by DS211 34 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Ok i know ive been starting threads like a maniac but heres one. Where in the heck d they get the "when we survive armageddon we will probably have to start rebuilding while we resurrect ones, teach them, plant food, clean the planet, and GROW TO PERFECTION"???? Doesnt the scripture say that we die corrupted but raised an incorruptible body? If its incorruptible? Where did witnesses get this? Again, i havent found anything in theBible about growing to perfection....
DS
I think the idea comes from when Jesus restored eyesight to the blind man. He didn't do it all at once. It was done in stages. So the reasoning is that since Jesus restored this blind man's eyes in stages, that is how our perfection will be restored. I think...
The idea of having to grow to perfection follows from the reading of the talking snake story and
inserting that A&E "lost perfection" when they disobeyed.
We, carrying their genes, all suffer the "dent in the bread pan syndrome".
If the idea of a talking snake is questionable, how much more so a misreading of what followed? no matter how often repeated and by how many?
It the story, it appears Adam & Eve really never lost their perfect initial condition, because the "powers to be" had to block the way to the means to get extended life, THE TREE.
So: the 12 gates* will SOON open again, the angels instructed to stand down, the trees to heal made accessible to the worthy.
SOON, within the overlapping generation, by the end of -(or during?)- the millenium.
overspun snake(oil) stories?
* not the babylonian "pearly heavenly" gates, but the millenium version, of the city descending to EARTH from above.
I think they came up with it for several reasons:
1. Since they don't believe fleshly Israel has any future, the millennial kingdom CAN'T be a fulfillment of OT promises to the Jews, as much a Christendom believes to be the reason for it. The WTS has to come up with some OTHER reason to have a millennial kingdom at all. That is, they have to have some explanation as to why Jehovah wouldn't just immediately usher in the final paradise earth.
2. Revelation 20:5 also creates a problem for the WTS, because it says that "the rest of the dead did not come to life until the end of the thousand years." That sounds like the righteous dead are resurrected at the beginning of the millennium and the unrighteous dead are only raised at the end of the millennium for purposes of their final condemnatory judgment. But that makes no sense to an organization that believes in soul sleep. Why resurrect someone from non-existence only to immediately condemn him for his sins and annihilate him back into non-existence?
So they interpret the verse SYMBOLICALLY to mean that the earthly class are still imperfect at their resurrection and they won't FULLY come to life until the end, i.e. when they have progressed to perfection.
3. Why, then, the millennial kingdom? The WT has turned it into a purgatory where people have a CHANCE to prove their worthiness by somehow progressing to perfection under the wise guidance of -- who else? -- the anointed 144,000, who will allegedly be in heaven helping Jesus administer the program.
4. How sinful people can progress to perfection over 1000 years isn't specified, but with the WTS, you can bet that it's the ultimate works system. You have to prove your integrity over 1000 years by your works. If you aren't progressing, you can be annihilated at any time.
It's also the ultimate WTS indoctrination process. You'll be getting those "new scrolls," and you'll have 1000 years to learn to obey them and to get with the program so you will be ready for the final test by Satan at the end.
In other words, the 1000 years will be a perpetual series of KH meetings and Watchtower conventions and assemblies.
Just think of how grateful that will make you for the faithful and discreet slave!
C.T. Russell took this 'paradise restored' notion directly from the teachings of the Adventists (140 years ago).
All Jehovah's Witnesses are now given the same picture - all the time - in the magazines, murals at assembly halls, in talks & prayers and in the calendars.
ginger
Yea a friend said to me once "well think of what mankinds done just in the last few hundred years....!certainly a thousand years is all youll need to fix things."..hmmm sounds almost better to stay dead.....and honestly it looks bad on the anointed and jesus' part if thats true. Thats like a kid coming in and wrecking your room and throwing paint all over your walls and your ma or dad saying "you better clean that mess up". So we have to clean up billions of dead bodies, trash, rubble, etc and Christ and the anointed will just watch and supervise? Sounds like ancient egypt...one may then conclude death to be the better option according to thrr belief.
