by Terry 108 Replies latest watchtower bible
Designs, Any proof that these were actual christian teachings?
I don't quite understand your question. The only reference to Christians in that post were the interpolators to the Jewish Sibylline Oracles, who inserted "passages predicitng the coming of Jesus as the Messiah". I am pretty sure that the coming of Jesus as the Messiah is an actual Christian teaching. What do you mean, if you meant something else?
I have a standing challenge. Show me just one thing printed in the entire Bible that demonstrates Divine knowledge of a factual nature that was not also known by non-Bible readers at the time.
In other words, the Bible is held to be the Highest Mind speaking wisdom. Yet, it contains fortune cookie banality.
Is there REALLY something profound anywhere to be found?
I have never seen such a passage that somebody offered as proof of fact.
FACTS are not contained in the Bible.
Get over it.
People seek and find because the WANT to find what they seek there.
@Deputy Dog:
You quoted John 3:16, 17 in your post, after which @leavingwt asked you the question:
Who does God love?
I note that @Psacramento responded with this:
According to John, the whole world.
Then @besty responded to your question in this way:
Define "world", and does it include Afghanistan which is currently 99.9% convinced on an alternative holy book.
At this point, you wrote in response to @leavingwt wrote:
Who can say they haven't [received] ANY love from God. The reformers never had a problem with this.
IOW, you didn't answer his question, "Who does God love?"
God loved the new world of righteousness that He purposes to bring to the earth with His son as king, for after God had taken steps to lay out in the Bible over many thousands of years what things the human family needed to know about His principles and how He had applied those principles in the past to guide the human family in advance of the Messiah, Jesus went on to advance God's purpose in having the good news of the kingdom rule destined to rule over the world of obedient mankind declared throughout the earth in explaining just how He intended to apply these same principles in the future under the government of His son.
In addition, Jesus trained ministers to explain through their preaching of the good news that our loving God means to be obedient to the doing of God's will since only those people who accept the free gift of life and who have been released from the condemnation of sin and death inherited from the common father Adam through their faith in the ransom provision that God made possible through Jesus Christ will live in that new world of righteousness. John 3:18 says:
He that exercises faith in him is not to be judged. He that does not exercise faith has been judged already, because he has not exercised faith in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.
Since 33 AD, God has given all authority in heaven as well as on the earth to the Lord Jesus Christ, and without question it is through the congregations of God through the F&DS -- mere men and woman -- that Jesus is using to refine and train others that they might find those desirous of living in that new world of righteousness under the kingdom. It is true that there are many Christian denominations today -- literally hundreds of them, including those said to be non-denominational -- but even by reading the Bible on our own, one cannot help but see how Jehovah has always worked through a visible channel on earth, for under the Law, he guided His organization of Jewish worshippers for 1,545 years until the appearance of the Christ, at which point God then proceeded to organize and provide guidance through the Christian congregation for some 1,977 years until now under the oversight of the Christ.
During this time, many of the folks that were reading the Bible on their own were being given the help that they need to understand God's requirements for life in the new world of righteousness and are even being helped to understand these things, which has given them the faith to know what the future holds for them, for without their receiving help from those with holy spirit to guide them, they know that they would have continued to be in darkness spiritually, for those not actively exercising faith in the ransom provision have been judged already and will not survive God's judgment upon the world that is coming, and no undedicated/unbaptized person will be able to escape God's wrath at Armageddon by claiming ignorance of God's will. (Acts 8:31-36; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)
Opining whether Christians are obliged to keep the Sabbath or what it was Jesus meant with respect to the commandments to love God and neighbor under the Law will not make anyone a recipient of God's grace, a recipient of His undeserved kindness. There are many folks, including drunkards, fornicators, idolaters and murderers, who, like you claim to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his shed blood, and yet because of their standing before Jehovah God, they are disqualified to become beneficiaries of the ransom. (1 Corinthians 6:9, 10)
Anyone opining that the ransom of Jesus Christ applies to all men are just spreading false religious ideas, since Jesus gave his life as a ransom, not for all men, but "in exchange for many," for it is only those that actually endure in the faith that will be saved. (Matthew 10:22; 20:28) Opinions that one only need live a decent life and 'do to others as you would have them do to you' to gain god's approval is also the product of false religious ideas, for only those that are doing God's will, and making public declaration of their faith that Jesus is Lord and exercising faith in their heart that Jehovah God raised Jesus from the dead are the ones that will be saved. (Matthew 7:21; Romans 10:9)
@djeggnog
Since 33 AD, God has given all authority in heaven as well as on the earth to the Lord Jesus Christ, and without question it is through the congregations of God through the F&DS -- mere men and woman -- that Jesus is using to refine and train others that they might find those desirous of living in that new world of righteousness under the kingdom. It is true that there are many Christian denominations today -- literally hundreds of them, including those said to be non-denominational -- but even by reading the Bible on our own, one cannot help but see how Jehovah has always worked through a visible channel on earth, for under the Law, he guided His organization of Jewish worshippers for 1,545 years until the appearance of the Christ, at which point God then proceeded to organize and provide guidance through the Christian congregation for some 1,977 years until now under the oversight of the Christ.
I personally like the "without question" part, the air of authority made my skin tingle, LOL !
I notice NO MENTION of the role of the HS in there, interesting.
