When he was on earth, Jesus Christ noted the hypocrisy of the priests. They always told the people what they should do but then failed to do it themselves. He said, "All the things they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say but do not perform." (Matt. 23:3) Why would I quote this Scripture in regard to taking quotes out of context? Keep reading.
In The Watchtower, Feb. 1, 1996, page 5, paragraph 8, the Society quotes "one of America's best-known evangelists" but then refuses to give his name. The man they are quoting is, in fact, Billy Graham. They say his of words:
"One of Jesus’ disciples warned that ungodly men were 'turning the undeserved kindness of our God into an excuse for loose conduct and proving false to our only Owner and Lord, Jesus Christ.' (Jude 4) How might we, in fact, turn God’s mercy 'into an excuse for loose conduct'? We could do so by assuming that Christ’s sacrifice covers deliberate sins that we intend to keep on committing rather than sins of human imperfection that we are trying to put behind us. Surely we would not want to agree with one of America’s best-known evangelists, who said that you do not have to 'clean up, give up, or turn around.'"—Contrast Acts 17:30; Romans 3:25; James 5:19, 20
This quote from Billy Graham seems pretty horrible, doesn't it? We don't have to change our ways to be saved? We can accept Jesus sacrifice but then continue to do bad things? Well, that isn't what he says. His exact words are these:
"All you have to do to be born again is to repent of your sins and believe in the Lord Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour. You don’t clean up, give up, or turn around yourself, you just come as you are. This is why we sing the hymn 'Just As I Am'"-From the book How to Be Born Again, pg. 156
What Billy Graham was actually saying was that when you are convinced in your heart that you can have salvation nowhere else except in the shed blood of Jesus Christ and believe firmly that he can save you and repent of your sins, right there, in that moment, you can be saved. You don't have to "clean up, give up, or turn around" in that moment but in the days, weeks, and months afterward. (Compare Acts 2:38, 41; 8:5, 9, 12-13; 16:30-34) That is what Graham is telling his readers. He was not referring to past, present, and future sins but only to past sins. As far as I am aware, Graham believes that after you first repent you have to change your life in the future.
Some "Christians", but not all, believe that you don't have to turn around after you first "repent and accept Jesus". The Society was having us believe that Billy Graham was one of these.
Another person that the Society misquotes is a lesser-known evangelist named Zane Hodges, who died in November of 2008. I am pretty sure that Zane Hodges was a believer in "Free Grace Theology" which says that you only have to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and you are forever saved. No matter what you do in the future, you can never lose your salvation.
The mis-quote that the Society made of Zane Hodges was this:
"Paul did not make converts, as some TV evangelists do, by saying: 'Accept Jesus right now, and you will forever be saved.' Nor did he have the confidence of the American clergyman who wrote: "As a teenage boy, . . . I was already saved." More than 20 years after Jesus personally chose Paul to carry the Christian message to people of the nations, this hardworking apostle wrote: 'I pummel my body and lead it as a slave, that, after I have preached to others, I myself should not become disapproved somehow.'"-The Watchtower, Feb. 1, 1996, pg. 6, para. 7
Not only is this a mis-quote, but it is also a misleading one. The idea of what constitutes being saved is different with what most of Christendom believes and what Jehovah's Witnesses believe. How so? Christendom uses the term "saved" as a substitute for having repented of your sins, accepted Jesus Christ sacrifice, and receiving him as your savior. So when Zane Hodges said that he was saved as a teenage boy he meant that he had repented of his sins and put faith in Jesus.
The real quote by Zane Hodges was this: "Many years ago, as a teenage boy, I attended a series of evangelistic meetings in a small Baptist church in Hagerstown, Maryland. Although I was already saved, the meetings made a lasting impression on me as a young believer." (From the book Absolutely Free, pg. xiii) As Jehovah's Witnesses, we use the term saved to mean our future salvation when we survive Armageddon into the Kingdom. The Society knows the differences between what we mean by "saved" and what Christendom means by "saved" but decides not to tell that.
The Trinity Brochure is full of quotes taken out of context. However, we will look at only one. On page 6 of this brochure, paragraph
"Jesuit Fortman states: 'The New Testament writers...give us no formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, no explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal divine persons...Nowhere do we find any trinitarian doctrine of three distinct subjects of divine life and activity in the same Godhead.'"
