I don't know if Larry is right in his assertion that it is hypocritical to pray for Paul McCartney if you are not willing to write him a letter or talk to him. I don't know if he's right, but his comment got me thinking: surely I should be willing to talk to the cultists who come a knocking on my door. It would be ethically wrong to just send them away with a smile and a prayer. James certainly would have some words to say to me about that!

I heard Larry Norman make that comment in the early or mid 1980's. I thought about it a lot and decided that I needed to be able to talk to the folks who I met. I already knew what the major arguments against Christianity were. For years, I had been reading the best materials produced by Christianity's detractors. Reading the arguments against my own position helped strengthen my confidence in it. I wanted to find out where the critics made their mistakes in thinking, and I wanted to see how the best Christian apologists responded. Sometimes the Christian response was disappointing to me - the responses were not wrong or unsupported - it's just that the arguments were not beautiful. Apologetics is like a game of chess. Chess is a work of art when played by a skillful player; when played by a novice the art can be butchered.

I expanded my reading to include primary source documents from the major American cults. I started analyzing the arguments and comparing them to other arguments from history. None of the cultists said anything new. No new heretical idea has come up for 1700 years or so now.

I found the Mormons to be easy to talk to. Those boys, and sometimes girls, will sit for hours and come back for months. But they never take anything to heart. They just listen and smile and say "Well, I don't know how to answer you, but I am sure that someone in my Church does". They don't even want to know for themselves - they are just fine believing that the answer is out there - blowing in the shifting winds of heretical doctrine.

The Jehovah's Witnesses were harder to talk to. They shut down and suddenly remember "appointments" when you start to act like you know anything at all. This was more challenging. I started collecting every single thing I could find by the WTBTS. Everything I cite or quote on my site, I also own. I would never quote something I could not pull off the shelf and show somebody.

I read gobs of that nonsense. Rutherford was the most interesting. I think he took lessons in mind control from Hitler. He also copied the Roman Catholic Church. Rutherford was the first Pope of the Watch Tower. Franz was the second. To date, there have only been two WT Popes. I noted that during Rutherford's reign, a right relationship with God was equated with a right relationship to the WT. That's why when you ask a JW which year the Society had the correct view of say the identity of the "superior authorities" of Romans 13:1 (i.e. Superior Authorities = Gentile governments (1886); secular governments (1918); the representatives of God's organization (1931); God's organization (1932); Jehovah God and Jesus Christ (1933-1959); earthly governments (again! 1965-2004); the JW will just look at you with that blank look on their face, and then say that the Society always had the correct view, even though the views clearly changed and contradicted each other over time. In the JW world, God does not require faithfulness to HIM, He requires faithfulness to the ORG. (In the JW world, GOD = THE ORG). Whatever the ORG says must be accepted as true, even if the ORG says that the sky is green and pigs can fly. If the ORG contradicts the Bible, then you must believe the ORG because God has set it up as a measure of your faithfulness to Him if you believe His divinely appointed servants even when they contradict themselves and blaspheme His word and denigrate His Son. As a theological system, the WT is a house of cards. As a mind control game, they are one of the best.

JW's began knocking on my door. I invited them in. I thought they would run when they saw the books, but they did not even know what they were. Literacy is not a big thing in Jehovah's happy kingdom. I started pulling the Studies books down and showing them the nonsense about the Pyramid. They said "wow, whoever wrote that is a nut". I showed them it was Russell, and it did not phase them at all. "Well, if that's what Jehovah's people needed to believe then, then it was right to believe it" appeared to me to be their attitude. Occasionally, a JW who had been in the ORG a while would show up. They did not like that I had the old books. They wanted to know what my "motivation" was. They would not touch the books even if I tried to hand them over so they could look. Odd, I thought, these older guys are scared of the books. So I put em on the web.

I moved recently, so occasionally I get Jehovah's Witness visitors again. I have a big canvas illustration of the pyramid passages (the "Chart of the Ages") hanging in my living room. It's from 1910 and was made by the WTBTS to be used in their home talks. I have it in a museum quality frame. It attracts a lot of attention. Most JW's think I am into the pyramid when they see it, and they tell me all about how God is against that kind of occultic stuff. I tell them I have books about the pyramid too, and I show them C. Piazzi Smyth's book and Russell's books. It is interesting to see the reaction when they see the WTBTS on the bottom of the title page (of Russell's books). Some of them start to flip through the book looking for something to read. Others slam the book shut and ask me if I have ever been a JW (I have not). One lady just dropped the book on the ground - just dropped it. And then walked out. I noticed that JW's do not know how to handle books. Goes with their aversion to literacy.

So the short answer to your question is that I got involved with JW's because I felt that ethically, I had to. Now that I have been at it for some years, I must say it's always interesting. I am continually surprised by the things God uses to reach people. The JW's have produced so much garbage that all you really have to do is get them to read it.

Chuck

1. Email me at jellogator@cox.net
2. C. Piazzi Smyth, Charles Taze Russell, and the Great Pyramid of Gizeh
3. Analysis of Watch Tower "Truth"
4. Defending the Governing Body 
5. Morton Edgar defends Charles T. Russell