Jehovah's Witnesses REFUTED!

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and I am very excited about this specific episode.

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We're going to be talking about the Jehovah's Witnesses. Very, very interesting. This is very much a part of what we would call cult apologetics.

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From a Orthodox Christian perspective, we see Jehovah's Witness as a cult with aberrant theology that does not have a genuine gospel, and so the

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Jehovah's Witness, along with Mormons and other sorts of cults that we might be familiar with, these are folks that we need to be able to share the gospel with, and so it's very important that we understand what they believe and why they believe it, and also how we provide a biblical response.

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Now, for those who follow the show, you guys do know that I typically take things from a presuppositional perspective, and my guest today,

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Matt Slick of Karm .org, is also a presuppositionalist, so while Matt unpacks a little bit with respect to the

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Jehovah's Witness, their theology, and various responses, perhaps we could also try and make some presuppositional application, and we'll unpack that a little bit, keep it for folks to, you know, keep it at the mid -shelf.

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We don't want to go talk over anyone's heads, but we definitely want to go into the weeds, if necessary, to unpack, really, what is a deception.

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The false gospel, and so this is a very important topic, and I hope folks will benefit from this episode.

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Just a couple of quick announcements, and then I'll invite Matt on the screen with me. On October 18,

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I believe that's next Monday, 9 p .m., I'll be having Joel Sedekes on to do a debate review.

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He recently had a debate with the atheist YouTuber Tom Jump. You guys remember, I also had a debate discussion with Tom as well.

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Joel did an excellent job from a presuppositional perspective, and so we're going to unpack that debate and kind of take a look at, you know, various applications of the presuppositional method to someone who makes the sort of arguments like Tom Jump has.

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We're also going to have Anthony Rogers on, on October 20th, too, and this might be interesting for folks.

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I'm actually having Anthony Rogers on to talk specifically about the philosophical problem of the one and the many.

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So those who know presuppositionalism, we're defending the Christian worldview, and we argue that the triune

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God of Scripture who reveals provides the necessary preconditions for knowledge and intelligible experience, and this issue of the one and the many comes up.

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That entire episode is going to be dedicated to covering that specific topic, and so I'm really excited to have

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Anthony Rogers on, on October 20th. Also, November 18th,

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I'll be having Jason Lyle back on. Jason Lyle is a PhD astrophysicist and presuppositional apologist, and he is going to be coming on to discuss the issue of the historical atom, and this is going to be within the context of Dr.

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William Lane Craig's recent book on the historical quest for, the quest for the historical atom, and he's going to be,

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Dr. Lyle is going to be responding to Dr. Craig's work there, and so that's going to be very interesting for folks.

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Looking forward to having Dr. Lyle on again. He's been on a couple of times, actually. And lastly, on November, let me see if I got this date correct,

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November 4th, I will be having, and I'm super excited about this, I'm going to be having

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Dr. Douglas Gruthius on. Douglas Gruthius is a professor, and he wrote a very thick book on Christian apologetics called

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Christian Apologetics, and so I'll be sharing the, you know, the link when he comes on, so you guys can come in and ask questions and things like that.

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We're going to be talking about, with Dr. Gruthius, the topic of the spiritual formation of the apologist, and so folks who are engaged in apologetics, this tends to be a very intellectually heavy discipline, because we're thinking about theology, apologetics, and philosophy, things like that.

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I'm going to be having Dr. Gruthius on to talk about the importance of spiritual formation. How should the spiritual life of the

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Christian apologist be conducted so that we are not living in an imbalanced fashion, where we're only just hitting the books, and there's no really, you know, spiritual relational dimension to our lives, and so I'm looking forward to having

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Dr. Gruthius on on November 4th. All right, well, last announcement before I invite

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Manahan, sorry I had to get these out of the way, I'm super excited. If you guys know a while back, I was advertising some online classes that I was teaching on presuppositional apologetics, and I called it

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PresuppU, and so I offer courses on my website at revealedapologetics .com,

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and you could actually click on the menu PresuppU and sign up for the class.

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Folks can sign up anytime, and you'll be sent all of the lectures, all of the PowerPoint slides, and all of the outlines, but starting

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November 1st, I will actually be starting up again the premium package in which those who sign up by November 1st will get all of that content that I just mentioned, but I will be meeting with the students who sign up once a week, and so that we can go deeper and unpack the content of the course, and it is basically an introduction to biblical apologetics, but don't be fooled, the introduction element, we get into some pretty deep stuff, philosophy and theology and things like that, so I'm really encouraging folks, if you want to learn how to do presuppositional apologetics, you can sign up for my class and you have up until November 1st where we'll be having our first meeting, so revealedapologetics .com,

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PresuppU, and you can sign up for that right now. Okay, all right, well that's it for the opening segment here, and I would like to invite

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Matt Slick of CARM .org. How are you doing, Matt? Man, I was ready to go to sleep, there was so much there.

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I know, I have to get it out of the way. Jeez, boy, I should have come in later, man, I'm just back in here waiting.

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All right, so what do you want? Well, first I want to point people into the direction of your website.

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The topic that we're going to be exploring today, Jehovah's Witnesses, Matt Slick on CARM .org

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has a ginormous section on his website that covers this specific area, so if you want to know how to do apologetics with Jehovah's Witnesses and share your faith with Jehovah's Witnesses, you need to go to CARM .org

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and check out those articles. But we have the man, the creator, the writer of most of the content on CARM right here.

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So we have the famous Matt Slick. I'll make his head grow so big that his microphone will fall off.

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All right, well, I'm happy that you're here because I know that you are... I used to be scared for Jehovah's Witnesses when

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I used to listen to your show, and someone would call, and you can tell that the way they were talking, you would stop and be like, are you a

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Jehovah's Witness? And I'm like, oh, no, don't say yes. The person would hesitate, and they'll be like, yes.

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And I'm like, it's over. Because right there, you knew where to go. You went straight for the jugular.

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Lovingly, though, and I wasn't mean. That's true, but sometimes we just need to go straight to the foundation there.

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And so I think you do a wonderful job in that area. On the radio, people call up. You got to do that because the listeners want to hear the meat.

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But if I'm talking to someone one -on -one, it's usually a little bit different. That's right. Well, let's jump right in then.

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Why don't you define for folks what Jehovah's Witnesses, who are they, and what do they believe?

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And then we'll jump right into how we would engage in some of our central disagreements. Jehovah's Witnesses came out of the

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Millerite movement back in the 1800s and was started by a guy named Charles Taze Russell.

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And there's different theories about exactly when and how he had a Bible study going, but it was incorporated in the 70s,

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I think it was, 1870s. And he did not like the idea of hell, for one thing, and the deity of Christ, and he started this study.

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And he started publishing. And by publishing his heresies, people had information that they could go to.

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And people fell for it. So this organization has grown immensely.

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It's starting to lose members, though. And it denies the doctrine of the Trinity. It denies Jesus Christ as God in flesh, denies his physical resurrection, and denies the doctrine of justification by faith alone and Christ alone.

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It is a serious and major cult. So they used to teach that only 144 ,000

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Jehovah's Witnesses would exist, and that when that number exceeded, they had to reinterpret certain ideas about 144 ,000, namely the heavenly class.

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And so the heavenly class are going to be the ones who go to heaven, and then the earthly class will stay here on the reformed earth.

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And we're the swine class, we're going to hell, because we don't affirm the true doctrine of Jehovah, because we're polytheists, we believe in the

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Trinity, which they've misrepresented sometimes badly, and sometimes they've represented it accurately.

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If you go through their Watchtower materials, which I think you can go to, it's been a while since I've even looked at JW stuff, but JW .org,

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you can, JW .org, you can do some of their searches, and you can find different things about how they define the

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Trinity at different times and different ways. And it's not like it progresses chronologically, it actually, they get it right, they get it wrong, they get it right again, then they get it wrong again, then wrong, then wrong, then right, then wrong, and so it just goes like that.

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And I have a CD that someone sent me, a DVD actually, and it's got hundreds and hundreds and thousands of their articles, all searchable, so I can go out and find all kinds of stuff.

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And they have what's called the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which they just moved from Brooklyn, New York, to another place,

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I don't know where, I forgot where. And they produce more literature, I think, than anybody else on the planet, basically.

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And they have people going door to door, because that's what the disciples taught, and they usually go on Saturdays, usually, usually are done around noon, and they try and get people interested in Jehovah and his kingdom, because you need to belong to Jehovah and his kingdom, and God's associated servant, the

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Jehovah's Witness organization, in order to avoid the penalty of the Antichrist, and the coming tribulation period, and the judgment to come.

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And if you don't make it as a Jehovah's Witness, and you're like me, you get annihilated.

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So they're annihilationists, and because hell is too bad, God wouldn't do that kind of a thing.

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Et cetera, et cetera. And that's the basics of the Jehovah's Witnesses. So now, when we think of a cult, when people think of a cult, they think of kind of often like a really small group of people who believe strange things.

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But actually, just real quick, I have numbers here. This is as of 2021, there are almost 8 .7

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million Jehovah's Witnesses in 240 countries around the globe, including 1 .3

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million of those right here in the United States. So this is a very large group. Obviously, it is shrinking for various reasons.

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But I mean, it is a large group. And I think everyone that I know has a Jehovah's Witness story of someone knocking on their door and things like that.

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So why don't we make this really practical for people? When a Jehovah's Witness knocks on your door, what should

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Christians expect? Because I know it is interesting. Many people will pray, Lord, please send people in my path so that I can share the

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Gospel. And then Saturday morning comes around, we hear the knock, and all of a sudden, they're like, it's a Jehovah's Witness, shut the doors, close the blinds, lock the door.

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What should we expect when a Jehovah's Witness knocks on our door? That reminds me, I want to tell you before I answer the question,

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I've done seminars on Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and I've said, so how many of you in here have had

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Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door, and Mormons come to your door, and hands go up, and I said, and you basically have said, you know,

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I'm busy, and no thanks, we disagree, and you kind of send them on their way, and their hands just fly up in the air, and I say, let me reword that last part.

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How many of you have said this to the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons? I know that you're preaching a false doctrine that will lead people to eternal damnation.

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I'm busy, could you go to my neighbor? And that's the thing, is that when people come to your door too many times,

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Christians, they don't do anything. Like I said, close the door, lock the door, close the blinds, don't want to do anything.

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What you should do is engage them, and talk to them. You'll find that they're polite, they're nice, but you'll also find that they're brainwashed in that they are only looking for people who are interested in having a discussion.

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They're not looking to have an engagement. Say you and I, if we're home, ding dong, we get up, and there are

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J -dubs at the door, we're going to engage them. What they're going to do then is, after a few minutes, say, well, thank you, we've got to be on our way.

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Then they'll mark your door on the paper. They mark your addresses, don't go to this house.

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What they do is they try and get Bible studies started in different neighborhoods this way.

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They avoid the people who are difficult. I've invited them in before, and they've come in, and we've talked.

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When they're in, it takes longer for them to leave. I can tell you stories about that.

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One of the things I do recommend is this. I'm serious about this. I know a lot of Christians don't like this idea of actually picking up your cross and following after Christ.

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When they come to the neighborhood, and you talk to them very politely, and go to CARM, other websites, learn about the

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J -dubs, go to the CARM forward slash cut, and it'll lead you to the cut and paste section.

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You can go to the Jehovah's Witness stuff. It's just very succinct information, and that's all you really need. You can just have that available, printed up, ready.

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It's the same thing with the Mormons. Nevertheless, what happens is when they leave,

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I go get my car keys, I go get my shoes, and then

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I get some information if I have it. I wait until they're just a few doors down around the block corner, and then

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I follow them in my car. I have my airco on, and I'm relaxing, and I stay a few hundred feet behind them.

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What I'm looking for is them spending time at someone's house or going into that house.

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You can tell, no thinking, not interested, and then they walk away. If there's a five -minute conversation, that's a house

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I'm going to go back to either knock on the door or provide information. Once, as an example,

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I was just driving down the road on a Saturday, and I could just tell they were

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Jehovah's Witnesses in a car going someplace. I just peeled around and followed them.

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I still remember very clearly, they went to an apartment complex, knocked on the door, went right inside, the door closed. They had an appointment.

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I went back a couple hours later with some information, and I remember talking to the lady at the door.

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I said, this is going to sound a little bit odd, but I said, my name is Matt, I'm a

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Christian, and I noticed that some Jehovah's Witnesses were here. It's okay with you.

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I could tell you a couple of things they haven't told you. She said, what do you mean? We ended up talking for 20 minutes, and I gave her information.

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At the end of the conversation, she said, okay, I'm going to stop studying with them. I won't have anything to do with them anymore.

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Then I said, go to these good churches and things like this. There's things you can do and things you should do to come into your door.

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Don't let them go to your neighbor's door and preach the false doctrines that are going to damn people to hell.

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What is that false doctrine then? Let's clarify what they teach and why it's problematic.

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Are you stronger? Why is it damning? What is the Gospel for the

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Jehovah's Witness? The Gospel for Jehovah's Witnesses I'll go to their site.

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The documentation on my site on the cut slash Jehovah's Witness stuff.

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On salvation, what they say, this is February 15, 1983, page 12.

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There are four requirements for salvation. I could just paraphrase it, but I'm going to read it. Many have found the second requirement is more difficult.

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It is to obey God's law, yes, to confirm one's life to the moral requirements that are in the Gospel. They teach this because it's a non -Christian cult.

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This is called satiriology. Why do they teach synergistic satiriology?

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Synergism is you cooperate with God, you do good things in order to be saved. They have what's called synergistic satiriology.

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Christianity is monergistic. It means there's just one thing involved in salvation.

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That's faith. God grants it to us. Why do the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, and other cults like that have a false gospel?

