WHAT do Jehovah's Witnesses need to hear before they will reconsider whether they are in the right religion?

EVIDENCE that their leaders have misinterpreted a number of Bible verses usually falls on deaf ears. After all, their chief doctrine is that those leaders are God's appointed representatives, his channel of communication, the mouthpiece of his Faithful and Discreet Slave. The leadership's interpretations of Scripture are automatically correct -- regardless of whether they make sense or not. And your explanations of Scripture that contradict God's channel of communication are automatically wrong; even if you sound convincing, you simply must be wrong. (Although essential to deprogramming and re-education in genuine Christianity, Bible discussions are best begun aftera JW has stopped looking to the Watchtower Society as God's spokesman. If you start off with Scripture before that, you will merely be challenging the Witness to a game of Bible ping-pong, with verses tossed back and forth unproductively.)

EVIDENCE that the Watchtower Society has changed its teachings over the years may actually strengthena Witness's belief in the organization. Leaders learned long ago to cover their tracks by citing Proverbs 4:18 ("The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day." NIV). New teachings are "new light" from God, "brighter"
light, proof that God is leading the organization.

(The doctrinal changes that most powerfully expose the wolf in sheep's covering are the instances in which JW leaders renounced the former teaching as evil and wrong, only to resume teaching it again some years later. See examples listed on page 4 of this issue.)

EVEN evidence that the Society is a false prophet tends to be brushed aside by fully indoctrinated Witnesses nowadays.

When The Watchtower's repeated hints "that the battle of Armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975" (Aug. 15, 1968, page 499) proved false and a million members dropped out, the leaders responded by redefining words.

Predictions that the world would end in 1914, that God would destroy the other churches in 1918, that ancient patriarchs would return to life in 1925, and so on, were not false prophecies; they were redefined as "expecting the wrong thing," "misplaced expectations," "expectations ...not realized," "disappointed expectations," "disappointments," "wrong expectations," and "premature expectations." (Proclaimers, pages 62, 78, 107, 110, 633, 636, 709; See our booklet 'Proclaimers' Answered Page by Page.)

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