Paradise Earth for JW's the same as Heaven for other Christian groups?
by punkofnice 19 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
-
Violia
My father said the same thing " it is just a hope, it's not real" . Most of mainstream Christianity's hope is heaven or hell, jws hope is earthly paradise or being one of the 144,000 or just forever being dead.
At least mainstream Christianity encourages you to live while you are alive and get education and plan for retirement. Jws pin all their hopes on everyone else dying. Jws are a religion of death.
-
moshe
shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles
While Christians would want to ignore the last part of this story, the ending shows this story was written to Jews, unless Christains want to celebate the feast of tabernacles, like the Jews. The Hebrew sciptures were given to the Jews and the New Testament gospels belong to Christians. How would Christians feel, if the Jews put their spin on the gospels and called it fulfillment?
-
Perry
16And it shall come to pass, that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles
Moshe,
The text clearly refers to "the nations" ..... this means the gentiles. Jesus, who is the Alpha and the Omega is everyone's King, Jew and Gentile.
-
moshe
and to keep the feast of tabernacles
Still don't plan on keeping the feast of tabernacles, do you? I see lord and king mentioned, but nobody by the name of Jesus. Jesus is not my king or the king of billions of people. Trying to create a christian dogma using a mish mash of new testament verses and Hebrew Bible verses makes your Christianity a cut and paste religion. I guess that doesn't bother people who worship, opinion, not fact.
-
moshe
Zechariah was written in Baylon during the exile period- a few hundred years later the Temple was rebuilt and nations (the gentiles) did come the Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of tabernacles. Judaism was a growing religion and was viewed as a threat to Roman order and control. Jesus is not needed to explain Zecahariah.
-http://www.thejc.com/judaism/judaism-features/35674/how-disaster-made-conversion-harder
"There is a close link between Tishah b'Av ( Aug-8th 2011), the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, and rabbinic discouragement of gentiles from conversion after the Roman-Jewish wars (66-70, 115-17, 132-35 CE). Roman concern with Jewish conversion began prior to the destruction of the Temple. Though not a missionary religion (early Christians such as Paul, Barnabas and Peter are the only first-century Jewish missionaries known by name), pre-70 Judaism was highly varied and expanding in the Roman empire. It attracted sympathisers and adherents among the underprivileged, powerless, persecuted classes of the empire, especially slaves and women.
The Oxford scholar, Martin Goodman has written that conversion to Judaism was unique in the ancient world as converts were accepted as equals by Jews.
Many spiritually hungry pagans, drawn to Judaism by its moral code, its valuation of human life and charity, and hope of messianic salvation, adopted Jewish customs, particularly the Sabbath and the dietary laws; but Judaism spread also among upper-class Romans. Privileges granted to the Jews by Julius Caesar encouraged proselytisation: freedom from emperor worship and army service as well as the right to congregate as a religious group. According to the historian, Louis Feldman, conversion was the single most important issue on which the emperors legislated in the entire history of Roman-Jewish relations.
The Midrash takes pride in legends that famous Romans such as Nero converted to Judaism. Some of the most eminent talmudic rabbis, including Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir, were allegedly descended from converts; their Jewishness was not questioned. In any case, many biblical characters, including the children of Moses and Solomon, were born to foreign women. Acceptance of Judaism was a private matter for the convert, not a public process fixed by religious authorities. The Temple was a site of pilgrimage and sacrifice not just for Jews but also for many others who were drawn to Jewish religious and national distinctiveness.
Prior to the destruction of the Temple, there seems to have been no unified standard of conversion, no refusal to accept conversions or prolongation of the process. On the contrary, the often-violent rivalry between Judaism and Greco-Roman culture meant that conversion to Judaism could be seen as a sign of its superiority.
