Exceptional

Today, at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Shoreline, Washington, one hundred twelve thousand congregations, included the one I attended, learned how the Word of God, as well as His name, Jehovah, has been preserved by Him over the span of thousands of years, even though Satan himself has vigorously labored to prevent accessibility to both throughout the history of mankind. Despite this being the case, many who profess to be Christians do not spread the word of Jehovah in line with His intentions. The first article of the February 2013 publication of The Watchtower, a magazine, released months ahead of time, from which Jehovah's Witnesses conduct their sermons directly out of several days a week in a seminar fashion, gives a brief history of how the most accurate translation of the Bible possible has been passed along to shield us from the evil messages of some other translations (all of the ones that aren't their version, The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures), which were crafted by the devil.

The most important distinction between the NWT and heretical versions of scripture is how often God is referred to by His name, Jehovah. Not referring to God as Jehovah as many times as the scriptures literally do in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek the way the NWT Bible does is essentially the same as worshipping anyone who may go by any name, even if the supposed god is is defined by all of the same stories and traditions as Jehovah is. Admittedly, the name Jehovah is pronounced differently depending on the language it's spoken in and its true pronunciation God prefers is unclear. Regardless, the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses call God by His name to the best of their ability gives them a leg up on the other, less dedicated sects of Christianity.

God expressed His approval of the practices of those who, at the time, identified themselves as "Bible Students" at the 1931 Watch Tower Convention in Columbus, Ohio, when He allotted them the title Jehovah's Witnesses through their leaders. According to The Watchtower, "no one else in the world wanted that name, but God has blessed [them] in the use of it for over eight decades," and since no one else thought of the title before them, it's apparent that Jehovah's way of specifically anointing them His Witnesses was by intending them to conjure it up and claim it first.

Because Jehovah's Witnesses are Jehovah's chosen people, The Watchtower says "nothing in Satan's arsenal can do [them] permanent harm." The most harmful thing Satan tries to do is print copies of the Bible that don't specifically use the name "Jehovah" as many times as they're supposed to. Luckily for us, God has thwarted Satan's attempts and preserved His name in His Word by making the NWT Bible as accessible as possible. Even though the Catholic Church has prohibited the use of vernacular copies of the Bible that people could read or translating the scriptures into English in the past, Jehovah has used John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, and Martin Luther as His instruments to reach the world with accurate versions of the Bible so that "no demonic or human power will ever block the preservation of Jehovah's Word," which is now available in over one hundred sixteen launguages.

Modus Ponens

Easter Sunday, at Blue Sky Church in Bellevue, I learned that without believing in not only Jesus's resurrection and ascension into the heavens, but also the feasibility of the resurrection of any dead person, one's very belief in Christianity is worthless. I was fortunate to receive today's message from Lead Pastor Steve Morgan, which was made possible by Blue Sky's four hundred members, whose $6.1 million in tithings last month will enable them to expand in enough volume to reach over twice as many of Christ's followers as before with their life saving message of the accuracy of the literal content of the Bible.

In Pastor Morgan's Easter sermon titled "Wonderful Truths That Christians Believe," he addresses that "shocking" irrefutable fact that has everyone asking "what are Christians talking about?" "Jesus actually rose from the dead," he informs us. The Bible is actually quite clear that Jesus and various others have undergone a transition from dying for days at a time to not being dead anymore. Sadly, many people find this truth, which is self evident in that it's written in the Bible, hard to believe. Morgan justifies that there must be existing circumstances of resurrection from the dead because the Bible says there are, and if there aren't, as he puts it, "Christianity unravels entirely."

Although it's a hard concept to believe, let alone wrap your head around, one's belief in God is explanation enough of how a corpse can revert back into a living being, Morgan denotes, asking "Is Christianity true or not?" (obviously). "There is no in between. You have to be logical about this." Millennia ago, the so-called believers in Corinth weren't grasping this level of reasoning and purported that Jesus was actually the only former corpse to be restored of his physical life. Paul caught wind of their flawed teachings and was disturbed deeply by the notion that they could be spreading a false gospel that is untrue and would therefore offer no salvation from sin, or, at the very least, one that is exponentially less entertaining.

Paul hastily wrote them to rebuke their erroneous testimony so that they could be equipped with the one he presented to all of the other new converts. He explains to them that if living beings can not in fact be risen from the dead, then Jesus could not have been risen from the dead; and if Jesus hadn't been risen from the dead, then the sacrifice of his life for our sins didn't pay for our sins, so in death they would all still be judged and justifiably punished for all of their transgressions against God, and the good word they preach to others and believe themselves is nothing more than a bunch of meaningless rituals and unexplainable habits. Since Jesus, aside being the only tangible arm of a trilateral God, was a living physical being who had died and been risen from the dead, then the dead in general, which too are the remains of formerly living beings, can and do rise from the dead (1 Cor 15:12-22).

"Historians are absolutely clear that this letter is actually true," Morgan says. "The Apostle Paul was scared about it," and he is scared about it too, because, he says, "if [Jesus] wasn't raised from the dead, none of it is true," explaining that it is impossible to subscribe to Christianity by picking and choosing the parts you find most believable– otherwise, it is a completely different doctrine, and since there is no actual scripture in favor of any such doctrine, the idea of a form of Christianity that only advocates that the relatively believable portions of the Bible are true is preposterous; therefore, either everything the Bible says is true, or it is all a lie and attending church is a complete waste of time that contains no useful substance. As a matter of fact, if the Bible is not wholly true, the persuit of a Godly lifestyle should be set aside for other persuits of happiness and moral satisfaction, since our souls wouldn't be saved from eternal damnation anyhow. Morgan puts it best when he says "if it's all just a lie, people ought to really feel sorry for you Christians."