God’s Kingdom Society: A Watchtower Surrogate

My friend, Dexter, sent me an audio clip of a monthly radio program sponsored by the friends of God’s Kingdom Society.

The station minister, Emmanuel Oriaku, was on air to disseminate their teachings and the line was opened for listeners to call in at the end of the program.

Before I proceed to respond to some of the things he said, I need to give a brief history of this religious group.

The God’s Kingdom Society (GKS) is a sect that broke away from the Jehovah’s Witness religion. It was founded in 1934 in Nigeria by Gideon M. Urhobo (1903-1952) a former Jehovah’s Witness (JW).

GKS has become one of the larger offshoots from JWs with followers in Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Benin, North America and England.

Urhobo claimed to receive a vision from Jesus in 1933 “to proclaim the good news of God’s Kingdom to all nations as the only remedy for all human sufferings and woes…and to expose all the false doctrines which Satan had used to deceive the people.”

Thereafter, he became a Jehovah’s Witness and a Watchtower Society representative in Nigeria.

He soon disagreed with their teachings regarding marriage, the Memorial celebration, the 144,000 heavenly class, their failed predictions and their name “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” and broke away in 1934 to form his own sect.

When we have surrogate sects that have splintered from a pre-existing curious sect, they usually contain a derivative and successive theological, Christological, soteriological and eschatological views.

Therefore, once you have understood the falsehoods inherent in Jehovah’s Witnesses doctrines and their method of eisegesis (flawed Bible interpretation), you won’t be swayed by the teachings espoused by the God’s Kingdom Society.

Now, back to the audio clip, the words of Emmanuel Oriaku will be in blue:

[Quotes from John 14:1-3]

“This promise is not meant for a Christians. There are two classes of Christians. This is where all the churches get it wrong when they interpret the Scriptures. We have the apostles and the disciples class. Christ himself gave that distinction.”

First of all, nowhere does the New Testament teaches that Christians are in two classes. There is no elitism in the Body of Christ.

It’s quite difficult for a brainwashed mind to admit that his interpretative grid is cut out of the badly smoked, deluded lenses of Mr. Urhobo – a man in the 20th century who supposedly had a better grasp of the Scriptures than all other Christians in the last 2000 years!

One of the first things a cult leader tells his followers is that all others are lying.

To infer that the Bible classifies all believers into “apostles” and “disciples” is ludicrous, because the word “apostle” is used in two senses: as an office and as a gift (implying “one who is sent from”).

In Matthew 10:1-2, the “twelve disciples” were also called “twelve apostles.” The terms were used interchangeably, even though they were quite different.

Jesus originally called disciples. The meaning of the word disciple is “a follower.” These were the people who followed Jesus and learned from Him.

It was out of all His disciples that Jesus chose certain ones who were to be apostles. The word apostle means “sent one.”

In Acts 1:16-26, Peter said the criteria for being in the office of an apostle is that he must have followed Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry and been a witness of the Resurrection.

Mr Oriaku quoted Luke 6:12-13 but it fails to support his preconceived beliefs. The text fails to uphold the idea of a two-tier Christianity.

Christ told the apostles to make disciples through preaching the gospel. He added that each person who believed the gospel was to be taught to obey everything that He had taught the original twelve:

“Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20).

This statement can’t be applied exclusively to a special class of “elite” Christians or leadership hierarchy.

Whatever commands, promises and empowerment the apostles received from Christ were passed on to all who believed the gospel (e.g., their own disciples), who in turn passed on the same to their own converts, and down on to the present time.

All believers are recipients of the blessings of the New Covenant – forgiveness of sin, regeneration of the Holy Spirit, baptism of the Holy Spirit and eternal life.

No one has the right to restrict these blessings to a “special class.”

“Is it only 12 that make up the apostles? No. The 12 apostles were the foundation members of the class of Christians known as 144,000 chosen and anointed Christians according to Revelation 14:1-5 and 7:1-7. They are known as the “little flock” Luke 12:32.”

Now the Trojan horse has been fully unearthed. These are the same errors adhered to by Jehovah’s Witnesses, except that they don’t designate their two classes as “apostles” and “disciples.”

This has been addressed in two posts, The 144,000 and the Great Crowd and Who mediates for the Great Crowd?

