Comercio exterior

In addition to these doctrinal changes, the Watchtower has also promoted some rather peculiar teachings and beliefs. Listed below are a few examples:

White people living in China eventually produce Chinese offspring—without intermarrying—due to the influence of soil and climate.³⁶

Jehovah God lives on the star Alcyone in the Pleiades star system, “from which the Almighty governs his universe.”³⁷

Jesus is the mediator only for the 144,000, while the anointed remnant is the mediator for the great earthly crowd, since members of this group are not in the New Covenant.³⁸

The mention of “a thousand six hundred furlongs” in Revelation 14:20 is really a reference to the distance between Scranton, Pennsylvania, (where vol. 7 of Studies in the Scriptures was written) and the Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn.³⁹ The Leviathan of Job 40:15–41:34 is a prophecy of a steam locomotive: “Thou wilt

lengthen out leviathan [the locomotive] with a hook [automatic coupler] or with a snare [coupling-pin] which thou wilt cause his tongue [coupling-link] to drop down.

Wilt thou not place a ring [piston] in his nostrils [cylinder]?”⁴⁰

“The earlier in the forenoon you take the sun bath, the greater will be the beneficial effect, because you get more of the ultra-violet rays, which are healing.”⁴¹

Downplaying the significance of the changes and peculiar theories, the Watchtower offers Proverbs 4:18 as an explanation of them: “But the path of the righteous ones is like the bright light that is getting lighter and lighter until the day is firmly established.”

But how can one consider the original falsehoods to be “light” at all?

When pressed further on the matter, the Watchtower published an illustration to help explain the changes. It explained that these corrections “might be compared to what is known in navigational circles as ‘tacking.’ By maneuvering the sails the sailors can cause a ship to go from right to left, back and forth, but all the time making progress toward their destination in spite of contrary winds.”⁴²

In Ephesians 4:13–14, the Watchtower claimed, Paul speaks of something similar—

acquiring “accurate knowledge” and encouraging the faithful to “no longer be babes, tossed about as by waves and carried hither and thither by every wind of teaching by means of the trickery of men, by means of cunning and contriving error.” But rather than heed St. Paul’s admonition, the Witnesses are told to “move ahead with Jehovah’s organization”⁴³—even in spite of the changes and contradictions—and to view these

“adjustments” as opportunities to demonstrate loyalty to the Watchtower:

Actually, any adjustments that have been made in understanding have furnished an opportunity for those being served by this “slave” to show loyalty and love, the kind of love that Jesus said would mark his followers. . . . For those who truly love God’s law there is no stumbling block.⁴⁴

So if an honest Witness finds it a “stumbling block” that the Watchtower has contradicted so many of its prior teachings, that Witness is challenged to be loyal, or to

“truly love God’s law,” by essentially ignoring those contradictions or writing them off as

“old light.” But the concept of “old light” was addressed by Charles Taze Russell when the Watchtower sect was still in its infancy and before it altered any of its doctrines. In fact, Russell pointed to this very concept as one of the flaws of the Adventist sect he left behind:

If we were following a man undoubtedly it would be different with us; undoubtedly one human idea would contradict another and that which was light one or two or six years ago would be regarded as darkness now; But with God there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, and so it is with truth; any knowledge or light coming from God must be like its author. A new view of truth never can contradict a former truth. “New light” never extinguishes older “light,” but adds to it. If you were lighting up a building containing seven gas jets you would not extinguish one every time you lighted another, but would add one light to another

and they would be in harmony and thus give increase of light: So it is with the light of truth; the true increase is by adding to, not by substituting one for another.⁴⁵ The Watchtower still maintains that Jesus approved its “accurate” teachings back in 1918. But what was the Watchtower teaching then? It had just published Studies in the Scriptures, vol. 7 (The Finished Mystery), in 1917, and it taught, among other things, that Jesus had returned in 1874, that God would destroy all of Christendom’s churches by 1918 (killing millions in the process), that the “little flock” of Bible students would be glorified in 1918, and that God’s kingdom would be established in 1931.⁴⁶

Since these teachings proved to be false, which the Watchtower admits, why would Jesus have considered an organization disseminating such doctrines to be “providing spiritual food”? Surely Jesus would have known that these teachings were untrue. If Jesus did give his approval to such beliefs, then the Watchtower would no longer have God’s favor for having since rejected them.

This brief list of contradictions will, one hopes, illustrate to the sincere Witness that the Watchtower is an inconsistent and misleading organization and, thus, unworthy of trust.

The Witness has no certainty that what he is being taught today by the Watchtower will not be rejected in another twenty, thirty, or fifty years as “apostate doctrines of men,” or

“old light,” as the organization sometimes calls it. A much longer list of scriptural contradictions and doctrinal twists could be formulated,⁴⁷ but the above examples suffice to remove any reason one might have to believe that “it is through the columns of The Watchtower that Jehovah provides direction and constant Scriptural counsel to his people.”⁴⁸ God is not the author of error and contradiction, so the explanation for such mistakes and mutations is that the Watchtower does not speak for God.

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