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The reason they have a false gospel is because they have a false Christ. They'll deny that Jesus is

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God in flesh. Here's the thing. If Jesus is God in flesh, according to what the Scriptures teach,

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John 1 .1 and verse 14, the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the

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Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Colossians 2 .9, for in Him dwells all the fullness of deity and bodily form.

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Hebrews 1 .8, but of the Son, the Father, says, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.

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It's a quote from Psalm 45 verse 6. So when the Bible teaches that Jesus is

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God, we know that He has two distinct natures. And these two natures mean that He has a divine nature and a human nature.

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This is called the hypostatic union. And I won't get into all the particulars of theological this and that, but to say this, that what happens is

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He's God, He's man, and He, because He's God, He can offer sacrifice of divine value.

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And because He's man, He can offer sacrifice on behalf of people. And because our sin is against God, we sin against God.

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And so God needs to be appeased, and God comes down, and He does this in the person of Christ. And so this is necessary, because without Jesus being

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God in flesh, or He's like Michael the Archangel, as Jehovah's Witnesses teach, that Michael the

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Archangel became a man. And there's serious logical ontological issues there, and continuity problems. But they'll say that, well,

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He's not God. Well, then how is this sacrifice of divine value? Well, it's not of divine value. It just opens a door that Adam closed.

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So then, you step to the door, you open the door to your own works, hence synergistic soteriology, cooperative efforts with God for salvation.

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And the reason they have a false Christ is because they have a false God. And in Jehovah's Witnesses, God is one person, and Biblically speaking,

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He's a Trinity, which then allows a second person to become flesh, and then offer divine sacrifice for our sins.

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So this is... That's the Christian position. That's the Christian perspective. So Jehovah's Witnesses are

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Unitarian. They believe God is one being who is also one person. Orthodox Christianity is

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Trinitarian. We believe that there is one God, there's one being of God, who exists in three co -eternal simultaneous persons,

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Okay, so we can go through John 1 -1,

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John 1 -14, Colossians, the Hebrews passages, but we understand that every time a Christian will quote these

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Scriptures, they will find very quickly that the Jehovah's Witness Bible, the New World Translation, doesn't say exactly what our

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Bibles say, which is remarkable. I spoke with a Jehovah's Witness once, and he had his

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Bible open, and I asked him, do you mind if I use my Bible? And he was like, sure, as though he didn't know there was a difference.

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Okay, so why don't you go through a couple of key passages that Christians often bring up in responding to the

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Jehovah's Witness denial of the deity of Christ, or the Trinity, but in the NWT, the

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New World Translation, it's slightly altered there. So how can we navigate that issue of different translations and interacting with them from Scripture?

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Well, you sign up for a Greek class and take it for four years so that you can talk to them, or what you do is you go to websites like CARM, and where I've listed some differences in the

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NWT, and they've actually got a new version. I have to update this stuff because they've modified it even further.

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There were some verses that I could use in their second, not this version, but the previous version that I could use that really stumped them, and now they've altered those as well, and I can tell you what that is.

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But here's some of it's really easy. So you're talking about that Amos passage?

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Genesis 19 -24. Okay, there's also a passage in Amos 4 -10 -11 -12, yeah.

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There we go, yeah. Okay. Alright, so let's go. So unpack that for us. How do we navigate those, you know, it's like, of course

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Jesus is God. Here, look, John 1 -1. I mean, how would you interact with the Jehovah's Witnesses? Yeah, but that's not what it says.

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See, what I do, I don't want to argue with them about John 1 -1, because they're going to have their stuff, they're prepared.

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What I recommend people do, believe it or not, is to go to a kingdom hall. To just go, they're not going to throw you out, they're not going to treat you badly, just walk in on a

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Sunday service, and just sit there, don't, you know, take literature, be polite, don't argue. The reason

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I say this is because you need to understand what happens in there, to understand why I'm going to tell you what

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I'm going to tell you. They are inculcated. To inculcate means to teach by repetition.

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So they're brainwashed. Inculcation and brainwashing are synonymous, depending, one's pejorative, one's not.

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So you have to understand that they have people who get up, they'll stand up, they'll open the watchtower, they'll open the

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Bible, and they'll say things like, we know Jesus is not God, because in John 1420, because if Jesus was

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God, he'd be equal to God, the Father. Let's go to John 1428. Jesus says the

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Father's greater than I. See? This is why he's not God. They do this kind of a thing, and they're ripping things out of context, they're leading them mentally without doing any thought.

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What happens is, the watchtower and the awake magazine that they'll study out of, and other books that they have, they have a

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JW logic. And, like I just exemplified, the JW logic is pseudo -logic, but they don't know.

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They don't know about context, they don't know about interrelationships of words, they don't know about conceptual ideas and context.

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And so, because of this, the Jehovah's Witness just thinks, yeah, the Bible, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, is so accurate, is so good, it's so true, it's the prophet of God.

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And so what they do is, they give their will -heart -mind over to the prophet of God. And I've got quotes about them being a prophet.

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And then we've got false prophecies and stuff, that's another topic within the watchtower. And so, you have to understand that they are prepared then, against the pagan, trinitarian, tritheistic people who will go to John 1 .1.

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They'll go to John 1 .1. They're going to go to John 8 .58. Before Abraham was, I am.

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Well, which is present, active, indicative, which literally is, I am. It's present tense, active, performing the action, indicative, first person singular, which means,

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I am the one doing the action. You know, I am. And they translate it as, I have been, which is the perfect tense.

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And so they say, before Abraham was, I have been. Well, I can argue with them on this, because I know Greek. But they can't, or most everybody cannot.

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So when I train people, I say, you don't want to really do that.

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Yes and no. I mean, if you want to do it, do it, you know, and learn from it. That's fine. And so what you can do, for example, is go to Colossians 1 .15

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and 16. And for he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

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For by him, all, the NWT will say, all other things were created, both in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities.

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All other things have been created through him. He is before all other things, and in him all other things hold together.

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Now, this one isn't too bad to memorize, because that pericope, it's actually just Colossians 1 .16,

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17. You want to stay away from verse 15, because it says firstborn, which is protoktos, and it's protiktos, is first created.

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And get in some Greek stuff. And you guys don't know that, don't worry about it. But if you just, you know, Colossians 1 .16

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and 17, you can say, why is it my Bible does not have the word other, but your Bible does four times?

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And the reason is it is not in the Greek. Now, if you want, depends on how much people want to do, they can actually get what we call the purple people eater.

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And it's the interlinear that the Jehovah's Witness organization put out many years ago.

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And it has... That's what it's called? We'd call it, sorry. I'm so used to calling it over the years.

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The purple people eater, I didn't even think about it. But that's, I have one at the garage, and a green one too.

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And you can actually show the Greek in their own publications. And that's, this is if you're into this kind of stuff.

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Okay, but what you can do is just say, well, in Greek there's two words for the word other. Alos and heteros.

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Heteros, heterosexual. Heteros is another of a different kind. Alos is another of the same kind.

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Neither one is used there. I just asked the J -dubs, why is that? And we're just having a discussion, and they're going to clarify.

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And say, well, my Bible here doesn't have the word other. And I try to be very careful. I don't want to tell them

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I know too much, okay? So, I happen to know that. I've read some sources, which is all true.

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And so, alos and heteros, it's not there in the Greek. I actually went online, I've looked. It's not there.

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You can be very polite. And how come you guys put that there? And then what you want to do is have them try and read it without the word other.

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Just see if they can do it. They can't do it. They can't do it. They stumble.

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Oh, we've got to go. We've got to leave. But at least you've done this when you go to Colossians 1, 16 and 17.

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Because you need to sit there with a Jehovah's Witness and actually teaching you something else you guys don't know I'm teaching you.

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I'll explain what it is here in a minute. I'm pretty slick. And what you want to do when you go to Colossians 1, 16 and 17 is have that prepared alos and heteros and be able to just show your

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Bible and show theirs. And you can just very politely ask them to explain why the difference is there.

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And go on like blueletterbible .org. Go look at the Greek. And you can say, you can see, it's not there.

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So how come you, you know, in Colossians 1, 16 and 17, how come you change it and have them read it?

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Okay. And then this is a conversation. Now one of the things I'm doing here is repeating Colossians 1, 16 and 17 to you over and over and over again.

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Because I want you to remember this. Colossians 1, 16 and 17. You should take your

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Bible and if you have a page in the back that's blank, just write Colossians 1, 15 and 16,

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Jehovah's Witnesses, other, alas, heteros, not there in the Greek. Why do they add it?

28:13

Okay? Four times. It's all you got to do. And you can go through and do that. And that's just one of the slick and quick approaches.

28:19

I got some that are better. But this gets you used to this kind of stuff. You know,

28:24

I got stuff that we take the notch and the burner up a little bit. And I've got some like that.

28:30

So we can, I can show you a few. And this is not for deceptive purposes. Like you said before, you don't want to give away that you know this stuff.

28:39

Not because you're trying to be deceptive. But once you give that away, the lines of communication are broken. They're out.

28:45

And you want to be able to get to the, hopefully get to the gospel with this person and get them to question what they take to be a valid authority, which we take to be very problematic.

28:56

So I just wanted to point that out there. All right. Well, okay. So they have different translations.

29:02

This is important to kind of know. I mean, and you don't need to know Greek to do what you just did. I mean, there's just simple little word studies, you know, little things you could do in your spare time to prepare yourselves for things like this.

29:12

Well, let's jump into some of the theology then. How would you go about it? You know, a

29:17

Jehovah's Witness says, you know, hey, I have the truth. You can't refute the truth. How would you begin then?

29:24

Well, let's assume what you're about to do is not what the average person is going to do. But for content purposes, how would you refute?

29:31

I mean, I've entitled this episode Jehovah's Witnesses Refuted. How would you begin to refute

29:38

Jehovah's Witness theology and pull it apart one brick at a time? And before you do that, I want to let folks know if you have any questions about Jehovah's Witness theology apologetics, you can put them in the comments.

29:51

We'll be doing that as we do in every show at the tail end. So make sure you ask questions if you have.

29:57

But go ahead, Matt. One brick by brick. All right. You want to witnessing techniques, witnessing ways to show that they have things that are wrong.

30:07

You made a comment, though, which I want to respond to. You said that people, you know, they'll say, well, we have the truth.

30:14

And they call themselves, their organization, The Truth. How long ago did you find the truth?

30:20

And so this is an important thing. You have to understand this is their mentality. They have the truth. We don't.

30:26

So when they say to me, look, we have the truth and you can't really deal with it.

30:31

I'll say, if you've got the truth, you are correct. I would not be able to. No problem.

30:38

And maybe, and I'll say to them, maybe you could help me understand some things. It's always possible that they could.

30:44

So I say, maybe you could. I don't believe that they can, but I've learned some things from cults.

30:49

They've taught me some things I haven't known. So it's always true. Maybe you could. And I'll say, I've got some things in the

30:55

Bible that I'd like to have you take a look at. Now, at this point, I'd go to Genesis 19, 24, and Amos 4, 10, 11, but can't do that anymore because they changed the

31:05

Bible and changed those texts. And so I'll skip those for now, and I'll do something else.

31:12

And this works. Okay, this is pretty good. And I'll say, look, can we go to Psalm 116, verse four, and in Psalm 116, four, it says,

31:22

I called upon the name of, and use their Bible, use their Bible, and I called upon the name of Yahweh or Jehovah, they'll say.

31:31

Jehovah, I ask you to save my life. And I'll say, that's a prayer, right? It's calling upon Jehovah and only

31:37

Jehovah, right? And Zechariah 13, 9, you'll see a similar phraseology.

31:43

And what I'll say is, whenever there's this phrase, I speak like this to them, calmly and slowly.

31:50

And I'll say, whenever you see this phrase, this is what I've seen here, that this phrase, call upon the name of Jehovah, it occurs in different places.

32:02

I've looked at it. If you're calling on the name of Jehovah, called on the name of Jehovah, but the phrase call the name of Jehovah, not just the word, you know,

32:12

Jehovah or the word name or the word call, but the phrase. And I say this this way on purpose, okay?

32:17

That phrase, whenever it appears, it's always a prayer adoration, whatever it is to Jehovah alone, right?

32:25

And they'll say, yes, no problem with that. Do you know what the Septuagint is?

32:30

And they'll say, well, some say yes, some say no. And I'll explain. The Septuagint is what the

32:38

Jews did around 200 -ish B .C. They took the Old Testament Hebrew and they translated it into the

32:45

Greek. They translated it into the Greek. And when they got to this phrase, this is before Jesus was ever born, you know, we have the

32:54

Septuagint copies today. And when they got to this phrase, call upon the name of Jehovah, they translated it into the

32:59

Greek, call upon the name of the Lord. That's what they did. And I'll say, look in your

33:05

Bible. And let's see if I can do this. I haven't done this for so long. I'll go to JW .org

33:12

and then what I'm going to do now is go to Bible Teachings Library and go to Online Bible.

33:20

And I'm going to go to Displayed English and Kingdom.

33:26

Ooh, they even have a Kingdom Interlinear on there. Yeah. Boy, I got so much stuff. Is this something worth sharing the screen over?

33:34

Sure. I have the dark mode that I use now because my eyes are sensitive.

33:40

You got the cool nifty dark mode. I don't even know how to do it. Oh, yeah. Well, I got four monitors and they're glaring white from everything.

33:48

And now I've been getting headaches and so now I use dark mode. I think you showed me your setup.

33:54

It looks like you're just kind of in front of one thing, but there's like a control center in front of you where you rule the world secretly.

34:04

If you want, I can share with the camera around and show everybody if they want to know.

34:10

Yeah, that's cool. Okay, so I have it here. So let me get this up here.

34:16

Okay. Let me see. There it is. So this is the New World Translation right here, and this is the 2013 version, 1984 version.

34:25

This one's really good to use. I haven't been on here for a while. So what I'm going to do is let's just go to the...

34:36

Is this on their website? This is their website, JW .org.