Indeed, the title “apostle” was not limited to the Twelve, for Barnabas (Acts 14:14), Paul (Acts 9:1-31; 22:5) and James the Lord’s brother were also apostles (Gal. 1:19; 1 Cor. 15:7). But they didn’t leave behind a dynasty of apostolic succession as Romanism or Mormonism teaches.

When you open to Revelation 14:1-5 and 7:1-7 and read, you will find out that these people are literal Jews from the tribes of Israel, not anointed Christians.

Again, when you read Luke 12 from verse 22, you find that Jesus was directly saying these things to His disciples.

So, even if we assume that the term “little flock” indicates the number of those who would be in heaven, it also shows that disciples will be in heaven!

Those who subscribe to these absurd GKS teachings need to learn that the promise of believers agreeing together in prayer (Matt. 18:19) and receiving whatever they ask in the name of Jesus (Jn. 16:23) was originally given to Christ’s inner circle of twelve. So why do they follow it today?

The command given at the Last Supper for believers to do this “in remembrance of me” (Lk. 22:19) was given to the inner circle of 12 disciples, so why do they follow it?

Approaching the Bible with a two-tier lens makes the Bible quite confusing and contradictory.

Finally, Mr. Oriaku drops the bombshell:

“And there is no woman among those that are going to heaven. No woman will go to heaven. Some of the women may be surprised to hear this. (The interviewer cuts in, “The women on earth?”). Yes. No woman on earth would go to heaven. We have it in the Scriptures … I am not here to patch the words, I’m just here to tell the truth as contained in the Holy Bible. (The interviewer asks, “So where will women go?”). They will be blessed, once they are faithful in God’s kingdom here on earth.”

If there’s a proof that this is a false religious group, this one extinguishes all the doubts.

If the Bible is clear that “there is neither Jew not Greek…slave nor free, … male nor female; for you are all one in Christ” then our position as recipients of Christ’s blessings is not premised on race, social class or gender. It’s based on faith in the perfect work of Christ at Calvary (Gal. 3:26).

One excited caller on the program (who has been soaking in these heresies) said he taught in his church during the youth week, that we would not go to heaven and his pastor corrected him that if he doesn’t want to go to heaven, he, his pastor wants to. I hope that guy was corrected and re-taught from the Bible.

We are living in an age where Christians need to be grounded doctrinally in the truths of Scripture otherwise we will be blown here and there by different winds of false doctrines.

When Witnesses leave the Watchtower

According to an estimate, at least 70,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses leave that religious group annually.

Some of them are disfellowshipped for flouting their by-laws while others simply walk out of the cult due to a number of issues, such as the prevalence and cover-up of sexual abuse within the organization and spiritual emptiness.

Like most heretical sects, the JW belief system is a house of cards. If just one card falls, the entire structure crumbles. Interestingly, for each individual JW, it’s a different card which falls first.

For some, they find inexcusable errors in Watchtower teachings, some witness the injustice, others walk away when they can no longer stomach the Himalayan hypocrisy and the cruelty embedded within the system.

Janja Lalich, a professor studying cults and totalitarian leadership, made some statements regarding cult groups. “There’s this intense devotion and the inability to question or criticize or doubt,” Lalich told The Daily Beast. “They seem to be in a state of what we call cognitive dissonance, where what they believe doesn’t match reality,” she said.

Once the seed of doubt is sown into the heart of the Witness against his/her authoritarian leadership, the structure of their beliefs begins to crumble. It takes just one weak link to break a chain.

In the testimonies of former Witnesses who have come to know Jesus Christ, one can see various ways the Watchtower chains of deceit holding them down were broken.

“Between the two of us, we conducted ‘home bible studies’ with dozens of people, and we brought well over 20 of them into the organization as baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses,” says David Reed an ex-JW elder and his wife, Penni. “We weren’t stupid,” he continues, “but we were totally ignorant of the Bible. Besides, the Jehovah’s Witness program of indoctrination is so cleverly put together that it appeals to intelligent people.”

JWs will not come to your doors to talk about their most absurd beliefs, but would rather start out teaching things that most people agree with and gradually introduce the more absurd beliefs as time goes by.

