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Response Letter to a Jehovah's Witness (Part 2)


“Loretta” replied to my response to her first letter (the reason I put her name in quotes is because I don’t believe it is her real name, since some of my friends have received similar letters from the same P.O. Box address under a different female name. But even if it is, her identity is clearly protected). As discussed in the first entry concerning this, I received a letter from a Jehovah’s Witness (JW) in the mail and a tract from the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (WBTS), which is the organization of the JW’s. Please look at the first article concerning this conversation, because it is important to know what I replied, and how she responded (below). Notice that none of my questions to her were acceptably answered.

Before we get to the letter, it should be noted that I have included the grammatical errors (in this hand-written letter) because I think that it gives strength to the statistics revealing the education levels of JW’s. They are told to not attend higher education and to only study what the WBTS provides or approves. In the graph below, from pewresearch.org, one can see that JW’s are the highest of all in the list who do not graduate high school. This is all about controlling the intellect of people from the WBTS. The idea is that if a person or organization can control behavior, how time is spent, and people’s emotions, then they have the control of the whole person.[1] This is a recipe for a cult.

 

https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/FT_16.10.06_educationReligiousGroups.png?w=640

See the contents of her letter below, still coming from the same P.O. Box address without a surname:

Hello Nace;

Thank you so much for writting me back, so wonderful to find someone who is really interested in the Bible and want questions answered.

Many translators of the Bible have a deep respect for the Divine name (Jehovah) and have a healthy fear of removing or adding anything that appeared in the original text. In the Hebrew scriptures the divine name nearly 7,000 times, we know he has many titles and descriptive Terms such as, Lord, Almighty, most High, Jehovah God himself directed Bible writers to use his name, Joel the prophet said in Joel 2:32, “Everyone who calls on the name of Jehovah will be saved.” And one Psalmist wrote in Psalms 83:18 “May people know that you, who’s name is Jehovah, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” Jesus plainly stated “I have come in the name of my father”, he also stressed that his works were done in his fathers name. If you look at acts 2:34, in a book entitled “the Emphatic Diaglott,” by Benjamin Wilson (1864) Gods name appears; also Lord; clear distiction of God (Jehovah & Lord his son) you are right on the alpha & Omega (the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet) they are used together three times in Revelation as a title for God. which means “the beginning and the end.” Rev 1:8, 21:6 also 22:13 he always existed and will never end.

Thank you for your time, hope this helped.

Loretta

 

No, Loretta, it didn’t help. Notice that she underlined the word “name” just about every time she wrote it. Her emphasis on this word is esoteric in nature. This is part of the allure of JW’s. They believe that they are privileged with information that is private and secretive. What she is saying here is that there are only a select few who know the true name of God; namely, Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The name “Jehovah” comes from an unpronounceable word in the Old Testament called the Tetragrammaton. This word in Greek, means “the four letters.” The Tetragrammaton comes from the Old Testament where the Hebrew letters equivalent to YHWH (or JHVH) in English are translated as JEHOVAH. The reason this word does not include vowels is because the scribes who copied the Old Testament did not want the name of God to be pronounceable, in order to avoid the sin of the Third Commandment, which is that “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”[2] In other words, you shall not use the name of God like something that is common. So the scribes who copied the books of the Old Testament omitted the vowel points on purpose in order to make the name of God so sacred by basically making it forgotten.

JEHOVAH came to exist by adding the vowel points found in the Hebrew word “Adonai” which means “Lord.” Most scholars agree that the more likely translation of the Tetragrammaton is Yahweh (even many JW’s believe this, in my experiences). This is how JW’s believe that they are privileged, to know the name of Jehovah. Her answer to my question of why the Jehovah’s Witness translation of the New Testament uses the Tetragrammaton, which is odd because the Tetragrammaton is not found in the Greek New Testament, is an appeal to a single reference, over a century old, of a Bible translator who used the name Jehovah in the New Testament. This still does not make the Greek New Testament include the Tetragrammaton, which leaves me with my question ultimately unanswered.

I had two main questions that stood out in my letter to her: The first one is, “Did Jehovah God die?” It was explained how I came to this question, but she clearly dodged it. All she really discussed was the “name” of God. The second question is in regard to John 1:3, “If ‘all things came into existence through him’ wouldn’t that mean that he is also uncreated? Wouldn’t the Word (who seems to be Jesus according to JW.org, and verse 14 in the same chapter), be the one to create ‘all’ things?” To which there is not a single reference to in her letter. I even added at the bottom of the letter, “As you can see, the most important of my questions comes from John 1:3.”

It still seems to me that this question is unanswerable to Jehovah’s Witnesses. So much so that they avoid it like the plague. I will reply to her this time emphasizing the fact that my questions were not answered. Perhaps she will respond with more than a single page dodging the questions altogether. But prayerfully, my hope is that she really wrestles with these questions posed to her. Again this is material that a Christian (myself) is producing, which is not from the WBTS, so she might not even read it. With prayer, we can always hope.

 


Written by Nace Howell through the grace of the Lord Jesus

© Nace Howell, 2022


[1] See Steven Hassan’s B.I.T.E. model.

[2] See the Third Commandment in Exodus chapter twenty.

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