WITNESSING TO WITNESSES: A Strategy and Some Specifics
Advice from a well-known former JW pastor, David A ReedFROM SWORD & TROWEL 1999 No 1
The best-selling author of books about the Watchtower identifies the best ways to approach
JWs.
PROBABLY most, or half, of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Britain were trained using a book called,
You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. This is a large red book, you may have seen it
yourself, full of colour pictures of a beautiful earthly paradise. Children are seen playing with lions and
tigers.
On page 23, it says this: ‘How might Satan use even friends and relatives to discourage us?
You can be sure that Satan the devil does not want you to have this knowledge and that he will do all in
his power to stop you from getting it. How will he do this? One way is by seeing to it that you receive
opposition, perhaps in the form of ridicule. It may be that even close friends and relatives will tell you
that they do not like you examining the Scriptures. Jesus Christ himself even warned, "Indeed a man’s
enemies will be persons of his own household".’
If you come along and tell a Witness (or a person studying with the Watchtower) that it is a
dangerous cult, you will play into his hands.
If you go ahead and tell the Witness, ‘I have some evidence against your organisation,’ that
Witness is going to be frightened out of his skin. Witnesses will usually terminate the discussion, and
not come back.
But there is a strategy to avoid such a reaction. First, do not tell the Witness that you want him
or her out of the organisation. Do not, of course, be dishonest, but avoid immediate negative comments.
Secondly, ask questions. This takes advantage of the Witnesses’ training, which teaches them to answer
questions.
The main doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses is that the Watchtower organisation is God’s
spokesman to the world. Until you deal with this, it is not worth talking about the Trinity, the afterlife
and other things, because a Witness will simply believe you must be wrong - because you disagree
with God’s spokesman. So you have to undermine their belief that the Watchtower is God’s spokesman
first.
To show the doctrinal acrobatics of the Watchtower is one way of undermining the
organisation’s position of infallible authority. It was taught for fifty years that the Great Pyramid of
Egypt was inspired by God, just as the Bible is inspired, and that prophecies could be derived from
measurements within the pyramid. Witnesses are often shocked when they hear that. They have been
told that the pyramid somehow figured in their past, but it is very vague, and they do not really know the
details. If you can show them some of those details it will really upset them.
[David Reed gives evidence in his book - How to Rescue your Loved One from the
Watchtower - with document reproductions which may be photocopied.]
Witnesses may have an answer for this. They will say that their light has since become
brighter. (This excuse is an obvious twisting of Proverbs 4.18.) Do not bother refuting this.
Go instead to another changed doctrine, for example, the matter of whether the men of Sodom and
Gomorrah will be resurrected. Say that you have heard that in 1879 they taught that they
would be resurrected. But in 1952 they said they would not be. In 1965 the Watchtower
switched back to saying that they would be resurrected. In 1988 they reversed their teaching again. The
question is, does the light grow brighter, or is it blinking on and off?
If you have only a few minutes to talk to a Witness - share your testimony. If you have got the
time to look up a scripture - look up 1 John 5.1 and ask them if they have been born of
God, because the scripture says every Christian has been. If you have time to go into a whole passage -
go into Romans 8.8-17 and discuss it with them. And if you have more time, then go after
their chief doctrine, their belief in the Watchtower organisation.
We now turn to two specific JW doctrines described in a previous article, to show how they
may be refuted.
A prominent belief held by Jehovah’s Witnesses is that the dead are non-existent. They teach
that the soul is man himself, and the soul dies when the man dies, and there is nothing left. They believe
in a resurrection which is a re-creation. God makes a new copy of you. Their chief text to support this
is Ecclesiastes 9.5 where the New World Translation says - ‘as for the dead,
they are conscious of nothing.’ To rightly determine whether this verse refers to the eternal
consciousness of the dead we need to turn to Luke 12.4-5 (reading from the
New World Translation) where the Lord says - ‘Moreover I say to you my friends, do not fear
those who kill the body, and after this are not able to do anything more. But I will indicate to you whom
to fear. Fear Him who after killing has authority to throw into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear this one.’
