. But they try. In that vein, there are ongoing efforts today to remove the Lord’s Prayer from meetings; to ban all kinds of literature—such as Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount; to silence members who share about them; and to crush presentation of their views in A.A. conferences. I’ve seen this happen all to frequently. Many times I’ve even heard obstructive remarks from those who oppose Big Book study conferences, claiming they are not real A.A. meetings and violate A.A.’s Traditions because of the modest charge they make for attendance in order to cover expenses.
This kind of challenge is without merit. And its proponents are wrong!
The James materials can be taught and learned. You are not in your meeting to lead, opine, or share, but rather to learn. Feel free to ask what you wish, state what you wish, and discuss what you wish. But when controversy arises, it is probably futile to promote your viewpoint in the meeting. In this respect, I’m reminded of the idea: “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Keep your controversial statements to yourself and present the points later to someone you think has the answers.
This discussion portion of a meeting follows the completion of reading from the Bible as well as the completion of reading from When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. Then it’s open season.
Participants may have questions. They may have observations. They may have stories they want to share. And they may even be loaded with opinions. Hopefully they have already begun to see the relevance of James to Big Book and Twelve Step material. In fact, they can and should discover, from what has been read, the actual number of quotes and ideas from James that have still been printed and retained in the latest editions of A.A.’s Big Book. Participants should be encouraged to make observations about those facts. Such comments would be useful and would help underline what has been covered in the readings. Let all students raise questions, make observations, and give commentaries.
This portion of the meeting should be moderated by the leader and should proceed much as any A.A. discussion meeting proceeds. Audience comments should not be regarded as teaching or doctrine. Opinions can certainly be expressed. But definitive answers will more profitably be found through prayer, further reading of the Bible, further collateral literature, or from a knowledgeable priest, minister, or rabbi.
The more the questions the more the questioners may themselves see they need to do, and profit from, their personal reading, independent of the meetings.
At this point, close each of your James meetings with the Lord’s Prayer—just as the pioneers closed their meetings.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount meeting or meetings should proceed in the same manner as the meeting or meetings on the Book of James. The same five approaches should be involved: (1) Pursuing the entire Sermon. (2) Reading every verse in it from Matthew 5 through Matthew 7. (3) Reading from When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. (4) Reading suggested collateral literature. (5) Opening the meeting for discussion.
Bill W. and Dr. Bob each said many times that the Sermon on the Mount contained the underlying philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous.
From what I have read in Alcoholics Anonymous literature, I suggest that, in mentioning the “underlying philosophy of A.A.,” Bill and Bob may have been referring to the entire Sermon, but they may also have had in mind a specific portion of the Sermon such as the philosophy of the “Golden Rule” in Matthew 7:12: “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Bill and Bob might also have been thinking of other Sermon verses such as: (1) Matthew 6:10—“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (2) Matthew 7:21—“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (3) Matthew 5:43-44: Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
All four of the aforementioned verses point to such basic A.A. ideas as “helping others,” praying that God’s will be done, doing the will of God, and practicing the fundamental Biblical command to “love thy neighbor.”
Taken together, the aforementioned verses emphasize ideas that have become pillars in A.A.—doing for others what you would like to have done for you; turning to God to see what He would have you do; loving your neighbor and even your enemies, and recognizing that God wants us to do His will as expressed primarily in His Word.
In your reading, you will soon discover a host of verses and ideas from the Sermon that became part of the fabric of A.A. For example: (1) reconciling with your enemy; (2) making restitution to those you have hurt; (3) the Lord’s Prayer; (4) “first things first” as expressed in Matthew 6:25-33; (5) “easy does it” and “one day at a time” as expressed in Matthew 6:24; and (6) inventorying and removing your own faults before you endeavor to have another’s removed.
Begin the Sermon on the Mount meeting or meetings with prayer.
First, pursue all chapters and every verse in Matthew Chapters 5
through 7 inclusive. Follow our suggestions.
There is scarcely a verse in the Sermon that did not influence early A.A. actions, steps, and language. Thus, while James was the “favorite,” the Sermon presented the greatest and broadest group of challenges for spiritual progress. It spelled out most of the key aspects of a Christian way of life.
Second, study every verse in Matthew: 5, 6, and 7. The verses in those three chapters contain every word of the actual “sermon” Jesus gave.
Following the same guide that was used as to James: Silently read, and have your leader read aloud every Chapter and every verse from the beginning of Matthew 5 to the end of Matthew 7.
Third, study the part of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why that reviews and explains the verses in Matthew 5 to 7 you have just read. Compare each relevant segment of my title with the part or parts you have just read in the Sermon.
Fourth, consider reading collateral literature
Again the possibilities are similar to those discussed in conjunction with James.
Devotionals: You may choose to look into the five devotionals early AAs used and gain more understanding from the discussion of the verses you have read.
Commentaries: Unlike the situation with James, there are a host of writings on the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, it is often discussed in many of the books early AAs read for spiritual growth. And the following were studied extensively by Dr. Bob and some of the pioneers: (1) Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Oswald Chambers. (2) My Utmost for His Highest by Glenn Clark. (3) The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox. (4) The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones.
Other Relevant Titles: There certainly are other books that early AAs read and which contained references to, studies of, and teachings about, various parts of the Sermon. You may want to locate them through two of my titles: (1) Dr. Bob and His Library. (2) The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth, 7th ed.
Fifth, open the meeting to relevant audience participation. Let
individual students participate by presenting any desired discussion, comments, or questions about the Sermon verses, the portions of my commentary they have just read, or collateral literature they have considered.
Again: Close the Sermon meetings with the Lord’s Prayer just as the pioneers did.
The Thirteenth Chapter of 1 Corinthians
This widely read chapter in Corinthians has provided fodder for many a sermon on “love.” There is scarcely an A.A. root source that doesn’t make reference to this chapter. Its best known commentator was Professor Henry Drummond of Edinburgh University in Scotland. The professor delivered his address on Love in many places, including Africa; but its fame in America seemed to spring from his presentation in 1887 at a Northfield Conference. Drummond authored a number of popular books such as Natural Law in the Spiritual World, The Ideal Life, and the Ascent of Man. And when Dr. Bob’s daughter Sue Smith Windows first opened her attic to the view of others, I discovered there that Dr. Bob had owned and read all the Drummond books. They were voluminous.
But the little book that caught my eye was a copy of Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World (London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, n.d.). Drummond created the title from the last line of 1 Corinthians 13. Verse thirteen reads: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity [love], these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” And various editions and reprints of this address have since sold in the hundreds of thousands.
On page 26, Drummond wrote: “The Spectrum of love has nine ingredients:--Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Humility, Courtesy, Unselfishness, Good Temper, Guilelessness, and Sincerity.” A moment’s glance at the language of the verses themselves and then a glance at Drummond’s characterization of them will call to your mind the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, God’s declared will about them, and their importance in the needed life-change.
Dorothy Snyder Murphy, the wife of pioneer Clarence Snyder at the time, often worked with drunks. On one occasion, she tells of this experience with Dr. Bob and Corinthians:
Once when I was working on a woman in Cleveland, I called and asked him [Dr. Bob], “What do I do for somebody who is going into D.T.’s?” He told me to give her the medication, and he said, “When she comes out of it and she decides she wants to be a different woman, get her Drummond’s “The Greatest Thing in the World.” Tell her to read it through every day for 30 days, and she’ll be a different woman” (DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, p. 310).
Now for your meetings to study 1 Corinthians 13.
Open the Corinthians meeting with prayer.
First, pursue all chapters and every verse in 1 Corinthians 13. Follow our suggestions.
Second, study all thirteen verses in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Those verses contain every word in the Corinthians “love” chapter—particularly those words which Dr. Bob emphasized so frequently.
Third, study the part of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why
that reviews and explains the verses in 1 Corinthians you have just read. Compare each relevant segment of my title with the part or parts you have just read in the Corinthians chapter.
Fourth, consider reading collateral literature
Just as was the case with James and the Sermon, you can find much additional help from several sources that wrote about the Love chapter.
The best is Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World, which should be your starting point. Then you may want to review the five devotionals and see what they have to say. Finally, there is lots to be found in the other books early A.A.’s read—books by Oswald Chambers, Glenn Clark, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Toyohiko Kagawa, and E. Stanley Jones. You can find the appropriate book in the bibliographies of my two titles Dr. Bob and His Library and The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth.
Fifth, open the meeting to relevant audience participation. Let
individual students participate by presenting any desired discussion, comments, or questions about the Corinthians verses, or about the portions of my commentary they have just read, or about the collateral literature just covered.
Then close your Corinthians meeting or meetings with the Lord’s Prayer.
This concludes our guide to your meetings to study the three parts of the Bible most mentioned by Dr. Bob and called “absolutely essential” by him. We will follow with additional study capsules for your meeting. Their subjects will be (1) The Bible and A.A. (2) The Big Book and the Bible. (3) The Twelve Steps and the Bible.
End of A.A. History Capsule No. 1
Capsule No. 1
© 2004
You may want to call your meetings “The James Club” or “The Big Book/Bible Study Meeting”
Dick B.
P.O. Box 837, Kihei, HI 96753-0837
Email: dickb@dickb.com; URL: http://www.dickb.com/index.shtml
Studying A.A. History, Bible Roots, Big Book, and Twelve Steps
How you and your A.A. and 12-Step friends can meet freely to study, learn, compare, and discuss our basic roots and text
Abstract
This is for individuals who believe in, want to investigate, wish to learn, or study to understand the basic Bible verses and Biblical ideas studied by A.A. pioneers. And compare and contrast them with the teachings of A.A.’s mentors and with the basic ideas and principles that were incorporated into A.A.’s Big Book and Twelve Steps. Many AAs and 12-Step groups have written me asking where and how they can begin “Big Book/Bible Study” meetings and groups. Here we tell you where such seekers—if they want to follow the footsteps of our founders—should focus and read as a group in the Bible and the Big Book. We suggest reviewing the sources that propelled the basics into the A.A. Fellowship. We give you specific places read, which we believe will help every member, leader, facilitator, group, speaker, or student. We show what the founders read and did and what you can do to understand better the “spiritual” recovery program in the Big Book and Twelve Steps. If you are asking about recovery and cure, this is the guide for you. Discover right now where you should start, what you what you should read, and how you and your friends or group will benefit by learning the specific resources adopted and used in pioneer A.A.
________________________________________________________________________
Parts of the Good Book A.A. old-timers considered “absolutely essential”
What Dr. Bob said about our beginnings
“Dr. Bob, noting that there were no Twelve Steps at the time and that ‘our stories didn’t amount to anything to speak of,’ later said they were convinced that the answer to their problems was in the Good Book. ‘To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the 13th chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James,’ he said.” (DR.BOB and the Good Oldtimers. NY: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980, p. 96).
“Members of Alcoholics Anonymous begin the day with a prayer for strength and a short period of Bible reading. They find the basic messages they need in the Sermon on the Mount, in Corinthians and the Book of James” (quoted in an Akron, Ohio, A.A. pamphlet of the 1940’s—published by the Friday Forum Luncheon Club of the Akron A.A. Groups; and see Dick B. Cured: Proven Help for Alcoholics and Addicts. HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 2003, p. 4).
Why this guide is needed
In the last fifteen years, A.A. members—and a great many recovery groups—have shown a long overdue and certainly promising interest in early A.A.’s beginnings. The trend can easily be recognized in the growing number of books, articles, websites, forums, conferences, and groups which have made 12-Step history a major priority or at least a subject to be learned.
But the new historical zeitgeist has yet to reach and motivate recovery professionals, 12-Step groups or individuals, or their meetings to a flourishing application of the spiritual program that marked early A.A. cures.
The following are among the reasons for the obvious historical vacuum: (1) Unfamiliarity with, or lack of access to, informative, accurate, comprehensive historical materials. (2) Preoccupation with this or that dynamic that promotes a particular medical, psychological, religious, therapeutic, treatment, or rehab program approach. (3) Prejudice against mention of religious matters above a whisper. (4) Inordinate concern over who, what ideas, and what literature should be excluded from recovery talk and meetings. (5) A present and recognizable tendency to place universalism, “treatment,” stereotyped secular practices, and profitable book sales above those things which originally produced such remarkable cures among seemingly helpless and hopeless, “medically incurable” alcoholics. (6) A zeal for medical, psychological, government, and religious grants which push to the side the primary purpose of A.A., which is to reach out to, and help newcomers. (7) Absence of informed, effective teachers and facilitators. (8) A tendency to argue about, and suppress any writing or talk that conflicts with present-day views. Phrased differently, claiming that history, God, and religion endanger the “simple” detritus being hurled into the scene today—to replace the tried and true early A.A. components such as the Bible, Christian literature, the teachings of Rev. Sam Shoemaker, and Oxford Group literature and principles (9) Outright rejection of the historically significant observations in the journal of Anne Ripley Smith, Dr. Bob’s wife. (10) Omission of the pioneers’ emphasis on Quiet Time with its Bible study, prayers, seeking of guidance, use of devotionals, and reading of religious literature—all of which enhanced an understanding of the “spiritual.”
I have received thousands of communications by letter, phone, fax, and email from people wanting to know where and how to begin and continue their education about our history, the Bible, and the relationship of each to the program as it exists today. The writers often ask about the success rates (75% to 93%) in early A.A. and the success rate in today’s A.A. (1% to 5%). Most inquirers lack an effective guide—usually none at all. Many lack a solid cadre for group study. Most can find no willing leadership. Almost all forget that early A.A. and just about every continuing A.A. group today sprang from very humble beginnings—involving as few as two or three members in search of relief from the curse of alcoholism. These early birds were not experts, were not afraid to learn from medicine and religion, willingly sought God’s help, and abstained from liquor and temptation while relief was on the way.
On the other hand, those of us in direct touch with religious, medical, and scholarly inquisitors, as well as thousands of still-suffering alcoholics and addicts, know that there is a loud thundering today for facts. Facts about early A.A., its roots, and its astonishing pioneer success rate. Facts explaining what the pioneers meant when they said they were cured. Facts explaining how and whether individual religious convictions can be squared with an ever-growing secular trend and secularist intrusions into the recovery groups as well.
This capsule will briefly discuss A.A.’s tools, the sources of the tools, experiences, hindrances, and specific ideas about how to organize a study meeting or group; how to conduct its meetings; how to use resources that will form the basis for education and instruction; and how a leader, facilitator, chairperson, or individual can move out on studies right now.
Begin with the Bible itself
I can offer no better place to begin than with the Good Book itself. Dr. Bob’s wife wrote in the journal she shared with early AAs:
Of course the Bible ought to be the main Source Book of all. No day ought to pass without reading it (See Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, 1933-1939, 3rd ed. HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1998, p. 82).
Dr. Bob said that old timers believed the answer to their problems was in the Bible, which he and they called the Good Book. He also stated emphatically that A.A. took its basic ideas from their study and effort in the Bible.
From the outset keep your study objectives simple.
Begin where the pioneers began. Begin where both Dr. Bob and Anne began. Make sure your studies are grounded in the Bible. Obtain a copy of the King James Version of the Bible. Bring it to the meeting, and keep it in front of you and in front of every person studying with you. This means, of course, that every student should own and bring, or be provided by your group with, the Bible. Don’t leave home without it!
Stick with the King James Version, whatever else may be your preference, because King James is what the pioneers used. You will relate better to their thinking and practice if you use it.
Previously we have quoted Dr. Bob’s statements that three parts of the Bible were considered “absolutely essential” in the early program—the Book of James, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 to 7), and 1 Corinthians 13. We now know that Anne Smith read to Dr. Bob and Bill every day in the summer of 1935. And A.A.’s own literature
tells us that Bill Wilson said Anne frequently read from the Book of James, which Bill said was “our favorite.”
I therefore believe that your first attention should be directed to study of the Book of James
James
As Bill Wilson himself said: Anne Smith read to Dr. Bob and Bill every day in the summer of 1935 when Bill was living with the Smiths in Akron. She frequently read from the Book of James.
Snippets from James can still easily be spotted in the Big Book. For example: (1) “Father of lights” (James 1:17). (2) “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (James 2:8). (3) “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:20). (4) And the “confess your faults” language in James 5:16.
That’s why this guide begins with James, and I suggest that you start your meetings in the Book of James. It is simple, easy to understand, and a clear mirror of what the pioneers saw in the Bible.
First, pursue all chapters and every verse in the Book of James. Spend more than one meeting on this book if you wish. Follow our suggestions; and you can later apply those suggestions to your studies of the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13
As stated, Anne Smith read to Dr. Bob and Bill from the Bible every day in the summer of 1935. She often read from the Book of James. And DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers reports the following thoughts and remarks of Bill Wilson about these matters:
“For the next three months, I lived with these two wonderful people,” Bill said. “I shall always believe they gave me more than I ever brought them.” Each morning, there was a devotion, he recalled. After a long silence, in which they awaited inspiration and guidance, Anne would read from the Bible. “James was our favorite,” he said, “Reading from her chair in the corner, she would softly conclude, ‘Faith without works is dead’,” This was a favorite quotation of Anne’s, much as the Book of James was a favorite with early A.A.’s—so much so that “The James Club” was favored by some as a name for the Fellowship.” (DR. BOB, supra, p.71).
Second, study all the verses in the Book of James
I’ve usually suggested to men I sponsor that the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Don’t try to read the entire Bible at or even after beginning. Don’t even focus on the Gospels, Acts, or the church epistles. Just one chunk of reading at a time.
Open every meeting with prayer and ask all present to pray specifically that God guide and bless the reading and illuminate your understanding of it.
Take your Bibles. Open them to the Book of James. Don’t start until everyone has found the correct page. Appoint one person to read the Book of James out loud while others silently read along in their Bibles as the speaker reads aloud from it.
Eyes on the page! Don’t try to read all the chapters of James at one session unless the flow is smooth and within your time limits. No questions. No teaching. No discussion. Just a reading of the Book of James. Your leader should read aloud, all or as much as you like, of the Book of James. Others silently read along with the speaker.
Before proceeding further, you and your leader might want to read the same material more than once. Don’t hesitate to do just that.
[Note: When you have completed all segments of your study of James, including the instructions in the following paragraphs, you are then ready and able to do the same thing with the Sermon on the Mount, and then with 1 Corinthians 13].
Here we resume again with your instructions as to studying James.
Third, study the part of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why
that reviews and explains the verses in James you have just read. Compare each relevant segment in my title with the part or parts you have just read in James.
I have reviewed the Book of James, verse by verse, thoroughly in several of my titles. But I believe the best and most recent analysis is in my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why (Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications Inc., 2003). Your greatest benefit will come if each student has a copy of that resource.
Appoint one person to read the explanatory resource out loud just as was done with the Bible itself. To begin, turn to page 51 of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. At the first James session, your leader should read my commentary aloud, beginning at page 51. He or she should then continue reading until he or she has read as much of the relevant commentary as deals with what the leader covered in the reading from James. Other students should silently follow the reading in their own copy of the resource. No questions. No teaching. No discussion. Not yet!
The reason for keeping audience silence during any reading by the leader is that interrupting questions and discussion often divert attention from the speaker, from the content being read, and from audience concentration on the intended instruction at hand. The desired answers and explanations may often come in the very next sentence or chapter that is to be read. Moreover, opinions, criticisms, and questions by a student will seldom bless either the seeker or the speaker or the others in the meeting.
Remember that your meetings have a plan to be followed. Stick to it. There is no record that Bill Wilson cross examined Anne Smith before, during, or after she read from her Bible or from her journal. To the contrary, Bill said to T. Henry and Clarace Williams:
I learned a great deal from you people, from the Smiths themselves, and from Henrietta [Seiberling]. I hadn’t looked in the Bible up to this time, at all. You see, I had the experience [conversion experience at Towns Hospital] first and then this rushing around to help drunks and nothing happened (Dick B. The Akron Genesis of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 64).
Bill and Bob just listened to Anne’s reading and comments, and they learned. Discussions certainly were held between Bill and Bob for many hours over many days, but not when a reading by Anne was in progress.
In your meetings, first comes the opening prayer, then the reading from James, then the reading from When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, then the use of any suggested collateral literature, and finally audience participation.
Fourth, consider reading collateral literature
Devotionals: As you complete study of each Bible segment and my commentary on it, you might gain greater understanding or mental challenge by checking out the devotionals the pioneers used daily to enhance their spiritual growth on that particular subject.
For example, you could go through The Runner’s Bible, look for its comments on the James verses you have read. Then silently read those Runner’s comments while the leader reads them aloud. You will thereby see and hear the very same interpretations the pioneers saw and heard.
You may even wish to do the same thing with at least four other devotionals that were pioneer favorites: (1) The Upper Room by Nora Smith Holm. (2) My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. (3) Daily Strength for Daily Needs by Mary W. Tileston. (4) Victorious Living by E. Stanley Jones.
All five devotionals were owned, used, recommended, and circulated by Dr. Bob. Several were even mentioned later in A.A. “Conference Approved” publications.
Commentaries: There are several important commentaries on two of the three “essential” Bible segments that Dr. Bob read and recommended. These books pertain to the Sermon on the Mount and 1 Corinthians 13. But we haven’t found any for the Book of James. There is, however, a further relevant collateral area you can pursue.
Shoemaker’s titles: If you wish to see the degree to which many basic ideas from James influenced our founders and their mentors, you will find many specific references to James in the books written by Rev. Samuel Shoemaker, Jr.
Other Literature: To sum up the collateral reading possibilities, you could use, and profit from reading, DR.BOB and the Good Old-timers; Sam Shoemaker’s Realizing Religion; and my titles New Light on Alcoholism: God, Sam Shoemaker, and A.A, and The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Anonymous.
Fifth, open the meeting to relevant audience participation. Let
individual students participate by presenting any desired discussion, comments, or questions about the James verses, or about the portions of my commentary they have just read, or about suggested collateral literature.
Audience participation often has its place. It may help build mutual interest, friendships, and the feeling of belonging. It may, at the proper time, permit someone to let off steam. It may bring to the light similar questions others have in mind. But it will probably be a rare moment if truly significant points are raised or answered. The leader should keep all participation short. Those who do present questions or comments should share with humility, patience, and tolerance. All should keep criticism, verbal reproofs, and lofty pronouncements to a minimum.
Three more suggestions: (1) Pray before you speak—whether you are the leader or a member of the audience. (2) Keep difficult and extended questions for presentation or discussion until the meeting concludes. (3) You may even find it helpful to seek some additional resource or religious authority for possible explanations.
As Bill Wilson wrote in his Big Book:
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer (Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., p, 87).
Dr. Bob’s wife Anne suggested the same type of further research. In her journal, she specifically named and recommended a number of books for reading, but she added:
See your ministers for others if you desire (Dick B., Anne Smith’s Journal, 1933- 1939, 3rd ed. Kihei, HI: Paradise Research Publications, Inc., 1998, p. 85),
AAs in recovery are seldom experts in either religion or medicine, and their A.A. friends know it. Early AAs had good literature to help and instruct them. They had Biblical books by the hundreds. They also had excellent teachers like Rev. Sam Shoemaker, Anne Smith, Henrietta Seiberling, T. Henry Williams, and his wife Clarace.
Today most groups would probably refuse admission to the likes of these proctors.
And that is a sorry fact, though probably true. Suggest to people in your study meetings that they might want and need to invite outsiders to help in understanding the verses in James. But you had better place your shield in front of you, and expect an onslaught. The days when the likes of Father Ed Dowling and Rev. Sam Shoemaker were invited or even permitted to speak to AAs in meetings or conferences are, sad to say, all but at an end. It’s hard enough to conduct a history conference without naïve objections and hindrances.
It’s much harder to stimulate learning about the Bible and its relevance to the Big Book if you attempt to do so inside A.A. meetings. Such an objective involves different and substantial challenges. There are wolves in the woods who don’t like God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, religion, or church. They frequently turn a deaf ear to those subjects. Few members of this howling pack know anything about our history. Such bleeding deacons--frequently outspoken, bold, rude, and insulting--do not control, govern, or speak for A.A., its groups, or its meetings. But they try. In that vein, there are ongoing efforts today to remove the Lord’s Prayer from meetings; to ban all kinds of literature—such as Fox’s The Sermon on the Mount; to silence members who share about them; and to crush presentation of their views in A.A. conferences. I’ve seen this happen all to frequently. Many times I’ve even heard obstructive remarks from those who oppose Big Book study conferences, claiming they are not real A.A. meetings and violate A.A.’s Traditions because of the modest charge they make for attendance in order to cover expenses.
This kind of challenge is without merit. And its proponents are wrong!
The James materials can be taught and learned. You are not in your meeting to lead, opine, or share, but rather to learn. Feel free to ask what you wish, state what you wish, and discuss what you wish. But when controversy arises, it is probably futile to promote your viewpoint in the meeting. In this respect, I’m reminded of the idea: “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” Keep your controversial statements to yourself and present the points later to someone you think has the answers.
This discussion portion of a meeting follows the completion of reading from the Bible as well as the completion of reading from When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. Then it’s open season.
Participants may have questions. They may have observations. They may have stories they want to share. And they may even be loaded with opinions. Hopefully they have already begun to see the relevance of James to Big Book and Twelve Step material. In fact, they can and should discover, from what has been read, the actual number of quotes and ideas from James that have still been printed and retained in the latest editions of A.A.’s Big Book. Participants should be encouraged to make observations about those facts. Such comments would be useful and would help underline what has been covered in the readings. Let all students raise questions, make observations, and give commentaries.
This portion of the meeting should be moderated by the leader and should proceed much as any A.A. discussion meeting proceeds. Audience comments should not be regarded as teaching or doctrine. Opinions can certainly be expressed. But definitive answers will more profitably be found through prayer, further reading of the Bible, further collateral literature, or from a knowledgeable priest, minister, or rabbi.
The more the questions the more the questioners may themselves see they need to do, and profit from, their personal reading, independent of the meetings.
At this point, close each of your James meetings with the Lord’s Prayer—just as the pioneers closed their meetings.
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount meeting or meetings should proceed in the same manner as the meeting or meetings on the Book of James. The same five approaches should be involved: (1) Pursuing the entire Sermon. (2) Reading every verse in it from Matthew 5 through Matthew 7. (3) Reading from When Early AAs Were Cured and Why. (4) Reading suggested collateral literature. (5) Opening the meeting for discussion.
Bill W. and Dr. Bob each said many times that the Sermon on the Mount contained the underlying philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous.
From what I have read in Alcoholics Anonymous literature, I suggest that, in mentioning the “underlying philosophy of A.A.,” Bill and Bob may have been referring to the entire Sermon, but they may also have had in mind a specific portion of the Sermon such as the philosophy of the “Golden Rule” in Matthew 7:12: “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” Bill and Bob might also have been thinking of other Sermon verses such as: (1) Matthew 6:10—“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” (2) Matthew 7:21—“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (3) Matthew 5:43-44: Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
All four of the aforementioned verses point to such basic A.A. ideas as “helping others,” praying that God’s will be done, doing the will of God, and practicing the fundamental Biblical command to “love thy neighbor.”
Taken together, the aforementioned verses emphasize ideas that have become pillars in A.A.—doing for others what you would like to have done for you; turning to God to see what He would have you do; loving your neighbor and even your enemies, and recognizing that God wants us to do His will as expressed primarily in His Word.
In your reading, you will soon discover a host of verses and ideas from the Sermon that became part of the fabric of A.A. For example: (1) reconciling with your enemy; (2) making restitution to those you have hurt; (3) the Lord’s Prayer; (4) “first things first” as expressed in Matthew 6:25-33; (5) “easy does it” and “one day at a time” as expressed in Matthew 6:24; and (6) inventorying and removing your own faults before you endeavor to have another’s removed.
Begin the Sermon on the Mount meeting or meetings with prayer.
First, pursue all chapters and every verse in Matthew Chapters 5
through 7 inclusive. Follow our suggestions.
There is scarcely a verse in the Sermon that did not influence early A.A. actions, steps, and language. Thus, while James was the “favorite,” the Sermon presented the greatest and broadest group of challenges for spiritual progress. It spelled out most of the key aspects of a Christian way of life.
Second, study every verse in Matthew: 5, 6, and 7. The verses in those three chapters contain every word of the actual “sermon” Jesus gave.
Following the same guide that was used as to James: Silently read, and have your leader read aloud every Chapter and every verse from the beginning of Matthew 5 to the end of Matthew 7.
Third, study the part of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why that reviews and explains the verses in Matthew 5 to 7 you have just read. Compare each relevant segment of my title with the part or parts you have just read in the Sermon.
Fourth, consider reading collateral literature
Again the possibilities are similar to those discussed in conjunction with James.
Devotionals: You may choose to look into the five devotionals early AAs used and gain more understanding from the discussion of the verses you have read.
