Another Gospel? What the Good News Is — and Why It Is Not Merely the Announcement of a Government
by Richard Whiting

© 2026 Richard Whiting. All rights reserved. May be reproduced in whole, with attribution. See the full notice at the end of this article.

I. A Curse on “Another Gospel”

There are few sterner words in all of Paul's letters than the ones he writes, white-hot, to the Galatians: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8–9). Twice in two verses Paul pronounces the anathema. He will not soften it even for himself, even for an angel. Whatever else this tells us, it tells us that the content of the gospel is not a matter of indifference. To get it wrong is not a minor error of emphasis; it is to fall under a curse.¹

That is why the question “What is the gospel?” is worth asking with care, and why it is the right question to put to the Jehovah's Witnesses. For the Watchtower has a very definite and very public answer. The “good news” its eight million members carry from door to door, in more than a thousand languages, is, in their own words, “the good news of God's Kingdom” — and by this they mean something quite specific: the announcement that God's heavenly government was established in the year 1914 and will soon rule the earth. The question this essay asks is whether that is the gospel the apostles preached — or whether it is, in a subtle but serious way, another gospel.

Let me say at the outset what this essay does not claim. It does not claim that the Kingdom of God is unimportant, or that Jesus did not preach it, or that the Watchtower invented it. The Kingdom is gloriously real, and Jesus made it the theme of his preaching; on that, a Catholic and a Witness can agree. The claim is narrower and, I think, decisive: that the Watchtower has reduced the gospel to the announcement of a government, and in doing so has moved the center of the good news away from where the apostles fixed it — the person of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for our salvation.

II. What “Good News” Meant

The word translated “gospel” is the Greek euangelion, “good news.” It is an old word, and it carries an Old Testament freight that matters here. When the prophet Isaiah looked for the day of redemption, he described a herald running over the mountains with good tidings: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings … who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Isa. 52:7). “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings … say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’” (Isa. 40:9–10). The good news, in Isaiah, is double: that God reigns, and that God himself comes.²

This is the very passage Jesus takes up. In the synagogue at Nazareth he unrolls the scroll to Isaiah 61 — “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” — and then says the astonishing thing: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18–21). Notice what has happened. The good news Isaiah promised is no longer merely a future reign; it has become a present person. The herald and the message have converged: the one who brings the good news is himself the content of it. From the very first, the gospel is inseparable from the Anointed One in whom it is fulfilled.

III. The Kingdom Is Real — but What Is It?

It must be granted, and gladly, that Jesus preached the Kingdom. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). The Watchtower is right to insist that the Kingdom was central to Jesus' message, and a Christian who never mentioned the Kingdom would be preaching a truncated gospel of his own.³

But everything depends on what the Kingdom is. And here the New Testament gives an answer the Watchtower's definition cannot contain. The Kingdom is not, in the first place, an administrative arrangement to be installed at a future date. It is the active reign of God breaking into history in the person of the King himself. “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons,” Jesus says, “then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). “The kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:21) — because the King was standing in their midst. The Kingdom is wherever the King reigns; and the King reigns, first of all, from a cross and an empty tomb, and then in the hearts he reconciles to God. To ask “what is the Kingdom?” and answer only “a government established in 1914” is to describe the throne while saying remarkably little about the One who sits on it, and how he came to reign.

IV. The Watchtower's Gospel: An Announcement Dated 1914

Consider how the Watchtower itself defines its good news. “This good news of the kingdom,” it explains, “means the fresh, brand-new information that tells of God's established kingdom” — and the specific, vital thing “now added to the good news” is “the birth of God's Messianic kingdom in the heavens … in 1914.” In another place it states the matter with admirable clarity: “the good news is about the Kingdom, or government, by God that will eliminate all wickedness and then rule over all the earth in peace.”⁴

Read those definitions slowly, and notice what is at the center and what is at the edge. At the center is information about a government and a date. The good news is news about an administration — that it was born in heaven in a certain year, that it will shortly act, that the nations must be put on notice. Jesus is present in this scheme, to be sure: he is the King installed over the government, and his ransom is the legal basis on which its blessings become available. But the thing preached, the content carried from door to door, is the establishment and imminent action of the Kingdom-government. The cross is in the background as a transaction; the crucified and risen Lord is not himself the burden of the proclamation.