34:42

And so now what I'm going to do is go to 1 Corinthians 1, and right there and start reading.

34:48

Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will, and Sosthenes, our brother, to the congregation of God that is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in union with Christ, called to be holy ones, together with all those everywhere who are calling on the name of our

35:02

Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm going to ask him, Paul the apostle knew that the phrase calling on or called on or called in the name of Yahweh in the

35:17

Septuagint was called upon the name of the Lord. And notice he applies it to Jesus.

35:24

And I just ask him, can you explain why he does that? It's just...

35:29

That's it. I ask him, can you please explain that? And they stumble.

35:36

Now it says here, our Lord. Okay. So what I'm going to do here is show you something.

35:43

I'll go back here. Let's just do this live. Okay. And the

35:49

Kingdom Interlinear, and I'll go to 1 Corinthians 1 and this is what it says here.

35:59

Calling upon the name of the Lord. This is of the

36:05

Lord. That's what it is. Of us. We don't talk like this.

36:10

Let me do this here. Control plus, plus, plus. So what we do, see this is what it says here.

36:18

Calling upon the name of the Lord. That's the Greek right there. That's what the

36:23

Greek is right there. Okay. This word hamon is of us.

36:31

Jesus. But we don't say in English, calling upon the name of the Lord of us, Jesus. We say calling upon our

36:37

Lord. That's why they have it as our, but the Greek is actually this. And I've got an article on this on CARM.

36:43

All right. So this is a, you know, you could even have your phone open up and you could show them this.

36:48

Not a big deal. And you could use their Bible. And with one

36:55

Jehovah's Witness, this might really stump them. If another Jehovah's Witness, they might say, well, I don't see any problem.

37:00

And then you work with them and they can't see anything. Okay. This is what happens sometimes. So let me show you once what happened once when

37:09

I was, and I'll just do that. I'll continue to do this. All right. I'll continue to use their stuff. This is the 2013 version.

37:15

What I did was I would show them varying verses. And this study is on CARM under that was called the plurality study.

37:25

So you don't have to write everything down. It's just in the plurality study and you can see what

37:30

I'm doing here. And literally, I'm just going to say this because this is just a reminiscing thing.

37:36

I've known a guy, Dave Kimball. We were roommates and I remember and he remembers the time when we went out to a restaurant and stayed there for a few hours and worked through this study and some other studies on how to develop studies against the

37:53

Jehovah's Witnesses. And this is a study we developed and we just talked about it a month ago and he goes, yeah,

37:59

I remember when we did that. At any rate. So what I would do is I would do this.

38:04

Now this is how it used to be. I'll share a few things here. This is how it used to be in their version.

38:10

This is 1924. All right. Is this okay doing it like this with you guys?

38:16

Is this all right? Absolutely. Can you zoom in a little bit more? It's okay if you can. I can still read it. But the bigger the better.

38:21

There we go. That's much better. Much betterer? Yes. Most bestest. Most bestest.

38:28

Okay. And so this is what it says, used to say in their Bible. Check the newest ones.

38:33

I believe they did change it. But anyway. Then Jehovah made it rain sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah.

38:40

It came from Jehovah out of heaven. Now notice what they said. Oh, I've never seen that. Oh, that's very...

38:46

When you're used to reading something, it sounds a certain way when you read it out loud. That is so different that the moment you read it,

38:54

I recognize that that's not in the original text. That's not the original. So what we'll do here, let's go to the 1984 version.

39:02

I believe that... Okay. Let's see. Oops. Genesis 19 and...

39:13

Let's see if it's the same thing here. Really changed it. Okay.

39:20

Then Jehovah made it rain sulfur and fire from Jehovah. From the heavens.

39:26

That's correct according to the Hebrew. And now you can see why they changed it. Right. Because it implies for those who don't know what you're getting at, it implies two persons.

39:38

Yep. Which would support the Trinitarian perspective. So what you can do is get an old

39:43

Jehovah's Witness Bible. You can go to a bookstore, you know, used bookstore. You'll find them. Look for 1984 and older.

39:51

And you can have this ready. And you can just say, oh, I got my new translation. It'll cause them to wonder when they see the conflict.

39:59

And this is what I used to do all the time with them. I'd say, so, I'd just say, can you help me understand this verse?

40:07

And they would read it. And I would say nothing. They would stare. They would stare at their Bible. They'd stare at their

40:13

Bible. They'd look at me and about half the time they'd look at me and they'd say, are you trying to show me the

40:18

Trinity? And I would respond with, you got the Trinity out of that? And then you go to Amos 4, 10 and 11 and stuff like that.

40:30

Let me show you what I'm going to do. Okay. So I would do that. But also check this out.

40:37

Look at this, folks. When Abram got to be 99 years old, then

40:43

Jehovah appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God almighty. That's what it says, right?

40:49

No problem, right? Look at verse, at chapter 18. Come on.

40:58

You can do it. There we go. Afterward, Jehovah appeared to him along, among the big trees of Mamre, when he was sitting at this entrance to the tent.

41:07

Okay. So Genesis 17, 1 and 18, 1, he appears. Now, when you go to Exodus 24, and Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the older men,

41:31

I want to do it the NASB way, 70 of the older men of Israel proceeded to go up and they got to see the

41:36

God of Israel. And under his feet there was what seemed like a work of sapphire, flagstone and like the very heavens for purity.

41:44

And he did not put out his hand against the distinguished men of the sons of Israel. They got a vision of the true God and they ate and they drank.

41:52

It does not say vision in the Hebrew. They changed this.

41:58

So that phrase, God of vision, you can't get that from the Greek at all. That's not a translation.

42:06

That's an interpretation and addition of words in the text. That's right. In fact, here, let me do this.

42:12

Let me get my Holly Bibble up. This is my Holly Bibble and I'll do the share version.

42:23

It's a newer translation of the Holy Bible called the Holly Bibble. Be careful.

42:29

People want to take you serious. They're going to be like, where is that? Where's the Holly Bibble? What I'll do is

42:34

I'll go to Exodus 24. I'll do it over here. It's bigger. Exodus 24, 9 through 11.

42:42

And you can see the Hebrew down here. All right. And they saw the God of Israel right here.

42:48

They saw the God of Israel. In the

42:55

Hebrew, there's no vision of the word vision. It's not there. So knowing this,

43:03

I'm not generally going to go here because they're going to say it's just a vision. What I'm doing right now is actually kind of boning up on some stuff because I haven't done this for so long.

43:13

So what I'm going to do now is go to Numbers and I'm going to learn and I'll teach you what

43:18

I used to do with it. And then I'll go to a verse that I know will work for sure. Now this is

43:25

Numbers 12, 6 through 8. Aaron and Miriam were complaining that Moses married a

43:33

Cushite woman against Moses on account of the Cushite wife. Cushite is Ethiopian incidentally.

43:39

Black woman. But they weren't upset because she was black but because of some other reasons about being over here and outside of this and that.

43:46

Anyway, so they were complaining. So this is

43:52

Numbers 12, 6 through 8. Okay, I just say the whole thing. And God, this is God, went on to say, hear my words please.

43:59

If there came to be a prophet of yours for Jehovah, it would be in a vision. I would make himself known to him in a dream.

44:06

I would speak to him, not so with my servant Moses. He is being entrusted with all my house.

44:12

Mouth to mouth I speak to him, thus showing him and not by riddles. And the appearance of Jehovah is what he beholds.

44:18

When did he not see it? So now here there's no vision, right? In the

44:24

NASB it says, not a vision, not a dream. He beholds a form of Jehovah. So you could go back to the other verse and say, well, wait a minute.

44:30

It says a vision, but this says it's not a vision. And then you could say to the JWC, your Bible adds that word vision but it's not there.

44:38

This is just stuff you have in the back of your head if you want to go there. All right, having said that, let me show you this. This is where we get quick and slick.

44:48

So you don't have to remember all that stuff, but this I do want you to remember. So you're talking to Jehovah's Witness and Genesis 19, 24,

44:59

Amos 4, 10, and 11 have been altered. You can see how Exodus 24, 9 -11 has been a little bit altered.

45:05

You could use we had a vision in that Exodus. Sorry to speak so fast but I do, you've been doing so for so long.

45:12

Here's what I like to do. And God went on to speak to Moses and say to him, I am

45:17

Jehovah. And I used to appear to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty. So I asked the

45:23

Jehovah's Witness, who's talking? God went to speak and said,

45:29

I am Jehovah. And I'll ask him, is that an angel? Now they're going to say,

45:36

J -Dub might, I'm trying to tell you what happens, J -Dub might say, well, the Bible says no man's seen God at any time.

45:42

And you say, yeah, that's John 1 -18. We'll go there in a minute. But yeah, you're right. And I'm not setting the scripture against each other.

45:49

I'm trying to understand this. And I'll tell them, I think I have an explanation. Maybe you could help me out here.

45:56

Right? And they'll keep talking. But it says here that Jehovah, it's not an angel of the

46:03

Lord. It's not a vision. It's not a dream. Because he said, he speaks to Moses and said to him,

46:08

I'm Jehovah. I used to appear to them, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty.

46:14

So God says he's Jehovah and he appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty.

46:21

And I'll just say, I know about John 1 -18, but do you agree? This is what it says here.

46:26

Now at this point, they're going to be getting confused because they know what John 1 -18 says.

46:32

We'll go there. And they're ready for this kind of stuff with John 1 -18. All right?

46:38

And so what you do is it says, no man has seen

46:48

God at any time. The only begotten God who's in the bosom of the position with the

46:53

Father is the one that's explained to him. And I'll say, so that has to be

46:59

Jesus, right? I'm not going to worry about the begotten God thing. He's explained him.

47:06

He's explained what's going on. Okay? And I'll say, you see that? So Jesus is the one who's explained this, right?

47:14

They go, yeah. Good. I agree with that. Here it is.

47:21

John 6 -46.

47:29

Jesus says, not that any man has seen the Father, except he who is from God, this one has seen the

47:35

Father. Not that any man has seen the Father. Now Jesus has explained him this stuff of seeing

47:42

God, not seeing God, but he's explained him, revealed him, the whole bit. And say, if in Exodus 6, 2 and 3,

47:49

God says that he was appearing to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, that's what it says, and yet Jesus says no one's ever seen the

47:58

Father, then I have a question. Who were they seeing in the Old Testament who's not

48:03

God the Father, but is God Almighty? Who is that? That's good.

48:10

Oh, it's really good. So all you got to know is Exodus 6, 2 and 3, and John 1 -18 and John 6 -46.

48:21

Okay? You remember all three of those together, you got a good witnessing tool for them. And I remember this.

48:28

This is a true story, a true story. Back before I was married, I mean, I've been married 34 years, it's been a long time, and I'm in Southern California, and still at my home with my folks,

48:39

I back went there with them for a few months or something, you know, whatever it was. J -Dub's at the door, and these two girls come in, and very politely

48:47

I read them through this, and I said, so who were they seeing in the Old Testament who's

48:53

God Almighty but not the Father? And I still remember this. This girl's, J -Dub, she's looking, she's looking, she doesn't say anything.

49:01

Don't say anything at that point. They're thinking. Just let them alone. And she looks at me, she goes, oh, they were seeing

49:06

Jesus. And she went like that, she closed her book, and goes, we gotta go. And then she just, poof, they were out the door that fast.

49:13

Wow. Yeah, wow. That's awesome. See, that's quick and slick.

49:20

Okay, that's quick and slick. You see, what I think is amazing too, though, Sure, sure, yeah, yeah.

49:27

There we go. Let me go here. There we go. I'll do one of those. Okay, what

49:33

I find amazing is a lot of Christians will go to try to demonstrate the

49:39

Trinity or the Deity of Christ to the New Testament, which I think is entirely appropriate, but there are so many subtle, non -obvious portions of the

49:51

Old Testament that make these points in profound ways like you just did right there. This differentiation of persons without using the theological vocabulary that we use given the fact that we're kind of 2 ,000 years out with church history already established these theological terms and things like this.

50:07

I think it's fascinating that the Lord appears to Abraham. You don't even realize that. Or Amos 4, when

50:14

I first heard you quote that one, I thought that was fascinating. It's so subtle.

50:21

From a people who didn't have a full revelation at the time yet they are, by inspiration, writing these accounts, the words of the

50:31

Lord, in a way that differentiates persons while still maintaining a monotheism.

50:36

I think that's so interesting and subtle with respect to how we can use the Old Testament there. That's awesome.

50:42

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. And there's other stuff I can show you guys too if you want to see.

50:49

Well, let's jump into some questions. There are some questions. There's not a lot of people asking.

50:55

There's a lot of people watching, just not a lot of people asking questions. But there was a question. Let's take it here because I know people will confront this often.

51:03

So here's a question by Arthur Berry. He says, Seeing that Jehovah's Witnesses believe

51:08

Jesus is a created being, have you heard of them using Proverbs 8, Chapter 8, verses 22 through 31?

51:16

And what I want to do is I want to actually go there. So let me open up my text here and read that.

51:24

So I'm going to be reading from the ESV. Is that okay, Matt? ESV is essentially inspired. That's what

51:30

E stands for. Right. Okay, so Proverbs... I'll go to the JW Bible and show it from there.

51:37

Proverbs 8, 22. All right. And to 31.

51:44

So it says, The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old. Ages ago

51:49

I was set up at the first before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth.

51:55

When there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills

52:00

I was brought forth. Before He had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world.

52:06

When He established the heavens, I was there. When He drew a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above.

52:12

When He established the fountains of the deep, when He assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress

52:18

His command. When He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him like a master workman, and I was daily

52:26

His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.

