It would be no different if they were wrong about armageddon.
A war comes, some survive, some didn't. That is what will happen regardless of anyone's theology.
What if Jehovah's Witnesses were right about Armageddon...
by Comatose 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
Cold Steel
OP: What if the Jehovah’s Witnesses were right, but god has changed his mind? According to the bible god can and does change his mind. The example of Jonah comes to mind. What if in the early years they had it right. The end was coming maybe even in 1975. Their first understanding of generation was right. But, then god saw things were getting better. God saw that people were doing okay on their own. God hit pause or even changed his mind.
No offense intended, but your view of Deity is a bit stilted. Please understand that God knows all things from the beginning. When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden, do you think for an instant that the Father didn’t know that they would partake of the forbidden fruit? He knows all things from the Beginning because, to him, it’s one eternal round. That’s why, when the fall occurred, that the Father could no longer communicate with man directly. The Father thence withdrew and Jehovah, known in the flesh as Jesus Christ, became the great Intercessor, Savior and Judge of mankind.
Jehovah was chosen in the beginning by the Father because he knew that man would sin. He didn’t wait for Adam to sin, then look around for an intercessor. In the same manner, God knew full well that Nineveh would repent and he used the occasion as a teaching moment for Jonah. My point is, that Yahweh only appears to change his mind according to man’s inability to comprehend him. When prophets attempt to change his mind, the questions he asks and the agreements he makes are all known to him in detail before the facts.
Wishing For the Death of Billions
Your comparison of Jonah with the Jehovah’s Witnesses is irony and is based on the dubious claim that the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses is God’s mouthpiece on Earth. And since this is a hypothetical situation, we’ll have to assume that Jehovah is not the Son, but the Father, and that he spoke anciently to mankind directly without an intercessor. We’ll also have to assume that he’s a changeable god, being loving and merciful one moment, then vindictive and vengeful the next; unpredictable, calling prophets in one age, then letting men appoint themselves in the next. Performing miracles, healing the sick, showing men visions and instructing them in one age, then withdrawing and letting unordained front men and elders act in his behalf in another.
So, since we must make these adjustments, we then must figure out how the Governing Body came up with the 1975 year. Did they collectively receive this year through revelation of the Holy Spirit? Did that spirit, the active force of God, whisper it into their minds? Or did they use mathematics? Did they change key dates in history and then count down through the aeons until they got to that year? Or did they offer an inspired guess?
Merciful or Vengeful?
Yes, God is merciful when people repent. But he’s also merciful to the ignorant, the misguided, the suffering. But he certainly didn’t change his mind regarding the destruction of Jerusalem, did he? The elect were scattered according to scripture, then gathered back to the lands of their inheritance (which is still going on). It’s one thing to prophesy destruction to a people who are being warned. After all, if he had intended to destroy Nineveh, why did he first warn them? It was to give them an incentive to repent. And btw, it didn’t last. A number of years later, Nineveh fell back into their old habits and they were destroyed, even as God had warned. So it isn’t that God changed his mind.
And finally, since this is a hypothetical, we have to assume that God is using some fairly inconsistent forms of prophecy. He said, originally, that Armageddon would take place in the Middle East, after the rise of a vicious ruler who would attack and destroy much of Jerusalem. Then, in the 19th Century, he changed his mind and decided it would be a worldwide war and an attack by the United Nations on a publishing company (most likely because it had refused to pay its dues to the international library, and you know how librarians are?) So he changes millennia of eschatological prophecy and now says Armageddon isn’t Armageddon, but Ragnarök, the great Nordic war between good and evil, from which an unprecedented time of peace will follow. It’s great legend, but poor scripture. So given that Jehovah has radically changed prophecy, then who knows what other things he’ll change?
Consistency of God
All this is reason enough for the consistency of God. Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses have to first dismiss the Organization from any scriptural role in end-time events. Like it or not, Jesus established a church in the Meridian of Time. It was called a “church” and it had officers who were called and ordained by Jesus himself. These leaders, in turn, used the Holy Spirit to call and ordain others. And since they had the binding power of the keys of the kingdom, which binds or looses on Heaven or Earth, those ordinations were valid and recognized by God, as were the ordinances they performed.
