Question 1

Is the Word 'a god'?

Accepted Answer

The Society’s own Kingdom Interlinear prints the word-for-word line beneath the Greek — “and god was the Word” — under the very verse its translation renders “a god.” Rendering it “a god” sets a second god beside Jehovah, which Isaiah 43:10 rules out in the Society’s own Bible: no God was formed before him, and none after. The Society answers that the missing article makes theos descriptive, and its strongest academic ally, Jason BeDuhn, agrees; but a descriptive theos tells us what the Word is — divine, with the nature of God — not that he is a lesser god. Grammarians such as Bruce Metzger call “a god” a mistranslation, and the KJV, ASV, ESV and BSB all read “the Word was God.” John seals it two verses later: “All things were made through him” — while Yahweh says he is the one “who alone stretches out the heavens” (Isaiah 44:24).

Question 2

Is Jesus Michael the Archangel?

Accepted Answer

Hebrews 1 answers exactly this: “For to which of the angels did he say at any time, ‘You are my Son. Today I have become your father?’” The Son is set above every angel, worshiped by them all — “Let all the angels of God worship him” — and addressed as God. Daniel calls Michael “one of the chief princes”: one among peers, where Jesus has none. Michael “dared not bring against him an abusive condemnation” and left the rebuke to the Lord (Jude 9); Jesus rebuked Satan to his face: “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10). As for 1 Thessalonians 4:16, the Lord descends “with the voice of the archangel and with God’s trumpet” — the archangel’s voice no more makes him an archangel than God’s trumpet makes him a trumpet.

Question 3

Do only 144,000 go to heaven?

Accepted Answer

The teaching reads Revelation 7 half-literally: the number 144,000 is taken as exact arithmetic while the twelve named tribes of Israel in the same sentence are taken as symbols — one verse, two opposite methods. And the great crowd it assigns to earth is seen “before the throne of God,” serving him “day and night in his temple” (Revelation 7:15). The Society answers that “standing” before the throne means God’s approval, not a place; but John has already shown us where that throne is: “a throne set in heaven” (Revelation 4:2). Jesus spoke of “one flock with one shepherd”; Paul of “one body and one Spirit” and “one hope”; and the new birth is the doorway for everyone who believes — not a quota the Society long dated as closed in 1935, a date it set aside in 2007.

Question 4

1874, 1914, 1925, 1975 — what happened to the dates?

Accepted Answer

Every date is documented in the Society’s own publications, several in its own official history. Russell’s movement taught that Christ’s invisible presence began in 1874 — the official history says Barbour “succeeded in convincing Russell” of it — before the Society moved the presence to 1914. Russell’s 1889 The Time Is at Hand said the battle of the great day of God Almighty “will end in A. D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of earth’s present rulership”; the 1927 printing of the same volume reads 1915. The Society’s history concedes of 1925: “The year 1925 came and went,” and of 1975 the 1980 Watchtower admitted that some statements “implied that such realization of hopes by that year was more of a probability than a mere possibility,” calling it “to be regretted.” Moses gave the test: “When a prophet speaks in Yahweh’s name, if the thing doesn’t follow, nor happen, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken” (Deuteronomy 18:22). Jesus gave the reason: “no one knows of that day and hour” (Matthew 24:36).

Question 5

Did Christ return invisibly in 1914?

Accepted Answer

The arithmetic and the theology both fail. Mainstream scholarship, working from the Babylonian chronicles and astronomical texts, dates Jerusalem’s fall to 587/586 BCE, not 607 — and the Society itself concedes that “the majority of secular historians” do; move the start date and 1914 dissolves. And Scripture leaves no room for a hidden coming: the angels promised that Jesus “will come back in the same way as you saw him going into the sky” (Acts 1:11); “every eye will see him” (Revelation 1:7); and Jesus warned against anyone who says, “Behold, he is in the inner rooms” — don’t believe it, for his coming will be as plain as lightning across the sky (Matthew 24:26-27).

Question 6

Does the Bible forbid blood transfusions?

