A confident smile with some finality does the trick.
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When evangelists knock on your door...
- Thread starter Eddi
- Start date
Thank you so much for your very reasonable and friendly approach. These kinds of threads identify the “good” people from the “bad” and the just plain “ugly”. Ignorance fuels so much of what people think. Telling one sided stories of a personal encounter, as if all JW’s must be the same. Good grief! How do we know that these stories are even true? People with a hateful agenda like to embellish and twist the truth for maximum benefit.
We are counselled to be mindful and to respect the beliefs of others because we are offering something that they may not want. If we call at their door, a polite refusal is welcome, no need to be nasty. We try not to call at inconvenient times and a lot of our preaching is now done on the streets because this is where people are. They will approach us for a chat. They can take literature for free.
So many people in Western nations are not at home these days, (out working) so there is no point in calling at empty houses. Our website is the main gateway now. JW.ORG
Any JW who calls repeatedly on someone who has clearly indicated that they are not interested and has requested that they not return, are entitled to report the problem to the local congregation. We are not there to harass anyone, just to give them knowledge from the Bible that will (we believe) affect their future. For us, it’s a life saving work, but like it was in the first century, it has many opposers. (John 15:18-21)
We liken our work to that of emergency service workers who sound the warning of an impending disaster. They do it through the media, but just in case someone is missed, they go door to door to sound the warning in person, so everyone knows what is coming. They can’t force people to get out of the danger zone, but they can tell them how.
The calm before a storm, an earthquake or a tsunami can lull people into a false sense of security. We believe that a great catastrophe is coming that the world at large does not expect.....that is why we call. That is our only motive....to save lives.
I just don’t understand the hate and lies that come out of some people....it just shows what kind of people they really are IMO. Kindness costs nothing.
Thanks again.....
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Looking up what “soliciting” means....
“Soliciting:
the action or fact of accosting someone and offering one's or someone else's services as a prostitute.”
“solicitation - Legal Definition
n. A request or petition intended to obtain something; criminally urging, advising, or ordering someone to commit a crime; offering to pay for sex or requesting money in exchange for sex; an attempt to increase the number of one's actual or potential clientele.”
“Example of Solicitation Statute
The following example solicitation statute defines the act: ... A person engages in solicitation if he intentionally orders, advises, or encourages another person to commit a crime. It is not necessary for the actual crime to have occurred for a person to be guilty of solicitation. Mar 5, 2016”
“Is door knocking soliciting?
In some cities, posting a "No Soliciting" sign on your front door or near the entrance to your neighborhood prohibits solicitors from knocking on your door. ... However, if your city does not prohibit solicitors from knocking on your door when such a sign is posted, all you can really do is politely ask them to leave.”
So you see that the work that JW’s do in spreading the gospel as Jesus commanded, is not “soliciting” by it’s legal definition......if we refuse to leave your premises when asked to, (which we will always do,) it can then become trespass.....that is illegal. But in most places it is not illegal to knock on your door.
It is not our intention to harass or to annoy people but only to give them what we believe is life saving information. The easiest way to stop us coming to your door is to request that we do not call again. You will be placed on a list of homes not to call on, and we will leave you in peace, knowing that we have done as Jesus requested. Our elders may call once a year or so to make sure that the house has not been sold and have new residents who may welcome our visits. The call will be very brief.
You misunderstood their reason for leaving quickly.....we have nothing to fear from the police because we are not breaking the law. It would have been more about not wanting to upset you any further.
Please just tell them not to call again if that is what you want. Believe me, we have no desire to confront hostile people.
We have no desire to disturb a family meal.....some people eat at strange times so there is no way to gauge what is “mealtime” for many. If you have a sign that says “No Jehovah’s Witnesses” we can read.
Why? God's too busy?
Always fascinates me, this idea that God really, really wants all humanity to know the "truth" about him, but in all his omnipotence, could only manage to tell a few people, and hope they'd be able to "pass it along." And without making any mistakes, or changing a word here or there, as everybody here on earth knows happens when messages get forwarded.
When I was growing up in the church, I had no reason to believe that I wasn’t a Christian. But as I began to process the church’s doctrines, the less any of them made sense to me. I had a million questions, but my church had no answers.
Only JW’s could answer my many questions, so they opened up the Bible for me to glean answers to every question I had. It was nothing short of amazing!
Then we are grateful to have helped you make a decision.....that is what our work is all about. When Jesus comes as judge of all....everyone will be where they have placed themselves. We are just the catalyst for that decision. (Matthew 24:14; Matthew 25:31-46)
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I, for one, quite seriously object to people who think that I am too stupid to know what I think, and that I should accept their nonsense over whatever nonsense I prefer.
