by ilikecheese 15 Replies latest jw friends
Designs-
The point is that the evil empire publishes in it's book/magazines that the Pharisees of Jesus day were these evil religious leaders who were supposed to care God's people and their spirituallity. However, they began to become self-important, self-righteous, and become concerned with rules and regulations rather than caring for people.
So, the irony is that the WTB&TS judges these Pharisees of Jesus day and are guilty of the same allegations.
If you want to know who the governing body really and truthfully represents.....read just a little bit past Matthew 24:45-47
truth-b
I get the irony. The Watchtower writers are notorious in their use of Jews as Bad Examples, its sickening.
There are both men and women who are modern day Pharisees in our network of droids. If only they could genetically recreate the red heiffer the Jews used, to offer up sacrifices to Jehovah. As the Scriptures always said "Jehovah wanted sacrifices, not mercy, not love and especially he hated justice! Jehovah really loved the whole burnt offering the fake leaders gave him!" This according to the WTS, who pushes works above mercy and love and justice. The Old Testament and the Gospel show that all those in positions, are "Pushers" for the Cartel in New York and Patterson, Pushing magazines the XJWs read and study better than most active JWs do. The XJWs must be very cautious of their spiritual need, meanwhile the JWs in good standing, are too busy to read the food provided at the proper time.
Regardless of whether the gospels lied the Pharisees were portrayed as rule oriented and showed no fellow feeling for the people they were supposed to assist to spirituality they are contrasted by Jesus and the disciples who showed fellow feeling and used the principles of the law to inform their practices. It can be said that the organisation today bears more resemblance to the Pharisees than Jesus. They have rules for everything and everyone and they do not allow anyone to make judgements about what is right and wrong or how they should interpret the Bible. They have one interpretation and they alone have the right to judge others but no one is allowed to judge or criticise them.
It is sad that so many are entranced by the organisation and may have doubts but feel unable to explore them or raise them for fear of censure.
You guys crack me up....Have you ever stopped and thought that what the JW's taught you about the Jews might not have been correct?
There were two competing factions of Phariseeim in Jesus' day.
In rabbinic literature, these were known as Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai: The story goes like this:
A Gentile came to Shammai with the strange request that he be taught the entire Torah, but that it be done during the time he could stand on one foot. Shammai, a surveyor by trade, chased him away, swinging a cubit stick. When this Gentile approached Hillel with the same request, instead of being scolded for such an impudent demand, he was told, "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellowman. This is the entire Torah. All the rest is commentary — now go and study."
Do Rabbi Hillel's comments sound the least bit familiar? Do they sound just a little teny, tiny bit like Jesus' statement at Matthew 7:12 and Paul’s "summary" in Galatians 5:14?
Hillel's negative formulation of Jesus' Golden Rule is sometimes referred to as the "Silver Rule". It, in turn, is derived from an even earlier Jewish tradition: "Do to no one what you would not want done to you." (Tobit 4:15)
The school of Shammai died out around the time Jerusalem was destroyed. The kinder approach to the Law as taught by the disciples of Hillel and Jesus became normative Judaism today.
I suppose for someone who got their religious instruction from Jehovah's Witnesses, it would be easy to read the controversy stories of Matthew and miss the evidence that this was essentially a family quarrel:
The Pharisees were forbidden to eat with anyone who was not a Pharisee. (cf. Berakot 43b) Yet they invite Jesus to meals on multiple occasions (Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1)
Ritualistic hand washing was only an issue if you were a Pharisee. Yet it becomes an issue for Jesus. (Mark 7)
It was the Pharisees who warn Jesus of Herod's intent to kill him (Luke 13:31 cf. Acts 5:34)
In the early years of Christianity, the boundary between Christian and Pharisee was semi-permeable. (Acts 15:5) Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, who become followers of Jesus, were almost certainly Pharisees and a number of other early converts to Christianity were definitely Pharisees. (John 3:1; 7:50;: 19:38,39)
Gamaliel of the Bible, who urges leniency in dealing with the early Christians (Acts 5:34-40) was the grandson of Hillel himself. You will not find a more influential Pharisee in the entire Bible. And he is simply not the murderous thug that Fundies make the Pharisees out to be.
