WANTED ! JW Apologist

by wobble 389 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  wobble

  Well put Busy bee,I am saving your comment for future use!

  Oompa--- Necessarily unique,or why would Jesus choose them in 1918/19?

  As I have pointed out on other threads ,just one MORE suitable choice at the time would have been the Christadelphians,more of them in number I think at the time,but more importantly, teaching all the things your Dad mentioned plus did NOT support the War effort,they were conc. objectors from the time of the Ameerican Civil War!Surely Jesus looked mon that with approval,rather than the Bible Students buying War Bonds. Interestingly they published a list of their beliefs in the mid-19th centuary and still hold to them today,no Noo Lite for them!Those teachings are much as the JW's teach today after having to have copious amounts of Noo Lite

  Not that I am an advocate for them,it's just one example of the rocky ground that todays "FDS" bases it's authority on.

  So where is this spiritual food or teaching that Jesus looked at with approval that singled out the Bible Students as opposed to other more apparently worthy groups?

  Love

  Wobble

  ps Or put another way,somebody answer Besty's question,if anybody can??????
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  oompa

  wow...christadelphians...good input wobble...are there other religions that have been listed...shoot out a short list if you have them.....thanks.....oompa

  i wonder if they are still around?.....if not i guess that is why they were not chosen darn it....lol
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  wobble

  Oomps! they are still around,not in nearly so great a number as years ago.

  I first reserched this to pose to a Bro. who was calling to encourage me back to Meetings about a year ago,there were other groups that came close,but the "delphs" seemed best for my arguments sake. He has never come back with an answer,apart from that they don't believe in a personal Devil,so I said yea but they didn't believe in Pyramidology etc etc in 1918.

  I also gave him eleven other questions about current Dub teachings,still waiting for his answers,one year and counting.

  Love

  Wobble
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  OUTLAW

  "Christadelphians"..That name always cracked me up..LOL!!..........I wonder if there`s any Christapherians in Jamacia..LOL!!................................................OUTLAW
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  besty

  Lets be clear on why the requirement for 'unique' is part of the premise:

  Approved association with Jehovah’s Witnesses requires accepting the entire range of the true teachings of the Bible, including those Scriptural beliefs that are unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Watchtower April 1 1986 Pg 31 Question From Readers

  Surely for Jesus to choose the WTS in 1919 they would have been exhibiting at least some unique beliefs to help him decide in their favor?

  My question remains:

  Please post a list of the unique beliefs the WTS was promoting at or around the beginning of the 20th Century (that they still promote today) to justify your claims of holy spirit at that time.
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  Earnest

  If your a Jehovah`s Witness..When Armageddon comes and your not an active JW..Your Dead!.....Jesus can`t Save you!..LOL!!.....Only active JW`s..Working for the WBT$ for free,will be saved!..Not even the 144,000 are safe!!..............In Watchtower World,the Watchtower is your Savior..Jesus is out of a Job!!..

  OUTLAW : This is wobble's thread and wobble would prefer that we stick to the question as to what teaching is unique to Jehovah's Witnesses. However, I understand there is no objection to my replying to the point you raise. It is all very well for you to say that in Watchtower World the Watchtower is your Saviour but, as I have explained previously, that is confusing association with God's people and the act of being saved. Let me repeat the analogy one more time, it is quite easy to understand (even for your dog). When the nation of Israel came out of Egypt, crossed the Red Sea and survived in the Wilderness for forty years there was a great crowd of foreigners (i.e. non-Israelites) who came out with them. Now it was not Moses or Aaron or the priesthood or the nation of Israel that saved those foreigners from the various perils faced in fleeing from Egypt and travelling to Canaan. It was God and (possibly) Christ (according to some commentaries on the Exodus account). However, if those foreigners had detached themselves from the nation of Israel and gone off on their own there is no reason to believe that God would have acted on an individual basis rather than for the body of his people. So by staying with the nation of Israel those foreigners were able to avail themselves of the safety that God provided. I have heard a similar analogy made to the time of the Flood. If individuals had decided they did not want to go on board the Ark with Noah but would build their own boats it seems unlikely that they would have survived the Flood.

