Jehovah Witnesses

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Akalyte' post='1123086' date='Nov 18 2006, 10:25 AM']
I found a tract "the end of false religion is near". and what do I see? i picture of a Catholic Priest. I cant wait to bump into them on monday.
[/quote]
Make sure you keep your cool. We are all on the battlefield of life...some are wearing the wrong uniforms. We do not want to strip and humiliate them...we want to show them the right uniforms.

[Akalyte]

[quote name='Raphael' post='1123088' date='Nov 18 2006, 09:28 AM']
Make sure you keep your cool. We are all on the battlefield of life...some are wearing the wrong uniforms. We do not want to strip and humiliate them...we want to show them the right uniforms.
[/quote]

oh yeah I planned on keeping my cool. Being mean and rude would just prove their suspisions true. lol

i actually want to create my own catholic tracts. Anyone want to help?

[Winchester]

[quote name='Raphael' post='1123085' date='Nov 18 2006, 09:23 AM']
Yes, they see themselves as Christians...not only that, but as the ideal Christians living in harmony like the Early Church...which is, of course, a load of carp.
[/quote]

But you catch my drift?

It's important, I think to not dismiss the individual as not Christian. We are not saved by knowledge, but by faith. Intellectual failure or false indoctrination probably does not equal damnation, and certainly one does not wish to be flatly told their Christianity is a load of fish. Better that a sincere believer be corrected gently. I'm not saying lay over (obviously, I would not say such a thing,) but if they are good and respectful people, then saying they (the individual, not the religion) are not Christian is not only impolite, it's also may well be incorrect (again for the individual.)

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1123153' date='Nov 18 2006, 12:56 PM']
But you catch my drift?

It's important, I think to not dismiss the individual as not Christian. We are not saved by knowledge, but by faith. Intellectual failure or false indoctrination probably does not equal damnation, and certainly one does not wish to be flatly told their Christianity is a load of fish. Better that a sincere believer be corrected gently. I'm not saying lay over (obviously, I would not say such a thing,) but if they are good and respectful people, then saying they (the individual, not the religion) are not Christian is not only impolite, it's also may well be incorrect (again for the individual.)
[/quote]
Oh, of course I understood your meaning there. The truth must all be presented, but in a certain order. It would not be wise to begin with the truth that they are not Christian, but rather to show them the light of the true faith and lead them to see the truth in it until such point that they would readily agree that JWism, Mormonism, etc., are not Christian.

[Church Punk]

In collage they were preaching to the masses... they went as far to say that Catholics were vampires and canibals because we drink and eat the Body and Blood of Jesus. My response to that, was well if thats what you want to call it, its fine!

[suuran]

It doesn't strike me as particularly important to even discuss the idea of whether they're Christians or not...positive or negative. Don't affirm "Yes, you guys are totally Christians!" but don't go out of your way to lay the smack-down with "You guys are heathens, not Christians!"

I'm a pretty good writer (fiction, mostly), but I don't think I have the level of apologetic knowledge to write any kind of Catholic tract or whatever you'd call it...I don't even really know what JW believe.

Actually, that'd be my main advice: Make sure you know and understand what a Jehovah's Witness believes as he believes it. Your rebuttals will be much more effective if you don't misunderstand what you're arguing against--just like how Protestants who don't have a clue what Catholics actually believe quickly lose my interest.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Church Punk' post='1123163' date='Nov 18 2006, 01:07 PM']
My response to that, was well if thats what you want to call it, its fine!
[/quote]
You shouldn't give that response. Their accusation is based on their misunderstanding of the sacrament...that response makes it seem like you agree with their misunderstanding and just don't care. Correct the misunderstanding instead.

[Guest maureen]

[quote name='Winchester' post='1122697' date='Nov 17 2006, 07:26 PM']
But the question is: How do they identify themselves. It truly matters in dealing with them.

For instance, I think I am sane, terribly urbane, and also humble and handsome. If you contradict any of those things, you will lose my ear.
[/quote]

We Jehovah's Witnesses, see ourselves as Christian because we try to do what Christ recommended. (going house to house, 2 by 2, making disciples, etc.)
We believe what God said at Matthew 3:17 'Look! Also, there was a voice from the heavens that said: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” ' and what Jesus said at John 14:28 "YOU heard that I said to YOU, I am going away and I am coming [back] to YOU. If YOU loved me, YOU would rejoice that I am going my way to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am." Also what Paul said, after Jesus' resurrection at 1st Corinthians 11:3 "But I want YOU to know that the head of every man is the Christ; in turn the head of a woman is the man; in turn the head of the Christ is God"
So we believe that as God said, Jesus is His son, and as Jesus said, his Father is greater than he is, and what Paul said, after Jesus' death, that God is Jesus' head. These are some of the reasons we don't believe in the Trinity. It's not that we're trying to be contrary, it's just that Jesus and God would not have been misleading in their teachings, so we take their words at "face value"
Thanks,
maureen123@cox.net

