GHOST? SPIRIT? WRAITH? What the heck is holy spirit/HOLY SPIRIT?

by Terry 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Terry

  We all know people who have opinions on things they've never been educated about--but, that doesn't stop them from acting qualified, does it? No.

  From time to time I read and hear some amazing opinions spoken with confidence and authority with nothing to back all that up.

  I have watched Pat Robertson on TV close his eyes and receive "Word" from the spirit.

  I have met people who "talk" with God.

  Obviously these kinds of above-described activities are SUBJECTIVE.

  It would be like hearing about somebody else's toothache. It is THEIRS and not mine. I can empathize, but I don't actually feel it.

  But, if an X-ray with a cavity were taken and you showed me that, I could at least see proof beyond your complaint of pain.

  Understand?

  I've said all that to say this:

  WHAT IS HOLY SPIRIT?

  What I'm really asking is "How the heck do YOU know?"

  Is your opinion based on something other than subjective "feelings" on your part?

  I know what a PERSON is. I just don't know what a SPIRIT person is.

  You can assert Spirits, Ghosts, wraiths, simulacra and such--but, you can't objectively offer concrete evidence.

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  We all know Jehovah's Witnesses have a bug up their butt about DEMONS and such. They are highly superstitious. They are afraid.

  How big is one of these "demons?"

  You can pack over a thousand of them inside one person (according to the NT) and even transplace them into pigs!

  Are they tiny? Do they take up space?

  The cable TV show where "investigators" go about with instruments measuring "ghost" activity is laughable nonsense.

  The TV adverts and teasers always seem to show SOMETHING or other and yet, they end up with no evidence beyond surmise, feelings, spookiness.

  If God is a person, is Holy Spirit a person? How do you know for sure? What makes the two different in any meaningful way?

  WHAT IS THE SIN AGAINST the Holy Spirit?

  "Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin"—for they had said, "He has an unclean spirit."

  Why do so few people agree?

  Okay--your turn. Let's have some kind of believable evidence besides your "feelings", okay?
• 

  Terry

  The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society has taught holy spirit was first given at Pentecost 33 CE and ended in 1918.

  In 1919, Angels took over teaching the anointed remnant until the number of them began exceeding 144,000 in early 1932.

  A new doctrine was invented to explain the excess. The new teaching about OTHER SHEEP being (not Gentiles as Christendom teaches) but earth dwellers!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6ll7ohRsq4
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  Terry

  When holy spirit ended in 1918, so the Watch Tower teaches, ANGELS began taking over the job of teaching!

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSStbLwkhI4
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  Terry

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jRQqVygD0k
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  Terry

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jRQqVygD0k
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  Cold Steel

  What the Society puts forth is not only unscriptural, it is demonstrably false. So how did God reveal his “secrets” to his servants, the prophets? Was it an invisible Spirit that came upon them? Sometimes. Peter didn’t strike Ananias and Sapphira down (Acts 5) on his own accord. How did he know that they had “lied to God”? And by what authority did he cause them to forfeit their lives? Peter stated, “Why is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit?”

  Peter was ordained by Jesus, who gave the apostles the “keys of the kingdom” to bind in Heaven and on Earth. Peter, when Jesus asked him who he, Jesus, was, replied, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven.”

  These things all came through the Spirit of God. But Peter, the apostles, the ancient prophets—they also entertained angels and some even spoke to God directly, face to face. And though Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as a “him,” the Jehovah's Witnesses prefer to think of him as an active force (despite the fact that there’s no such thing as an “inactive” force).

  Not only were the members of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses never ordained by God, angels, or anyone else, and having no keys of governance over God’s earthly Kingdom, none of them has actually seen or spoken to God, an angel or to Jesus. And if Jesus appeared to his servants anciently, let them feel the prints in his hands and feet and taught them for 40 days before ascending into Heaven, then why can’t he do it now? If they have had a joint revelation from angels or from Jesus and can each testify that it happened, then I’ll take them more seriously; and we can determine when and how they received the keys of authority for this dispensation. But until then—until they have shown that the spiritual gifts of the ancient church belongs in a publishing company, excuse me for saying that their claims are false and that they, themselves, are false prophets and will be regarded as such at the Judgment.

  As for “sinning” against the Holy Spirit, or blaspheming him, since he is a revealer of Christ and a revelator of holy things, if you have it revealed to you that Jesus is the Christ by that Spirit, and then deny it and seek the murder of the Lord’s people, then you blaspheme against the Holy Spirit and become an eternal enemy to God. But I think that requires an irrefutable revelation to a person and then have that person turn as did the angels of Heaven in the Beginning. In other words, a person would have had to first acquire a certain knowledge, then throw it to be trampled by swine. Peter didn’t sin against the Holy Spirit when he thrice denied Christ, for he only denied an association and he had not yet been converted.

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  designs

  It was funny on the evangelical-jw website they would get unhinged when we used the term Holy Ghost (but it was KJV approved).
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  Cold Steel

  And with some justification. I've never liked the term "Holy Ghost," but I use it because the scriptures do. Ghost is generally defined now as "The spirit of a dead person, especially one believed to appear in bodily likeness to living persons or to haunt former habitats." Spirit, on the other hand, is defined as "The vital principle or animating force within living beings; incorporeal consciousness; the soul, considered as departing from the body of a person at death." So it's pretty much the same thing.

  Still, most people on the street think of "ghosts" of being the spirits of departed people and "spirits" as incorporeal beings or finer matter. A spirit can be an unembodied being while a ghost is a disembodied being. Since the Holy Spirit has never been embodied, it doesn't seem right to many people. But according to dictionary meanings, it's six of one....
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  Bart Belteshassur

  Terry- Do you mean the Holy Spirit or are you referring the the spirit holy? The two evidently have different meanings and are used in conjunction with each other in the greek text on very rare occassions, something which the churches fail to point out in their translations, which probably comes from their following of the Volgate although I have not checked the latin yet. I'll do it in the next 10 mins.
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  Terry

  Bart-

  Terry- Do you mean the Holy Spirit or are you referring the the spirit holy? The two evidently have different meanings and are used in conjunction with each other in the greek text

  You'll have to enlighten me on that one, Bart.

  The very idea of holiness is rife with possibility for fetishistic obsession.