One of the biggest things that I hear when it comes to Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses speaking to current Jehovah’s Witnesses is that they don’t know how to either start a conversation or steer a conversation.  When I initially started writing my Tough Questions series I realized that it could prove to be a fantastic tool for this.

I’ve seen numerous websites with the title “Prove Jehovah’s Witnesses wrong with a few simple questions”, “Questions Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t want to be asked”, “Stump a Jehovah’s Witness with these questions”, and I really don’t get the point of that at all.  The people reading this website are more than likely former Jehovah’s Witnesses; you probably have friends or families that are inside the organization.  Stumping a Jehovah’s Witness isn’t exactly the object, am I correct?

For those who have never been Jehovah’s Witnesses, they don’t know where to begin.  For those who aren’t used to debate don’t know how to steer a conversation or to rein it in.  For a non-JW related example, there’s a video on youtube regarding Scientology.  A Former member asked a representative “How would you feel if you found out that asbestos was in a ship and you were lied to?”  This was regarding a court case where a Scientologist contracted Mesothelioma from Asbestos that was said to not be on a ship, but was used as a cost-saving measure.  In response to his question the Scientology representative said “What is your level of expertise on asbestos?”  

Notice that the question wasn’t answered and now is brought to a subject that will no doubt be used to discredit the original questioner.  For a more relevant example I was asked to help a man whose wife was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and was starting a study with them.  I gave him a few suggestions of things he should talk about, he had found one of these “Stump a JW” websites and wanted to talk about Michael the Archangel being Jesus and wanted to point out changes in doctrine being referred to as New Light.  I told him it wasn’t a good idea to go into scriptural discussions with a Jehovah’s Witness because unless you’re a seminary student you don’t read the bible as often as they do; and the subject matter he picked he would have to be VERY knowledgeable on the subject in order to make any headway.  He didn’t listen to my advice and he ended up being eviscerated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were studying with his wife, which just reinforced her view that they had the truth. 

So for my next few entries I’m going to post text to one of my Tough Questions and then follow-up questions to ask, how to steer the conversation to a conclusion and finally how to prevent a derailing of the conversation.  I looked over the text to all of my Tough Questions and thought that the best one to start with would be Tough Question Number 3 which is in regards to preaching:

Anyone even curious about Jehovah's Witnesses knows about their door to door work.  The belief is that the preaching work and message will be known through out the Earth and then the end will come.  The problem, how is this possible?  There are something like 6 million Jehovah's Witnesses in the world however world population is currently at 6 billion and increasing.   If we were to stop right there, that would mean that every witness (man, woman and child) would merely have to preach to 1000 people in order for the good news to be spread throughout the world.  

However that's not taking into account that every day 200,000 people are born. So in essence in one day one witness would have to preach to 1000 people, then to keep up each week they would have to preach to 2.5 people to keep up with population growth.  That of course is saying that someone could manage to preach to 1000 people on the outset of this problem, the average hours of a publisher is 10 hours per month.  This would mean that it would take 100 months to preach to all 1000 required people before taking population growth into effect.  So at that point it would take a little over 8 years in order to preach to those initial 1000 people, and then when they've completed those 1000 people due to population growth they would have another 1040 to preach to. 

It's a never-ending cycle, which is probably the reason why the Watchtower is always heralding to do more in the Preaching work.  This of course is just including preaching to them once; this wouldn't include return visits or studies.  Also it is assuming that everyone is possible to reach, even those people in theocratic governments like Iran or harsh dictatorships like North Korea.  Another assumption made is that they would be possible to be reasoned with; they wouldn't have any pre-conceived notions of what the Jehovah's Witnesses were, willing to listen earnestly to everything preached to them, not trying to push their preacher off of their doorstep, completely ready for assimilation.  With this data in hand, how is this possible, would this have to apply to the specific Jehovah's Witness message or a broader message about Jesus ransom sacrifice?  So Tough Question number 3: How can the prophesy of the message reaching everyone in the Earth (and them knowing it's God's message) be fulfilled before the time of the end given the current preaching process?

Obviously you’re not going to remember all of that (if you do color me quite impressed).  So let’s break it down, what do you need to hit on in your initial question to the Jehovah’s Witness to open up the discussion.

