Why does it matter whether or not Armageddon is near?

TxNVSue2023

Why does it matter whether or not the end of the world ( (Armageddon) is near? If it was next week, next year, next decade, next century?

What is to be gained by knowing how close or far it is? What is to be lost by knowing how close or far it is?

For me, it has never mattered when or how soon it was coming. I trust that God will judge when the time is right. Who am I to think I can outsmart God & why would any person or Organization attempt to pinpoint a time when the Bible clearly says men will not know?

Overall, I have lived my life by learning the Bible truths that change my life for the better, improved human interactions & relationships and teach you how to live the values of faith, love, charity & integrity. This valuable & practical wisdom from above is a gift from God to any who seek it. The sacrifice of Jesus is so great there are no words & is the greatest gift. All these things are valuable ( invaluable) free gifts from God. Our loving Father asks that we reflect his love by loving him back & loving our fellow man. By studying His Word & being humble enough to let him teach you His unsearchable ways you learn to Love Him & trust Him to know that He will always act justly. By means of the cleansing blood of Jesus he gives us Hope & Faith in Him. That's the big picture. Everything else is just minute details that mostly have no impact on you. Leave the rest to God. He will take care of ending all the suffering & injustice in this life. He will decide whether or not a person is acceptable to Him or not.

He will decide who will & will not be part of the new world. All we have to do is build our faith in Him & live our lives according to the righteous standards He teaches us, treat people with love & respect. Live a clean life of integrity & help our fellow man in whatever way we can. He tells us it is not our place to judge & we need to remember that. Neither is it our place to worry about when this world will end. Dead or alive God will judge you & He will restore His Kingdom.

All the rest is unnecessary speculation that divides people and misleading & causes confusion.

LongHairGal

TXNVSUE2023:

Maybe you haven’t read many threads and posts on the forum.

You might have missed the part about how many Jehovah’s Witnesses have not prepared for their old age and retirement. They were discouraged from getting higher education/careers and full-time employment and told they should be in the ministry instead. They worked part-time for low wages.

I am glad that you probably got college & career.. This means you are not overly concerned about when the End comes - which is as it should be.. Unfortunately, this is not the case for many Witnesses. They are waiting for ‘this system to end’ because they cannot deal with having gotten older and being unprepared because of following bad advice (which some of them won’t admit).

I could have been in this predicament myself except I paid No heed years ago when pushy elders in the religion wanted me to quit my job. Thank God I didn’t listen.

TxNVSue2023

I've never cared about reporting time, who the 144K were, the date/generations, and things like that.

Staying out of & neutral to politics is words of wisdom from above. We are taught by God to know & understand that they are all corrupt & will eventually be removed from power. All we need to do is endure their rein of terror & cling to God ( which builds faith). Respect & obey their temporary authority ( unless it disobey's God's law) & help others to know God & H8s hope.

Not celebrating holiday's is living a life 9f integrity. It is being loyal to God and rejecting the venerations of pleasure. Easter is not presently celebrated to honor Jesus' sacrifice. Instead it is fill with pagan ( satanic) symbols and take away the focus on spiritual things & Jesus sacrifice. Halloween is a celebration of demons & promotes spiritism. Christmas & birthdays are nothing but celebrations of greed & competition ( look at me, I'm the best). Again all these things are distractions that do not honor God and mislead you further away from Him.

Empathizing & loving people- broken hard to love people. To learn to separate them from their sins & hate the sin but love them as a fellow human being. To giving love, time & effort & assistance to people without expecting anything in return. Your only motive being love.

While it might seem easy to lay it all out in the simplest terms -- we all know the reality of living in integrity & in God's will is very difficult & challenging. We need to draw close to God to grow our hope & faith & to draw on His strength to endure the blows Satan abuses us with.

Many, many times a day you have to pray to God for strength &, wisdom to stay on the right path. To fill your mind with clean spiritual things because this world of Satan is full of distractions & traps.

