DUAL DENOMINATION REVIEW: JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES AND PENTECOSTALSSo, two weeks ago, on Tuesday 23rd of October, someone rang my bell and I picked up the phone. Thankfully it wasn't the daily request for clothing, and the conversation went something like this:
¥Do you believe there can be peace on Earth?¥¥I don't, no.¥...well, what if there was a way?¥¥Is the way Jesus?¥Yes, would you like to talk about it?Turns out these were Jehovah's Witnesses! So I took the chance to say yes and go down to talk with them, for once. As a diehard physicalist, I'm interested in how people today experience religion in their lives, partly as a matter of epistemology, partly as a matter of the communal life that so many say has been lost. The visitors were three people, a granny, an older man, and a younger guy, I asked about their schedule and it just so happened they'd meet the day after at 18:30 in a nearby venue. The witnesses don't meet up once but
twice a week, you see. So I went there the next day and was very surprised by what I encountered.
The room where the congregation met was a rather small one, in which about thirty or forty people fit into, much smaller than most churches. There is a small stage in the back with a podium, and on each of its sides a television is hung on the wall. The decoration is plain, and there are no icons whatsoever. Mass on Wednesdays is divided into three stages: Treasures from God's Word, Apply Yourself to the Field Ministry, and Living as Christians. All three of these are composed months in advance and instruction is distributed worldwide through their magazine The Watchtower—Study Edition. (Most witnesses used the app, JW Library.) The mag I was given contained the programme for the entirety of September and October with dates for each topic, and as their site says
it was prepared in July, as well as
this workbook from
here. Their issues contain a good deal of solid art and photography, and lots of text to go over with accompanying questions for every paragraph or two. At the start of mass and when transitioning from one stage to another, everyone stands up to sing a hymn, whose lyrics appear in the TVs and it specifies in brackets the verses it is inspired by. (Hymns are also part of the preprogrammed.) There are at least 162 unique songs, here listed with lyrics and playable instrumentals in their unexpectedly sophisticated site:
https://www.jw.org/en/library/music-songs/sing-out-joyfully/I recommend going through a few of them.
Treasures is effectively Bible study homework. An elder (because they do not have priests) gave a lecture on Ecclesiastes and Solomon, and brought someone from the congregation to narrate the verses and pre-redacted text to accompany class. For every paragraph or two there was a question to answer, and two other members carrying microphones moved around the room to let people read out loud the answers they had brought. After this came Field Ministry, where multiple members of the congregation came forward to roleplay meeting people out while evangelizing, and we went over four situations: "start up conversation" divided into "informal preaching" and "formal preaching", "make revisits", and "make disciples". Evangelizing is an obligation, and in this section they practice and rehearse their techniques to bring in new converts. This level of involvement shocked me, frankly, about as much as their
organizational structure. Instead of having a leading priest, the leadership of a JW chapter is formed by a group of elders who cycle in their responsibilities, which is a very interesting choice allegedly inspired by 1st century Christianity. Lots of roles and rotation therein.
Then we sang another song and moved on to Living as Christians, which is about applying biblical lessons to one's
day to day life. It was about giving proper advice to others, featuring various duos from scripture. We finished that day with lessons 20 and 21 for more Bible study, you can find the 103 lessons here:
https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/bible-stories-lessons/Luckily, we were dealing with Exodus, a great opportunity for debate! As you may know, there's absolutely no archeological evidence whatsoever that there ever were two million Israelites enslaved in Egypt, nor proof that anything close to the Plagues struck the greatest regional power in catastrophic succession, which raises problems for literal readings of the Bible's historical narratives. But there's also the point of God hardening of the pharaoh's heart, which the text is ambiguous about and some exegesis is needed to tackle the matter. It does say about half of the time that it's God acting on the pharaoh, and the other half that the pharaoh did it on his own, either way God already knew what would happen and it was part of his plan.
So how do the witnesses get around this? Easy! Just alter the text! Instead, their Bible reads "I will allow his heart to become obstinate", absolving God of any implications! Why do this? Because it wouldn't make sense for God to intervene like that, of course. We need to convey the truth plainly, and if this requires radically altering the syntax, then so be it. God certainly would never do such a thing, it just doesn't make sense.
Their version, the New World Translation, is infamously biased in matters of theology. Their trademark is the replacement of every instance of Adonai and Kyrios in favor of Jehovah, something the Israelites moved away from several centuries before Christ, but this is relatively unimportant compared to other points. Most inter-Christian conflict is based on the Gospel of John, where any verses that may be used to argue for Christ's divine nature is modified and rewritten, most notably John 1:1. But the same sleight of hand as above is also used elsewhere, like Ezekiel 20:25-26 where God's statement that he gave the Israelites statutes demanding child sacrifice is likewise altered to say he
allowed them to fall into that. Because of course, God would never do that. Or a retcon in 2 Kings 3:27, which otherwise points towards earlier polytheism and another kind of sacrifice. They also consider Sheol and Hades to be metaphorical, so these are changed into "the tomb", an allegory with no theological implications. They assert there is neither heaven nor hell, nor an immortal soul, and that the Kingdom of God will be a place on Earth where God will reconstruct all believers using his perfect memory, like an inverse Roko's Basilisk. They also argue Jesus was not executed on a cross but a stake and that the cross was a pagan introduction by Rome, based on faulty etymological arguments from the XIX century.
