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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 coming down the
driveway was a fellow born-again Christian. But when I talked this over with
a 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 didn't train us to hammer 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.
1• Do not let these people get personal with you. You must never ever
assume they are your friends because first and foremost, these people are
recruiters. Their primary interest is in making you a life-long slave to the
Watch Tower Society.
2• Do not accept their literature. They will want to come back later and
discuss it with you; thus taking control of the meeting.
3• Don't give them a chance to launch into their spiel, but immediately begin
introducing your own questions; thus denying them control of the
conversation
4• Do not debate. You're not a salesman pushing a product-- you're
herald; viz: a messenger; that's all. The goal is to show missionaries that
the Society's isn't the only expert opinion 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.
5• 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, saluting the flag, service in the military, and that
sort of thing. There are much bigger fish to fry than those.
6• 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 digress, change the subject, go off on a tangent, nor
get distracted and/or turn their attention elsewhere while you're speaking.
7• 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.
8• Do not permit them to evade and/or circumvent difficult questions. They
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.
9• It's very important to show them the Bible not in ways they've already
seen, but in ways they've never imagined.
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. 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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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 coming down the
driveway was a fellow born-again Christian. But when I talked this over with
a 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 didn't train us to hammer 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.
1• Do not let these people get personal with you. You must never ever
assume they are your friends because first and foremost, these people are
recruiters. Their primary interest is in making you a life-long slave to the
Watch Tower Society.
2• Do not accept their literature. They will want to come back later and
discuss it with you; thus taking control of the meeting.
3• Don't give them a chance to launch into their spiel, but immediately begin
introducing your own questions; thus denying them control of the
conversation
4• Do not debate. You're not a salesman pushing a product-- you're
herald; viz: a messenger; that's all. The goal is to show missionaries that
the Society's isn't the only expert opinion 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.
5• 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, saluting the flag, service in the military, and that
sort of thing. There are much bigger fish to fry than those.
6• 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 digress, change the subject, go off on a tangent, nor
get distracted and/or turn their attention elsewhere while you're speaking.
7• 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.
8• Do not permit them to evade and/or circumvent difficult questions. They
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.
9• It's very important to show them the Bible not in ways they've already
seen, but in ways they've never imagined.
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. 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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
