I hope it went well, waiting to hear all about it.
My Elderette is returning today to CONDUCT another conversation...
by Faithful Witness 85 Replies latest watchtower bible
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A.proclaimer
Good luck! You should record these experiences to learn from. she probably suspects you know more than the average bible study and been doing your research. Don't give out too much information or else she'll run the other way, unless that's what you're looking for.
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Faithful Witness
I appreciate all your thoughts and comments. I am too kind, and I really did let her talk WAY too much. Her poor partner couldn't even get a word in edgewise... had to raise her hand to speak up. It was downright rude at times, really... oh well, there is always next week. (Although I'm not sure how long I will be able to endure this).
As expected, Miss K arrived with her own agenda, since I hadn't given her a specific question. We went hopping and skipping through the bible, picking out verses to demonstrate that God's message comes through Jesus to men, who write it down. She believes that today, the Watchtower is the channel for God on earth. I had already challenged that belief, and she was trying to give me evidence of that, because "someone has to be spreading the truth today."
She wanted to go to jw.org and watch the video called, "Why should you study the bible?" I agreed. (It took awhile for the video page to load on my ipad, and while waiting, I realized that I had multiple tabs open in my browser, including this one and 2 others that said Jehovah's Witness... oops... so I adjusted the angle and made a little show of reloading the page and holding the ipad in the air, explaining that the modem was upstairs). It worked, and we watched the bizarre video. JW's really have a strange way of presenting the message of the bible.
She kept talking about the TRUTH. Repeatedly, verses about "the truth," "being in the truth," etc. I kept waiting for her to get to the point, after all these 1-2 verse passages about the TRUTH.
Finally, I said, "What is the truth?" She looked at me blankly for a moment and replied, "Well, the Bible is the truth."
"What is the truth of the Bible?" I asked her. (blank) "What is the message of the Bible?" I rephrased the question, and waited.
"It's about the fulfillment of God's kingdom and the sanctification of His name, restoring his power on earth." She started to go off on another topic, and I said "Wait a second..." and I picked up my pen. She gasped. "Don't quote me on that! You're not going to find that written anywhere... Well, you can write it down if you want, but ___" I am not quoting directly, since I made the choice to respect her feelings and did not write it down. I wasn't trying to embarrass her, but I think I did make her think about what she had just said.
Then I said, "Jesus is the truth. He told us so himself. 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No man gets to the Father, but by me.' " She agreed, although she was thrown a little bit.
She summed up her presentation with, "Who is teaching the truth today?" Of course, she claims it is the JW's... (look at all the false things being taught in churches: trinity, hellfire, immortal soul...)
Then she asked me why I had stopped studying before. "Was there something particular that made you stop?" I sat silent for a moment, while thinking of how to reply. (For some reason, she didn't hear or remember that we found apostate information and showed it to our teacher, and HE stopped the study and gave up on us. That was about 4 years ago, so I give her the benefit of the doubt... although there are others in the KH who OBVIOUSLY think they need to avoid me).
I said, "Well, I have come to realize that there is a big difference between studying the Bible, with the use of a study aid or commentary, and just reading the Bible without someone telling you what to believe it says. The more I read the Bible, the more things I see that conflict with what we were being told."
She then asked me if I had a copy of the Bible Teach book. I said I did, but I would have to find it. She happened to have hers in her bag (surprise!). She pulled it out and laid it on the table. "This book is the book we usually use, to help people to understand what the bible says. It's called "What does the bible really teach?" (I interrupted with, "I've read it.")... What do you think you will learn from this book?"
I replied, "That book is about what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe the Bible says. It is written from the JW's perspective."
(At the beginning of the conversation, they had made comments about how different people have different perspectives on things. "For example, you can read a newspaper article, and it will give you the perspective or viewpoint of the person writing that article. It won't necessarily give you all the information you need to know, or the perspective that someone else has." She told about how she had witnessed a crime, but didn't see certain details. She loves giving personal examples to draw analogies in her life.)
She was frustrated with my answer, and said, "This book talks about what the Bible really teaches. Do you think you could learn the truth about the Bible from this book?"
