Understanding and Debating Jehovah Witnesses with Nathan Fisher & Daniel Mynyk

Can you show me, because we're going to use some hermeneutics, can you show me anywhere in the Old Testament where that word

perpetual is not perpetual?

Because again, I understand you're appealing again, sure.

No, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on, I thought I was going to get to have a talk.

You asked a question.

Hang on a second, sir.

Be quiet.

There you go.

I will mute you because it's not your show.

You asked a question.

I'm going to give you the answer.

Genesis 6 -4, the word olam is used referring to those

who are of old.

Deuteronomy, I'll just rattle off all the ones where it's used, not referring to perpetual.

Genesis 6 -4, Deuteronomy 32 -7, Joshua 24 -2,

1 Samuel 27 -8, Job 22 -15, Psalm 24

-7, 24 -9, 25 -6, 41 -13, 77

-9, 90 -2, 103 -17, 106 -48,

119 -52, 143 -3,

Proverbs 8 -23, Proverbs 22 -28, Proverbs 23 -10, and

Ecclesiastes 1 -10.

Should I go on for more?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is Apologetics Live.

To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

All right.

Welcome to Apologetics Live.

Maybe, maybe I was trying to kill a dead horse there.

I don't know.

I ran out of verses to give that guy.

Welcome to another Apologetics Live.

That was a, that beginning clip we, was from my show.

I forget how long ago that show was, was on, but this is Apologetics Live.

We come in and we can ask any questions you have.

We're going to do open Q &A, usually second half of the hour.

The topic tonight will be Jehovah Witnesses, what they believe and how to

witness to them.

I've got some special guests in with us on that, but if you have any questions, just go to

ApologeticsLive .com, Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern time.

Suggest you get in early if you have questions, because a lot of people like to come in at the end and then there's no time for their questions.

So come in early, you'll be able to ask first.

And so any questions that you have, Apologetics, even if it's a challenge, that's fine.

And we are here to answer those questions.

So this is a show that is sponsored or supported by Striving for Eternity Ministries.

So go to strivingforeternity .org and check out all the resources that we have out there.

It is also a podcast that can be heard on the Christian podcast community.

And with that, I'm going to actually have one of our podcasters here as a guest.

Oh, I see Melody is in the house, which means we're probably, if she comes in, we might get the,

you guys may, our guests may get the question.

Those that know, you know, the Dunn's may know the question that they like to ask our guests and

we'll see if they know the answer.

Hmm.

All right.

So we'll see the advantages.

They probably don't even know what the question is.

So it's great, Melody, you gotta, you're gonna have to come in now.

So we want to do is talk about Jehovah Witnesses.

Now, one of the things I want to let you guys know is many people are familiar with Jehovah

Witnesses.

They know some of what they teach, they come to your door, they usually knock at inopportune times.

And a lot of people try to avoid them.

And the thing is that understanding what they believe has always been a very helpful thing.

However, they've changed their ways.

They are no longer looking to engage with people.

So if you show that you have a little bit of knowledge, they run faster than you trying to get rid of them.

So it is actually if you if you know some things about them, they

usually do not want to engage with you.

So full belly bear I'll put his his full

belly bear just get I every time I read that I chuckle but his comment is I don't even know

why this is a topic some some Jew already has written a great book on Jehovah

Witnesses.

It has everything.

Well, I got news for you.

You're going to be surprised full belly bear because let me first I'm first going to bring in Daniel Minnick.

Daniel is one of the podcasters on the Christian podcast community.

Why don't you introduce yourself your podcast and and a little bit about what you do.

And why we brought you on because you're writing a book on it.

So that's why.

Well, my name is Daniel Minnick.

I am the host of the truth espresso podcast.

And as Andrew has mentioned on other programs, it sounds like I need a lot of

coffee or espresso with my truth.

But the idea is to basically focus on truth wherever it

may be found from a Christian perspective.

And I like to deal with topics that are often not addressed.

But still, from a Christian perspective, we like to get deep into theology,

understanding who God is, who Jesus Christ is the attributes of God,

atonement, but also even recently have been getting into topics of

economics, especially during this era of the coronavirus.

Some I think it's important for some for people, especially Christians to be able to have a God

centered worldview and not trust the state.

But I'm also in the process of writing a book that is kind of

long overdue from my perspective, because I've been kind of slacking a

little bit on getting it published, but it is tentatively titled

Watchtower Watchers.

It's actually a book that I co authored with my brother and my brother, john, he's basically the

hero of the plot of the book.

And the book is actually, you know, it's a conversation between

my brother, john, and Jehovah's Witnesses from what he could recall from his

three hour conversation.

And he was equipped a little bit from for that conversation with some of the information and resources

that I directed to him.

And then the book is kind of a transcript of a conversation, an

interview that I had with him about his conversation with Jehovah's Witnesses.

So we actually get to see a look into a conversation with Jehovah's

Witnesses, and a Christian.

And then basically, john and I also converse from that interview to

provide some more commentary on that.

And that was a neat book because it was more of a more of a casual conversational style.

Now Melissa is asking is he standing up and using a mic?

Yes, I am standing up.

All right, let me also bring in Nathan.

Now I alright, before you introduce yourself, Nathan, I just got to point out to everybody, can

you can you just shift to your left a little that the other left?

Okay, you see that those all those volumes of book those two bookcases, the entire

right side of that, that is by far the best Jehovah Witness library I have

ever seen in my life.

So thank you for letting me show off your your bookcase.

I have empty books, I feel so sad.

My books are practicing social distancing.

No, Nathan, you you and I, and for the record, you know, Nathan knew exactly how to

get me to come over to visit with him.

I was I was at I was not too far.

How far is Pastor Ray from you?

Okay, minutes.

Pastor Ray is probably about five or 10 minutes away.

Yeah.

Okay, even less.

So so he's like, over 10 minutes away.

And, and I get a text from Nathan's just saying, Hey, you know, I see that you're

over at Pastor Ray's.

If you want to come over, my wife will make homemade sushi.

He knew exactly, exactly how to get me over there.

And, dude, she made more sushi there.

It was it was you and I are wives.

And then you ended up having like three friends come over and there was still sushi left.

It was a lot.

I tried.

I really did try.

But, you know, one of the things that I was that Pastor Ray had told me Ray Rhodes, who wrote the book

Susanna.

He told me ahead of time, he's like, you got to see his library on Jehovah Witnesses.

So I was like, all excited.

So when you brought me up to see it, I was like, Oh, good.

I get to see it.

Okay, nerdy.

I know.

But could you introduce yourself?

You're a little bit of your background so people understand why do you have the library you have?

Yeah, so my name is Nathan Fisher.

And I'm a third generation Jehovah's Witness.

I had left the cult probably about I think it's been 20 years or more 21

years.

And my dad, I grew up as an elder son.

And he was the main elder or is still the main elder in the congregation that he is in

within the Jehovah's Witness organization.

He was a Bethelite, which is another term that they use.

It's their headquarters where they do all of their printing work and training of the Jehovah's Witnesses for about four or five years.

I think he served up in Brooklyn, New York in the 60s, I believe,

then he met my mom.

So I grew up in a pretty strict Jehovah's Witness family being trained

to be the best Jehovah's Witness I could be.

So I started collecting these books probably about three years ago when I

came to Christ and decided to use them for apologetics purposes, research purposes, things like that.

All right.

And we have a question that came in already.

Can you tell me what it is that they Christian or what's their, I guess

belief?

I will I and I guess I should so I put up full belly bears comment, but I do have a book that's let's see

right there on the screen.

What do they believe?

That's a good book to get it'll go over Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Muslims, Jewish people,

Catholicism, Christianity, explain what they believe.

So there's also there's some heretic in the room.

Look at this.

Let's bring let's bring this character in.

Oh, it's Dr. Silvestro.

I'm surprised you have time from your busy videotaping.

He was just doing a video live.

And he actually said he would be here.

And I was like, if you got he did a video about the government and protesting.

And I don't know if you guys got a chance to see it was about an hour long and about 20 minutes into it.

He said, I'll only be one more minute.

That's what it's like preaching with Dr. Silvestro.

He's his view of one minute is just a little bit off.

So he did say, you know, he was gonna wrap up in another minute about four or five times in

the video.

So I really didn't believe he's gonna be here.

I told you I was not going to, to overrun your time here tonight.

So I got done at like 759.

And I don't know, 40 seconds or something.

So enough time to advertise for you.

And we got Justin Pierce saying, Yep, saw him ranting.

All right.

So Anthony and I have have done a couple different things.

When it comes to witnessing to Jehovah Witnesses.

It used to be that you could get into good conversations wherever you find them.

And I have an opening line that I start with, I usually will ask them,

why Jesus Christ had to be God.

And anyone who understands them, and I'll get Nathan to give a little bit more of the background of them.

That's something they don't believe in.

They don't believe Jesus was God.

So their immediate thing is like, but wait, we don't believe he is God.

I always be like, I know.

But why did he have to be God?

And they don't have an answer to that.

So that actually is my way of, because usually, if you see them on the street, I'm not going to get a lot of time to talk.

So I want to go right for the most important thing, and get them to realize they don't have an answer so that I can give the answer.

So when they tell me they don't, they don't believe he was God, they don't understand.

Then I explain that if Jesus Christ was not God, then he cannot pay the sins of other people.

And if he doesn't pay the sins of other people, then we're all dead in our sins, and his death was meaningless.

And so I go right for the issue of his deity and salvation.

Now, Anthony, you started doing something when you get into conversations with them, as a very good

primer to get to get started.

You ask a different question about the time.

Yeah, so I do this with Jehovah's Witnesses and with Mormons.

And so I'll ask them, do you believe that the entire Bible is true?

And they'll say yes.

I'll ask them, do you believe God is immutable, he's unchanging?

They'll say yes.

And then I'll ask them one more thing about how much time do you have to talk?

And so I get him nailed down for whatever amount of time it is.

And then when I go into my line of questioning, and usually about four to five minutes in, they start saying, well, you

know, we're about out of time right now, or whatever it is.

And I say, wait a minute, you just told me five minutes ago.

So it's an interesting way to trap them.

And then I'm able to say, look, it's obvious, you guys don't have the truth, you guys don't have the answers.

Because if you did, you'd be able to stand on the truth.

So.

Ever since you said that to me, and it's just great, because I have noticed that they'll be like, oh, we have about an hour.

And they're like, four or five minutes in, they want to go.

And it's like, but you said you had an hour, like, what changed?

So Nathan, you're, you're probably the the most, the

best expert on this on this panel right now.

I drove witnesses, I don't think any of us, myself included, have studied it to the depth that you have.

I mean, I spent many years studying, but nowhere near definitely don't have the library.

I mean, if you come in one day, and see your library missing and my shelves filled, you know where they

went.

All right.

