Résumé

The faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses (= WTS = Watchtower Bible and Tract Society) is based on a colossal misinterpretation of the Bible. In their writings “Pay Attention to Daniel’s Prophecy!” (JWP) and “What Does the Bible Really Teach?” (JWW), hundreds of Bible verses, especially from Daniel’s book (Dan), the Revelation and the Gospels, are interpre­ted as predictions for modern times, even though they actually only refer to antiquity. In Dan, God’s judgment and kingdom are predicted for the second century BC, in the New Testament for the first century AD – but not, as the WTS claims, for a period more than 1800 years later. Such long-range forecasts would not have been interesting for the readers at that time. They expected God’s judgment during their lifetime.

Living in the Last Days?

Like all real Bible prophecies, Dan, Revelation and the Gospels failed in their prediction: God’s kingdom did not come. Nonetheless, the WTS ignores this fact. For more than one hundred years, it has been proclaiming that we live in the “last days”, that Armageddon is imminent and announced in the Bible for our modern times as a final battle between Satan’s “world empire of false religion” and Jesus, the annihilator of evil. Only Jehovah’s Witnesses – “the true Christians” – would survive this day of wrath and judgments.

Daniel’s Book – Unknown Authors and False Prophecy

Contrary to WTS’s belief, most of Daniel’s prophecies are so-called ‘vaticinia ex eventu’: Daniel claims to write in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Cyrus and Darius. But as a matter of fact, he lived in later centuries, and pretends to have prophesied events of the past. However, given his poor historical knowledge, we cannot assume that he was an alleged contemporary witness at the court of Babylonian and Persian rulers.

The real names of the authors of Daniel’s book – there were several – are unknown. Dan is essentially a propaganda scripture for the Yahweh faith as well as a scripture of hope and of comfort of the ancient Jewish community. The most important prophecy of this book – the beginning of God’s kingdom in the time of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV in the year 165 BC – has not been fulfilled.

Ludicrous Constructions of Prophecies for Modern Times

For Jehovah’s Witnesses, the destruction of the wicked world, Satan’s world, is ante portas (JWW 32). They copied this idea from Daniel’s book. There

“man’s rule … is confronted with the irrevocable coming of God’s reign; only this will truly bring salvation. For the apocalyptic, therefore, no healing is expected within the history; it requires a funda­mental change of times …” (Daniel: bibelwissenschaft.de)

The same fundamental attitude can be found both in the Revela­tion and in the Gospels. The WTS adopted it also from these sources and projected it on our present times. But these books don’t contain any prophecy for today’s times – and neither does Daniel’s book. Its interpretation by Jehovah’s Witnesses is wholly false, arbitrary and full of contradictions. In this book – as in all other Old Testament Scriptures – there are no prophecies relating to Jesus, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an “Anglo-American world power”, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, the UN, or the establishment of a heavenly “Messianic Kingdom” in the year 1914 AD. Such biblical interpretations are not just misinterpretations – they are ludicrous constructions, running like a red thread through the entire WTS literature. Their prototype is to be found in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, a prophecy of Daniel is reinterpreted in the sense of this evangelist (Matthew 24:15). That balloon of pious fraud is pumped up by the WTS to an extreme size: Hundreds of Bible verses cited in JWP and JWW are reinterpreted by the WTS, resulting in a false doctrine which is full of contradictions. In addition, historically secured ruling times of antique rulers are modified in order to fulfil biblical prophecies, according to the motto:

“I re-create my world, just the way it suits me.”

In this sense, the Watchtower Society has made its own Bible (“New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures”) in which many Bible verses of the original text were translated incorrectly in order to support the absurd constructions of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

False Religion and Poisonous Waste

Particularly problematic in the teaching of the WTS is the condemnation of all other Christian and non-Christian religions as “false religion”, their rites and customs such as Christmas as “poisonous waste”. WTS is a typical fundamentalist sect that considers a theocracy to be the ideal form of government. Tolerance in faith is not an option for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

JWW 145:

“Like counterfeit money, false religion has no real value … True religion leads to everlasting life. False religion leads to destruction … the way we worship God means either life or death for us.”

By contrast, in its “nostra aetate” from 1965 the Catholic Church declares:

“Likewise, other religions found everywhere try to counter the restlessness of the human heart, each in its own manner, by proposing ‘ways’, comprising teachings, rules of life, and sacred rites. The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions…”

The credo of Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, is:

“Think like us, or die in the battle of Armageddon!”