The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, of the “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” teaches that Jesus Christ is a created being; that God first created Him before creating everything else by Him. They say on their website:

“…the Bible plainly states that in his prehuman existence, Jesus was a created spirit being, just as angels were spirit beings created by God. Neither the angels nor Jesus had existed before their creation”
(http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_05.htm).

In short, they are in serious error. Jesus and the Father are a united deity. Though the Son is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son (John 6:38; 1 Cor. 11:3; 15:27-28), they are still “one” (John 1:1; Phil. 2:6-8; Heb. 1:2-3, 8-12), sharing the divine nature. It is in Jesus that the fullness of the “Godhead” (deity and divine nature) dwells (Col. 2:9), and deity has indefinite existence.

 In Revelation 22:13, Jesus professes to be the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” “Alpha” and “Omega” are the first and last Greek letters (thus covering the entire alphabet), so Christ is proclaiming to compass all that is, having existed before the creation of “all things” (John 1:3; Col. 1:16-17), and having brought everything into existence. He also is the “end” of all things, because everything reaches its purpose in Him, for Paul declared “all things” were created “for Him” (Col. 1:16). Not only that, He will literally be the “end” of all things when He returns (2 Pet. 3:10ff; Rev. 21:5). Jesus used this same expression in other instances (Rev. 1:17; 2:8), and so does God in Isaiah 48:12, saying, “…I am he; I am the first, I also am the last” (cf. Isa. 41:4; 44:6). How many of us would approach the idea of Yahweh (or Jehovah) having a beginning? Yet, Christ assumes the same designation. Like the Father, Jesus has always been.

Micah prophesied beforehand, saying,

“But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting” (5:2).

This prophecy is applied to Jesus in the New Testament (Matt. 2:6; John 7:42), and beyond doubt verifies His eternal past, saying He is from “everlasting.”

In a discussion with the Jews, Jesus told them His “day” had been seen by Abraham (John 8:56), but when asked how this was possible, since Jesus, as it seemed, wasn’t old enough to have been seen by Abraham, He replied, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am” (v. 58). Yahweh of old also identifies Himself as “I am,” and “I am that I am” (Ex. 3:14). It denotes His self-existence, and Jesus claims the same. Jesus and the Father have neither beginning nor end. They just simply exist of themselves. There is a reason Jesus chose “I am” as opposed to saying, I was. The Jews knew exactly what Christ was saying, and for this reason they prepared to stone Him (v. 59), which they began to do on another occasion when they perceived that He was expressing equality with God (John 10:33).

At the first of John’s gospel it is evident that Jesus had no genesis. As touched on earlier, John explains how Jesus, “the Word,” existed before the start of creation (of anything). He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). John continues on in the third verse: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” The apostle confirms that everything created (“made”) was created by the Word. After saying “all things,” he proceeds to be more explicit and says nothing was made “without Him,” but if He was made by God, then it is not true that “without Him was not anything made that was made.” Nothing is excluded. Jesus was not created, otherwise He created Himself. Anything that falls into the “made” category was made by Jesus.

Interestingly, the 1984 edition of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society’s New World Translation attest to the same, which reads: “All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.” “Not one thing!” Yet they turn right around and say there indeed was one thing that came into existence apart from Jesus—Jesus!

Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, reiterates the same:

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, …all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (1:16-17).

In an attempt to support their Jesus-creature doctrine, those at the Watchtower Society have polluted Paul’s words in their NWT by adding the word “other” four times with brackets into this passage, saying, “by means of him all [other] things were created in the heavens and upon the earth…” and that “…All [other] things have been created through him and for him. Also, he is before all [other] things and by means of him all [other] things were made to exist…”

Yes, they have corrupted the words of the God they profess to serve.

“FIRSTBORN OF ALL CREATION”
What evidence has the Watchtower Society presented to prove the Son of God was created? Consider the following statement from its publication, What Does the Bible Really Teach?

“He is called ‘the firstborn of all creation,’ for he was God’s first creation” (2005, p. 41).

The declaration that “firstborn of all creation” means Jesus was created first is nothing more than an assertion. When used in reference to literal birth, the word certainly implies an order in time, being the first to exit the womb, but in the case of Jesus being called the “firstborn,” it is more than apparent that the term is not used in such a literal form, just as the term “firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18) does not imply literal birth from death, for such is nonsense.

In truth, “firstborn” is a title of preeminence. Throughout man’s history, as in the Bible, the “firstborn” male was highest in rank among his siblings and had the “birthright”—the right to inheritance (1 Ch. 5:1; Gen. 29:26; 43:33; 48:18; Deut. 21:1); thus the word “firstborn” became associated with superiority and being the highest of honor. When used in this sense, it no longer has reference to chronology or birth, but rather to rank.

For example, in Psalms 89:27, God says He will make David His “firstborn” (also a Messianic psalm). How would God make David the “firstborn” if he was already in existence? If he had already been born? In fact, David was the youngest of many sons (1 Sam. 16:11-13). God would make David the “firstborn” by exalting his position in honor while being King. This is exactly what God means, for He qualifies “firstborn” with, “higher than the kings of the earth.” The whole context concerns the promotion of David through Yahweh’s blessings.

