WTWizard....I am curious

by still thinking 47 Replies latest jw friends

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  still thinking

  Im sorry for me you are making a lot of assumptions that try and make the rediciulous creditable. There is no motivation for Jesus to speak or conceal this important message by using substitutes, if he meant Satan in this particular case, he should have simply said so. I ill credit jesus with intelligence, and there was no need to add more indirection and confusion.

  LOL mP....I consider most of the bible confusing now a days....Jesus shares a lot of important messages in parables and confusing ways...I will credit Jesus for possibly doing it again here. By using teminology that maybe they understood...but you and I don't. I am trying to look at all different options and understand that I am probably coming accross as being confusing. It's hard not to when you start to analyse what the bible means and says.

  I agree there is no need to add more indirection...cause there certainly is enough...but that idea came from another religious belief. Which I kinda thought could have been a valid option for that text. **sorry cant link where I read that now...I read so much on here, I can't find it** And, as I quoted on the previous page...many of these ideas are different religous assumptions...I am simply trying to sift through them.

  Anyway...I may give up on this topic since not many want to discuss it...I was just putting my thoughts out there. They weren't set in stone or anything.
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  still thinking

  @TEC

  Your commentary is slightly dishonest, seraphs were a type of messenger. Your commentary seems to imply that ALL angels were seraphs or snakes which is very much untrue as countless other scriptures show. its important to be clear in this cases just take a look at the fuss a little "a" or "the" in John 1:1 has caused and thre trinity....mP

  I don't believe this is what tec was trying to say at all.
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  tec

  Well, angels are a type of messenger too. I don't know if all angels are seraph... perhaps just different roles. But yeah, I was thinking of them all in that sense. When I think angel, I tend to think of all of them as well. My point was that if Satan was an angel... and someone like Michael is also an angel; then not all of the same species is bad. So that even if you consider that these are both also serpents/seraphs... saying be as wise as a serpent does not equate to be as wise as Satan.

  Related to serpents, snakes, or vipers discussion, this was in something i read about seraph on wiki:

  (nahash, the generic word for snakes, in 14:29, and efeh, viper, in 30:6)

  The different word could imply the different qualities as well.

  Peace,

  tammy
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  ldrnomo

  ST said: Yeah, I know what you mean crazyblondeb ....but I like to know why people believe what they do...you never know...I might learn something...LOL

  I'm with you on that thought. I had put my thinking on hiatus for two and a half decades because of the mind control the Watchtower infuses in they're members. I celebrate the freedom to think whatever I want, without guilt, without shame, and without fear.

  I love this forum because it gives me the platform to release the mind controlled thoughts that "my keepers" (for over two and a half decades) imposed upon me through, peer pressure, brain washing (they even admit to that) word manipulation and mental/emotional manipulation.

  WT Wiz, great thoughts on satan, god and all the rest of the characters in this play. Is it the age of aquarius that is waking us up or is it the fact that humans can and do manipulate the dirt we come from and we make and do with it anything we want. My next statement was going to be "within the laws of physical science" but I then realized that, "the laws of physical science" may not be as strong a barrior as we logically think. With that in mind, for whatever reason, when life is backed up against the wall we as humans simply manipulate the dirt to come up with whatever solution is needed to remain "on going".

  We have so much knowledge that is now wide spread which makes me think of the story of babel. Our knowledge base is better pooled in one place than it has ever been and many more humans have access to that knowledge than has ever been. Age of aquarius? could be. Or maybe it is just human ingenuity. Maybe, we have no bounds uh I think that's called imagination. And what better to take that away than religion. Are we as humans getting back our imagination? Ignorance and fear have supressed it. Einstein once said, "imagination is more important than knowledge". They go hand in hand. What we imagine we can do with only one constraint, knowledge. As our knowledge base grows, and it's probably doing that at a firestorm rate by now, we will be able to fullfil the things we imagine (science fiction comes to mind). We imagine, and then we accomplish. We have become master manipulators of dirt and because of that we have gotten into a lot of trouble because we can make beneficial and we can make harmful things with dirt. Will that change? Again, when our backs are up against the wall it will change. We will desinigrate the wall and continue to run from the errors we've made in the past. Will we always be running from our errors?

  Aquarius? Maybe, or maybe just survival.

  long for me I know and the misspelled words are due to an in-oporitive spell check since switching to chrome.
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  mP

  StillThinking

  LOL mP....I consider most of the bible confusing now a days....Jesus shares a lot of important messages in parables and confusing ways...I will credit Jesus for possibly doing it again here. By using teminology that maybe they understood...but you and I don't. I am trying to look at all different options and understand that I am probably coming accross as being confusing. It's hard not to when you start to analyse what the bible means and says.

  I agree there is no need to add more indirection...cause there certainly is enough...but that idea came from another religious belief. Which I kinda thought could have been a valid option for that text. **sorry cant link where I read that now...I read so much on here, I can't find it** And, as I quoted on the previous page...many of these ideas are different religous assumptions...I am simply trying to sift through them.

