Generation Teaching - Everyone is speechless? (page 33)

hamsterbait

Are anatomical photographs from medical textbooks banned on this board?

I am looking for one of an anus.

HB

thetrueone

From the long list of djeggnog's posts on this thread we can only assume that there many JWS that are starting to have their confidence unraveled

from the ever-changing doctrines by the WTS/JWS. What may have been at one time confidently reassuring to many JWS over the long-term

of diligent devotion, many JWS are really starting to doubt what they've been taught over the years.

I think the inter-net has changed the game for the organization in general as well.

Not in the entire history of the WTS has there been so much contradictory information about this organization, easily obtainable

for anyone to click on to with such little of effort. This I'm sure as made the heads of this organization quietly a little nervous and paranoid

within themselves and the general body of members.

The greatest and probably the biggest danger that this organization poses is it's strictly imposed dogma that can not be put to question or

taken with any vague appeal. For example if I were to present my questioning of the 1975 date and the established held to thoughts surrounding

this year, I wound have been certainly chastised and purposely muzzled. 1975 has now past on and you can now say a new generation of

applicable excuses are being created to cover over past proclaimed doctrines which were undeniably untrue.

I don't know what you do for a living, but I hope to God it doesn't involve numbers... You've committed one error after another on this thread and your latest on this topic is no exception.... But it's a statistical mistake to compound that rounding twelve fold when calculating the mean number of days in a year.

I didn't make a statistical mistake at all. I merely pointed out the basis upon which Jehovah's Witnesses calculate the "seven times" at Daniel 4:25 as being equal to 2,520 years counting from 607 BC to 1914 AD. You are not one of Jehovah's Witnesses and so I do not expect you to understand the point that I was making. I'm satisfied that you are unwilling to learn about these things that Jehovah's Witnesses take so seriously, and which serve to strengthen their faith in Jehovah. You joined this thread to argue with me and I knew this when I responded to your post, but I thought it important to clarify the point that I was making for the benefit of those lurking this thread, who might otherwise conclude that you had uncovered a flaw in our reasoning with respect to our calculation of Daniel's "seven times," which you did not.

The assertion that I've contradicted myself by correcting the bad math in your post 237 is equally wrong because it's based on the same mistake of rounding first instead of last.

You claimed that you had not contradicted yourself and I'll leave it at that.

You can fuss and whine, accuse me of lying and evading your questions all you want, but I'm not going to walk into an interrogative fallacy with your bad math incorporated as a starting point.

I didn't fuss or whine, @TD; I stand firm in my statement here that you are a liar, and that when I asked you specific questions that would have proved that you were such, you evaded them. When I'm interrogating someone, I tend to ask the right questions, which is not an "interrogative fallacy" were you to soil yourself upon walking into such, so I'll give it to you that you were smart to evade my questions. What's good about this exchange between us, @TD, is that now I believe I know more about you than I knew before this particular exchange began.

@thetrueone:

From the long list of djeggnog's posts on this thread we can only assume that there many JWS that are starting to have their confidence unraveled from the ever-changing doctrines by the WTS/JWS. What may have been at one time confidently reassuring to many JWS over the long-term of diligent devotion, many JWS are really starting to doubt what they've been taught over the years.

Perhaps you have been guilty of putting your faith in the words of men, but Jehovah's Witnesses have put their faith in the word of God. It is true that many active Jehovah's Witnesses depend mightily upon the Bible study aids that the WTS provides us for use in our ministry, but these Bible study aids were designed to be studied by Jehovah's Witnesses for our own benefit as well as for the benefit of those in whose hands we might place one or more of them.

I have read (and responded to) many of the posts here by @wasblind, @PSacramento, @caliber and @you (among others), and what I see that is consistent among you is that none of you can adequate defend yourselves against that which I accuse you here of doing: Of having put faith in the interpretations of Jehovah's Witnesses instead of in the infallibility of God's word, the Bible, and that is so sad. You have allowed the explanations of the Scriptures that have been provided you over the years by Jehovah's Witnesses, our own interpretations of various Bible passages just as Christendom's churches have advanced their own interpretations of the Bible, to stumble you because you truly believed that our having the truth means that or interpretations of the Scriptures would be as infallible as the Bible is infallible, when nothing could be further from the truth.

