JULY 2025 STUDY WT How to Give Advice

by blondie 12 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  NotFormer

  It's been gone into in great detail here over the years, but I'll raise it again. A smart JW who knows the issues might decide that since all the fractions that make up whole blood are allowed in any combination, logically whole blood should be allowed. They might argue with themselves about it, saying that the spirit, if not the letter, of that law would allow the use of whole blood. Since which fractions in what quantities are up to the individual JW's conscience, he may decide that his conscience is clear and allow whole blood within his medical treatment. Of course, he'd have to be REALLY smart and not let the HLC get a whiff of what's going on. And no-one at all within his family or social circle. It would be wise as a JW to not ever talk about any medical issue except to one's doctor, etc,. I'm guessing. Perhaps with regards to all medical treatment, not just where blood is involved. We know just from the article that spawned this thread that elders and their advice/judgement can trespass into areas which even WT HQ is covertly admitting is above their (the elders' and JC's) pay grade.

  I doubt that any JW is going to go through the logical steps of reaching the conclusion: if Jehovah allows all the fractions of blood, in any combination, he must logically allow whole blood. They've been so exposed to and frightened by the blood issue that they wouldn't know how to follow the steps to that conclusion. Unless they lurk somewhere like here, of course, and do a lot of reading...
• 

  Rattigan350

  NotFormer, The only law is Gen 9:4 "Only flesh with its life—its blood—you must not eat"
  
  Unfortunately people like to look to Acts 15:20,29 and not realize that the word "abstain" applied to all 4 of the prohibitions. It did not mean that the ban on eating and drinking blood was expanded in scope. The apostles even with the holy spirit, didn't have that authority. Their objective there was not to make new laws and rules. It was to state what the law was.
• 

  aqwsed12345

  @Rattigan350

  From Wikipedia:

  From 1931, when the name "Jehovah's witnesses" was adopted, Watch Tower Society publications maintained the view of Society founder Charles Taze Russell that the reference to abstaining from the eating of blood in the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:19–29 was a "suggestion" to be given to Gentile converts.[1][2] Watch Tower publications during the presidency of Joseph Franklin Rutherford commended the commercial and emergency uses of blood.[3][4] A 1925 issue of The Golden Age commended a man for donating blood 45 times without payment.[5] In 1927, The Watchtower noted, without elaboration, that in Genesis 9, God decreed that Noah and his offspring "must not eat the blood, because the life is in the blood".[6] In 1940, Consolation magazine reported on a woman who accidentally shot herself with a revolver in her heart and survived a major surgical procedure during which an attending physician donated a quart of his own blood for transfusion.[6]

  1. "The Apostolic Council". Zion's Watch Tower. November 15, 1892. It will be noticed that nothing is said about keeping the ten commandments, nor any part of the Jewish law. It was evidently taken for granted that having received the spirit of Christ the new law of love would be a general regulation for them. The things mentioned were merely to guard against stumbling themselves or becoming stumbling blocks to others.
  2. "Settling Doctrinal Differences". The Watchtower. April 15, 1909. pp. 116–117. These prohibitions had never come to the Gentiles, because they had never been under the Law Covenant; but so deeply rooted were the Jewish ideas on this subject that it was necessary to the peace of the Church that the Gentiles should observe this matter also ... these items thus superadded to the Law of Love should be observed by all spiritual Israelites as representing the Divine will.
  3. "Manufacturing and Mining". The Golden Age. October 15, 1919. p. 47. A serious difficulty which has been overcome in the use of plywood for airplanes construction was the making from blood of a glue that will stand any quantity of moisture without letting go…. In this plywood, stronger than steel, we have an illustration of how the Lord can take characters, weak in themselves, and surround them with such influence and so fortify them by his promises as to make them "mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds" of error and sin.
  4. "Here and There Over the Planet". The Golden Age. December 17, 1924. p. 163. Fearing the death of the child, the woman deliberately cut her arms and breast with glass from the windshield to provide blood to keep the child alive during the cold nights. The child will recover, but the heroine is expected to die.
  5. "Flotsam and Jetsam". The Golden Age. July 29, 1925. p. 683.
  6. "One Reason for God's Vengeance". The Watchtower. December 15, 1927. p. 371.
  7. "Surgery". Consolation. December 25, 1940. p. 19. one of the attending physicians in the great emergency gave a quart of his own blood for transfusion, and today the woman lives and smiles gaily over what happened to her in the busiest 23 minutes of her life.