© 2000 Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Not too long ago, Jenny, a young woman who had been baptized in the Catholic Church as an infant but had not been raised Catholic, came into my store, and announced that she began a Bible study with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She had no idea who they were or what they teach, but they knocked on her door, introduced themselves, and this gesture sparked an interest in her to begin studying the bible.
Careful not to say or do anything that might dampen her enthusiasm for a renewed interest in Christ, I provided conversational support, and yet I offered guarded caveats about the lack of orthodoxy in the JW teachings. I explained that JW’s are not Christians, and that, in fact, they are anti-Christian. They do not believe in the Trinity or in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I told her that, unfortunately, none of our local Catholic parishes offered a Bible study class, and that I understood that this could negatively impact the ability for Catholics who desired to know Christ more intimately. I mentioned that the Gospels were written by the Apostles Matthew and John, and that Mark and Luke followed Peter and Paul and recorded their teachings for our posterity. I explained that the JW’s modus operandi was to re-translate the Bible into a bastardized version of The Truth. They did this in an effort to support their fallacious heterodox teachings.
Jenny appeared nonplussed. She stammered, with some hesitation, that her “Bible study” was meeting on Monday mornings at her apartment, a day that my store was closed, and so I asked her if I could attend along with her to straighten things out. When she nodded eagerly, I realized that my foot was now in the door.
That following Monday at 10:00 a.m., I was sitting on Jenny’s couch when Ramona, the JW arrived with her trainee. After introductions were made I told Ramona that I was the owner of the local Catholic bookstore and that I had been studying the materials published by the Watchtower for many years. Ramona solidly informed me, her eyes pinning mine, that she had been baptized as a Catholic and raised in the faith but that she had been a JW for the past nine years.
I told Ramona that I believed the Watchtower Society was one of the most devious organizations that I had ever encountered. After recovering from her initial shock, Ramona could merely respond, “What do you mean?”
Praise the Lord! She had given me my opening. Since JWs will not accept any literature that is not produced by the Watchtower Society, I knew that if I wanted to get Ramona up to speed on how badly she had been spiritually swindled, I would have to rely exclusively on Watchtower materials. I brought out my New World Translation (the JW Bible) and a Watchtower magazine dated January 15, 1992. Ramona recognized these materials as being published by the Watchtower and approved of them.
I then turned to page 20 of the Watchtower booklet and I pointed out to her an article entitled, “What do the Scriptures Say about the Divinity of Christ?” The last line on page 21 began with, “But do not Jesus’ miracles prove that he was a God-man? No, for Moses, Elijah, Elisha, the apostles Peter and Paul, and others performed miracles without being God-men.” (Exodus 14:15-31; 1 Kings 18:18-40; 2 Kings 4:17-37; Acts 9:36-42, 9:11-12) According to the JW’s, Jesus was considered a human who performed miracles with God-given power (Luke 11:14-19).”
Ramona read the article and stated that she agreed with it. I then opened my New World Translation and went to the first Scripture cited by the article. Exodus 14:15-16 states: “Jehovah’ now said to Moses: ‘Why do you keep crying out to me? Speak to the sons of Israel that they should break camp. As for you, lift up your rod and stretch your hand out over the sea and split it apart, that the sons of Israel may go through the midst of the sea on dry land.’” When I asked Ramona who performed the miracle, she replied, “Moses.”
Moving along, I cited verse 21, which states, “Moses now stretched his hand out over the sea; and Jehovah began making the sea go back by a strong east wind all night long and converting the sea basin into dry ground, and the waters were being split apart.” Once again, I asked, “Who performed the miracle, Moses or Jehovah God?” Ramona answered, “Well, I guess Jehovah God actually performed this miracle.”
We then looked at all the other Scripture passages cited in the Watchtower article. Each time Ramona agreed that only “Jehovah God” had the power to perform a miracle. In each of these instances, it was readily apparent that the individuals involved did not, themselves, have the power. Each of them had called upon the power of Jehovah God, or Jehovah God had directly intervened. Ramona then was willing to admit that only Jehovah God, and not humans, could perform a miracle.
