1800s, 1900s, 2000s - by my math, as taught by the Watchtower - that is three different centuries. ;)
Inviting djeggnog to discuss the blood doctrine
by jgnat 317 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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OUTLAW
1800s, 1900s, 2000s - by my math, as taught by the Watchtower - that is three different centuries. ;).....Just n from bethel
"Evidently"
Your going for the WBT$ Overlapping Theory?..
LOL!!..
2011-1879 = 132
Using WBT$ math you should be able to find anther 168 years..
WBT$ Math confirmed 607 BCE..And..Killed Off the Generation of 1914..
Using WBT$ Math....
You can Replace a Burned Out light..
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...OUTLAW -
sizemik
eggnog said: Not true. God's laws applied only to the Israelites, and so did not apply to those dwelling in their midst as alien residents. Any non-Israelite family that settled in the land given to the Israelites, who lived among the Israelites, but who weren't worshippers of Jehovah weren't proselytes, and so they only needed to live by the basic laws of the land.
Mary said:
Well since the WTS has always equated the Israelites of old with 'spiritual Israel' (aka, the 144,000), and the 'Great Crowd' with the 'alien residents', than this is just one more reason why their braindead ban on blood transfusions (even if their doctrine was correct) should not apply to anyone other than those professing to be of the heavenly class.
Now THAT, DJeggnog . . . deserves an answer . . . I'm sure you have one . . . but I would still love to see it.
Luvonyall - MS
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cofty
At no time was it ok for an Israelite to eat the flesh of an animal that had died of itself, that is to say, an animal that he knew was "already dead" when he discovered it; to do such was a violation of God's law against their eating blood. - DJeggnog
No amount of prevarication can change the facts.
"If an animal that you are allowed to eat dies, anyone who touches its carcass will be unclean till evening. Anyone who eats some of its carcass must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening. Anyone who picks up the carcass must wash their clothes, and they will be unclean till evening" - Lev11:38,39
It really is that simple. We are not talking about eating fat or eating the blood of an animal that has been slaughtered. We are talking about deliberately and knowingly eating the unbled flesh of an animal that was found "already dead". There was no penalty apart from temporary uncleanness. If the person who found the beast decided not to eat it but to bury it the consequences were identical.
This provision was not available to the priesthood who could not deliberately cause themselves to become unclean.
Moses suggests avoiding uncleanness by selling it to a foreigner who was not under the ceremonial restrictions of the Law.
In Acts 15, Jewish Christians weren't obliged to keep the Law of Moses and weren't observing it at all - DJeggnog
Your suggestion that early christians were not 100% Jewish and steeped in Jewish Law, practice and tradition demonstrates an appalling lack of knowledge of early christianity. Early christianity was a Jewish sect who had found the Jewish Messiah. You really need to read some good scholarship and see the contrast with the drivel that comes out of Brooklyn.
Acts 15 is all about how Jewish Christains who were stil lkeeping the Law in every detail could have fellowship with uncircumcised gentile christians. If you don't grasp that you don't have the first clue what the NT is about
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Mary
Here's a few quotes from the Society's own literature that shows that 1) they acknowledge that blood is a tissue transplant; 2) that tissue transplants should be a 'conscience matter' and 3)that they are more concerned with the blood being used as a 'dietary' matter:
"...Dr. Ciril Godec, chairman of urology at Long Island College Hospital, in Brooklyn, New York. He wrote: "Today blood would probably not be approved as a medication, since it would not fulfill safety criteria of the Food and Drug Administration. Blood is an organ of the body, and blood transfusion is nothing less than an organ transplant..."-----Awake! August 22, 1999 p. 31 Are Blood Transfusions Really Necessary?
"When doctors transplant a heart, a liver, or another organ, the recipient's immune system may sense the foreign tissue and reject it. Yet, a transfusion is a tissue transplant."----How Can Blood Save Your Life?, 1999, p. 8
"...Regarding the transplantation of human tissue or bone from one human to another, this is a matter for conscientious decision by each one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Some Christians might feel that taking into their bodies any tissue or body part from another human is cannibalistic. . . . Other sincere Christians today may feel that the Bible does not definitely rule out medical transplants of human organs. . . . It may be argued, too, that organ transplants are different from cannibalism since the "donor" is not killed to supply food..."----The Watchtower, March 15, 1980, p. 31
"Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden."------September 15, 1958 Watchtower, p. 575
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dgp
Question. If one of the members of the Governing Body had cancer and chemotherapy could save him, but he needed to replenish haemoglobin, would he not take transfusions?
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wary
@wary wrote:
eggonface said
Yes, I believe he would mind if he said "abstain from crude oil" or "abstain from natural gas." Why do you ask?
Get what?
OH GOD PLEASE OPEN HIS STUPID EYES!!
