Heb. 10:26 Question... (page 2)

Tuesday

You could try to prove to him that by going back he's actually sinning willfully. You might have to get creative, but I'm sure there are ways you can show him that by going back to the witnesses he is in fact sinning willfully. If you need some examples I'm sure myself or people on here can come up with some.

Honesty

Since he wants to use Scripture...

For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there among them.

Matthew 18:20

greendawn

Once more we see that the fear of religion and God got into and enslaved someone. The JWs are not the truth and never have been and can not be compared to the early church which not only believed but also practiced what it believed. It was a religion and not a business pretending to be a religion. Therefore this verse can not be applicable to them.

Leolaia

I think the first point you need to hammer home is that the JWs do not represent the totality of faithful Christians. The central assumption is that one rebels against God and Jesus if he or she leaves the JWs per se, and that is a claim that the Society makes for its own self-interest. It teaches that one must obey the organization in order to obey God. That is a notion that has no basis in the Bible. Once a person realizes that one can associate with other Christians outside of the JWs, or that leaving the JWs does not mean that one leaves Jesus, then he or she can begin to discard the control mechanism that the Society here imposes.

Second, if your friend is feeling guilt over the matter, then he is clearly not wilfully sinning in the sense of v. 26, which concerns deliberate rebellion and blasphemy against God -- specifically rejecting the covenant that had previously been accepted (v. 16, 28, 29). In fact, unless your friend declared himself to be of the "anointed" and thus under the new covenant, he is not even in a position to reject it. The JW so-called class of "non-anointed" Christians is entirely extraneous to the Christian congregation discussed in the NT; it doesn't exist as an entity in the NT. Your friend -- like the vast majority of JWs -- is arrested at the stage of a proselyte who has not yet consecrated himself to the covenant and receive the Holy Spirit...such ones are like those who "being still an infant, lives on milk" (5:13). He could not "treat as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him", if in fact he has not yet been sanctified by the blood of the covenant (10:29). Similarly, it is precisely those who are spirit-begotten who "insult the Spirit of grace" by rejecting the Holy Spirit they already received. It is also worth noting that "the knowledge of the truth" is a semi-technical expression in the Pastorals, referring to not simply a knowledge about Christianity but one's acceptance of Christianity and the salvation pertaining to it (cf. 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Timothy 2:25, 3:7, Titus 1:1). Finally, the author distinguishes between those who deliberately rebel and those who "are ignorant and are going astray" in 5:2, for even the priests in the OT were "subject to weakness" and Jesus as the high priest is "able to deal gently with" such ones (v. 1-3).

R.Crusoe

I recall this living nighmare!! This is the let all humans walk over you syndrome the WT transplant into your brain!

I had it and still have residual fragments! The 'sin' idea has departed my persona as a fear and become positive choice thinking which it should have been all along! I choose what is sin! I work out who I am! And it is way better than WT torture and better for everyone!!

freydi

So is not going to a meeting a sin or not? What do ya think?

a) According to the Bible

b) According to the society

Heb. 10:26 Question...