The Concept of "Increasing Light" Scenario

by ziddina 30 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  ziddina

  A re-posting of Cedar's hi-jacked thread...

  Cedars:

  Hello everyone. I just thought I'd share something if you don't mind.

  My conviction in the legitimacy of the Society was slowy eroded over a number of years simply by reading the publications and becoming increasingly frustrated at how little the interpretations of prophecy and scripture made sense, added to the complete ineptitude of senior figures in the organisation.

  For me, the "glue" that kept everything roughly held together into something that can be called a "faith" was the concept of "increasing light", which as you all know is the principle employed by the society to excuse any mistakes or backtracks that are made. They routinely flog Proverbs 4:18, which as we all know has nothing to do with gradual refinements in understanding when read in context. Regardless of this, the concept managed to keep me loyal to the organisation for quite some time, as I was too fearful to bring it under direct scrutiny. When I finally did, and realised that each of the 3 scriptures routinely used to expain "increasing light" were irrelevant to the principle as it had been propounded, everything fell apart, and the blinkers fell off. This was just another religion, and not God's spirit-directed organisation.

  The way I explain this to people is "the makeweight scenario". So far this explanation of the "increasing light" doctrine has baffled two elders, neither of whom have come up with an effective repost. I'm wondering whether sharing it with friends/loved ones who are "teetering" might be helpful for them as it was with me, although I realise that everyone is different, and there is no "one size fits all" argument.

  Anyway, here's the makeweight scenario in the form of a question as it might be posed to a believer of "increasing light":

  Can you show me one scripture that supports the idea that the Holy Spirit would deliberately feed God's servants untrue information or a flawed understanding of scripture as a "makeweight" until actual truth would be revealed at a later date? Is there a biblical principle that justifies Jehovah dealing with his servants in such a way?

  There it is, let me know what you think of it as a reasoning tool.
• 

  ziddina

  Wobble:

  A very well crafted question Cedars, and one that leads on to many more in the minds of an honest hearted person. I will try it out if I ever get the chance.
• 

  ziddina

  leavingWT:

  It's not about a single point or multiple points. Even if you're right on this point, WHERE ELSE WOULD THEY GO?

  Your goal is to empower people to think for themselves. Your question assumes that they feel capable of making a religious decision. They are not capable. They have been stripped of the ability to even have any opinion on spiritual mattes. They follow orders from Mother.

  The answer to your qeustion is: What the Society says the answer is.
• 

  ziddina

  james_woods:

  An ex-witness, ex-circuit overseer once made the point that Jehovah's Witnesses are now teaching that the "faithful and discrete slave" was guiding them even at a point when the witnesses themselves were wrong about who or what the faithful and discrete slave really was.

  As he said in his tape, now that is just LUDICROUS.
• 

  ziddina

  AnnOMaley:

  Very good question, cedars.

  Similar kinds of questions have popped into my mind in the past:

  Is there any scriptural precedent whereby Jehovah deceives His faithful servants?

  Does the God of Truth mislead the faithful with falsehoods?

  Scriptures that have a bearing on this are:

  - The account of wicked Ahab consulting 400 prophets about whether he should go into battle or not. All the prophets are saying, 'Yeah, go for it, you'll be fine.' However, Jehovah's prophet, Micaiah, tells Ahab the backstory to these other prophets' positive messages:

  (1 Kings 22:20-23) And Jehovah proceeded to say, 'Who will fool A′hab, that he may go up and fall at Ra′moth-gil′e?ad?' And this one began to say something like this, while that one was saying something like that. Finally a spirit came out and stood before Jehovah and said, 'I myself shall fool him.' At that Jehovah said to him, 'By what means?' To this he said, 'I shall go forth, and I shall certainly become a deceptive spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' So he said, 'You will fool him, and, what is more, you will come off the winner. Go out and do that way.' And now here Jehovah has put a deceptive spirit into the mouth of all these prophets of yours; but Jehovah himself has spoken calamity concerning you."

