A Secret
Kept from
Jehovah’s Witnesses

ASK Jehovah’s Witnesses where Jesus Christ is today, and you will receive a variety of replies such as ‘in heaven,’ ‘at the right hand of the Father,’ ‘on the throne,’ etc. These answers are all true, but they highlight an important fact: JWs think of Jesus as being a million miles away. Not one of Jehovah's Witnesses will reply that Christ is living ‘in me.’

Why not? For three basic reasons:

FIRST, they have not personally experienced what the Bible calls “this mystery, which is Christ in you.” (Colossians 1:27 RSV) Having never been “born of the Spirit” (John 3:6), they can not apply to themselves these words of Scripture: “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:6 NKJ

SECOND, the Bible translation they use has been tampered with to hide this basic Christian truth. In several verses the Watchtower Society’s New World Translation changes “in” to “in union with.” This is done very selectively. For example, compare John 17:26 in the New World Translation with the original Greek translated word-for-word in the Society’s Kingdom Interlinear Translation Bible:

in order that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in union with them—NW
in order that the love which you loved me in them it may be and I in them—KIT

THIRD, the Society has taught its followers that the opportunity to be part of the Christian congregation—the ‘body’ or ‘bride’ of Christ—ended in the year 1935. Since 1935, new converts have been directed to consider themselves part of a secondary class of believers once called ‘Jonadabs,’ now called ‘other sheep’ and ‘the great crowd.’

BUT “this mystery, which is Christ in you”—carefully kept from Jehovah‘s Witnesses by their leaders—is so basic to Christianity that the Bible sets it forth as a test of whether one is really in the faith:
“Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith. Prove yourselves. Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are disqualified?” — 2 Corinthians 13:5 NKJ

The Bible in Living English by Steven Byington, published by the Watchtower Society in 1972, puts it this way:
“Make the test of yourselves, if you are in the faith; see about your own genuineness. Or do you not recognize in your own case that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless you are counterfeit…”

Jesus himself, while He was still on earth in the flesh, foretold that He would later dwell “in” his disciples by his Spirit:
“…that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth … you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.… At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”— John 14:16-20 NKJ

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