Is the Watchtower shy about repeating their new "generation" teaching? (page 19)

slimboyfat

I heard the rumours he was encouraging young ones to go to university. I don't know about fading though, don't you think he probably wrote the 607BCE articles last year?

With Furuli out of the fray who is left to defend the Witnesses these days?

Well, there's Djeggnog, and then there's Letters and numbers. But with the GB latest explanations, and pronouncements against Higher Learning, most apologists worth their salt will keep a low profile.

slimboyfat

The Watchtower are pretty hypocritical about this. On the one hand there was the Sept 2007 Kingdom Ministry that discouraged Witnesses from doing their own research. On the other hand they published articles on the Coptic version of John 1:1 and 607 BCE which were the result of independent research by Solomon Landers and Rolf Furuli.

What about Hal Flemings these days? Not to mention Wes Williams, Brenton Hepburn and the rest.

Vidqun

Slimboyfat, you are allowed research, however, only from WT publications. Problem with the NWT, it is based on Westcott & Hort (1881), and the BHK (1973). The NWTRef (1984) is their last revision. A lot have happened in the mean time. The DSS have been made available in their entirety, the Greek papyri have been discovered in Egypt. Nestle-Aland is on its 27th edition, the United Bible Society's Greek text is on its 4th edition. In connection with the Hebrew Scriptures there is the Jerusalem Project, BHQuinta, all with their different scholarly approaches. Then there is thousands of new articles coming out in periodicals and magazines. How on earth are you going to keep up to date with all this research if you haven't a degree or two behind your name? They should have had a specialized team to keep up to date on the latest research, e.g., the Mormons. No, I think they have lost the storyline altogether because of their unreasonable expectations. Now the world is passing them by.

Black Sheep

I find it hard to believe he really believes as he argues because it is so ridiculous.

They probably do it for a variety of reasons. E.g. my Dad cannot face the possibility that he chose to join a bunch of crazies, ignored failed prophesies in his own lifetime, ignored flip flops and all other evidence that the WT hierarchy is making it all up, and stuck with them, kneed grating up a whole new three generations of baptised dupes (and their converts) in a foreign country, abusing family and friends who left, got DFd etc., for leaving in good conscience.

Armageddon has to come soon to stop him looking like a right twat .......... he didn't comprehend the 1995 change .... that wasn't part of HIS religious beliefs. God knows what he thinks of this overlapping rubbish, if he thinks about it at all. He sure as eggs hasn't been in any hurry to bring it up with me.

Ucantnome

Djeggnog,

Yes the quote "commissioned to serve as the mouthpeice and active agent of Jehovah" came from

The book 'The Nations Shall Know That I Am Jehovah'—How? was released back in 1971 when Jehovah's Witnesses believed and taught that "the generation of 1914" existed,

Page 58/59

I'm sorry I should have put it in my post. Thank you.

The following year the Watchtower had an article in the April 1st 1972 magazine "They shall know that a prophet was among them" on page 200 it says talking of Ezekiel.

"Jehovah would confirm him as a prophet then by causing what Ezekiel prophesied to come true"

and further on on the same page talking about Ezekiel 2:8 it says,

"This would indicate that Jehovah's witnesses today make their declaration of the good news of the kingdom under angelic direction and support. (Rev.14:6,7; Matt. 25:31, 32) And since no word of work of Jehovah can fail, for he is God Almighty, the nations will see the fulfillment of what these Witnesses say as directed from heaven.

Yes the time must come shortly that the nations will have to know that really a "prophet of Jehovah was among them."

This good news of the kingdom spoken of in Matthew 24 was that the sign of Matthew 24:30 had been seen along with the composite sign and the generation that saw this would see the start of the tribulation. But it didn't happen. Or am I wrong Djeggnog?

djeggnog

@Amelia Ashton wrote:

When Christ comes it will not be "invisibly" and hidden from view at all. It will be obvious to everyone!

@djeggnog wrote:

Christ has already returned invisibly, but he has not yet come. When Jesus does [come], his coming will not be invisible, for when he does come, everyone on earth will know; his coming will be obvious to all! I know you don't know that there is a difference between Jesus' return and his coming, and maybe after you have read my response, you still won't know the difference. Oh, well....