Judaism reached the peak of its expansion in the years prior to the 66 CE revolt. Salo Baron, in his monumental A Social and Religious History of the Jews, points out that the Jews - comprising as many as 10 percent of the Western Roman empire and 20 percent of the Eastern Roman empire - were seen by Rome as a threat to the unity of the Roman empire, whose universal culture was Greek, not Jewish. Too-rapid expansion, concludes Baron, had endangered Judaism, for it had "made too many compromises, and flirted with too many alien ways of life and thought. The results were those sharp sectarian and political divisions which had almost brought it to the brink of extinction."
The Roman-Jewish wars led to depopulation of Jews both in the Land of Israel and in the diaspora and transformed the Jews into a homeless, persecuted, semi-pariah people until the modern period.
The Jewish perception of conversion changed as the forces which brought about the expansion of Judaism also contributed to Greco-Roman antisemitism and, ultimately, the destruction of the Jewish state.
After the final, disastrous Jewish war against Rome, the Bar Kochba revolt (132-5 CE), Jewish leaders were no longer kings and politicians, Temple priests and messianic warriors, but rabbis dedicated to the survival of the Jewish people and Judaism in the Roman empire. The Romans approved organised rabbinic authority as the rabbis regarded Torah study - not proselytisation and anti-Roman messianic militancy - as the highest good, essential to Jewish survival.
The rabbis dealt with the Roman ban on Jewish proselytisation and the continued attraction of Judaism by making the process of conversion harder and warning of the hazards of Judaism: "What is your motive?" they would ask the prospective convert. "Don't you know that Israel is suffering, persecuted, oppressed, harassed and beaten down with a multitude of sorrows?"
The Talmud tells of a nephew of Titus, destroyer of the Temple, who raises Titus from the dead to ask if he should convert to Judaism: "Their laws are so hard," Titus replies, "You won't be able to keep them."
Judaism survived by turning inward, strengthening its laws and customs, retaining its universalist outlook but leaving missionary monotheism to Christianity and, later, Islam. Only since the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, when German Reform began, has Judaism regained some of its variety, and become again attractive to converts. Yet, the memory of national vulnerability survives in Tishah b'Av - together with ancient wariness of conversion. Tishah b'Av reminds us that communal disunity and strife can be fatal, and converts might justly be warned as in the past: Judaism remains a target for antisemites, and Jews continue to suffer vilification, though not on the scale of the past."
David Aberbach is professor of Jewish studies at McGill University, Montreal
------------------------------------------------
added: Many Rabbis differentiate between yearnings for Jewish freedom during the exile period and inspired prophecy. Finding a future fulfillment in any Bible verse is no guarantee of divine inspiration.
-
MrFreeze
It's all fear tactics. Thats all it is.
-
mrquik
I admire your persistence in looking for the true religion. Don't waste your time. It's not here yet. Probably won't be here for a while. If you find comfort or friendship in a particular religion. If it brings a measure of contentment or peace; by all means, indulge yourself. Just don't be deluded into believing they speak for God. They don't. You want to speak to God? Keep praying. Otherwise Live Well..... Enjoy Life.
-
jefferyjones
jesus said that only those that sin against the holy spirit would have no resurrection.
simple as that.
jehovah being the merciful god he is, he will no doubt take into consideration all factors pertaining to an individual, not just wether he was a JW or not. JWs as an organization have only been around for a handful of years anyways. the purpose of them today is to fill all the remaining number of those going to heaven and to prepare a people for the new system on earth.
that's all the details we know.
likely we will be pleasantly surprised at what jehovah reveals to everyone in the new world. but knowing every detail isn't a requirement for serving god. Abraham didn't know hardly anything about how god's purpose would come to pass but he acted on what he did know and where did that get him? Jehovah used him to bring forth a nation and the messiah, among other things.
lesson: don't let details hinder you from what you know you should do.
-
OUTLAW
the purpose of them today is to fill all the remaining number of those going to heaven
and to prepare a people for the new system on earth......JefferyJones
They did that 40 years ago..
Jehovah is building an addition onto heaven for the 750,000 JW`s going to heaven..
.......................
...OUTLAW
