Expert: Brenton Hepburn - 9/18/2006

Question
I am interested in all religions but know very little aboutjw.Please let me know who your leader is,what kind of seminary your leaders attend and your beliefs concerning Jesus christ and other religions. also about your beliefs concerning medicine and transfusions. Do you reconize the new testament?Anything you can give that might help me understand.

Answer
Greetings deesaller

Thank you for your question, and I must appologise for the delay as I only have access to the internt 4 days a week at this time.

I must apologies for the time in getting back to you but I do not always have access to the internet or a computer at this time.

Who is our Leader?
We consider no man to be our leader.  We consider Jesus to the head of the congregation.  So men that have the responsibility of organizing JWs are not considered to be our
leaders. The organizational structure is something like this

PRINTING
For legal reasons we have corporations such Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. (The corporation laws in each country dictate the number of people that make up positions of responsibility such as a board of directors and their titles and how many “share holders” there must be.)  The American corporations have a board of directors that look after the printing facilities.  Many countries have printing facilities that have their own boards but work under the direction of the main corporation. Each branch has a branch overseer. The world is divided into zones and there are Zone overseers.

All the corporations are non profit, that is, no shareholder or director can prophet in any way, therefore no dividends are ever given to any of the share holders  

SPIRITUAL ASPECT
The information that is published by the printing plants come under the responsibility of the Governing Body.  

The Governing Body oversees various committees such as teaching and writing.  These plan the content of the literature and the information that taught at meetings and conventions. We do not view any member of the Governing Body as being inspired or infallible.  We see them as imperfect men that have the enormous responsibility of oversight of the all the congregations. We expect them to make mistakes, especially when considering maters that are not directly mentioned in the scriptures but where Bible principles and prophecy are involved. We see their job as keeping us “spiritually” awake in this ever changing world. Because of their heavy responsibility they have a heavy accountability before God for their actions or inactions.

Under their supervision are district overseers that look after a number of circuits in each country.  In each circuit there is a circuit overseer who looks after several congregations. In each congregation there are elders and ministerial servants that shepard and look after the congregations.

That is a BRIEF outline of the structure.

We do not have any seminaries.  All men in the congregations are encouraged to reach out for the responsibility of being an overseer  (not all want that responsibility). All our meetings are designed to train each one of us (male and female, young and old) to be ministers. So, all men that have added responsibilities have the same basic training.  However there are seminars held periodically for the various elders to refine their organizational skills or to help them in solving problems that might arise in a congregation.  The only “formal” school of any period is the missionary school for men and women who are in a position and willing to go to a foreign land.

Now, we view Jesus as our leader.  We feel that the Bible teaches that Jesus is the first son of God, the first creation of God through whom (as Gods agent) Jesus worked with God to create all other things.

Jesus came to earth for several reasons. 1) to preach the good news of Gods kingdom 2) to be the mediator of a new covenant that superseded the one that Moses mediated 3) to establish a people that will benefit from the new covenant (that is all that will listen to and obey what he taught) 4) to die as a ransom to buy back the life that Adam lost for all of us when he sinned.

Jesus said that those that will see “salvation” are those that obey Gods word and do his will.  That does not matter who those people are, if they are not doing Gods will or obeying him they will not benefit from Gods kingdom.

There are a lot of ideas taught in other “Christian” religions that we do not teach. For example we do not believe in a trinity, an immortal soul, hellfire or that the good go to heaven.

From the Bible writings, Jesus was born in very late September or early October.  As most of the Christmas traditions are derived from old pagan religions we do not celebrate Christmas. The only religious observance we keep is a memorial service of the death of Jesus.

We believe that the earth was made for mankind to live on and that is Gods purpose to restore the earth to the original condition. We believe mankind was never meant to die, we only die because Adam sinned, (that is why we need the ransom sacrifice of Jesus).  We believe Satan is the ruler of the earth at this time.  In Gods due time, under the leadership of his son Jesus, Satan and all that follow him will be removed, and, all those that are doing the will and obeying God will be left to inherit the earth

We believe that, all of the Bible is written for our benefit and instruction.  All though, when Jesus died, the law code that Moses mediated was abolished, (so we are no longer under the 10 commandments) the principles of the Mosaic law code are very important as Jesus referred to them many times. Our lives revolve around trying to be guided by Bibles law and principles. Laws are easy, principles are a little harder. We will obey all of the laws of the land where we live except any laws that violate Gods laws, eg joining the armed services or voting for a government.

Using the principles of the old law code and what God told Noah after the flood (pre law code) as well as what the first century Christians decided on, we feel that it is against our creator’s wishes for us to misuse blood and that includes transfusions.  There is a problem in modern medicine that is left up to each JW to decide when it comes to some blood components.  Even though we avoid whole blood or the major components, there are certain fractions that some JWs feel are OK to have.  You see, the Israelites had to bleed any animal that was to be eaten. Small amounts of blood stayed in the animal.  Also the Israelites were allowed to eat the bone marrow where the blood is made, so there is a shading area between having absolutely no blood and taking blood. To illustrate. Take a line of color.  One end is blue the other end is green.  Gradually the line changes color and in the middle is aqua. Now at either end you can clearly distinguish the blue and the green, so the extremes are clearly discernable. However just about every one will have a different idea as to where the aqua starts and ends. This is the “grey” area where there is no discernable demarcation line.  This is the same with blood.  We know just where the boundaries are but there are points in the middle where each JW has to decide what to do.  Some will abstain from all use of blood while others will accept some treatments.

As far as other medical procedures are concerned, we value life and will do all that is possible to save life except for where we see it as violating Gods laws.

I hope I have been able to give you a brief overview of JWs.  If you have any further questions or want clarification, please feel free to ask