Do Jehovah's Witnesses have a relationship with God?
Who did Adam talk to in paradise?
Chapters Genesis 2 and 3 speak of man's creation and the direct communication Adam had with his Creator in the Garden of Eden. Genesis 2, 15 and 16 show that after Adam was created, God took him and placed him in the Garden of Eden. There God gave Adam instructions that were vital to their relationship.
The Bible tells us When Adam had sinned by disobeying God's instructions, God came personally to talk to Adam and Eve about their sin. Genesis 3:8-11 tells us that Adam and Eve heard the voice of God as he walked in the garden, hiding from the presence of God. When God called man, Adam answered, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, for I am naked, and I hid myself."
Although the Bible clearly informs us that Adam had a personal relationship with God in the Garden of Eden, the Watchtower refuses to acknowledge the fact that God spoke directly to Adam.
According to the August 1, 1995 Watchtower, page 13, God did not speak directly to Adam. The Watchtower says that God could have spoken directly to Adam if he wished, but did not. Instead, the Watchtower Society says that it was probably the prehuman Jesus who went to Adam and talked to him. However, the Watchtower denies that Jesus is the Almighty God and thus denies in principle that man can have a direct relationship with God at all. Why is this so important?
The doctrine of the Watchtower Society, according to which the Almighty God did not communicate directly with Adam, puts two highly problematic facts into the world:
- First, the Watchtower Society contradicts the clear biblical statement in Genesis 3:10 that Adam personally heard the voice of God.
- Second, the Watchtower Society arbitrarily constructs a state that denies the average Jehovah's Witness a direct relationship with God.
Only a special category of Jehovah's Witnesses proclaimed as the 144,000 can have a direct relationship with God. Only for this particular caste is God the God known as the "Father. This corresponds to the Watchtower of August 1, 1995, page 13.
Does Jehovah's Witness have a direct relationship with God?
For Jehovah's Witnesses, their "relationship" to God does not consist of their love for him or their desire to communicate with him. Their "relationship" to God depends only on their relationship to the Watchtower organization. As soon as Jehovah's Witness leaves the safety of this Watchtower organization for any reason, it is told to him that he has lost "his relationship" with God. No Jehovah's Witness can ever have a "relationship" to God without this particular Watchtower Society.
The Watchtower doctrine portrays God as someone who distanced himself from those he had created. This God constructed by the Watchtower Society is very different from the God known from the Bible, who sets out from his personal loving motivation to seek his lost children. About a hundred times in the Gospels we read "Father". This is the revelation of the New Testament about God. The "distant JHWH" of the Old Testament is the close trusted father of the New Testament.
Jesus met mankind as the greatest revolutionary of all times. Even if he had only cleared up an old misunderstanding, the effects of his person are global and pervasive. His work and will fundamentally changed the world and gave people a new light, which is incontrovertibly the way to God.
In this world situation the adversary has hard nuts to crack. If we put ourselves in Satan's shoes, we have to realize that Satan is a player who has already lost the game all too clearly. His defeat is inevitable, the game is lost to him. – But what is he doing? He doesn't give up the game like a good sportsman would, because this is his last game ever. With the end of this confrontation, a fundamental change occurs for Satan. His current existence is ended.
This is a bad situation for Satan! For he cannot seek other ways out by his nature. He is dependent in all his substance on keeping his right constructed by him and destroying the power and nature of his opponent. And although the outcome of his project is crystal clear to him, he decides like the Nazis to destroy as much substance as possible, to kill as many people as possible and to deny as much proven guilt as possible.
The worst thing for Satan is grace and love. In these two factors the power of his opponent has stepped terribly on the playing field and has largely crushed Satan's positions. The associated loss of the entire war, however, is by no means a reason for Satan to end the game. His only possibility to remain faithful to his own mischief is the desperate fight against Jesus' superiority of love.
That is why Satan is trying to get to the root of God's plan. Fortunately for Satan, this overwhelming turn on the chessboard of life is tied to people's faith. The one who does not accept God's will (Jesus) is lost in spite of God's love that wins all victories. So Satan can necessarily only achieve success where he can successfully sell God's plan to people as nonsense.
If the Nazis had not shown mankind how, despite their obvious defeat, they had not thought of changing their behavior, we could not understand Satan in his iron decision against God. But this way we can empathize and consider it possible that Satan cannot and will not otherwise because of his being so.
Satan has strapped on a huge vendor's tray of tactics to keep people away from Jesus. For Jesus is the embodiment of salvation desired by God. The center of satanic thinking is the trivialization and downplaying of what Jesus has established in the world. Even though Satan has already lost the game as a whole, he still comforts himself by dragging as many as possible with him to death, like the Nazis.
In the argumentation of the Watchtower Society one thing is always conspicuous: It works permanently and with a tremendous energy to disguise the grace freely accessible to every human being in faith in Jesus. Just like the little films on children's television, it always suggests to people anew that one can somehow find a solution to drive away the evil spirits or to appease fate. Man and his reliability and goodness are always put in the foreground, so that man's forlornness does not become visible. For when a person recognizes his or her forlornness, he or she also recognizes the grace that was bestowed on us in Jesus.
What can protect us humans from something like this?
Except Jesus, there is no mediator between God and men. Except Jesus there is no help for the smartest and most self-confident and richest and fastest and most courageous among men! No test of patience, no test of skill, no Technical Supervisory Association of faith, no sacrament, no liturgy, no esotericism, no virgin paradise doctrine can help people. All "isms" (socialism, neoliberalism, humanism etc.) fail in the struggle that has become visible since Jesus' appearance. – There is only the turn to Jesus (though initially cautious, suspicious, distant or magically motivated or begun under the pressure of suffering). No matter for what situational reasons man turns to Jesus, he will not be disappointed. The fantastic thing about Jesus is that he does not drop anyone in this personal turn to him.
Jehovah's Witness! The very special trick of Satan is to suggest to you that you are on the narrowest path imaginable. But the teachings of the Watchtower Society have fundamental parallels with Islam, with the Catholic Church, with modern economics, and with many other sadnesses of human history. As long as you refuse to take note of facts open to all men, you are certainly faithful to the Watchtower Society.