Many of our interpretations over the years have undergone a bit of tweaking, but we are always willing to abandon any interpretation -- even those that we may have thought to have been scripturally sound -- if it should become apparent that we are wrong. Jehovah's Witnesses are simply not going to dishonestly try to make something that we discover to be a wrong interpretation a right interpretation, and when we are wrong about something, we are not going to hide our error from anyone. We are going to send a letter to all of the congregations in the world and print an article in the Watchtower magazine because we are about the truth and because of who we are, namely, Jehovah's Witnesses.

@slimboyfat wrote:

You are joking, right?

No.

@Black Sheep wrote:

I have family members that simply do not comprehend anything that contradicts their version of their JW religious beliefs.

@djeggnog wrote:

And your point is what now?

@Black Sheep wrote:

What? Do I really have to spell it out for you?

You do not have to do anything that you do not choose to do. I was asking a question. Whatever it is you should decide to say in response to any question I might ask you here, including the rhetorical ones I might interpose in order that you might get around to making your point, is fine with me. Whatever it is you should decide to say to me here in response, I mean you no ill will, @Black Sheep, or, as they say a lot in New Zealand, kia ora.

You don't comprehend?

If you should get around to making your point, then maybe I'll comprehend what it is you will have said to me or were trying to say to me. Maybe.

Gawd. You really could be any one of a number of my family members who play the game of pretending to comprehend whatever they want, regardless of the [grammar], context, source, or intention of the author, in order to pretend that the image of the Watchtower that they are trying to paint is not contradicted by their own church documents. Current, or past.

You being so judgmental of your family members reminds me of something that Jesus said to one of his apostles -- to Peter -- after Jesus had just signified to him the manner in which Peter would die, prompting Peter to ask Jesus about first cousin, John, "What will this man do?" Peter want to know what was going to happen to John. Jesus told Peter in reply: "What concern is that to you?" and told Peter a second time to, "Continue following me." (John 21:18-23)

Even if it were true and you have good reason to believe that your own family members only pretend to comprehend the things that they read in the Watchtower or all of our other publications "current ... or past," what is that to you? Why should you be judging anyone? We must all of us work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because salvation is that important. If you are exercising faith in Jesus' name, then of what concern of yours is it what devout worshippers of Jehovah are doing or are not doing? Catholics and Baptists are devout worshippers of Jesus so why not judge them as well? Why target Jehovah's Witnesses, including your own relatives? Is it perhaps because they are worshippers of Jehovah? If this is not the reason, then what is your reason for indicting your own family members as pretenders?

All any of us can do -- if we want to that is -- is be an encouragement to others, to incite others to love and fine works, putting up with others and forgiving their shortcomings freely if we should have a cause for complaint against them. You are like an enraged bull that seeks to gore to death those that have continued, as best they can, to exercise faith in Jesus' name, that is to say, faith in Jesus' office, in the position that was kindly given him by Jehovah with the power to save us from death, with the hope, it seems, that they will become your followers, your disciples, in becoming enraged bulls themselves seeking to gore those desirous of worshipping Jehovah in spirit and truth to death, so that they stop working out their own salvation with fear and trembling, and await the expression of God's wrath from heaven just as you are, when Jesus comes with his angels to bring vengeance upon those that don't know God and those that have refused to obey the good news about our Lord Jesus Christ.

No, @Black Sheep, I wasn't able to comprehend what it was you didn't say in your previous message, but now maybe I do, and maybe if you keep trying to convince your own family members that they don't really comprehend the admonition given in our literature to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, you will be successful and the outcome for them will be like yours. Thanks for the clarification.

Do you have Kiwi family Your Royal Eggness?

You didn't explain this comment. Why not?

@slimboyfat wrote:

You are joking, right?

@iCeltic wrote:

No, he jokes not. It's impossible to reason with this person. It's been pointed out to this person the Awake! article that stated, in writing, the FACT that young people alive at that time would not grow old. That was a lie. It wasn't misleading, it was a pure and utter lie. This person defends that, he should be completely ignored.

