117. JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES, the TRINITY and THE ... - Answers

greatly above our ways. For example, in Genesis 18:1-3 Abraham addressed the three
visitors as ‘Jehovah’. The two who left to visit Sodom, Lot called them ‘Jehovah’ (19:18),
yet the one who remained, Abraham continued to address Him as ‘Jehovah’
(18:22,26,27,30,31,32,33).
Note: JWs often mockingly ask the question when Jesus prays to Father: ‘Does God talk to
Himself?’ Yes He does, as in Genesis 18:17-19 where God asks Himself a question:
‘And Jehovah said, Am I keeping covered from Abraham what I am doing?’
Later in v. 22 Jehovah separates.
Hence the Father can talk to the Son, with the Son still being 100% God.
Ask: If you reject the Trinity because you can’t understand it, then how do you explain how
a brown cow by eating green grass gives white milk?
14. John 4:23 - Do we worship the Father only? ‘True worshippers shall worship the
Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him’.
Watchtower teaching: JWs say that only the Father is to be worshipped, not Jesus who they
claim to be a lesser deity.
Bible teaching:
1. Early Watchtower editions say: ‘to worship Christ in any form cannot be wrong’. (1880).
Ask: Why did early Watchtower magazines say that we should worship Jesus, while later
editions say that we should not?
Ask: Were earlier editions of the Watchtower unscriptural?
2. The NWT shows its anti-Christ bias by translating the Greek word for worship
‘•’ (proskuneo) as ‘ worship’ when it applies to the Father (21 times),
devils (14 times) and angels (2 times), but as ‘obeisance’ when it applies to Christ (16
times).
Ask: What rule of Greek grammar do you use to so inconsistently translate ‘proskuneo’?
3. When Christ was worshipped as God, He always accepted such worship as appropriate.
Jesus accepted worship from:
i) Thomas (John 20:28);
ii) a leper (Matthew 8:2);
iii) a ruler (Matthew 9:18)
iv) a Syrophonecian woman (Matthew 15:25);
v) Mary Magdalene (Matthew 28:9);
vi) the disciples (Matthew 28:17);
vii) a blind man (John 9:38);
viii)God does not rebuke the wise men for worshipping Jesus (Matthew 2:11);
ix) God tells all the angels to worship Jesus (Hebrews 1:6).
4. When Paul and Barnabus healed a man at Lystra, the crowd shouted: ‘The gods are
come down to us in the likeness of men’. (Acts 14:11). When Paul and Barnabus saw that
the people were preparing to worship them, they immediately and severely rebuked the
misconception that they were gods, by forbidding the people worshipping them.
By contrast, Jesus never corrected His followers when they bowed down and
worshipped Him. Jesus’ accepting worship as appropriate, proves He is God in the flesh.
If Jesus was a man or an angel, He should have refused worship, as the angel rebuked
John in Rev.22:8,9.A man or angel accepting worship is sin. Only God is to be worshipped.
‘Thou shalt worship no other God: for the Lord (YHWH) is a jealous God’.(Exodus 34:14)
Consider the following discussion led by a JW:
JW: Whom do you worship as God? What is his name? (You: The Lord or God).
JW: That’s a title. What is God’s name?
You: Jesus. (Saul in Acts 9:5,17 prays to Jesus, asking ‘Who art thou Lord?’ The Lord
replies ‘I am Jesus.’ God should know His name.)
JW: Reads John 4:23 and says, ‘You are not a true worshipper, because you are worshipping
the Son. The Bible says here that true worshippers will worship the Father.
Do you know the Father’s name?
JWs then present their standard arguments about the name Jehovah.
JWs preaching theme is: Deny the Deity of Christ, and teach that only the Father (Jehovah)
must be worshipped. To establish this doctrine they show certain verses, clearly avoiding
Isaiah 9:6 (the mighty God), John 1:1 (the word was God), John 8:58,59 (before Abraham
was, I am); John 20:28 (My Lord and my God), Colossians 2:9 (in him dwelleth all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily), Hebrews 1:6 (Let all the angels of God worship him),
I Timothy 3:16 ( God was manifest in the flesh) all showing the deity and worship of Christ.
You ask JW: While agreeing that the Father should be worshipped, do you respect the
Father’s wishes in other matters too? (Yes).
Read John 5:23 where the Father requires ‘that all men should honour the Son, even as they
honour the Father’. Do you give worshipful honour to the Son? (No).
Then your worship of the Father is in vain, because the same verse continues:
‘He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him’.
The words ‘even as’ mean that we must honour both the Father as God, and the Son as God.
Ask: Do you give worshipful honour to the Son as you do to the Father? (No)
Then your worship is in vain and you are not giving worshipful honour to the Father.
15. Mark 10:17,18 ‘Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God’
Watchtower teaching: JWs claim that this verse proves that Jesus is not God, as Jesus said,
only God is truly good. They say that Jesus here would not accept the title ‘God’. JWs say,
‘Jesus was saying that no-one is as good as God, not even Jesus.’(Should you Believe in the Trinity, p 17)
Bible Teaching: Jesus was saying to the rich young ruler:
‘You have given me a title belonging only to God. Do you understand and mean that I am
God?’ Jesus was not denying that He was God or good.
Jesus was asking him to examine the implications of what he was saying. Jesus asked in
effect, ‘By calling me good, are you saying that I am God?’ Jesus did not deny His deity, but
His question was a veiled claim to it. Either Jesus was good and God, or a bad man.
Ask: Where in the text does Jesus explicitly say that He is not good?
By asking, ‘Why do you call me good?’ this is not denying Christ’s goodness.
Note: Jesus did claim to be good and hence God: ‘I am the good shepherd’. (John 10:14)
and ‘There is none good but one, that is God’. (Mark 10:18)
16. Hebrews 9:27 In this verse, the Watchtower adds ‘for all time’. Why?
This occurs in no NT manuscripts. The NWT does not even place this phrase in brackets.
This misleads readers to think that it is part of the NT text.
NWT Hebrews 9:27 KJV
And as it is reserved for men
And as it is apointed unto men
to die once for all time,
once to die,
but after this judgment.
after this the judgment.