Backing into the light

The Jehovah's Witnesses go to great lengths to explain away the plain sense of John 1:  The Word was with God and the Word was God.  If those words are not plain to the simple and lowly, if they were written only for Greek scholars, then they can benefit only those who are learned in Greek. But the insistence of the Witnesses actually drove me to investigate for myself what the Apostle John believed about Jesus:

Through Him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world

...though the world was made by Him, the world did not recognize Him.

No one has ever seen God, but the only (begotten) Son, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known.

Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.

For this reason, the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbeth, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal to God.

(and Phil.2:5):  who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross.

Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.

that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.  He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.

Finally, in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus tells Satan: "The Lord, your God, shall you worship, and Him alone shall you serve."  However, after the Resurrection, the apostles worshipped Jesus just prior to the Ascension.

I read someplace that weeds help the flower roots go deeper than they could on their own.  I suppose I have to be grateful that the Jehovah's Witnesses are out there; in their own way, they make me find things I probably would have glossed over without their help:)