Odd CO talk...ever hear anything like this?

by sir82 35 Replies latest jw friends

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  sir82

  Had our CO visit last month. Normally the guy has all the charisma and charm of Ben Stein from "Ferris Buhler's Day Off", but he managed to give a talk that was actually coherent one night.

  Here is the rough outline:

  The theme was about the difference between "justice", "mercy", and "undeserved kindness".

  Situation 1: Adam and Eve sinned. Justice demanded their immediate execution. But God granted undeserved kindness and allowed them to live another 930 years, i.e., he gave them time. During that time of undeserved kindness, Abel performed a righteous act and thus God extends mercy and will grant him life in the resurrection.

  Situation 2: The world of Noah's day was exceedingly evil. Justice demanded the immediate death of everyone. But God granted undeserved kindness and allowed that society to exist another 120 years. During that time of undeserved kindness, Noah performed a righteous act by preaching and building an ark, so God showed mercy by allowing him to live.

  Situation 3: The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were extremely evil. Justice demanded their immediate destruction. But God granted undeserved kindness and allowed time for Lot and his family to escape. Lot performed the righteous act of fleeing the city, and so God showed mercy and spared his life.

  Present day situation: When Jesus "inspected the earth" in 1918, he found it to be evil. Justice demanded its immediate destruction. But God has granted 90+ years of undeserved kindness, up until now. During this period of undeserved kindness, we should engage in righteous acts (preaching, meeting attendance, yadda yadda the usual stuff) so that God might grant us mercy and let us live in the new order.

  I was surprised on 2 counts: (1) It was an actual coherent argument from this guy, who normally can't explain the color of the grass without stumbling around and telling an irrelevant story from 40 years ago, and (2) it's completely and utterly non-Christian.

  As most here know, the Society translates what everyone else calls "grace" as "undeserved kindness". There are dozens of scriptures that indicate that salvation is due to "God's grace", yet this talk made the complete opposite point - that "grace / undeserved kindness" is merely a sort of "temporary stay of execution", and that salvation comes as a "reward" for "works" and is granted via "mercy".

  I had never heard the JW message framed this way - I was quite stunned at its complete deviation from the NT scriptures.

  What do you all think?

  I was thinking, maybe this was a "trial balloon" to see how a potential bit of "new light" goes over? Or maybe they are test-driving a new way to spin their message - one that will have more appeal to people from a non-Christian background?

  Certainly if JWs tried to spin a "Grace is merely a stay of execution, you are saved exclusively by mercy granted because of works" message in an area with a Christian background, it would fall completely flat.
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  wobble

  To my mind he has just spelled out what is, and always has been the true belief of the WT, that there is no such thing as grace, just salvation by works for them, a large publishing company.

  Love

  Wobble
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  OnTheWayOut

  The WTS has always drawn such supposed parallels. Your C.O. was just presenting material from WTS, so he didn't have to think of it.

  They have also been testing out such a parallel with the members in several study articles in the past so that the idea won't sound new when they present some definite tie-in to the 120 years of waiting in Noah's day.

  They will say how the ark was built in that time, the animals gathered, the message preached. Similarly today, the kingdom halls and Patterson, the people preached to and some came in, but it's been almost 100 years. Jehovah didn't wait longer than he should have- he gave everyone undeserved kindness before proceeding. Same today. After the 120 years have gone by, they will say there were less people back in Noah's day. It might take a wee bit longer to "reach" them all today.
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  snowbird

  What do you all think?

  I think they're desperately trying to hold on to anything, anything, that will support their untenable doctrine that Jesus inspected the WT in 1918 and found them to be the only group worthy of His approval.

  Their denial of His grace is sufficient to prove they weren't. It only takes a few well-worded questions words from any Christian to make JW's look like complete fools.

  They must be scared witless!

  Tee hee hee.

  Or maybe they are test-driving a new way to spin their message - one that will have more appeal to people from a non-Christian background?

  Could be. Down here they are converging on the Asian population, encouraging publishers to learn just enough Vietnamese, Laotian, etc., to present the "Kingdom message."

  Sylvia
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  WTWizard

  It is a scam based on another scam. First, why do things have to follow the exact same pattern this time as earlier? Just because something happened in a certain order before does not mean it will this time, and they could cause a lot of people to needlessly waste their time trying.

  I also do not see why this religion is the true one and all the others were false. Didn't Jesus inspect the religion in 1918 and find it acceptable then? Why mess with something that is already approved? If Jesus liked what he saw in 1918, there is no assurance that Boozerford didn't ruin what Jesus liked about it. Do we really know that Christmas and the cross are actually bad? Jesus would have done something about it on the spot if he didn't like those elements in an otherwise clean religion.

