Does every verse of Isaiah apply to today?

by Far North 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Far North

  Last night at the book study they spent an entire hour covering 11 verses in the book of Isaiah. Using pictures and scriptures from all over the Bible every verse has a lesson for us today. Is this really true or is it just talented writing? When my wife wondered why I miss so many Book Studies I told her I think it's redundant to spend three years doing a verse by verse study of Isaiah. By the time you get ready for the meeting, go and come back you have spent two hours studying a few verses you can read in two minutes.

  In the study last night they were all over the place making application of Rutherford's imprisonment, token service and Nazi persecution. The point was made that those who fell away when the end didn't come in 1914 were the impurities skimmed off the top of the refined metal. The conductor said that those who fell away after 1975 or who leave today because they get tired of waiting are also imputities being skimmed off the organization. I almost yelled out, "If the organization didn't make so many false predictions maybe there would be less disappointed people!".

  Maybe some day I'll have the backbone to say it. Maybe it's time for me to be skimmed off! In the meantime I look for any excuse I can to miss the bookstudy. Like I told my wife, "In fifteen years they will write another Isaiah book and it will all be changed!" I think of the hundreds of Book Studies I attended as we studied the Babylon The Great book over and over again in the 1960's and how much was changed in the Revelation Climax book. I should of used the time to take some night courses at the community college.

  Off the subject, the next time I screw up at work I'm going to tell managment they can't get upset with me because I now have new light on how to do things and this is only revealed to me gradually, usually after the fact so I can't be held accountable for my mistakes and they need to continue to have perfect trust in me. Then I'll ask for a big raise!
• 

  musky

  LOL. I like your style! Welcome Far North. I think that an entire study could be spent on only one verse. I do not have a problem with that. The problem is, it is all strict adherence to the schedule. All our thinking has been done for us. Its no wonder only a few verses are agonizing! If we all could feel free to make our own comments and say how these verses impact us personally (independant thinking warning), The study would be great. As a young boy at the book study it was the Ezekials prophecy book? or babylon the great book? can't remember. It was agony for me! I understood nothing. I was thinking about kickball, having fun, etc. I used to watch the clock slooowwwllly drag by. I felt so bad, because I knew it was the truth, and if I did not enjoy it there must be something wrong with me.

  btw, good luck finding a new job!
• 

  Scully

  Well to answer the question you posed about every verse of Isaiah:

  No, I don't think every verse has a modern application. I also don't think it's clever writing on their part.

  What the WTS has done over the years, and will continue to do as long as they have people who are willing to swallow their swill, is fabricate false associations between the Bible and whatever is happening in the current world situation. You see, JWs are taught that they have to watch for that "sign" that the end is near. And because the WTS says that we are living in the "last days", they also like to point out, at every opportunity, things that seem to prove their beliefs are true. Because, if we aren't living in the "last days", then the preaching work doesn't make sense. But then there's the circular reasoning that because JWs are preaching, we must be in the "last days". However, the WTS has said that we are in the "last days", so JWs must engage in the preaching work.

  So every little thing that happens in the universe has something to do with the JWs. They pull events from history - like the way a few handfuls of JWs were imprisoned in Nazi Germany - and extrapolate that as meaning that they had God's favour because they were so harshly persecuted. (Try to figure out how the numbers started out at around just over 300 JWs dying in the camps, to over 6000 in the Proclaimers book.) Do you suppose that maybe the Jews were more favoured by God because Hitler persecuted, imprisoned and killed more than 6 million of them?? The JWs will have an answer for that too - the Jews rejected Jesus and this was part of their divine punishment. More circular reasoning - they have to prove something they've said is "logically correct", so they attribute significance to something like a few Bible verses to support the claim they make.

  Everything about everything has to do with JWs, Jehovah or Satan manoeuvering political leaders to start Armageddon or restrain Jehovah's hand because the preaching work isn't completed yet.

  It's all about circular reasoning.

  By the way, I wouldn't recommend your proposed idea at work, it's only effective on brainwashed cult members.

  Love, Scully
• 

  LeslieV

  First welcome Far North!!!! Since you are beginning to reason using your own mind..it will not take long before you are sick of dealing with their silly cult thinking. Just don't let anyone yet know that you visit this board until you are ready to leave. There is alot of encouragement here and open thinking. Something right now you have not been able to use. Good luck in your journey of pealing away those layers that the borg places over your eyes. We are all here for you.

  Leslie
• 

  blondie

  Just the comment my husband and I made, Far North, how they grasp at making every verse apply.

  I just focus on 1919 supposedly being the year that Jesus returned to the temple to inspect it and found only the Bible Students (later JWs) clean spiritually (this was not understood until 1922). This in spite of:

  It was under stood that the great tribulation had an opening phase that started in 1914 was was temporarily suspended in 1918 to start up again at Armageddon (this was changed in 1969 to be understood that the great tribulation had not yet begun).

  Separation of sheep and goats understood to be happening right then in 1923 (changed in 1995 to after the great tribulation starts)

  Until 1925, Armageddon was understood to be a social revolution used by God to overthrow existing institutions.

