P
pacloc
Guest
Thank God! I have a very similar background. I was a JW from the ages of 5 to 28 and am now 34. I too got really involved toward the end and began to notice their made up doctrines that proved to be false prophecies, and especially their poor understandings of things like why God permits suffering. Thank God you were able to get out of the controlling group! I too left thinking that a lot of things they taught were still correct even though the religion was wrong. Like I still believed in annihilation and that the Trinity was not correct. But you have to understand that you have been given a false picture of these Holy teachings that are really quite evident in Holy Scripture. Even Charles T. Russell said that if you read the Bible without the guide of his “Studies in the Scriptures”, you would begin to believe like the false Christians who believe in the Trinity.
So for helping someone thinking of God as simply Jehovah and Jesus as His first creation, I think the simplist transition into understanding the Trinity would be to take what the JWs say about Jesus being with God for billions of years and becoming an exact representation of Him, and just change the term billions of years with eternity. Since we cannot understand how it is that God the Father exists in all eternity, it is fine to say that He begot a Son from all eternity. It is equally outside of our mind to understand. We believe Time is a creation, and that God the Father, His Word Jesus Christ, and His Holy Spirit created time and creation. There are plenty of Scriptures clearly showing that Jesus created all things and is God, namely from St. John the Theologian and Evangelist, beginning and closing his gospel with the declarations, “and the Word was God”, and Thomas declaring Him “My Lord and my God”.
St. John Chrysostom explains beautifully how to read Christ’s words in the Gospels. Like we show disdain for those that are lowly yet speak highly of themselves, and yet admire those that are royal and yet speak lowly of themselves and love them even more for doing so, we see our Lord Jesus Christ speaking of himself highly at places, and we must think of Him a despicable person if He does not have the right to claim things such as “To have seen Me is to have seen the Father” and other high sayings. But if he is really our Lord and God, and yet speaks lowly of Himself for bowing the Heavens and coming down to be in our fallen likeness yet without sin, We love Him even more for His rich Mercy.