I was raised from infancy with the teachings of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society to guide me. I came to regard what I had been taught as the truth. It all seemed to make sense. It certainly made more sense than what the other religions taught. Come on. Eternal torment in a fiery hell, three persons in one God. I was able to use scripture to defeat those and other teachings common to the religions in Christendom.
But I never thought to use the same techniques to examine my own religion until one day I did. That day I decided I would no longer accept any given, any assumed truth or premise upon which to build Bible understanding. Everything was on the table. That is when the Bible truly started to open up to me.
I'd like to help others to share in that experience. And one of the best ways is to expose how religious teachers exploit the trust of their audience by getting them to accept a premise without actually examining it. If you are to break free from mind control, because that is what it is, you have to learn to recognize when this is happening.
I could use pretty much any talk video from jw.org to do this. I've chosen the one that follows to show how the leaders of the organization get you to obey them thinking you are actually obeying Jehovah God.
What do you think? Is it possible for an imperfect human to elevate his or her thinking to agree with God's thinking? And if so, how can we do this?
To answer those questions, let's consider several verses in the Bible book of Isaiah. First, let's read Isaiah 40 verses 12–14. Seth is about to read verses which highlight the incredible nature of God's wisdom and power and knowledge. And we have no problem with any of this because he is God and is to be exalted. But to what use will he put these verses as his talk continues? That is the question.
What do we learn from these verses? That Jehovah's thinking, his wisdom, his understanding of the earth's physical makeup and processes, and his intimate knowledge of each one of us imperfect humans is elevated. So much so that it may seem far beyond our reach. But the good news is that Jehovah is not inaccessible and neither is his thinking.
How do we know? We know because of a beautiful Bible prophecy found in Isaiah. In fulfillment of this prophecy, Jehovah is drawing millions of imperfect humans to himself. And in the process, he's elevating us and our thinking.
Please follow along as I read Isaiah 2:2 and 3.
Seth is correct in saying that Jehovah is not inaccessible and neither is his thinking. Seth is going to prove this by using a prophecy in Isaiah to show that Jehovah is drawing millions of imperfect humans to himself. So far so good. But there's a catch. Seth is setting you up to believe a false premise. If you accept his false premise, then what he says might well seem feasible and true.
False?
First, let's hear what it is and read the verses from Isaiah that he uses to try to prove it.
As we read and discuss the verses, you'll see that Isaiah paints a simple but vivid prophetic picture.
In the final part of the days or as the footnote helps us to appreciate in the last days that is in these days the time in which you and I are living in the final part of the days the mountain of the house of Jehovah will become firmly established above the top of the mountains and it will be raised up above the hills and to it all the nations will stream.
What does the mountain of the house of Jehovah represent? Pure worship. In other words, in the last days, pure worship would become prominent, plainly evident, and available for all who are seeking the truth.
Notice how he takes the phrase the final part of the days says that this refers to the last days and then effortlessly slides in the premise that we are in the last days. There's your false premise. He makes no attempt to prove this. He knows his audience has been well conditioned to believe this lie.
How do we know it's a lie? We'll get to that in a moment.
He next claims that the mountain of the house of Jehovah represents pure worship. What he doesn't say because again his audience is well indoctrinated is that pure worship to him means the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Take for example this quote from the Watchtower by means of the faithful and discreet slave. Jesus has built up a remarkable organization on earth to promote pure worship. How do we know about that organization? In response, perhaps you think of the words of the Apostle Peter who said to Jesus, "Whom shall we go away to? You have sayings of everlasting life." John 6:68. Where would any of us be today if we had not come in contact with Jehovah's organization 2022 Watchtower July page 12 paragraph 13.
So the premise is first we are in the last days and second the only religion practicing pure worship is the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
But Seth hasn't finished making his point. So let's hear him out.
The prophecy indicates that honest-hearted people from all of the nations would climb the mountain of pure worship.
Why would they do so? Verse three continues, "And many peoples will go and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will instruct us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths." For law or as the footnote helps us to appreciate instruction for law or instruction will go out of Zion and the word of Jehovah out of Jerusalem.
So in the last days we're told that people from all of the nations would go to the mountain of pure worship in order to be instructed by Jehovah.
Notice how he has emphasized the word instruction. Where does this instruction come from? From Jehovah. If so, then we have the Bible. We don't need a magazine like the Watchtower published by men to instruct us. Unless, of course, we accept Seth's premise that we are in the last days and pure worship is only to be found in the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses.
I said it was a false premise, but unlike Seth, I'm going to back up what I say by using God's word and asking you to reason on it.
Prior to the arrival of Jesus Christ, Israel was the source of pure worship on earth. Mind you, they had deviated from it, but the law was from God. That was God's instruction. The nations weren't exactly streaming to become Israelites, were they?
But what Jesus set up was Christianity. Then the nations began to stream to the mountain of Jehovah. This started in the word going forth from Jerusalem when Peter preached to the crowd at Pentecost. And then three and a half years later, the word went out to the Gentiles.
