Outlier University - Outlier

Well, this is a better turnout than I than I than I thought.

I I figured for sure the the guys would be getting an extra day of rest or something like that, and because the wives come on, we gotta go to church.

But it is good to see so many ladies that uh attend here are at the advance and they're all interested in getting the recording.

So we're this is good because it's pushing us as a church to get this stuff on recorded, archived, so we can go back and get at that information.

Even with the notes, two years from now you say, you hear that knock on the door and you say, What did he say again?

I have it in my file somewhere, right?

Well, what file is it?

Is it on the Mac or is it on the desktop or is it in the documents or whatever?

So um we're working at at the university at getting a single database of all this stuff.

Wouldn't that be wonderful?

So that you can go in with a couple of descriptors, tags, um, Jehovah's Witnesses, bingo, and it pulls up the document, and you don't have to have it on your own desktop.

Won't that be wonderful?

So anyway, let's open up in prayer.

Father God, what a grand time to get together and discuss your word in the world.

Uh this is our opportunity to take a look outside of our own sphere and see the sphere of others.

Uh many other religions in the world.

Uh many people who love God in their own way that don't know about Jesus yet.

Uh but God has this open window for generations, for 2,000 years, and for who knows how many years in the future, to bring more people into the kingdom so that when it's full, when all the people that you've already known will be there with you, then uh the end times will come.

Uh today we start a little different track, Lord.

Uh help us uh be able to witness to people that uh are close to the truth but have their own version of it.

And uh we'll see the differences today, we'll see that this isn't a world religion, we actually uh call it something different and uh be with us.

Help us do this in love as we search for truth.

We're just walking around the table to see the tr see the truth in as we as believers in your word that you've given us uh the truth and to be able to see others comprehend that and use it to come to know Jesus.

We pray in his name, amen.

Okay.

Not talking about a world religion in the sense that this is completely different than Christianity.

We're talking about and we're calling it a cult.

Not in a negative sense, I mean cult means really culture, but in the sense that uh this is uh different in that they use uh cults use the same scriptures or close to the same scriptures, they'll have additional scriptures, uh which we'll see with Mormonism next week, or in the case of the Jehovah's Witness, uh they think they have the same Bible we do.

Uh so how do you discern the difference when you hear your uh the knock on the door?

Uh I don't want to offend anybody in here that has Jehovah's Witness background, maybe.

There probably is people in here that might have that background.

Have a sister or brother or father, mother, whatever, that has this background.

But we do want to discern truth.

God gave us the word to discern, and we want to have friendly conversations.

This is an opportunity when somebody comes knocking on your door, mission field opportunity.

This is wonderful.

I mean, they want to talk about Jesus, we want to talk about Jesus, and they're right there at your doorstep.

So, what's the difference between a cult and a religion?

Well, a cult is a group that renounces the teaching of the historic gospel of Jesus Christ.

Uh, in this case, the historic gospel was the gospel up until 1874, about.

And all of a sudden, there is a new vision by a new leader who said, that's all wrong.

Here is really what is going on.

His name was Charles Taze Russell.

We'll talk about him in a second.

But this is a group uh that renounces the historic teaching of the gospel.

You might say, well, they use the Bible and so forth.

They don't renounce the teaching at all.

Well, we'll see that in a second.

Do they really renounce the teaching, historical teaching?

Number two, they insist that it's not another religion, but the Christian religion, despite the fact that it denies the major tenets of the faith.

So if a Jehovah's Witness were saying we're just another religion, we treat them just like we treated the Hindus and Buddhists and so forth, as a people that love God but in a different religion.

Uh they're not denying the historic religion of the church.

And number three, uh, they're usually formed around a strong, uh, charismatic, unchallengeable leader, and that's how we'll see that this group got started in 1874 about.

Um strong, charismatic, unchallengeable is probably the right word to use it.

And then people flock to this kind of leader.

So was Charles Tays Russell that kind of leader?

We'll take a look.

And number four, uh, it becomes over time we are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

I mean, we carry that that's an incredible thing that we actually have God in us.

So we have a witness that God is speaking to us.

Is that a human organization?

Only in the sense that this is a ministry center, but really we are the church, the people are the church, not this building.

This is a ministry center.

This is just a place where we gather.

Uh in a human organization, usually it gathers and becomes more like an organization over time.

Is that what happened to the Jehovah's Witnesses?

We'll take a look at that.

All right.

I I made a huge claim there that they deny the historic doctrines of the Christian church.

Let's just take a look at this list.

Uh I would say that every one of those things is something I totally affirm.

I don't deny any of those.

Uh, and you probably would say the same thing if you're a born-again Christian.

Jesus was God.

From the very beginning, he was God.

It goes all the way back to the initial records that he was God.

The Gospels are written within 20 years of his resurrection.

People saw him.

He said, I'm God, I'm going to prove it, I'm going to overcome death.

That's pretty powerful.

Nobody in history has ever done anything like that.

Buddha never did anything like that.

Muhammad never did anything like that.

Uh, no other religion.

So, and from the very beginning, the the scriptures witness to that fact.

Uh, they denied the atonement of Christ, the complete atonement of Christ.

If I had to deny the complete atonement of Christ, I couldn't be a Christian.

I mean, I can't work my way, I can't be good enough to do anything to earn my way into heaven.

We'll see that they have an atonement, but it's not a full atonement.

It's half atonement by Jesus that overcame the sin of Adam, and then the rest of it you have to work your way into the kingdom.

Um if I had to work my way into the kingdom, I'd just give up and go eat, drink, and be merry all the time.

It was God's grace that saved me, that brought me into the kingdom.

Uh they deny the physical resurrection and the physical return of Christ.