52:34

So how do they use that? And how would we provide a response? So here's the thing, this is another issue with how the

52:45

Jehovah's Witness organization corrupts the Bible. Now if you were to look in the

52:51

Bible, so I'm going to do this, and I have, oh look at that, it's on the share thing, that's why

52:58

I don't have it. Do you want me to put your thing up back on the screen? If you want, sure. And what I'll do is,

53:03

I'm going to show you something. And it's right here, right here, notice it says, this is the beginning of Proverbs, does not wisdom call and understanding lift up her voice?

53:19

And that is what's happening there, lifting up her voice. And her voice here, if you have tools, you can go in and look and you can find third person feminine singular, you can see what they're parsing it.

53:32

But this is on blue letter Bible, you can do this kind of a thing. So this is what it says here, her voice, okay, but notice what they do.

53:45

Does not wisdom keep calling out and discernment give forth its voice? Ah, those are subtle, those are very subtle.

53:54

They're subtle but they're purposeful. Yeah. So here's the disadvantage of being the average

54:00

Joe doing this kind of a thing. If you don't know about this, and how to demonstrate that they have a problem, then you can't really go very far in some areas.

54:11

This is one of them you wouldn't be able to do that unless you had like the blue letter Bible and you showed the interlinear and you showed where it says her and you can go to the

54:21

King James and do the same thing. And so because they used to use the

54:27

King James and here's what it used to say the

54:32

King James and understand understanding put forth her voice, okay, wisdom and understanding.

54:38

So it's a personification and wisdom is spoken of in the feminine. And so if you've done this enough times where you've shown them the differences, you can say why is it the

54:49

New World Translation keeps changing things when it comes to stuff about Jesus? If you can say this is about Jesus then and we'll talk about the continuity issue next, but if you can say this is about Jesus then when the original says her then it can't be referencing

55:07

Jesus, can it? And yet the JW Bible changes it. Why is it? And just ask them can you explain why it does that?

55:14

I'm curious. You don't want to say they changed it because it's a cult and you're brainwashed you stupid moron.

55:20

You don't say that. You say why would they do that? Could you get back to me on that?

55:26

I'd really like to know. And that way by not being insulting and mean you haven't put up an emotional roadblock.

55:34

Now the goal here ultimately is to talk to them as much as possible for as long as possible.

55:41

So what I'll do also when they leave my door after having talked with them like this I'll make sure they don't see me following them.

55:49

The reason is not to be deceptive but if they see it's me following them they will tend to just throw out everything

55:56

I've said. So that's why I will just stay.

56:02

I get good eyesight. Well back then I used to have 2010 vision and I could see stuff on like Mars.

56:09

I could see some of the dust storms. It was great. Anyway so you can do that and you can gradually show them this kind of stuff and then you can follow them and watch and keep your distance and stuff like that and go to the doors later on with information.

56:29

Okay so when someone you know when they learn about the Jehovah's Witness kind of just in passing there's the common things like oh those are those weird people who don't celebrate birthdays or they don't celebrate holidays that's probably not the best place to start in conversation with them.

56:44

What are the sorts of things that you could share with people as to how to get to really the core issue?

56:51

How should we begin the conversation so that we don't waste time talking about peripheral sorts of things.

56:57

Things that are unimportant. Well one of the things I like to do is steer the conversation to something that's important and that is salvation.

57:05

Okay. What do you have to do to be saved? I just say to them I'll talk to them this way.

57:11

I'll say you know we want the same thing. We want to serve God. We want to be with Him. You know have our sins forgiven.

57:19

And they'll say yeah. I say that's good because that's what I want. So I ask well how do you get your sins forgiven?

57:31

And just leave it open like that. And I want them to give me

57:41

I want them to give me an explanation. Because what's going to happen is well you've got to go door to door.

57:48

They're not going to say the exact same thing. But it's basically going to be faith and works. Okay. You've got to be associated with Jehovah's true organization for one thing.

57:57

You've got to be baptized. You have to repent of your sins. Etc. It's not faith and trust in Jesus.

58:04

But it's faith and trust in what Jesus did to reopen the door by which you then earn salvation.

58:10

Okay. Now this is something I would recommend that all Christians become familiar with and that's Romans chapter four one through five.

58:18

So Romans four one through five. Okay. But to the one who does not work.

58:25

That was the one that got me with the whole with the whole salvation by faith alone when

58:31

I was first learning. I memorized it because of you. To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.

58:37

His faith is reckoned to him as righteousness. Well thanks for taking away the glory of my explanation but that's okay.

58:43

Well I'm giving it back to you. The only reason why I remember that is because I've heard you say it a bazillion times.

58:51

That's right. I'm teasing you a bit. So Romans four verses one through five.

58:58

I do this. I want people to see this. Okay. You should become familiar with it. Now obviously Eli is and it's a great verse.

59:04

I use it for Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics. That being the New World Translation.

59:10

I'm going to share the screen again. We'll read it from their Bible because you want to use their Bible. All right. That being so, what shall we say about Abraham our forefather according to the flesh if, for instance,

59:22

Abraham were declared righteous as a result of works he would have a ground for boasting but not with God.

59:31

For what does the scripture say? Abraham exercised Oh man. Okay.

59:37

Sorry. Abraham exercised faith in Jehovah and it was counted to him as righteousness.

59:42

And I can stop right there and say to the JW Do you exercise your faith in Jehovah? Because that's what it says.

59:50

Right. Now it doesn't say Jehovah in the Bible in the New Testament anywhere. Even when it

59:56

Jehovah is quoted from the Old Testament text, it's Lord. Okay. And he believed

01:00:01

God and stuff. They'll do this. I could get really in depth on a lot of things that they alter but not going to do that.

01:00:07

So Abraham exercised faith in Jehovah. Don't worry about it. Just go see and you do that. Yeah. Okay. And it was counted him as righteousness.

01:00:13

So what was counted? It was his faith. And they're going to look at it. Don't try and add.

01:00:18

Once you see a JW, just start looking at the text. They're quiet and they're looking. Don't say anything.

01:00:25

Take the opportunity to pray. Let them deal with what it says. Okay. And they might make a comment and then interact with a comment.

01:00:35

Say, well, you got to be good. You got to do stuff. Yeah, we do have to be good. You're right. We do. But it gets interesting here.

01:00:41

And it goes on. Now to the man who works, the pay is not counted, not as an undeserved kindness but as a debt.

01:00:49

And this verse right here really gets me. The verse five, just like Eli did, I'd say this verse five here is so important,

01:00:56

I think. On the other hand to the man that does not work but puts faith in him who declares ungodly when righteousness, his faith is counted as righteousness.

01:01:06

That's just like verse three. thank you for being here and helping me with your name, whatever.

01:01:15

Could you tell me, how do you explain this? What does this mean to you? And you see what's happening here is

01:01:21

I am teaching by asking questions. And this is important. Can you please tell me, well, here it is.

01:01:30

And this is my tone, the way I'm speaking is actually how I talk to them at the door. This is how

01:01:35

I actually do this. I'm not doing anything different. And so I'm sitting here.

01:01:43

I want them to look. And so atomic apologetics, man.

01:01:52

That's right, we did. I got in trouble. J -Dub's at the SeaTac airport.

01:01:59

That's the other thing. Okay, so anyway, so I'll stick and I'll say, can you explain this to me? That's what

01:02:04

I want them to do is explain it to me. But notice what just happened. We read the text out of their

01:02:11

Bible. Now, could you please explain what this means to me right here? Now they're going to be sitting here looking at this.

01:02:19

It's apart from the Watchtower manipulation system. What does it mean? And then they might you never know what they're going to say.

01:02:27

They might say something like, well, you know, faith that works is dead. Okay. And you say, you're right.

01:02:35

Faith without works is dead. And that's in James, right? Yes, it is.

01:02:41

Okay. And so I'll say, all right. Okay. I agree with you.

01:02:47

Faith that works is dead. You are out here. You believe and you are doing what you believe.

01:02:53

Your faith is manifested by your works. Right. I can't fault you for that.

01:02:58

Right. Your faith is manifested by your works. And they go, that's right. That's what it means. Faith without works. They go, I agree with you.

01:03:04

That's what it is. And I said, no, this is for us to know, and it depends on how much you want to use this.

01:03:10

Of what benefit is it, my brothers? This is James 2, starting at verse 14. What benefit is it, my brothers, if a certain one says he has faith but does not have works?

01:03:19

Can that faith save him? Now say, you are out here doing your door -to -door stuff and I think more people should do that, which is true.

01:03:28

Not that I mean the J -dubs, but more people should do that. And so you are demonstrating that faith, right? Now say, yes.

01:03:34

And it says here, if a brother or sister is naked, in a naked state and lacking the food sufficient for the day, yet a certain one of you says to him, go in peace, be warm and well fed, but you do not give them the necessities of their body.

01:03:46

What benefit is that? Thus, too, faith, if it does not have works, is dead in itself. Nevertheless, a certain one, this is the critical verse, nevertheless, a certain one will say, you have faith and I have works.

01:03:59

Show me your faith apart from the works and I'll show you my faith by my works. This is what we call the horizontal.

01:04:07

This is the horizontal. This is justification before men. Watch this.

01:04:13

Let me get over here. I've got two tabs open. This is for people here to understand this so that they can properly use this.

01:04:21

I see on the top of your screen you've got a thousand folders. Sure. Are those just different topics depending on who you're talking to?

01:04:30

You just kind of pop one open and you've got all your stuff there? This is atheistic, my books and things like that.

01:04:36

This is cryptocurrency. This is stuff in Karm. This is social things I go to. These are, let's see what else

01:04:42

I've got. These are categories that I'll do, Huffington Post. I'll go meet up JW stuff. 2013 version, 1984 version,

01:04:51

SDA, SEO. That's just on my right screen which you're looking at.

01:04:56

That's Firefox. On my left screen is Chrome and I have another set over there. There we go.

01:05:03

Getting a little glimpse into the command center. Go ahead. I apologize. That's right. I should show them everything I got. Maybe they would like to see that.

01:05:09

Maybe towards the end. That'd be great. I'd love to see what you've got there. What I've done is this is the

01:05:17

JW Bible stuff. You have two tabs so it's really convenient. Nevertheless, a certain one will say, you have faith,

01:05:22

I have works, show me your faith, I'll show you my faith. This is the horizontal. What does it say in Romans 4?

01:05:28

That being so, what shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? If, for instance,

01:05:33

Abraham were declared righteous as a result of works, he'd have the ground but not with God.

01:05:38

He'd have the ground but not with God. This is the vertical. For what does the scripture say?

01:05:45

Abraham exercised faith in Jehovah and was credited in his righteousness. Verse 5 on the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies him godly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

01:05:54

I had to go back to the NASB. This is the vertical Romans 4.

01:06:00

This is the horizontal James 2. This is what we Christians have got to know about this.

01:06:07

This is what's going on here. When they go to James, they think that James is vertical but it's not.

01:06:15

James is horizontal because notice what it says. You believe there's one God, do you? You're doing quite well and yet the demons believe.

01:06:23

So I say this is obviously a false faith. It's empty.

01:06:29

It doesn't do anything. Also, it's before people because notice what it says.

01:06:35

Someone comes in naked and you say this. It's about people right there, brother or sister. You show me or I'll show you yours and stuff like that.

01:06:45

But do you care? Empty man, faith apart, works as inactive. Was not Abraham our father declared righteous by works when he offered up Isaac his son?

01:06:54

Now this is something we've got to talk about here. This is a little bit tough. You ask the question, justified before who?

01:07:08

Before God? By his works? Or before man? It's because the same thing here is quoted by Paul in Romans 4.

01:07:19

So I tell him, I said, look, this is not justification before God. It's justification before people.

01:07:25

Because that's how we know that Abraham was righteous from what he did. That's how we know. But when you go back to here,

01:07:33

Romans 4, it's justification. Abraham was declared righteous as a result of works.

01:07:40

If that's the case, you have grounds for boasting. But not with God. So you have to go back and forth with them.

01:07:46

You have your fingers in both places. You go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So you, the

01:07:51

Christians here, you need to know this. And you need to be able to go back and forth with Romans chapter 4, verses 1 through 5.

01:08:00

And there's more you could go. But this is an easy thing to remember while you do that with James. Behold, faith worked along with his works.

01:08:10

And by this, his faith was perfected. You see? See? Faith was there with his works, right? But it's not the faith and the works.

01:08:18

Now, you need to have some things ready in your head such as this.

01:08:25

If you're taking notes, you'd have this ready. Come on.

01:08:30

Matthew chapter... Okay, it's not going to give me

01:08:36

Matthew chapter... Let's go to Matthew chapter 5 and see what happens here. I'll go to Matthew 7.

01:08:43

See if it'll go to 7. There we go. A little glitch they had there. And so,

01:08:51

Matthew 7, 22 and 23. And it'll say, Many will say to me on that day,

01:08:59

Lord, Lord, do we not prophesy in your name and expel demons in your name and perform many powerful works in your name?

01:09:07

And yet I will confess to them, I never knew you. Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness.

01:09:14

If we can go this far, they're not gone by then. Mr. or Miss Jehovah's Witness, could you please tell me this is on the day, the day of the

01:09:23

Lord, the day of judgment, right? And I'll say yes. What were they appealing to for their salvation?

01:09:30

The lordship of Jesus and what they did. And they're condemned.

01:09:40

And just depending on what they do and how they react, they may say, well, we're done talking.

01:09:46

And, okay, that's what it is. That's what it is. But, you know, it just depends. I've gotten this far with J -dubs before, okay?

01:09:53

And you can, it just happens sometimes. And it's not Luke 16, it's Luke 18, but it won't show me the whole thing, so I have to go wait for it to show up.

01:10:05

Come on. It's supposed to be Luke 18. There we go. I had a little glitch on their system, not because I had the screen so big.

01:10:11

The font size doesn't show up. All right. So Luke 18, 9 through 14.

01:10:21

But Jesus spoke this illustration, parable, also to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous.

01:10:27

Notice what, this is what it is. They trusted themselves that they're righteous. And they consider the rest as nothing.

