Why are JW's THIS blind?

by BoogerMan 41 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  ExBethelitenowPIMA

  The September 2022 Study Watchtower, par. 14 p. 18 - in black & white - makes the claim that "...no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world."
  

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  maybe they mean depending on how vile depends on if they are given a bit more time.

  if it’s the Dali Lama kissing young boys and asked them to suck his tongue then he will be destroyed before such a vile thing happened.

  If it’s someone struggling with something that Jehovah hates then maybe they will be given a little bit more time and some may indeed be able to change

  so it’s not a contradiction to say in the September 2022 Study Watchtower, par. 14 p. 18 - in black & white - makes the claim that "...no one will be allowed to practice vile things in the new world."
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  peacefulpete

  Rev describes the Christian martyrs are raised to heaven by the throne, then says the dead were raised after 1000 years and judged out of the things written in the book of life. This might seem odd but it was one of the Jewish perspectives that the dead would be reanimated in the flesh to receive judgement for their past. Rev represents a melding of ideas in early Jewish Christianity. An earlier/better resurrection for those who are martyred or just and a resurrection to judgement for the rest. This is repeated in the Bible in those terms a number of times. Again, this might seem redundant, but it fit the overall narrative that the 'righteous' would be vindicated over the wicked. To accomplish this in many minds, the dead had to have their condemnation explained and witnessed. No one among those in the 'second resurrection' are ever said to beat the rap, they are raised exclusively to be condemned and have justice pronounced.
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  Disillusioned JW

  peacefulpete you make good points but there is something else to consider regarding if Revelation says resurrections will take place during the 1000 years. If I recall correctly, there are verses in Revelation which say that all who receive the mark of the beast will be executed by God, and there are verses in Revelation which say that all who refuse to receive the mark of the beast will be executed by the beast. As a result, when those verses are combined that means Revelation is saying that no human will live through the great tribulation and Armageddon to enter the 1000 year period as living humans. [The book says the righteous will be killed by the beast but then live in heaven. The book also says the great crowd are in heaven in the heavenly temple and are before God's throne. Yet, Revelation 20:3 (1984 NWT) says that during the 1000 years Satan is in the abyss so "... that he might not mislead the nations any more until the thousand years were ended." As a result Revelation is also saying there will be humans (for it says there we be nations) living on Earth during the 1000 years. Years ago (probably starting when I was still an independent Christian) that made me thus wonder who are these people whom Revelation says will be alive on Earth during the 1000 years. I later concluded that according to Revelation it must be the people whom Revelation 20:5 will be resurrected, even though that verse says they will "... not come to life until the thousand years [have] ended." But then that created the puzzle of how can one reconcile the idea that they will be resurrected during the 1000 years since the verse if is when the 1000 years have ended. I possibly solved that puzzle in part by reading old WT literature (such as the book from the 1960s called Babylon the Great). The old WT literature says they don't come to life in the fullest sense of being alive until after the 1000 years have ended - after they became perfect humans. That idea seems strange but just a moment ago I thought of something which provides the means to understand it.

  Recall that Genesis chapter 2 says YHWH/Jehovah God told Adam that if he eats from the tree of center of the garden (the tree of knowledge) then he would die in that very day. Yet chapter 3 says that Adam and Eve later ate it and yet did not become dead (in the full literal sense) during that solar day. That is an apparent contradiction (or makes it looks life God lied or couldn't keep his word, and that the serpent thus told the literal truth). Chapter 4 even says that after being expelled from the Garden they produced offspring. Chapter 5 says Adam lived 930 years (nearly 1000 years) and then he died. The WT says that though he wasn't literally dead in the full sense of the word "dead" in the solar day he sinned, nonetheless his body (and Eve's) became began to break down. In other words, the interpretation is that both the death sentence was uttered by God, and that the dying process began, on the solar day in which they ate the forbidden fruit, and that they became imperfect on that very solar day. Furthermore, a verse in the Bible says that to YHWH/Jehovah a day is as 1000 years and a 1000 years is as a one day. Multiple Bible verses also speak of a judgement day of YHWH/Jehovah and yet those verses don't mean that the 'day' of YHWH lasts for no more than one solar day. That is also something pointed out by the WT. According to the WT during the 1000years the process of dying is reversed for those living on the Earth, and at the end of the 1000 they become perfect and full alive. Figuratively speaking, that is a mirror image symmetry ( a reverse image) of what happened to Adam and Eve. That is how I reconcile (or at least think is a possible reconciliation of) the statements in Revelation about the 1000 years and resurrection time frame mentioned in Revelation 20:5.

