Jehovah's Witnesses: Contending for the Faith Conference

I recently did an online conference for the ministry women's Bible study and Lisa Luger had asked me to come on and talk about three topics Mormonism Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholicism so this is one of those videos if you'd like to see all three you could just wait you know on my channel it'll eventually be updated and I will have more details about her ministry and links to that ministry if you'd like to check it out in the video description so thank you to Lisa for letting me upload this content on my channel as well I hope that you find this very beneficial thank you for joining us you guys alright let's just go ahead and start so welcome to everyone for our contending for the faith webinar which is kind of funny because it was never meant to be a webinar originally mike was going to come to Phoenix with his lovely wife and we were going to do a one-day six-part series and cover all three different religions and then the coronavirus hit which kind of kind of sort of ruined our life I think but so we had to cancel it because we can't meet there and so we're doing the next best thing which is the webinar so we're very happy that Mike could join us now if you are joining us for the first time and you don't know anything about us I'm going to tell you a little bit first if you're from Mike's and my name is Lisa litter I teach a women's Bible study in Phoenix Arizona and we videotape weekly studies and then chrome online here is our website right here women's Bible study comm and I'm really mostly showing that to you because we are this is today is two hours of a six-hour thing and so you're gonna need to sign up for additional webinars and that's where you would do it so if you went to women's Bible study comm you clicked on Mike's actually you can put that back up to where the back screen here you'll see our contending for the faith right back up here on our website click on that and then you can you can register for the next to the one on Friday will be on Mormonism and then we'll do Catholicism back in in June 2000 rather like that so so we are very very thrilled to have pastor my clear with a state or so often we have guests come to Bible study and this just seemed like a really important topic that we needed to talk about so I'm going to introduce those of you that don't know Mike I'm going to introduce you to him that's him on the screen so Mike is a pastor one of the pastors at Hosanna Christian Fellowship in Bellflower California and I his main focus is not so much the church but his main focus is pretty much his own personal ministry which here is his logo there you go Bible thinker his Bible thinker dot-org so Mike I'm just gonna have you tell us a little bit about what you do in your ministry so people know know you yeah well the the focus of my ministry is helping people learn how to think biblically about everything and I think that those are the those two words thinking biblically are really the focus that's why Bible thinker you know is that is the name of the website of the ministry the idea is we want to think thoroughly about things carefully about things logically rationally and it's gonna be biblical I don't there is a tendency and sometimes when we deal with apologetics even theology stuff where we just start straying from what actually scripture says about things and not letting it have its weight upon us which it should so yeah thinking biblically about everything I take issues or passages or whole books of the Bible any of those things and I just want to cover them very thoroughly study it a lot and then break it down in a way that's accessible but without dumbing it down and that's that's kind of what I do so I have verse by verse teaching through books of the Bible I have controversial issues that I'll try to cover very carefully and thoughtfully dealing with other religions or in-house debates that Christians have all that kind of thing and all my content is free it's all up it's all totally free it's available on youtube or on my website or on podcast free of charge yeah it's awesome and I look at you as someone who's really changing the face of YouTube because you know everyone always said YouTube is for like the three minute segments and I just think it's so cute cuz you teach for sometimes well over an hour and you do live Q&A s and and and and you have I think the last I checked you were over 128,000 subscribe so it just I'm just like that just tells me that people really really want good strong Bible teaching like what is that really what does the Bible really have to say so I always say you do live q and A's and they give me anxiety because people call in and I'm like I don't know how I would answer that so I'm very proud of you so vitally coorg for those of you mike has a new life and he told me 2.5 cats so you'll have to give us the cat thing all right we have we have two cats that we are living the house and that we take care of and stuff and then we have one cat that's astray just was around the neighborhood very friendly very affectionate cat but was an out-and-out side cat we started feeding this cat and then we went through the season in California where it was just raining constantly so we opened our garage and gave the cat somewhere to stay dry and eventually I cut a little hole in the garage so you had a little cat door to come in and out and now he's like our half cat yeah when I go walk around the block which I do on a regular basis he'll often go walk with me around the block that was before Tiger king was even like a thing so yeah um but your cats are cute they show up on your your your cat cam every so often okay so I have something really funny to show you because I didn't tell you this Mike but when when I first first found you on YouTube this is what I saw can you see that up there I do okay so all your faces I know first time I saw that I liked like wow I think I bet he's very angry and I didn't and so what I did was I clicked on one day and I realized that you are not loud and you were ink not angry this is it I didn't yell okay watch this there you go okay mild mannered and he's kind and smart and all those kind of things yeah and then you started teaching and then you turned into this there you go there you go well that's quite a compliment I was laughing like had no idea like that that was yes you know what I'll tell you though the faces is literally just what seems to work on YouTube it's like how do i how do i package the material so it'll get to people so it'll minister to them and the advice on youtube is don't just have a normal face have like a weird face and so I've tried all kinds of weird stuff even though I find it embarrassing in the attempt to like be all things all people so speak look just make me look skinny that's all I care okay so how we're gonna do this it's gonna be a 2 or 3 to our webinars the first one of course today will be to hold witnesses Friday will be on the Mormon Church so if you you need to go on and register for that if you want to also watch that too once you're done with today you'll you'll love Mike that you'll just have to go and do that and then the third one is of course the Catholic religion now the Catholic will be a little bit different because unlike the Mormon Church and the Jehovah Witness church the Catholic Church does believe in the right Jesus so we're going to go a different way and talk a little bit more about just the religion itself and and what the differences are in the Bible's so now the reason why we're doing this conference is because all of us have Jehovah Witnesses knock on our door we have Mormons knock on our door and the thing is is that they all say they believe in the Bible and if we don't really know the differences in what the Bible actually says then people just assume well of course Mormons are Christians and of course Jehovah Witnesses are Christians and that is the reason for this conference so I want to put a couple verses up really quick first Peter 3:15 on it says let's see what does it say but in your wherever here now we're still on Superman but in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have so that's kind of why we're doing this conference because we want to make sure that we can have an answer for people and then Jude 3 is kind of pretty much what our whole conference is about this was the brother of Jesus he thought it was important beloved while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our comments I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to what contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the Saints so let's talk about us to start there Mike and just talk about those verses and why this is this is even important that we're even doing this yeah well like that verse in Jude Jude verse three is you know contend for the faith there is there is a faith in that phrase the faith is talking about the things that we actually believe it's not just a feeling of faith but actually the doctrines we believe and we're two contender to fight for it now not like a physical fight right but we're two were two basically choose the faith and then defend those truths without compromise it was delivered once and for all to the Saints it's not going to be changed or altered and and our job is to preserve and defend those truths so this is this is hugely important there's just no sense in saying I'm Christian but I won't take a stand on Christian truth this is to be like I've to mine just to confess one thing with my mouth had to live something else with my actual life so yeah that the the truth is the Jesus he's you know he's the way if Jesus is true if he's the truth which every person who claims the name of Christ says he's the truth well he's also the way he says in John 14:6 I'm the way the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me so if there's no one who comes to the Father except through Christ then we really want to make sure people understand who Jesus is and how they can access God through him it's it's of supreme importance there's not really anything more important than that acts 4:12 it says that there is salvation in no one else there's there's salvation and no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved and that would be the name of Jesus we'll talk more about that verse a little bit later but that's that's Jesus it's talking about Peter says to Jesus you alone have the words of eternal life so we're just saying that that we need to allow the truth and the life to be presented as he is the truth and the life and the way there is a confusion about this those some people think that we don't like other religions because we're being rude or intolerant or unkind and that's that's not true at all rather we're saying they don't work that's the problem is the middle word if every path led to God we would just all hold hands and sing Kumbaya and be like awesome but if if this is a false path that doesn't lead through Christ and it doesn't lead to the Father that ends up in hell then out of love out of compassion both for God and for our fellow man we want to say hey look that's that's a one-way dead-end road you don't want to go down that road come down the way the truth and the life you know the true faith that was once and for all delivered to the Saints so we defend that truth and we do it out of compassion and love not out of anger or rudeness or intolerance yeah because I know we want to make sure to get that out there because we don't want people to think we're bashing their religion that's not it we're trying to save their life it's kind of how when you think about this okay so really for week we of course have the Bible which of course we know that it tells us the way to God but my question and this is kind of sounds really weird but so we've had this body of truth for what 1,800 to 2,000 years that you know that and I don't understand how somebody 1800 years after around Jesus and around the time when they were you know writing these things for the for the for the Bible why would somebody just believe something like the Jehovah Witness like oh this is just a new religion and it doesn't make sense to me and we'll do that with Mormonism like I don't understand how people can just one day wake up and go oh there's something new even though Jesus made it so clear to watch out for false teaching yeah but there's an interesting thing in the New Testament where we have warnings about false teachers but we also have affirmation that large numbers of people will follow those false teachers so even the even the scripture affirms this that like yeah there's false teachers but yeah a lot of people will follow them I think one of the downsides for a lot of people is that they just don't know the Bible in the first place yet yet here's the crazy thing they think they do know the Bible I have encounter people all the time with weird beliefs who say I know the Bible and I like to ask them questions like what do you think the book of Hebrews is about Hebrews what where is that old or New Testament oh cause they don't know the Bible they the thing is they've had such a shallow faith for so long they think that that's all there is to Christianity and said they think they know the Bible right so they have beliefs but they're not thoughtful or they're not well understood and they don't understand Scripture but they do have verses individual isolated verses but those verses are often out of context so that creates sort of a lot of a high level of confidence but with a low level of understanding that person is very easy to bring into a cult because then you come to them with challenges and you say well the Trinity is a is a pagan belief that was invented years later you start asking him hard questions about the Trinity how how could Jesus pray to God if you know then he couldn't be God because he was praying well god I can't die and Jesus died and you start asking these hard questions or they say oh the cross is a pagan symbol this is something there's always witnesses teach the cross is a pagan symbol your Christmas celebration is pagan all of your churches are you know ignoring the Bible and and you don't know that this isn't true cuz you don't know the Bible right so it's actually true that most of those who convert to JW's become Jobos witnesses their nominal Christians they're Christians a name but not necessarily in life and the the opposite is also true that a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses who leave the organization they're those not who are Jehovah's Witnesses only a name but they're those who studied more deeply and then they went wait a minute whoa we're completely off the rails compared to what scripture actually says so yeah that it's our it's our shallowness that puts us in danger and that's what I think that's why it was your ministry and our ministry had a lot of new Bible ministries out there it's like we just are desperate to get people to know what the Bible says so we can stand up against you know things that come in our life that some of them is untruth so all right talk to us about how how this religion even started like what does that even look like yeah so this is um this is interesting and this is something where actually there's a there's