by raymond frantz 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
"'twas Nisan 14 when your glory was seen...."
Man, talk about Vogon poetry! š±š³š
Scuttlebutt amongst us mainstream Christians in the 80s was that JWs would answer "Yes" if you asked them if they were born again, presumably to deflect from certain arguments.
I suspect they will still state that this may very well be the LAST time we have such a gathering in this system of things.
SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY (Year)
How things have changed.
As a kid in the 60s the "anointed" were old, frumpy, rare birds with their heads in the clouds. They got annual questionnaires asking for opinions from HQ. 1st gen and I both had one of these rare pre-1930s JWs in our big extended JW families. They died years ago.
Watchtower has since troted out "annointed 2.0. " Now they are more common, younger than us, sporting expensive duds, bling, and have nice digs. They are not waiting for heaven...they already have it.
My pet peeve about the memorial is their obsession with just once a year and it has to correspond with Nisan 14 as the same as the passover night. Then if you miss it you do it one month later per the law of Moses. Jesus said nothing about this. He just said "do this often in remembrance of me". I think Wt. has it all wrong about frequency and when it's to be celebrated. I think the concept of the Catholic Mass is overdoing it with frequency. If done too often it loses its importance, but once a year is too infrequently. I'm not up on how often Protestant denominations do it. I'm sure it varies from one church to the next. Google AI says some do it every Sunday, or monthly or quarterly.
My pet peeve about the memorial is their obsession with just once a year and it has to correspond with Nisan 14 as the same as the passover night. Then if you miss it you do it one month later per the law of Moses. Jesus said nothing about this.
It's called Pesach Sheni or Second Passover. It is the law in the Torah in reference to those who may be ritually impure or due to travel who cannot "offer the Passover sacrifice on that day," not about people who cannot simply partake of the meal.--Numbers 9:6,11.
Someone had to be ritually impure, meaning they could not legally approach the altar of Jehovah to offer a sacrifice. This is speaking about slaughtering the Passover lamb on Nisan 14, Preparation Day:
When any of you or of your posterity who are defiled by a corpse or are on a long journey would offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, they shall offer it in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight.--Numbers 9:10-11a.
Once the sun sets and it goes dark another day and another festival began, Nisan 15, the Festival of Unleavened Bread. This observance was not a sacrifice but a communion meal.
The Jewish holiday of Passover actual grew out of two ancient festivals, one of the shepherding people that included a sacrifice to divinity and another of the farming community that offered the best of the remaining of last season's wheat harvest in the form of unleavened cakes. They seem to be side-by-side for a series of reasons, including the fact that the Jews used to employ a solar calendar before the Babylonian Exile and then adopted the lunar calendar, and the fact that both communities likely took advantage of celebrating under the light of the full moon.
When the Levitical priesthood retrofitted the Jewish holidays to teach lessons about the Exodus, including the Festival of Booths which was originally a harvest/ingathering festival, the Lamb and Unleavened Bread become symbols of one feast (this is why it is confusing to read the accounts in Exodus on when to observe Passover--"between the two evenings"). By the time of the Second Temple period, as recorded by Josephus, the system of slaughtering lambs for Passover on Nisan 14 was so systematic that tens of thousands went through the Herod's Temple between the Preparation Day hours of 12 pm to 3 pm.
I think the concept of the Catholic Mass is overdoing it with frequency. If done too often it loses its importance, but once a year is too infrequently.
Christians began observing the Lord's Evening Meal weekly, the day after the Sabbath (Sunday). This was because it was forbidden for Jews to travel on the Sabbath itself or to congregate for secular meetings, thus Jewish Christians could not do so outside of worship at the Temple or in synagogues.
The "Mass" is based on the Jewish Liturgy, including the Jewish readings of the Scriptures which follows a yearly cycle. Christians added readings from writings of the Apostles and texts called the Gospels. Afterwards they celebrated what Justin Martyr (c 100-165 CE), one of the Church Fathers, called the "Eucharist."
Justin Martyr wrote one of the earliest accounts about what weekly Christian worship was like. While it does not align with what everything that Catholics now believe about Communion or line up with everything they do, it is where they inherited the basic structure of their worship services. And it was each and every Sunday.
Protestant denominations vary in their practice based on simple autonomy. Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy inherit their practice, meaning they must have some historical precedence for what they do that they can point to (which they call Tradition). "Unless the Church of the past did it..." Protestants claim there must be something written in a Scripture text before they do it. "Unless the Bible says so..." And thus the difference in practice.