Commentaries: Unlike the situation with James, there are a host of writings on the Sermon on the Mount. In fact, it is often discussed in many of the books early AAs read for spiritual growth. And the following were studied extensively by Dr. Bob and some of the pioneers: (1) Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Oswald Chambers. (2) My Utmost for His Highest by Glenn Clark. (3) The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox. (4) The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones.
Other Relevant Titles: There certainly are other books that early AAs read and which contained references to, studies of, and teachings about, various parts of the Sermon. You may want to locate them through two of my titles: (1) Dr. Bob and His Library. (2) The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth, 7th ed.
Fifth, open the meeting to relevant audience participation. Let
individual students participate by presenting any desired discussion, comments, or questions about the Sermon verses, the portions of my commentary they have just read, or collateral literature they have considered.
Again: Close the Sermon meetings with the Lord’s Prayer just as the pioneers did.
The Thirteenth Chapter of 1 Corinthians
This widely read chapter in Corinthians has provided fodder for many a sermon on “love.” There is scarcely an A.A. root source that doesn’t make reference to this chapter. Its best known commentator was Professor Henry Drummond of Edinburgh University in Scotland. The professor delivered his address on Love in many places, including Africa; but its fame in America seemed to spring from his presentation in 1887 at a Northfield Conference. Drummond authored a number of popular books such as Natural Law in the Spiritual World, The Ideal Life, and the Ascent of Man. And when Dr. Bob’s daughter Sue Smith Windows first opened her attic to the view of others, I discovered there that Dr. Bob had owned and read all the Drummond books. They were voluminous.
But the little book that caught my eye was a copy of Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World (London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, n.d.). Drummond created the title from the last line of 1 Corinthians 13. Verse thirteen reads: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity [love], these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” And various editions and reprints of this address have since sold in the hundreds of thousands.
On page 26, Drummond wrote: “The Spectrum of love has nine ingredients:--Patience, Kindness, Generosity, Humility, Courtesy, Unselfishness, Good Temper, Guilelessness, and Sincerity.” A moment’s glance at the language of the verses themselves and then a glance at Drummond’s characterization of them will call to your mind the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, God’s declared will about them, and their importance in the needed life-change.
Dorothy Snyder Murphy, the wife of pioneer Clarence Snyder at the time, often worked with drunks. On one occasion, she tells of this experience with Dr. Bob and Corinthians:
Once when I was working on a woman in Cleveland, I called and asked him [Dr. Bob], “What do I do for somebody who is going into D.T.’s?” He told me to give her the medication, and he said, “When she comes out of it and she decides she wants to be a different woman, get her Drummond’s “The Greatest Thing in the World.” Tell her to read it through every day for 30 days, and she’ll be a different woman” (DR. BOB and the Good Oldtimers, p. 310).
Now for your meetings to study 1 Corinthians 13.
Open the Corinthians meeting with prayer.
First, pursue all chapters and every verse in 1 Corinthians 13. Follow our suggestions.
Second, study all thirteen verses in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Those verses contain every word in the Corinthians “love” chapter—particularly those words which Dr. Bob emphasized so frequently.
Third, study the part of my title When Early AAs Were Cured and Why
that reviews and explains the verses in 1 Corinthians you have just read. Compare each relevant segment of my title with the part or parts you have just read in the Corinthians chapter.
Fourth, consider reading collateral literature
Just as was the case with James and the Sermon, you can find much additional help from several sources that wrote about the Love chapter.
The best is Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World, which should be your starting point. Then you may want to review the five devotionals and see what they have to say. Finally, there is lots to be found in the other books early A.A.’s read—books by Oswald Chambers, Glenn Clark, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Toyohiko Kagawa, and E. Stanley Jones. You can find the appropriate book in the bibliographies of my two titles Dr. Bob and His Library and The Books Early AAs Read for Spiritual Growth.
Fifth, open the meeting to relevant audience participation. Let
individual students participate by presenting any desired discussion, comments, or questions about the Corinthians verses, or about the portions of my commentary they have just read, or about the collateral literature just covered.
Then close your Corinthians meeting or meetings with the Lord’s Prayer.
This concludes our guide to your meetings to study the three parts of the Bible most mentioned by Dr. Bob and called “absolutely essential” by him. We will follow with additional study capsules for your meeting. Their subjects will be (1) The Bible and A.A. (2) The Big Book and the Bible. (3) The Twelve Steps and the Bible.
End of A.A. History Capsule No. 1
AA's Roots in the Oxford Group
A.A.’s Roots in the Oxford Group
By WILLARD HUNTER, Claremont, California.
With Assistance from M.D.B., Toledo, Ohio.
(Mr. Hunter, a nonalcoholic friend of A.A., was associated with
the Oxford Group movement for many years. M.D.B., an A.A.
member and a frequent contributor to the Grapevine, is a student
of A.A.’s early history.)
Almost every A.A. member knows that two dramatic encounters in the mid 1930s were key events that helped bring Alcoholics Anonymous into existence.
The first of these encounters was Ebby T.’s visit to Bill W. in 1934, when the latter sat drinking in the kitchen of his Brooklyn home. The second great encounter came about six months later and helped spark the actual founding of the A.A. movement. That, of course, was Bill’s famous meeting with Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio on Mother’s Day, 1935.
Today, both meetings are rightly regarded as the early seeding of A.A. But in fact, they were also new plantings of work by the Oxford Group, the inspirational fellowship which nurtured, many of the spiritual ideas and practices that became essential to Alcoholics Anonymous. What follows is a bit of history and a discussion of A.A.’s links to the Oxford Group and its founder, Frank Buchman.
The Oxford Group was an evangelistic Christian movement that grew up in the 1920s under the leadership of Buchman, an extraordinary man who eventually became world-renowned for his work in promoting peace and reconciliation. In the 1950s he was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Buchman, a Lutheran minister at the beginning of his career, was born on June 4th, 1878, in Pennsburg in eastern Pennsylvania. He lived a long life that was marked by great accomplishments and some controversy. Such was his stature as a world figure that when he died in Freudenstadt, Germany in 1961, his obituary was featured on page one in both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. He was eulogized on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by 11 members of Congress, while 20 heads of state sent messages to his funeral. His passing was also noted in news magazines and other periodicals.
Buchman’s program was at various times called "The First Century Christian Fellowship," "The Groups" (1920s), the "Oxford Group" (1930s) and "Moral Re-Armament" (1938 and on). Buchman’s friends and associates knew him as a genial, intuitive, intelligent, compassionate man—a true humanitarian. He had an extraordinary ability to motivate able men and women to dedicate all their time and money in fulfilling his global vision of world changing through life changing. His tools in effecting changes in people and situations were the guidance of God and the four standards (absolutes) of honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. It could be said, with justification, that Buchman attempted to carry essential spiritual principles to the average person without getting sidetracked in religious or sectarian issues. He was certainly an early architect of the spiritual, mutual assistance movements which have grown up in many forms. John Drakeford writes in his People to People Therapy that the roots of modern mutual assistance renewal lies in John Wesley’s group meetings, Frank Buchman’s Oxford Group, and Bill W’s Alcoholics Anonymous. Howard Clineball, author of the classic textbook Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic, says Buchman, as much as anyone, broke people out of the assumption that problem persons had to go to a professional. He demonstrated that they might get more help from other persons with the same problem.
It Started With a Resentment
There’s a saying in A.A. that all it takes to start a new group is a member with a resentment. That’s the way it was with Frank Buchman. He had a resentment, then he had a spiritual experience which completely turned him around. Finally he followed through be making amends and starting a movement. Here’s how it happened.
Growing up in Allentown, "Pennsylvania Dutch" country where his father ran a saloon near the courthouse, Buchman was strongly influenced by his mother to enter the ministry. He studied at Muhlenberg College and Mt. Airy Seminary, and then engaged in church work that led to his establishing, in 1905, a hospice for underprivileged boys in the slums of Philadelphia. But a run-in with the trustees over their plan to cut costs by reducing the boy’s food finally brought his resignation. Filled with resentment toward the board, Buchman sailed for Europe. It was 1908, and he was 30 years old. He was a bitter, disillusioned man, and his rancor towards the trustees had made him miserable and lonely.
In England, he drifted to a religious conference which turned out to be cold and unexciting. Then, in the little town of Keswick, Buchman attended an afternoon church service that proved to be the turning point in his life. It was a small gathering of only 17 people. The speaker was a Salvation Army woman. By his own admission, Buchman went into the church nursing pride, selfishness, and ill will which he later realized were preventing him from functioning as a Christian minister should.
The woman’s talk got through to him, giving him a vision of the gulf between him and Christ that had been created by his anger toward the trustees. He then had a transforming spiritual experience which completely changed his life. He stopped blaming the trustees and wrote each of them a letter of amends. This so altered his thinking that he became convinced that such an experience, if multiplied, was the answer to the world’s ills.
For the next few years, Buchman served as a YMCA secretary at Penn State, where he worked with students in developing his life changing methods. One of the persons who was changed by Buchman’s message was Bill Pickle, the campus bootlegger who was also an alcoholic. But the Buchman disciple who was to be so important to A.A.’s early origins was Sam Shoemaker, whose life was changed as a result of a meeting with Frank Buchman in China in 1918. Dr. Sam was to become a spiritual counselor to Bill W. and one of A.A.’s strongest supporters in the ministry. After breaking with Buchman in 1941, Sam carried on the mutual assistance idea in his own "Faith At Work" movement.
By 1919, Buchman had formed a society called the First Century Christian Fellowship, which soon became known as The Groups. The fellowship sponsored house parties, and practiced a program which included prayers, confession of wrongs, seeking guidance, and making restitution, and a life changing outreach to others. The Oxford Group name was adopted in 1928, because students at Oxford University were fanning out with the idea through the world.
In 1923, Buchman and the fellowship were described in a book entitled Life Changers, by Harold Begbie. Oddly enough, Frank stipulated that his name not be mentioned in the book, and he was described only as "F.B." or "F." Seven other chapters were devoted to young college people—Sam Shoemaker being one—who had experienced change and were working to help others, but nobody was named in the book. This practice, certainly an example of what Bill W. viewed as spiritual anonymity, was later dropped by the Oxford Group in favor of a "key person" strategy; i.e., using illustrious names and prominent people who had been helped in order to attract others into the fellowship.
But the book that put it all together for the Oxford Group was a 1932 publication entitled For Sinners Only, written by A.J. Russell and published by Harper’s. The book focused on the Oxford Group when it was enjoying its greatest success as a mutual assistance movement. Russell, himself a beneficiary of Oxford Group teachings, also wrote many of the spiritual messages reprinted in the meditation book, Twenty –Four Hours a Day, which is used by many recovering alcoholics. For Sinners Only was indeed the "Big Book" of the Oxford Group, and may well have served partially as a model. Those who are interested in more of Frank Buchman’s background may wish to see his latest biography, out in 1988, On the Tail of a Comet by Garth Lean, published by Helmers & Howard, Colorado Springs.
The Jung Connection
In that same period, a problem drinker named Rowland H. learned from the distinguished psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung in Switzerland, that cased like his were hopeless except when a vital spiritual experience took charge. Rowland found his experience in the Oxford Group, and passed it along to Ebby T., who then carried it to Bill at his kitchen table in Brooklyn. At Towns Hospital, in 1934, Bill W. had the same kind of spiritual experience that had come to Frank Buchman in England in 1908. And just as Frank had viewed his experience as an answer to the world’s ills, so did Bill W. see it as the way out for thousands of other alcoholics. Thus, the stage was set for the Akron encounter which brought A.A. into being. At first, the alcoholic recovery program was all part of the Oxford Group activity.
Henrietta Seiberling, the gracious lady who brought Bill and Bob together at her Akron home, recalled that Bill introduced himself to her over the phone as a "a member of the Oxford Group from New York and a rum hound." It was a providential call, because Henrietta was herself a member of the Akron Oxford Group which had been trying to help Dr. Bob. Only two weeks earlier, in an emotion-charged meeting at the home of T. Henry and Clarace Williams, Dr. Bob, who had been attending the weekly meetings for over two years, only now admitted to the others that he had a drinking problem. Bob then and there led the group in prayer for his recovery. Now he was to meet the man whom he would later describe as the first living human being with whom he had ever spoken, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience.
The Akron Connection
The astonishing thing about this historic meeting was that earlier events had made the Akron Oxford Group unusually strong and active at the very time an unrelated business venture brought Bill to Akron. A few years before, an Oxford Grouper who was closely associated with a prominent tire manufacturer was able to help one of the industrialist’s sons overcome his drinking problem. The son in turn aided an alcoholic lawyer who was winning most of his court battles and losing his bottle battles. Because the tire scion’s escapades had been the talk of the town, his recovery gripped the city’s attention. As a result of such recoveries, the Akron Oxford Group was locally regarded as being effective in dealing with alcoholism.
The tire manufacturer, grateful for his son’s recovery, then invited an Oxford Group team of 60 people to Akron in 1933 to conduct night and morning meetings throughout the city for ten days. Henrietta Sieberling and T. Henry and Clarace Williams joined the Group during this ten-day session, and started the Wednesday night meetings in the Williams home that were joined by Dr. Bob and Anne Smith. The meetings were joyous and friendly, and Dr. Bob said the Oxford Group members attracted him because of their seeming poise, health, and happiness. "They spoke with great freedom from embarrassment, which I could never do, and they seemed very much at ease on all occasions and appeared very healthy. More than these attributes, they seemed to be happy, "he wrote in his personal story. He and Anne attended the meetings for 2-1/2 years, but he drank every night nevertheless. He later acknowledged, however, that the Oxford Group led him to vital spiritual principles which were to be important in his A.A. work. Beyond that, of course, it was the Group connection and Mrs. Seiberling’s inspiration that helped bring him into touch with Bill W.
Sam Shoemaker
Meanwhile, back in New York City, the Oxford Group was also highly active at its national headquarters in D. Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Church, where Ebby T. And Bill W. received much valuable help. Dr. Sam was virtually the U.S. leader of the fellowship, and was the ideal person to become Bill W.’s spiritual mentor. As Bill later said, "…the early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker…, and from nowhere else. Sam’s teaching did most to show us how to create the spiritual climate in which we alcoholics may survive and then proceed to grow."
In 1978, Lois W. told an interviewer that for two and one half years, 1934-1937, she and Bill attended two Oxford Group meetings in Manhattan every week for most weeks of the year. Thursday evenings were personal sharing and planning. Sunday afternoons were the more public meetings where people brought new friends. In the videotape "Bill’s Own Story," Bill rounds out this wonderful chain of events, saying, "We began to go to Oxford Group meetings…. Dr. Shoemaker’s impact on us in those early days certainly registered, and the principles emphasized by the Oxford Group later lent themselves very readily to the formation of A.A.’s 12 Steps and publication of our book Alcoholics Anonymous".
Despite this important linkage, Bill and the small band of alcoholics around him did not long remain associated with the Oxford Group. Bill began holding separate meetings for alcoholics soon after returning from Akron. In 1937, his fledgling group in New York City withdrew completely from the Oxford Group fellowship. Nevertheless, Bill always acknowledged that the important spiritual and working principles of A.A. came from the Group.
Out in Akron, it was a slightly different story. Deeply loyal to nonalcoholic friends such as Henrietta Seiberling and the T. Henry Williamses, the recovered alcoholics in Akron maintained their Oxford Group ties until 1939. They, too, eventually decided to follow a separate path in order to be more effective in aiding alcoholics. By this time, the book Alcoholics Anonymous had been published and the fellowship of recovered alcoholics had its own name. A.A. groups had been started in Cleveland, and A.A. was now well on it’s way as a separate society, grateful to the Oxford Group but no longer dependent on it.
Differences in Methodology
There were other reasons why A.A. and the Oxford Group followed separate paths after 1939. Frank Buchman apparently knew that this program had been effective in helping alcoholics and, according to A.A. old-timer Clarence S.; Buchman addressed the Akron group in 1938. But Buchman did not view helping alcoholics as a major activity of his fellowship. "I’m all for the alcoholics getting changed," he was quoted as saying, "but we have drunken nations on our hands as well." Much of his work after 1938 was devoted to bringing world leaders together in an effort to promote reconciliation and understanding without war and violence. Buchman had little confidence in a special interest program exclusively for alcoholics, and except for an appearance at the Akron Group he never showed interest in personal involvement in A.A. activities.
In addition, Bill W. and other A.A. pioneers also felt that the assertive evangelism of the Oxford Group would not work with alcoholics. Chastened by failure, Bill had already been forced to tone down his own evangelistic fervor just before meeting Dr. Bob. Another difference was that the early A.A.’s became committed to the practice of anonymity, whereas the Oxford Group sought to work with prominent individuals. The Oxford Group also emphasized the Four Standards, or Absolutes, which were not formally adopted by A.A. but are still displayed by some local A.A. groups. Bill W. believed that these standards were expressed or implied in the Twelve Steps.
There was yet another compelling reason for A.A.’s separation from the Oxford Group. Frank Buchman had been remarkably successful in building bridges to various religious faiths during his early career. Indeed, he was probably a herald of the modern ecumenical movement.
But in the late 1930s, for whatever reasons, the Oxford Group was misunderstood by a few denominational spokesmen, and negatives appeared in the press. Bill W., who was already well along with the idea of avoiding public controversies, did not feel that A.A. could afford to be linked with the Oxford Group any longer in the public mind. Subsequently, prominent prelates in the same denominations reversed those positions and publicly supported Buchman’s work. Nevertheless, in Bill’s mind, controversy diverted attention and energy from A.A.’s singleness of purpose. There was even the fear that the use of the Four Standards and other Oxford Group terminology could arouse prejudice against A.A. Finally the Oxford Group itself, as it was transformed into Moral Re- Armament, placed less emphasis on the small group, mutual assistance concept that was so useful to recovering alcoholics. In 1939, when A.A. had only 100 members, Frank Buchman was introducing MRA to the nation in huge mass meetings at Madison Square Garden, Constitution Hall (D.C.), and the Hollywood Bowl.
Moral Re-Armament
For the rest of his life, Buchman sought to make MRA an instrument of world peace. The Society operated conference centers at Mackinac Island, Michigan and at Caux, Switzerland, on Lake Geneva. Buchman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951 and 1952, and during the later years he also addressed a joint session of both houses of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. In addition, he received decorations from eight governments for his peacemaking efforts. MRA also promoted its philosophy, centered around the Four Absolutes, in newspaper advertisements and through stage and screen presentations. Although MRA activity and membership in the United States went into some decline following Frank Buchman’s death in 1961, significant work today is seen in India, England, Switzerland, and elsewhere.
In America, substantial MRA financial resources and energy went into a young people’s traveling, inspirational program, "Up With People." There is now no connection between the two entities. In recent years, the Moral Re-Armament program has been steadily re-building in the United States, with centers at Caux, Switzerland, attracts each summer several thousand representatives from all continents.
While A.A. received much of its spiritual program from the Oxford Group, there are many other A.A. practices and ideas which were developed independently or came from other sources. On the medical side, for example, Dr. William D. Silkworth, a physician specializing in alcoholism, gave A.A. its clear understanding of alcoholism as a disease. The Traditions which have guided many A.A. activities were developed independently, mostly through trial-and-error. The Twelve Steps were written by Bill W. and reflected the six principles that were used when the early A.A.’s still attended Oxford Group meetings. The Serenity Prayer and the A.A. slogans also came from sources other than the Oxford Group. On the other hand, the Lord’s Prayer was said at, or near, the close of most Group weekly meetings.
Appreciation
Bill W. was justly proud of his correspondence with Dr. C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, whom he thanked for telling Rowland H. that the only hope for his alcoholism was a transforming spiritual experience. Bill regretted he had not also expressed appreciation to Frank Buchman for providing Rowland with the experience Jung called for. A month after Frank’s death in 1961, Bill wrote to a friend: "Now that Frank Buchman is gone I realize more than ever what we owe to him, I wish I had sought him out in recent years to tell him of our appreciation."
Inspirational, mutual assistance portion of A.A. and its concept of a Higher Power—all came from the Oxford Group and the early inspiration of Frank Buchman. Is that important? Many A.A.’s would say that it was all God-ordained and God-directed anyhow, so who cares if everybody is properly credited for his role in the development of our fellowship?
One A.A. member who did care was Al L., a retired rubber engineer from Akron who lived in Pompano Beach, Florida until his death. He attended his first meeting in 1937 at the Williams home and finally established continuous sobriety in 1941. Dr. Bob was his sponsor.
Al carried a small stack of wallet-size pictures were a sort of pictorial history of A.A. There were shots of T. Henry and Clarace Williams, Dr. Bob and Anne S., Ebby T., Bill and Lois W. and others.
But the very first picture in the stack was a portrait of Frank Buchman. Al had a stock answer for anybody who asked, "Why do you keep Frank’s picture on top?"
It was this: "Because that’s where it all began. None of this would have happened without Frank."
That’s not the whole story, of course. Many A.A. members feel that God could have used hundreds of different channels and people to bring A.A. into existence. But He apparently chose Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group. If that bothers you, take comfort in the fact that it bothered Bill W. when the Group message was first presented to him by Ebby. But didn’t it all work out in a wonderful way!
By WILLARD HUNTER, Claremont, California.
With Assistance from M.D.B., Toledo, Ohio.
(Mr. Hunter, a nonalcoholic friend of A.A., was associated with
the Oxford Group movement for many years. M.D.B., an A.A.
member and a frequent contributor to the Grapevine, is a student
of A.A.’s early history.)
Almost every A.A. member knows that two dramatic encounters in the mid 1930s were key events that helped bring Alcoholics Anonymous into existence.
The first of these encounters was Ebby T.’s visit to Bill W. in 1934, when the latter sat drinking in the kitchen of his Brooklyn home. The second great encounter came about six months later and helped spark the actual founding of the A.A. movement. That, of course, was Bill’s famous meeting with Dr. Bob in Akron, Ohio on Mother’s Day, 1935.
Today, both meetings are rightly regarded as the early seeding of A.A. But in fact, they were also new plantings of work by the Oxford Group, the inspirational fellowship which nurtured, many of the spiritual ideas and practices that became essential to Alcoholics Anonymous. What follows is a bit of history and a discussion of A.A.’s links to the Oxford Group and its founder, Frank Buchman.
The Oxford Group was an evangelistic Christian movement that grew up in the 1920s under the leadership of Buchman, an extraordinary man who eventually became world-renowned for his work in promoting peace and reconciliation. In the 1950s he was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Buchman, a Lutheran minister at the beginning of his career, was born on June 4th, 1878, in Pennsburg in eastern Pennsylvania. He lived a long life that was marked by great accomplishments and some controversy. Such was his stature as a world figure that when he died in Freudenstadt, Germany in 1961, his obituary was featured on page one in both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. He was eulogized on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives by 11 members of Congress, while 20 heads of state sent messages to his funeral. His passing was also noted in news magazines and other periodicals.
Buchman’s program was at various times called "The First Century Christian Fellowship," "The Groups" (1920s), the "Oxford Group" (1930s) and "Moral Re-Armament" (1938 and on). Buchman’s friends and associates knew him as a genial, intuitive, intelligent, compassionate man—a true humanitarian. He had an extraordinary ability to motivate able men and women to dedicate all their time and money in fulfilling his global vision of world changing through life changing. His tools in effecting changes in people and situations were the guidance of God and the four standards (absolutes) of honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. It could be said, with justification, that Buchman attempted to carry essential spiritual principles to the average person without getting sidetracked in religious or sectarian issues. He was certainly an early architect of the spiritual, mutual assistance movements which have grown up in many forms. John Drakeford writes in his People to People Therapy that the roots of modern mutual assistance renewal lies in John Wesley’s group meetings, Frank Buchman’s Oxford Group, and Bill W’s Alcoholics Anonymous. Howard Clineball, author of the classic textbook Understanding and Counseling the Alcoholic, says Buchman, as much as anyone, broke people out of the assumption that problem persons had to go to a professional. He demonstrated that they might get more help from other persons with the same problem.
It Started With a Resentment
There’s a saying in A.A. that all it takes to start a new group is a member with a resentment. That’s the way it was with Frank Buchman. He had a resentment, then he had a spiritual experience which completely turned him around. Finally he followed through be making amends and starting a movement. Here’s how it happened.
Growing up in Allentown, "Pennsylvania Dutch" country where his father ran a saloon near the courthouse, Buchman was strongly influenced by his mother to enter the ministry. He studied at Muhlenberg College and Mt. Airy Seminary, and then engaged in church work that led to his establishing, in 1905, a hospice for underprivileged boys in the slums of Philadelphia. But a run-in with the trustees over their plan to cut costs by reducing the boy’s food finally brought his resignation. Filled with resentment toward the board, Buchman sailed for Europe. It was 1908, and he was 30 years old. He was a bitter, disillusioned man, and his rancor towards the trustees had made him miserable and lonely.
In England, he drifted to a religious conference which turned out to be cold and unexciting. Then, in the little town of Keswick, Buchman attended an afternoon church service that proved to be the turning point in his life. It was a small gathering of only 17 people. The speaker was a Salvation Army woman. By his own admission, Buchman went into the church nursing pride, selfishness, and ill will which he later realized were preventing him from functioning as a Christian minister should.
The woman’s talk got through to him, giving him a vision of the gulf between him and Christ that had been created by his anger toward the trustees. He then had a transforming spiritual experience which completely changed his life. He stopped blaming the trustees and wrote each of them a letter of amends. This so altered his thinking that he became convinced that such an experience, if multiplied, was the answer to the world’s ills.
For the next few years, Buchman served as a YMCA secretary at Penn State, where he worked with students in developing his life changing methods. One of the persons who was changed by Buchman’s message was Bill Pickle, the campus bootlegger who was also an alcoholic. But the Buchman disciple who was to be so important to A.A.’s early origins was Sam Shoemaker, whose life was changed as a result of a meeting with Frank Buchman in China in 1918. Dr. Sam was to become a spiritual counselor to Bill W. and one of A.A.’s strongest supporters in the ministry. After breaking with Buchman in 1941, Sam carried on the mutual assistance idea in his own "Faith At Work" movement.
By 1919, Buchman had formed a society called the First Century Christian Fellowship, which soon became known as The Groups. The fellowship sponsored house parties, and practiced a program which included prayers, confession of wrongs, seeking guidance, and making restitution, and a life changing outreach to others. The Oxford Group name was adopted in 1928, because students at Oxford University were fanning out with the idea through the world.
In 1923, Buchman and the fellowship were described in a book entitled Life Changers, by Harold Begbie. Oddly enough, Frank stipulated that his name not be mentioned in the book, and he was described only as "F.B." or "F." Seven other chapters were devoted to young college people—Sam Shoemaker being one—who had experienced change and were working to help others, but nobody was named in the book. This practice, certainly an example of what Bill W. viewed as spiritual anonymity, was later dropped by the Oxford Group in favor of a "key person" strategy; i.e., using illustrious names and prominent people who had been helped in order to attract others into the fellowship.
But the book that put it all together for the Oxford Group was a 1932 publication entitled For Sinners Only, written by A.J. Russell and published by Harper’s. The book focused on the Oxford Group when it was enjoying its greatest success as a mutual assistance movement. Russell, himself a beneficiary of Oxford Group teachings, also wrote many of the spiritual messages reprinted in the meditation book, Twenty –Four Hours a Day, which is used by many recovering alcoholics. For Sinners Only was indeed the "Big Book" of the Oxford Group, and may well have served partially as a model. Those who are interested in more of Frank Buchman’s background may wish to see his latest biography, out in 1988, On the Tail of a Comet by Garth Lean, published by Helmers & Howard, Colorado Springs.
The Jung Connection
In that same period, a problem drinker named Rowland H. learned from the distinguished psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung in Switzerland, that cased like his were hopeless except when a vital spiritual experience took charge. Rowland found his experience in the Oxford Group, and passed it along to Ebby T., who then carried it to Bill at his kitchen table in Brooklyn. At Towns Hospital, in 1934, Bill W. had the same kind of spiritual experience that had come to Frank Buchman in England in 1908. And just as Frank had viewed his experience as an answer to the world’s ills, so did Bill W. see it as the way out for thousands of other alcoholics. Thus, the stage was set for the Akron encounter which brought A.A. into being. At first, the alcoholic recovery program was all part of the Oxford Group activity.
Henrietta Seiberling, the gracious lady who brought Bill and Bob together at her Akron home, recalled that Bill introduced himself to her over the phone as a "a member of the Oxford Group from New York and a rum hound." It was a providential call, because Henrietta was herself a member of the Akron Oxford Group which had been trying to help Dr. Bob. Only two weeks earlier, in an emotion-charged meeting at the home of T. Henry and Clarace Williams, Dr. Bob, who had been attending the weekly meetings for over two years, only now admitted to the others that he had a drinking problem. Bob then and there led the group in prayer for his recovery. Now he was to meet the man whom he would later describe as the first living human being with whom he had ever spoken, who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism from actual experience.
