The late Richard Harris did a speaking record; "Too many saviours on my cross"..
What Jesus' Return Would Mean for JWs, According to the Bible
by Afterburn 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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zeb
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Afterburn
No one prevents people from having a relationship with Jesus Christ, except there is no point in it. He is not the objective. He is a priest bringing people to Jehovah God. Israelites could have friendly relationships with the high priests, but the high priests were just a go between. The whole point was to bring them to God.
Rattigan350, no one "prevents" any one of Jehovah's Witnesses from doing anything, in the strictest legal sense. That's true enough, in the sense that your cult cannot be successfully sued in civil proceedings on that basis.
However, much like the Jews of Jesus' day, your cult's use of shunning is, as Insight On the Scriptures aptly states, "a very powerful weapon" to coerce people into conformance with a doctrine that rejects the position blatantly assigned to Jesus in the Bible.
I have a question for you, so that you can explain your cult's teachings more expansively for others reading here:
If "the whole point was to bring them to God," and if a personal relationship with Jesus was not the first objective in restoring an individual relationship with God, then, 1) why did Jesus repeatedly direct people to come to him and 2) why did Paul lie to Timothy when he said that Jesus (personally) was our only mediator in the process of restoring our individual relationship with God?
I think you've been lied to about what the Bible teaches on this point. If you believe otherwise, please explain these incongruities for the benefit of any others who might read this exchange between us. -
Afterburn
I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but Rattigan350 studiously avoided addressing the point I made regarding the cult's emphasis on a ministry of dedication to and on baptism into a religion rather than on the ministry Paul had been given of reconciled personal relationship with God and on baptism into Christ.
The former does not fulfill the commission found at Matthew 28:18-20.
The latter does.
The former does require extensive indoctrination into a religion's dogma prior to baptism, because a specific prayer of dedication would require that much knowledge and understanding.
The latter does not require any organized religion, at all, and only requires enough information to convince one that 1) a person has no personal relationship with God, and 2) there is a way to restore that relationship, open to all persons.
Which do we see happening at Acts 2:22-40?
What about the Ethiopian eunuch at Acts 8:26-40?
And then there is Acts 10:33-48, where Peter speaks less than 200 Greek words to an assembled group of Cornelius' family and friends, all of whom are baptized by holy spirit "while he was still speaking"; followed immediately by water baptism. Is that anything like JW baptism, at all? Which of them was required to publicly commit themselves to a religion?
Acts 16:14-15 and Acts 16:25-34 are two more examples; Lydia with her whole household, and the Philippian jailer with his entire family. The Agnostic Philippian certainly didn't meet any JW criteria for baptism, and never published the good news to anyone. Well into Paul's ministry throughout the known world, and long after there was already a congregation established in Philippi.
It is a fact, well known to the Governing Body, that there is no Scriptural justification, at all, for the concept of an unbaptized publisher of the good news among Christians.
It is a fact, well known to the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses, that there is no justification found anywhere in the Bible for any of their prerequisites for Christian baptism, most especially for a specific prayer of dedication as a requirement, nor any verbal commitment to a specific religion, nor to a verbal commitment to adhere to the teachings of any group of men.
They know that they are teaching falsehoods as truth about Christian baptism.
About one of the elementary things of the primary doctrine about the Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses teach many separate lies as truth.Hebrews 6:1-2
Therefore, now that we have moved beyond the primary doctrine about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying a foundation again, namely, repentance from dead works and faith in God, the teaching on baptisms and the laying on of the hands, the resurrection of the dead and everlasting judgment.
This is just a small piece of the truth about The Truth™ (All Rights Reserved, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Inc.)