My Encounter With Jehovah's Witnesses, Part 2: Jesus Isn’t God?

The previous article in this series overviewed my recent visit with my new door to door friends, Jehovah’s Witnesses. We began our conversation by them attacking celibacy. In case you missed it, the beginning of this four part series starts here: My Encounter With Jehovah Witnesses, Part 1: Priestly Celibacy.

After my explanation left the husband with a stunned look on his face and speechless, his wife piped up...

In a quick breath this cute little grandma implied that Jesus was not God. I paused for a moment and asked, “Really, then why does Jesus, refer to Himself as God?”. Her response was, “the devil is called god in Scripture”, and she asked if I had a Bible. “Oh yes I do”, I said and passed her my “Apologetic” Bible. She noticed all of the coloured tabs and notes right away and said, “Wow, that’s very coloured”. What she didn’t realize is that one of those colours was for her…

She referenced a passage in 1 Corinthians 4:4 referring to the “god of this world” being evil. I suggested that we look at a passage that refers to Jesus as God, and pointed to John 1:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God [Theon], and the Word was God [Theos]… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us [Jesus]”.

However, her translation was a bit different, her’s stated, “the Word was a God”. She said “See, Jesus isn’t the supreme God, he’s just a god. He’s God’s son”.

That seemed a bit strange, so I said, let’s look at the Greek, the original language it was written in, to examine the word God, “Theos". Sure enough, “a God” wasn’t in the Greek. In fact, every other place in the New Testament the Greek word “Theos” is translated, it is simply “God”. For example, in Matthew 22:32, Jesus says,

“I am the God [Theos] of Abraham, and the God [Theos] of Isaac, and the God [Theos] of Jacob”.

So I asked her, “Who was the God of Abraham? And why is Jesus claiming to be that God?"

Seems as though these words are pretty synonymous. So why would the New World Translation, the Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, add to God’s word by inserting “a God” into this passage? And more importantly, what would the meaning be, if the word ‘a’ didn’t precede God? She didn’t seem to comfortable with the Greek, and understandably. So I kept on going to show her what the Bible really says about Jesus being God.

I asked her what doubting Thomas called Jesus, after he realized that Jesus had just risen from the dead:

“My Lord and my God” (John 20:28).

I could tell she had heard this passage before, and had a canned response because she quickly interrupted. Her response literally (and figuratively) made my jaw drop. She answered, “This was a figure of speech, like how in modern times we say, ‘oh my god’”. This cute little old lady stated it in such a matter of fact way.

I was stunned. I said, you can’t be serious. Thomas was a devout Jew. Jews didn’t dare even utter God’s name, YHWH, in fear of breaking the commandments, using God’s name in vain.  The Jews used substitutes to refer to God such as "Adonai". Never would they use the Lord's name out of great fear and respect. There’s absolutely no way that he would have stated, to Jesus’ face, “oh my god”, without meaning what those words affirm. Furthermore, the fact that someone can come to this obscene conclusion demonstrates extreme Biblical illiteracy and ignorance.

Now she was silent. And I think she had run out of tracks to try and give any sort of coherent answer. I’m not sure she even believed what she was saying anymore.

So I thought I would take this lull in the conversation as an opportunity to deliver the deathblow to their “Jesus is not God” doctrine. I said I had one more passage to show you that Jesus really is God, please turn with me to John 10:30-34, who does Jesus say He is?

"'I and the Father are one.' Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them,'I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?' 'We are not stoning you for any good work,' they replied, 'but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.’"

I said the Greek word for “god” is “Theos” same as every other passage referring to God the Father (ex. Love the Lord your God with all your heart… Matthew 22:37).

It appears from this passage that the Jewish leaders understood that Jesus was claiming to be God. So either Jesus was a liar, the Jews misunderstood him, or He really is God. Which is it, I asked her. Again silence… She couldn’t admit Jesus was a liar. She wouldn’t dare side with the Pharisees. And lastly, she couldn’t admit that Jesus was God.

I took that opportunity to summarize that our dilemma here is much more fundamental. I explained that my church has reasoned that Jesus is God, your church has reasoned that He is not God. I said, “how do we know who is right? How do we know what the truth is?”, and thus continued our conversation...

Coming up next: “My Encounter With Jehovah's Witnesses, Part 3: Biblical Interpretations”.