01:10:34

I'll say, if you get it with a J -dub, think about this. In their mind, they're the ones who are righteous.

01:10:42

You're the one who's not righteous. Because you don't have the truth in the kingdom,

01:10:48

God's kingdom, Jehovah's kingdom. So when he says, they trusted in themselves that they were righteous and considered others, the rest, as nothing.

01:10:58

This is what they do. All right? But don't point out that's what they do. Just read this and say, this is what it says, illustration that trusted in themselves that they were righteous.

01:11:10

And we're going to find, I'll tell a J -dub, we're going to find out what Jesus is saying here. And, you know, consider the rest as nothing.

01:11:17

Two men went up to the temple. Now they may at this point already be familiar, and they may make a comment. They may say, well, you know, works over here in James.

01:11:25

Say, yeah, that's true. But we could look at that later if you want, if you haven't already looked at it. But this says right here.

01:11:32

So what I'm doing is, I'm not letting them take me to a tangent someplace else. Just want to focus.

01:11:38

You say, yeah, I see that, but we could talk about that later. But right here, you've got to do this continually.

01:11:45

Two men went up to the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and began to pray these things to himself.

01:11:51

Oh God, I thank you. I'm not as the rest of men, extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

01:11:58

I fast twice a week. I give a tenth of all the things I acquire. And I say to the people, well, look what he's doing here.

01:12:06

A Pharisee is not a bad guy. He's doing what's right. He prays. He believes and trusts in Jehovah.

01:12:13

Because that's the word, oh God. It's Jehovah, right? You could say that, yeah. He doesn't steal.

01:12:19

He's not a thief. Not like other people. He does the good. He pays tithes. He fasts twice a week.

01:12:27

He's a good guy. But the tax collector, standing at a distance, was not willing even to raise his eyes heavenward, but kept beating his breast saying, oh

01:12:36

God, be gracious to me, a sinner. It doesn't say a sinner. It says the sinner in the Greek.

01:12:43

I tell you, this man went down to his house and proved more righteous. Now, this is a bastardization of the text.

01:12:53

Proved more righteous. Because what they're saying here is the Pharisee is righteous, but he's more righteous.

01:13:00

And you can ask them. You can say, okay, so is the Pharisee righteous? And you can just have this conversation with them.

01:13:08

Why is it that Jesus says that this man went to his home, proved more righteous than that man?

01:13:15

The one who was doing all the good stuff. Now, what I'm trying to do is stick with what their text says, because that's what they're going to go to.

01:13:22

I try to work with it. Now, let me show you what the Bible actually says.

01:13:30

Let me pull this down here. What I'll do is I will, because people need to see it better.

01:13:40

There. Hope that's helpful. Now, I'll go to Luke 18 9.

01:13:53

And I think I give thanks twice.

01:13:59

God be merciful to me, a sinner. I thought it was the sinner. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm going to correct myself.

01:14:06

Oh, I am incorrect. It is a sinner. I thought it was the sinner. All right.

01:14:13

Well, okay. I'm always learning. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other.

01:14:22

That's what's going on here. That's the correct translation. Okay. This man went down to his house justified.

01:14:29

And you can check this out. What it means here, it is the perfect passive.

01:14:34

It's something that happened to him. And it's in the participial form, which means it's a perfect participle, which means having been justified.

01:14:43

That's what it's a literal way of saying it. Because a participle is I -N -G, and perfect is have been, having been justified.

01:14:52

So he's the one having been justified, or just say he was justified, which is correct. Rather than the other, by contrast.

01:15:00

So what the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible has done obviously is to make the text change so that you have a bit of an uphill battle.

01:15:13

But what you want to do is get them to say, well, in Matthew 7, 22, 23, they were appealing to what, you know, many on this day would not do this, do that, do that, get away from me,

01:15:25

I never knew you. That's Matthew 7, 22, and 23. So in that verse, that's why you've got to know these together.

01:15:31

That verse says that, and this says here. Is Jesus teaching the same thing? Now you've got a good conversation going.

01:15:39

So these are the kinds of things you can do with Jehovah's Witnesses. And you'll notice from my approach, it's patient, it's almost apologetic in tone.

01:15:53

I say, I never lied to them, I never intended to deceive them. I say, maybe you can help me, because it is true.

01:15:59

I don't believe it's really going to happen, but it's possible, and I have been surprised by a few people before.

01:16:06

And I'm asking them to help me for them to test or to teach me from the

01:16:13

Word of God. But I'm doing it, like I said earlier, apart from the Watchtower's Guidance and the

01:16:18

Watchtower Magazine and the Awake, etc. They're there by themselves with the Bible. And that reminds me,

01:16:24

I will show you a... I've got to show this to you. I've just got to do this. This is a great verse.

01:16:29

Do you think also a good tactic would be to place a wedge between the

01:16:34

Jehovah's Witness and the Watchtower Society's overarching interpretation? How might we give reason to doubt the

01:16:46

Watchtower Organization? How can we share that with the Jehovah's Witness? This is a quote worth having right here.

01:16:59

This is a quote worth having. This is on CARM, which is, in my opinion, one of the greatest websites on the entire internet, and that you should be checking it daily.

01:17:11

I am so not neutral, let's be sure. Where's the word reading?

01:17:16

I put it right there. Check this out. August 15, 1981.

01:17:23

From time to time there have arisen from among the ranks of Jehovah's people those who, like the original

01:17:31

Satan, have adopted an independent, fault -finding attitude. They say it is sufficient to read the

01:17:38

Bible exclusively, either alone or in small groups at home. But strangely, through such

01:17:45

Bible reading, they have reverted right back to the apostate doctrines that commentaries by Christians clergy were teaching 100 years ago.

01:17:55

Now wait a minute, Mr. Jehovah's Witness. Is the Watchtower telling me that if I just read the

01:18:02

Bible by itself, I'll end up believing in the Trinity? That's an apostate doctrine, right? It says, if I just read it, it's sufficient to read the

01:18:13

Bible, either alone or in small groups. But strangely, through such Bible reading, they've reverted right back to the apostate doctrines.

01:18:21

So I say, so you're telling me that this is telling me that if I just read the Bible for what it is, I'll end up believing in the

01:18:27

Trinity? Is that correct? This is why this is important. That's good.

01:18:34

That's good stuff, man. All right. Well, let's I actually want to I have two more questions before we get to the

01:18:41

Q &A. One has to do with prophecy, because I know that there's a great emphasis upon prophecy in the in the

01:18:51

Watchtower theology. And also kind of a quick summary of how to apply presuppositional methodology to a

01:18:58

Jehovah's Witness. And so I'm going to take a moment. I'll ask you the prophecy question first, but then

01:19:04

I want to take a moment to read Proverbs chapter 26 verses 4 and 5 and ask you, how can we apply the principles in Proverbs 26, 4 and 5 to the

01:19:14

Jehovah's Witness so we can kind of get a good presuppositional application? There are a lot of questions pertaining to presuppositionalism and its application to competing religious perspectives.

01:19:24

And so when we are engaging in presuppositionalism, utilizing a transcendental argument, it's usually within the context of a

01:19:31

Christian versus an atheist. But there is actually ways in which we can apply presuppositionalism to any perspective.

01:19:38

So I want to explore that a little bit as my last question. So before we get to that, how might we use prophecy or the false prophecy of the

01:19:48

Watchtower as an apologetic? I mean, is that something worthy of pursuing, or do they kind of have an answer to the many false prophecies?

01:19:58

Yeah, so why don't you walk us through that? Yeah, their answer is, we admitted we made false prophecies, so we're not false prophets anymore.

01:20:07

Is that an official response? Is that an official response or something? This is what I've heard from them over the years.

01:20:13

Now, I've got to tell you, of late, I've not talked to hardly any Jehovah's Witnesses in several years now.

01:20:20

I moved to Idaho, and there's not too many here, and the ones that did come to my door, they don't come here for some reason.

01:20:29

They don't come here anymore. So if you want to share the screen again, I'll show you something. This list of prophecies,

01:20:36

I did not put this together. Someone else did years ago, and it shut down entire kingdom halls.

01:20:42

The entire kingdom halls just shut the doors down because they saw these prophecies. But they're prepared for it now.

01:20:51

We've made mistakes in the past. It's mistakes, okay? Nevertheless, this is what the

01:20:56

Jehovah's Witness organization says, April 1st, which I think is appropriate. This prophet was not one man, but was a body of men and women.

01:21:05

It was a small group of footstep followers of Jesus Christ, known at that time as International Bible Students.

01:21:11

Today, they're known as Jehovah's Christian Witnesses. Of course, it is easy to say that this group acts as a prophet of God.

01:21:18

It's another thing to prove it. 1897, I have these books out in the garage. Our Lord, the appointed

01:21:27

I believe I have them in. I have a lot of these. Our Lord, the appointed King, is now present since October 1874.

01:21:37

1899, this is the date that he wrote this. The battle of the great

01:21:42

God Almighty, Revelation 16, 14, which will end in A .D. 1914 with the complete overthrow of Earth's present rulership, is already commenced.

01:21:53

It's the time of his hand. 1908 edition, they updated. This is written earlier. 1918, therefore, we may confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to the faithful prophets of old, particularly those named by the apostles in Hebrews 11 to the condition of human perfection.

01:22:12

Millions will now live and will never die, page 89. So that was supposed to have happened already.

01:22:18

How do they explain that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Let's see what they say. They explain it here.

01:22:24

It's right. 1922, the date 1925 is even more distinctly indicated by scriptures than 1914 and 1923.

01:22:32

Our thought is that 1925 is definitely settled by the scriptures. As to Noah, the

01:22:38

Christian now has much more upon which to base his faith than Noah had upon which to base his faith in the coming deluge.

01:22:47

Remember, God spoke directly to Noah. But they have more now.

01:22:53

1925, the year 1925 is here. With great expectations, Christians look forward to this year. Many have confidently expected that all members of the body of Christ will be changed to heavenly glory during this year.

01:23:04

This may be accomplished. It may not be. In His own due time, God will accomplish

01:23:10

His purpose concerning His people. Christians should not be so deeply concerned about what may transpire this year.

01:23:17

1931, there was a measure of disappointment on the part of Jehovah's faithful ones on earth concerning the years 1917, 1918, and 1925, which disappointment lasted for a time, and they also learned to quit fixing dates.

01:23:35

Now, did they? No, they didn't. We could go on. I could read more. But 1968 talks about 1975.

01:23:43

Right here. Why are you looking forward to 1975? And so, they continue to do this. Now, they're used to this, and so, if you bring it up, you've got to be careful when you bring it up, because they may or may not respond.

01:23:57

They may or may not close the door right away. And I brought it up with Jehovah's Witnesses, and you have to do it in a very careful way.

01:24:05

You know, Mr. Jehovah's Witness, I've heard that there have been false prophecies. I actually have,

01:24:11

I've seen them listed out. Could you explain that to me? I'm really curious.

01:24:18

And notice how I'm talking. This is not mockery. It's not fake sincerity, but it's a way to communicate with them, to try and get them to continue to engage.

01:24:28

If I were to do it the way I'm capable of doing it, you know, it says in Deuteronomy 18, if you were to make a false prophecy, then you're no longer of God.

01:24:34

You should not listen to them. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society claimed it was a false prophecy on April 1, 1972.

01:24:40

And you made prophecies. It's just not going to work. So I just said you can collect more flies with honey than a hammer.

01:24:53

All right. Excellent. This is my last question, and then we'll move on to the Q &A.

01:25:00

We have some questions that people sent in here. So how might we apply a presuppositional approach to Jehovah's Witness?

01:25:09

Now real quick, everything that you've done in terms of pointing to specific passages and going through some of the

01:25:16

Greek and some of the history there is not inconsistent with the presuppositional approach. I just want to let people know presuppositionalism is not allergic to the utilization of evidence and appealing to certain facts and things like that.

01:25:29

But let us read Proverbs 26 verses 4 and 5. It says here,

01:25:43

Now this is a passage that is often used by presuppositionalists to demonstrate a kind of two -step approach in engaging the unbeliever.

01:25:53

So on the one hand, we don't answer the fool according to his folly, but then on the other hand, we do answer the fool according to his folly to show the folly of his ways.

01:26:00

How might we apply that methodology to a Jehovah's Witness if we're thinking of this from a presuppositional perspective?

01:26:08

Well, I've actually done a lot of that tonight because what I've done is use what they presuppose against them.

01:26:17

They presuppose certain things and then shown where their presuppositions can't be harmonious.

01:26:23

Now this is a subtle way of doing this. Of course, if a JW really wanted to sit down and go through Trinitarian presuppositional apologetics related to the

01:26:32

Unitarian insufficiencies, we could do that. The one and the many, and the solitude issue, and the manifestation of personhood, and there's some other things that I could say.

01:26:39

Here's one, I'll write it down. Oh, I got this note up here. The Ayala writes, they wear turbans and shout loudly.

01:26:48

It's a cult you mentioned earlier. That's not a real cult.

01:26:55

There's going to be something like, what's that cult that he was talking about? The Ayala, you can't even, see my name wouldn't even make a clue.

01:27:00

The Ayala writes, the right to be an Ayala person and you have to wear a turban and shout loudly and the advanced people can walk without their head going up and down.

01:27:11

For those who have no idea what you're talking about, Matt thinks that if you say my name really quick, it sounds like a

01:27:17

Muslim war cry. My full name, my full name is my full name is

01:27:26

Elias Ayala. You say that five times fast, it sounds like you're speaking in tongues. Elias Ayala! Run!

01:27:33

You know what you could do is just walk up in a white robe to a bunch of people standing outside and just take a bag and put it down and go,

01:27:40

Ayala, Ayala, Ayala! And then run. They would buy it. It would work. All right,

01:27:46

I feel better. And so anyway, you have to understand what they presuppose.

