Let’s Bring the Light of God’s Truth to Jehovah’s Witnesses

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:31

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are in the big studio. But before we get started,

00:38

Rich walked in today as I was getting set up and brought me this.

00:48

This is me. Now, I really don't have a face, but I do have my beards there.

00:59

And of course, I'm bald. And we've got a very colorful

01:04

Fuji sweater and jeans. That's normally pretty, you know, no fancy shoes, because I don't do the fancy shoes stuff very much.

01:12

But yes, and it came with a very nice letter from Paige, Paige Wells.

01:23

And I won't go through the letter. I appreciate the encouragement and the fact that our ministry has been a benefit to you.

01:33

And so Paige wanted us all to know that if you go to etherealwooldolls, one word, .etsy

01:42

.com, and put in the promo code KUJI22, you can get 20 % off your very own

01:49

James White wool. It's made of wool, you see, wool doll.

01:54

Now, here's my concern. I'll be, there you go. See, there I am.

02:01

I've got a Bible in my hand, and I'm doing something. And here's my concern.

02:10

OK, so I've got a debate. In fact, Paige said she's going to try to make the debate in Houston coming up on the 8th,

02:17

I believe, of February. And it'll be on what is marriage.

02:23

It'll be a very interesting evening, I can assure you. And I can just see many of my detractors.

02:36

I can see the provisionist doing this, OK? I can see all the provisionist guys showing up on the front row with one of these.

02:46

And then while I'm trying to make my opening statement, they pull out these big, long pins. And they just start.

02:55

And I start going, ah, ah. I could just, I could see that happening.

03:00

I could really, someone's going to do that. Someone's going to, there's no question about it.

03:06

But yes, etherealwooldolls .etsy .com. Hoogee22 for your edification.

03:19

Yes, well. And something tells me he would probably, I doubt that is fireproof wool.

03:27

Something tells me if someone wanted to light him up, that he would probably light up real wool.

03:35

Real wool. Real wool. So, there you go.

03:41

That's a nice coogee, though. That's very, very well done. Who's first? Oh, yeah.

03:48

I'm supposed to be nice to Rich, or he's going to be sitting back there with, you know, what, you're going to take this one and stick it back there?

03:55

Yeah, OK. All right. So anyway, we have a lot to get to today. And we're in the big studio, so we're doing some stuff with the big board.

04:04

I'm starting to see the big board appearing in other places. Coming to Baptist Theological Seminary, I think they got their big board.

04:14

A number of the pictures I saw of last weekend's class with Lane Tipton on Van Till, I kept seeing this board in the background.

04:25

If it's not the same one, it's very much the same one. I verified that.

04:31

Oh, you verified that? OK, all right. Rich says it is the same one. So we just want everybody to remember who had theirs first.

04:41

Well, we can actually thank Matt for that, I think. Matt was our go -to guy on getting the big boards.

04:51

So what happened? Last, I don't know, I guess it was, oh, it was sometime last week.

05:04

I think it was Thursday of last week. No, Friday.

05:10

Anyway, I had some people coming. I was in the middle of doing some other stuff, and the doorbell rang.

05:19

And I thought, oh, man, they're here early, or something like that. And I come to the door, and there are two gentlemen standing outside.

05:27

And one of them is reading from a script and starts talking to me about,

05:34

I think it was, what do I think the kingdom of God would be? Something like that.

05:40

And so I'm just like, so what group are you all with? Well, we're

05:46

Jehovah's Witnesses. So I opened the door, and I step out. Because I'm surprised.

05:52

I am surprised on many levels. I have watched Jehovah's Witnesses walk past my home for many, many years.

06:02

But I'm also surprised because Jehovah's Witnesses stopped going door to door during COVID.

06:10

And they started writing letters to people, and I guess either mailing them or delivering them into mailboxes.

06:18

And I'm sorry. We all know that's going to be incredibly ineffective.

06:26

And so while I was talking to them, I noticed there was a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses on the other side of the street.

06:31

So they were back doing the old service ministry work. And maybe it's just been so long since they did it, they lost their maps.

06:41

You know, the one that says, don't go to this house, don't go to that house. And so John and Ed came by my house.

06:51

And I didn't have a lot of time. Like I said, I had people coming over, something else.

06:59

And so we weren't able to get too deeply into things. But I had a nice conversation, especially with John.

07:07

Ed just was sort of listening in. And I get the feeling that John either is an elder or has been an elder at some point in time.

07:18

And I did what I have a little bit of an advantage in this situation. I just go ahead and tell them what

07:24

I do. And if they're going to run, they're going to run then. And we're not going to be wasting our time. But I said, you know,

07:30

I teach at a number of different schools. I lecture on what various religious groups believe, including your own.

07:42

And I've talked much about what you all believe. And I've read many of your books. And so I started off by asking them, so last time

07:51

I did much digging, the society was 1914 was a long time ago.

08:03

And according to teaching the Watchtower Society in the past, God stopped calling people into the anointed class in 1935.

08:12

And has that stopped? It seemed to me like they were working at getting rid of the anointed class, slave class, earth class type distinction.

08:26

Great crowd, the anointed class and the great crowd. Seemed like they were trying to open up room for a third group or something like that.

08:36

And John engaged all that. John answered as best he could those particular questions.

08:42

But he had asked me at one point, do you believe in the Trinity? And so I only had time to go through one text with them very briefly.

08:56

And when I went on Twitter later in the day, someone had mentioned, you really ought to do some programs on how to talk to Jehovah's Witnesses.

09:05

And I'm like, you have to remember, we've been doing this honestly.

09:13

We don't have the records of them. But we started doing the dividing line in the 1980s.

09:24

And for many years, I mean, this ministry started with a focus on Mormonism.

