About Janko Expertise I am a qualified minister of Jehovah`s Witnesses and fully capable of answering any or all questions on our faith as well as others too, and the correct understanding of the Bible,which is God`s Word.
Experience My experience with our faith is quite substantial and was introduced to it in the 1960's as a child.
Question hello -
i was wondering if you could give me any useful information or sites regarding the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in the holocaust. Also, i was interested in learning about the basic beliefs and principles of the religion. THank you so much for your help -
Campbell
Answer Hello Campbell,
Thank you for your questions and I hope I can give you some answers.I have some informative articles I have included here for you on both topics you asked about:
The Evils of Nazism Exposed
IN THE 1920's, as Germany struggled to recover from its defeat in World War I, Jehovah's Witnesses were busy distributing tremendous amounts of Bible literature. Not only did this offer comfort and hope to the German people but it alerted them to the rising power of militarism. Between 1919 and 1933, the Witnesses delivered an average of eight books, booklets, or magazines to each of the approximately 15 million families in Germany.
The Golden Age and Consolation magazines often drew attention to the militaristic stirrings in Germany. In 1929, more than three years before Hitler came to power, the German edition of The Golden Age boldly stated: “National Socialism is . . . a movement that is acting . . . directly in the service of man's enemy, the Devil.”
On the eve of Hitler's taking power, The Golden Age of January 4, 1933, said: “There looms forth the menacing promontory of the National Socialist movement. It seems incredulous that a political party so insignificant in its origin, so heterodox in its policies, can, in the space of a few years, develop into proportions that overshadow the structure of a national government. Yet Adolf Hitler and his national socialist party (the Nazis) have accomplished this rare feat.”
An Appeal for Understanding
Hitler became prime minister of Germany on January 30, 1933, and a couple of months later, on April 4, 1933, the Magdeburg branch office of Jehovah's Witnesses was seized. However, the order was rescinded on April 28, 1933, and the property was returned. What would happen next?
In spite of the evident hostility of the Hitler regime, Jehovah's Witnesses organized a convention in Berlin, Germany, on June 25, 1933. Some 7,000 persons assembled. The Witnesses publicly made their intentions clear: “Our organization is not political in any sense. We only insist on teaching the Word of Jehovah God to the people, and that without hindrance.”
Thus Jehovah's Witnesses made a good-faith effort to state their case. What were the consequences?
The Attack Begins
The immovable neutral position of the Witnesses, along with their loyalty to God's Kingdom, was unacceptable to the Hitler government. The Nazis did not intend to tolerate any refusal to support their ideology.
Immediately after the Berlin convention concluded, the Nazis again seized the branch office at Magdeburg, on June 28, 1933. They broke up Witness meetings and made arrests. Soon Witnesses began to be dismissed from their jobs. They suffered raids on their homes, beatings, and arrests. By early 1934 the Nazis had seized from the Witnesses 65 tons of Bible literature and had burned it outside Magdeburg.
Witnesses' Resolute Stand
Despite these initial attacks, Jehovah's Witnesses stood their ground and publicly denounced the oppression and injustice. The November 1, 1933, issue of The Watchtower featured the article “Fear Them Not.” It was prepared especially for the German Witnesses, exhorting them to take courage in the face of mounting pressure.
On February 9, 1934, J. F. Rutherford, the president of the Watch Tower Society, sent a letter of protest to Hitler stating: “You may successfully resist any and all men, but you cannot successfully resist Jehovah God. . . . In the name of Jehovah God and His anointed King, Christ Jesus, I demand that you give order to all officials and servants of your government that Jehovah's witnesses in Germany be permitted to peaceably assemble and without hindrance worship God.”
Rutherford set March 24, 1934, as the deadline. He said that if by that time relief did not come to the German Witnesses, the facts about the persecution would be published throughout Germany and the rest of the world. The Nazis answered Rutherford's demand with stepped-up abuses, sending many of Jehovah's Witnesses to the concentration camps that had recently been set up. Thus, they were among the first inmates of these camps.
Witnesses Expose Nazi Atrocities
As Jehovah's Witnesses had promised, they began exposing the atrocities occurring in Germany. Witnesses around the globe repeatedly registered protests with the Hitler government.
