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| Jas 5:16b The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. | August 19, 2008 |
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"Jehovah" not a NT Greek wordAn angle that I successfully used in a discussion with a Jehovah Witness. As the subtitle explains, this is a teaching that I will give to expose and exploit one of the Jehovah Witness's sacred cow's. And that is how they repeatedly use the word "Jehovah" many times in the New Testament section of the New World Translation of their bible. "Jehovah" is an english translation of the hebrew word "Yahweh" which comes from a word called the Tetragrammaton (YWHW), which is four letters that make up God's name. Yahweh (YHWH) is used abundantly in the original hebrew manuscripts. In New Testament Greek however, we never see the word "Jehovah" being used at all. How can they do this and still claim scriptural accuracy? Lets take a look. Even though this shouldn't have to be said I am going to say it anyway. There is no one sure teaching to read that will equip you enough to successfully argue a point to defeat a Jehovah's Witness. A Jehovahs Witness is usually very studied up and entrenched and ensnared in his/her doctrine. There are two main ingredients that you should have in your christian life to be a successful witness to the JW's, knowledge and anointing. You've heard the cliche that 'knowledge is power', well in this case the little bit of knowledge I had went a long way. At this point in my christian life I was at a crux in my life in that I knew I was a leader in the ministry that I worked with, but wasn't to sure how I was going to land after things got rolling. The Lord blessed me with a means to earn a fair amount of money, and that money went into buying study books of all kinds. I literally began to absorb information, the only problem I have now is that I could retain all that info that I learned. Anointing, that word says so much that there is almost nothing more that I need to say. In fact, if you have the 'anointing' you can skip the 'knowledge' section that we just covered. The simplest way to explain what the anointing is is God's hand reaching directly into someone else's life and making a life changing effect through you. To get to this point in your life cost you a whole lot. Denying yourself, obedience to God, making him Lord not just savior, etc. I wish I had had more of that anointing when I had my talk with this JW, but thankfully I had a little of the knowledge. In my afore mentioned quest for books, I stumbled on a few JW books in a used book store, I had a credit with the store for trading some books that I no longer needed, so I bought them and made some use of them. One book called "Reasoning from the Scriptures" and a "New World Translation Bible" which is a version of the bible that they publish and give to their witnesses to use. One interesting thing that I read in Reasoning from the Scripture was concerning the New World Translation on page 276. It defines it as ..A translation of the Holy Scriptures made directly from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into modern-day English by a committee of anointed witnesses of Jehovah. These expressed themselves regarding their work as follows: "The translators of this work, who fear and love the Divine Author of the Holy Scriptures, feel toward Him a special responsibility to transmit his thoughts and declarations as accurately as possible..." emphasis added. On page 277 we read... For one thing, it is an accurate, largely literal translation from the original languages. It is not a loose paraphrase, in which the translators leave out details that they consider unimportant and add ideas that they believe will be helpful. Again emphasis added. Even on page 278 they address my initial claim... "Why is the name Jehovah used in the Christian Greek Scriptures?" They make a reference to 'The Emphatic Diaglott' as using the word "Jehovah' 18 times when an OT verse is being quoted that contained the Tetragrammaton (YWHW). Next they use the Septuagint (LXX) as a reference point showing that the tetragram is used in its pages. Which it is, and this is where the wetness' that I talked with tried to trick me. He shown me articles containing a graphic showing the tetragram embedded within a Greek text and said "see the early writers did it this way, so the NWT does translate the NT scriptures correctly". Well if I didn't already know that the Septuagint was the Old Testament translated into Greek having nothing to do at all with the New Testament, then he might have stumped me. Once I called him on his error he conceded the discussion. His partner, a visibly confused lady and quite disturbed with the direction of conversation I was taking him in, asked me why was this so important to me and what was the big deal that they had a few 'Jehovah's' misquoted in their translation, and that even the King James Version doesn't accurately translate everything either. I agreed that the KJ isn't completely accurate, but the NWT is heralded as "an [accurate], largely literal translation...is not a loose paraphrase, in which the translators leave out details that they consider unimportant and add ideas that they believe will be helpful." If the NWT is found not to be accurate in such an obvious fashion, than how can we trust it when it reads "In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was a god." There are many other verses that we can reference here too but I will stick with this one because it so blatantly steals the deity of Christ away. It steals something so pivotal, so important to our faith, and we are supposed to put our trust in this altered translation of the bible. If there is a single strategy that can be used while dealing with cults, it would have to be the deity of Christ, and or the trinity. Study yourselves up in these areas and you will do well. Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith.
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