I am not going to tell any of you here that our understanding of certain passages in the Bible haven't had to be adjusted, as I have no interest in lying about what everyone here knows to be true, but why does our having to admit when we were wrong in our interpretations of certain Bible passages have to mean that we don't have the truth? Please tell me why it is you believe that I, as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, should feel responsible for misleading you into believing that the interpretations of Scripture that I and other Jehovah's Witnesses were sharing with others were more than just that, interpretations.

It is no doubt because of Jehovah's Witnesses that you came to know the cleansing effect of God's word on sinners, "the bath of water" that cleanses us by means of God's word, am I right? It is because of this "water" that bubbles up as if it were a fountain that "imparts everlasting life" that cleanses us so that we stand before God as "holy and without blemish," and, in fact, it is this spiritual "water" that serves to keeps us both morally and spiritually "spotless and unblemished" before God, isn't this right? (Ephesians 5:26, 27; 2 Peter 3:14) Were is not for God's mighty hand in leading you to Christ, you -- even you -- might have taken a different path in life, a path that may have led you to an early grave due to your having succumbed to some of the temptations of this world from which you would have died from a drug overdose, or from gunshot wounds due to your entering into a life of crime in order to support a drug addiction, and if not dead, then this different path might have led to quality of life issues with your having contracted one of many sexually transmitted diseases that flow from oral sex and/or anal sex from your youth on into your adult life.

Even if flawed, the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses have saved many of our young people from the diseases that many of the kids in school today now have to suffer as adults due to loose conduct, such as with oral sex, chlamydia, chronic Hepatitis B, cytomegalovirus, genital herpes, genital warts, Hepatitis B, Herpes simplex, HIV/AIDS, pelvic inflammatory disease, pubic lice, sexually transmitted diseases and scabies. Also, with anal sex comes all of the above diseases, and includes things like amoebiasis, cryptosporidiosis, E. coli infections, giardiasis, gonorrhea, granuloma inguinale, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis C, human papilloma virus (HPV), Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (HHV-8), lymphogranuloma venereum, syphilis, trichomoniasis, salmonellosis, shigella and tuberculosis, and the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses have been the impetus for saving our children from the impact of such quality of life issues that plague the vast majority of mankind that see no reason to abstain from immorality.

We do it before Jehovah wills that we abstain from fornication just as He wills us to abstain from blood, and while many Jehovah's Witnesses faced with decisions related to surgical procedures have adhered to God's commands with respect to blood in rejecting blood transfusions and have availed themselves of bloodless surgeries where available, some of us have died due to their refusal to resist God's word, which is to resist God's spirit, in their accepting blood transfusions, because they wanted to carry Jesus' "torture stake." (Luke 14:27) Indeed, the Master said that "whoever does not accept his torture stake and follow after me is not worthy of me. He that finds his soul will lose it, and he that loses his soul for my sake will find it." (Matthew 10:38, 39) But more importantly, by our listening to Jesus, receiving Jesus, obeying Jesus, since "he died for all that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised up," we know that we have God's approval for anyone that receives Jesus "receives him also that sent me forth." (2 Corinthians 5:15; Matthew 10:40)

Were it not for the teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses, you could well be in the same spiritual darkness in which the world dwells, for many of them, especially in Christendom, are paying huge sums of money to religious leaders in the false hope that these religionists can save the souls of their dead loved ones from a hellfire of eternal torment, and have helped many to extinguish fears of their loved ones winding up in limbo, in some purgatory, needing the prayers of the living to move their souls to the heavenly realm. We have given many parents that have loved their children at birth or even before their third birthday closure, helping them to appreciate that it isn't true that God needed another angel in heaven so that he took their children, helped many to appreciate the resurrection hope for life right even on Planet Earth, and have helped those with more education and material wealth than their spiritual brothers and sisters to treat them as being superior to us, for we have a very different viewpoint on the value of education and material riches than does the world.

When I read posts that blame the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses as being responsible for the economic standing of some in our ranks that elected to forego the normal pursuit of a good education in lieu of pursuing the full time ministry, when none of Jehovah's Witnesses are masters over anyone's faith, I become defensive for I know it was a desire to please the elders or a desire even to please themselves, to have others admire them for what things they were doing in the full time ministry that upon their having children they were unable to keep doing, and their desire for prominence is really what led to bad decision-making and that drove many of them, who had not 'calculated the expense,' who had not counted the cost, to make foolhardy decisions that in hindsight they really should not have made, since carrying our torture stake doesn't mean shirking one's responsibilities toward one's own family in order to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. (Luke 14:27, 28; 1 Timothy 5:8)

No one at all has ever been disfellowshipped in God's organization for making wise decisions for their family, such as dropping out of the full time ministry to get one's GED or to take college courses so that one could earn enough money to provide for their family's ever-growing needs, so when I hear such things, I'm quick to point the finger of blame back at those who say these things.