“When I think of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I recall a lifetime of bondage to a cult which I served for the first 28 years of my life,” wrote Paul Blizard, who was a third generation JW.

“I was taught that Jehovah’s Witnesses had the only true religion, a religion governed from Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. The governing body controls 2.3 million people. I use the word ‘control’ because Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that everything written by the Watchtower is from God and is not to be questioned,” he wrote.

In Tammie’s case, she was “a religious zealot and looked scornfully at anyone too lazy to pursue the ‘Truth’ as we called it.” She adds, “I was persuasive enough to lead five people to the point of baptism. I reported a monthly average of 10 Bible studies and [gave out] hundreds of pieces of literature. I read and studied the organization’s materials to the extent that I was able to argue doctrine better than any elder I knew, and this by their own admission.” Yet, “I was desperately lonely and empty.”

An online Christian ministry that evangelizes JWs notes that:
“There are two types of converts. Those who joined this religion because it met an emotional need and those who converted because it gave them ‘answers’ to the questions they were facing in life. While the second group is easier to reach through logical reasoning about doctrinal inconsistencies, the first group is the most difficult to reach.”

What attracts people to the group usually keeps them in it. Penni recalls, “We were at a Witness convention and a handful of opposers were picketing outside. One of them carried a sign that said ‘READ THE BIBLE, NOT THE WATCHTOWER’.”

That night, she and David decided to follow that instruction. They read their Bibles and their discoveries eventually led the couple out of the cult.

Paul Blizard was given a book titled ’30 Years a Watchtower Slave’ by a fellow JW. The book was authored by an ex-JW who had found the truth by reading the Bible without Watchtower materials:

“I knew that my duty as a good Witness was to turn in my friend to the elders, for we were forbidden to read any anti-Witness material. But in defiance, I read the book. It disturbed me very much, for the author was a former worker at headquarters, and I could relate to many of the things he was saying.”

Then the Watchtower fancy cards came crashing down:

“My wife and I secretly studied our new Bible long hours into the night, discovering that many of the major doctrines that we had been willing to die for were false. I confronted my father about some of these issues. Being an elder, my father saw that I was questioning some of the main teachings, and he reported my wife and I to the elders, to stand trial for apostasy.”

Tammie, had her doubts when she met true Christians:

“I wondered why I had been warned all my life not to read other people’s religious materials. I observed these people’s lives and how they really lived what they believed and I began to wonder why a God of love wanted to kill these people at Armageddon. Was God so cruel to want to destroy these people who obviously love Him, just because they were not Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

Cynthia Cooper questioned the JW religion when her sister married a non-JW man. “My parents had literally thrown all of my sister’s clothes out on the front lawn.” She wondered “this is your child, how can you say you love your child and you love God but you are treating your child this way?… This is not the love of God.”

After Cynthia left the Jehovah’s Witnesses, she was shunned by her family and nearly committed suicide. But with the support of her Christian friends and pastor, she regained her feet and is still in the Lord.

Daniel Rodriguez, who has led many JWs to Christ observed that:

“Many who exit the Watchtower on their own never again involve themselves with “religion” of any kind. Many become agnostics or atheists. Many have suicidal thoughts. Some succumb to those thoughts. Thankfully, there are those who, in time, work out the trauma of leaving the Watchtower organization and live meaningful lives. Many publications deal with ministering to Jehovah’s Witnesses; but very few address the trauma of those who exit the Watchtower organization (Winning the Witnesses, Chick Publications Inc., 2007, pp. 75-76).

Raymond Franz, a former member of the Governing Body of JWs and cousin to a former President of the Watchtower Society, Fred Franz, provided some interesting insights into the hermetic mind control operating in this cult

“Sadly, in the case of most Witnesses, the organization has so persistently pushed its own self to the fore, has occupied such a large place on the spiritual scene, focusing so much attention on its own importance, that it has kept many from the closeness of fellowship with the heavenly Father that should have been theirs. The figure of the organization has loomed so large that it has overshadowed the greatness of God’s own Son, has clouded the vision of many from appreciating the warm relationship he invites persons to share with him, has distorted their perception of his compassionate personality.

