A friend of mine who is still a witness has been posting these things he calls "research questions" on his bebo account. I find them rather amusing because even if I look up the answers and put them basically word for word from scriptures they usually end up being something printed out of the watchtower. Since he reads my bebo account I posted something about how there are shades of grey in morality and discussed how stealing a loaf of bread for your starving child could be both proven and disproven with the bible. So my latest attempt is Armageddon. Basically I'm trying to prove that when Armageddon comes not all the unbelievers will be destroyed, they'll make it to the Millenium where God will be able to judge them without Satan messing everything up (The Russell idea, not that I believe either to be honest I'm still an Evolutionist). I liberally took from the online book "Falling In Truth", but I think I put it in a different way with my own expirience. Let me know what you all think, if you have anything to add (especially scripturally) please feel free to comment and let me know. If there's any responses you can see an active witness coming up with let me know so I can pre-empt them in here, otherwise enjoy the read and comment freely I always love to hear everyone's critique and so forth.
Thanks,
Here's the Article....
A Bloodless Armageddon
I think my mother is scared to death of Armageddon. I remember once when I was ten, which was long before I ever had any doubts, before I stopped attending meetings, before I ever even thought of reading any other religious materials my mother coming home balling because we were going to die at armageddon. To be honest I think I may have been a bit younger, my mother just came home one day crying saying that we weren't doing enough and needed to do more if we weren't going to be destroyed with the wicked at the great battle of Armageddon. I visited my father on Saturdays, my mother was a single mother raising me with very little monetary support, she worked full time, she did phone witnessing on her lunch hour, she took me out in service every sunday for at least an hour, on summer vacations she would auxilliary pioneer and Saturday mornings she would wake up at the crack of dawn to drive downtown and do street witnessing. I can't think of anything else she could've done. I don't know maybe there's something else going on there inside her head at the time, or maybe she just felt I was born wicked but for whatever reason we weren't worthy of walking the narrow path leading off into paradise.
The only conclusion that I could really draw from that is my mother was scared of "The Big A". An irrational fear of the unknown, maybe she was scared of death, I was only ten at the most but the image stuck with me. My mother, my care-giver, slumped on top of the old heater openly weeping regarding the reaping. I always wanted a way to soothe her, the only thing I could tell her was that I would try to do better with our studies, or try to go out in service more, I even tried to stop playing violently with my wrestling figures. Can you picture that, I had wrestling figures, the entire purpose was to wrestle and I was playing with them talking to each other? It actually explains alot about the way I wrestle now.
I never held the same fear as my mother did, no matter how many horrible pictures I was shown of people being destroyed, being eaten up by the earth, astral rocks falling on petrified civilians, chariots riding chest deep in the blood of the unbelievers I couldn't get frightened. Through out the New Testiment (not the Old Testiment, that's another conversation entirely) God is given the personality of a loving care-giver. He will leave the 99 sheep to find the 1 lost sheep, he cradles his children like a mother hen does her chicks, he is our loving heavenly father how could he show such barbarism to his creations? Something didn't make sense to me.
I always "rested (my) hope on a living God, who is savior of ALL men"(1 Timothy 4:10). But isn't God going to be killing all non-believers at Armageddon? There's the parable about the wheat and the weeds, where God's angels will be harvesting the wheat and burning the weeds. It almost always went in conjunction with the parable about the sheep and the goats, I remember them quite well actually given that every time I was out with my mother she was telling me how we were doing our part to help with that work. Every time someone showed some sort of harsher way of disagreement she would say that they were indeed a "goat". Once again that struck me as odd, I know now if a mormon comes to my door and offers me the book of mormon I'm going to pass because I've heard about the bigomy, Joseph Smith and his ideas of Jesus preaching to native americans, and any religon that's responsible for the Osmonds I want no part of. I never read the book of Mormon, who knows I'm sure I could find some passages in there that I find intriguing. I mean if Ghandi who prided his life on the pursuit of peace found his inspiration in the Bhagavad Gita, a book whose entire premise is God chastising a soldier for not killing his friends and relatives who happen to be on the other side of a battle, I'm sure I might find something of note in The Book of Mormon. I guess it would be alot like my mother offering a watchtower to someone who's only impression of the watchtower is letting people die instead of taking blood transfusions, hiding pedofiles due to the Dateline show a couple years back, and that the generation of 1914 would "by no means pass away" (by the way there are only 80 veterans of WWI alive as of last year). One would assume that a omni-present, all-knowing, all-powerful God might have a better plan in mind to get his truth into the minds of all the inhabitants of earth than having imperfect men preaching to other imperfect men using imperfect presentations about a concept itself which is more than likely imperfect (it may be truth, but at all times it will be imperfect since men are interpreting the scriptures, you know "the light gets brighter").
