Hey everyone, yesterday I had my first encounter with a Jehovah's Witness as someone who studies scripture. so basically I was taking a break at work and heading to my car and an older man comes up to me and asked me if my name is Mark, I tell him no, and he said oh that's funny I have been talking with someone named Mark who also works here and he looks like you, anyways can I give you this booklet and talk to you for a little while? Instantly I am cautious and suspicious of him because there's no one at my work who's name is Mark that looks like me so I concluded afterward that he was either lying in an attempt to break the ice to talk to me or maybe he just got the name wrong.
The former sounds right.
however I decided to go ahead and let him talk and see what he had to say. He starts asking me about how I thought we could change the world and how bad everything was becoming and on and on he went.
Makes sense because they believe this world will be their eternal home. I'm getting close to the time where I'll do an audio teaching on JWs, so if anyone doesn't understand that, I'll explain it later.
I wasn't really sure what to say and I could tell that he thought that I was just some kid who didn't really care about how bad the world was based on what he was saying to me. eventually I asked him are you referring to the wickedness of man's heart and what we can do about it? His eyes kind of lit up and he said yeah we can start there. I quoted to him from Jeremiah and said the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked who can know it? He said back to me from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. We ended up talking for about 25 minutes and a lot of the time he was questioning me about who Jesus was and we eventually got to the point where he was trying to tell me that Jesus isn't God and he tried saying that he is A son of God And not The Son of God.
I got to question him by asking, do you believe Jesus is Lord? he said yes. I said and we worship him? he said yes. I said and we worship God? he said yes. I said but I thought we worship the Lord thy God only and him we serve? and with questions like this he quickly changed topics.
Nicely done so far, and every response and tactic you've mentioned so far sounds like every trained Jehovah's Witness I've ever heard of.
I could see right through every tactic he was using and it's kind of hard to recall everything he was saying but I could see that he was trying so desperately to deceive and knock me off of my foundation of the word of God. When I would quote scripture to him about Jesus being God in the flesh all he would say is yeah yeah I've heard people say that too and then he would cherry pick another verse and try to say that Jesus was just a created being and a prophet but that he wasn't God. And he also tried to tell me that Jesus was Satan's brother. That was the point that I looked at him and said are you a jehovah's witness? (I kind of already knew) I eventually got to the point where I said to him man I disagree with just about everything that you're trying to tell me and we eventually agreed to disagree. I never really got the chance to ask him if he knew what a false convert was or what his definition of repentance was because the conversation got cut off and I had to go. I usually carry a pocket KJV Bible with me but I actually didn't have it so I wasn't able to open it up and start reading scripture to him I just had to use what was in my memory.
You were ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us (1Pe 3:15), and that's all you really needed. It takes a lot of practice to be ready for every person of every religious belief. I wish you could have had
our JW tract for him on hand, but that's not always possible.
The reason why am making this post is to ask a couple questions, should I have flat out rebuked him and told him that he is lying and teaching false doctrine? Really the only thing I said was I disagree with you completely and I stand on God's word, you can't prove any that you're saying through scripture ( which he couldn't) so therefore I don't have much else to say to you.
was that the right thing to say? as I said I usually have a pocket Bible with me at all times in case I need to use it and this just makes me want to be more careful about having on me in the future.
I would appreciate info on how anyone else would have handled the situation.
If this was your first experience, you'll get better over time.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air:
-1Co 9:25-26He's talking about the difference between a shadow boxer and a real boxer. If one who throws his fists into the air fights one who combats with real opponents on a regular basis, you'll easily see the difference. I've been a bit out of practice for a while simply because I've spent so much of my time in writing and study, and thankfully, the ridiculous emails I get help keep me in shape a bit, but as I run into more people, I get more tempered and I can focus more on using their words against them with the Word of God.
Without knowing what he said word-for-word, it's very difficult for any of us to tell you how you should have handled it.