As stated before, Jesus is called the “firstborn from the dead,” though He was not the first to rise from death. Lazarus and the ruler’s daughter had previously been raised by Christ (John 11; Mark 5:35-42), and God raised a child back to life in the time of Elijah (1 Kings 17:21-22). Rather it means that among all who have died, Jesus is superior to them all—being the greatest among the dead as well as the living. He is the “Lord both of the dead and living” (Rom. 14:9), so that “in all things he might have the preeminence” (Col. 1:18).

There is an aspect of Jesus resurrection in which He is chronologically first—the first to rise from the dead to never die again (Rev. 1:8), but in this He is spoken of as the “first fruits” (1 Cor. 15:20, 23).

The Greek language (in which the New Testament was originally written) had a word for “created,” as seen throughout the New Testament (Mark 13:19; 1 Cor. 11:9; Eph. 2:10; Eph. 3:9; 1 Tim. 4:3, etc.), but it is not used for Christ.

“THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION OF GOD”
One of the various appellations self-applied by Jesus in the book of Revelation is “the beginning of the creation of God.” In harmony with the immediate and overall context of the Bible, this is to be understood to mean He was the cause of the creation. Everything began in Him; thus he is “the beginning.” However, the Watchtower presents it as proof that Jesus was the first created:

“… [Jesus] was “the beginning of God’s creation.” (Revelation 3:14, RS, Catholic edition). “Beginning” [Greek, ar·khe’] cannot rightly be interpreted to mean that Jesus was the ‘beginner’ of God’s creation. In his Bible writings, John uses various forms of the Greek word ar·khe’ more than 20 times, and these always have the common meaning of “beginning.” Yes, Jesus was created by God as the beginning of God’s invisible creations”
(http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_05.htm).

The Watchtower has failed to read the phrase in the context of John’s writing. He uses the word “beginning” (archē) in other instances of Jesus’ self-designations in Revelation, and in chapter twenty-one, the same titles are used, and the “beginning appears as well as “the end” (v.6). It doesn’t take long to see the dilemma the Watchtower faces. If “beginning” means first in chronological order of creation, then to be consistent, “end” would mean last in chronological order of creation.

The error of their doctrine is abundantly manifest. “Beginning and end,” “the Amen” (3:14), “Alpha and Omega” (21:6), and the “Faithful and True Witness (3:14),” are all titles expressing the credentials of Jesus’ deity, and deity is necessarily eternal, both past and future.

The “beginning of the creation of God” of Revelation 3:14 is equivalent to “firstborn of all creation” of Colossians 1:15, and both contexts deal with the superiority of Christ. This is the overall contextual interpretation of the verse.

PROVERBS 8
In Proverbs chapter eight, wisdom is personified, written as speaking in the first person, and the “witnesses,” as well as others, believe it is meant to be Jesus Himself speaking. In verse twenty-two, some translations speak of wisdom as “created” by Yahweh. The Watchtower says:

 “Notice how closely those references to the origin of Jesus correlate with expressions uttered by the figurative “Wisdom” in the Bible book of Proverbs: “Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning, before the oldest of his works. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth; before he had made the earth, the countryside, and the first elements of the world. Proverbs 8: 12, 22, 25, 26, NJB” (http://www.watchtower.org/e/ti/article_05.htm)

This is very poor interpretation. Again, the immediate and larger context of this passage is being grossly ignored. The language of Solomon is called personification. The surrounding chapters have wisdom speaking and acting for effect. This is a common method of speaking in the Bible, and the evidence that Christ is in mind is contrary to the “wisdom’s” feminine presentation. In chapter 7 verse 4, wisdom is called “a sister.” And will we say that fear is the beginning of Jesus (9:10)? This reasoning is futile.

The word translated as “created” (Hebrew—qânâh) is rendered “possessed” in many versions, such as the King James, though “create” is within its range meaning. The same Hebrew word is found in Jeremiah 32:15, where it says, “Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.” According to the context, just as Jeremiah bought the field from his cousin Hanameel (v. 7ff), the fields of the lands that had been taken under control by Babylon would be owned again by Israel once they were to take the lands back into “possession.”

Nevertheless, the argument is moot because whichever way they want to take it, the Watchtower does not help itself here, because in Proverbs 8:23, “wisdom” is said to have been “set up from everlasting…” (KJV). God’s wisdom is eternal as is He.

Ultimately, while Jesus Christ is not a created being, the Jesus of the Watchtower Society is. Their Jesus is the archangel Michael (Watchtower, April 1^st, 2010 p. 19). He is neither prayed to nor worshipped (Watchtower, July 15, 1996; November 1, 1964). Doubtless their Jesus is not the real Jesus. The true Jesus is deity, having eternal past and eternal future. Glory and honor to His name, and to the Father through Him.

Article by: A.K. Richardson