[Katholikos]

[quote name='maureen' post='1123387' date='Nov 18 2006, 07:35 PM']
We Jehovah's Witnesses, see ourselves as Christian because we try to do what Christ recommended. (going house to house, 2 by 2, making disciples, etc.)
maureen123@cox.net
[/quote]Hi, Maureen, and welcome. You posit the same fallacy as Protestants[b]: [/b] you beleive Christianity is based on the Bible, and you attempt to understand it through your own or Charles Taze Russell's (mis)interpretation of the words written on a page centuries ago. But Christianity was founded on the oral teaching of the Apostles. Jesus Christ taught the Apostles, and the Apostles taught the Church and appointed others to replace themselves as they moved on to evangelize others. When the Church was nearly 400 years old, she selected 27 of her own writings, named them the New Testament, and formed the Bible.

Christian doctrines and practices did not originate with the New Testament. The Church's teachings are confirmed by the NT, but the NT is not their original source. The myth that the Bible stands alone without the Church was born full blown from the mind of Martin Luther in the 16th century.

The Catholic Church is the Mother of the NT, not the daughter.

==========================
Blessed Father Damien, pray for us!

[Akalyte]

[quote name='maureen' post='1123387' date='Nov 18 2006, 06:35 PM']
We Jehovah's Witnesses, see ourselves as Christian because we try to do what Christ recommended. (going house to house, 2 by 2, making disciples, etc.)
We believe what God said at Matthew 3:17 'Look! Also, there was a voice from the heavens that said: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” ' and what Jesus said at John 14:28 "YOU heard that I said to YOU, I am going away and I am coming [back] to YOU. If YOU loved me, YOU would rejoice that I am going my way to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am." Also what Paul said, after Jesus' resurrection at 1st Corinthians 11:3 "But I want YOU to know that the head of every man is the Christ; in turn the head of a woman is the man; in turn the head of the Christ is God"
So we believe that as God said, Jesus is His son, and as Jesus said, his Father is greater than he is, and what Paul said, after Jesus' death, that God is Jesus' head. These are some of the reasons we don't believe in the Trinity. It's not that we're trying to be contrary, it's just that Jesus and God would not have been misleading in their teachings, so we take their words at "face value"
Thanks,
maureen123@cox.net
[/quote]

Hello, and peace be with you.

Is "Jehovah" God’s Name?


In Reasoning From the Scriptures the WTS teaches that "Jehovah" is the proper pronunciation of God’s name, and so "Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved" (Rom. 10:13). They continue, "Many scholars favor the spelling ‘Yahweh,’ but it is uncertain and there is not agreement among them. On the other hand, ‘Jehovah’ is the form of the name that is most readily recognized, because it has been used in English for centuries . . . " (p. 195).

However, the JWs’ own Aid to Bible Understanding says, "The first recorded use of this form [Jehovah] dates from the 13th century C.E. [after Christ]. Raymundus Martini, a Spanish monk of the Dominican order, used it in his book Pugeo Fidei of the year 1270. Hebrew scholars generally favor ‘Yahweh’ as the most likely pronunciation" (pp. 884-885).

New Testament Greek always uses the word "Lord," and never "Jehovah," even in quotes from the Old Testament (OT). Encyclopedia Judaica, Webster’s Encyclopedia, Jewish Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Universal Jewish Encyclopedia and countless others agree that the title "Jehovah" is erroneous, grammatically impossible, and was never used by the Jews.


Not in the "New Testament"

Most importantly: the name "Jehovah" does not appear at all in the "New Testament"! The Watchtower took it upon themselves to mistranslate the Greek word for "Lord" (Kurios) into "Jehovah" 237 times in their New World Translation of the Bible. They did this arbitrarily and inconsistently. Wherever Kurios was obviously used in reference to Jesus, they translated Kurios as "Lord".

If the Watchtower had been consistent in their substituting "Jehovah" in place of "Kurios" then Philippians 2:9-11 would read in their translation:

"Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of those in heaven, and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Jehovah, to the glory of God the Father."

Such a reading would contradict Watchtower theology which holds that Jesus is not Jehovah.

Edited November 19, 2006 by Akalyte

[Katholikos]

[quote name='Akalyte' post='1123410' date='Nov 18 2006, 09:40 PM']
Is "Jehovah" God’s Name?

* * *
New Testament Greek always uses the word "Lord," and never "Jehovah," even in quotes from the Old Testament (OT). Encyclopedia Judaica, Webster’s Encyclopedia, Jewish Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Universal Jewish Encyclopedia and countless others agree that the title "Jehovah" is erroneous, grammatically impossible, and was never used by the Jews.