I said, "This book presents explanations of how Jehovah's Witnesses come to the conclusions they have about the bible."
"It is about what the bible teaches. If what is written in this book is true, then it is presenting the truth about the bible... do you agree?"
I said, "It presents certain ideas that the Jehovah's Witnesses believe, and then refers to scriptures to support their viewpoint."
She made another comment, clearly frustrated that I was not going to concede that the Bible Teach book was true. I didn't say it was false, because I was not ready to really argue any of the points being made in the book. I haven't touched that book in a very long time.
I finally asked her, "Is this book inspired?"
"No! It is not inspired. Of course it is written by imperfect men," and then she went on to admit how no JW was perfect, and that all are still sinners. "Yes, there are men and even leaders in the organization who have done wrong, and had to be removed..." She went on a little rant about that, and then came back to earth. She keeps bringing up problems that are evident in the organization, and even in their literature, while still insisting that the JW's are "THE ones teaching the truth today."
She kept pressing me for a reason or something that was stopping me from agreeing with the JW's. I asked her if JW's believed that Jesus was their mediator, and that they could go directly to him. She said yes. I said, "I get the distinct impression that there is this other 'layer' there, and that you teach that you have to go through an organization to get to Jesus. Your explanation of how Jesus speaks to people today through your organization, is something I have not heard anywhere else. Jesus said HE was the truth..."
She interrupted (again), "Did you ever go to meetings at the Kingdom Hall?" She knew we did, for almost a year at that KH. "Did you ever hear anyone pray to the organization or the governing body in their prayers?"
I told her I couldn't remember, it had been so long, but I will take your word for it that they don't do that. "But I did witness my sister's baptism, and I noticed that they all agreed that they were being baptized as part of the organization of Jehovah's Witnesses. It appeared they were making a sort of pledge to the organization before they were baptized."
They both stammered a little bit, and said they didn't know exactly how it was phrased, but agreed that there was more to it, than just "The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost." I said, "That is not in the bible." (change subject)
"What do you think most people would say, if you asked them why Jesus came to earth?" she asked.
"I can't guess what most people would say, but I know why he came. He came to save us from our sins, to sacrifice his life and die for us on the cross."
She said, "That's right, AND he said he came to tell us about God, and to sanctify his name." I asked her where it said that, about the name.
"That is one thing I did notice at the meetings. You don't talk much about Jesus, but spend a lot of time focusing on the name of Jehovah," I added.
She asked if they talked about Jesus being the son of God, and I agreed, but that they seem to diminish him and his authority. They are more worried about vindicating the name of Jehovah God.
She repeated the statement that Jesus came to sanctify the name of his Father. I asked her again where it was in the Bible, and we looked up a couple of verses. So I asked her, "Where is it recorded that Jesus called his father by his first name? I never found that anywhere."
"Oh! It's in there... let's look it up." She took me to Luke 4:8, where Jesus is quoting from the Old Testament. I was reading from the King James bible, so the entire quote of the Old Testament was in all caps. She pointed out to me, that it said LORD, because it was originally YHWH.
I said, "That doesn't work here, since the whole sentence is in all caps." She didn't know what I was saying, so I opened the JW library app, where we viewed all the translations at once. First I went to Genesis 2, and found a verse with "Jehovah" in it. The KJV translation had translated it as LORD.
Then I went to Luke 4:8 in the JW app, and the KJV says Lord, where the new version of the NWT says Jehovah. None of the translations had used LORD here. All had Lord, INCLUDING the original Greek in the KIT, which should have had YHWH, if I'm not mistaken.
I said, "So Jesus didn't actually say Jehovah here."
"Yes he did."
"That's not what it says here, or in the Greek."
"Well, he obviously did, because he had come to sanctify his father's name. He would have said Jehovah because he was reading it from the scriptures."
I didn't catch that until later, but he was probably just reciting, since they are supposedly his own words.
"By this time, they had already removed God's name from the scriptures. That is why it is just written as Lord in the Greek." (HUH? Is that true?)
"Oh, I thought they removed the name in modern translations. I guess I'm confused about that... Is there any record of Jesus ever calling his father by his name? Did he refer to him by his name, or ever instruct us to call him by his name? Specifically?'