So could you bring people up to speed on what it is Jehovah witnesses believe?

Sure.

So we'll start with the deity of Christ.

Jehovah's witnesses actually are what is considered, you know, theist.

So they believe that Jehovah God is the Almighty God.

And that Jesus Christ is a little God with a little G.

And they render it that way in their actual Bible in for John 1 .1.

They say, in the beginning was the Word and the Word became flesh and or the Word was with God and the Word

was a God.

And that's how they've rendered it since their very first translation.

So what they actually believe is that Jehovah God created Jesus first as his only

direct creation.

And through Jesus, Jehovah God created the rest of everything else.

And they've changed their Bible in a few places to kind of accommodate that it's it's

really nothing more than an Arian heresy.

We, you know, kind of read redone.

Well, backup backup, you're gonna have to explain Arian heresy for not everyone has studied church history like you

my friend.

So Arianism teaches that there was a time Arius taught there was a time that the sun

did not exist, that the sun was not.

And so it's basically a denial of the eternality and deity of

Christ.

And it was fought in the in church history.

And the Council of Nicaea in 327 AD

was, was decided that, you know, that Jesus was,

was God.

Well, we kind of knew all along from Scripture.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But they were having a basically they were having a church

debate or dispute.

More I think what it was with that just tie into it.

The politics of it, right?

Arianist was your different emperors areas was kind of favored by an emperor.

And that's why he had a voice.

And then the council got together and said, Nope, heretic, throw him out of the land.

And it really is it's it they deny that Jesus is God.

But there's some more things.

You go into more of the specifics of some of the things they have.

And there was a question earlier of are they Christian?

They'll say they are, but where would they differ from what we would hold to?

Yes, so they they use very similar Christian language.

And and that's what a lot of the cults do.

They'll use very similar Christian language to us.

They are a works based religion, which basically means that they believe that they can earn their salvation.

They do not believe in the five solas such as the one being faith

alone, through Christ alone.

They believe that they can earn Jehovah's favor and their whole structure is set up in such a way to

help them to earn Jehovah's favor.

But unfortunately, they are serving an organization secretly behind the

scenes.

That's what it's all set up for is to serve an organization.

So everything they do is in service and dedication to a manmade organization.

So they believe that Jesus died for their sin, but they believe that there is

more that is needed.

They believe that he died as a ransom or in place of of of them,

but that they have to and they use James chapter two, which a lot of the cults do they have,

they have to you know, faith without works is dead.

So they believe that their works are earning favor with Jehovah.

If you were to talk with my mom right now and ask her if she's done enough to,

to get into the paradise earth, which is what they believe that they're going to inherit at the after the end of

the world, she would say, well, I certainly hope so.

Which is a very sad position to be in because it is very much a treadmill of works for them to be on.

And those works include going out in the field ministry, which is the door to door preaching.

They're required to log a minimum of 10 hours a month.

Sometimes, you know, people will volunteer to do 40 hours a week and they'll become full

time, full time, pioneers is what they call it.

And they'll go out in the preaching work for for up to 40 hours a week.

So there's just a, you know, this whole structure set up, they give their money to

the cult.

They, a lot of times if a family member such as me, that's been disfellowshipped and

disowned by my parents, they would sell the property if they die, or if they're

about to die and leave it in the will to to the Jehovah's Witness organization instead of to me.

Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen with my family.

I don't know.

But I've heard of those type of stories happening where someone has been cut out of the family and they just

sell off the property and give the proceeds to the organization.

So there's, you know, there's just a lot of stuff that they're following that is not

necessary for salvation, because we know that salvation comes through what Christ did on the cross,

where he took the punishment for our sins on our behalf.

He bore the wrath of God and because of that, we can be forgiven

if we repent and put all our faith in him.

That's not a message that they believe in.

Yeah, and some of the questions that came in, there was a question, do

they believe in hell?

No, they believe in annihilationism.

So they don't believe in it.

It's one of the key things they're going to focus on.

There was, let me see if I can find the comment from full belly bear had some great.

Oh, yeah, here we go.

Full belly bear said Anthony is always on time.

His that is, but but he full belly bear did pick up.

He did pick up he says Anthony takes dress to match to another level.

The mic cover matches his shirt.

Okay, so yeah.

He does dress he is more like a girl in that way.

He's got a match.

All right.

So um, there though there was

there was a question here as far as that just Pastor Justin had asked about.

He had said this is is their belief that God grants grace after all they could do.

And that's actually Mormonism that would teach that.

That's the second Nephi.

Oh, I'm going from memory.

I think it's 825 I think.

Yeah.

What is it Daniel?

What do you.

Say?

I think is it 2523?

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, I.

Forgot.

So that's, that's what he was quoting.

But that's that's actually a Mormonism.

And so so Scott Moses asked this question.

And I'll, you know, throw it out to either of you guys.

He said as as you're explaining things, Nathan, he says, that sounds like cat that sounds Catholic.

Like, how is it different from Catholic?

Yeah, so Catholics have sacraments and various other

things that they do.

The Jehovah's Witnesses.

I mean, it's really not a whole lot of difference other than just the traditions that they

follow.

Because if you think about it, the Catholic Church is a workspace religion that puts you

immediately on a treadmill of works from the minute that you accept the sacrament of baptism, you have to

maintain the grace that was infused to you at the acceptance of that sacrament.

And in order to maintain that you go through this treadmill of works where you

basically commits, you know, do the sacraments and the penances and keep

from doing venial sins and mortal sins.

When you do venial sins, you go to a priest and confess when you commit a mortal sin, then you pay your sacraments and your penances.

So, you know, that's all in their tradition in the Jehovah's Witness tradition.

You know, those type of things would be going out in the field ministry, attending regular meetings,

they actually watch the attendance of the baptized people in in the

organization and judge based off of the attendance, whether or not that person is strong

in the Jehovah's Witness faith or becoming weak.

If there's any kind of sins, you go to the elders and you confess based on the sins

and their judgment of how much repentance they deem that you have had, they may

or may not continue with further disciplinary actions.

And and so yeah, so it's it's, it's got some similarities between the two, especially

based that it's that's workspace religion.

Daniel, now do you get the answer to the question asked me why we're bringing him in?

You know, he kind of makes you and I look like we don't know what we're talking about with.

Jehovah's Witnesses, huh?

Yeah, and I apologize earlier, I was a little nervous when we got into the church history.

I hadn't been on a video in a while.

He kind of he kind of knows a little bit more of than you, the three of us do.

Now, Daniel, you you have, since you're working on this book on on witnessing

to Jehovah's Witnesses, which is really, I think how you and I first met, you sent me your

book to, you know, to review.

I think it's probably still on my list.

Sorry, I got through a couple chapters.

Anthony, I'll tell you, I have this long list of books.

I actually, I don't know if you can see it.

There's a pile of books right there on the camera.

Here's the books that people have sent me asking for endorsements.

So, but when witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses, what what do you think is

effective ways to, to read, you know, to try to get them into conversation?

At least, personally, I think it's to let the Jehovah's Witness talk

demonstrate that you're interested in what they have to say, because that's why they're there.

They, they have their kind of scripted things that they want to talk about.

And so if you're, you're ready to talk to them, you might first want to let them say something, because

then they might be willing to listen to what you have to say in

return.

And of course, you know, if you're prepared to deal with their, basically their main

doctrines of the deity of Christ, and they have some other pet issues that

they might try to introduce, such as the instrument of Jesus's execution, that it was

not a cross, it didn't have a cross beam, it was just an upright pole, you know, and some various

other things like that, the resurrection of Jesus being another one.

But, you know, first, you know, be courteous, of course, don't want, don't slam the door in their

face, you know, act interested in some ways, like, don't be deceptive, but,

like, maybe start off just showing that you're interested, don't just immediately tell them,

you know, I'm, I've studied you a lot, get ready, you know, like, you know, ask, you know,

maybe ask them some prodding questions, like, you know, show, yeah, that's interesting, I want to hear what you

have to say.

And so after they say it, then you can ask them questions in return, that would be, you

know, challenging questions based on their beliefs.

And if I remember, James White, Dr. James White, where we might all be

familiar with him, he gave the suggestion that, you know, you

avoid using terms that the Jehovah's Witnesses might suspect

that you are a disfellowshipped member which is someone who is basically

excommunicated from their organization, the Watchtower.

So be careful how you use, like, some of the terms, but you could start

with saying, can I, can I just summarize

basically what I think you believe?

And so they might even be flattered a little bit.

So they'll say, sure.

And so you could give your best shot to explain what you think they believe and ask

them if they agree, if that's what they if that's a good estimate, or good summary.

So they might even be impressed with that.

And then, you know, so that you've expressed interest in their beliefs, and then that can

start a conversation.

Well, I think that's actually really important, because you want to show that you're

not misrepresenting them.

I don't know about you guys, when I talk to someone, whether it be a Muslim,

Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, someone that doesn't agree with us, and they turn and tell me, well, you don't,

you believe in three gods.

I mean, at that point, I'm pretty much like, okay, like, I have zero respect for anything you're gonna say about what I

believe now, right?

You've just, you've just kind of nixed that because you've just displayed that you

don't understand what I actually believe.

And so taking the time to understand asking questions is a great thing.

That's what I train people to do.

Because you can actually control a whole conversation with questions.

And you can direct where it goes.

And you get to play dumb.

Now, I understand the three of you.

Okay, maybe Anthony can play dumb, but the two of you, it won't come naturally, I comes naturally, I could

play dumb.

Well, Anthony, well, maybe, maybe he just is, I don't know.

But I mean, you know, he is wearing a red shirt with a red, you know, cover to his

microphone, you know, good point there.

But yeah, so why Brian nine asks this question, I think I think,

Nathan, you kind of answered this a little bit.

But if Jehovah God, Jesus, a God, and Michael, who's the Holy

Spirit?

Now, I don't know if you if you got to this, but either Daniel, Nathan, what do you guys want?

Who in when it comes to Jehovah Witnesses?

And I think you address Nathan, that they believe that, that God created Michael, the archangel,

Michael created everything else.

And then Michael became Jesus returns to being an angel.

So the question, I guess is, who's the Holy Spirit?

Yeah, so, um, I didn't get to that their, their theology is very broad.

So it's going to take a lot of time to get to some of the various points.

But if we read out of their New World Translation, Genesis chapter

one, one in verse one, and two, it says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and desolate and there was a darkness upon the surface of the watery deep and God's active

force was moving about over the surface of the waters.

So what they actually believe is, is that the Holy Spirit is not a is not a person.

It's not the third person of the Trinity.

It is God's active force.

So it's kind of like the Jedi.

Absolutely.

That is what you should be proud.

I actually got a reference to pop culture, but I understand Star Wars.

So I.

Still can't figure out the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek.

So, you know,.

Oh, just that was that was painful.

All right.

Oh, he says this.

