Wow some people can turn a fun thread into a bore.
I would choose GC in a heartbeat. I dont want to be up in heaven like some monk. I want to explore the galaxy and live a fulfilled life doing everything you cant do during these 70 years.
Great Crowd Or Anointed...Your Choice!
by Cold Steel 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Theocratic Sedition
An eternity of gardening isnt that appealing to be honest with you.
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LostGeneration
ColdSteel, as a born-in, it is drummed into you as a little kid that you will have all kinds of animals and a garden forever, if you make it through the big A. Of course, as a child, this sounds like the shizzle.
When you grow up, you have a good two decades of indoctrination behind you. Add to that the creepy memorial that happens once a year, where if anyone partakes its kind of talked about in a hush-hush manner on the car ride home. It is more discouragement from ever thinking you want to be a part of that.
So you grow up year after year, thinking about how great and grand the paradise earth is going to be, and how you don't even know WTF the partakers are going to be doing up in heaven.
Just talking from a born ins perspective, converts probably have a much harder time with the 144k idea, especially if they come from another Christian denomination.
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Cold Steel
I would choose GC in a heartbeat. I don’t want to be up in heaven like some monk. I want to explore the galaxy and live a fulfilled life doing everything you cant do during these 70 years.
Now this is what I was after. What makes you think you’d be living as a “monk” in heaven? Your answer reflects a preconceived idea or notion, and it’s based on years of reading articles and listening to talks in church. But if you start with a fresh sheet of paper, you might find that being resurrected as a spirit in JW eschatology might be way preferable to living on an earthly paradise.
An eternity of gardening isn’t that appealing to be honest with you.
This, too, is a preconceived notion. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve (to my knowledge) never had to do any planting or reaping. Fruit just kind of fell into their hands and they didn’t eat animals. But pictures in the Watchtower and Awake! show people sowing and reaping crops, so it gets in peoples’ minds that that will be the way things will be. Actually, the scriptures nowhere state that the Earth will be a garden paradise; however, that’s the way the Governing Body says it will be. As LostGeneration said, “it is drummed into you as a little kid that you will have all kinds of animals and a garden forever, if you make it through” Armageddon. But can you imagine living in a garden forever? Apparently JWs don’t think about that. Forever is one hell of a long time. Adam and Eve, by partaking of the forbidden fruit, had their intellects unlocked and became as gods, knowing good from evil. People are going to need to progress, to stretch their wings (figuratively speaking). And how can they do that in a garden?
When you grow up, you have a good two decades of indoctrination behind you. Add to that the creepy memorial that happens once a year, where if anyone partakes its kind of talked about in a hush-hush manner on the car ride home. It is more discouragement from ever thinking you want to be a part of that.
Well, let’s say I’m a member in good standing and I partake of the Memorial. Are you saying that people would talk about me behind my back? If so, would anyone approach me directly…say an elder? You say the Memorial is “creepy.” How so? Does anyone ever partake of the emblems, or do they pass it around and no one does anything? There are some elements to this that do sound creepy.
So you grow up year after year, thinking about how great and grand the paradise earth is going to be, and how you don't even know WTF the partakers are going to be doing up in heaven.
Interesting that you speak of “up in heaven.” Are you telling me that no one has ever questioned living an eternity on a planet in a garden? I guess they’re not what you would call deep thinkers. Didn’t anyone ever think that eternity is an awful long time to spend on a single planet in a garden setting? We mortals tend to think in terms of years and decades; however, what happens when one thinks of two hundred billion years? And that’s just a dash in eternity. One split second. There is no finite anymore, just a neverending stretch of what? It’s a shallow theology. But what the heck…whatever the JW “heaven” is like, it’s got to beat an eternity on a floating rock covered with more rock and vegetation. Even if it is a veritable paradise.
Me, I’d think being a spirit would be a better gig. Like I said, a spirit’s gotta be able to get around faster and easier, plus there are whole galaxies to explore. Suns, planets, black holes…other civilizations, possibly some creations of your own. The scriptures indicate that what we see, we see through a glass darkly, and our minds can’t contain what has not been revealed. When I first found out about the two resurrection classes in the church, I thought, Who’d ever want to be of the earthly class? So what better way than to ask here.