JW Study Meeting #17

Today's meeting mostly consisted of just small-talk, but I also got a whole bunch of books, including:

• You Can Live Forever on Paradise Earth
• Mankind's Search for God
• United in Worship of the Only True God - I technically had this before, but I misplaced it somewhere, I think
• Isaiah's Prophecy: Light for All Mankind (2 vols.)
• Live with Jehovah's Day in Mind
• Keep Yourselves in God's Love

I can't really remember anything, save the relating of a Jeff Foxworthy-esque joke: "You know you might be a Jehovah's Witness.... if you have a shelf in your house devoted exclusively to 192-page books." (See, that's the standard length for most of theirs.)

JW Study Meeting #16

The fifteenth meeting was so uneventful that I scarcely have any recollection of it, but the sixteenth was a bit more exciting. My girlfriend's been spending spring break with me, so she was still here to sit in on the session. When Uriah and Shem arrived at 1:30 PM today, we started off with over half an hour of smalltalk. One of my cats, Moses, had basically all of his teeth extracted over the past week, so there was some discussion of that and my upcoming (May 21st) dental extraction (classic third molar business). Uriah and Shem both told me of their experiences with that procedure. Shem just plain hates needles, while Uriah turned out to have an extra tooth up near his sinuses that had to be surgically removed at the same time.

I mentioned that I've now finished Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophecy!, and I asked them about other JW commentaries on books of the Bible. I already have that one on Daniel and Revelation--Its Grand Climax at Hand!. They're gonna bring me both volumes of the Isaiah commentary, Isaiah's Prophecy--Light for All Mankind. I think Uriah is also gonna look around for a copy of Commentary on the Letter of James, which is one of their few other biblical commentaries.

In terms of other books, Uriah hopes to bring me a copy of Mankind's Search for God, which he was stunned he hadn't brought me yet, as well as a newer book called Live with Jehovah's Day in Mind, which I hadn't even heard of before today. And evidently there's yet another fairly new book called Keep Yourselves in God's Love, just released in 2008.

As for my request for a copy of The Word--Who is He? According to John, the 1962 publication that goes into the most detail on the Johannine Prologue, Uriah hasn't had any real luck yet, unfortunately. Heh... good thing I scanned the copy I received via ILL last semester. Someday when I have time, I'll see about stitching the scanned images together into a readable PDF to hold me over until I can get a real physical copy of the book.

And I think Uriah is going to look into getting me a Kingdom Interlinear, and maybe a copy of You Can Live Forever on Paradise Earth. I asked about a book called Make Sure of All Things; Hold Fast to What is Fine, and neither Uriah nor Shem had heard of it, but Uriah said he'd look into it. (Checking now, it was the book they used prior to Reasoning from the Scriptures.) Uriah also made note of a publication they have--I forget the title--that is for targeted distribution for areas that have a lot of superstition and spiritism. Due to a mix-up, the local Kingdom Hall has far too many unnecessary copies of it, and it's not like it's something that they need many of in, well, the heart of Amish country. So I'll be getting one of those too.

Uriah mentioned that the website that JWs use to order books for congregations--I should mentioned that, from what I can gather, Uriah is the inventory guy for the local Kingdom Hall--now allows them to check the inventories of other area Kingdom Halls, so if one has a book in stock that somebody wants to have at another, no need for an order, just send it on over.

Heh, so after we chatted about books and such, there was some further small-talk pertaining to my hobby, genealogy, and I related some tales about my newfound ancestors, such as the heroic last stand of my ancestor Captain Michael Pierce against a massive Native American ambush in 1676, or that fact that my ancestor Abigail Sewell's grandnephew Samuel Sewall was one of the judges in the Salem Witch Trials (and, I might add, the only one with enough sense to later on recant his decision).

Eventually, we somehow actually came around to the subject of, well, the Bible. We had sort of a brief discussion today of certain Scriptural passages that I'd brought up previously.