  I accept this begs the question as to whether such analogies can be applied to "spiritual Israel" as Jehovah's Witnesses understand it. But the same analogies were certainly made by early Christian writers regarding the importance of sticking with the Church and not joining with those Marcionites, Mandaeans, Arians, gnostics etc. who were not viewed as being part of those in God's favour. You may not accept that the term "spiritual Israel" applies to "the anointed" as JWs understand it, you may not accept that they are a modern-day counterpart to the Ark etc., but it is nonsense to say Jehovah's Witnesses themselves believe the Watch Tower Society or any group within it are their saviours rather than God and Jesus Christ.
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  besty

  Salvation is not possible without the WTS. In the minds of loyal JW's it is impossible for them to differentiate their loyalties between Jehovah/Jesus and the WTS.

  "But Jehovah God has also provided his visible organization, his faithful and discreet slave, made up of spirit-anointed ones, to help Christians in all nations to understand and apply properly the Bible in their lives. Unless we are in touch with this channel of communication that God is using,we will not progress along the road to life, no matter how much Bible reading we do." Watchtower 1981 Nov. 15 p.27
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  leavingwt

  but it is nonsense to say Jehovah's Witnesses themselves believe the Watch Tower Society or any group within it are their saviours rather than God and Jesus Christ.

  I couldn't disagree more.

  You seem to ignore the reality that in the cult members' mind, Jehovah only operates via a human organization. There is no salvation apart from the Watchtower Society.

  Turn the situation around: Do Jehovah's Witnesses believe they can be saved if the human organization disapproves of them?
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  wobble

  At the risk of hi-jacking my own thread, Earnest? Saving that crowd or mixed company? didn't all of that generation,apart from a priviledged few like Joshua,PERISH in the wilderness.I think you need to find another analogy,and read Bestys and Leavings comments.

  love

  Wobble
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  Earnest

  Bubble : Or put another way,somebody answer Besty's question,if anybody can??????

  Hi Bubble, let me make up for digressing from your primary question as I have previously done. And I should say this is my own answer rather than one I have read in the Watchtower or heard from the platform so I suppose it cannot be viewed as an official answer but it will have to do. There is a scripture in Corinthians where Paul says 'Who has come to know the mind of Jehovah, but we do have the mind of Christ'. There is another scripture...hmmm...it may be in Isaiah or in the Psalms...where God says that he is the Potter and we are the clay, who are we to question what the potter does. That is not word for word but that is the essence of it. In other words, we do not always know the reasons for Jehovah's decisions and choices. Maybe we never do. We understand why he chose the nation of Israel, because they were descendants of Abraham and Abraham was "God's friend". But why did he choose Abraham? Not because he was willing to sacrifice Isaac. He had already been chosen long before Isaac was born. Who knows, but doubtless he had his reasons. So, let us suppose we are living in the time of the end. Maybe we are, maybe we are not. But just suppose. And let us suppose that the printing press, the discovery of ancient manuscripts, the discovery of electricity and computers were all in God's plan for the dissemination of his message throughout the earth. And now there is the identifying of the wheat and the weeds that happens at this particular time. All the churches have false doctrine, none have the whole truth, so who is he to choose? Perhaps he chooses the group that is willing to change its beliefs that it recognises are false rather than those who cannot or will not change. We may view this as rather a strange choice but then, again, we are not God so what do we know.

  Personally, I do not see that Jesus or anyone else taught that there would be such a group. However, I do accept Reniaa's contention that if I was to associate with a Christian group I would do so with those whose primary beliefs were most in harmony with the Bible. I do not understand the pack of mad dogs who cannot accept her contention that dates are not that important to her faith as a JW, almost insisting that she doesn't know what she herself believes.