The WT is FAR from perfect. I wouldn't even say I believe 100% of what it teaches. And I do & always have felt that they add unnecessary rules & burdens to people's lives & they have had some misleading dogmatic teachings. These are harmful things - I see that. It would be worse if they never changed their stance & always towed the line hardline & never eases up & clarified things. But they have overcome alot ( like we all have in our lives). We adjust our information, direction & perspective when we get new information that clarifies things. This organization does the same. It is not like other churches who refuse to change because they don't want to admit they were wrong.

This organization teaches basic Bible truths with clean moral living standard. And they do it with worldwide unity because these things are for all people.

I don't find any other religion or Organization that has accomplished the good things the WT accomplishs. They are still run by human men & they are fallible. But at the end of the day they teach people how to understand & live according to Bible principles & standards.

TxNVSue2023

LHG I understand what your saying & I have experienced the same treatment. But what makes more sense- invest in something that makes you rich quick that you know is going to crash & leave you with nothing ( you just don't know WHEN) or invest in something that has no short-team gains and has a lot of short- term losses forcing you to live a lower level lifestyle than you prefer BUT is garrenteed to pay you back 7000% on everything you ever put in & everything you have ever lost plus garrentee that you will need to go through hard times again & awards you not only you past losses but tome to rebuild everything you did lose plus gain things you could never had imaged & it will never run dry.

All the org is trying to do is guide & remind people to keep a big picture view & plan for the real future- the one that God has promised. The is nothing wrong with working ot planning financially for retirement & there never has been. The issue is balance & priority. Those things should never take up so much time & energy that they become the priority over God's will.

The ministry saves us just as much as it saves other people. It keeps God close because we need him close to endure this life so we can make it to the next. It should be a desire of every person changed by the Love of God to spread the same l9ve & knowledge to help other people endure this life & build a foundation with God as well.

So it's not black and white where you must quit your job & spend 24/7 in the ministry. But you want to have the time & energy to give back to God 1st & not.allow ALL your time & energy spent building a life here when you know you will die here ( you just don't know when). Wh9 cares when the big A is? I/ you could be dead tomorrow, or we know we will certainly be dead in 100 years.

Beth Sarim

Unfortunately,,, majority of of JWs never thought of getting old or prepared for it.

If I had a quarter for every time I heard JWs say ""I thought I would never get old in this system"",,,I would be a millionaire

LongHairGal

TXNVSUE2023:

Well..things were surely black & white back in the days when I was in the Witnesses!…..Or maybe we weren’t even in the same religion(?)

No offense, but your first paragraph is a lot of pretty talk that is meaningless in real life - and sounds scripted by the religion. It’s not for real. ‘Lower level lifestyle’ = on the balls of your a$$ poverty. Why don’t you try it?

Just try talking to some older baby boomer JWs who didn’t plan and have reached retirement age broke and are asking around for money… I’m Glad I never followed the nonsense in that paragraph!😮

Believe what you will.

TxNVSue2023

If you're so glad that you have your retirement money, then why are you still miserable then? Enjoy it, eat your heart out. Then afterwards you die. The end. It's always been your choice.

LongHairGal

TXNVSUE2023:

You can believe I’m ‘miserable’ if it makes you feel any better.🙄 Makes no difference to me.. Witnesses like to believe such things about those who leave.

I was just pointing out the fallacies in your argument.

Sorry you have to resort to insults when somebody rejects the JW religion.. And I have news for you: everybody dies.

NotFormer

It matters because the WT said it matters.

"It's always been your choice."

That's not how it was presented to her.

Bizarrely, the WT in the 1950s was berating mainstream Christian denominations for not making false predictions about the imminence of the end. Those denominations turned out to be right, while the WT continued to declare dates and were proven to be a false prophet. There was recently a thread about it.

TxNVSue2023

Exactly everybody dies. So what difference does it make if they have money & a retirement or not?

We are all going to suffer & be uncomfortable and have losses in this life. And we're all going to die. Except maybe some who happened to still be alive during the big A ( whenever that is). But it doesn't matter if you're dead or if you make it through A - only Jehovah knows who he is going to choose.

Why does it matter whether or not Armageddon is near?

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