01:27:54

They don't presuppose the sufficiency and the authority of God, Jehovah.

01:28:01

They presuppose the sufficiency and the authority of God's organization. Now they'll say,

01:28:07

Matt, you are wrong. Jehovah is true. He's used our organization. But I could show you stuff where it says that you cannot

01:28:19

Oh, where's that one? You cannot even understand Yeah. See, only this organization functions for Jehovah's purpose and to his praise.

01:28:29

It alone is sacred. The sacred word of the Bible is not sealed. The Bible is an organizational book and belongs to the

01:28:37

Christian congregation as an organization, not to individuals, regardless of how sincerely they may believe they can interpret it.

01:28:43

And it's fully documented. Look at this. We should meekly go along with the Lord's theocratic organization.

01:28:49

They call themselves the theocratic organization and wait for further clarification rather than balk at the first mention of a thought unpalatable to us.

01:28:58

Theocratic ones will appreciate the Lord's visible organization and not be so foolish as to put against Jehovah's channel their own human reasoning and sentiment and personal feelings.

01:29:11

Well, right there, Matt, you did a quote before that one where it says that we shouldn't balk at at what did it say?

01:29:21

It says here, at the first mention of a thought unpalatable to us. Yeah, that's not really the situation.

01:29:27

I mean, people aren't balking at Jehovah's Witness theology because it's just unpalatable. We balk at it because it's blatantly false.

01:29:35

I mean, you have these false prophecies. If this organization is really the mouthpiece of God on earth, it does not give evidence.

01:29:42

It does not give evidence of that in a way that's consistent with scripture. So it's not an issue of being unpalatable.

01:29:47

It's an issue of just being demonstrably false, and we need to point this out to people. That's right. It's absolutely correct.

01:29:53

It takes time, and it takes work. Now, notice this one I have highlighted here, because this is important, too. This is really important.

01:29:59

All who want to understand the Bible should appreciate that the greatly diversified wisdom of God can become known only through Jehovah's channel of communication to faithful and discreet slave.

01:30:13

Okay? Okay. This is why I say to people, I sometimes say, they're not

01:30:18

Jehovah's Witnesses. They're watchtowerites. Now you'll understand why

01:30:23

I say that. I say they're watchtowerites. They follow what the watchtower tells them.

01:30:32

That's what it is. The watchtower has control over their minds, over their lives, and everything. They're really watchtowerites, and that's what

01:30:39

I'll tell you. They are. They're watchtowerites. They presuppose the sufficiency of the watchtower

01:30:46

Bible and tract society. Here's one of the things that you can do. There's a lot of things

01:30:52

I've given you. You can't use them all at once. Jehovah's Witnesses, you can ask them to interpret something for you in the

01:30:59

Scriptures, like Romans 4 verses 1 through 5, which I recommend you do that, and then you can ask them questions.

01:31:07

You can say, can you explain this to me? What you're doing right here is causing them to think apart from the watchtower's control, trying to think apart from the watchtower's control.

01:31:20

You're trying to get them to think independently. You're trying to do that, and you want to do that because you want to get them away from that brainwashing.

01:31:29

It takes a long time for someone to come out. It takes about two years usually. Notice how

01:31:37

I'm doing this very patiently and very kindly. A lot of people think I'm so mean and stuff. I'm not. Unless it's to Eli here, then

01:31:44

I am, but I mock him. I say, could you help me understand this?

01:31:51

I'm getting them to see and look. Here's something that a lot of people don't realize. Isaiah 55, 11,

01:31:57

God's Word will not come back empty without accomplishing what He desires. What you have to do is use

01:32:03

God's Word. Go to the Scriptures, and there's enough of truth within the NWT, New World Translation, to get them to think.

01:32:10

You have to go to their Bible, and you have to look at it and see. You can use it.

01:32:15

Romans 4, 1 -5, we just saw is pretty good. You can go there, and you can work with them.

01:32:21

What you're doing is undermining the presuppositions of the truth of the watchtower by simply reading what the

01:32:27

Scriptures teach. This is the idea. You have to understand they're watchtower -ites.

01:32:35

They believe what the watchtower tells them to think, tells them to believe, tells them to do. They're watchtower -ites.

01:32:41

So you have to presuppose this in your mind about them. That's why you have to go to the

01:32:47

Word and simply stick with the Word. That's why I wouldn't go to the false prophecies unless it comes later on.

01:32:53

I wouldn't go to other things unless it's later on. What does it say? Can you help me understand this?

01:32:59

I think, and I tell them this, I think I understand it pretty well. I've studied it, but I'm always open to being corrected.

01:33:08

That's fine, and it's true. I am still corrected. My wife knows that a lot.

01:33:14

You have to be open for this. You tell them that, and you have them explain. Now they're thinking independently from the watchtower because they're not going to go to Romans 4.

01:33:21

It's not something that's going to be prepared for like they would with, remember, call upon the name of the

01:33:27

Lord. That's, you know, Psalm 116 .4, Zechariah 13 .9, 1 Corinthians 1 .2. You go through those.

01:33:33

I should say them more slowly. Psalm 116 .4, Zechariah 13 .9,

01:33:41

1 Corinthians 1 .2, and you can go to CARM and look up, just in the search, just look up call upon the name of the

01:33:48

Lord. Just type that in, and you'll see the article on 1 Corinthians 1 .2. It's an extensive article because it's a very powerful argument.

01:33:55

Some Jehovah's Witnesses have tried to tackle me on it, and it caused me to do even more research, and then they stopped because it became even more powerful.

01:34:05

I don't know if that helps. No, that's very helpful. So don't answer the fool.

01:34:13

Don't go with the Jehovah's Witness undergirding assumption, but then hypothetically grant their assumption.

01:34:19

Hypothetically grant that the watchtower is reliable, and then look at their own sources and show, given the truth of their own sources, they undermine their own principles, their own perspective.

01:34:28

That is what you call, in presuppositional talk, an internal critique.

01:34:34

An internal critique, which is a very important concept, which I go into great depth on my online class. If you're interested in learning apologetics, you can sign up for that.

01:34:42

We actually spent an entire lecture just talking about the importance of internal critiques.

01:34:48

It's very, very important. All right. Actually, Matt, I remember you actually helped with my online course a while back.

01:34:57

You do so many things you don't remember. I only remember important stuff. At the end of the five weeks,

01:35:04

I invite a guest to do some role -playing, and you pretended to be an atheist. It was pretty cool.

01:35:11

You make a good atheist. You make a good atheist. I've got stories about doing stuff like that, but in real situations with churches.

01:35:18

Yep, that's right. You have a good class. They did pretty well. Yeah, they did. Let's go through some questions.

01:35:26

I'm going to start from the bottom here. I think this is actually pretty fun, though. Someone, Randall, looked up my name. He says,

01:35:32

Ayala is a Hebrew female given name, meaning gazelle, doe, or hind.

01:35:38

I like the hind part. I've never looked up my name before.

01:35:45

I've got to double -check that. That's awesome. Hind, huh? Justin, we love you.

01:35:52

Thank you very much, Randall. Now I know what my name means. Now I can never walk around.

01:35:58

I don't feel tough anymore. Ayala is a strong name. Not now.

01:36:06

It's not a Hebrew name. Where does it come from? I don't know. I'm Puerto Rican.

01:36:11

I don't know if it's a name that's popular in Puerto Rico at all. Ayala means there. This is

01:36:17

Ayala. Ayala. Over there, those.

01:36:22

Okay, I don't know. All right, let's look for some questions here. Okay, I've got to scroll through them quickly.

01:36:29

Let's see here. There were a couple. Let me see how many people followed directions and put the word question in front of the ...

01:36:38

You can always just read them. ... Those are usually interrogatives.

01:36:45

I'm trying. Let's see here. Okay, here's a good question.

01:36:56

Can anyone name any of the so -called Greek scholars who translated the original Greek to bring about the

01:37:02

New World Translation? That's another issue. There was actually a trial about this back in the day.

01:37:08

They tried to get them and they couldn't find any. They said that they had their own internal scholars and turned out the internal scholars didn't know squat.

01:37:19

What they do then is go to they scan through varying Greek texts to find something that they can use out of context for their own benefit.

01:37:30

One of the instances is they actually did it with Dana Manti. Dana and Manti's Greek text and Manti, I believe it was

01:37:39

Manti who was at, an old friend of mine I used to know back in Southern California, Bob Passantino, and he's brilliant.

01:37:47

Bob Passantino's brilliant. I don't know if you saw it around or not, but at any rate Manti was at his door at his house, spent the night

01:37:54

I think he spent the night, and was Saturday morning, was knocking the door and Jehovah's Witnesses come to the door.

01:38:01

And the Jehovah's Witnesses Manti was there. Manti taught Greek. Writes Greek manuals.

01:38:09

They started quoting Manti to him, not knowing who it was. He said, well, that's out of context.

01:38:17

He goes, well, no, it's not. The Watchtower does its work. He says, no, I know for a fact it's out of context. My friend

01:38:23

Bob said, he's just watching this like, this is good. He says,

01:38:29

I know it's out of context. Well, how could you possibly know that? Because I'm the guy who wrote it. My name's Manti. And their jaws dropped.

01:38:38

That's hilarious. I love that story. I love stuff like that. Wasn't there a guy who's like, hey, you should really he met you,

01:38:44

I think you met some guy in some event you were at, and the guy was like, man, you should really check out this website,

01:38:51

CARM .org. It's C -A -R -M dot org. You should really check it out.

01:38:56

I said, yeah, I should do that. That's a good idea. Once I was at another place, there was a track I'd written and all of a sudden,

01:39:03

California was used. And we're talking, this guy comes over to the car, he goes, hey, look, dude, man,

01:39:08

I know you're all here witnessing with us. Have you ever seen this track? It is an incredibly good track. Look at this track.

01:39:13

And he shows me it. It's called the warning track. And I go, yeah, I have seen that. And he goes, it's great. It's great.

01:39:19

I go, yeah, I wrote that. He goes, what? So it happens a few times. That's awesome.

01:39:25

My wife's not impressed. No, though our wives usually aren't impressed with all this apologetics. And apologetics doesn't work.

01:39:31

I mean, we can do apologetics against Jehovah's Witness, Mormons, atheists, all that stuff.

01:39:37

But for some reason, there is no book written where you can use apologetics on your wife. Actually, there is a book.

01:39:44

How to woo and win women by being an obnoxious jerk. That's a real book

01:39:50

I've written, folks. It's on Amazon. You can go look it up. It's real. I can attest. It's real. And it's How to Woo and Win Women by Being an

01:39:57

Obnoxious Jerk. And I have a section there, a chapter on girl logic. And if you know how to use that, you can win.

01:40:04

Excellent. Vincent the Sire asks the question, what are your thoughts on Jehovah's Witness false prophecies? We covered that, but if you want to maybe give a quick response there.

01:40:12

What was the question again? I was reading the text. What are your thoughts on the

01:40:18

Jehovah's Witness false prophecies? Are they apologetically useful? Should we bring them up? Yeah, they're useful.

01:40:25

And you should use them carefully at the right time. Because here's a thing.

01:40:32

I could say exactly the same thing you say to two different Jehovah's Witnesses. It works or doesn't work or vice versa.

01:40:39

Or they get mad, they don't get mad. So you just do your best. And then when they leave, you review.

01:40:45

I could have done this better, should have done that better, etc. So is it worth doing? Yes, it is. Is it worth not doing?

01:40:52

Yes, it is. So you do your best and bring them up when you think it's right.

01:40:58

And let me tell you, this is not an if. If you mess up, let me tell you, not an if.

01:41:06

When you mess up, don't worry about it. Just continue on and admit it.

01:41:13

And I'll tell you, if you want to learn about screw -ups, you hang out with me. And this is no joke.

01:41:19

I go witnessing, I do stuff, and you'll see, I could have done that better, could have done this better, could have done that better.

01:41:25

It's always the case. And so don't be afraid to take a risk. Because the ones who never risk never get anything accomplished.

01:41:33

And so take a chance. Alright, I was smirking because I was trying to read through the comments here.

01:41:39

And I just got to put this up because this is hilarious. So Atomic Apologetics says my first visit with Jehovah's Witnesses was in the morning and I was still sleeping and I answered the door still in my underwear.

01:41:52

I just imagine that's crazy. I mean, if I was a Jehovah's Witness and I was welcomed in someone's underwear.

01:42:03

I don't even want to know the details of that. I know who that is. Alright, so here's a question from the

01:42:10

Think Institute. Question, Matt, what do you think of using John 1 3 to show Jehovah's Witness that there are only two kinds of reality, created and uncreated, and ask them which category

01:42:20

Jesus falls into? They would say Jesus is a created being. We didn't talk about this, but this is important.

01:42:26

Okay. Jesus to them is a created being. And they'll go to 1 John Colossians 1 15. He's the firstborn of all creation.

01:42:34

And it's been a while since I've done this. I forgot the references. But there's a place in the Bible, and I have it on CARM, where firstborn is this way.

01:42:45

Let's see if I have it here in this little section here. Firstborn. Yes. Here it is. Jeremiah 31 9 for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

01:42:55

And yet Manasseh is called the firstborn in Genesis 41 51 52.

01:43:02

So firstborn is an issue of title. Okay. It was just transferable. So they're going to often go to Colossians 1 15.

01:43:09

He's the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. So they're going to say firstborn means first created.

01:43:16

And so what you can do, there's two approaches. There's many approaches, but the ones that I would consider, one is to teach them protoktos, protiktos, firstborn, first created.

01:43:27

But is it going to really work with them? I don't know. If I think it might at that time, I'll take a chance to give it a shot.

01:43:34

But what I'll do is I'll say that's an interesting thing. If, and it's a slick and quick thing to do.

