May you all have peace! This is just one of the many reasons why I simply cannot read that melarkey any longer. Poisonous wormwood... and it literally makes me nauseated. I literally gag. I can't even look at a cover of the WT. I almost always have to skip the threads and posts dedicated to them. On a [very] rare occasion, I can get through a paragraph or two because there's something I am supposed to comment on. This particular article, for example.
What do you need Jesus for if you can "Bless yourself".
Okaaaaaay, dear DD (peace to you!)? My comment is similar:
I remember talking to a "sister" on the campus at CSUS (Sac State Univ.). She and another "sister" had their little table set up, piles of books, mags, you know the drill. I was in a hurry to get somewhere, but my Lord asked me, "Aren't you even going to try?" and so I stopped at the table and we got into a discussion about HOW the "great crowd" was going to be resurrected and HOW they were going to "live forever"... if they didn't eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ. The "sister's" response blew... me... away:
"We have life... within ourselves!" she stated, quite assuredly... even indignantly.
Er?! What the...?? And then I remembered... that IS what the WTBTS teaches (sorry, I didn't pay attention to a lot of the "earthly hope" stuff)!! So, I asked her if she could explain to me just how that could BE... in light of what Christ is recorded to have said at John 6:53:
“Most truly I say to YOU ,Unless YOU eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have NO life in yourselves."
The blood literally drained from her face. She stared at the verse... then started to stammer and stutter... and then just shut her mouth. She then just turned around and went and sat down behind the table. She wouldn't look at... or speak to me... any longer. I just slowly closed her Bible... and walked away. Ummmm... okaaayyyy...
I don't know what happened to her but I prayed for WEEKS after that that maybe that encounter woke her up. Or was the beginning of her awakening. My experience is that folks either DO wake... or dig their heels in and go into an even deeper "sleep."
But I used to marvel when they misquoted verses... and I would ask about them. Now, I realize they don't have a clue, they just spout off stuff... throw their scriptural "cards" up in the air, so to speak... and hope the "land." And because 99% of them ARE asleep... they do land. Like the poppy field "opium rain" in the Wizard of Oz.
Ah, well...
Peace.
A slave of Christ,
SA