I spent some time with when I first came to God. I was about 21 and went to the Jehovah's withness hall for "Bible studies" with them, allthough they probably thught they were going to teach me. I will say their "church" looked nice, small, seating about 200 at most. No pews, straigt stadium seating, looked like a *gasp* movie theater.
Anyway during this time a few things stuck out to me, that may help any of you talking to Jehovah's witness in the future.
1)They are absolutly opposed to the baptism of the Holy Ghost and tongues, so I went about it a different way, on day as they were trying to recruit me, I briefly mentioned mine and my wife's testimony, how that when we God set us free from THAT VERY DAY never again smoked, cussed, drank, and all the vices of the flesh that were upon, that we had been strugling with since repentance were gone. When I mentioned that, in excitement (trying to recruit me) one hopped up and said, "That is exactly what we need" to which I responded, that is the exact experience I have been telling you about for 2 weeks that you don't believe in. See sis. alvears comment on testimony
2)They don't believe in the physical resurrection of Christ-see prax's post.
3)Interestingly enough, they very strongly believe that Jehovah AND Jesus created everything. Jesus is Jehovah's helper. They will try to explain this by
Gen 1 and
Proverbs 8. I remember cross referencing them to Isiah 44:24. If you could of only seen this "ministers" face. He just looked up from His Bible with his mouth open and paused for a moment. It was like for just a moment he was getting the revelation from God and had to choose between that or his tradition and upbrining. After a few seconds he stumbled around to change the discussion and we soon closed. of all of the time i spent with these JW's, I think the
Isa 44 scripture was the turning point.
4)I saw this same "minister" come into the grocery store I worked in and buy 2 Colt 45
40oz's (beers). I considered him a friend,and was embarrased to ask him in public what he was doing, fearing perhaps severe depression had kicked in or something, so I called him when I got home to which he responded:
"You won't catch me smoking a cigeratte, or doing any drugs, but I will throw back a cold 40. You know Paul told Timothy to use a little wine for his stomach's sake." (Somehow I think he is taking the scripture out of ocntext) Anyway they believe drinking is okay, it goes back to Judge Rutherford, former leader of the group.
5)The watchtower is treated as scripture. They actually have a service each week where the congregation reads through the entire watch tower. This was done on a Tuesday, the weird/neat thing is that all of the JW's around the world do this each week. So on any given Tuesday/Wednesday night they are all studing the same watchtower all over the world. Hence if you do some research you can tear them to pieces using this literature, for such discrepencies as the dating of the end of the world, rulings on blood transfusions, use of alchohol, and a host of subjects. This is because their official doctrine is that the headquarters in New York is the "servant" that Jesus spoke of in the gospel when He said "who is that wise servant who will give them MEAT in due season." It is not unlike the catholic doctrine of papel infallibility, only it is used of the "governing board" sort of like the mormons and their apostles. Anyway, like someone said, the only meat the JW's have been providing is bologna!
There's more, but I don't want the post to be too long, I'm sure there is enough to get started on.
PS-Anything scripture that EQUATES Jesus as BEING Jehovah, not merely His Son is very difficult for them. Especially cross referencing scripture.
PSS-the majority of their debate "skill" come from a book called "Reasoning from the Scriptures." which gives them the words to answer any particular doctrine they come into contact with. Many of them memorize the arguments n the book, you get them beyond the arguments in the book, and they have no defense. When you get on a difficult subject with them, and they answer you once or twice, press the issue they will run out of material because their doctrine is terribly built on shifting sand.
Hybrid Mode
