This post is pretty long so I just thought that i'd warn you.
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This morning around 10 o'clock I got a very rude wake up call from my little sister banging on my door.
I shouted: WHAT!
She said:
The people are here!
The people that you said that if they came by that to call you.
[ my sister is 7 by the way. Also I maed shure that everyone in my house was witness proof. They wont be getting any new converts, at least not from my home. ]
Then I started to think, what am I going to do, what am I going to say? A gush of thoughts went through my mind crippling me in the process, I couldent move for a while. Then I said to my self, think jerome think, youve been planning for this for months now. Come on get yourself togeather.
Well I finally did. I amasted the courage to go to the window and say:
Hello good morning.
They said: Good morning son, can we have a moment of our time.
I said: Ofcourse just give me a minute.
So I went to the bathroom to wash the cold out of my eye brush my teeth and put on a shirt in record time, then I went around to the back door. I stood there for a moment trying to compose myself, I cleared my thoughts, when I was ready I took a deep breath put a smile on my face and went around to the front.
Small talk.
w1= witness1
w2= witness2
me= jerome yours truly
Me: I'm here sorry I took a while. Good morning again nice to meet you.
W1+2: Good morning we would like to have a discussion with you about the Bible. You like the Bible dont you?
Me: Yes of course!
W1:Then you wouldent mind if we had a little discussion about it, would you?
Me: I wouldent mind at all.
W1: Well... Would you agree that the world as it stands today is in a state of termoil? When you listen to the news dont you hear of all the crime and all the wars that are happening overseas? Dont you think that the world is becoming a dangerous place to live in?
Me: Well no. The world has always been that way. Even going back to Bible days. But even so dont you know that right now that you can live longer than even the richest king in the those days. It is becoming common place to see people that live up into their 80's and 90's.
W1: Well I cant exactly agree with that because people in the Bible have lived much longer than that.
Me: Yes but that was when it was natural for them to live for that period of time. I'm shure that you know that the Bible says that after Adam that the life span of an indivisual would decrease. Dident it say that?
W: Well yes it did. And it also says in the Pslams that the life span of a Generation would be 75 years and 80 if God permitted it.
Me: Speaking of Generation I heard that there was some controversy about that word in your Church some time ago is that true?
W: I think I know what you mean but that really wasent a big deal.
[ Lie #1]
Me: Ok if you say so. You are Jehovahs Witnesses right?
W: Yes.
Me: I also hard that there was alot of controversy about your Bible. Especially John1:1. What does your Bible say about that scripture?
W: Well do you have a Bible.
Me: Yes I do.
W: Would you want to go get it for us?
Me: Shure. [I ran inside and grabbed up my KJV Bible and was back in flash.]
Here it is.
quote' In the beginning there was the word and the word was with god and the Word was God.
W: Nope... thats wrong. The correct translation was 'a god?'
Me: 'a god'!? [ Gasp! ] <---- Being sarcastic.
W: Well you see, how could you be with God and also be God?
Me: Ok I see your point but if you look at the Bible in all its entirety then you will realize that the hebrews had a different style of writing, that repeats alot of words and obivous statements t make things that are important stick out. When these scriptures are translated there are alot of sentences that if we examine them to closely they seem silly. For example,
'They stoned them with stones'. If you examined that sentence too closely you would think that the person who wrote it was being redundant. But you see thats just how the Hebrew language was at the time.
W: Ok we understand your point. But...
Me: [I cut them off here.] Is the word a 'true God' or a false god?
W: Well we believe that he is a true God.
Me: So then the word is God?
W: No, he is not Jehovah but he is still 'a god.'
Me: So is he a lesser god?
W: Well yes.
Me: So is Satan a god too?
W: Yes he is but he is only the god of this world. Jesus also calls him a god.
Me: But how can you say that bearing Is 43:10-11.
W2: Let me read that. [ He reads the scripture to himself.]
Me: So did the Word come before Jehovah or did he come after? Because Jehovah said that no 'god' came before or after me.
W: But Jesus called Satan a god so that means that obviously that they were other gods in a difference than you mean so that scripture cannot apply to what you are speaking about.
Me: But Jehovah was refering to a 'false god.' What I am trying to say is that no TRUE God came either before Jehovah or after. So any gods that came after Jehovah would definetly be false gods according to this verse. Because we all know that they are many gods but there is only one true God that we should pay any attention to.
W: But that scripture still dosent apply.
Me: [ Ok I understand I thought to myself, the dots dont connect for you but thats ok.][-->Aloud] So do you know here this word Jehovah came from?
W: Yes that is Jehovahs personal name.
Me: Ok. Did you know that that word Jehovah came from a combination of the four constanents YHWH or JHVH in english, and the word 'Adonai' which is Hebrew for lord and Eliohem? When you take out the vowels you get Jehovah.
W: [ Witnesses look surprised. They soak it in.]
Me: Oh can I ask you something?
W: Why yes ofcourse.
If you were bored to death before it gets really intresting from here.
Lies Lies Lies...
Me: What happened to your Church in 1975?
W1+2: Well nothing really.
[ lie #2 ]
Me: Are you shure because I heard that there was something really big going on, what year did you come into the truth?
W1: I was baptized in 1969.