Of course, they also believe biblical history to be literally true, and every fact in the Bible to be scientifically true as well, while anyone confused about it is operating under "personal interpretations" that are the wrongful product of false religions. (They'll repeatedly offer you a course to correct that.) Even with all their revisionism, they'll tell you no other group believes in the Bible, not truly, and the impending end of the world will see the events of Revelation come to life, in the year... 1975. Apocalypticism really is the most retarded facet of Abrahamic belief:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_eventsJust last month there was RaptureTok. Christ almighty...
I also visited on Saturday 27th, and the topic was how peace on Earth is absolutely unattainable due to Satan's control over the world (1 John 5:19), and personal peace can only be found in submitting totally to Jehovah's rule. That day we sang Song 87 which I found to be particularly egregious, here is the literal translation of what we sang, courtesy of Hebrews 10:24-25:
¥The world walks in darkness, straight towards destruction¥Yet today we are guided by Jehovah, he brings us illumination¥In our reunions, we nurture our faith to demonstrate loyalty¥Here too we cultivate maturity, perseverance, love, and goodwill¥For nothing in the world will we ever want to leave our congregation¥And less so being so close to the day of salvationIn many ways, the witnesses showcase the worst of Abrahamism. Deluded historical fanfiction, disdain for the world and humanity, an eagerness for everything to end, tight control of their members, myriad reports of abuse, billions in wealth, and the insistence that they aren't there to debate but to teach. It's a damn sad state of affairs, and that's why I wanted to hear their side of the story, even if it's totally bonkers. I tried having a conversation with one of the people who first rang my bell, the younger guy who told me he'd been exploring denominations for a decade (including Jews and Muslims) until he landed with the witnesses. He said he saw himself in my own exploration, but he'd always link to articles in the site and wouldn't engage with any arguments I presented, as if pre-minimalism apologia would be satisfactory. After I told him we'd reached an impasse and wished him well in this life and the next, he sent me a hug and blocked me, until a few days later where he invited me to their talk about physical proof for Jehovah's existence. It'll be on the 18th, and I'll attend to see if they have anything interesting to present.
So, now a description of the other guys...
There's a baker I regularly buy sandwiches from who's a Protestant, and we've been talking about theology for a while now. He used to be a Catholic, but converted to Pentecostalism after their prayers cured the terminal illness of his son many years ago, while medics were sure he'd die, now he considers the Vatican to be the Whore of Babylon. It's a decently common story. We're on good terms, and he's told me I'd be a great preacher if only God came forth to bring me in. I asked him what church could I check out, and he pointed me towards a fancy one nearby, an Evangelical place. Their schedule had like six instances of mass across the weekend, and I chose to go at 15:30 last Saturday with a friend who's been there before.
The place was way bigger than I expected. We entered a large hall, forming a quarter circle rather than a rectangle, centered on a stage in the corner where a large chorus, four main singers, and a whole band were practicing. It had guitar, bass, drums inside a glass box, and a violin. All around the stage there were screens for a concert... because it actually was a concert. After everyone got in, they started playing rock hymns. It was fun, the songs were mostly about hype, being filled with God's fire and spirit, swimming in his waters, it didn't have the slave-like affection of the witnesses, and my friend described it as "intense". Although nice to sing along to they were admittedly fairly repetitive, though for me it served to shine a new light on premodern songs in that sense. What surprised me was seeing that grannies would be going to a weekly rock concert, I guess grandma's still got it.
After half an hour of rock music, a preacher came in, and started talking about Acts 3 where they heal a disabled man, about the powers of Jesus, God's benevolence, worshipping the Lord, and all that stuff... while the chorus was still singing, mind you. A key detail about Pentecostals is that they don't believe spiritual gifts ended with the Apostalic Age, they say God's still doing that stuff all the time, particularly healing and speaking in tongues. The preacher himself randomly spoke gibberish inbetween his praises, while the band still played, though more muted now. Mass lasted in total about two hours, but there's very little for me to comment on, as half of it was music and the other half was hyping up God, with very little theology to speak of. Oh yeah, and there was a visibly neurodivergent girl in front of me stimming with her Madoka pin. I asked what she thought of the series and she replied it was great. The man next to her started swearing a bunch during prayer, no clue why.
At the end we opened the little pack of industrial bread and grape juice for the Eucharist, it was nice. Wrongful consumption of the Lord's supper is highlighted by Paul as a major sacrilege (1 Corinthians 11:27), but man, I just had to get a taste of that grape juice. These guys don't even believe in transubstantiation, clearly it can't be as bad as when I did it at Catholic mass.
So yeah, that one didn't seem to be as bad as the witnesses. I do think that trusting you'll be miraculously healed of your physical or mental illnesses by unknowable forces is one of the most harmful beliefs a person can possibly have, and the habit of getting spasms from being touched by the Holy Spirit isn't something I endorse. They also have a tithe for ideally 10% of your salary, which I'm not really sure if it's totally voluntary, and it has served as a vehicle for pushing the prosperity gospel. Aaaand they are literalists like so many other evangelicals, which, again, is a retarded stance to take, and contributes towards deluding them. Nonetheless, they can be feverish in their belief, and my Catholic friend positively compared them to saints, saying they truly seemed to be touched by God. I can at least say the baker is a very faithful guy, and it doesn't seem to have done him much bad.