09:35

That was when the ministry was founded 40 years ago this

09:40

August, this coming August, with four founding members.

09:46

We had one tract, one photocopied tract with questionable theology in it.

09:56

And we were pretty much just dealing with Mormonism. And when the ministry was founded, that was pretty much what we were going to be focused on was the

10:07

LDS church. And for years, that was the main focus. Going up to Salt Lake City, going out to the

10:13

Easter pageant of the Mormon church in Mesa, the tracts that we did, things like that.

10:20

But it did not take long when I started teaching at North Phoenix Baptist Church, which is a very different church today than it was in the 1980s.

10:32

And I was allowed to teach class on Mormonism.

10:41

And I think, yeah, by the time you and I met,

10:47

Mike had taken over the Mormonism class, and I was teaching Christian doctrine class.

10:54

And so it really was fairly early on that people would attend the

11:02

Mormonism class, and they would inevitably have questions about Jehovah's Witnesses. I was a little bit hesitant.

11:12

I was already, you know, I didn't have anyone to guide me at this point in time.

11:19

I don't think anyone at Grand Canyon knew what apologetics was. Grand Canyon University, well, Grand Canyon College back then.

11:27

I was going solo on a lot of this. Though, I will give thanks for Dr.

11:36

Bill Williams, president of Grand Canyon College, because I remember in a

11:42

Bible study class, young marrieds Bible study class, because like I said,

11:49

Kelly and I got married. I was 19, she was 18, and I ran more missionaries just a few weeks after we got married.

11:54

So I remember him after a class where I had said something about we were meeting with missionaries or something.

12:02

You know, he very properly and appropriately, you know, was concerned, wanted to make sure that there was a solid foundation.

12:13

And, you know, that's the same attitude that I have to this day, now with 40 years of experience behind me.

12:22

But anyway, I hesitated to expand out into other areas because I knew how much work

12:34

I'd already done to try to come to understand Mormonism. And once you get into Jehovah's Witnesses, and I've used this illustration many times, when you look at the range of topics that you need to have familiarity with to deal with Mormonism, it's very, very wide, but it's not all that deep.

12:58

With Jehovah's Witnesses, just turn that like this. It's a narrow range of topics, but you need to know it really well.

13:08

And so to get into Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, you had to go buy their books.

13:13

And, you know, I subscribed to the Watchtower and Awake magazines and ran into some people who knew more than I did that were helpful in finding resources, things like that.

13:27

So we started dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. And for a long time, that was all we did.

13:32

And then along came a fellow by the name of Benny Diaz, who's no longer with us. And he's like, you know, a lot of the stuff you're saying about the

13:40

Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, I'm a former Roman Catholic. And when you start talking about the consistency of scripture and sola scriptura and things like that, you know, these are issues that are relevant there.

13:52

And so you ended up with that starting and, you know, interesting histories to be found in the development of things over the years with Alvin and Megan Ministries.

14:06

So when someone says, I wish you'd do some programs on how to talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, I'm sitting here going, do you have any idea how many programs we've done on that subject?

14:18

And then they go, over 40 years. And then you realize, yeah, well, they probably have only been listening to the program for the past three.

14:28

So they missed the first 37 years. So they're not like Algo. And you know,

14:34

Algo's not the only one. I have met, I've probably met 24 people now who claim to have listened to everything they can possibly get their hands on.

14:47

Every debate, every dividing line, everything on the sermon audio, everything that they could possibly find.

14:56

And my response is always the same when someone says that to me. I say, I'm so sorry. I would never want to do that.

15:03

So I don't know why you would want to do that. But there have been a bunch of people. But still, that's probably two dozen at most.

15:15

And it always makes me smile when people say, oh man, I've been listening to you forever.

15:20

I started listening to you in 2015. I just started going, well, that's not really forever, but it may seem that way to you.

15:30

And I certainly would understand why. So I thought it would be important, it would be very good to once again do some basic stuff.

15:42

And since we have, since the Jehovah's Witnesses are starting to go door to door, maybe, just maybe, you will be one of those homes that used to have a big old

15:54

X on the front. And maybe they'll go, you know what? People move, things change.

16:00

We're gonna try, we're just gonna take all this out and rebuild our maps and go ahead and visit all the homes and we'll go from there.

16:09

So maybe I'm already X'd out because I had the conversation, though it was a very calm and respectful and kind conversation.

16:20

You know, maybe I'll look out a couple weeks from now and they'll just be walking on by and going to my neighbors and not coming to me.

16:27

It's happened before, it's quite possible. Who knows, we'll find out. But I was disappointed on Twitter by a number of people, not many, but there were a few, who did the slam the door on their face routine.

16:45

Now look, if you're not ready, or if you lack the love and charity to speak to these people, if you don't recognize the dreariness of their life and just want to allow them to continue to languish in darkness, okay.

17:05

But man, I hope you feel really, really convicted about that, as you should feel convicted about that.

17:14

And, you know, I was thinking about it. Someone, was it in our element channel where someone had found the reasoning from the scriptures book and it was like $127 or something like that?

17:31

I think it was. I just remember Benny Diaz and I going down in the 1980s to Tucson, to the convention center in Tucson, where the witnesses were having what's called their district convention.

17:47

And we attended, and we attended because we had heard that their new service ministry manual was gonna be coming out.

17:57

And so we wanted to get a copy. And it's the old

18:02

Brown reasoning from the scriptures book. And I guess they don't use it anymore because if it costs that much on Amazon, it's obviously not in print any longer.

18:16

But I just remember sitting there, listening to the talks and listening to the singing.

18:24

And my, you know, you just, if all you see are people that are interrupting your

18:30

Saturday morning or something like that, you're just, it probably is best that you just close the door. Yeah, it probably would be best.