discussion or debate on this even amongst job as witnesses because their founder is a guy named Charles taze Russell but Charles taze Russell is a very controversial figure and some of their modern beliefs actually disagree with him and so they will often try to say like we don't really he's not really the founder he's just one of the first guys and so they try to kind of distance themselves from him but if you read the literature you see that he was the guy like he's the guy in the past in the 1870s Charles taze Russell started this movement the Jehovah's Witnesses he didn't call it that at first but originally Charles taze Russell he was an Adventist and from them he got his belief in that there is no hell that annihilation is the doctor and there is no hell and he also got a peculiar you know tendency to do in times predictions so the Adventists were teaching that Christ had returned in 1874 invisibly and this is something they taught and later on Russell ends up taking those teachings adapting them and going further Russell teaches that the end of the world was going to happen in 1914 that this is going to be the end of the world and the ushering in of now the kingdom of God he also now they changed that later on they altered that belief now they say 1914 is the invisible presence of Jesus but again those are the alterations over the years he denied the Trinity he said that all the historic Creed's were false there were false teachings like the Apostles Creed things that Christendom is believed forever he says those are all false teachings and that Christianity outside of his little bubble of people who followed his teachings all of Christianity was a tool of the devil so you you start to go okay wow he's getting really far out there he started study groups who called themselves Bible students later they called themselves International Bible Students Association and he was so committed to his task of expounding his views of the Bible his new interpretation of Christianity that he started he sold several businesses there several locations of his father's clothing business that he inherited and he got millions of dollars out of it and started publishing Zions watchtower and Herald of Christ's presence so that sounds familiar because nowadays they're heading out the watchtower magazine well that's what it came from so he felt he founded in 1881 the Watchtower Bible and tract Society now this is a publishing company is what it is and that this is what we have to understand is different than a lot of other religions Jehovah's Witnesses are publishers and they focus on on getting the printed material of the organization out into people's hands that's the focus so initially Russell's little Bible study groups these small groups where he would he would guide them through the Bible and he encouraged them to come together in study scripture but after he wrote some volumes of his of his of his own publications his interpretations of the Bible which he called studies in the scriptures that's an important to remember remember that studies in the scriptures it did six volumes after he started writing these he told his Bible students to stop studying the Bible and to study his writings instead now that's a big shift for them right because now we're moving on to okay we have a special publishing thing and it's kind of replacing the Bible nowadays they continue to produce these types of writings in watchtower and awake magazines that they bring to your door when Jehovah's Witnesses show up in 1910 let me read you some quotes now in fact I've given you these quotes so we can put them on screen in 1910 on in the watchtower page 298 it says the following and look at their attitude towards the Bible versus their attitude towards their writings if the six volumes of scripture studies are practically the Bible topically arranged with Bible proof texts given we might not improperly name the volumes not merely comments on the Bible but they are practically the Bible itself then it goes on on the same page to say furthermore not only do we find that people cannot see the divine plan in studying the Bible by itself but we see also that if anyone lays the scripture studies aside even after he view he's used them after he's become familiar with them after he's read them for 10 years if he lays them aside and ignores them and goes on to the Bible alone our experience shows that within two years he goes into darkness on the other hand if he had merely read the scripture studies with references and had not read a page of the Bible as such he would be in the light at the end of the two years he would have the light of the scriptures so this this quotes really really damning in a sense because they're saying if you read the Bible you won't get our teachings that's what they're admitting so their counseling people you don't need to read the Bible as long as you at least read our teachings and just the verses we quote right out of context then in 1981 that was 1910 in 1981 more recently watchtower August 15th it says that people are wrong if they and here's the quote if they say that it is sufficient to read the Bible exclusively either alone or in small groups at home through such Bible they have reverted right back to the apostate doctrines that commentaries by Christendom is clergy we're teaching a hundred years ago now I think they've admitted more than they wanted to in that quote what they're telling is not only you don't get our teachings from the Bible but they're saying something else if you do read the Bible alone what teachings do you end up with classic Christianity that's their thing right because you revert back to what this clergy were teaching 100 years ago so you're getting classic Christianity if you just read the Bible alone so this is um this is really yes it's horrible that this is this is like the sign of one of the signs of an apparent group right is we're gonna replace ultimately in some fashion replace the Bible with something extra biblical as the new standard for what you're gonna believe so the focus now is on publishing that's what Russell started he started false beliefs false prophecies and he started a new publishing system that's treated like Scripture and it replaces the Bible at least effectively they still have Bibles don't get me wrong but it effectively replaces the Bible for our source of what we believe when Russell died in 1916 there were more copies of his works than nearly any other work in the world I mean there was more of the Bible and more of like the Chinese Almanac but there wasn't much more of anything else than just his works because the whole focus of the watchtower and of Java's witnesses is getting material out getting material out getting their teachings out so it's it's it's new it's novel for eighteen hundred years the church didn't believe these things and then he shows up and replaces the Bible with the watchtower effectively but if I were to join the Jehovah Witness church like what I like because I know we live in a world like what's in it for me like was like okay you get to go door to door and tell people and like well and why would I want to like what is exciting about that well I mean for one thing they create a sense of paranoia about all other churches and Christians because they're saying they're all basically apostates so you feel like oh gosh I'm I'm scared because like I celebrated Easter so I must be apostate which is that's that's that's like internet stuff right there that you see all over the place but other other things they do is they really promote family values they really talk about how they're just talked about they're good people and how they want to you know connect you into a nice community of people so there's a lot of like those are positive things but they're positive things that are like the bait on the hook that is false teaching okay so let's talk about this word cult because we would say Jehovah Witnesses are a cult so what what did you define what that what that means like what is a cult well cult has multiple definitions different ways of using the term cult so in some scholarly circles cult refers to like highly regulated religious practices so they'll actually use the word cult it's weird to normal people but they'll use the word cult to talk about the the sacrifices that took place in the temple in the Old Testament they'll call it the temple cult but they don't mean it the way we mean it right they're using the word in the whole different fashion in Christian theology we've often used the term cult as I as I often do to refer to like major heresy a group that sort of claims to be Christian claims to be classic typical religious group but they're actually a divergent group they're they're they're very different than the thing they claim to be and so there's major heresy false teaching on God's very nature definitely a false teaching on the gospel and they often also have an authority that they're raising up that is going to be over you and is going to be standing in place of the Bible so we see heresy about who God is how we're saved and a new authority these are like the three things that I often see when I when I go okay I'm gonna call that a cult at least from my terminology and then the Bible warns of this the Bible talks about how there would be false Gospels false teachers false apostles and leaders and to me that's what that's what the word cult means cults like saying hey guys that group out there claiming to represent Christ is not representing representing Christ it's it's a false group it's a cult yeah and sometimes there's a mind-control type element that goes on there as well well that's what you said it seems like so they come come on the scene and they're like you know we're kind of like the voice of God and you it's kind of like they're run by a group of men and then they have this leader and it just seems like like that's what a cult seems to be I mean talk to us about that yeah well for Jehovah's Witnesses you know we talked about sort of the historic you know beginnings and how it all got started but at the moment the way it is today there is a group of eight men and they live in New York and these guys are called the governing body now these guys are the highest authority on earth as far as the jehovah's witness is concerned they do two major things they well I'll say three things because one's potential so one is they formulate doctrine so they tell people what they should believe this is what you believe as a Jehovah's Witness two they oversee publishing okay again it's all about publishing the content so they're the ones putting together and overseeing The Watchtower magazine awake magazine and then a bunch of other resources that they put out all the time in fact as a Christian you've got the Bible on your shelf everything else is commentary right and it's not necessary but the Bible is but for the Jehovah's Witness if I were to just put all the literature from Jehovah's Witnesses up over the years I would need I mean I have six bookshelves in my house right there's two behind me I got four more I wouldn't fit it all there's so much there's stuff being published all the time so they oversee that and then they have another function the governing body which is this the Jehovah's Witnesses are expecting the end of the world to begin at any moment and they're taught that one day when the twin it when it begins when Armageddon begins that they have to follow the instructions of these eight men and their life depends on it so there's just like waiting for like marching orders not necessarily to go and fight but maybe okay everybody we're all running into the mountains to hide or we're all gathering and they're just looking for instructions of what to do when Armageddon happens now this sounds creepy to a lot of other people but to a Jehovah's Witness it's exciting because they're looking forward to this so like yeah we can't wait for them to give us those instructions and our life will depend on it they're taught you have to obey them even if what they say sounds weird or irrational this is stuff they're taught but let me let me tell you a little about their authority claims this particular group the governing body we have to understand they're not like they don't serve like a pastor in a church or like like elders in a congregation so we have a couple quotes to put up on the screen here and this is from Watchtower magazine 2013 and this quote says the faithful slave now just you know the faithful slave is is shorthand for the governing body or these eight guys in New York so that that's what they're talking about this is official doctrine in 2012 they defined this very clearly they said the faithful slave the faithful discreet slave is is these eight guys so the faithful slave is the channel through which Jesus is feeding his true followers in this time of the end it is vital that we recognize the faithful slave our spiritual health and our relationship with God depend on this channel so they're there to put it in a more obvious sense they're saying that the governing body is the mediator between God and man instead of Jesus effectively Jesus has been replaced by these eight guys they're the channel through which your spiritual health and relationship with God depend another quote from JW org from November 2012 says the faithful and discreet slave was appointed over Jesus as domestics in 1919 that's just talking about the kingdom of God all true Christians in their mind they're appointed over that slave is the small composite group of anointed brothers serving at world headquarters during Christ's presence who are directly involved in preparing and dispensing spiritual food when this group worked together as the governing body they act as the faithful and discreet slave so you they're essential to your salvation is what that's saying now they they provide access to eternal life according to the Jehovah's Witness teaching and your membership in their organization your obedience to them is totally required so have another quote for you from Watchtower 1981 December 1st page 27 unless we're in touch with this channel of communication that God is using we will not progress along the road to life no matter how much Bible reading we do I mean it couldn't be more clear they're saying that you can't just believe in Jesus you can't just trust in Christ and be saved you have to belong to the organization which means yielding to these eight guys or sometimes they have nine or eight or two or 17 or whatever whoever is currently part of the group one more one more last quote for you and it's in Watchtower 1964 July 15th I'm quoting for anybody who's isn't familiar with this I'm quoting from official sources from the Jehovah's Witnesses here it says what would happen if you don't follow these guys show respect for the faithful and discreet slave that he is using at the present time actually your very life depends on following this course of action remember - it is only he that endures to the end that will be saved so your salvation depends on those guys and your connection with them that's if that's not a cult yeah nothing is that's kind of terrifying this is a weird thought I just had this a lot of Christian churches you think there's some Christian churches that are going down that