Now they have a resurrection in which we'll we'll talk about, but it's not the same thing.

Uh Christ didn't physically rise from the grave, and he didn't physically return.

We'll find out that he actually came back in uh their theology back in 1914, and he's here today.

He's ruling as a spirit from heaven.

They deny the Trinity.

The Trinity is one of the ones that catches us sometimes because some of us stumble over explaining what the Trinity is.

That three persons, one person, what's all this personhood?

I've dealt with that in a previous class.

I don't know how well I did on that one.

Sharon, you guys were there.

And I dealt with a little bit last week with our our Jewish friends that even the Old Testament, you don't even need the New Testament to see the Trinity.

God is there, co-equal, co-eternal, uh, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, from the very beginning of time, three manifestations of the one God.

We're not going to deal with that in this class.

Hopefully, you have enough of a background to be able to do that defense.

When you get the survey, though, if you'd like to have a special class on that, that'd be great.

I'd love to, it's one of my favorite subjects.

They deny salvation by grace through faith.

Well, if you deny the atonement, uh, the full atonement of Christ, you have to deny salvation by grace.

I mean, it's by grace alone you've been saved, not as a result of works.

So you can't boast about it.

It's a result of God's sovereign action on your heart.

Yes, you accept them by faith, by grace through faith, is what the historic Christian doctrine is.

They deny the continual existence of the soul.

I am a soul.

I came at God, I was born, I had nothing to do with it.

I knew nothing about it.

I didn't even know I was anything but a baseball player until 10 years old.

And then I started thinking, oh yeah, I'm a person.

That personhood stays with me for eternity.

And my body comes on and goes off, but my personhood stays with me.

I'm physically a person now, and but I've always been a soul.

I've always been a spiritual person.

They deny that.

When you die in Jehovah's Witness theology, you're gone.

You return to dust.

In fact, you're annihilated.

Now, you resurrected later on.

We'll talk about that.

So there's a period of time when there's you were and you weren't, and then you are again, but in a spirit form.

We'll talk about that.

Uh because they don't have a salvation by grace, and because of their peculiar theology here, they deny, completely deny the existence of hell.

I mean, hell is a problem for a lot of people.

Uh we can talk about that in the survey too.

You know, why do we have to have a hell?

Well, God's not only a God of love, he's a God of justice, too.

I mean, can you imagine if Adolf Hitler was never held accountable for the atrocities that he did?

There has to be, yep, a final judgment, and God is, and Jesus is that final, final judge.

And they deny the Bible.

Oh, no, they don't.

I know they have their own uh Bible.

I have it right here.

Uh in fact, when I talk to Jehovah's Witnesses, I use their scriptures.

Uh, we're gonna do a little bit of role-playing today with uh with doing that.

And um, but it's not, it's their own translation of the Bible, and we'll talk about that too.

Let's take a brief look at uh Charles Taze Russell, see if he uh qualifies potentially as that strong charismatic uh uh cult leader.

Uh age 18, 1870, he organizes Bible studies.

I kid with Gail sometimes that said, if I wasn't a born-again Christian, spirit-filled Christian, I could be a really good cult leader.

And the reason for that is you can put together a theology.

In fact, I read most of a lot of the world religions and the books and so forth, uh, psychology.

I didn't want to become a Christian.

That was the last thing on my mind.

Uh but God got a hold of me in my 30s and said, just try me.

I said, No, I don't want to do that.

I know what church is and so forth.

Just try me.

And I did, and wow, Holy Spirit gets a hold of you.

And that is so many years ago, and I get more excited about it every year.

I mean, you can't just stay away from it because you know experientially that uh not only is it subjectively true, but as you study it, it becomes real, historical.

Eyewitness accounts, my goodness, I mean you could go to trial as a lawyer and win the case for the historic resurrection of Jesus, overcoming death.

So I know I have an eternal soul.

And um at age 18, Charles started a group of Bible studies in Pittsburgh.

He wasn't schooled, he wasn't theologically trained, but he was his own pastor, he became pastor of this group, but he was an indefatigable, charismatic entrepreneur.

He founded the Watchtower organization at that point in time.

This was an amazing organization.

It was in uh Brooklyn at one time, now it's just outside of New York City.

Uh they publish a billion copies of literature.

One billion.

Have it distributed worldwide.

It's an amazing entrepreneurial uh venture.

He started that in 1874, I think it was.

And uh through the Watchtower, uh, that magazine.

This is a counterfeit.

This is World Magazine.

This is what I recommend.

I wasn't gonna pass out the awake or the watchtower, but this is uh uh world magazine, Christian magazine.

But through that magazine uh is how the um evangelism, Jehovah's Witness Evangelism takes place, and you probably have had, and if and if you have any Jehovah's Witness background, you've seen this.

I mean it looks very, very Christian.

Uh and there's wonderful stories in there, good people.

Uh through that magazine, however, uh there was a lot of entrepreneurial activity, including Miracle Wheat, and um 40 million copies of this today are printed every month, along with 40 million copies of the Awake Pamphlet, that magazine, and distributed to over 200 countries.

So this is an incredible organization.

There's about eight and a half million worldwide followers, and these are really dedicated people.

I mean, good people.

They work very, very hard for what they do.

I wish as Christians sometimes we would do as much of the the kingdom work as they do.

Uh, there's two and a half million of them in the United States.

Uh, but it's interesting because of the background of Tay's Russell and court recordings and so forth, which I've read and so forth, uh, he set himself up and he lied under oath and he perjured himself and so forth about his qualifications.

Uh, for that reason, they distanced themselves.

So if you go on the JW.org website today, and you'll even see who is the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, and they'll say Charles Taze Russell was not the founder.