It should have come as no surprise to any of Jehovah's Witnesses to hear that our interpretation of Jesus' words at Matthew 24:34 must be incorrect, for, in hindsight, it is clear that what the apostle Paul stated at 1 Thessalonians 5:3 as to the world's declaring "peace and security" has not yet arrived, and looking at world events it could, but it just doesn't seem likely that this declaration will come during the 1914 generation of folks that are still living today, which is why Jehovah's Witnesses, in searching the Scriptures, have come to realize that the word "generation" could also have been used to describe the period of time that began in 1914, and which period ends at Armageddon.

Now this makes so much more sense than what we had interpreted Jesus' words to mean since we thought we could pigeonhole "this generation" into the life span of a person that had been born in 1914, but we cannot ignore the holy spirit that tells us at Exodus 1:6 that the word "generation" may refer to a period of time in excess of the life span of someone, since at Exodus 1:6 we learn how the Bible also measures a generation against those living as contemporaries of it. Certainly Levi, one of Joseph's 11 brothers, who was born in 1772 BC or 1773 BC and died some 22 years after Joseph's death in 1635 BC at the age of 137 (Exodus 6:16), lived during Joseph's lifetime, but the fact that he lived both before Joseph died in 1657 BC and after Joseph's death at the age of 110 is what makes Levi a contemporary of "the Joseph generation." It is this meaning of the word "generation" that Jehovah's Witnesses had not discerned before 2008 to be what Jesus meant at Matthew 24:34, but as of this year -- 2010 -- we now interpret Matthew 24:34 to refer to the generation the sign of Jesus' presence which began in 1914 and ends at Armageddon. That nobody would know "that day and hour" when the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ with his angels would begin Jehovah's Witnesses have always made a point of teaching others, even though some Jehovah's Witnesses at the time, some of whom are still actively among us, were guilty of spreading false rumors, such as the one about 1975, which rumor tended to affect some congregations during the years that preceded 1975 more than others. (Matthew 24:36)

You are free to believe that the beliefs of Jehovah's Witnesses are based on "ever-changing doctrines," but I can assure you that they are not our doctrines at all, but are doctrines that come from the One that sent the Lord Jesus Christ to speak His doctrines to the congregations, doctrines that are based upon what "the spirit says to the congregations" through God's word, the Bible. (John 8:26; Revelation 3:22) Our interpretation of these doctrines might undergo more changes before it's all over since the Father has placed certain things within His own jurisdiction, but the end will come without delay and "he who is coming will arrive and will not delay" in bringing God's judgment and "everlasting destruction" upon the world. bring destruction to bring comes (Revelation 10:6; Hebrews 10:37; Acts 1:7; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9) You may be speaking about yourself, but I can assure you that the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses do not doubt the sureness of God's word nor doubt what things we have "been taught over the years."

For example if I were to present my questioning of the 1975 date and the established held to thoughts surrounding this year, I wound have been certainly chastised and purposely muzzled. 1975 has now past on and you can now say a new generation of applicable excuses are being created to cover over past proclaimed doctrines which were undeniably untrue.

You can believe what you want to believe about 1975 being a date predicted by Jehovah's Witnesses as to when Armageddon would arrive. There is nothing in our literature that suggested that this year was more significant than the fact that 1975 was the 6,000th year of mankind's existence on earth. I pointed this out earlier in this thread.

There is absolutely no one that can produce a single shred of evidence that Jehovah's Witnesses ever took a firm position as to 1975 beyond proclaiming it to be the year that marked 6,000 years of mankind's creation (from 4026 BC). There was nothing magical about the year 1975, except to those among Jehovah's Witnesses like you that had decided or were persuaded to believe 1975 to have more significance than it had, and many of those who ran ahead of God's organization and had begun to spread this man-made doctrine like wildfire, from one end of the globe to the other, used this lie in scheme how they wouldn't have to pay off the debt that they were racking up from the purchases they made in the years leading up to 1975 loomed closer.