But I don't defend that portion of the article that appeared in the May 22, 1969 Awake! entitled, "What Future for the Young?" that was worded so poorly. Earlier in this thread, I even told @Leolaia, who had pointed out to me how this article had promised that this system of things would be "gone" by the time a high school student back in 1969 could attend college and "graduate into a specialized career," that, in hindsight, it would have better if what had been written was the following:

But where will this system of things be by that time? We don't know, but it may be well on the way toward its finish, if not actually gone!"

This statement had apparently caused many to speculate back in 1969 that the end of this system of things would occur in "perhaps even six or eight more years," "perhaps" by 1975, but my point is that the article didn't state this as a fact, for the article said "if ... [then] the evidence ... indicates ... [the] end in a few years," and "if ... thinking about a college education, [then] ... perhaps [in] six or eight more years ... this system of things ... [will be] gone." My parents were educated and knew what was being said was mere speculation, and so they treated these things as such for they had learned from God's word that no one knew "that day and hour."

My parents decided that I should do what was prudent for me to do in the meantime, and so I attended college, while many of the children of other Witnesses inexplicably did not, and yet they decided to get married and have children when hardly any of them had either the financial wherewithal or the academic wherewithal to qualify them to apply for better paying jobs that would enable them to raise a family, and as a result, just as Paul had warned at 1 Corinthians 7:27-34, I came to experience anxieties that I had never experienced in my life. While you and others here condemn this 1969 Awake! article, the article was designed to strengthen our resolve to remain in God's love and to encourage us and to warn young people so that they might avoid some of the anxieties of life.

Paul had written that if one was "loosed from a wife," that he should "stop seeking a wife," and that those having wives should "be as though they had none," because he wanted Christians to be "free from anxiety." Those that marry, Paul explains, will have "tribulation in the flesh" and they will have more of the anxieties of life, which anxieties will include those brought by having children, which anxieties would cause many to have to more fully make "use of the world," since, as he said, "the scene of this world is changing." The kind of anxieties that would cause one to use the world to the full are things like obtaining a student loan, having to live in uncomfortable living quarters and spend a lot of time with people that don't know God, and maybe miss regularly association with fellow Christians because one has had to accept a part time job, which circumstances could damage one's spirituality.

The anger over their failure to discern what was speculation and what was factual is understandable, but why would these just ignore the fact that there had not been as yet in those years leading up to 1975 been an outcry of "Peace and security!" which we learned from the Bible would precipitate the great tribulation?

Due to the enthusiasm and anticipation of those responsible for writing many of the articles that appear in our publications as to what might be coming, misleading statements weren't caught by the proofreaders and many statements were published that caused many people to make different decisions regarding the education of their children, decisions that severely impacted their lives after 1975 had come and gone, and the anger caused by blind allegiance to the speculations of men, rather than to God, caused many to stumble. One thing I know to be true: Jehovah God knows all of what happened at that time and why.

@slimboyfat:

I find it hard to believe he really believes as he argues because it is so ridiculous. Maybe he thinks he is funny or he is confusing people. Wherever he is at mentally it does not look like a very happy place.

Even if the things I have said here should appear to be "so ridiculous" to you, I'm not joking around here and I hope that I'm not confusing anyone. Wherever I am mentally is my business, but wherever I am spiritually ought to be, in my opinion, where you should be also.

@iCeltic:

I thought the same as you mate but now having read more of this persons comments I now think they mean every word of it. Terrifying that individuals like this exist.

I do mean what I've said here, "every word."

Your question was from a level headed individual, from a common sense stand point. When part of a barbaric religion common sense is chucked out the window.

I have chosen to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses a "barbaric religion" to you, but my choice. Like me, you, too, have free will, which gives you the freedom to make choices that I would never make, like you could if you wanted to do so become a Catholic or a Muslim or a Buddhist. Or, if you start your own Branch Davidians-like sect. Why are you and others here on JWN so fixated on the choices that Jehovah's Witnesses have made when many of you were once Jehovah's Witnesses? If you were among those that decided to leave God's organization on your own terms, then why shouldn't others leave God's organization of their own terms? What business is it of yours what I decide to do or don't do?