I mean, it's back to what you said, Daniel, question him nothing but questions because they believe

you're not qualified to read the Bible.

They love their Watchtower magazines.

And and this is on you're going to see.

One of the reasons I say they're a cult is one of the definitions of a cult is that you'll see in my

book what they believe I define a cult.

And one of the ways the first is going to be that there's an authoritarianism, meaning that you

have some person or organization that sets themselves up as the only

group or person that can rightly interpret the Bible.

What that does is set them up as the authority.

Now, here's the thing, whether it's the Catholic Church that says they're,

you know, equal and authority to the Bible, the Watchtower, which is going to interpret the Bible for

you.

Once you set up a group, that is the authority and only

person or group that can interpret scripture.

By the way, that's what Andrew does.

Every time he walks into a room, he sets himself up as the only one that can interpret.

I haven't named Andrew's cult yet, but.

See, see full belly bear says you've lost it.

See, I'm liking him more and more.

But.

But no, it is it's it's the thing once you have someone that that the Watchtower says they're the only

ones who can interpret scripture.

Well, when you when that happens, what automatically happens with that is that

they are now above the scripture.

So the Roman Catholic Church, they set themselves above the scripture because you can't understand the scripture without the church.

Same with the Watchtower.

Same with the you know, in the in Mormonism with the living prophet, you have that with

all of them.

And so I saw some other questions spin by so let me back up.

Oh, here's a from full belly bear.

And we Anthony, can you read this one?

I think that there's a typo.

There's a couple of typos in there.

Because what it says is Andrew is known for fully understanding and not misrepresenting people.

For him to say, you know, but, you know,.

Actually, I do have a couple of questions, though, for you guys that that's so

some finer points here.

Hold on, hold on.

Yeah.

For.

Your benefit.

I just saw this one.

Scott Moses says, Andrew, your shirt matches your mic to stop picking on Anthony.

But mine is black.

You see, that's the normal cover, the color for these covers.

See, Anthony went out and specifically got read so.

He could be different.

See, no, I was trying to match up to the striving for eternity logo, which has red in it.

There's no black in it.

No.

Thanks.

Quick on my feet.

Okay, so guys, I do have a couple of questions.

Number one is, what is there anything else significant about the

history of Jehovah's Witnesses?

Because they, it seems like in historical sources, that Jehovah's Witnesses are related

to the Millerites.

Alright, so the Millerites, that broke apart, and he had the Adventist group come off of it.

He had some other groups, apparently, what the Branch Davidians was that Waco, Texas,

those guys.

They came off of they claim they go back to the Millerites as well.

And then you have Jehovah's Witnesses who Charles Taze Russell, from what I understand, he was a wealthy individual.

He worked for an Adventist newspaper.

And then I don't know how he got wealthy.

So I'm curious about that.

And then number two, in terms of him starting a watchtower, like, can you fill in any of these gaps for maybe some

listeners who, who know some of the history?

Because I find it fascinating to understand where they came from.

So that's my first question.

I got one more after that.

Okay, I address that one.

Okay, so yeah, ultimately, Jehovah's Witnesses would be traced

way back to the Millerite movement, as you mentioned, in

the mid 1800s.

That started with Baptist minister William Miller, and he started this

process ruling of various interpretations of especially

Daniel chapter eight, or 10, where William Miller, William Miller,

interpreted Daniel 813.

And he used the day year principle to turn the 2300

days that were mentioned there to calendar years.

So in other words, there would be 2300 years before

God would or Christ God would sanct cleanse the sanctuary.

And so he tried to calculate that the 2300 years started

in 457 BC with the first decree of Artaxerxes one to

rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

And so calculating that out 2300 years later calendar years, the

sanctuary would be cleansed, and he understood the sanctuary being

cleansed, not as the sanctuary in the temple, but as the sanctuary of the

earth being cleansed at the second coming.

And originally, he calculated this out to 1843.

So we realized this was coming up pretty soon.

But various calculations, looking at Jewish calendars, he kind of

fudged it and adjusted it over time to

October 22 1844.

And so when that happened, the Great Disappointment is

what it's called when thousands of Millerites gathered to be raptured up from the

earth.

And so what happens when some failed prophecy of the end of the world

doesn't come to pass?

Well, you have lots of people who abandoned that original faith, there were some who tried to

figure maybe there were different dates, maybe we missed the calculation.

And others were more like, well, no, the calculation had to be correct.

So maybe we misinterpreted what the event was.

And so some spiritualized the day.

And so those who eventually determined that that date was

not when Jesus would come to cleanse the sanctuary on earth, but that Jesus

entered some sanctuary in heaven to start cleansing it by

introducing by beginning what's called investigative judgment to see who was

faithful to the law.

And particularly following the seventh day Sabbath, these are the seventh

day of Venice that we know today.

So they evolved out of that idea of that prophecy, and then various other

splinter groups differed on various issues as time went on, and

the prophecy, you know, kind of became less and less significant.

The basically the Millerite was a very eclectic group from, you know,

Presbyterians, Baptists, and even like, you know, different Aryans and so on joined under that

one idea of packing your bags for Jesus was coming.

And so eventually, over time, they started to get to focus more on other issues,

and divide over issues such as baptism or the identity of who Jesus Christ

is Aryanism and Sasanianism became more pronounced, they started differing on various

aspects of eschatology.

And of course, you had the seventh day Adventists, and then the set the Sunday

Adventists.

And eventually things went down to 1914.

And I'm sure Nathan might be able to address that a little bit more.

But then you get into the late 1800s with different Adventists

and Charles Taze Russell, I have some notes for that.

But maybe Nathan would like to talk about that.

Yeah, so Charles Taze Russell was the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

He started a movement after the Millerite movement kind of imploded with the failed

prophecies and the great disappointment that was just being described by Daniel.

And he started a small group called I believe the Bible students.

See here, trying to read back through my notes.

He was actually raised a Presbyterian, which which I find kind of interesting.

And.

Well, there goes, you know, that's a good thing.

We're Baptist now.

Now we know the problem.

Yeah, say call it.

Colleen Sharp would say, see, that was his problem.

He left the Presbyterian Church.

She would say he became a congregationalist then.

Just giving him time to look up the reference.

Well, actually, he actually he grew up in a Baptist church then became a Presbyterian, right?

Yeah, I believe.

So he was confused once and he got confused more.

Thank you for that background, Daniel.

And I know it's very helpful.

There were some other questions that I had seen in here that I.

Wanted to try to get.

Now, Danny, I'm going to miss this.

Did you grow up Jehovah's Witness as well?

Nope, never been associated with a watchtower.

OK, OK.

Look, he's just he's writing a book on a conversation that his brother.

He's writing a book of a conversation with his brother and a Jehovah Witness.

A very conversational way, which so, Anthony, let me let me bring you into this while I look for some

some of the questions that we had earlier.

But you and I go out on the streets quite a bit.

We have seen, I think, in the last few years, really ever since they came out with their new website, is when

I noticed started noticing a change in the way they interact with people.

It used to be that they would answer questions and I would tell people and I'll just say a good book if you want to

understand and be able to talk with Jehovah's Witnesses is go on eBay or wherever

and try to find Reasoning the Scriptures.

It's really their answer to Christianity.

And so when you have that book, it's kind of like, you know, going into a final exam, having the

answers to the test, you know, you know, you know what is going to be their

reaction to everything you say.

So when you bring up a passage, you know what it's going to be.

So so when I started talking with Jehovah's Witnesses, I would I read through that book and I would avoid everything that was in

there.

And I'd bring up things that wasn't weren't in their little handbook because now they didn't know the answer.

They couldn't just regurgitate some.

But Anthony, you and I go on the streets quite a bit.

We've noticed this change.

What have you noticed when witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses nowadays?

Are they willing to engage with you or not?

Well, let me say this first about the book.

This is I have several copies of it that I've picked up at garage sales and thrift stores and whatnot.

And the funniest thing is, is I know you know this, Andrew, I had a chance to witness to a Jehovah's

Witness on an airplane sitting right next to him.

And as from here out to Boise, and I had You're saying he had nowhere to go.

He couldn't he had nowhere to go.

He was sitting next to me the entire time.

It was his fault.

I'm flying out for and I talked to him about how I'm going out to visit Mike Riddle and, and put together some stuff that that we want to

do teaching in churches.

He goes, Oh, man, I teach in a church too.

Oh, really?

What do you what do you teach on the Jehovah's Witness stuff came out.

But as we were going back and forth, he literally opened up his, his iPad.

And he brought up his reasoning book.

And all he did was every time anytime something was brought up, he quickly looked it up and then gave all these

references.

It was great for me to watch him talk and do this because you know, they take a lot of those passages out of

context.

And I was able to walk through these things with him a lot.

But it was it was really funny to watch him actually do that.

Usually they try to hide the iPad from you, especially the novices.

But so, you know, in terms of what we notice on the streets, this is this is

interesting.

If you just if you're just preaching on a corner and Jehovah's Witness around the other corner, there are some times I won't go right up to him,

I'll wait and I'll do my own thing somewhere else, especially if I have a group with me that that I'm leading in evangelism.

So we'll do our evangelism and you'll watch people Jehovah's Witness stand and some people be standing there for 25

-30 minutes.

It's incredible.

And, and so you're like, they had a great conversation.

These might actually be Jehovah's Witnesses that are willing to talk.

And then you know, I mosey on over there eventually and five minutes and they're done.

And you know what I've come to find out there because now I've actually gone to stands and listened for a little bit before I bought in

Jehovah's Witnesses don't want to talk to anybody who who they believe

is a Christian and understands the Bible.

They will talk to really anybody else.

And I will tell you who their favorite targets are.

Their favorite targets are are either false converts, people who proclaim Christ really don't know much about the

Bible.

And then they get love bombs by by Jehovah's Witnesses who can walk with these scriptures.

They seem really nice, right?

You know, even even just explain love bombing, explain what that is as well.

Okay, so so love bombing is something that's used by especially the New Apostolic Reformation

movement, Bethel Redding, IHOP.

And what they do is they just they come to people and they just shower them with love, shower them with compliments,

shower them with Jesus loves you, and he has a better plan for you.

And, and, and they do these things and they try to catch people in in, I don't want to say off

guard, but catch them in a in a mood where, you know, life isn't going perfect for them.

And, and Jehovah's Witnesses, the same way the NAR does is tries to, to come around you and

offer you solutions.

And really, every every religion does that, although all the false ones do it in a in a false manner versus

what we do.

But so that's, that's the type of love bombing that they can do.

It's not as outright as what the NAR will do.

But, you know, one story that I don't think I've ever shared live, but I've told a number of

people, and this is this is really interesting.

There's a couple years ago, I was at a pizza shop with, with one of my good friends, actually a guy who discipled me

early on in, in, in my walk.