"No, it's not recorded anywhere, but like I said, God's name had already been removed from the scriptures by the time of Jesus." (???) "Jesus came to sanctify his name, like in the Lord's Prayer, when he says, 'Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified...' "
"What does sanctified mean? Does that mean it is too holy for people to say it out loud? What does that mean?" We looked it up in the dictionary, and it meant holy (basically).
"Well, no one was using God's name at that time. They had removed it from the scriptures." (She was sticking to this reasoning now) "That was one of the reasons that Jesus came here, to represent God and to sanctify his name."
"Ok. If this was so important, why didn't anyone record it? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John... none of the 4 found it important enough to even mention it once...?"
She said, "Well, no one knew how to pronounce it. We know Jehovah isn't the correct pronunciation, but neither is Jesus. People don't have a problem using the name of Jesus."
I asked, "Why didn't Jesus tell us how to pronounce it?"
She sort of scoffed at that. "Jesus told us he was sanctifying God's name."
"So there is no record of Jesus ever actually using God's name," I said.
"No, there isn't... but we know he did because he was reading it from scriptures."
"You just said it was removed."
"But Jesus knew God's name."
"Why didn't anyone record him saying it? If it was an important instruction, I think someone would have written it down."
She didn't have much more to say about that, and she changed the topic when it was clear she was not going to get me to come to a conclusion that was not written in the bible.
Interestingly, she referred me to the scriptures where Paul is telling the Bereans to examine what they are being taught, and to check everything in the scriptures. I will continue with that part when I am more awake.
Our session was again over 3 hours... cha-ching! Jehovah points for both of my friends!
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Island Man
Regarding their statement that men removed the name Jehovah from the NT: Tell them that if Jehovah allowed men to remove his name from the NT without allowing so much as a single Greek NT manuscript with the name to survive, then how can anyone trust that Jehovah didn't allow other changes in the NT. How can we trust anything the NT says? Their statement that God permitted men to thorougly remove Jehovah from the NT implies that God is not really capable of accurately preserving his word. The fools don't realize that they're actually undermining trust in the bible in order to support Watchtower teachings!
Another point is this: They will say that whenever the NT quotes an OT passage containing the YHWH then that's a solid basis for restoring Jehovah in that NT passage. But the NWT actually "restores" Jehovah to many places in the NT where the text isn't quoting OT passages with YHWH. Ask them if its proper to put Jehovah in NT texts that aren't even quoting OT passages with the name.
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LisaRose
Wow! You are schooling these dubs, they can't give out the stock answers and expect you to buy it, that has probably never happened to them before.
I always wondered about the "Greek" scriptures, there is some justification for adding Jehovah (or some version of ) to the Hebrew scriptures where they had YHWH, but they took liberty with the new testament, adding it in with NO justification, other than they thought it should be there.
Good Job
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Enlightenment123
Wow. Just wow. I love your posts :)
I've tried that exact sanctifying His Father's name thing with JWs too. Never got any further than you did. But it's one of those...sure, Jesus knew it, but does He call His Father by the proper name, or would He call him Father? If your dad's name is Bob, do you call him Bob or dad? He instructed us to call Him Father. Not a personal name.
The divine name was edited out of the scriptures about 250 years before Jesus' birth. The Jews were very superstitious and didn't believe it should ever be uttered out loud. They used Elohim or Adonai instead. So it was replaced with LORD long before Jesus. Even if He did say the actual name, it isn't Jehovah. Jehovah is an anglicized version of YHWH invented by a Catholic monk in the 13th century...Raymundus Martini. Jehovah is a false name. Yahweh would be closer. No one on earth knows the correct pronunciation, but scholars agree that Jehovah makes no sense in Hebrew and is a very bad translation. Earlier, some JWs I was talking to were saying Jehovah is English so it's easier and if someone named Juan came to the US and people couldn't pronounce it, they'd probably call him John. But this argument is silly...cause how hard is it to say Yahweh over Jehovah?