01:43:42

Okay, you say, so I know that you guys teach that Jesus is

01:43:47

Michael the Archangel, right? You'll say, yes, that's what he is. He's Michael the Archangel, and he became a man.

01:43:53

I says, okay. Well, I got a question, because an angel is not a man, right?

01:44:00

That's correct. An angel and a man are not the same thing. They're both created, but they're not the same thing.

01:44:08

A man goes to sleep, angels don't go to sleep. Men have to go to the bathroom, angels don't have to go to the bathroom. So we have the actuality of an angel who stops being an angel and then becomes something else, that he is not by his nature.

01:44:22

How then is he the same thing? They can get that.

01:44:30

Because if he's an angel, an angel is not a man, he becomes a man, then how is he by nature still the same one if his nature was angel, but now his nature is man, they're completely different.

01:44:40

How is he the same one? If they get that, and you can say, and I know that you teach that Jesus became

01:44:48

Michael the Archangel again. So that means Jesus doesn't exist anymore.

01:44:54

Right? That's right. So are they the same person?

01:45:01

How does that work? Can you explain that? Now, it's a bit of confusion, but they'll go, you know they'll be driving home going, that's, you know, and so that's one of the things called the continuity issue.

01:45:13

I use it against annihilationists. But notice how I'm saying this stuff. I'm not saying, look, there's a continuity issue.

01:45:20

You have to understand that the attributes are associated with the ontos, so the nature and the essence of something, and so the properties emanate out of the ontos.

01:45:26

So if the ontos changes, the properties and characteristics are also altered. They don't reflect the proper ontos.

01:45:33

We know the ontos by the characteristics of the emanation of those properties. So you cannot have a continuity be maintained, but the nature of one ceases and another object takes its place.

01:45:43

It's not the same object, so therefore they're not the same person. Do you see that? Okay, now I might take, you and I could talk like that, you know,

01:45:50

Eli, because I know you're going to be like... That's right. That's right.

01:45:55

So notice what I'm doing when I talk to them. Notice how my tone changes, body language will change, speed will change, level will change, and everything.

01:46:04

That's what you've got to do. All right. Thank you for that. There's a question by Davinsky Makalensky.

01:46:13

Davinsky Makalensky. I think I got it. Door -to -door Jehovah's Witnesses seem very difficult to get two words in when they come to my door and only seek to put their info in.

01:46:22

How do you break down their script when they try and just speak over you? Do this.

01:46:28

If you notice a Jehovah's Witness is like that, then you're in for the long haul, okay?

01:46:33

You say, well, that information... Just let them talk, okay? Because sometimes in order to earn the right to speak, you have to listen.

01:46:43

Don't interrupt them. Let them speak. Nod. And they show you something. Say, yeah,

01:46:48

I'm interested. Yeah, yes, I'm interested. Now, think. You're a Jehovah's Witness. You go to the door.

01:46:54

They're used to people going, no, that's not true. Slam. You're a cult thing. Now they've got this guy who is just listening.

01:47:02

That's interesting. You get this literature? Okay. Yeah, yes,

01:47:08

I'll be glad to take it. Yeah, sure, I'll be glad to take it. Oh, you will? Yeah, yeah. I'll go through it.

01:47:13

I'll look. Is there anything in here in particular you want me to look at? Yes. Well, I'll do that. And maybe you can come back.

01:47:23

And you take that literature and you study it. You underline and you go through and do some research.

01:47:28

They come back next week. Yeah, there you go. And that's what you do. You don't have to give them all the right perfect answers right away.

01:47:36

Sometimes you just got to wait. Be patient. And then you can pray and study and go to karm .org

01:47:41

and learn and other websites. Which I highly recommend. I mean, the section on Jehovah's Witnesses is huge.

01:47:49

Yeah, excellent, excellent. All right, I have a question here by Dylan Biggs for a revealed apologetic question for both of us.

01:47:56

Do you guys think we use arguments based upon the Divine Theophanies and Christophanies? I'm referring to appearances of the

01:48:02

Angel of the Lord. So do you guys think maybe we should use?

01:48:07

Yes. Yeah, I think I would agree. Yeah, I did that earlier with Exodus 6, 2 and 3 and John 6, 46.

01:48:17

Because in Exodus 6, 2 and 3 God spoke further to Moses and said to him, I am

01:48:22

Jehovah and I appear to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty. John 6, 46

01:48:30

Jesus says not that any man has seen the Father except the one, talking about himself, has seen the Father.

01:48:36

So I ask him, who were they seeing who's not God the Father but is God Almighty? And it's it.

01:48:43

See how quick that was? You can do that in one minute. We went over it earlier.

01:48:48

It's one of the good things to do. Yeah, you can get a lot of mileage out of the Theophanies and Christophanies in the

01:48:54

Old Testament because they're subtle. They're like parts of the Bible. You're kind of like, oh yeah, I remember that story. I never really thought about it that way.

01:49:01

Let me try one more thing, but just before I forget this. Okay, John 15, 13.

01:49:08

In fact, I've never done this in their Bible but here's a slick and quick thing that sometimes you can get to them and I've used this before, but I'm going to go to John because I have the stuff open,

01:49:19

John 15, 13. And I'm going to read what it says, John 15, 13. This is another little something you just put.

01:49:27

And this is what the verse says. Jesus says, no one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his soul on behalf of his friends.

01:49:37

That means to lay down your life, to die for him. So the greatest act of love, the greatest act of love is to die for a friend.

01:49:46

Surrender your soul for someone else. And the J -doubles say, well, yeah. And Jesus did that, right?

01:49:54

Well, I got a question. Can your

01:49:59

God perform the greatest act of love? The answer is no.

01:50:06

A creature outdid your God. I'll say that when it's getting a little bit testy.

01:50:14

But in the Trinity, God himself is one of us. And he performed the greatest act of love, the greatest sacrifice, the greatest humility to save us.

01:50:21

I do this a lot of times like this when they're leaving. And I can tell they don't want to talk anymore.

01:50:27

They clued in on, I know stuff. And so I'll say, so your God is outdone by a creature.

01:50:34

My God is not. Which is greater? Which is better? As they're walking away. That's a great appeal, like an existential appeal.

01:50:43

Even if it doesn't prove anything, I think it's very powerful to be like, why should I give up a God who has demonstrated via the greatest act of love anyone could do for a

01:50:50

God who can't do that? You know? Also with salvation, because when you ask a

01:50:57

J -Dub how you do to save, you have that long conversation with them. You say, well, Romans 4, 1 -5, I believe what it says here, so I don't have to do any good work.

01:51:05

So I just, I show my work, but that's not what saves me, right? Because it's faith alone. Romans 4, 5, right?

01:51:10

Romans 4, 5, that's right. But to the one who does not work. Alright, so...

01:51:16

Well, it's according to us. You know it. Well, it's because the way you say it. I mean, you used to, you did a

01:51:22

Bible study at my house one time, a long time ago. I did? Yeah, I had you on the screen.

01:51:27

Oh, on screen. And the people, it was funny, it looked like the most idolatrous thing ever, because in order for someone to ask a question, they had to come in front of the screen and then kneel down.

01:51:42

I'm like, watching this, I'm like, this is a little off, but I remember...

01:51:47

Bowing down before Reverend Slick, it's bad all the way around. But what I remember from that is that every sentence you uttered was the period of your sentence was a scripture.

01:51:58

And so that helped me memorize scriptures, just to hear you memorize scripture.

01:52:03

So it was super helpful. But at any rate, so Specialist FXHD, gotta love those

01:52:11

YouTube names. A question, is there evidence of Charles Taze Russell and the translators admitting that they don't know

01:52:18

Koine Greek? Yes. I don't know where it is, but yes. Okay. You can get some books.

01:52:24

I mean, I've written what I've written, and there's always more to write, but yeah, the evidence does exist.

01:52:29

There's trials, there's stuff, they've shown this and that, where they didn't know. I would probably point that person to the classic

01:52:38

Kingdom of the Cults by Walter Martin. I think there's an entire section where they go through the transcript of the court case in which he's being cross -examined and admits that he doesn't know

01:52:47

Koine Greek. And since you brought up Walter Martin, I just have to shamelessly brag that I've met him several times and went to his

01:52:55

Bible study for a couple of years and did volunteer work at CRI, Christian Research Institute, and would meet him there too.

01:53:04

So, not bragging too much, but it's definitely a brag. Well, I have a brag.

01:53:09

Okay. I was way too young. He died in 89, right? Yeah, and I did security at his funeral too, but yeah.

01:53:17

Oh, wow. Okay. Well, my brag is not going to be that cool, but I actually had his daughter on my show to talk about his impact as an apologist, and she sent me some audio that has never been put out, and she wanted to...

01:53:34

I have to do something with it. I have to give it to someone who could actually...

01:53:39

Send it to me. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's like a box of tapes and stuff like that. Oh, really? Yeah. So, she sent that to me.

01:53:45

If you send it to me, my wife has a way of contacting someone who could take them and put them all on MP3.

01:53:51

Yep. She said as long as it's done and given out for free, then go for it. So, she sent me a bunch of stuff.

01:53:56

If you want, you could do that or give the files to me, or I'd be glad to do that and say here, put a section up on Walter Martin and say here's free videos and stuff.

01:54:04

Yeah. They're tapes. They're like cassette tapes. I don't know if you know. Okay. I'll look into that then.

01:54:10

Excellent. Okay. All right. Never met him though. I would have loved to have met him, but at any rate...

01:54:16

I'm going to tell you this big story. Sorry, I got to do this. Sure, sure, sure, sure. We're doing some volunteer work at CRI, and we're going to raise funds, and he came in late one night, and we're all there, and we're praying.

01:54:25

We're going to pray, and Dan Schlesinger, who was leading the team, said, Hey, Dr. Martin, would you mind praying for us?

01:54:31

And so, he put his hand on my shoulder here and his hand on her shoulder. Someone else started praying, and I remember this very clearly.

01:54:37

I'm not joking. This is something. I remember I stopped praying. I started listening. I've never heard anybody pray like that.

01:54:45

I've never heard anybody pray like that. It's just like, oh, my goodness. He's in the presence of God, and it was different.

01:54:52

I'm serious. And then, when I was doing security at his funeral, incidentally, the pastor who married my wife, my mom and dad, was

01:55:01

Walter Martin's pastor. It's an interesting connection. So, I'm walking up and down the aisles because they wanted people there who could recognize cults, so a few others and me.

01:55:13

I was one of them. And I was in the aisle, and the door opened up, and I heard

01:55:18

Mrs. Martin say, and then the door closed, she said, and so I got up in the middle of the night, and I went to find him.

01:55:29

This is when he had died, how she found him dead. And I went to find him, and he was, I think he was sitting in the bathroom, and he was kneeling down, and I said, oh,

01:55:38

Walter, stop playing. Come back to bed. Stop praying. Come back to bed. And the door closed.

01:55:44

And it stunned me because her comment, would you stop that again? He was a man of prayer.

01:55:52

And I just never forgot that. Never forgot it. He was a great, great apologist, man.

01:55:59

I still listen to his stuff. Actually, if you folks can watch it on YouTube, he has a talk where he's in dialogue with another

01:56:09

Christian. There are two Christians, and they're role playing at the doorstep with a

01:56:14

Jehovah's Witness. It's excellent, and with a Mormon. It's like an hour and a half long, and it is awesome to see how

01:56:20

Walter Martin would actually have an actual conversation with a Jehovah's Witness. You can look that up. I think it's called

01:56:25

On the Doorstep with Jehovah's Witness and On the Doorstep with a Mormon. You guys should check that out.

01:56:33

All right. I love stories. I could listen to stuff like that all day long. I find that so fascinating. I stand out.

01:56:40

Now that you make me think, when I was at CRI, I guess it's called the

01:56:46

Bible Answer Man Headquarters or something. When I met with Hank Hanegraaff, he was telling me some cool stories of Walter Martin as well.

01:56:53

I think his life was so fascinating. Just so I can give a shameless plug, his daughter actually wrote a book called

01:57:00

The Bible Answer Man. It gives you all of these cool background stories from the perspective of his daughter and the history of CRI.

01:57:09

You guys might want to check that out. Definitely made me want to dig deeper into cult apologetics after reading his life.

01:57:15

It's super inspirational. Let's move quickly. Walter Martin also with his sidekick, but not in a derogatory sense sidekick, the guy,

01:57:25

I forgot his name. They actually had one of the best documented UFO photographs ever taken.

01:57:31

It was put on a magazine cover. That's super cool. All right.

01:57:38

One person whose name is Smo Petras Sifis.

01:57:44

I like the following technique, but what would your plan of attack be with a Jehovah's Witness that sends letters in the mail instead of door to door?

01:57:52

I've received eight letters in the past 1 .5 years. Well, eight's a number of new beginnings in the

01:57:58

Bible, letter topics. A new beginning for you, I'm reading too much into this, you need to write them back and say, yeah,

01:58:04

I'm interested in having a dialogue. Okay. All right. Next question. How would the

01:58:10

Jehovah's Witness get around the verse where Jesus says he is the first and the last in the book of Revelation?

01:58:17

Not revelations. All right. Just as a little heads up there. Well, let's go there and I'll show you what they do.

01:58:23

I can remember it or find it. They'll do this.

01:58:29

Let's see. Revelation 1. And they play a little bit of a word game.

01:58:35

All right. Okay. And so of Revelation by Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his slaves.

01:58:42

So God gave it to him. That's Revelation 1. So that's why Alpha the

01:58:47

Omega because really God talking through Jesus because God gave it to him.

01:58:53

So he's a true one. Now you have to go through the text and read and go, no, let's argue about it a little bit.

01:59:00

But you'll find that what I like to do is avoid things that bring up any argumentation because they'll shut off and I don't want to do that.

01:59:08

This is one of the ones I've stayed away from a little bit because of that. Not to say that it isn't worth trying and worth going at the right time, sir.