The Akron Connection
The astonishing thing about this historic meeting was that earlier events had made the Akron Oxford Group unusually strong and active at the very time an unrelated business venture brought Bill to Akron. A few years before, an Oxford Grouper who was closely associated with a prominent tire manufacturer was able to help one of the industrialist’s sons overcome his drinking problem. The son in turn aided an alcoholic lawyer who was winning most of his court battles and losing his bottle battles. Because the tire scion’s escapades had been the talk of the town, his recovery gripped the city’s attention. As a result of such recoveries, the Akron Oxford Group was locally regarded as being effective in dealing with alcoholism.
The tire manufacturer, grateful for his son’s recovery, then invited an Oxford Group team of 60 people to Akron in 1933 to conduct night and morning meetings throughout the city for ten days. Henrietta Sieberling and T. Henry and Clarace Williams joined the Group during this ten-day session, and started the Wednesday night meetings in the Williams home that were joined by Dr. Bob and Anne Smith. The meetings were joyous and friendly, and Dr. Bob said the Oxford Group members attracted him because of their seeming poise, health, and happiness. "They spoke with great freedom from embarrassment, which I could never do, and they seemed very much at ease on all occasions and appeared very healthy. More than these attributes, they seemed to be happy, "he wrote in his personal story. He and Anne attended the meetings for 2-1/2 years, but he drank every night nevertheless. He later acknowledged, however, that the Oxford Group led him to vital spiritual principles which were to be important in his A.A. work. Beyond that, of course, it was the Group connection and Mrs. Seiberling’s inspiration that helped bring him into touch with Bill W.
Sam Shoemaker
Meanwhile, back in New York City, the Oxford Group was also highly active at its national headquarters in D. Sam Shoemaker’s Calvary Church, where Ebby T. And Bill W. received much valuable help. Dr. Sam was virtually the U.S. leader of the fellowship, and was the ideal person to become Bill W.’s spiritual mentor. As Bill later said, "…the early A.A. got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker…, and from nowhere else. Sam’s teaching did most to show us how to create the spiritual climate in which we alcoholics may survive and then proceed to grow."
In 1978, Lois W. told an interviewer that for two and one half years, 1934-1937, she and Bill attended two Oxford Group meetings in Manhattan every week for most weeks of the year. Thursday evenings were personal sharing and planning. Sunday afternoons were the more public meetings where people brought new friends. In the videotape "Bill’s Own Story," Bill rounds out this wonderful chain of events, saying, "We began to go to Oxford Group meetings…. Dr. Shoemaker’s impact on us in those early days certainly registered, and the principles emphasized by the Oxford Group later lent themselves very readily to the formation of A.A.’s 12 Steps and publication of our book Alcoholics Anonymous".
Despite this important linkage, Bill and the small band of alcoholics around him did not long remain associated with the Oxford Group. Bill began holding separate meetings for alcoholics soon after returning from Akron. In 1937, his fledgling group in New York City withdrew completely from the Oxford Group fellowship. Nevertheless, Bill always acknowledged that the important spiritual and working principles of A.A. came from the Group.
Out in Akron, it was a slightly different story. Deeply loyal to nonalcoholic friends such as Henrietta Seiberling and the T. Henry Williamses, the recovered alcoholics in Akron maintained their Oxford Group ties until 1939. They, too, eventually decided to follow a separate path in order to be more effective in aiding alcoholics. By this time, the book Alcoholics Anonymous had been published and the fellowship of recovered alcoholics had its own name. A.A. groups had been started in Cleveland, and A.A. was now well on it’s way as a separate society, grateful to the Oxford Group but no longer dependent on it.
Differences in Methodology
There were other reasons why A.A. and the Oxford Group followed separate paths after 1939. Frank Buchman apparently knew that this program had been effective in helping alcoholics and, according to A.A. old-timer Clarence S.; Buchman addressed the Akron group in 1938. But Buchman did not view helping alcoholics as a major activity of his fellowship. "I’m all for the alcoholics getting changed," he was quoted as saying, "but we have drunken nations on our hands as well." Much of his work after 1938 was devoted to bringing world leaders together in an effort to promote reconciliation and understanding without war and violence. Buchman had little confidence in a special interest program exclusively for alcoholics, and except for an appearance at the Akron Group he never showed interest in personal involvement in A.A. activities.
In addition, Bill W. and other A.A. pioneers also felt that the assertive evangelism of the Oxford Group would not work with alcoholics. Chastened by failure, Bill had already been forced to tone down his own evangelistic fervor just before meeting Dr. Bob. Another difference was that the early A.A.’s became committed to the practice of anonymity, whereas the Oxford Group sought to work with prominent individuals. The Oxford Group also emphasized the Four Standards, or Absolutes, which were not formally adopted by A.A. but are still displayed by some local A.A. groups. Bill W. believed that these standards were expressed or implied in the Twelve Steps.
There was yet another compelling reason for A.A.’s separation from the Oxford Group. Frank Buchman had been remarkably successful in building bridges to various religious faiths during his early career. Indeed, he was probably a herald of the modern ecumenical movement.
But in the late 1930s, for whatever reasons, the Oxford Group was misunderstood by a few denominational spokesmen, and negatives appeared in the press. Bill W., who was already well along with the idea of avoiding public controversies, did not feel that A.A. could afford to be linked with the Oxford Group any longer in the public mind. Subsequently, prominent prelates in the same denominations reversed those positions and publicly supported Buchman’s work. Nevertheless, in Bill’s mind, controversy diverted attention and energy from A.A.’s singleness of purpose. There was even the fear that the use of the Four Standards and other Oxford Group terminology could arouse prejudice against A.A. Finally the Oxford Group itself, as it was transformed into Moral Re- Armament, placed less emphasis on the small group, mutual assistance concept that was so useful to recovering alcoholics. In 1939, when A.A. had only 100 members, Frank Buchman was introducing MRA to the nation in huge mass meetings at Madison Square Garden, Constitution Hall (D.C.), and the Hollywood Bowl.
Moral Re-Armament
For the rest of his life, Buchman sought to make MRA an instrument of world peace. The Society operated conference centers at Mackinac Island, Michigan and at Caux, Switzerland, on Lake Geneva. Buchman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1951 and 1952, and during the later years he also addressed a joint session of both houses of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. In addition, he received decorations from eight governments for his peacemaking efforts. MRA also promoted its philosophy, centered around the Four Absolutes, in newspaper advertisements and through stage and screen presentations. Although MRA activity and membership in the United States went into some decline following Frank Buchman’s death in 1961, significant work today is seen in India, England, Switzerland, and elsewhere.
In America, substantial MRA financial resources and energy went into a young people’s traveling, inspirational program, "Up With People." There is now no connection between the two entities. In recent years, the Moral Re-Armament program has been steadily re-building in the United States, with centers at Caux, Switzerland, attracts each summer several thousand representatives from all continents.
While A.A. received much of its spiritual program from the Oxford Group, there are many other A.A. practices and ideas which were developed independently or came from other sources. On the medical side, for example, Dr. William D. Silkworth, a physician specializing in alcoholism, gave A.A. its clear understanding of alcoholism as a disease. The Traditions which have guided many A.A. activities were developed independently, mostly through trial-and-error. The Twelve Steps were written by Bill W. and reflected the six principles that were used when the early A.A.’s still attended Oxford Group meetings. The Serenity Prayer and the A.A. slogans also came from sources other than the Oxford Group. On the other hand, the Lord’s Prayer was said at, or near, the close of most Group weekly meetings.
Appreciation
Bill W. was justly proud of his correspondence with Dr. C.G. Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, whom he thanked for telling Rowland H. that the only hope for his alcoholism was a transforming spiritual experience. Bill regretted he had not also expressed appreciation to Frank Buchman for providing Rowland with the experience Jung called for. A month after Frank’s death in 1961, Bill wrote to a friend: "Now that Frank Buchman is gone I realize more than ever what we owe to him, I wish I had sought him out in recent years to tell him of our appreciation."
Inspirational, mutual assistance portion of A.A. and its concept of a Higher Power—all came from the Oxford Group and the early inspiration of Frank Buchman. Is that important? Many A.A.’s would say that it was all God-ordained and God-directed anyhow, so who cares if everybody is properly credited for his role in the development of our fellowship?
One A.A. member who did care was Al L., a retired rubber engineer from Akron who lived in Pompano Beach, Florida until his death. He attended his first meeting in 1937 at the Williams home and finally established continuous sobriety in 1941. Dr. Bob was his sponsor.
Al carried a small stack of wallet-size pictures were a sort of pictorial history of A.A. There were shots of T. Henry and Clarace Williams, Dr. Bob and Anne S., Ebby T., Bill and Lois W. and others.
But the very first picture in the stack was a portrait of Frank Buchman. Al had a stock answer for anybody who asked, "Why do you keep Frank’s picture on top?"
It was this: "Because that’s where it all began. None of this would have happened without Frank."
That’s not the whole story, of course. Many A.A. members feel that God could have used hundreds of different channels and people to bring A.A. into existence. But He apparently chose Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group. If that bothers you, take comfort in the fact that it bothered Bill W. when the Group message was first presented to him by Ebby. But didn’t it all work out in a wonderful way!
Spiritual Experience in AA
A Gift That Surpasses Understanding
The spiritual experience in AA is something quite apart from formal religion, says this priest
Volume 26 Issue 11April 1970
Frequently around the AA program we hear a person say, "The spiritual side of the program is not for me" or "I don't go for the spiritual bit. As long as I don't drink, I'm satisfied. I leave the pie-in-the-sky stuff to other people." Any such cavalier dismissal of the spiritual side of our program makes me wince a little and feel a bit sorry for this person. This sense of pity and sorrow is the more intense and poignant the longer the person has been in the program.
In most cases, I have good reason to suspect that this man or woman is unwittingly confusing formal religion with what we call the spiritual side of the program. To my mind, he is unconsciously rebelling against the possibility of his being soft-soaped into embracing the creed, code, and cult of some particular religious denomination and then being wheedled into a kind of dogmatic straitjacket. For him, the word "spiritual" has overtones of something soft, hypocritical, less-than-virile, because it can evoke images of "church mice" with hands folded, eyes down, grim faces that seem to say, "Remember death!" And, understandably, he wants nothing to do with these creeps.
Yet I am quite sure that such a person, like the rest of us, would be quick to deny that he came into AA primarily because he had a religious problem. I have never yet met anyone who crawled into AA because he couldn't understand the infallibility of the Pope or the source of authority in the Protestant or Jewish faith. I seriously doubt, too, that any atheist has come into our program to get a black or white answer to the question of God's existence.
When I first came into AA, the good people in the program told me that, if I was alcoholic, I had a very real sickness, that I was sick physically, mentally, and spiritually. I do not remember anyone ever telling me that I was sick religiously or that, because I was a priest, I could not be sick spiritually. And how right they were in refraining from saying that I was sick religiously! In my descent down the skids of booze and pills, I never had any serious difficulty with my religion or my priesthood. It is true that I was less than vigorous in the practice of both, but I sensed that my sickness was on a level much more basic than these.
And yet it was by no means clear to me what it meant for me to be spiritually sick and at the same time not to be religiously sick. Like many others in AA, I was uneasy with the word "spiritual" as it is used in the program. But when it dawned on me that the term "spiritual" is derived from the word "spirit," things started to clear up. I was comfortable with the word "spirit," because I had lived with it all my life. This spirit, this soul, this principle of life, call it what you will, was given to me long before I had any knowledge or practice of a formal religion, long before I had the slightest idea what profession or vocation I might want to pursue.
This is the spirit that was infused into me at the moment of my conception, the thing that would automatically give me membership in the human race. This spirit is the rational part of me that endowed me with dignity, nobility, and a separate identity. My spirit or soul gave me the power to think, to make judgments, to wish, to will, to love, to reach out for the infinite. This spirit of mine gave me all these wonderful powers and something more--it gave me my total personality, which in the years to come would be molded and shaped, for better or worse, by environment, education, and circumstances.
The environment, education, and circumstances of the intervening years can be briefly telescoped. I had all the advantages of a good home, a better-than-ordinary education, a life with pleasant surroundings. My priesthood, which I loved (and still love dearly!), should have enhanced all these advantages. But life does not always work according to a definite blueprint.
Somewhere along the line, fears, self-doubt, and a sense of inadequacy began to manifest themselves. Then I discovered those two "friends," alcohol and tranquilizers, which seemed to quiet the fears and self-doubt and restore the sense of adequacy. The classical, insidious pattern started to form and continued growing over a long period: more and deeper fears, loss of interest in work and in life, gradual withdrawal from people and activities, deep-seated loneliness, panic, near despair. In this process of slow death, there was no one to whom I could turn except my two "friends."
The climax was occasioned by an enforced withdrawal from both the alcohol and the pills during hospitalization for major surgery. I went into dt's for a period of eleven days. After emerging from this pleasant interlude, I was immediately shipped to a "special-type" hospital (nut factory). About six weeks after being released from this institution, I went in and out of hallucinations, a delayed withdrawal symptom, and I soon found myself in the alcoholic ward of a state mental hospital. It was here that AA came to me.
Life had taken a tremendous toll on my spirit, my soul. I came into AA broken in spirit, soul-sick. If the ray of hope that I heard had worked for so many thousands in AA was to warm up my heart and light up my life, it would have to penetrate, not into the areas of my religion and my priesthood, but into the much deeper, more basic area where I was really sick--into my human spirit. Had there been in the AA program any suggestion of theology, formal or otherwise, I would have picked up my weak carcass and broken spirit and headed back to the desert outside. Having formally studied theology for four years under good professors, I was, according to ordinary standards, something of a professional theologian. At that time, I needed more theology about as much as I needed a third thumb.
What I did need and need desperately was, not more knowledge about God, but, with God's help, a deep, penetrating knowledge about myself. How could I learn to live, not ecstatically nor even euphorically, but with at least a modicum of peace? How could this spirit of mine find some kind of interest, enthusiasm, self-fulfillment? I was to discover that AA had the answer for this plain, ordinary, human craving of my heart.
I followed the suggestions of the AA people in the hope that I might emerge from the jungle, as they had, and enjoy a kind of resurrection. I went and still go to many meetings; I talked with many people, a newly discovered pleasure; I read a great deal of the available AA literature. These were immensely helpful and will always be necessary for me, to a certain extent. But if these techniques are to have any real meaning, body, and flavor for me, they must rest on something as substantial, vigorous, and life-giving as the Twelve Steps. When I studied and started to live these Steps, it became clear that, at least for me, the "spiritual awakening" mentioned in the Twelfth Step had to mean "an awakening of the spirit"--i.e., no matter how swift or prolonged the process might be, I had to come awake, alive in my spirit as a human being. From that time on, I have had very few, if any, hang-ups with the word "spiritual" as used in the AA program.
I was greatly impressed with the order, the logic, and the thoroughness of the Steps. They seemed to be an all-or-nothing deal. If I had taken the First Step and settled for that, I would have been guilty of the "selective surrender" spoken of by that pioneer friend of AA, Dr. Harry M. Tiebout. In his wonderfully perceptive brochure "The Act of Surrender in the Therapeutic Process," he makes this comment about one of his patients: "His surrender is not to life as a person, but to alcohol as an alcoholic."
Had I merely surrendered to alcohol as an alcoholic, this would have been good, but not nearly good enough. True, it would have meant that alcohol and pills, two deadly substances for me, would have gone out of my life--no small blessing! But the trouble with me was that everything was going out of my life--friends, activities, my sense of values, the meaning of life, love, laughter, and beauty. My human spirit was indeed desert-dry, and now, with booze and pills gone, it would seem a more arid, barren wasteland. If I was to recover the wholeness, the oneness of my personality, if I truly wanted a rebirth of my human spirit, a taste of the joy of living, then, in accordance with Dr. Tiebout's formula, I had to surrender, not only to alcohol as an alcoholic, but to life as a person.
But Chapter V of the Big Book, "How It Works," assured me that this awakening of the spirit was the natural, orderly result of studying and living the Twelve Steps. "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path," it says. Here was a safe, secure, comfortable framework within which I could move forward gradually and gracefully toward a new way of life, toward something of the peace and serenity that I saw in other AA people. Here was a mode of living fashioned, not from pure theory nor in the halls of academe, but from the rough, tough, raw experience in life of the first hundred members of AA, who had desperately wanted the same kind of awakening of the spirit that I was searching for.
This awakening of the spirit is set down so naturally and confidently in the Twelfth Step that it seems to carry this implicit warning: "If you are not having at least the beginnings of a spiritual awakening, it would be well to look back over the Steps and find out where you are failing." And there are no qualifying words, such as "maybe," "perhaps," or "perchance." On the other hand, there is a kind of built-in guarantee that, if you are living the Steps to the best of your ability, no matter how difficult it may be at times, you will eventually have this awakening of the spirit. What a tremendous source of encouragement!
It should not surprise us that the idea of God and our complete dependence on Him for recovery should be woven into the Steps. God has many kinds of presence. He has a general presence, by which He is present at every moment in every nook and cranny of the universe. He has many kinds of special presence, by which He is present to different groups who are trying to do something in His name. We can say that God is present with a special presence in a church congregation when its members are gathered to honor and worship Him according to the dictates of their conscience and the rites of their particular denomination. God is certainly present with a special presence to the heads of governments who are honestly seeking ways and means of promoting justice and peace. He is present by a special presence to any society, fellowship, or family that is gathered together in His name to work out some problem or achieve some worthwhile goal. Should it surprise us, then, that God is present by a special presence in AA, which is "a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism"? Indeed, since alcoholism is such a destructive, insidious, baffling disease, would it be an exaggeration to say that God is present to us in AA by a very special presence?
Yet this special presence of God in AA says nothing about our religious creed, code, or cult. It imposes no theology on anyone. It says one thing clear and loud: If you have a problem with alcohol and if you wish to do something about it within AA, then you, too, can partake of this special presence of God in this Fellowship. "If a drunk, fallen-away Catholic comes into AA and if he works the program with God's grace to the best of his ability, he will emerge as a sober, fallen-away Catholic. But the difference is infinite." Such is the astute observation of a priest friend of mine, who is very knowledgeable both in things AA and in things theological. This observation would be as true, it seems to me, whether the person was Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, or atheist, provided that he recognized his need for a Power greater than himself.
Should a man, after attaining a length of solid sobriety, wish to return to the practice of some formal religion in a particular denomination, this would be fine with AA. But, it would seem, such a return would require another special type of God's presence, outside the ambit and concern of AA.
I feel that anyone who comes into AA wants to "get better," whatever this term may specifically mean to him. It may mean getting out of trouble, placating the family or others, retaining his sanity, etc. The reason for a person's coming into AA is not important; any reason or even excuse will suffice. But it strikes me that the reason for his or her staying in AA is immensely important. Getting out of trouble, placating the family or the superior, etc.--all of these may be good for the time being. But for the sustained, lifetime work of handling this deadly, progressive disease of alcoholism, experience has shown that such motives are inadequate, short-lived, or too fragile; they do not meet the problem head-on, and under pressure they will snap or wither. The family, the boss, the probation officer, collectively or singly, are not the problem.
The problem is me (ungrammatical and humiliating as this may be). I am truly grateful that there was a fellowship, a group of warm, understanding people, to whom I could bring this "problem of me." Nobody lectured me; nobody gave me the moral wheeze; nor, on the other hand, did anybody stand in awe of me. The black suit and the Roman collar were merely the accidental and, therefore, unimportant attire of a sick human being. The important concern of the AAs was to reassure me that they knew what and how I was suffering and that I would "get better," as they had.
I somehow sensed immediately that the God of my understanding was present in AA by a special presence, a presence by which I could ask for and receive graces to handle my alcoholic problem, a presence that gave me these graces with and through AA people. I am grateful that within this apparently formless AA Fellowship, where only "suggestions" are made (famous last words!), there was a structured program of recovery where I would not be on my own. The Twelve Steps were there to guide me. And just over the horizon in the Twelfth Step was the promise, almost the guarantee, of something for which I had been searching over the years--a spiritual awakening!
Whatever this spiritual awakening may mean to anyone else in AA, to me it means that the God of my understanding has given me, by His special presence in AA and through AA people and the Twelve Steps, a gift that surpasses understanding--an awakening of my human spirit!
A Priest
The spiritual experience in AA is something quite apart from formal religion, says this priest
Volume 26 Issue 11April 1970
Frequently around the AA program we hear a person say, "The spiritual side of the program is not for me" or "I don't go for the spiritual bit. As long as I don't drink, I'm satisfied. I leave the pie-in-the-sky stuff to other people." Any such cavalier dismissal of the spiritual side of our program makes me wince a little and feel a bit sorry for this person. This sense of pity and sorrow is the more intense and poignant the longer the person has been in the program.
In most cases, I have good reason to suspect that this man or woman is unwittingly confusing formal religion with what we call the spiritual side of the program. To my mind, he is unconsciously rebelling against the possibility of his being soft-soaped into embracing the creed, code, and cult of some particular religious denomination and then being wheedled into a kind of dogmatic straitjacket. For him, the word "spiritual" has overtones of something soft, hypocritical, less-than-virile, because it can evoke images of "church mice" with hands folded, eyes down, grim faces that seem to say, "Remember death!" And, understandably, he wants nothing to do with these creeps.
Yet I am quite sure that such a person, like the rest of us, would be quick to deny that he came into AA primarily because he had a religious problem. I have never yet met anyone who crawled into AA because he couldn't understand the infallibility of the Pope or the source of authority in the Protestant or Jewish faith. I seriously doubt, too, that any atheist has come into our program to get a black or white answer to the question of God's existence.
When I first came into AA, the good people in the program told me that, if I was alcoholic, I had a very real sickness, that I was sick physically, mentally, and spiritually. I do not remember anyone ever telling me that I was sick religiously or that, because I was a priest, I could not be sick spiritually. And how right they were in refraining from saying that I was sick religiously! In my descent down the skids of booze and pills, I never had any serious difficulty with my religion or my priesthood. It is true that I was less than vigorous in the practice of both, but I sensed that my sickness was on a level much more basic than these.
And yet it was by no means clear to me what it meant for me to be spiritually sick and at the same time not to be religiously sick. Like many others in AA, I was uneasy with the word "spiritual" as it is used in the program. But when it dawned on me that the term "spiritual" is derived from the word "spirit," things started to clear up. I was comfortable with the word "spirit," because I had lived with it all my life. This spirit, this soul, this principle of life, call it what you will, was given to me long before I had any knowledge or practice of a formal religion, long before I had the slightest idea what profession or vocation I might want to pursue.
This is the spirit that was infused into me at the moment of my conception, the thing that would automatically give me membership in the human race. This spirit is the rational part of me that endowed me with dignity, nobility, and a separate identity. My spirit or soul gave me the power to think, to make judgments, to wish, to will, to love, to reach out for the infinite. This spirit of mine gave me all these wonderful powers and something more--it gave me my total personality, which in the years to come would be molded and shaped, for better or worse, by environment, education, and circumstances.
The environment, education, and circumstances of the intervening years can be briefly telescoped. I had all the advantages of a good home, a better-than-ordinary education, a life with pleasant surroundings. My priesthood, which I loved (and still love dearly!), should have enhanced all these advantages. But life does not always work according to a definite blueprint.
Somewhere along the line, fears, self-doubt, and a sense of inadequacy began to manifest themselves. Then I discovered those two "friends," alcohol and tranquilizers, which seemed to quiet the fears and self-doubt and restore the sense of adequacy. The classical, insidious pattern started to form and continued growing over a long period: more and deeper fears, loss of interest in work and in life, gradual withdrawal from people and activities, deep-seated loneliness, panic, near despair. In this process of slow death, there was no one to whom I could turn except my two "friends."
The climax was occasioned by an enforced withdrawal from both the alcohol and the pills during hospitalization for major surgery. I went into dt's for a period of eleven days. After emerging from this pleasant interlude, I was immediately shipped to a "special-type" hospital (nut factory). About six weeks after being released from this institution, I went in and out of hallucinations, a delayed withdrawal symptom, and I soon found myself in the alcoholic ward of a state mental hospital. It was here that AA came to me.
Life had taken a tremendous toll on my spirit, my soul. I came into AA broken in spirit, soul-sick. If the ray of hope that I heard had worked for so many thousands in AA was to warm up my heart and light up my life, it would have to penetrate, not into the areas of my religion and my priesthood, but into the much deeper, more basic area where I was really sick--into my human spirit. Had there been in the AA program any suggestion of theology, formal or otherwise, I would have picked up my weak carcass and broken spirit and headed back to the desert outside. Having formally studied theology for four years under good professors, I was, according to ordinary standards, something of a professional theologian. At that time, I needed more theology about as much as I needed a third thumb.
What I did need and need desperately was, not more knowledge about God, but, with God's help, a deep, penetrating knowledge about myself. How could I learn to live, not ecstatically nor even euphorically, but with at least a modicum of peace? How could this spirit of mine find some kind of interest, enthusiasm, self-fulfillment? I was to discover that AA had the answer for this plain, ordinary, human craving of my heart.
I followed the suggestions of the AA people in the hope that I might emerge from the jungle, as they had, and enjoy a kind of resurrection. I went and still go to many meetings; I talked with many people, a newly discovered pleasure; I read a great deal of the available AA literature. These were immensely helpful and will always be necessary for me, to a certain extent. But if these techniques are to have any real meaning, body, and flavor for me, they must rest on something as substantial, vigorous, and life-giving as the Twelve Steps. When I studied and started to live these Steps, it became clear that, at least for me, the "spiritual awakening" mentioned in the Twelfth Step had to mean "an awakening of the spirit"--i.e., no matter how swift or prolonged the process might be, I had to come awake, alive in my spirit as a human being. From that time on, I have had very few, if any, hang-ups with the word "spiritual" as used in the AA program.
I was greatly impressed with the order, the logic, and the thoroughness of the Steps. They seemed to be an all-or-nothing deal. If I had taken the First Step and settled for that, I would have been guilty of the "selective surrender" spoken of by that pioneer friend of AA, Dr. Harry M. Tiebout. In his wonderfully perceptive brochure "The Act of Surrender in the Therapeutic Process," he makes this comment about one of his patients: "His surrender is not to life as a person, but to alcohol as an alcoholic."
Had I merely surrendered to alcohol as an alcoholic, this would have been good, but not nearly good enough. True, it would have meant that alcohol and pills, two deadly substances for me, would have gone out of my life--no small blessing! But the trouble with me was that everything was going out of my life--friends, activities, my sense of values, the meaning of life, love, laughter, and beauty. My human spirit was indeed desert-dry, and now, with booze and pills gone, it would seem a more arid, barren wasteland. If I was to recover the wholeness, the oneness of my personality, if I truly wanted a rebirth of my human spirit, a taste of the joy of living, then, in accordance with Dr. Tiebout's formula, I had to surrender, not only to alcohol as an alcoholic, but to life as a person.
But Chapter V of the Big Book, "How It Works," assured me that this awakening of the spirit was the natural, orderly result of studying and living the Twelve Steps. "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path," it says. Here was a safe, secure, comfortable framework within which I could move forward gradually and gracefully toward a new way of life, toward something of the peace and serenity that I saw in other AA people. Here was a mode of living fashioned, not from pure theory nor in the halls of academe, but from the rough, tough, raw experience in life of the first hundred members of AA, who had desperately wanted the same kind of awakening of the spirit that I was searching for.
This awakening of the spirit is set down so naturally and confidently in the Twelfth Step that it seems to carry this implicit warning: "If you are not having at least the beginnings of a spiritual awakening, it would be well to look back over the Steps and find out where you are failing." And there are no qualifying words, such as "maybe," "perhaps," or "perchance." On the other hand, there is a kind of built-in guarantee that, if you are living the Steps to the best of your ability, no matter how difficult it may be at times, you will eventually have this awakening of the spirit. What a tremendous source of encouragement!
It should not surprise us that the idea of God and our complete dependence on Him for recovery should be woven into the Steps. God has many kinds of presence. He has a general presence, by which He is present at every moment in every nook and cranny of the universe. He has many kinds of special presence, by which He is present to different groups who are trying to do something in His name. We can say that God is present with a special presence in a church congregation when its members are gathered to honor and worship Him according to the dictates of their conscience and the rites of their particular denomination. God is certainly present with a special presence to the heads of governments who are honestly seeking ways and means of promoting justice and peace. He is present by a special presence to any society, fellowship, or family that is gathered together in His name to work out some problem or achieve some worthwhile goal. Should it surprise us, then, that God is present by a special presence in AA, which is "a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism"? Indeed, since alcoholism is such a destructive, insidious, baffling disease, would it be an exaggeration to say that God is present to us in AA by a very special presence?
