If you were an atheist who started to believe in God, would you form a group called "Atheist Believers in God"? Once you have seen that the WTS is wrong, why would you continue to follow their structure or identify with them, regardless of what direction your new beliefs led you in? Ex-JWs who become atheists tend to hang with other atheists, not set up a special breakaway branch of JW-ism for atheists. Ex-JWs who become orthodox (small o) Christians tend to join churches, not set up new groups as breakaways. Anyone who starts a breakaway group really hasn't broken away, in my opinion.
NeonMadman
JoinedPosts by NeonMadman
-
17
There is something that has always bothered me...
by braincleaned init always bothers me that the society boasts unity, as jehovah's witnesses don't have other branches and groups stemming from them, like the amish for example.
the wts is justified to brag unity of belief; to the point where the same program is taught in the whole world.. i blame those who leave and yet continue to believe in jehovah and jesus (i'm an atheist).
it seems a schism is above those who dissent from the org.
-
-
-
11
I just watched 3 days
by mouthy inof the witnesses for jesus convention....pennsylvania .
it was great.
did anyone else watch it????
-
-
NeonMadman
Doc Bob was faithfully in the back of the room running the sound booth. It was a great time. Wish you had been there, Grace! We miss you lots.
-
26
Teenage son's last WT comment. Major sphincter puckering on my part.
by Open mind ini thought maybe some of us might enjoy something light-hearted to start the week off.
at dinner last night my teenage son reminded me of the last kh meeting he attended with me about a year ago.
he is a big fan of christopher hitchins and self-identifies as an atheist.
-
-
NeonMadman
I like this kid already.
-
10
New tactic by the Watchtower?
by Christ Alone ini have noticed that lately everything that the watchtower "reports" is spoken of in the third person.
they take the role of "reporter" and use terms such as "they" "them" and "the witnesses".. notice this "official" report about their massive nwt braille bible:.
http://www.jw.org/en/news/by-region/world/six-foot-bible/.
-
-
NeonMadman
Nothing new about their using the third person in reference to themselves. I can remember them doing that as far back as the 1960s. Makes it seem as if the material is being written by an impartial third party.
-
12
Creepy Facebook friend requests but no message or even just a hello
by yadda yadda 2 indoes anyone else think its a bit rude and creepy for people from your way distant past or having only the tenuous of social connection with you to request being your friend on facebook but then totally ignore you, not even say a simple hello?.
this annoys me and i have a policy of deleting them after a month if they don't make communicative contact because by not even sending a message to say "hi, how are ya after all these years" they are not being friendly just apparently nosey bastards who wanna see my photos and what i've been up to in my life and then basically ignore me.
ive had this experience with a lot of jw's from my past.
-
-
NeonMadman
Someone from my past I wouldn't have such a problem with; it's the total strangers who have no mutual friends with me that make me scratch my head.
-
144
Does God Command Christians To Go From Door To Door Preaching The Gospel?
by Bangalore indoes god command christians to go from door to door preaching the gospel?.
source:http://www.thercg.org/questions/p070.a.html.
based on a quick reading and misinterpretation of acts 20:20, many believe that the apostle paul preached the gospel of the kingdom from house to house, to those who were unconverted.
-
-
NeonMadman
Recovery:
Jesus told his disciples to search out who is deserving in any city/village they enter. The entire city would be judged based on their response to Jesus disciples. The entire city cannot be judged if everyone in the city has not at least been given a chance to hear the message.
Interesting concept. Are you aware of the Watchtower’s teaching regarding countries where they have not made significant penetration with their preaching work? According to the WT of 10/15/1953,
“***w5310/15p.639QuestionsFromReaders***
The watchman class will faithfully perform the work to the extent Jehovah considers necessary, and by Armageddon all will come under individual or family or community responsibility before God.
