@djeggnog wrote:
Again, @Vidqun, I don't want to be hurtful, or say anything that would make you feel insulted or hurt your feelings, but like I told you in that thread, there does seem to be a question in your mind as to the scholarship of those who translated the NWT from "Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek" into its "English equivalent," and specifically as to the NWT translators word choice with respect to the Greek word genea. If you were discussing "dishonest scholarship" with me, fine, but I wasn't aware of it since I was the one that intimated to you that there seemed to be a question in your mind as to the scholarship of those that translated the NWT.
There is a difference, however, between the definition of a word and the interpretation of a word. You seem to not know that these two words -- "definition" and "interpretation" -- are not synonyms of one another, but have very different meanings. I'm really not comfortable discussing this with you, because you don't seem to be in possession of a sufficient knowledge of the English language and your inability to comprehend fundamental concepts compels me to beg off from discussing this topic further with you.
@Vidqun wrote:
I know you said you’re not comfortable discussing this with me, but seeing you don’t mind getting personal, I have freedom of speech to say my say....
Hold on. If I wasn't clear -- I thought I was, but if I wasn't -- then I just quoted here the context of what it was I told you I was uncomfortable discussing with you, this notion of yours that seems to believe the words "definition" and "interpretation" to be interchangeable, so that you would think your arguing the definition of the word "generation," as provided in a dictionary, to be somehow on a par with an interpretation of the word "generation," as Jehovah's Witnesses have done since the article, "Holy Spirit's Role in the Outworking of Jehovah's Purpose," that appeared in the Watchtower of April 15, 2010.
I'm not comfortable discussing this topic with you because I might say something to offend you, such as, I read, write and speak US English while you are barely functional in the language, which makes it difficult for you to comprehend some of the things I've said to you in this thread and in the other thread in which I first came to realize that you don't realize that the definition of a word is not euphemistic for the interpretation of that word. If I said that "when you were a teenager your mom and dad slept together, but you slept with your brother," you could interpret the words, "slept with," to mean "had sex with," even though what I meant was that you and your brother "shared the same bed."
Or, more specifically since we are talking about interpretation here, you may recall in Jesus' parable about the rich man and Lazarus, we read at Luke 16:22 Jesus' relating to us how it was that following Lazarus' death, he was "carried off by the angels to the bosom position of Abraham" (NWT) or how he "was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom" (KJV). Most people today would interpret the expression, "bosom position of Abraham" or "Abraham's bosom" to mean that Jesus was saying that Lazarus had died, but Jehovah's Witnesses interpret this expression differently to mean that Lazarus had come into God's favor, just as we read at John 1:18 how Jesus had come to be "in the bosom position with the Father" (NWT) or was "in the bosom of the Father" (KJV).
I don't deny you the right to have your say, nor do I believe anyone's speech should be abridged, suppressed or censored by anyone, but I'm not comfortable talking to you because you use the English language, but you don't seem to me to understand the language conceptually. I don't want to have to figure out what things you understand and what things you don't; there are schools set up to do that, but you are not the only person with whom I've spoken here on JWN that struggles with illiteracy.
I assume you read at least one of my replies to @slimboyfat's posts, but you should maybe read my reply to @iCeltic's and to @slimboyfat's posts below; maybe you'll realize that you are not the only one on JWN with a literacy problem, in that they both have the ability to read the words on the page, but they come away without comprehending what those words they read mean in the context in which they were written (or used). This is at least one of the reasons the Society has produced the "simplified" edition of the Watchtower. For years we have had elders suggesting to folks in the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses that their children should not attend college, and how children should be pursuing the full-time ministry as pioneers, when due to the bad influences brought to bear against our young people that attend college, which influences have led to an erosion of their faith, what we have said is that if after giving prayerful consideration to the matter and if one's circumstances should permit them to do so, then our young people should become full-time pioneers, the operative word here being "if."
In fact, in a recent letter to the body of elders here in the US to which someone had the audacity to provide a link here on JWN, it states that "[a]ll must weigh carefully the disadvantages and any perceived advantages of pursuing higher education before determining what they will do." What is needed is a "simplified"letters where words like "if" are spelled out by examples so that no one is given to understand that we are advising our young ones to not pursue college degrees, since there are too many jobs today for which they would not qualify without a college degree and having a good-paying job is a necessity if anyone is considering marriage and having children if one wishes to buy a home or live in a neighborhood that is less touched by crime.
More literate elders are needed to help the ones that suffer from illiteracy so that these elders are helped to avoid making suggestions that have a deleterious effect on those in our ranks with little education since our primary goal really is that "all attain to the oneness in the faith and in the accurate knowledge of the Son of God, to a full-grown man, to the measure of stature that belongs to the fullness of the Christ." (Ephesians 4:13) I didn't get personal with you and I don't want to get personal with you, but I have strong opinions against illiteracy and I do not enjoy exchanging posts with anyone that seems to understand English, but in reality doesn't understand what I'm saying.