18:37

If you don't see people who have been given just the most,

18:45

I don't know how to describe it. There was no joy in the singing. It was dreary.

18:52

The talks were monotonous. It was just, you know,

18:59

I think of David Reed and how he was sitting in a convention as Joe's witness.

19:05

He looked out the window and he saw a lone person standing outside with a sign that said, read the

19:12

Bible, not the watchtower. And it's real easy for your mind to wander listening to those talks.

19:21

They're just read out. They're just, oof. And he started thinking, you know, well,

19:29

I do read a lot more of the watchtower than I do the Bible. And that's what started it.

19:34

Just one guy with a sign. And a person starts thinking about it.

19:41

But the point being, if you don't have a love for these people, if you don't have some compassion for them, then yeah, don't get in, don't get on your theological high horse and, you know, get out your big old sword and wanna run somebody through with it.

20:00

That wouldn't be good. But for those who actually want to begin a process, you know, at the doorway, you're not gonna, you're not gonna have too much time.

20:13

Even if you arrange for them to come and sit and stuff, you're probably only gonna have a couple of, one meeting probably, a couple of meetings at most.

20:22

I've met a few people that somehow are obviously just much nicer than me. And so they've made it for a few more meetings.

20:31

But you want to start a process. The vast majority of these people have never encountered

20:37

Christians who really know the Bible and who really know their theology, let alone know their theology,

20:46

Jehovah's Witness theology, and hence make the effort to build the bridges and do the communication that needs to be done.

20:55

So somebody has to start that process. And it may be someone else who gets to finish that process.

21:04

You may never even find out the seeds that you sowed and what they came to. But that's how the

21:13

Lord does things. And so we do need believers who are desirous to be used of God in the lives of Jehovah's Witnesses, to bring them to a knowledge of the truth.

21:29

And so I want to go over something, I've done it many times in a program before, so I'll go, sorry, you've already heard all this.

21:41

And we've done it on the program within the past five, six, seven years probably, at some point. But I'm fooling myself if I think that everyone just simply remembers everything that's been done on every dividing line over the past five years.

21:59

Most people don't remember a sermon from the year before. So that's how it works. Now, let me just say from the start, this is,

22:10

I'm pretty certain, this is the current edition of the New World Translation of the

22:16

Holy Scriptures. This is the 2013 edition.

22:24

And I know I first saw this gray version. It's actually rather classy looking.

22:30

I saw this gray version, I told you a story about when I was in Durban, South Africa.

22:40

And I was running a 10K along the ocean back when

22:45

I could still run 10Ks. And I ran out to the end of this pier and there's this guy out in the darkness before sunrise.

22:55

And he's preaching to the ocean. He's facing out into the ocean and he's preaching.

23:02

And I come up behind him and he realizes I'm there. And he grabs a book that he had in front of him.

23:09

And this is what it was. Soon as I saw it, I recognized it was the

23:14

New World Translation, so I knew I was dealing with Jehovah's Witness. But I had not seen the gray version.

23:21

It had only been out for a little while. And this is the greatest barrier that you're gonna have to get around in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses because it is a mistranslation of Scripture.

23:37

It is a perversion of the Scripture. And that creates a lot of difficulty and challenge for you.

23:46

There's no, there's no choice about it. Now, thankfully, what I'm gonna share with you today doesn't require you to deal with mistranslations at all, really.

24:02

You can just pass over all of them when doing this presentation.

24:08

And I've said many times that the first time

24:13

I did it this way, I had been invited by a Christian to meet with some

24:20

Jehovah's Witnesses on a Saturday morning. So it was an appointment. And three elders showed up.

24:29

That's a little bit unusual, but three elders came. And they asked me, as happened last week, do you believe in the

24:39

Trinity? And I had already introduced myself in the sense that, you know,

24:45

I already told them. I lecture about what you all believe. And what I did in that situation was

24:51

I said, could I give you a summary of what I would tell my students?

24:57

You all believe. And then I gave them the most accurate in their own language summary of their beliefs about God.

25:09

Jesus is Michael the Archangel. The Holy Spirit is an impersonal active force. The great crowd, the anointed class, the faithful and discreet slave, the

25:22

Watchtower Battle and Track Society, all of that. And that got their attention.

25:31

That could end the conversation immediately. For many, many

25:37

Jehovah's Witnesses, they encounter a non -Jehovah's Witness that knows that much about what they believe, they're out the door.

25:43

And many of them will actually believe that you must be a former Witness to have that level of knowledge.

25:51

It's just, it's a risk that I'm willing to take.

25:56

It's because it's opened some really good doors. And then I said, so you asked me why

26:01

I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Let me show you from your Bible why

26:07

I believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Now, I had purchased the opportunity to do this by accurately representing what they believe.

26:20

Because this can't necessarily be done in three minutes.

26:26

So we have to be wise. There are, if you can tell you're gonna have 90 seconds, then this isn't the direction you wanna go.

26:35

But if you've hopefully, they've come into someone else's home, an appointment has been made, they've sat down.

26:45

I figured we'd have a little more time. And I didn't see the, you can sort of tell when someone wants to get out of a room.

26:55

I didn't see that with these guys. And so I went for it. So what

27:01

I did is, now you can use the NWT. You can use New World Translation.

27:07

Go ahead and let them do it. Now, by the way, I actually did mention this last week.

27:17

We now have a conservative, excellent

27:24

Bible translation that uses the divine name all through the

27:30

Old Testament. There had been an English translation, I think it was the

27:35

New Jerusalem Bible, that had Jehovah in the Old Testament. But we now have the

27:44

Legacy Standard Bible. And it uses Yahweh throughout the

27:49

Old Testament. That is incredibly helpful.