Jesus Christ was the founder.

But it's still the same theology.

It's called Russellite theology.

But isn't it just another denomination?

I mean, they believe the Bible.

We have all kinds of denominations and Protestantism, Catholic, Orthodox, then all the denominations, the Baptists and the etc.

Isn't this just another denomination?

They have a Bible.

Leave them alone.

Well, I'm not picking on them, all right?

I'm just giving you some information so you can have a conversation with them.

Um, hopefully you won't convert because I think you'll find out that this is not uh the truth.

Uh, but have that conversation.

This is our opportunity as a Christian to have a mission field right at our doorstep.

Their Bible, and and and here's how this works their Bible starts with their theology in place, and then it works backwards to re-engineer the Bible to fit the theology.

That's a good way of doing a lot of things.

That's why we call it counterfeit.

I mean, you start with what you want it to believe, and then you work backwards and put everything in place, so that's what it says.

And we'll see that today.

Uh that's why I use the word counterfeit.

Walter Martin was my teacher.

Walter Martin uh wrote the Kingdom of the Cults.

It's back on the back table there.

It's been out of print for a couple of years, several years, but it's still one of the finest uh expositions of other cults uh in the world.

And uh he uh will give you the background of a lot of this, but the New World Translation that the Jehovah's Witnesses use uh is an English version of what they claim is the original Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew.

That started maybe 30, only 30 years ago or so.

Well, they re-engineer the Greek, Aramaic, and so forth to meet what the English translation says, so it works backwards.

So they'll have a very, it looks very scholarly and so forth, but it's not open to criticism.

We don't know who the translation committee is, they have their own translation committee, there's no names, it's anonymous.

Uh you know how our translation committees work?

I mean, these are people that get around the table and fight over does that Greek proposition, uh preposition, you know, mean to or become or whatever, and we work it through.

Uh I use happen to use the New American Standard.

New American Standard tries to be as close to the Greek, the original Greek, and we have manuscripts.

We have over 5,800 Greek manuscripts before the Gutenberg Press that has 99.9% complete of what the original text says.

We don't have the original documents that Paul or John actually wrote, but we can reconstruct from 5,800 copies from all over the Mediterranean and piecing that together, wow, we can reconstruct exactly what that says to 99.9% accuracy, and the Jewish scriptures to 95% accuracy.

I brought had the Tanakh last week, the Jewish, actual Jewish scriptures, 95%.

So we know what the original languages said.

You have anonymous scholars who produce extensive commentaries on these scriptures.

Again, that's re-engineered to fit the theology.

So the question then becomes: is the theology correct?

I mean, was the church really out the lunch on all these doctrines for 1870 years, or is this actually the uh the real translation of the scriptures?

My conclusion after all this is probably the most robust counterfeit in the sense of Walter Martin used to say, my teacher, I was loved, I could sit right there in the front row, right in front of Walter and his big booming voice, and he would say, you know, when they teach bankers how to recognize counterfeit money, they don't they don't bring a whole bunch of counterfeit money and have you look at it.

They bring the real thing.

The real thing.

And from the real thing, you feel exactly what that feels like.

You look at it and you see certain characteristics of it.

Once you know the real thing, the counterfeits just pop up all over the place.

And uh that's why I call it the most robust because this is a real attempt to get as close to uh an aberrant theology as you can get with his Bible and commentaries and scholars, and it's very impressive if you don't do the digging.

But this is good.

I've done a lot of the digging.

You can come and absorb this and then do your own digging too.

That's the greatest thing about the Christian faith is you can dig, dig, dig.

It just gets better and better and better.

The deeper you get, the the more, because wow, that really connects.

All the dots start connecting.

Okay, quickly.

I'm gonna read uh some of these scriptures.

I'm gonna read over top of them real quick because why am I even doing this?

Just let other people be, let other religions be, let other uh doctrines be, and so forth.

Why are we bothering to do this?

The scriptures tell us to.

That's why I do this.

The scriptures tell me, be on the lookout for another Jesus, another, a different gospel, a counterfeit spirit.

Be on the lookout.

Uh 2 Corinthians 11 4 says, um, but I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit, which you have not received, or a different gospel, which you have not accepted, false such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

No wonder, for even Satan disguises Himself as an angel of light.

Therefore, it's not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness whose end is according to their own deeds.

Galatians.

Paul writes to the Corinthians, he writes to the Galatians.

I mean, can you imagine what he ran into?

I mean, we talk about not having a Christian culture, we're losing Christian culture.

My heavens, there wasn't anybody who was a Christian back in when he starts knocking on doors in the Mediterranean.

I mean, they all had a different view of everything.

The Greeks had a different view, the Romans had a different view, and so forth.

But the hardest part he had was when Jews who found Jesus as their Messiah became, quote, Christians, but then wanted to retain their Judaism.

That's what the letter of the Galatians is all about.

They said, well, you had to be circumcised and you have to be a Jew and so forth.

No, he said, it's all by grace.

He said, here is the facts about the Jewish Messiah and the resurrection of the dead.

The Galatians were proceeding on a different track, on a different gospel.

They wanted their people to be circumcised first and then they could become a Christian.

He said, I'm amazed that you so quickly are deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we've preached to you, let him be an anathema.

Let him be accursed.

He said, and we said before, so I say again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you be what you have received, let him be an anathema.

Somebody, if an angel appeared right now, right here, and taught you a different gospel, you're supposed to challenge them.

Don't receive them.

Let him be accursed.

Because that's God's not going to do that.

God's not going to do that.

1 Timothy.

He says, be on the lookout for another gospel.

The Bible is God's product.

