Which JW doctrines are THE SAME as mainstream Christianity?

Question

In another thread, I stated that many Jehovah's Witness doctrines are the same as mainstream Christianity. Extracting the Trinity and its subsets, and the holiday/birthday things, what would the JWs here say are the things that other Christians would AGREE with them about? Just how long IS that list?

Answer 1

I think it depends greatly on what you consider "main stream". Most people of other Christian faiths I know believe, or seem to, that Jesus is the son of God. If you give a list of what you consider main stream beliefs I could tell you quicker. We, obviously as Christians, believe Jesus is key to salvation. We believe in God. Murder is wrong. Lying as well. We believe the Bible is God's word. We believe in trying to follow the Bible and in being good people.

Answer 2

It appears that this topic was conceived to find something positive to talk about. Yet some have managed to turn it into a negative topic.
Apostates often mention some facts about Jehovah's witnesses while leaving out information that would better clarify are position proving why this is not the best place for accurate information.

What do we agree on?

I live in a highly religious area and when are campaign informing the public about evolution was launched I found they were more then willing to listen. They readily accepted are "Awake!" magazine talking about the matter. People who would normally argue instead agreed with us and wanted to know more about the bibles scientific accuracy and how we could get to know God by observing nature.Even those who said they believed in both the bible and evolution were willing to read are literature.

One more thing that we tend to agree on is that God is loving and he is love.

1 John 4:8
He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.

Answer 3

(Former JW) Last month I accepted the watchtower and awake mags when they came around because I still like reading some of the articles. What I took exception to was the teaching that Jesus Christ is the first horseman of the apocalypse. This is definitely NOT the case. Jesus is the Prince of Peace - Not War! The Seventh Day Advents teach this too, and I don't know how many others. I will have some very pointed questions ready for them the next time they come knocking.

Answer 4

That's a great question. Well, there is some overlap with atheism and Christianity too. We could pull up some things we could agree upon (extracting the belief in God). Treating people with dignity and respect, being kind to one's neighbor, and helping the poor to name a few. However there is a huge elephant in the room if we haven't noticed. One believes in a eternal, holy, loving, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, infinite Creator who created everything with purpose through His Son (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1-3) while the other believes in an accidental big bang and when the smoke cleared there was order and design, solar systems, planets, galaxies, fish and apes which eventually developed into mankind as each succeeding progression killed off the one that was becoming weak. Anyway, the deity of Jesus Christ, the Tri-unity of God, salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone are not minor differences, they are the heart and soul of historic Christianity. Also, the New World Translation is a hodge podge translation to suit the agenda of the JW movement. I John 5:20 clearly calls Jesus the "true God and eternal life." Please, flee to Jesus Christ as the Savior of your sins, trust that He is who He claimed to be, the Son of God, the Savior, the bread of life, the resurrection and the life, the Word become flesh who dwelt among us, before Abraham was I AM. Compare with Exodus 3:14 and you will see that Jesus clearly linked Himself with Jehovah.

Answer 5

--There is God!
--God created the universe!
--The Bible is God's word!
--Satan is real!
--Virgin conception of Jesus!
--Adam & Eve were the first 2 humans created directly by God!
--Heaven exists where God, Jesus & the angels reside!
--Belief that God gave the 10 commandments!
--That Jesus died for our sins!
--Jesus performed actual miracles & resurrected the dead!

--THAT'S IT!--Not too many major things!
--Good Question!

PS--I thought this was a simple listing , but what do we get?--a tirade of what are Bible does,& does not do ! WHAT we should be doing, with the trinity?
--Are people that insecure that they have to attack any religion that does not agree with them --NO MATTER what the question is?

Answer 6

HI Suzanne!

I am feeling like a pretty good Christian this morning and so I wanted to point out that I have been noticing that the JWs and the rest of us seem to always agree on that homosexuality is wrong, and that mormons and muslims are wrong. I'm stating this based on the thumbs down in our questions to each other. Now, if we could just agree on Jesus.....

May God Bless!!
xo Anna

Answer 7

The key word here is DOCTRINE; in theology that is a construction of beliefs that are held to be fundamental dogma, or tenets of the faith. Mainstream Christianity categorises various doctrines into main headings such as, Final Authority in Matters of Faith; The Godhead; Man and Sin; The Person and Work of Christ; The Atonement; The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit; The Church; The Last Things.

The Watchtower Society does not categorise its tenets in such a way. If it did, it would be much easier for people to see that there can be no agreement between the doctrine of the JWs and that of mainstream Christianity. Let me briefly illustrate:

Final Authority; JWs insist the Bible is their final authority without admitting that it is actually acceptance of the interpretation of their Governing Body that identifies a "true" Christian. In other words, you cannot be a Christian unless you accept the Governing Body's interpretation of scripture as published in Watchtower literature, which makes that literature the final authority.

The Godhead: JWs are adamant that there is no doctrine of the Godhead. Mainstream Christianity's doctrine is of Satan, they say.

Man and Sin: The JWs say Jesus only died to pay the price for Adam's (inherited) sin and not to cover people's individual, personal sins. People pay their own price for that by dying physically, they say.

Christ: His divinity is ridiculed by JWs. They accuse Christians of polytheism whilst glibly calling Jesus 'a god' and 'the Mighty God', yet without worshipping him, thereby calling into question their understanding of what divinity means. To JWs, he is no more than a perfect man who, in his previous life, was an angel.

Atonement: Too many differences to specify here. One example: Christ's atonement was based on him being High Priest, but JWs say he is only High Priest and Mediator for 144,000 people. That leaves 99.9% of all JWs without a Mediator to intercede for them before God's throne. And they think there's no problem with their doctrine!

The Holy Spirit: To JWs this is nothing more than Jehovah's "active force" - a power, like electricity; no personality, a mere "it". They clearly have no idea of what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is.

The Church: They limit the biblical Church (the body of Christ) to 144,000 persons from the time of Christ till now. And (surprise, surprise) all of them were / are JWs. There are no means of grace to be found in any faith group except themselves.

The Last Things: Armageddon and a paradise earth (after Jesus' 3rd return) fill their minds, almost to the exclusion of everything else. They imagine the Day of Judgment will be a 1,000 year period of happiness on a paradise earth, people 'growing' to perfection, and the resurrection of the dead back to this earth taking place then. No Christian faith has this view.

At every point JW dogma fails to agree with mainstream Christianity. The simple reason is their inability to give Christ Jesus his proper place. If only they could do that, everything else would fall into place. Whatever things JWs say they agree with is superficial and misleading compared with the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. That is why I have felt obliged to provide a non-JW answer. I fear lists you might get from JWs will mislead readers into thinking the JW doctrines are only slightly different when they are, in fact, utterly irreconcilably opposed to mainstream Christianity's.

Answer 8

They accept the 66 books of the Bible canon.Although they have 'doctored up' the new testament with the bogus insertion of the Jehovah name 237x's.

Their "Gospel" is false,that Jesus has already had his "invisible" second coming in the year 1914

Galatians 1:8 Saint Paul's dire warning,"whoever preaches a different version of the Gospel,let him be accursed".

Need I say more?

Answer 9

None. The JW's have changed the Holy Bible to fit their agendas.

http://www.watchtower.org/e/bible/index.htm

Go to John 1 in this link and then compare it to your bible, the words are different