I spent some time talking with an elder from the local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses - he paid me a visit, and in conversation told me he was an elder - he is a very polite and patient man, quite a shining light among his people and , in my opinion, a very good ambassador for his religion.
In our conversation he spoke of the great contest between Jehovah and Satan in which Jehovah's name will be vindicated and all Satan's lies will be refuted by the faithful goodness of Jesus Christ and of the witnesses. In his explanation he informed me that their religion (the people, to be more precise) is called Jehovah's witnesses because they are witnesses in a grand courtroom drama with Satan accusing mankind and Jehovah and Jehovah calling forth human witnesses (chief among whom is Jesus Christ) to defend Jehovah's name. In fact their religion takes it name, he said, from a passage in the bible, he then quoted this verse (from the New World Translation)
(Isaiah 43:10, 11) 10 “YOU are my witnesses,” is the utterance of Jehovah, “even my servant whom I have chosen, in order that YOU may know and have faith in me, and that YOU may understand that I am the same One. Before me there was no God formed, and after me there continued to be none. 11 I—I am Jehovah, and besides me there is no savior.”
My New Jerusalem Bible says it slightly differently, thus:
(Isaiah 43:10-11 NJB) You yourselves are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, and the servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that it is I. No god was formed before me, nor will be after me. (11) I, I am Yahweh, and there is no other Saviour but me.
Now, you may be wondering by now why I am writing all this about Jehovah's witnesses and their teaching about Jehovah vindicating his name. Well, my reason is this:
The sacred scriptures do include information about Satan accusing God's people and by implication impugning God's name. We can see this in the beginning chapters of Job, yet Satan accusations and the refutation of them is not a major theme in scripture. It is present but as a background story in some parts of scripture to explain specific incidents and specific issues that were at stake at the time of those incidents.
It is important to keep one's mind and heart firmly focused on what the scriptures do present as their major theme. That theme is Jesus Christ himself. His coming, his teaching, his miracles, his goodness, his love, his victory over death and his promises to us. The whole of the old testament was opened up to the disciples who were on the road to Emmaus by Jesus, after the resurrection, as he explained to them how all that was written in the scriptures was written about him. We ought to remember that the old testament and the new testament exist to bear testimony to Jesus Christ.
Now, having said what I think and having given some background about why I think it, I want to make an observation about this thread and especially about the the quote at the bottom of this post. This thread is unbalanced in its approach to scripture because it takes a theme, that is more incidental than it is central to scripture, and expands it into the chief theme of scripture. By doing this it makes a courtroom drama into the reason for everything that is said in the bible. Rather than seeing Jesus as the centre and circumference of the scriptural world view this thread places a controversy between Christ and Satan at the centre. In doing this scripture is distorted. I think that the Christians participating in this thread know this at heart and some will know it consciously and - I hope - have raised it as an objection to the thesis behind this thread. I hope you will all join me in fighting against this tendency to distort the scriptures and place Christ in the centre and in every place in your own reading of sacred scripture.
God be merciful to us all.