The Bible is God's word about himself.

It's not man's words about God.

God's words about himself.

And he tells us that in 1 Timothy 3.16.

He said, or is it 2?

I think it's 2 Timothy, isn't it?

Who's my Bible scholar here?

Anyway, somebody looked that up for me because I hate to tell you.

Huh?

Yeah, 2 Timothy, right.

Yeah, I missed a one there.

All right, so change that to a two.

In the last days, difficult times will come.

Avoid men who oppose the truth, men of depraved minds.

Their folly will be obvious to all.

Now, you followed my teaching, conduct and purpose, but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving, being deceived.

You, however, Timothy, this is his young protege that he's developing, he said, continue in the things you have learned, become convinced of it, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, faith alone in Jesus Christ.

Then he says, All scripture is inspired by God.

The word is Theonustos, God breathes, product of God.

We use the word inspire like Shakespeare was inspired or something.

That's not what he means there.

It means it's a product of God.

All scripture is God breathes and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and training.

So it's not just for teaching and learning and so forth, it's also for reproof and correction in the church.

Training in righteousness so that the men of God may be adequate for every good work.

Okay, well, I get that, but I don't want to go argue with people and don't argue with people.

This isn't about argument.

This is about having a discussion with a friend who doesn't know Jesus yet.

Doesn't know about salvation by grace, doesn't know that he's not going to be annihilated upon death and hope for the resurrection and some committee to decide whether or not he's good enough to make it.

No, this is some, and Jude tells us, contend for the faith.

Contend in a loving way, with gent, Peter says with gentleness and respect, said, I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation.

I felt it necessary to write to you to appeal to contend.

That's what I'm doing to you, appealing to you to contend for the faith.

You know, be that convinced about this is the truth, and other people don't know it yet.

Let's contend for the faith.

Earnestly given once for all and hand it down to the saints.

So 2,000 years ago, the truth was handed down.

But you have to win every generation, right?

I mean, people say, oh, we're losing it and so forth.

Whose fault is if this generation is falling apart, whose fault was it?

I mean, when you want to look for fault, it's the previous generation that didn't pass it on to the next generation.

That's why the Jews in their Deuteronomy say, you know, every day, you know, you write it on your forehead, you write it on your arms.

And you heard David last week when he was an Orthodox Jew.

I mean, that would those scriptures, that Torah was right there every day, reminded of it.

He said, contend for the faith which was once for all handed down, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed that were long beforehand marked out for condemnation.

Ungodly persons who turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny Jesus Christ.

So we are instructed by the scriptures to have that kind of passion and contend with gentleness and respect for the faith.

All right, well, how how do we contend for our faith?

Well, invite them in for Pete's sake.

I mean, this is a wonderful opportunity to tell your story to them.

They want to tell, I mean, they're selling, not buying, but so are you.

Uh you're you're you're selling too.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, God told us Paul was the best salesman there was throughout the Mediterranean.

It was just incredible.

Invite your visitor in for a friendly discussion.

View this as a mission field.

Uh use your Bible.

This is important.

They're going to have their Bible in hand.

Use your Bible, know your Bible, and look at a couple of aspects, and I'm going to give you some points you can do.

If you just did these two scripture verses today that we're going to enact for you, you'll have a lively, robust conversation.

Practice agape apologetics.

That's love apologetics, love contention, gentleness, respect.

We're just searching for the truth, and we're going to walk around.

Well, what does that really say?

And we should do that among ourselves anyway.

What does that really say?

That's how good doctrine comes together.

Doctrine is not scripture.

Doctrine is man's view of scripture, and we can have different opinions because we have different interpretations.

But how how do you get to the right interpretation?

Just like uh Wycliffe does it, translation.

How do I talk about salvation leaning on Christ or whatever?

Well, that translates into a culture in different ways.

Maybe it's the weight on a chair that breaks in their culture, whatever it is.

That's why we have to walk around this and understand it.

We find common ground, like we've been doing with all these religions, uh, but put a pebble in their shoe.

Where's Tony?

Tony, there he is.

He talks, I I he said, Well, I like to think about it as pebbles.

He has his own pebble.

Uh look for an opportunity.

Put a rock in their shoe about a particular point.

And if if you're able to do that, be satisfied with that.

God will do the heavy lifting.

I mean, they're at your doorstep as a sovereign act.

This isn't something about, well, they know their stuff better than you do.

Yes, Tony, you got it nailed.

He's got it nailed.

Well, uh, yeah, we should do that for ourselves, not uh put our own pebbles in our own shoes for reasons like that, to pray or to remember somebody in in prayer.

At minimum, this dialogue is going to take off the spiritual veneer of their testimony when they knock on the on the next door.

So that's some advice I have for you.

All right, let's turn to some counterfeit Jehovah's Witness doctrines here.

Uh these two points.

If you do nothing else, take these two points home with you, okay, for the for the conversation you're gonna have.

And if have your Bibles with you, turn to John 1 and Colossians 1.

John 1 and Colossians 1.

And I think I'm gonna go out and do some Jehovah's Witnessing.

I have to put on my um get ready.

All right.

I'm gonna get my watchtower.

I'm gonna get my New World Translation here of the of the Bible.

And um I'm gonna go, well, here's a good here's a nice house.

Look at this.

I like this house.

I see that they even have a uh fish symbol out there.

So they're I know they're Christians, so I wanna want to go to that.

I'm gonna go up to the door here.

I wish they did something with these steps.

Hi.

Hi.

I I'm Stu.

I'm your I'm your neighbor here.

You know, I'm we're people that are really concerned about the moral decline uh of America.

And uh I'd like to are you interested in it too?