road where it's like you joined the church and you have to follow this particular leader I mean is that something we need to be worried about too while we're on the subject yeah I think that any any of this like I am of Paul I'm of Apollo's you know that kind of stuff is is a dangerous thing I don't see it personally happening too much but then my my experience in the small number of churches that I happen to you know visit or be acquainted with that doesn't necessarily speak to the world it is human tendency to start putting people in the place of God and that is something we all have to watch out for and it's it is important to what I see more often probably in churches is just pastoral overreach is pastors who just they they think too highly of their own authority and they they overreach and they think too highly of their own discernment they think that the voice of God when they're when that's not what pastor is pastor isn't I'm the voice of God for my church that's not what that means and so there is a there's a responsibility there that sometimes they forget on the other side the church is also sometimes the pastor is basically he's the pep talk or for the church and he doesn't have any authority really no spiritual kind of authority so there's probably errors on both sides right all right talk about Jay Jay Ross and Charles taze Russell there was a something in court that was kind of an issue and if she throw a red flag to people because he lied and that should maybe make if you're a Jehovah Witness maybe that should make you stop and go wow I should probably think twice about this yeah so and this is again this is why they've sort of distanced themselves from Russell a bit in the in the more recent literature and the older literature Russell's like the man God spokes really restored the gospel through Brussels now in the newer literature they're trying to distance themselves a bit but they can't because it just the fat is he started this whole thing and they and they still consider his six volumes studying the Scriptures treated as practically the Bible for hate that's that's what they do well this is so fascinating so there's this guy JJ Ross and he wrote a tract a little pamphlet called some facts about self-styled pastor Charles T Russell where he just ripped on Russell it was ripped on him he says about him that he's deceiving people he's not really a pastor he doesn't really know biblical languages and he's defrauded people out of their inheritance he's talked widows into giving making him the one who would inherit their fortune when they died and that he also had fraudulent business practices that he used a spiritual authority to like buy land that should have been say fifty thousand dollars for like twenty bucks he was he was you know defrauding people well Russell did not like those things at all and so he sued the guy he sued JJ Ross well I think he expected it to go away so JJ Ross according to JD Rossi he writes about the whole lawsuit and the thing that happened what happened is that Russell went to sue him and JJ Ross was like fine let's go to court I'm gonna prove all these things that I've said about you were true and Russell didn't show up in court and then Russell didn't show up again and the court produced a summons like you need to come back to the cut to the country because he left the country and to come back and you just missed it in court and be cross-examined and he didn't want it so he wrote a letter according to Ross saying hey you know what if you'll just apologize to me and tell people you were wrong I'll drop the whole thing and Ross is like no I want to take it to court you wanna sue me let's do this well finally Russell gets onto the stand and it's like a long cross-examination and I want to get my hands on the actual manuscript so it's a real headache I haven't been able to do it but the following is from Walter Martin's the Kingdom of the Colts and he provides us with some of the transcript information that he got from someone inside the watchtower and you can check it out in his book for more details but here's here's a part of the back and forth so the question was asked by the prosecutor or is the defense attorney who says do you know the Greek alphabet and Russell says oh yes and he says can you tell me correct letters if you see them and Russell says well some of them I might make a mistake on some of them now just you know the alphabet is look the most basic thing right I know the Greek alphabet easily easily right now it's it's not it doesn't mean you even know Greek to know the Greek alphabet you were just part of a sorority maybe not much this is not high level of Greek knowledge but he's claiming to have inside Greek knowledge and that's why he can he can tell you that Jesus really isn't God that kind of thing right so he says would you tell me the names of those on the top of the page 447 I've got here and then Russell says well I don't know that I'd be able to then the prosecutor says or the lawyer says you mean you can't tell what letters those are look at them and see if you know some time goes by and the lawyer says are you familiar with the Greek Nate language and Russell says no so under oath the man perjured himself this is significant because and it's not because he it's not like we're just saying Oh Russell has a character flaw so you should reject him that's really not what we're saying we're saying that he claims a new interpretation of Christianity that disagrees with all of church history and seems to disagree with Scripture he tries to support this by saying ah but I know Greek but I've got Hebrew so I'm giving you know I'm pulling the wool out over from your eyes so you can see the truth but under cross-examination it's proven in court the guy doesn't actually know Greek which means that you can't trust his wacky interpretations this is this is a real big deal so he pretended inside knowledge and they still do this today the watchtower is following in Russells footsteps unfortunately and they pretend that they've got insight into Greek that they don't have and they do stuff that makes guys that know Greek just bashed their heads against the wall and they tell their congregation oh but in the Greek this and that and this and that and it's very very manipulative and dishonest Wow all right let's talk about Jesus let's talk about what the Bible says about Jesus and what the Jehovah Witness church teaches because we were talking two completely different things yes okay so you know we know the Christian teaching on Jesus the biblical teaching on Jesus is that He is God and he is with us he's God and man he is truly God and he's truly man both of those things are true about Jesus but in Watchtower teaching Jesus is actually not God he's a created being he didn't always exist he's a created being and he's actually Michael the Archangel he's Michael the Archangel and you let me give an example now this is refuted and lots of places in Scripture but what I'd like to do is share with you one verse they used to support this doctrine and it's 1st Thessalonians 4:16 and this verse says for the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first now that the voice of an archangel that that phrase in the verse there they're saying well if he comes with the voice of an archangel then that means he's an archangel and this is this is the kind of thing that throws Christians off because they're like well I haven't thought that deeply about that verse you know I don't I don't know what to think about it but there's a few things I'll mention really quick for those who might be wondering about this um it says he comes with three things a cry of command the voice of an archangel and the sound of a trumpet is Jesus a command well no he's coming with a cry of command is he is he a trumpet because he comes at the sound of a trumpet does that make him a trumpet no that would be interesting oh so he goes the voice of an archangel why why is that make him an archangel well it doesn't the point is he's being heralded there's a cry of command right perhaps this is from the father the the voice of an archangel well the scripture says he's coming with all the Angels so we know he's he's coming with every angel so with all the good ones anyway and so we would expect Archangels voices to be involved in this and yeah so that that that's a key proof text to them and this is this is to just destroy the deity of Jesus Christ on such shoddy you know handling of the text of Scripture is is really that's what they do a lot unfortunately so they don't believe Jesus like we believe in Jesus so yeah it's a totally different Jesus not even the same person at all so because they because they believe he was Michael how does that play out like like God creates Michael and then yes so they think that God created Michael the Archangel first and then sort of threw Michael made everything else okay so this is because the scripture that says all things were created through him but of course in their translation they say all other things were created through him and so they try to try to they try to force a creation moment for Jesus that never actually happened yeah this is um this is okay so if I take something that's not God and I call it God that's itthat's idolatry right but what if I take God and I say he's not God that's called blasphemy and that's what's happening with Jesus here okay so when when he came and you know Bethlehem and and what is their view on on that they think that Michael became a human so he's an archangel who became a human and then we'll talk about the death of Jesus a little bit more I think but when he died that that man that humanity died and he's never human again after that he's now he's just Michael the Archangel they'll still use the word Jesus to refer to him but they think that physically that's it that's the end of the story for him one of the questions that somebody emailed me originally so I'm going to go ahead and put this up and you can talk about that the question I have is defending the divinity of Jesus Christ I have a Jehovah when his friend who I'm witnessing to and when we discussed the divinity of Jesus she quoted to me John chapter 20 verse 17 with this verse she challenged me by asking why Jesus would call his father his God if he were also gone to her it would seem to contradict that Jesus was God if he didn't if if he himself is ascending to God I'm looking for the best way to respond to this question yes well the the thing that I think maybe the verse that helps us the most excuse me is when we look at John 1:1 okay in John 1:1 it says that the big in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God so this now this is a very careful like the structure in Greek is very careful we're getting deep theology in this verse of John 1:1 so the word is is God but the word is also with God so how can Jesus say that the father is God because he's with God God is not only is he god but he's also with god there's a relational aspect but within the Trinity so the father can be called Jesus's God for two reasons one is the very nature of God is he's tryin there's three persons so he's always with himself so to speak of sloppy terminology but there's father the spirit in center with one another but there's also the fact that Christ comes and he lays aside his glory and becomes a human he's still deity but he's also human so he has now a human relationship with the father and so in that humanity he can speak of the we could pray to the Father he can interact with the father as God but the scripture is also very clear that he's still God because it was the word who became flesh and dwelt among us so does that help I yeah oh it has a with getting a clearer understanding of Jesus both Jesus's humanity and his deity and as long as we don't lay aside either of those truths all the verses makes sense but if you set aside any one of them everything falls apart okay perfect that makes sense all right let's talk about Jesus dying on a stake it's really weird like what is that all about yeah I could go on in this for a long time actually I mean I talk about this for quite a while so you might be like who cares what what shaped the object is that Jesus died on so Christians state was like a cross like this and then Joe was witness to say it was a stake it was just one upright pole but the reason why I think that they do this is because it creates doubt about everything if you think that something you took for granted wasn't true so if you think boy all this time I thought the cross was a cross not a stake and so they'll come to you and they'll say hey we can quote Greek resources we can we can show you from the Greek especially this is all about Greek really that the word style Ross that the New Testament house for cross is actually should be translated stake and in their translation that's how they translate it as a torture stake now to us it doesn't matter okay as a Christian I don't care like I mean Oh change your artwork okay if that's about it that's about the biggest impact it has but the watchtower the reputation is riding on this because they've used this as a major point of showing paganism amongst all other Christians by saying the cross is a pagan symbol you've got to the cross your pagans and this is a big deal to them and the truth is that in the Greek and in history and even Watchtower literature it's a cross not a stake so I have a whole video where I go through tons information on this I'll give you a couple points real quick the the Greek word Stavros it it did originally mean the etymology the origin of the word it meant like an upright stake but over time words change okay so at the time of Jesus the most common use of the word was for a cross not just a stake also our earliest copies of the New Testament they have where the word stauros occurs they have this cool little artsy thing that manuscript guys would do instead of writing style rows they would take the the T and the R or the the tau in the row the two Greek letters that are consonants that are in the middle of the word and they would merge them together into an image and they would just get rid of the vowels so we call this a starter Graham and it's like a it's like a shorthand way of saying like it's that I sort of saying I love you it's but I heart you right we we know what that means so instead of saying star Ross they would put this other symbol and the symbol is a cross when you put these two letters together so from the very earliest Christians they're they're taking for granted that it's a cross in the second century Justin Martyr and the Epistle of Barnabas both talked about how there were two beams where Jesus was in the Gospels we have multiple Gospels that say there was a sign over his head which would imply that there were there were two beams and the watchtower here's the most interesting part the watchtower used to think the cross was real not not not the stake so I've given you guys a couple pictures so let's take a look at those there the first one is from the 1912 watchtower and if you look at the top left of the image you see a crowning cross the Chrono Cross symbol which is something that was really common for Jehovah's Witnesses even up into the 60s they would wear these things as like necklaces and stuff