I love how at one moment the NT is written to First Century contemporaries, and then, arbitrarily, it's written 'for our day' -- like 2 Tim 3.
The Society's teaching about the mediator cannot be scripturally defended. Use the tactic they teach in Pioneer School -- make him defend his belief using the Bible beacuse his response is simply a mindless regurgitation of poorly thought-out WT 'reasoning' with unproven premises.
The Watchtower of November 15, 1979, page 26, made this comment:
“What, then, is Christ’s role in this program of salvation? Paul proceeds to say: “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men [not, all men], a man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a corresponding ransom for all.”—1 Tim. 2:5, 6.
The insertion "[not, all men]" is the Society blatantly changing the meaning of the Bible.
This issue was raised in a 1989 Questions From Readers (w 8/15/89 p 30-31):
“Is Jesus the Mediator only for spirit-anointed Christians or for all mankind, since 1 Timothy 2:5, 6 speaks of him as the “mediator” who “gave himself a corresponding ransom for all”?”
The Watchtower answer to this question on the mediator centers on the following legal concept:
“The Greek word me·si′tes, used for “mediator,” means ‘one who finds himself between two bodies or parties.’ It was a ‘many-sided technical term of Hellenistic legal language.’ Professor Albrecht Oepke (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament) says that me·si′tes was “one of the most varied technical terms in the vocabulary of Hellen[istic] law. ” (w 8/15/89 p 30-31)
So, it is a "many-sided technical" term. But they never bother to define what it means! Nor do they cite the source.
To put this 'legal word' non-sense to rest, here is how should we legally define the word mediator as used by Paul:
“[Paul] calls him the mediator, the mesities. Mesities comes from mesos, which, in this case, means in the middle. A mesities is, therefore, one who stands in the middle between two people and brings them together. When Job is desperately anxious that somehow he should be able to put his case to God, he cries out hopelessly: 'There is no umpire [mesities] between us' (Job 9:33). Paul calls Moses the mesities (Galations 3;19) in that he was the one between, who brought the law from God to the people. In Athens in classical times, there was a body of men - all citizens in their sixtieth year - who could be called upon to act as mediators when there was a dispute between two citizens, and their first duty was to bring about a reconciliation. In Rome, there were arbitri. The judge settled points of law; but the arbitri settled matters of what was fair and just; and it was their duty to bring disputes to an end. Further, in legal Greek, a mesities was a sponsor, a guarantor or a surety. He put up a bail for a friend who was on trial; he guaranteed a debt or an overdraft. The mesities was someone who was willing to pay a friend's debt to make things right again.”
- William Barclay (1907-1978), Professor of Divinity and Biblical Criticism Glasgow University in Scotland, Letter to the Hebrews, p. 106.
So, according to Paul, did Jesus -- as a mesities -- only 'bail out' a small, limited number of people? Is the payment of the 'debt of sin' only applied to the 144,000?