Also see the QFR in w52 6/1 p. 350. The teaching is that individuals are responsible before God because of their participation in a community. Most people in China, for example, have never been reached with the JW message. Nonetheless, they will be destroyed by God at Armageddon because of their support of their ungodly leaders and because of their own sinful rebellion against the God who is evident in creation. It is not necessary that every individual hear the message, only that it be proclaimed in the community. So, according to WT teaching, your assertion is false.
No, if you want the entire city to hear your message you will not only have to go to public places, you will also have to go to each person's individual home. This is exactly what the disciples did. That is why it is virtually translated as "from house to house" and not "in private homes of interested people", because it is not logical or sensical.
You are simply asserting this without evidence. As I and others have pointed out, the Greek term does not need to mean “from house to house” in the sense that JWs understand the phrase (more about that in a minute). Also, you are looking at this text through 21 st century eyes. Word about new things spread much more quickly and thoroughly in ancient cities (which, as I’ve also pointed out, were much smaller than modern cities). In old west towns in the USA, for example, everyone heard about it and came out when the revival preacher or snake-oil salesman came to town. He didn’t need to go from door to door to contact nearly everyone; all he had to do was set up in a public place and wait for word to get around. The same was almost certainly true in the time of Jesus and the apostles. People weren’t tied up watching TV, surfing the net, playing video games, etc. Most didn’t even have books to read. When something new arrived in town, everybody was curious and wanted to check it out. To say that the disciples HAD to go from house to house is simply imposing your organization’s requirements into the text where they are not found.
Jesus is training his disciples in the preaching work so that they continue it after he is long gone. Of course, Jesus could do everything better himself but he is sending forth his disciples to preach so that they can acquire skill and in the future take the lead in the disciple making work. Surely, you aren't going to try to make the case that it wasn't necessary for the disciples to preach from door to door simply because Jesus had crowds follow after him?
No question that Jesus was training His disciples to do the work of evangelism after His return to heaven, but I don’t see how that explains why crowds followed Him everywhere He went. Clearly, people had heard about His teaching because He went to public places to teach. The Bible never once speaks of Jesus going from door to door to spread His message – He is always teaching and preaching in public places. Nonetheless, He had crowds clamoring to hear what He said. You are presuming that the disciples did a door to door preaching work in connection with Jesus’ ministry, but no clear delineation of it is found in the text, only a few verses that use the phrase “from house to house,” onto which you are projecting the Watchtower’s interpretation of the phrase. More about that below.
Bible translators of all credentials disagree with you. If the early Christians method of preaching was ambiguous/unclear, it would not be so easily translated as "from house to house". This is not an issue of serious lexical debate, because it is very obvious to those who use their thinking caps and those who are not attempting to discredit the house to house preaching work of JW's.
The problem is that you are looking at the phrase “from house to house” through Watchtower-colored glasses, as others here have already pointed out. “From house to house” does not imply a sequential door-to-door campaign of calling at the homes of uninterested strangers, as the WTS teaches. The same phrase in Greek is translated elsewhere (such as Acts 2:46) –even in the New World Translation - as “in private homes.” Since the NWT claims to translate Greek phrases consistently throughout, why is Acts 2:46, for example, not rendered as, “And day after day they were in constant attendance at the temple with one accord, and they took their meals from house to house and partook of food with great rejoicing and sincerity of heart”? The answer, obviously, is that such a rendering would be absurd. The disciples did not walk down the street, knocking sequentially on each door, eating their meals in every house. The phrase obviously means “in private homes,” as the NWT has correctly translated it. And if it means “in private homes” at this instance, there is no contextual reason why it cannot be rendered in exactly the same way at Acts 5:42 and 20:20 – except that to do so would eliminate the key proof texts that JWs use for their door-to-door work. The Greek phrase that is rendered “from house to house” does not refer to door-to-door canvassing.
On his first trip on his second missionary tour, what does Paul find? Does he come to Ephesus and find a thriving, organized congregation of Ephesians?