Me: Really well I heard that you were expecting the end of the world.
W: Dont mind that kinda talk it was ONLY A FEW CONGREGATIONS that were doing something like that. And even so it was only a few people that were doing those kind of things.
[ lie #3 ]
Me: Thats not what I heard at all. I read that 6000 years of human existence were going to end 1975 and that Everybody thought that the world would end in 1975.
W1: Well since I was new to the organisation at that time, anthing like that that was going on I DIDENT REALLY HAVE A PART TO DO WITH.
Me: So you mean to tell me that everyone around you was waitind for the world to end and you dident even notice.
W1: Well its a good thing that I dident because look were still here.
Me: Ok moving on...What were the Bible students doing in 1914?
W1: We were preaching the good news ofcourse.
Me: Do you know what really happened in 1914?
w1: What do you mean?
Me: Well do you know that Charles Taze Russel was expecting the end of the world in 1914 and not the presence of Christ jesus as you now preach.
w1: I never heard that.
w2: Me nethier.
Me: How is that possible? Dont you study your Churches history?
w1: Well yes we do but I never heard anything around that time.
Me: Well I read that when 1914 came and went that, he pushed the date foward to 1915.
w2: ...
w1: ?
Me: Then he pushed it foward to 1918. And now you hold this date as the date that Christ judged your Church and appointed it above all of his affairs on earth.
w1: Where did you hear all of this?
[ Here comes trouble... ]
Me: I read it off the internet.
W1: Did you get this from the Watchtower site?
Me: Well not exactly. I found it from all over the place because I found that I cant really get the information that I want from your hearquarters website.
w1: Did you hear this from apostates or the headquarters.
Me: Well as I said I got it from all over the place. You see the older publications that you have are nolonger protected by copyright laws so you can by them from off of the internet. People photocopy them and put them on the internet. Also to you can take an excrept from a book and put it online if you want to make a comment about it so then you wouldent be violating copyright laws.
w1: Ok.
[ Thank God... Danger averted.]
Me:Theres another thing that troubles me about your Church.
w1: What is that?
Me: Well... You shun people. When somebody leaves your Church you cant speak to them anymore.
w1: Well that is not exactly so because just the otherday a woman came to the kingdom hall and she told me that she was disfelloshipped. Then she even went to the elders and told them that she wanted to be reinstated.
Me: So can you talk to people that are disfelloshipped?
w1: Well... We shouldent associate with people that we think that are not following Gods principles. Well its OUR OWN PERSONAL DECISION IF WE DECIDE TO TALK TO DISFELLOSHIPPED PEOPLE OR NOT. Live for instance if we were to be at home watching television, we would not want to be watching programmes that a good Christian would not approve of. So you see its a personal decision.
[ Is it really a personal decision? Lie#4 If you are caught you are dfed.]
Me: But I heard that if you got disfelloshipped that your friends would sometimes send you letters telling you that they cant associate or talk with you any more.
w1: I never heard of any such situation...
Me: Ok. there is one last thing that I think that I have to ask you. Do you know what psychological coercion is?
w1: No what do you mean?
Me: Well let me explain. You see back in the 50's there was this war in Korea and alot of American prisoners were captured. In a short period of time many of them ( as much as 75% of them) denounced the united States as evil and sent letters to back to the u.S. asking them to dismantel captiolism. Now everyone wondered how could so many U.S. pow suddenly denounce everything that they have done for all their entire life as evil and take sides with the enmy. Well when the pow's were returned to the states they were studied by many medical professionals to see exactly how could this have happened. They termed the process psycological coercion. Are you shure that you never heard of it though?
W1+2: Not to my recolection.
Me: Well not only did these people find that it was happening in warfare, they also found out that some religious leaders were doing it. One religion that stands out is the Heavens Gate dooms day cult.
w1: I think I heard about those.
w2: [listening intentively]
Me: So do you know that you have to look out for any organisation that uses this psychological coercion. After all if what these people say is true then anybody that dosent know what it is in deep trouble. Like in Heaven Gate people ended up comitting suiside.[/blue]
w2: Ok. we really have to be going now. can we come back some other time?Me: Well ofcourse. How about sunday evening. [/blue]w1+2: Ok that sounds fine. [ They got into their car and drove off. ] Summary; They lied about: 1975, shunning, generation...They dont have a clue about any of the other dates for Armageddon and they dont really know much about their history. I mentioned vaccinations and organtransplants but they dident seem to know, or at least they acted that way.They made plans for a return visit on sunday, and they are bringing their daughter. She apparently has a better knowledge of their history so they think that she would be better able to anwser my questons.Witness 1 is female and is married to Witness 2. W1 is the more mature witness and witness 2 isnt too good with words, so his wife takes the lead.They left a Watchtower and Awake article with me but I made shure that they couldent ask for a donation.I asked the guy if he was happy and he took 30'seconds to anwser, so i think that asking him what being a witness has done for him to make him feel better about himself. His wife on the other hand claims that she is happy as a bird. I think that she was only saying that though.They realize that I know alot about the Organisation._______________________________________Here is my question to the board.What do you think that I should do to prepare for Sunday?jerome.The Bible is a two edged sword wield it for evil and it you may get hurt.