How To Evangelize Jehovah's ...

How to Evangelize Jehovah’s Witnesses

David Reed has much experience to draw from when teaching Christians to evangelize Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was a preacher and elder there for many years. Now his book, Jehovah’s Witnesses Answered Verse by Verse is in its 32nd printing and has sold more than 250,000 copies. As he notes, John 20.28 troubles many in that cult because they refuse to accept the deity of Christ so clearly given here. From his work he has observed two responses to this verse.

Less knowledgeable Witnesses may “brush it off by saying, ‘Thomas was just exclaiming his surprise. If we saw a friend return from the dead, we, too, might say, ‘Oh! My God!’ Thomas didn’t mean anything by it.” That answer might seem possible in our day and age when God’s name is treated as a curse word. But a devout Jew, like Thomas, would never have blasphemed in that way. Additionally, if that had been Thomas’ meaning, Jesus would surely have rebuked him. Instead, he acknowledges that Thomas has finally “believed” – finally believed what? That Jesus is both Lord and God!

A better trained Witness knows to move quickly to different verses, as they are taught to do in the Watchtower Society’s book Reasoning from the Scriptures. They will show you verse 31 of John 20 and say that Jesus is only the Son of God. They will go back to verse 17, where Jesus calls God, “my God and your God.” They will claim that these other verses eliminate the possibility of a divine Christ.

But that will not suffice. Thomas recognizes that a resurrected Christ proves his deity. He is neither the archangel Michael nor some created, god-like being. Here is proof of what the church has always believed: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

From a sermon by Glenn Durham, How Do You Respond to the Jesus of the Book? 6/2/2010