Peter said, "On the contrary, this is what was said through the prophet Joel. In the last days, God says, 'I will pour out some of my spirit on every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.'" Acts 2:16–17.
The last days to which Peter refers are the last days of the Jewish system of things. So Isaiah fits very nicely into that.
In the first century, the word went forth from Jerusalem and Christians were filled with Holy Spirit and prophesied and the inspired writings came forth. Instruction from God.
Going back to Isaiah 2:2 and 3, in the final part of the days or the last days, the end of the Jewish system of things, the mountain of the house of Jehovah will become firmly established above the top of the mountains that is every other religion or form of worship and that was the start of the Christian congregation and it will be raised up above the hills and to it all nations will stream which is what happened after 36 CE and today a third of the world claims to be Christian and many people will go and say come let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah to the house of the God of Jacob and he will instruct us about his ways and we will walk in his paths for law will go out of Zion and the word of Jehovah out of Jerusalem.
And it was out of Jerusalem that the word of Jehovah first came. And it was through the writings of the apostles that we have been instructed by Jehovah down to this day.
Did you notice the expression of determination made by these ones? We will walk in his paths. What a beautiful prophecy.
But how does this relate to our question? What does it have to do with elevating our thinking to agree with God's thinking?
Well, what happens when you climb a mountain? It takes effort. It can be tiring. You may stumble. You may even suffer some injury while you climb. But if you persevere, what's the situation when you get to the top? You're elevated. You have a view that you would never have experienced if you hadn't made the climb.
If you truly follow the instruction of God and want to be instructed by Jehovah, it will indeed be like climbing a mountain. You will have a great deal of difficulty and many obstacles in your way because the men of the organization or for that matter any religion will oppose you because inevitably the instruction from God will conflict with the teachings of that particular religion or church.
I'm not going to subject you to the entirety of Seth's talk. However, I do want to point out some of the key aspects of it because it has a purpose and it appears that purpose is damage control.
We'll jump ahead just a little bit.
When Jehovah says that his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, he is talking about forgiveness. He forgives repentant wrongdoers in a large way. Truly, Jehovah's mercy is on a level that's challenging for us to comprehend. After all, when we forgive a fellow human, it's a case of one sinner forgiving another. All of us realize that sooner or later we will need to have a fellow human forgive us. But Jehovah, even though he never needs to be forgiven, forgives in a large way.
And in his mercy, Jehovah opens the floodgates of the heavens, showering down blessings on those who return to him with all their heart. That's the elevated view that you and I strive to imitate.
The August 2024 study edition of the Watchtower helped us to better appreciate Jehovah's elevated thinking as reflected in his mercy and his willingness to forgive repentant wrongdoers, even those who have committed serious sins.
For example, we discussed the case of the unrepentant wrongdoer in the congregation in Corinth. His sinful course was so shocking that Paul said it was not even found among the nations. Truly, this Christian man had abandoned Jehovah's elevated standards. Because he was unrepentant, Paul instructed the elders to remove the man from the congregation.
And yet perhaps only months later, Paul instructed the elders to kindly forgive and comfort the man to confirm their love for him. Why? The discipline had yielded positive results. The man repented and was welcomed back into the congregation as a brother.
What good news. What a beautiful example of Jehovah's elevated thinking. And it serves to assure any Christian who's fallen into serious wrongdoing that it is possible with Jehovah's help to get up, dust yourself off, and continue climbing the mountain of pure worship.
Don't those words sound encouraging and high-minded?
But the reality is quite different and the level of hypocrisy needed for a man like Seth to say them publicly knowing what he must know is beyond the pale.
Because anyone who's served as an elder, as I have, knows that the organization's standard is to have a minimum of 12 months before anyone is reinstated. It doesn't really matter what the offense was. It could be something as simple as smoking a cigarette or getting drunk a couple of times. And it doesn't matter how sincere the repentance was because the disfellowshipping process is akin to the judiciary process that the nations of the world practice.
If you do the crime, you must do the time. It's about punishment to instill fear into the heart of the transgressor. Fear leads to compliance and compliance means control.
It is true that an elder body can reinstate a person in less than 12 months. It is an unwritten rule after all. The JW equivalent of the oral law the Pharisees enforced in their day.
But if an elder body does reinstate in less than a year, they will be questioned by the circuit overseer or even the local branch office. I know of three occasions where this happened.
That kind of pressure and scrutiny usually causes most elder bodies to wait out the full year.
So this whole thing seems to be part of the damage control campaign the organization is utilizing to raise their public image in the light of the growing number of nations that are examining the unscriptural judicial policies the organization practices.
So what do we learn from all of this?
Simply that anything you hear from the organization should always be fact-checked. That means going to the Bible and making sure that the premise upon which their argument is based is indeed well supported in scripture and not simply their personal interpretation presented as fact through the Watchtower magazine.
I hope this has been helpful.
Thank you for supporting this channel. We'll continue to do these types of videos to expose hypocrisy and false teachings to protect true Christians from the snare of being seduced by false teachers.