Terry's 3M's

It's been a long day.

Delton and I took the kids to Freedom Park so that Johnny could visit with his dad. In the five hours that we were there; John played with his dad. All the kids went to the pond to feed the ducks. They played on the swings, went down the slides, climbed on the jungle gym, and climbed trees. We ate lunch there and roasted because it was chilly in the morning, so we wore sweaters.

The park that is much closer to us is within walking distance from the house. It is only a couple of years old and has very little shade because the trees haven't had time to mature. When you live in a climate where it gets to be over ll0 degrees in the summer, shade seems rather important.

Anyway, one of the things I got to do at the park today was to witness to a woman from Jehovah's Witnesses. When she asked if she could leave some reading material with me, I said, "No, thank you. I have some fundamental disagreements with your religion." So, she sat down and we talked.

One of the things that I brought up was the fact that although the New World Translation of the Bible was a collaborative effort, only one of the men on the panel had and linguistic training in Hebrew and Greek. And that the translation of the last phrase of John 1:1 was in disagreement with every other translation of the Bible. The phrase in question was: "the Word was God. Their Bible translates this as the Word was a god. It's a tiny word that makes a huge difference.

Another area in disagreement was that she doesn't believe that Jesus can be seen by all when He comes back. (The Witnesses are taught that Jesus has been here [albeit unseen] since 1914.) I told her--Satellite TV--He'll preempt all the channels.

Another is the 144,000 that are sealed in the book of Revelation. She said that that meant that they were sealed to sit with the Father in heaven. I told her to read it again. That they would be sealed to protect them from death during the Tribulation. Although she had said several times at this point that she believes in the Bible, she said that they wouldn't really come from the 12 tribes of Israel because there was no way of knowing which tribe different people came from. I disagree--God knows. I told her that I thought that these would be Jews that were witnessed to by Christians. Then when the Rapture comes, they'll look around at all the people that are missing and then believe what their Christian friends told them. And they would go out and evangalize the world in the next 7 years. She told me that 144,000 was not a lot of people and that it would be impossible do do it in 7 years. I replied, "Not with today's technology!"

Don't you just love it when people say that they believe in the Bible and then tell you that what is written there is impossible?

I had some Mormons come to the door one day. [Around here, the Mormons go door to door as much as the Jehovah Witnesses do.] They said that they wanted to teach me the truth as the Bible teaches it. I asked them if they believed that they would be married in heaven. One of them said, "Yes." So, I said, "Jesus said that there would be no marriage in heaven." [Okay, so it was an answer to a trick question about who a woman would be married to if she married one guy, he died before they had kids, so she married the brother and he died before they could have kids--so when she gets to heaven--which one will be her husband? Nonetheless, He did say it.] Then the man told me that he didn't want to go into specific verses with me. Excuse me? He wants to teach me the truth in the Bible, but, we can't discuss the verses in the Bible? Needless to say he didn't get very far with that line.

Well, I gotta go put kids to bed. They are all in my room watching TV and it's past bedtime.

Thanks to for the border background set.