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“Who Are the April Fools? How Do You View Jesus?” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” “On the foal of a donkey”: I thought about that phrase, and then I thought about the fact that this is April 1, and so I considered doing a sermon on “April Foal’s Day” . . . and then I decided against it. But this is April Fools’ Day,...

they differ from Protestant religions in many significant ways. In fact, The Encyclopedia of Religion refers to Jehovah’s Witnesses as being “distinctive.” Consider three ways in which they are different. First, although Protestant faiths reject certain features of Catholic worship, Reformation leaders retained certain Catholic dogmas, such as belief in the Trinity, hellfire, and the immortality of the human soul. Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, believe that those doctrines not only contradict the Bible but also promote a distorted view of God.—See Exposed: Six Myths About Christianity. Second, the religion that Jehovah’s Witnesses advocate is, not one of negative protest, but one...

What would happen if a pair of Mormon missionaries showed up on the doorstep of a dedicated Jehovah’s Witness? This humorous but insightful fictional dialogue is what it might sound like. Elder Hawkins grinned as he approached the door. He and Sister Sarah had placed the Book of Mormon in four homes already this morning, and it wasn’t yet noon. He rang the doorbell and stepped back. A tall, balding man wearing a large smile opened the door. Elder Hawkins saw the Watchtower magazine in the man’s hand and his grin vanished.(By David Washburn, This Rock Magazine, 1992)“Come in, come...

It is amazing how easily we as human beings can lose our objectivity. We become lost in our own little world. It is like looking in a mirror which reflects an inaccurate image of reality. What we see in the mirror is not a true reflection of our condition before God. It is almost like someone has cast a spell over us. We need to look in a different mirror in order to break the spell. We need a mirror that will help us to see ourselves correctly and in a new light. This is what can happen for a...

Raymond Franz, former leader of JW and author of Crisis of Conscience The teaching of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society that Armageddon will come before the "generation of 1914" passes away is causing increased anxiety among Jehovah's Witnesses as 2014 approaches and there are still no clear signs of how and when Jehovah will bring an end to this evil "system of things."According to the teaching that the Jehovah's Witnesses have held for decades, people who were alive in 1914, when Jesus began "invisible rule" in heaven (an event marked by the outbreak of the first world war), will...

Every time we make the sign of the Cross we make an invocation of the Holy Trinity: "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Those who grew up as Catholics, or in other religious communities with an orthodox understanding of this Triune nature of God, may take this doctrine for granted and not comprehend the extent to which it has historically been assaulted and still is attacked today. In many cases those who attack the doctrine do so without ever really understanding what the Church teaches about it to begin with –...

Rhonda Kalapach believes Jehovah's Witnesses have no place on her property. When two of them came to her door, the 60-year-old Monroe County woman asked them to leave. Her husband saw the women from across the street and yelled at them, but they didn’t go. That’s when her husband, William George Kalapach, came into the home and got his rifle. The women were walking to the car where three other people were waiting, when Kalapach said they weren’t moving fast enough, police said. Police said he fired four shots into the ground about 11 a.m. Saturday near the car with...

This is my 17th Easter. For the first 38 years of my life I did not celebrate Easter because I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a pseudo- Christian group with a very strange economy of salvation. It is not easy to describe life in a cult like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is very dark. Even their light is darkness. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in the Trinity, so they do not believe in the deity of Christ. They believe that Jesus was Michael the Archangel before he came to earth, and that after he was resurrected, he went back to being...

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Trinity The doctrine of the Holy Trinity has been consistently misunderstood, probably more than any other teaching of the Bible. Frequently investigation into the doctrine of the Trinity has been dismissed from serious discussion or study by invoking the time-worn assertions - "It's a great mystery" or "This is incomprehensible" - thus discouraging many from investigating the scriptural basis of the doctrine. Due principally to this attitude as well as certain complex aspects of the Trinity doctrine itself, there has been a revival of anti-Trinitarian heresies during the past one hundred and fifty years, and they...

WEST PALM BEACH, FL -- If you feel like the world has been crumbling down around you lately, the Jehovah's Witnesses say - you're right. It is. In fact, beginning this weekend, they'll be holding a series of public lectures entitled "How to survive the end of the world". "It's imminent. It's at hand," says local Jehovah's Witnesses spokesman Travis Telfair. Local Witnesses will be holding 14 consecutive 'conventions', as they call them, at their convention center on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard - formerly the West Palm Beach Auditorium. They hold such gatherings each year, but this year's theme is,...