We were there together with with a few other guys from our old church.

And, and we're talking, we were watching the draft, it's the Browns, when they drafted Baker Mayfields is what, two

years ago now.

And so we're sitting there and watching this.

And a couple tables away, because there was one TV, we're kind of all huddled around in this restaurant.

And a couple tables away, there were some guys pretty close to us, they had, the guy had a shirt and tie on woman

had a dress on, I didn't think anything of it.

And we were talking, eventually, we got talking about Christianity.

And, and it turned out that one of the guys that was a good friend of my friend who discipled me, he

didn't seem to have a really good Christian worldview.

And so I was really pressing him on some questions and walking through scriptures with him.

And I'm talking about how, you know, if you don't know your stuff better, you know, you don't really sound any different than a Jehovah's Witness or

Mormon.

I mean, I'm going into this stuff and I'm, and I'm literally walking through the different cults that are out there, how he doesn't sound any

different than really any of these Christian cults.

And, and the people that were at this table, just a few tables away from us were listening to every word we were

saying.

So I gave the gospel multiple times and whatnot.

So when we all decided to leave, and we all get up from the table, the one guy who is in

a shirt and tie walks over and says, Hey, sir, I've got some stuff for you in my trunk.

If it would be helpful to you.

I did not think anything of it.

And I left.

Next thing I know, I get a call from my buddy just a few minutes later and said, you'll Anthony, you'll never know what just happened.

I go, what he goes, you know, that guy that was sitting there in the shirt and tie that came over to, and I'm not going to say his name.

I go, he brought him out to his trunk and he gave him a bunch of Jehovah's witness material.

And so of course I literally flipped around in the middle of the street and drove straight back out of the pizza shop.

And unfortunately they were gone by then.

But, uh, this was one story that, that, uh, is reminiscent of a number of stories I hear out there

that Jehovah's witnesses look for what are called low hanging fruit.

People that have enough knowledge about the Bible to be dangerous and a Jehovah's witness can

come in and fill in the missing pieces with their heresies.

So that's what they, that's what they look for.

So when you go up to Jehovah's witness stand and you start talking to them, they're literally feeling you out.

And the moment, the moment they sense you are going towards Christ and his deity,

they stop.

They literally stop dead in their tracks.

It'll be from going, it'll be from going to in a nice conversation back and forth, very friendly

to all of a sudden we're done here.

And that's it.

It's incredible.

And when they do that, they, a lot of times they'll turn their heads from you if you keep on talking.

And the next thing you know, even though you've already, I've already established how much time they have, you will, you will see

that the next two are walking up and saying, Hey guys, it's time for your break.

Uh, we're going to take over.

And the thing I've learned about these Jehovah's witness stands is there's always somebody, some watcher that is somewhere in the

background.

And you know, I saw this at the Superbowl outreach in Minneapolis where they had multiple stands being managed by one guy who's literally

watching all the stands and he was switching people among the stands whenever we stood there and talk for too long.

So, I mean, it's incredible what they have in place.

And, and I say all this, um, and maybe you guys can answer, you know, about

what techniques they use in terms of when a biblical Christian actually comes up and talks to them.

Um, all the checkpoints they have in place to kind of.

Get out of those conversations.

Yeah.

So what you were saying is actually, uh, is correct.

But when I was growing up, we actually used to debate people.

I, my dad got into various conversations, um, at people's houses and tried

to reason with them from his view of the scriptures.

Um, and he was not ashamed or embarrassed to do that.

Of course, at some point he would break it off if he saw that he wasn't making any ground.

Um, but they changed their stance, uh, back in 2000 when the internet

kind of started to become more popular and more information was being put out by

them and they published in the, I believe it's January 15th I'm reading here, a keep on the watch for the

end of the world.

Um, they said that we see the global preaching work being accomplished, which Jesus

said would take place just before the end of the system.

And then at the end, uh, they gave what I like to call kind of a soft nudge

to their members that says, nevertheless, the Bible does not state that Jehovah will wait until every individual on

earth has received a personal witness.

Rather, the good news must be preached to Jehovah's satisfaction and then the end will come.

So they started permeating this idea that the preaching work was winding down.

And then from, from then on, they started to tell their members only pick

people that are willing to listen.

Um, here's another article that I pulled up, um, that says, why don't Jehovah's witnesses respond to all

accusations made against them?

And, uh, they say, well, Jesus didn't respond to the ridicule that he was receiving.

He made no answer to Pontius Pilate when he was falsely accused.

He didn't respond to those who, uh, called him a drunkard or a glutton.

Instead, he let his actions speak for themselves in harmony with the principle.

Wisdom is vindicated by its results.

This is straight from a watchtower article.

And they give some examples of the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter.

Uh, so what they've done is they've used this opportunity as kind of a way to

keep their members uninformed on things such as the, uh, child molestation

scandal, which would be things that people would question them on and, uh, other various, um,

argumentation that someone would use against them.

And it kind of locks in their members to where they're not exposed to things

that the organization can no longer control, uh, them being exposed to.

Now, you know, one of the things that, uh, let me ask Nathan, uh, your witnesses

don't serve in military or police, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

What is their view as far as, as that.

Goes?

They consider themselves conscientious bystanders.

They respect the government, but they, uh, quote the scriptures that Jesus, uh, says, you know, my kingdom

is not part of this world.

And, um, basically don't get involved in any time of political service.

They don't vote.

They don't, uh, hold any political, uh, opinions.

Um, they are not allowed to go into the military.

In fact, if you were to go into the military or even marry someone that's in the

military, maybe that's not a believer and live on a military base, uh, you could be disfellowshipped and kicked out

of the organization.

Um, and they don't typically allow people to serve in law enforcement.

Now would they, would they reach out to, I mean, would they.

Call law enforcement?

Oh yeah.

Uh, as far as like, if someone's breaking into their house.

Yeah, absolutely.

What if, what if.

They just don't like what someone's doing?

Cause here's what we saw happen.

Uh, Anthony and I were out in California and Anthony was on the street.

Um, uh, evangelizing, he was just doing some open air, uh, which was really funny.

He had, he had a small amplifier and this guy came, if you're Anthony's laughing,

he knows exactly what I'm going to refer to.

This guy came on a bike and like a megaphone and he was louder than Anthony

and they're on, they're on different corners.

So Anthony is on one corner, this guy's on the other corner and they're, they're the guys heckling Anthony from across

the street and going back and forth.

And on the other corner, the third corner is a Jehovah witness stand and

they were there.

And so I walked up and I went to the first two people that were there and I said, do you

know why Jesus Christ had to be God?

They said, they don't believe that he is.

I started explaining why he had to be the guy.

Like Anthony said, the guy that was behind, he walked up, had the two people go back, brought two other

people up.

I asked them the same question.

I'm a little bit persistent.

He then pulled them back and then he and another person came up and I asked them the

same question and he's like, we're not here to talk to you.

I said, well, what are you doing out here?

We're here to answer questions.

I said, but I'm asking questions.

And he goes, he goes, we're not talking to you.

I said, why not?

Is it that I understand what you believe and, and I understand the Bible and the differences there.

He's you can't talk to us.

And so me and the person I was talking to, we stepped away from right in front of their booth.

So now picture the scene.

Anthony's on one corner.

He's shouting answers to a heckler that's on another corner.

I'm now on a third corner.

And what I'm doing is I'm raising my voice to answer questions to my friend about what Jehovah

witnesses believe.

So we literally have three of the four corners that we're all doing open air.

There's someone like raising their voice at all three.

These guys called the police on me.

And the officer came over and said that I was harassing.

I said, what was I doing?

That was harassing.

I he and I said, I said, what is it?

What's their purpose in being here?

They have a permit for what purpose?

And he said, well, to answer questions.

I said, all I was doing was asking questions.

I said, how is that harassing?

He's like, you can't be here.

I said, sir, at this point, I'm like, I'm probably like 10 feet from them 15 feet from them.

So I'm not even like right where they're.

And he ends up like real.

I said, I'm nowhere near them.

You there's no law that I'm breaking standing here.

And so he goes back over to talk to them then comes back because he wants me to go away.

And I said, sir, you know, unless I'm breaking a law, you need to allow me to

stand here.

And so he was really frustrated because they wanted him to do something.

And I was like, I'm like, so when he finally did leave, I walked over and I said, I thought you guys are conscientious

objectors.

I didn't know you'd call the police.

So they were, they were less than happy.

Now that the funny thing was, next year that Anthony, I were there, they were there.

So we were able to do that again, though, Anthony didn't have his heckler.

He didn't have the heckler the next year.

Let's see full belly bear had some stuff.

Full belly bear Anthony had said being stuck with Anthony, ugh, he might be a Jehovah Witness, but man, do I

feel bad for the guy.

Now he went after everyone here because he says, Andrew does a thing called ridicule bombing.

That's actually kind of true.

No one's going to disagree with that, actually.

Oh, I like this one.

He said, he said, Anthony just said he made an illegal U -turn arrest him.

And he was he was busting even on Scott Moses, where was that one?

He had?

Oh, here we go.

He said, Scott, Scott thinks he's cool because he has two first names like Ricky Bobby.

And then he told me that you're laughing, Nathan, you probably get it.

He goes, that's a that's a pop culture reference, by the way, Andrew.

Yeah, I don't get who.

So and Nathan, who's Ricky Bobby?

I didn't get that.

You don't know Ricky Bobby.

Anthony, he doesn't know how pop culture illiterate I am.

Will Ferrell movie.

About NASCAR.

We're gonna have to educate you on that one.

Wow.

So I got another question for you guys.

You know, I know eventually I want to get into.

I would love for us to get into some, some verses that you guys would use to going up Job's witnesses.

But one question before that would be, is it is it true?

Because it sure seems this way.

Is it true that Job's witnesses are told not to look into their history of the watch tower?

And so can you can you explain a little bit of that to to all of us?

Sure, that that's absolutely true.

In fact, these publications back here, my dad may still have copies of these.

But most of the time, the Jehovah's Witnesses are asked when publications are

reprinted and or kind of discontinued or out of date to turn them into

the local kingdom hall.

And they are sent to the watchtower Bible and track society for destruction.

I can actually show you well, it wouldn't be good for screen, but I can show you a couple

books where they predicted the 1975 prophecy of end of the world

coming in 1975.

They self predicted that in their book, when it didn't occur after people had sold their belongings,

donated it to the watchtower, not went to college, not had children, not got married, went into full time

preaching work, peddling their books.

They came out with a new update of that book where they reprinted it and they took the quote out.

So they are definitely discouraged not to look into their history.

They are told that there are a lot of lies being spread by apostates and the devil and

that if they look into that they may get misled and abandon the faith.

So most do not look and are not willing to look.

So they are told that they'll be misled by their own history.

They did this and I didn't know the apostate history, the apostate history.

So so and this is not I didn't know.