Dont you get it?
If God said 'natural gas' was sacred! do you think he would mind if you extracted it and broke it down for your own purposes?
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djeggnog
@isaacaustin:
Idolatry...fornication- not speaking of premarital sex but marriage to close relatives, CONSIDERED fornication under jewish law...and the eating of animal blood. Go read Leviticus 17 & 18 and you may learn something.
@Mary:
One more comparison I'd like to address: fornication is also mentioned as something that both the Israelites and early Christians had to 'abstain from'. In it's [sic] basis [sic] meaning, fornication means having sexual relations to someone you're not legally married to.
You and I agree on this, but @isaacaustin says fornication isn't about premarital sex at all, but is about someone marrying their close relative. He's arguing having sexual relations with someone to whom you're not legally married isn't fornication. But no one has argued that non one could engaged in sexual relations with the own spouse under any circumstance, @Mary, so why do you mention fornication in the context of two married people, Adam and Eve, when it isn't possible for a married person to be guilty of committing fornication when having sexual relations with one's own spouse?
Does that mean that the Israelites and early Christians were not supposed to have sexual relations under any circumstances? Of course not. God commanded Adam and Eve to 'reproduce' and to 'fill the earth' so obviously, having sex under ALL circumstances was not condemned or forbidden, but it was supposed to take place within a marriage. It did not mean that you could not have sexual relations under any circumstances.
The command to 'abstain from blood' is no different. It was eating the blood of a dead animal that was forbidden....
There were four (4) prohibitions mentioned that were about life, @Mary, for all four of them referred to life, which is sacred to God. The use of blood for any reason is onerous, so that the first prohibition, "to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols," involves eating foods in a religious context, which might include drinking blood as part of a religious ritual, which would be idolatry. The second prohibition, "to keep abstaining ... from blood," involves the eating or drinking of blood. The third prohibition, "to keep abstaining ... from things strangled," involves the eating of unbled meat. Lastly, the fourth prohibition, "to keep abstaining ... from fornication," involves having sexual relations with someone to whom you are not married, for the procreative process is designed for the purpose of conception, iow, for the purpose of producing a life, for God considers a child born through fornication to be unclean, its blood is unclean, which unions should only take place between a husband and a wife.
... but you cannot claim that this means you cannot use blood under any circumstances or in any other way. That would be like saying that committing fornication includes having sex even within a marriage.
Sure, I can, and perhaps you can explain how someone "having sex ... within a marriage" constitutes fornication. Maybe you should drop this part of your argument (it's not just a bad argument; it makes no sense).
@TD:
Marital sex and adultery are not equivalent acts because they both fall into the generic [category] of "Sex"
Marital sex and fornication are not equivalent acts for the first involves sex between two married people whereas the second involves sex between two unmarried persons that are not married to each other.
Drinking a glass of water and drowning at the bottom of a lake are not equivalent acts because they both fall into the generic [category] of "Taking in water."
How about lowering a bucket in a well to retrieve water? That would "taking in water," too, wouldn't it, so what is the point of this, er, equivalency? I don't get it.
The transfusion of blood and the consumption of blood are not equivalent acts because they both fall into the generic [category] of "Taking in blood"
Did you come up with this particular "equivalency" on your own or did someone help you with it? Would you call taking penicillin orally consuming it, @TD? Would you consider penicillin being administered intravenously to be yet another way of consuming the drug? If taking penicillin orally and intravenously are equivalent acts, then how can you say that transfusing blood is somehow different than consuming it, @TD?
People may scoff when I win them, but I never lose a debate because I am never on the wrong side of one.
Implying equivalency through semantics is the fallacy of equivocation
You referred to semantics earlier in this thread and I said nothing at that time, but now the time has come to call you on your calling something "semantics" that isn't semantics, almost like saying that half dollar isn't equivalent to 50¢. Tell me, @TD: I know you're not one of Jehovah's Witnesses, but you are familiar with our beliefs, so, then, according to your understanding of what Jehovah's Witnesses teach and believe according to the Bible, would you think it to be a case of equivocation on my part were I to say that Jesus is the Messiah or that Jesus is the Christ, but refuse to say that Jesus is the Messiah and Christ, knowing as you do that Messiah is equivalent to Christ?
If transfusion is wrong for the same reason(s) that eating blood was wrong, that equivalency would be based on a concrete set of conditions that could be tested and proven.
And with my illustration (above) about penicillin, I have proved the equivalency of transfusing blood and eating blood, since either orally or intravenously, the nutrients found in blood make their way into the bloodstream, even as does penicillin, whether administered orally or intravenously.