Yet this special presence of God in AA says nothing about our religious creed, code, or cult. It imposes no theology on anyone. It says one thing clear and loud: If you have a problem with alcohol and if you wish to do something about it within AA, then you, too, can partake of this special presence of God in this Fellowship. "If a drunk, fallen-away Catholic comes into AA and if he works the program with God's grace to the best of his ability, he will emerge as a sober, fallen-away Catholic. But the difference is infinite." Such is the astute observation of a priest friend of mine, who is very knowledgeable both in things AA and in things theological. This observation would be as true, it seems to me, whether the person was Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, or atheist, provided that he recognized his need for a Power greater than himself.
Should a man, after attaining a length of solid sobriety, wish to return to the practice of some formal religion in a particular denomination, this would be fine with AA. But, it would seem, such a return would require another special type of God's presence, outside the ambit and concern of AA.
I feel that anyone who comes into AA wants to "get better," whatever this term may specifically mean to him. It may mean getting out of trouble, placating the family or others, retaining his sanity, etc. The reason for a person's coming into AA is not important; any reason or even excuse will suffice. But it strikes me that the reason for his or her staying in AA is immensely important. Getting out of trouble, placating the family or the superior, etc.--all of these may be good for the time being. But for the sustained, lifetime work of handling this deadly, progressive disease of alcoholism, experience has shown that such motives are inadequate, short-lived, or too fragile; they do not meet the problem head-on, and under pressure they will snap or wither. The family, the boss, the probation officer, collectively or singly, are not the problem.
The problem is me (ungrammatical and humiliating as this may be). I am truly grateful that there was a fellowship, a group of warm, understanding people, to whom I could bring this "problem of me." Nobody lectured me; nobody gave me the moral wheeze; nor, on the other hand, did anybody stand in awe of me. The black suit and the Roman collar were merely the accidental and, therefore, unimportant attire of a sick human being. The important concern of the AAs was to reassure me that they knew what and how I was suffering and that I would "get better," as they had.
I somehow sensed immediately that the God of my understanding was present in AA by a special presence, a presence by which I could ask for and receive graces to handle my alcoholic problem, a presence that gave me these graces with and through AA people. I am grateful that within this apparently formless AA Fellowship, where only "suggestions" are made (famous last words!), there was a structured program of recovery where I would not be on my own. The Twelve Steps were there to guide me. And just over the horizon in the Twelfth Step was the promise, almost the guarantee, of something for which I had been searching over the years--a spiritual awakening!
Whatever this spiritual awakening may mean to anyone else in AA, to me it means that the God of my understanding has given me, by His special presence in AA and through AA people and the Twelve Steps, a gift that surpasses understanding--an awakening of my human spirit!
A Priest
The Lord's Prayer is a part of A.A.
A Contradiction in Terms?
See Big Book Pages 270, 291, 381 of the 3rd Edition.
Volume 55 Issue 9February 1999
In most meetings, the Lord's Prayer is the official close of the meeting. I think that the recitation of a prayer from a specific religion is a violation of tradition, and diverts us from our singleness of purpose. I also believe it is disrespectful to persons of other faiths for us to assume that everybody sitting in the room is a Christian. I wonder how many newcomers of other religions (or those having none at all) are uncomfortable with the Christian ritual, and perhaps do not come back.
Page xiv of the Big Book states: "The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. We are not allied with any particular faith, sect or denomination,. . ." Page xx says: "Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization." Page 12 says: "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?. . . It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning." Page 46 says that "the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men." Page 47 says: "When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God."
The long form of Tradition Ten declares: "No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues--particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion." The long form of Tradition Three says: "Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation."
I have heard people talk about Jesus Christ during meetings, something other members get upset about. But I'm afraid we should expect that. After all, by incorporating the most well-known Christian prayer into our meetings, are we not endorsing that particular religion? If I walk into a room full of people who are reciting a Christian prayer, I am naturally going to assume that they are Christians; therefore, Jesus Christ may be a natural topic of discussion. Do we have a right to be angry with members who talk about Jesus, when we are using a Christian prayer to close the meeting?
The "Twelve and Twelve" discussion of Tradition Three says, "Why did we dare to say. . .that we would neither punish nor deprive any AA of membership, that we must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything, or conform to anything?" But we do. When discussing God, who is referred to as "He," it's pretty obvious that we are referring to the Judeo-Christian concept of God. Even though we encourage newcomers to "find a God of their own understanding," we have already decided what that concept of God should be.
I've discussed this with many other members. I've asked them why, if we claim not to be a religious organization, we say a Christian prayer during the meeting. Nobody has been able to answer the question. The only reply I got was, "It's always been done that way." That does not address the contradiction. We are saying one thing and doing something else. We are claiming to be nonreligious while incorporating a prayer from a particular religious denomination into our meeting. We can't have it both ways--we should either quit saying the prayer, or quit claiming to be nonreligious and nondenominational. If we're going to be Christian, okay, but let's quit denying it!
To claim that we aren't a religious organization while making a Christian prayer an official part of the meeting seems to me a very blatant hypocrisy. However, I certainly don't want to build up such a resentment over it that I stop attending meetings. That would only hurt me, because if I quit going to meetings I will drink, and if I drink I will die. I know that AA is the only way I can continue to enjoy life as I do now. As one of my friends said, "AA is not perfect, but it's all I've got."
I have neither the time, nor the youthful energy to embark on a crusade to ban the Lord's Prayer from meetings. But I myself do not have to be a hypocrite. When people ask me if AA is a religious organization, I say, "It wasn't supposed to be, but somehow it turned out to be Christian."
Donna F.
Georgia
See Big Book Pages 270, 291, 381 of the 3rd Edition.
Volume 55 Issue 9February 1999
In most meetings, the Lord's Prayer is the official close of the meeting. I think that the recitation of a prayer from a specific religion is a violation of tradition, and diverts us from our singleness of purpose. I also believe it is disrespectful to persons of other faiths for us to assume that everybody sitting in the room is a Christian. I wonder how many newcomers of other religions (or those having none at all) are uncomfortable with the Christian ritual, and perhaps do not come back.
Page xiv of the Big Book states: "The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. We are not allied with any particular faith, sect or denomination,. . ." Page xx says: "Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization." Page 12 says: "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?. . . It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning." Page 46 says that "the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men." Page 47 says: "When, therefore, we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God."
The long form of Tradition Ten declares: "No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues--particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion." The long form of Tradition Three says: "Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation."
I have heard people talk about Jesus Christ during meetings, something other members get upset about. But I'm afraid we should expect that. After all, by incorporating the most well-known Christian prayer into our meetings, are we not endorsing that particular religion? If I walk into a room full of people who are reciting a Christian prayer, I am naturally going to assume that they are Christians; therefore, Jesus Christ may be a natural topic of discussion. Do we have a right to be angry with members who talk about Jesus, when we are using a Christian prayer to close the meeting?
The "Twelve and Twelve" discussion of Tradition Three says, "Why did we dare to say. . .that we would neither punish nor deprive any AA of membership, that we must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything, or conform to anything?" But we do. When discussing God, who is referred to as "He," it's pretty obvious that we are referring to the Judeo-Christian concept of God. Even though we encourage newcomers to "find a God of their own understanding," we have already decided what that concept of God should be.
I've discussed this with many other members. I've asked them why, if we claim not to be a religious organization, we say a Christian prayer during the meeting. Nobody has been able to answer the question. The only reply I got was, "It's always been done that way." That does not address the contradiction. We are saying one thing and doing something else. We are claiming to be nonreligious while incorporating a prayer from a particular religious denomination into our meeting. We can't have it both ways--we should either quit saying the prayer, or quit claiming to be nonreligious and nondenominational. If we're going to be Christian, okay, but let's quit denying it!
To claim that we aren't a religious organization while making a Christian prayer an official part of the meeting seems to me a very blatant hypocrisy. However, I certainly don't want to build up such a resentment over it that I stop attending meetings. That would only hurt me, because if I quit going to meetings I will drink, and if I drink I will die. I know that AA is the only way I can continue to enjoy life as I do now. As one of my friends said, "AA is not perfect, but it's all I've got."
I have neither the time, nor the youthful energy to embark on a crusade to ban the Lord's Prayer from meetings. But I myself do not have to be a hypocrite. When people ask me if AA is a religious organization, I say, "It wasn't supposed to be, but somehow it turned out to be Christian."
Donna F.
Georgia
Questions for Jehovah's Witness
101 should be asked using the NWT
These questions have been put together using information from many different sources. All verses are from the NWT so that the translation of these verses cannot be questioned by Jehovah's Witnesses. If the Watchtower Society decides to change any of these verses (like they did with Heb 1:6), then the obvious question for the individual Jehovah's Witness is why did the WTS change their own Bible.
"...keep testing whether you are in the faith" (2Cor 13:5)
1. The WTS claims it uses the Bible as it's "supreme authority". Where in the Bible does anyone count their time in preaching on a slip of paper and are assigned record cards of activity, determining this as a "gauge to their spirituality"? Where in the Bible are Pioneers, Auxiliary Pioneers, Bethelites, and Kingdom Halls? Where in the Bible does it say that anyone born after 1935 can not go to heaven, that Christians are required to attend five meetings a week, that men are prohibited from wearing beards, and that after a prophecy fails, if the prophet admits he made a mistake, he is no longer a false prophet (see Deut 18:20-22)? Where does the Bible say that a person must belong to an organization that will start in the late 19th century and be headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, in order to survive Armageddon?
2. The WTS teaches that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not reside with Christ in his heavenly kingdom. If this is so, then how do you explain Mt 8:11 in which Jesus says, "But I tell you that many from eastern parts and western parts will come and recline at the table WITH Abraham and Isaac and Jacob IN the kingdom of the heavens"?
3. If there is no conscious awareness after death, how could the "spirits in prison", who lived during "Noah’s days", be preached to by Christ after His death (1Pet 3:18-20) and how could the good news be "declared also to the dead" (1 Pet 4:5-6)? If the "spirits in prison" of 1Pet 3:19 refers to demonic angels, instead of the just people who died before the resurrection of Christ, then why would Jesus "preach" to demonic angels?
4. Is it true that the WTS's prophecy that Armageddon will come before "the end of the generation of 1914" (You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth, pg 154), is no longer taught as "the Truth"? If so, then does this mean that this teaching of the WTS, which they have taught as "the Truth" for decades, was really a false teaching? Since the WTS claims that they are the "one channel that the Lord is using during the last days of this system of things" (Jehovah's Witnesses-Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, pg 626) and that the governing body is "the mouthpiece of Jehovah God", does this mean that God changed His mind about this teaching and the definition of "generation"? Is it possible that God could change His mind? Has the WTS ever changed their mind before about a teaching that they once taught as "the Truth"? The WTS has taught that Armageddon was going to occur in:1914 - The Time Is At Hand, 1888 (1911 ed.), pg 101; Zion 's Watchtower, 1/15/1892, pg22 1915 - The Time Is At Hand, 1915 edition, pg. 991918 - The Finished Mystery, 1917, pg 62, 4851925 - Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920, pg 89-90, Watchtower, 7/15/24, pg 2111931 - Vindication, Book 1, pg. 147WWII - Watchtower, 9/15/41, pg 2881975 - Kingdom Ministry, 6/69, pg 3; AWAKE!, 10/8/68, etc."Before the end of the generation of 1914" - You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth, pg 154In addition, the WTS claims that it is the "mouthpiece for Jehovah", "God’s one and only channel of communication to the world", etc., clearly claiming to speak for God. Since Deut 18:20-22 says that a false prophet is anyone who claims to speak for God and makes a prophecy that does not come true, doesn’t this make the WTS a modern day false prophet according to scripture? Can a true prophet make even ONE false prophecy? What does scripture say about false prophets? See Mt 7:15, 24:11, Mk 13:22, 2Pet 2:1, 1Jn 4:1, Rev 16:13-14, 19:20, 20:10. Why would anyone willingly follow an organization that has repeatedly proven itself to be a false prophet, according to biblical standards? Since God does not tell lies or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), and since it is clear that the WTS could not have possibly been speaking for God when they made these false prophecies, then how do you know that the WTS is speaking for God now? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15. To review many direct quotes from the WTS, click: WTS Quotes
5. If the spirit of a man has no existence apart from the body, why does Stephen just before his death in Acts 7:59, pray to Jesus to "receive my spirit"? How could Jesus, who was in heaven, receive Stephen's spirit if a man's spirit ceases to exist when the body dies and if no one could enter heaven until the year 1914? Similarly, if the soul ceases to exist after the death of the body, why does Paul say that he would rather be "absent from the body" so he could go make his "home with the Lord" (2Cor 5:8), and why would he say that he would rather depart from this life so that he could go be with Christ (Phil 1:23)? How could Paul be "with Christ" and make his "home with the Lord" if no one could enter heaven until 1914?
6. On page 7 of the booklet Should You Believe in the Trinity?, unreferenced quotes from Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen are made. Why are these quotes unreferenced? Also on page 7 of this same booklet, the statement is made, "Thus, the testimony of the Bible and of history makes it clear that the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for SEVERAL CENTURIES thereafter." Based on the quotes below, how can the Watchtower Society make these claims?
Justin Martyr (110-165 AD):"... nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God." - First Apology of Justin, Ch LXIII; "... but now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and the Lord of hosts ..." - Dialogue with Trypho, Ch XXXVI; "Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is witnessed to by Him who established these things, as deserving to be worshipped, as God and as Christ." - Ibid, Ch LXIII. Irenaeus (120-202 AD):"... and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King ..." - Against Heresies, Bk 1, Ch 10; "But that He is in His own right , beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets and apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth." - Against Heresies, Bk 3, Ch 19.
Clement of Alexandria (153-217 AD):"For 'before the morning star it was;' and 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'" and "This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man ..." and "The Word, who in the beginning bestowed on us life as Creator when He formed us, taught us to live well when He appeared as our Teacher; that as God He might afterwards conduct us to the life which never ends." - Exhortation to the Heathen, Ch 1.
Tertullian (145-220 AD):"Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the virgin, and to have been born of her - being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ." and "... while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing them in their order the three Persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ..." - Against Praxeas, Ch 2; "With these did He then speak, in the Unity of the Trinity, as with His ministers and witnesses." and "...I mean the Word of God, 'through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.' Now if He too is God, according to John (who says) 'The Word was God'..." - Against Praxeas, Ch 12.
Hippolytus (170-236 AD):"For he speaks to this effect: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'" and "...'Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' And by this He showed, that whosoever omitted any one of these, failed in glorifying God perfectly. For it is through this Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth." - Against the Heresy of One Noetus, Ch 14; "For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings." - The Refutation of All Heresies, Bk 10, Ch 30.
Origen (185-254 AD):"From all which we learn that the person of the Holy Spirit was of such authority and dignity, that saving baptism was not complete except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of them all ..." - Origen de Principiis, 1.3.2; "For it is one and the same thing to have a share in the Holy Spirit, which is (the Spirit) of the Father and the Son, since the nature of the Trinity is one and incorporeal." - Origen de Principiis, 4.1.32
To read the entire text containing the above quotes online, go to Early Church Fathers After reading pg 7 of Should You Believe In The Trinity? and then reading the quotes above, do you feel that the WTS was in any way deceptive by using "quotes" from these early Christian writers to support their teachings? If yes, then why does the WTS need to engage in deception if it teaches "the Truth"? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15.
7. The Bible says in Zeph 1:18, "…but by the fire of his zeal THE WHOLE EARTH WILL BE DEVOURED, because he will make an EXTERMINATION, indeed a terrible one, of ALL the inhabitants of the earth." If the WTS’s teaching that the present earth will never be destroyed or depopulated is correct, then why does the Bible say that the "whole earth" will be "devoured", and "all" the inhabitants of the earth will be exterminated? What do the words "devoured" and "all" mean to you? How can a great crowd of people continue to live on forever in paradise on earth after Armageddon if "ALL the inhabitants of the earth" will be exterminated?
8. If the dead will be resurrected during the millennial reign of Christ and judged according to their deeds during that time, why does the Bible explicitly say in Rev 20:4-5 that the "(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended)"? How could they be judged according to their deeds during the 1,000 year reign of Christ, if they will not come to life until after this period is over? Why does the NWT have parentheses around this verse? Similarly, if the dead will be resurrected during the millennial reign of Christ and judged according to their deeds during that time, why does the Bible say that the dead will come out of their tombs and "those who did (past tense) good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced (past tense) vile things to a resurrection of judgement" (Jn 5:28-29), and why does the Bible say that men are "to die once" and "after this (ie. death) a judgment" (Heb 9:27)?
9. The forward to the Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT),1985 edition, on page 8 states, "Our primary desire has been to seek not the approval of men but that of God, by rendering the truth of his inspired Word as purely and as consistently as our dedicated abilities make possible. There is no benefit in self-deception." On page 9 it is stated, "We offer no paraphrase of the Scriptures. Our endeavor throughout has been to give as literal a translation as possible where the modern English idiom allows for it or where the thought content is not hidden due to any awkwardness in the literal rendition. In this way, we can best meet the desire of those who are scrupulous for getting, as nearly as possible word for word, the exact statement of the original." The NWT translates Jn 14:14 as, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it completely omit the word "me" after the phrase "If you ask", even though the word "me" is in the original Greek. See Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT). If the NWT correctly translated Jn 14:14 from the original Greek and included the word "me" after "ask" in this verse, how would this verse read? How could a person "ask" Jesus for something without praying to him? How can the NWT be "rendering the truth of his inspired Word as purely" as possible , and how can it be "as literal a translation as possible" when the "translators" knowingly omit this word ("me") so that this verse does not contradict the teachings of the WTS?
10. If the present earth will never be destroyed or depopulated, why does Zeph 1:2-3 say, "I shall without fail finish everything off the surface of the ground,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘I shall finish off earthling man and beast… and I will cut off mankind from the surface of the ground, is the utterance of Jehovah"? The Hebrew word translated here as "finish off" in the NWT is "cuwph" (Strong’s # 05486) which means "to cease; to come to an end", according to Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary. How can this be if the WTS is correct and faithful Witnesses will survive Armageddon and live forever in paradise on the present earth? In addition, Isa 65:17 says, "For here I am creating new heavens and a NEW earth, and the former things will not be called to mind…" If the present earth will never be destroyed, why will God be "creating" a "new" earth? Notice that this verse does not say "cleanse", but "create". What do the words "create" and "new" mean to you? Similarly, 2Pet 3:10-13 says, "Yet Jehovah’s day will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass a way with a hissing noise, but the elements being intensely hot will be dissolved, and the earth and the works in it will be discovered. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be… through which [the] heavens being on fire will be dissolved and [the] elements being intensely hot will melt! But there are new heavens and a NEW EARTH that we are awaiting, according to his promise…" How can people live forever in paradise on this present earth, if the earth will "be dissolved" and "melt" and if we are awaiting a "new" earth?
11. The WTS claims that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E. and uses Dan 4:23-25, Rev 12:6, 14, Num 14:34, and Ezek 4:6 to come up with 1914 C.E., which is 2,520 years later, as the year that Jesus began his reign in heaven. If the WTS’s claim that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E. is correct, then why is it that every reference source, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, Microsoft Encarta, The World Book Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Compton’s Encyclopedia, Acedemic American Encyclopedia, Cambridge Ancient History – Vol. III, The Oxford Dictionary of World History, etc, etc, all state that Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC? If the WTS is correct that Christ’s reign in heaven started 2,520 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, shouldn’t this event have occurred in 1935 instead of 1914? Should we view the overwhelming opinion of essentially every historian who is an expert on ancient history, or the WTS, as unreliable?
12. According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the Greek word "heos" (Strong’s # 2193) means "till, until". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it mistranslate the Greek word "heos" in Mt 5:18 as "sooner would" instead of "until", completely changing the meaning of this verse? If the Greek word "heos" was translated correctly as "until" in this verse, what would this verse say about the future of this present earth? Why is this Greek word translated as "until" in the KIT, but rendered "sooner would" in the NWT? Why the inconsistency in the translation? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15.
13. If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal "active force", why does he speak directly and refer to himself as "I" and "me" in Acts 13:2? If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force, how could he: Be referred to as "he" and "him" in Jn 16:7- 8 and Jn 16:13-14; Bear witness (Jn 15:26, Acts 20:23); Feel hurt (Isa 63:10); Be blasphemed against (Mk 3:29, Lk 12:10); Say things (Ezek 3:24, Acts 8:29, 10:19, and Heb 10:15-17); Forbid someone to say things (Acts 16:6); Plead for us with groanings (Rom 8:26); Be tested (Acts 5:9); Send people (Acts 13:4); Be a helper (Jn 14:16, 16:7); Appoint overseers (Acts 20:28); Be outraged (Heb 10:29); Desire (Gal 5:17); Search (1Cor 2:10); Comfort (Acts 9:31); Be grieved (Eph 4:30); Be loved (Rom 15:30); Be lied to and be God (Acts 5:3-4)? What does the Bible say about those who speak against the Holy Spirit? See Mt 12:32 and Lk 12:10.
14. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the written word of God by adding the words "[in symbol]" in Mk 1:4, even though these words don’t appear in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would Mk 1:4 read if the words "[in symbol]" had not been added? In Acts 2:38, Peter says "… Repent, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ FOR FORGIVENESS OF YOUR SINS…" and in Acts 22:16, Ananias tells Paul "…Rise, get baptized and WASH YOUR SINS AWAY by calling on his name." If baptism is only a symbolic display of faith in God and does not effect the remission of sins, then why does Peter tell the people of Jerusalem to be baptized "for forgiveness of your sins" and why does Ananias tell Paul to get baptized in order to "wash your sins away"?
15. The WTS claims that Ezekiel's prophecy of the Jews returning to their land is fulfilled in their organization. Ezek 36:24, 28 says "And I will take you out of the nations and collect you together out of all the lands and bring you in upon your own soil." and "And you will certainly dwell in the land that I gave to your forefathers, and you must become my people and I myself shall become your God." If this is fulfilled in the Watchtower organization, then how are they returning to the land of CANAAN as promised to the forefathers (Ps 105:8-11)?
16. Consider also what is said concerning those who fulfill this prophecy. Ezek 36:22 says, "Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: "not for your sakes I am doing [it], 0 house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you have PROFANED among the nations where you have come in." Since the WTS claims that it is spiritual Israel and fulfils these prophecies in Ezekiel, how do Jehovah's Witnesses believe they have profaned God's name "among the nations"?
17. The NWT adds the word "[the]" to the phrase "of our God and savior Jesus Christ" in 2Pet 1:1. 2Pet 1:11, 2:20, and 3:18, which contain the same exact phrase in the Greek with the exception that these verses contain the word "lord" (kyrios) instead of the word "God" (Theos), don’t have the word "[the]" added to them. See Greek-English Interlinear. What is the reason for this gross inconsistency in translation of these phrases? How would 2 Pet 1:1 read if it had been translated the same way as 2Pet 1:11, 2:20, and 3:18, and the word "[the]" had not been added? What does scripture say about adding words to the Bible? See Prov 30:5-6.
18. Zechariah 2:10-12 says, "Cry out loudly and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for here I am coming, and I will reside in the midst of you", is the utterance of Jehovah…And you will have to know that Jehovah of armies himself has sent me to you. And Jehovah will certainly take possession of Judah…and he must yet choose Jerusalem." If Jesus and Jehovah are not one and the same God, then how do you explain the fact that Christ is the one who is "coming" and "will reside in the midst of you", but in this passage, Jehovah claims that he is the one who is coming and will reside in their midst? How do you explain the fact that "Jehovah of armies" is sending him (Jehovah) to reside in their midst?
19. Is it true that the WTS once taught that: The second presence of Christ started in 1874 (WT, 11/1/22, pgs 332-337; Prophecy, 1929, pg 65-66); Vaccinations never saved a human life, doesn’t prevent smallpox, and are condemned (Golden Age, Feb 4, 1931, pg 293-4); The great pyramid of Egypt is a witness of the Lord (WT May 15, 1925 pgs 148-9); God governs the universe from a star called Alcyone (Thy Kingdom Come, 1903 Ed, pg 327); Leviathan of the Bible is the steam locomotive (The Finished Mystery, pg 84-86); Tonsillectomy is condemned; better to commit suicide than have a tonsillectomy (GA, April 7, 1926, pg 438); In the new world, Abraham will rule New York City (GA, Oct 5, 1927, pg 26/29); The black race originated with Noah’s curse upon Canaan (GA, Jul 24, 1929, pg 702); Jews are no longer important to God (Vindication, Vol 2, pg 257-258); God wears clothes (GA, May 19, 1926, pg 534); The WTS stands for the principles of Nazi Germany (Yearbook 1934, pg 134-137); Aspirin is the menace of heart disease (GA, Feb 27, 1935, pg 343-4); Do not use X-rays (GA, Sept 23, 1936, pg 828); In 1938, people should not get married (Face the Facts, pg 46-50); Organ transplants were condemned as cannibalistic (WT, Nov 15, 1967, pg 702-4)? The WTS teaches that it is the mouthpiece for Jehovah and God’s one and only channel of communication to the world. Since God does not tell lies or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), and since it is clear that the WTS could not have possibly been speaking for God when they proclaimed these teachings, then how do you know that the WTS is speaking for God now? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15. To see many direct quotes from the WTS, click: WTS Quotes
20. The NWT translates the Greek word "esti" as "is" every time it appears in the New Testament (eg, Mt 26:18, 38, Mk 14:44, Lk 22:38, etc), except in Mt 26:26-28, Mk 14:22-24, and Lk 22:19 where it is rendered as "means", even though this word is translated as "is" in the Kingdom Interlinear. Why the inconsistency in the translation of the word "esti" in these verses? If the NWT were consistent and translated the Greek word "esti" as "is" in these verses, what would these verses say?
21. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the word of God by twice adding the words "relation to" in Mt 5:19, when this phrase does not exist in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would this verse read if the phrase "relation to" had not been added to it and what would this say about who can enter the kingdom of heaven? If only 144,000 people will go to heaven, why does scripture say in this verse that "ANYONE who does them (the commandments) and teaches them…" will be called great "in the kingdom of the heavens."? What does the word "anyone" mean to you?
22. If the earth will never be destroyed or depopulated, how can it be, then, that God says in Isa 51:6, "... the earth itself will wear out, and its inhabitants themselves will die like a mere gnat...", and that John says in Rev 21:1 that he saw "... a new heaven and a NEW earth; for the former heaven and the FORMER earth had passed away, and the sea is NO MORE."? Similarly, if the WTS’s teaching that the earth will never be destroyed or depopulated is correct, then why does the Bible say that "the earth itself…will perish" (Ps 102:25-26, Heb 1:10-11), and why does Jesus himself say that "Heaven and EARTH will pass away…" (Mt 24:35, Mk 13:31, Lk 21:33)? Conversly, in Eccl 1:4, Solomon says, "A generation is going and a generation is coming; but the earth is standing even to time indefinite." But didn’t Solomon write this scripture at a time in his life when he had ceased to serve the Lord and therefore wrote only his own thoughts from a very humanistic point of view? In Eccl 1:2, he states, "Everything is vanity!" and in vs 8 he says, "All things are wearisome". Since obviously not "everything" is vanity and not "all things" are wearisome to a true Christian, doesn’t this show that Solomon was speaking for himself and doesn’t this whole passage just show the futility of man without God?
23. The NWT translates the Greek word "Theos" in Jn 1:1c as "a god", but translates this same exact Greek word as "God" everywhere else it appears, (eg, Jn 3:2, 3:16, 3:17, 3:33, 3:34, 4:24, 6:27, 8:54, etc), including Jn 20:28 where this word explicitly refers to Jesus. What is the reason for this inconsistency in the translation of "Theos" in Jn 1:1c? If "Theos" was translated as "God" in Jn 1:1c like it is translated everywhere else it appears in the NWT, how would Jn 1:1 read and what would it say about the nature of Christ? Similarly, the Greek word "Theon" is translated in the NWT as "God" in almost every instance (eg, Mt 22:37, Lk 10:27, Jn 1:1b, 8:41, 14:1, 17:3, 1Jn 4:7, 4:12, 5:2, Rev 14:7, etc), but in Jn 10:33 it is translated as "a god". What is the reason for this inconsistency in the translation of the word "Theon"? If "Theon" was translated as "God" in Jn 10:33, how would this verse read and what would it say about the nature of Christ? What did Jesus say in this passage that made the Jews want to kill him? See Jn 10:30-31. The phrase "Son of God" in theological language is a semitic term which means "having the same nature as God", or being God, just as the term "Son of man" means "having the same nature as a man", or being a man. Since blasphemy is one of the few offenses in Jewish law for which a person may be stoned to death, wouldn’t this claim of Christ, that he is the Son of God, qualify as a blasphemous statement to the Jews, and wasn’t this the reason they wanted to kill him by stoning him to death (Jn 10:31, 36-39)?
