Truth Magazine

By John McCort

Recently a test was given to a group of Bible class teachers who were taking a teacher training class. The test covered some basic fundamentals of Christianity such as the plan of salvation. The results of the test were very revealing.

The test was given with closed Bibles to test the true knowledge of the teachers. (Very few tests in school are open book tests.) The average score on the test was 58%. One man scored 98% and one woman scored 92%. The rest of the class scored below 80%.

Here are some of the questions and the results. Fourteen teachers took the test. Only four of them could find verses on the five steps in the plan of salvation. They were asked to supply two passages which imply that baptism is immersion. Only four of them could supply those passages. One teacher could not even write the plan of salvation in its five steps. They were asked to match up the cases of conversion with the corresponding chapters in Acts. Only two could do that. Only four could list a passage which stated that the Bible is inspired. Two of the teachers could not tell who preached the first sermon on Pentecost in Acts 2.

Five of the teachers did not know how many men wrote the Bible and three did not know how many books were in the Bible. Two did not know that Luke wrote the book of Acts and only eight of the teachers knew that Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes. Only five could supply a verse that says there is only one church. Only three could supply a passage which states that Jesus is the head of the church. Only two teachers could supply two verses which state it is wrong to add to God’s word. Four of the teachers were unable to tell that Job came before Psalms. Only six of the teachers knew the passage that says that salvation is by faith only. One of the teachers stated that a pastor was an evangelist.

The results of this test point up some very fundamental weaknesses in our teaching program. We are not requiring enough recall from our adult classes. Many of our adult classes require nothing at all but a very few general comments from the class. The students are not required to learn anything or to remember anything. Thus, our Bible class teachers are very ill equipped to teach because very little intensive training is done. We never test our teachers to test their competency to teach. It is little wonder that our younger classes learn as little as they do at times.

These test results probably reflect a widespread and fundamental problem in the church. Our teachers need to be given some concentrated classes on Bible fundamentals and should not be allowed to teach until they know these fundamentals. We also need some special classes on teaching techniques.

I do not believe that our teachers need to be scholars. I do believe; though, that all teachers need to know the fundamentals of Christianity. We all need to know the plan of salvation and be able to supply verses which will substantiate what we claim. How can we teach the little children the books of the Bible if we do not even know them ourselves.

Students ask a lot of questions it. class. We do not always have the luxury of hunting through our Bibles for 15 minutes and using our concordance to find the answers. We need to know some of these fundamental answers by heart. We ought to be able to supply a passage which says that baptism is immersion and that sin is not inherited and yet most of our teachers are unable to do so.

If you think that your teachers are more knowledgeable than that, then write and ask for a copy of the test and give it to your teachers. I will venture to say that the percentages will be about the same. I am not trying to paint a negative picture of our Bible class teachers. I am, though, trying to point out the need for special intensive classes on Bible fundamentals for our teachers.

Truth Magazine XXIV: 43, p. 690October 30, 1980

Correction

The October 30, 1980 issue of Truth Magazine, Vol. 24, no. 43, page 2 (690), article entitled “I Would Not Have You Ignorant Brethren” had the following error. The fourth paragraph has the sentence, “Only six of the teachers knew the passage that says that salvation is by faith only. It should read, “Only six of the teachers knew the passage that says that salvation is not by faith only.”

Note appeared in Truth Magazine XXIV: 48, p. 776
December 4, 1980

By Fred Holthouser

Before telling why I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization (better known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York and elsewhere), let me warn everyone not to let this Society become your master. It used to be my master. Although most Witnesses will deny the fact, they are governed by a board of directors of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society headed by a president who is elected by this board. The only ones who can be elected president are members of the board of directors. The only way that one can become a member of the board of directors is to be what they call a member of the one-hundred-forty-four-thousand class (to be taken up in another article).

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society operates with its dictatorial structure organized from the top down. Everything that the President says for them to believe, they must believe. Otherwise they face probation or disfellowshipment. This needs to be brought into the open in order that so many people will not be misled by these false teachers. A later article will deal with the way the organization is set up and how it is along the same lines as the Roman Catholic Church. The Society is a dogmatically ruled organization in which no interference or sincere difference is tolerated. From the very start, I plead for everyone to refuse to let these men become the masters of your life as they did of my life!