On October 7, 1934, all congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany assembled to hear a letter read that was being sent to the officials of the Hitler government. It said: “There is a direct conflict between your law and God's law . . . Therefore this is to advise you that at any cost we will obey God's commandments, will meet together for the study of His Word, and will worship and serve Him as He has commanded.”
On the same day, Jehovah's Witnesses in 49 other countries met in special assembly and sent the following telegram to Hitler: “Your ill-treatment of Jehovah's witnesses shocks all good people of earth and dishonors God's name. Refrain from further persecuting Jehovah's witnesses; otherwise God will destroy you and your national party.”
The Nazis responded almost immediately by stepping up their persecution. Hitler himself screamed: “This brood will be exterminated in Germany!” But as opposition intensified, the determination of the Witnesses stiffened correspondingly.
In 1935, The Golden Age exposed the Inquisitionlike torture methods of the Nazi regime and its spy system. It also revealed that it was the aim of the Hitler Youth organization to purge Germany's youths of their belief in God. The following year a nationwide Gestapo campaign resulted in the arrests of thousands of Witnesses. Soon after, on December 12, 1936, the Witnesses answered with their own campaign, blanketing Germany with tens of thousands of copies of a resolution protesting the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses.
On June 20, 1937, the Witnesses who were still free distributed another message that was unsparing in its detail about the persecution. It named officials and cited dates and places. The Gestapo were appalled at this exposure and the ability of the Witnesses to carry it off.
Love of neighbor is what compelled the Witnesses to warn the people of Germany not to be fooled by the grandiose vision of a glorious thousand-year rule by the Third Reich. “We must tell the truth and give the warning,” said the booklet Face the Facts, published in 1938. “We recognize the totalitarian government . . . as the product of Satan brought forth as the substitute for God's kingdom.” Jehovah's Witnesses were among the first targets of Nazi abuse, but they also loudly decried atrocities against Jews, Poles, the handicapped, and others.
The resolution “Warning!,” adopted at a 1938 convention of Jehovah's Witnesses in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., said: “The Fascists and Nazis, radical political organizations, have wrongfully seized control of many countries of Europe . . . All the people will be regimented, all their liberties taken away, and all will be compelled to yield to the rule of an arbitrary dictator and then the ancient Inquisition will be fully revived.”
Rutherford regularly took to the airwaves, delivering powerful lectures on the satanic nature of Nazism. The lectures were rebroadcast globally and were printed for distribution by the millions. On October 2, 1938, he delivered the address “Fascism or Freedom,” in which he denounced Hitler in no uncertain terms.
“In Germany the common people are peace-loving,” Rutherford proclaimed. “The Devil has put his representative Hitler in control, a man who is of unsound mind, cruel, malicious and ruthless . . . He cruelly persecutes the Jews because they were once Jehovah's covenant people and bore the name of Jehovah, and because Christ Jesus was a Jew.”
As the Nazi rage against Jehovah's Witnesses reached new heights, the Witnesses' denunciations became ever more scathing. The May 15, 1940, issue of Consolation stated: “Hitler is such a perfect child of the Devil that these speeches and decisions flow through him like water through a well-built sewer.”
Horrors of Camps Exposed
Although the public was largely unaware of the existence of the concentration camps until 1945, detailed descriptions of them appeared often in Watch Tower publications in the 1930's. In 1937, for example, Consolation told of experiments with poison gas at Dachau. By 1940, Witness publications had named 20 different camps and had reported on their unspeakable conditions.
Why were Jehovah's Witnesses so well acquainted with the concentration camps? When World War II started in 1939, there were already 6,000 Witnesses confined in camps and prisons. German historian Detlef Garbe estimates that the Witnesses constituted at that time between 5 and 10 percent of the total camp population!
At a seminar on the Witnesses and the Holocaust, Garbe stated: “Of the 25,000 persons who admitted to being Jehovah's Witnesses at the beginning of the Third Reich, about 10,000 were imprisoned for any length of time. Of these, over 2,000 were admitted to concentration camps. This means that the Jehovah's Witnesses were, with the exception of the Jews, the worst persecuted by the SS of all the religious based groups.”
