J-DUBS

November 1, 2010 Monday

This morning while tracting, we pulled around a corner and stopped just across from a house where a couple of young men were standing on the porch talking. Orson got out to go to a house on our side of the road, and I noticed these two guys leave the porch and walk around the opposite corner into a cul-de-sac. I commented to Orson when he came back that I thought they might be Jehovah Witnesses. One of them had a bag slung over his shoulder and the other had a small pouch in his hand. We went on down the street and saw a couple of young women in dresses walking toward us from a cul-de-sac. At some point, Orson and the girls came face to face so he stopped them and, sure enough, they were J-Dubs. So he asked them why they were so “hung up” on the name Jehovah when Christ address the “most high God” as “Father.” Their explanation was that Christ is so familiar with God (Jehovah in their minds) that he could call him “father.” Anyway, being the good missionary that he is, he proceeded to tell them about the Council in Carthage in 397 AD when a bunch of “church” leaders got together and proceeded to decide which of all the books of ancient writings should be put together into a bible. They had no clue about that. This led to telling them that John’s statement in Revelation wasn’t meant to say there must be no more scripture. Then he read to them 1 Nephi 29 which tells them that God is the God of the whole world and he can talk to any of His people anytime He wants and it can be recorded and considered scripture. The young men had come back at this point and joined the conversation (lesson). And I looked for our camera because I wanted to record this historic moment—it was in the house, drat it! How often does a Mormon missionary get to preach to Jehovah Witnesses? They must have talked for 40 minutes or so. We sure would like to go to their Wednesday night “missionary” meeting and hear what is reported ;0)
Tonight we went back to Jhun and Evangeline’s ready to teach the plan of salvation. We had gone there last Monday but not been able to really teach anything because Jhun was so wound up and had to expound his beliefs that he’s gleaned from the Bible. Many are right, but there are also many where he’s taken a left turn on something and needs to be turned around. So the last couple of visits have consisted of him giving us his “take” on various Gospel issues and us reading scriptures to him from modern revelation to straighten him out. It’s become evident that he’s not really reading and praying about the Book of Mormon even though he accepts the Joseph Smith story as being plausible. So we started of with the pre-mortal life. He asked some questions about it that brought up the plan that Jesus Christ would come to earth to atone for the sins of all mankind. Then he said, “I cannot accept that Jesus had to die on the cross. He could have done so much more to help all mankind if He had lived and was able to teach people for a long time.” It was all downhill from there. We tried to read 2 Nephi Chapter 2 with him, but then he didn’t like the explanation of the Fall in the Garden of Eden. It didn’t jive with his. Then he complained that we weren’t giving him definite answers and details on everything (but he wasn’t giving us time because he kept interrupting). Finally, he gathered up the Books of Mormon and pamphlets and very politely thanked us for our time and said he hoped we could continue as friends but that we would not discuss religion anymore with him. It’s so sad—he had the dream that was clearly linked to the restoration and a second book of scriptures; but he’s become a law unto himself and is not willing to consider that ALL of what he has figured out from the Bible is not accurate. It just kind of shows you why there are so many “Christian” churches out there. We just hope that someday he will come back to studying Mormonism with an open mind to modern revelation.