Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on your door will sooner or later  warn you of the pagan origins of Christmas and Easter and how Christians should never take part in celebrations.

But do we once again find the Jehovah's Witnesses practising double standards?

In the Awake! magazine of March 22, 1986, 2 Corinthians is cited by the Watch Tower as a warning to all those associated with pagan practices, concluding;

Surely that would include customs that are clearly derived from – or unmistakably resemble- false religious practices.”

But, according to an article on page 4 of the Watchtower, April 1 1993, nearly one million Jehovah’s Witnesses, in the last three years, were guilty of carrying out a pagan practice. Their sin…. being baptised.

Yes, the April 1, 1993 Watchtower tells us that baptism “predates the Christian faith,” and was used in ancient Egypt to bestow immortality.(see below)

If we were to apply the Jehovah’s Witnesses own reasoning to this, all JWs should stop being baptised immediately.

Obviously the Watch Tower Society isn’t going to stop baptising its members, yet why does it persist in criticising those who celebrate the Lord’s birth.

No doubt, when brought to the attention of a JW they could try to explain it away as an April Fool’s joke.

However, we will leave the Jehovah’s Witnesses with the same challenge as the Watch Tower left celebrators of Easter, in the Awake!, March 22, 1986;

The challenge now to those who know the truth about baptism is whether they will act upon what they know or not.”

 First published in the Autumn 1997 issue of Concern