by pixel 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Thought it would be good to have the definition of:
an·ti·type
I first began my association with Jehovah's Witnesses circa 1959.
All you heard at the Kingdom Hall was "Type/Antiype."
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
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You know how archaeologists and paleontologists sift through strata for evidence of bygone eras?
The same layers or stratum exist for the ever-changing "truth" in the Watchtower religion.
The Pastor Russell era was dominated by Pyramids and Date-setting nonsense as well as character development and rapture.
The Rutherford Era was dominated by confrontations and doomsaying.
The Knorr Era was a Golden Era of missionary zeal and Mormon-like witnessing and mugging for the camera at big conventions. The type/antitype
teachings were pure bullshit from the pen of Fred Franz, of course.
Toward the end of the Knorr Era, Freddy went off the rails with 1975 (hearkening back to the bygone days of old) and a few lawyers jumped in and saved the day by tearing the GB away from one-man-rule.
Since that time, the religion has been like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime cleaning up evidence of wrongdoing and erasing
fingerprints.
Pointing the finger and blame-shifting pretty much deflected the heat onto former members.
Today we are living in an era of the IGNORAMUS JW who knows next to nothing about the actual history of the Society.
Dimwits mouth slogans and point blinkered amateur Christians toward multi-media indoctrination.
It's a great time to be a JW. You don't have to be arrested, go to prison, face the Nazis, argue before a Draft Board or explain the Gentile Times.
Today is Easy Street compared to when I was a mindless robot!
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I was at a local hardware shop this weekend and a witness tried to preach to me by handing out a flyer from the campaign (a little late no?). I asked him "How do you know we are in the end?" He said "times have never been worse". I responded by asking "So, would you rather be alive in 1938 in Nazi Germany? Werent you all put in concentration camps too?" (He didnt know I used to be a witness) I then asked "or would you rather have been alive during medieval times when people had no rights, slavery was rampant and disease was abundant?" He said nothing. I then said " do me a favor tomorrow morning as you sit in your air conditioned house, drink your coffee and enjoy your breakfast with your children in relative peace ask yourself if times are worse than ever before!
I wondered if I went to far but if they can go about telling everyone how wrong they are why cant I?
Yes Terry, they have it easy street. I think they are more brainwashed now than in the past. At least they would discuss the deeper things and think to a certain degree. Now they are truly mindless.
Terry is absolutely right. In the 1950s and 60s when I was very active, I remember hearing those terms and examples in almost every KH talk or Watchtower study. We had one brother who was really caught up in that crap. He claimed to have been a Bible scholar before he became a JW and never failed to mention that he had a degree from some college. (I learned later that he got his AA degree from San Bernardino City College, but never found out what his major actually was). Not exactly what I consider an expert by any means.
He was really into types and anti-types and loved to refer to both "God and Magog." (I think this was mostyl due to a science fiction movie popular at the time that had two quirky and unpleasant robots who turned on their human masters - one being named Gog and the other Magog. Until recently I doubt if JWs really paid much attention to those names/character/characters.
However, Gog was supposed to be a person or a tribe. Magog was a tribe or land area, not a person. Anyway, this brother would always insert these entities into his public talks and then go all Garner Ted Armstrong on us. His opinion, which was quite prevalent at the time, was that Gog was the type for the King of the North. The anti-type was Russia + communist China. He would at times suggest that China and Russia would exchange the title at some point in the future depending on who became more powerful. Remember that thanks to Korea and Viet Nam wars, China was cast into the role of the USA / UK's main enemy and therefore was considered by some as the real King of the North. I always thought it was interesting that the USA and UK were cast as the King(s) of the South when their latitudes were the same as most of Russia and China. Most considered our support of Israel as putting us in that region and therefore "south" for prophetic purposes.
It will be interesting to see how the GB eases out of their use of types/anti-types and covers up their past history of King of the North failed prophecy.
One brother who finally got tired of all the type / anti-type BS told me that maybe we should just look at all those people and places mentioned in the Bible for what they were - just as we would the Kings of England or historic characters from the Middle Ages.
JV
Russell suggested that discussion of types should be limited to those clearly defined in scripture. The Watchtower abandoned that all most immediately after he died. P. S. L. Johnson published a serialized commentary on Jeremiah. Rutherford responded in the Watch Tower and typology infected the magazine for decades.
Appealing to types was one of wt's way to indentify with what many saw the pragon of Truth, the bible, the book they swore by.
The typing was fun. The bigger and better Moses,
The king of TYRE = Satan in his 'angel of light'- beauty.
The greater Jehuh= Mario Andretti, Schuhmaker of late.
possibilities vast with the cast of fictional bible chararcters.
Terry: Typically great analogies by you.
