[Music] okay hi everybody welcome back to our session part two of our Jehovah Witness series with my clear I thought contending for the faith what is a conference there really isn't kind of a conference it's more like a webinar because of the coronavirus so if you haven't watched the first part go back and watch that we were just methodically working through what each other's believes what the Church teaches and so you're joining us for our second part of that and we're just going to continue along and this is mike winger if you don't know him and everyone should know him by now and everyone should love him by now so there you go 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 Christians 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 no no 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 it 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 as God I should honor the son the same way and those were 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's really good so if you're confused about that then yeah and can I say for that teaching 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 um 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 into into all that they spend a lot of time you know of course the word Jehovah Jehovah Witness Jehovah what explain that portion of it yeah so the name Jehovah is very very significant for the group Jehovah's Witness is not just cuz 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 4 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 cornerstone 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 sued in the in the Greek hey-zeus 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 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 there 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 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 it 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 its 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 just found 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 spiritual disaster yeah all right let's talk about the hundred and forty-four thousand 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 what 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 the öhlins who 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 there we know three things about these 144,000 based on Revelation one 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 the 144,000 number and they say that's literal there's a literal 144,000 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 I'm looking forward to that if it's symbolic well then the whole 144,000 teaching just goes out the window in the you know all together no serious person who studies Revelation thinks that the job is witness interpretation has even a chance of being right now go back to that so they say that there's it's like I'm a witness and I'm going door to door I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do yeah alright there's way more than 144,000 Jehovah Witnesses on this earth you said there were there's eight million bla bla bla so what's the deal with that so 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 there's 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 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 Y 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 after 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 I 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 and 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 your home as witnesses and they call it the pioneer plod because they people going door to door are pioneers they call them they called 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 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 in the rest of the world at any rate it's not even evangelism because what they're publishing is not the gospel so 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 ok 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 spend about two hours preparing for Tuesday where we would have Bible study time which is really studying Watchtower material not the Bible right they call it the Bible out of context but they don't study it so Monday to our prep Tuesday they would 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 and 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 gonna be two homos 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 any 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's like get on 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 almost 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 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 so you can be careful that you don't contract it as well so you prepare yourself you glove up or whatever and you go and you try to assist them without getting it yourself and that's that's my goal is eyewitness to 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 attitude of 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 to mock and ridicule and name-call and add more burdens onto the burdens they're 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 pace 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 a that's our our attitude okay if you were a Jehovah 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 needed to leave the church but if I leave the church then then my entire all the people that I know like my whole base is gone too so so so talk talked about happen what happens if that 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 is witnesses they're what they're taught makes it a lot more than that so what I you 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 goes way beyond that so here's some quotes from the watchtower so you can see it in their own words the first ones Watchtower in 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 ohshit 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 letting 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 disco 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 disfellowshipped 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 gotta read this close to you because it 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 would 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 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 so 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 her by the city 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 different place but while they were 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 you know 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 someone like that yeah I had a similar experience I 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 when I 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 we 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 gonna do that but the public relations side of Jehovah's Witnesses they say research us test our claims 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 they're 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 students 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 wind like we're just gonna take it all on faith Jehovah's Witnesses have done instead they've locked down and did hyper control and 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 Jehovah's 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 Jehovah Witness neighbor 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 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's so so when you just share with them that that's just kind of like a weird thing it open 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 just 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 but 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 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 distributes 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 oh 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 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 actually translated the watchtowers book you can get his book it's on Amazon crisis of conscience and he gave us four names four people and one of them Fred Franz yeah same name because his raiment Rosa's uncle made 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 ten 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 like this guy with two years of Greek he's a newb he doesn't know what he's doing I two years is nothing when it comes to translating Greek ok 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 or that they think it's good whether it'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 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 a professor of New Testament or 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 a big deal right but except that this is based on a really well-respected rule in Greek and it's it's called the Grandville Sharpsville I'm not going to 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 translations just 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 to well just go to John 1:1 we'll look at that as a final one real quick but in John 1:1 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 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 waitwhat like this is Christian's are like wait God it was since winter they're even more than one God there's only one god this is like monotheism is 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 is whenever it's the deity of Jesus they change it they also add a peculiarly that they add the word Jehovah 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 right 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 you know it's so they're not they're not consistent this translations been made to support their theology so when it shows up at your door and you say something so how do you tell them that like ah do I mean you bring it out do you show them the difference so I do have a whole long video on tactics of how to witness to Joe as witnesses and 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 the 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 could show it using Watchtower documents you print all that out you get it you could show it to the GIW 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 DVD 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 transfusions so there's a topic that you can pick foe 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 watch tower 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 on at 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 him 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 tip maybe - 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 black list which means 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 kid Donald right out of there so it makes it really hard for me um I have had a lot of conversations in the past that worked really well I think that what happened was when they saw that I love 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 they're Miss translating the Bible and so that's kind of something I have to learn how to do it takes a lot of Education 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 Jehovah's Witnesses I go through with my example there but however I found also my videos online 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 the 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 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 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 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 1:1 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 it 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 their their New World Translation okay all right I'm going to ask one last question and then we're gonna go to whatever questions that we have on the QA they don't solve at birthdays holidays no blood transfusions like what is that all about alright we're going to talk about that for a while too 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 Chris birthdays celebrating various holidays like Easter or 4th 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 the Easter Bunny's 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 ok so Christmas celebration doesn't go back to Saturnalia it's on a different date it's not even on the same date 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 Christian right well 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 dogs 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 do they believe in funerals but not birthdays oddly enough um so there's no biblical reason for that no bit 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 Luke sir Luke chapter 3 I don't think I gave you but Luke chapter 3 verses 12 through 14 there's a guy who's in the military and he 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 whe 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 sure what they're teaching on it the watchtower is 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 jws have died since the 70s when they first started really pushing us Wow all right we are 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 the 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 office okay so it sounds like unity is a test for truthfulness in her mind and 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 we can 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 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 that'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 church group 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 convert Chapel Lisa hi I brought up you better read 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 Jehovah Witness that helped him to receive peace after leaving the organization okay did Jesus is Lauren mm to 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 did 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 cots in 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 know 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 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 left the Mormon Church when 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 to a mock why 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 cuz you left the watchtower doesn't mean you came to Jesus right you've 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 cult they're drawn to cult so maybe they get involved in some other cold afterwards so just like a tractor 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 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 a 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 the whole 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 yeah I'm gonna pull up John 14 28 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 that 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 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 here'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 like a positional 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 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 talks about this son - 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 us 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 a 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 right within your well-prepared an 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 watch tower 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 half Jehovah Witness maybe friends and relatives and Tricia said this thank you for this I am an extra when this 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 crazier witnesses maybe one day I can help so I think that's just an encouraging encouraging to say thank you to you so 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 awesome stuff there and he's got a lot of stuff on Jehovah Witnesses 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 on Friday because we got to know what what you know how to respond to these people so 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 Mike thank you you're awesome so thank you for everyone who joined us and we will see you guys on Friday what o'clock for Mormonism so awesome thanks [Music] you