Now hit fast forward to our day. There’s no church, no revelation—just an obscure publishing company run by seven or eight men. Are they ordained? No. Are they called of God? Well, they say so, but in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Who has witnessed the calling of Governing Body members? Is the Organization a church? It doesn’t claim to be a church at all but an organization. Are the elders called and ordained “as was Aaron”? No, they are appointed with a handshake. Then, finally, how is it (really) that a declining non-political religious organization will earn the ire of the entire earth, to the extent that all nations suddenly attack it?
Perhaps the events of Armageddon and the Millennium didn’t happen as they were expected to happen because the Outfit is a “false prophet,” and the words of false prophets fail to come to pass.
.
.
-
Comatose
Do you realize this is an ex-JW site? lol Your views on god are fine, just like anyone elses views are fine for them personally. But, you act like you know something very clear and obvious. I don't know if you realize that what you say is strange to just about everyone on here who sees it.
-
anonymouz
The 8th King UN NGO allied Bethel KNOWS something big is about to happen soon. So do a lot of other people and researchers, theorists, groups, etc. It will not be "Armageddon" as Bethel misleads JWs to confuse them and aid the cessation of that formerly anti-UN ministry. It is already ceased as far as any accuracy now.
What is about to start will take a decade or so to resolve in a tribulation cycle starting and ending as per Matt24:29. That is because UN world government as 8th human kingdom is planning to rule the world, not destroy it, so even the "great tribulation" Bethel preaches is also not "the end of the world" according to their own Bible and rules of engagement of Armageddon.
Like WW1 and WW2 and cold war that birthed UN related renditions after those conflicts were resolved, a world tribulation of type engineered and designed, is for the chaos effect from which new order is established. This coming "new order" is a full UN centric but greatly expanded international, multi-national world government totality. Not just an international UN forum "image" of such a world government in progress, but the Rev17:12-18 and Rev16:13-16 real thing, global uni-polar ultimate power world government. (Dan11:42-45 final cycle).
And that is not going to occur tomorrow, it takes years to realize and a final globalization cycle aided by a tribulatory aided consolidation of world power upon a final national decline that must also recover (Isa41:1) into a "freedom from care" (Dan8:25) and a world "peace and security" (1Thess5:1-3) a number of years after inception of the final cycle. A completion phase is also a requirement of that international secular system itself.
Thus Bethel is NOT so brain dead as to not see this. As per internal UN NGO reality, they are merely aiding the process by also derailing and removing the JW organizational system to aid this final cycle in that sector of potential opposition in exposure of Daniel 11:30-45 as the 3rd (of 4) and 4th (of 4) UN placements in prophecy and world hisory and projections. And by that Bethel engineered deception they sell JWs a premature "the end" cycle and a handy self fulfilling prophecy of Bethel's financial and organizational destructions, over a couple years to aid the beginning of this final globalization phase.
Bethel full well knows (as do world elites) that final globalization cycle has a beginning as Dan11:42-43 financial pawning phase of globalization of national economies and finances, but they will sell that to JWs as terminal Daniel 11:44-45 attack phase misapplied and premature in the phasing, which it will not thus actually be, and cannot be in the process of actual world globalization into world governmental power. And that by prophecy AND the globalization projection itself.
Bethel states a tribulation is coming. That much is true. But it is Bethel that "can end any day now brothers!", not the overall world system. And that tribulation cycle must end as in the three previous world war/tribulation formulas presenting a form of, at that time not yet complete, world government in 1919, 1945 and 1990, and as stated plain as day at Matt24:29 the tribulation cycle ends. It ends into full world government 8th King actuality.Bethel knows what the real target is in the start of the final cycle as far as their operations, to attempt to shut down JWs permanently organizationally for starters. These delusions in JW theology aid that process.
And that is why they sell JWs a potential for great anxious confusion that can aid a Bethel implosion, internally aided by Bethel's top administration, and covered up with misapplied prophecy so JWs have no idea what is really going on. As far as an event or events coming up, the web has been full of that vibe in increasing fashion since even 911. The national financial condition of multi-100s-of-trillions in national debt and unfunded liabilities sets up the Daniel 11:42-43 finance/wealth cycle plainly obvious in that meaning of financial and monetary globalization first, upon total control of the "gold and the silver" basis of world wealth, and all national holdings as the "all the desirable things of Egypt", as "Egypt" is finale "King South" national declination, southbound power in symbol, upon which international power ascends to apex "King North".