  In a number of cases, the more I study and contemplate Bible's statements the more understandable and harmonious (and non-contradictory) it becomes (seems) to me, even though I am now an atheistic naturalist. Furthermore, even reading some of the WT's literature (even its literature by Rutherford from nearly 100 years ago) helps to achieve such. I am surprised each time I discover such reconciliations of passages in the Bible which initially seem to outright contradictions.
  
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  peacefulpete

  DisiJW...I won't spend a great deal of time breaking it all down, but in short, Revelation is a work that that attempts to incorporate OT and intertestamental apocalyptic symbolism and even diverse scenarios. For instance, the description of a war of all the nations is repeated in various ways, notably before a 1000 year interval and also after. Some commentators suppose the 1,000 year chiliasm is an original idea of the author that he had to shoehorn into his collection of motifs and scenarios he is reinterpreting from his sources. Whether you find it intellectually satisfying or not, the author was not overly concerned with a completely logical outcome. IOW. regards what you observed, yep taken literally and read as a single harmony, it would be an issue that no one is left on earth to rule over during the 1000 years, (that is until you read that all the nations are soemhow still around to oppose the saints after the 1000 years). It's an artifact of the way he used his sources.
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  Disillusioned JW

  By the way, JWs, Revelation 7:15 (1984 NWT) says the great crowd "... are before the throne of God; and they are rendering him sacred service day and night in his temple ....". The WT's Kingdom Interlinear reveals regarding the location of the great crowd that the Greek word (naos) translated "temple" in that verse means the temple sanctuary (in the former earthly temples in Jerusalem only priests were allowed to enter the temple sanctuary), not the temple courtyard. [See also https://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/great-crowd-other-sheep.php .] That insight thus refutes the WT's explanation of Revelation 7:9-10 in which the WT says verse 8 indicates the great crowd are on Earth (and thus the WT incorrectly says the great crowd "serve in the earthly courtyard of Jehovah's great spiritual temple") and not the sanctuary. [Maybe that is part of the reason the number of partakers of the JW's Memorial emblems in recent years has been increasing instead of decreasing.] I think the WT says (incorrectly) that the courtyard thus extends to Earth. Also the description of a great crowd wearing white robes fits the idea of the great crowd being priests serving in the temple and with the great crowd being shown (by scripture) as being the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation, and that thus the number 144,000 (as used in Revelation) is a symbolic number rather than a literal number.
  
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  Disillusioned JW

  Correction: After I revised my prior post I should have deleted the words "I think the WT says (incorrectly) that the courtyard thus extends to Earth."
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  Disillusioned JW

  Some other things perplexing about the book of Revelation are the following. After chapter 20 mentions the Devil being "hurled into the lake of fire and sulphur" and of death and Hades being "hurled into the lake of fire" and after chapter 21 mentions "the holy New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven" and of that the "tent of God is with mankind", Revelation 21:8 mentions that murderers, fornicators, and others will be in "the lake that burns with fire and sulphur ... the second death.". Still later chapter 22 after mentioning those who will have access to eating from trees of life and also have entrance into the city, verse 15 says "Outside are the dogs and those who practice spiritism and the fornicators and the murderers and the idolaters and everyone liking and carrying on a lie." Chapter 22 verse 19 mentions that "God will take" the portion of some people "away from the trees of life". Those verses make it seem like the book is saying that even after the 1000 years have ended and even after death has ended and after all unrighteousness has ended, there still be those doing unrighteousness (outside the holy city) and that there will still be those who will go into the lake of fire. Such appears to be a huge contradiction, one which is extremely hard (at least for me) to reconcile. Perhaps some of these passages have meanings (and time sequences) which overlap each other, rather than they all being in one temporal sequential order.

