Another Part in the School

On Thursday night I did my first 5 minute part in the School - a whole 5 minutes!  (I ought to acknowledge that the brothers have to do 30 minute talks...and do them very well too.)  The Brief was:  

• Return Visit: (5 min.) Begin with the sample conversation. Then offer the Enjoy Life Forever! brochure, and start a Bible study. (th study 16: Upbuilding and Positive)   And looking at the little demonstration video, I saw that I needed to play the video.

• You can find the video I play here:  https://www.jw.org/en/library/videos/#en/mediaitems/VODSampleConversations/pub-mwbv_202109_2_VIDEO 

And this was my talk:

Sue: Thanks for the coffee. Its nice to be able to meet up regularly again. How has your week been? 

HH:  OK thanks Sue - oh and I must tell you this. You know you were saying last week that you Jehovah's Witnesses were doing your witnessing work by letter because of the pandemic. Well I got a letter from your congregation!

Sue. Great!  Who was it from, and what did it say?

HH:  I can't remember her name.  I meant to bring it to show you, but  I forgot.  She said pretty much the same as you were telling me last week, about the Kingdom of God and the earth becoming a paradise.  And she quoted some words from that frightening book at the end of the Bible - the Apocalypse I think its called.  But they were lovely words.

Sue:  Oh yes, also known as the Book of Revelation - and actually it does reveal some lovely things.  Was it the verses that tell us that God will wipe out every tear from our eyes?

HH:  Yes that was the one.  Lovely words.  And I only wish I could believe they would come true. 

Sue. Indeed. And they do seem too good to be true, don't they? But would you like to be able to be sure that you can believe them?  Because the men who wrote the Bible tell us over and over again that what they are writing down is inspired by our Creator, Jehovah. It is his message to us. In other words, that it is the truth.

HH:  Honestly, I would find that hard to believe. A book written that long ago has to be pretty out of date for a start.  We know so much more than those writers would have.

Sue.  That is a very good point, because, yes, if it is a book written by men then for sure much of it would be very out of date, and some of it likely plain wrong.. But is it?  You might be surprised if you study it. For example, the writing of the Bible was completed over 2,000 years ago - most of it being much older than that - so when it touches on scientific matters, do you think it would be very out of date.

HH:  Yes. No question. We have made such advances in science since then.

Sue. Then I hope you might want to think about this. Although the Bible is not a scientific textbook when it does touch on matters of science, it is one hundred per cent accurate.  And I would love to demonstrate using this little brochure I was telling you about last week.  I hope to show you that not only is the Bible accurate, but is actually ahead of its time - ahead of human knowledge.  I have a copy with me - shows ENJOY LIFE FOREVER. There is a great little video, very short, in this section here: Science Agrees with the Bible",  Would you like to watch it?

HH:  Ok, why not?

VIDEO

Sue:  Do you notice the two wrong things people used to believe about the earth?

HH:  Yes, that it was flat - that you could even sail off the end of it.

Sue.  Yes. I have often thought how brave those early explorers were, when they did first sail round the world. They must have been afraid that any minute they could be swept over the edge by a gigantic waterfall!  And do you notice what else they thought.

HH:  Yes. They thought this flat earth had to be supported on something.

Sue. Yes, which is only logical as they did not understand about gravity.  But did you notice that when describing the earth, the Bible not only tells us that it is round, a sphere, but also that it floats unsupported in space. And I would like to read you that verse from Job, the one that was quoted in the video,  as it was written three thousand five hundred years ago:   Reads Job 26:7: 

"He (that is, Jehovah, the Creator) stretches out the Northern sky over empty space, suspending the earth upon nothing."

Until I began to study the Bible with the Jehovah's Witnesses, I had no idea that the Inspired Scriptures told us the shape of the earth and how it floats through the universe, suspended on nothing, long before scientists had worked it out.

HH: This has made me realise that I don't know very much about the Bible.

Sue:  I would love to help you learn more if you would like to. Could I leave this little publication with you and we could talk some more about it when we meet next week.

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