 Hi, we're in the neighborhood sharing the good news of Jehovah. Do you have a moment? Without question, the Jehovah's Witness faith should be regarded as a cult. They are not a Christian organization. However, there is one point that should be noted and that is this, that you can be a person could possibly be a Jehovah's Witness or part of the Jehovah's Witness and still be a Christian. Here's how. Being a Jehovah's Witness does not necessarily mean that you know everything about what the whole organization entails. Just like being a Christian doesn't necessarily mean that all Christians understand what the tenets of Christianity are. No faith can, can make that claim that all of their adherents understand what's going on in that particular group. The same as the same holds true with Jehovah's Witnesses. So there are some as possible, that there are some who have come to a trusting faith in Christ, yet don't fully understand what's going on in the Jehovah's Witness group. This is an organization that is ran by the White Tower Bible Track Society, a group that calls itself the mouthpiece of God. However, a closer look will find out that they are anything but a mouthpiece of God. In order to kind of see what they're about to get a good understanding of Jehovah's Witnesses, you have to first start with the founding of the group. That was by a man by the name of Charles Tays Russell, who by any account would be categorized as a snake oil salesman. This guy was not a good man whatsoever. He was a person who, who believed or at least spoke about how there are no good churches. There are no Christian organizations left. All of the world has gone into apostasy. And so it was up to him to kind of usher in God's true word. Well, the reason why you would call this person a snake oil salesman is because he literally was that he was going around the countryside selling what, what he claimed to farmers to be this seed for miracle wheat. Well, anytime you have someone out there making these ridiculous claims, you're going to have someone, at least in those days, you're going to have some journalists who are going to challenge him. And so he had in his side a thorn by the name of the Brooklyn daily eagle. This was a newspaper that called him on his claims about this miracle wheat, but also made it a point to mention how inerrant his doctrine was biblically. Well, Charles Russell did not take to that kindly. And so he would, he filed a suit against them claiming that the newspaper was defaming him. And because of his lawsuit, then naturally a court proceeding would take place. The good part about a court proceeding though, is that there are transcripts to kind of help us to see what happened. One of the things that came out in the court process was Charles Russell's lack of understanding of the Bible. Now we need to back up for a second. This is an organization that believes that God's true name is Jehovah. And we ought to call him that out of respect that it's sinful not to call him Jehovah. Well, a couple of things. One, we're not sure if the V sound is an accurate sound at the beginning of Hebrew. Now there are some, some scholars who debate that point. So I won't really get into that. But what we do know for a fact is that the J sound is absent in Hebrew as well as Greek. The J sound is a sound that comes around a little later in the next several centuries, introduced primarily we think by German scholars who try to compensate by adding the J to what they think is the correct pronunciation of his name Yahweh. Now we don't even know if that's the correct sound of his name, because Jews did not, or Hebrew did not have, it doesn't have any vowels and nor did the Maserites give it any vowels when they maintain the Jewish texts. So where they get this term Jehovah and to state that that's the name that we ought to call him. We just don't know. It's okay to call him Jehovah. That's not the problem. But to state that it is a sin to not call him that. Well, there's no basis for that more than that. This is an organization that states that they understand and they have the true translation of the Bible. You have heard it talked about many times no doubt about how they handle the character and the deity of Jesus. They deny that he is the true God. They would put him in the category of a God. Now we're going to look and see if that makes biblical sense and we're going to do so using their scriptures. Here is an organization. Here is a man that claims to have the right interpretation of scriptures. However, we're going to find out that he didn't even understand the languages that were used that our English versions were derived from. He didn't understand Hebrew or Greek though he had bragged and boast as though he was a Hebrew and Greek scholar. Well, on the stand during his lawsuit against this newspaper, the question was asked, do you understand? Can you read Greek? Well, to maintain his facade, he answered the question as to whether he understood and could read Greek. He answered, stating that he could read and understand Greek. Well, so what would any lawyer do as a follow up question? They would give him a Greek text to read. And so they gave him the Greek text and it may have been the book of John. I'm not sure, but I believe that's what it was. They gave him the book of John to read. And of course he was found to be a fraud. He could not read it. Well, thinking that maybe this might be too difficult of a task, maybe at least because he's got all this pressure on the stand, they offered him something easier to read. They gave him the Greek alphabet. He still could not read that. And so he was forced to admit on the stand in court that he had lied about being able to read and understand Greek or Hebrew. Well, why is that important? Well, when you tell everyone that our interpretation, our translation of the Greek and Hebrew scriptures are incorrect and yours are correct, well, now we see that. No, we can't trust your word. You can't even read the text yourself. And so you're in no position to tell anyone else how they are in error when it comes to their translations. This is a man who had multiple affairs with his wife. And so after a divorce and the court had ruled that he owed, I think it was about 20 something thousand in alimony, he got around that by taking all his assets and pushing it into the coffers of the Watchtower Society. I'm not sure how that actually ended, but that's the kind of man that we were that that that we're dealing with here. This is the kind of person who is the founder. This is the founder of this organization. So if the foundation is rotten, if