Sometimes when you are trying to explain biblical Christianity to Jehovah’s Witnesses, it helps to be creative.

Here are a couple examples from my own experience.

Example #1: Receiving the new birth

Years ago I had some detailed online discussions with a Jehovah’s Witness concerning the new birth. I was able to help her see that the Watchtower was wrong about the new birth being a designation of a person for spirit life in heaven, something which is reserved for a limited group of 144,000 “anointed” Witnesses of Jehovah.

She came to understand that the new birth is an inner transformation by the Holy Spirit which was essential to her salvation.

She asked me how she could know whether or not she had been born again already. After all, she believed in Jesus and had come to understand his full deity.

And if she hadn’t been born again yet, what did she need to do to receive the new birth and to know that it had happened?

There were three things I wanted to make clear to her:

1. Getting born again involves more than an intellectual assent to certain doctrines.
2. It’s a gift from God, not a reward for doing a certain number or quality of good works.
3. An act of the will needs to be involved. That is, she needed to commit her life to Christ in prayer and receive the new birth by faith.

I prayed about how to illustrate all this in a creative and helpful way. Then a thought came to me from the Holy Spirit. (I know it was from Him because it was something I would never have come up with on my own.)

The thought was: “Tell her it’s like getting married. You have to say, ‘I do.’”

So I told her, “Getting born again is like getting married. You may understand marriage very well intellectually, but that doesn’t get you married. You may feel strong emotions of love, but that doesn’t get you married. You may want to demonstrate your love to him by the way you behave toward him, but it’s not those good works that get you married.”

Then I said, “In order to get married, you need to come to the altar. You need to say, ‘I do.’ Jesus is standing at the altar, offering you a spiritual rebirth. He has done his part. Now you need to put your hand in his and commit to him by saying, ‘I do.’ You may or may not have an emotional experience when you do that, but the key is in making that commitment to Jesus. He will do the rest.”

A short time later, she prayed that prayer in her own words. She had a very intense sense of God’s love that she had never experienced before. Her life has never been the same since.

I’m not saying that the marriage analogy should be used with everyone.

What I am saying is that we need to be creative in the way we get through to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we need to listen to the Holy Spirit to know how to convey it.

Example #2: Overcoming fears about praying to Jesus via “the conference call.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses are forbidden to pray to Jesus. They think it is blasphemous to do so. That’s because the Watchtower has taught them that Jesus is not God but rather is the archangel Michael, and we are not to pray to angels.

Even if they come to understand that Jesus indeed is fully God as well as fully man, the indoctrination against addressing him in prayer can remain very strong.

I have tried to get past this barrier with Jehovah’s Witnesses by reasoning, “How can Jesus be your mediator if you can’t talk to him?” Sometimes that works.

But there still may be a fear that prayers directed to anyone but the Father will really go to Satan. I myself had this fear years ago when I studied with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

What helped me get past those fears was the idea of the “conference call.”

I started by addressing my prayer to God. I said, “Jehovah, I don’t know if I should call you ‘Jehovah’ or not, so I will. Please forgive me if I’m doing it wrong. I also feel like I should pray to Jesus but I don’t know if that’s essential or if it’s blasphemous, so please forgive me if I’m doing it wrong. But if it is okay for me to talk to him as my mediator, then please bring him in on this prayer so that we can all speak together.”

Believe it or not, that really helped me!

I didn’t feel like I was doing something blasphemous behind the Father’s back. I was engaging in a three-person conference call with me, God the Father, and my mediator—Jesus Christ.

I have suggested this creative approach to ex-Witnesses and some of them have found it very helpful in overcoming their fears that talking to Jesus in prayer would anger the Father and end up exposing them to satanic deception. After all, Jehovah isn’t going to include Satan in a “conference call” prayer.

You are welcome to use that idea.

Perhaps you can think of a better way—something even more creative and helpful.

If so, great! Try it.