blondie - very true, the Society has always played ignorance of its former teachings or standpoints to its advantage.
Cedars
Opening the bible at random - once spoken of approvingly, now superstitious!
by cedars 45 Replies latest watchtower bible
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rip van winkle
according to Professor Gamble http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/jagamble.htm
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King Solomon
Blondie says:
Individual witnesses who said they did this (few in my experience) were viewed as on the fringe, immature, and bringing over beliefs from their pre-jw life. Some were even counseled not do this, because it could give place to the devil. But non-jws are given the benefit of the doubt, not yet knowing what God really requires that knowledge then brings responsibility.
If you find an experience in the pubs that say a baptized jw did this and it was condoned by the WTS, that would be enlightening.
Not just 'enlightening', it would be hypocritical, or actually fit into the category of "practices once approved, now superstitious" u-turn policy changes. Blondie identified that the status of the person carrying out the act matters, not the practice itself. If it leads one to let the Holy Spirit help them to find "The Truth", it's OK.
The example from Thailand even takes a separate sentence to point out: "He was involved in spiritism"; CLEARLY not a JW. The WT article denouncing the practice says "Christians" (meaning JWs), so not surprisingly there are different standards for different groups.
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kepler
Once apon a time "Baby Doc" (son of "Papa Doc") Duvalier of Haiti was asked about human rights.
His reply: "I am in favor, but they have to be on my terms."
Similarly with this situation. The WTS does not give a hoot about reading random text in the Bible. It assaults everyone with random verses, often quoting in backward sequences. If you wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night and grab the NWT and you find a verse that draws you closer to J, they're not going to complain.
No, this was all about the individual held up as a bad example. It was a way to knock Augustine of Hippo. And the body of literature which he wrote. It was in his book "Confessions" where he described the incident.
In the mid 380s AD, Augustine was commuting between his home in Carthage, North Africa( he was born nearby in present day Algeria) and Milan in northern Italy, then the seat of Roman government. Well educated and well to do, it was Augustine's parents who had provided him a mixed, but overall Christian background. His father converted from paganism and his mother was an orthodox Catholic, trying to convince her son to be of the same faith. Until the incident described, Augustine was a professed Manichean.
Whether one believes it a heresy or a legitimate outlook, Manicheanism is well worth looking up. One of many early Christian belief structures, very dualistic, it claims that the universe is in a tight balance between good and evil, the sort one might suspect if Satan is presumed to own the world. Manicheanism spread from Persia and was pervasive in the Roman Empire at about that time. It borrowed much from Zoroastrianism and incorporated Jesus, Claiming a division of creation into two kingdoms good and evil in eternal combat.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, Augustine couldn't make up his mind about this belief. From on-line sources, a home encyclopedia and translations from Confessions:
...In the summer of 386, after having heard the story of Placianus about his and his friends' first reading of the life of Saint Anthony of the Desert, which greatly inspired him, Augustine underwent a profound personal crisis, leading him to convert to Catholic christianity, abandon his career in rhetoric, quit his teaching position in Milan, give up any ideas of marriage, and devote himself entirely to serving God and to the practices of priesthood, which included celibacy. According to Augustine his conversion was prompted by a childlike voice he heard telling him in a sing-song voice, "Take up and read" (Latin: tolle, lege):
"I threw myself down somehow under a certain figtree, and let my tears flow freely. Rivers streamed from my eyes, a sacrifice acceptable to you [Ps 50:19- your conversation is devoted to wickedness and your tongue to lies] and (though not in these words, yet in this sense) I repeatedly said to you: 'How long, O Lord? How long, Lord, will you be angry to the uttermost? Do not be mindful of our old iniquities.'[Ps 6:4 - Yahweh, relent and save my life...].
"For I felt my past to have a grip on me. It uttered wretched cries: 'How long, how long is it to be?' 'Tomorrow, tomorrow.'[33] 'Why not now? Why not an end to my impure life in this very hour?'
"As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or a girl (I do not know which), saying and repeating over and over again 'Pick up and read, pick up and read.' At once my countenance changed, and I began to think intently whether there might be some sort of children's game in which such a chant is used. But I could not remember having heard of one. I checked the flood of tears and stood up.
"I interpreted it solely as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I might find. For I had heard how Antony happened to be present at the gospel reading, and took it as an admonition addressed to himself when the words were read: 'Go, sell all you have, give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me'[Matt 19:21]. By such an inspired utterance he was immediately 'converted to you' (Ps. 50.15). So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting. There I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit: 'Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts'[Rom 13:13-15].
"I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Book VIII, Paragraphs 28 and 29.[36]
Noted in summary from sources.
The volume Augustine read was Paul's Epistle to the Romans. He wrote an account of his conversion in his Confessions, which became a classic of Christian theology. Ambrose baptized Augustine, along with his son, Adeodatus, on Easter Vigil in 387 in Milan, and a year later they returned to Africa. Unfortunately both his son and mother also died within the same year.
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Note also that Augustine did NOT read from the BIBLE at random. Random perhaps, but he read from a book he set down by one of the Apostles, identified as Paul - and it included the letters to the Romans. The Bible was a concept that was gathering like a rolling snowball. It was not until 367 AD that a 27-book list of the canon was published by Athanasius in Alexandria. What should eventually be bound together in a book including old and new testaments was a concept about two decades old - but still not entirely determined.
Augustine would figure prominently in the debates on this and advocacy in the west. The City of God, Confessions, essays on the books of the Bible, letters...
As for whether he was wrong and about how much, someone would actually have to read something of his work. And to the writers of the 15 December article, that would be even more terrible than selecting passages at random from the Bible - before they did.
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Botzwana
Cedars you are correct in your assessment.
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NOLAW
The morons of the spim GB have once again condemned themselves with the spims they print in the WT.
Since my memory is not so strong can someone remind us how did it happen to Bible Students to adopt the name Jehovah's
Witnesses?
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wasblind
Since my memory is not so strong can someone remind us how did it happen to Bible Students to adopt the name Jehovah's
Witnesses?___NOLAW
On page 151 in the Proclaimers book A.H. Macmillan said that Rutherford was guided by the Lord
to change the name of the bible students, and it ask , which viewpoints do the facts support.
was it a stroke of genius or by divine providence . Bible facts say Jesus commanded in Acts 1:8 to be "witnesses of him"
and Matt 17:5 Jehovah said " This is my son, Listen to him"
Question: Why would Jehovah take away the authority he gave to Jesus in Matt 28:18
and give it to Rutherford ?
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blondie
The Jehovah's Witnesses began to emphasize their trademark house-to-house preaching in 1922.In spite of these efforts, attendance at their yearly Memorial dropped from a high of 90,434 in 1925 down to 17,380 in 1928, due to the previous power struggle, the failed predictions for the year 1925, and a number of significant doctrinal changes that alienated those who sided with Russell's views. By 1933, the year 1914 was reinterpreted as the beginning of Christ's presence and therefore the start of the "last days" rather than the terminal date in their chronology. Under Rutherford, the downward trend in membership would soon reverse itself, and the movement's membership grew to about 115,000 at the time of his death in 1942.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Jehovah's_Witnesses
Rutherford had to re-invent the product since so many Bible Students had left and started up their own groups. The WTS would still today like you to think there are no Bible Students any more. But I have met them and attended their services. Alive and kicking but admant that they are NOT jws and Russell did not found jws.
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wasblind
Correction: Info I found came from the Proclaimers book on page 152
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wasblind
Rutherford had to re-invent the product since so many Bible Students had left and started up their own groups.____Blondie
Hello Blondie
Definitley a stroke of genius and not divine providence as stated by Macmillan