24. On pgs. 66, 69, 211, 423, 560, 648, and 719 of Jehovah's Witnesses--Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, reference is made to The Finished Mystery, which was the 7th of the Studies in the Scriptures series published by the WTS in 1917 (pg 66, 719), and was the major publication of the WTS at that time. On pgs. 88, 648, and 651, a picture of this book appears, complete with the winged disk symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra on its front cover. Is it true that The Finished Mystery taught that Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and the Almighty of Rev 1:8 (pg 15), that Christ established a "Church" (pg 17), that Christ returned invisibly in 1874 (pg 54, 60, 68), that Armageddon was definitely going to occur in the spring of 1918 (pg 62 and 128), that the Holy Spirit has a personality (pg 57), that the great pyramid of Giza was God's stone witness and was used to predict the year of Armageddon (pg 60), that Christ was crucified (pg 68), that Heb 1:6 is translated, "Let all the angels of God worship him" (pg 104), that Leviathan of the Bible refers to the steam locomotive (pg 85), that Michael is the Pope of Rome and the angels are his bishops (pg 188), that Nah 2:3-6 describes the railway train (pg 93), that the great earthquake of Rev 6:12 refers literally to the Lisbon earthquake of Nov 1, 1775, and it refers symbolically to the American Revolution (pg 119), that the sun becoming black in Rev 6:12 refers literally to a dark day which occurred on May 19, 1780, and refers symbolically to the light of the papal heavens darkened when Napoleon fined the Pope 10 million dollars and took the Pope a prisoner to France (pg 120), that Christ is eternal, "the same yesterday, today, and forever. – Heb 13:8" (pg 142), and that the Seventh Volume of Studies in the Scriptures (also known as The Finished Mystery) is "Divinely provided" (pg 145)? According to "current" WTS teachings, Christ began to reign in heaven in 1914 and around 1918 chose the WTS as his earthly organization because they were the only ones teaching "the Truth". If this was so, then Jesus would have known the teachings of the WTS as put forth in The Finished Mystery, published in 1917. Do you really think that Jesus would have chosen an organization which taught so many things that were not correct according to "current" WTS teachings and are no longer taught as "the Truth"? Since God does not tell lies or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), and it is clear that the WTS could not have possibly been speaking for God when they taught these things, at least according to current WTS teachings, how do you know that the WTS is speaking for God now?
25. Isa 42:8 says, "I am Jehovah. That is my name; and to no one else shall I give my own glory…". Similarly, Isa 48:11 says, "… And to no one else shall I give my own glory." If Christ is not God, then how could he say in Jn 17:5, "So now you, Father, glorify me alongside yourself with the GLORY that I HAD alongside you before the world was"? Since God stated that no one else would have the glory that alone belonged to God, how could Christ have the same "glory" as God unless Christ is God in the flesh?
26. Phil 2:6-8 says that Christ was "existing in God’s form" before he became a man, and willingly "emptied (lowered) himself" to become a man and "humbled HIMSELF" in order to make himself subject to the Father. Scripture also says that Christ was born under the law (Gal 4:4), in order to do, not his own will, but the will of the Father (Jn 5:30, 6:37). Doesn’t this mean that before Christ lowered "himself", he would not have been subject to the Father and therefore equal to the Father in authority and glory? See also Jn 17:5
27. The NWT translates the Greek words "ego eimi" () as "I am" every time it appears in the New Testament (eg, Jn 6:35, 6:41, 8:24, 13:19, 15:5, etc.), except in Jn 8:58 where it is translated as "I have been". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible what is the reason for the inconsistency in this translation? If "ego eimi" was translated in Jn 8:58 the same way it is translated in every other verse in which it appears, how would Jn 8:58 read and what would this verse say about the nature of Christ? See Exo 3:14 in every version of the Bible except the NWT. Why is this phrase, "ego eimi" translated as "I am" in the KIT, but "I have been" in the NWT? Since "I am" is present tense, and "I have been" is past tense, which tense is correct? If the "translators" of the NWT were Greek scholars, shouldn’t they have known which tense "ego eimi" is?
28. Almost every time the Greek word "ginosko" (Strong’s # 1097) is used in the New Testament, the NWT translates it as "know" or "known" (eg, 1Cor 8:3, Gal 4:9, Jn 10:14, Jn 10:27, etc). However, in Jn 17:3, this same Greek word is rendered as "taking in knowledge of". What is the reason for the inconsistency of the translation of this word in Jn 17:3 by the NWT? If the NWT were consistent and translated this word in Jn 17:3 the same way it is translated in the other verses in which it appears, how would this verse read? In addition, the Kingdom Interlinear translates this word as "they may be KNOWING" instead of "their taking in knowledge" as it is translated in the NWT. Why the inconsistency in translation between the KIT and the NWT? If this word was translated in this verse like it is translated in the other verses in which it appears, how would this verse read? How could a person come to "know" Jesus Christ unless they have a relationship with him? How could a person have a relationship with Christ unless they communicate with Jesus through prayer?
29. If the soul is the body, why does Jesus make a distinction between the body and the soul in Mt 10:28? Similarly, if the soul is the body, why does Paul make a distinction between the "spirit and soul and body of you" in 1Thess 5:23? In addition, the NWT renders 2Tim 4:22 as, "The Lord [be] with the spirit you [show]…"even though the Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT) translates the Greek phrase "sou pneuma" as "the spirit of you". Why is there a difference between the KIT and the NWT rendition of this verse? Why does the NWT add the word "[show]" when it does not appear in the Greek? Wouldn’t the KIT version be a much simpler and straight forward rendition of this verse? If the KIT version is used, what does this verse say about the "spirit" of a person?
30. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the word of God by adding the word "[Son]" in Acts 20:28 when this word does not exist in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear.
31. In Phil 2:9, the NWT inserts the word "[other]" even though it doesn't appear in the original Greek. See Gr-Engl Interlinear. Why does the WTS alter scripture by adding the word "[other]" to this verse? Is the word "Jehovah" a name? See Exo 6:3, Ps 83:18, and Isa 42:8. How would the verse read if the word "other" had not been inserted? What does scripture say about adding words to the Bible? See Prov 30:5-6. If Christians are persecuted for the sake of Jehovah's name, why did Christ tell the first Christians that they would be persecuted for the sake of his (Jesus') name, instead of Jehovah's (Mt 24:9, Mk 13:13, Lk 21:12,17, Jn 15:21, and Acts 9:16)? If the name "Jehovah" is so important, then why does Acts 4:12 say, "Furthermore, there is no salvation in anyone else, for there is not another name (Jesus Christ vs 10) under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved"? If the teachings of the WTS are correct, would this not have been the logical place for God to have used the name "YHWH" or "Jehovah"?
32. The NWT translates Mt 25:46 as, "And these will depart into everlasting cutting-off…". The Greek word that is translated as "cutting-off" is "kolasis" (Strong # 2851). According to Strong’s Greek dictionary, this word can only mean "correction, punishment, or penalty", but no reference is made to "cutting-off". If the word "kolasis" was translated correctly as "correction, punishment, or penalty", as it should be according to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, how would this verse read?
33. According to scripture, Jesus is "the first and the last" (Rev 1:17-18), the "first and the last" is "the Alpha and Omega" (Rev 22:13), and "the Alpha and the Omega" is God (Rev 1:8). In other words, Jesus = "the first and the last" = "the Alpha and the Omega" = God. How can this be if Jesus is not God?
34. Since the WTS prohibits the use of blood transfusions, why does it permit the infusion of albumin, clotting factors, and gamma globulins, all of which are components of human blood and are derived from human blood? Since Acts 15:29 clearly refers to the old Jewish law of not EATING blood (Gen 9:4, Lev 3:17, Deut 12:16), and since the WTS has changed its teachings on other major health related issues like vaccinations, organ transplantations, and its opposition to tonsillectomies (Golden Age, 4/7/26, pg 438), etc. and simply calls these changes "New Light", how can you be sure they won't some day change their teachings on blood transfusions and refer to that change as "New Light" also?
35. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the written word of God by adding the words "itself" and "[true]" in Eccl 12:7 when these words don’t exist in the Hebrew? How would this verse read without the addition of these words? What does scripture say about adding words to the Bible? See Prov 30:5-6. If what the WTS teaches about the spirit of man is correct, then how can the "spirit" of a man return to God after the body dies and returns to the earth?
36. The WTS book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth states on page 147, "Bible evidence shows that in the year 1914 C.E. God’s time arrived for Christ to return and begin ruling." It also states "In the same way, Christ’s return does not mean that he literally comes back to this earth. Rather, it means that he takes Kingdom power toward this earth and turns his attention to it." In 1Cor 11:26, Paul writes, "For as often as you eat this loaf and drink this cup, you keep proclaiming the death of the Lord, until he arrives." If Christ "arrived" in 1914, why do Jehovah's Witnesses continue to partake of the bread and wine? Shouldn't they have stopped in 1914?
37. In Acts 2:26-27, Peter, referring to the time the dead Jesus spent in the tomb, quotes David referring to Christ, "On this account my heart became cheerful and my tongue greatly rejoiced. Moreover, even MY FLESH WILL RESIDE IN HOPE, because you will not leave my soul in Hades…" If Jesus’ body was destroyed while he was in the tomb, why does he say that his "flesh will reside in hope"? For what "hope" was his "flesh" residing? If there is no conscious awareness after death, how could he "hope", in the first place?
38. In the NWT, every time the Greek word "proskuneo" () is used in reference to God, it is translated as "worship" (Rev 5:14, 7:11, 11:16, 19:4, Jn 4:20, etc.). Every time "proskuneo" is used in reference to Jesus, it is translated as "obeisance" (Mt 14:33, 28:9, 28:17, Lk 24:52, Heb 1:6, etc.), even though it is the same word in the Greek (see Gr-Engl Interlinear). Especially compare the Greek word "proskunhsan" used with reference to God in Rev 5:14, 7:11, 11:16, and 19:4 and the same exact word used with reference to Christ in Mt 14:33, 28:9, and 28:17. What is the reason for this inconsistency in translation? If the NWT was consistent in translating "proskuneo" as "worship", how would the verses above referring to Christ read?
39. Jesus Christ is referred to as "Mighty God" in Isa 9:6 ("For there has been a child born to us, there has been a son given to us... And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father..."). Jehovah God is referred to as "Mighty God" in Isa 10:20-21. How can this be if there is only ONE God? Jesus is also called the "Eternal Father" in Isa 9:6. Since only God is eternal, that is, has no beginning and no end, how can this be if Christ is not God but was "created" by God? If "Mighty God" and "Eternal Father" are only titles given to Christ, why would he be given any "title" in scripture that did not accurately apply to him?
40. Acts 17:31 Paul says, "Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a MAN whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead". Did Paul believe that the future judge of the world, Jesus Christ, would be an invisible spirit creature or an immortal "man"? Similarly, after Jesus’ death, Paul writes in 1Tim 2:5, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus." Did Paul, speaking in the present, believe that Jesus was an invisible spirit creature or a "man"?
41. Col 1:16, in talking about Jesus says, "... ALL [other] things have been created through him and FOR HIM". If Jesus were Michael the Archangel at the time of creation, would an angel have created all things for himself? Isa 43:7 says God created "everyone ... for my OWN glory ..." If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the written word of God by adding the word "[other]" even though it does not appear in the original Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would this verse read if the word "[other]" had not been added? What does the word "all" mean to you?
42. Heb 1:3, in speaking of Christ says, "…and he sustains ALL things by the word of his power…" What does the word "all" mean to you? How could Christ "sustain all things" unless he is almighty? Since only God is almighty, what does this verse say about Christ?
43. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the word of God by adding the word "[others]" in Acts 10:36 when this word does not appear in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would this verse read if the word "[others]" had not been added to it? What does the word "all" mean to you?
44. Does Prov 4:18 really justify an organization replacing doctrines and failed prophecies with new doctrines and prophecies, or does it simply contrast the benefit to the "righteous" of obeying a wise father (Prov 4:10-19)? A false teaching can be called a "false word" and Prov 13:5 says, "A false word is what the righteous hates..." When the WTS changes a teaching to something that is totally different or even the exact opposite of a previous teaching, is it like a light that is "getting brighter and brighter" or more like having one false light (word) completely turned off and a totally different light turned on? Do you think the WTS would be critical of any other religious organization that changed its teachings as many times on as many different issues over the last 100 years as the WTS has? In addition, Jude 3 says, "…to put up a hard fight for the faith that was once for all time delivered to the holy ones." Since the faith was established and "once for all time delivered" to the first century Christians, and since the Bible doesn’t change and God doesn’t lie or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), why the need for constant "new light" and ever changing teachings of the WTS, many of which directly contradict former WTS teachings?
45. According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the Greek word "theotes" (Strong’s # 2320) used only once in the Bible in Col 2:9, is translated as "the state of being God, Godhead". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it mistranslate this Greek word "theotes" as "divine quality" in Col 2:9, instead of "Godhead"?
46. In the WTS book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth states on page 147, "…Bible evidence shows that in the year 1914 C.E. God’s time arrived for Christ to return and begin ruling." It also states "In the same way, Christ’s return does not mean that he literally comes back to this earth. Rather, it means that he takes Kingdom power toward this earth and turns his attention to it." This event is described in Zechariah 14:4, which states, "And his feet will actually stand in that day upon the mountain of the olive trees which is in front of Jerusalem on the east…" If Jesus has no body and if he will not literally come back to earth, as only the WTS teaches, how do you explain this verse? What does the phrase "his feet will actually stand" mean to you? In addition, Zech 14:3 says that it is Jehovah’s feet that will stand upon the mountain of the olive trees. Since Jesus is the one who is coming, how can this be unless Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same? Similarly, if Christ will not have a visible return to earth, but returned invisibly in 1914, then how was he seen by "ALL the tribes of the earth" (Mt 24:30), and by "EVERY eye" (Rev 1:7) when he returned? What do the words "all" and "every" mean to you? How can Christ "APPEAR" a second time (Heb 9:28) if he will not have a visible "return" to earth?
47. According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the Greek word "klao" (Strong’s # 2806) means "to break; used in the NT of the breaking of bread or communion" and the Greek word "artos" (Strong’s # 740) means "food made with flour mixed with water and baked" or "bread". Jesus himself used these same words ""klao" and "artos" in Lk 22:19 at the Last Supper and Paul also uses these words in 1Cor 11:23-24. In these verses, the NWT translates these words accurately as "broke" and "loaf". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why then does it translate the Greek phrase "klao artos" of Acts 2:46 and Acts 20:7, as "took their meals" and "have a meal", instead of the much more accurate "break bread"? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, what is the reason for the inconsistency of the translation of these words between Lk 22:19 and Acts 2:46, 20:7? In Acts 2:46, how often did the early Christians meet to break bread?
48. Acts 1:11 says, "This Jesus who was received up from the you (apostles) into the sky will come thus in the same manner as you have beheld him going into the sky." What does the phrase "in the same manner" mean to you? Did Jesus literally, physically, and in plain view ascend to heaven (see Acts 1:9)? What does the phrase "while they were looking on, he was lifted up" in Acts 1:9 mean to you? If Jesus physically and in plain view ascended to heaven, then how can Jesus have an "invisible" return to earth if his return will be "in the same manner" as his ascension?
49. According to Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary, the Hebrew word "ruwach" (Strong’s # 07307) used in Gen 1:2 means "spirit". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it mistranslate this word as "active force"? Similarly, in 1 John 4:1, the NWT translates the Greek word "pneuma" as "divine expressions" even though this same Greek word is translated as "spirit" in 1Jn 3:24, 1Jn 4:2,3, and 6. Why the inconsistency in the translation of this word? Isn’t John's whole point here that even though the Spirit's presence in us gives us assurance of God's love, we are not to believe every "spirit" that claims to be from God, but test them by the teachings which their prophets espouse, "because many false prophets have gone out into the world"? Is the NWT obscuring this point in order to avoid the implication that God’s "spirit" is a person rather than a force (just as the demonic "spirits" are personal entities and not impersonal forces). In addition, in 1Tim 4:1, the NWT translates the simple Greek word "pneuma" as "inspired utterance", instead of "spirit". What is the reason for this inconsistency in translation of the word "pneuma"? Is it because a straightforward "the spirit says" would too obviously imply the personality of the Holy Spirit?
50. To what was Jesus referring to by the term "this temple" in Jn 2:18-19? In Jn 2:21 John explicitly states that when Jesus used the term "this temple", he was referring to his body. If the WTS teaching that Jesus' body was destroyed after his death is correct, then how do you explain these verses?
51. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it translate the very simple Greek phrase "en autos" as "in him" in Col 2:7, Col 2:9, Mt 14:2, Mk 6:14, Lk 23:22, Jn 4:14, Acts 20:10, 1Cor 2:11, Eph 1:10, Col 1:19, Heb 10:38, 1Jn 2:15, 3:5, 3:15, etc. but translates this same Greek phrase as "by means of him" in 2Cor 1:20, 5:21, and Col 2:10, "by relationship with him" in Col 2:11, "in his case" in 2Cor 1:19, 1Jn 2:8, 10, and "in union with him" in Jn 14:11, 2Cor 13:5, Eph 1:4, Phil 3:9, Col 2:6, 2Thess 1:12, 1Jn 1:5, 2:5, 2:27, 2:28, 3:6, 4:13, 4:15, and 4:16? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. What is the reason for the addition of words in these verses and for the inconsistency in translation of this very simple Greek phrase "en autos"? If the NWT was consistent and translated this very simple Greek phrase "en autos" as "in him" in all the above verses, how would they read? Is the WTS trying to obscure the point of the author that the Christian life consists of a supernatural relationship with Christ?
52. Jn 1:3 says that Jesus created "all things". What does the word "all" mean to you? In Isa 44:24, God says that he "BY MYSELF" created the heavens and the earth and asks the question "Who was with me?" when the heavens and the earth were created. If what the WTS teaches about the nature of Christ is correct, how could God have been "by myself" when the heavens and the earth were created if Christ had been created first? If Jesus had been created by God, wouldn’t he have been with God when everything else was created? Likewise, if Jesus was a created being, then according to Jn 1:3, Jesus would have had to create himself. How would that have been possible?
53. If Christ was created by God and was the wisdom of God (Prov 8:1-4, 12, 22-31), then before Jesus would have been created, God would have had to have been without wisdom. How is it possible that God could have ever been without wisdom? In Prov 8:2, the feminine form of the Hebrew verb "natsab" is used. This can only be translated as "SHE stands". Similarly, in Prov 8:3, the feminine form of the Hebrew verb "ranan" is used. This can only be translated as "SHE cries". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it use the neuter pronoun "it" in these verses when the feminine pronoun "she" is called for? How could Christ be the wisdom of God in Prov 8, if the feminine form of the verbs are used? In addition, why does the NWT use the neuter pronoun "it" in Prov 8:2-3, when wisdom is called "sister" in Prov 7:4 and "she" in Prov 9:4?
54. The Bible says that: The heavens are the work of God’s hands (Ps 102:25), the heavens are the work of Jesus’ hand (Heb 1:10); God laid the foundations of the earth (Isa 48:13), Jesus laid the foundations of the earth (Heb 1:10); God is our judge (Ps 50:6, Eccl 12:14, 1Chron 16:33), Jesus is our judge (2Tim 4:1, Rev 20:12); God is the temple of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:22), Jesus (the Lamb) is the temple of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:22); God is the alpha and omega (Rev 1:8), Jesus is the alpha and omega (Rev 22:13); God is the first and last (Isa 44:6, 48:12), Jesus is the first and last (Rev 22:13); God is the beginning and the end (Rev 21:6), Jesus is the beginning and the end (Rev 22:13); Only God can forgive sins (Lk 5:21), Jesus forgives sins (Lk 5:20); God is our hope (Ps 71:5), Jesus is our hope (1Tim 1:1); God is eternal (Deut 33:27), Jesus is eternal (Isa 9:6, Heb 1:10-11); God will come with all the holy ones (Zech 14:5), Jesus will come with all the holy ones (1Thess 3:13); Only God is our savior (Isa 43:11), Jesus is our savior (Tit 2:13, 2Pet 1:1); God is the creator of the universe (Isa 44:24, Jer 27:5), Jesus is the creator of the universe (Jn 1:3); To God, every knee will bow and every tongue confess (Isa 45:22-23), to Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess (Phil 2:10-11); God is the same and his years will have no end (Ps 102:27), Jesus is the same and his years will have no end (Heb 1:12); God is immutable (Mal 3:6), Jesus is immutable (Heb 13:8); God is over all (Ps 97:9), Jesus is over all (Jn 3:31); the spirit of God dwells in us (Rom 8:9), the spirit of Jesus dwells in us (Gal 4:6); God is a stone of offense and a stumbling block (Isa 8:14), Jesus is a stone of offense and a stumbling block (1Pet 2:8); God was valued at 30 pieces of silver (Zech 11:12-13), Jesus was valued at 30 pieces of silver (Mt 26:14-16); God is our shepherd (Ps 23:1), Jesus is our shepherd (Jn 10:11, 1Pet 5:4, Heb 13:20); God is Mighty God (Isa 10:21), Jesus is Mighty God (Isa 9:6); God is Lord of Lords (Deut 10:17, Ps 136:3), Jesus is Lord of Lords (Rev 17:14); God is our only Rock (Isa 44:8, Ps 18:2, 94:22), Jesus is our rock (1 Cor 10:4); God is our owner (Isa 54:5), Jesus is our only owner (Jude 4); No one can snatch us out of God’s hand (Deut 32:39), no one can snatch us out of Jesus’ hand (Jn 10:28); God is the horn of salvation (2Sam 22:3), Jesus is the horn of salvation (Lk 1:68-9); God renders according to our works (Ps 62:12), Jesus renders according to our works (Mt 16:27, Rev 22:12); God loves and corrects (Prov 3:12), Jesus loves and corrects (Rev 3:19); God’s words will stand forever (Isa 40:8), Jesus’ words will stand forever (Mt 24:35); God is the eternal light (Isa 60:19), Jesus is the eternal light (Jn 8:12, Rev 21:23); God seeks to save the lost (Ezek 34:16), Jesus seeks to save the lost (Lk 19:10); Paul is a slave of God (Tit 1:1), Paul is a slave of Jesus (Rom 1:1) even though no man can slave for two masters (Mt 6:24); God raised Jesus from the dead (Gal 1:1), Jesus raised himself from the dead (Jn 2:19-21); God is our guide (Ps 48:14), Jesus is our guide (Lk 1:79); God is our deliverer (Ps 70:5, 2Sam 22:2), Jesus is our deliverer (Rom 11:26); God is called God (Isa 44:8), Jesus is called God (Isa 9:6, Jn 20:28); God is the King of Israel (Isa 44:6), Jesus is the King of Israel (Mt 27:42, Jn 1:49). Since the Bible does not contradict itself, how can all these things be true if Jesus is not God?
55. In Col 2:8, Paul condemns the "traditions of men" and in Mt 15:6, Jesus condemns the "tradition" of the Pharisees that makes the "word of God invalid", since their traditions were making null and void the commandment to "Honor your father and mother" (Mt 15:4). However, in 2Thess 2:15, the Bible commands us to "stand firm and maintain your hold on the traditions that you were taught", in 2Thess 3:6 we are told of "the tradition you received from us", and 1Cor 11:2 says that the Corinthians are "holding fast to the TRADITIONS just as I handed [them] on to you." By definition, the word "tradition" refers to the unwritten teachings that have been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next. See also 2Tim 2:2, 1Cor 11:2, 1Thess 2:13, 1Cor 11:23, 1Cor 15:3, and 1Tim 6:20-21. Since the WTS claims that the Bible is its "supreme authority", then in accordance with biblical commands, what "traditions" do Witnesses maintain?
56. Does the WTS claim "apostolic succession"? If so, can it trace its roots all the way back to Christ (Mt 16:18)? Who was it then, that "passed the torch of God's spirit" to C. T. Russell when he founded the organization? What was the name of this individual or individuals? Similarly, since the anointed believers as an organization are claimed to be God's collective "faithful and discreet slave" that alone guides people in their understanding of Scripture, and since this organization did not come into existence until the late-nineteenth century, does this mean God had no true representatives on earth for many, many centuries? If he did, who were they? What were their names? Can you name one Jehovah’s Witness who lived before 1800?
57. The NWT translates Jn 1:1 as "... and the Word was WITH God, and the word was a god." How can the Word (Jesus) be "a god' if God says in Deut 32:39, "See now that I -- I am he, and there are NO gods together with me..."? Similarly, the Greek word "Theos" does not have an article in Jn 1:1c and the NWT supplies the indefinite article "a", rendering it "and the Word was a god." If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why doesn’t the NWT add the indefinite article "a" in other verses where the Greek word "Theos" does not have an article (eg Jn 1:6, 12, 13, 18, etc)? What is the reason for this inconsistency in translation? In addition, how could Jesus be "a god" since Jesus says that he came against those whom the prophet called "gods" (Jn 10:35)? Is there any such things as a "true" god? If the WTS teaches this, then doesn’t that make them polytheists?
58. The WTS teaches that the 144,000 of Rev 7:4 and Rev 14:3 is to be taken literally. If these passages in scripture are to be taken literally, then the 144,000 are all literally male (Rev 14:4), Jewish (Rev 7:4-8), virgins (Rev 14:4). Was Charles Taze Russell a Jewish virgin? Are all women excluded from this number? Are any of the other 144,000 people included in this number Jewish virgins? If not, then how can this passage, including the number 144,000, be taken literally? What justification is there for switching methods of interpretation from literal, in the case of Rev 7:4 and 14:3, to figurative in the very next verse(s)?
59. Jesus uses the phrase "Truly I say to you,..." over 50 times in the Bible. In the NWT, the comma is placed after the word "you" every time except in Lk 23:43, where the comma is placed after the word "today". Why is the comma placed after "today" instead of after "you" in this verse? According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the word "paradise" (Gr-paradeisos – Strong’s #3857) refers to "the part of Hades which was thought by the later Jews to be the abode of the souls of the pious until the resurrection", where Jesus would go in order to preach after his death (1Pet 3:18-20, 1Pet 4:5-6). By using this word instead of the Greek word for "heaven", wasn’t Luke showing that Jesus was not referring to heaven when he made this statement? If the translation of this phrase in Lk 23:43 was consistent with the translation of this phrase in every other verse in which it appears (see concordance), and the comma was placed after the word "you", how would this verse read?
60. What are the names of the men on the New World Bible Translation Committee who supposedly translated the original Hebrew and Greek into English for the NWT? What are their credentials that would qualify them to produce a Bible translation? Why does the WTS withhold the names of these people so that no one can see what their qualifications are?
61. Rev 20:10 says, "And the Devil... the wild beast and the false prophet [already were]; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever". This event will occur after the 1,000 year reign of Christ (Rev 20:7). Where will the Devil, the wild beast, and the false prophet be "tormented day and night forever and ever"? What does the word "tormented" mean to you? Likewise, Rev 14:9-11 says, "... If anyone worship the wild beast... he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur... And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever..." Where could "anyone" be "tormented... forever and ever"?
62. Since the WTS currently rejects many of the teachings of its founder, Charles Taze Russell (who was president of the organization from 1879-1916), and since they also reject many of the teachings of "Judge" Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who succeeded Russell as president from 1916-1942, how can you be sure that in 25 more years, the WTS won't reject many of the teachings under current president, Milton Henschel (1992-present), as they did Russell and Rutherford? What kind of confidence can you have in an organization that rejected many of the teachings of its founder and first two presidents for the first 63 years of its existence - over 50% of the time they have existed?!
63. In Jn 20:28, John refers to Jesus in Greek as "Ho kyrios moy kai ho theos moy". This translates literally as "the (Ho) Lord (kyrios) of me (moy) and (kai) THE (ho) God (theos) of me (moy)". Why does Jesus, in Jn 20:29, affirm Thomas for having come to this realization? If Jesus really wasn't the Lord and "THE God" of Thomas, why didn't Jesus correct him for making either a false assumption or a blasphemous statement?
64. Since the WTS has received "new light" regarding the 1914 generation, and completely changed their views on this, does this mean that all the former Witnesses who were disfellowshipped years ago for the same view the organization is now teaching will automatically be accepted back into fellowship again? Were these ex-Witnesses in fact disfellowshipped for what is now taught as "the Truth"?
65. If there are 144,000 spirit anointed people who have a heavenly hope, and a great crowd of people who have another hope of everlasting life on paradise earth, why does Paul say that there is only ONE hope (Eph 4:4), instead of two? Similarly, if there is one body of people that will go to heaven, and another completely different body of people that will live forever in paradise on earth, why does Paul say that everyone who is baptized, is baptized into "ONE body" (1Cor 12:13)? What do the words "all" and "one" mean to you?