For Ezekiel 32:21-30 and Isaiah 14:9-20, Uriah basically said that he'd send me some Watchtower articles dealing with those, but he doesn't think that they portray any sort of activity in Sheol. We went then to 1 Samuel 28, the tale of the witch of Endor. For JWs, Samuel doesn't actually appear anywhere in this chapter; rather, it is merely a demonic manifestation wrought through the medium, wherein an evil spirit impersonates Samuel. As I found, the NWT even has quotation marks around Samuel's name in this chapter. The purpose of the spirit's impersonation of Samuel was to keep Saul from turning back to God, by reinforcing his acceptance of spiritism. As for the content of the message, the words were, strictly speaking, true, and thus were credible to Saul because they accorded with what he already knew from Deuteronomy 18 and from his life; however, they served to lure him further away from God rather than spur him to repentance. Since, then, this is only a demon and not a human spirit, nothing here serves to challenge the JW belief about the fate of the dead--or, at least, this is the argument as paraphrased from Uriah's presentation.

We then moved to 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, where I thought that Uriah's case was less obviously implausible, if one granted some of the premises. This passage is, of course, one of the classic texts used by orthodox Christians in favor of a disembodied intermediate state, but it didn't take long into the explanation before I saw how the JWs would interpret the passage. Basically, Paul was a member of the anointed class, and his addressees were all of the anointed class, the 144,000 of Revelation. When he speaks of being home in the body and absent from the Lord, that refers to this present life, which is uncontroversial. A typical orthodox Christian construal of the next few verses would have being absent from the body but home with the Lord refer to, of course, the intermediate state in which we exist wholly separate from our bodies. For the JWs, however, this is a reference to the post-resurrection state of the anointed class. After being resurrected as spirit-creatures, they will be in the heavenly presence of Jesus (also a spirit-creature), and thus be both absent from the body and at home with the Lord.

I didn't present any counterarguments this time around, though I did ask plenty of questions about 1 Samuel 28 to make sure that I was following what they were saying. Uriah also informed me that, in their belief, those of the anointed class who died long ago (e.g., Paul) were spiritually resurrected in 1914 during Christ's invisible return, and that for those of the anointed class in the present, they are resurrected as spirit-beings in heaven at the moment of their death. Uriah pointed--I'm not entirely sure to what end, though--to 1 Corinthians 15:51 to note that there would be anointed Christians still alive at the time of the trumpet's sounding. Uriah made mention that, according to the official tally as of last year's memorial service, there were 9,985 members of the anointed class still in this earthly life. The total was sealed in 1935, but there can be replacement of a handful if some apostasize, on the model of Matthias' replacement of Judas among the Twelve.

That's about where we stopped for this week; I'll be meeting them again next Saturday, barring unforeseen circumstances. I've got a confirmation of the date of their annual Lord's Evening Meal memorial service (9 April 2009), which I plan to attend at the local Kingdom Hall. I'm going to talk to my best friend Daniel to see if he'll be free that evening to come along. Should be pretty interesting.

JW Study Meeting #14

Uriah arrived right on time today, and I was very surprised when I saw that Shem was with him! So after a greeting, I let the two of them in, and we made some smalltalk at the table while Uriah petted Enoch, one of my cats who happens to like being around him. I explained how I'd finished the Proclaimers book, which had both of them surprised, especially Shem. (Uriah is a bit more used to me, I suppose, haha.) We were about to start the study when I heard a noise that gave me pause. As I suspected, Enoch was under the table, throwing up next to Uriah's feet. I cleaned that up, and then we got to the study. Chapter 6 was about the state of the dead, and I said up front that I'd probably have disagreement but that we'd get through the chapter today and discuss the issue apart from the book next time. Really, only about 30-40% was objectionable. I explained my position in scattered comments here and there--not very well, in my opinion, but I'm kinda tired. As we went, I jotted down a couple passages of Scripture to look into before the next meeting: Ecclesiastes 9:5-10 and Psalm 146:4. In return, I had prepared a list of other passages to explore at the next meeting, which I gave them to look into: Ezekiel 32:21-30, Isaiah 14:9-15, 1 Samuel 28, Isaiah 26:19, Matthew 22:29-32, Philippians 1:21-26, and 2 Corinthians 5:6-10. I didn't get the chance to look many of them up ahead of time--I jotted some of the references down while skimming a portion of Philip Johnston's Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament early this afternoon before the meeting--so I'm not sure of the relevance of some of them.

