Great crowd in the first century ?

by ninja 21 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Gill

  Yes Gordy!

  It's like all those pretending annointed ones who keep partaking of the emblems on Memorial night!

  The little pesky dudes! Fancy messing up the Society's figures like that!
• 

  fullofdoubtnow

  I used to wonder when I first joined how there were still places left in the 144,000 for people born in the 19th and 20th centuries, seeing as only 144,000 go to heaven, as Christianity had been around for a long time by then. The jw I studied with said something on the lines of many of them just being professing Christians, like the churches today, and I was gullible enough to accept it. Yet the idea is so silly, considering what these people went through for their faith.

  Maybe if they'd read the watchtower and been baptised in the name of jehovahs spirit - directed organisation, they'd have been ok in the jws eyes.
• 

  jwfacts

  This is another unfair doctrine that assumes bad motives of these early Christian martys simply to bea able to support an illogical doctrine. Hundreds of thousands of people died as for their Christian beliefs, yet the WTS dismisses them as false followers of Christendom.
• 

  Mary

  Too bad the Society didn't actually read the tripe they print:

  w51 9/1 p.516 Hated for His Name*** It is said that in the year 95 alone some 40,000 suffered martyrdom................. Diocletian assumed the crown A.D. 284. At first he seemed friendly to the Christians, but in the year 303 he gave in to persuasion and opened the tenth persecution, probably the most ferocious of all. Suffocation by smoke, forcible drinking of melted lead, mass drownings and burnings, breaking on the rack of men and women alike ran the empire with blood. In a single month 17,000 were slain. In the province of Egypt alone, 144,000 such professed Christians died by violence in the course of this persecution, in addition to another 700,000 who died as a result of fatigues encountered in banishment or under enforced public works.

  ***

  re chap. 20 p. 125 A Multitudinous Great Crowd***
  

  During the 1920’s and early 1930’s, the John class had stressed the heavenly hope, both in the publications and in the preaching work. Apparently, the full number of the 144,000 had yet to be filled.

  So on one hand, they tell us that all the early Christians had the heavenly hope and by the 4th century CE, almost a million Christians had been martyred in some of the most inhumane ways possible, yet it wasn't until 1935 that 144,000 spaces were filled? Gimme a break.
• 

  yesidid

  w51 9/1 p. 516 Hated for His Name *** It is said that in the year 95 alone some 40,000 suffered martyrdom ................. Diocletian assumed the crown A.D. 284. At first he seemed friendly to the Christians, but in the year 303 he gave in to persuasion and opened the tenth persecution, probably the most ferocious of all. Suffocation by smoke, forcible drinking of melted lead, mass drownings and burnings, breaking on the rack of men and women alike ran the empire with blood. In a single month 17,000 were slain . In the province of Egypt alone, 144,000 such professed Christians died by violence in the course of this persecution, in addition to another 700,000 who died as a result of fatigues encountered in banishment or under enforced public works.

  It is probably a Dorothy Dix but this is their pathetic reply:

  ***w521/15p.62QuestionsFromReaders***

  Questions From Readers

  According to the article " Hated for hisName" in the September 1, Watchtower, hundreds of thousands of Christians died in the "ten

  persecutions" starting in Nero's time, 144,000 dying in Egypt alone during one of the persecutions. How can this be harmonized with the

  Scriptural limitation of 144,000 placed on the number being in Christ's body, and which position was the only one open to Christians during

  those centuries?—J.A.,DominicanRepublic.

  "The article did not class with any finality the individuals that died during these persecutions,

  but spoke of the results in a general way. Note that a key qualification was made in the case

  referred to in the question: "In the province of Egypt alone, 144,000 such professed

  Christians died by violence in the course of this persecution, in addition to another 700,000

  who died as a result of fatigues encountered in banishment or under enforced public works.

  " The victims are identified as "professed Christians", not Christians in fact. Many of those

  persons might have been caught in the wave of persecution, but may never have actually

  preached the truth or followed in Jesus’ footsteps, being only professed Christians. They

  knew the world they lived in was rotten and they were listening to the message of the

  Christians and willing to die for it even though not in line for the high calling in Christ Jesus.

  Many professed Christians today might be willing to die for their faith, but still not be

  Jesus’ footstep followers and meeting the Scriptural requirements for such."

  Yesidid
• 

  Mary

  "...The victims are identified as "professed Christians", not Christians in fact. Many of those persons might have been caught in the wave of persecution, but may never have actually preached the truth or followed in Jesus’ footsteps, being only professed Christians...."

  WTF?? Uh, last time I checked, anyone who "followed in Jesus' footsteps" was classified as a "Christian".

  They knew the world they lived in was rotten and they were listening to the message of the Christians and willing to die for it even though not in line for the high calling in Christ Jesus.

  And....they're basing their judgement that these early Christians were "not in line for the high calling" on what?? Hells bells, they're always telling us that that was the ONLY hope back then, at the same time they're telling us it wasn't?? Which is it??

  I find it incredible that these self-righteous, pompous fools at Brooklyn can sit there and judge the hearts of those that lived 1700 - 2000 years ago. Those 40,000 that died in 95 CE would have been the contemporaries of the apostles. Many of them might have even known Jesus himself, yet the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses in the 20th century claim these people weren't "real Christians"??? What a bunch of idiots.....
• 

  Abandoned

  When I've raised this with a JW the reply is that "They really weren't "real" Christians. They just professed to be"

  *cough* b*r*a*i*n*w*a*s*h*i*n*g *cough*
• 

  buriram

  It simply beggars belief that the 144.000 was not sealed until 1935, that is my favourite doctrine when debating with JWS.
• 

  blondie

  The WTS teaches that not everyone who said they were a Christian and died in the first and second century were "real" or "genuine" Christians; just "professed" Christians.

  The WTS can't even be consistent as to whether there were any anointed from 200 to 1879 AD; to make up the "faithful and discreet slave" class they said always had some representatives on earth at any given moment.

  As has been said according to the WTS, the great crowd are only those people who survive the great tribulation into the paradise without dying. They and everyone else who is resurrected to live on earth are labeled the "other sheep." So all of the great crowd are of the other sheep, but not all of the other sheep are part of the great crowd.

  Since the WTS teaches that children do not receive anointing by holy spirit, I wonder if they teach that parents in the first century were in a hurry to get their children baptized so that they could be in heaven with them. I wonder how parents felt whose babies died knowing that they could never see them again since they were going to heaven and the babies could only be resurrected to life on earth (or did they think that?)

  Blondie
• 

  jwfacts

  A good question to ask a JW is "what prophecy they use to show the sealing of the GC was in 1935? " There is none, it is simply because that happens to be the year Rutherford made up the doctrine.

  Russell had said that the 144,000 were sealed in 1881 (The Time Is At Hand (1889) 1916 ed. p.235) At least Russell tried to come up with a reason for his year.

  And the three and a half

  years following the Spring of A.D. 1878, which ended October, A.D. 1881, correspond to the

  three and a half years of continued favor to individual Jews in the last half of their seventieth

  week of favor. As in the type that date—three and a half years after the death of Christ—marked

  the end of all special favor to the Jew and the beginning of favor to the Gentiles, so we recognize

  A.D. 1881 as marking the close of the special favor to Gentiles—the close of the “high calling,”

  or invitation to the blessings peculiar to this age—to become joint-heirs with Christ and partakers

  of the divine nature.