1.)     Preaching the message around the earth must be done in order for the end to come.  (agreeing essentially with preaching)

2.)     Population is roughly 6 billion, and witnesses in order to reach everyone will need to reach 1000 people before going into population growth.

Pretty simple right?  Only really two things to remember.  So where does this lead, the answer you will more than likely hear is this:

“The scripture you’re talking about says that the work must be done in all the NATIONS, it doesn’t say that every PERSON must be reached.”

This can lead two places; the first response will lead nowhere, the second however can lead to a great point.  The first response you can go with would be:

“Well Jehovah’s Witnesses do not preach to all the nations, they do not preach in North Korea or Iran.”

This would be quickly refuted with “No currently we do not preach in those nations but will in the future.”  

Do you see how this was basically a dead end?  Also you can probably see why someone thought that would be a good set up for a punch line, “Ha, gotcha, you’re not fulfilling the scriptures because you’re not preaching in every nation.”  Note also how quickly it is refuted.

The second response you could say is:

“I see, so if it is truly only to be preached in the NATIONS and not EVERY PERSON needs to be reached, what happens to those who never hear the message before the end comes?  Do they get a ‘free pass’ so to speak and enter right into paradise, or are they killed simply because they were unfortunate enough to never hear the message?”

Now with this response there are three responses that are usually given.

1.)     “Yes, God would destroy them because the message was available they didn’t seek it.”

2.)     “Yes, God would allow them into Paradise so that they could then hear the message.”

3.)     “God will make a decision at Armageddon based on their heart condition whether they will make it to paradise or not.”

All three of these responses lend themselves to fantastic discussions.  For the first response.

“Yes, God would destroy them because the message was available they didn’t seek it.”

You could respond a myriad of ways to this.  If it were me my response would be something like this:

“How would someone know which message to seek if they never got a chance to hear it?  Imagine you are one of these people, you’re ready for judgment and God says to you ‘Sorry Christadelphians were the true religion.  You were never home to hear the message, you could’ve researched on your own the Christadelphian faith.  Would you think that is something a fair and just God would do?”

The second response:

“Yes, God would allow them into Paradise so that they could hear the message.”

This creates a really interesting dilemma, maybe you can see it already… My response to this would go something like this:

“So people who don’t hear the message are given a free pass?  Then what are you accomplishing by preaching to them?  A good hearted person could be slated to make it into Paradise, then you preach to them they say ‘not interested’ and now they’re slated off into destruction.  So every knock on every door you’re killing people.”

The third response:

“God will make a decision at Armageddon based on their heart condition whether they will make it to paradise or not.”

Again this creates another interesting dilemma.  After seeing the last reply, you can probably already see it.  I would answer with something like this:

“So God is making decisions based on heart condition then.  Would this also apply to those who don’t accept the message?”

If they respond with “No, those who don’t accept the message even if their heart condition is good will be destroyed”; you can simply go back to the reply to the second response.

If they respond with “Yes”, your response can continue:

“Then what exactly are you accomplishing in your ministry.  Whether I say yes or no to your presentation if my heart is good God will let me in to paradise.  It wouldn’t matter if I were Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Seventh Day Advantist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or whatever; as long as I have a good heart then I can make it to Paradise.  I fail to see the benefit of converting to your religion.”

You could also follow up with a question “What if I do convert to your religion and don’t have a good heart, would I be destroyed?”

Again there are only two responses to this, “Yes” or “No”.  If they respond “Yes”, you could simply follow up “Then the religion clearly isn’t important when it comes to judgment, I’ll take my chances with God.” If they respond “No”, you can follow up with “Do you really think someone like a serial killer or child molester will make it through Armageddon simply because he stumbled into the right religion?”

I kept my responses as brief as possible for clarity and for memorization purposes.  You can come up with your own responses, but you need to think ahead as to where the conversation might go to every thing you say.  Notice also how to steer the conversation and most importantly avoid the bible.  Bible Ping-Pong usually solves nothing, if you choose to engage in Bible Ping-Pong you better either REALLY know your stuff or enjoy getting in circular debates.  Hopefully, this might be able to help you in the future if you choose to discuss things like this with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

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