JW Study Meeting #13

Today Uriah and I had our thirteenth meeting. My girlfriend's staying here for the week, so she was present. The three of us--I haven't seen a JW other than Uriah for quite some time now--made some small-talk here and there; I mentioned that I'd finished reading the second volume of Studies in the Scriptures (the one called The Time is at Hand), plus the 1986 book Worldwide Security Under the "Prince of Peace", and now I was tackling Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom. Also some talk of computers, and assorted stories that now slip my mind. We finished the fifth chapter of What Does the Bible Really Teach? without too much difficulty, and it was relatively uncontroversial, though I added some clarifications to the effect that Christ's life and death were not simply a one-for-one trade-off with what Adam forfeited. The next chapter, regarding the fate of the dead, will naturally be much more fun.

JW Study Meeting #12

The fun ain't over! Uriah and I had our latest meeting today. We spent a lot of time making assorted small-talk and discussion. He brought me the latest copies of The Watchtower and Awake!--nothing terribly interesting in either so far as I can see--as well as copies of two new books: Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life, their previous study book, and a thick hardback that I've been eagerly awaiting, Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom. Uriah told me how, before he was a JW but when his wife was, he used to look through that book and others seeking points to write up for debate. Then he'd prepare all sorts of flowcharts and get into multi-hour debates with Jehovah's Witnesses on all sorts of things. It's no wonder he's the JW I get to meet with. This morning, I had finished watching the third of the videos that Uriah let me borrow. This one was about the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany, and it included numerous stories from JW Holocaust survivors. Pretty interesting stuff, but like most Watchtower-produced films, it eventually grew boring and excessively lengthy. I returned the movie to him today.

Some of the other things we spoke of were reading (I mentioned that I'm shooting for 100 books in 2008, which is somewhat plausible since this morning I made it to 93) and some current-event types of things, like this and this. Oh, and computer problems. We've both been having plenty of computer problems lately, though at least--unlike his--mine hasn't actually crashed, per se. (I still say that requiring several hours and about forty tries to access the Internet is rather extreme, though...)

He told me some interesting tales of running across a Baha'i household in door-to-door witnessing once. (At least, I think it was Baha'i. The name he said sounded a lot like it, as did a description of their teaching and methods.) I forget exactly how we managed to get on that subject, but it was a pretty interesting story. He mentioned how Witnesses get maps of sections of the neighborhood to cover and then turn them back in for another section map so that they don't harass the same people too often. On the back of the map for that section was a note saying that newly baptized Jehovah's Witnesses should avoid that household; evidently the Baha'i man was a fairly eloquent and persuasive speaker if the listener wasn't being sufficiently critical. I told a brief story, then, about the time I attended a World Religion Day celebration at a small Baha'i meeting. Interesting time, that.

Oh, and I told Uriah some interesting stories about a debate foe of mine, especially concerning the trouncing he received in this thread at TheologyWeb. I believe the phrase, "most brainwashed individual I have ever encountered" rolled off my tongue. See, I was explaining to Uriah that my academic advisor persuaded me to spend next semester applying for a Fulbright, and I've decided that my proposal is going to be to travel to the Philippines and do a study of Iglesia ni Cristo theology for nine months. I'm pretty excited at the possibility, quite naturally, especially because it could be the perfect solution to my problems with procuring INC materials. But, we'll see where that goes.

Eventually, Uriah and I turned to the section of What Does the Bible Really Teach? that we've been working on and got through another piece of the chapter on the atonement. Nothing terribly controversial so far, although I might have qualified a few things here and there. The one paragraph emphasized that being made in the image of God does not mean that we physically resemble God, and that "Jehovah does not have a body of flesh and blood" (p. 48). I quipped that Mormons would probably find that paragraph fairly objectionable, and Uriah remarked that he's never been able to get a Mormon to stick with the study past maybe the second chapter at the furthest.