66. Rev 7:11 says that "before the throne" is in heaven where "all the angels were standing". Rev 14:2-3 says "And I heard a sound out of heaven ... And they were singing as if a new song before the throne ...", also showing that "before the throne" is in heaven. Rev 7:9 says,"... look, a great crowd ... standing before the throne..." and Rev 7:14-15 says, "...These are the ones that come out of the great tribulation ... That is why they are before the throne of God ..." Therefore, if "before the throne " means in heaven (Rev 7:11, 14:2-3), and the "great crowd" is "before the throne" (Rev 7:9, 7:14-15), where does that mean that the great crowd will be? Where does Rev 19:1 say that the great crowd will be?
67. If hell does not exist, then what is the "everlasting fire" (Mt 18:8, Mt 25:41, and Jude 7) that people can be thrown into? If fire is a symbol of annihilation, then what is the scriptural evidence to support this? Similarly, Jesus talks about the "fiery furnace" and says "There is where [their] weeping and the gnashing of [their] teeth will be" (Mt 13:42, 13:50). If hell does not exist, then where is the "fiery furnace" where there will be "weeping and the gnashing of [their] teeth"? If the "fiery furnace" is just symbolic of total annihilation, in which a person will completely go out of existence and have no conscious awareness, then how could they weep and gnash their teeth?
68. The WTS makes the claim, "Like the Primitive Christian Community - the religious publication 'Interpretation' stated in July 1956: 'In their organization and witnessing work, they [Jehovah's Witnesses] come as close as any group to approximating the primitive Christian community..."- Jehovah's Witnesses- Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, pg 234, and on pg 677 of the same book, a caption appears titled "Like the early Christians". Do Jehovah's Witnesses pray the "Our Father" (Mt 6:9-13), break bread together (celebrate the Eucharist) frequently (Acts 2:42, 1Cor 10:16-17, 1Cor 11:26-27), come together on Sunday to break bread (Acts 20:7), confirm the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands (Acts 8:15-17, 19:5-6, Heb 6:2, 2Tim 1:6), ordain (appoint) priests (elders) through the laying on of hands (Acts 6:5-6, 13:2-3), pray to Jesus (Mt 11:28, Acts 7:59-60, 1Cor 16:22-23, Rev 22:20), anoint the sick with oil (Mk 6:12-13, Jas 5:14), often kneel down to pray (Acts 9:40, 20:36, 21:5, Lk 22:41), consider themselves to be witnesses of Christ (Acts 1:8, 10:39, 13:31), have deacons (1Tim 3:8, 10, 12), use altars (1Cor 10:18-21, Heb 13:10), fast from food (Mt 6:16-18), believe there is salvation in no one else other than Jesus Christ (Acts 4:10-12), celebrate Pentecost (Acts 2:1, 20:16, 1Cor 16:8), have special people that look after widows and orphans (Acts 6:1-4, Jas 1:27), and occasionally drink wine (1Tim 5:23)? If not, then how can Jehovah's Witnesses consider themselves to be like the primitive Christian community? Since the word "Jehovah" is not contained in the original New Testament and did not appear until at least the 12th century (See Aid to Bible Understanding, pages 884, 885), making it clear that the first century Christian community could not have referred to themselves by this name, then how can the WTS be like the primitive Christian community by applying the term "Jehovah’s Witnesses" to themselves?
69. If the name Jehovah is so important, then why is it never used in the entire Greek New Testament and why does it not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of New Testament writings or in the very first Bible, the 5th century Latin Vulgate? If men edited out the proper name of God, "YHWH", when they copied the New Testament, as only the WTS claims, thereby altering God's written word, then how can we have confidence in ANY of the New Testament? Should we discard the New Testament or the WTS as unreliable? Since Jesus never addressed the Father as "Jehovah", and since he taught that we can address God as "Father" (Mt 6:8-18, 7:21, Mk 14:36, etc), doesn’t this mean that the term "Jehovah" is not the only expression by which we can address God? Why don’t Witnesses follow the example of Jesus and address God as "Father", instead of "Jehovah"? Since the word "Jehovah" did not appear until at least the 12th century, thereby making it impossible that the first century Christians used this term for God, why do Jehovah’s Witnesses still insist on using this name? Since this name comes from an aberration of the tetragrameton "YHWH", wouldn’t "Yahweh", which many Christians use and which is used in some Bibles (eg The New Jerusalem Bible) be a much more accurate name to use?
70. If Jesus was executed on a torture stake, with both hands together over his head, as only the WTS teaches, why does Jn 20:25 say "... unless I see in his hands the print of the nailS...", indicating that there was more than one nail used for his hands? Wouldn’t two nails have been used if Christ was crucified on a cross whereas only one nail would have been used if he would have been executed on an upright pole?
71. Can Jehovah's Witnesses hold and discuss openly with other Witnesses opinions that differ from orthodox WTS teachings? If no, why not? Does the WTS encourage people who are not Witnesses to examine their own religion? If yes, then why does it discourage Witnesses to honestly examine the teachings of the WTS? If the WTS really teaches "the Truth", then what do they have to fear from an honest examination?
72. In Rev 22:12-13, Jesus Christ, the one who is "coming quickly", says of himself," I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end". In Rev 1:17-18, Jesus, the one who "became dead, but, look! I am living forever and ever", refers to himself as the first and the last. Rev 21:6, in speaking of God, says, "...I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end .,.". God is also referred to as the "first" and the "last" in Isa 44:6 and Isa 48:12. How can Jesus and Jehovah both be the "alpha and omega" and "the first and the last" since by definition of these words there can only be one Alpha and Omega and only one first and one last?
73. If the WTS claims they are not "inspired" but does refer to themselves as "God's spirit-directed Prophet", what is the difference? Is there such a thing as an "uninspired true prophet"? Why would anyone be part of a religious organization which claimed that their teachings were NOT inspired?
74. If the great crowd is to have everlasting life on paradise EARTH, why does 1Thess 4:17 say, "...we the living who are surviving will, together with them, be caught away in clouds to MEET THE LORD IN THE AIR; and thus we shall always be with the Lord"? If Armageddon were to start next week, as a Jehovah’s Witness in good standing with the WTS, wouldn’t you be one of "the living who are surviving"? Would you expect to "meet the Lord in the air"? If not, then how do you explain this verse?
75. In Mt 1:23, who is Matthew referring to here that has been given the name which means "With Us Is God"?
76. Referring to Isa 14:9-17, if there is no conscious awareness after death, how could Sheol "... become agitated at you in order to meet you on coming in..." (v.9), how could the souls in Sheol "... speak up and say to you..." (v.10-11), how could the souls in Sheol when "...seeing you will gaze even at you; they will give close examination even to you, [saying,] ‘Is this the man...’" (v. 16-17), and how would you be aware that this was happening?
77. Heb 3:1 refers to "holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly calling". In Mk 3:35, Jesus says, "Whoever does the will of God, this one is my brother..." Therefore, according to the Bible, whoever does the will of God is a brother of Jesus and a partaker of the heavenly calling. How can this be if the Watchtower Society teaches that only 144,000 people go to heaven?
78. Heb 11:16, in speaking about some of the faithful people of the Old Testament (Abel, Noah, Abraham, etc.) says, "But now they are reaching out for a better [place], that is, one belonging to heaven..." and,"... their God for he has made a city ready for them." The footnote on the word "city" refers to HEAVENLY Jerusalem of Heb 12:22 and Rev 21:2. How can this be since according to the teachings of the Watchtower Society, the only people who will go to heaven are the 144,000 spirit anointed who have been chosen from people who lived after Christ died?
79. In Lk 24:36-39 and in Jn 20:26-27, Jesus showed his disciples the wounds in his body as proof of his resurrection. If Jesus' body had been destroyed by God after he died, how could Jesus show the disciples his very own body which had the wounds in his hands, feet, and side? In Lk 24:39, Jesus says, "See MY hands and MY feet, that it is I MYSELF; feel me and see me, because a spirit does not have FLESH AND BONES just as you behold that I have." If Jesus was really raised as a spirit without a body, as the WTS teaches, then why would he have tried to deceive his disciples into thinking he was resurrected in his real body with "flesh and bones"? Does "being made alive IN the spirit" (1Pet 3:18) really mean the same thing as "being raised AS a spirit"? See Rom 8:11.
80. In Lk 20:37-38, how could Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be "all living to him (God)", since they all died hundreds of years before Jesus said this? If the WTS’s teaching that an immortal soul does not continue to live on after death of the body and that there is no conscious awareness after death is correct, then how could Moses and Elijah not only appear to Peter, James, and John but actually converse with Jesus (Mt 17:3)? Similarly, in Jn 8:56, Jesus says, "Abraham your father rejoiced greatly in the prospect of seeing my day, and he saw it and rejoiced". Since Abraham died hundreds of years before Jesus said this, how could Jesus say that Abraham "saw it and rejoiced", if there is no conscious awareness after death?
81. If the soul dies when the body dies, how could the "souls" of Rev 6:9- 11, who were of those who had been "slaughtered" (i.e., killed), cry out "with a loud voice, saying: 'Until when Sovereign Lord ..."?
82. In Mt 28:19, Jesus tells his disciples to baptize "people of all the nations ...in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit". Why would the disciples be instructed to baptize in the name of anybody or anything who was not God? Do Jehovah's Witnesses follow the command of Jesus and baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit"?
83. If the human soul IS the person, how could the soul go out of a person’s body (Gen 35:18) or come back into a person’s body (1 Kings 17:21)? Similarly, in Lk 12:4-5, what would be left of a person after they were killed that could be thrown into Gehenna?
84. Eph 4:4 says that there is ONE spirit. 1Cor 3:16 says for the people of God’s temple, this spirit of God dwells in them and Rom 8:9 states that those who are in harmony with the spirit have God’s spirit dwelling in them. If this is all true and there is only ONE sprirt, then who or what is the spirit of Christ (Phil 1:19, Gal 4:6, Rom 8:9)? In Gal 4:6, how is it possible that the spirit of Christ could come into our hearts? How is it possible that the spirit of CHRIST could reside in someone? How could a person have God’s spirit dwelling in them (Rom 8:9) but also have Christ’s spirit (Rom 8:9), if there is only ONE spirit, unless God and Jesus are one and the same?
85. In Jn 6:51, Jesus says that a person must eat "of this bread" in order to "live forever", and that "the bread that I give IS my flesh". If Jesus was only speaking symbolically here, why did the Jews object to this teaching (Jn 6:52), and why didn’t Jesus explain to them that he was only speaking symbolically, instead of going on to repeat himself FIVE times saying essentially the same thing (Jn 6:53, 54, 56, 57, 58)? If Jesus was only speaking symbolically here, why does John use the Greek word "trogo" (Strong’s # 5176) in verses Jn 6:54, 56, 57, and 58, which means "to gnaw on; to chew" according to Strong’s Greek dictionary? Can "to gnaw on or chew" be taken symbolically in any way? If Jesus was only speaking symbolically in this passage, after his own disciples objected to this teaching (Jn 6:60), why did he allow "many disciples" to leave (Jn 6:66) instead of calling them back and straightening everything out like he had done on other occasions with other difficult teachings (see Jn 3:1-15, Mt 16:5-12, 19:23-26)? Finally, if Jesus was only speaking symbolically in this passage (Jn 6:51-58), and really meant that they only needed to believe, why did so many disciples leave him over this teaching, when they had already been told that they must "believe" (Jn 5:24), and we see absolutely no disciples leaving him after Jesus told them this? Do you eat the flesh of Christ, as Jesus commanded, in order to have life in yourself (Jn 6:54) and in order to live forever (Jn 6:58)? See Lk 22:19.
86. If Jesus is not God, then why would he have deceived the Jews by making himself "equal to God" in Jn 5:17-18?
87. If only 144,000 spirit anointed people are "born again", why does the Bible, in 1Jn 5:1, say that, "Everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been BORN FROM GOD…"? What does the word "everyone" mean to you? Conversely, where in the Bible does it say that only 144,000 people will be "born again"? Similarly, if only 144,000 spirit anointed people are "born from God", why does the Bible say that "EVERYONE who loves has been born from God" (1Jn 4:7)? Don’t all Christians love and believe that Jesus is the Christ? Again, what does the word "everyone" mean to you? Similarly, if only 144,000 spirit anointed people are "sealed with the holy spirit", why does the Bible say in Eph 1:13, that after a Christian "believed", he was "sealed with the promised holy spirit." Shouldn’t this apply to all Christians since all Christians "believe" that Jesus is the Christ? In addition, Rom 8:14 says that, "ALL who are led by God’s spirit, these are God’s sons." Do Jehovah’s Witnesses believe they are led by God’s spirit? If so, then according top Rom 8:14, aren’t they also "God’s sons"?
88. In Jn 5:39-40 Jesus says, "You are searching the Scriptures, because you think that by means of them you will have everlasting life…And yet you do not want to COME TO ME that you may have life." Jehovah’s Witnesses are constantly "searching the scriptures", but do they come directly to Jesus as he says they should (Mt 11:28, Jn 5:40)? Do Witnesses "come" to Jesus by praying directly to him? If not, then aren’t Witnesses exactly like the people Jesus was talking about in Jn 5:39-40?
89. In Mt 4:10, Jesus clearly has the authority to rebuke Satan and does so. Jude 9 says, "But when Michael the archangel had a difference with the Devil…he did not dare to bring a judgment against him…but said, "May Jehovah rebuke you." If Jesus is Michael the Archangel, why did Michael, refuse to rebuke Satan in Jude 9, when he clearly did so in Mt 4:10?
90. In Lk 4:12, the NWT translates the Greek word "kyrios" (Gr-lord) as "Jehovah", which makes this verse read, "You must not put Jehovah your God to the test". See Greek-English Interlinear. Why is "kyrios" translated as "Jehovah" in this verse? Was the devil, in Lk 4:9-11, putting Jehovah to the test or Jesus to the test? Similarly, in Mt 3:3, Mk 1:3, and Jn 1:23, the Greek word "kyrios" is translated as "Jehovah". Was John the Baptist preparing the way for Jehovah, or preparing the way for Jesus (compare Isa 40:3)? See Jn 1:25-31. Since the Greek word "kyrios" (Strong’s # 2962) in these verses are clearly referring to Jesus, if this word was correctly translated as "lord" in these verses, what would these verses say about the nature of Christ?
91. Jn 5:23 says, "in order that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father…" If Jesus is not God, why does the Bible require that all men should honor the Son equally with the Father?
92. If Jesus and Jehovah are not one God, then why, according to the NWT, is "Jehovah" the name which brings salvation (Acts 2:21), but Acts 4:10-12 says that ONLY the name of Jesus brings salvation ("…for there is not another name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved.")?
93. If the soul is the body, why does John make a distinction between the "prospering" of Gaius’ body because of good health and the "prospering" of his soul in 3Jn 2, and why does Paul distinguish between a person and their soul in Acts 20:10 by saying, "Stop raising a clamor, for his soul is in him"?
94. The WTS teaches that Jesus is the first and greatest creation of God. If Jesus was Michael the Archangel before he became a man, then why does Dan 10:13 refer to Michael as "ONE of the foremost princes" implying that he was equal to other angels? If Christ was Michael the Archangel before the incarnation, then became Jesus, then changed back into Michael the Archangel after his death, why does Heb 13:8 say that, "Jesus Christ is the SAME yesterday and today, and forever."? How could Christ be "the same" if he changed from being Michael, into being Jesus, then back into being Michael again?
95. Rom 10:12 says , "…for there is the same Lord (Jesus vs 9) over all, who is rich to all those CALLING UPON him." If Jesus is not to be prayed to, then why does Paul say that they will be rich who call "upon him"? Similarly, Paul says in 1Cor 1:2, "…together with all who everywhere are calling upon the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours" and in 2Tim 2:22 he says, "…but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, along with those who CALL UPON THE LORD out of a clean heart." If Christians should not pray to Jesus, then why did the early Christians "call upon" Jesus? How can a person call upon Jesus without praying to him?
96. If hell does not exist but is simply a complete annihilation of the person in which there is no conscious awareness, why does Jesus say in Mk 14:21 that it would be better for Judas if he had never been born?
97. Amos 4:11 says, "'I caused an overthrow among you people, like God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. And you came to be like a log snatched out of [the] burning; but you did not come back to me,' is the utterance of Jehovah." If the Trinity does not exist, then how can Jehovah, speaking in this verse, refer to another person as God ("... like GOD'S overthrow of Sodom ...")?
98. If Jesus Christ is Michael the Archangel, how can Mt 25:31 say, "When the Son of man arrives in his glory, and ALL the angels with him, ...". Since "all the angels" would certainly include Michael the Archangel, is it possible that Jesus could return with himself? Similarly, if Jesus was Michael the Archangel before his birth, then how do you explain Heb 1:13 which says, "But with reference to which one of the angels has he ever said: "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet"? In addition, if Jesus became Michael the Archangel upon his resurrection, why did none of the New Testament writers refer to the resurrected Christ as "Michael" by name? Can you point out one verse, just one, that says that Jesus and Michael are the same?
99. If Jesus did not become the Christ until he was baptized approximately 30 years after his birth, why does Lk 2:11 say, "because there was born to you today a Savior, who IS Christ [the] Lord, in David’s city."? What does the word "is" mean to you?
100. In Col 1:26, 27, 2:2, and 4;3, the Greek word "musterion" (Strong’s # 3466) is translated as "sacred secret" but in the Kingdom Interlinear, this same word is translated correctly as "mystery". Why the discrepancy in the translation of this word between the KIT and the NWT? Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to render this word correctly as "mystery" in the NWT? If this word would have been correctly rendered as "mystery" in the NWT, how would the above verses read and what would they say about the fact that some things about God are impossible to completely understand?
101. Every true Christian would agree that we should follow the commands of God. In Mk 9:7, God the Father commands us to listen to Jesus. Do you follow this command and listen to Jesus? After all, Jesus died for your personal sins (1Jn 2:2, 1Pet 2:24). Jesus tells us to go directly to him (Mt 11:28-30), and the Father commanded us to listen to Jesus. Why? Because JESUS gives us everlasting life (Jn 10:28), and so that JESUS will enter our house and be with us and give us the right to sit on his throne (Rev 3:20- 21). Do you pray to Jesus as Paul and the early Christians did (1Cor 1:2)? Do you partake of the flesh of Christ as Jesus commanded (Jn 6:51)? If not, then are you following the command of the Father who said "Listen to him"
These questions have been put together using information from many different sources. All verses are from the NWT so that the translation of these verses cannot be questioned by Jehovah's Witnesses. If the Watchtower Society decides to change any of these verses (like they did with Heb 1:6), then the obvious question for the individual Jehovah's Witness is why did the WTS change their own Bible.
"...keep testing whether you are in the faith" (2Cor 13:5)
1. The WTS claims it uses the Bible as it's "supreme authority". Where in the Bible does anyone count their time in preaching on a slip of paper and are assigned record cards of activity, determining this as a "gauge to their spirituality"? Where in the Bible are Pioneers, Auxiliary Pioneers, Bethelites, and Kingdom Halls? Where in the Bible does it say that anyone born after 1935 can not go to heaven, that Christians are required to attend five meetings a week, that men are prohibited from wearing beards, and that after a prophecy fails, if the prophet admits he made a mistake, he is no longer a false prophet (see Deut 18:20-22)? Where does the Bible say that a person must belong to an organization that will start in the late 19th century and be headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, in order to survive Armageddon?
2. The WTS teaches that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not reside with Christ in his heavenly kingdom. If this is so, then how do you explain Mt 8:11 in which Jesus says, "But I tell you that many from eastern parts and western parts will come and recline at the table WITH Abraham and Isaac and Jacob IN the kingdom of the heavens"?
3. If there is no conscious awareness after death, how could the "spirits in prison", who lived during "Noah’s days", be preached to by Christ after His death (1Pet 3:18-20) and how could the good news be "declared also to the dead" (1 Pet 4:5-6)? If the "spirits in prison" of 1Pet 3:19 refers to demonic angels, instead of the just people who died before the resurrection of Christ, then why would Jesus "preach" to demonic angels?
4. Is it true that the WTS's prophecy that Armageddon will come before "the end of the generation of 1914" (You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth, pg 154), is no longer taught as "the Truth"? If so, then does this mean that this teaching of the WTS, which they have taught as "the Truth" for decades, was really a false teaching? Since the WTS claims that they are the "one channel that the Lord is using during the last days of this system of things" (Jehovah's Witnesses-Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, pg 626) and that the governing body is "the mouthpiece of Jehovah God", does this mean that God changed His mind about this teaching and the definition of "generation"? Is it possible that God could change His mind? Has the WTS ever changed their mind before about a teaching that they once taught as "the Truth"? The WTS has taught that Armageddon was going to occur in:1914 - The Time Is At Hand, 1888 (1911 ed.), pg 101; Zion 's Watchtower, 1/15/1892, pg22 1915 - The Time Is At Hand, 1915 edition, pg. 991918 - The Finished Mystery, 1917, pg 62, 4851925 - Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920, pg 89-90, Watchtower, 7/15/24, pg 2111931 - Vindication, Book 1, pg. 147WWII - Watchtower, 9/15/41, pg 2881975 - Kingdom Ministry, 6/69, pg 3; AWAKE!, 10/8/68, etc."Before the end of the generation of 1914" - You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth, pg 154In addition, the WTS claims that it is the "mouthpiece for Jehovah", "God’s one and only channel of communication to the world", etc., clearly claiming to speak for God. Since Deut 18:20-22 says that a false prophet is anyone who claims to speak for God and makes a prophecy that does not come true, doesn’t this make the WTS a modern day false prophet according to scripture? Can a true prophet make even ONE false prophecy? What does scripture say about false prophets? See Mt 7:15, 24:11, Mk 13:22, 2Pet 2:1, 1Jn 4:1, Rev 16:13-14, 19:20, 20:10. Why would anyone willingly follow an organization that has repeatedly proven itself to be a false prophet, according to biblical standards? Since God does not tell lies or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), and since it is clear that the WTS could not have possibly been speaking for God when they made these false prophecies, then how do you know that the WTS is speaking for God now? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15. To review many direct quotes from the WTS, click: WTS Quotes
5. If the spirit of a man has no existence apart from the body, why does Stephen just before his death in Acts 7:59, pray to Jesus to "receive my spirit"? How could Jesus, who was in heaven, receive Stephen's spirit if a man's spirit ceases to exist when the body dies and if no one could enter heaven until the year 1914? Similarly, if the soul ceases to exist after the death of the body, why does Paul say that he would rather be "absent from the body" so he could go make his "home with the Lord" (2Cor 5:8), and why would he say that he would rather depart from this life so that he could go be with Christ (Phil 1:23)? How could Paul be "with Christ" and make his "home with the Lord" if no one could enter heaven until 1914?
6. On page 7 of the booklet Should You Believe in the Trinity?, unreferenced quotes from Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen are made. Why are these quotes unreferenced? Also on page 7 of this same booklet, the statement is made, "Thus, the testimony of the Bible and of history makes it clear that the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for SEVERAL CENTURIES thereafter." Based on the quotes below, how can the Watchtower Society make these claims?
Justin Martyr (110-165 AD):"... nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God." - First Apology of Justin, Ch LXIII; "... but now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and the Lord of hosts ..." - Dialogue with Trypho, Ch XXXVI; "Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is witnessed to by Him who established these things, as deserving to be worshipped, as God and as Christ." - Ibid, Ch LXIII. Irenaeus (120-202 AD):"... and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King ..." - Against Heresies, Bk 1, Ch 10; "But that He is in His own right , beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets and apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth." - Against Heresies, Bk 3, Ch 19.
Clement of Alexandria (153-217 AD):"For 'before the morning star it was;' and 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'" and "This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man ..." and "The Word, who in the beginning bestowed on us life as Creator when He formed us, taught us to live well when He appeared as our Teacher; that as God He might afterwards conduct us to the life which never ends." - Exhortation to the Heathen, Ch 1.
Tertullian (145-220 AD):"Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the virgin, and to have been born of her - being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ." and "... while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing them in their order the three Persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ..." - Against Praxeas, Ch 2; "With these did He then speak, in the Unity of the Trinity, as with His ministers and witnesses." and "...I mean the Word of God, 'through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.' Now if He too is God, according to John (who says) 'The Word was God'..." - Against Praxeas, Ch 12.
Hippolytus (170-236 AD):"For he speaks to this effect: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'" and "...'Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' And by this He showed, that whosoever omitted any one of these, failed in glorifying God perfectly. For it is through this Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did, the Spirit manifested. The whole Scriptures, then, proclaim this truth." - Against the Heresy of One Noetus, Ch 14; "For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings." - The Refutation of All Heresies, Bk 10, Ch 30.
Origen (185-254 AD):"From all which we learn that the person of the Holy Spirit was of such authority and dignity, that saving baptism was not complete except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of them all ..." - Origen de Principiis, 1.3.2; "For it is one and the same thing to have a share in the Holy Spirit, which is (the Spirit) of the Father and the Son, since the nature of the Trinity is one and incorporeal." - Origen de Principiis, 4.1.32
To read the entire text containing the above quotes online, go to Early Church Fathers After reading pg 7 of Should You Believe In The Trinity? and then reading the quotes above, do you feel that the WTS was in any way deceptive by using "quotes" from these early Christian writers to support their teachings? If yes, then why does the WTS need to engage in deception if it teaches "the Truth"? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15.
7. The Bible says in Zeph 1:18, "…but by the fire of his zeal THE WHOLE EARTH WILL BE DEVOURED, because he will make an EXTERMINATION, indeed a terrible one, of ALL the inhabitants of the earth." If the WTS’s teaching that the present earth will never be destroyed or depopulated is correct, then why does the Bible say that the "whole earth" will be "devoured", and "all" the inhabitants of the earth will be exterminated? What do the words "devoured" and "all" mean to you? How can a great crowd of people continue to live on forever in paradise on earth after Armageddon if "ALL the inhabitants of the earth" will be exterminated?
8. If the dead will be resurrected during the millennial reign of Christ and judged according to their deeds during that time, why does the Bible explicitly say in Rev 20:4-5 that the "(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended)"? How could they be judged according to their deeds during the 1,000 year reign of Christ, if they will not come to life until after this period is over? Why does the NWT have parentheses around this verse? Similarly, if the dead will be resurrected during the millennial reign of Christ and judged according to their deeds during that time, why does the Bible say that the dead will come out of their tombs and "those who did (past tense) good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced (past tense) vile things to a resurrection of judgement" (Jn 5:28-29), and why does the Bible say that men are "to die once" and "after this (ie. death) a judgment" (Heb 9:27)?
9. The forward to the Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT),1985 edition, on page 8 states, "Our primary desire has been to seek not the approval of men but that of God, by rendering the truth of his inspired Word as purely and as consistently as our dedicated abilities make possible. There is no benefit in self-deception." On page 9 it is stated, "We offer no paraphrase of the Scriptures. Our endeavor throughout has been to give as literal a translation as possible where the modern English idiom allows for it or where the thought content is not hidden due to any awkwardness in the literal rendition. In this way, we can best meet the desire of those who are scrupulous for getting, as nearly as possible word for word, the exact statement of the original." The NWT translates Jn 14:14 as, "If you ask anything in my name, I will do it." If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it completely omit the word "me" after the phrase "If you ask", even though the word "me" is in the original Greek. See Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT). If the NWT correctly translated Jn 14:14 from the original Greek and included the word "me" after "ask" in this verse, how would this verse read? How could a person "ask" Jesus for something without praying to him? How can the NWT be "rendering the truth of his inspired Word as purely" as possible , and how can it be "as literal a translation as possible" when the "translators" knowingly omit this word ("me") so that this verse does not contradict the teachings of the WTS?
10. If the present earth will never be destroyed or depopulated, why does Zeph 1:2-3 say, "I shall without fail finish everything off the surface of the ground,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘I shall finish off earthling man and beast… and I will cut off mankind from the surface of the ground, is the utterance of Jehovah"? The Hebrew word translated here as "finish off" in the NWT is "cuwph" (Strong’s # 05486) which means "to cease; to come to an end", according to Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary. How can this be if the WTS is correct and faithful Witnesses will survive Armageddon and live forever in paradise on the present earth? In addition, Isa 65:17 says, "For here I am creating new heavens and a NEW earth, and the former things will not be called to mind…" If the present earth will never be destroyed, why will God be "creating" a "new" earth? Notice that this verse does not say "cleanse", but "create". What do the words "create" and "new" mean to you? Similarly, 2Pet 3:10-13 says, "Yet Jehovah’s day will come as a thief, in which the heavens will pass a way with a hissing noise, but the elements being intensely hot will be dissolved, and the earth and the works in it will be discovered. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be… through which [the] heavens being on fire will be dissolved and [the] elements being intensely hot will melt! But there are new heavens and a NEW EARTH that we are awaiting, according to his promise…" How can people live forever in paradise on this present earth, if the earth will "be dissolved" and "melt" and if we are awaiting a "new" earth?