Sure, Stu.

I'm I'm Lee.

Please come in.

Oh, well, thank you.

Oh, good.

A nice friendly guy, and I know he's a Christian and so forth.

Um in.

He said, uh, do you have a minute?

Uh you I'm gonna give you this magazine here.

You can see uh we love uh I I love Jesus too, and he has some real good answers for us about what's going on.

Great, Stu.

Yeah, I see you're a Christian.

That's wonderful, so am I.

And I see you have your own Bible with you.

That's great, I'll go get mine.

Uh-oh.

Come on in.

Yeah, I have my Bible and you have yours, we're all set to have a nice conversation.

I love Jesus too.

I love John 1 1.

Oh, oh, hmm.

Wow.

Well that's uh that's interesting.

Except I'm looking at uh John 1 1 myself here, and uh that's not what my Bible says.

Um my Bible says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, but the word was a God.

A God.

I'll take it from here.

Thank you, Lee.

A God, interesting.

Well, the uh translation, there's no a in front of God.

So the Greek manuscript, allegedly, that supports this translation is fraudulent, but best I can say.

It is not an a God.

And even if it was a God, what does that mean?

I mean, we're monotheists, right?

I mean, the very fundamental of the Christian faith is monotheism.

Jehovah's Witnesses will be monotheists too.

I don't know how to explain Jesus if he's just a God.

What does that mean?

Uh and there's many, many commentaries.

You can go, this can go on for hours, and don't expect a conversion on your first step any more than they expect to convert you.

But this can lead to an ongoing dialogue.

Uh it doesn't say a God.

All Greek scholars know that there's no a in front of that word.

A God.

Uh but let's go to Colossians.

Well, you know what, Lee?

Um see, we believe that Jesus is the creator.

You believe that Jesus is the creator.

Wow, okay.

Well, now my mind as a Christian is really starting to go, well, if Jesus is the creator, then we're on the same page together.

Um He's going to show me what that means by going to Colossians 1.1.

So turn to Colossians 1.1 and let's look at verses 16 and 17.

It says, by means of him all other things were created in the heavens and upon earth.

Four times the word other is in brackets there.

What could that possibly mean?

I'm thinking as a Christian, what could that possibly mean, all other things?

Well, if you start with the assumption that Jesus was the creator of heaven and earth, well, he was created too.

If he was created too, which is the Arian heresy of the fourth, that was dealt with uh 1600 years ago, the Arian heresy.

That Jesus was first created and then he created everything else, but then I could say all other things were created.

But notice what what do you notice about this?

Is how the translation looks like.

What do you notice about the word other in the translation?

It's in brackets.

You can't possibly manipulate the Greek text to have it mean other.

So they'll put it in brackets like we do sometimes for clarification.

And if you know what the answer is ahead of time, then you put the word in brackets.

He it has to be all other things if Jesus was a created being, because he was created, then he created all other things.

All Greek scholars know there's no justification for this.

So now you start saying, well, what's their motivation?

Why would they possibly want to do this?

Because they are convinced in their theology that there's only one and only one Jehovah, that the Trinity makes no sense to them.

And yet we saw last week it even makes sense in the Old Testament.

But if you don't want to believe something, no matter how what the evidence is in the scriptures, it doesn't make any difference, right?

You you'll defend your particular position.

And Jesus can't possibly be God because we know there's one and only one Jehovah.

And the Trinity makes no sense.

So Jesus can't be God.

Well then think for a second with your friend.

Uh well, if he can't be God, then God Almighty, then who is he?

He's a mighty God.

And you think, I don't get that.

I mean, you're either Almighty or you're not Almighty.

And if you're a mighty God, then you have to be a polytheist.

There's one and one only one God.

This was the uh, as I said, the Aryan heresy of the fourth century that God created Jesus who created the heavens and the earth.

That was dealt with and swept out of the church 1600 years ago.

Well, so if you get to the point where you're having a conversation, well, I don't understand who what a mighty God is.

Well, there's only two created types of beings in the universe.

Right?

There's people and there's angels.

So it it you dig deep enough into the commentary, the Jehovah's Witness commentaries, you'll find out that they have to have an explanation for Jesus, and he has to be an angel then.

So, and the highest of the angels to them is uh Michael the archangel.

Well, even the scriptures, Hebrews 1, if you go to Hebrews 1, you should read Hebrews 1.

Memorize Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, John 1.

Those three sets of scriptures define all you'd need to know about having a friendly conversation with your Jehovah's Witness friend.

Hebrews is all about God, the angels.

There was people that saw at the Gnostics at the time that Jesus was just the highest of all the angels.

And the writer to the Hebrews just completely shows that that can't be true.

As a matter of fact, Hebrews 1 has some of the most powerful testimony of who Jesus is because it quotes Psalm 45.

In Psalm 45, you have Jehovah God, Yahweh, Tetragrammaton, YHWH talking to the Son and saying that telling the Son that He's God, that laid the foundation of the earth before the world began, laid all the foundations.

So Hebrews 1 totally refutes that.

Pardon?

Good, Sharon.

Yes, in Genesis, we and we did that last week too with the with the Jewish friends.

Uh let us make all throughout the Old Testament.

It's you can prove the Trinity from the Old Testament.

It wasn't exactly clear because God was waiting for the fullness of time to send his son to finalize the whole thing and complete the picture that uh the Old Testament began.

Denies the Trinity.

Satan is the if you look into their commentary, Satan is the originator of the Trinity doctrine.

It's difficult to love and worship a freakish-looking three-headed God.

Jehovah is one solitary being from all eternity.

There's no Trinity.

Jesus reduced to a creature, removed the person, removed the personality of the Holy Spirit.

