Yesterday, barely a week after the last JW visit, the one-armed woman was at the door again, this time with a man who looked and dressed like the cousin's husband in Secondhand Lions who shook his finger at Walter and said, "We know what you're up to. You're not going to get away with this."
But this guy was nice. And he went off about how so many ministers nowadays don't want to preach about Jesus and so many folks don't want the JWs going around telling about him. The woman looked at him like, "Will you please shut up, this is WAY off script," but he kept going, and I imagine he heard plenty when they got in the car.
I told them I don't have much time, and they promised to keep it under 5 minutes. She had him look up this verse in Daniel about God's kingdom eventually superseding all other kingdoms, and showed me an illustration of the head of gold/belly of brass/feet of clay statue. And England and America are the feet, she said, so in the timeline of history we are at the toenails, so to speak.
Yes, well. Wasn't gonna argue about that.
Then they gave me a pamphlet about Jesus and said we can discuss it next time. I sensed that we were finally heading into more turbulent theological waters.
Ben was home sick so I handed him the pamphlet and asked if he could read it and look for heresy. He sat on the couch with two Bibles and the pamphlet and dug in.
he found plenty of heresy, most of it vague and subtle, as in: not a word about forgiveness of sin through Jesus, or salvation. Mostly it was about the good example Jesus set. Well, fine, but that's really minimizing who he was. Then Ben turned the page and read that Jesus is actually the same as Michael the archangel; he just had a different name while he was on earth.
Obviously the days of agreement are over. You can all pray for me, because I who hate confrontation am going to have to speak up and insert the Truth into that smooth and gentle flow of words from the one-armed woman.
Quote of the Day:
"And people spend money on this?"
--Ben, after taking a sip of my hazelnut latte
I spent some lovely time in the vague but gentle stream of those initial visits with some JW women. Then just like you said, we got to that point where I just knew we were headed for 'turbulent' waters. And indeed it was just that. They brought 'back-up' a couple of times and then there was that final visit where I just said, I'm sorry but I can't talk to you anymore because you won't be changing my mind on Jesus...and if you don't want me to try to convince you otherwise that's gonna have to be the end of our visits.
ReplyDeleteGood luck. you can do this. :-) I'll pray for you, just keep holding up Jesus. :-) Lisa
ReplyDeleteYears ago a friend told me that if you tell JW's that you want to pray w/ or for them before they begin their shpeel they will not hang around long. I tried it twice and it absolutely worked. The one said "Oh, we do our own praying." The other just couldn't get away fast enough. So if you don't want to waste time w/ them try it & see what happens...
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