by hotchocolate 35 Replies latest watchtower bible
Ooooooh the elusive Skyring. Yep, heard all about him. Do you think he's real or just urban legend? LOL
Actually I sent him a PM so if he replies I'll know he's real for sure... LMAO
Thanks a lot for your replies. I'm feeling good about this stuff for once!
There's no flaw in your logic. You're spot on.
There may even be additional flaws in the JW logic you haven't realized yet.
Here are two:
1. The phrase "Abstain from blood" is not grammatically complete. You cannot invoke a partial predicate apart from the context that completes it as an independent construction.
For example, what would it mean if someone were to come up to you and out of the blue, say, "Abstain from car" ? You can abstain from driving a car or riding in a car, or washing a car, but the idea of an abstinance from the car itself is meaningless. This is because technically we don't actually abstain from physical objects, we abstain from finite acts done in connection with these objects. Therefore a finite verb is needed to complete the thought. When the verb is not present, the reader picks it up from the context. --If someone were to say, "Abstain from liquor" you would automatically know that they were talking about drinking it.
The same is true of blood. In context, the phrase, "Abstain from blood" is a reference to eating it. Many translations render the phrase as, "Abstain from eating blood" or something to that effect. (e.g. Moffat, Today's English Version, Contemporary English Version, New Life Version etc.) Transfusion is not eating blood. It is a form of organ transplant.
The JW invocation of the phrase "Abstain from blood" is just a cheap, ungrammatical trick to try to force a comment out of the Bible that it never actually makes.
2. There is no Biblical requirement to pour all blood out on the ground.
Ancient people would kill a domestic animal that they intended to eat by quickly slitting its throat with a very sharp knife. Wild animals don't let you walk up to them and slit their throats. Wild animals don't usually even let you get near them. Methods for killing a wild animal (e.g. A spear, arrow, snare, etc.) do not sufficiently bleed the carcass. Therefore under the Law, when a wild animal was killed, additional steps were necessary. The throat still needed to be slit and the blood poured out even though the animal was already dead.
With these facts in mind, read the scriptures the JW's use to substantiate their idea that all blood must be poured out on the ground. You will see that they are contextually specific instructions to Israelite hunters about what to do with a stag, hart, gazelle, and wild fowel after you have killed it.
Blood needed to be removed from the body by being poured out.
The JW's have taken that requirement, divorced it from the original context (Hunting) and reworded it into this:
"Blood removed from the body must be poured out."
However that's not what the Bible says and this is just another cheap trick to try to force a statement out of the Bible that it never makes.
What of the deaths that did result from the laws placed upon Jehovah's Witnesses, which we have now seen were incorrectly imposed? New light and understanding I guess I can perhaps understand... but we are now talking about a erroneous understanding that has led to the death of innocent people. I'm just not sure I can see how God would be a part of that.
hotchocolate,
God was not part of that. Jews still keeping the Law in Jerusalem with which the Watchtower patterns itself were. This turned out to be a false teaching that Paul could not correct until many years later. They used their influence to take advantage of this new Apostle and then nearly killed him because he did not follow their real intentions. I have been upgrading the document Beyond Watchtower Doctrine recently and it discusses this along with the blood issure and how it has destroyed lives unnecessarily. Not just blood fractions but whole blood can be taken without fear of displeasing God. We are no longer under Law or the way their letter has been misapplied by the Watchtower. If you have time download this along with the book at: http://home.earthlink.net/~jmalik/ Click on the picture to get to page two where it can be downloaded.
Joseph
Hotchocolate, glad you appreciated it. As for the further research, a really great website to delve into is www.talkorigins.org It's very non-threatening, clear and well-documented with lots of annotated references to scientific source material. Their section on the biblical flood is what pushed me out of the Witnesses.
SYMBOLIC...you have hit it pretty much on the nose, its not the amount of blood, cant drain it all from the meat we eat, how much more of being a witness is symbolic? Baptism and dedication? Dead to our old ways, made alive in Christ? And where these out ward symbols are outlawed by governments, are they not forgone because they are only symbolic?
Holding blood as sacred becuase Jehovah has said to, can be done in our hearts, your have raised very valid points about blood and it connection with death.
Acts 15:19-20,
"19
Hence my decision is not to trouble those from the nations who are turning to God, (is that not us?)20 but to write them to abstain from things polluted by idols, (also translated, "sacrafices to idols" making it unclean) and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood."The NWT is twisted here to isolate blood from what was really advised to avoid.
Truth is like a finely cut stone, as you turn it in the light it shine many nuanses and facets, not just one ray of light as the WT would have us see it.
Right on,
The need for Rhogam also led me to discarding the WTS view of medical blood. I knew when I contacted NY with questions and every single response was "matter of conscience" that this was heading the way of organ transplants. I persisted in double checking the pubs all they way back to the 40's, that is when I confirmed that Woodward was behind the concept. When I was very young and 1975 didn't happen I remember hearing about the vaccinations ban and how he was a quack. Searching the internet I came across Bulgaria, which only again confirms the WTS lack of commitment to the doctrine. It makes me sick/angry/sad everytime I hear about someone dying after refusing blood because of the WTS.
Hey H.C. one thing I have always brought up and you touched on this is the fact that Witness doctrine puts blood to the point of an Icon. They recently had a Watchtower article about how Icons are wrong. Unknowingly I think most witnesses equate blood with Jesus, which there just is no biblical basis. This could be a form of Idol worship at it's simplest. It's a stretch but it's something to think about.
TD:
This is the first time I've read that argument about "abstain from blood" as an incomplete statement. Elegant proof! Simple and irrefutable.
The thing that irritates me - is that the Watchtower writers most certainly read this discussion group. At the very least there are hundreds of people who have read these excellent arguments and have written the Watchtower. The result? The Watchtower never deals with these arguments. They don't give their loyal soldiers the weapons to refute these arguments.
They are defeated on these points. They have NO REBUTTAL.
Hi Hotchocolate,
You're in the right place.
If anyone can see a flaw in my logic, please tell me... I'm really interested in hearing other ideas on this...
No flaw.
It's hard to trust your own instincts, when you have been taught all your life to trust someone elses.
Jesus had an idea that I like:
Mark 7: 14
Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. 15 Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' "
17 After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. 18 "Are you so dull?" he asked. "Don't you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him 'unclean'? 19 For it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach, and then out of his body." (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods "clean.")