And yet if you read John 14, 15, 16, uh the personality of the Holy Spirit is there.

Last week we showed the personality of the Holy Spirit coming upon all the prophets at the same time that God was running the heavens and the Shekinah glory was in the tent, and the prophets were prophesying all at the same time.

Three manifestations of the one God doing his work.

So the Trinity, one God, three persons, the most fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith.

The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet there's only one God.

Three manifestations of one God.

You must learn to articulate this, but don't get hung up on it because I've had many experiences, well, several experiences, I should say, with uh Jehovah's Witness friends that they just want to hammer on the Trinity.

I say, wait a second.

Jesus is the whole thing.

You know, just keep Jesus in focus.

Don't don't worry about getting gobbled up and defending the the Trinity.

Uh you must learn to articulate uh Jesus and don't allow yourself to be articulated.

Okay.

Got to run along here.

Denies the body, body, bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Well, Jesus was put to death as a man.

He was a superman, yeah, he was a mighty God in that kind of context.

Uh he's gonna be king of the Millennium Kingdom, which we'll see in a second.

But and he was raised as an invisible spirit creature.

And for years um they were waiting for Jesus to return.

Uh reminds us of today, right?

I mean, everybody's saying he's gonna come.

Where is the his teaching and so forth?

Good seeing you, Paul.

How are you feeling?

Good, good, good to have you back.

Uh good uh seeing uh that uh Jesus was running out of time to return.

So in 1914, the watchtower declared that Jesus returned, but he's invisible.

So he's invisibly in uh running his kingdom right now.

And please explain to me why 1914?

You know, the be in a position of asking questions, don't always be on the defensive of having to give an answer, but ask a question.

Please explain to me, 1914.

Um the trial of the founder was Yeah, you knew.

And he died a couple of years later, so yeah, there could be.

I I could spec I I'm not gonna speculate uh necessarily, but uh please explain to me uh why Jesus is invisible.

I mean, remember in Acts, uh they see him rise bodily, and they said he's gonna return the same way?

I mean, we're gonna see him.

Uh Matthew 24, it's wonderful.

Archangels and trumpets and everything.

I mean, this is a huge worldwide event.

We're gonna see him.

Uh we don't see him.

Uh what is Jesus doing on earth now?

Ask that question.

That's that's interesting.

Well, uh up until 1935, uh, you know in the book of Revelation uh we have 144,000 Jews that are saved, 12,000 from each tribe.

It's very specific that these are Jews.

So, regardless of what you think of uh premillennial, post-millennial, amillennial, da-da-da-da-da, it's pretty clear from Revelation that these are 144,000 Jews.

Well, part of being saved in Jehovah's Witness theology is to be part of this, at least it was a hundred years ago, to be part of this 144,000, except all these slots filled up by 1935.

So if uh now you can't really get into heaven.

There's no seats left as a spirit creature in heaven.

So we have a redeemed earth in Jehovah's Witness theology, a redeemed earth, not a new heaven and an earth, just a redeemed earth.

The earth is man's permanent location in Jehovah's Witness theology.

It's gonna be redeemed.

You're gonna your body, which was annihilated upon death, is gonna be resurrected and you're gonna live in the millennial kingdom for a thousand years.

And if you convert and follow the doctrines, you'll be able to stay in that body.

If not, after a thousand years, then you're annihilated permanently.

But you are do have a slot in quote, the not the heaven, uh, because you can't only spirits are in heaven, but you have a redeemed body on earth that you can be still part of.

And this is uh how uh they determine whether or not you're gonna be saved.

The eternal state, since man doesn't have a uh an eternal soul, when you die and you return to dust, then you resurrect it.

But these special 144,000 people, the anointed class, always be careful of any kind of whatever it's a friend, a parent, or whatever, anytime you have special classes, uh be on the lookout for that.

Around Jesus' time, Paul's time, it was the Gnostics were the always had special mystery information.

You need mystery information to get saved.

Well, these 144,000 are special anointed class, and uh they're not Jews, uh just 144,000.

But Matthew tells us something interesting in Matthew 24 here regarding Christ now on earth and what he's doing.

If anyone says to you, Behold, here's the Christ, there's the Christ, don't believe him.

False Christs and false prophets will arise to us mislead even the elect.

It's very easy to get misled if you don't know your scriptures.

This is the one that touches our heart.

You can't work your way into heaven.

We all know that.

That's why we're we're we're we're we're sitting here.

Uh some of us might have come out of a uh either Jehovah's Witness or some situation where you're never good enough.

You know, you're always working to somebody else's drum, and God says, no, salvation is by grace alone.

Uh well, how do they get around that since the scriptures clearly teaches the atonement?

Uh well, it's only a half of atonement.

Halfway, Jesus uh overcome, his death overcame the sins of Adam, but really to get into heaven or on the redeemed earth, you have to work your way into that.

So his sacrifice, Jesus' sacrifice, remove the effects of sin, but the work ahead is to do the work of the kingdom, uh, the Jehovah kingdom.

Scripture clearly teaches Jesus takes away all sin, the sin of the world by his sacrificial death.

Clearly teaches that God made the one who knew no sin to become righteous in our place so that we could be redeemed.

It clearly teaches, for by grace you have been saved through faith, not of yourself.

It's a gift of God, not result of works, not the result of works, not the result of works, so that no one should boast.

We do works because we're saved.

We don't do works to get saved, right?

We we know that.

Very clear teaching.

And then present the the great news.

I mean the great news to a Jehovah's Witness is the gospel, and the gospel, as we've seen in all witnessing to all these uh various different faiths, is that you can't argue your way into the kingdom, you can't love your way into the kingdom.