You are engaging in false dichotomy. I didn’t say that Paul came to Ephesus and found a “thriving, organized congregation of Ephesians,” but neither did he come to Ephesus and find no Christian presence whatsoever. As the Insight book correctly points out, Priscilla, Aquila and Apollos were already there (Acts 18:24-26). Presumably, they were not functioning in a vacuum. There were almost certainly other Christians there, though there were also some who misunderstood the faith and had only been baptized with John’s baptism. Paul did much to grow and strengthen the church there, but he didn’t start from zero.
The account does not mention Aquila and Priscilla or Apollos. We do not have conclusive proof that they are still there. So where is the proof that there were Christians in Ephesus before his second arrival?
I assume, then, that you believe that Insight on the Scriptures is in error on this point? Let me understand your contention: Christians were present in Ephesus at some time before Paul’s second visit (at least in the persons of Aquila, Pricilla and Apollos, and likely others as well), but you are saying that all Chriatians had left the city by the time of Paul’s second visit so that Paul was walking into a city that was 100% devoid of Christian presence? That’s a pretty big stretch, and it seems to me that the burden of proof would fall to you to show that all Christians had left the city. But, again, this is the sort of position you need to take in order to support the Watchtower’s pet doctrine.
Surely, all the inhabitants of Asia didn't hear the word of the Lord at the synagogue (in Ephesus) and the school auditorium (in Tyrannus).
Except for the fact that that is exactly what it says in Acts 19:10.
The district of Asia was far more encompassing than just a school auditorium in Tyrannus and a synagogue in Ephesus. But it would have been possible for Paul to reach all the residents of the district of Asia if he preached from house to house and not just in a school auditorium in one city.
I suppose it would have. He might also have done so with a good direct mailing campaign or if he hired an airplane and used skywriting to place his message above the city. However, the Bible does not record either of these methods, nor does it say that he engaged in sequential door-knocking. It DOES say that “he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God. But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus. This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (Acts 19:8-10). Again, it is only because of your support of Watchtower dogma that you feel the need to insert other concepts into these verses. In your eagerness to insist on adding the door-to-door work to Scripture, you are actually denying the plain statements that the Bible makes – not an unusual practice for JWs, I’m sorry to say.
Another point I would make is that the word “all” as used in the New Testament does not necessarily mean every single person. For example, in Luke 8:37, we read, “Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned.” Are we to assume that every last person among the Gerasenes approached Jesus personally and asked Him to leave, or does it make more sense to assume that the phrase means there was a consensus? So when Acts says that “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord,” it could mean that the message had thoroughly penetrated the area, not necessarily that every last individual had received a personal message from someone calling at his home. Remember also, that Ephesus was a port city and a center of commerce, so messages heard there tended to be carried far and wide, especially if some of those hearing the message while visiting the city had actually become believers.
The primary method of making new disciples is preaching from house to house. This is what most JW's spend their time doing. Inviting people to the Memorial is also primarily done by house to house. This is the primary method for memorial invitations globally. You cannot take a method (such as informal witnessing) substantially LESS advocated/employed and use it for your case. We are talking about what most of the time the preaching hours you quote are spent on. And most of them are spent in the door to door ministry. The door to door work has its benefits, as is shown by the increase in Memorial attendance and converting of JW's in the past 50 years. There are other methods used, but they are so much lower when compared with the house to house work, they are not comparable/extremely significant.
Again, this is mere assertion on your part, presented without evidence. Indeed, no evidence is available, since, as far as I know, nobody is keeping statistics on percentages of those baptized who were initially contacted by various means. I was speaking from my own experience, and I have no hesitation in saying that, after 30 years as a JW, the vast majority of Witnesses whom I knew were NOT contacted through the door-to-door work, but were either approached through other methods, or else had been raised in the organization. Even if we minimize the number brought in through “informal” witnessing, certainly we must agree that a large number of baptisms are of young people who were raised as JWs. That makes even larger the number of hours that must be spent in ministry to achieve even one baptism of someone who was originally contacted in the door-to-door work.