You know, if I met a woman I didn't know on the street and said, "You know, honey, your makeup isn't really working for you, and your taste in clothes...well, really!" I frankly think she'd be quite correct to knock me upside the head with her purse. If I told a man I didn't know that he needed to fire his tailor, I think he'd be right to consider my teeth a target. Even if it's somebody I know well, I believe in the absolute right of even my best friends to the privacy of their own thoughts and beliefs, and to be free of my trying to take them from them, and replace them with my own.
It is a repugnant practice, and one that I would have thought any really decent person would know better than to get involved in.
Kangaroo Feathers
Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
IMPE, most door knockers aren't like that though. They're offering their opinion, not trying to force it on anyone.
Emergency workers typically work in the teeth of a real, objective, identifiable threat. I don't think that an imagined danger, 2000 years old and still not yielding any objective evidence of itself, doesn't quite measure up. As a result, I certainly wouldn't put you in the same category, nor give you the same respect.
But why would I offer my opinion to someone I don't know about a matter that is personal to them? I would not do so about their dress, their makeup, their choice of home décor, or anything else unless I was specifically and pointedly asked. So why would I offer my opinion on somebody else's beliefs? Is that somehow different?
Yes, Deeje,
Indeed, you are entitled to come to your own conclusions for your own reasons, as we all are.....its all about making decisions.
Well, we do too.....since there is only one God and one truth, its up to us to make our choices about who he is, and what it means to serve his interests in a world controlled by his adversary. (1 John 5:19) We have to remember that this adversary has a unique ability...to make the truth seem like a lie and vice versa. (2 Corinthians 4:3-4) The best way he knows how to "blind" the minds of people is to present them with another "truth"....if it seems authentic at face value, then people will fall for the counterfeit. But the fake will not stand up under scrutiny....it will lead to death.
There is much at stake here. We live in a world of 'wheat and weeds'....'sheep and goats'....God knows the difference and will guide and direct only those who show the right qualities, to his truth (John 6:65)....which will seem like heresy to the majority, as it did with Jesus and his apostles....but not to "the lost sheep", who will see the value of the truth.
The "weeds" and the "goats" will be clearly distinguishable as the time of the end draws to a close, because they will not be obeying any of the laws of God......deftly justifying their way out of them. At the end Jesus will rightly accuse those who claimed him as their "Lord" of being "workers of lawlessness" whom he "never knew". (Matthew 7:21-23) None of us wants to be found among them.....
That is entirely up to you...God does not operate in earth time. 2,000 years or 20,000, makes no difference to a timeless Being. I believe there is a "real identifiable threat" that was penned by Jesus' apostles to occur in our day.....you can choose not to believe it.
Your decisions are your to make.
Think about what you've said: time doesn't matter to God, yet you suppose that all this stuff is to happen "imminently." Please note that "imminent" is a time-oriented word, but could mean in 2 seconds, an hour and a quarter, 6 centuries, or 37.6 squidzillion years. Or even never! And you've got nothing in your kit bag that can help you understand which is more likely. Untestable beliefs are really easy to hold, but impossible to justify to anyone else.That is entirely up to you...God does not operate in earth time. 2,000 years or 20,000, makes no difference to a timeless Being. I believe there is a "real identifiable threat" that was penned by Jesus' apostles to occur in our day.....you can choose not to believe it.
Your decisions are your to make.
That has been my experience as well, and I still count one of the local elders as a friend.
I know you have difficulty understanding, but I also feel it suits you not to. It has nothing to do with anyone's intelligence.....it has everything to with their heart appreciation for the Creator and his creation....something even a child can demonstrate.
Offering your opinion on whether some woman's make up is well applied, or whether a man's suit is well tailored, or if their home is tastefully decorated, is hardly a life or death matter...it might be personal, but it has no bearing on whether they live or die. Your religious beliefs or lack of them, might be personal but if there is a God who requires something of his creation, and we do not deliver it when requested to do so, who do we blame if he lowers the boom on us? Can we plead ignorance?...insanity? Did he make no attempt to inform us? Did we balk at the caliber of the messengers?
If you misunderstand the reason for the warning, or fail to see the danger approaching, then you will never heed the warning and will suffer the consequences. If someone tries to give you the means to avoid the impending disaster, why shake your fist at them? It will be like Noah's day all over again. (Matthew 24:37-39)
The fact is that God wants everyone to be saved from what is coming....but he will not force anyone to worship him either with threats or with displays of his power....all that does is illicit fear. He does not want us to be afraid of him...he wants us to get to know him....and to know him is to love him.....but how many will really bother when there is an enemy at work slandering him at every turn? They will prefer to believe the slander rather than hear the truth, because it suits them to do so.
