Revelation 3:14
Revelation 3:1414To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Originator of God’s creation.
is one of the Watchtower's flagship texts for arguing that Jesus is a created being. The NWT's "the beginning of the creation by God" is read as identifying Christ as the first of God's creations — the Logos through whom God then made everything else. Combined with ("the firstborn of all creation"), the verse anchors the JW Christology that Jesus is the highest-ranking creature but not God himself.
The Greek hē archē tēs ktiseōs tou theou is a possessive genitive: "the beginning [or 'ruler', 'origin'] of God's creation." The phrase identifies Christ as the source or sovereign of creation, not as a creature within it. The Greek word archē carries the senses "beginning, origin, ruler, first principle" — uses the same word of Christ as "the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might be preeminent." Read together with ("all things came into being through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into being") and ("by him all things were created... all things have been created through him and for him"), the verse confirms Christ's role as the one through whom and for whom creation exists, not as the first item inside it.
The NWT renders the genitive tou theou as "by God" — an instrumental or agency reading — rather than the natural possessive "of God" or "of God's creation." Every major English translation reads "the beginning of God's creation" (ESV) or "the beginning of the creation of God" (NASB, KJV). The genitive case in Greek defaults to possession, not agency; reading it as instrumental requires a preposition the Greek does not have. The choice tilts the verse toward identifying Christ as the first product of God's creating rather than the source of God's creation. The Watchtower's own Kingdom Interlinear glosses tou theou with the literal "of the God" beneath the line — but the smooth column reads "by God." The translation does the doctrinal work the Greek refuses to do.