on the on the lighthouse you see multiple crosses okay this is this is the watchtower 1912 they thought there was a cross then but if you go to 1931 you can see that they were still teaching okay here's a 1931 copy this sort of the cross and crown on there they've got the lighthouse although it looks like the crosses have been moved from the lighthouse which is interesting okay but then if you go 15 days later to October 15 1931 the cross is gone that's when the change happened all of a sudden they went wait crosses their pagan and from then on they were teaching hey this is this is a pagan thing we don't want this we don't anything do with this up until then they said it was fine this is a development of doctrine and it's a really useful tool because on the level where people don't really know their theology very well this just freaks them out okay it just freaks about the cross I'm we're going to pay against it you know and it's not true but it's really useful for getting you to distrust your pastors get distrust your Bible translation and then think that the Jehovah's Witnesses are offering you the truth and that's that's the real strategy there okay all right let's talk about this invisible rule like like Jesus is invisibly ruling since what 1914 and why is that a big problem because it kind of is yeah okay well they teach that in 1914 Jesus showed up came back and now he's ruling on earth not in a physical body because they think he has no physical body we'll get into that probably a little bit later more but this the reason why they picked that date 1914 is they have this really complicated calculation based upon different scripture verses and the idea that Jerusalem fell to Babylon in 6 of 7 BC and then they count the years and they go boom 1914 that's when Jesus returns this is actually really really fascinating to study because there is no way on earth Jerusalem fell in 6 or 7 BC it was actually 586 587 BC this was they just didn't know right they were pretending to have knowledge they didn't have they misunderstood history but they based their predictions in their prophecies on a misunderstanding of 607 BC so there's a whole side study you can do on how they tried to like spin history to support their dating but there's a there's a bigger issue here who cares what day Babylon fell in regarding to the return of Christ like this is not important it's irrelevant the nature of Christ's return is what I want to talk about and they say Jesus invisibly returned Scripture in fact Jesus himself directly comments about things like this if someone says that Jesus comes back to not listen so let's put that verse of Matthew 24 verse 23 through 27 says and Jesus himself speaking if anyone says do you look here is the Christ or there he is don't believe it for false Christ's and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead you so as to lead astray if possible even the elect see I have told you beforehand so if they say to you look he's in the wilderness don't go out if they say look he's in the inner rooms that means hidden right he's hidden in some inner room you can't see him he's hidden somewhere don't believe it for the Lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west so will be the coming of the Son of Man in other words everyone will see him another verse that talks about this is revelation 1:7 it says behold he's coming with the clouds and every eye will see him even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him even so amen scripture makes it clear you don't even need to investigate claims about a secret return of Jesus Jesus just says don't believe it if it's secret is not true this is this is the biggest issue with the whole 1914 thing Wow ok let's talk about the resurrection of Jesus because they don't think about it the same way we do yeah not even not even remotely yeah so they celebrate the death of Christ but they don't exactly celebrate his resurrection the same way and they don't think his death accomplished what we think it accomplished it's all it's all similar words of different meanings on Jehovah's Witnesses order JW org they say Jesus was resurrected with a spirit body so he comes as a spirit creature not in the flesh now official teaching of the church is actually conflicted about what actually happened to Jesus's body but so some of it says we don't know what happened but other documents say very clearly this is the this is the verdict Jesus's body was dissolved and God just like dissolved like atomized Jesus's body that's why the tomb was empty that's why they couldn't find him because God just destroyed it and in studies in the scriptures volume 5 remember that's like they're 6 volumes set that started the whole movement it says the man Jesus is dead forever dead now they don't they don't think he didn't rise they think the man the humanity is dead forever gone but look at what scripture says because scripture actually weighs in on this was was the body that Jesus raised in and showed up and was it the same as the body that died so did he physically rise John 2:19 in and for twenty-one it says jesus answered them destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up but he was speaking about the temple of his body so what was he gonna raise up he was gonna raise up the very body that they destroyed Jesus has promised is that he was physically resurrect the same body he was living in on the earth now after his resurrection we have more evidence to support this in John 20 verses 25 through 28 thomas is doubting jesus he says he wants to see jesus and he wants to put his finger into the nail holes in jesus's hands so it says here so the other disciples told him we have seen the lord but he said to them unless I see his hands in his hands the mark of the nails and placed my finger into the mark of the nails and placed my hand into his side I will never believe notice Thomas's request he's like I want to actually touch the holes that were caused by the nails that were on the cross so he doesn't just want to touch any old finger holes right like he wants to touch the actual injuries caused by the crucifixion eight days later it says in verse 26 his disciples were inside again and Thomas was with them although the doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you then he said to Thomas put your finger here and see my hands and put your hand and place it in my side do not disbelieve but believe and Thomas answered my Lord and my god now jehovah's witness teaching says about this that this was a fake body that was fabricated just to make them think Jesus had resurrected in other words Jesus is perpetrating a deception on jehovah's witness teaching but according to the bible he's raising the very body that died that's the body that gets raised up and there's one more piece of evidence i'll throw in there and that is that the the very Jewish idea of resurrection is not spiritual the Jews did not believe in a spiritual resurrection if they said resurrection they meant physical if you were talking about spiritually you know living after you die they would use a different word so just a very word resurrection means physical resurrection Jehovah's Witness teaching denies all that and ultimately denies the resurrection of Christ this terrifies me for just just the people that are involved in this religion like big yeah it's just everything about it just I think it's just a reminder of the importance of making the Bible your final authority like it can't go beyond that you can't say anything beyond that like it's one of the most common things I hear from former Jehovah's Witnesses is how confused they are because imagine if you've been hearing all these false teachings your whole life I mean just thoroughly indoctrinated in scriptures out of context and unbiblical teachings and thinking it's in the name of Jesus and my heart goes out to them because it takes years to undo all the weird teachings that they've you know put into your head yeah that is it does it seems like it takes yeah we'll talk about that in our next webinar but all right we'll make this our last question for just this first session and then one of I saw a question come through us all asking the question for this question but they don't believe is it like for us you know Jesus is an asura salvation like it's just Jesus alone it's not not our works not but they they don't believe that that is apparently because we see them walking around knocking on door so there's a lot of things added to the typical Witness religion that they tell you you have to do to be saved so talk on that yeah so the here's a quote from studies in the scriptures volume 1 page 150 on this topic it says you know about Jesus's death I think we have this for a screen here ok well I'll just read it to you maybe I didn't give it to you it says the ransom for all given by the man Christ Jesus does not give or guarantee everlasting life or blessing to any man they very clearly teach that Jesus is not enough so the question is well then what do you have to do right and they have four requirements and all four of the requirements are anti-christian ultimately anti-biblical the first one is you have to take in knowledge of God and Jesus Christ so take in knowledge of God what does that mean it means that you you stop believing Jesus was God you start believing he's Michael the Archangel you stop believing he resurrected physically you start believing he just spiritually was glorified so you have to take in false knowledge then number two you have to obey God's laws and by God's laws what do they mean did they mean like the Old Testament law no no they mean all the rules that the watchtower gives you to live your life there's a very large number of different rules and policies like they even could trol things like beards and stuff like that i couldn't have this beard if i was that's a lot of guys do when they leave the watchtower they did grow a beard yes finally yeah now they they say number three you have to belong to the Jehovah's Witness organization as we read earlier about the governing body have to belong to them so you have to be an efficient just I have allegiance that I'm have to officially belong beyond the roles and be accepted on the roles and they can threaten to take you off the walls if you don't do what they want and number four you have to have quote loyalty or you have to promote the the JW organization by giving out or selling its material and this is why they go door-to-door it's part of their salvation you have to be an active publisher that's at least an hour a month and you have to submit reports on how many doors you went to and when you were actively out there working you have to attend regular services and all of these are required for salvation this is completely contrary to what Scripture teaches that we were saved by grace through faith and it's not of our own doing it's a gift of God not a result of works so that no one should boast that's Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9 right there on the screen that this is a salvation by grace and Romans 11:6 it tells us that if you add works it's not even grace anymore it's as if by grace then it's no longer of works otherwise grace is no longer grace but if it is of works it is no longer grace otherwise work is no longer work so this is interesting because Paul is like arguing about definitions of words he's like look if you say it's works it's not grace like these are incompatible things I'm either safe freely by Jesus or I add my works in which case I'm saying Jesus your grace isn't enough and so that's why it's a it's so important and I think one of the liberties that Jehovah's Witnesses have when they come to Christ is they go I'm forgiven I didn't I don't earn it I don't do something to to stay in it I I just am given salvation and I live from that place of salvation not for that place of salvation one of the questions that someone wrote in I just saw it as a zoomed by she and I'm there it is my daughter was raised in a Christian home she became a Jehovah Witness as an adult she accepted the Lord as Savior will she be saved like these honestly these are kind of questions on really hard time because I don't know somebody's heart when it comes to trying to predict whether somebody's saved or not we have a clear indication which is do they at least verbally declare the truth of Christ and that they affirm his his identity his death in his resurrection and so if they're like oh I believe in you know Jesus his death in his resurrection and it's the true Jesus well then I at least have a reason to think that they're safe but do I know their heart are they genuine are they one of those who says Lord Lord but Jesus never knew them I don't know that and only the Lord knows in that day so the the question I'd have if I was trying to figure out the answer to this question would be to pull her aside and find out though she says she's Jehovah's Witness does she really believe these doctrines a lot of people don't believe the stuff that their religious group believes right they have their own set of ideas so you might find out where where she where she is in that way but she's definitely in danger right because your hope she's part of a group that clearly teaches a false gospel with a false Jesus and so that all the red flags should be going up and all the efforts should be made in love and grace without anger to try to bring her the awareness of Christ yeah you know it's really because I know Mike the first time I really talked to you on the phone we're talking about something but I was having a meltdown about someone that I was afraid wasn't really a Christian and they said they were a Christian so of course I start crying but you said the coolest thing to me you said you know leave that at some point you have to put you have to add another box to your life that says I don't know and I'm gonna have to be untrusting this person with God and that's the box that they're gonna go in and I don't know and I have to be okay with that so that really helped me to get past that so all right so let's talk we talked a little bit about salvation and let's talk now about God like they have they have an interesting because like we believe God a certain way and so today so what is their belief in God now I I just wanna make clear that people know so people know there's a difference between sort of like in house debates and discussions amongst Chris like about the gifts of the spirit you know questions about all kinds of issues baptism and things like that but but this is not an in-house discussion when we talk about the very nature of who God is and if if you're substantially different than scripture it in no way is a Christian thing at all and so the view of God on Jehovah's Witnesses is very different and it has to do mostly with the doctrine of the Trinity they definitely reject the doctrine of the Trinity oddly enough if you know theology well you'll see that what they actually reject is called modalism what they usually do is they they argue that what we believe is something called modalism that the father became the son who then became the spirit which is not a trinity right that's just him like changing clothes so to speak and then they argue against that view so it's very confusing when you're talking