The real quote is this:
"If we take the New Testament writers together they tell us there is only one God, the creator and lord of the universe, who is the Father of Jesus. They call Jesus the Son of God, Messiah, Lord, Saviour, Word, Wisdom. They assign Him the divine functions of creation, salvation, judgement. Sometimes they call Him God explicitly. They do not speak as fully and clearly of the Holy Spirit as they do of the Son, but at times they coordinate Him with the Father and the Son and put Him on a level with them as far as divinity and personality are concerned. They give us in their writings a triadic ground plan and triadic formulas. They do not speak in abstract terms of nature, substance, person, relation, circumincession, mission but they present in their own way the ideas that are behind these terms. They give us no formal or formulated doctrine of the Trinity, no explicit teaching that in one God there are three co-equal persons. But they do give us an elemental Trinitarianism, the data from which such a formal doctrine of the Triune God may be formulated.
The problem with this quote is not so much that it does not say what the Society says it does but that they mislead us in the personal beliefs of those who made the quotes. They make us think that these people are firmly against the Trinity when, in fact, they are not. This is true of Jesuit John L. McKenzie quoted on page 28, Jesuit Edmund Fortman quoted on page 6, and writers of the The Illustrated Bible Dictionary. These people DO believe in the Trinity although the candor of their quotes helps us to see that they are digging a hole for themselves. These quotes are misleading because they misrepresent the viewpoint of the speaker.
In the new book given at the 2009 "Keep on the Watch!" District Convention, the Society misquotes the writer of the book Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament. How do I know this? I owned Dr. BeDuhn's book for a short while and read it in two whole days! I remembered this quote because of how much it stood out to me and was even discussing it with a relative a few days before I received the new book.
The quote from the new book from the Watchtower is this:
"In his book Truth in Translation, Jason David BeDuhn, associate professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University in the United States, wrote that Jehovah's Witnesses approach the Bible 'with a kind of innocence, and [build] their system of belief and practice from the raw material of the Bible without predetermining what was to be found there.'"-Pg. 105, see box at 'Jehovah's Witnesses build their beliefs on the Bible'
Dr. BeDuhn's quote is actually differentiating between the Protestant Reformation and how they approached the Bible and made their doctrines and the way Jehovah's Witnesses approached the Bible to make their doctrines when each of these first started. Out of all the quotes that I have found this one is the most misleading. Dr. BeDuhn is not referring to the modern-day Jehovah's Witness approach to the Bible but the approach we took in the 1880's and 1890's.
The actual quote is this:
"Protestant forms of Christianity, following the motto of sola scriptura, insist that all legitimate Christian beliefs (and practices) must be found in, or at least based on, the Bible. That's a very clear and admirable principle. The problem is that Protestant Christianity was not born in a historical vacuum, and does not go back directly to the time that the Bible was written...For the doctrines that Protestantism inherited to be considered true, they had to be found in the Bible. And precisely because they were considered true already, there was and is tremendous pressure to read those truths back into the Bible, whether or not they are actually there."
On the other hand, contrasting the Protestant approach to the Bible with that of Jehovah's Witnesses, Dr. BeDuhn writes this:
"This movement has, unlike the Protestant Reformation, really sought to re-invent Christianity from scratch. Whether you regard that as a good or a bad thing, you can probably understand that it resulted in the Jehovah's Witnesses approaching the Bible with a kind of innocence, and building their system of belief and practice from the raw material of the Bible without predetermining what was to be found there.-Truth in Translation by Dr. Jason BeDuhn, ch. 13, pg. 163-165
When I first saw this misquote, I was appalled. I've always had a lot of respect for Dr. BeDuhn and when I saw his quote misquoted I was a little upset. Oh well, I guess it could have been worse. They just took what Dr. BeDuhn said about Jehovah's Witnesses in the past and applied it to Jehovah's Witnesses today.
The Society has done this for many years, taking quotes out of context. Interestingly, their own words in the book Qualified to be Ministers, pg. 199, condemn them. They say, "Be very careful to be accurate in all statements you make. Use evidence honestly. In quotations do not twist the meaning of a writer or speaker or use only partial quotations to give a different thought than the person intended. Also if you use statistics use them properly. Statistics can often be used to give a distorted picture."
Yes, Jesus Christ's own words remind us that we are not to follow this same course of taking words out of context. Remember what he said? ""All the things they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds, for they say but do not perform."-Matt. 23:3
With Sincere Christian Love and Affection,
Brother Ebed Abodah
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