Now to get back to the title “Why I Left the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I will write the truth of the matter and not just something to hit`,back at them for what they did to me. I am qualified to write these articles because I spent over twenty years as a stave to this group of people. I was asked by them to do many things that a child of God has no business doing or even attempting to do, things which are clearly against Bible principles and even the laws of the land in which we live (0m. 13:1). The Bible tells us to obey the laws of the land in which we live. One of the reasons I left this organization was that after many hours of study and prayer, using nothing but the Bible, I saw that a person could not keep doing the things that I was doing and still be pleasing to God. I did not leave for monetary gain as the Witnesses accused when I gave some lectures at Waverly, Tennessee. They charged that I left them to fill my pockets with all kinds of money. I used my liberty in Christ at Waverly and went there at my own expense and did not receive anything from the church there in the way of any financial support (as brother Steve Bobbitt will verify).

The reasons that I did leave this false organization are numerous. These several articles giving the reasons have been written so that maybe someone will read them and by so doing bring themselves out or to stop someone from getting tangled up in this organization. If they once get into it, it will take them a long time to get out, if they ever do, just as it took me a long time.

Investigation Breaks the Chains of Slavery

When I was first asked why I left, there was only one way I knew to answer. That was to show from a study of the Watchtower books that what we were told to believe was not what they had taught in the past. Yet the Bible says that God’s word is the same or what is the truth today is still the truth tomorrow. This is not so with the Witnesses. Their doctrine changed so much and so fast that one was hard pressed to keep up with what we were supposed to teach from one day to the next. Jude 3 tells us that the faith was delivered to the saints one time and for all time. There will be no new light added to the Bible because it was perfect when given to us; we have the complete, revealed word of God in our day.

Most Witnesses, when they come to your door at your home, will ask you if you have investigated your religion. Ask them if they have ever investigated theirs; most cannot tell you one thing about the past history of the so-called New World Society. They have been blinded so badly that, as the old saying goes, “they cannot see the forest for the trees.” Also, if you try to tell them about the things that some of us are asked to do, they will not want to listen to you. In fact, they will call you a bigot or hard head or some other name that cannot be put in this article. Some of these things I will relate to you; you make up your own mind as to whether a person should do these things in the name of God.

There was a trailer park in West Point, Kentucky that did not want the Witnesses to go door to door in this park. We were told to go through it anyway. If the owner tried to stop us, then we were to create an incident in order to get a bunch of us locked up. They would then send the Society’s lawyer, who at the time was Hayden C. Covington, and we could cry religious persecution. Any time you want the American people on your side, just claim someone is denying you your right to worship as you see fit and the public is behind you then. But the police chief was a little too smart for us; he did not fall for the game we were trying to play on the town. Can you see Jesus doing something like this?

Witnesses consider themselves just like the old nation of Israel that spent 400 years in bondage to Egypt. They are the Israelites in bondage to you, the Egyptian. So whatever it takes to get the upper hand over you is fair. As the old saying goes, all is fair in love and war, and they are at war with you, the Egyptian. This they consider till you buy one of their books. Then you become a person of good will and they will treat you with kindness until they find out that you do not intend to become one of the Witnesses. At that point, it is back to war with you. I just wish that the Witnesses knew as much about their own organization as they want others to know about theirs.

To do full justice to this article, I am going to have to give you some of the things that I found out by studying the background of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. This helped me to come out of that false organization as much as anything did. This organization is just like any other human organization and is built upon the sand (Matt. 7:26). Although the Witnesses will tell you that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society is not in control of them, take them to their book Let God Be True. On page 221, it states, “In 1884 the legal servant body of this international association was incorporated under Pennsylvania law. That nonprofit corporation (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society) and the governing body of Jehovah’s Witnesses have been inseparably associated ever since.” Let the Witnesses deny that men govern them, but a rose by any other name is still a rose. The Witnesses do have a human hierarchy with its head, just like the Catholic Church. If they think they do not, just let them try to buck the organization one time and see how fast they are put on probation or disfellowshipped.

Waiting In Bed Sheets for the Lord’s Return

The Jehovah’s Witnesses religion was started in 1872 by a man named Charles Taze Russell; the followers were first known as Russellites. In his book The Studies of the Scriptures (Vol. II, p. 2), he prophesied that the times of the Gentiles would end and God’s kingdom would be established in the fall of 1873. This would bring about the end of the world and start the millenial or thousand year reign of Christ. Because of this proclamation about the thousand year reign of Christ, followers were known as the Millenial Dawnites, which name they wore until the death of Russell in 1916.