with them about it but they believe that Jesus he's not God in the flesh though he's a created being he's Michael the Archangel they believe the Holy Spirit is not personal is is is actually an active force and has no personality would therefore have no will or intentions or desires or things like that because it's just like gods like energy or something like that so they say the Trinity is pagan and we can support it in the Old Testament thoroughly people don't even realize how strong the Old Testament teaches and supports at least the doctrine of the Trinity and we can teach it in the New Testament very very very thoroughly which is why they have their own translation of the Bible called a New World Translation where they systematically alter texts that teach the Trinity so it won't give us the deity of Jesus in particular or the personhood of the Holy Spirit so this is this is this is where they deny a fundamental Christian truth this is why they have to say that Christians since the second century AD have been totally off the rails you know part of the kingdom of Satan all Christians from that time because we have this doctrine called the Trinity so they have to change the Bible they have to deny church history well John 5:23 says this it since Jesus himself speaking he says that all should honor the son just as they honor the father and whoever does not honor the son does not honor the father who sent him I honor the father has got I should honor the son the same way and those are from Jesus's own words pretty pretty serious divergence from biblical teaching here you did a study on the Trinity it was really good so if somebody really wants to know more about it like that's what I love about when you teach like you're just very methodical about this verse this this goes with it it's really good so if you're confused about that then yeah and can I say for that teaching it it's are we right about the Trinity I think is the name of the teaching but the idea I did there is I took objections to the Trinity and I put a bunch of them up at the front of the study and asked a bunch of challenging hard questions then I did an explanation of the Trinity and then I answered all the objections systematically and so that was meant to bring people from a place of confusion to a place of clarity on the topic okay lots of questions coming through about how do I share Jesus with my Jehovah Witness neighbors friends things like that so we're going to get to that but what I want to do is I want to make that towards the end because if we get through the the main what they believe first then I think we can go into inch into all that they spend a lot of time you know of course the word Jehovah Jehovah Witness what explain that portion of it yeah so the name Jehovah is very very significant for the group Jehovah's Witnesses not just because it's in the name of the group but because they think that it's God's proper name and it's properly pronounced Jehovah and God ultimately will not respect you or respond to you if you don't call him by his name and that is their that is their doctrine on this so let me give you a couple verses they used to support this and here's how about if they hit you at your door they'll say hey are you using God's name well acts 4:12 it says there's salvation in no one else for there's no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved and so they imply like if you don't use his name you're not gonna be saved but if you just read the whole entry Acts four verses 10 through 12 the very verse that they use is actually about Jesus not the name Jehovah it says in verse 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom you crucified whom God raised from the dead by him this manna standing before you well this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you the builders which has become the corner stone and there is salvation in no one else for there's no other name there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved so acts 4:12 is about Jesus he's the name you've got a call on and I don't think God cares about pronunciation Jesus ei sue in the in the Greek hey Zeus in in Spanish or Yeshua in Hebrew God doesn't care it's about who he is the end that you're calling on him another verse they used for this is Romans 10:13 where it says for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved Romans 10:13 so this is um this is actually quoting the Old Testament it's according Joel to 32 which is about Yahweh or Jehovah but if you look at it in context it talks about Jesus Romans 10:9 because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved so it says confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved so this is again this is about Jesus these are actually they're proof texts so that the very texts that they're quoting often prove them wrong and this is actually really the case for cults in general they usually quote verses that proved them wrong if you just look at them in context if you don't know what else to do just slow down look at the verses before and after and you'll usually see right through it now ironically the the phrase Jehovah is probably the wrong pronunciation of God's name in the Bible we see a capital L Ord in our Old Testament when we see Jehovah it comes up many many times thousands of times in the Old Testament well it was like we don't know how it's translated for sure it was likely translated Yahweh that's like the the scholarly majority says it was translated Yahweh or pronounced Yahweh but it definitely wasn't Jehovah it might have been Yehovah but it wasn't Jehovah because there's no J in Hebrew there's just no sound in the language at all but Russell didn't know this those guys didn't know this because they don't know the languages like they're pretending they do sometimes so ironically what the Jehovah's Witnesses have been taught to do is focus on a wrong pronunciation of Jehovah instead of on the true identity of Jehovah they want you to say you have to pronounce and say his name right while yet denying who he is and thereby like the whole idea just backfires in a terrible spear disaster yeah alright let's talk about the hundred and forty-four thousand you ready you be like somewhere along the line I'm not certain how they got this all wrong because it's like the Bible is very clear in Revelation who the hundred and twenty-four thousand are so how do they get away with with thinking but they think yeah so they take a puzzling passage in Revelation that talks about a hundred forty-four thousand and you know they say this is the anointed class they're the only ones who take communion when they pass Communion or other Zeeland to actually partake it's a special group who's gonna reign in heaven in spiritual bodies they won't get a physical resurrection they'll just reign in heaven in spiritual bodies according to them the rest of mankind will be annihilated or or or other JW's who are not part 144,000 they'll live on paradise earth in remade bodies but the passage they quote is revelation seven verses four through eight which is not talking about anything like that it's talking about the end times that's true and it says that their 144,000 people sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel then it names the tribes Judah Reuben GAD Asher Naphtali you know it goes through all the tribes well in the in another parallel passage in Revelation 14 verses three through four it shows more about these hundred forty four thousand it says that let's see no one could learn the song except two hundred forty four thousand it is these who have not defiled themselves with women for they're virgins it is these who follow the lamb wherever he goes these so they're we know three things about these 144,000 based on revelation 1 they are Jewish twelve thousand from each tribe two they are males three they are virgins they haven't fornicated and they also have not gotten married so they haven't done either of those things these are the three things we know but the Jehovah's Witnesses they take the 144,000 number and they say that's literal there's literally hundred forty four thousand but they're not Jews they're not from the tribes they're not male and they're not virgins this isn't this is like exactly how you see that someone's making up new theology right they just take a verse and rip it out of context if revelations literal here which I tend to think it is is talking about actual Jews basically a revival amongst Israel in the end times and on looking forward to that if it's symbolic well then the whole 144,000 teaching just goes out the window in the you know altogether no serious person who studies Revelation thinks that the job is witness interpretation has even a chance of being right I go back to that so they say that there's it's like I'm a double witness and I'm going door to door I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do yeah all right there's way more than 144,000 Jehovah Witnesses on this earth you said there's 8 million bla bla bla so deal with that deal with that so um this is where I think the teaching involved I think initially it was a small group so he thought 144,000 are you gonna get in but once they grew beyond that they had to have something to explain all the people that wouldn't fit that number so now they have two groups of Jehovah's Witnesses this sort of super super godly 144,000 people and then there is everybody else and they have two different destinations when these people die and you know in the future they're gonna be up in heaven actually with God and then the rest of these people will be on earth at the new earth now Revelation talks about how there's gonna be no difference right heaven comes to earth the New Jerusalem comes down God is with us on earth so so these these two separate things don't make sense biblically but that's the teaching they have um you talk about because they you know they go to door to door of course we know that what why is what's their reasoning behind that like it has to have something to do with this whole works based yes so part of the reason for the job is let's just take like the motivations are different for the individual witness the one who's going around it's different than the motivation for the organization for the individual witness their motivation is for for salvation because they have to do this to maintain membership and to be a consider to order an active publisher that's like a category you want to make sure you're in and so they have to do this this is if the report there are hours every week and that sort of thing it's there's a lot of pressure there and they want to I want to go to heaven oddly enough they they I don't know if you've noticed this ok I've know I've seen it so many times that it's more than a trend is that they walk so slow I thought when I've gone with this thing even door to door and I walked so fast from house to house cuz I've only got so much time right and I want to get as many of these tracks out share with people they walk so slow well when I actually interviewed former Jehovah's Witnesses they told me that this is not only a fact it's a joke amongst Jehovah's Witnesses and they call it the pioneer plod because they people going door to door are pioneers they call them they call the pioneer plod because they trend they're trying to wait out there hour they don't have to hit a certain number of doors they have to be out there for a certain amount of time so it's it's a works thing now for the organization it's all about growth because as they go door to door they're handing out magazines they're giving out magazines they're publishing publishing that started from Russell right and this is how they promote the group and to them it's also the organization it's also like a point of proof they think that they're the only group of people who were doing the work that Jesus told us to do when he says like going to all the world and they say we're the only ones publishing door to door but this isn't even true there's there's churches that go door to door there's around the world here's a quick statistic for you in 2004 Jehovah's Witnesses baptized 200,000 people which is quite a few right but they have a really low retention rate people don't tend to stay for very long but the just the Baptist's just one one denominational group within Christianity they baptize 600,000 people and planted 21,000 new churches but the Jehovah's Witnesses are told that one way they know that the watchtower is the true Church of God is that their own they're the only ones really publishing God's Word to people but this is just not true there's just isolated so they don't know what's going on the rest of the world at any rate it's not even evangelism because what they're publishing is not the gospel so it it's if anything all these door-to-door trips are not a good work they're a bad work yeah exactly it's very deceptive okay let's talk about you interviewed and it was a really good interview with the couple that they were Jehovah Witnesses and honestly the the church keeps them so busy that they don't even have time to think so talk about like a day in a week in the life of a Jehovah Witness yeah so they talked about when they had were more earlier converts when they just sort of first gotten involved in the group and I asked him what their regular week was like and they said well on Monday they walked through the week they said on Monday we'd spent about two hours preparing for Tuesday where we would have Bible study time which is really studying Watchtower material not the Bible right they quote the Bible out of context but they don't study it so Monday to our prep Tuesday they have about two hours of study time doing their meeting a gathering on on Wednesday they would have another two hours of preparation time on Thursday another two hour meeting this is to do another Bible study going through Watchtower literature remember there's just mountains of literature they have to go through on Saturday they would do at least one hour of witnessing and then sometimes other labors maybe they would go and they would work on it on the building on the local building because a lot of them are artisans and it workman with their hands then on Sunday they have their regular church services they're gathering so six days a week you've got stuff that's fit fits right into the free time you had when you got off work that day right I mean you're you're very busy now this has two results if you think about one it creates social isolation you're gonna Jehovah's Witness let's say you're a new convert even you just you don't have time for anybody else in your life right it's all just can be Jehovah's Witnesses so you get social socially isolated and your and this is gonna make it harder for you to think clearly about issues or to leave the group and to you have no time to really study the Bible on your own to go and research anything to go and find out the problems there might be because all your time is spent getting indoctrinated into Watchtower literature and then doing tasks for the watchtower Oh Mike that's so scary it really it really is which is why you talk about how we need to be the most compassionate people to them like a lot of people in my yard you know you're a crazy person but really when you understand