In 1973 there were 67,500 Jehovah`s Witnesses in Britain. In the year 2,000 there were 126,000 of them, an 87% increase in 27 years. America has seen a similar rise in their numbers to nearly a million last year. The Christian Church needs to be aware that this sect, recovering from the failure of its 1975 date for the millennium by sleight of hand , will put ordinary Christians under increasing pressure in the new millennium.
I believe that we Christians have a duty to bring the Gospel of truth to the Witnesses, and it is not enough to shut our doors in their faces when they call at the most inconvenient times. These are people who are lost to the Lord, people who are following another gospel which is no gospel. If they are trying to earn their way to a new life after Armageddon, and we are at the receiving end of their preaching, we are still called to love them into the Kingdom of Christ.
Know whom you believe.
When the J.W comes to your door (as he will or, more often, she will), do not say "I belong to such and such a church, or to such and such a denomination". He has been trained in the Kingdom Hall to use this reply as the first in a deliberate series of steps designed to wean you from your Church into the congregation of Witnesses. He is highly trained in method and psychology. He will attempt to find some part of your life with which you are unhappy or disgruntled (that minister who never came to see you when you were ill; the terrible state the world is in; the fact that you live alone and no-one seems to care for you etc).
No! When the Witness calls, do not answer his questions; instead, as soon as you can, tell him that you love the Lord Jesus Christ. Tell him that you have surrendered your life to Him, and that you have a personal relationship with Him. If you get the chance give him examples of what Jesus has done for you in the past week, and how you experience the power of the Lord working in your life today. This may confuse him, for many Witnesses have little spiritual experience in their lives.
Know what you believe.
There is an answer for all his arguments. You need to know that answer for your own safety, but, remember, you will not get very far with a J.W if you argue with him. He is trained for arguments. He thrives on argument. The only thing that is going to make any impression on him is the quality of life that arises from the fact that Christ is God, and lives in you.
Know what it is you hope for.
It is obvious that the J.W. lives under a system of justification by works, no matter how much he will protest to the contrary. The reward of all his hard work is life in an earthly paradise which has been renewed after the devastations of Armageddon. (Out of the 6 million active Witnesses today, only about 8,000 believe that they belong to the heavenly class!).
The Christian needs to know the promises of the Bible which deal with the hope that lies before us. It is quite plain that the Kingdom of Heaven is already a reality in the heart of the one who accepts Jesus Christ as Lord. He is experiencing a downpayment on the powers of the age to come already. His is not some vague hope held out in the future, but an absolute cast-iron certainty which is his now, because his hope rests not on what he himself has done, but on the faithfulness of God.
Know what you possess.
The Witness denies that the Gifts of the Spirit operate today. He teaches that they died out with the death of the last Apostle in the last years on the first Century. For him the history of the church from that point onwards is one of a gradual but accelerating drift away from the Bible in a church which has become more and more apostate. Finally, in the 19th Century, God called the Witnesses out of the world to be a purified testimony to Him in these last days.
It is at this point where we Christians must stand and face the Witnesses. If we try to counter them in our own natural strength we will undoubtedly fail, for we will be facing them on their own terms. But Christians have been given supernatural weapons by God, gifts of wisdom and knowledge, gifts of faith and miracles, gifts of prophecy and healing, gifts of tongues and the interpretation of tongues, and, not least, the gift of discernment of spirits.
If you have faced a Witness as I have on many occasions, it doesn`t take long for you to realise that, behind the outward face the Witness seeks to present, there is indeed a `spirit of the Witnesses`, a hard, bitter spirit. Many of their converts are women left in the home all day by husbands who are out for long hours earning money. These women, lonely, with time on their hands, feeling unloved, easily succumb to the person who calls and seems to be interested in them as a person. Before they know it they are ensnared in the system.
The Witness finds his refuge in a society which asks him to be different from everyone else. Any attempt to get them to see another point of view is seen by them to be part of the `persecution` that the Witness is constantly (and sometimes unconsciously) seeking. All this leaves them with a `spirit`, a spirit which can be discerned. That spirit can only be faced and triumphed over when a Christian faces them with the power and love of God.
God tells us that we are experiencing an `earnest`, a downpayment, on the powers and experience of the age to come. He is giving us powers to face a world which has rejected Him, to love that world powerfully into His Kingdom. These are the only weapons that we dare face the world with, or the Witness with. Use every gift that God has given you, and these alone, to show the Witness that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and for ever - God incarnate in human form.
(SEE ALSO: Study Course on the Jehovah`s Witnesses on this site. e.g. Studies 1-6 about the fact that Jesus is God).
(SEE ALSO: www.mysterycell.freeserve.co.uk)