the foundation is shaky, what does that say about everything else that's built on top of it? Now, because we're not doing a real exhaustive study on the Jehovah's Witnesses, we're not going to be able to cover all of the things that they believe. They believe some wild things such as Jesus being Michael the Archangel. Well, that didn't even make sense, even according to their own scripture. If you just simply look at Hebrews one five, we find this. To which one of the angels did God ever say you are my son? Today I have become your father. So even in their own translations, God is saying that I've never called any angel, let alone Michael, my son. And so that holds no water. But one of the biggest things that the Jehovah's Witnesses has against the rest of Christianity, or I should say the other way around. And the reason why we treat it as a cult is because of how they handle Jesus and his deity. They deny that Jesus is God. And so when you encounter a Jehovah's Witness, there's a couple of things you need to be prepared to deal with. One, many of them are indoctrinated to the point to where they may not be willing to hear you or wanting to hear you. So you've got to first determine if they are willing to do so. I'm going to give you a couple of questions to ask to kind of proceed for these are some things that I used to use, but you'll also see why I don't really spend a lot of time dealing with them unless I come across one who I can tell or at least seems that they might be open to hearing the text. What's the old saying? A man convinced against his will is really not convinced. And that's what you're going to find a lot of times when dealing with people like Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, should we do so? Sure, we should always, as Peter says, always be ready to give a defense of the hope that's in us. And so we also want to be guilty of sharing the gospel to people who just don't know the gospel, and that would include Jehovah's Witnesses. But as I said before, there are there there may be someone into the Jehovah's Witness faith who. Believe in Jesus like we do, but may not quite understand all the tenants. And so I've got a couple of questions that I that I kind of use that may be helpful to you. The first question is this, one, since I'm willing to be wrong, if you can show me something that proves that I'm wrong, I'm willing to listen to it. I'm willing to address it. So my question to them is this, if I can show you something using your own scriptures that demonstrate that you might be wrong, would you be willing to listen? If their answer is no, then there is no further reason to talk, because again, we're going nowhere. We'll just go back and forth for no good reason, unless maybe there's someone in the audience, someone around who is genuinely interested and may be struggling and you want to defend the faith. That's fine, also. But if it's just the two of you or maybe in their case, they have two against one. It may be a fruitless exercise, but if they answer yes and they're likely to answer yes, then you can go ahead and proceed for it, because if they're willing to listen, or at least they say they're willing to listen or to address whatever they think might be wrong, now you've got a starting point. Now you've got some common ground that I mean that they're really going to listen. And so here's what the second question comes in. The second question is this, do you believe that lying is wrong? Is lying a sin? What Joe was witness is not going to say that, yes, lying is wrong and lying is a sin. Even atheists, even people who don't believe in God, believe that lying is wrong and lying is a sin. And so if lying is wrong and lying is a sin, when we show them something that they can't refute and they don't want to address it, then the next question has got to be, is I thought you told me that you'd be willing to address it and you said that lying is a sin. And so, and so when we come to a passage that refutes their understanding and they're not willing to hear it, then we're going to remind them that you said initially that you would be willing to at least address or listen to what seems to be an apparent error. And you told me that lying is a sin. So you need to at least be honorable to your word. I will be honorable to mine if you can show me where I'm wrong. So we want to deal with like many others, we want to deal with the easiest thing to show their error. And that is the deity of Christ. Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is not God. Now, according to our scriptures, we believe that he is. As a matter of fact, we don't believe it. We know so. They have decided to mangle the translations and to cause their new world translations to read the way that justifies their doctrine. So we're familiar with John one, one word says in the beginning was the word the word was with God, the word was God, but they were translated as the word was a God. In Greek, there is no indefinite article. You would just simply have the word by itself. So if you want to say a cat, a dog, you would just have the word that represents dog. If you want to say a brother, you would say a Delphos. And that would be it. But they take that to an extreme. And so when we look in John one, one, when it says the third portion of it, it says Caipeas and Helagos, they take that the Caipeas, because there is no definite article in front of Faos, the word God, because there is the word does not there. They would take it as that it is to be rendered as a God. Well, that's just bad Greek grammar. And I hope I don't lose you. But let me try to explain this real briefly and then we'll move on. There are two nouns in this passage, the word, the word for God, and the word for word. Both of those are nouns. The question is, which one of those nouns is the subject? Any Greek scholar, any Greek student would be able to tell you that Helagos is identifiable as the subject. So the word is the subject. The other noun for God is what's called the predicate nounative. What that simply means is that the word belongs to a category of Faos, meaning that the word belongs to the category of God. The word is God, which is why it says Caipeas and Helagos, which is and God was the word or we translated better in English and the word was God. The problem that Jehovah's Witness have is that when we go further down, we see their inconsistencies in verse six. Read this with me. In English, it says, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. In Greek, it says, a pestilmanus, paratheu. A pestilmanus is being sent from, paratheu is from, then it