Accepted Answer

The Old Testament texts cited forbid eating blood — the blood of slaughtered animals (Genesis 9:4; Leviticus 17; Deuteronomy 12) — and Acts 15 sets blood beside “things strangled” in a list mostly about food and idolatry; none envisions giving living human blood to preserve a life. Leviticus itself gives the reason blood was set apart: “it is the blood that makes atonement” — a shadow pointing to Christ’s blood, not a medical regulation. And Jesus settled how such laws bend before human need: David ate the show bread, “which is not lawful to eat except for the priests,” and Jesus defended him, for “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:26-27). A rule held “even when confronted with a life-threatening situation” inverts the Lawgiver’s own priority: “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 12:7).

Question 7

Was Jesus raised as a spirit?

Accepted Answer

The risen Lord answered this claim in person: “See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). The Society answers that he materialized bodies as angels had done — but Jesus did not say he had taken on a body for the occasion; he said “it is truly me.” He invited Thomas’s finger into his hands and side; he had foretold that the temple of his body would be raised in three days (“he spoke of the temple of his body,” John 2:21); and Peter preached that “his flesh didn’t see decay” (Acts 2:31). A resurrection in which the body that died is set aside and a different one appears is not the resurrection the apostles proclaimed — it is the empty tomb explained away. Note carefully: Witnesses do affirm a resurrection; the examined question is whether it was bodily, as the Scriptures state.

Question 8

Should 'Jehovah' appear in the New Testament?

Accepted Answer

The Society’s own Insight encyclopedia concedes that “Yahweh” is favored by most Hebrew scholars, keeping “Jehovah” as the well-known English form — but the deeper issue is the insertions. With no manuscript support, “Jehovah” is written into verses where the apostles wrote “Lord,” and the effect is doctrinal: in Romans 10, confessing “that Jesus is Lord” (v. 9) and calling “on the name of the Lord” (v. 13) belong to one breath, yet the translation turns them into two different persons. Even Jason BeDuhn, the academic most favorable to the NWT, is listed in the Society’s own Study Bible among the scholars who “strongly disagree.” The manuscripts are unanimous; the apostles applied the LORD’s name to Jesus, and the translation un-applies it.

Question 9

Is Christ the mediator for only 144,000?

Accepted Answer

Paul’s sentence does not split what the Society splits: “there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6). The mediator for “men” is the ransom for “all” — the same Christ for the same people. John writes that Christ is the atoning sacrifice “not for ours only, but also for the whole world,” and Hebrews opens his intercession to all “who draw near to God through him” (Hebrews 7:25). A mediator for 144,000, with everyone else outside his mediation, is not the gospel Paul preached.

Question 10

Is the Governing Body God's sole channel?

Accepted Answer

Matthew 24:45 is a parable about every servant’s watchfulness, asked as a question — “Who then is the faithful and wise servant?” — not an organizational charter conferring a doctrinal monopoly on a committee in 1919. The Bereans were called “more noble” precisely for “examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11) — auditing an apostle against Scripture; Paul put even himself and angels under the gospel, not over it: “even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any ‘good news’ other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed” (Galatians 1:8). A century of revised dates and reversed doctrines, documented in this corner from the Society’s own publications, is the practical test of the claim.

Question 11

Is the Holy Spirit a person or “God’s active force”?

Accepted Answer

The Bible keeps treating the Spirit as a “he,” not an “it.” Ananias is told he lied “to the Holy Spirit” — and in the next breath, that he lied “to God,” equating the two (Acts 5:3-4). A force does not speak, yet the Holy Spirit said, “Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). A force has no feelings, yet the Spirit can be grieved: “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (Ephesians 4:30); no mind, yet he “will teach you all things” (John 14:26); no will, yet he distributes gifts “to each one separately as he desires” (1 Corinthians 12:11). Electricity is not lied to, grieved, or heard calling workers “for me.” The Watch Tower’s “active force” is a category the texts keep breaking — because the Spirit is the personal presence of God himself.

Question 12

Should we worship and pray to Jesus?

Accepted Answer

Yet heaven does exactly what the Watch Tower forbids. The Father commands, “Let all the angels of God worship him” (Hebrews 1:6) — a verse the New World Translation softens to “do obeisance.” Every creature is heard crying “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion, forever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13) — the Lamb receiving with the One on the throne what creation gives to God. Jesus says “that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father” (John 5:23), and promises to answer prayer himself: “If you will ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14). A faithful Jew would never pray to or worship a creature. The first Christians did both — to Jesus — because they knew he was not one.

Question 13

Is the New World Translation an honest translation?

