Strongholds SHAKEN A Biblical critique of false faiths and confusing cults by David Legge STRONGHOLDS SHAKEN: A BIBLICAL CRITIQUE OF FALSE FAITHS AND CONFUSING CULTS David Legge David Legge is a Christian evangelist, preacher and Bible teacher. He served as Assistant Pastor at Portadown Baptist Church before receiving a call to the pastorate of the Iron Hall Assembly in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He ministered as pastor-teacher of the Iron Hall from 1998- 2008, and now resides in Portadown with his wife Barbara, daughter Lydia and son Noah. Contents 1. The Witness Of The Watchtower - 3 2. Christian Science And Scientology - 15 3. Mormonism - The Latter Day Saints - 27 4. Unitarianism - 39 5. Spiritism - 49 6. Church Of Christ - 61 7. Christadelphianism - 74 8. Buddhism - 85 9. The Baha'i Faith - 96 10. Islam – 107 11. Cooneyites – 118 12. Hinduism – 129 13. Oneness Pentecostalism – 139 14. Freemasonry - 151 Appendix - Further Resources - 162 The audio for this series is available free of charge either on our website (www.preachtheword.com) or by request from [email protected] The inclusion of images and diagrams in this booklet is done without intention to breach any copyright restrictions. If this has been done in any instance, please contact us and we will willingly remove the offending item. All material by Pastor Legge is copyrighted. However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and the copyright is included. This does not include hosting or broadcasting the materials on another website, however linking to the resources on preachtheword.com is permitted. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all. 2 STRONGHOLDS SHAKEN: A BIBLICAL CRITIQUE OF FALSE FAITHS AND CONFUSING CULTS David Legge Chapter 1 "The Witness Of The Watchtower" Deuteronomy 18:22 1. The Witness Of Their History 2. The Witness Of Their Prophecies 3. The Witness Of Their Bible 4. The Witness Of Their Theology 5. The Witness Of Their Christ Introduction In Deuteronomy 18 and verse 22 Moses writes: "When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him". This book is entitled 'Strongholds of Satan', and the particular cult for our contemplation in this chapter is the cult of the Jehovah's Witnesses. We will consider this cult under the heading: 'The Witness of The Watchtower'. Now if you were to mention the 'Jehovah's Witness movement' or 'Jehovah's Witnesses' to people, there's often a varied response. Usually people will think of two well-dressed individuals knocking on your door at an inconvenient time, and talking to you about the end of the world. Or perhaps it's the controversy that we often see in our media, or portrayed on Hollywood film screens, regarding blood transfusion - how little children die because their devout religious parents belonging to this particular cult won't allow them to have a blood transfusion because it's against the religious principles and philosophies of the Jehovah's Witness movement. Background It would be easy with the plethora of publicity that the Jehovah's Witnesses movement gets in our modern age, to conclude that they're some kind of eccentric religious fringe, and just a cult of wackos. But the fact of the matter is, the Jehovah's Witness movement is a stronghold of Satan, it is an evil movement, and it is a movement in our modern age that is making huge strides and converting many. In fact, in the Watchtower magazine, which is their official publication, on January 1st 1995 they claim that the worldwide membership of the Watchtower movement is 4.9 million. Those 4.9 million people are active witnesses in 75,500 congregations throughout 232 countries around the globe. If you have ever encountered Jehovah's Witnesses you will know that they are a zealous crowd. In fact, I'm led to believe by Watchtower magazine that the average Jehovah's Witness spends ten hours per month in door-to-door evangelism. They attend five hours of meetings during one week. We would do well to ask the rhetorical question: is it any wonder that the organisation is said to be growing at a rate of 4000 converts a week, due to their zealousness and their violent evangelism as far as they can see it. The Jehovah's Witness movement is building five 'Kingdom Halls' a week worldwide. The Watchtower magazine is published twice a month, and it is published in 120 languages. Each issue, on average, has 16 million plus copies printed - and 600,000 of those copies are for distribution in the United Kingdom alone. So you can see that we're not talking about