Only God can bring salvation through the presentation and acceptance of the gospel, and he does that through the power of the Holy Spirit.

But those first two is our responsibility too.

The first part is to love the people, to tell them the truth, and then look for the opportunity to present the gospel.

And here's the good news for the Jehovah's Witness they'll go to heaven immediately upon their death.

I mean, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

I look for my wife died four years ago.

48 years, seven months, twenty-five days, but who was counting?

And her home going was a celebration.

I expect my home going to be a celebration too.

We're just here for this short period of time.

I mean, our true life is there.

If I thought that this is all there is, I'm gonna be annihilated, my body goes, and then I have to assume that I worked hard enough to get resurrected for my first chance in the Millennium Kingdom, and then I have to obey the kingdom rules for another thousand years to make sure that I'm gonna make it and I'm not gonna be totally annihilated again.

Wow.

Good news.

This is fantastic news.

I mean, show your excitement for your salvation.

Upon death, I'm gonna be with the Lord.

I'm gonna be with Gale.

I had two Gales.

My second Gale is a Gale two.

And we referred to Gale one and Gale two.

It's so cute.

I mean, any of you have, when you're young, like this group here, you don't think about that kind of stuff.

But as you get older, it becomes really important to think about the kingdom.

Wow, what a great life that's gonna be.

And this is wonderful news for your Jehovah's Witness friend that's there.

Um and there's no earth to be renewed in the scripture.

You can you can point this out in their own scripture.

They haven't changed all the scriptures, they've just changed some of these proof texts that really catch them on the deity of Jesus.

But use their Bible.

Say, let me see your Bible.

Let's let's see what it says about a new heaven and a new earth.

We go to Peter, and Peter says, boom, destroyed, totally destroyed.

The earth is destroyed, burned up in fire.

Uh and then there, but Revelation 21, 22, the end of the story.

Fabulous.

New heaven, new earth, new sets of physics.

I'm a science guy.

Whole new sets of physics.

How can you have a 1500 mile wide New Jerusalem by 1500 mile long and 1500 miles deep?

You know, in our current laws of physics, if we put something like that in outer space, it becomes a sphere.

Couldn't possibly exist like that.

Uh no sun.

God illuminates, and Jesus illuminates this.

No law of second law of thermodynamics.

Wow.

No law of gravity, no law of sort.

That's a whole new set of physics.

There's a whole new deal coming.

It's not a renewed earth.

And this old earth is going to be re uh destroyed.

Uh and don't worry about hell.

Hell's not for you.

John 3 says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

All you have to do, I mean, you're a hard worker, loving Jesus, working for the kingdom of God and so forth.

Just accept his grace for Pete's sake.

Just accept his grace.

You don't have to go knocking on doors.

If God calls you to go knock on doors, wonderful.

It's great that you're an indefatigable worker for the kingdom.

But you are saved just by accepting the fact that Jesus by grace will save you.

Just like the Philippian jailer.

I mean, the walls are coming down all over the place and he's going to die.

And so what must I do to be saved?

Wow.

Well, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be saved.

And your family.

Does that mean they're saved without accepting Jesus?

No, but you're going to go home and tell them, and they can't wait to go with you.

That's the same thing.

Yes, Sharon?

I think the most important thing about sharing our faith with the Jehovah's Witnesses or whatever is the motivation for why we're doing it.

If we're doing it just to contend or be contentious or to argue about it, we won't see fruit.

But if we go, it says the Father would let all men be saved.

If we go into that, that that's true.

That we're doing it because we have love and the Father loved us and so would he loved others.

That's the most important thing.

I have a presentation.

Probably 30 years ago, the Lord gave me a treaty, and she was talking to me, and I felt that coming down at me.

And when I went to talk to her, the Lord showed arrows going out from me and hitting the Lord in my heart.

And so the Lord was showing me then it's the way you speak to them that will make them respond.

And if it's not out of love and it's just to win the argument, then there will be no fruit.

And it hurts God's heart when we talk down at anybody and don't do it the love and respect that you talked about in the beginning.

That's the most important thing, no matter who you're talking to.

It's got to be done out of love.

Good point.

Excellent.

That's a great way of wrapping up.

And I'm sorry we didn't have a whole lot of time for questions and interaction in a small group on this, but there was a lot of material to cover.

But any other uh comments that anybody wants to make?

Uh yes, bring it over.

So thank you.

Hi.

Kathy, just one second.

I want to get your stuff on if you don't mind, so we get it on the tape.

There's um two two parts in the Bible.

I don't remember.

I've looked them up before.

One's um in in Revelation, and um one was when Jesus was dying on the cross, and he looked up and he said, Dear Father, take me now.

Um they use that.

And then also in in Revelation, it says that Jesus is going to be seated um on the right hand of God.

So that's how they say, well, there's gonna be there's they're not, they're they're two people, two two in two two separate people.

How would I explain that?

So uh so Jesus says, into your hands I commit my spirit, but then he goes into the grave, right?

And then he's resurrected bodily, and then he ascends bodily to the Father.

So that's Christian doctrine, right?

And then Jesus says, remember last week when we talked about the Messiah sitting on the right hand of the Father?

He was at that point anointing Jesus to be not only the Son of David on an earthly sense, but also to be uh the son of God in a heavenly sense.

There's no contradiction that Jesus would be as both a man or a spirit who took on flesh in the incarnation and then returned through the resurrection.

There's nothing inconsistent about that at all.

In fact, the diagram that I did last week, where you you were here last week, right?