So they went when I knew that they update stuff.

I mean, like I have old copies of even the New World Translation, because and

it's important to have some of the older copies.

Because when you get to Colossians 115 to 18, they add the word

other when it says Christ created all things four times.

They add the word all other things because they think he's a created being.

And so early on, they didn't have brackets around it, the brackets reveal that it is added,

it wasn't in the Greek.

And so they wouldn't have the brackets around it.

Then they basically got shamed into adding the brackets.

And in the most recent update that they've done, those brackets are gone again.

And so I like to bring that out to show that they know it's not in the Greek, and it shows that the

the deception that they're doing on their own people with that, but I didn't know they

asked people to turn in the old copies of, of the watchtower,

the awake and those things.

That's interesting.

Another Andrew, another example of changes in the New World Translation is

that in Hebrews 1 .6, where it says,

and let all the angels of God worship him.

The 1970 New World Translation actually still had said worship, but

later versions changed that to do obeisance because they wanted to make sure that they weren't

instructing their members to worship Jesus, the son.

That's interesting.

Nathan, I see you got you grabbed something.

So what do you got for us?

Yeah, I was just grabbing the 1980 something New World Translation.

So the story that I heard and I may be wrong is is that Manti and Dr.

Walter Martin had given them a lot of problems over putting the word other in

Colossians one.

And, and there, Dr. Manti was a Greek scholar, famous Greek scholar, and

Dr. Walter Martin, of course, we all know was the author of the kingdom of the cults, but

basically did most of his ministry in the cults and minister into cults and taught other

people how to do it.

But yeah, they, I think that they under pressure, if I remember the story correctly, put

the brackets in Colossians one in the 1980s.

And then after,.

What's that?

I think it was 79 when they put it in, and they took it out.

I think I forget when the latest translation just came out, but.

They took it out of the 2013 translation.

Yeah, it's it's out of there.

And this is why I think Angie says, she says here, the internet must be a nightmare for

witnesses, actually, Joe witnesses and Mormons, the Mormons had, if you're familiar with

Mormonism, they've come out on their website, and they have these gospel essays.

And the gospel essays basically support everything that we Christians used to say

about Mormons.

Now with the internet, they can't hide it anymore.

So they're trying to they've come up with a spin on things.

No, so they're trying to spin it where the witnesses kind of just are going quiet.

They don't want to talk to anyone that that understands kind of what they believe.

Yeah, actually, the 1984 version that I just pulled off of my shelf, other was not in brackets,

was not in brackets, okay, brackets in that one.

So that's not necessarily a recent change.

But, you know, you can take them to their kingdom interlinear.

If if they happen to have that in their JW library, and would be willing to go there and the word others not in

the text, but I probably wouldn't go that route with them.

Because if you don't know your Greek, they could try to trip you up with a few

tricks they would do.

Yeah, they they do like to.

Okay, so one of the things I've always found is they do like to go to the Greek quite a bit.

And they try to make cases from the Greek.

Now, what I find is they go to the Greek without knowing the Greek.

I mean, and so I had two women that accidentally came to my door.

And when I say accidentally, it so when I moved into this neighborhood, that we had a neighbor up the

street, and his sister was Jehovah Witness.

And so they used to come, the Jehovah Witnesses used to come as I

discovered, they used to come to our neighborhood every single Saturday morning,

at 10 o 'clock.

I didn't know that because I wasn't always home on Saturdays.

But once once they identified me, they started skipping my house.

And what happened was I saw them go from my one neighbor's house, skip my house and go to my next door neighbor's

house.

And so I grabbed my new world translation and I ran out.

Okay, I am this nerdy.

I ran out.

And I went to my neighbor.

And as as he's opening the door, they're standing there.

I'm standing behind them.

And they actually as the door opened, they turned and looked at me.

And I was like, Hey, Pete, I'm your neighbor next door.

They're gonna lie to you about the Bible.

I'm gonna correct them.

Go ahead, guys.

And I just stood there and they were like, what are you doing?

I said, Well, I'm not gonna let you lie to my neighbors.

And so they they just they literally just left the door.

And there's my neighbor Pete looking at me.

I was like, bye, Pete.

And I followed them to the next neighbor.

They're like, What are you doing?

I said, I'm not gonna let you lie to my neighbors.

I'm gonna follow you.

They never came down our street again.

For years, for probably about eight years, we never saw them all the neighbors were

thrilled that I moved in until I gave them all gospel tracks.

And they were like, Oh, no.

But But here's the thing.

I had these two, they come to me.

We were in Colossians.

Here's why I go to Colossians.

There's a couple passages I like to go with them.

Colossians 115 to 18 is one of them.

They read because this is so clearly talking about the deity of Christ.

And this is the thing they deny.

Now remember, they've added the word other he so I'm going to read through this and and you're going to see the difference that

adding that he created all things all creation or all other.

So it says he is the image of the invisible God.

So right there.

It's not saying he's the image we think that it means he's the form.

He's the form of the invisible God.

The firstborn of all creation, and they'll argue firstborn means he's an offspring.

And this is why they say he's Michael.

He's the offspring.

He's the first creation.

However, firstborn does not have to do with the first in the number born.

It often has to do with preeminence.

This is especially true when you look at something like inheritance.

When you look at inheritance, it is always dealing with the issue of birth order.

And the birth order, though, is not always a birth order.

Because what you have in inheritance is something like Abraham, who's his firstborn?

Well, it wasn't Isaac, but Isaac is the firstborn.

So you end up seeing that it has to do with inheritance with as you read this, it's all about inheritance.

But we see here it says he's the image of the of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by

him, all things were created.

That's anything that's created was created by him.

And they're going to add the word all other things that totally changes the meaning, doesn't it?

So this adding the Greek word is not for help.

For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible,

invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created

through him and for him.

And he is before all things.

And in him, all things are held together.

So you see there that all four of those times adding the word other totally changes the meaning.

Everything that was created everything he was before there was any creation, he was before all of it.

And he is the one that not only created it, but it was created for him.

Now, that becomes a real problem for them.

And the reason that is, is because they're going to hold to a view that they say that

the arc that Michael, the Archangel was the first creation, and he created everything.

So once you go through that, and what I did with these two ladies, when they came, they were trying to tell me that that the word

other is in the Greek because remember, this is when the brackets were removed.

So they were telling me that the word other is in the Greek.

And I went, really?

And they said, Yes, it's there.

I said, Hold on a minute, I came into my house, I grabbed my Greek New Testament, I opened to Colossians one, I

turned into them, I handed to them and said, Show me.

And they were like, Well, we don't know Greek.

And I said, Okay, then please don't tell me what is and is not in the Greek.

But the next verse that I'll turn to with them is this.

So Colossians one, 15 to 17, you want to read that

then you go to Isaiah 4424, which reads, Thus

says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you out of the womb, by the way, the word Lord, there's

Jehovah.

Then says this, I am Jehovah, who made all things

who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth

by my self.

Now they got a problem, because they just said Jesus created all other things, which means he would have been created.

And all of a sudden, now, we're seeing a created being.

You see, this presents a dilemma for them.

They they don't have an answer to that.

Because all of a sudden, they were arguing that there's there is that that

this is that Jesus is a created being.

And now all of a sudden you point out he's not he is that God

alone created.

That is a real dilemma for them.

I have a couple more verses I like to bring in, but I'm going to bring you guys in and see what else what other what verses to answer

Anthony's question, what verses do you guys kind of go to?

Let's see, I'll bring up.

So you could actually use the their New World Translation with this one.

And, like, you know, as you mentioned, we mentioned before, like asking questions, you can control

the conversation.

So this is an example that I actually heard James White talk about, if you read

Psalm 45, verses six through seven, and ask who that's

talking about, of course, it's they would say it's Jehovah God.

If you read Psalm 102, verses 24 through 27.

It talks about Jehovah God being the unchanging creator of all

things, that, you know, basically all creation grows

old and waxes old, and you will wrap it up as a garment because,

you know, you are unchanging and your years will never end.

And then you go to Hebrews, chapter one, and verses eight through 12.

And you read that this is a quote from those two Psalms.

And so but Hebrews one, it says unto the Son, he

referring to God said, your throne, oh, God is forever and ever a scepter of righteousness is the

scepter of your kingdom, quoting Psalm 45.

And then it says, and and then it continues quoting from Psalm 102, which

describes Jehovah God, that David described Jehovah God as the

unchanging eternal creator.

And there's actually a footnote, I think it's still in the most recent

printing of the New World Translation that will actually go back.

There's a footnote in a cross reference in the Hebrews one passage that will go back to Psalm

102, verses 24 through 27, because that's the quote.

So after you read that, then you can ask.

Them, well, here from what was the reference.

Psalm 102, what.

Verses 24 through 27?

Thank you.

Okay.

So Catherine asked.

This question.

Let me give this to you guys.

It should be an easy one.

But question from my mom, she wanted to know if they Jehovah Witnesses read the King James

Bible, or do they have.

Their own Bible?

Well, they used to the Watchtower used to print and publish the King James Bible,

primarily.

And I forget the year, maybe Nathan would know that eventually when they develop the New World

Translation, because it allowed them to translate things to fit their doctrine,

but they used to primarily rely on the King James Version.

Yeah, that's.

Correct.

And they also will allow the American Standard.

They have two versions that they will allow their members to use as reference.

One is the King James and one is the.

American Standard.

I didn't know they use the American.

Standard.

Interesting.

That's the old one, not the new American, the old one from the late 1800s, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah, so I know that they would use the King James, which is why with any of the cults, King James seems to be

acceptable.

An interesting story, by the way, for folks that, Nathan, I don't probably know this, but maybe not.

And I think it was Holland that this happened where the translators,

you're shaking your head.

So was it.

Holland?

I can't remember if it was Holland, but you're talking about the great trial.

Yeah.

Scholarship of the New.

World Translation.

So here they're being sued about their translation.

And what ended up happening in court, and I don't remember all the details,

but basically they claim that the translator claimed that he

was fluent in the Greek and the Hebrew.

And what Jennifer Pepling is saying, Scotland.

She's saying it was Scotland.

And so yet what they had done was they gave this guy who said he's fluent

something written in Hebrew and asked him to translate it.

And he had to admit he didn't know Hebrew.

And so in a court of law, it was basically revealed that the translators

of the New World Translation didn't know the original languages that they were

translating.

Nathan, it looks like you're looking up some information on that.

Yeah, I'm probably not going to be.

Able to find it because it's been a while since I've read this book, but this is a book called Crisis of Conscience.

It's got a reprint in now, so it's a lot cheaper.

I paid $175 for it.

But this was the book written by former governing body member, Ray

Franz.

And I believe in this book somewhere, he says that his brother was on the committee,

and his brother only had about a first year Greek whenever they did the New World.

Oh, wow.

