OMG. I was sitting at my computer this morning answering emails when the doorbell rang. It takes me a couple of minutes to get to the front door and when I got there the bell-ringer had left, but I see two men on the front walk discussing something. One man, nattily dressed in a grey suit and maroon tie, probably fifty years old, was jotting something into a pocket notebook. The other guy was a lot younger, casually dressed with khaki pants and an off-white conservative short-sleeved shirt and he was pointing at something behind his older friend.. Turned out they were discussing what street to try next. They were Jehovah’s witnesses on their weekly hunt.
I hoped they might see me at the window of my enclosed porch and return because I have a standard response to the Witnesses. After they introduce themselves, I talk over them and begin rambling loudly that I’ve been saved since 1967. I talk and gesture dramatically faster than they about my religious experiences. I’m warm and smiling. I’m also lying but maybe a day or two in purgatory might be worth it. They are typically unprepared for this welcome and usually hand me a tract and quickly leave.
Years ago when I lived in a small town in Missouri — the buckle of the bible belt– I found stuffed under my front door a JH pamphlet describing the story of a Catholic priest who fled to the Witnesses. The last page encouraged me as a priest to leave the Catholic Church, too. It really made me feel good about the Witnesses.
These so-called witnesses are scavengers, targeting the poorest and most vulnerable. They try to coax Christians to leave their own churches and join the Witnesses. Then they mesmerize their novice candidates. They develop the fear that once you join and then try to leave, you will literally go to hell.
Jehovah is their rendition of the tetragrammaton YHWH, the sacred personal name of God, which was and still is never pronounced out loud in Jewish services. Lord (Adonai) is substituted. In writing and print, ancient Hebrew did not supply vowels. If vowels are used as superscripts above the NAME it means that here, the reader will say “Lord.”
At the time of Jesus, the chief priest on Yom Kippur while hidden away behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies would voice the sacred name. No one else did, ever.
I think Jehovah’s Witnesses is a cruel, malnourished religion. The daughter of a women I know was ejected rom the Witnesses because she got married to a non-believer. Her mother matter-of-factly informed me that the entire group of JW families -including her own- were committed to shunning this daughter for the rest of her life. I can’t imagine a more anti-Christian behavior.
Showing that we bear the cross of Jesus in our own lives is the best example to the world of a witness for Jesus. Living His message must be our witness to the world. Anything else is perjury.