27:55

These guys had no idea. Jehovah's Witnesses in general are shocked when you show knowledge of the divine name.

28:06

Either how to recognize it in a regular English Bible, L -O -R -D in all caps, smaller font for the

28:11

O and the R and D. But when you know what the Tetragrammaton is, Yod -Heh -Wau -Heh, Yahweh, don't get into an argument with them about pronunciation.

28:22

Jehovah is not a possibility. But don't even, if there's any resistance there at all, just switch over to Jehovah.

28:32

It doesn't make any difference. Because if the

28:39

Bible identifies Jesus as Jehovah, all the rest of that stuff becomes irrelevant.

28:47

Their system's done at that point. So, Legacy Standard Bible, super strong on the text on the deity of Christ, and uses

29:01

Yahweh in the Old Testament. So, very useful along those lines. So I asked them to turn to Psalm 102, 25 -27.

29:15

And I have it up here. I do not have the New World Translation in Accordance Bible Software.

29:22

They don't have it because they can't, it's copyrighted. So, I'll be using

29:29

Legacy Standard Bible. But you can see here. Now, what's important is,

29:36

I'll scroll back here a little bit. And here in verse 22, when the peoples are gathered together and the kingdoms to serve

29:44

Yahweh. So, there's a tetragrammaton, Yahweh. And so, here is, that'll be

29:52

Jehovah in the New World Translation of the

29:57

Holy Scriptures. And so, we're talking about Yahweh here. And verse 25, of old, you founded the earth.

30:05

This is Yahweh being addressed. And the heavens, the work of your hands. Even they will perish, but you will remain.

30:12

And all of them will wear out like a garment. Like clothing, you will change them. They will be changed, but you're the same and years will not come to an end.

30:18

And so, I asked them to read Psalm 102, 25 -27.

30:24

And I asked them, who's being addressed? They look up, Jehovah. So, Jehovah's being addressed.

30:33

And what is said about Jehovah here? Well, he is unchanging.

30:41

He is immutable. You are the same. Your years will not come to an end.

30:47

And he is put in direct contrast to the creation, the Son, which comes into existence and ages, but he does not age.

30:59

And so, I say, so, would you agree with me that only

31:05

Jehovah is unchanging? Because he is the creator of all things.

31:10

He is eternal. He did not have a beginning, will not have an end. So, would you agree with me that Jehovah is immutable?

31:18

He's unchanging? Yes, we would agree with that. Okay, now keep that text in mind and turn with me to Hebrews chapter one.

31:33

Now, I realize sometimes there's nerves involved and things like that, but this one, especially, it's important that you cover all your bases so you don't have to go back and try to, fix things up later on.

31:52

You could just go to verses 10 through 12. Don't do that. You need, the more that they make your points for you, the better, okay?

32:07

If they are answering questions in such a way that they are setting these things in place, that's much more effective in the long run.

32:19

So, I go back to verse eight, because verse eight begins, but of the son, he says, your throne, oh

32:29

God, is forever and ever. And the scepter of your brightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your

32:34

God has annoyed you with the oil of gladness above your companions. Now, the

32:40

New World Translation will not say your throne, oh God. It'll say, God is your throne.

32:47

Now, that's a prejudicial translation on their part.

32:55

Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. All you're doing by looking at verses eight and nine is establishing who is being addressed.

33:07

Who is being addressed? And who is being addressed is the son. But of the son, he says, your throne, oh

33:16

God, is forever. So, he's speaking to the son. And you have the quotation through verse nine, and then verse 10 says, and, and then the quotes pick up again.

33:30

Now, the New World Translation does this acceptably. It has the and, and then the quotes pick up.

33:41

And I've already taken a lot of background time, so I won't go ahead and pop these up, but I did take pictures earlier today.

33:50

And I could pull them up, but the NWT will help you here.

33:56

The NWT will help you here. And in fact, the 2013 NWT will help you here.

34:04

How? Well, at the beginning of the book of Hebrews, there is a outline of content right before chapter one.

34:17

And for chapter one, it says, God speaks by means of his son, one through four, and then the son superior to the angels, five through 14.

34:30

So, their own outline says that verses five through 14 are about the son being superior to the angel.

34:41

But then in the cross -reference in the 2013 edition, in the 2013 edition, you have at the end of verse 12, the end of the quotes, there's a little

34:57

C, a little reference. You go into the center column, you go into the center column, and it says

35:05

Psalm 102, 25 through 27. So, the

35:11

NWT will back you up when you get them to finally get to the reading of Hebrews chapter one.

35:22

So, ask them to read Hebrews one, 10 through 12. And, speaking to the son, you,

35:30

Lord, in the beginning founded the earth and the heavens, the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. And they all will wear out like a garment and like a mantle, you will roll them up like a garment.

35:39

They will also be changed, but you are the same and your years will not come to an end. So, they've just read those same words from Psalm 102 and have agreed only

35:55

Yahweh, only Jehovah is unchanging. And now you've shown them in Hebrews chapter one, that these words are applied specifically to the son.

36:10

That's why it's important to start in Psalm 102 and get them to say, yes, this is only about Jehovah God.

36:19

Only Jehovah God is unchanging. Only Jehovah God is eternal. Everything else has been made, including

36:24

Michael the archangel, who is Jesus for them. And so, you show them this.

36:34

If they're not sure it's the same citation or something, like I said, you can use their own cross -reference there.

36:40

If they, well, I'm not sure this is about the son. Well, even your outline says it is. The quotations in your text say that it is.

36:49

So, here you have a New Testament writer that takes a section that we all agree is only relevant to Jehovah, uniquely to Jehovah.