  Believing that Abraham, Moses, David, and others would be resurrected in 1925 because the Kingdom would be in complete control

  Celebrating Christmas until after 1926

  FDS not discerned as the "entire spirit body of anointed on earth" until 1927

  In 1929 superior authorities understood to be Jehovah and Jesus (changed back to secular governments in 1962)

  Using the cross on the cover of the WT until 1936.

  Looks to me like the Bible Students/JWs were not so clean spiritually.

  Blondie (Welcome to the board, great comment!)

  Edited by - Blondie on 1 January 2003 10:33:17
• 

  Carlo

  No, it does only apply to some goat-herders some thousand years ago. To think that anything in the socalled bible applies to anything today, is pure nonsense.

  Carlo
• 

  minimus

  The Book Study is one hour of AGONIZING PAIN. Due to "work", I've been to 2 bookstudies in 2 months. Dental surgery without anesthesia is more inviting than this tedious crap. To actually believe that JW's fulfill EVERYTHING in the Bible is stupid.The best part of any JW application is that no matter how wrong they were, no matter how many times God had to discipline them, they always were his favored people. They could still do no wrong. Booze Rutherford was an angry man. You have to wonder what happened to him while he was in prison.( maybe someone tried to get more than the Kingdom message). To think that everything he said was in direct fulfillment of Bible prophecy is unbelievable.Yet, millions of JW's readily read and digest this defecation, and then try to force-feed others into believing this excrement......I HATE this Isaiah book!!!.....(just in case you didn't catch my drift).
• 

  johnny cip

  welcome far north;; don't forget all the conventions of the 1920's were forfullment of the prophecies of rev. 5 or 6 with the seven bowls being poured out on the jw's at the time blondie gave a little of thaqt rotten spritual food at the proper time... try this site JW RESEARCH.. it has a lot of wt shit from the 20's... all being preached at those conventions of 1919, 1922 cedar point ohio.. etc... what were the wt advertizing then as a new wt calls these conventions bible truth ... a hard look into the wt in the teens and the 20's shows how they lie today about that time... the research on this stuff is a killer as the wt mag's always glorify a history of false prophecies and quack medicine. etc trust me this research will make your head SPIN.... GOOD LUCK JOHN
• 

  troucul

  Isn't there a scripture in Isaiah that talks about "people stabbing themselves all over with many pains"? I've thought about that scripture over the past few months, (and thinking about a rendition of that verse tattooed on my back)...I wonder if that verse applies particularly to victims of the 'crotchtower'. People wasting their lives away, stabbing themselves, inflicting damage on their own souls, as it were. I think it applies today, more so than ever.
• 

  Shakita

  Hi Far North,

  Welcome to the board. One reason I can't attend any more meetings is because of what I found out about the WT. I gave 25 years of my life to this organization and all the while they were either withholding information or outright lying. Obviously, not everything in the book of Isaiah has a modern fulfillment. Much of what was written had a fulfillment in ancient times, some were fulfilled with the sacrifice of Jesus in the first century, and some have a future fulfillment.

  Ask yourself this question Far North. If God is a God of love, why would he make salvation come through an obscure and controversial sect wherein its leader at one time, Joseph Rutherford, applied scriptures to himself? First of al,l it's the height of arrogance and pride to apply scripture to oneself. How egotistical and selfish. Certainly the scripture at Rev. 11 that big Joe liked to apply to himself shows how pompous he really was. You know, where he says that the US governments imprisonment of himself and his other cronies in 1918 fulfilled Rev. 11 where it talks about two witnesses prophesying in sackcloth and ashes for 1,260 days. Then the wild beast ascends out of the abyss and kills them, supposedly representing Rutherford et.al imprisonment and having the preaching work silenced. After 3 and a half days spirit of life from God enters them and they stand on their feet. According to Rutherford, after they were released from prison the preaching work resumed and "their enemies beheld them." Who says that the Bible students and later the Jehovah's Witnesses were the only ones preching the good news? Jesus said this good news of the kingdom would be preached throughout the entire inhabited earth. He didn't specify that only one particular group would fulfill his words.

  If the scriptures are to be understood by all mankind how can they have such a limited application? Would it be just for God to annihilate 6 billion people based on how they reacted to Rutherford's railings? The problem has always been, Far North, what right does any man or organization have to divert attention from Jesus to themselves. According to John 14:6 Jesus said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." It doesn't say, the Watchtower Society is the way and the truth and the life. It doesn'ty say that No one comes to the Father except through Russell, Rutherford, Knorr, Franz, Henshel. They are just men. However, they have countless times in the pages of the WT and Awake claim that obedience and loyalty to the organization is the only way to salvation.

  If you haven't already, I would recommend reading Ray Franz's Crisis of Conscience and In Search of Christian Freedom. These books expose the machinations of the Wt and their fearless leaders such as Russell, Rutherford and others. Carl Olof Jonsson's two books are excellent. The Gentile Times Reconsidered and The Sign of The Last Days-When? Also, www.freeminds.org has many articles on it dealing with the true history of the WT. Read the bible without WT interference. You will find it to be an eye opening experience.

  Mr. Shakita