Exchanging proof text with JWs is not easy. But here are portions of CAF provided tracts addressing the differences in their understanding of the verses you are discussing.
From CAF tracts on JWs:
Was Christ Created?
- “Christ was the first of God’s creations.” Verses cited by Witnesses in support of this claim include: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15). “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen [Christ], the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation’” (Rev. 3:14).
In the first of the two verses, Witnesses think that “first-born” implies succession and inferiority. But the title “first-born” refers to Christ’s place as the chief and unique Son of God (cf. Rom. 8:29).
Further, the Greek of this verse can also be translated as “the first-born over all creation,” as in the New International Version of the Bible.
Regarding the second verse from Revelation, it’s hard to see how it helps the Witnesses at all. It merely says Christ was the source of creation. This implies Christ is divine, since God created everything.
The fact that there was no time when the Son did not exist is indicated in John 1:1–3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” This passage also shows that the Son is not a creature because all created things were made through him, and no created things were made except through him.
The God of the Jehovah’s Witnesses
One of the most unique doctrines the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach is that Christ, both before he came to Earth and since he has returned to heaven, was and is Michael the Archangel. To argue this, the Witnesses use 1 Thessalonians 4:16: “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding call, with an archangel’s voice and with God’s trumpet.” (Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from the New World Translation [NWT] of the Bible, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the parent organization for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.) From this verse the Witnesses conclude that the Lord Jesus Christ is an archangel because he has “an archangel’s voice.” No other denomination has ever come up with such a conclusion, because every other denomination has concluded that the return of the Lord will simply be heralded by an archangel. But let’s continue with the Witnesses’ argument.
They identify the archangel as Michael from Jude 9: “But when Michael the archangel had a difference with the devil and was disputing about Moses’ body, he did not dare to bring a judgment against him in abusive terms, but said: ‘May Jehovah rebuke you.’” How does this identification work? According to Reasoning from the Scriptures, one of the manuals Witnesses use in door-to-door evangelization, “the expression ‘archangel’ is never found in the plural in the scriptures, thus implying there is only one” (page 218).
Actually, 1 Thessalonians 4:16 suggests an arch-angel’s voice, not to the archangel’s voice, implying there is more than one archangel. The Greek definite article (Greek’s equivalent of “the”) simply is not in the text. (The definite article is used in Jude 9, but there it serves to identify which Michael is being talked about—the Michael who is an archangel. In that context, it no more implies that there is only one archangel than talking about “Smokey the Bear” implies that there is only one bear.)
Reasoning from the Scriptures claims that “the evidence indicates that the Son of God was known as Michael before he came to earth and is known by that name since his return to heaven where he resides as the glorified spirit Son of God” (page 218). The Bible contains little evidence concerning such a strange claim, but what little evidence there is argues against the Witnesses’ position
Look at Hebrews 1:5: " . . . [T]o which one of the angels did he [God] ever say: ‘You are my son; I, today, I have become your father’?" This suggests the Son of God can’t be an angel (or an archangel, since “archangel” simply means “high ranking angel”), because it was to the Son that the Father said, “I have become your father.”
Even the Jehovah’s Witnesses, in their own, backhanded way, recognize this. Look at their translation of verse 6: “Let all God’s angels do obeisance to him,” referring to the Son. The Witnesses want you to think the angels do obeisance to the (sole) archangel, but they know this isn’t what the verse really says. Until 1970 the NWT didn’t use the word “obeisance.” Until then verse 6 read this way: “Let all God’s angels worship him” (italics added). Angels don’t worship an archangel, who, after all, is just another creature. They worship God (Rev. 19:9-10, 22:8-9). When the NWT was first made, this verse slipped by the translating committee and effectively undercut the Witnesses’ assertion that Christ is really Michael.