International global government power is what King North is as 8th King ultimately. (Dan11:27-45) Another detail Bethel also subverts successfully. (Dan11:30-31; Dan8:11-14). It's getting a little too logical Bethel is a UN allied troop of expert actors leading JWs into an engineered multi-year purposeful catastrophe on a worldwide scale as merely part of the inception activities of the final world globalization cycle that has to go on after that inception, for another 10 years, plus/minus.
Many in the world already know the UN plans to be the center of a real uni-polar world government. (Even Ron Paul (and Vladimir Putin, and many others) plainly describes it as such) And that is exactly what the "8th King" will achieve for a while. -
blondie
I would not want to live forever amongst the WTS organization and its adherents...........hell on earth.
-
jonahstourguide
You know, some of the older ex and current jws in the world and on this site do often shake their heads
in honest recognition of the errors that have been made.
Living in denial gets you nowhere,,, speaking from experience.
I reckon Pastor Dylan sums it up to my way of thinking.
"you gonna have to serve somebody" and we all do in some way shape or form.
P.S. Comatose, go easy on me mate will ya!!!!! Would have been a good cruise if they didnt chuck him overboard !
-
Cold Steel
Comatose: Do you realize this is an ex-JW site? lol Your views on god are fine, just like anyone elses views are fine for them personally. But, you act like you know something very clear and obvious. I don't know if you realize that what you say is strange to just about everyone on here who sees it.
Well, Coma, the JWs are the only ones I know of who don't follow the biblical eschatological exegesis regarding Armageddon. Yes, it sounds strange to them. Probably because they've never heard it before. People can believe it or not; I'm certain some folks think the entire concept is a fairy tale. The thing is, JWs believe that Jerusalem is "spiritual" and they just scratch it out and write in world, then they scratch out Judah and write in Jehovah's Witnesses.
Okay, I'm oversimplifying it somewhat, but the scripture can be either literal, spiritual or both. Armageddon, according to the Bible goes down like this. A world leader pops up who represents a past earthly empire. Lots of evangelicals think it's Rome, but author Joel Richardson believes it's the Turkish Caliphate. The empire is one that is, is not, and is again. If one takes the biblical border of this kingdom, then it is the Caliphate, not Rome. Thus, the Beast, though said to rule over all nations of the world, will only occupy the nations surrounding Israel. Anyway, this Beast brings a massive army "down" (from the north) and is stopped in the valley of Armageddon by the two witnesses. After three and a half years, the Beast will break free, kill the two witnesses and three and a half days later, they arise and ascend into the air to meet the returning Messiah.
This is not just the Christian expectation, but also the Jewish and Muslim expectations. When the Romans descended on Jerusalem in 70 A.D., many of the Jews expected to be rescued by their Messiah. But Jesus had pronounced the doom of the city, and the ancient prophets declared that before the coming of the Messiah in glory, that Judah must be scattered to the four corners of the earth and then gathered. After that, then Armageddon and the return of Christ.
So, again, if this is new it doesn't mean it's "different." It means that to get to the JW interpretation, the scripture must be altered and mangled. Don't believe me? Read Zechariah 12-14, Ezekiel 38-39, and Revelation 11-12. Note that in Revelation 11, that John is given a reed to measure the temple, but what temple? The second temple already was destroyed. So a third temple, he is saying, must be built before the return of the Savior. It hasn't been built yet, so Armageddon cannot take place yet. Also note that the city under seige in all of these scriptures, is Jerusalem.
In other words, the JWs have to make their members read the Watchtower to understand their view of Armageddon. If they read the Bible, they will slip right into cognative dissonance and they won't be able to reconcile it.
.
-
NewYork44M
Well, if they "were" right about Armageddon, then the event would be a part of history. Since they were not right about Armageddon, perhaps your question should be what if they will be correctabout Armageddon. But if that is the question, I am confused about what the current beliefs are related to Armageddon.
-
Finkelstein
The only thing the WTS. got right about Armageddon is that its a great marketing tool to draw attention to literature produced by a publishing house..
They are still doing it today.
Fear both sells and and empowers.
The WTS/JWS have always exploited ignorant naive people to their own prospering advantage.
-
smiddy
You might as well ask what if the World Wide Church of God is right about Armageddon ?
What if the Christadelphians are right about Armageddon ?
Jehovahs Witnesses are not unique in beleiving or predicting Armageddon , it is rife in christian sects using the bible.
smiddy
