Witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses

From Wayne Shih @ http://acts18910.blogspot.com/

There appear to be two basic approaches (though in reality it's not either/or):

1. Show their doctrinal errors, as exemplified by Patrick Zukeran's article on Witnessing to the Witnesses.

2. Show them love, as exemplified by Clint DeBoer's excerpt on Speaking the Truth in Love to Jehovah's Witnesses.

Sites about Jehovah's Witnesses

There's a great deal of information on the Net about the beliefs and practices of Jehovah's Witness. Obviously, there is the official site of the Watchtower Society to hear from the source. But here are some other voices you might check out:

Watchtower Information Service ... the latest news and 263 articles on Jehovah's Witnesses.

Watchman Fellowship ... articles on Jehovah's Witnesses.

Through comments left on the site, I came across a couple of blogs on Jehovah's Witnesses:

Some Christian Thoughts on Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower.

Astonishing Realizations.

The Watchtower Prophecies

Many of the Watchtower's prophecies involve date-setting. This site has a helpful list of Watchtower dates. I can't speak to its accuracy, but the writer invites corrections. From my reading, I've learned that 1914 and 1935 are important. Here's what the site says about those years:

1914
Christ's invisible return, start of reign as King, end of last days. "Gentile times" ended, but this has no visible effect, except an (JW-imagined) increase in violence, wars, pestilence, earthquakes and other calamities since that year.

Current JW doctrine. From 1922 this was held to be start of Christ's *reign*, from 1930 also the start of invisible presence (earlier held to be 1874). [Note 2] Until recently, the WTS taught that some of those who experienced the events in 1914 would be alive to see the end of the world. This "1914 generation" doctrine was removed in November 1995. See WT 11/1 1995 p17. The "Creator's promise" about the end of the world before the 1914-generation died was removed from masthead (p4) of Awake! in 11/8 1995 issue. Whole idea of "generation" in Mt 24:34 being specific individuals is now abandoned.

1935
Close of "high calling" to be of the 144.000. From this date, JWs have taught that the "great Company/Crowd" in Rev 7 will live on Earth, not in heaven. The "Great Crowd", all JWs except ~8000 living now, is not considered anointed Christians, is not "born again," do not partake in communion and does not have Christ as mediator. They expect eternal life on Earth. See WT 6/15 1992 p23; Proclaimers (1993) p166. This date is justified only on the fact that the doctrine about earthly hope for "great crowd" was created in 1935.

This site lists other "prophecies" of the Jehovah's Witnesses.