And so a fair question presses: when Paul preached the gospel — the gospel he would curse an angel for contradicting — did he preach the establishment of a government in a calculated year? Or did he preach something, and Someone, else?

V. The Apostles' Gospel: A Person, Crucified and Risen

We are not left to guess, because Paul tells us twice, in so many words, what his gospel was. At the head of his letter to the Romans he describes himself as “set apart for the gospel of God … the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power … by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 1:1–4). The gospel, by Paul's own definition, is “concerning his Son.” Its content is a person — his identity (the Son of God), his humanity (descended from David), his resurrection, his Lordship.⁵

And when Paul sets out to remind the Corinthians of “the gospel … in which you stand, by which you are saved,” he names its content “of first importance”: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day … and that he appeared” (1 Cor. 15:1–5). There it is, the irreducible core of the apostolic preaching — what scholars call the kerygma — and there is not a word in it about a government installed at a future date. Its four beats are died, buried, raised, appeared. The center of gravity is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins.⁶

Turn to the preaching in Acts, and the same center holds. Luke summarizes the apostles' daily work as “teaching and declaring the good news about the Christ” (Acts 5:42) — the phrasing is the Watchtower's own translation. Philip “preached the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12); the two are named together, the King with his Kingdom. Paul describes his whole ministry as “to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). The apostles did preach the Kingdom — but the Kingdom they preached was never separable from the crucified and risen King whose grace opens it.⁷

VI. Good News About the King, Not Only the Government

Here, then, is the heart of the difference, and it can be put in a single sentence. The Watchtower preaches good news about a government; the apostles preached good news about a King — his death for our sins, his resurrection, his Lordship, and the reconciliation with God that he accomplished. The two are not unrelated; the King has a Kingdom, and the Kingdom has a King. But which is the center makes all the difference, because it determines what is actually proclaimed, and what the hearer is actually asked to believe in order to be saved.

Paul will not let the center drift. “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23). “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14). For Paul the cross is not a transaction in the background that makes a future government legally possible; it is the saving heart of the message, the very thing he glories in and preaches. A “gospel” that keeps the cross on the books as a necessary mechanism, while making the burden of its preaching an administrative announcement, has quietly moved the center Paul refused to move.⁸

And the apostolic gospel announces something already accomplished, not merely something scheduled. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19); he has “made peace by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20); in Christ “you who once were far off have been brought near” (Eph. 2:13). The Kingdom is entered now, by reconciliation with God in Christ — “he has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). Where the Watchtower's good news points forward to a government that will soon act, the apostles' good news points to a salvation that has acted — decisively, on a hill outside Jerusalem, and at an empty tomb.⁹

VII. Faith Working Through Love

What, then, does the true gospel ask of the one who hears it? Paul answers in the same letter in which he hurls the anathema. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). The gospel does not ask for the bare transfer of information, nor for membership in an organization, nor for a program of works performed to earn a future place. It asks for faith — a living trust in the person of Christ — a faith that is not inert but works through love.¹⁰

This is the formula the Catholic Church has always confessed, and it stands as a quiet rebuke to two opposite errors. Against any gospel of works — of earning, of qualifying, of measuring up — Paul insists the avail is faith. But against any gospel of mere mental assent — of “accepting facts,” of believing the right information about a government and a date — he insists the faith that avails is faith working through love. The good news is not a bulletin to be acknowledged. It is a Person to be trusted and loved, and a life to be transformed by that love. “This is eternal life,” Jesus prayed, “that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3) — not first that they relocate to a paradise, but that they know God in Christ, a knowing that begins now and is consummated in the vision of God.¹¹

VIII. Why the Difference Is Not a Quibble

Someone may object that this is a distinction without a difference — that the Watchtower believes in Jesus' death and resurrection too, and merely emphasizes the Kingdom. But the objection underestimates how much rides on what is placed at the center, and Paul's anathema shows that he, at least, did not think such things were quibbles.