36:58

This is why this is so strong. There are well -meaning

37:05

Christians that will find texts about Jesus being king, and then they'll find texts about Yahweh being king and say, see,

37:14

Jesus is Yahweh. The problem is, then you can find texts about David being king or Solomon being king.

37:20

That doesn't make David or Solomon Yahweh. Because kingship is not unique in that sense, but immutability is.

37:31

That's why, you know, I was sent a video this week from a Unitarian, and some

37:36

Jehovah's Witnesses will, they can get into trouble for it, but some

37:43

Jehovah's Witnesses will sort of dig around on the internet and find non -Watchtower

37:49

Unitarian sources and use their stuff. There are Unitarians, they're always small groups.

37:57

Unitarianism always dies slowly over time. Once you do not have a divine

38:04

Jesus, everything falls apart. And Unitarianism falls apart over time.

38:14

It has no means of maintaining its own focus. But they're out there, and they're very zealous, and so I was sent a video from this guy.

38:22

He's saying, Jesus never claimed to be God. And what you'll have from a lot of modern day

38:28

Unitarians is they will utilize intertestamental, like very rare for Jehovah's Witness to do this, but just so you're fully prepared.

38:39

They will use like intertestamental materials, and they will say, well, Jesus just bore the name of God himself, like this person over in this intertestamental book, or this one over here, or something like that.

38:52

And it's similar to the argument that was made when Michael Brown and I did the debate with Anthony Buzzard and Joseph Goode in 2010,

39:04

I think that was, 2010 or 2011. And this representational idea.

39:11

It's all they've got, it's all they've got. Now, the

39:17

New Testament writers don't quote from their sources, don't make that application. It's a forced application.

39:22

But the point is this, this particular text, and if you wanna hear how this works,

39:28

I forget what year it was, but I did, I was in studio. Man, I went to London a lot, between 2005 and 2019.

39:38

I wonder how much time I actually spent in London over all those years, it was a lot. But I was in the studio on Justin Brierley's program, with Anthony Buzzard, and we went over this text.

39:57

And so they know about this, and this is key for them.

40:06

Because when you consider what's being said here, if it is uniquely about Yahweh, it cannot be truly said of anyone else.

40:16

And here in Hebrews one, this is demonstrating the supremacy of the Son to the highest created being, the angel, and so that's why this is so strong and so vitally important.

40:32

This isn't just bearing a name, this is being identified as that divine name with unique characteristics that are solely had by Yahweh.

40:46

Now, here's where you have to have a heart check, I just realized today, that might get us kicked off of YouTube.

40:59

Well, those dumb AI bots say I'm running on, I just had a heart check. They're probably going, oh, you're saying that someone's gonna keel over and die suddenly.

41:09

And it's like, no, no, I'm talking about Christians. Christians having a heart check.

41:16

Why are you doing what you're doing? If you're speaking to these witnesses, just simply to pull out your theological sword and run them through and get your sword bloody, then what you're gonna do is you're going to push right here and you're gonna say,

41:36

I want an answer right here. And that's gonna end your conversation because especially if they're elders, they're gonna come up with an answer.

41:49

And as I've said so many times before, it may be the dumbest thing they've ever said, but they're probably gonna go to their grave believing it because you forced them to, you pressed them.

42:01

If you really care for these people and you want to do an even better job in communicating to them, here's what you do.

42:11

You show them this, the vast majority of Jehovah's Witnesses have never seen them, vast majority.

42:19

And so there's that awkward moment before they can even try to come up with an answer, what you do is you give them an escape route.

42:31

You go, escape route, why would I want to do that? Because you care about them and you want them to think this through.

42:39

You don't want instant gratification. You're leaving your theological sword, you're using your theological sword to do surgery rather than cutting a limb off, okay?

42:51

So what you do is you give them room and what you do is you say, now, it wouldn't be fair of me to ask you to respond to that if you've not seen that cross -reference before.

43:04

But I hope we can get together again and talk about that and could I show you another one? By giving them room and not demanding they come up with an answer, you've given yourself the opportunity of doubling the amount of light that you provide to them because I have yet to have a

43:24

Witness say, nope, you can't show me another one. And when I met with those three elders, they're like, sure, yeah, show us another one.

43:34

And so the first one, write it down. Psalm 102, 25 to 27, Hebrews chapter one, verses 10 through 12 with all the other stuff that I've mentioned along the way to make those things more efficient and effective as you're doing it.

43:52

The next one is from John chapter 12. Now, you could, if you want to, you can be a little less strict in the ordering of your presentation here, but I think this is the best way to do it.

44:11

And by the way, this is helpful. This really is, I have, people often ask, they'll sit in on one of these conversations or we'll be out amongst the

44:27

Mormons and they'll see that generally

44:33

I have control of the conversation. And many people will go, man, I've never had control of one of those conversations.

44:41

How come you do? And part of it just may be I look really scary, possible.

44:49

But the reality is, when you demonstrate by your presentation that you are very familiar with these texts, you're not just simply, you don't just have a little card you're reading in the back of your

45:09

Bible, Jehovah's Witness verses, Mormon verses, that type of thing. You generally will get to control the conversation.

45:21

And so if you know what the context of John chapter 12 is,

45:29

I present something like this. I'd say, you know, when you get to John chapter 12, which of course is the end of Jesus' public ministry in the gospel of John, from this point on, chapters 13 through his arrest is the private ministry to the disciples.

45:44

And you have this really interesting discussion on John's part about the unbelief of the

45:51

Jews and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and things like that. What you're doing is you're setting up the context, but you're also controlling the conversation because a lot of them don't know that that's what

46:05

John chapter 12 is about. So you're establishing a level of authority, and you're also establishing a level of reality.