AUGUSTA, GA - I grew up thinking the Jehovah’s Witnesses were a cult. In eighth grade, at the Christian school I attended, I took a world religions class. I thought it would open a window and shed light into the unknown. Turns out, the class was just closed-minded and dogmatic indoctrination. As a result, I spent the next 10 years wary of anyone who knocked on my front door, as though they would lure me with winning smiles only to brainwash me into believing bizarre, unholy practices. Luckily, life experience changes superstitious prejudices. A couple of Jehovah’s Witness friends in...

If you live in Southern Arizona — whether it's in an apartment, trailer, house or ranch — you should expect a knock during the next three weeks. It doesn't matter whether you rent or own, whether you are in Oro Valley or Sahuarita, or whether your house is high on a hill surrounded by a wall and a mile from the road. It doesn't matter whether you are in a gated community or a retirement home. The Jehovah's Witnesses are pledging to personally deliver you an invitation to their regional convention in July. On Friday, Tucson-area Jehovah's Witnesses began a...

What do you guys think of Jehovah's Witnesses? I talk to them all the time, I don't think that they will comment because they are not allowed to discuss politics.

Moscow (AsiaNews/F18) – Alexander Kalistratov, chairman of the Gorno-altaisk chapter of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, was convicted for possession of “extremist” literature, and given a two-year prison sentence. The sentence is final, and Kalistratov’s only recourse is the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) where his lawyer filed on appeal arguing that his conviction was religiously motivated. The original charges were laid after it was determined that he possessed copies of Jehovah’s Witnesses publications like Watchtower and Awake, whose opinions, according to the court, were “extremist” even if solely religious in nature. For this reason, local experts told the Forum 18...

Mormons took a lot of abuse for helping pass Proposition 8 in California, where 52% of voters banned the right of gay couples to marry in 2008. But will anyone thank Jehovah’s Witnesses for their role in getting the law declared unconstitutional? One of the biggest outcries over Prop 8 was that the fundamental rights of a minority group could be taken away by popular vote — which isn’t supposed to happen in America, land of the free. Vaughn Walker, the federal judge who struck down Prop 8 this week, boldly said it “was premised on the belief that same-sex...

Talking to Jehovah's WitnessesJASON EVERTIf you open your home to the Witnesses, that is more than most people do. Know that your charity and willingness to share your faith will leave a mark on the hearts and minds of Jehovah's Witnesses. Hi. We're making visits in the neighborhood. Did you see on the news that bombing that happened in the Middle East? Wouldn't it be great if we could live in a world without war? If you've ever opened your door to find a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses, odds are you've heard a question such as this. This query...

In the 1920s and 1930s, Jehovah's Witnesses were viewed by many with the same horror and loathing gun owners receive today. So the 1920s and 1930s saw widespread state and local legislation against Jehovah's Witnesses, and though the Bill of Rights guarantees freedom of speech and religion, it took 30 to 40 years of careful litigation--patiently piling up precedents to achieve the overthrow of those laws by the Supreme Court. The relevance of the Witnesses' experience to gun owners is that it will take at least that many years of patient, careful litigation to remove the morass of senseless anti-gun...

Dennis McConner climbs the front steps of a well-kept home on Holgate Avenue in Maumee and knocks on the door. SNIP Mr. McConner, of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., smiles warmly and says, "Good morning sir, how are you?" "Just fine. Can I help you?" the homeowner asks, polite but hurried. "Yes, my name is Dennis McConner. I'm stopping by this morning leaving invitations to you and your neighbors to attend a convention we're having at the SeaGate Centre and to answer this question: 'How can I survive the end of the world?'•" SNIP Leading up to the first weekend of meetings,...

WEST PALM BEACH — It's the start of the Jehovah Witnesses' convention season, and this year they'll be preparing for the end of the world. Starting Friday, the Witnesses will host 14 consecutive weeks of conventions at the Christian Convention Center on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. This year's theme, "Keep on the Watch!" is designed to discuss world events and how they relate to the Bible's prophecy of the apocalypse. While all conventions are open to the public, the Witnesses are specifically inviting the public to a discussion with the provocative title, "How to Survive the End of the World,"...

A Jehovah's Witness who for decades refused all surgery on his horrific facial disfigurement has been given hope by a British doctor and new medical technology. Unwilling to accept a blood transfusion, Jose Mestre has allowed the bloody tumour that first appeared on his lip in adolescence to obliterate almost all of his face. Jose Mestre aged 14, when his tumour was still small (left), and as he is now Now 15 inches long and weighing 12 pounds, it has blinded him in one eye and made eating a daily ordeal. As it begins to block his airways, doctors fear...