Accepted Answer

The pattern is the problem: again and again, exactly where the Greek points to Christ’s deity, the New World Translation bends away. In Colossians 1:16-17 it adds the word “other” four times — “by means of him all other things were created” — a word not in the Greek (the 1984 edition at least bracketed it; the 2013 revision drops the brackets), turning the Creator of all things into one created thing among others. At John 8:58 it changes Jesus’ “I AM” to “I have been,” hiding the claim that made his hearers reach for stones. At Hebrews 1:8 it turns “Your throne, O God” into “God is your throne,” so the Father stops calling the Son God. At Titus 2:13 it splits “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” into two persons. No Greek manuscript requires any of these; one theology does. A translation is honest when it follows the text even where the text is inconvenient.

Question 14

Cross or torture stake?

Accepted Answer

Three quiet facts undo the stake. First, Thomas speaks of “the print of the nails” — plural — in Jesus’ hands (John 20:25), which fits a crossbeam with each hand nailed far more naturally than hands nailed together above the head. Second, the charge was set up “over his head” (Matthew 27:37), not over his hands, as an upright stake would require. Third, the Society’s own history says that for many years the Bible Students “viewed the cross as an acceptable symbol of Christianity,” put a cross-and-crown symbol on the cover of the Watch Tower from 1891, and first taught that Jesus died on a stake in 1936. Christians long before Constantine described the cross with two beams: Justin Martyr, around AD 150–160, wrote that “the one beam is placed upright” and “the other beam is fitted on to it.” The shape was never the gospel — Paul would boast only “in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:14) — but this change came from the organization, not the evidence.

Question 15

Does 1914 rest on a twenty-year error?

Accepted Answer

The whole calculation hangs on one date the rest of the world rejects. The Babylonian evidence — business tablets, king lists, astronomical diaries — and the consensus of historians place Jerusalem’s fall in 587/586 BCE, not 607; the Society itself admits that “the majority of secular historians” date it to 587. Move the start to that date and the “seven times” run out around 1934, not 1914; the keystone cracks. The Society’s case rests on Jeremiah’s seventy years, but Jeremiah says “After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon” (Jeremiah 29:10) — Babylon’s seventy years, not a count that must begin with Jerusalem’s fall. And the method fails before the date does: Daniel 4 is about King Nebuchadnezzar, over whom “seven times” passed, not a 2,520-year countdown, and Luke 21:24’s “times of the Gentiles” names no year at all. Jesus said plainly, “It isn’t for you to know times or seasons” (Acts 1:7). A doctrine that must overturn twenty years of settled history to keep its date is defending a number.

Question 16

The “generation” that keeps being redefined

Accepted Answer

The trouble is that the Watch Tower has redefined “this generation” again and again — as the generation of 1914 grew old and died. For decades it was the people who saw 1914: into the mid-1990s, Awake! promised a new world “before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away.” When they aged out, the 1995 Watchtower made it “contemporary people of a certain historical period”; by 2008 it was the anointed as “contemporaries”; by 2010 it was anointed ones whose lives “would overlap with the lives of other anointed ones” — two lifetimes chained together, stretching the word past anything it can bear. Read in context, Jesus was speaking to his own disciples of what they would see, and of the final day he said, “no one knows of that day and hour” (Matthew 24:36). A meaning that must be rewritten every time it fails was never the meaning.

Question 17

Has the Watch Tower passed the Bible’s test for a prophet?

Accepted Answer

The Society has called itself God’s “prophet” — and Scripture sets a clear test: “When a prophet speaks in Yahweh’s name, if the thing doesn’t follow, nor happen, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously” (Deuteronomy 18:22). The Watch Tower attached God’s purposes to dates — the overthrow of earth’s rulership by 1914, the patriarchs’ return in 1925, the hopes built on 1975 — and the things did not follow (see “1874, 1914, 1925, 1975”). That is not the eager mistake of a disciple; it is repeated public prediction, in print, of what God was about to do. Jesus warned, “Beware of false prophets … By their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:15-16), and Peter of teachers who “will secretly bring in destructive heresies” (2 Peter 2:1). A body that speaks for God, is proved wrong, and then asks you to trust it for the next date has answered the test itself.

Question 18

When teaching reverses, is it “new light”?