46:15

Like I said, you're not just sitting there going, say this to Jehovah's Witnesses, you are a member of a cult.

46:21

You know, that doesn't really work all that well. Is that your way of doing it?

46:31

Woke him up. Yeah, I could tell that Rich was sitting back there going, no one's ever made a wool doll of me.

46:50

Someone should make a wool doll of you in a coogee. That would be awesome. Was there something you wanted to say from the

46:58

Twitch channel? Is that what you - Actually, Twitch does have a little bit of it. How difficult is it to use the

47:08

Greek Septuagint in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses? Yeah, there's a

47:14

Twitch question, which I don't see, but that'd be very distracting.

47:20

How difficult is it to use the Greek Septuagint in dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses? John knew about the

47:25

Septuagint, and he was familiar with that terminology. Ed did not, but there were reasons for that.

47:35

And the Septuagint will come up here in a moment, and maybe someone's anticipating that.

47:40

It could be someone in the channel that already knows where we're going here, and the Septuagint could become important here in a moment. But actually,

47:49

Jehovah's Witnesses are gonna be significantly more aware of that, a background like the

47:58

Greek Septuagint, than Mormons, for example. I don't, I can count on one hand the number of Mormons I've encountered that would be familiar with the

48:07

Greek Septuagint, but Jehovah's Witnesses, much more likely to be familiar with it. So it will come up here in this very text here in just a couple of moments.

48:20

So you go to John chapter 12, and you set up the context, and you can start where you want, but you have to start before 39, because that's where you want to get there.

48:35

You can start at 39, or you can start a little bit earlier to get some of the context. So the word of Isaiah, verse 38, the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke,

48:44

Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, he has blinded their eyes and he hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart, in return

48:57

I heal them. These things Isaiah said, because he saw his glory and he spoke about him.

49:08

Now, immediate note, lest I forget it, the

49:14

NIV will throw you a curve here. So if you're using the

49:20

NIV, the NIV is very strong on passages on the deity of Christ, don't get me wrong. But the

49:26

NIV had a rule that was basically based on the idea that they wanted the level of the translation to be such that if the antecedent to a pronoun got too far back in the translation, they would reintroduce it in the place of a pronoun.

49:50

So in verse 41, it'll say, these things

49:55

Isaiah said, because he saw Jesus's glory and he spoke about him. But you look over at the

50:05

Greek of verse 41, Tauta Aipen Aesaias, Hati Aiden Tain Doxon, Altu, Kai Elalaisen Peri Altu.

50:15

There is no Jesus in there. There is no Jesus in there. And so they translate

50:22

Altu as Jesus. Well, that's not gonna be in New World translation.

50:29

And so now you're having to explain why the NIV stuck Jesus in there, and that ruins everything.

50:35

Now you've completely lost the focus and everything else.

50:41

So NIV doesn't work for this one. LSB does really well.

50:49

You might wanna read past verse 41. Nevertheless, many, even of the rulers believed in him, but because of the Pharisees, they were not confessing him for fear they'd be put out of the synagogue.

50:57

So who's the him? There's only one him in this context. The him is Jesus. So it's clear from the context.

51:05

You don't have to have it there at all. But so the point is, for this reason, they could not believe.

51:17

For Isaiah said again, he has blinded their eyes, their heart and their heartless, see with their eyes and understand with their heart, and I return and I heal them.

51:23

This is from, of course, Isaiah chapter six. And then verse 41 says, these things

51:30

Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke about him. Now, when you go back to Isaiah chapter six, what's that about?

51:47

A lot of Jehovah's Witnesses will know. A lot of Christians know. But Isaiah six, of course, is the calling of Isaiah as prophet, his commissioning as a prophet.

52:05

And if you all, obviously all of you that, well, it's been a few years ago now, and it's silly to think people would remember this, but I preached at G3 a few years ago on Isaiah chapter six.

52:21

And so I went through all of this at that particular point in time. And so you're well aware of what the background issues are.

52:30

But these things Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke about him.

52:36

This is about Jesus. So when did Isaiah see Jesus's glory?

52:42

Well, you go back to the immediately, immediately before that, you have the citation from Isaiah chapter six.

52:48

You go to Isaiah chapter six. You gotta quit moving this stuff around. I'm starting to get dizzy.

52:56

And you go to Isaiah chapter six, which I will do right here.

53:07

There we go. In the year of King Uzziah's death, I saw the

53:12

Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up with a train of his robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above him, each having six wings.

53:19

With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet. With two, he flew. And one called out to another and said, holy, holy, holy is

53:24

Yahweh of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. So we all know this text rather well.

53:32

We've seen it before. And you go down to verse 10 and that's where this citation is derived from.

53:40

And so when we look at this, we go, well, the year of King Uzziah's death,

53:46

I saw the Lord and it's not Yahweh there. I saw the

53:52

Lord right here is Adoni. I saw the

53:59

Lord, Adon. And yet he is identified clearly as Yahweh, right here, there's the

54:09

Tetragrammaton, Yahweh. Now I've told the story before that when

54:15

I was writing the Forgotten Trinity and I was dealing with this text, I was reading the attempted response to it by Greg Stafford, who at that time was still one of Jehovah's Witnesses.

54:30

He hadn't started his own little cult called Witnesses of Yah yet. And in listening to his presentation in trying to get around this, what he basically did is he says, well, the earlier

54:46

Isaiah citation from Isaiah 53, and it could be referring to that, and it's about the

54:52

Messiah. And he's just trying to find some way around looking at Isaiah 6 and going, well,

55:01

Isaiah said these things, these words in Isaiah 6, because he saw his glory,

55:08

Jesus' glory, and he spoke about him because there's only one person seen. Unless I suppose, you know,

55:15

I've never even thought about this until just now, but someone might say, well, you have the seraphim,

55:21

Jesus is one of the seraphim. Maybe that's how somebody would get around it. But this is where the

55:27

Greek Septuagint comes in. And whether you present this or not,

55:33

I just want, I think you should be familiar with it. I think you should know about what's here in teaching your kids, your family.