The WTBTS epitomizes what happens when EVERYTHING that you teach is based on a false premise. Also, everything that they teach serves the purpose of legitamizing their own existence. So, if the WTBTS has no idea of what the future will be, and they are wrong about "growing to perfection", then what the hell do we need them for? There goes all the building, all the hard-hats, all the safety glasses, all the construction work, all the ORGANIZING for 1,000 years. All the BS the JWs do now, preparing for the 1,000 years becomes useless. All things WTBTS become exposed as false. Once the sheeple realize that they are giving away their time, money and lives for nothing, the GB lose ALL power of their masses of worshippers.
Once the "paradise" is exposed for a fraud, the WTBTS goes out of business. Hence the need for Unity of thought.
DD
The thing I don't get about the whole progress to perfection is this: If we are not perfect now, which we sin all the time, how is it we are going to be able to progress to perfection without sinning and being zapped into nothing if we are going to start from where we are? It doesn't add up. If one sins in the progress they are poof gone, right? So the only way for that to make sense it would have to be not a progression but an instant perfection.
Also there is no scriptural proof of this so called progression.
As well as what others have stated... Armageddon occurrs at the end of the thousand years, not at the beginning. It is not a second judgment on those who are already in the Kingdom... these ones have crossed over from death to life, in Christ. Armageddon is 'against' those who ride out against the Kingdom and the people in the Kingdom. They cannot enter the kingdom, and fire from heaven devours them. Devours them... but does not devour those in the Kingdom... because those in the Kingdom already have been made clean by fire (holy spirit), and so fire from heaven does not hurt them.
Timing:
There is the tribulation, at the end of which, Christ comes and gathers his people to Him (his brothers who rule with Him a thousand years, who have been given white robes - the spirit body, uncorrupted), and then establishes his kingdom and separates the sheep (subjects OF the kingdom) and the goats (those not permitted into the kingdom)
At the end of the thousand years, the goats, misled by Satan who tells them that they may take the kingdom and the eternal life within it for themselves (and not die... in the same manner that he told Adam and Eve that they could eat and be like God and not die)... these ones come against the kingdom. Neither God nor Christ nor those who belong to them have pursued the 'goats', or rode out to destroy them. The goats ride out to destroy the kingdom and those within it. (contrary to the wts depictions) But fire from heaven devours them and no one in the Kingdom of God is harmed. (that is armageddon... the war of God)
Then comes the second resurrection, the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment begins... some are raised to life (putting on the white robe... which is the incorruptible body) and they are brought into the Kingdom, and some are raised to judgment and death (the second death).
....
Armageddon does not occur until the end of the thousand years. The resurrection of the dead (second resurrection) and judgment does not occur until after armageddon. The first resurrection are those who belong to Christ... those still alive when He comes, and those who have fallen asleep and who wait under the altar, but were given their white robes and told to wait just a little longer, until the full number of their brothers have come. (Revelation 6:11)
Notice also how the wts teaches that people can come to perfection on their own, somehow? There is no Christ in their teaching. There is no blood of the lamb covering them, so that they are made clean in Him. There is no love (which perfection IS) Chirst is once again not part of their 'theology', except as a figurehead or footnote.
Peace to you,
tammy
It's an outgrowth of social conservatism wedded to Biblical literalism.
One of the fundamental axioms of conservative ideology is the assertion that humanity is fundamentally and irrevocably flawed.
However, to the conservative religionist, God is perfect ('cause He's God, duh), therefore nothing he created could possibly be imperfect, therefore humanity must have been perfect at one point, until something happened to screw it all up. This is how the events in the Genesis creation narrative came to be viewed as (necessarily) literal history among fundamentalists; it provides an effective cause-and-effect explanation.
Understandably, this can and sometimes does foster a distate and resentment of humanity's percieved imperfection, and thusly, an overdeveloped desire to achieve perfection.
Which, of course, is impossible (and therefore frustrating), 'cause there's no such thing.