  Regarding the dogs mentioned in chapter 22:15 page 675 of the Babylon the Great book says the following. "... the people who are like scavenger dogs of the streets, who practice homosexuality, sodomy, Lesbianism, viciousness, cruelty (Deuteronomy 23:18; Psalm 22:16, 20; Matthew 7:6; Philippians 3:2) ...".

  Page 656 of the Babylon the Great book offers what might be a correct explanation of the biblical meaning of some of the above, for it says the following. 'Even the Adamic death itself and Hades or Sheol are hurled into the "second death." ... It is Adamic death that will be no more, but not the "second death". '
  
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  peacefulpete

  I think my last comment addresses the issues you are seeing. The way the writer (and redactor) structured the whole thing wasn't meant for it to be read as a narrative but a collection of scenes, utilizing familiar symbols and language from earlier apocalyptic works. Ultimately it was written for a particular sect of Christians experiencing Roman oppression who felt sure things would deteriorate. The basic themes are vindication and vengeance. Few Christians read it or liked it then. It took hundreds of years for it to be widely accepted. Ironically about the time Christianity became the State religion of the empire.
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  Disillusioned JW

  It 'sounds' like you are saying that the writer(s) did not intend for collection of scenes to be entirely compatible with each other, and thus there was no attempt to predict any specific outcome (other vindication and vengeance). But I wonder if the writer(s) were presenting what they thought were a collection of possible futures, thinking that one of them might be the actual future. But perhaps they were merely trying to convey that no matter what evils the government(s) will do to Christians and no matter what badness is done by individual people, in the end God will vindicate faithful Christians and carry out vengeance those those deemed bad.

  Some scholars (at least James Taylor) say the vast majority of the content of Revelation was written by a non-Christian Jew, but that a Christian later added content containing Christian ideas. Tabor at https://jamestabor.com/here-it-is-at-last-a-pre-christian-version-of-the-book-of-revelation/ mentions what he considers the non-Christian Jewish version of the text. That web page has a link to a PDF file of his text. At https://jamestabor.com/here-it-is-at-last-a-pre-christian-version-of-the-book-of-revelation/ Tabor says the following.

  "The thesis of the post is a simple one. Behind the New Testament book of Revelation, formally called “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” (Rev 1:1), is an older Jewish apocalyptic document that had nothing to do with Jesus or the early Christian movement. The additions, or interpolations, made by a later Christian writer, are potentially identifiable, as is quite often the case in such Jewish texts that have a Christian overlay.

  ...The name YHVH/Jehovah has been inserted in places where the use of the Greek word “Lord” (kurios) is clearly the Divine Name. Otherwise “Lord” in this text is taken as the Hebrew word ‘Adon (see Zechariah 4:14)."
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  peacefulpete

  I've pondered trying to "recreate" a hypothetical Jewish form. It just seemed pretty much impossible to divine what was Jewish from Jewish Christian. Like I said earlier, it strikes me as a series of verbal dioramas. They may not have even been drawn from a single original document. IOW the Christian author/redactor may have collected material from separate works and married these with his own. Without at least some guidance, it would be impossible convincingly separate sources.

  You may have read that Cerinthus was one of the proposed authors. IOW, It was apparently at some point anonymous. The name 'John' is the single reason it was eventually included into the Canon of most churches. It seems reasonable to say that it was added to facilitate its inclusion into the Canon. Even then keen readers recognized the style differences from the Gospel and so assumed it referred to a different John. Eventually the Orthodoxy firmly established the tradition that the writer was the same man as the author of the 4th Gospel, the epistles and the John from the Gospel story.