(Contrary to the nonsense that a couple of folks here have been spouting, doctors aren't trying to transfuse animal blood into human beings, what with antigens being one big factor and the fact that death can occur when someone with one blood type intravenously receives the wrong blood type, let alone the blood from an animal causing the white blood cells -- the immune system itself -- to war against such blood invaders until the patient dies being another big factor, it would just be nuts to believe that a doctor, unless he had jumped into a time machine from the late 1870s, would actually pull such a stunt today using animal blood!)
I think I'm going to have to withdraw from this thread now, because there's no possibility that I'm going to lose this debate as to what "abstain ... from penicillin" means, which has the same equivalency to "abstain ... from blood," and with @OUTLAW, who is usually a funny guy, making the mistake of saying (on Page 10) that the atonement made using blood was "for taking the Life of the Animal," I feel I must withdraw.
@Mary:
"Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden."------September 15, 1958 Watchtower, p. 575
The part in bold in the following is what you should have underscored if you wanted to be honest here (same quote):
"Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden."------September 15, 1958 Watchtower, p. 575
Even so, the QfR article from which this quote of yours comes asked the following question about, among other things, blood fractions:
Are we to consider the injection of serums such as diphtheria toxin antitoxin and blood fractions such as gamma globulin into the blood stream, for the purpose of building up resistance to disease by means of antibodies, the same as the drinking of blood or the taking of blood or blood plasma by means of transfusion?
No, it does not seem necessary that we put the two in the same category, although we have done so in times past. Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden....
The injection of antibodies into the blood in a vehicle of blood serum or the use of blood fractions to create such antibodies is not the same as taking blood, either by mouth or by transfusion, as a nutrient to build up the body’s vital forces.
While God did not intend for man to contaminate his blood stream by vaccines, serums or blood fractions,doing so does not seem to be included in God’s expressed will forbidding blood as food. It would therefore be a matter of individual judgment whether one accepted such types of medication or not.
While the Bible is infallible, Jehovah's Witnesses are not infallible, and so when we are wrong about something, we will print a retraction in our literature so that all Jehovah's Witnesses are informed of a necessary change in our understanding of a matter to which we need to adjust, since there is absolutely no benefit to anyone today, for example, to be referring to Pluto a planet when on August 24, 2006, it lost that designation. Back on February 18, 1930, it was ok to refer to Pluto as a planet, but 76 years later, the IAU vote in the Prague stripped Pluto of its status as a planet, so that no one today refers to it as such.
Likewise, pulling out old Watchtower articles as "proof" of what Jehovah's Witnesses believed to be true back in the 50s or 60s will not prove what Jehovah's Witnesses believe 50 or 60 years later. In this case, the quotation you used in your post from the Watchtower, dated September 15, 1958, was disingenuous, and you know what else, @Mary? You knew this when you decided to quote it in your post.
As I said to @TD, there reason I never lose a debate is because I'm never on the wrong side of one.
@dgp:
If one of the members of the Governing Body had cancer and chemotherapy could save him, but he needed to replenish haemoglobin, would he not take transfusions?
Why don't you read all of this post and see if you can figure out what my answer to your question would be?
@djeggnog
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cofty
Are you ignoring my point about an animal "already dead" because you are conceding you have no reasonable answer?
Even the society acknowledged "a measure guilt was incurred by eating the flesh of an animal found already dead" in the old blood brochure. They must have realised the implications of this becasue they dropped all mention of it in the next booklet on the subject.
Can anybody find a scan of that phrase, it was in the old blood booklet, the little paperback one.
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Listener
"DG Post 288 said
Likewise, it is not impermissible for Jehovah's Witnesses to use such products if made from any of the four components of blood provided (1) the product of interest should be a "nutrient" derived from one of these blood components and (2) they should choose to do so, for such blood fractions are no longer blood, so that would not be reusing it in their own bodies, and they may conscientiously choose to accept or reject such nutrients (fractions) in connection with the medical treatment they receive.
DG Post 291 said
Are we to consider the injection of serums such as diphtheria toxin antitoxin and blood fractions such as gamma globulin into the blood stream, for the purpose of building up resistance to disease by means of antibodies, the same as the drinking of blood or the taking of blood or blood plasma by means of transfusion?
No, it does not seem necessary that we put the two in the same category, although we have done so in times past. Each time the prohibition of blood is mentioned in the Scriptures it is in connection with taking it as food, and so it is as a nutrient that we are concerned with in its being forbidden....
The injection of antibodies into the blood in a vehicle of blood serum or the use of blood fractions to create such antibodies is not the same as taking blood, either by mouth or by transfusion, as a nutrient to build up the body’s vital forces.
While God did not intend for man to contaminate his blood stream by vaccines, serums or blood fractions,
doing so does not seem to be included in God’s expressed will forbidding blood as food. It would therefore be a matter of individual judgment whether one accepted such types of medication or not."
DJ is a blood fraction food/nutrient or not? In your first post that I quoted you indicate that it is?
