How would you answer this Jehovah's Witness?

Location: Downtown Chattanooga, TN

Roosevelt was one of the first JW that I ever talked to when I began my street ministry and boy did he ever give me a verbal whoopin’ the first time we ever talked. Ouch, it wasn’t pretty. He is an older gentleman (70+) and is very knowledgeable and friendly. He always stands outside of the courthouse and passing out Watchtower literature. After some friendly chatting I dove right in with “Roosevelt if I had only 3 minutes to live what would you tell me that I can do to enter the kingdom?” His answer was kind of a squishy mix between hope in the resurrection and to believe in Jesus. I finally pinned him down to the answer of “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ”.

“I don’t have to do any good works”, I asked

“What did I just tell you?” He said “You have to believe in Jesus. What do you think you have to do?” He asked me.

I said, “You need to repent, put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and believe the Gospel”.

He told me, “That’s what I do”.

Ok, great I thought. Now we are going to have an hour long debate on the deity of Jesus. So I took him through the Law. He was not very friendly toward that and told me that I reminded him of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. The Pharisees made accusations, I’m only asking questions, I told him. He would not admit that he was a liar, a thief, or a blasphemer. He also said that God was not going to judge him on the 10 Commandments so he didn’t have to worry about it.

Anyway he became so flustered as I was asking him questions about the Law and judgment that he actually picked up his Watchtower literature and walked away from the courthouse. I was very happy to see that because no one else would be getting their false teachings this morning.

So my question to you is this…If a JW says that to get to Heaven you must believe in Jesus and that works in not necessary how do you approach the topic then? What would be your next move in the conversation?


Ty