Three consequences follow from putting a government, rather than the crucified and risen Lord, at the center. First, it changes what is preached: the message carried from door to door becomes the announcement of an administration and a date, rather than “Christ crucified.” Second, it changes what salvation is: salvation becomes survival into an earthly paradise under a coming government, rather than reconciliation with God and the knowledge of him, begun now in Christ. Third, it changes what faith is: faith becomes the acceptance of correct information mediated by an organization, rather than a personal trust in the Lord himself that works through love. None of these is a small shift. Together they describe a gospel with a different center, a different salvation, and a different act of faith — which is precisely the kind of difference Paul was willing to pronounce a curse upon.

It should be said plainly, and charitably, that this is not to accuse Jehovah's Witnesses of insincerity, or to deny that they love the Scriptures and proclaim them at real personal cost. It is to say that zeal in carrying a message does not, by itself, make the message the apostolic gospel — and that the most loving thing one can do for a sincere Witness is to ask, with him, the question Paul makes unavoidable: is the good news you carry the good news Paul preached, with Christ crucified and risen at its center? Or has the King been quietly moved to the edge of his own Kingdom?

IX. Conclusion: The Gospel That Saves

The gospel is good news — the best news — and it is news about the Kingdom of God. On that the Catholic and the Witness agree. But the Kingdom of God is the reign of God in the person of his Son; and the good news of that Kingdom is, in the apostles' own words, the good news about the Christ: that the Son of God, descended from David, died for our sins, was raised on the third day, and is Lord; that in him God was reconciling the world to himself; and that everyone who turns to him in faith working through love is, even now, transferred out of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son.¹²

That is the gospel the Catholic Church has guarded and proclaimed for two thousand years, the gospel for which the apostles died, the gospel Paul would not exchange even at the word of an angel. Any “good news” that keeps the Kingdom but loses the centrality of the crucified and risen King — that preaches the government and mutes the Lord, that defers salvation to a coming administration and reduces faith to the acceptance of a date — is, however sincerely carried, a gospel with its heart removed.

And against just such a substitution, however well-meant, Paul set his twofold curse. The remedy is not a better government or a more accurate date. It is the Person himself: “We preach Christ crucified … the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:23–24). “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). That Word — incarnate, crucified, risen, and reigning — is himself the good news. To preach him is to preach the gospel. To preach anything in his place, however true and glorious in its own right, is to risk preaching another.

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good … who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

— Isaiah 52:7

Copyright and Distribution

© 2026 Richard Whiting. All rights reserved.

This essay may be reproduced and distributed freely, in printed or electronic form, provided that it is reproduced in whole and without alteration, and that the author's name is retained. Excerpts may be quoted in reviews, scholarly works, or other writings consistent with fair use, with attribution. For any other use, including translation, adaptation, or partial republication beyond fair use, please contact the author.