PS The Beasts of Revelation, let’s not go there. If you don’t know the beasts or their history in the Society's literature, rather avoid the subject altogether, otherwise you might just throw your name away.
I agree. Let's not.
@JW GoneBad:
Why did you have to respond to The Gladiator in such a way? I thought his comment to you was rather fair-spoken.
@djeggnog wrote:
Just in case you didn't understand me, let me say to you again: I'm not a nice person and I'm not here to be your friend, @THE GLADIATOR's friend, anyone's friend. If @THE GLADIATOR should feel he needs you to run interference for him, you cannot run interference for him. I don't allow it. I expect men to step up to me like men and I don't not expect them to cower or tuck their tails between their legs in fear as if they were a scared animal, a dog.
@THE GLADIATOR:
Unfortunately your attempts to sound butch have had the opposite effect. Your child-like petulance and hissy fits are rather sweet and endearing. Come to daddy.
Ok, daddy.
@djeggnog wrote:
One thing you should know about me is that I'm not a nice person and I don't care what others think to be right or wrong. I don't pretend to be something that I'm not and nice I'm not. I know what's right and I know what's wrong according to my conscience, and I endeavor to live my life by God's standards, not by man's, nor by yours. I'm not saying any of this to make you cry or whine; I'm saying this so that you can move on to someone else and explain to them some of the things to which you are so sensitive and toward which you have such tender feelings. I'm not here to hurt your feelings, but I don't care if I do hurt your feelings. Understand?
@iCeltic wrote:
Don't care what others think are right or wrong? I endeavour to live my life by Gods standards? Can you see the problem with those two statements? If you were living your life according to Gods standards then you would care about other people and whether or not they know right and wrong.
As I indicated to@Vidqun above, you are like many people that "have the ability to read the words on the page, but they come away without comprehending what those words they read mean in the context in which they were written (or used)." I didn't say that I didn't care what other think to be right or wrong. @JW GoneBad didn't like the way I responded to one of @THE GLADIATOR's posts and thought it important enough to tell me so, so, in context, I responded by telling @JW GoneBad the following three (3) things:
(1) "I don't care what others think to be right or wrong," meaning that I never feel any need to get someone's stamp of approval as to whether something I might write here complies with their standards of what is right or wrong;
(2) "I know what's right and I know what's wrong according to my conscience," meaning that my conscience lets me know whether something is right or wrong; and
(3) "I endeavor to live my life by God's standards, not by man's, nor by yours," meaning that despite the fact that @JW GoneBad didn't like what I said to @THE GLADIATOR, God's standards govern the choices I make, not @JW GoneBad's standards or anyone else's standards.
To answer your question, no, @iCeltic, I do not see a problem with any of my statements. I don't have a problem with yours either, since you are entitled to have an opinion and to give voice to it, even if I should not agree with anything that you opine. As to my adherence to God's standards as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, I am involved in sharing the good news about God's kingdom that was shared with me because I do care about other people, and I do wish to help them to learn what is right and wrong from God's standpoint so that they might repent and be among the ones saved from this crooked generation.
Since I began what is essentially a "search and rescue" work, I've never stopped sharing with people things from God's word, hoping that something I might say might resonate with them and persuade them to consider taking up a study of the Bible, and I actually do speak with many of the people with whom I had initially spoken God's word at coffee shops, like Starbucks, and much progress has been made in this regard. It would be great had you not stopped helping others to learn about God and Christ, and the marvelous hope that the Bible holds out to all who are willing to learn what is right and wrong from God's standpoint, from God's point of view, because you have to know that many people are going to perish if they are not found in a place of safety when Jehovah God, through Jesus Christ and his angels, brings vengeance upon those that don't know God and upon those who, like you, won't obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. (2 Thessalonians 1:7-9)
And the facts are there is a new, overlapping generation teaching. Watchtower themselves used the word overlapping.
Yes, Jehovah's Witnesses do now interpret the words "this generation" at Matthew 24:34 different than we had in the past, and our new interpretation of the word "generation" involves how the lives of the anointed followers of Christ Jesus overlap during the generation of the sign of Christ's presence since we have abandoned our former interpretation of the word "generation" as referring to the people of the "1914 generation," and have embraced this generation as an event where the anointed have been contemporaries since this event began back in 1914, which generation will continue until the great tribulation.
Can we assume you know that you no longer believe watchtower teaching from the 1990's on the generation?
Yes.
And that you believe the new teaching on generation involving two groups of overlapping generations?
No, you may not assume that I believe in any "new teaching" that suggests that there are "two groups of overlapping generations." Hypothetically, what has been described as two groups aren't really two groups at all, for no matter when it was that someone of the anointed becomes a contemporary of the generation of the composite sign of Christ's presence that began in 1914 -- whether it was in 1914, or in 1916, or in 1942, or in 1977, or in 1992, or in 2012 -- they do not all of them belong to a single generation, meaning that there are no "overlapping generations," but what is true is that all of the anointed are contemporaries of the generation of the sign that began in 1914.