Of course the bible doesn't realy speak of any visible organization or group per say, other than the apostles and even of those, only John, James and Peter are mentioned, beyond them there was Stephen who was stoned ( only a disciple), there was Jude ( of the epistles) and we know of Mark and Luke and of course Paul, none of them apostles, and beyond them, certian individuals are named because of their contributions, but a "visisble channel" doing God and Jesus's work?
No, not unless by "visible channel" you mean inspired individuals, in that case I agree.
Jesus said the the HS would guide his followers and that the HS would teach them, I don't recall him mentioning a "visible organization".
The "love" spoken of in scripture bears scrutiny!
It is over-loaded with implications without context. Bible "love" implodes!
As I've repeatedly pointed out: God so LOVED the world.......cannot have any meaningful justification.
Why?
There is no BASIS for God to love what He has spent 5,000 years destroying!
If man DESERVES to die, then, that is God's opinion of man. Love cannot be attached to something deserving to die.
God requires Justice? Death to man is the proof of God's Justice! Love cannot be attached to the criminal convicted by his own sin.
Justice is God's value. Mercy would have to be based on "something" to be consistent with Justice.
Grace is God's kindness (not love) WITHOUT merit. Oh, really?
That invalidates Justice! God without Justice is not God. It is the anti-God.
Grace is anti-God.
The LAW was God's idea and not man's.
Adam and Eve were convicted of trespass and theft.
Why was a DEATH penalty attached to tresspass and theft?
We don't put a burglar to death do we?
God's sense of JUSTICE put man to death.
God cannot violate His OWN Justice and remain "god".
No, Bible "love" is meaningless.
Jesus preached only to Jews. Jesus did not take his ministry to the Gentiles. He did not "love" them enough.
Justice in God's hands is peculiar just as the word "love" is peculiar.
David was an adulterer who ate the "show bread" and soiled his hands with murder. God is said to given his "heart" to him!
Jesus played favorites too! John is the Apostle whom Jesus "loved."
This bible "love" means whatever the writer at the time thought it should mean.
Nothing holy going on. Nothing precise. Nothing sharp and commensurable with fact.
But, by all means go ahead and read the book and tell us how supernaturally profound it is!
life is a coin and what you observe Terry seems true. Your looking at the dull, dark side of the coin.
The other side is shiny and optomistic.
If you could absolutely positively prove their is no God and the bible is everything bad you say it is people will still
hold it up and embrace it because people are looking for something, people are trying to scratch and itch that
only faith and hope can address.
The world wouldnt be any better if everybody was an atheist.
ANd the world wouldnt be any better if everybody was a Christian. Based on the past history of Christians.
The world would be better if everybody loved one another and made love and not war.
But thats not going to happen.
It is what it is.
Everybody owes one death in the end.
You can go kicking and screaming mad and angry or happy and peaceful with a smile on your face.
The world wouldnt be any better if everybody was an atheist.
False dichotomy.
The choices aren't : 1.Stuck with supernatural nonsense guiding your life but no two people agree
or
2.Total disbelief wrough by atheistic depression and a mad spiral into the void of gloom
There is a tertiary alternative!
3.Stick to a factual decision making process and create a life for yourself of achievement, friends, charity, benevolent intent.
Life is the journey not the destination.
In the Wizard of Oz, everybody was having a better time and full of hope and happiness, untill they looked behind
the curtain and saw who the wizzard was.
@Terry:
In the Bible, at Job 26:7, a verse written by Moses in 1473 BC, indicated how the earth is held in suspense, saying that "hanging ... upon nothing," which is profound considering how many people there are today that are convinced that men had to wait until the Greeks came along to discover such things.
Isaiah 40:22 talks about God "stretching out the heavens," which is remarkable considering what science has since come to learn about our expanding universe since 732 BC when the book of Isaiah was written; also in this same verse it would appear that the Israelites came to know through God's prophet that the earth was a "circle" or circular in shape (we know it today to be spherical).
Also, at Jeremiah 33:25, the Bible speaks of the laws of nature in describing day and night as a "covenant," as being "the statutes of heaven and earth," denoting the existence of physical laws of the universe, and Jeremiah was written in 580 BC.
I especially like to mention here how Daniel's prophecy at Daniel 9:24-27 as to the coming of Messiah after 69 weeks of years has been fulfilled is quite remarkable, in view of the fact that Jesus' first coming did, in fact, occur in 29 AD, some 483 years after they began to be counted in 455 BC. BTW, the book of Daniel was written in 536 BC.
You spoke of a "false dichotomy," and I do agree with you as to what the choices "aren't." The choices are (a) life and (b) death. The good thing is is that we all have free will and what we choose is our choice to make.
@djeggnog
Mmmm... Interesting points, Terry...
I don't personally read the bible unless I'm looking for a specific scripture to make a point... However, I do remember reading in one of the exposés on Jehovah's Witnesses - maybe it was at "Six Screens of the WatchTower" - that one of the most certain ways to get a Jehovah's Witness to leave the cult, is to get them to read the bible - BY ITSELF - without Watchtower literature to 'interpret' it...
Most JWs who do this, eventually LEAVE the WTBTS and go BACK to mainstream Christianity... Which says volumes about what the bible REALLY says, and the mis-interpretations of the WTBTS and the Gov.Bod...
Just my two cents' worth...
Zid
