LoL. That is from...your own wedding cake, Gumby? You got married in ...Amsterdam?
Something strange about "Christs invisible presence"...
by Hellrider 54 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Star Moore
Hello friends..
I definately believe now the return of Christ is going to be a fleshly, real, human return. He's called the 'son of man', on his return. Not the 'son of God'. Also he judges and kills with the 'spirit of his lips', and the 'rod of his mouth' in Is. 11:5. So, we have to be able to hear him.... And many other reasons..I think his return has to be tangleable...
This idea of JW's of being in heaven for almost 100 years and nobody knows, what's going on with him is INSANE. Geez, he's not even, separating the sheeps and goats, anymore according to the JW's...
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NotYou
jeje we should change the name of this site to "We all hate god"
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Hellrider
LoL, it looks like a jw finally showed up to defend the doctrine.
Nice going, jws!
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greendawn
There is only one return mentioned regarding Christ:
"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory". Matthew 24:30
That will be a return with great consequences as all the nations will be mourning. Not an invisible return that goes totally unperceived. -
moggy lover
According to my notes that I have from the days of my misspent youth in the JWs, I have the following quote, taken from the WT of Sept 15 1964, pg 576: "The disciples had no idea that he [Christ] would rule as a glorious spirit from the heavens and therefore did not know that his second presence would be invisible" [To my regret I threw out all my back issues of the WT when I left the movement I only have my notes]
Just to make sure that this was'nt a printers devil that had eluded the sharp eyed censors of the WT, the writers repeated the statement almost ten years later. [Jan 15 1974, pg 50]
Remember that the discussion regarding the "Parousia" of Christ mentioned in Matt 24:3 is in fact an answer that Christ to a question posed by the disciples. They asked: What will be the sign of your Parousia? Now - this begs the question - If the disciples did not know that Christ's Parousia was to be invisible [as acknowledged publically on at least two occasions by the writers of the Wt] then how the hell could they have asked their question with an invisible Parousia in view???
When Christ answered their question , what question was He answering? He could not be discussing an "invisible" Parousia because the idea did not even come up!! He must then have been answering a Parousia that made Him to be visible. [There are only two possibilities: invisible/visible. If one was not being discussed, then it must have been the other!] In effect, then the disciples were asking:" What will be the sign of your [visible] Parousia"? And that was what Christ was discussing.
Was'nt it?
Cheers
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Hellrider
Moggy Lover:
Remember that the discussion regarding the "Parousia" of Christ mentioned in Matt 24:3 is in fact an answer that Christ to a question posed by the disciples. They asked: What will be the sign of your Parousia?
Have you checked that the word in the text there is "parousia"? If so, then that`s a pretty solid argument you got there!
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moggy lover
Hi, HL
In answer to your question: Matt 24:3 is the first of 24 occurences of "Parousia" in the NT text.
If Parousia means an "invisible" presence then Paul must have been invisibly present when he was with the Corinthians !!! [2Cor 10:10]
I know we are drifting away from your post, but indulge me a little. There is an interesting footnote to this verse of the NT, which to the best of my knowledge has not been commented on by the writers of the Wt. This is the only place in the NT where the word Paousia is qualified by an adjective. In other words at 2Cor 10:10, Paul did not just mention his own parousia, but he mentioned the kind of parousia that is involved within the meaning of the word. He said that his Parousia was a "Somatos parousia" where "somatos" here acts as an adjective.
How would one translate the expression "somatos parousia"? Well a few verses later, at 2Cor 12:2, that brilliant greek scholar who could'nt tell a Greek "Alpha" from a leg of pork, Freddie Franz translated "somatos" as "Body" So knowing that "somatos" means "body" thanks to Freddie the Boy Wonder, we can then get ready to translate "somatos parousia"
As a noun the word "somatos" means "body" and as an adjective it means either "bodily" or "physical" Which means then that we can translate this expression as either "PHYSICAL presence" or "BODILY presence" So Paul clearly is telling us that the word "Parousia" is associated with the body, not the spirit. There is nothing invisible either by extension of meaning, or implication in the word "Parousia" and 2Cor 10:10 indicates this. But, and this a big but, take a look at how cleverly Freddie "translated" this expression. It is ambiguous enough to be made to mean anything!!!!
Try telling your wife that you were indeed present in bed last night, only invisibly. see how far it gets you!!
Cheers
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Hellrider
Thanks Moggylover. I know very little about the greek stuff, but even I understood that, once you explained it. Ah, if only JWs were told about these things...
I know we are drifting away from your post, but indulge me a little.
No worries there, I`m all for drifting away from the original post...I just refer to it as "new light".