Endnotes

1. Galatians 1:6–9. Paul pronounces anathema (“let him be accursed”) twice — the only place in his letters where he repeats the curse — against anyone, even an apostle or “an angel from heaven,” who preaches “a gospel contrary to” the one the Galatians received. The gravity of the warning is itself evidence of how much turns on getting the content of the gospel right. ↩
2. The Greek euangelion (“good news, gospel”) translates the Hebrew basar of Isaiah's “glad tidings.” See Isaiah 40:9–10; 52:7; 61:1–2, where the good news is that “Your God reigns” and that the Lord himself comes “with might.” Jesus applies Isaiah 61:1–2 to himself in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16–21), declaring, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The good news is from the first inseparable from a person: the Anointed One in whom it is fulfilled. ↩
3. Mark 1:14–15; Luke 4:43; 8:1. Jesus genuinely preached “the gospel of God” and “the good news of the kingdom,” and the Kingdom is no Watchtower invention — it is a central category of his teaching, and the Catholic Church confesses it in the Creed (“his kingdom will have no end”) and in the Lord's Prayer (“thy kingdom come”). The Catechism treats the Kingdom at length: see Catechism of the Catholic Church §§541–560. The dispute is therefore not over whether the Kingdom belongs to the gospel — it does — but over what, and who, the Kingdom is. ↩
4. The Watchtower defines “this good news of the kingdom” (Matt. 24:14) as “the fresh, brand-new information that tells of God's established kingdom” — specifically “the birth of God's Messianic kingdom in the heavens at the end of the Gentile Times in 1914” (The Watchtower, cited from the Watchtower Online Library, “What Now Distinguishes the Good News to Be Preached”). Elsewhere it states plainly that “the good news is about the Kingdom, or government, by God that will eliminate all wickedness and then rule over all the earth in peace” (“The Kingdom Good News — What Is It?”). The 1914 chronology rests on the Society's reading of the “seven times” of Daniel 4 and is treated on the Authority and Last Days pages of this site. ↩
5. Romans 1:1–5. Paul opens his greatest letter by defining the gospel he was “set apart” to preach: “the gospel of God … concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power … by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” The content of the gospel is a person, and the response it seeks is “the obedience of faith … among all the nations.” ↩
6. 1 Corinthians 15:1–5. Paul states “the gospel … in which you stand, by which you are saved,” and gives its content “of first importance”: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day … and that he appeared.” This is the apostolic kerygma — the irreducible core of the good news — and its center is the death and resurrection of Christ, not a date or a government. ↩
7. In Acts the apostolic preaching is summarized again and again as “the good news about Jesus” or “about the Christ”: “they continued without letup teaching and declaring the good news about the Christ” (Acts 5:42, NWT); Philip “preached the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12); Paul “testifying … to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). Notably, the Watchtower's own translation of Acts 5:42 reads “the good news about the Christ” — the apostles preached the King, not merely the government. ↩
8. 1 Corinthians 1:23; 2:2. “We preach Christ crucified … For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Galatians 6:14: “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” A gospel in which the cross is reduced to a transaction enabling a future government, rather than proclaimed as the saving heart of the message, has shifted the center Paul refused to move. ↩
9. 2 Corinthians 5:18–21; Colossians 1:19–20; Ephesians 2:13–16. The gospel announces reconciliation — that God was “in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” making peace “by the blood of his cross.” The Kingdom the gospel proclaims is entered now, by reconciliation with God in Christ; it is not merely a government to be installed later. The Watchtower's framing tends to defer the good news to a coming administration, where the apostolic good news is that in Christ the decisive act of salvation has already occurred. ↩
10. Galatians 5:6. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (RSV). The same letter that anathematizes “another gospel” states positively what the true gospel produces: not bare assent, and not works apart from grace, but faith that works through love — the formula the Catholic Church has always confessed against both legalism and a faith conceived as mere intellectual agreement. See Catechism of the Catholic Church §1814 (faith) and §§1826–1829 (charity as the form of the virtues). ↩
11. John 17:3; 3:16; 20:31. “This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” John writes his Gospel “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.” Eternal life is framed not first as residence in an earthly paradise but as knowing God in Christ — a communion that begins now and is consummated in the vision of God. ↩
12. On the gospel as the proclamation of the person and saving work of Christ, see Catechism of the Catholic Church §§422–429 (“The Good News: God has sent his Son”), and on the Kingdom inaugurated in Christ and consummated at his return, §§541–556, 668–682. Dei Verbum 17 calls the Gospel “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith,” centered on Christ himself. ↩