In an earlier post, I encouraged you to have clear goals in mind whenever you try to get through to Jehovah’s Witnesses on any subject.
My book, Getting Through to Jehovah’s Witnesses: Approaching Bible Discussions in Unexpected Ways, contains 3 approach chapters with specific recommendations for discussing the Nature of God with Witnesses.
- The objective of The Jesus Isn’t Michael Approach (Chapter 12) is to help Jehovah’s Witnesses see that, contrary to Watchtower doctrine, Jesus is not Michael the archangel.
- The objective of The Jesus is the God-Man Approach (Chapter 13) is to help Jehovah’s Witnesses see that Jesus is fully God and fully man.
- The objective of The Holy Spirit is God Approach (Chapter 14) is to show Jehovah’s Witnesses that the Holy Spirit is both a person and God himself, not an impersonal, “active force” that emanates from God.
You can see that these objectives vary considerably in their scope. The Jesus Isn’t Michael Approach has a narrow focus, and could be covered in one session with a Jehovah’s Witness. It also could be narrowed further into “seed planting” or “stone in the shoe” objectives I discussed in my last post. Continue reading
As a reminder of the definition from last week, a person or organization commits the error of rejecting biblical authority when “either the Bible as a whole or texts from the Bible are examined and rejected because they do not appear to agree with reason or other revelation.”
The “obvious fallacy” occurs when “words like absolutely, undoubtedly, certainly, it is only reasonable to conclude and so forth are substituted for logical reasons.”
“Confused definition” means, “A biblical term is misunderstood in such a way that an essential biblical doctrine is distorted or rejected.”
Using a reductio ad absurdum, Walter Martin demonstrated how, by collapsing contexts, we can make the Bible seem to teach anything:
