Johannes Greber

The Watchtower & The Spirit Medium

The Watchtower Society claims that it is God's "sole channel of
communication" . They claim that they alone are in the truth and that the truth they present in the magazines and books cranked out of the WT printing presses by the millions are the means by which Jehovah God has been communicating the "truth" for the last 100+ years.

1. Why would the Watchtower quote the "New Testament Translation" of an ex-Catholic priest whose translation it knew had been gained by "Communications with the Spirit World of God".

In the April 1, 1983 Watchtower', Questions from readers the question was asked . . .

Questions from Readers

"Why, in recent years, has theWatchtower not made use of the
translation by the former Catholic priest. Johannes Greber?"

"This translation was used occasionally in support of renderings of Matthew 27:52,53 and John 1:1, as given in the New World Translation and other authoritative Bible versions. But as indicated in a foreword to the 1980 edition of the New Testament by Johannes Greber. this translator relied on "God's Spirit World" to clarify for him how he should translate difficult passages. It is stated: "His wife, a medium of God's Spiritworld was often instrumental in conveying the correct answers from God's Messengers to Pastor Greber." The Watchtower has deemed it improper to make use of a translation that has such a close rapport with spiritism. (Deuteronomy 18:10-12) The scholarship that forms the basis for the rendering of the above cited texts in the New World Translation is sound and for this reason does not depend at all on Greber's translation for authority. Nothing is lost, therefore, by ceasing to use his New Testament".

  The impression given in this article is that the Watchtower Society did not know that the translation of the New Testament by Johannes Greber had been done with the help of his wife, a spirit medium, and that when they found out they stopped using it.

BUT . . . Is this true? Did the Society not know not know this the entire time they were using for support?

Here are just a few citations to demonstrate the Watchtower's use of Greber's New Testament for support.

   "Very plainly the spirits in which ex-Catholic priest Greber believes helped him in his translation".(W.T. 2/15/56/ p.111).

The translation by Johannes Greber (1937) of these
verses reads as follows: "Tombs were laid open, and . . .
"(Aid to Bible Understanding 1969 p. 1134)


       A report in the Bible, as translated by Johannes Greber,
       says that when Jesus died, "the earth quaked, and the
       rocks were shattered."(W.T. 4/15/76 p. 231)

Also in the 1956 issue of the Watchtower magazine we find the following quote:

       Says Johannes Greber in the introduction of his Greber's Communication Book
       translation of The New Testament, copyrighted
       in 1937: "I myself was a Catholic priest, and
       until I was forty-eight years old had never as
       much as believed in the possibility of
       communicating with the world of God's spirits.
       The day came, however, when I involuntarily
       took my first step toward such communication,
       and experiencing things that shook me to the
       depths of my soul. . .
      .My experiences are related in a book that has
       appeared in both German and English and
       bears the title, Communication with the Spirit
       World: Its Laws and Its Purpose."


So if the Watchtower knew that Greber's Translation had come by way of a spirit medium in 1956 then why use it for support for the next 27 years? If the material in the Society's publications comes from Jehovah and through the Faithful and Discreet Slave? How is it that they used Greber's translation at all?


                  An even bigger question is,


            Is the Watchtower Society the
        Organization that God is using?