Afterwards I think I went off on a brief tangent about how certain Church Fathers (*cough*-Gregory-of-Nyssa-*cough*) developed the ransom imagery for the atonement in some difficult directions, and I emphasized that the varying images for the crucifixion used in the New Testament (sacrifice, ransom, penal substitution, victory, etc.) all need to be integrated and taken together as part of the immensely multifaceted solution of God to the creation's problem of rebellion, corruption, and death.

JW Study Meeting #11

Uriah dropped by today, and I was caught off-guard a bit because I was upstairs, browsing TheologyWeb through the mysterious wireless Internet access that my laptop sometimes gets and for which I'm sure not the one shelling out any cash. After hopping downstairs, I let Uriah in, and we made a bit of small talk at the start. I told him how I'd watched two of the videos he'd let me borrow, Jehovah's Witnesses: The Organization Behind the Name and No Blood: Medicine Meets the Challenge. The second one is all about, needless to say, the medical progress being made in developing bloodless surgical techniques to accomodate, not just Jehovah's Witnesses, but also any other individuals who have a preference for avoiding blood transfusions for some reason or other. One case given as an example of this technology in action was a young JW girl who needed surgery to deal with a very severe case of scoliosis, and for whom they used the substitute techniques of hemodilution and use of a Cell Saver. The other video, which I'd initially hoped would cover some of the history of the organization, was really more about the operation as it stood in the late 80s... so there was plenty of footage from inside Bethel and the related complex, including an extremely lengthy tour of the printing presses. It was pretty interesting at first, and I especially enjoyed checking out brief clips of the library and information on how their publications come to be written... but by the time I was about halfway through, I was bored out of my mind.

I was chatting with Uriah for a bit, and he was telling me about a tour of Bethel he took a year or so ago, and we were discussing the computer technology they have, and he was mentioning how impressive the presses are. Then he mentioned that while there, he got to take photographs of Russell's and Rutherford's personal Bibles, and that reminded me to show him my copy of Russell's The Divine Plan of the Ages, which I'd discovered in a box in the basement a few weeks ago and which he was delighted to see. Then I showed him the chart in front, which was Russell's "pyramid scheme" (forgive the pun), and I talked for a while about all the cool stuff I have in PDF format, including Harvest Gleanings, Russell's will, some of his earlier writings, and collections of his comments arranged by verse--which, it occurred to me, is just the sort of thing that I'd be likely to do.

From there, I asked about some of the books I'd asked for and some others that interest me. Uriah's ordered in a copy of Jehovah's Witnesses--Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, whereas "The Word"--Who is He? According to John is proving to be a rather elusive fellow. He could've sworn he'd already transferred a copy of Knowledge That Leads to Everlasting Life to me last time he was here, but I don't have record that he did, so he thinks it might still be at home, in which case I'll receive it next time. I then mentioned that I'd seen a two-volume work called Insight on the Scriptures, which is sort of their current Bible encyclopedia. He's going to look into the possibility of finding me a copy. He explained how he uses it, and he gave as an example a time recently when he was curious about the meaning of 1 Peter 3:19 and found some answers in the Insight book. Around here, we got on a tangent of discussing Mormonism--evidently the Mormons don't visit him anymore. At first they get excited, but after they realize that he's interested in the Bible and not the Book of Mormon, they tend to wander away. We then spent some time discussing Mormon doctrine, such as eternal progression and exaltation, and he brought up how he had a book on Mormonism (I don't think he remembered the title), and he questioned them on the relative recentness (is that a word?) of admitting blacks to the priesthood. I've always wanted to see a Jehovah's Witness and a Mormon throw down. When we found ourselves back on books, I asked about Aid to Bible Understanding, and he actually wasn't sure what it was, though he recalled that the cover had blue lettering and a yellowish/goldish background. He said it was pretty old, but he'll see if maybe he can find one somewhere. From the sounds of it, nobody really uses it anymore, so it sounds perfect for me. Jehovah's Witnesses these days don't really read the older material too much, since they're busy getting through the newest and latest. I eventually asked about the difference between the Emphatic Diaglott and the Kingdom Interlinear, and he didn't seem entirely certain, actually. From the sounds of it, they don't really use either very much, or at least he doesn't. The Diaglott, he said, is arranged in three columns, each a different language, with one frequently empty depending on which testament the page is. He wasn't sure about any specifics of the Kingdom Interlinear, but he's going to look into the possibility of getting one for me. I can buy an Emphatic Diaglott from one of the Christadelphian bookstores, since the translator of the Diaglott, Benjamin Wilson, was a Christadelphian.

