Saturday, June 14, 2014

Watchtower Ladies at my Door


Every now and then Jehovah's Witnesses show up at my door. Sometimes it can be years between their visits and other times only the Spanish speaking ones come to my door asking if anyone in the home speaks Spanish. I usually kid around and tell them I speak "Spanglish," does that count?
Recently I had a day off from work so I didn't get around to taking my shower and getting ready for the day till mid-morning. I was nearly all dressed up when I heard the doorbell. As I was still up in my bedroom finishing dressing, I went to my intercom to find out who it was.
Me: "Who's there?"
Female Voice: "We're Jehovah's Witnesses and we just wanted to talk about the Bible with you."
Me: "Hold on a minute, I'll be right down."
Female Voice: "Ok."
I went downstairs to my living room and opened the front door and said to the two ladies standing there, "Come on in. I don't like to stand here with the door open because I don't want my cats going outside." So they both came in and I invited them to sit down.

JW lady #1 begins her talking points regarding their book, What Does the Bible Really Teach? She explained how they reference all their teaching with a Bible verse. I smiled at her and told her that I was quite aware of what Bible teaches. I pointed to my study Bible on the coffee table and told the ladies that this Bible is not the only one in the house. I went on to explain how important it is that people really read their Bibles and understand it in context. Taking my cue from Stand to Reason's Greg Koukl, I further explained that my rule was, "Never read just one verse." Explaining how easy it is just to take a verse or two out of scripture and try to build a teaching around it to believe in can be very dangerous. One example would be the passage and verse at Matthew 27:5 where Judas went and hanged himself. Someone could build a case about committing suicide as a good thing when one commits a grievous sin against God. These ladies just looked at me and agreed but looked puzzled. I believe that deep down inside, they know that the Watchtower nearly always uses just one verse to build an idea that they base all their theology on. When examining their theology, one will find in most cases that nearly every verse they cite to prove their point actually does not mean what they think it means when read in context.
An example of where the Watchtower applies this out of context reading is in Revelation 7:1-11. In this chapter, the Watchtower says that the 144,000 is in heaven but the great crowd is on Earth. On further examination of this passage it actually appears that the 144,000 is on earth and the great crowd is in heaven. First the angels are told not to damage anything on Earth until the 144,000 from every tribe of Israel had been sealed. If the 144,000 were already in heaven, this verse would not make any sense if they were already in heaven. Reading further on, verse 9 begins with the "Great Crowd" (whom the Watchtower says remain on earth) seem to be in heaven! They have the whole thing topsy turvy because they read all their scripture out of context!
As I tried to continue to try to talk about the Bible to these ladies who had by this time, were sitting on my living room couch, one of them just kept whipping out the What Does the Bible Really Teach book. As she had the book open to the table of contents, she tried to tell me that the only way to really understand the Bible was to read this book and understand what is written in the chapters. I told her that I had already read the Bible from cover to cover a couple of times and was in the process of going through it again this time teaching a lady from my church whom I conduct a personal Bible study with.
Then the two ladies got up and said they had to leave. I asked them why because I thought they had come over to discuss the Bible with me. Their answer: "We can tell you already know a lot about the Bible. We are looking for people who don't know anything about the Bible."
Well there you have it. Jehovah's Witnesses are not interested in just going door to door and finding anyone to discuss the Bible with. They are seeking only those with Bible ignorance so that they can teach them a false gospel.

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