In volume seven of The Studies of the Scriptures (p. 217), this prophecy was changed from 1873 to 1878. In their book of Religion (p. 336), this same prophecy was changed again to the fall of 1914. This was the date for God’s kingdom to start rule over all mankind. A Witness friend of mine who is now deceased was a Witness back in those days. She told me that all of the Witnesses in 1914 cut holes in their bed sheets and draped them over their shoulders. They climbed on top of their houses and lifted up their hands to heaven waiting for the Lord to come and take them to home to heaven to be with Him forevermore. When He did not show up as was expected, the organization started loosing members by the thousands. This is when they started saying that He did come but that He was invisible. They had to come up with something to save the members that they had left. The reason for the bed sheets was so that they would be in robes of white for the Lord. As for His coming being invisible, Revelation 1 :7 says, “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and, every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him, Even so, Amen.” In the book of Prophecy (p. 73), they claim that by force Christ took authority over the kingdom, which took Him from 1914 to 1919 to accomplish. Matthew 28:18 tells us that all power or authority was given to Christ at His resurrection in the first century and He did not have to take it by force nineteen hundred years later.

Truth Magazine XXIV: 43, pp. 689, 699
October 30, 1980

By Irven Lee

In speaking of the people of Crete Paul quoted one of their own poets as he said, “One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars, evil . beasts, slow bellies” (Titus 1:12). Goodspeed’s translation says, “savage brutes, lazy gluttons.” The American Standard Version has, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons.” The Amplified Bible, which can be used more as a brief commentary than as a translation, has “Cretans are always liars, hurtful beasts, idle and lazy gluttons.” The New Testament in Basic English has “evil beasts, lovers of food, hating work.” Knox has “venomous creatures, all hungry bellies and nothing besides.” Vine, in his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, lets us know that in Titus two words were used which, when used together, signify a glutton, or an idle glutton. Webster’s Student Dictionary defines a glutton as one who eats greedily or to excess.

Excess in eating was one general characteristic of the people of Crete. Lying and idleness were traits also found among them. We know that these two last things are wrong. Our study is of gluttony. Is it a sin to be gluttonous? If it is a sin we need to know it and to avoid doing that which the Lord does not approve. The word keeps bad company in the passages where it is used. The enemies of Christ thought they were making a charge of sinfulness when they falsely accused Christ of being a wine bibber and a gluttonous man (Matt. 11:19).

Let us now read from the old law. “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shall thou put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear, and fear” (Deut. 21:18-21). The gluttony was only par( of the story in this case, but it could hardly be included in this if it were not evil. We do not live under the same law, but we do live under the same God who gave this law. Would you suppose that He now approves excessive eating?

Let us again read from the counsel given to Israel. “Be not among wine bibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: -and drowsiness shall clothe a man in rags” (Prov. 23:20, 1). The glutton is here mentioned with the drunkard. Poverty, drowsiness, and rags art mentioned as his part in this life. What if a glutton began drinking alcohol? Would he almost certainly drink to excess? The lack of self-control in eating would be evident in his drinking. The one habit may be a cousin to the other. I am not saying that one habit is as bad as the other. The drunkard would be more harmful to others. The gluttonous person may harm himself to the extent that his life expectancy may be no more than that of the alcoholic.

Is excessive weight harmful to the body which is fearfully and wonderfully made? Is there any doubt? “Ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s (1 Cor. 6:20). “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). We can, at least, say that the Lord is interested in the proper care of our bodies. If we all stop to consider, we may decide that almost every one of us have been guilty of over indulgence through some period of life, if not always.

The active young person may have a big appetite, but his great amount of activity uses the excess amount of food. The period when he settles into office work or quiet years in college may not see a corresponding cutting back on food consumption, so weight may rapidly increase, and there will likely be high blood pressure and other dangers to the body. I am no doctor, but we all need to inform ourselves of dangers and then buffet our bodies and bring them into subjection. We have much food, and many kinds of food are available in our country. Are we able to eat sensibly? There are evidently many that think it is great fun to eat ridiculous amounts where a restaurant offers “all you can eat” for a set price.

The Libscomb-Shepherd Commentary comments on Titus 1:12 and on the words “idle gluttons” from the American Standard Version, which it uses, as follows: “Their gluttony made them dull, heavy, and indolent. These sins were true of the Cretans generally in their unregenerate state; but sins prevalent among a people before they become Christians will possibly be their besetting sins after they become such. The sins of lying and gluttony seem to indicate a ferocious and vindictive spirit, and that they were lazy and given to gluttony.” These sins are not all usually listed together.