says, stayu, that's God. What's missing here is the definite article. There is no word, the, there. So their line of consistency would say that it should be rendered being sent from a God. Now, the reason why they don't have this same consistent line of thinking here is because this text, verse six, doesn't affect their doctrine that Jesus is not God. Verse one doesn't. So they deal with that, but if they're going to be consistent, they would have to do the same thing in verse six. They're not interested in being consistent. They're interested in improving their point and indoctrinating people and then having more to add to their cult. And I say cult and I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm hesitant to use that word. Oftentimes, but this categorizes them. This class of this classification of them being a cult is earned. We're going to see that in just a second. So the first line of questioning would be this, who raised Jesus from the dead? Well, according to the Jehovah's Witnesses, and I won't give you all the scriptures, I won't read the scriptures for you. I'll just put the scriptures up so that you can go and read them. But in the New World Translation, God is the one who raised Jesus, according to Acts 232, but then according to John two, Jesus is the one who raises himself from the dead. But then what about the Holy Spirit? Well, according to the New World Translation, as well as our translations, Romans eight tells us the Holy Spirit raises Jesus from the dead. So Houston, Watchtower, we have a problem because you can't say that God is the one that raised him from the dead. When your own scriptures tell you that Jesus raised himself from the dead, as well as the Holy Spirit, how can that be? Now we know, we know what the truth is. The way it's recognized that that God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, they exist eternally as one, though they are distinct. But the Jehovah's Witnesses will tell you that Jesus is not God. Well, so the next question would be, is Jehovah the Almighty God? Well, they would say yes. And in Isaiah 455, their scriptures in the New World Translations will tell you that God declares that he is God. Apart from him, there is no other God. He's the only God. So there is no other God. However, John one, you've just told us in your passages that Jesus is a God. Well, if Jesus is a God and God or Jehovah is Almighty God, what do we do with Isaiah when he tells us that about this child that's going to be born and what his name will be called? Wonderful counselor, Mighty God. Well, wait a second, even more of a problem, because your own scriptures are bearing this out that Jesus in fact is God or at least Almighty God in the New World Translations at the name of Jesus every knee, shell, bow, tongue, confessor. The same can be said about God in the Old Testament. In the New World Translations, God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. But in the New World Translations in Revelations, Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. Well, what is it? So when you're asking this question, and granted there are far more passages that we can go to. But so when you ask them these questions, ask them, does that seem to be a problem? And if they're going to be honest and true to their word, they're going to say, well, that needs to be addressed. They're likely not to turn from the Jehovah's Witness faith at that point, because they have been so indoctrinated that they are reliant upon the Watchtower Society to give them their marching orders, which is why I tell you that they are a cult. This is a group, this is an organization that has throughout the centuries given numerous false prophecies regarding the end of the world. The latest being 1975, they've also done so I believe in 1925, 1914, 1874, and a few other times in between there, times where they said that the Jesus's millennial reign has already begun. I believe 1925, they spoke that through the Watchtower that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will come and physically rule and reign on the earth. The problem with giving these predictions is that while when you're giving them, you're going to get a boost in attendance, you're going to get a boost in people joining, but when the date comes and goes, you're going to have a huge falling away. You're going to have a lot of people leaving because wait, we found out that you were wrong. And what does Deuteronomy say about a prophet that's whose words don't come true? So when it comes to dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, remember the people themselves aren't necessarily representative of the organization. The organization is built upon lies, deceit, deception. There are some though who may legitimately be seeking the truth. And so when you come across them, as Peter said, always be ready to give a defense to those that ask you. Sanctify Christ in your heart and always be ready to ask them or answer them. That doesn't mean that you're going to know everything. And so when you come across someone in the Jehovah's Witness faith and they ask you questions and you may not have the answer to, it's okay to say, I don't know. Would you be willing to come back when I find the answer? And that doesn't mean that you can also bring somebody there with you. If they have somebody with them, then so be it. But it's okay for you to also have somebody with there's no rules that say that you can't have one or two more people with you to give you a better answer or understanding. So be careful when you deal with them, because it's not likely, not impossible, but it's not likely that you're going to turn them, but make sure that they don't put you in a position to where you look ungodly, where you get frustrated. There are plenty of people out there who need to hear the gospel, who are not being pulled in by a cult. But we all still have this one issue to deal with, whether we are born again believers, whether we are not, whether a person is in the Jehovah's Witness faith, whether someone is a Mormon or Muslim. We all are dealing with Satan's attacks. And so we want to be mindful when we go out and share the gospel and love that we're going to deal with this from time to time. Now this question came from one of the subscribers who asked a question about Jehovah's Witnesses. And so if any of you have any questions, simply leave them in the comment section, send an email. And then what I will do is I will respond either through the comments through an email or in this case with a video. So I want to thank you all until we meet again, be smart and be a smart Christian.