@slimboyfat:

Awake! 1969: "If you are a young person, you also need to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of things."

The mind boggles.

@breakfast of champions wrote:

This isn't really hard. . . Someone needs to face the real facts.

But it really is that hard. You don't seem to be able to read between the lines of the article, so you read it as literally saying that the end of this system of things would occur before a young person should "grow old in this present system of things." The writer was merely speculating on what would be the case were the end of this system of things to occur before a high school student had completed six or eight years of college. It does seem to me that this is the fact that you need to accept, @breakfast of champions.

I find the wording of this sentence interesting. There are not saying that "if you are a young person, you will never grow old in this present system" but that you need to face this "fact", emphasizing that this statement is not just hypothetical, but is real, actual, and imminent.

No, the wording in the sentence is just wrong, pure and simple. The article wasn't proofread and it was published just as we read it today in the 1969 Awake! I've seen similar errors when reading magazines like Time and Newsweek, but human beings make mistakes and this Awake! article is just proof of this.

@wannabefree:

If it were God's Organization, it wouldn't make such speculations, speculations that are viewed as information coming from God by followers and are represented as such by the men behind the Organization.

But this would be your opinion, wouldn't it? I don't think such speculations to be information coming from God, and most of those who are Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe this either, so my question to you is this: Why did you? What was it about the information you heard when you were regularly associating with God's organization that intimated to you that there were men behind the organization? Consider the following questions:

Did you not know that what is behind God's organization is God's spirit? If not, why didn't you know this? What was it that made you believe that God's organization was being guided by mere men? How do you think it to have been possible for God's organization here in the US to have grown 2,000% from 360,000 to over 7.2 million in 60 years if not because of God's spirit operating mightily upon the efforts of Jehovah's Witnesses? I don't expect an answer to these questions, but it would be great if you would only think about what these things prove as to whether Jehovah God is indeed blessing our efforts (or not).

@Listener:

'If you are a young person' - either you were or weren't, there is no hypotheticals in this statement

I'm glad that my parents weren't as intelligent as you appear to be. I mean, if nothing else, it does seem to me that one would at least realize when reading the subject 1969 Awake! article that this was speculation.

@Alfred:

Acts 1:7 can't be any clearer... Speculation on when Jesus would return to establish his kingdom is NOT ALLOWED.

This isn't how I understand Acts 1:7, @Alfred. This verse isn't saying any about speculation, since Jesus' disciples had clearly speculated as to how God's purposes with respect to the kingdom would be carried out, fulfilled. You can go on believing whatever you wish, but you're mistaken.

Jesus told them at Acts 1:7, 8, that 'it didn't belong to his disciples to get knowledge of the times or seasons which the Father had placed in his own jurisdiction; but that they would receive power when the holy spirit arrives upon them.' Did you notice that Jesus said that they would receive power when the holy spirit arrived upon them? Ever heard the expression, "knowledge is power"? It was God's holy spirit that enabled Jesus' followers to become witnesses of him in "in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the most distant part of the earth."

@Vidqun:

Djeggnog, attempting to defend the indefensible, as usual. Many have tried, but they have failed. Here specifically Rolf Furuli comes to mind. With interest I always followed his threads in b-Hebrew and b-Greek, always to see him running into a brick wall of scholarly dissent, trying to defend the indefensible, i.e., the Society.

Face the facts, writer of the Awake!-mag. article told a Whopper (of a lie). They did not call it a hypothetical statement, they called it a "fact". "all the evidence ... indicates that this corrupt system is due to end in a few years." That's Whopper, no. 2, in other words, another lie. How do I know it's a lie? The system did not end in a few years. But then, there is a question as to the meaning of the word "few"? It could mean a 100 years or it could mean 1 or 2. Perhaps it is also an overlapping "few". Then it could mean two hundred years.

Google has a translation service.

What a stupid ting to say. An education is needed here and I have such, not a translation service.