  Anyway...I may give up on this topic since not many want to discuss it...I was just putting my thoughts out there. They weren't set in stone or anything.

  MP

  I agree the thoughts someone back then would have received from this message is very different from what we in a modern world think when we read those words. This is very true.

  Personally you have referred to two very different separate scriptures, Eve and the snake and the second being Jesus parable. They are separate. Unfortunately i think the problem is we or perhaps you are assuming there is only one good and one bad side and everything else is just a word substitute for either side. In reality imho, the truth is peoples in those days were a supersitutious lot, the read prophecy in all sorts of nonsense, with entrails and throwing lots being the perfect example. The jews believed in these sorts of things, we have many recorded examples in the Bible itself, with the selection of Matthais after Judas suicide and in the magical stones unim and thuranim that were featured prominently on the chest of the high priest. The ancients did not know much of how the world ticked or why nature and it cycles worked the way they did they inserted personalities or gods as the controllers. Everytime the wind blow this way or a black cat walked in front of them it was a message from the gods. When we realise thats how they thought, the Bible and other ancient works became interesting but not inspiring in anyway.
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  mP

  @soldier77

  The entire bible is astrotheology. The Bible is an attempt by the jews to explain the forces of nature, of which astrology was the study of the heavens above them. We can see references to the Bible everywhere if we just look. I challenge anyone to read the gospels without thinking of a man when the language talks about Jesus in the sky etc and to simply read it literally. What we have is simply someone admiring the power and glory of the sun of nature. Good=light=sun, evil=dark=death its as simple as that.
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  mP

  @stilltinking

  @TEC

  Your commentary is slightly dishonest, seraphs were a type of messenger. Your commentary seems to imply that ALL angels were seraphs or snakes which is very much untrue as countless other scriptures show. its important to be clear in this cases just take a look at the fuss a little "a" or "the" in John 1:1 has caused and thre trinity....mP

  I don't believe this is what tec was trying to say at all.

  MP:

  its important to be exact when we make statements like the one i was referring too. Im not trying to be a typo nazi in anyway, its just worth being clear what we mean in exactly when we say things like this. Satan was a messenger of a wanna be tyrant called Yahweh, snakes are messengers as well. These statements are all true, all sorts of items contained messages from above. Soothsayers, druids, priests found all sorts of messages in entrails, clouds and many other nonsenses.
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  mP

  @stillthinking

  I will attempt to explain what the age of Aquarius means. Each spring the sun is in the position of a particular sign of the zodiac. Nothing is of course fixed in this universe and the earth wobbles and moves ever so slightly. It takes two thousand years to travel thru each sign. The start of the age of Pisces started approximately exactly when Jesus was born. The age of Pisces ended about now and we are starting in Aquarius. Before Pisces there was the age of Aries and before that Taurus.

  A little research shows the symbol of xianity is of course the fish, and the symbol of judaism in the OT is very much the RAM, and Moses himself tells us via the story of him returning from the recieving the ten commandments the jews went back to the old ways of worshipping the goal calf or bull.

  If we try just a bit we can find a lot of astrology in the Bible. Some very strange and popular numbers frequently found in the Bible are of course 7 and 12. The best and only explaination for these is of course 7 heavenly bodies that are visible with the naked eye and the 12 months of the year. All jewish holidays including passover, etc are actually celebrations connected to the changng of time and the seasons. The passsover, easter is nothing more than the spring equibox. The Jewish holy day Roshashana (sp] day of atonment or judgment also happens to fall right in the middle of Libra and the autumn equinox. Everything is always judged in autumn, because thats when plants, crops etc die and one gathers and judges the worth of the past growing season.

  Another easy example is the nonsense in Gen 49, where the sons of Jacob are given strange commentary. If we take these key words its easy to see a mapping being formed between the zodiac signs and each tribe or son. We also have the something similar with the apostles. By readingjust the scriptures we learn very little of most of them. We also have the curious case that some scriptures give different names for the twelve. Again the number and not the individuals are whats important.

  Take a look at anything in the Bible, and do a little study and its not hard to quickly find an astrological connection.
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  still thinking

  thanks for the responses...........I have had a quick skim and what has been said looks interesting....hopefully I will have time to look at them properly tomorrow
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  still thinking

  ldrnomo..I agree, this forum is a spring board for looking at all sorts of things.....I think that my be why I find it so addictive.

  Are we as humans getting back our imagination? Ignorance and fear have supressed it. Einstein once said, "imagination is more important than knowledge".

  This is one of the problems I am having....how to diferentiate between what is someone elses imagination and what is my own. Did I take belief and expand on it with my imaginagion? Is belief imagination? Probably your guess is as good as mine. But I would not like to stifle imagination either. As you point out...look at what it can accomplish.