NEW LIGHT! Earthquakes-3-22-02 Awake! (page 4)

Ranchette

Another great thread hijacked just as Fred planned from the start!!!

Ranchette

mindfield

Sorry... I just hate FredHall with a passion...

How on earth can you say that you pointed this out to apostates years ago? By every definition from the Society, your pointing this out publically makes you an apostate. What makes your disagreement with the Society less apostate than anyone else's? You do the same thing the GB does, condemn others for what you yourself do.

Hmmm

AlanF

I agree, Ranchette!

People, please don't respond to this asshole FredHall. All you're doing is helping him to hijack good threads. Ignore this fucker and it will go away.

AlanF

mindfield

Okay, I'll try to restrain myself... maybe handcuffs will work...

waiting

Howdy Mindfield,

When you were a kid (and that was not so long ago) - if another kid taunted you with stupidity - the hardest thing was to ignore him. But by ignoring him, you take his power away. Whoever is playing Fred, he will always taunt......and be stupid.

AS FOR THE ARTICLE!!!!

I read it too..........and thought "what the heck........" (not really *heck* - but trying to improve my image).

It sticks out like a sore thumb - what's the sign if it's no different than it's always been? There is no sign for *our* generation! However, the WTBTS' writers were slick - they insinuated that the suffering brought about by these still-the-same earthquakes would be greater.

Awake! quote - "All Jesus said was that there would be great earthquakes in one place after another. Furthermore, he stated that these events would mark the "beginning of pangs of distress." (Matthew 24:8) Distress is measured, not by the number of earthquakes or how they rate on the Richter scale, but by the effect that they have upon people. end quote

So the new sign of the last days is more suffering. Which, remarkably, can't be proven.

Also mentioned as part of this evolving sign was: "...the last days of this system. During that time, the Bible states, people would be "self-centered, lovers of money," and "callous."

You see, the earthquakes caused more deaths than necessary because of greedy men not following building recommendations, which probably is true.

But there have always been earthquakes (as the WTBTS now admits) and there has always been distress, and there has always been greedy men.
And there's a scripture which says that in the last days, there would be people like me saying words like this. Go figure.

waiting

You Know

How on earth can you say that you pointed this out to apostates years ago?

Because years ago on the H20 forum when this issue was brought up by Alan Fraudbacker and others I simply pointed out that Jesus never said there would be an increase in earthquakes, only that there would be "earthquakes in one place after another." That doesn't necessarily equate to an increase in frequency or intensity.

By every definition from the Society, your pointing this out publically makes you an apostate. What makes your disagreement with the Society less apostate than anyone else's? You do the same thing the GB does, condemn others for what you yourself do.

I didn't necessarily disagree with the Society. I simply pointed out what Jesus actually said. It is a rather trivial point as far as I'm concerned. I never even gave it a second thought. It's amazing to me some of the ridiculous things people stumble over. / You Know

Ranchette

Mindfield,

Don't feel bad.

I have been sucked into this trap more than once myself and I'm sure I will do it again.

I think we all have.

I just hope when I do someone will remind me of what's really going like I tried to do here.

Okay, back to the original subject.

I was disgusted when I read this article this morning.
I shared it with my DF'd sister and she is equally sickened by it.

This teaching was crammed down our throats all our lives and then we in turn went door to door shoveling this shit down the householder’s throats.

Just think of how we would have felt if a householder said, "Well earthquakes have been happening all through history. Earthquakes are no special sign."

We would have called them "ridiculers" and we would say they were fulfilling bible prophecy by saying these things!

Watchtower can come out and contradict their teachings over and over and the rank and file just happily gulp it down.

I did it too in the past.

That's part of the reason it's so upsetting. It’s hard to accept how blind I was for so long.Also because of family and friends That I don't know how to wake up.

Ranchette

jschwehm

Interesting thread-

When I was first leaving the JWs, I wrote to the National Geological Survey and sent them the quote from the Insight Book that uses their data. The geologist that wrote me back basically said that the numbers the Society quoted from their document were correct but that their application was bogus.

I took that geologist's letter and some other research that I did on earthquakes and sent it to my JW parents. My mother and father both said not to send them anymore information like that because all it does is make the Society look bad.

It is interesting how badly the Society is trying to hold onto the whole 1914 we are in the end times teaching. They cannot use their chronology to support it and they as much as admit that, so many of the JWs will say that it is this supposed "composite sign" that shows we are in the last days. However, a closer look at this criteria demonstrates that the JWs understanding of the last days since 1914 is wrong. It seems to me that they are trying to get this 1914 doctrine to hold out as long as they can. (I bet they wish that they had someone like Fred Franz around to help them spur the troops on with a new date.) It will be interesting to see what the JWs will do with the 1914 thing in the year 2014.

Jeff S.

AlanF

People should carefully note You Know's responses on this thread. He forgets that the Society itself already as much as admitted around 1992 that quakes are no more severe today than at any other time. That is a major admission, given the huge number of lies they've told over the years with regard to this. Given that God does not use liars as his spokesmen, that alone proves that JW leaders are "false prophets" and should not be listened to.

Also note that, like the Society now, You Know deliberately fails to try to explain how anything that is exactly the same as it has always been can be a sign of anything. Green grass growing in one place after another is just as much a sign of "the end" as earthquakes are.

In the material that messenger quoted, the Society implies that, despite the fact that quakes today are no more severe or frequent than they've ever been, somehow their 'effects on people' are much worse. But this is not explained, nor is it backed up with examples. This kind of obfuscation is positive proof that the Society's leaders know full well that they're still teaching lies about earthquakes and "the sign of the end".

The simple fact is that today the effect of quakes on people is less than before the 20th century by any measure you want to apply. The best proof of this is to examine the risk of a person dying in a quake: it is about four times lower today than 300 years ago.

Some JW apologists will claim that the mere fact that modern communications allow a lot more people to know about a particular quake than before the 20th century. But again they never manage to explain just how mere knowledge of something that they know has been going on unchanged for millions of years can be a "sign of the end". They seem to imply that somehow this knowledge should alert people to the impending "end of all things". But reasonable people understand that if something is objectively much less severe than ever before (i.e., the risk of dying in a quake), then those who know it will worry a lot less, and so it "affects" them a lot less. What about the ignorant, the ones who think that just because they read things in the news, "things" are much worse than ever? Well, assuming that Jesus' words about quakes mean what JW-style end-times prognosticators claim they mean, is it reasonable to think that Jesus would have made a prophecy that would be interpreted correctly only by people ignorant of the facts? I suppose a JW would answer Yes, for obvious reasons, but it's ludicrous to think that the Son of God would base a prophecy on false information.

So no matter how one looks at it, the claims of JWs and other end-times proclaimers are based on no more than wishful thinking, and a deliberate ignoring of facts.

AlanF

NEW LIGHT! Earthquakes-3-22-02 Awake!

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