Look at that diagram, and it shows how Jesus comes from heaven, takes on flesh, temporarily gives up his uh all his attributes as a man, but keep retains his uh attributes as God while he's on earth, and then after the death and res after he pays for sin, I mean the whole whole idea was him to come and pay for sin, right?

There was no other reason to come.

And the Jews at the time weren't getting it.

But once Christ did it perfectly, the infinite atonement took place for all time and all eternity, then he could return to heaven and then leave us with the Holy Spirit.

He said, if I don't leave you with the Holy Spirit, then I'm only geographically here.

You know, now everybody, the Spirit's going to be worldwide in the church.

I don't know if that that helps at all.

Why would he do that?

Is it is it just um I just I don't understand.

The infin infinite atonement.

Did you want to say something about that, Brian?

That he was showing submission to God the Father.

Um I was thinking when you were talking when they talk in in reference to those scriptures, I think of what Paul said.

He said, To the natural man the things of God are foolishness.

And so they they want to approach the scriptures with a natural standpoint.

And there's also a proverb that says there's a there's a way that seems right to a person, but the ends thereof is the way of death.

So we know we know scripture is a revelation of God.

God is spirit, we're flesh.

It's hard for us to connect with God.

But that's why we need Christ, because He's fully God and fully man at the same time.

And that just brings some clarity to those natural questions that come up.

And um it's it's a great dialogue that we can have with them.

I've had those conversations, and but the answer is always going to be found in the scriptures.

The best the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible itself, and so it's but they they're coming from it from their from their vantage point, from their from their scriptures, but we know that they've been engineered to support their theology.

And so we just stay grounded in scripture and and just try to persuade them about because their doubt is based upon their theology that Jesus was an archangel, you know, just just a spirit, but he was he was holy man.

So let's stay.

Uh can you have a few minutes?

I'd love to stay with you.

Yeah, you you're asking very fundamental, hard uh questions that are totally answered though in in the scripture.

So let's go through that.

It would be wonderful.

Any anybody else want to go at that level?

Yes, go ahead.

Alex, one last comment.

Share um a process that Ron Carlson has that I wrote on a business card.

I took a picture of it, so I'd remember, but I always carry it with me.

And we've used this several times.

Uh in with just walking in New Jersey, you see the guys that are you kind of know the Jehovah's Witnesses, so you just approach them and go, Oh, what church do you guys go to?

And they'll say, you know, whatever they say in Kingdom Hall, and we go, Oh, cool, yeah, I'm a Christian.

There's all kinds of different flavors of Christianity.

And and then you you start, there are four verses in Revelation, and you go, Um, do you have your Bible?

Or if they knock on the door, you just go, Are you from the watchtower?

And they go, Yeah.

I go, Oh, I'm so glad you're here.

I've had these questions drive me crazy.

And they get all happy, you know.

Yeah, in your Bible, can you look up um and I pull out the card, uh, Revelation.

The first one is Revelation 1.8.

And it's all of these verses have to do with the first and the last, beginning and the ending, Alpha, Omega.

So you have them read it out of their Bible, and then you say, Who's speaking there?

And they say, Uh, well well, uh, God is speaking.

And you go, Jehovah, right?

And they say, Yeah.

And you go, oh, good, that's what I thought.

Uh, and then you go to the next one, uh, Revelation 21, 5 through 7.

And you say, Who's speaking there?

And they say, Well, God is speaking there.

I'm like, oh, good, that's what I thought too, Jehovah.

Okay, cool.

Jehovah, right?

And they go, Yeah, okay, great.

Uh the next one's Revelation 22, 13, and they read that, and you go, Who's speaking there?

And they say, Well, Goddess.

And you go, Jehovah, right?

And he goes, Yeah.

The next one is Revelation 1, 17 through 18, but you have to stop them right when they finish 17.

So it's like I'm the first and last, beginning, ending, and you say, Stop.

Who's speaking there?

And they say, Well, Jehovah's speaking there.

Okay, that's what I thought.

Please keep reading.

And this says, I'm he that has died.

And as a lot, and they'll they'll kind of pause as they're reading it.

They'll go, he that has died.

And I go, When did God die?

It's been driving me crazy.

And they'll go, God didn't die, Jesus died.

Oh, so Jesus is God.

And they go, Well, Jesus isn't God.

I'm like, Well, the quote hasn't changed, it's the same person talking.

And so then they get really flummoxed.

And I mean, 45 minutes on my doorstep, we were just, he was looking in scripture, trying to figure things out.

And I said, Can you bring an elder back from the church?

Because I really want to know this answer.

And they'll come back with somebody else, and that's when you can get into all this, the Trinity, you know, because they'll go, Well, that's the Trinity is not in the Bible.

And you go, I know it's not.

It's a Latin word, it's not in the Bible originally, but you can show them the baptism of Jesus and see they could see the three personalities and stuff like that.

But it it plants, Ron Carlson said it plants a seed in that they always have a younger and an older person together when they come.

So it plants a seed in that younger person's head, and then you kind of have a door in with these folks and can develop a relationship and do some Bible study and stuff like that.

Thank you, Alex.

We've got to wrap up here.

Okay.

Um anybody else want to come up afterwards?

I'd love to have one-on-one conversations, even have a focus group.

If it, you know, we might even put together a focus group to discuss like the doctrine of the Trinity.

Uh it would be really good to dig into your Bible because the best part about this is like uh Alex was saying, digging into the Bible.

Stay in the Bible, stay with Jesus.

Father, we just thank you for this opportunity to share around your word.

We thank you for opportunities when we have a Jehovah's Witness come to be able to share you and for their salvation.

We pray in your name.

Amen.

All right.

Next week we we're going to do uh Mormonism, so please come on back and bring any Mormon friends.

That's another work ethic.