Did the Watchtower Claim to Be a Prophet? (Then Deny It)
For more than half a century, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society described itself in unmistakable terms as God's modern-day prophet — the "prophet" foretold in Ezekiel, a "prophetlike organization" whose warnings Christendom would ignore at its peril. Yet when its dated predictions repeatedly failed, the organization reversed course, insisting it had never claimed to be an inspired prophet at all and that its forecasts were merely honest "expectations." This article documents both claims in the Watchtower's own words, and then applies to the organization the very test — Deuteronomy 18:20-22 — that the Watchtower uses to condemn every rival religion.
Overview
The question of whether the Watchtower is a "prophet" is not an accusation invented by critics. It is a description the organization repeatedly chose for itself, in print, in its flagship magazine, across the tenure of multiple presidents. The contradiction at the heart of this topic is simple to state: the Watchtower spent decades claiming the mantle of a divinely appointed prophet to lend authority to its teachings, and then — once those teachings proved false — spent the following decades disowning that same mantle to escape the consequences.[1]
For an EXJW audience, this is one of the cleanest illustrations of the organization's core credibility problem. It is not a matter of interpretation or of hostile framing. The affirmative claims and the later denials sit side by side in the corpus, and both cannot be true.
The Affirmative Claims: "Who Made Them a Prophet?"
1959 — The Jeremiah Argument
The earliest and boldest formulation appeared in The Watchtower of January 15, 1959. Defending the Bible Students' authority to preach a "present-day fulfillment" of prophecy, the article asked and answered its own rhetorical question:
"For an answer, people should listen to the plain preaching by the remnant prefigured by Jeremiah, for these preach to men the present-day fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecies. Who made them a prophet to speak with the authority that they claim? Well, who made Jeremiah a prophet?"[2]The comparison is deliberate and unmistakable. The "remnant" — the anointed leadership of the organization — is placed in the same category as Jeremiah, a canonical Hebrew prophet who spoke the direct word of God. The article does not soften the term or place "prophet" at arm's length. It embraces it.
1964 — "A Prophetlike Organization"
Five years later, The Watchtower of October 1, 1964, made the claim institutional rather than merely individual:
"God has on earth today a prophetlike organization, just as he did in the days of the early Christian congregation."[3]The phrasing matters. The organization is not merely led by prophet-like men; the organization itself is prophet-like, an earthly channel comparable to the first-century congregation through which, Witnesses were taught, God spoke.
1972 — "That Prophet" Identified as Ezekiel
The most detailed and most cited affirmative claim is the article "'They Shall Know That a Prophet Was Among Them,'" published in The Watchtower of April 1, 1972.[4] Building on Ezekiel's commission — in which Jehovah tells the prophet that a rebellious people "will know also that a prophet himself happened to be in the midst of them" (Ezekiel 2:5) — the article asks who fills that prophetic role in modern times, and answers plainly:
"So, does Jehovah have a prophet to help them, to warn them of dangers and to declare things to come? … Jehovah, who is the true God … caused a 'prophet' to be raised up among them. This 'prophet' was not one man, but was a body of men and women. It was the small group of footstep followers of Jesus Christ, known at that time as International Bible Students. Today they are known as Jehovah's Christian witnesses. … Of course, it is easy to say that this group acts like a prophet of God. It is another thing to prove it."[4]The article proceeds to identify this collective prophet as "the modern-day Ezekiel," the "'prophet' commissioned by Jehovah to declare the good news of God's Messianic kingdom and to give warning to Christendom."[5] The title of the article — a direct quotation of Ezekiel — leaves no ambiguity about the self-identification: Jehovah's Witnesses are the prophet, and history will vindicate them as such.
The Broader "Voice of God" Framing
These prophet claims did not stand alone. They were embedded in a wider theology of divine authority. The Watchtower of June 15, 1957, instructed readers to obey the organization ("the 'slave'") as if obeying God directly:
"It is vital that we appreciate this fact and respond to the directions of the 'slave' as we would to the voice of God, because it is His provision."[6]Taken together, these statements form a consistent picture across the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s: an organization that presented itself as God's appointed mouthpiece, a prophet whose pronouncements carried the weight of the voice of God.[1]
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View on Amazon →Timeline of the Claim
- 1889–1914 — Under founder Charles Taze Russell, Zion's Watch Tower teaches that 1914 will mark the end of "the Gentile Times" and the establishment of God's Kingdom in full.
