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!
