By Ron Halbrook
For the Truth’s sake, we should seek the lost. Many zealous religious people are among that number (Rom. 10:1-3) because they have not confessed the Deity of Jesus Christ. You must “confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus” by faith in him, to be saved (v.9). By faith, we must repent and be “baptized into Christ” (Gal. 3:26-27).
The Bible teaches us to “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” and to confess him as, “My Lord and my God” (Jn. 20:31, 28). Among the lost who do not confess the Deity of Christ are the so-called “Jehovah’s Witnesses” (from a misuse of Isa. 43:10, where “my witnesses” are the Jews as a nation). Their special translation: The New World Translation, alters Jn. 1:1 (“the Word was God”) to read, “the Word was a god.” Eventually “the Word was made flesh” in Jesus Christ. (v.14). but Jehovah’s Witnesses claim “the Word” originated like angels by creation. So, God created “a god,” who came to earth as Jesus Christ. He, then, is not confessed as, “My Lord and my God,” but is only recognized as the crowning work of God’s creation.
Support is claimed from B. Wilson’s Emphatic Diaglott (1864), which gives an interlinear (line of Greek and line of English) and a translation. Jehovah’s Witnesses emphasize Wilson’s interlinear column but overlook his translation column, which says, “the Logos was God.”
We don’t have to know Greek grammar to go to heaven or to see the inconsistency of Wilson and the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation. The Greek use of articles (“the” is an article) differs from English, and is complicated for us average folk. At any rate, “the” does not appear in Greek before “God” in the expression “the Word was God,” so Wilson set this off by using “a god” in his interlinear. New World Translation on this basis says, “the Word was a god.” In Greek there is no article before God in v.6 (“a man sent from God”), v.12 (“the sons of God”), v.13 (.”but of God”). Yet Wilson uses “God,” not “a god”, in those verses in his interlinear column. So his interlinear is inconsistent. His translation column consistently and properly uses “God” in vs. 1 (“the Logos was God”), 6,12, and 13.
New World Translation has the same inconsistency which Wilson’s interlinear has: “the Word was a god” in v.1 but “God” in vv. 6, 12, and 13. Isa. 43:10 positively denies the possibility that one “God” created “a god:” `before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.”God did not form “a god,” but the one Deity includes “the Father,. . . the Son, . . . the Holy Ghost” (Matt. 28:19). Even the New World Translation has Jesus blessing Thomas, and all others who will confess Him: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28-29). Truly, “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation,” but, “if we deny Him, He also will deny us” (Rom. 10:10; 1 Tim. 2:12).
Truth Magazine XXI: 5, p. 66
February 3, 1977