- 1917–1925 — Under J. F. Rutherford, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1920) promotes 1925 as the year the ancient patriarchs would be resurrected to an earthly paradise.
- 1957 — The Watchtower tells readers to respond to organizational direction "as we would to the voice of God."[6]
- 1959 — The Jeremiah "Who made them a prophet?" argument appears.[2]
- 1964 — "A prophetlike organization."[3]
- 1968 — Awake! condemns date-setters as "guilty of false prophesying" even as the organization promotes expectations tied to 1975.[7]
- 1972 — The organization is explicitly identified as the modern Ezekiel, "that prophet."[4]
- 1975 — The widely promoted expectation of the end fails to materialize.
- 1986 — Awake! redefines "prophet" to mean any true Christian, insisting it "does not necessarily mean that he predicts the future."[8]
- 1993 — Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom states the organization has no "divine inspiration."[9]
- 2010s — Official literature repeats that the leadership is "not inspired" and "not infallible."[10]
The Denials: "Not Inspired," "Not Infallible"
By the mid-1980s the tone had changed completely. The dated expectations of 1914, 1925, and 1975 had all failed, and the earlier prophet language had become a liability. The organization began to redefine the very word it had once embraced.
1986 — Redefining "Prophet"
Awake! of June 8, 1986, argued that being a prophet has nothing necessarily to do with foretelling the future:
"In the Bible the ord [word] 'prophet' … does not necessarily mean that he predicts the future."[8]The article reframed "prophet" so broadly that "all true Christians" could be called prophets simply by declaring God's message — quietly stripping the term of the predictive weight the 1959, 1964, and 1972 articles had relied upon.
1993 — "Do Not Have Divine Inspiration"
The organization's official history book, Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, made the disclaimer explicit:
"Those who make up the one true Christian organization today do not have angelic revelations or divine inspiration. But they do have the inspired Holy Scriptures, which contain revelations of God's thinking and will."[9]The same year, Awake! of March 22, 1993, added: "Their writings are not inspired as are those of Paul and the other Bible writers."[11]
2010s — "Not Inspired… Not Infallible"
The disavowal continues in current literature. A modern publication distributed to Witnesses states of the Governing Body:
"They are not inspired by God and hence are not infallible, but they rely on God's infallible Word as the highest authority on earth."[10]The rhetorical maneuver is consistent across all these later statements: the failed predictions are recast as sincere but fallible "expectations," never as prophecy in the biblical sense — and therefore, the organization argues, the false-prophet charge simply does not apply. This is closely tied to the doctrine of "new light," the mechanism by which reversed teachings are presented as progressive revelation rather than error (see [[new-light-rationalization]]).
The Contradiction Laid Bare
The difficulty is not that the organization changed a doctrinal detail. It is that the same body claimed two mutually exclusive things about its own nature:
- In 1959 it asked "Who made them a prophet?" and answered by comparing itself to Jeremiah.[2] In 1993 it declared it does "not have… divine inspiration."[9]
- In 1972 it identified itself as the "modern-day Ezekiel," the "prophet" Jehovah "raised up."[4] In 1986 it insisted "prophet" "does not necessarily mean that he predicts the future."[8]
Applying the Watchtower's Own Test: Deuteronomy 18:20-22
The sharpest measure of this contradiction is the standard the Watchtower itself uses to judge others. The organization's own publications cite Deuteronomy 18:20-22 as the definitive test of a false prophet. That passage reads, in the New World Translation:
"However, the prophet who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded him to speak … that prophet must die. And in case you should say in your heart: 'How shall we know the word that Jehovah has not spoken?' when the prophet speaks in the name of Jehovah and the word does not occur or come true, that is the word that Jehovah did not speak."[12]The Watchtower has repeatedly applied exactly this reasoning against rival faiths. Awake! of October 8, 1968 — during the very build-up to the 1975 expectations — declared:
"True, there have been those in times past who predicted an 'end to the world,' even announcing a specific date. … The 'end' did not come. They were guilty of false prophesying. … Missing from such people were God's truths and the evidence that he was guiding and using them."[7]The organization's Reasoning From the Scriptures handbook and other publications teach the same principle: a genuine prophet of God is right every time, because Jehovah does not err; a prophet whose predictions fail thereby proves he was never speaking for God.[13]
By this standard — the Watchtower's own — the record is difficult to reconcile with the organization's claims:
- 1914 was promoted for decades as the year of the end of the present order; when the year passed, the meaning of the date was repeatedly revised (see [[607-bce-1914]]).