A Jehovah’s Witness hearing this will be surprised. They are not trained to think of this verse
as pointing out that there is something to fear after the body is killed. How could the verse be true if
people did not somehow survive the death of the body?
A closely parallel verse is Matthew 10.28. It is the same conversation being
reported, but Matthew mentions something that Luke does not. The Lord said, ‘and do not become
fearful of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.’ The Witnesses are not familiar with that
verse either. The Watchtower does not usually quote this because it says that you can kill
the body without killing the soul.
We might also turn to Revelation 6.9-11. If you ask a Witness to turn to this they
will find yet another passage which they do not visit when they are given their guided tour of the Bible
by their teachers. Again, using the Jehovah’s Witness Bible, we read: ‘And when he opened the fifth
seal I saw underneath the altar the souls of those slaughtered because of the Word of God and because
of the witness work that they used to have. And they cried with a loud voice saying, Until when,
sovereign Lord, holy and true, are you refraining from judging and avenging our blood upon those who
dwell on the earth? And a white robe was given to each one of them, and they were told to rest a little
while longer until the number was also filled of their fellow slaves and their brothers who were about to
be killed as they also had been.’
I remember when I was coming out of the organisation being shown that passage. I was utterly
floored by it. I had been an elder, or teacher, or minister, in my congregation, but I had never seen this.
Another prominent belief of the Witnesses is that only 144,000 go to Heaven, while the
remainder will live on the Earth. The door to Heaven was closed in 1935. Psalm 37.29 is
one of the Witnesses’ favourite verses to prove their point that the righteous will live on the Earth and
not go to Heaven. The verse says, ‘The righteous themselves will possess the earth and they will reside
for ever upon it.’
In Watchtower literature, however, the Witnesses speak about the meek possessing the Earth in
terms of Christ Jesus becoming ruler over the Earth, and the 144,000 ruling over it with Him.
But I think the best answer to Jehovah’s Witnesses about only the 144,000 going to Heaven is
to turn to Revelation 7. They will ask you to read verse 4, where it says (New World
Translation), ‘And I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144,000 sealed out of every
tribe of the sons of Israel.’ ‘There you are,’ Witnesses say, ‘it is proved that 144,000 go to Heaven.’ But
it does not say 144,000 go to Heaven. It speaks only about 144,000 sealed out of the tribes of Israel. It
goes on to say, ‘Out of the tribe of Judah 12,000 sealed, out of the tribe of Reuben 12,000 sealed.’ Ask
them, ‘Who are the 12,000 out of the tribe of Judah?’ They have no idea. They do not read that part.
They just read the part the Watchtower points them to.
Then, if you ask them whether these are literal numbers - the 12,000 out of each tribe - they
will reply that the numbers are just symbolic. Then we may challenge them - How can twelve symbolic
numbers, 12,000 times twelve, add up to a literal 144,000? They do not know how to answer that. They
cannot deal with the fact that symbolic numbers may add up to a literal number according to their
teaching.
There is another verse that will really refute Jehovah’s Witness dogma. It is John
17.20. I remember when I was leaving the Witnesses that this was the verse that changed my
mind as to whether I would have a hope of living on the Earth as a Christian, or going to Heaven to be
with Jesus.
John 17.20 is part of the Lord’s great prayer. Verse 1 says Jesus spoke these
things raising His eyes to Heaven. He was praying about His disciples, the apostles, and future disciples.
He says, ‘I make request not concerning these only [the disciples He had at that time],
but also concerning those putting faith in me through their word.’
At this point we may ask a Jehovah’s Witness if he has put faith in Jesus through the word of
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He will, of course, say that he has. Then go on to verse 24 where the
Lord asks something for all who in the future would believe in Him. He says, ‘Father, as to what you
have given me, I wish that where I am, they also may be with me, in order to behold my glory.’
When I read that, it really shook me. I was unhappy with the Witnesses; I realised they were
wrong, but I was still stuck with many Jehovah’s Witness beliefs. It was this passage that changed my
mind and brought me to see that all true believers go to Heaven.
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