A fragment of the Septuagint in which the Tetragrammaton appears.

I know I am about to have an intense discussion when my Jehovah’s Witness elder buddy begins our conversation by pointing to my iPad, grinning through his teeth and asking, “Is that thing fully charged?”

KW: (Laughing) Uh, Yeah.

JW: Good because I want to talk about the name of God one more time.

KW: AGAIN?

My witness friend brought his study edition of the New World Translation this time. There were some things he wanted to show me last week, but he didn’t have his study edition Bible which discusses a bunch of different topics in the many appendices. Appendix 1D is titled, “The Divine Name in the Christian Greek Scriptures.” This title is deceptive because the Watchtower refers to the New Testament as “The Christian Greek Scriptures,” yet the appendix speaks about the Septuagint. Read More …

This week was very different than the last two weeks. My Jehovah’s Witness elder friend was in a very good mood and we joked around for more than a half hour before we got into our study. Another man came with him this time. JW2 has come before and we enjoy each other’s company. Our study began with JW1 asking a question out of the blue. Read More …

I love it when God shows up. There are times when God arranges things in such a way that it completely undermines the arguments presented by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Such was the case today. My Witness elder buddy and our other frequent guest showed up at our meeting place. We chatted for about 20 minutes before we got into our study.

One of the things my friend mentioned was that he had to leave by a certain time because his air conditioner recently went out. Although Jehovah’s Witnesses do not believe in hell, summer in south Texas is almost enough to get them to rethink their theology. I told him about a guy we used who recently fixed our air conditioner and gave him his name and phone number. I had no idea at the time that God was going to use that to get my friend’s attention. Read More …

One of the points that the “WHAT DOES THE BIBLE Really TEACH?” Book makes early in chapter one is the idea that God has a personal name and that if we don’t use that name, then we cannot really know him. In my study with my Witness friend I do not want to challenge him on everything, but I think that this is an important enough issue to get him to think about some things from a different perspective. The Watchtower thinks this is an important issue to because chapter one of the book refers to an appendix where the name of God is discussed in greater detail.

Here is the basic gist of our conversation. Read More …