In June 1940, Consolation said: “There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland when Germany began its Blitzkrieg . . . , and if reports which reach the Western world are correct their destruction seems well under way.” In 1943, Consolation noted: “Whole nations like the Greeks, Poles and Serbs are being exterminated systematically.” By 1946, The Golden Age and Consolation had identified 60 different prison and concentration camps.
Nazis Frustrated by Witnesses
Although the Nazis tried to stem the flow of Watch Tower literature, a Berlin official admitted: “It is hard to find the secret places in Germany where the Bible Students' literature is still being printed; no one carries names or addresses and no one betrays another.”
Despite their frantic efforts, the Gestapo were never able to capture more than half the total number of Witnesses in Germany at any given time. Imagine the frustration of the elaborate Nazi spy system—it could not round up and silence this tiny army or stop the flow of literature. The literature found its way to the streets and even penetrated the barbed-wire fences of the concentration camps!
Triumph Over Barbarism
The Nazis, who were considered masters at breaking the human will, tried desperately to get Jehovah's Witnesses to violate their Christian neutrality, but they failed miserably. The book The Theory and Practice of Hell said: “One cannot escape the impression that, psychologically speaking, the SS was never quite equal to the challenge offered them by Jehovah's Witnesses.”
Indeed, the Witnesses, backed up by God's spirit, won the battle. Historian Christine King, chancellor of Staffordshire University in England, described the opponents in the conflict: “One [the Nazis] enormous, powerful, seemingly invincible. One [the Witnesses] very, very tiny . . . with only their faith, no other weapon . . . Jehovah's Witnesses brought morally to their knees the might of that Gestapo power.”
Jehovah's Witnesses were a small, peaceable enclave within the Nazi realm. Yet, they waged and won a battle in their own way—a battle for the right to worship their God, a battle to love their neighbor, and a battle to tell the truth.
The Holocaust—Yes, It Really Happened!
SURPRISINGLY, there is a small minority of people who allege that the Holocaust did not take place as it is depicted in modern history. In his publication Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last, Richard Harwood states: “The allegation that 6 million Jews died during the Second World War, as a direct result of official German policy of extermination, is utterly unfounded.”
So the questions are raised: Did the Nazis command the extermination of the Jews during World War II? Did four to six million Jews really die in the concentration camps? Were there such things as gas chambers? Or are these distortions of German history?
Certain revisionist historians have alleged that these events did not take place. They argue that, at most, only a few thousand Jews died and that the majority were evacuated to other countries.
A recent court case in Canada highlighted this controversy. A German immigrant to Canada was prosecuted for “knowingly publishing false information which was likely to cause harm to social or racial tolerance” by denying that the Holocaust ever happened, reported The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Canada. The result was a 15-month jail sentence and a ban on the publication of his revisionist views of the Holocaust.
In West Germany an antidefamation law was amended in 1985 to allow even non-Jewish persons to lay complaint against “anyone who insults, slanders, libels or disparages people who ‘lost their lives as victims of National Socialist or other forms of tyrannic or despotic rule.'” The effect of this law is that it “makes the denial of the murder of Jews in concentration camps during the Nazi dictatorship a punishable offense,” stated the Hamburger Abendblatt.
The denying of the Holocaust is commonly called the “Auschwitz lie.” Auschwitz (now Oswiecim) was the infamous concentration camp in Poland where the Nazis committed mass murder. According to the West German media, right-wing extremists have tried to hide or deny these events and thus the term “Auschwitz lie.”
Emigration or Extermination?
The existence today of millions of Jews of European origin proves that the Nazis did not succeed in destroying European Jewry. That many Jews escaped the attempted annihilation in the concentration camps is confirmed by historian William L. Shirer, who wrote in his book 20th Century Journey—The Nightmare Years 1930-1940: “Not all the Austrian Jews perished in the Nazi camps and prisons. Many Jews were allowed to buy their way out of captivity and go abroad. Usually, it cost them their fortune. . . . Perhaps nearly half of Vienna's 180,000 Jews managed to purchase their freedom before the Holocaust began.” This policy was especially in effect in the 1930's.