As far as Memorial invitations being distributed from house to house, I can’t recall a single time in 30 years as a JW when someone attended the Memorial simply because someone randomly left an invitation at his or her home, having no prior interest in JWs. Not one. In fact, as I recall, we were not encouraged to distribute Memorial invitations at every door, but only to our studies, return visits, or where particular interest was shown. You must know as well as I do that the reason for the huge Memorial attendance is that everyone comes, including the inactive, the unbelieving mates, Bible studies, interested persons and even disfellowshipped persons – in many cases people who never darken the door of a Kingdom Hall any other time during the year, but who nonetheless have some sort of connection to the organization prior to attending. I hardly think you can truthfully attribute high Memorial attendance to invitations being distributed from door to door.
Well, downsizing and consolidation are economical methods to save funds, and better use them on things that take priority. If one branch can supply literature to every region that received literature from 5 other branch facilities, it is entirely reasonable and logical to consolidate them into one as doing such would save considerable funds. Over 10,000 congregations were opened in the last year, there are more Kingdom Halls that need to be built than they can keep up with and yet you are arguing that our figures are unreliable?
Maybe, maybe not. Let’s just say I’m skeptical. While you say that many new congregations are being opened, why is it that I am so often reading about congregations being consolidated and Kingdom Halls sold off? There is a rather famous lawsuit going on in California in which a congregation did not want to turn its KH over to the organization to be sold, in just such a situation – the organization demanded that two congregations be combined and one of the Kingdom Halls sold (and, of course, the proceeds of the sale turned over to the WTS). Why is this going on, if the organization is growing so dramatically? It appears to me that the only areas in which the JWs are truly growing are third world countries, where the Internet is not widely available and the facts about the history and teachings of the JW organization are not readily found. It just seems inconsistent in the other areas that congregations are closing up as the organization allegedly grows.
-
20
WT declares JWs are not "Great Crowd"
by irondork inhuh?.
okay, the thread title was a stretch, but not by much.. after these things i saw, and, look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the lamb..." revelation 7:9. sooo..... every time the wts releases it's annual report, it is declaring the total number of jehovah's witnesses, a crowd that can most certainly be numbered, as not being the "great crowd" mentioned at revelation 7:9
-
-
NeonMadman
Technically, their teaching is that the "great crowd" is made up of those who survive Armageddon. Therefore, the body of JWs at any given moment before Armageddon is not the "great crowd," since many current JWs may die or prove unfaithful before Armageddon comes. Also, some of the current membership of the JWs are among those professing to be of the anointed, so they would also not be part of the "great crowd." Since the end is always 'any minute now,' we should be able to presume a close correspondence between the current body of JWs with the earthly hope and the "great crowd," but the two are not identical. Since no one actually knows who will and will not survive Armageddon, it's true from their viewpoint that no man can number the "great crowd."
-
144
Does God Command Christians To Go From Door To Door Preaching The Gospel?
by Bangalore indoes god command christians to go from door to door preaching the gospel?.
source:http://www.thercg.org/questions/p070.a.html.
based on a quick reading and misinterpretation of acts 20:20, many believe that the apostle paul preached the gospel of the kingdom from house to house, to those who were unconverted.
-
-
NeonMadman
Wow. The disciples didn't preach door to door but they would preach from private home to private home
I didn’t say “from private home to private home.” I said “in private homes.” One does not equate to the other, as I pointed out. As I said, going to people’s homes does not equate to knocking randomly at the doors of strangers. The disciples preached everywhere they went, whether on the street, in synagogues, or in the marketplace. And, just possibly, they may have preached from house to house at times. That was very much in harmony with the technology of the day. But as others have pointed out on this thread, they also rode donkeys and wore sandals everywhere they went, and I haven’t seen any JWs doing that lately.