“It is not surprising, then, that many persons, if expelled from the organization feel a sense of aloneness, of being adrift, floundering, due to no longer being tied to some visible authority structure, no longer having their lives channeled into its routine of programmed activity, no longer feeling the restrictive pressures of its policies and rulings” (Crisis of Conscience, 4th edition, Commentary Press, Atlanta, 2004, p. 397).

“When I told my parents that I had accepted Christ as my Savior, my mother cried and said she would never speak to me again,” recalls Tammie. “They believe Satan has blinded my mind so I can’t see the Truth anymore but I have discovered that the Truth is not an organization or a religion; it’s a Person, it’s Jesus Christ.”

After Paul Blizard and his wife were expelled and shunned, “Christians came to our home and helped us with food and money … The living testimony of these people affected my wife and I so much that we decided to start again studying the Bible.” From their study, “one night, my wife and I held our hands and gave our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Salvation is in Jesus Christ alone, it is not in a religious organization.

The Watchtower Mind Tricks

In a bid to uphold their false doctrine about the afterlife, the Watchtower Society resorts to various tactics to validate its position.

1. Deliberate mistranslation

In their New World Translation, they swallowed a camel in a bid to sustain their annihilation belief.

Matthew 27:50. “Again Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and yielded up his breath” (NWT).

Luke 23:46. “And Jesus called with a loud voice and said: Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit” (NWT).

These are parallel passages describing the same event: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In Matthew’s account, ‘the Society’ had no difficulty substituting the word “breath” for the Greek “spirit” (pneuma), whereas based on the context and grammar, there’s no justification for such a replacement.

Jesus yielded up His spirit, not His “breath.” JWs forced the word “breath” into the Matthew text in order to cement their doctrine; it’s a Jedi mind to condition the Witness’ mind.

When they arrived at the passage in Luke, the JW translators too realized that their messy cat would be easily let out of the bag if they rendered it: “Father, into your hands I entrust my breath,” so they used the correct rendering “spirit” instead.

But the very fact that Christ dismissed His spirit proves the survival of the human spirit beyond the grave, or as Solomon so wisely put it: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7).

Let me give another example.

Philippians 1:21–23. “For in my case to live is Christ, and to die, gain. Now if it be to live on in the flesh, this is a fruitage of my work—and yet which thing to select I do not know. I am under pressure from these two things; but what I do desire is the releasing and the being with Christ, for this, to be sure, is far better” (NWT).

Notice how the word “departing” was replaced with “releasing.” In their appendix to the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (pp. 780-781), they wrote:

“In no way is the apostle here saying that immediately at his death he would be changed into spirit and would be with Christ forever … It is to this return of Christ and the apostle’s releasing to be always with the Lord that Paul refers at Philippians 1:23 … It must refer to the events at the time of Christ’s return and second presence…”

First of all, no reputable lexical work defines the Greek word analousai as “releasing.” The passage grates against their cherished belief, so they twist the text to conform to it.

Second, what apostle Paul is saying in Philippians 1 centers on his possible death and subsequent presence with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8), and also his concern toward the believers in Philippi. The coming of Christ is not the subject of discussion at all.

Paul never believed he would “sleep” in the grave till the resurrection because he clearly states he could either be with Christ after death or continue in the body to minister to the people. He described death as “gain.” There would be no gain in dying if men became non-existent after death. God is not the God of the dead or the non-existent (Mark 12:27).

Now, by denying that apostle Paul “would be changed into spirit and would be with Christ forever,” the Watchtower is also indirectly implying that he is not part of the 144,000 “anointed class.”

Why God would bypass Paul the apostle who “laboured more strenuously than all the rest” for the Gospel (1 Cor. 15:10) and was “poured out as a drink offering” as a martyr (Phil. 2:17), and consign him to the “great crowd” is a fatal contradiction that Jehovah’s Witnesses will have to explain.

2. Misquoting sources

In Reasoning from the Scriptures (pp. 169-170), a quote is offered from Encyclopedia Britannica (vol XXV, 236) to disprove the soul’s immortality. The part appearing in bold was intentionally omitted:

“In the NT, the Greek word psyche is often translated as “soul” but again should not be readily understood to have the meaning the word had for the Greek philosophers. It usually means “life” or “vitality,” or at times “the self.” While most Christians believe in a life after death, the Bible does not provide a clear description of how a person survives after death. Christian theologians have had to resort to the discourse of philosophers for an adequate means of describing survival of the individual after death, and philosophers have traditionally utilised the concept of the soul as the vehicle of immortality.”