If so then do yourself a service and stop being fussy over the actual term.
I would say that you should learn how to comprehend what things you read, for you have never read anything about "overlapping generations" in any of our literature, only here on JWN.
@elderelite:
Poor eggnogg.... Perhaps a bit of biblical [advice] would serve you well:...
You are here giving me advice and you cannot even spell the word? Ok.
@JW GoneBad:
Why did you have to respond to The Gladiator in such a way? I thought his comment to you was rather fair-spoken.
@djeggnog wrote:
One thing you should know about me is that I'm not a nice person and I don't care what others think to be right or wrong. I don't pretend to be something that I'm not and nice I'm not. I know what's right and I know what's wrong according to my conscience, and I endeavor to live my life by God's standards, not by man's, nor by yours. I'm not saying any of this to make you cry or whine; I'm saying this so that you can move on to someone else and explain to them some of the things to which you are so sensitive and toward which you have such tender feelings. I'm not here to hurt your feelings, but I don't care if I do hurt your feelings. Understand?
@breakfast of champions wrote:
Didn't Jesus say this?
No, Jesus didn't say "[o]ne thing you should know about me is that I'm not a nice person and I don't care what others think to be right or wrong." I said this in the context of @JW GoneBad's feeling that I shouldn't have responded in the way I did to @THE GLADIATOR. I think @JW GoneBad had the idea that I was a nice person, so I felt I needed to disabuse him of this notion by telling him what I wasn't and that I didn't care "what others think to be right or wrong." @JW GoneBad was entitled to opine on what it was I said to @THE GLADIATOR, but I was just as entitled to opine what it was I said to @JW GoneBad.
I don't have to agree with anyone else's notions of right and wrong and you don't either. Your being judgmental about me doesn't move me to take a different position on this. I say whatever it is my own conscience allows me to say and I'm just not concerned with what your conscience might allow you to say, not in the least.
Do you see how nothing I said to @JW GoneBad implicates Jesus or don't you? Just as Jesus spoke according to his own conscience, so do I. If you don't understand what I am saying here, that's ok. I'm really not speaking to you, but to the lurkers and to those that are reading this thread with interest, and especially those folks that are reasonable and would be able to comprehend the rather simple concepts employed in my posts, concepts that an educated person would understand.
@slimboyfat:
I know the Watchtower didn't use the term "overlapping generations", but that is because they are maintaining the fiction that two overlapping groups over 100 years actually constitute a single generation.
That's good to know, but even though you are willing to admit here that the Society has never used the term "overlapping generations," you have to know that there are many here that will stubbornly refuse to listen to you, for there are just as many that refuse to listen to what things I have been telling them as to the spurious nature of this phrase that you coined here.
They are stretching language and incredulity to breaking point.
How so? This I'm not clear on. If you are the one that is doing the stretching of language, how is it that Jehovah's Witnesses are responsible for what you are doing? I need help with understanding your logic here, @slimboyfat, if what you are saying here is logical, because this statement of yours doesn't sound logical to me.
But that doesn't mean others are compelled to follow them in misusing language.
I'm sorry. What now?
If it looks like two generations (by any reasonable non-Watchtower skewed definition) then we might as well call it what it is.
I think I'm beginning to understand what you are really saying now. You are of the opinion that Jehovah's Witnesses should just as well call their latest interpretation of "generation" as used by Jesus at Matthew 24:34 "overlapping generations" because you say so.
So I am calling the doctrine the "overlapping generations" doctrine to underline just how absurd it is.
Got it!
You are aware, are you not, that not everyone that saw the sign when it began in 66 AD actually got away safe before the great tribulation broke out in Jerusalem four years later in 70 AD, right? Jesus had told his followers, who were later anointed on Pentecost, that those that lived through the "generation" that discerned the sign in 66 AD that he had given them some 33 years previously, would "by no means pass away until all these things occur," and many of those that were alive during that generation of that sign did not die because they left Judea and took flight to Perea, to the city of Pella some 954 miles away from Jerusalem.
The generation of that sign began in 66 AD and ended four years later in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem, "the great tribulation," which set the pattern for things to come. Jehovah's Witnesses now understand that the generation of the sign that began in 1914 will end with the great tribulation and just as occurred in 70 AD, we know that many of Jesus' anointed followers will be alive when the great tribulation finally arrives.
I don't know that the Watchtower has an alternative official name for the new teaching anyway. And I doubt they will bother to come up with a name for the teaching because either they will change it yet again, or they'll just neglect to draw attention to it in future. And no wonder, because it is a pure embarrassment and an insult to people's intelligence.
I think you to be lacking in intellect, but please don't be offended, for I only mean this in a kind way.
@djeggnog