  The point is that Jehovah fools those who are NOT His loyal servants.

  - (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12) - But the lawless one's presence is according to the operation of Satan with every powerful work and lying signs and portents and with every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing, as a retribution because they did not accept the love of the truth that they might be saved. So that is why God lets an operation of error go to them, that they may get to believing the lie, in order that they all may be judged because they did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.

  Again, God allows error to flourish among those who are NOT His servants.

  So, a JW may trot out the line that past wrong ideas were allowed by God for a beneficial purpose (e.g. the Rom. 13 error enabled early JWs to remain neutral during the war years, or one could "praise the Lord for the mistake" of wrong expectations based on flawed prophetic understandings*), yet the JW needs to be concerned that, according to the Bible, God only allows His enemies to be deceived into having wrong ideas. But then the natural question follows, if God wasn't behind the mistakes after all, who was? And that's an uncomfortable series of thought processes a JW generally doesn't want to go down - until they are ready to face it.

  * "The author acknowledges that in this book he presents the thought that the Lord's saints might expect to be with Him in glory at the ending of the Gentile Times. This was a natural mistake to fall into, but the Lord overruled it for the blessing of His people. The thought that the Church would all be gathered to glory before October, 1914, certainly did have a very stimulating and sanctifying effect upon thousands, all of whom accordingly can praise the Lord - even for the mistake." - Foreword to The Time is At Hand! (1916)
• 

  PSacramento

  The "new light doctrine" is not soemthing bad at all, the bibel in of itself is a "progressive revelation" of God's plan, cumulating the Christ.

  The issue is that the new light is nothing of the sort and it is more often than not, a return/flip flop to older doctrines.

  New light would be a progressive IMPROVMENT in WT doctrine, not a "oh crap, we made a mistake, its a new light".

  We can see a progressive understand of the state of the dead in the bible for example, from the OT with the "dead know nothing we are just dead, that's it", to an existence after death (spirt returns to God, Sheol, etc) to an life AFTER "life" after death ( resuurection of the body).

  That is a progressive revelation.

  The WT is more like :

  No organ transplant, yes to organ transplant, no organ transplant, ye sorgan transplant.

  That is NOT new light that is "coin flipping doctrine" at its best.
• 

  ziddina

  Perry:

  This was just another religion, and not God's spirit-directed organisation.

  If you are looking for God's spirit directed organization, I think I can save you some trouble. That term isn't in the bible. Jehovah doesn't work through organizations. Jesus is saving individuals not religions..... from judgment, not armageddon.

  And, it will cost you everything you love to get it. You might as well stay in the org if you arent willing to give up EVERYTHING for Christ.
• 

  ziddina

  Baba Yaga:

  And now, to get back to the original post:

  Cedar, I think that is a very good question indeed... and I thank you for it. Let's hope it helps someone we love.
• 

  ziddina

  Cedars:

  I honestly thought it was a fairly valuable suggestion I was offering to all those with family members that may be teetering. Sometimes all it takes is one piece of devestating logic to push someone out of the control of the organisation.

  Someone referred to the fact that nowhere does the bible refer to God's spirit-directed organisation, and this is true. It's interesting though that acknowledging the authority of God's spirit directed organisation is the subject of the second of the two baptismal questions, and therefore (at least in the minds of the Society) a prerequisite to baptism (whether or not it's in the bible)!!
• 

  ziddina

  Listener:

  They claim that as they are not inspired by God this means that they will, at times, get things wrong. This makes it impossible to know at what times the actual truth is spoken. But if they do later have the truth then how did this come about? That is, how did God reveal it to them and how did they know that it was God who was doing the revealing on that occassion?

  Cedars, I thought your Makeweight Scenario was excellant and I'll repeat it here from your first post-

  ...

  "Can you show me one scripture that supports the idea that the Holy Spirit would deliberately feed God's servants untrue information or a flawed understanding of scripture as a "makeweight" until actual truth would be revealed at a later date? Is there a biblical principle that justifies Jehovah dealing with his servants in such a way?"