However, Shirer explains that although the Office for Jewish Emigration was set up, under Reinhard Heydrich, “later it would become an agency not of emigration but of extermination, and organize the systematic slaughter of more than four million Jews.” This “final solution” was directed by Karl Adolf Eichmann, who was eventually executed in Israel for his war crimes.
The concentration camps were not the only means of eliminating what the Nazis regarded as subhuman and inferior races. There were also the feared Einsatzgruppen (Special Action Groups), extermination squads that went in behind the invading army “and whose sole objective was the wholesale slaughter of the Jews. . . . Moving close behind the advancing front line so that few could evade their net, the Einsatzgruppen brutally shot, bayoneted, burnt, tortured, clubbed to death or buried alive almost half a million Jews in the first six months of the campaign.”—Hitler's Samurai—The Waffen-SS in Action, by Bruce Quarrie.
Is that figure hard to believe? It works out to an average of less than one murder per day per member of the 3,000 member group. When these special action groups reached the Soviet territories, partial death tolls give a figure of “more than 900,000, account[ing] for only about two thirds of the total number of Jewish victims in mobile operations.”—The Destruction of the European Jews, by Raul Hilberg.
Commandant Confesses
What testimony is there from the very participants in the executions in the concentration camps? Rudolf Höss, former commandant of the Auschwitz camp complained: ‘Believe me, it wasn't always a pleasure to see those mountains of corpses and smell the perpetual burning.' He also expressed “surprised disapproval that Jewish Special Detachments (Sonderkommandos) were willing, in return for a short extension of their own lives, to help with the gassing of members of their own race.” (The Face of the Third Reich, by Joachim C. Fest, page 285) German author Fest adds: “Some of the one-sided perfectionist pride of the expert comes out in Höss's statement: ‘By the will of the Reichsführer of the SS [Heinrich Himmler], Auschwitz became the greatest human extermination centre of all time,' or when he points out with the satisfaction of the successful planner that the gas chambers of his own camp had a capacity ten times greater than those of Treblinka.”
In his autobiography Höss wrote: “Unknowingly, I was a cog in the chain of the great extermination machine of the Third Reich.” “The Reichsführer SS [Himmler] sent various high-ranking Party leaders and SS officers to Auschwitz so that they might see for themselves the process of extermination of the Jews. They were all deeply impressed by what they saw.”
However, they were apparently affected by the difference between the phrase “the final solution of the Jewish question” and its ghastly reality in the gas chambers. When asked how he could stand it, Höss answered: “My invariable answer was that the iron determination with which we must carry out Hitler's orders could only be obtained by a stifling of all human emotions.”
Thus, Höss, the sadistic puppet, freely admitted that the Holocaust was a reality and that he was one of its perpetrators as camp commander of Auschwitz.
In Values and Violence in Auschwitz, a book first published in Polish, the translator, Catherine Leach, states that 3,200,000 Polish Jews lost their lives because of mass executions, torture, and slave labor in concentration camps. She says: “The holocaust of Europe's Jews took place on Polish territory.”
Death by Drowning
Death could come in many ways in the camps—starvation, disease, a bullet in the neck, gas chamber, beatings, hanging, guillotine, and drowning. The drowning was a special refinement.
Writer Terrence Des Pres explains: “The fact is that prisoners were systematically subjected to filth. They were the deliberate target of excremental assault. . . . Prisoners in the Nazi camps were virtually drowning in their own waste, and in fact death by excrement was common. In Buchenwald, for instance, latrines consisted of open pits twenty-five feet [8 m] long, twelve feet [4 m] deep and twelve feet [4 m] wide. . . . These same pits, which were always overflowing, were emptied at night by prisoners working with nothing but small pails.” One eyewitness recounts: “The location was slippery and unlighted. Of the thirty men on this assignment, an average of ten fell into the pit in the course of each night's work. The others were not allowed to pull the victims out. When work was done and the pit empty, then and then only were they permitted to remove the corpses.”
