Has anyone read Thucydides - beside the author of Daniel?

by kepler 51 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  kepler

  At this writing I have contributed four topics. In two of them I had mentioned my intention to submit a list of questions via post to the WatchTower "questions from readers" department.

  I want to notify readers of these two topics that I have changed my mind about this plan.

  There are several matters pro and con which I have been weighing. The arguments pro and con have also been influenced by participating in this forum, reading other people's posts, and getting an idea of how many different backgrounds there are for people who exchanged their ideas here.

  It comes down to this: Although the existence, practices, lies and influence of the WTBTS has affected my life and those close to me, I am not and have never been a member of the organization. What I am doing, in effect, is traveling on a tourist's visa through a police state. It is like my visits to the pre-Soviet breakup eastern Europe or immersing myself in 20th century Russian literature or watching the film about the East German STASI "The Lives of Others". I am there, I can make the connections but I haven't lived the life. Other people have to. My protest cannot be used against me, but when a letter with a return address and name turns up in a data collecting organization such as it is, I have volunteered blood for a ministry of the interior. It can be used as leverage against others. And this ministry is already applying immense pressure on anyone affiliated with it. Reading "Crisis of Conscience", it looked plain enough to me that a person could be disfellowshipped to get at someone else. Why should I open the door for that even a crack just for the frivolous benefit of receiving in a few months in answer to my questions the organization's acknowledging form letter?

  Saying that. I still want to protest what has happened and I want to use what faculties I have to expose a number of things said and done; catch the perpetrators in the act. Exchanging posts, experience and information with people in this community I still believe is an effective way to do this.

  Maybe your vision of a better world isn't exactly what mine is, but I hope we can still work together toward such goals.

  My instinct is to sign off with my name or initials, but sorry I can't.
• 

  kepler

  It's been a while since I've added anything to this topic, yet by the very nature of this forum, elsewhere I see ideas built on foundations which the discussion here would indicate are all sand.

  In a largely unrelated historical discussion someone pointed me to in another e-group. In a historical essay describing the events leading to the siege of Vienna in the 1680s and the earlier confrontations between European christendom and the Islamic East ( ~1529) I came across the following paragraph:

  Suleiman I, called "the Magnificent" in Europe, saw himself as the heir of Alexander the Great, the "last world emperor" who would destroy his rival Charles V and then march west and conquer Rome. Like his competitors in the West, Suleiman was also eager to see himself as the beneficiary of an apocalyptic tradition, based loosely on the Book of Daniel, that foretold of a time toward the end of the sixteenth century when the Great Year would dawn, in which one true religion (Catholic Christianity for Charles V, Sunni Islam for Suleiman) would triumph over all others, ruled by one divinely appointed ruler—the sahib-kiran, "Emperor of the Last Age."

  What's the difference? They had plenty of time to read, they were ethno-centric and they were sure that the lines were addressed to them...