55:43

And then if you need to bring it into the conversation, then you're ready to bring it into this conversation. But here we have the

55:50

Hebrew Masoretic text, and here we have the Greek Septuagint.

55:57

And if you, you know, with the train of his robe filling the temple, and so you think of a, you know, the regal robe of a king, and it's very long and large and things like that.

56:12

But when you look at the Greek Septuagint, that's not what it says. That's not what it says.

56:20

And in fact, let me see if I can, how did we do this? Yeah, gotta find it first.

56:32

There we go. If you look at, oh, go away. The last phrase, and someone has been messing with stuff.

56:46

I'm gonna have to remember to check those settings before we do these things, because someone's, go, fix this stuff.

56:58

There we go. And the house, so the temple, was filled, plerase, teis doxas autu.

57:15

What's doxas? Is glory. The house is filled with glory.

57:24

So there is a textual difference between the Greek Septuagint and the

57:29

Hebrew Masoretic text. But who is the audience of the

57:37

Gospel of John? And what translation of the Bible are they reading?

57:44

Well, they're reading the Greek Septuagint. And so when, when

57:53

John writes specifically in John chapter 12, these things

58:02

Isaiah said, because he saw his glory and he spoke about him, there's his glory right there.

58:11

There's his glory. And anyone reading Isaiah six in the Greek translation, oh, that's

58:18

Isaiah six one. There's no question about what he's referring to. So when you ask

58:25

Isaiah, whose glory did you say? See, Isaiah is going to say Yahweh.

58:30

When you ask John, John, whose glory did Isaiah see? John's answer is

58:37

Jesus. Jesus. Now we can get into, you know,

58:44

Yahweh does not share his glory with another from Isaiah and things like that to be very, very specific again.

58:52

But in that conversation with those Jehovah's Witness elders what

58:59

I said to them after I gave them this second one, which I could tell none of them had seen either one.

59:08

Once again, there's that moment, that awkward silence after you show them the refutation of what they believe in their own

59:22

Bible. And again, if this is where you want to get out your theological sword and get it bloodied, this is where you're going to do it.

59:32

That's not what I did. I said, now, again, it would be unfair for me to ask you to respond to these things.

59:38

If you've not seen them before, I'd be happy to schedule another meeting where we could talk about what your response to these things would be.

59:46

But I just want you to understand, we believe there is only one God, Yahweh, but the

59:54

Father's identified as Yahweh in the New Testament. Isaiah 53, Yahweh places our sins upon the

01:00:00

Messiah. So that's what the Father does. The Father's identified as Yahweh. Here, and in many other places

01:00:07

I can show you, the Son is identified as Yahweh. And what is the spirit of Yahweh?

01:00:14

But the spirit of Yahweh, I mean, every text that identifies the

01:00:20

Holy Spirit, who, for example, gives the gifts as he wills, that's the action of a person.

01:00:26

Why am I emphasizing that? Because they don't believe the Holy Spirit's a person at all, let alone a divine person.

01:00:34

But I said, the spirit is the spirit of Yahweh. The Son's identified as Yahweh in these texts and many others.

01:00:41

The Father's identified as Yahweh. So you have one divine name and three persons who are distinguished from one another in the text of Scripture, identified by that one divine name.

01:00:55

We believe there is one being of God shared fully and completely, not divided into thirds, but fully and completely by three divine persons,

01:01:05

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father's not the Son, the Son's not the Spirit, the Spirit's not the Father. They're distinguished from one another, but they are fully divine.

01:01:16

And this is why I am a Trinitarian. We are baptized into the name, singular, of the

01:01:22

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, not Jehovah God, Michael the Archangel, in an impersonal act of force.

01:01:30

This is why I'm a Trinitarian, because I believe all that the Bible says. Now, for a Jehovah's Witness, that is a shot in the solar plexus.

01:01:41

That is a shot in the solar plexus, because they're going around believing they're the ones who believe the

01:01:52

Bible. They need to be pointed out to them that they only believe the

01:02:01

Bible as far as it's interpreted by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. But that's their thinking.

01:02:07

And so when you can turn around and say, I'm a Trinitarian because I believe the Bible, that's very different than saying

01:02:15

I'm a Trinitarian because of the Council of Nicaea or the Great Tradition or anything else.

01:02:23

I'm a Trinitarian because I believe the Bible and all the Bible teaches. It was quiet when

01:02:32

I got to that point. I mean, there comes a point where you go, okay, well, so, you all have something else to be doing on Saturday, you know?

01:02:41

And, you know, I did not,

01:02:47

I actually wanted it to end there because I wanted them to think about that. I didn't want them to, I didn't want to go on to other things so that they could use that as an excuse to dismiss what they had just been presented.

01:02:59

Because when you show it to them in this, I've never had a Jehovah's Witness leave an encounter where they left this behind.

01:03:09

They almost will never take literature from you. But they'll always take their own

01:03:15

Bible with them. So you show them the truth there and they'll take it with them.

01:03:20

They'll take it with them. And you don't know what kind of difficulties and disappointments they're experiencing in the

01:03:28

Watchtower Society. I mean, there's a lot of backstabbing and politics and all sorts of things there too.

01:03:36

And maybe this is the exact time God wanted you to speak to them and there you go. There you go.