I don’t believe that we can state with certainty that their preaching was definitely from house to house, or that such a method was even their primary method. We read far more instances of the disciples preaching in public places than in private homes. I find it just as easy to believe that the private homes in which they preached and taught were those of people whom they had met in public places who showed interest during their public proclamation as to believe that they were engaged in some sort of door to door canvassing. More so, really, because in those days, the streets and marketplaces were where you found people, and a message proclaimed in the public square tended to become known throughout the town fairly quickly. Much more efficient than going to houses one by one.
How are the disciples to search out in a city who is deserving and who is not? How can Jesus say the entire city will be judged on Judgement Day if the disciples only went to talk to a few people here and there in private homes? Also, notice that Jesus says "wherever anyone does not listen to YOUR words...on going out of THAT HOUSE". Now if Jesus' disciples are just teaching people in their private homes, why would the people they are teaching not listen to their words? Again, why is the entire city/village going to be judged on Judgement Day if all the disciples are doing is teaching/preaching in private homes?
As I pointed out above, one possibility is that they would contact people in public places and then visit with them in their homes upon invitation. We aren’t talking about Manhattan here. Cities back then were much smaller than cities today, and there were many fewer distractions in the form of entertainment than we have today. Ephesus was a good sized city for the time - I visited its ruins just last month - but no bigger than an average small town today. When someone came to town with a new teaching and proclaimed it in public, word got around very effectively. People came to follow Jesus in droves to hear His preaching, because word had gotten around. Surely you aren’t going to try to make the case that the disciples went around Jerusalem from door to door passing out invitations to the Sermon on the Mount?
The potential for rejection that Jesus mentions does not eliminate this possibility; as a JW there were many times that my message was ultimately rejected by someone who initially showed interest. Admittedly, another possibility is that the disciples did actually preach from house to house. I’m not trying to make the case that they absolutely did not do so. My point is that there is not explicit enough indication in the Bible to be certain that they absolutely did, as JWs argue. Remember, the question we are discussing is not whether the disciples preached from house to house, but whether God commands Christians to preach in this specific manner. JWs would argue that, if the apostles preached this way, modern Christians are also required to follow this exact method, with God disapproving anyone who fails to do so, no matter how zealous he may be about spreading the message in other ways.
Paul is summarizing events that haven take place over a period of three years. That is why Paul says "YOU well know how from the first day that I stepped into the [district of] Asia I was with you the whole time.." Now if Paul is talking about his preaching to the elders, this statement must be false. On Paul's first day in the district of Asia there were no disciples. There was no congregation. There were no elders. How could Paul have been with the elders, preaching to them in their private homes from the first day he came into Asia? Also, why does Paul mention opposition from the Jews regarding his preaching. How were the Jews opposing and setting plots against Paul if he was simply going to the private homes of the elders? It is very obvious whose interpretation doesn't make nearly as much sense.
Sorry, but your timeline is flawed. The three-year visit that is ending here in Acts 20 was not Paul’s first visit to Ephesus, and it is untrue that there were no disciples in Ephesus when he arrived. According to Insight on the Scriptures (v. 1, p. 735), Paul had visited Ephesus previously in 52 C.E. and then left, promising to return if it was God’s will. During his absence, Aquila and Pricilla remained in Ephesus, along with Apollos, whom they taught. Paul returned in the winter of 52/53 and then proceeded to stay for 3 years. So it is apparent that there were disciples in Ephesus prior at least to Paul’s second visit. Now, if I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that in one three-year visit, Paul took Ephesus from having no Christians at all to having a church with elders, and that therefore his teaching must have included house to house canvassing so as to make converts, some of whom would later become elders, but that his reference to teaching “publicly and from house to house” would refer to all phases of this three-year visit. But your premise is wrong. There were Christians, and almost certainly at least a rudimentary church in Ephesus before his arrival. He did much to grow and develop it, but it wasn’t as if he walked into the city, started converting pagans and built a church where there was no prior Christian presence at all. So I would maintain what I said – Paul’s comments in Acts 20:20 refer to his actions toward “you” – the elders with whom he was speaking and not the church as a whole.
