My wife did a talk last night at the Kingdom Hall concerning how a God of love could kill people. She asked me to come with her because she wanted the emotional support. I agreed and we were all on the way. Before the meeting began, Brother Hero comes to me and asks if we can start studying again. In my mind I was saying, never, but I wanted to give Brother Hero a reason to 'earn' my study but since he caught me off guard at that moment I asked him to get with me after the talk and I will let him know. My wife gives her talk while the kids and I were in the hallway. The littlest one would not sit still so we had to go out in the hall but we watched my wife through the window.
We left immediately following so we could get the kids to bed at a respectable time. I had a copy of this letter to the elders as well as a copy of this news article concerning blood transfusions that I wanted to give to Brother Hero. However, my oldest daughter got a hold of them and instead shoved them in the contribution box. Oops.
At any rate, Brother Hero asks again before I leaved and I promised to call him the next day. I called him this morning around lunch time to talk about the study and here is how the conversation went.
First off, I explained to him that I did not see the point in studying anymore if he was unable to explain to me how their current understand of their blood doctrine was supported by the Bible (not to mention common sense). He responded by saying that while I did not understand things now that in time I will. That’s not good enough, because everything that we have studied since my questioning him on this doctrine and my sharing with him my views on the matter have been about everything but blood. I hate being misled in this way and I figured it was time to come clean.
I asked him how they could he know that the witnesses have the one true religion and he immediately directed me to the scriptures in Matthew 24:14 and Matthew 28:19, 20. I looked them up and figured that he would immediately point to the fact that they preach door to door as their marker of the one true religion. I replied, “There are a lot of people who call themselves Christian. One third of the world’s population if I am correct, so it seems that there has been a lot of preaching in the world.”
He told me that the witnesses have been preaching the Kingdom since the days of Christ but I countered with the fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses did not exist as a religion until the days of Russell and even then they were known as the Bible Students not the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He even went as far as to say that the people of Israel were considered the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I asked, “So if I were to go to a Jewish temple and ask a Jewish rabbi if the Israelites considered themselves Jehovah’s Witnesses back in Bible times, he would say yes?” “You should go to the Bible, Gary it says in the Bible that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.” “The Bible calls them Jews,” I responded.
At any rate, I knew this was not going anywhere so I took the conversation back to the original topic and said, “Look, what is important is that you can somehow show me how the scriptures support your current understanding of the blood doctrine. If you cannot do that, perhaps you can show me proof that the witnesses do indeed have the true religion and that the Watchtower is indeed God’s sole channel here on Earth. That is what you say right, that they are God’s sole channel?” “Yes,” he replied. “Then if you can prove that, I will listen,” I said.
He told me things like how the witnesses follow the Bible as closely as possible or that the Bible supports what the witnesses teach. I replied, “A lot of religions claim the Bible supports their teachings. When I was an IFB, they too claimed that they followed the Bible as closely as possible and believed that they had the correct teachings. We even went door to door trying to win souls for Christ.” “You did what the Bible commands us to do then,” he said. “So am I to become an IFB again?” I asked. I then explained that the fact of the matter was that even though the pastor claimed to have the true gospel message from the Bible, that pastor also taught false things like urban legends such as the beast of Revelations being a super computer in Belgium as the truth. Confronting false teachings like this made me conclude that they could not be the only true church.
“What do you think is the one true religion, Gary?” he asked. “None of them,” I replied. “So you don’t believe that the first century Christians had the one true religion then?” he asked. “I think that Jesus could be considered the truth but that none of His followers had everything right,” I replied, “In the book of Revelations, it speaks of 7 different churches all of them had something that was a little off as far as Christ was concerned.” “Well, of course imperfect men would not have everything right,” he said. “Then can’t that be said of other churches, imperfect men not getting everything right?” I asked. He went on to talk about how the church members would go about fighting in wars and participating in politics, etc, etc.. I brought up the Amish and he countered by asking me if the Amish spread the good news of the Kingdom like they do. While we agreed that the Amish don’t go around door to door like the witnesses do that fact alone is not enough to convince me that they are the one true religion. Neither does their grandiose claims of Jehovah’s Witnesses being around since Bible times. In spite of their claims, their religion did not exist prior to Russell in the 1800’s.
However, again, taking the conversation back to my original topic, I offered him this. If he could somehow prove to me that their current understanding of their blood doctrine is somehow indeed backed up by scripture or, barring that, prove to me that Watchtower is indeed God’s one sole channel here on Earth, I will listen to him. He told me that he could provide me some information but that it would be up to me to accept it. “That’s fine,” I said, “what is important is that the information provides inescapable proof that the blood doctrine is truly support by scripture or, barring that, that the information he provides proves inescapably that the Watchtower is God’s one sole channel. There should be no way out.” In other words, it should be air tight.
We ended the conversation on that note. I am not sure if he is even going to try to get that information for me. He sounded as if he realized that he was not going to convert me and may have decided in his mind that he was going to ‘brush the dust off his feet.’ After the conversation, I felt real bad for how it went. He is a nice guy and I did not want to get into any kind of sparring match with him or what not. I just wanted to express to him that I did not see the point of our continued study if he was not going to answer my questions concerning blood. On the other hand, if he can prove the selection by Christ in 1919, that would be a bonus.