Let me give.

You guys another verse that I always go to with Jehovah Witnesses, and

this is how I set this up.

I will ask them to open even in their New World Translation to Jeremiah 23,

verse 5.

And I will ask them to read verse 5, and let me read verse 5 for you.

It says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, or Jehovah, when I

will raise up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as

king, and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

And they read verse 5, and I say, who is that speaking of?

And they always, always, I've never once had them say anything else other than Jesus.

And I say, okay, could you read verse 6 and see what

he's called?

And verse 6 says, In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell

securely.

And this is the name by which he will be called, Jehovah, or Righteousness, Yahweh

Sikhanou.

So this is his name.

He is called Jehovah.

Nobody is called Jehovah in the Bible except Jehovah.

That's a real problem for them, and they don't even realize it.

They translated it as Jehovah without even looking at the context of who it's speaking of.

Jesus Christ is called God, right there.

So that's one I always go to because they just go, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.

And that's not in their Reasoning the Scriptures book.

They don't have that in there.

So it's one that they're not ready for,.

Which is why I like to go to those.

– So that's like, you're quoting that right out of their New World Translation, right?

– Well, that one I read out of the ESV, but their New World Translation will say a similar thing.

It will say Jehovah, or Righteousness, which is what you want.

They will say it's speaking of Jesus, the branch of David.

And so branch of Jesse is the king of David.

So they'll admit to that, and they don't even realize that their translators

didn't even pick up on what they were actually writing.

– Yeah.

So what other verses or tips do you guys have about going up to Jehovah's Witnesses today?

Are there other verses in the New World Translation that are easy ones to go to that display Christ's deity, maybe?

I would say one thing that most Christians probably are familiar with trying to go to is

John 1 .1.

I would not really recommend going there with them.

They have pretty much a canned response for the Greek

indefinite article, which is not actually in Greek, but they have a pretty good response to

that.

However, if they do go to that, you can go to Isaiah 43 .10, and

Isaiah 43 .10 actually will help you with that verse.

It says, let me get it out of theirs because it's better out of theirs.

It says, you are my witnesses.

This is where Jehovah's Witnesses actually get their name from, is this verse.

It says, you are my witnesses, declares Jehovah.

Yes, my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and have faith in me and understand that I am

the same one.

Before me, no God was formed, and after me, there has been none.

And then in their New World Translation, when they render John

1 .1, of course, they say that Jesus is a God.

They say, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God, and say, okay,

well, wait a second.

In Isaiah 43 .10, it said, there was no God formed before me or after me.

What kind of God is Jesus?

Is he a true God or a false God, according to your theology?

So, you can kind of get the gears kind of going with them, but they'll probably go to

all of their, what I like to call the clobber verses, so they'll try to pull the Colossians 1 on you.

Another thing I wanted to point out about Colossians 1, great response from Andrew on how he handles that.

If you get caught up on firstborn, and it meaning preeminence or first in rank, verse

18 in their New World Translation of that same chapter says, and he is the head of the body, the congregation,

he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might become the

one who is first in all things.

That verse right there supports the preeminence translation of

firstborn in verse 15.

So, you can kind of make your argument a little more sound off of verse 18, right from their own Bible, and

most of the time, they will stop at verse 17.

Yeah, because when you get into verse 18,.

It's also going to talk about the inheritance issues and things like that.

Now, I've had where they'll bring up, they'll bring up to me, John 1 .1, and

where I go to with that, when they bring it up to me, I usually ask this question, does

Jehovah know everything?

Is there anything Jehovah doesn't know?

And the reason I ask that, and this is a good thing to always remember, especially with dealing with people in false religions, you

want to ask questions up front that you want to use the answers to later.

You get to learn when you do this enough, you get to learn the questions that you want to get answers to.

And so, I want the answer to this question, is God omniscient?

Is he all -knowing?

They'll say yes, he is.

Now, once they say yes, I then turn to a different Isaiah passage

than Nathan did, and that is Isaiah 45, verse 5.

I am the Jehovah, I am the Lord, and there is no

other besides me.

There is no God.

Verse 6, I am the Lord, and there is no other.

Verse 7, I am the Lord who does all these things, these things being

creation.

And verse 8, I am the Lord, I have created it.

So, you see here, he ends up talking about, he's God, and he doesn't know of any other God.

So, when you say Jesus is a God, well, God says he doesn't know of any other

gods.

So, who's this other God that God didn't know of?

And it can be funny when you put it that way, because they suddenly get tied up

in the fact that they're the ones arguing, there's only one God, one person, and all of a sudden, they have multiple gods.

And God doesn't know this God that they're talking of.

So, I like to do that.

Yeah, it's interesting you brought up, of course, their emphasis on John 1, 1c, where

the New World Translation has a.

And, of course, they think that's going to help their position by

the lack of the definite article there implying that you can insert an indefinite article to make

him a God, but then that, as you mentioned, that presents problems when even

some of their favorite verses, when they're trying to argue against the deity of Christ, you can use that back on them

with John 17, 3, where Jesus calls the Father the only true God.

Well, is a God in John 1, 1 a true

God?

And if they have to say yes, well, then how come Jesus said that the Father is the only true

God if Jesus is also a true God who is a God, a

lesser God who is ontologically distinct from the Father?

Yeah, and I mean, this is where I think they start getting wrapped up because they have, see,

and what you often find with Jehovah's Witnesses is they are not thinking through these issues.

They're taught to regurgitate.

They're told what to say, they're told what to think, and they don't process it.

And that's why when you ask questions, we've talked about this, asking questions.

Angie says that Andrew sets traps, lol.

It's not really setting traps.

It is in a way, but what I'm doing is asking questions up front so that I could use that later.

There's a reason for that.

When they realize that you know what you're talking about, they're going to be a lot more defensive.

They're going to be a lot more careful, and I want them giving me the honest answers, not

trying to figure out how I'm trying to trap them in that sense.

So I want the honest answers up front, and then I'm going to use that later.

I mean, I do this with Muslims all time.

I'll say, is God greater than our ability to understand him?

And this is something you could do with Jehovah's Witnesses, but they don't argue this way as much.

A Muslim will argue that the Trinity can't be true because it doesn't make sense to them.

And so what I'll do is I'll say, is God greater than our ability to understand him?

And they'll say, yes.

And I go, okay, thank you.

And then later when they say, well, the Trinity can't be true, it doesn't make sense.

I go, wait a minute.

I appreciate you conceding that your God doesn't exist.

And they go, what?

And I say, yeah, because you can understand your God and you can understand the Trinity.

And we both agreed that the real God is one that's beyond our ability to understand.

You can understand your God.

He's not God.

He's a figment of your imagination.

And so I do that quite a bit.

Now there is a question here for Anthony from Full Belly Bear.

So you know, you got to be careful when Full Belly Bear is asking questions here.

I got to find out who this really is.

But he says, Anthony, my tooth hurts.

Can you give me a teeth cleaning?

You're the dentist here.

I'm not sure that those two statements go together.

So you're going to be allowed.

You're finally going to be allowed to clean his teeth.

Soon, huh?

Yeah.

I mean, we're in Ohio allowed to go back as of next Monday.

But you know, with the government, you never know.

Here's a, this is so wild.

Our governor says we can go back.

The state dental board says we can go back.

But the state dental board, when they were asked about what our requirements are in terms of dental office and how we're supposed to

keep the office clean, there's different standards now, as well as what type of equipment we need, the personal

protective equipment, PPE.

They say to go to the CDC website and check out the CDC website

for that.

So you go to CDC website, and they have banned all non non

essential procedures, all elective procedures.

So so within within government, we have conflicts going on.

So honestly, we could find out tomorrow or Friday that we're not going back next week either.

It's it's who knows?

Yeah, well, I know.

I.

Know.

I say this because a it it kind of triggers Anthony, but

as as churches are trying to be, you know, follow the law best

they can, whether these laws are actually laws in the

sense because they we have laws going on right now that break the, you know, our violations of the Bill of Rights.

So you actually have illegal laws.

So you could argue when you say following Romans 13, which which laws are you following?

Because we have contradictory laws here that are in place.

Very interesting.

You guys know I'm near New York.

And in New York, the New York City mayor threatened churches for Good

Friday and Resurrection Sunday that if they don't close, they could be shut down permanently.

So he threatened to permanently shut them down.

If they have people in the building, not if they have more than 10 people, it was just if

they had services going in the building.

Some churches that were live streaming got in trouble because they had a couple of people in the

building.

And being in the building was the issue and they were live streaming from the building.

And so there was like the pastor and the guy running the camera and you know, his family or something.

So that's not allowed.

Synagogues were told no.

Even even as recently as I think last week, synagogues were told because

there was a funeral and and the mayor said it is past time of warning.

It's time for arrests.

But when it comes to Ramadan, oh, oh, he the mayor had a message for Ramadan.

He wanted all the Muslim New Yorkers to know that they set up 450 places for them to get

halal food for Ramadan.

They could come pick it up at city expense.

The city was providing it.

Oh, and not only that, but the city was going into the mosques and and I saw them taping off

areas so that they'd be six feet apart so that they could gather for their worship.

The same city that said they had permanently shut down the churches is setting up tape is at

what happened to separation of church and state, by the way, where did that go all of a sudden in Minneapolis

there?

The city is setting up loud speakers for Ramadan so that they can have their five times a

day.

The call for prayer could go off since they're not allowed to go to the mosque.

At city expense, but you as a Christian, no, you're not allowed to worship.

Yeah, so I think I'm spinning Anthony up.

He's going to do another two hour, two hour.

Rant, shall we say?

It's well thought out.

They've not just.

Been rants.

They've just been rants.

Daniel, Nathan, you heard that right?

He did admit that it was a rant.

I said, what?

No, no, no, it wasn't just it wasn't just a rant.

Yeah, it was a well thought out rant.

That's fine.

The first 20 minutes was thought out.

The next 40 when he was saying he was going to get off, that was more of a rant.

The next 20.

Minutes was a little bit of a rant in the last 20 minutes.

I.

Was just full blown rant.

So here's a full belly bear says.

Anthony had a great message on his Facebook about rights.

So that's what we're referring to.

All right.

Oh, Anthony, a different Anthony has a problem with us.

How come none of y 'all.

Have beards?

Well, actually, if you're going to be following the mandates of wearing a face mask, you're gonna have to shave your beard because

you cannot seal a face mask onto your skin with a beard.

You are actually going to be in violation of.

Every government order across the country.

Yeah, well, the simple reason is because we love our wives.

Yeah, I fully.

Admit my wife won't let me.

My wife does not like anything scruffy touching her face, but I have a baby face

anyway and can't grow a beard and I actually know Anthony Vitoli.

He's a personal friend of mine.

He stayed with me during G3 and yeah, he has a stellar beard.

Good job, Anthony.

Let's get.