Gluttony and sensuality are examples of using animal appetites as means of gratification rather than relief. Evidently we should not glory in the things of which we should be ashamed. Self-control, dignity, refinement, and courtesy do not fit into the same picture as “lazy gluttons” or “idle gluttons.” Is there no regard for etiquette and good manners? One who consumes a ridiculous amount of food at an extraordinary speed may be repulsive to many who observe his behavior. Is this the proper behavior for a Christian? A great teacher in the days of my youth had a definition of temperance, which he stressed very often. He defined the word as meaning “the total abstinence from things harmful and the right use of things helpful.” Do not cut the length of your life in half by excessive use of good food.

The proper eating habits may be more easily formed by young people. It is very hard for the glutton of many years to come back to wise eating habits. It is not so difficult for the thoughtful and careful young man to develop good manners and avoid the loss of self-control in eating. It is so much easier to learn self-control early than to overcome the weight problem and the evil effects that come with obesity.

Truth Magazine XXIV: 42, pp. 682-683
October 23, 1980

By Daniel H. King

We note with some small amount of interest that Don S. Browning, Professor in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, has been named the first “Alexander Campbell Professor” in the school. The August/September, 1980 (Vol. 8, No. 2) issue of the Bulletin remarked that Browning is “an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ),” and “was minister of the Kearney Christian Church, Kearney, MO (1952-1956), and minister of students at the University Church of the Disciples of Christ in Hyde Park (1957-60).”

The Bulletin goes on to explain, “The chair commemorates a founder of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) . . . .” Being familiar with the writings and teachings of Alexander Campbell, at least to a degree sufficient to register surprise here, we cannot help but have somewhat to say about this point. If there is any one thing Campbell stood against in both his preaching and his writing, it was the concept of the church of God as being an institution of human origin or design. The starting place for him in understanding the nature of God’s “grandest of all schemes” was the Bible and the Christ who is its center. It was Jesus who was to build the church: “Upon this rock I will build my church” (Mt. 16:18). Those words roared from the pulpits of churches where Campbell preached. They also found their place on the pages of the Christian Baptist and the Millennial Harbinger, papers edited by the indomitable scholar of Bethany. Campbell condemned the churches started by Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and others, and decried the papacy and its strangle-hold on religious folk. It too was of human origin.

Imagine now, if you will, a man being placed in the “Alexander Campbell Chair” of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, a member of the Christian Church of which Campbell is considered “a founder”! To say that Browning and other members of that church had left the old paths, removed the ancient landmarks, and shifted from original ground is so obvious as to waste’s one’s breath in saying it. Nevertheless, this position is said to “commemorate” that great restoration leader. If Campbell could hear all these goings-on, and were it possible for him so to do, his thunder would be heard once more – as he rolled over in his grave!

This-firings-anew-a thought to my mind which I have often entertained as I have studied the words of Paul directed to Timothy in the second letter (4:3): “For the time will come when they will not endure the sound doctrine . . . .” In very short order the Spirit of Truth had made known to Paul that a son of perdition would take his seat in the very temple of God (the church, 1 Cor. 3:16-17, etc.), setting himself forth as God (2 Thess. 2:1-12). It surely gave the apostle Paul no pleasure to realize that the future held such awful events for the body and bride of Christi The Almighty was unquestionably merciful and kind to Paul to remove him from the scene before the very churches with which he had labored with such resolve had fallen into the hands of men who cared more for their own popularity than for truth or right (2 Tim. 4:3-4). The lesson here is a plain one: Paul and his own generation could only work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, it would be left to the next generation to stand on its own two feet or fall on its own bottom. And it must be forever so. In fact, were we to concentrate upon this point with too great intensity doubtless it would discourage us from doing much of anything for fear the people we convert, the institutions we begin, the churches we start, the buildings we build, in fact all the good that we do, will fall into undeserving hands in a future over which we have no control whatever. The time would come for Paul when he could not even preach in the churches he, with the help of God, had started. The same would be true of Alexander Campbell today in relation to the Christian Church denomination. Campbell fought denominationalism in all its forms in his day and would fight it with equal vigor today – even if it appeared in the form of genuine “Campbellism,” i.e., the reverencing of the person or ideology of the man Alexander Campbell in the stead of Holy Scripture and its central figure, Jesus. The great pity is that the wealth and influence of yesteryear, contained in the treasuries and assemblies of those churches at the present, are not in any real sense supportive of what Campbell stood for. They go their own independent way, to the degree that they stand opposed to what he stood for and stand for what he opposed.