01:03:44

So, I think that is, years ago

01:03:51

I knew a former Jehovah's Witness and one of the things that he said, and I sort of repeated this in a way to the witnesses last week.

01:04:00

It was like, we could argue forever whether Jesus was God or a God. But if Jesus is

01:04:07

Jehovah, case closed, debate's over, that's it.

01:04:14

That's it. Are there all sorts of other things to talk about with Jehovah's Witnesses?

01:04:19

Oh yeah. I mean, all their stuff about the anointed class and the great crowd and their bifurcation of justification.

01:04:30

And we actually did get into a little bit of a discussion of the Memorial Supper and how many people were partaking.

01:04:37

And I didn't pursue it. But I could tell that John had already thought about some of these things and so I went for more useful areas.

01:04:50

But yeah, there's all sorts of other things to talk about. But there's also a lot of really blind alleys. A lot of blind alleys, just as there are with Mormons.

01:04:59

There's all sorts of stuff you can end up talking about, polygamy and everything else that, are they relevant?

01:05:06

Are they falsehoods? Yeah, but they're not necessarily all that useful to deal with at a doorway or with someone that you may never get a chance to talk to again.

01:05:21

And so you have to keep that in mind as well. So I would just highly recommend to everyone, get these texts down, be familiar with them so that you don't have to be turning to the back of your

01:05:35

Bible and pulling out a card or something like that. The more comfortable you are in presenting this information, the more you're gonna be in control of the conversation and the more memorable it's gonna be.

01:05:50

And remember, especially when you have what we would call like equals, you're talking to those witnesses who are pretty much equals.

01:06:00

You don't have one guy who's sort of controlling the other guy. They have to be very, very careful about how they respond to things.

01:06:12

They can't, I mean, it must be horrible to live in a context where you are always concerned that the people you quote unquote, go to church with could be talking to the elders behind your back about some sign that maybe you're questionable in your theology.

01:06:33

Maybe you're willing to listen to things you shouldn't be willing to listen to. Stuff like that. And so even if they're sitting there going, wow, they're not gonna say that in front of somebody else, okay?

01:06:49

They're not gonna, don't be sitting there going, oh, I was just hoping to see some sign. No, don't.

01:06:56

They can't show that to you mainly because they can't show it to that other person. But they're gonna leave your house.

01:07:04

And then eventually they're gonna leave the presence of that other person. That is when you want to have presented the clearest presentation you can.

01:07:15

And that's when you pray, Lord, start a work in this person's life.

01:07:21

That's when it's gonna happen. So, yes, oh, do you? There was another inquiry about the software that you use.

01:07:28

Oh, about the software that we are using, yes.

01:07:37

Well, you have the Flipboard. So that's Samsung.

01:07:45

But the actual software, the Bible software, is, of course, Accordance Bible Software. I do have,

01:07:52

I have almost all the major Bible software programs. So I have a very large

01:08:01

Logos library. And I started with BibleWorks. Some of you are not old enough to remember when you had

01:08:12

PC and you had Mac. Of course, then again, there was that time when it was just PC.

01:08:21

And I just became familiar with BibleWorks working under Windows. And so when

01:08:26

I switched to Apple products, that was really tough because BibleWorks had said, we're never gonna offer a

01:08:34

Mac version. And Accordance was

01:08:43

Mac only. But then eventually everybody had to offer both.

01:08:49

They had to be cross -compatible. And BibleWorks eventually closed down.

01:08:58

And a friend of mine had connections with Accordance and they helped me to make the transition over and move a lot of my resources over and things like that.

01:09:11

And so Accordance is much more like BibleWorks in the Bible area than Logos is.

01:09:16

Logos has always been very, very different in its Bible study area.

01:09:23

And I remember when Logos was Libronics, which was, and still in many ways,

01:09:34

Logos is much more of a library program than it is a Bible program. So you can buy all sorts of books in Accordance now.

01:09:42

I've got all sorts of commentaries and all sorts of things in Accordance, just like I have in Logos.

01:09:48

But you can get a whole lot more in Logos because Logos is still very much focused on big, large library search parameters.

01:09:59

Accordance, I think, is just much more useful in doing Bible study. Now, if you grew up on Logos, that's fine, great, wonderful.

01:10:08

But Accordance is the most like BibleWorks. And so I was able to make that transition.

01:10:15

And still, when I'm preparing sermons, debates, things like that, Accordance is my go -to.

01:10:24

Will I have Logos open? Yes. For commentaries that I don't necessarily have in Accordance, historical background stuff, it's a library program to me.

01:10:34

I've just never, ever found it to be, I've always found it to be, quite honestly, rather clunky when it comes to Bible stuff.

01:10:41

We're all different. And if you were trained differently, I'm an old dog and you don't want to teach old dog new tricks.

01:10:50

And so, yes, Accordance, highly, highly, highly recommended.

01:10:56

I love how it displays on the board. We do all sorts of textual critical stuff with it and everything else.

01:11:01

It's extremely useful. When I think of what people like A .T.

01:11:07

Robertson or something could have done with what we have available today, it's truly astonishing.

01:11:16

Because I don't even know all the things that Accordance can do.

01:11:22

I wish I did. They have classes and videos and all sorts of stuff you can do. There's just only so many hours in a day.

01:11:29

But it works really, really well for us. So there you go. And we don't have a sponsorship from Accordance or anything, but that's what we use.

01:11:39

So there you go. All right, I had a bunch of other stuff, but we went real long on that.

01:11:45

So we'll keep it because there are other programs coming up to address various things going on.

01:11:53

Lots of stuff going on out there. A lot of good conversation going on about Van Til right now.

01:11:59

I'm encouraged by that. But we'll get to that in future editions of The Dividing Line.