I returned to speak to the Jehovah’s Witness elder, as I mentioned in a previous post. It did not go as expected, for either of us – but God was, I think, glorified.
I believe that I was not, perhaps, honestly represented to this man by the people I talked to previously – so he got something unexpected, as well. He seemed to be under the impression that I was there to confront him about my children being part of his religion. There is an element of that, to be sure – but my primary goal was to take advantage of the opportunity to speak to their teacher. I was asked to speak to the young man previously – as I was asked to speak to this elder. My goal was, first and foremost, to faithfully present the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Hopefully, I was able to impress that point upon him during our conversation, which only lasted about 45 minutes. I hope and pray that God was glorified through it.
I started out with a summary of JW doctrines I requested from Dr. White some time back, which reads as follows:
There is one true God, Jehovah; He is eternal and unchanging. His name is very important to know, and to use. He has revealed Himself in Scripture as Jehovah. His first and greatest created thing is Michael the Archangel – in fact, Michael is the one through whom all other things are made. He is the master worker. He is the only direct creation of Jehovah God. It is only through Michael that all other things have been created. Michael then becomes the man Jesus Christ.
The man Jesus Christ does not have a spirit, in the sense of some other spiritual component. We possess a soul, that is the life force within us. It does not survive death as a disembodied spiritual essence. This one, Michael, becomes Jesus of Nazareth, who gave his life on a torture stake as a corresponding ransom for the sins of Adam, and he is one of the 144,000. The 144,000 are those who will be with Jehovah in heaven, and Jesus is one of that anointed class. The rest of God’s faithful servants are known as “the great crowd” – they have not what is called a “heavenly hope”, as the 144,000 have, but what is known as a “earthly hope” – they hope to live on a paradise earth. The Bible teaches that God created the earth to be inhabited, and after it is cleansed, this will be the place where the great crowd will live.
Those who are in heaven, are in the new covenant, and those who live on earth receive the benefits of the new covenant only in and through their obedience to and fellowship with the anointed class. Once a year, the witnesses gather together for the memorial supper, and during that memorial supper, the elements are passed throughout the room in remembrance of Jesus – yet in the vast majority of congregations, no one will partake. Only those who partake are those who claim to be of the heavenly, or anointed class, and those who partake are demonstrating that they are part of the new covenant. All others in the great crowd let it pass by, because they are not a part of the new covenant.
A day is coming when Armageddon will take place, the faithful will be removed from the earth, God’s wrath will fall upon the earth, and those who have not followed Jehovah’s ways will be destroyed. Then a millennium is ushered in where those who have died before this time period will be resurrected, and they are taught the ways of God. This is not a sudden resurrection, but a resurrection over time. The servants of God will teach them the ways of Jehovah, and at the end of that time, there is a test. Even the faithful Jehovah’s Witnesses who are on earth at that time will be tested. Those who do not pass the test of faithfulness will be destroyed.
There is no conscious punishment for sin, there is simply destruction, or annihilation. Those who pass the test will live forever in paradise on earth – even though, the option is held open that if ever evil is found among those on earth, they will be very quickly destroyed, that this evil does not spread. Jehovah’s witnesses are very focused upon evangelism, very focused on going door to door, in obedience to the commands of Scripture. There is one organization that speaks for Jehovah today. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, centered in Brooklyn, New York, directed by the governing body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – the “faithful and discreet slave”, that gives meat in due season to the members of the household, and one only finds true spiritual nourishment by listening to what is given them by the governing body of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
There were 6 things objected to in that summary, which I hope to rectify soon. Those were:
1) “The man Jesus Christ does not have a spirit, in the sense of some other spiritual component. We possess a soul, that is the life force within us.”
2) “and he is one of the 144,000…and Jesus is one of that anointed class.”
3) “The rest of God’s faithful servants are known as ‘the great crowd'”
4) “the faithful will be removed from the earth”
5) “even though, the option is held open that if ever evil is found among those on earth, they will be very quickly destroyed, that this evil does not spread.”
6) “There is one organization that speaks for Jehovah today. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, centered in Brooklyn, New York”
I’ll address what I’ve discovered as to the possible inaccuracies in that statement, perhaps in a following post, but I wanted to share the fruit of that discussion.
As we continued to speak, I asked him to tell me what the Gospel is. I was given the predictable response “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” – which, while true, is not the entirety of the Gospel. I then responded by asking if I could give him what I had just taught the children in my 1-6th grade class concerning the Gospel.
A) Man is sinful, God is Holy! (Lev 11:44-45; Gal 3:11)
B) Man is cursed with sin, due to the Fall of Man in Eden. (Gen 2:16-17) Man’s nature is such that he cannot do good.(Eph 2:3)
C) God, however, has a Perfect Way to satisfy His wrath (Rom 1:18) toward sin, and to proclaim His glory (rom 5:2, Rom 15:7).
D) God promised a Redeemer, from the very beginning. (Gen 3:15) The law, and the prophets all point to Him (Rom 3:21)
E) That Redeemer was born to a virgin (isa 7:14), and lived a perfect life in obedience to the law(Heb 7;28)
F) That Redeemer was crucified by the Jews on a Roman cross,(Acts 2:36) in propitiation for – in substitution for (2 Co 5:21)- our sins (1Jo 4:10)
G) That death was the satisfaction – the payment for – the wrath of God. (Rom 3:25) All who believe on Christ will be saved from the Judgement to come. (Rom 5-9)
H) That Redeemer defeated sin, overcame death (Rom 8:3) and proved the reality of His sacrifice’s power by raising Himself from the dead (Acts 17:31; John 2:19)- and now lives always to be the intercessor for His sheep (Heb 7:25)
I) Men come to Christ by the power of God (John 6:44) – by being born again of the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Pe 1:3), by the Repentance (Acts 5:31) and Faith (Rom 12:3, Phil 1:29)that both come as gifts from God – and are foreknown, predestined, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified by the power and for the glory of God. (Rom 8:28-37)
I think I was able to present most of it – and as we talked, he tended to try to direct the conversation to the Trinity argument – which I answered, and then returned to my presentation.
When we got to propitiation, we had a discussion of the atonement, justification, and the nature of man’s sinful state before God that I truly hope was extremely valuable to him. We discussed why the sacrifice had to be God, that there were two essential doctrines that the JWs truly do not properly recognize – sin, and the need for atonement from it. Personal atonement, for personal sin. He brought up the Trinity once, in relation to the early church’s witness – and I shared with him a bit of background concerning their supposed citation of Tertullian, in their book “Should you believe the Trinity?”. I’ve been working on a selection of quotations from those various Fathers, demonstrating that Trinitarian belief was something every major writer affirmed – albeit with lesser or greater degrees of accuracy. I’m also going to send him a rewritten summary, to see if he would consider that unobjectionable.
Hopefully, we can stay in contact – and he looked to be very interested in doing so. May God bless these opportunities in the future 😉