Much more testimony could be quoted to prove that extermination became a part of the Nazi policy as more and more European countries were occupied. The bibliography on this subject is endless, and the eyewitness testimony, together with the photographic evidence, is appalling. But was the Holocaust only a Jewish experience? When the Nazis invaded Poland, was it only the Jews they wanted to liquidate?
A Testimony to Their Faith
THE year 1995 saw the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. Throughout Europe, Nazi victims commemorated this occasion with large gatherings attended by heads of State at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and other camps. One thought that came repeatedly to the fore was, “May we never forget!”
For this reason Jehovah's Witnesses presented exhibitions in Europe during the anniversary year. Many of the Witnesses had been interned by Hitler's government for their refusal to give the Hitler salute and to support the war effort. From 1933 onward, thousands of them were imprisoned, and many died as a result of the treatment they received.
Their experiences are, however, generally unknown by the public. This has given rise to the expression “history's forgotten victims.” A group of Witness survivors expressed the desire to preserve the memory of their families and companions who were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, or murdered and to make known the testimony of faith and courage left by these Bibelforscher, the name by which Jehovah's Witnesses were identified in the concentration camps.
On September 29, 1994, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., held a seminar concerning Jehovah's Witnesses in the concentration camps. Two large commemorative reunions were held in France by camp survivors, on March 28, 1995, in Strasbourg and on March 30, in Paris. It was very moving to hear these now aged men and women, still faithful to God 50 years later, relate their experiences. On April 27, a similar meeting was held near Berlin, in Brandenburg, Germany, where many Witnesses were executed by being beheaded. On the following day, a number of the survivors attended the ceremonies organized by the State of Brandenburg and made visits to various camps.
The French Exhibition
At these reunions, an exhibition with the theme “Mémoire de Témoins” (Witness Testimony) was presented. From May 1995 to April 1996, it toured 42 cities in France and various cities in Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland. Above all, the men and women in the exhibition are Witnesses of Jehovah God. But they are also witnesses of the suffering that they and others endured in the concentration camps. They are living proof of an ideology of intolerance that caused the suffering and death of millions of people because of their race or religion. The testimony of the Witnesses, furthermore, exposes how so-called Christians preferred a pseudomessiah, Hitler, to Jesus Christ; hate to love of neighbor; and violence to peace.
The exhibition consisted of some 70 panels, starting with a timetable of events—the opening of the camps in Dachau and Oranienburg, in March 1933; the Nuremberg Laws to “protect German blood,” in September 1935; the Anschluss, or annexation of Austria to Germany, in March 1938; Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), in November of the same year, during which thousands of Jewish shops were ransacked and more than 30,000 people were arrested and deported; the gradual ban on Jehovah's Witnesses; the invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941; and the euthanasia of the mentally sick, from 1939 to 1941.
Several panels highlighted the indoctrination of the young in the Hitler Youth and the fascination that the huge Nazi rallies in Nuremberg held for the masses. Photos called to mind Jehovah's Witnesses' refusal to pledge allegiance to the führer and to give the Hitler salute. Other panels showed how Jehovah's Witnesses were the victims of disinformation and how, as of 1935, they distributed magazines and tracts exposing Nazi excesses.
Personal Experiences
About 40 panels recounted the experiences of ordinary men and women from all over Europe who were persecuted and even killed because of their faith. Survivors supported the exhibition by their presence, and visitors listened to them attentively. Children were enthralled as Louis Arzt told his story. Originally from Mulhouse in France, he was taken from his parents and sent to Germany for refusing to say “Heil Hitler!” at school. “An SS soldier beat me for refusing to salute Hitler. He gave me 30 strokes. Two days later he took me by the shoulder and tried to play on my feelings. ‘Think of your mother. She would be so happy to see you. All you need to do is to say “Heil Hitler!” and you can get on the train.' It was hard for a child of 12,” he added. Many were touched by the experiences of Joseph Hisiger who exchanged his week's ration of bread for the Bible of his Protestant cell mate.
Videotaped interviews with former deportees were another feature of the exhibition. Some interviews were done at the camp locations themselves—for instance, at Ebensee in Austria and at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen in Germany. Other interviews recorded various aspects of camp life or the memories of Witnesses deported as children.