God has always kept things "imminent", because they are to him. If he was to indicate that thousands of earth years were still to go before he steps in the rectify the whole situation, how many would lose heart and give up? The Bible tells us that "hope is an anchor for the soul".....to keep one's hope bright doesn't take much, especially since we have such a short life on this earth at present. Death overtakes us all but to the dead, time has ceased. They do not have to wait any longer for the promised Kingdom to fix everything that is wrong here on this earth.
When the earth is finally cleansed of all wickedness and those who practice it, then the dead will be restored to life to enjoy what God purposed in the beginning......sinless humankind living in paradise conditions on earth forever. The Bible says that God always finishes what he starts (Isaiah 55:11).....he just doesn't do it in earth time.
If they said NO BLOOD then their wishes should have been respected. Your young OB/GYN's career was ruined by him/herself. It wasn't his/her call. You will never know if the patient may have survived with other life saving measures performed within her beliefs....you never gave them a chance.
Blood does not always save lives...in fact I will wager that more people die after a blood transfusion than ever die without one. Doctors are waking up to how dangerous these transfusions really are. Bloodless medicine is practiced in many hospitals around the world. Whole hospitals are dedicated to bloodless medicine. What does that tell you? They are not our hospitals.
We don't even meet for our local witnessing until 9am.....so I have no idea what that was all about. We do not call on people that early. You must be mistaken. If someone came to my door at 7am three days running I would send them off too.
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Answer the door with a “Hail Satan”
Oh and offer juice and snacks.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
SugarOcean
¡pɹᴉǝM ʎɐʇS
I was reading a forum post once and about this same OP topic.
A woman there said she'd repeatedly asked JW's who knocked to not return. She was Christian and resented the idea that someone would enter her property thinking the resident must be damned.
She said that one day when in her living room doing housework she saw a large van pull into her horseshoe shaped drive. They were JW's.
Fed up, she undresses, closes the light blocking drapes, lights the candle set on her dining room table, grabs a butcher knife from the knife block on her kitchen counter and goes to the front door and waits for their ring of the doorbell. The house being completely dark now but for the soft candle glow behind her.
She said she opened the door buck naked and holding up the knife. The mouths of the women dressed in their Sunday best fell open, eyes grew wide.
The woman of the house looked over her shoulder then and shouts, "Honey? The sacrifices to Satan have arrived."
She turns back to those ladies , steps back, opens the door wider so they can see the candle array behind her, smiles and says, please do come in we've been expecting you.
At the time of that post she closed by saying she hadn't been bothered again and going on ten years.
Oh, if only there were video.
Hahaha! What a legend!
I was reading a forum post once and about this same OP topic.
A woman there said she'd repeatedly asked JW's who knocked to not return. She was Christian and resented the idea that someone would enter her property thinking the resident must be damned.
She said that one day when in her living room doing housework she saw a large van pull into her horseshoe shaped drive. They were JW's.
Fed up, she undresses, closes the light blocking drapes, lights the candle set on her dining room table, grabs a butcher knife from the knife block on her kitchen counter and goes to the front door and waits for their ring of the doorbell. The house being completely dark now but for the soft candle glow behind her.
She said she opened the door buck naked and holding up the knife. The mouths of the women dressed in their Sunday best fell open, eyes grew wide.
The woman of the house looked over her shoulder then and shouts, "Honey? The sacrifices to Satan have arrived."
She turns back to those ladies , steps back, opens the door wider so they can see the candle array behind her, smiles and says, please do come in we've been expecting you.
At the time of that post she closed by saying she hadn't been bothered again and going on ten years.
Oh, if only there were video.
Got a citation for that claim? A recent study perhaps? Because you can literally say that about almost all medicine: people can die, for any number of reasons after receiving medical treatment. But just because you could die from a surgery is not a reason to avoid a surgery to remove an infected appendix. Everything has a risk. Even walking down the street.
I’d like to put forth my own wager. Bloodless medicines arose to service the need of JWs refusing blood in the first place. Commerce 101. You guys had a need, some bright spark filled it.
We as a society have a deep intrinsic respect for personal faith. Even I, with my snarky sarcasm, would gladly fight to protect this fundamental human right. Regardless of whether I agreed with it or not.
This is true in medicine. Doctors may often be arrogant (some would argue they need to be in order to do their job) but they need your explicit permission to even get a hair sample, never mind a blood transfusion. If you refuse, they will find a way around it, in order to respect your rights.
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