That beard back up there.

I can grow a beard pretty easily.

My wife actually likes a scruffy face.

The problem is there's only like a small period where it would actually work and I can't keep my

facial hair the specific length that she wants so that's why I have to shave.

Mine's real simple.

Mine's real.

Simple.

I made an agreement with my wife very early on.

This is in Peter where it says dealing with your wife with wisdom.

See, I think I look better with a beard and it's easier to maintain.

My wife doesn't think I look good with a beard.

However, I think my wife looks amazing with long hair and she thinks she looks better

with short hair and she says it's easier to maintain.

This is a very simple agreement.

She keeps her hair long.

I keep my face clean.

That's a good deal.

Yeah, but but Anthony's saying that's not your reason there.

Nathan, he was waiting on me to say the baby face remark.

Well, we Anthony and I happen to know someone who does have a baby face, but he's grown a beard

and I think when I've seen it without any pictures with him without his beard, he he's like you.

He looks like a like a little child baby face.

He is.

Alright, so let me see.

I don't think I'm trying to look to see if there's any other questions.

Oh, yeah.

KT says how about loudspeakers with the gospel?

I think if there's anyone listening that's in Minneapolis, I I believe you should absolutely

partition the city and argue.

I I sue the city if need be to allow the gospel to be preached from

loudspeakers every Sunday.

I mean it it should be if they're going to five times a day

force everyone to listen to the Muslim prayer.

I think that they should you know preach the gospel.

I think it's it's only fair.

They don't want to force a religion on people.

Yikes trying to see if there was any questions I missed here,

but any other any other verses that you guys use when evangelizing to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a I have.

A set of verses that I like to use so Isaiah 45 is is really just a beautiful

chapter for you know you were quoting from earlier.

If you if you drop a little further down in verse twenty -one, it says there is no other

God but me a righteous God and Savior.

There is none besides me turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth for I am God and there is no one else

by myself.

I have sworn the word has gone forth from my mouth and righteousness and it will not return to me.

Every knee will bend every tongue will swear loyalty is how they render it in the new world

translation, but then if you go over to Philippians two in the New Testament.

You have started in.

Verse ten six, it's talking about

Jesus and him emptying himself and taking on a slave's form and becoming a human

humble in himself being obedient to the point of death and then in verse ten, it says so that in the name of Jesus,

every knee should bend and of those in heaven and those on the earth and those under the ground and every

tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father.

So you can see that Paul is quoting back to Isaiah

45 from this and so you can kind of plant a little bit of a seed in

their head.

The funny thing is also I believe that.

In the Greek, but I'm not 100 sure Jesus Christ is Lord would be curious

and this is one of the times that they did not choose to translate that as Jehovah because

it would have clearly read Jesus Christ is Jehovah.

Yeah, I probably wouldn't go there with them on that.

Yeah, I had that.

I had.

That Isaiah 45 and Philippians two in my

notes here from the new world translation.

So you definitely stole my thunder on.

That Nathan.

Sorry.

I think it would be important also to talk about some of the passages that they use to try to prove that Jesus is

a created being as well as some of the alterations real quickly.

I'll go through it.

A lot of Christians like to go to Exodus 314 where God says I

am who I am to Moses whenever Moses asked who he is and then he says

I am has sent me to you and then if you go to John 8 58 and

you try to make that jump immediately to there, it says truly truly.

I say to you before Abraham was I am that's been changed in the new world translation

in the new world translation.

It says I will become what I will become in Exodus 314 and in John

8 58.

It says before Abraham was born.

I have been so you can actually make that that connection.

The context though.

Right.

Why did he pick up stones to stone him?

They didn't change that like you just.

Why did they pick up stones stone him for you being a man claimed to be God so

so basically and I forget who it is that who uses this.

Now is it you that use this line and and says you know so you're agreeing with the with

the Pharisees.

Well, yeah II often I will ask him the question you know why did why did why did they put Jesus to die

on the cross like what what was the crime that he that he supposedly committed and uh and that

they know they're caught at that.

They will they usually won't answer at that point and I usually say this question right for the end because

once they stop listening when you ask this question, they have no answer for it.

And so I readily give it up and that's usually when they uh say bye and uh Andrew you saw that

right.

That happened the last time we were in uh California at the at the beach there uh

just a few months ago.

Um let me let me.

Get a couple things.

Yes.

Uh full Billy Bear is asking how come I can't super chat because Google doesn't like us.

They don't allow us to do that.

Uh but if you do want to donate, we would you can do that.

You just have to take an extra step and just go to striving for eternity dot org slash donate.

We're still working with Google to try to allow us to uh set up super chats, but

uh if you want to donate, that's where you could do it.

Um I wanna get to Jennifer's question before we go, but let me ask this one from Angie real

quick.

Uh Nathan, you probably would be the one to answer this.

Angie says so the higher ups at the Watchtower Society know they're lying to their people.

You think that's true.

I think to.

Some level it is uh there are certain members of the governing body that I definitely would

think uh are are willfully lying um and keeping things from the

members.

All of them to some extent are keeping something from the members.

I what I mean by how I said that there there's some on the governing body that I

believe are actually sincere and misled themselves.

Um they're kind of just put in place as figureheads uh, but then there are others that I

believe um really are misleading their people purposely willfully.

They do know that what they are teaching is false.

They do know that uh what they are doing is is taking advantage of their members to

to some level.

Sorry.

They just getting wealthy off of their members.

Is that the.

Point?

There's been some some speculation and a little bit of trace into the

organization being owned by higher ups than just the governing body.

The governing body in general is not really super rich.

They have free room and board um and and things like that, but I believe that there is

a higher type organization above them that is funding uh or

profiting off of their organization.

Yeah, they're not.

Like the Mormons there.

So um let's see so uh okay.

So Cody is saying that slick is the one that uses that you agree with the Pharisees.

Uh uh Ethan is saying this.

Ethan is like I'm sure you have a certain number of subs.

He's talking about YouTube.

Actually we've so what we did Ethan is to try to get super chats.

We have created a new YouTube channel.

We need a thousand uh subscribers to be able to do super chat for them to maybe let us

again and we are currently if I go look this up as of right now at

932.

So we're getting close uh but we haven't gotten to the 1000 yet to be able to get some.

So if you guys wanna subscribe, that would help us just go to the YouTube channel that you are watching now.

If you're watching on YouTube and click the subscribe button, click the bell so you get the notifications.

Let me bring this one up and I think Jennifer does have one verse wrong in here.

Um she says not sure if you guys said this one read Revelation one eight who uh who is this read

Revelation twenty -two fifteen.

She means twenty -two thirteen who is this read uh Revelation one seventeen who

did Jesus who did Jehovah die.

So so here let me read these in order.

So Revelation one eight says I am the alpha and the omega

says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come the almighty.

So the the God almighty the Lord God or what they'd say is the almighty

God referring not the mighty God.

Jesus is the mighty God Jehovah is the almighty God.

So the almighty God is alpha and omega.

If you go to Revelation twenty -two thirteen, it says I am the alpha and omega the

first and the last the beginning and the end that's Jesus speaking.

So then with what Jennifer is saying go back to Revelation one seventeen when I

fell uh when I saw him, I fell at my feet as though dead, but he

laid his right hand on me saying fear not I am the first and the last

the living one.

I died and behold I live I am alive forevermore.

So what she's pointing out there is here you have God being called

the alpha and omega the first and the last and yet at the same time you end up seeing

that uh that's Jesus.

So that's who that's referring to uh so that's a good a good couple of passages to use,

but uh for those who saw her comment, it's Revelation uh twenty -two thirteen not

fifteen.

Just so you know.

And you can also go back to Isaiah 44 six that says uh that says the Lord the king of Israel the

redeemer.

I am the first and the last besides me.

There's no.

Other God.

Yeah, and II think if he's omniscient, he would know if there's another God right.

So Justin.

And you gotta love this with Justin Pierce.

Pastor Justin when someone has to say serious question to start their question, you

kinda know the level of questions he usually asks.

Uh but he's he's a good friend of us here in the ministries, but he says don't they usually translate

Jehovah where Yahweh is clearly the Old Testament translation i .e. uh

I am Yahweh and there is no other.

Yes, I believe that's true right.

Yeah.

So they.

Latched on to the name Jehovah.

I believe uh Rutherford um was the one that coined and named them

Jehovah's witnesses and started to use the name prominently um you have to

realize that I want to get into this earlier real quick, but um you have to realize that if

you give God the uh uh the name Jehovah, then it's very difficult

for them to comprehend anything else taking the place of Jehovah.

So when you start to use these passages like we've been going over where you know these things are written

uh of Jesus that were attributed to uh you know God in the Old

Testament um it there's a disconnect between them because they're like well Jesus

is not Jehovah Jehovah is Jehovah and so it causes them a lot of.

Issues because there's that disconnect they read the entire scriptures uh from a

Unitarian type perspective, which is that God is one person

and not God is one being in three persons as the Bible teaches and so

it causes a lot of roadblocks for them in how they think whenever they're you

know thinking about that.

God's name is Jehovah and so that's why they use it so much, but Jehovah is uh you know

they They say that that's the English translation of uh

the uh Tetragrammaton and so that's kind of why they they use that one and they latched on to it because

it sets them apart from anyone else and it you know, but Yahweh is is a

perfectly fine English translation.

In fact, I think that Jehovah is kind of a little bit of a mangled and slaughtered translation.

It comes from a Germanic uh pronunciation um Yahweh is what

I would personally use well.

I'll let.

You in on a little secret of a new translation coming out

so uh for folks who don't know that the new American standard is

1995 translation and they're gonna be redoing a

translation.

I think it's gonna be the twenty or the twenty or twenty -one version um but there's

another so it's it seems as the rumor mill would have it that

somebody bought the rights to the new American standard 95

edition and it would be none other than Master's Seminary um and so

John MacArthur and the staff at Master's Seminary are working on a translation.

They're gonna call.

I think right now it's it's I think it'll be they think what they're going with is the

legacy uh legacy standard Bible which

I'm encouraging them to do the legacy standard version because LSD LSB I could

I just I'm just saying I could see the jokes coming uh LSV doesn't

help much more but but they're working on translation and one of the things that is

gonna be unique with this translation is that everywhere where they see Yahweh, they're gonna transliterate

it as that and so that's something with with that um I am showing on the screen

because uh John McKinnon said he was like I didn't know you guys were on YouTube.

Cool.

If you wanna find us on YouTube, if you're watching on Facebook or listening to the podcast, just go to YouTube

.com slash C just letter C slash striving for eternity.

That's our where we're at.

There's actually two.

We still have our old page up.

That's the one with thousands of subscribers.

This one just has 900 that we're trying to move everything over to.

So, uh so your your friend Anthony is saying one more thing here, Nathan.

Let's see.

He says Andrew.