We then turned to the New Testament where there are 36 miracles attributed to Jesus. Step-by- step I reviewed with her some of those miracles. I asked Ramona to show me where Jesus received help from Jehovah God and she could not. We examined miracle after miracle, and we both came to the same conclusion; yet Ramona stubbornly insisted that Jesus was not divine, and that, somehow, Jehovah God must have performed His miracles through Jesus.
Finally, I opened to the passages concerning the hemorrhaging woman, from the New World Translation. Each of the three synoptic Gospels––Matthew, Mark, and Luke––tells the story. I turned to Luke 8:43-46: “And a woman subject to a flow of blood for twelve years, who had not been able to get a cure from anyone, approached from behind and touched his [Jesus] garment, and instantly her flow of blood stopped. So Jesus said” ‘Who was it that touched me? When they were all denying it, Peter said: ‘Instructor, the crowds are hemming you in and closely pressing you.’ Yet Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me, for I perceived that power went out from me.’”
Now we had a Scripture passage, in her own Bible, which demonstrated emphatically that the power to heal was within Jesus. If only Jehovah God had the power to perform miracles, and Jesus, when He was touched, felt power leave His Body, then it stands to reason that Jesus must be divine.
Ramona sat there, stunned. Her hands were trembling visibly, and she kept repeating, “You can’t be right; you can’t be right.” Shaking her head, she muttered, “I don’t know how to answer you, but there must be a way.” She could not bring herself to believe that the Watchtower Society had deceived her. Ramona fled in embarrassment and confusion.
The following day, surprisingly, she came into my store accompanied by one of the elders of her congregation. He was visibly angered, he did not even have the courtesy to introduce himself, and they had come to prove me wrong. The elder had brought along a booklet entitled Should you Believe in the Trinity? I asked them for a brief intermission, I immediately went to my stash of JW books in the back room, and I brought out my annotated copy of the same booklet. After about 45 minutes of an intense spiritual warfare, with me clearly in the lead and my sword polished brightly, the elder literally dragged Ramona out of the store, wagging his finger at her all the way to the car.
But before entering the car, Ramona pulled away from the grip he had on her arm, and she returned to my store to ask me one final question: Could I prove that hell existed? I told her that I could prove it using only her New World Translation (an idle boast on my part, but I was depending on my backup from The Holy Spirit).
I advised her that, because of her elder’s attitude, this might not be an ideal time, so we made an appointment for the following Monday at 2 p.m. to discuss the subject. I spent hours poring over material on hell over the next few days, using only the NWT. When D-day arrived, I felt confident that I was ready to address all of Ramona’s questions. But she telephoned me at 1 p.m. to cancel our meeting. She had gone to the Kingdom Hall for moral support. The elders asked her if she believed that I was trying to convert her, and Ramona answered yes. Then they asked her if she felt that there was any chance of converting me to their teachings. Ramona answered no. She was then forbidden to meet with me ever again, because, they said, our discourse had already placed her salvation in jeopardy.
Much to her credit, Jenny was not only willing to resume her meetings with Ramona but she welcomed my presence as well, and so, the following Monday at 10 a.m., I was once again sitting on Jenny’s couch. Ramona came in, and we spoke briefly. I told her that if she wanted to continue to study with Jenny, then I would always be there to offer my views. I offered her literature contradicting Watchtower theology, which she naturally refused to accept, having been told that such material has demons attached to it. She left in a huff, and never returned.
As for Jenny, I offered her some literature on Catholicism that I thought would be a breaking ground for her. The fact is that it is not uncommon for Catholics to drift into other faiths because the opportunity for Catholic Bible Study is not as prevalent as it is in Christian denominations.
I wish I could say that this story had a noticeable happy ending; however, to my knowledge, Jenny never did find a Catholic Bible study at that time, and I suspect that Ramona may still be in the Watchtower’s clutches. But that which this interesting little story does profess is how the fear-based brainwashing of the Jehovah’s Witnesses can not only cloud the minds of their “sheep” but it can utterly demolish the salvation intended for these unfortunate souls that was won by Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And so, I continue to pray that the seeds The Holy Spirit enabled me to plant on that day of reckoning for Ramona will, someday, come to fruition, and I invite you, the reader, to pray along with me as there is strength in numbers.
First published in This Rock, February 2000.