all the things that they have to do in their mindset you also have to feel really sad for them yeah absolutely and I've seen comments like on my youtube videos where they're like well I just say this to Joe as a witness haha and they and they're like thinking of ways to mock or ridicule them and I'm like that's so ungodly it's so unchristian I think we have to be careful I think I think our great analogy is to treat Jehovah's Witnesses like like a contagious victims right they've contracted something that's hurting them they're also contagious you have to be careful that you don't contract it as well so you prepare yourself you glove up or whatever and you when you try to assist them without getting it yourself and that's that's my goal as I witnessed a Jehovah's Witnesses I want to seek to help them out of the deceit without getting myself deceived at the same time Jesus is attitude though I mean the people are crucifying him his attitude his father forgive them you know he says turn the other cheek he has such an active compassion and love Christianity is by nature Invitational God made one of his most successful apostles out of a murderer Saul and and so the church had a hard time with this right when Saul first got saved they were like we don't know we're not so sure that he's really genuine or not and that's understandable but but God is wanting to do a supernatural work where he takes these people brings them to the true light of the gospel restores and renews their lives and we can be the ones inviting them into that and and definitely not the ones who want a mock and ridicule and name call and add more burdens onto the burdens are already experiencing you have a verse in there too yeah this is a great verse for witnessing just to remind ourselves of our attitude it says and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone able to teach patiently enduring evil correcting his opponents with gentleness God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to the knowledge a knowledge of the truth and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will and this is this is it sets the tone for us gentleness respect Willington so we engage in disagreement but we do it with a certain attitude we we engaged to say hey you're wrong but it's only because we want to get you right with God it's a battle not against you it's a battle for you and that's that's our our attitude okay if you hear a Java witness and you you know your whole world is basically your friends the people who do church body so like you said it's very inward you know it's just that this specific group but what happens if you let's say you've got it someone here listening today and they're like I need to leave the church but if I leave the church then then my entire all the people that I know like my my whole base is gone too so so so talk that happen what happens if a person leaves and what if they're like I'm gonna really go and follow Jesus the biblical Jesus now it really is it's a it's a tough decision yeah I mean it would be we can understand innocent to be tough because you're leaving a social circle but it's it's more than that and Joe was witnesses there what they're taught makes it a lot more than that so what I what I want to do is first share with you this according to like JW facts calm which I find to be a very useful resource for researching these things over 1 percent of Jehovah's Witnesses are shunned every year shun I use that word shunned let's talk about what it means to shun or to disfellowship because disfellowshipping isn't just a spiritual like you're not part of our congregation it's a lot more than that it's not like a biblical excommunication or disfellowshipping it's goes way beyond that so here's some quotes from the watchtower so you can see it in their own words the first one's watchtower 1963 July 15 15 page 444 the wrongdoer has to realize that his status is completely changed that his faithful Christian relatives thoroughly disapprove of his wicked course and show this disapproval by limiting contacts to only those which are unavoidable imagine if your children do this to you imagine if your parents do this to you your wife or your husband do this to you this is what they teach you to do in kingdom ministry August 2002 page 3 they wrote this what about speaking with a dispelled ship person like this is like even a question they have to ask are you allowed to talk to them well it says while the Bible does not cover every possible situation 2 John 10 helps us get jehovah's with you of the matter if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching neither receive them into your homes or say a greeting to him now just so you know in 2nd John verse 10 what this is actually talking about here is about missionaries who are bringing false Gospels don't be a host to them where you take them into your home and they stay with you for like a week when you feed them and you help them on their mission it's not talking about just talking to people at any rate they go on and say commenting on this the watchtower of September 15th 1981 page 25 says a simple hello to someone can be the first step that develops into a conversation and maybe even a friendship these are obviously dangerous things would we want to take that first step with a dis filler ship person after hearing a talk at a circuit assembly a brother and his fleshly sister realized that they needed to make adjustments in the way they treated their mother who lived elsewhere and who had been disfellowship for six years immediately after the assembly the man called his mother and after assuring her of their love he explained that they could no longer talk to her unless they were important family matters requiring contact this is this is like there's more I got to read this quest to you because it puts it in their own words Watchtower 1970 June 1st page 351 and 352 says this yet there might be some absolutely necessary family members of matters requiring communication such as legalities over a will or property but the disfellowship relative should be made to appreciate that his status has changed that he is no longer welcome in the home nor is he a preferred companion I mean what are you telling like say a wife to treat to do to her husband when make sure he knows he's not your preferred companion like that's destructive to marriages it's not biblical in Watchtower 1952 they wrote if the children are of age then there can be a departing and breaking of family ties in a physical way because the spiritual ties have already snapped so if your kids are like over 18 you could just cut them off entirely now what does scripture say it does talk about a separation in the church right but it doesn't it all relate this to a family shunning or anything like that in fact it says hey wives 1st Corinthians 7 if you're married to an unbelieving husband make it work be a great wife honor God if first Peter talks about it to honor God your you should be a better wife husband father son daughter you should be better because you're a Christian not worse and if they're unbelievers it doesn't change that obligation so you can find on the internet all kinds of stories from Jehovah's Witnesses former JW is talking about how they were shunned about how when people see them they will cross the street just to avoid them so they can just because they came is a Hello they'll talk about stories about how within a week the the local leaders of their congregation went and just ripped on them to all their friends and family they called everybody to make sure that they knew don't talk to them anymore now here's a question why on earth are they doing this and some think it's because they're just mad at the people they're shunning and I have a different theory my theory is this once Jehovah's Witnesses start thinking outside the box they quickly become you know D conversions experiences and they leave the group and they often become Christians true Christians well that's contagious and so to protect the people that are still in the bubble they quickly cut off entirely those who are not it's to keep it from keep what they discovered from getting to these people who they still have control of okay it's crazy stuff where we have our Bible study they always said well they used to have a whole section of witnesses that would come they would sit right out front always be on Wednesday when the Bible studies and then all of a sudden they moved and they moved down by our sign in a whole whole different place but while they were in there one day I was thinking how how can we tell them about the true Jesus because anything we give them like they're gonna throw away so I thought I was reading the deal crushed she's look seeking all the finding Jesus and I thought well if I give them this book then maybe maybe they'll be like is something correlate like false religion false religion and maybe yeah but and I realized that they were going to just throw it away because they really are taught not to read anything and I think that was one of the questions that came through how do you explain to someone and they they won't read anything that you're offering them they won't read the Bible that you're offering them so how do you even get through to something like that yeah I had a similar experience actually had a pamphlet that was for Jehovah's Witnesses and I went and I got these pamphlets and I checked him out and I thought yeah this is great and I mean I've encountered Jehovah's Witnesses I was like here all takers and I promise to read it will you take mine and they visibly backed away from what I was trying to hand them like it was dangerous or something and I was like wait away like why won't and I didn't realize till later what's going on here they will not take any of your literature as a standard rule if you take if they take your stuff this is either they're gonna throw it away like you said or they'll read it in rebellion to what they've been taught like that so their chances are they're not going to do that but the public relations side of Jehovah's Witnesses they say research us test our that's the PR side of JW's but in house what they actually tell to their people and I've heard this from JW's myself there they're told in public they're all told don't google Jehovah's Witnesses do not use Google to research who we are what we are you'll end up getting lies like don't use anything in fact they say go ahead and research but you're only supposed to use the watchtowers research tool found on JW org so they want you to research but only their own material so if you can only use Watchtower published literature and you can only use the research tool that they give you with the documents that they've written and the rule is trust the governing body this is this is actually I used to be a domestic violence counselor and this is what's called isolation I want to isolate you from any friends or any other influences like sometimes in a domestic violence home parents don't want a kid to go to school to go to college because they're afraid that the teachers will become an influence in that student's life and they want to be the only one influencing you that kind of thing so this is like a DV tactic that goes on this does create a big challenge it's keeping the bubble right in in modern times we'll talk about Mormonism next week but Mormonism has done the opposite of this they've just said okay read whatever you want like do whatever you want like we're just gonna take it all on faith that Jehovah's Witnesses have done instead they've locked down and did hyper control so it's like an experiment between two Colts like which one works better in modern times for the Jehovah's Witnesses yeah don't look outside the bubble don't go anywhere else only trust our stuff and it creates a ton of distrust in the job as a witness towards you towards other translations even if they'll say they don't have that distrust they do it's it's it's abusive yeah I mean how do you break through okay you got a sniper and you're just like I really want to share Christ they won't take anything so how do you break through or I mean I I know God has to do something in their heart but yeah absolutely I think things ways to break through are sharing your own genuine relationship with Christ this just trips them out because they're like what because they don't have a real relationship with Christ but also they don't think you do it so um so when you just share with them that that's just kind of like a weird thing it opened their eyes but also using their literature is what I recommend and this this takes homework on my part I have to already know ahead of time where I can go in Watchtower literature to show them these quotes like you could take the quotes I gave earlier but I would go and find them on JW org find them in their archive write use their stuff so that they will because they don't mind if you show them their own material and talk about it right they're gonna have to read that and take it as as truth so that's the strategy I usually use and we'll come back and talk more about how to share Christ with some of it let's go to our last question before we actually do that the translation of the Bible though they have a completely different translation so how about that because they they just have messed up this whole thing yeah and you and when you put it all together you see yeah trust the governing body don't research only read our material don't even read the Bible on your own only read our kind of stuff and then to kind of come alongside that they have their own translation of the Bible where whenever the Bible disagrees their theology they just change it I mean this is it's it's as I think it works because it's so bold I think that it's so out there the deception is so bold and in-your-face that that actually helps at least for some people maybe for the more gullible people I don't know are people who just want to lean on Authority at any rate their translation of the Bible is called a New World Translation and it wasn't done like normal translations are done normally you get a committee of scholars and they're credentialed in different areas and you put them together and they work carefully and they oversee and double check each other's work and all that kind of thing that's how you know the New King James Version is made or the ESV or the NIV all these different translations how was the New World Translation done well this is weird but according to the watchtower it's done by a secret committee of anonymous individuals that just want to give all the honor to God so they won't tell you who they were right yeah well I know there's a guy named Raymond Franz though Raymond Franz was a former member of the governing body we're talking to the elite guys right he was one of the elite guys he left the watchtower and then he wrote a book called crisis of conscience where he made very clear that the watchtower was not of God and this guy is a guy from inside as high up as it goes the governing body and he told us who acts translated and watchtowers book you can get his book it's on Amazon crisis of conscience and he gave us four names for people and one of them fred Franz yeah same name because his Raymond Fras his uncle fred Franz so his uncle was the principal translator