If she really wants to go over the Bible teach book with you, I say go for it. But prepare first. There's a man that wrote a book dissecting it - Wilbur Lingle. He takes it section by section to prove how wrong it is and gives lots of leading questions, one after the other, to reach the ultimate question for a particular point. By the time you reach that one, the JW is totally stuck and it should really make them think about what that book says. You can read it here: http://thesnarkyapologist.blogspot.com/ (Response to What Does the Bible Really Teach - how to respond to this publication).
Looking forward to your next post :)
EDIT: Island Man has good points. There are scriptures that are clearly speaking about Jesus but it says Jehovah. They've added it many, many more times than what is quoted from the OT.
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ABibleStudent
Hi Faithful Witness, I'm impressed that you talked with the two sisters for 3 hrs!! Here's two for you.
Have you thought about asking Miss K to view what she says from your prespective? How would she feel if she asked you a question and you changed topics instead of answering her question? Would she feel like you were hiding somthing from her? Would she feel that it was a health or unhealthy conversation?
Miss K seems to use a lot of thought-stopping platitudes like "imperfect men" and "that they did something wrong". Since Miss K likes to say that the WTBTS has imperfect men who have made mistakes in the past, how does she view your opinions about the Bible? What did those JW men do that was so wrong in Miss K's opinion? Are you more imperfect than JW men who have done something wrong? Is she more imperfect than JW men who she said did something wrong? When JWs say that the "Light keep getting brighter" is it because imperfect men made mistakes and needed to cover-up their mistakes?
Peace be with you and everyone, who you love,
Robert
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Pams girl
Wow...this is jaw dropping stuff, really. Amazing how you keep your cool. I love your posts.
One note, you mentioned Jesus died on the CROSS for our sins......and she agreed. Whenever I mentioned cross to my bible study teacher, she looked like the devil was in the room and corrected me that it was STAKE from the Greek "Stauros"...excuse my ignorance, but has their belief changed on this?
Best, Paula x
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AudeSapere
FW wrote: "... and I picked up my pen. She gasped. "Don't quote me on that! ..."
LOL That made me really laugh out loud!
Classic. Talk for hours. Knock on neighbors doors for decades. Turn in reports with data and stats of all the witnessing she does. But... OMG~!! Don't quote her~!!! LOL
Funny people.
-Aude.
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Faithful Witness
Pams girl: I might not have said cross. She did correct me last time, and said, "Or torture stake..." I may have avoided the term this time, to stay on topic.
Blondie: Thank you for the illustration and hints for next time! I really struggle with finishing my thought, before she just runs rough-shod over me with her own agenda. I am way too polite, and there were more than a couple of times, when I should have stopped her in the middle. I kept waiting for her to get to the point... but I'm being reminded that they WILL just go on forever, if you don't stop them. It was sometimes like she was talking herself into her point of view...!!
Terry: It is funny you should say that, as Miss W (her partner) brought up the fact that they had learned about the truth from a different book! She said they called it "The Blue Bomb!" She said it strongly addressed the trinity doctrine. That could be what she remembers most, because she used to attend both Methodist and Catholic Churches... not sure which one came first. She now will not enter a church building for any reason, "because I know what false teachings are going on in there!" --- Miss K, on the other hand, says that she goes into church buildings for funerals, weddings, and even has gone to Weight Watchers at a church before... that is where "your conscience" comes in. She used this an example of JW's enjoying "free will."
I had made the comment that "With the JW's, it is really ALL or nothing." Miss K said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "If you want to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you have to agree with all their teachings and beliefs, even when they change their mind. Then you say that you have 'free will.' From an outsider's perspective, it really appears that you have 'FREE WILL, as long as you agree with US.' "
She didn't really have a comment about that, but then went on and told how they didn't control every little aspect of your life. "For example, they don't tell you what specific movies, TV shows or entertainment you can watch..." Then Miss W piped in with, "Of course, you want to PLEASE JEHOVAH."
Ugh... to be continued. Thanks for the encouragement.
I found it ironic, when we read about Paul instructing the Bereans to examine the teachings of their leaders... then she proceeded to try and "teach" me something that wasn't actually documented in the bible. (Jesus using God's personal name).