11. The WTS claims that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E. and uses Dan 4:23-25, Rev 12:6, 14, Num 14:34, and Ezek 4:6 to come up with 1914 C.E., which is 2,520 years later, as the year that Jesus began his reign in heaven. If the WTS’s claim that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E. is correct, then why is it that every reference source, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, Microsoft Encarta, The World Book Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Compton’s Encyclopedia, Acedemic American Encyclopedia, Cambridge Ancient History – Vol. III, The Oxford Dictionary of World History, etc, etc, all state that Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC? If the WTS is correct that Christ’s reign in heaven started 2,520 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, shouldn’t this event have occurred in 1935 instead of 1914? Should we view the overwhelming opinion of essentially every historian who is an expert on ancient history, or the WTS, as unreliable?
12. According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the Greek word "heos" (Strong’s # 2193) means "till, until". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it mistranslate the Greek word "heos" in Mt 5:18 as "sooner would" instead of "until", completely changing the meaning of this verse? If the Greek word "heos" was translated correctly as "until" in this verse, what would this verse say about the future of this present earth? Why is this Greek word translated as "until" in the KIT, but rendered "sooner would" in the NWT? Why the inconsistency in the translation? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15.
13. If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal "active force", why does he speak directly and refer to himself as "I" and "me" in Acts 13:2? If the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force, how could he: Be referred to as "he" and "him" in Jn 16:7- 8 and Jn 16:13-14; Bear witness (Jn 15:26, Acts 20:23); Feel hurt (Isa 63:10); Be blasphemed against (Mk 3:29, Lk 12:10); Say things (Ezek 3:24, Acts 8:29, 10:19, and Heb 10:15-17); Forbid someone to say things (Acts 16:6); Plead for us with groanings (Rom 8:26); Be tested (Acts 5:9); Send people (Acts 13:4); Be a helper (Jn 14:16, 16:7); Appoint overseers (Acts 20:28); Be outraged (Heb 10:29); Desire (Gal 5:17); Search (1Cor 2:10); Comfort (Acts 9:31); Be grieved (Eph 4:30); Be loved (Rom 15:30); Be lied to and be God (Acts 5:3-4)? What does the Bible say about those who speak against the Holy Spirit? See Mt 12:32 and Lk 12:10.
14. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the written word of God by adding the words "[in symbol]" in Mk 1:4, even though these words don’t appear in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would Mk 1:4 read if the words "[in symbol]" had not been added? In Acts 2:38, Peter says "… Repent, and let each one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ FOR FORGIVENESS OF YOUR SINS…" and in Acts 22:16, Ananias tells Paul "…Rise, get baptized and WASH YOUR SINS AWAY by calling on his name." If baptism is only a symbolic display of faith in God and does not effect the remission of sins, then why does Peter tell the people of Jerusalem to be baptized "for forgiveness of your sins" and why does Ananias tell Paul to get baptized in order to "wash your sins away"?
15. The WTS claims that Ezekiel's prophecy of the Jews returning to their land is fulfilled in their organization. Ezek 36:24, 28 says "And I will take you out of the nations and collect you together out of all the lands and bring you in upon your own soil." and "And you will certainly dwell in the land that I gave to your forefathers, and you must become my people and I myself shall become your God." If this is fulfilled in the Watchtower organization, then how are they returning to the land of CANAAN as promised to the forefathers (Ps 105:8-11)?
16. Consider also what is said concerning those who fulfill this prophecy. Ezek 36:22 says, "Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the sovereign Lord Jehovah has said: "not for your sakes I am doing [it], 0 house of Israel, but for my holy name, which you have PROFANED among the nations where you have come in." Since the WTS claims that it is spiritual Israel and fulfils these prophecies in Ezekiel, how do Jehovah's Witnesses believe they have profaned God's name "among the nations"?
17. The NWT adds the word "[the]" to the phrase "of our God and savior Jesus Christ" in 2Pet 1:1. 2Pet 1:11, 2:20, and 3:18, which contain the same exact phrase in the Greek with the exception that these verses contain the word "lord" (kyrios) instead of the word "God" (Theos), don’t have the word "[the]" added to them. See Greek-English Interlinear. What is the reason for this gross inconsistency in translation of these phrases? How would 2 Pet 1:1 read if it had been translated the same way as 2Pet 1:11, 2:20, and 3:18, and the word "[the]" had not been added? What does scripture say about adding words to the Bible? See Prov 30:5-6.
18. Zechariah 2:10-12 says, "Cry out loudly and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for here I am coming, and I will reside in the midst of you", is the utterance of Jehovah…And you will have to know that Jehovah of armies himself has sent me to you. And Jehovah will certainly take possession of Judah…and he must yet choose Jerusalem." If Jesus and Jehovah are not one and the same God, then how do you explain the fact that Christ is the one who is "coming" and "will reside in the midst of you", but in this passage, Jehovah claims that he is the one who is coming and will reside in their midst? How do you explain the fact that "Jehovah of armies" is sending him (Jehovah) to reside in their midst?
19. Is it true that the WTS once taught that: The second presence of Christ started in 1874 (WT, 11/1/22, pgs 332-337; Prophecy, 1929, pg 65-66); Vaccinations never saved a human life, doesn’t prevent smallpox, and are condemned (Golden Age, Feb 4, 1931, pg 293-4); The great pyramid of Egypt is a witness of the Lord (WT May 15, 1925 pgs 148-9); God governs the universe from a star called Alcyone (Thy Kingdom Come, 1903 Ed, pg 327); Leviathan of the Bible is the steam locomotive (The Finished Mystery, pg 84-86); Tonsillectomy is condemned; better to commit suicide than have a tonsillectomy (GA, April 7, 1926, pg 438); In the new world, Abraham will rule New York City (GA, Oct 5, 1927, pg 26/29); The black race originated with Noah’s curse upon Canaan (GA, Jul 24, 1929, pg 702); Jews are no longer important to God (Vindication, Vol 2, pg 257-258); God wears clothes (GA, May 19, 1926, pg 534); The WTS stands for the principles of Nazi Germany (Yearbook 1934, pg 134-137); Aspirin is the menace of heart disease (GA, Feb 27, 1935, pg 343-4); Do not use X-rays (GA, Sept 23, 1936, pg 828); In 1938, people should not get married (Face the Facts, pg 46-50); Organ transplants were condemned as cannibalistic (WT, Nov 15, 1967, pg 702-4)? The WTS teaches that it is the mouthpiece for Jehovah and God’s one and only channel of communication to the world. Since God does not tell lies or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), and since it is clear that the WTS could not have possibly been speaking for God when they proclaimed these teachings, then how do you know that the WTS is speaking for God now? See Zeph 3:13 and Isa 28:15. To see many direct quotes from the WTS, click: WTS Quotes
20. The NWT translates the Greek word "esti" as "is" every time it appears in the New Testament (eg, Mt 26:18, 38, Mk 14:44, Lk 22:38, etc), except in Mt 26:26-28, Mk 14:22-24, and Lk 22:19 where it is rendered as "means", even though this word is translated as "is" in the Kingdom Interlinear. Why the inconsistency in the translation of the word "esti" in these verses? If the NWT were consistent and translated the Greek word "esti" as "is" in these verses, what would these verses say?
21. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the word of God by twice adding the words "relation to" in Mt 5:19, when this phrase does not exist in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would this verse read if the phrase "relation to" had not been added to it and what would this say about who can enter the kingdom of heaven? If only 144,000 people will go to heaven, why does scripture say in this verse that "ANYONE who does them (the commandments) and teaches them…" will be called great "in the kingdom of the heavens."? What does the word "anyone" mean to you?
22. If the earth will never be destroyed or depopulated, how can it be, then, that God says in Isa 51:6, "... the earth itself will wear out, and its inhabitants themselves will die like a mere gnat...", and that John says in Rev 21:1 that he saw "... a new heaven and a NEW earth; for the former heaven and the FORMER earth had passed away, and the sea is NO MORE."? Similarly, if the WTS’s teaching that the earth will never be destroyed or depopulated is correct, then why does the Bible say that "the earth itself…will perish" (Ps 102:25-26, Heb 1:10-11), and why does Jesus himself say that "Heaven and EARTH will pass away…" (Mt 24:35, Mk 13:31, Lk 21:33)? Conversly, in Eccl 1:4, Solomon says, "A generation is going and a generation is coming; but the earth is standing even to time indefinite." But didn’t Solomon write this scripture at a time in his life when he had ceased to serve the Lord and therefore wrote only his own thoughts from a very humanistic point of view? In Eccl 1:2, he states, "Everything is vanity!" and in vs 8 he says, "All things are wearisome". Since obviously not "everything" is vanity and not "all things" are wearisome to a true Christian, doesn’t this show that Solomon was speaking for himself and doesn’t this whole passage just show the futility of man without God?
23. The NWT translates the Greek word "Theos" in Jn 1:1c as "a god", but translates this same exact Greek word as "God" everywhere else it appears, (eg, Jn 3:2, 3:16, 3:17, 3:33, 3:34, 4:24, 6:27, 8:54, etc), including Jn 20:28 where this word explicitly refers to Jesus. What is the reason for this inconsistency in the translation of "Theos" in Jn 1:1c? If "Theos" was translated as "God" in Jn 1:1c like it is translated everywhere else it appears in the NWT, how would Jn 1:1 read and what would it say about the nature of Christ? Similarly, the Greek word "Theon" is translated in the NWT as "God" in almost every instance (eg, Mt 22:37, Lk 10:27, Jn 1:1b, 8:41, 14:1, 17:3, 1Jn 4:7, 4:12, 5:2, Rev 14:7, etc), but in Jn 10:33 it is translated as "a god". What is the reason for this inconsistency in the translation of the word "Theon"? If "Theon" was translated as "God" in Jn 10:33, how would this verse read and what would it say about the nature of Christ? What did Jesus say in this passage that made the Jews want to kill him? See Jn 10:30-31. The phrase "Son of God" in theological language is a semitic term which means "having the same nature as God", or being God, just as the term "Son of man" means "having the same nature as a man", or being a man. Since blasphemy is one of the few offenses in Jewish law for which a person may be stoned to death, wouldn’t this claim of Christ, that he is the Son of God, qualify as a blasphemous statement to the Jews, and wasn’t this the reason they wanted to kill him by stoning him to death (Jn 10:31, 36-39)?
24. On pgs. 66, 69, 211, 423, 560, 648, and 719 of Jehovah's Witnesses--Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, reference is made to The Finished Mystery, which was the 7th of the Studies in the Scriptures series published by the WTS in 1917 (pg 66, 719), and was the major publication of the WTS at that time. On pgs. 88, 648, and 651, a picture of this book appears, complete with the winged disk symbol of the Egyptian sun god Ra on its front cover. Is it true that The Finished Mystery taught that Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and the Almighty of Rev 1:8 (pg 15), that Christ established a "Church" (pg 17), that Christ returned invisibly in 1874 (pg 54, 60, 68), that Armageddon was definitely going to occur in the spring of 1918 (pg 62 and 128), that the Holy Spirit has a personality (pg 57), that the great pyramid of Giza was God's stone witness and was used to predict the year of Armageddon (pg 60), that Christ was crucified (pg 68), that Heb 1:6 is translated, "Let all the angels of God worship him" (pg 104), that Leviathan of the Bible refers to the steam locomotive (pg 85), that Michael is the Pope of Rome and the angels are his bishops (pg 188), that Nah 2:3-6 describes the railway train (pg 93), that the great earthquake of Rev 6:12 refers literally to the Lisbon earthquake of Nov 1, 1775, and it refers symbolically to the American Revolution (pg 119), that the sun becoming black in Rev 6:12 refers literally to a dark day which occurred on May 19, 1780, and refers symbolically to the light of the papal heavens darkened when Napoleon fined the Pope 10 million dollars and took the Pope a prisoner to France (pg 120), that Christ is eternal, "the same yesterday, today, and forever. – Heb 13:8" (pg 142), and that the Seventh Volume of Studies in the Scriptures (also known as The Finished Mystery) is "Divinely provided" (pg 145)? According to "current" WTS teachings, Christ began to reign in heaven in 1914 and around 1918 chose the WTS as his earthly organization because they were the only ones teaching "the Truth". If this was so, then Jesus would have known the teachings of the WTS as put forth in The Finished Mystery, published in 1917. Do you really think that Jesus would have chosen an organization which taught so many things that were not correct according to "current" WTS teachings and are no longer taught as "the Truth"? Since God does not tell lies or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), and it is clear that the WTS could not have possibly been speaking for God when they taught these things, at least according to current WTS teachings, how do you know that the WTS is speaking for God now?
25. Isa 42:8 says, "I am Jehovah. That is my name; and to no one else shall I give my own glory…". Similarly, Isa 48:11 says, "… And to no one else shall I give my own glory." If Christ is not God, then how could he say in Jn 17:5, "So now you, Father, glorify me alongside yourself with the GLORY that I HAD alongside you before the world was"? Since God stated that no one else would have the glory that alone belonged to God, how could Christ have the same "glory" as God unless Christ is God in the flesh?
26. Phil 2:6-8 says that Christ was "existing in God’s form" before he became a man, and willingly "emptied (lowered) himself" to become a man and "humbled HIMSELF" in order to make himself subject to the Father. Scripture also says that Christ was born under the law (Gal 4:4), in order to do, not his own will, but the will of the Father (Jn 5:30, 6:37). Doesn’t this mean that before Christ lowered "himself", he would not have been subject to the Father and therefore equal to the Father in authority and glory? See also Jn 17:5
27. The NWT translates the Greek words "ego eimi" () as "I am" every time it appears in the New Testament (eg, Jn 6:35, 6:41, 8:24, 13:19, 15:5, etc.), except in Jn 8:58 where it is translated as "I have been". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible what is the reason for the inconsistency in this translation? If "ego eimi" was translated in Jn 8:58 the same way it is translated in every other verse in which it appears, how would Jn 8:58 read and what would this verse say about the nature of Christ? See Exo 3:14 in every version of the Bible except the NWT. Why is this phrase, "ego eimi" translated as "I am" in the KIT, but "I have been" in the NWT? Since "I am" is present tense, and "I have been" is past tense, which tense is correct? If the "translators" of the NWT were Greek scholars, shouldn’t they have known which tense "ego eimi" is?
28. Almost every time the Greek word "ginosko" (Strong’s # 1097) is used in the New Testament, the NWT translates it as "know" or "known" (eg, 1Cor 8:3, Gal 4:9, Jn 10:14, Jn 10:27, etc). However, in Jn 17:3, this same Greek word is rendered as "taking in knowledge of". What is the reason for the inconsistency of the translation of this word in Jn 17:3 by the NWT? If the NWT were consistent and translated this word in Jn 17:3 the same way it is translated in the other verses in which it appears, how would this verse read? In addition, the Kingdom Interlinear translates this word as "they may be KNOWING" instead of "their taking in knowledge" as it is translated in the NWT. Why the inconsistency in translation between the KIT and the NWT? If this word was translated in this verse like it is translated in the other verses in which it appears, how would this verse read? How could a person come to "know" Jesus Christ unless they have a relationship with him? How could a person have a relationship with Christ unless they communicate with Jesus through prayer?
29. If the soul is the body, why does Jesus make a distinction between the body and the soul in Mt 10:28? Similarly, if the soul is the body, why does Paul make a distinction between the "spirit and soul and body of you" in 1Thess 5:23? In addition, the NWT renders 2Tim 4:22 as, "The Lord [be] with the spirit you [show]…"even though the Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT) translates the Greek phrase "sou pneuma" as "the spirit of you". Why is there a difference between the KIT and the NWT rendition of this verse? Why does the NWT add the word "[show]" when it does not appear in the Greek? Wouldn’t the KIT version be a much simpler and straight forward rendition of this verse? If the KIT version is used, what does this verse say about the "spirit" of a person?
30. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the word of God by adding the word "[Son]" in Acts 20:28 when this word does not exist in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear.
31. In Phil 2:9, the NWT inserts the word "[other]" even though it doesn't appear in the original Greek. See Gr-Engl Interlinear. Why does the WTS alter scripture by adding the word "[other]" to this verse? Is the word "Jehovah" a name? See Exo 6:3, Ps 83:18, and Isa 42:8. How would the verse read if the word "other" had not been inserted? What does scripture say about adding words to the Bible? See Prov 30:5-6. If Christians are persecuted for the sake of Jehovah's name, why did Christ tell the first Christians that they would be persecuted for the sake of his (Jesus') name, instead of Jehovah's (Mt 24:9, Mk 13:13, Lk 21:12,17, Jn 15:21, and Acts 9:16)? If the name "Jehovah" is so important, then why does Acts 4:12 say, "Furthermore, there is no salvation in anyone else, for there is not another name (Jesus Christ vs 10) under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved"? If the teachings of the WTS are correct, would this not have been the logical place for God to have used the name "YHWH" or "Jehovah"?
32. The NWT translates Mt 25:46 as, "And these will depart into everlasting cutting-off…". The Greek word that is translated as "cutting-off" is "kolasis" (Strong # 2851). According to Strong’s Greek dictionary, this word can only mean "correction, punishment, or penalty", but no reference is made to "cutting-off". If the word "kolasis" was translated correctly as "correction, punishment, or penalty", as it should be according to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, how would this verse read?
33. According to scripture, Jesus is "the first and the last" (Rev 1:17-18), the "first and the last" is "the Alpha and Omega" (Rev 22:13), and "the Alpha and the Omega" is God (Rev 1:8). In other words, Jesus = "the first and the last" = "the Alpha and the Omega" = God. How can this be if Jesus is not God?
34. Since the WTS prohibits the use of blood transfusions, why does it permit the infusion of albumin, clotting factors, and gamma globulins, all of which are components of human blood and are derived from human blood? Since Acts 15:29 clearly refers to the old Jewish law of not EATING blood (Gen 9:4, Lev 3:17, Deut 12:16), and since the WTS has changed its teachings on other major health related issues like vaccinations, organ transplantations, and its opposition to tonsillectomies (Golden Age, 4/7/26, pg 438), etc. and simply calls these changes "New Light", how can you be sure they won't some day change their teachings on blood transfusions and refer to that change as "New Light" also?
35. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the written word of God by adding the words "itself" and "[true]" in Eccl 12:7 when these words don’t exist in the Hebrew? How would this verse read without the addition of these words? What does scripture say about adding words to the Bible? See Prov 30:5-6. If what the WTS teaches about the spirit of man is correct, then how can the "spirit" of a man return to God after the body dies and returns to the earth?
36. The WTS book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth states on page 147, "Bible evidence shows that in the year 1914 C.E. God’s time arrived for Christ to return and begin ruling." It also states "In the same way, Christ’s return does not mean that he literally comes back to this earth. Rather, it means that he takes Kingdom power toward this earth and turns his attention to it." In 1Cor 11:26, Paul writes, "For as often as you eat this loaf and drink this cup, you keep proclaiming the death of the Lord, until he arrives." If Christ "arrived" in 1914, why do Jehovah's Witnesses continue to partake of the bread and wine? Shouldn't they have stopped in 1914?
37. In Acts 2:26-27, Peter, referring to the time the dead Jesus spent in the tomb, quotes David referring to Christ, "On this account my heart became cheerful and my tongue greatly rejoiced. Moreover, even MY FLESH WILL RESIDE IN HOPE, because you will not leave my soul in Hades…" If Jesus’ body was destroyed while he was in the tomb, why does he say that his "flesh will reside in hope"? For what "hope" was his "flesh" residing? If there is no conscious awareness after death, how could he "hope", in the first place?
38. In the NWT, every time the Greek word "proskuneo" () is used in reference to God, it is translated as "worship" (Rev 5:14, 7:11, 11:16, 19:4, Jn 4:20, etc.). Every time "proskuneo" is used in reference to Jesus, it is translated as "obeisance" (Mt 14:33, 28:9, 28:17, Lk 24:52, Heb 1:6, etc.), even though it is the same word in the Greek (see Gr-Engl Interlinear). Especially compare the Greek word "proskunhsan" used with reference to God in Rev 5:14, 7:11, 11:16, and 19:4 and the same exact word used with reference to Christ in Mt 14:33, 28:9, and 28:17. What is the reason for this inconsistency in translation? If the NWT was consistent in translating "proskuneo" as "worship", how would the verses above referring to Christ read?
39. Jesus Christ is referred to as "Mighty God" in Isa 9:6 ("For there has been a child born to us, there has been a son given to us... And his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father..."). Jehovah God is referred to as "Mighty God" in Isa 10:20-21. How can this be if there is only ONE God? Jesus is also called the "Eternal Father" in Isa 9:6. Since only God is eternal, that is, has no beginning and no end, how can this be if Christ is not God but was "created" by God? If "Mighty God" and "Eternal Father" are only titles given to Christ, why would he be given any "title" in scripture that did not accurately apply to him?
40. Acts 17:31 Paul says, "Because he has set a day in which he purposes to judge the inhabited earth in righteousness by a MAN whom he has appointed, and he has furnished a guarantee to all men in that he has resurrected him from the dead". Did Paul believe that the future judge of the world, Jesus Christ, would be an invisible spirit creature or an immortal "man"? Similarly, after Jesus’ death, Paul writes in 1Tim 2:5, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, a man, Christ Jesus." Did Paul, speaking in the present, believe that Jesus was an invisible spirit creature or a "man"?
41. Col 1:16, in talking about Jesus says, "... ALL [other] things have been created through him and FOR HIM". If Jesus were Michael the Archangel at the time of creation, would an angel have created all things for himself? Isa 43:7 says God created "everyone ... for my OWN glory ..." If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the written word of God by adding the word "[other]" even though it does not appear in the original Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would this verse read if the word "[other]" had not been added? What does the word "all" mean to you?
42. Heb 1:3, in speaking of Christ says, "…and he sustains ALL things by the word of his power…" What does the word "all" mean to you? How could Christ "sustain all things" unless he is almighty? Since only God is almighty, what does this verse say about Christ?
43. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it alter the word of God by adding the word "[others]" in Acts 10:36 when this word does not appear in the Greek? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. How would this verse read if the word "[others]" had not been added to it? What does the word "all" mean to you?
44. Does Prov 4:18 really justify an organization replacing doctrines and failed prophecies with new doctrines and prophecies, or does it simply contrast the benefit to the "righteous" of obeying a wise father (Prov 4:10-19)? A false teaching can be called a "false word" and Prov 13:5 says, "A false word is what the righteous hates..." When the WTS changes a teaching to something that is totally different or even the exact opposite of a previous teaching, is it like a light that is "getting brighter and brighter" or more like having one false light (word) completely turned off and a totally different light turned on? Do you think the WTS would be critical of any other religious organization that changed its teachings as many times on as many different issues over the last 100 years as the WTS has? In addition, Jude 3 says, "…to put up a hard fight for the faith that was once for all time delivered to the holy ones." Since the faith was established and "once for all time delivered" to the first century Christians, and since the Bible doesn’t change and God doesn’t lie or change his mind (Num 23:19, Ps 89:34, Heb 6:18), why the need for constant "new light" and ever changing teachings of the WTS, many of which directly contradict former WTS teachings?
45. According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the Greek word "theotes" (Strong’s # 2320) used only once in the Bible in Col 2:9, is translated as "the state of being God, Godhead". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it mistranslate this Greek word "theotes" as "divine quality" in Col 2:9, instead of "Godhead"?
46. In the WTS book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth states on page 147, "…Bible evidence shows that in the year 1914 C.E. God’s time arrived for Christ to return and begin ruling." It also states "In the same way, Christ’s return does not mean that he literally comes back to this earth. Rather, it means that he takes Kingdom power toward this earth and turns his attention to it." This event is described in Zechariah 14:4, which states, "And his feet will actually stand in that day upon the mountain of the olive trees which is in front of Jerusalem on the east…" If Jesus has no body and if he will not literally come back to earth, as only the WTS teaches, how do you explain this verse? What does the phrase "his feet will actually stand" mean to you? In addition, Zech 14:3 says that it is Jehovah’s feet that will stand upon the mountain of the olive trees. Since Jesus is the one who is coming, how can this be unless Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same? Similarly, if Christ will not have a visible return to earth, but returned invisibly in 1914, then how was he seen by "ALL the tribes of the earth" (Mt 24:30), and by "EVERY eye" (Rev 1:7) when he returned? What do the words "all" and "every" mean to you? How can Christ "APPEAR" a second time (Heb 9:28) if he will not have a visible "return" to earth?
47. According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the Greek word "klao" (Strong’s # 2806) means "to break; used in the NT of the breaking of bread or communion" and the Greek word "artos" (Strong’s # 740) means "food made with flour mixed with water and baked" or "bread". Jesus himself used these same words ""klao" and "artos" in Lk 22:19 at the Last Supper and Paul also uses these words in 1Cor 11:23-24. In these verses, the NWT translates these words accurately as "broke" and "loaf". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why then does it translate the Greek phrase "klao artos" of Acts 2:46 and Acts 20:7, as "took their meals" and "have a meal", instead of the much more accurate "break bread"? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, what is the reason for the inconsistency of the translation of these words between Lk 22:19 and Acts 2:46, 20:7? In Acts 2:46, how often did the early Christians meet to break bread?
48. Acts 1:11 says, "This Jesus who was received up from the you (apostles) into the sky will come thus in the same manner as you have beheld him going into the sky." What does the phrase "in the same manner" mean to you? Did Jesus literally, physically, and in plain view ascend to heaven (see Acts 1:9)? What does the phrase "while they were looking on, he was lifted up" in Acts 1:9 mean to you? If Jesus physically and in plain view ascended to heaven, then how can Jesus have an "invisible" return to earth if his return will be "in the same manner" as his ascension?
49. According to Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary, the Hebrew word "ruwach" (Strong’s # 07307) used in Gen 1:2 means "spirit". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it mistranslate this word as "active force"? Similarly, in 1 John 4:1, the NWT translates the Greek word "pneuma" as "divine expressions" even though this same Greek word is translated as "spirit" in 1Jn 3:24, 1Jn 4:2,3, and 6. Why the inconsistency in the translation of this word? Isn’t John's whole point here that even though the Spirit's presence in us gives us assurance of God's love, we are not to believe every "spirit" that claims to be from God, but test them by the teachings which their prophets espouse, "because many false prophets have gone out into the world"? Is the NWT obscuring this point in order to avoid the implication that God’s "spirit" is a person rather than a force (just as the demonic "spirits" are personal entities and not impersonal forces). In addition, in 1Tim 4:1, the NWT translates the simple Greek word "pneuma" as "inspired utterance", instead of "spirit". What is the reason for this inconsistency in translation of the word "pneuma"? Is it because a straightforward "the spirit says" would too obviously imply the personality of the Holy Spirit?
50. To what was Jesus referring to by the term "this temple" in Jn 2:18-19? In Jn 2:21 John explicitly states that when Jesus used the term "this temple", he was referring to his body. If the WTS teaching that Jesus' body was destroyed after his death is correct, then how do you explain these verses?
51. If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it translate the very simple Greek phrase "en autos" as "in him" in Col 2:7, Col 2:9, Mt 14:2, Mk 6:14, Lk 23:22, Jn 4:14, Acts 20:10, 1Cor 2:11, Eph 1:10, Col 1:19, Heb 10:38, 1Jn 2:15, 3:5, 3:15, etc. but translates this same Greek phrase as "by means of him" in 2Cor 1:20, 5:21, and Col 2:10, "by relationship with him" in Col 2:11, "in his case" in 2Cor 1:19, 1Jn 2:8, 10, and "in union with him" in Jn 14:11, 2Cor 13:5, Eph 1:4, Phil 3:9, Col 2:6, 2Thess 1:12, 1Jn 1:5, 2:5, 2:27, 2:28, 3:6, 4:13, 4:15, and 4:16? See Gr-Engl Interlinear. What is the reason for the addition of words in these verses and for the inconsistency in translation of this very simple Greek phrase "en autos"? If the NWT was consistent and translated this very simple Greek phrase "en autos" as "in him" in all the above verses, how would they read? Is the WTS trying to obscure the point of the author that the Christian life consists of a supernatural relationship with Christ?
52. Jn 1:3 says that Jesus created "all things". What does the word "all" mean to you? In Isa 44:24, God says that he "BY MYSELF" created the heavens and the earth and asks the question "Who was with me?" when the heavens and the earth were created. If what the WTS teaches about the nature of Christ is correct, how could God have been "by myself" when the heavens and the earth were created if Christ had been created first? If Jesus had been created by God, wouldn’t he have been with God when everything else was created? Likewise, if Jesus was a created being, then according to Jn 1:3, Jesus would have had to create himself. How would that have been possible?