Incidentally, I find it interesting that the emphasis in Acts is placed on Paul’s preaching in the synagogue and the school auditorium at Tyrannus – public places – and not particularly on any supposed house-to-house campaign (Acts 19:8-10). Note that verse 10 states that “This [reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus] continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” Not through random door-knocking, but through preaching in public places.
We CAN assert this as conclusive because we have clear instructions from Jesus to his disciples about searching out who is deserving in a city/village. "If anyone does not take you in or listen to your words..on going out of THAT HOUSE.." There is nothing ambiguous about these instructions. These weren't instructions to go and preach to people in private homes, they were to search the entire city for deserving ones. How could this be done if they did not go door to door?
As I pointed out above, and as the Scriptures seem to bear out, the disciples preached in public places. This is certain. There are dozens of citations where the disciples went to marketplaces, synagogues, public squares and other public locations in order to evangelize. They went wherever people were to be found. Let’s face it, if their primary work was preaching from house to house, why did both Jesus and the apostles face so many attacks from angry mobs? How does a mob gather if you are speaking to one person at a time, in the privacy of his own home? Clearly, their primary means of communicating the Word was by public proclamation. Whether they supplemented this with any sort of door-to-door canvassing is uncertain, but even if they did, it was certainly never commanded by Jesus as THE method for Christians to use in preaching – which, again, is supposed to be the question we are addressing.
We live in a day when it is not seen as socially appropriate in many areas for strangers to approach the doors of people they do not know. This has changed just within my lifetime. I am now 60 years old; when I was young, we had a man come to the house regularly to deliver milk, and another who brought ice for our icebox three times a week. Salesman used to ply their wares from door to door, the Fuller Brush Man came by once a month or so, and occasionally, someone who was down on his luck would knock on the door and ask for a handout. All of this was taken in stride by householders; it was the normal way of things, nobody worried about it. But rising violent crime and differing social conditions have made such things obsolete. Now, we are concerned when we see a stranger approach our doors. We open them only a crack, because we don’t know who it is, and we are worried that it might be someone intending to rob or harm us. Companies that used to hire door-to-door salesman have moved to other marketing methods. We get milk and bread at the supermarket or convenience store. We do not expect strangers to knock on our doors, and our guard is immediately up when one does. JWs who have not adapted to the social environment find that many are unwilling to talk with them at all, because their very approach is seen as inappropriate.
Besides all that, there are very efficient methods today of reaching mass audiences. TV, radio, mass mailings and the Internet are all far more efficient at reaching people than door-knocking, and many Christian ministries use these methods to great effect. The Great Commission is still being obeyed, using the best methods available in our time – just as it was in the time of the apostles.
1950--1 in 5000 attended the memorial
2001--1 in 400 attended the memorial
1950--1 JW for 7000 people
2000--1 JW for 1000 people
If you could establish that all those people were brought into the JWs through the door-to-door work, you might have something there, but as far as I know, no statistics are kept as to the method of initial contact used with new converts. In my experience, most JWs I knew had NOT been contacted through the house-to-house work. Rather, the majority had been initially introduced to the JW teaching through workmates, acquaintances, and relatives or had been raised as JWs. It was a very small percentage who had come in through the door to door work. Which makes the statistics I cited regarding 2011 that much worse (and the numbers are similar for most years, I only picked 2011 because it was the most recent number I had). Over 5000 hours to make a convert, and most converts did not come in through that means. So how many hours to make a real convert who was actually contacted through the door-to-door work? 10,000? 15,000? Very efficient indeed.
The other question that crosses my (admittedly cynical) mind is whether we should trust the growth statistics from the WTS in the first place. They claim growth every year, but seem to be on a downsizing campaign the last few years. Branches are being closed and consolidated, as are local congregations. If the organization were actually growing as it claims, it seems they would be opening new branches and congregations, not closing the ones it has.
Jesus, Paul, and the early Christians knew they best way to spread their message.
