A Few Questions – on Blood!
[Quotes from Watchtower publications, including their New World Translation, are in burgundy.]
Print/Download: PDFA few questions arise out of the article, "Godly Respect for Blood," in the Sept. 1, 1986 issue of the Watchtower:
“Blood is an organ among many body parts that caused King David to exclaim: ‘O Jehovah, you have searched through me, and you know me. I shall laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made!” (p 24)
Question: If blood is an organ, why wasn’t the ban on blood dropped when the ban on other organ transplants was dropped?
“The Law allowed for only one use of blood – in animal sacrifices to Jehovah.” (p 24)
Question: Did the WT get it wrong then or now, since the WT today allows for multiple uses of blood by extracting it’s fractions?
“Not even in an emergency may the sacredness of blood be ignored.” (p 25)
Question: Isn’t it time for the WT to examine it’s premises in the light of all of Scripture, seeing they now do allow for the use of blood in emergencies, [e.g. in the case of factor 8 for hemophiliacs, and various other blood fractions for other life threatening conditions?
“With regard to blood, it matters not whether this is eaten through the mouth or transfused through the veins. The purpose is the same – to sustain and nourish the body.” (p 25)
Questions: Is the blood destroyed when transfused as it is when eaten? Is the human blood donor killed as the animals were? Does the Bible say anything at all about transfusion? Is there another way to understand the command in Acts 15 as God’s command to Gentiles to show respect for Jewish sensitivities?
“As the governing body clearly indicated, failure to abstain from blood is a violation of the law of God.” (p 25) [the WT’s context is Acts 15.]
Question: If that is really so, hasn’t the WT already broken the ban by allowing the use of fractions, which any thinking person knows is blood?
“Many are coming to realize, too, that God’s law on blood makes sense.”
(p 26) “In the matters of… abstaining from blood… let each one of us be determined to obey all of God’s counsel. (p 27)”
Question: Doesn’t this beg the question? It has not been demonstrated that the WT’s Counsel is God’s counsel (especially as the WT’s counsel in many matters is continually changing)?
“Should not the righteous Fashioner of mankind, the Designer of our blood, be the One to determine how that stream of life may be properly used? (Job 36:3) That he has done in no uncertain way.”
Question: Why then is the WT, which claims to be His mouthpiece, so uncertain about it?
Finally, and here the WT slips into a much-loved subject, the exclusive place reserved for the 144,00:
“Jesus uses the merit of his own precious lifeblood in providing salvation, first for his priestly ‘house’ of 144,000 anointed Christians so that they may have righteousness imputed to them and gain an inheritance as kings and priests with him in the heavens. Next, the sacrifice on behalf of ‘the people’ pictured Jesus’ ransoming all those of mankind who will inherit everlasting life here on earth.”
Questions: Where in Scripture is the two-class system of the WT taught, apart from the WT reading it into the text? Furthermore, are the 144,000 the only ones to whom righteousness is imputed?
“Imputed” righteousness is a wonderful theological concept. “Impute” is sometimes translated “reckon”, or “credit”: Rom 4:7-8 “David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.’"
It is time the WT admitted it has been dead wrong on the subject of blood. Instead the WT has again chosen the subtle, underhanded, face-saving approach it usually chooses to cover up changing doctrines and dates. What makes it so serious is that it is all done in Jehovah’s Name!
Written by Greta Olsoe
www.soundwitness.org
Click here for more articles on the Jehovah's Witnesses