Angels and Jehovah's Witnesses

by Cold Steel 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  return of parakeet

  Cold Steel: " What would the reaction of the church be if one of the Governing Body claimed to have seen an angel or have an angelic experience?

  By "angelic experience" I mean being shown future events by an angelic presence. "

  It would be a disaster for the WTS of one of the gb claimed a direct communication with a supernatural entity of any kind and it was made public.

  The reason is that over the length of its history (about 140 years or so), the WT has made a lot of outright predictions and a few guarded predictions about the end of times, Jesus's second coming, armageddon, etc. All have failed to materialize.

  The gb wiggles out of these failures by claiming they (the gb) are only "spirit-directed," not in actual communication with angels or god or whatever. They don't claim to be direct prophets of God. This allows them to rewrite their history of failures and keep their adherents in line by claiming that God's "light" (that is, his indirect guidance) keeps getting brighter as "the end" approaches.

  There are no magical gold tablets or peep stones" or directly "revealed" info about "future events" in the dub religion.

  That's sort of thing is the province of Mormons.
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  Cold Steel

  Yes, the LDS faith is the only Christian denomination that claims revelation and divine guidance, and it doesn't apologize for it. In fact, it was the absence of apostles and prophets in today's religious world that eventually led me to it. But unlike Joan of Arc, Ellen G. White and others throughout history, including Islam, "Mormonism" has witnesses to every major foundational revelatory event such as the advent of the Book of Mormon (3 witnesses who saw the plates, the angel and heard the voice of God declaring it was true, and 8 witnesses who saw the plates, hefted them, but saw no angel or vision), the restoration of both priesthoods including Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, and the vision of the Three Degrees of Glory, which included Sidney Rigdon. Many other witnesses said they felt the plates in the burlap sack Joseph kept them in and, later, when apostles were called and ordained to fill a quorum, these men also had their own revelation and visions. One of these men trekked miles in a blizzard with only a frozen piece of stale bread to suck on. Another was commanded by the Lord to visit Jerusalem and dedicate it for the return of the Jews. He suffered sickness through much of his journey in the holds of a ship, yet was shown in vision that Judah would soon begin its trek to the lands of their inheritance. Then there were the miracles, the healings, the raising from the dead and restoring vision to the blind. These also were witnesses by many believers and non-believers. So too was the miracle of the sea gulls and the crickets in early Utah.

  Like the ancient church, the LDS church has no fixed canon of scripture. We leave it open in the event that when the Lord does reveal something new, we don't slam the doors in His face.

  Mormonism wasn't built on just one man, but upon many who were called of God as was Aaron. Like ancient Christianity, it, too, was accused of blasphemy and was ridiculed by critics. Yet future events will bear out its story. I would think if God were going to restore His church to the earth, that He would do it through revelation, the same way He's done it in the past. But that's another story.

  
  
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  sir82

  Yet future events will bear out its story.

  Future events will miraculously make the DNA of Native Americans correspond to that of ancient Hebrews?

  Can't wait for that.
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  Cold Steel

  Wish you boys could go find these for yourselves instead of me doing the searches, but what the heck. Thing about apologetics is that it's a whole lot easier throwing out the objections than reading the answers.

  The Book of Mormon and DNA Research by Daniel C. Peterson

  1. About the Contributors
  2. Introduction by: Daniel C. Peterson
  3. The Problematic Role of DNA Testing in Unraveling Human History by: John L. Sorenson
  4. A Few Thoughts from a Believing DNA Scientist by: John M. Butler
  5. Before DNA by: John L. Sorenson, and Matthew Roper
  6. Addressing Questions surrounding the Book of Mormon and DNA Research by: John M. Butler
  7. DNA and the Book of Mormon: A Phylogenetic Perspective by: Michael F. Whiting
  8. Detecting Lehi's Genetic Signature: Possible, Probable, or Not? by: David A. McClellan
  9. Who Are the Children of Lehi? by: D. Jeffrey Meldrum, and Trent D. Stephens
  10. Nephi's Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations by: Matthew Roper
  11. Swimming in the Gene Pool: Israelite Kinship Relations, Genes, and Genealogy by: Matthew Roper
  12. Elusive Israel and the Numerical Dynamics of Population Mixing by: Brian D. Stubbs
  13. Index
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  Cold Steel

  By the way, lest we forget, the whole topic here is that if God's going to start a religion, is He going to do it under the cover of darkness or is He going to speak as He always has, through angels, prophets, visions, prophecy, etc.? The Jehovah's Witnesses just assumed themselves into positions of authority. You may not buy Mormonism...that's fine...but how else is God going to do things?

  We Mormons at least have a claim and we have resources that can show our claims are at least plausible on many accounts. But without divine authority, what is any religion? And how can JWs and others call other churches "manmade" when they, themselves, also seem manmade?

  Just sayin'.