Somewhere in here, we went on some tangents, first about Joyce Meyer and how she insists that if people don't believe that Jesus was tormented in hell by demons for three days to further atone for our sins, they can't be saved, and then second about the bailouts, which both Uriah and I think was a rather abysmal decision.

Also, Uriah told an interesting story about how full-time Pioneers get a chance now and then to attend a special two-week school (I asked if it was Gilead, but then I remembered that that's specifically a missionary training school), and one time, an instructor there had his class spend a day in the field with nothing but their Bibles. No tracts, no study helps, just Bibles. Uriah said that the purpose was to remind them to teach the Bible, not the study book, which at least comes across as an atypical JW sentiment, considering their organization's history of insisting that the Scriptures need to be clarified through the organization's helps. (Uriah's remarks at this point sounded very... Protestant, at least for a JW. It was interesting.)

After almost an hour, Uriah and I finally turned to What Does the Bible Really Teach?, and after we determined where we were, we decided to just do two paragraphs and call it a day. We're getting into the fifth chapter, which is on the atonement. Should be interesting. Nothing controversial so far. It's just introductory material saying little more than that the atonement brought by Christ was the greatest gift that we could ever receive. No argument there! So we talked about it for a while, and then prepared to part ways. I wished Shem well, and Uriah mentioned that although we don't pray together at our studies, he does still pray for me, and that he thinks I've got a lot of potential.

Oh, also, he gave me the latest two issues each of The Watchtower and Awake!. While I think I'll thoroughly enjoy many of the articles in the November Watchtower, since they primarily concern the issue of hell, my attention was immediately drawn to the 1.5-page article on pp. 24-25, concerning John 1:1. My favorite! It basically contains a single argument to the effect that the Sahidic Coptic translation of the Gospel of John, being very early, supports their position, because the Coptic equivalent of theos in John 1:1c has the indefinite article. Unfortunately for this article, I've already run into this very same argument in other literature--I think it might've been in "The Word"--Who is He? According to John, though I could be totally mistaken--and I know its fatal flaw. Although Coptic scholar Thomas Lambdin is quoted in the article as saying, "The use of the Coptic articles, both definite and indefinite, corresponds closely to the use of the articles in English", I'm extremely confident that he's been misunderstood and/or taken out of context--probably both. Why? Because while the similarity to English is that it has both definite and indefinite articles, the Coptic indefinite article has some quirks, such as attaching to nouns that wouldn't ordinarily get it in English. Hence, just a few verses later in the same copy of the Gospel of John, we get references to being "baptized in a water". Once one understands exactly how the Coptic indefinite article functions, it becomes clear that it doesn't at all support the JW rendering of John 1:1.

JW Study Meeting #10

Nothing terribly much to tell for this one. Uriah and I basically spent nearly an hour and a half in chitchat and never got around to the study part. He's letting me borrow three VHS tapes: one about blood transfusions, one about what the JWs went through in the Holocaust, and another about how the organization works. He also got me a copy of Reasoning from the Scriptures and a couple article-type things on questions I'd had: one about John 20:25 which gave a very unconvincing rationale for the plurality of nails within the JW notion of Christ's crucifixion, and another one on the "faithful and discreet slave". We spent much of the rest of the time discussing illness, cats, annoying neighbor kids, etc. Uriah's a nice fellow.