What shall I do with it?
Medium Size - Side 1 Medium Size - Side 2
Large Size - Side 1
Large Size - Side 2Found a "Jesus Christ Who Is He?" tract at my apartment's bulletin board.
by Elsewhere 11 Replies latest jw friends
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jgnat
I imagine a document left on a bulletin board is meant for the public. The more people who have access to this information, the better, eh, Elsewhere?
Will you put it back later with a link to silentlambs and ajwrb?
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Will Power
did you notice it was printed in Canada?
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IronClaw
Leave it on the back of your toilet bowl, for those emergency times.
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jgnat
I'm trying to pick it apart, but I'm finding it difficult to do. Other than the clunky language, this message is soft-pedalled and Christ centred. The poor "interested one" wouldn't find out until the tenth study that Christ is not the center of the Jehovah's Witness teachings. A full quote from Will Durant:
The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.... The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so loft an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man. (1944)
Quoted from: http://www.bede.org.uk/price1.htm
Secular scholar Will Durant, who left the Catholic Church and embraced humanism, also dismisses the idea in Caesar and Christ (the third volume of his Story of Civilisation)
HOWEVER, I see these apologists don't represent Will Durant fairly. He later regained a deep spirituality, though perhaps not one his Catholic mother would approve:
But when Ethel came, I saw how some mysterious impulse, far outreaching the categories of physics, lifted her up, inch-by-inch and effort by effort, on the ladder of life. I felt more keenly than before the need of a philosophy that would do justice to the infinite vitality of nature. In the inexhaustible activity of the atom, in the endless resourcefulness of plants, in the teeming fertility of animals, in the hunger and movement of infants, in the laughter and play of children, in the love and devotion of youth, in the restless ambition of fathers and the lifelong sacrifice of mothers, in the undiscourageable researches of scientists and the sufferings of genius, in the crucifixion of prophets and the martyrdom of saints -- in all things I saw the passion of life for growth and greatness, the drama of everlasting creation. I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process ... I became almost reconciled to mortality, knowing that my spirit would survive me enshrined in a fairer mold ... and that my little worth would somehow be preserved in the heritage of men. In a measure the Great Sadness was lifted from me, and, where I had seen omnipresent death, I saw now everywhere the pageant and triumph of life.
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katiekitten
Draw glasses on all the men and boobies on all the ladies.
I was going to say draw mustaches, but theyve beaten you to it.
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Legolas
Send it back with a letter stating that you do NOT want any cult people going to that building again!
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jgnat
Those dreaded dots ... or, ellipses [ ]. Don't you wonder at the context of Ghandi's quote?
Still talking about solutions, we are reminded of a historical account: Lord Irwin, a British viceroy of India, once asked Mohandas Gandhi (earlier mentioned in this article) what he thought would be "the solution to the problems of India and Britain."
Writer S. J. Corey made the following report in his book Treasury of the Christian Faith: "Taking up a little book from the nearby lampstand, Gandhi opened it to the fifth chapter of Matthew and replied, ‘When your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world’
Perhaps the WTBTS would rather not remind folks that there are great leaders at least attempting to solve the problems in this old world, rather than wait around for Jehovah to fix it.
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Sunspot
Jeepers, Else, I thought that this tract was the WTS finally admitting that they don't have a clue who Jesus Christ is! I think if it were me......I'd put it back up with a notation in plain sight asking..."Don't YOU know?"
hugs,
Annie
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carla
Print out some warning stickers and keep them with you for cases like this-- ****************** Warnining********** Cult Reading Material, or something on that order.