1 Peter 4:16
1 Peter 4:1616But if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but glorify God that you bear that name.
("if he suffers as a Christian, let him not feel shame, but let him keep on glorifying God in that name") is cited in Watchtower publications on persecution and endurance, but the verse's elevation of "Christian" as the divinely given name of the disciple is typically handled without engaging its implications for the name "Jehovah's Witnesses" adopted at Rutherford's 1931 Columbus convention. Peter treats "Christian" — the name first given at Antioch () — as the identity marker Christians are to glorify God by bearing.
Peter's line anchors a simple historical question. The Bible names the disciples "Christians" ( — "the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch"), and the NWT study notes themselves acknowledge the Greek verb chrēmatizo indicates divine origin. then treats "Christian" as the identity to glorify God with. The name "Jehovah's Witnesses" was adopted on 26 July 1931 at a convention in Columbus, Ohio — a human organisational decision, not an apostolic designation. 's "you are my witnesses" is God addressing national Israel, not a twentieth-century organisation. Use as a gentle prompt: is the apostolic name the one Peter told his readers to bear, or the one adopted in 1931? Combine with the early-church-fathers chain (Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus) — men taught by the apostles or their immediate successors who called themselves Christians and confessed Christ as God. The question is not whether the organisation cares about God's name but whether its continuity claim can survive Peter's own naming.