Not in the "New Testament"

Most importantly: the name "Jehovah" does not appear at all in the "New Testament"!

[/quote]Supporting what Akalyte has posted, here's what the esteemed Protestant scholars who translated the Revised Standard Version have to say on the subject:

"(1) The name Jehovah does not accurately represent any form of the Name [of God] ever used in Hebrew, and (2) the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as if there were other Gods from whom he had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church."

========================
Blessed Father Damien, pray for us!

[Akalyte]

[quote name='maureen' post='1123387' date='Nov 18 2006, 06:35 PM']
We Jehovah's Witnesses, see ourselves as Christian because we try to do what Christ recommended. (going house to house, 2 by 2, making disciples, etc.)
We believe what God said at Matthew 3:17 'Look! Also, there was a voice from the heavens that said: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” ' and what Jesus said at John 14:28 "YOU heard that I said to YOU, I am going away and I am coming [back] to YOU. If YOU loved me, YOU would rejoice that I am going my way to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am." Also what Paul said, after Jesus' resurrection at 1st Corinthians 11:3 "But I want YOU to know that the head of every man is the Christ; in turn the head of a woman is the man; in turn the head of the Christ is God"
So we believe that as God said, Jesus is His son, and as Jesus said, his Father is greater than he is, and what Paul said, after Jesus' death, that God is Jesus' head. These are some of the reasons we don't believe in the Trinity. It's not that we're trying to be contrary, it's just that Jesus and God would not have been misleading in their teachings, so we take their words at "face value"
Thanks,
maureen123@cox.net
[/quote]


The Trinity

By David Goldstein LL.D, 1943. A Jewish convert to Catholicism.
Named a "Knight of St. Gregory" by Pope Pius XII in 1955.



I am glad that your Orthodox friends are this time to the fore. The issue they raise is apropos. The gist of it is this"The Messiah is a man in the eyes of Judaism and not God. Jesus never called himself God. In the eyes of Jews, God is One, and not divided into three Gods, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We Jews hold God to be a transcendent, infinite, personal being; the Creator, Author, and Supreme Lord of the Universe.


Those primary characteristics of God named in the last sentence, above quoted, are entirely in accord with the Catholic concept of God. Especially pleased am I to have you designate God as "a personal being," as did the great in Israel. This is noted because there is a tendency among prominent persons in Jewry, some of them rabbis, towards a pantheistic concept of God. Their use of biblical terminology often beclouds the fact that they lean theologically and philosophically more towards Spinoza than Moses. Einstein, who ranks high in mathematics, but low in theology, leads in that misconception in Jewry today. He denies belief in a personal God, substituting a "cosmic God" for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If the God of Israel is not a Personal Being, then have the learned in the Jewish and Christian world throughout the ages been grossly in error when they declared that God created and rules the universe; God loves; God made the moral law that we are obligated to obey; God rewards; God punishes. Surely no "cosmic God" could do such things, as it has no intelligence, no self-consciousness, no will, no personality. Besides, without the existence of a personal God, there is no way of accounting for the origin of human personality.


In order properly to understand Catholic belief, it is necessary to dismiss from your thought the notion that Catholics believe in the existence of three Gods, because they pay homage to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is as incorrect as saying that the Jewish homage paid to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob means that Jews worship three Gods. Your definition of God is in agreement with Catholic teaching, that God is Infinite Being, who embodies within Himself all perfections in the absolute sense of the term. Hence the existence of three such Infinite Beings-one in the Father, one in the Son, and still another in the Holy Spirit -, is an intellectual and spiritual impossibility. For the three to be Infinite each would have to possess all perfections. Therefore each would be independent of the others, hence none of them would be Infinite, as only one Being can possibly be absolutely all-inclusive.


It goes upon the saying, that the Catholic Church knows best what Catholics believe, or rather, what Catholics must believe. She claims to believe in, and to worship, the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that the Jews worship, the God of the Old Testament which is part of her Bible. Therefore when Jews pass from the Synagogue to the Church, they may continue, if they desire, to say the foremost prayer of their fathers in the Jewish faith-"Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is One." Yes, they may make the sign of the Cross, "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit," before and after it without contradicting that God-given prayer.
The Catholic Church positively, and most emphatically declared in the Athanasian Creed, over fifteen hundred years ago, that:

"There are not Three, but one God" - "We are forbidden by the Catholic Religion to say that there are Three Gods or Three Lords."