The Inauguration
A short ceremony opened each presentation of the exhibition, during which a representative of the former deportees explained the spiritual resistance of Jehovah's Witnesses to Nazism. Non-Witness deportees as well as several historians and officials, including a former French government minister, also kindly accepted invitations to speak.
A former deportee who knew Jehovah's Witnesses in Buchenwald said regarding them: “I am unaware of any category of deportees, apart from the Jews, who were treated as ignominiously: beaten, humiliated, insulted, given the vilest tasks. Without their faith, they could not have withstood. I have the greatest respect and admiration for them.”
Reactions
Over 100,000 people visited the exhibition. In some locations hundreds of people, among them many youngsters, queued up to get into the exhibition hall. Many visitors expressed their feelings with a few words in the visitors' book. For example, one youngster wrote: “My name is Sabrina. I am ten years old and would like to be as brave as Ruth to please Jehovah.”
The media also spoke about the exhibition. In general, in each town one or two articles appeared in the local press. Additionally, local radio stations often publicized the exhibition and broadcast programs featuring interviews with former deportees. Regional television presented brief reports. One televised news report spoke of the exhibition as “a simple yet terrible story that looks into the heart of the unspeakable. A ‘Witness Testimony' that pays respect to dignity that can never be taken away.”
For the survivors the 50th anniversary of the liberation will long remain engraved in their minds. While evoking painful memories was not always easy, by sharing them with others and by bringing the memories out of oblivion, the Witnesses were able to strengthen the faith of others. They considered it a privilege to participate in this exhibition and to dispel some of the prejudice and the ignorance that still linger after 50 years. Most of all, they derived satisfaction from knowing that their testimony brings honor to their God, Jehovah, and ensures that others will never forget what they endured as his Witnesses.
Are Jehovah's Witnesses Christians?
Why are they spoken against? What is their aim?
A TRADITIONAL pattern in religious worship and practice has been established among the orthodox religions of Christendom. They have a clergy class and a laity class, with the clergy doing all the preaching and the laity the listening. They have their social activities, money-raising programs, political interests and many commonly accepted teachings and holidays. Any religious group that does not conform to this pattern is, more often than not, considered to be peculiar. Political and legal authorities may even refuse to recognize it as a religious group and may deny it constitutionally guaranteed liberties. Orthodox religious leaders may ridicule it, accusing it of being a deceiver, false prophet and not Christian. This has been the experience of Jehovah's witnesses in this twentieth century.
The treatment given the Witnesses is similar to what was experienced by Christians in the first century for not conforming to the popular religious pattern among the Jews and Romans of that day. Those early Christians were a minority whose worship, beliefs and religious practices were strikingly different from the idol-worshiping Romans and the tradition-bound adherents to Judaism. It was the popular thing to show intolerance toward them. Roman emperors put them in the arenas to be burned alive or to be torn by wild beasts. The religious leaders of Judaism incited mobs against them, causing them to be persecuted from city to city. Jesus Christ foretold this when he said to some of those orthodox religionists: “I am sending forth to you prophets and wise men and public instructors. Some of them you will kill and impale, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.”—Matt. 23:34.
Those same religious leaders decorated the memorial tombs of the prophets that lived before their day, saying: “If we had been in the days of our forefathers, we would not have been sharers with them in the blood of the prophets.” (Matt. 23:30) Yet they treated Christians as their forefathers had treated the Hebrew prophets who did not conform to what was popular.
Although many centuries have passed since the days of the early Christians and many millions of people now profess Christianity, nonconforming Christians are still mistreated. Orthodox religious groups may deplore the mistreatment that was shown the early Christians and say that if they had lived then they would not have been among the persecutors, but they will turn around and persecute Jehovah's witnesses for not conforming to the popular religious pattern of today. Jesus Christ foretold that this would be so when he spoke about those followers of his living in the last days: “Then people will deliver you up to tribulation and will kill you, and you will be hated by all the nations on account of my name.” “The hour is coming when everyone that kills you will imagine he has rendered a sacred service to God.”—Matt. 24:9; John 16:2.