01:59:16

Okay. Mr. C. It's not a question but it's a statement that I think it would be worth speaking to.

01:59:24

No matter how logical or sensical your apologetics is, this person's not a believer. He comes on the show every now and then and post some good questions.

01:59:32

I appreciate Mr. C. He says, no matter how logical or sensical your apologetics is when confronting another religion, you're going to find yourself up against the power and influence of friends and family.

01:59:42

Now while that's true, Matt, what other power and influence is the kingdom of darkness going up against when a

01:59:49

Christian filled with the Spirit of God confronts a Jehovah's Witness? Why don't you go into a little bit of that because it's very important that we don't forget.

01:59:56

We don't forget. Well, why don't you unpack what the

02:00:01

Spirit does and why why, because the Spirit does what He does, we should never be intimidated or think our time is being wasted when we're talking with certain people.

02:00:14

Oh, that's important. Romans I mean, Isaiah 55 11 the Word of God will not come back empty without accomplishing what

02:00:20

He desires. That's a very critical verse. A lot of people don't believe that. Always quote the Scriptures. It's one of the reasons

02:00:25

I quote Scripture. Quote Scripture. Quote Scripture. It's the Word of God. It's the Word of God. It's the Word of God. Also, you want to go to Romans 1 16 the gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who would believe for the

02:00:35

Jew first the Gentile second. You always want to do that, but you got to remember this God is the one who opens the mind of people to understand the

02:00:43

Scripture. Luke 24 45. God grants that people believe. Philippians 1 29

02:00:49

He grants them repentance. 2 Timothy 2 25 He causes people to be born again.

02:00:56

1 Peter 1 3 and they're born again not of their own will. John 1 13 We have to understand these biblical truths so our job is to do the best to give an answer for the reason of the faith that lies within us.

02:01:10

1 Peter 3 15. We're to give a defense and we're to ask to answer as you quoted in Proverbs 26 4 and 5.

02:01:18

You know ask them according to his foolishness and not according to his foolishness. We're giving answers and if perchance

02:01:25

God may grant them repentance because it says in 2 Timothy 2 24 and 25 the

02:01:32

Lord's bond servant must not be quarrelsome but be kind to all Gentiles something when reproached answer with salt and season.

02:01:42

If perchance God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth. So what we want to do is understand that we're in sales not production.

02:01:53

God produces the souls that are saved we produce or we are in the sales.

02:02:00

Hey, this is what we want you to believe. So our job is to present the word of truth to the best of our ability and be prayerful in it, patient and kind and also go to Colossians 4, 5 and 6.

02:02:14

Conduct yourself with wisdom toward outsiders making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech season with salt so you know how you respond to everyone.

02:02:22

Season with salt and grace. So the thing is this is how we're to be and ask and when the door closes ask

02:02:28

Lord, would you please save that person? Would you please open that person's heart that mind because you're working against brainwashing demonic forces.

02:02:37

You go to Ephesians 6 12 we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities of darkness.

02:02:42

So you pray for that. Now I gotta warn you guys I want everybody about something. It's not something that's talked about and I'm sorry

02:02:48

I need to talk about this. If you ask to be used of God, you want to be used of God, you want to say

02:02:54

Lord bring Jehovah's Witnesses, bring Mormons to my door, teach me, I want to study this stuff. You better be ready to count the cost.

02:03:01

I think it's Luke 11 43. No it's not there. It's someplace else. I forgot. Luke 14 28

02:03:06

I think it is. Someone can correct me. Jesus says count the cost. Alright, you want to count the cost of what you're getting into.

02:03:14

You better understand that if you want to do this kind of work in ministry that there's a cost that comes in that you are knocking on demonic doors when you go after people, you go after cults, when you prepare and it's worth doing.

02:03:28

It's worth being persecuted. It's all worth that but the thing is I'm not gonna find that where it says count the cost and so otherwise

02:03:40

I won't be able to sleep at night so it's in yeah that's right it's Luke I was right

02:03:46

Luke 14 28 okay so you gotta be slick and so you have to be ready to be involved and when you study this stuff the demonic forces are aware maybe they'll get a flat tire tomorrow maybe you might get sick the next day maybe nothing will happen but let me tell you

02:04:04

I've had death threats I've been attacked by I got stories I got one story you guys just wouldn't believe but it's all true but death threats

02:04:16

I've been swatted outside hands up walking backwards in the dark guns pointed at me from the cops you know swatted not arrested but handcuffed

02:04:26

I think followed in my car been threatened with death my family's been threatened with death

02:04:31

FBI involved you know this is the kind of stuff that happens and you gotta be ready for it now

02:04:38

I've really had some excessive stuff happen because I'm really excessively into this but this is a kind of thing you gotta just be aware of that's all and in the increase of ungodliness in our world the doors for that are opening even more so just be aware that's all thank you for that yeah okay

02:05:00

Dylan here he says I like how Matt keeps forgetting he's done stuff with Eli who's

02:05:06

Eli who's that guy it's like you know what it is I actually wanted to put that up there because I wanted to just emphasize

02:05:17

Matt you do so much that it is almost impossible to keep track of everything

02:05:23

Matt just had a debate with a Muslim apologist Muslim scholar Shabbir Ali which

02:05:30

I believe you can find on the Stand for Truth YouTube channel and I thought he did an excellent job so you guys want to check that out but he has done multiple debates just in the past week every time

02:05:41

I call him and you know how's it going he's just like it's going look he just looks older look at him look at him if you remember

02:05:48

Matt Slick when he was younger and he looked really cool with a beard and then just compare what he looks like now

02:05:55

I mean look at him just look at him I'll be 65 in a couple of months yeah he's if you look at his high school yearbook he's got a selfie with Moses he's just like he's super old the yearbook is in wired stone tablets that's right well

02:06:20

Matt I appreciate this we just went over two hours and I don't want to keep you more because we're buddies

02:06:28

I don't mind taking advantage of you a little bit two hours is long for anyone but I'll tell you what someone's at I wouldn't mind telling the story if you guys want to have five extra minutes

02:06:40

I'll tell you okay yep let's tell the story and then we'll wrap things up and then just while before you tell the stories guys if you have found this content helpful why don't you share this video with someone or I'm going to try to make some shorter snippets from things that Matt has said so that you could have kind of shorter videos to share with individuals you know people you might know on your social media but if you found this helpful you know click the like button it helps with the algorithms and all that fancy YouTube stuff and thank you so much for listening

02:07:13

I do appreciate everyone's support so let's hear this story and then we'll wrap things up Matt go for it speaking of busy

02:07:20

I got to teach Bible study tomorrow night I may go out to Pocatello to witness at the Mormons I may go down on the 23rd to Salt Lake for a tour with Bill McKeever I get another debate next week and I got something else good so yeah it's busy and I'm doing research on COVID alright so this is a true story okay now not to get too emotional but this is part of everything

02:07:42

I my wife and I lost a son at after birth and that was very traumatizing and we went through that like 27 years ago alright that left a mark on me and so I have a sympathy for anybody who has lost a child and and I can talk about that some other time in that level okay now the reason

02:08:05

I'm bringing this up is because Diane who used to work with us at CARM she made friends with a lesbian

02:08:15

Satanist and and Diane since passed away but the the lesbian

02:08:23

Satanist had a daughter who was murdered and died in her arms in her front yard and I said oh my goodness

02:08:35

I said I want to talk to her and so because I've lost a son this opened the door and so I talked with this girl for two hours

02:08:48

I should really correct that and say she talked at me against God and everything for about two hours cussing swearing this that and I just listened and you know

02:09:00

I understand that's yeah trust me I understand it's hell and so this went on for two hours this is part of the story okay two hours and she you know got out of her system not that that makes it better it doesn't but you know she thanked me she goes

02:09:18

I know who you are know what you do I don't agree with you but she said but thank you for listening and not preaching at me and I said look

02:09:26

I'm here to you know I care I mean if I was there with you I would sit with you and weep with you it's just hell and this made an impression on her okay that's part of the story all right now another part of the story because these things come together okay another part of the story is

02:09:46

I started getting these emails from someone who said that they were going to kill me and my wife and that they were

02:09:54

Satanists in the area of Southern California knew where I was going to kill me and you're right yeah

02:10:06

I just heard a noise oh I know what it is okay okay it's just it sounded like something else okay it's the the curtain with the wind and so he's going to kill me we got the police involved the

02:10:19

FBI got involved and this person would send we found out it was a woman in Australia we didn't know that at the time and she was sending to us

02:10:30

MapQuest addresses to my house and where I was living but for some reason it was off I never told her it was off but she sent pictures with her

02:10:42

Satanist group saying you know we know who this we know who you are we know this we know that got connections in Southern California we're going to have them come after you so the police went and talked to her in Australia and knocked on her door she got pissed off about that and said okay that's it

02:10:59

I'm going to contact the people who are going to come after you now now that she sent me they whoever sent me pictures of people who were sacrificed

02:11:11

I mean I can still see them in my head they were sacrificed and their blood their guts and then they sent a letter to me an email that it was routed some weird way and it was so bad that if the person had been in the room and said it to me

02:11:28

I would have attacked him right or wrong I would have and my wife wanted to read it

02:11:34

I just would not let her read it nope this is not happening it was protection against her this is how evil this was that's another part of the story right alright so this satanist the second satanist was really coming after me the first satanist

02:11:52

I talked to heard about it and decided to get on that first one the other one and tell her to leave me alone now there's more to this now

02:12:05

I've got one satanist fighting against another satanist to protect me a Christian who's against satanism so you go

02:12:14

I can see that it's unusual oh it gets better and so okay now put that aside so there was a debate session

02:12:23

I had with some atheists years ago on the forums and I told

02:12:31

I'll skip details I set them up for a fall and they fell and I have what happened and everything and they didn't like it and I outsmarted them is what happened and so what they did was they started

02:12:46

AARM atheist apologetics research ministry and their goal was to bring down karm to shut the server down destroy the website now guess who they wanted on their secret board for their secret meetings to be able to work against me they wanted the satanist girl on that I spent two hours talking with and she agreed so she was on this board with them and then what happened was she would feed me information that they would say they were going to do

02:13:23

I would then give it to the service provider and they would harden the problems they take care of stuff and their frustration grew there's a lot more details

02:13:33

I won't get into it but their frustration grew she said I don't like what you do man but you have the right to do what you want and you spend time with me and blah blah blah and don't tell them anything you know so I had an informant inside of their group

02:13:46

I'll do it this way an informant inside of their group who's feeding me information this went on for a year or two and they could not figure this out it frustrated the heck out of them alright so this organization was started by a particular individual and I won't give you his name my brother

02:14:07

I have two brothers one was in Missouri at the time the other one is in Southern California and I'm here in Idaho I think by that time and he said hey

02:14:17

Matt have you ever heard of so and so on your end right there

02:14:24

Eli? I think my son is screaming now okay he's like crying yeah if you could mute because it's

02:14:31

I won't be able to mute yourself just for a little bit I'll fill this yeah I'll mute myself yeah okay yeah for those who don't know

02:14:39

I'm autistic I have Asperger's I can't handle too many high -pitched sounds for very long alright and so and just being a child that's okay it's just me so what happened was my brother calls up and he says do you know so and so and I said yes that guy caused his problems he said this he's done that almost had a lawsuit

02:14:57

I mean I'm skipping details blah blah blah and he's trying to destroy karma and I go on for a couple minutes and I said why?

02:15:04

and he said he works for me this is for real this guy who started this anti -karm ministry worked for my brother and so I said are you kidding me what are the odds of that that now the guy who's trying to destroy karm has a satanist inside his organization feeding me information and the same guy works for my brother what are the odds this is for real and so my dad was with that brother and my dad was getting sick and he's passed away since and so I had to go out and see him you know before he passed away my other brother and I we went out there and so my brother my middle brother you know who's out in Missouri I said

02:15:51

I want to go see this guy at your work so I got to meet him he saw me and I walk into his office and he saw me he saw me because he knows my face right and I walk over I'm not big but I'm six feet tall couple hundred pounds you know and that's small and my brother he makes me look like a midget okay

02:16:14

I'm the smallest one of the family and I'm six feet tall at 220 pounds and so I just I walked over to his desk he's staring at me like this okay because I walk over I'm not small you know and I just you know

02:16:31

I go I put my fists on the desk and I lean forward I got my jaw out there like please it was body language take a swing at me that's what

02:16:40

I want you to do that was obvious but I said I just lean forward you know and I go isn't it interesting how the lord provides things and you know how he works and I'm like oh man

02:16:52

I'm so glad I'm here to be able to talk to you and I'm leaning forward and he's backing up in his chair because he knows

02:16:58

I want him to take a swing because I'll be all over him like a monkey in a cupcake right and rip apart and I would you know

02:17:05

I'm sorry but you don't even know what kind of problems he caused and kind of stuff libel slander it was bad that's very odd you're right the chances of that was

02:17:19

I don't only happen to you it wouldn't happen to me but it happened it's all true and I skipped some details to shorten it up because there's more stuff but you get the message no worries well thank you so much for sharing that and thank you for all the

02:17:33

Jehovah's Witness stuff and just giving us tools to use I hope folks have found this really helpful and I'm going to be snipping parts of this interview and making multiple videos so that folks could find the specific information that is useful to them

02:17:49

I'm sure everyone won't use every single thing that was said here tonight so thank you so much Matt for your time

02:17:55

I appreciate it I appreciate your friendship and just your guidance when I have a problem and I give you a call you're always very helpful and I do appreciate that very much and I get a hell from you too so praise

02:18:06

God that's right well guys thank you so much if you guys enjoyed this video click the like button and subscribe if you haven't and go over and check karm .org

02:18:15

if you have not already I mean I don't know anyone who does apologetics and has never heard of karm so if you haven't definitely check it out check it out alright alright well that's it for this episode thank you so much for listening guys take care