Page 14 - Christology - Student Textbook

Myths
This movement maintains that Jesus Christ never existed and all documents asserting Jesus’
existence are mythical in nature. Claims for this movement are radical. Notice that even atheist, Bart
Ehrman, believed that Jesus Christ “certainly existed as virtually every competent scholar of
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antiquity, Christian or non-Christian” concurs grounded on unequivocal and sure proof. Further,
Michael Grant, the classical historian and scholar notes that “In recent years, ‘no serious scholar has
ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not
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succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.”

Depiction of historical Jesus by various cults
A cult can be defined as a “religious group” dedicated to a “living leader, a new teaching, or an
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unusual practice.” The cult’s proclivity is to follow a “living leader who promotes new and occult
(strange and mysterious) doctrines and practices.” Further, leaders of cultic groups declare that
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they own “exclusive religious truth and command absolute obedience and allegiance” from their
adherents. William Clebsch’s thoughts on the definition of a cult gels well with the Jehovah’s
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Witnesses’ beliefs on the Watchtower Society; “the Watchtower Society—as God’s visible
representative on earth—exercises authority over all true believers.” Tellingly, they further state
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that “we must recognize not only Jehovah God as our Father but his organization as our Mother.”

So, what do the Jehovah’s Witness believe about Jesus?
Jehovah’s Witness believe that God is not Trinity, that Jesus Christ was a creation of God and is not
God, that Jesus Christ did not raise from the dead in bodily form, and the Holy Spirit is nothing more
than a force of God. Further, they negate “a conscious eternal punishment for the wicked, the
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immortality of the soul, and the substitutionary atonement of Christ.”

They believe that the first faithful 144, 000 Jehovah’s Witnesses (“Anointed Class”) will live with
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Christ in the “heavenly Kingdom” while the “other sheep” will live eternally on a “paradise earth.”
The Anointed Class will have more “spiritual blessings and privileges” than probably the other sheep.
However, salvation for both is a “works-oriented.” Their main work is “witnessing door to door and
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distributing Watchtower literature.”

22 Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We
Think They Are (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011), 285.

23 Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1997), 200.

24 William A. Clebsch, The World Book Encyclopedia (Chicago: World Book, Inc, 1988), 1, Ci-Cz: 1184.
25 Clebsch, The World Book Encyclopedia, 1185.

26 Ibid., 1185.
27 Ron Rhodes, Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Eugene, OR: Harvest
House Publishers, 2009), 24.
28 Ibid., 25.

29 H. Wayne House, Charts of Cults, Sects, and Religious Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing House, 2000), 150.
30 Rhodes, Reasoning from the Scriptures, 253.

31 Ibid., 257.

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