Hi all,
I took a look at my wies Isaiah book where she had it marked and checked out tonight's assigned material. It's astonishing to me that anyone with even an average intelligence could choke this stuff down. Does anyone really take this tripe seriously?
Here's a book that purports to unlock all the secrets of the book of Isaiah, a detailed chapter-by-chapter exposition of the prophesies and their fulfilments, etc. And tonight's stuff covers some fascinating ground -- the latter half of Isaiah 19, where the prophet speaks intriguingly of Jehovah's ``witness in Egypt"" (which Pastor Russell hypthesized was the Pyramid of Geza, a prediction that ``five cities of Egypt would speak the language of Caanan,'' civil war in Egypt, God's denunciation and then ultimate reclamation of Egypt, an eventual rapprochement betwen Egypt, Assyria and Israel,
redemption for the Egyptians, etc., etc.
Fascinating, enigmatic stuff all, but what the hell does it all mean? Well, don't count on the FDS and this paperback beauty to unravel any of it for you.......
From about paragraph 26 on, they adroitly leapfrog over the troubling question of how this was all fulfilled in Bible times, and divert the subject to a purported--and typically bogus-- ``larger fulfilment."
The ``inconsequential'' issue of the prophecy's ``smaller fulfilment" the only one that really matters, and which, if explained, would make for some interesting reading, gets almost totally ignored. In its place we're treated to their customary struggle to make all of this fit arcane language into their modern-day history, the proverbial pounding of the square peg into a round hole. All balderdash.
All of these mental gymnastics are a bid to obfuscate the real fact that the Brooklyn Gerontocracy has no more clue than you or I as to what any of this stuff means.
What really tocks me off is that my better half still takes this turgid nonsense seriously. She's facing a crucial Civics exam on U.S. history tomorrow for her citizenship application, and my daughter asked to stop by for advice with a fairly urgent family matter. But no; all of these issues must ``hang fire'' until mom's done with her weekly does of WTS pap.
It tantalizes me to imagine what would happen if any of these ``penny awful'' paperbacks were to be submitted to the editorial panels of the New York Times Book review, or the Book of the Month club.