Uh I'd love to go out and witness with you guys.

I'm from the Northeast myself.

Uh I think we'd have a lot of fun.

Well, Anthony, let me make it easy for you.

If you'd like to come with Anthony and I into one of the probably my favorite and and

and I'm I don't, I'm not the one that runs this.

Maybe that's why I enjoy this one because I have no responsibilities but we go go to

repent and I think it's Jennifer, you're in here.

So, shoot me the the uh the website but I think it's repent and witness .com

uh but or Anthony's gonna look it up but we go to the we go to New York for 4 days

with uh the the Christian Collegian Network and um you

know, we enjoy that thoroughly.

Um it's 4 days in the city.

We have a lot of fun.

It is probably my favorite evangelism outreach.

Um because we're just, it's a blast.

So, if you can make it to that, that is, that is definitely worth it.

Repent and witness .com, she said.

There we go.

Let's put it up there.

I knew she'd be lickety split with that and uh she's in her tie -dye shirt there in that picture.

Look at that.

Um Jennifer goes out in a tie -dye shirt to evangelize.

You can always figure out if you ever get lost, you just look for her cuz it stands out but her.

Laugh from a further distance than you can see her tie -dye.

Shirt.

So, you had to go there.

People in the in the chat were calling her giggles.

This is a true story.

This is not a joke.

Uh we had a bunch of people.

We're meeting up to do some evangelism uh in New York and we're meeting at uh Madison

Square Garden and I was with a couple people and we went, what do you think?

I mean, Madison Square Garden folks, if you don't know, it's it's like the whole block and we said

Madison Square Garden but we never said where like what corner or anything and I literally no

joke to the person I was with.

I said, wait, stop.

Just just listen.

He's like, what are we listening for?

You'll know and I listened and I'm sure enough I heard it and as Jennifer's saying, we found

her in Madison Square Garden.

She was around the corner but we found her.

Now, not only that but within minutes, probably like two or three minutes, came some other

people who are also looking for us and decided the easiest way to find us

was to stop and listen to the giggle because once you heard the giggle, you you you were able to find her.

Uh it is that loud of a giggle and um it's gonna be a half a mile away and hear it.

You could IIII believe that that is true and I think I think I may even

have that giggle.

Let me see if.

I look on my phone.

Oh, while you're finding that Repentant Witness is my favorite uh conference to go to every year.

Favorite witnessing.

Um New York City is just awesome to witness that and uh you actually get yours truly this year teaching at it.

So, you know, like it or not to wait till next year.

You'll get it.

You'll get a chance to sleep longer in the morning.

This is what that means.

You.

Can sleep because you speak longer and meet me.

Jennifer's laughing at you.

What I think.

Hold on.

Let's see if we can get this to work.

Where is it?

There we go.

That's that's her laugh.

She tells me I morphed it but that actually is her laugh.

So, alright.

So, Cody is asking and this may be the last question.

Uh what do they do?

What what do they say when talking about John one one when you ask how many

gods there are?

Have you have you guys had any have you done that with him?

Cuz II just get lately at least all I get is shut down.

I.

As Nathan had mentioned before the Jehovah's Witnesses are

kenotheist.

So, they believe, you know, basically that there's one great almighty

god and then to some extent, you can call like angels, lesser gods,

and you know, Michael, the archangel, the a god of John one one.

So, if they're kind of backed into a corner and had to explain it, their kenotheism would,

you know, come up.

They would say, well, in a certain sense, you know, we call Jehovah the only true god because

that, you know, basically that means he's the the highest god.

It's it's a it means a certain thing that doesn't mean something else can't be called a

god but there's no god greater than Jehovah God and and if and since Jesus is

the image of the invisible god, he can be called god in a

secondary sentence or he can be, you know, he's he can be given the

name of Jehovah as a representative or agent or you know,

like, you know, they might even go to John ten.

I think it's a John 1030 where Jesus is, you know, I said, you know, it is written in your law.

I said, you are gods to show that even humans can be called gods in the sense that's

less than the one true.

God Jehovah.

Yeah.

And and we'll wrap up on this.

Cody says but then there's the scripture that Jehovah says, I know no other gods in Isaiah and that's that's what we're

bringing up and so with that, you know, I thank you guys for coming in.

I think that folks, you know, let me start with Daniel.

How can folks get a hold of you?

If they wanted to reach out to you, maybe when this book of yours finally comes out in in

what?

Twenty twenty -eight.

You're you're worse than me.

I mean, I've been working on a book on the deity of Christ for like 5 years now.

So, but you you're I.

Think you might be worse than me but yeah, I kind of stole the went to other things

and I was like throwing lines out for like endorsements or different people and

then I was like, well, while I'm waiting for that, I'll get to other things and then kind of the podcast

took over and then it's almost like when this came up and you mentioned in

the invite, the book like, oh, wait, I that's still hanging out there.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm starting to look at like I'm actually starting to look at covers and trying

to finish the cover for it.

So, I'm hoping cuz I committed.

I wanna get that and possibly like some other books out this

year.

So, but to contact me, you know, like my podcast is at Truth

Espresso .com to listen to the podcast and then my my

website is Truth Hub .org.

Don't forget that there would be two H's there.

So, Truth Hub .org and you can post comments and II need to make sure

cuz I haven't updated like haven't blogged on the site recently.

I need to make sure that as I have changed email addresses there that I have some valid contact

information on Truth.

Hub .org.

And Nathan, how can folks get ahold of you if they have more questions about Jehovah Witnesses and other.

Things?

You can contact me on Facebook.

Nathan Todd Fisher is my Facebook name.

You can look me up on there.

Friend request me, message me.

It is easier to see the messages when someone has already friend requested cuz they kinda are hidden if if

not but I'll try to respond back with you guys.

And Anthony,.

You can get ahold of at Heretics R Us.

Oh.

Your website.

No, you could get ahold of Anthony and I at Striving for Eternity .org.

We're we're there.

You could just email us just email info at Striving for Eternity .org.

That's a good way to get ahold of us.

Oh, Jennifer is letting us know some dates here.

Uh Repentant Witness, July 30th to August 2nd.

July 30 to August 2nd.

Uh maybe maybe I will make an appearance.

I was not gonna be able to make it because of travel but all the travel has been canceled this year.

Um my yeah, I was talking with Justin Peters uh like 2 weeks ago.

He called me up and said, so how's your travel schedule looking?

I said, it's all clear.

He said, mine too.

And so with that, what we came up with is we said, well, what are we gonna do?

Well, May 30th we have a plan.

Uh we don't have a website for you to register yet but save the date for May 30th.

That's a Saturday all day from uh ten in the morning eastern time till six at night.

Uh Justin and I, if you remember, we went to the Philippines and did the Snatch Them by the Flames

conference or seminar.

We're doing that the home version.

So it's Snatch Them from the Flames home edition is May 30th, Saturday, May 30th.

Uh Justin will start off the morning on talking about the sufficiency of scripture and

all these people that wanna hear from God.

I will then talk about, so he's gonna talk about sufficiency of scripture.

I'm gonna teach you how to interpret scripture.

Uh after lunch, we're gonna take a lunch break.

After that, Justin is gonna be talking about discerning false teachers and then I'm gonna talk about how to

identify false teachers and then we're gonna do a Q and A.

So, you'll be able to ask questions throughout the day and we're gonna answer them and so we'll have a link

for you to uh find where to register at strivingforeturning .org.

So, just go there.

Uh hit us up there.

Also, as a last minute thing and I'm gonna as we close out, I'll put uh just put out the the shout out if I could

figure out where the thing is.

I thought I had a thing for the.

Israel trip.

Okay.

While you're at Jersey, equip Jersey this year.

We have scheduled on the twenty -fourth and twenty -fifth of July, Friday night, Saturday.

So, uh we are we are planning on equip Jersey and that'll be uh pastor Andrew myself and

possibly a third speaker at uh at that conference and we'll be going out and evangelizing at the uh New

Jersey Boardwalk on that Saturday night.

I'll be at the same church and uh so we're doing that unless for some reason, this coronavirus thing uh

to go away in New Jersey.

Yeah.

So, uh 2021 Israel trip .com.

If you wanna go and join us, you can also find this on the striving for turning page.

Go to striving turning .org right at the top is the Israel trip.

The trip is sold out.

However, um they told us that they are expecting to have many people

cancel uh just because of everything going on and so um

John is asking the cost of that trip.

The the I think the trip from New York where you're at John is uh is I think almost

$5000.

It includes hotels, food, all that.

I think all the meals except lunches.

It's it's one lunch is covered but it's breakfast, dinner, uh and one lunch, hotels,

um flight, all that.

Uh but if you go to 2021 Israel trip .com, it has all the information.

Now, if you go there, you cannot register which means right now, you don't have to put up the $500

deposit.

It means that when people do cancel, the sooner you sign up for that, the first year on

the uh the list of who they go to once people cancel and so if you're thinking

about that, that would be good to go to now.

There's no money you have to lay out right now because it's sold out but they do anticipate that some will

cancel.

Anthony, you were talking about equipped jersey and Jennifer said that equipped jersey is her favorite event probably because she

doesn't have to organize anything for it and so um

with that, I think that's all the announcements that we have.

I appreciate you guys coming.

I appreciate Nathan, Daniel, you guys coming on giving some of your expertise in the in the area with Jehovah Witnesses

and uh I think this was helpful.

Um we're not sure for next week.

Uh Anthony and I are are kind of working on on a couple of actually a series of things of of podcasts

that we may do a couple of on a topic.

Um so I don't know if we're gonna do that but we are planning and the tentative date is May 28th

to have uh another debate.

If you guys remember, we had Ken Cook who debated a Lutheran on the topic of does baptism

save?

There was a gentleman who felt he uh that the Lutheran, another uh Lutheran professor felt that the Lutheran

that he debated I guess wasn't uh good enough of a debate.

He challenged Ken so they have done that debate and they wanna come on to this program

and debate the topic of baptism as far as the modes and things like that infant baptism.

So, with that, we're gonna probably do that.

The tentative date is May 28th but like I said, we're gonna see.

We have, we're working on that.

We're working on some things that Anthony wants to do on the show.

So, um just remember to check it out every Thursday night.

If you guys have questions, I know we get people that that like to type in the questions.

We'd like to see you come in and ask those questions.

It's a lot uh just it's a lot better.

We get to hear your voice.

So, unless of course you're you're pastor Justin Pierce cuz you know, if if he's if we we had him

start the question at the beginning of the show, he'd still be asking it.

You know, it'd be, it'd really be a sermon but he is a pastor after all but

but he's a friend of the ministry.

We're just joking folks.

Alright, we thank you guys.

I hope this was helpful to you.

I hope you guys learned a lot about Jehovah Witnesses, how to evangelize to them and so we'll be back next week to

answer your tough questions.