53. If Christ was created by God and was the wisdom of God (Prov 8:1-4, 12, 22-31), then before Jesus would have been created, God would have had to have been without wisdom. How is it possible that God could have ever been without wisdom? In Prov 8:2, the feminine form of the Hebrew verb "natsab" is used. This can only be translated as "SHE stands". Similarly, in Prov 8:3, the feminine form of the Hebrew verb "ranan" is used. This can only be translated as "SHE cries". If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why does it use the neuter pronoun "it" in these verses when the feminine pronoun "she" is called for? How could Christ be the wisdom of God in Prov 8, if the feminine form of the verbs are used? In addition, why does the NWT use the neuter pronoun "it" in Prov 8:2-3, when wisdom is called "sister" in Prov 7:4 and "she" in Prov 9:4?
54. The Bible says that: The heavens are the work of God’s hands (Ps 102:25), the heavens are the work of Jesus’ hand (Heb 1:10); God laid the foundations of the earth (Isa 48:13), Jesus laid the foundations of the earth (Heb 1:10); God is our judge (Ps 50:6, Eccl 12:14, 1Chron 16:33), Jesus is our judge (2Tim 4:1, Rev 20:12); God is the temple of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:22), Jesus (the Lamb) is the temple of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:22); God is the alpha and omega (Rev 1:8), Jesus is the alpha and omega (Rev 22:13); God is the first and last (Isa 44:6, 48:12), Jesus is the first and last (Rev 22:13); God is the beginning and the end (Rev 21:6), Jesus is the beginning and the end (Rev 22:13); Only God can forgive sins (Lk 5:21), Jesus forgives sins (Lk 5:20); God is our hope (Ps 71:5), Jesus is our hope (1Tim 1:1); God is eternal (Deut 33:27), Jesus is eternal (Isa 9:6, Heb 1:10-11); God will come with all the holy ones (Zech 14:5), Jesus will come with all the holy ones (1Thess 3:13); Only God is our savior (Isa 43:11), Jesus is our savior (Tit 2:13, 2Pet 1:1); God is the creator of the universe (Isa 44:24, Jer 27:5), Jesus is the creator of the universe (Jn 1:3); To God, every knee will bow and every tongue confess (Isa 45:22-23), to Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess (Phil 2:10-11); God is the same and his years will have no end (Ps 102:27), Jesus is the same and his years will have no end (Heb 1:12); God is immutable (Mal 3:6), Jesus is immutable (Heb 13:8); God is over all (Ps 97:9), Jesus is over all (Jn 3:31); the spirit of God dwells in us (Rom 8:9), the spirit of Jesus dwells in us (Gal 4:6); God is a stone of offense and a stumbling block (Isa 8:14), Jesus is a stone of offense and a stumbling block (1Pet 2:8); God was valued at 30 pieces of silver (Zech 11:12-13), Jesus was valued at 30 pieces of silver (Mt 26:14-16); God is our shepherd (Ps 23:1), Jesus is our shepherd (Jn 10:11, 1Pet 5:4, Heb 13:20); God is Mighty God (Isa 10:21), Jesus is Mighty God (Isa 9:6); God is Lord of Lords (Deut 10:17, Ps 136:3), Jesus is Lord of Lords (Rev 17:14); God is our only Rock (Isa 44:8, Ps 18:2, 94:22), Jesus is our rock (1 Cor 10:4); God is our owner (Isa 54:5), Jesus is our only owner (Jude 4); No one can snatch us out of God’s hand (Deut 32:39), no one can snatch us out of Jesus’ hand (Jn 10:28); God is the horn of salvation (2Sam 22:3), Jesus is the horn of salvation (Lk 1:68-9); God renders according to our works (Ps 62:12), Jesus renders according to our works (Mt 16:27, Rev 22:12); God loves and corrects (Prov 3:12), Jesus loves and corrects (Rev 3:19); God’s words will stand forever (Isa 40:8), Jesus’ words will stand forever (Mt 24:35); God is the eternal light (Isa 60:19), Jesus is the eternal light (Jn 8:12, Rev 21:23); God seeks to save the lost (Ezek 34:16), Jesus seeks to save the lost (Lk 19:10); Paul is a slave of God (Tit 1:1), Paul is a slave of Jesus (Rom 1:1) even though no man can slave for two masters (Mt 6:24); God raised Jesus from the dead (Gal 1:1), Jesus raised himself from the dead (Jn 2:19-21); God is our guide (Ps 48:14), Jesus is our guide (Lk 1:79); God is our deliverer (Ps 70:5, 2Sam 22:2), Jesus is our deliverer (Rom 11:26); God is called God (Isa 44:8), Jesus is called God (Isa 9:6, Jn 20:28); God is the King of Israel (Isa 44:6), Jesus is the King of Israel (Mt 27:42, Jn 1:49). Since the Bible does not contradict itself, how can all these things be true if Jesus is not God?
55. In Col 2:8, Paul condemns the "traditions of men" and in Mt 15:6, Jesus condemns the "tradition" of the Pharisees that makes the "word of God invalid", since their traditions were making null and void the commandment to "Honor your father and mother" (Mt 15:4). However, in 2Thess 2:15, the Bible commands us to "stand firm and maintain your hold on the traditions that you were taught", in 2Thess 3:6 we are told of "the tradition you received from us", and 1Cor 11:2 says that the Corinthians are "holding fast to the TRADITIONS just as I handed [them] on to you." By definition, the word "tradition" refers to the unwritten teachings that have been handed down by word of mouth from one generation to the next. See also 2Tim 2:2, 1Cor 11:2, 1Thess 2:13, 1Cor 11:23, 1Cor 15:3, and 1Tim 6:20-21. Since the WTS claims that the Bible is its "supreme authority", then in accordance with biblical commands, what "traditions" do Witnesses maintain?
56. Does the WTS claim "apostolic succession"? If so, can it trace its roots all the way back to Christ (Mt 16:18)? Who was it then, that "passed the torch of God's spirit" to C. T. Russell when he founded the organization? What was the name of this individual or individuals? Similarly, since the anointed believers as an organization are claimed to be God's collective "faithful and discreet slave" that alone guides people in their understanding of Scripture, and since this organization did not come into existence until the late-nineteenth century, does this mean God had no true representatives on earth for many, many centuries? If he did, who were they? What were their names? Can you name one Jehovah’s Witness who lived before 1800?
57. The NWT translates Jn 1:1 as "... and the Word was WITH God, and the word was a god." How can the Word (Jesus) be "a god' if God says in Deut 32:39, "See now that I -- I am he, and there are NO gods together with me..."? Similarly, the Greek word "Theos" does not have an article in Jn 1:1c and the NWT supplies the indefinite article "a", rendering it "and the Word was a god." If the NWT is the most accurate word for word translation of the Bible, why doesn’t the NWT add the indefinite article "a" in other verses where the Greek word "Theos" does not have an article (eg Jn 1:6, 12, 13, 18, etc)? What is the reason for this inconsistency in translation? In addition, how could Jesus be "a god" since Jesus says that he came against those whom the prophet called "gods" (Jn 10:35)? Is there any such things as a "true" god? If the WTS teaches this, then doesn’t that make them polytheists?
58. The WTS teaches that the 144,000 of Rev 7:4 and Rev 14:3 is to be taken literally. If these passages in scripture are to be taken literally, then the 144,000 are all literally male (Rev 14:4), Jewish (Rev 7:4-8), virgins (Rev 14:4). Was Charles Taze Russell a Jewish virgin? Are all women excluded from this number? Are any of the other 144,000 people included in this number Jewish virgins? If not, then how can this passage, including the number 144,000, be taken literally? What justification is there for switching methods of interpretation from literal, in the case of Rev 7:4 and 14:3, to figurative in the very next verse(s)?
59. Jesus uses the phrase "Truly I say to you,..." over 50 times in the Bible. In the NWT, the comma is placed after the word "you" every time except in Lk 23:43, where the comma is placed after the word "today". Why is the comma placed after "today" instead of after "you" in this verse? According to Strong’s Greek Dictionary, the word "paradise" (Gr-paradeisos – Strong’s #3857) refers to "the part of Hades which was thought by the later Jews to be the abode of the souls of the pious until the resurrection", where Jesus would go in order to preach after his death (1Pet 3:18-20, 1Pet 4:5-6). By using this word instead of the Greek word for "heaven", wasn’t Luke showing that Jesus was not referring to heaven when he made this statement? If the translation of this phrase in Lk 23:43 was consistent with the translation of this phrase in every other verse in which it appears (see concordance), and the comma was placed after the word "you", how would this verse read?
60. What are the names of the men on the New World Bible Translation Committee who supposedly translated the original Hebrew and Greek into English for the NWT? What are their credentials that would qualify them to produce a Bible translation? Why does the WTS withhold the names of these people so that no one can see what their qualifications are?
61. Rev 20:10 says, "And the Devil... the wild beast and the false prophet [already were]; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever". This event will occur after the 1,000 year reign of Christ (Rev 20:7). Where will the Devil, the wild beast, and the false prophet be "tormented day and night forever and ever"? What does the word "tormented" mean to you? Likewise, Rev 14:9-11 says, "... If anyone worship the wild beast... he shall be tormented with fire and sulphur... And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever..." Where could "anyone" be "tormented... forever and ever"?
62. Since the WTS currently rejects many of the teachings of its founder, Charles Taze Russell (who was president of the organization from 1879-1916), and since they also reject many of the teachings of "Judge" Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who succeeded Russell as president from 1916-1942, how can you be sure that in 25 more years, the WTS won't reject many of the teachings under current president, Milton Henschel (1992-present), as they did Russell and Rutherford? What kind of confidence can you have in an organization that rejected many of the teachings of its founder and first two presidents for the first 63 years of its existence - over 50% of the time they have existed?!
63. In Jn 20:28, John refers to Jesus in Greek as "Ho kyrios moy kai ho theos moy". This translates literally as "the (Ho) Lord (kyrios) of me (moy) and (kai) THE (ho) God (theos) of me (moy)". Why does Jesus, in Jn 20:29, affirm Thomas for having come to this realization? If Jesus really wasn't the Lord and "THE God" of Thomas, why didn't Jesus correct him for making either a false assumption or a blasphemous statement?
64. Since the WTS has received "new light" regarding the 1914 generation, and completely changed their views on this, does this mean that all the former Witnesses who were disfellowshipped years ago for the same view the organization is now teaching will automatically be accepted back into fellowship again? Were these ex-Witnesses in fact disfellowshipped for what is now taught as "the Truth"?
65. If there are 144,000 spirit anointed people who have a heavenly hope, and a great crowd of people who have another hope of everlasting life on paradise earth, why does Paul say that there is only ONE hope (Eph 4:4), instead of two? Similarly, if there is one body of people that will go to heaven, and another completely different body of people that will live forever in paradise on earth, why does Paul say that everyone who is baptized, is baptized into "ONE body" (1Cor 12:13)? What do the words "all" and "one" mean to you?
66. Rev 7:11 says that "before the throne" is in heaven where "all the angels were standing". Rev 14:2-3 says "And I heard a sound out of heaven ... And they were singing as if a new song before the throne ...", also showing that "before the throne" is in heaven. Rev 7:9 says,"... look, a great crowd ... standing before the throne..." and Rev 7:14-15 says, "...These are the ones that come out of the great tribulation ... That is why they are before the throne of God ..." Therefore, if "before the throne " means in heaven (Rev 7:11, 14:2-3), and the "great crowd" is "before the throne" (Rev 7:9, 7:14-15), where does that mean that the great crowd will be? Where does Rev 19:1 say that the great crowd will be?
67. If hell does not exist, then what is the "everlasting fire" (Mt 18:8, Mt 25:41, and Jude 7) that people can be thrown into? If fire is a symbol of annihilation, then what is the scriptural evidence to support this? Similarly, Jesus talks about the "fiery furnace" and says "There is where [their] weeping and the gnashing of [their] teeth will be" (Mt 13:42, 13:50). If hell does not exist, then where is the "fiery furnace" where there will be "weeping and the gnashing of [their] teeth"? If the "fiery furnace" is just symbolic of total annihilation, in which a person will completely go out of existence and have no conscious awareness, then how could they weep and gnash their teeth?
68. The WTS makes the claim, "Like the Primitive Christian Community - the religious publication 'Interpretation' stated in July 1956: 'In their organization and witnessing work, they [Jehovah's Witnesses] come as close as any group to approximating the primitive Christian community..."- Jehovah's Witnesses- Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, pg 234, and on pg 677 of the same book, a caption appears titled "Like the early Christians". Do Jehovah's Witnesses pray the "Our Father" (Mt 6:9-13), break bread together (celebrate the Eucharist) frequently (Acts 2:42, 1Cor 10:16-17, 1Cor 11:26-27), come together on Sunday to break bread (Acts 20:7), confirm the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands (Acts 8:15-17, 19:5-6, Heb 6:2, 2Tim 1:6), ordain (appoint) priests (elders) through the laying on of hands (Acts 6:5-6, 13:2-3), pray to Jesus (Mt 11:28, Acts 7:59-60, 1Cor 16:22-23, Rev 22:20), anoint the sick with oil (Mk 6:12-13, Jas 5:14), often kneel down to pray (Acts 9:40, 20:36, 21:5, Lk 22:41), consider themselves to be witnesses of Christ (Acts 1:8, 10:39, 13:31), have deacons (1Tim 3:8, 10, 12), use altars (1Cor 10:18-21, Heb 13:10), fast from food (Mt 6:16-18), believe there is salvation in no one else other than Jesus Christ (Acts 4:10-12), celebrate Pentecost (Acts 2:1, 20:16, 1Cor 16:8), have special people that look after widows and orphans (Acts 6:1-4, Jas 1:27), and occasionally drink wine (1Tim 5:23)? If not, then how can Jehovah's Witnesses consider themselves to be like the primitive Christian community? Since the word "Jehovah" is not contained in the original New Testament and did not appear until at least the 12th century (See Aid to Bible Understanding, pages 884, 885), making it clear that the first century Christian community could not have referred to themselves by this name, then how can the WTS be like the primitive Christian community by applying the term "Jehovah’s Witnesses" to themselves?
69. If the name Jehovah is so important, then why is it never used in the entire Greek New Testament and why does it not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts of New Testament writings or in the very first Bible, the 5th century Latin Vulgate? If men edited out the proper name of God, "YHWH", when they copied the New Testament, as only the WTS claims, thereby altering God's written word, then how can we have confidence in ANY of the New Testament? Should we discard the New Testament or the WTS as unreliable? Since Jesus never addressed the Father as "Jehovah", and since he taught that we can address God as "Father" (Mt 6:8-18, 7:21, Mk 14:36, etc), doesn’t this mean that the term "Jehovah" is not the only expression by which we can address God? Why don’t Witnesses follow the example of Jesus and address God as "Father", instead of "Jehovah"? Since the word "Jehovah" did not appear until at least the 12th century, thereby making it impossible that the first century Christians used this term for God, why do Jehovah’s Witnesses still insist on using this name? Since this name comes from an aberration of the tetragrameton "YHWH", wouldn’t "Yahweh", which many Christians use and which is used in some Bibles (eg The New Jerusalem Bible) be a much more accurate name to use?
70. If Jesus was executed on a torture stake, with both hands together over his head, as only the WTS teaches, why does Jn 20:25 say "... unless I see in his hands the print of the nailS...", indicating that there was more than one nail used for his hands? Wouldn’t two nails have been used if Christ was crucified on a cross whereas only one nail would have been used if he would have been executed on an upright pole?
71. Can Jehovah's Witnesses hold and discuss openly with other Witnesses opinions that differ from orthodox WTS teachings? If no, why not? Does the WTS encourage people who are not Witnesses to examine their own religion? If yes, then why does it discourage Witnesses to honestly examine the teachings of the WTS? If the WTS really teaches "the Truth", then what do they have to fear from an honest examination?
72. In Rev 22:12-13, Jesus Christ, the one who is "coming quickly", says of himself," I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end". In Rev 1:17-18, Jesus, the one who "became dead, but, look! I am living forever and ever", refers to himself as the first and the last. Rev 21:6, in speaking of God, says, "...I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end .,.". God is also referred to as the "first" and the "last" in Isa 44:6 and Isa 48:12. How can Jesus and Jehovah both be the "alpha and omega" and "the first and the last" since by definition of these words there can only be one Alpha and Omega and only one first and one last?
73. If the WTS claims they are not "inspired" but does refer to themselves as "God's spirit-directed Prophet", what is the difference? Is there such a thing as an "uninspired true prophet"? Why would anyone be part of a religious organization which claimed that their teachings were NOT inspired?
74. If the great crowd is to have everlasting life on paradise EARTH, why does 1Thess 4:17 say, "...we the living who are surviving will, together with them, be caught away in clouds to MEET THE LORD IN THE AIR; and thus we shall always be with the Lord"? If Armageddon were to start next week, as a Jehovah’s Witness in good standing with the WTS, wouldn’t you be one of "the living who are surviving"? Would you expect to "meet the Lord in the air"? If not, then how do you explain this verse?
75. In Mt 1:23, who is Matthew referring to here that has been given the name which means "With Us Is God"?
76. Referring to Isa 14:9-17, if there is no conscious awareness after death, how could Sheol "... become agitated at you in order to meet you on coming in..." (v.9), how could the souls in Sheol "... speak up and say to you..." (v.10-11), how could the souls in Sheol when "...seeing you will gaze even at you; they will give close examination even to you, [saying,] ‘Is this the man...’" (v. 16-17), and how would you be aware that this was happening?
77. Heb 3:1 refers to "holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly calling". In Mk 3:35, Jesus says, "Whoever does the will of God, this one is my brother..." Therefore, according to the Bible, whoever does the will of God is a brother of Jesus and a partaker of the heavenly calling. How can this be if the Watchtower Society teaches that only 144,000 people go to heaven?
78. Heb 11:16, in speaking about some of the faithful people of the Old Testament (Abel, Noah, Abraham, etc.) says, "But now they are reaching out for a better [place], that is, one belonging to heaven..." and,"... their God for he has made a city ready for them." The footnote on the word "city" refers to HEAVENLY Jerusalem of Heb 12:22 and Rev 21:2. How can this be since according to the teachings of the Watchtower Society, the only people who will go to heaven are the 144,000 spirit anointed who have been chosen from people who lived after Christ died?
79. In Lk 24:36-39 and in Jn 20:26-27, Jesus showed his disciples the wounds in his body as proof of his resurrection. If Jesus' body had been destroyed by God after he died, how could Jesus show the disciples his very own body which had the wounds in his hands, feet, and side? In Lk 24:39, Jesus says, "See MY hands and MY feet, that it is I MYSELF; feel me and see me, because a spirit does not have FLESH AND BONES just as you behold that I have." If Jesus was really raised as a spirit without a body, as the WTS teaches, then why would he have tried to deceive his disciples into thinking he was resurrected in his real body with "flesh and bones"? Does "being made alive IN the spirit" (1Pet 3:18) really mean the same thing as "being raised AS a spirit"? See Rom 8:11.
80. In Lk 20:37-38, how could Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be "all living to him (God)", since they all died hundreds of years before Jesus said this? If the WTS’s teaching that an immortal soul does not continue to live on after death of the body and that there is no conscious awareness after death is correct, then how could Moses and Elijah not only appear to Peter, James, and John but actually converse with Jesus (Mt 17:3)? Similarly, in Jn 8:56, Jesus says, "Abraham your father rejoiced greatly in the prospect of seeing my day, and he saw it and rejoiced". Since Abraham died hundreds of years before Jesus said this, how could Jesus say that Abraham "saw it and rejoiced", if there is no conscious awareness after death?
81. If the soul dies when the body dies, how could the "souls" of Rev 6:9- 11, who were of those who had been "slaughtered" (i.e., killed), cry out "with a loud voice, saying: 'Until when Sovereign Lord ..."?
82. In Mt 28:19, Jesus tells his disciples to baptize "people of all the nations ...in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit". Why would the disciples be instructed to baptize in the name of anybody or anything who was not God? Do Jehovah's Witnesses follow the command of Jesus and baptize "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit"?
83. If the human soul IS the person, how could the soul go out of a person’s body (Gen 35:18) or come back into a person’s body (1 Kings 17:21)? Similarly, in Lk 12:4-5, what would be left of a person after they were killed that could be thrown into Gehenna?
84. Eph 4:4 says that there is ONE spirit. 1Cor 3:16 says for the people of God’s temple, this spirit of God dwells in them and Rom 8:9 states that those who are in harmony with the spirit have God’s spirit dwelling in them. If this is all true and there is only ONE sprirt, then who or what is the spirit of Christ (Phil 1:19, Gal 4:6, Rom 8:9)? In Gal 4:6, how is it possible that the spirit of Christ could come into our hearts? How is it possible that the spirit of CHRIST could reside in someone? How could a person have God’s spirit dwelling in them (Rom 8:9) but also have Christ’s spirit (Rom 8:9), if there is only ONE spirit, unless God and Jesus are one and the same?
85. In Jn 6:51, Jesus says that a person must eat "of this bread" in order to "live forever", and that "the bread that I give IS my flesh". If Jesus was only speaking symbolically here, why did the Jews object to this teaching (Jn 6:52), and why didn’t Jesus explain to them that he was only speaking symbolically, instead of going on to repeat himself FIVE times saying essentially the same thing (Jn 6:53, 54, 56, 57, 58)? If Jesus was only speaking symbolically here, why does John use the Greek word "trogo" (Strong’s # 5176) in verses Jn 6:54, 56, 57, and 58, which means "to gnaw on; to chew" according to Strong’s Greek dictionary? Can "to gnaw on or chew" be taken symbolically in any way? If Jesus was only speaking symbolically in this passage, after his own disciples objected to this teaching (Jn 6:60), why did he allow "many disciples" to leave (Jn 6:66) instead of calling them back and straightening everything out like he had done on other occasions with other difficult teachings (see Jn 3:1-15, Mt 16:5-12, 19:23-26)? Finally, if Jesus was only speaking symbolically in this passage (Jn 6:51-58), and really meant that they only needed to believe, why did so many disciples leave him over this teaching, when they had already been told that they must "believe" (Jn 5:24), and we see absolutely no disciples leaving him after Jesus told them this? Do you eat the flesh of Christ, as Jesus commanded, in order to have life in yourself (Jn 6:54) and in order to live forever (Jn 6:58)? See Lk 22:19.
86. If Jesus is not God, then why would he have deceived the Jews by making himself "equal to God" in Jn 5:17-18?
87. If only 144,000 spirit anointed people are "born again", why does the Bible, in 1Jn 5:1, say that, "Everyone believing that Jesus is the Christ has been BORN FROM GOD…"? What does the word "everyone" mean to you? Conversely, where in the Bible does it say that only 144,000 people will be "born again"? Similarly, if only 144,000 spirit anointed people are "born from God", why does the Bible say that "EVERYONE who loves has been born from God" (1Jn 4:7)? Don’t all Christians love and believe that Jesus is the Christ? Again, what does the word "everyone" mean to you? Similarly, if only 144,000 spirit anointed people are "sealed with the holy spirit", why does the Bible say in Eph 1:13, that after a Christian "believed", he was "sealed with the promised holy spirit." Shouldn’t this apply to all Christians since all Christians "believe" that Jesus is the Christ? In addition, Rom 8:14 says that, "ALL who are led by God’s spirit, these are God’s sons." Do Jehovah’s Witnesses believe they are led by God’s spirit? If so, then according top Rom 8:14, aren’t they also "God’s sons"?
88. In Jn 5:39-40 Jesus says, "You are searching the Scriptures, because you think that by means of them you will have everlasting life…And yet you do not want to COME TO ME that you may have life." Jehovah’s Witnesses are constantly "searching the scriptures", but do they come directly to Jesus as he says they should (Mt 11:28, Jn 5:40)? Do Witnesses "come" to Jesus by praying directly to him? If not, then aren’t Witnesses exactly like the people Jesus was talking about in Jn 5:39-40?
89. In Mt 4:10, Jesus clearly has the authority to rebuke Satan and does so. Jude 9 says, "But when Michael the archangel had a difference with the Devil…he did not dare to bring a judgment against him…but said, "May Jehovah rebuke you." If Jesus is Michael the Archangel, why did Michael, refuse to rebuke Satan in Jude 9, when he clearly did so in Mt 4:10?
90. In Lk 4:12, the NWT translates the Greek word "kyrios" (Gr-lord) as "Jehovah", which makes this verse read, "You must not put Jehovah your God to the test". See Greek-English Interlinear. Why is "kyrios" translated as "Jehovah" in this verse? Was the devil, in Lk 4:9-11, putting Jehovah to the test or Jesus to the test? Similarly, in Mt 3:3, Mk 1:3, and Jn 1:23, the Greek word "kyrios" is translated as "Jehovah". Was John the Baptist preparing the way for Jehovah, or preparing the way for Jesus (compare Isa 40:3)? See Jn 1:25-31. Since the Greek word "kyrios" (Strong’s # 2962) in these verses are clearly referring to Jesus, if this word was correctly translated as "lord" in these verses, what would these verses say about the nature of Christ?
91. Jn 5:23 says, "in order that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father…" If Jesus is not God, why does the Bible require that all men should honor the Son equally with the Father?
92. If Jesus and Jehovah are not one God, then why, according to the NWT, is "Jehovah" the name which brings salvation (Acts 2:21), but Acts 4:10-12 says that ONLY the name of Jesus brings salvation ("…for there is not another name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must get saved.")?
93. If the soul is the body, why does John make a distinction between the "prospering" of Gaius’ body because of good health and the "prospering" of his soul in 3Jn 2, and why does Paul distinguish between a person and their soul in Acts 20:10 by saying, "Stop raising a clamor, for his soul is in him"?
94. The WTS teaches that Jesus is the first and greatest creation of God. If Jesus was Michael the Archangel before he became a man, then why does Dan 10:13 refer to Michael as "ONE of the foremost princes" implying that he was equal to other angels? If Christ was Michael the Archangel before the incarnation, then became Jesus, then changed back into Michael the Archangel after his death, why does Heb 13:8 say that, "Jesus Christ is the SAME yesterday and today, and forever."? How could Christ be "the same" if he changed from being Michael, into being Jesus, then back into being Michael again?
95. Rom 10:12 says , "…for there is the same Lord (Jesus vs 9) over all, who is rich to all those CALLING UPON him." If Jesus is not to be prayed to, then why does Paul say that they will be rich who call "upon him"? Similarly, Paul says in 1Cor 1:2, "…together with all who everywhere are calling upon the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours" and in 2Tim 2:22 he says, "…but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, along with those who CALL UPON THE LORD out of a clean heart." If Christians should not pray to Jesus, then why did the early Christians "call upon" Jesus? How can a person call upon Jesus without praying to him?
96. If hell does not exist but is simply a complete annihilation of the person in which there is no conscious awareness, why does Jesus say in Mk 14:21 that it would be better for Judas if he had never been born?
97. Amos 4:11 says, "'I caused an overthrow among you people, like God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. And you came to be like a log snatched out of [the] burning; but you did not come back to me,' is the utterance of Jehovah." If the Trinity does not exist, then how can Jehovah, speaking in this verse, refer to another person as God ("... like GOD'S overthrow of Sodom ...")?
98. If Jesus Christ is Michael the Archangel, how can Mt 25:31 say, "When the Son of man arrives in his glory, and ALL the angels with him, ...". Since "all the angels" would certainly include Michael the Archangel, is it possible that Jesus could return with himself? Similarly, if Jesus was Michael the Archangel before his birth, then how do you explain Heb 1:13 which says, "But with reference to which one of the angels has he ever said: "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet"? In addition, if Jesus became Michael the Archangel upon his resurrection, why did none of the New Testament writers refer to the resurrected Christ as "Michael" by name? Can you point out one verse, just one, that says that Jesus and Michael are the same?
99. If Jesus did not become the Christ until he was baptized approximately 30 years after his birth, why does Lk 2:11 say, "because there was born to you today a Savior, who IS Christ [the] Lord, in David’s city."? What does the word "is" mean to you?
100. In Col 1:26, 27, 2:2, and 4;3, the Greek word "musterion" (Strong’s # 3466) is translated as "sacred secret" but in the Kingdom Interlinear, this same word is translated correctly as "mystery". Why the discrepancy in the translation of this word between the KIT and the NWT? Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to render this word correctly as "mystery" in the NWT? If this word would have been correctly rendered as "mystery" in the NWT, how would the above verses read and what would they say about the fact that some things about God are impossible to completely understand?
101. Every true Christian would agree that we should follow the commands of God. In Mk 9:7, God the Father commands us to listen to Jesus. Do you follow this command and listen to Jesus? After all, Jesus died for your personal sins (1Jn 2:2, 1Pet 2:24). Jesus tells us to go directly to him (Mt 11:28-30), and the Father commanded us to listen to Jesus. Why? Because JESUS gives us everlasting life (Jn 10:28), and so that JESUS will enter our house and be with us and give us the right to sit on his throne (Rev 3:20- 21). Do you pray to Jesus as Paul and the early Christians did (1Cor 1:2)? Do you partake of the flesh of Christ as Jesus commanded (Jn 6:51)? If not, then are you following the command of the Father who said "Listen to him"
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