by thedepressedsoul 12 Replies latest watchtower bible
Jan said " I believe that the Bible does not support this teaching when read alone without any help from the Watchtower .".
I think that is spot on, just a cursory reading of the scriptures JW's use to back up their "earthly hope" idea shows, that if you read them in context, none of them do any such thing.
It must be worthwhile understanding how these things relating to the rituals of the spring equinox are all of pagan origin. By pagan is meant that of the villagers, from the peasant culture as opposed to those who saw themselves educated and above the common herd.
Jewish paganism was apparent in the sacrifice of the lamb. It was the spring celebration for the sheep and goat pastoralists for the purpose of warding off evil by ritually killing and eating the young animal. The matzo element (pronounced motza by Jews who I have heard) comes from the spring celebration of the arable farmers of early Israel who gratefully celebrated the early barley harvest with the unleavened flat-bread.
The whole idea of these rituals taking place at the equinox was because the time was considered to be the moment when the Sun God annually sacrificed his life and returned to his solar father which rustic myth explained in the greatly increased sunlight at this time in the northern hemisphere.
The symbols of bread and wine had been in common use in the popular Mithraic cult which had been favoured by the Romans although coming from Persia and with Indian influences. The Mithraic symbols were almost exactly the same as Jesus Christianity adopted, bread (or cakes) and wine, symbolic of the saviour Mithras’ body and blood, partaken once a year in remembrance. These origins ultimately are drawn from cannibalistic ritual. Catholic Christianity borrowed wholesale from Mithraism and to such an extent that they rendered the latter religion deflated and in terminal decline.
I suggest that to quote what Jesus is supposed to have said as ‘gospel’ is a mistaken authority. His words were never recorded; they are the writings of the cult protagonists whose words were sanctified by the inclusion into the first Bible made by the Roman Catholic selection of texts in the fourth century. As exemplified by the Catholic Church back then, triumphant in crystallising and syncretising the Christ-cult on their own terms and in favour of Roman imperialism; the truth of any religious matter is a distant second to political control over the worshippers. A lesson well understood by the GB.
The rituals are now so irrelevant to the point of being obsolete except for those who take this hocus-pocus literally.
You need to understand two things
Any Christian sect that has there entirely theology all tied together by the book of revelations is really bad news. No one is completely sure what it all means.
The WTS has no concept of what the new testament is all about. Judaism to Christianity, the law of Moses to the law of grace, the nation of Israel to the body of Christ ( the church ), saves though works to being saved though faith.
Once you understand the big picture, it makes the WTS bamboozal just freakin stupid with the earth hopers and heavenly hopers and the faithful slavers that can only understand the bible.