They certainly did, and it has continued to spread for 2000 years, using the best technology and methods available at every point. Christians today who engage in evangelism don’t usually ride donkeys, they don’t preach from handwritten scrolls, and they don’t typically go canvassing from house to house. At one time all of these things may have represented the optimum in efficiency; today they are obsolete. You are welcome to stick to first-century methods if you wish, but you are not free to demand that every Christian follow your example. There is no command in the Bible for Christians to go sequentially from house to house for the purpose of evangelism.
-
144
Does God Command Christians To Go From Door To Door Preaching The Gospel?
by Bangalore indoes god command christians to go from door to door preaching the gospel?.
source:http://www.thercg.org/questions/p070.a.html.
based on a quick reading and misinterpretation of acts 20:20, many believe that the apostle paul preached the gospel of the kingdom from house to house, to those who were unconverted.
-
-
NeonMadman
Several thoughts here:
1. The Restored Church of God (to whose web site the original post linked) is an offshoot of Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, and is a majorly wacky cult probably worse than the JWs.
2. There is not one instance in the Bible where Jesus Himself is said to have gone from house to house. If this were such an indispensable feature of Christian ministry, one would think it would be explicitly stated that the Lord Himself had done so. Telling His disciples to go to people's homes is not the same thing as commanding them to engage in door-to-door evangelism - of course they would go to people's homes to instruct them in an age where there was no TV, radio, Internet, printed Bibles or literature or other means of mass communication. Going to people’s homes does not equate to knocking randomly at the doors of strangers.
3. The Greek term translated "from house to house" in Acts 20:20 can also be translated "in private homes," and the context indicates that it is much better translated that way there. Paul was not talking about some sort of door to door evangelism program in those verses, he was talking about how he instructed the ELDERS of the Ephesian church. Again, it's not surprising that he would go to their private homes in order to instruct them. The way JWs try to use that verse, we would have to understand that Paul went up and down the streets of Ephesus, randomly knocking on doors until he found an elder of the church, then would go in and instruct him. Doesn't make nearly as much sense.
4. The only verse in the NT that could possibly be used in support of door to door type evangelism by any early Christians would be Acts 5:42, but the same Greek phrase could as easily also be translated there as "in private homes," and would make just as much sense. In the absence of other evidence for early Christian door to door preaching, we cannot assert this text as sole proof, since its meaning in this matter is not conclusive. We would have to be reading our idea of door to door evangelism into the verse rather than drawing it out. Even if the early Christians did use this method of evangelizing, it would not necessarily mean that such a method is required for Christians today, since there are much more effective methods of reaching large numbers of people that don't carry the negative social implications associated today with making uninvited visits to the homes of strangers. There is no command anywhere in Scripture to preach specifically from house to house; the concept is imposed on the text by JWs, not drawn from the text.
5. As far as the effectiveness of such door to door ministry, it is actually very ineffective. If you divide their hours spent in "field service" by the number of baptisms for (for example) the year 2011 (as reported in their Yearbook), you find that 5,451 hours had to be spent in their ministry for every new baptism that occurred, and that's not taking into consideration that the majority of those baptisms were probably of young people who had been raised as JWs. That doesn't sound like a very effective method of spreading the word to me. A cynical mind (such as mine) might conclude that the purpose of the door-knocking work for JWs is to keep them so busy that they don't have time to ask questions, rather than to effectively spread their message.
Not that there is anything wrong with knocking on doors if it's what one feels comfortable to do and one wants to evangelize in that fashion (though I think there are also some very good arguments against it in this day and age), but it is hardly a required activity for Christians, as the WTS teaches.
-
68
Have you met anyone on the Governing Body?
by Christ Alone ini posted on another thread about a couple of my experiences of meeting the governing body while i was in brooklyn.
i wanted to see if anyone else had any experiences along these same lines.
i met most of the ones that were current during the 2001-2003 years.
-
-
NeonMadman
I met Samuel Herd a few times when he was our District Overseer, but never had a substantial conversation with him. Back in the 1970s, I also met William Jackson (died in 1981), but again, no detailed discussions.