God, in substance, in His divine nature, is One, says the Catholic Church. But God manifests in three distinct Persons, as the Father, He - the One God - is the Creator. As the Son, He - the One God - is the Redeemer. As the Holy Spirit, He - the same God - is the sanctifier. This is something that we cannot understand because it is a mystery, that is, something the nature of which is hidden from our finite minds. Yet do not dismiss it from consideration because it is a mystery. Nature is filled with mysteries. What do we know of light, save its manifestation? What do we know about how a single human voice, broadcasted, can be heard in its entirety, by millions of persons, all over the world, save that it so manifests? Look at a kettle of water boiling over a flame. Can you tell how a cold match, cold charcoals, and cold water, develop light, fire, heat and steam in the course of a dozen minutes? St. John asks the question, "The wind blows where it will, and thou hearest its sound, but dost thou know where it comes from or where it goes?" (3:8) What was said of the stars and the wind, can be said of the knowledge of the Father, Whose creation we see; of the Son, of Whose redeeming qualities the world is conscious; of the Holy Spirit, Whose sanctifying grace has transformed sinners into saints:

"I may not know the compass plan
By which the stars shine in the heavens at night,
But I may know as well as any man
That stars are shining, and may share their light.

I may not know how blows the summer wind,
And whence? and wither? still unanswered be,
But I may feel its soothing touch, and find
Rest and refreshment in the breeze for me."

While the Trinity in Unity will ever be a mystery, it is not contrary to right-reasoning to believe that a thing may be one and three at the same time, provided it is looked at from two different aspects. This simple principle became a working factor with me long before I passed from the Synagogue to the Church. It removed from my mind the obstacle that might otherwise have caused me to hesitate to accept the doctrine of the Holy Trinity upon the authority of the Catholic Church. The simple lesson that aided me was the study of an object, that is a thing, anything within the cognizance of the senses. The object is one, be it a toothpick or the universe. Yet it is three in those aspects which make it an object, its length, breadth and thickness. Without that triunity in unity, the object could not be sensed or seen as an entity. What reason compels us to reject, is that an object can be one and three at the same time, in the same sense.


We may talk about an object, as we talk about God, but to encompass the object, or to know God to the fullest degree within the compass of the human mind, the object, and God, must be looked at from a triune aspect -, the length, breadth and thickness of the object; and God through the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I fully realize how difficult it is for Jews to accept the doctrine of the triunity of God. It is no doubt due in part to their hostility towards anything that might suggest a plurality of Gods, as belief in three Gods is a denial of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Then there lurks in the Jewish breast an ingrained hostility towards the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, involved in the Holy Trinity, which means the assumption of a human nature by the Second Person, Jesus, the Messiah.


Long centuries before the Christian era, our fathers of old in Israel battled for monotheism, the principle of one God, against polytheism, the principle of many Gods that was uphela by the peoples who surrounded them. It was the divine mission of our forebears to teach monotheism, the principle to which they adhered strenuously. In Old Testament days, the advocacy of belief in the division of God into persons would have created intellectual confusion. It would have been universally held to be a denial of the oneness of God, and thus encouraged the very thing that Jews were battling against, polytheism.


In studying the doctrine of the Trinity, in fact in studying any phase of revealed religion, one must realize that the fuller understanding of it had to await the coming of the Messiah, in whom all things are fulfilled. That which appeared in shadow in the Old Testament was revealed in a fuller light in the New Testament. Besides, the world would have been unable to get a proper appreciation of the Holy Trinity until the Second Person appeared upon earth and demonstrated, by His life and works, that He is true God as well as true man. God seems to have willed that His unity be stressed to the utmost by the Jews while they were the keepers of His Law; and that His triunity be stressed by the followers of His Son when they became the keepers of the New Revelation.


Yet the learned in Israel realized the hidden suggestion of the plurality of persons in God, in the Old Testament. We see it ourselves in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis (5:26), wherein God said, "Let us make man in OUR Own image." Then in the third chapter (5:.22) we read, "Behold Adam is become one of us, knowing good and evil." In foretelling the obstinacy of the Jews, so apparent today when they are confronted with things related to the glorious Son of David, who "Hearing, hear, and understand not," Isaiah says, "Whom shall I (the Lord) send? and who shall go for us" (6:8). A study of the Sh'ma - "Hear, 0 Israel, our Lord is One" (always said in Hebrew)-shows a suggestion of a plurality of persons in God. The noun Elohenu (Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai ELOHENU, Adonai Ehod) is the plural of Eloah (God), which, translated literally, means Gods.
Just one more point, for I will leave your declaration that Jesus never called Himself God for my next letter. Jesus, who ever spoke of God in the singular, as do Catholics, proclaimed to the world the existence of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This was unmistakenly apparent on the occasion when Jesus commissioned His disciples to convert the world:

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name (NOT THE NAMES) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (St. Matt. 28:20).