Why the Jehovah’s Witnesses are growing and what we can learn 1: Devotion - GBC Bulletin Column #62

Jehovah’s Witnesses are everywhere. Their current campaign of ‘metropolitan witnessing’ as they call it sees couples of them dotting London’s high roads and outside major attractions and transport hubs. Recently tens of thousands of Witnesses met at Twickenham for convention meetings held in over a dozen languages. There are cities in Europe where the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses exceeds that of evangelical Christians. To what can their growth be attributed and what can those who confess ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ learn? This past summer I met with a JW in his house for seven weeks, working through the Watchtower Society’s ‘What does the Bible really Teach?’ and got an inside look.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses I met were characterised by a serious devotion to their lives as Witnesses. How so?

1. They prioritise. Their ‘Jehovah God’ comes first, so practically speaking this means that telling people about him tops their list of priorities in life.

2. They organise. To prioritise, they have to organise their lives not around themselves but around ‘Kingdom Hall’ life. Relationships? Witnessing becomes a date for young couples, and an outing for families. Work? I’ve read of businesses that actually look to hire Jehovah’s Witnesses because they have a serious approach to, consistency in, and high standard of work. Given the high standard to which they perform, they do not have many problems taking off the hours and days that they need. Others choose jobs that they know will allow them adequate time to get involved in the life of their assembly. To effectively witness, they have to know their stuff, and so they make time to study as individuals and in assemblies the Watchtower Society’s literature, from the New World Translation of the Bible to ‘What does the Bible Really Teach’ to Watchtower and Awake! Magazines.

3. They exercise their gifts to proselytise people. If all they can do to contribute to the making of a new Witness is stand in public and hold a magazine, they do it. Or they might be like the man with whom I spent the most time: this British Nigerian with an aptitude for languages learned Albanian, Romanian, and Turkish in order to communicate the teachings of the Watchtower Society more effectively in those ethnic communities, and is himself a member of an Albanian-speaking Kingdom Hall.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are deceived and deceiving. They do not know the truth, they don’t see where they are headed, and their lives do not please God because they deny the eternal and exalted Son of God who said “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one come to the Father but by me.” They are, however, more devoted to lies than many professing Christians are to the truth. Some person (often an arrogant 20 something year-old male) pipes up and says, “Yes, but JWs are ‘works based’”, as if to dismiss their self-denying devotion. He misses the point. If people enslaved to a system of works-based salvation can do their duty with such enthusiasm, how much more so should we who know the riches of God’s grace in Christ delight in devoting ourselves, our talents, abilities, and resources to his glory in our homes, workplaces, communities, and churches! It is a basic principle we would do well to grasp: if you devote yourself to something, it will develop. 

This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 19 October 2014. Part one in a series.