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My first encounter with a Watchtower Society missionary (a.k.a. Jehovah's
Witness) occurred in 1969. At the time I was young and naïve, and thus
assumed that the hewer of wood, and hauler of water who came down the
driveway was a fellow Christian. But when I talked this over with a
Protestant church elder he became alarmed; and urged me to read a little
book titled 30 Years A Watchtower Slave by William J. Schnell; whom the
Society at one time demonized as an agent of Satan. I would not be
surprised if it still does.
After getting my eyes opened by Mr. Schnell's book, I was afterwards
steered towards another book titled Kingdom Of The Cults by Walter Martin.
No doubt the Society demonizes Mr. Martin too.
Around late 1980, my wife and I attended a series of classes sponsored by a
local church titled "How To Witness To Jehovah's Witnesses". The instructor
(call him Pete) was an ex Witness who had been in the Watch Tower Society
system for near three decades and was a wide-area manager before
terminating his association with the Society; so he knew the ins and outs of
its doctrines pretty good.
Pete pioneered a small organization in San Diego dedicated to de
programming and re-educating ex Witnesses. It was a challenge. The ex
JW's with whom Pete worked were often very depressed with feelings of
betrayal and disillusionment-- not to mention the humiliation and the
despondence they were experiencing from letting themselves be duped by
the Society's ingenious sophistry --and found it nigh impossible to trust
ecclesiastical authority. Pete said that had he not been an ex Witness
himself; many of his students would never have listened to him.
Pete didn't train us to defeat the Society's missionaries in a discussion
because even if you best them scripture for scripture, rebuttal for rebuttal,
and refute for refute, they will not give up on the Society. Their mind's
unflinching premise is that the Society is right even when it can be easily
proven wrong. No, he trained us to do seven things:
1• Do not accept their literature. They will want to come back later and
discuss it with you.
2• Don't give them a chance to launch into their spiel, but immediately put
them on the defensive with your own questions, thus denying them control
of the conversation
3• Do not get embroiled in trivial issues like birthdays, Easter, Christmas,
Christmas trees, blood transfusions, the design of the wooden device upon
which Christ was crucified, service in the military, and that sort of thing.
4• Force them to listen and pay attention to what you say even if you have
to repeat yourself to do it, or clap your hands, snap your fingers, or raise
your voice. Do not let them turn their attention elsewhere while you're
speaking.
5• Do not permit them to butt in and/or talk out of turn. Politely, but firmly,
insist that they remain silent until you are finished speaking.
6• Do not permit them to evade and/or circumvent difficult questions. They
will sometimes say that they will have to confer with someone more
knowledgeable. When they do that, the meeting is over. Thank them politely
for their time and then ask them to leave and come back when they have
the information. Do not let them stay and start a new topic of their own.
7• It's very important to show them the Bible not in ways they've already
seen, but in ways they've never imagined.
The goal is to simply show missionaries that the Society's isn't the only
interpretation out there. In other words: the Watchtower Society's
interpretations aren't the only option; nor are theirs eo ipso the right
interpretations just because they say so.
Later on, I read a book titled Why I Left The Jehovah's Witnesses by Ted
Dencher and eventually purchased a copy of the Society's Kingdom
Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures to use in my discussions with
missionaries because it is the one Bible that they cannot challenge; nor dare
to challenge. I also read and studied the Society's little brown book titled
Reasoning From The Scriptures.
From all that vetting, study, and training I quickly discovered that although
the Watchtower Society uses many of Christianity's standard terms and
phrases, those terms and phrases mean something entirely different in
Society-speak than what you'd expect. It is genuinely a case of apples and
oranges going by the same names. So your first challenge in dealing with a
Watch Tower missionary is to scale the semantics barrier; and that by itself
is an Herculean task.
=====================
My first encounter with a Watchtower Society missionary (a.k.a. Jehovah's
Witness) occurred in 1969. At the time I was young and naïve, and thus
assumed that the hewer of wood, and hauler of water who came down the
driveway was a fellow Christian. But when I talked this over with a
Protestant church elder he became alarmed; and urged me to read a little
book titled 30 Years A Watchtower Slave by William J. Schnell; whom the
Society at one time demonized as an agent of Satan. I would not be
surprised if it still does.
After getting my eyes opened by Mr. Schnell's book, I was afterwards
steered towards another book titled Kingdom Of The Cults by Walter Martin.
No doubt the Society demonizes Mr. Martin too.
Around late 1980, my wife and I attended a series of classes sponsored by a
local church titled "How To Witness To Jehovah's Witnesses". The instructor
(call him Pete) was an ex Witness who had been in the Watch Tower Society
system for near three decades and was a wide-area manager before
terminating his association with the Society; so he knew the ins and outs of
its doctrines pretty good.
Pete pioneered a small organization in San Diego dedicated to de
programming and re-educating ex Witnesses. It was a challenge. The ex
JW's with whom Pete worked were often very depressed with feelings of
betrayal and disillusionment-- not to mention the humiliation and the
despondence they were experiencing from letting themselves be duped by
the Society's ingenious sophistry --and found it nigh impossible to trust
ecclesiastical authority. Pete said that had he not been an ex Witness
himself; many of his students would never have listened to him.
Pete didn't train us to defeat the Society's missionaries in a discussion
because even if you best them scripture for scripture, rebuttal for rebuttal,
and refute for refute, they will not give up on the Society. Their mind's
unflinching premise is that the Society is right even when it can be easily
proven wrong. No, he trained us to do seven things:
1• Do not accept their literature. They will want to come back later and
discuss it with you.
2• Don't give them a chance to launch into their spiel, but immediately put
them on the defensive with your own questions, thus denying them control
of the conversation
3• Do not get embroiled in trivial issues like birthdays, Easter, Christmas,
Christmas trees, blood transfusions, the design of the wooden device upon
which Christ was crucified, service in the military, and that sort of thing.
4• Force them to listen and pay attention to what you say even if you have
to repeat yourself to do it, or clap your hands, snap your fingers, or raise
your voice. Do not let them turn their attention elsewhere while you're
speaking.
5• Do not permit them to butt in and/or talk out of turn. Politely, but firmly,
insist that they remain silent until you are finished speaking.
6• Do not permit them to evade and/or circumvent difficult questions. They
will sometimes say that they will have to confer with someone more
knowledgeable. When they do that, the meeting is over. Thank them politely
for their time and then ask them to leave and come back when they have
the information. Do not let them stay and start a new topic of their own.
7• It's very important to show them the Bible not in ways they've already
seen, but in ways they've never imagined.
The goal is to simply show missionaries that the Society's isn't the only
interpretation out there. In other words: the Watchtower Society's
interpretations aren't the only option; nor are theirs eo ipso the right
interpretations just because they say so.
Later on, I read a book titled Why I Left The Jehovah's Witnesses by Ted
Dencher and eventually purchased a copy of the Society's Kingdom
Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures to use in my discussions with
missionaries because it is the one Bible that they cannot challenge; nor dare
to challenge. I also read and studied the Society's little brown book titled
Reasoning From The Scriptures.
From all that vetting, study, and training I quickly discovered that although
the Watchtower Society uses many of Christianity's standard terms and
phrases, those terms and phrases mean something entirely different in
Society-speak than what you'd expect. It is genuinely a case of apples and
oranges going by the same names. So your first challenge in dealing with a
Watch Tower missionary is to scale the semantics barrier; and that by itself
is an Herculean task.
=====================
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