- 1925 was, per The Watchtower of the era, "definitely settled by the Scriptures" as the year of the resurrection of the ancient worthies — an expectation that failed.
- 1975 was promoted through the late 1960s and early 1970s as a probable date for the end of six thousand years of human history, with the clear implication that the end was near; it too failed.
The Watchtower's Defense — and the Counter-Evidence
The organization's defense rests on a single distinction: it says it never claimed inspiration, only sincere interpretation, and therefore its errors are the honest mistakes of imperfect men, not false prophecy. It compares itself to the apostles, who at times misunderstood prophecy, and asks for patience as understanding is "refined."[1]
Three points weigh against this defense:
- The organization did claim the prophet title, in plain language, for decades. The 1959, 1964, and 1972 statements do not read as tentative interpretation; they read as claims to be God's appointed prophet, demanding obedience "as… to the voice of God."[6]
- The distinction between "inspired prophecy" and "prophecy made in Jehovah's name" is absent from the test the Watchtower applies to others. When Awake! condemned other date-setters in 1968, it did not first ask whether they had claimed inspiration; it condemned them simply because their predicted end "did not come."[7]
- The mainstream Christian and scholarly view generally holds that the biblical false-prophet test turns on outcome, not on whether the speaker used the specific word "inspired." On that view, an organization that speaks confidently in God's name and is proven wrong cannot exempt itself merely by later declining the label.
See Also
- The 1914 Earthquake Claim: A Statistic the Watchtower Deleted
- 'New Light': How the Watchtower Explains Away Its Reversals
- 'This Generation' — Six Contradictory Definitions
- Complete Timeline of Watchtower Prophecy Failures
- Major Doctrinal Reversals — Complete Registry
- Political Neutrality — Voting, Military & Nationalism
References
1. ↩ "Discussion of Watchtower Claims to Be Jehovah's Prophet," JWfacts.com (survey of Watchtower prophet claims, denials, and the Deuteronomy 18:20 index record). [jwfacts.com]
2. ↩ The Watchtower, January 15, 1959, pp. 39–41 ("Who made them a prophet… Well, who made Jeremiah a prophet?"). [jwfacts.com]
3. ↩ The Watchtower, October 1, 1964, p. 601 ("God has on earth today a prophetlike organization"). [jwfacts.com]
4. ↩ "'They Shall Know That a Prophet Was Among Them,'" The Watchtower, April 1, 1972, pp. 197–199. [wol.jw.org]
5. ↩ The Watchtower, April 1, 1972, p. 197 ("the modern-day Ezekiel, the 'prophet' commissioned by Jehovah… to give warning to Christendom"). [wol.jw.org]
6. ↩ The Watchtower, June 15, 1957, p. 370 ("respond to the directions of the 'slave' as we would to the voice of God"). [jwfacts.com]
7. ↩ Awake!, October 8, 1968, p. 23 ("They were guilty of false prophesying… Missing from such people were God's truths"). [jwfacts.com]
8. ↩ Awake!, June 8, 1986, p. 9 (redefining "prophet"; "does not necessarily mean that he predicts the future"). [jwfacts.com]
9. ↩ Jehovah's Witnesses—Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1993), p. 708 ("do not have angelic revelations or divine inspiration"). [jwfacts.com]
10. ↩ Jehovah's Witnesses—Unitedly Doing God's Will Worldwide, p. 26 ("They are not inspired by God and hence are not infallible"). [jwfacts.com]
11. ↩ Awake!, March 22, 1993, p. 4 ("Their writings are not inspired as are those of Paul and the other Bible writers"). [jwfacts.com]
12. ↩ Deuteronomy 18:20-22, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. [wol.jw.org]
13. ↩ "False Prophets," Reasoning From the Scriptures / Watchtower Online Library (the organization's own definition of the false-prophet test). [wol.jw.org]