Due to their embarrassment after 1975 came and went, many of those who were Jehovah's Witnesses at the time moved away in disgrace as some were filing bankruptcy relief as their lives were turned upside down, and as a result of the shame they left, some began missing meetings and eventually left Jehovah's organization. While nothing about 1975 was included in the outlines used by those giving public addresses prior to 1975, except to point out what 1975 meant as far as mankind's existence on earth is concerned, even traveling ministers, like the circuit overseers were ad libbing in speculating about what it would mean if 1975 turned out to be when the end of this system of things occurred. There are folks in our congregations today with very little education just as there were then, some of whom are elders now, that were not simply equipped to handle such speculations as speculative, and this fact is what contributed to the problem that existed pre-1975.

Look! I've said this before and I'll say this again, even though I know I realize the real possibility that your mind is closed and that you cannot hear me:

Jehovah's Witnesses do not predict when a prophecy will be fulfilled, for if we were to do that, then we would be making a prediction, which we as a body of Christians do not and cannot do. Anyone that claims to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses and claims that they know "that day and hour" is lying, and anyone that claims to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses and listens to such claims, so that he or she puts faith in these false claims, and then goes out and spreads this falsehood by proclaiming it to others as if it were true is a liar, and makes himself or herself a false prophet if he or she should be found making such a prediction, since we know (1) nobody knows that day or hour and (2) nobody knows on what day Jesus is coming. (Matthew 24:36, 42)

@djeggnog

Witness My Fury

Eggnog, I have previously actually liked some of what you have said as it made me think a bit ...(not in this thread but in some other one), ...BUT, yes here comes the but....

I can see quite clearly from this one though that you are under heavy mind control and can barely think for yourself. The repeating of the WT stance on private matters like oral and anal sex reveals this to be true. It looks like you have googled all the STDs that could possibly be accociated with these sexual practices and listed them here for our "benefit".

However even you must realise that the WTBTS has overstepped the mark by sticking its nose into what is clearly the private matters between marriage mates. If we were to apply the "inference" model used here to all other aspects of a JW's Christian Living (tm) then we would need to eliminate almost the entire marriage customs used for the wedding itself. Inference is a great tool for control purposes.

I encourage you to read the passage at proverbs 5: 15-19 again and ask and answer YOURSELF exactly HOW that squares with the WTBTS view. Please dont fall into the trap of turning this back on me and call me a pervert. I am still a virgin FFS, so DONT even go there.

Cheers

warmasasunned

wow what a heavy thread, it reminds me of being a witness....phew wee! and it all started out so simple

"you will know the truth and the truth will set you free"

not getting on at you guys n dolls, but there is no way "god" if thats what you belive in would make finding "the true path" this hard.

its all bullshit to me.

designs

DJ-

There was only one way for us to read Fred Franz's theology on Septemillennialism that is 6000 years from Adam to the beginning of the 1000 year rule of Jesus. The only event between the two periods is Armageddon.

There are thousands of us still around to remind the Witnesses and the Watchtower Society of this simple fact no matter how many times they try to rewrite or spin their history.

Listener

W 1968 5/1

The immediate future is certain to be filled with climactic events, for this old system is nearing its complete end. Within a few years at most the final parts of Bible prophecy relative to these “last days” will undergo fulfillment, resulting in the liberation of surviving mankind into Christ’s glorious 1,000-year reign. What difficult days, but, at the same time, what grand days are just ahead!

This was written in 1968 and although it doesn't state 1975 it does state within a few years. Now that it is 2010 does the period from 1968 to 2010 constitute a few years?

t

Listener

Wasblind recently started an interesting thread pointing out how the public version of a WT is different to that of a study version and wrote this

In the Sept 15, 2010 WT, study edition for Witnesses only on page 13 paragraph 8 states: "This spiritual food is based on Gods word. Thus, what is taught is not from men but from Jehovah."

I have to agree with you eggnog - that interpretations are from man but the org does not often make this clarification and instead point to speaking from God. You can see this from a very recent article. Some of what they teach are interpretations and they claim they are from God.

Ding

Listener wrote: "This was written in 1968 and although it doesn't state 1975 it does state within a few years. Now that it is 2010 does the period from 1968 to 2010 constitute a few years?"

What the WTS said in 1968 doesn't matter to a loyal JW.

It's "old light."

All they are supposed to focus on is "new light" and "present truth."

When a WT teaching is current, loyal JWs must BELIEVE it.

Once time shows a WT teaching to be wrong, loyal JWs must IGNORE it.

OUTLAW

"Jehovah's Witnesses do not predict"

"when a prophecy will be fulfilled".....DjEggnogg

........................ ...OUTLAW

Generation Teaching - Everyone is speechless?

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