On a cold Monday morning I was picked up by my future mother-in-law so I could do my laundry at her house. As we was talking about current events like the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong II, she switched to how church went this past Sunday. As she shared with me these things, she told me that her pastor read from the New World Translation…from the pulpit! I was shocked to hear this! A Christian minister reading from the bible of the Jehovah’s Witnesses? But you may be asking the question, “What is wrong with the New World Translation? Is it just another version of the Bible?” To answer that question and to understand how tragic it was for a Christian minister to preach from it before his congregation on a Sunday morning, let us examine The New World Translation to see if it is just another version of the Holy Scriptures or a translation to be shun from the pulpit of the Christian Church.

The New World Translation was first published in 1950 by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society under its president Nathan Norr. In the years following the New World Translation would be revised several times in 1961, 1970, 1971, and presently its 1984 translation. But why so many revisions? The reason for so many revisions was because of essential doctrinal issues the Christian Church had and still have with the Jehovah’s Witnesses–such as the deity of Jesus and whether or not Jesus should be given worship like one gives worship to God. The Christian Church from its inception has held to the divinity of Jesus and the belief that He is to be worshiped because He is God in human flesh–the second person of the Triune Godhead. Not so, however, for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Jehovah’s Witnesses deny that Jesus is God and they deny that Jesus is to be worshiped. According to Jehovah’s Witnesses Jesus is “a god”(John 1:1, NWT) the first creation of Jehovah God. So since God alone is to be worshiped (Exodus 20:5), then Jesus, a created being, cannot be worshiped.

There was a huge problem for the Jehovah’s Witnesses when they held to these doctrinal views such as the rejection of Jesus being worshiped–they contradicted their own bible! In the 1961 and 1970 New World Translation in Hebrews 1:6 it renders the verse as saying, ” But when he again brings his First-born into the inhabited earth, he says: ‘ And let all God’s angels worship him'”. Now if the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that their bible is the inspired Word of God–and they do–why then did they contradict the teaching of God Almighty as presented in His own Word? The answer to the question is simple and easy: The New World Translation is not the Word of God. This became evident when the 1971 New World Translation was released. In Hebrews 1:6 it now reads, ” But when he again brings his First-born into the inhabited earth, he says: ‘ And let all God’s angels do obeisance to him.'” Obeisance means, “A bow made to show respect or submission(Merriam Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus).” This word in no way implies worship in any way. If the New World Translation is the Word of God, has God changed His mind about what He told His angels to do? Did God have an “oops” moment or a short mental relapse and is now correcting His mistakes which is a huge theological one at that? If we believe God is perfect by nature then we must reject such reasons. We must therefore conclude that either the god of the Jehovah’s Witnesses is a finite being who is subject to making mistakes and changes or the New World Translation is the word of The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. These two reasons are the only reasons for such a radical change in Hebrews 1:6 from the 1970 to the 1971 New World Translation.

Therefore the pastor at my future mother-in-law’s church should have never preached from the New World Translation because it is not the Word of God. It is the word of the Watchtower organization and ultimately the words of Satan himself.The New World Translation is a defiled and corrupt translation of God’s holy Word and no Christian pastor should ever preach from anything other than the Word of the Lord. To preach from such a corrupt book is to usher in the demonic and satanic into the House of God. How sickening is the thought of such a thing! It is my prayer that this pastor and others who have done so will get on their knees before God and repent because the job of the pastor is to be a shepherd of the flock–his congregation–and protect them with the infallible and inerrant Word of God.

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