and had the most education in in Greek and Hebrew and what is his education two years of Greek and self-taught in Hebrew now for those who don't know language let me just say this when I was taking Greek and I will not try to translate the Bible but when I was taking Greek my Greek teacher said to me you know after 10 years of working with Greek every day you start to really understand it it's just a big job to translate the Bible is all I'm saying and you don't want this guy with two years of Greek he's a noob he doesn't know what he's doing I two years is nothing when it comes to translating Greek okay it's just nothing so they'll deceptively quote scholars they'll quote scholars out of context in their literature to try to make it look like people like the New World Translation that they think it's good but there's totally deceptive here's what scholars really think about this work I'm gonna give you some quotes dr. Julius manty the author of emanuel grammar of the Greek New Testament she calls the New World Translation quote a shocking mistranslation Bruce Metzger who's one of the biggest names in Greek in the world Bruce Metzger and in the New Testament in particular he's the professor of New Testament was at Princeton University he calls the numeral translation quote a frightful mistranslation erroneous pernicious and reprehensible dr. william barclay he said that the deliberate distortion of truth by this sect is seen in their new trends their new testament translation it is abundantly clear that a sect which can translate the New Testament like this is intellectually dishonest so basically what they do the short version is this wherever the Bible is gonna affirm a truth that they don't like they change it right so Titus 2:13 it says in our in our ESV it says and every other translation is going to say something like this right that Jesus is our great God and Savior right our great God and Savior Jesus Christ in the New World Translation though they say of the great God and of our Savior Jesus Christ now that may not seem like big deal right but except that this is based on a really well respected rule in Greek and it's it's called the Granville sharps rule I'm not gonna try to explain it because like who cares but the point is this it's like when we say this is like a standard rule of grammar in English that's what this is for Greek and what it means is that everyone knows that Titus 2:13 is saying that Jesus one person is our great God and our Savior that's clearly in the text they just totally change it they do it again in second Peter 1:1 it's says by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ in a normal translation Jesus is God and Savior but in the New World Translation says through the righteousness of our God and the Savior Jesus Christ so just as words to change the meaning here's the crazy thing the New World Translation the committee they knew about the Grandville sharps rule because they used this rule everywhere else in the Bible where it's applied and they ignore it when it's about the deity of Jesus there's other places as well I'll just go just go to John 1 we'll look at that as a final one real quick but in John 1 when it says in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God that's just about every translation it's gonna hold that the same way this is a really careful construction Dan Wallace says like this was written and he's a he's a Greek expert he says the way this was written in John 1:1 it was like written to support the doctrine of the Trinity and to keep you away from you know modalism on one side or for other errors on the other side so the New World Translation though it adds one little word in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God wait what like this is Christians are like wait God it was since winter they're even more than one God there's only one god this is like monotheism just like kind of a big deal in the Bible right but they can't handle John 1:1 it so clearly teaches the deity of Christ that he is He is God and with God right these two pillars of the doctrine of the Trinity that they just change it there's no justification for this but hardly any Jehovah's Witnesses know anything about Greek so they trust the the watchtower whenever it's the deity of Jesus they change it they also add a peculiarly that they add the word into the New Testament 237 times now in the Greek New Testament we don't have the word in the Old Testaments there's thousands of times but in the New Testament the word never occurs write the name of God they just say Lord or correos but sometimes they'll translate this 237 times as Jehovah oddly enough they'll especially do this if the New Testament is quoting an Old Testament passage and that Old Testament passage said Jehovah then they'll put your hope in the new you can kind of argue that that kind of works even if the pronunciation is wrong you could argue for that but multiple times the New Testament where it's calling Jesus Jehovah they just translated as Lord interesting no it's so they're not they're not consistent this translations been made to support their theology so goes up at your door and you say something so how do you tell them that like I do I mean you bring it out you show them the difference so I do have a whole long video on tactics of how to witness to Jehovah's Witnesses and I'll maybe I'll do more stuff in the future but let me give you a quick tips here's some just real quick tips one is I say focus on one issue and you need to know the issue before they come to your door don't try to think of it off the top of your head stop spin an hour spend an afternoon prepare for this moment maybe even spend more than that so you could talk about prophecy we haven't even talked about the false prophecy there's a bunch of false prophecy in the history the watchtower and you can show it using washed our documents you print all that out you get it you can show it to the JW and you're ready when they come to your door you could use the New World Translation to actually show who Jesus is there are even though they tried to get rid of the deity of Jesus there's several places where they didn't right they just didn't change it enough times and so you could go to those passages to show the divi of Christ you could talk about birthdays I know this sounds weird but we haven't talked about birthdays they don't believe in birthdays or blood transfer so there's a topic that you can pick though and believe it or not a lot of job is witnesses really do care about that even though it seems trivial it is something they care about it might be a foot in the door or you could talk about scandals right now you can go onto YouTube and you can see video footage of the Australian Royal Commission that shows that the leadership of the watchtower was systematically hiding child abuse hiding it and refusing to report it to the authorities this is because of a whole bunch of issues that were going the time these videos are actually leaders of the church on the stand in court and it's totally damning so this is something you can actually use to show what we don't know am I just trying to be mean you know this whole Jehovah's Witness thing is built on trusting the watchtower and I want you to know you can't trust those guys that's the point I just want them to understand they can't trust them so you pick one of those topics any one of those just pick one go deep into it know it really well and then have a conversation about it and wherever you get stumped you're gonna write down well here's where I got lost right and you're gonna go back and you're gonna get better at that for the next conversation but I have one last two maybe two when is control the conversation if you bring up a scripture don't allow them to run somewhere else keep talking about that verse until you're done just know that every false group is always gonna leapfrog from topic to topic to get away once you've shown that they're wrong on something so you stay on that issue and you chase it down and chase it down you will you will be really sad if you let them change topics and you think well I have answers for every question it'll just turn into a wasted conversation though so control the combo the next one is just have compassion it's very easy to turn into a combative thing remember this is outreach I'm seeking to persuade you of the falsity of things you've been taught about God that's the whole goal there and it's gonna require a lot of compassion someone had written in and wanted to know give us an example of someone that you've actually talked to and do you know anyone that it's really actually led them out of the Jehovah Witness church so this is a little bit of a challenge for me because I'm on a blacklist which means that they don't come to my door anymore so for a number of years the in fact I actually saw them not that was a couple years back I saw them maybe two years ago and they were walking down my street as I was coming out of my house and I was like and I like have radar like I know it's Jehovah's Witness is within three seconds I could just tell and so I was like hey and I was like coming out to go talk to them you know on the street as they were because they were walking past my house and the lady just looked at me and she said oh we already talked to you it's they just get dialed right out of there so it makes it really hard for me um I have had a lot of conversations in the past that were really well I think that what happened was when they saw that I loved the Word of God and then I knew these verses in context they were like well that's different and that caused them to actually want to talk with me because I care about it and I was compassionate I wasn't rude or anything the things that I found to be helpful are picking like I said I picked like John five I like using John five because you can show Jesus is equal with God and I know how to answer every argument they have against that so I'm prepared for that conversation and I found least in my mind some success in that but the other thing is I like to use their actual interlinear Bible so the watchtower produces an interlinear which has Greek and English on it and because I know just a little bit of Greek I'm able to actually show them in their own work that their mistranslating the Bible and so that's kind of something if they learn how to do it takes l'éducation to do that so I found that to be useful I remember a guy going like just looking back and forth going wait this is a really watchtower that says this because it was so puzzled by how obviously they had missed translated the Bible and I talked about that in my video on how to witness to Jonah as witnesses I go through it my example there but however I found also my videos online have been really useful I've had lots of people talk about how they've left the watchtower and that my videos were really helpful in that and one of the biggest reasons is because I don't come off like I'm angry at them or making fun of them and I've had them say I was only able to watch your video because you weren't rude or mean to me right so I think that that's a smart direction to go I hope that helps there's my thought well as far as the sharing Christ with someone who knocks on your door I've decided that if someone comes to my door I'm just facetiming you let you talk to them I'm worried they might recognize me though because of my video my videos on Jehovah's Witnesses have quite a few views oh yeah well it's really great I mean a lot of the questions that are coming in or just like thank you for your videos it really helped to be I think one of them said they even left the church because of I'm there's a lot of stuff going on there right here one question someone asked was could you come to actual faith from their bad translation I thought that was kind of a good question I I guess it's like possible because there's at least some places where it's not translated properly but not likely because it specifically teaches heretical things like John one wine is it says Jesus was a god that's a pretty big deal right and every time the Holy Spirit comes up it depersonalized as the Holy Spirit calls the Holy Spirit it also takes away the Holy Spirit and it so doesn't say they were filled with the Holy Spirit it says they were filled with the Holy Spirit and so it it deliberately alters Christian teaching so I I would think at least the tendency is to come up with false theology by reading that they're a New World Translation alright we're gonna ask one last question and then we're gonna go to whatever questions that we have on the QA they don't solve our birthdays holidays no blood transfusions like what is that all about alright way to talk about that for a while to actually so basically there's a there's a there's a host of things that they say are pagan things that people who call themselves Christians are doing and those things like you said Christmas birthdays celebrating various holidays like Easter or fourth of July for that matter celebrating different holidays and also blood transfusions now blood transfusions is kind of a different category let's talk first about the celebrations that first days and stuff like that what they do is they create anxiety because they're like you you know Christmas is really the pagan celebration of Saturnalia it's really Sol Invictus it's you know Easter is really the celebration of Ishtar and the Easter Bunny is a fertility symbol and you hear all these things now I've spent my whole I've done my homework right these claims are blown way out of proportion and you could celebrate Christmas and Easter unto the Lord now you can also make it like a totally pagan holiday by just taking Jesus out of it and it's all about Santa Claus and presents and things like that that's true you can do that but but what they're talking about is not true right okay so Christmas celebration doesn't go back to Saturnalia it's on a different date it's not even on the same day right but these are the types of things they say Jeremiah 10 talks about cutting down Christmas or cutting on trees and decorating them but it's talked about idols carving idols and they try to pretend it's about Christmas trees which is it just gets one over on the right now your pagan and we're gonna fix it for you you need to trust our organization when it comes to birthdays there's only two places in the Bible where birthdays come up a birthday celebration comes up and in both of those times bad things happened right like Belshazzar's celebrating his birthday and that's where he dies the writing on the wall and all that but this isn't because it was a birthday it's not like God like your celebrated your birth death for you like that's not what's going on here for instance dodj come up in the Bible all the time and usually for bad reasons right dogs are usually seen as a bad thing and they you know you're a dog the Gentiles and dogs and things like that this doesn't mean that having a pet dog is wrong that's silly it's just silly well so they believe in funerals but not birthdays oddly enough so there's no biblical reason for that no but real biblical case for that but when it comes to military service there's an interesting thing here is they they want you to belong to the governing body and not