As I thought harder I thought how unfair the whole idea is. If I'm recalling the scripture correctly I believe that 2 Corinthians 4:4 says "Satan is the God of this system of things and has blinded the minds of unbelievers." I don't see how showing the light to blind men will open their eyes. I know that cramped is the road leading to righteousness and all, but how do you even find if you're blindfolded? One would think that God would come up with some sort of way to take away the blindfold before judging them, free of the negative influence, or the negative profiles.
Then there's the people who would be resurrected. To me it seemed kind of odd that I could die at armageddon when my only sin was lying about doing homework and there was a good chance Hitler would be in paradise after slaughtering 6 million people. I mean the people from Sodom and Gomorrah would be resurrected in Armageddon, This coming from Jesus' own lips in Matthew 10:15. Jesus actually also said a couple of chapters later in Matthew 12: 31,32 "On this account I say to you every sort of sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. For example, whoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him, but whoever speaks against the holy spirit, it will not be forgiven him, no, not in his system of things nor in that to come." So the only sin that will not be forgiven a person would be speaking against the holy spirit? So now begs the question, how can someone sin against the holy spirit if they're not being led by it? If the last scripture is indeed correct that Satan is the ruler of this system of things, wouldn't he be the one leading the people of the world?
Whenever someone would ask me "what will you do when the hour of judgement occurs?" I would usually reply "I guess I'd hand in my paper and hope that God grades on a curve." But as strange as it sounds that might actually be the case. "Because he(God) has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteoussness." (Acts 17:31), This sounds like the day of Armageddon. Also it's said that before Armageddon "the eyes of the blind shall be opened" (Isaiah 35:5) and "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9). It sounds to me that there will be a time that people will be judged by God, where they will not be blinded and God's purpose will be completely revealed to them, clear as the waters covering the sea, not murky like a swamp.
I know there's hope for those creatins at Sodom and Gomorrah who tried to rape angels, but hey maybe there's hope for a poor schlub like me who just doesn't want to do the homework for the night? Revelation chapter seven says that the believers, the survivors of Armageddon would say "Salvation we owe to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb." and in verse 14 the ones coming out of the Great Tribulation would "wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb" but it doesn't say they'd be the only ones to survive Armageddon. In fact Revelation 18:4 may talk about people being destroyed as Babylon the Great, but it also says "And I heard another voice out of heaven say "Get out of her, my people if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to recieve part of her plagues." It seems to be contrasting the people with Babylon the Great, which in Revelation would be considered symbollic of false religion. I know Governments, sects, religions, in fact whole parts of the world have fallen without people having to die as result of it. The Glorious Revolution folks may have shared in their punishment in losing property and such, but they didn't die the same death as the institution they were involved in. The scriptures definetly describe in detail the desolation of the great harlot, but no where do they mention about people would suffer the same fate.
If I could go back to being 10 again, if I could see my mother slumped crying on that heater again and could tell her some of these things. There's no way a God who can only serve justice would kill blind people for not being able to see light. If I could show her that God is a forgiver of ALL people not just some people. If I could show her that politicians and popes come and go but people don't die because of it. Maybe I could stop her crying, maybe I could've made her smile. Maybe I could've done something to make her feel worthy, or even if it didn't make her feel worthy she could be satisfied knowing that her ultimate Judgement from God would be in a time where his path was freely available and she would be guided by HIS spirit and not Satan's. Maybe she would stop killing herself for some mythical, magic number of hours preaching that would get her through Armageddon, or some perfect amount of time spent reading God's word or publications about God's word. But we can't go back, and I'm left with the image of me just being able to hug my mom and sing her "Somewhere Out There" to get an akward hug and kiss back feeling her wet cheek against mine. The image is mine to keep, mine to remember, and some nights I can't help but see it clear as it was yesterday. They say people fear what they don't understand, whether it's death or the ominous future pre-determined date of your death. Maybe if I could've made her understand, the fear, the tears and the image could go away.