The conjunction "if" is conditional, in connection with being a young person (you might be an old person, then the sentence does not apply to you - then you might be dead soon). But according to your analysis, the force of this conjunction is such that it turns the rest of the sentence into a hypothetical sentence.

The statement made in the 1969 Awake! magazine that has become the subject of this discussion is a speculative statement. I might speculate that it is going to rain today, but it may not rain today at all, so if I were to say to someone, "It's going to rain today," you could, I suppose, hold it against me if it doesn't rain, but it should be patently obvious that my statement, "It's going to rain today," is speculative in nature and not an established fact, since my saying "It is raining" when it is, in fact, raining would be definitively a fact. Just like I told @Leolaia earlier in this thread, I say to you: Speculation is never a fact.

@punkofnice:

Their 'university education' mags are going down to 16 pages. There are less pages to 'overlap'(TM).

You know what? This reference you make here to a "university education" based on the reduction in size of one of our magazines is an old saw that is based on something spun from an article that appeared in the Watchtower article, entitled "An Excellent Education," dated June 15, 1983, about someone that had dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and was forced to return to school to get his high school diploma, which story was introduced with the words:

"It has been said that by reading the Watchtower and Awake! magazines, along with other publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a person will receive, over a period of years, a considerable and broad education."

I say it is an old saw, because while many believe this to be true, such a statement was never published by the Society, and I've heard the claim made that if one should read the Awake! magazine for ten years or so, that such a person will have learned the equivalent of what one would have learned had he or she attended a four-year college, which is not what this article states at all.

I could marvel over the stupid things that some people say, like your reference to "'university education' mags," but I hear stupid things said like this all of the time, so what I typically do is wait for an opening to say "even so, there's no way that a hospital administrator would hire someone that had never had a university education to work as a surgeon at a hospital, no way that the State Bar of California would license anyone to practice law that had not attended law school and passed the state bar exam." I want to thank you for sharing this nonsense with us, but I believe you are lost and your post to have been a bit off-topic. I believe there is at least one thread here on JWN where a discussion is being had over the proposed reduction in the number of pages that will affect one of our magazines. You will find one such thread here.

@Ucantnome:

Yes the quote "commissioned to serve as the mouthpeice and active agent of Jehovah" came from

The book 'The Nations Shall Know That I Am Jehovah'—How? was released back in 1971 when Jehovah's Witnesses believed and taught that "the generation of 1914" existed,

Page 58/59

I'm sorry I should have put it in my post. Thank you.

There's no need. I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses and I don't usually quote from our publications on JWN" since if anyone doesn't believe me, I know they will look to see in the article I cite if what I have said is truly the case, which is exactly what one should do. You guys" on here have probably read the Society's publications more than you did when you were active Witnesses.

This good news of the kingdom spoken of in Matthew 24 was that the sign of Matthew 24:30 had been seen along with the composite sign and the generation that saw this would see the start of the tribulation. But it didn't happen. Or am I wrong Djeggnog?

Yes, I have the unpleasant burden of telling you that, in my opinion, you are wrong, @Ucantnome, but please don't let this get you down. Most of the things I have read on JWN are imprecise or just plain wrong, and we cannot all of us be me.

@djeggnog

slimboyfat

Where you are spiritually is where I ought to be?

You are breaking the rules of your faith by talking to known apostates. If you believe in the JW religion at all then you know that pleasing Jehovah is incompatible with your actions.

It makes ironic mockery of the arguments you attempt to make, which are self-defeating and negated by the circumstances of their own expression.

wannabefree

God must be behind NO RELIGION, since NO RELIGION is the fastest growing.

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2009/03/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html

Black Sheep

You being so judgmental of your family members...

There was nothing judgemental in what I said. It was an observation of their behaviour. You can see their behaviour any way you want.

Even if it were true and you have good reason to believe that your own family members only pretend to comprehend the things that they read in the Watchtower or all of our other publications "current ... or past," what is that to you?

They can do whatever they want when I'm not around, but when they try to recruit me by deceiving me as to what your church teaches, past or present, they make it my business.

Is the Watchtower shy about repeating their new "generation" teaching?

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