a little fringe religious extremist group or 3 STRONGHOLDS SHAKEN: A BIBLICAL CRITIQUE OF FALSE FAITHS AND CONFUSING CULTS David Legge Christian sect or cult. This is a movement that is making great strides in our modern age of religious scepticism and so-called rationalism. It is an exclusive society, it does not encourage free thinking, it does not encourage their followers to look into other religions or other religious philosophies. In the January 15th 1993 issue of the Watchtower magazine - very recently - the followers of the Jehovah's Witnesses were instructed, I quote: 'to avoid independent thinking'. That really means, if I can put it into my own words, that they're to follow the teaching of the Watchtower movement and try not to imbibe anything that is, as far as they are concerned, 'false teaching' or a 'false movement'. Now that is why they devote 85% of their personal study time to Watchtower publications - not the word of God! The Watchtower movement dedicates 85% of study time to Watchtower writings alone. A further 15% of their personal study time is dedicated to their particular version of the Bible, the New World Translation. So you can see right away where their emphasis lies, it lies not in the word of God, not even in their own interpretation of the word of God, but on the teaching of their own particular anointed prophets, as they call them. I believe we will see that far from being, as they claim, 'Jehovah's Witnesses' upon the earth, they are rather false witnesses according to the teaching of the New Testament. Maybe you're a Jehovah's Witness yourself, and you might say 'How can you prove this? How do you intend to prove that they're false witnesses?'. Well, I want to do it upon the witness of their own testimony. That's why I've entitled this chapter: 'The Witness of the Watchtower' - what does the Watchtower testify of itself, and what testimony has the Jehovah's Witness movement left on this earth for us to observe? The Witness Of Their History The first witness that I want us to consider is the witness of their history, the witness of their history. The first founder and President of the Watchtower movement and the Jehovah's Witnesses was a man by the name of Charles Taze Russell. That is where the movement got their original name from, which is perhaps a more correct name, 'The Russellites' - from Charles Taze Russell, their founder. He was born in Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania in 1852, and he was brought up traditionally as a Congregationalist and a Presbyterian, but it wasn't long in his life until he began to become sceptical about the views of his historical Christian forefathers in those denominations. He began to oppose Christian Orthodox religious history. He opposed organised religion of any kind, and many of the teachings that traditional historical orthodox Christians hold dear, he rejected outright. From then he began to organise little Bible classes in Pittsburgh in 1870, and they met regularly - they claim - to study God's word. Then, from that little Bible class in 1879, there began a magazine entitled 'Zion's Watchtower and Herald of Christ's Presence' - which was later renamed 'The Watchtower - announcing Jehovah's Kingdom', we know it today as 'The Watchtower Magazine'. The Jehovah's Witnesses as a movement were incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1884 under the name 'Zion's Watchtower Tract Society', and in 1886 Charles Taze Russell was involved in publishing the first volume of the 'Millennial Dawn', which is now known by Jehovah's Witnesses as a series of books entitled 'Studies in Scripture'. You might think that all that information is irrelevant, but please bear with me because it's not. I believe from my studies of the Jehovah's Witness movement that this series of books by Charles Taze Russell - at least the first four volumes save one - is more important to the Watchtower movement than the word of God. It's more valued to the Jehovah's Witness than the Bible, even their own translation of the Bible. Now let's think about the biography of this man Charles Taze Russell for a moment. Not only were his theological views interesting as we'll see later - but as an individual, he was involved in many conflicts during his life: not least marital conflicts and legal conflicts. Historical records show that in 1913 the courts granted his wife a divorce, and later charged him with 4 STRONGHOLDS SHAKEN: A BIBLICAL CRITIQUE OF FALSE FAITHS AND CONFUSING CULTS David Legge fraud and with perjury.