But there is another oddity about which I would have something to say before I quit just now. That is the Gospel Advocate. Recently I had the pleasure of reading The Life and Times of David Lipscomb by Earl Irvin West and was once more struck, with greater realization than ever before, by the fact that the very man who had given birth to that journal, nursed it through the stormy years of the instrumental music and society crisis, could not even get his views on church cooperation aired in the pages of that same paper! In fact, we dare say that the present editorship of that journal would not have the courage to reprint those careful studies of church cooperation that came from the pen of Lipscomb in the years immediately following the Civil War, and again in the years 1884-1886! Wrote West on Lipscomb’s views:

The practice in Texas was for the churches holding annual or state meetings, giving reports of the past year’s work of the various congregations, and then, putting the work under one local church for the coming year. The plan was that all of the churches in the state would work under the eldership of one church to preach the gospel. Lipscomb frankly rejected this. The church universal, he argued, had no organic existence whatsoever, and could never work save through the local churches. The matter of the many churches working through the eldership of one church was wrong in Lipscomb’s conception because it made out of the elders of a local church a missionary society in embryo. They were being granted a responsibility and work larger than that of one local congregation. When, therefore, Azariah Paul was sent to Turkey, Lipscomb presented the matter to three of the larger congregations in Nashville. Each congregation sent directly to the man in the field. The work was done, but not by one congregation assuming more than its scriptural amount of power (p. 271)

In January of 1910 a group of the “conservative” brethren sent out a request for a meeting of brethren at Henderson, Tenn., with the desire that West Tennessee was to call an evangelist and contributing churches throughout that area were to send their contributions to the elders of the Henderson church to send to the preacher. So, the Henderson church was to “take the direction of the work.” Wrote Lipscomb in the “Old Reliable” (March 24, 1910, p. 364):

Now what was that but the organization of a society in the elders of this church? The church elders of Henderson constitute a board to collect and pay out the money and control the evangelist for the brethren of West Tennessee . . . . All meetings of churches or officers of churches to combine more power than a single church possesses is wrong . . . . For one or more to direct what and how all the churches shall work, or to take charge of their men and money and use it, is to assume the authority God has given to each church. Each one needs the work of distributing and using its funds as well as in giving them (Quoted in West, Life and Times of David Lipscomb, p. 274).

Now, as a matter of fact, that is exactly what I, the editor, and other writers of this paper believe churches ought to do in order to have scriptural church cooperation. Not because that was what Lipscomb said or believed, but because that is what the Bible teaches. Lipscomb believed it and we believe it. But isn’t it strange that the Gospel Advocate today would not even allow those views to be expressed on its pages? Many of us learned what we now know to be the truth about Bible church cooperation, either directly or indirectly, from the writings of Lipscomb on the pages of the Advocate. But what the Advocate. advocated in the days of Lipscomb it no longer advocates, and what it condemned in the time of that grand “sage of Nashville” it no longer calls sin. The practice has been given the title, “the sponsoring church”, but it is still precisely what Lipscomb labelled it in the last century, “a missionary society in embryo.”

I would imagine that the Jews who arose to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah knew that it is the way of the things of this earth to fall victim to decay and destruction. Still they rose and built. We, too, know that this journal, the churches we establish, the buildings we build in which to worship God, the schools started by loyal brethren, etc., will possibly at some future time fall into unworthy hands. Still we must arise and build. It is but ours to concern ourselves with the salvation of our own souls and the souls of those whose lives we touch. God planted us upon this earth to labor in his service now. The future is ever in his hands. There is no need for us to feel desperation at what might have been. Better for us to make what can be happen. Perhaps the virtue is, after all, in the striving rather than the accomplishing. Those staunch and rocky fortifications raised by loving Jewish hands fell to earth once more after a few short years had come and gone. The only thing that gives us courage to press on now is the knowledge that what really matters will stand forever; and that. the Jerusalem we build up is a higher and better one than theirs (Gal. 4:26)!

Truth Magazine XXIV: 42, pp. 681-682
October 23, 1980