WHAT IS A CHRISTIAN?
That which determines a Christian is not adherence to the popularly accepted beliefs of orthodox religious organizations or participation in popular religious practices and religious holidays. Conforming to the popular concept of a Christian does not make a person a Christian. What does is the meeting of Scriptural qualifications. The apostle Peter said: “Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely.” (1 Pet. 2:21) One must follow the example Christ set.
Aside from making himself thoroughly familiar with the Scriptures and living by its right principles, Christ bore witness to the name and purposes of his heavenly Father. “I have made your name known to them and will make it known.” (John 17:26) He stated that his purpose in coming was to bear witness to the truth. (John 18:37) Christians of the first century followed his example by bearing witness to the truth, although this conflicted with the traditional teachings that were popularly accepted in those days.
Those early followers of Christ refused to adopt any of the philosophical beliefs or religious formalisms of the pagan Greeks and Romans. They knew that a Christian's worship must be pure, undefiled by pagan influence. “Do not become unevenly yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?”—2 Cor. 6:14.
The kingdom of God was made prominent in the preaching done by Jesus Christ. He laid great stress on it, and told his followers to seek “first the kingdom and [God's] righteousness.” (Matt. 6:33) This is a requirement that Christians must meet, and, like the early Christians, they must not only seek the Kingdom but talk about it as well.—Matt. 10:7.
As Jesus kept integrity to his heavenly Father under the most trying circumstances so must the person who seeks to be a Christian. When men of the world try to force him to break integrity to God, he must do as Peter said: “We must obey God as ruler rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) A Christian must not break his integrity when persecution comes upon him for refusing to conform to what is popular but contrary to God's Word. He cannot expect all men to speak well of him. “All those desiring to live with godly devotion in association with Christ Jesus will also be persecuted.”—2 Tim. 3:12; Luke 6:26.
The fruits of the spirit are produced by a Christian at all times, not just one day a week. Regarding these fruits the Bible says: “On the other hand, the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control.” (Gal. 5:22, 23) These qualities must be given more than lip service by the person wanting to be a Christian.
Because Jehovah's witnesses are unlike orthodox church members in their beliefs and religious activities, some persons may claim that they are not Christians; but let us see if they meet the Scriptural requirements that determine a Christian. This is what counts, not what is popular.
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES MEET REQUIREMENTS
The activities of Jehovah's witnesses fit their name. Like Jesus Christ, who is called by Scripture “the faithful and true witness,” Jehovah's witnesses bear witness to the name, purpose and truth of God. (Rev. 3:14) They do not hide his name but publicly declare that it is Jehovah. As you will note, it appears prominently on the cover of this magazine, which is the principal publication used by the Witnesses. It is Jehovah's will that his name be made known to earth's inhabitants.—Ps. 83:18; Heb. 13:15.
As his witnesses they testify to the fact that he is one God and that he rightly demands exclusive devotion. Consider this expression of theirs in The Watchtower of January 1, 1956: “Exclusive devotion to Jehovah God is a very serious requirement. . . . He is exclusive. Everyone else stays outside this most honored position that he only can hold. He is alone in his exalted place in the universe. He will not include anyone else with himself. His glory he does not share with another.” This fact eliminates religious devotion to images and human leaders.—Ex. 20:5.
Like the early Christians, Jehovah's witnesses insist upon keeping their worship of Jehovah God undefiled. They refuse to use icons, symbols, processions, clerical robes and the many other things that religious Christendom adopted from pagan religions many centuries ago. They refuse to defile their worship with the observance of religious holidays that have roots in paganism or with religious creeds that sprang from human philosophy and not from God's Word. This determination to maintain undefiled worship puts the Witnesses out of step with popular religious beliefs and practices. As the religious leaders of Jesus' day became greatly upset over the Scriptural truths he taught, so religious leaders in Christendom become upset over the preaching activities of Jehovah's witnesses.
As clearly shown by the resolution passed by the Witnesses at their Divine Will International Assembly in 1958, the kingdom of God is the principal theme of their preaching. It stated: “The only stable government in the universe is the established kingdom of God in the hands of his anointed Son.” They follow the example of Jesus by “seeking first the kingdom and his righteousness.”—Matt. 6:33.
