What if your opinion was based on misinformation? What if you had lived in the first century and Jesus and his apostles came along and the religious leaders that you relied upon to administer Bible truth had nothing good to say about those apparent apostates?
What did Jesus tell us to expect as his disciples?
Matthew 5:11-12...
“Happy are you when people reproach you and persecute you and lyingly say every sort of wicked thing against you for my sake. 12 Rejoice and be overjoyed, since your reward is great in the heavens, for in that way they persecuted the prophets prior to you.”
John 15:18-21...
“If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were part of the world, the world would be fond of what is its own. Now because you are no part of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, for this reason the world hates you. 20 Keep in mind the word I said to you: A slave is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have observed my word, they will also observe yours. 21 But they will do all these things against you on account of my name, because they do not know the One who sent me.”
Who were the first Christians’ most vehement opposers and persecutors? Wasn’t it the ones who claimed to worship the same God? Who was responsible for invalidating the word of God by the introduction of human traditions? The very ones pointing the fingers at Jesus and his disciples. (Matthew 15:7-9)
We see Christendom as the modern day mirror image of corrupt Judaism....and history is repeating.
I came out of Christendom so I know first hand what that side of the fence is like....most of our opposers have never even spoken to Jehovah’s Witnesses without a pre-conceived prejudice manufactured by the religious system that they grew up in. I was one of them.....when JW’s came to my door I told them to leave.....then out of the blue one day, my farther dropped dead with no warning. He was only 52 and it left our close family devastated.....but in my heart I wanted to know where he was....was he as devastated as we were at that sudden separation? Was he missing us like we were missing him? I was haunted by the prospect that he was suffering like we were.
I asked my questions about death and the afterlife but what I got was platitudes....no real scriptural answers.
I was frustrated beyond anything I had ever felt before because I wanted the Bible’s answer to my questions, not man’s opinion of what they thought the Bible said.
When JW’s came to my door I put my questions to them, imagining that they would also be hard pressed to give me the Bible’s answers. To my complete surprise, they asked if I had a Bible and asked me to go and get it.....then they gave me scriptures to look up in my own KJV, and each scripture answered my question.
I was so intrigued that the ones I thought would be of no help at all, were the only ones who did not give me empty platitudes, they just provided God’s word on everything.....I wanted to know more as I has a million questions.....they came and studied the Bible with me and answered all my questions.
The more I had to do with them, the more I came to see that they were nothing like what I had been led to believe.
I began to understand what the first Christians had to do in order to become separated from the Jewish system and to take up the challenge of being ostracized by friends and family for telling an unpopular truth to an indoctrinated people who were functioning under the guidance of complete hypocrites. (Matthew 10:34-39)
Consider the possibility that satan has never changed his tactics.