Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Jehovah's Witnesses are directed to study the Bible using Watch Tower Society publications. Jehovah's Witnesses regard secular education as fundamental, but they emphasize their preaching work as the top priority in their life. Therefore, they promote moral and spiritual education over secular education. [173]
The doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses have developed since the publication of The Watchtower magazine began in 1879. Early doctrines were based on interpretations of the Bible by Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society founder Charles Taze Russell, then added to, altered, or discarded by his successors, Joseph Rutherford and Nathan Knorr.
Jehovah's Witnesses are taught that the Bible prohibits the consumption, storage and transfusion of blood, based on their understanding of scriptures such as Leviticus 17:10, 11: "I will certainly set my face against the one who is eating the blood" and Acts 15:29: "abstain from … blood." This standpoint is applied even in emergencies.
In all, Jehovah's Witnesses brought 23 separate First Amendment actions before the U.S. Supreme Court between 1938 and 1946. [36] [37] Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone once quipped, "I think the Jehovah's Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties." [38]
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is God's only direct creation, that everything else was created through him by means of God's power, and that the initial unassisted act of creation uniquely identifies Jesus as God's "only-begotten Son". [157] As part of their nontrinitarian beliefs, they do not believe that Jesus is God the Son. [158]
Care of the environment is also a religious moral based on values of creation. [8] There are issues in society such as abortion which religious values impact as well. [9] An adherent's attitudes on homosexuality are also affected by religious values. [10] If divorce is taken as a path in marriage or not is affected by how religious the ...
Commonly, the moral code of conduct is decreed by a divine entity, i.e. Divine law. Sin is often used to mean an action that is prohibited or considered wrong; in some religions (notably some sects of Christianity ), sin can refer not only to physical actions taken, but also to thoughts and internalized motivations and feelings.
Jehovah's Witnesses' literature teaches that their refusal of transfusions of whole blood or its four primary components—red cells, white cells, platelets, and plasma—is a non-negotiable religious stand and that those who respect life as a gift from God do not try to sustain life by taking in blood, [5] [6] even in an emergency. [7]