Found this on a website:
What's a good way to steer a conversation with Jehovah's Witnesses who come to my door?
Focus on John 6. This seems to do it every time--or, more properly, it seems to do something every time, and the something can be one of two things.
If you're fortunate, your discussion of that chapter--it's the one in which Jesus promises the Eucharist and states emphatically that what appears to be bread and wine really will be his body and blood--will throw the Jehovah's Witnesses for a loop. Focus on Jesus' repetition; over and over he said we're to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and over and over he failed to tell his listeners he was speaking only metaphorically--for the simple reason that he wasn't. He was speaking literally, and his listeners knew it.
First the Jews walked away, shaking their heads in disbelief. Then even some of Jesus' disciples left him, unable to accept the doctrine of the Real Presence. One particular person fell away here: Judas (see verse 64). It was here, in his disbelief in the Real Presence, that Judas first betrayed Christ. Yes, later he would be a thief and a traitor, but this is where his tragedy began.
If you go through John 6 slowly, emphasizing what's really going on, the Jehovah's Witnesses will find themselves in a pickle. You'll show them how all the people mentioned in that chapter took Jesus literally--so why shouldn't we?
If you bring the missionaries this far, end your exchange with an exhortation. Use the lingo they (and you) have heard elsewhere; they'll identify with it. Tell them they need to read the Bible. Say they should ask "Jehovah God" to give them the light to understand what John 6 really means. Tell them they have to "get right with God," and let them know that means going wherever the truth leads them. Tell them they have to trust God and follow him wherever he may lead them, even if that is somewhere they think they'd rather not go.
All the above explains what happens if you're fortunate in you discussion with the Witnesses. Of course, things may go wrong--not drastically, not dangerously, but annoyingly. You may find that your consideration of John 6 produces no impression at all on the missionaries. If so, wait for their return and try again.
[Reprinted with permission from the April 1992 issue of This Rock magazine.]
In your three-tape set, "I Escaped from the Watchtower," the former Jehovah's Witness being interviewed recommended a book entitled The Finished Mystery. What is the book about, who wrote it, and why is it important?
Leonard Chretien, an ex-witness who spent 22 years as as official in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the Jehovah's Witnesses), recommended The Finished Mystery because it is an example of the bizarre metamorphosis of Watchtower theology over the last hundred years and is useful in showing Witnesses the problems and contradictions in their religion.
The Finished Mystery was the seventh and final volume in Studies in the Scriptures, a series of books written by the sect's founder, Charles Taze Russell. It is a hodgepodge of false prophecies, rambling discourses on the interpretation of Scripture, and the obligatory rantings against the Catholic Church. The Finished Mystery was printed posthumously in 1917 and was touted as an unanswerable critique of "Christendom."
As the years passed, and as elements of its theology changed, the Watchtower trumpeted a series of bogus prophecies concerning the date of Christ's return. To its embarrassment, the Watchtower was unable to reconcile either its new theology or its more recent spate of failed prophecies with Russell's book. In an understandable act of damage control, the Jehovah's Witness leadership withdrew from circulation all volumes of Studies in the Scriptures.
Most Witnesses are unaware of the existence of Russell's books, and for obvious reasons the Watchtower is careful not to allow the rank and file access to them. But you can get a photographically reproduced copy of the book from Witness Inc., an Evangelical apologetics group that focuses on refuting the errors of the Watchtower (P.O. Box 597, Clayton, CA 94517, [415] 584-3838).
As with all Evangelical apologetics organizations, however competent they may be in their particular field, there is always the problem of faulty Protestant theology being offered as the "solution" to the errors of the "cults." You need to read around this Protestant bias. The organization's research is still helpful because of their expertise in documenting the errors and contradictions in Watchtower publications such as Awake! and the Watchtower, as well as in many out-of-print works.
[Reprinted with permission from the May 1993 issue of This Rock magazine.]
My wife is studying with Jehovah's Witnesses, and they have convinced her that celebrating birthdays is a pagan custom and not something Christians should do. She refuses to allow our children to celebrate their birthdays. What should I do?
Birthday celebrations are mentioned only a few times in Scripture, and nowhere are they condemned. Witnesses wrongly assume that celebrating birthdays is evil because the only two explicit biblical mentions of birthday celebrations are those in honor of a pagan, Pharaoh (Gen. 40:20-22), and a wicked man, Herod Antipas (Mark 6:21; cf. Matt. 14:1-12). To compound the issue, King Herod's birthday festivities were the occasion of sexual immorality involving the daughter of his brother's wife, Herodias, and led to the murder of John the Baptist. Witnesses wrongly reason that, because these biblical occurrences depict the celebrations of the births of wicked men, celebrating anyone's birthday is in itself sinful. You can demonstrate that this does not logically follow by showing that the Bible says that the birthday of John the Baptist would be the cause of "joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth for he will be great in the sight of the Lord" (Luke 1:14-15). While this passage does not explicitly mention an annual celebration of John the Baptist's birth, it certainly allows for such an interpretation and at the very least demonstrates that it is good to celebrate the birth of a holy person.
[Reprinted with permission from the March 1994 issue of This Rock magazine.]
Why won't Jehovah's Witnesses accept blood transfusions, even when their lives are in jeopardy?
Mainly because their founder, Charles Taze Russell, scrambled to come up with a unique set of doctrines that would stand out from the pack. He didn't seem to care which biblical teachings he embraced and which he rejected, so long as the resulting doctrinal pastiche would be exotic. Rejecting blood transfusions on "biblical" grounds is one of the odd tenets that make the Watchtower a truly odd organization. Witnesses cite two verses as bases for their position: "You shall eat no blood whatever, whether of fowl or of animal, in any of your dwellings. Whoever eats any blood, that person shall be cut off from his people" (Lev. 7:26-27); "For the life of every creature is the blood of it; therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off" (Lev. 17:14).
Besides being inconsistent by retaining this particular Old Covenant prohibition while ignoring others, such as circumcision (cf. Gen. 17:2-14) and kosher dietary laws (cf. Deut. 14:3-21), Witnesses misunderstand what these passages are talking about. In both Leviticus 7 and 17 the prohibition is against the eating of blood, not reception of blood through transfusions (a medical procedure which was developed only within the last century). Witnesses ignore the fact that in a single passage in Leviticus the Lord prohibits the eating of both blood and fat: "It shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, in all your dwelling places, that you eat neither fat nor blood" (3:17). Yet the Watchtower does not condemn the eating of fat, and no Jehovah's Witness would feel any moral compunction against eating a bag of fried pork rinds or enjoying a nice, fatty cut of prime rib. This is a good example of the Watchtower's selective "theology."
[Reprinted with permission from the March 1994 issue of This Rock magazine.]