till your nation your allegiance is to them not to any other worldly this is a control thing so you can't do military service now here's interesting scripture Lukather Luke chapter 3 I don't think I gave you this first the Luke chapter 3 verses 12 through 14 there's a guy who's in the military and it comes to John the Baptist in the New Testament and he asks him what do you want me to do now if Jehovah's Witness teaching is true he should say resign your commission in the military and and you belong to God's kingdom but what John the Baptist says is different so the soldier asks him and what what and we what shall we do as soldiers and he said to them do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation and be content with your wages so serve God in a godly way in your job in the military but they said you can't have military service so that conflicts with Scripture finally with blood transfusions this is way worse it's estimated that three Jehovah's Witnesses in the world every day died because they're not allowed to have blood transfusions they're taught that it's cannibalism I had a message literally less than a week ago from someone who says that their relative had died because there was a witness and they refused blood transfusions so they died now in the past they were taught that if I got a blood transfusion they're gonna be annihilated by God they'll lose their salvation now they teach it's it's confusing now we're not really what they're teaching on it the watchtowers changing their tune as they do sometimes but the the blood transfusion thing is really really bad it's it's it's scary bad and thousands and thousands and thousands of JW's have died since the 70s when they first started really pushing us Wow all right we're gonna go to a few questions we have about ten minutes left mark wrote a Jehovah Witness friend of mine told me she was concerned with a unity of the Christian Church she claimed that since the body of the Jehovah Witness cult is so unified it's more trustworthy than the body of the Christian Church since there are so many denominations I think that's where they're going then she stated since a Methodist would say something different about baptism the Baptist then one of them is wrong about everything they claim she backed up in Scripture but I don't remember what it was what'd you say about this okay so it sounds like unity is a test for truthfulness in her mind and I she probably been taught that because that sounds like a talking point from the watchtower and we get this from other people too we're so unified look at how unified we are well I think that unity is a secondary issue to the actual doctrines of truth so for instance let's say that you came across let's make a crazy example a crazy death cult where everyone when they hit the age of 30 they'd kill themselves and they're super duper unified man they are so unified right they're the most unified group you've ever seen they all say and believe exactly the same things they even dress the same they talk the same they they do everything identical does this mean that their cult is real and true see this is a bad test for truth right there's this kind of unity second the type of unity she's talking about is is not what we mean by Christian unity Christian unity is about a love love relationships and commitment to basic Christian truths well with the Jehovah's Witnesses there aren't those basic Christian truths so it doesn't even qualify for a unity test in the first place across denominations we have differences but most of our denominational things we're gonna say they're still Christians right we are still unified we have a different we have a different label right for our particular troop but that doesn't mean that we think we're separate from that other group we're just saying we have you know on secondary issues we have differences so I I have friends that are a bit up my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ that don't belong to Calvary Chapel which is where I'm a pastor at and I'd like at least I don't even ask you what are you a cop in Chapel Lisa hi I've got better you better be like I didn't even ask you this because I don't care because we have unity so denomination doesn't mean this unity okay iris wrote my husband read the book crisis of conscience by Raymond France a former Joba witness that helped him to receive peace after leaving the organization accepted Jesus as Lord in 2002 your opinion about that book or anything that would help external losses yeah I have only read snippets of it so far I've only looked at parts of it but I would definitely at least consider it I I hesitate to just recommend it full on but it but I would definitely consider that you know I read portions of it in preparation for sharing some of the stuff I do with you guys so yeah I think that helps I think the big here's the issue and this is where we want to really let our hearts God said JW's former JW's um once they come out they it's not like they leave Jehovah's Witnesses and now they have good theology everything they've known about God is now in question every authority they thought was true when it came to believing spiritual things is now in the gutter and they're so confused and and they don't even know where their doctrine is different than biblical doctrine yet they don't know what to believe they're so confused so one of the best things is to get them into regular Bible teaching but not like what they've heard proof text taken out of context no like regular Bible teaching getting them to read the Bible actually read the Bible on their own that's a great thing so yeah I I think they need a lot of personal care in addition to like books and resources that's good but man it's it's a lot of trauma and a lot of care that needs to be dealt with after someone leaves a group like that yeah Wilder when she Mormon Church and she wrote her book she she was a tenured professor of BYU and she said when she finally realized she got out she sat and read the Bible over and oh she wouldn't read anything besides the Bible because she just wasn't she didn't believe anyone or anything so I guess that is almost what did you have a witness would have to do to to tamakwa do you know many people that get out and really stay and are okay yeah ya know it they they're it happens all in all directions so just because you left the watchtower doesn't mean you came to Jesus right you you've left this cult group it doesn't mean you you've had an experience with the true Christ so some people they they leave the watchtower and they get involved maybe they have just cope they're drawn to cult so maybe they get involved in some other cold afterwards so just like attractive that sort of thing others they sometimes find safety in in agnosticism like you know what if I don't have to commit to anything I never have to risk what happened before and so they find like a sense of safety and just sort of like being on the fence on everything after that or even atheism so I'm go to atheism because I think it feeds that sense of rebellion that there's other reasons lots of reasons why they might but I think it does feed that sense of rebellion that they have against what they used to believe it's like a freedom of Liberty thing like I'll do what I want with my life I don't have to submit to anybody else's rules I am my own compass for truth now and so there's like that sense of freedom in that although atheism robs you of all the value and purpose and meaning of life but there is like a sense of freedom that's there that I think is desirable to people so yeah well my my thing is to just get you in the word because I'm trusting that God by his Spirit will guide and direct you as you read his word without in fact let me just quote the watchtower right boy if you read the Bible and you don't pay the description studies you'll end up with all those old Christian doctrines truths needs to get in there and that's that's the problem yeah okay Casey wrote Jehovah Witnesses can be extremely convincing especially because they bring up verses like John 14 28 and Ecclesiastes 9:5 are there any resources that help answer these objections from Jehovah Witnesses you probably have logos written from you you I'm gonna pull up John 1428 so Jesus says you heard me say to you I'm going away and I will come to you if you loved me you would have rejoiced because I'm going to the Father for the father is greater than I you know there's I could give us a longer version on this the short version is this is right okay in Christian teaching in biblical teaching which Jehovah's Witnesses will always misrepresent what we believe about Jesus and what we believe about God and then they'll argue against the misrepresentation modalism is what they argue against but in Christian teaching Jesus when he he he took on flesh he was still God in as being his identity is still God but he also is human and in that human human state he laid aside his glory Philippians says he laid aside his glory so it's totally fair to say God is the father is greater than I because there's a sense in which the father is greater but that that is a temporary situation why because in John 17 Jesus says to the father glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was so Jesus declares there's really pivotal things about the identity of Christ that he had glory with God right the glory of God because He is God right in eternity past when he became human he set aside that glory coming lowly as a servant and then when he goes to be with the Father it will be to be received back his full you know his full glory in his position and rightfully as God so that's consistent with John 14 28 that's consistent with all the passages that teach about Jesus what Jehovah's Witnesses do is they say if the father is greater then he's like ontologically or in his very essence of being he's greater than Jesus for eternity what Scripture is talking about is this laying aside glory father's greater than me taking my glory back yeah so it's a it's a compositional relational thing so people really need to just study these verses on their own to really grasp the meaning of it before so that they they can be prepared on their own yeah yeah and you got to be ready to go and when I say this they're gonna come back with another verse and I wanna be ready for that my video on the Trinity talked about this some - yeah yeah and you do a whole video on how to share Christ with a Jehovah Witness so Angela wrote to wrap this up at the end can you give like five bullet points to remember when you encounter someone like what should you focus on yeah well the first bullet point is prepare before they show up okay like you guys you have homework to do right now you pick a verse a passage and topic and go at it look it up in the New World Translation go on websites look gather and figure out your argumentation so prepare this means you need to know what you're gonna say what they're gonna say what you're gonna say in response what they're gonna say in response and what you're gonna say to that like you have to know all that and how do you learn that sometimes just by trying it out and seeing what they say you know and how it goes so I'd say prepare ahead of time to stick to just one topic don't talk about everything don't talk about every scripture stick to one issue chase it down write with and you're well-prepared and you chase it down three would be have incredible compassion it's not argumentative its Invitational right Invitational have an awareness of where they're at and where you're trying to bring them to and realize that maybe this is the last point is that you just need to put a crack in the dam you don't necessarily need to convert a person at your door you need to put a crack in the dam because all this stuff everything is just built on them trusting the watchtower and the governing body and if they can just begin to think outside that box just begin to distrust that group they will start to see all kinds of things that you don't even know to tell them about okay i tricia said something this is just hopefully to encourage people off of it have to have a witness maybe friends or relatives and Tricia said this thank you for this I am an extra witness I was a witness for almost 40 years now I've been a Christian for a year Mike's teaching have helped me has helped me a lot and crazy witnesses maybe one day I can help so I think that's just an encouraging encouraging to say thank you to you so um yeah we have a million other questions which of course we are not going to get to which is super sad but I would just say go on to Bible think org Mike's got a bunch of really really um awesome stuff there and he's got a lot of stuff on different mistahs and then Friday we're going to talk about Mormonism so now where you live Mike you have a lot of Jehovah Witnesses where we live filled with Mormons so it'll be a good conversation on Friday because we got to know what what you know how to respond to these people so um thank you for this we're super excited that you've got to do this out will you pray for everybody really quick before we leave absolutely absolutely let's pray um father God we just thank you for the truth of Christ revealed to us in the person of Jesus and in the Word of God we pray Lord that you enable us empower us and help us learn how to be better examples and better witnesses of the truth of Christ we pray Lord for our Jehovah's Witnesses in our community and around the world that more and more that our eyes would be opened we pray that more people in the governing body would repent and recant of all of the apostasy and the deceit that has gone on with that group Lord we pray that you continue to pull the wall off of the Jehovah's Witnesses eyes to see that they can't trust the governing body but we also pray they would lead them to the truth of Jesus and not just a rejection of one cult Lord empower us to be witnesses show us that we want to go deep in our knowledge of Christ so that we can take others deep into the knowledge of Christ and we ask Lord that you would give us more opportunities even especially now with kovat 19 all this kind of stuff we just pray for more chances and opportunities to witness either online in person you know in anyway we pray in Jesus name Amen amen [Music]

Channel: Mike Winger

Views: 123,489

Rating: 4.8365293 out of 5

Keywords: Jehovah's Witnesses, jehovah's witnesses beliefs, Mike Winger, what do Jehovah's Witnesses believe, refuting Jehovah's Witnesses, lisa laizure, contending for the faith conference

Id: tJAZfVcAo1Y

Length: 115min 0sec (6900 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/fishfacedoodles]

I am very much opposed to religion, but man I really like listening to his videos haha. I guess it’s the sort of stuff I would really have liked to hear instead of what we got at the KH, good apologia and captivating speaking.

[u/Biru96]

Interesting and good points but most definately a highly biased source.

To me, it's just replacing BS with another type of BS

[u/edgebo]

Mike Winger would make even the most knowledgeble JW appear like an ant compared to him.

It's really amazing that JWs are convinced that they study/studied the bible. Then you watch such men as Winger and you understand what it really means.