Has anybody ever written to Bethel asking why we believe certain things and did you get a reply?

by EndofMysteries 16 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  The Searcher

  I wrote to Patterson and received a very patronising response telling me to look up the the different publications listed in their letter.

  Not only had they ignored the fact that I had cited or quoted all the Society's references on the subject, but they very pointedly refused to discuss relevant Scriptures which refuted the corrupt reasoning they offered.

  I had previously had conversations at different times with at least 4 elders regarding the topic (including the CBE - not that he's any wiser than the rest), and not one of them could offer one single word to contradict what I said, but again, not one of them has ever come back to me to show me where I'd got it wrong!!

  In fact one MS with whom I'd discussed the verse, actually revealed that a progressive Bible study had stopped his study, based on the Bible Teach book's explanation. Then a few months later, the MS came up to me in the KH and said, "I wish you'd never told me about Romans 6:7."

  It's not the truth that hurts - it's the lie and the liar!!
• 

  Vidiot

  Searcher: "I wish you'd never told me about Romans 6:7."

  What did he find so disturbing about it?
• 

  The Searcher

  @ VIDIOT

  It really hit him that the literal interpretation of Rom. 6:7 makes Christ's sacrifice so unneccessary - if our own death wipes out our sins!!

  Therefore, if the most evil person on the planet slips on a banana skin, cracks his skull & dies, it washes his sins away?

  What kind of logic is that for any Christian to accept? He's a thinker, and I feel that he will start to reason on a few more "truths".
• 

  Vidiot

  Searcher: "It really hit him that the literal interpretation of Rom. 6:7 makes Christ's sacrifice so unneccessary - if our own death wipes out our sins!"

  Ahh.

  Come to thing of it, I remember having a similar little "wait a minute" moment years ago, but at the time, I just chalked it up to the fact that I could never fully get a handle on the whole "ransom sacrifice"/"substitutionary atonement" concept anyway (other than the conclusion that it negated the possibility of evolution).

  Good catch.
• 

  EndofMysteries

  the searcher - Romans 6:7 - in your entire life, if sins amount to that your payment for them is death, all that means is that there is no need for a hell or torment after, that your death is the punishment for sin. BUT that is it. How do you get life again? Either God just brings you back since your death covered it, or if Christ is needed, that means that his death pays for those sins, allowing you to be resurrected since your own death was not needed. But again, sayins your sins are aquitted when you die doesn't mean that you have to be raised again, either God has to want to or that would be where Christ comes in.

  Also there are the scriptures about how if you have Christ, then your physical body will die because of sin, but you have also become spirit, and that part will live and depart the body on death.

  Those are the various possibilities I've seen in the scriptures.
• 

  Bobcat

  Searcher:

  "Not only had they ignored the fact that I had cited or quoted all the Society's references on the subject"

  They did exactly the same thing in mine. I said what the WT pubs said on the subject I addressed. The pubs merely made assertions about a certain point. So I ask them WHY do they say such-and-such is the case. I was trying to find out their reasoning on the subject at hand. I thought they were wrong, but I didn't say so in the letter. I was quite open to the possibility that I was wrong or had missed some obvious factor.

  The response was, 'Maybe you missed what these publications say on this subject.' They then quote the very pubs that I referred to in my letter.

  I later showed my letter and the response to several other elders and none of them could clarify anything. But for them it was simply a matter of, 'Well that's what mother says ...'

  I reckon, for a few people, it takes moments like these to start to wake up.

  Take Care
• 

  cobaltcupcake

  I also asked how if the understanding of the prophecy fulfillments in Revelation was something that we all should believe or if there is a possibility that it is all wrong. Some of it seemed so silly and baseless in applying it to the conventions and resolutions of the 1920's and 30's.

  That is what started me doubting that anything they were telling me was true. It was the pouring out of the bowls of God's wrath on the nations, and they said these bowls were resolutions passed by a few thousand people at a gathering in some obscure American city. How was that a global proclamation?

  My ex-father-in-law, I suspect, had the same doubts. He used to say, "Isn't it amazing how a bunch of old ladies sitting under the trees in Cedar Point fulfilled Bible prophecy?"

  I never wrote to the Society, but my ex-husband did, a number of times. He received condescending replies along the lines of, "There, there, brother, don't fret about a little thing like that. That's a matter for us big boys to handle."

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  The Odd Life of Jehovah's Witnesses