  Besides, the whole thing about "undeserved kindness" is a complete scam. Why did Adam "deserve" to die? Because he wanted to be able to make decisions for himself instead of having someone that could have had cross-purposes make them for him. Satan had to have known that Jehovah was setting up a tyranny--and stepped in before that Almighty Lowlife Scumbag had the chance to do that.

  As for the Nephilim, is there any proof that they were all violent? Or, are they just making that up? I think it could as easily be that they wanted people to have a good time, and that they would have led mankind into a society where minimal regulations would have existed. And that would prevent Jehovah from distressing mankind, eliminating the "need" for "deliverance" and the source of that scam. For all I know, the Nephilim were not necessarily a violent race.

  Why did those in Sodom and Gomorrah "deserve" to die? Homosexuality? Or, perhaps because they were thriving cities without Jehovah's interference, thank you--and He had to destroy them in order to prevent them from making a fool out of Jehovah? I think the homosexuality excuse was used to justify Jehovah's destruction of these prosperous cities--and I have reason to believe that it wasn't quite as widespread as the Bible would have one believe. If one only practiced homosexuality and never practiced "straight" sex, the whole city would have died out without any of Jehovah's "help". It had to be because, left alone, those two cities would have shown other people that mankind could function just fine without that Almighty Lowlife Scumbag.

  Hardly valid excuses these days.
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  ssn587

  Let me see if I got this correct, Jesus came to earth sometime during 1914-1918, (invisible of course) and inspected all the religions (christian that is) and chose a publishing company (not a religion mind you but a publishing company) as the only true religon? So Publishing company equals a religon? So to follo that nonsense, if you read a book from "x" publishing company, you are reading religious material???

  Just more nonsense for the self-appointed idiots at Bethel. Their Proof is ,and out pouring of BS from their mouths?

  Oh by the way how do you call in ZEro nada zilch hours not out in the public harrassment work???
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  blondie

  *** w65 7/1 pp. 414-415 Tempering Justice with Mercy ***Jehovah also tempered his justice in the days of Noah. The Biblical record tells us that about 120 years before the great Flood "the badness of man was abundant in the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the time." The violating by man of what was righteous in the eyes of God threw the scales of justice off balance. Jehovah God judged the world of that time and sentenced it to destruction. "Jehovah said: ‘I am going to wipe men whom I have created off the surface of the ground.’" (Gen. 6:3-7) But this judgment decree was tempered when Jehovah showed the guilty undeserved kindness by staying the execution decree for 120 years. He was long-suffering with them. This gave men the opportunity to produce grounds for Jehovah to extend mercy to them on the basis of their repentance, which would mean the preservation of their lives through the Flood. All who failed to take advantage of those 120 years to build up legal grounds for mercy to be shown them were swept from the surface of the ground by the floodwaters. Their destruction balanced the scales of justice.
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  babygirl30

  I remember this talk almost 2yrs ago!!!!!!! (Bro Burdine - who has the personality of a SNAIL) and it really confused the HELL outta me between the differnce of mercy and undeserved kindness.....to this DAY I don't get it. The one thing I DO recall most is that the said Jehovah would not extend 'mercy' to Adam and Eve because they were 'perfect' and so they would NOT qualify for the resurrection! That blew my mind.
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  sir82

  I may not have expressed myself as clearly as I could have....no surprise there.

  It doesn't surprise me that the message is "do more or God will kill you".

  What does surprise me is that in the past, they have at least paid lip service to the Biblical notion of "saved by grace", along the lines of "everlasting life is an act of undeserved kndness from God...(but of course you have to go out and prove you deserve it)."

  That way, at least they could tie in all the scriptures that deal with "grace / undeserved kindness" and say "See? We covered that".

  But this time all those scriptures were just utterly ignored. The entire meaning of "undeserved kindness" was presented as I had never heard it before - as a sort of grudging toleration, a reluctant concession to allow wicked people to continue in their wickedness for a while until finally God gets the relief of killing everybody off.

  I think they might be thinking, such a message might be more appealing to people of African or Asian descent, where the idea of "everlasting life as a gift" would conflict with the more usual non-Christian religious message of "you get rewarded by God for doing good, and punished for doing bad". So they are test-driving the message on US JWs, to work out any kinks before putting it in a book.
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  nugget

  The significant thing is in all these examples masses were destroyed and only a tiny minority of individuals were saved. His message seemed to be preach the word for your salvation the rest are past all hope. It is really quite a depressing message when you think of it.