Like the early Christians, Jehovah's witnesses maintain integrity to God despite the many vicious efforts that are made to silence them. In the United States during 1940, 600 mobbings did not frighten them into silence. Hitler failed to break them in prisons and concentration camps where he tortured 10,000 of them, and the Communists are failing to do it in their frightful prisons and slave-labor camps. The Witnesses have found the following words of Jesus to be as true today as they were 1900 years ago: “If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, on this account the world hates you.”—John 15:19.
Making public proclamation of Scriptural truths is an obligation that rests upon all who strive to follow Christ's example. Jehovah's witnesses do not ignore this fact. All of them engage in the ministry by preaching to others. In 1959 over 870,000 of them devoted more than 126 million hours to this divinely authorized work. They know that preaching is one of the things required to get salvation. “For with the heart one exercises faith for righteousness, but with the mouth one makes public declaration for salvation.”—Rom. 10:10.
By manifesting the fruits of the spirit they give further proof that they are Christians. Their love, mildness and self-control is publicly revealed when they hold assemblies. At the time of their 1958 assembly in New York city the Daily News said that an official of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau “called the Witnesses an ‘asset to the community' and said their conduct was ‘out of this world' for mannerliness.”
BELIEFS ARE SCRIPTURAL
Although the beliefs of Jehovah's witnesses frequently differ from what Christendom considers as orthodox, they are Scriptural. It is believed by the Witnesses that persons who die are in a condition similar to sleep, a condition of unconsciousness. The hope for the dead is to awaken to life by resurrection. This belief is Scriptural, for Jesus himself compared death with sleep. He said: “Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am traveling there to awaken him from sleep. Jesus had spoken, however, about his death.”—John 11:11, 13; Ps. 146:4; Eccl. 9:10.
The fate of the wicked is another point of difference between the beliefs of the Witnesses and those of orthodox religions. Instead of preaching that the wicked are tormented in a fiery hell after death, they contend that the wicked go into eternal death. This too is according to God's Word. It is written: “Jehovah is guarding all those loving him, but all the wicked ones he will annihilate.”—Ps. 145:20; Rom. 6:23.
A popular belief in Christendom is that God is three persons in one, all three persons being coequal and coeternal. Jehovah's witnesses reject this belief because it is not found in the Bible. It is, instead, found in Hinduism and in other pagan religions. The Witnesses follow the Scriptural teaching that the Father and the Son are different persons, with the Son having been created by the Father. It is written that Christ was “the beginning of the creation by God.” (Rev. 3:14) Jehovah is his Father and the God whom he worships. This was stated by Jesus himself: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father and to my God and your God.”—John 20:17.
Human salvation is recognized by the Witnesses as being possible by no other means than by Christ's ransom sacrifice. This too is a Scriptural teaching. (Matt. 20:28) The kingdom over which Christ was made King is proclaimed by the Witnesses as a heavenly government that will rule the earth. It is a very real government.—Isa. 9:6, 7; 1 Cor. 15:24.
It will be this divine government, established in the heavens, that will destroy all human government and authority that do not have God's sanction. (2 Pet. 3:7) The earth will then be inhabited by meek persons who, because of their faithfulness to the Creator, will receive the gift of eternal life. The Scriptures support this belief by saying: “For those being blessed by him will themselves possess the earth.” “Happy is the man that keeps on enduring trial, because on becoming approved he will receive the crown of life, which Jehovah promised to those who continue loving him.”—Ps. 37:22; Jas. 1:12.
These and the other things that Jehovah's witnesses believe, while being different from orthodox beliefs in Christendom, are Scriptural. They are things made known by God's Word and do not come from pagan religions of ancient times. By their beliefs and their activities Jehovah's witnesses prove that they are true Christians. They meet the Scriptural qualifications of a Christian. Their principal aim is to preach the good news of God's kingdom “in all the inhabited earth for the purpose of a witness to all the nations.” In this and in many other ways they follow closely Christ's steps as it is required of true Christians.—Matt. 24:14. Janko