3. Poisoning the well

They always link the Christian doctrine of the afterlife with paganism by misquoting their sources or utilizing the biased works of other annihilationists.

They also project a very negative image of pastors or Christian Bible teachers as ‘servants of Satan.’ This is a preemptive tactic deployed to seal the minds of JWs to whatever their opponents say.

“The Bible’s teaching about the condition of the dead leaves many of Christendom’s clergymen in an awkward position. The very book on which they claim to base their teachings, the Bible conflicts with their doctrines. Yet, consciously or unconsciously, they feel impelled to reach into the Bible to seize on something to prove their point, thereby blinding themselves and others to the truth” (Is this Life All There Is? 1974, 98, 99).

They continue:

“The ‘burning anger of Jehovah’ is against all who have misled their fellowmen by lying about God and his purposes. And he does not hold guiltless those who support such men by attending their religious services or being members of their organizations. The time left before the execution of divine judgement is short…you need to act quickly…to break all ties with the world empire of false religion.” (Ibid p. 187)

The scare-mongering and the appeal to isolation in these quotes are obvious. The amusing thing is that, on the one hand, JWs are told to quickly cut all ties with all churches, yet the JW who wrote this claims to know what church clergymen might say or do “consciously or unconsciously.” How did he know them?

Such a screeching rhetoric is aimed at preventing JWs from reading any reputable Christian work exposing the lies of the Watchtower Society. A renowned cult expert provides some interesting insights:

“First and foremost, the belief systems of the cults are characterized by closed-mindedness. They are not interested in a rational cognitive evaluation of facts. The organizational structure interprets the facts to the cultist, generally invoking the Bible and/or its respective founder as the ultimate source of its pronouncements … Secondly, cultic beliefs are characterized by genuine antagonism on a personal level since the cultist almost always identifies his dislike of the Christian message with the messenger who holds such opposing beliefs” (Walter Martin and Hank Hanegraaff, The Kingdom of the Cults, revised edition Bethany House, 1997, p. 33).

4. Comma shifting

Luke 23:43 “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

Here, Jesus was promising the pernitent thief that he would be with Him in paradise that very day. This is another proof of the immortality of the inner man and an eternal destination. This would torpedo the JW annihilation doctrine, so they shifted the comma to after the word “today” in their New World Translation (NWT) bible to read as:

“Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise”

To defend this spurious translation, they argue that:

“Westcott and Hort text put a comma in the Greek text before the word today… in the original Greek, no comma is found” (Kingdom Interlinear Translation, 1969, 408).

The fact is, the punctuation in English is determined by the context of the passage. The NWT has no scholarly support for this mis-punctuation. This is why all Bible versions (with the exception of the NWT) renders the comma after “you” and not “today.”

Greek scholars are in agreement. Dr Randolph Yaeger in his work, The Renaissance New Testament translates Luke 23:43 as:

“Therefore He said to him, truly I am telling you, Today you shall be with me in paradise.”

Greek scholar, Kenneth Wuest renders it:

“And He said to him, Assuredly I to you am saying, Today you will be with me in paradise” (The New Testament- An Expanded Translation, Grand Rapids, MI, 1961, 203).

As stated elsewhere, these are the tactics employed when a religious organization is bereft of truth.

Dr. Ron Rhodes explains why the JWs had to tamper with this Bible text:

“It is helpful to observe how the phrase, ‘Truly, I say unto you’ is used elsewhere in Scripture. The phrase – which translates the Greek word amen soi lego – occurs 74 times in the Gospels and is always used as an introductory expression …

“In 73 out of 74 times the phrase occurs in the Gospels, the New World Translation places a break – such as a comma – immediately after the phrase, ‘Truly I tell you’. Luke 23:43 is the only occurrence of the phrase in which the New World Translation does not place a break after it. Why? … this would go against Watchtower theology” (Reasoning from The Scriptures with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Harvest House, 1993, 328).