Accepted Answer

Proverbs 4:18 describes the righteous person’s path growing brighter — not a teaching organization reversing itself and calling the U-turn light. Real light gets brighter; it does not flip from light to dark and back, which is what the record shows: the cross, then the stake; organ transplants condemned as “cannibalistic” in 1967, then left to “personal decision” in 1980; “this generation” redefined again and again. “New light” that contradicts the old light is not more light — it is the admission that the old “light” was darkness, taught as God’s truth and binding on the conscience while it stood. The God of the Bible “is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19); “I, Yahweh, don’t change” (Malachi 3:6). A channel that must keep unsaying what it said in his name is not getting clearer.

Question 19

Who is the “faithful and discreet slave”?

Accepted Answer

Two problems. First, the identification keeps changing: for decades the “slave” meant all the anointed on earth; in 2013 the Society narrowed it to “a small group of anointed brothers” closely identified with the Governing Body (Watchtower, July 15, 2013, p. 22) — a small group naming itself the channel. Second, the parable does not support the claim. In Matthew 24:45-47 Jesus asks “Who then is the faithful and wise servant?” — a question urging every servant to be found faithful when the master comes, not a prophecy installing one ruling council. He elsewhere forbade exactly this: “you are not to be called ‘Rabbi’, for one is your teacher, the Christ … Neither be called masters, for one is your master, the Christ” (Matthew 23:8-10); and Peter told elders to shepherd “not as lording it over those entrusted to you” (1 Peter 5:3). A slave who asks to be obeyed even when his instructions “seem strange, impractical, or illogical” has forgotten he is a slave.

Question 20

Does the Bible command the shunning of family?

Accepted Answer

Scripture does call for discipline of the unrepentant — Paul says, “Don’t even eat with such a person” (1 Corinthians 5:11) — and the Society’s 2024 adjustments move in a gentler direction: a greeting at meetings, invitations to attend, visits from elders. But its published direction (2002) that relatives outside the home avoid “needless association,” even keeping business dealings to an absolute minimum, goes beyond anything Paul describes, and Paul’s aim was always restoration. When the disciplined man in Corinth repented, Paul urged them to “forgive him and comfort him … confirm your love toward him” (2 Corinthians 2:6-8), and he told the spiritual to “restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1). The father of the prodigal did not keep his distance; he “ran, fell on his neck, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). A discipline that cuts off the family ties through which a person could return turns a tool meant to win a brother back into a means of holding members by fear.

Question 21

Is there a hell, or only annihilation and “soul sleep”?

Accepted Answer

The Bible’s own words resist the erasure. Jesus said the wicked “will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46) — the same word for both; if the life is forever, so is the punishment. He told of a rich man, conscious after death, “being in torment” and crying, “I am in anguish in this flame” (Luke 16:23-24). The Society answers that this is a parable — but Jesus does not build his parables out of false pictures of what happens at death. Revelation says “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. They have no rest day and night” (Revelation 14:11). And to the dying thief Jesus promised, “today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) — today, not after a long unconscious sleep. The New World Translation avoids that only by moving the comma: “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise” (NWT, 2013). The doctrine of soul-sleep and annihilation is gentler to modern ears, but it is built by setting aside the plain words of Christ himself.

Question 22

Is salvation earned by works and door-to-door preaching?

Accepted Answer

The gospel says the opposite, in words too plain to miss: “by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). God saved us “not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy” (Titus 3:5). Jesus himself: “he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24) — has, present tense, not a hope held on condition of staying inside the right organization. The Society agrees that salvation “cannot be earned,” and good works do follow true faith as its fruit — but when survival depends on remaining in one organization and keeping up its work, the finished work of Christ has been traded for a condition, and the assurance the gospel was meant to give is gone.

Question 23

Are birthdays and holidays really forbidden?

Accepted Answer

The Bible nowhere forbids a believer from marking a birthday or a holy day — the Society itself concedes it “does not explicitly forbid celebrating birthdays” — and Paul settles the matter directly: “One man esteems one day as more important. Another esteems every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). “Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day … which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s” (Colossians 2:16-17). Two birthdays that happened to end badly are no command; by that logic the Bible’s own feasts, and Jesus’ attendance at them, would be suspect too. The error Jesus actually named runs the other way: “you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8). Binding consciences with rules God never gave is precisely what he condemned.

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