by EdenOne 77 Replies latest watchtower bible
Will the updated book admit that the Society were members of the UN, The Scarlet Coloured Wild Beast, during the very time that witnesses were "studying" about it in the Revelation Book study??
Hmmm...doubt it...that was swept under the carpet and will never be openly admitted....
If this is legit, watching 'em try to adapt ol' Freddy Franz's eschatology to the Information Age will be interesting, to say the least. :smirk:
WingCommander - "Is the 'Grand Climax' from about 1985, finally at hand?"
Ugh.
80s porn.
The Book of Revelation that squeezed into the New Testament was only one of a number of Apocalypses written at that time. We are aware of perhaps as many as 10 other Apocalypses, and who knows how many others were destroyed by the successful Pauline Christians.
The Watchtower therefore accepts the decision that was made by the 4th century Christian Church, the same Church that accepted the Trinitarian formula, to accept the Revelation of John as Scripture.
The Apoclypse that made it into the NT is the product of the Jewish section of the Christian movement. It anticipated that the Coming was imminent, during their own lifetime. ("I am coming soon").
It has influenced history ever since, with people in every age using it to show that it refers to their own times. Its failure, whether for the people to whom it was originally addressed or to the people in every subsequent time, has not deterred people from repeating the mistake of saying "Coming Soon".
The lesson that history teaches is that people do not learn the lesson that history teaches.
Doug
Narcissism gets on the way of reason and evidence.The lesson that history teaches is that people do not learn the lesson that history teaches.
Doug Mason - The Apoclypse that made it into the NT is the product of the Jewish section of the Christian movement
Doug, I'm interested in this bit. Can you reference some scholarly work where this topic is discussed at lenght? Is this "jewish-christian" section the same that was headed by James The Just and the apostles in Jerusalem? The Ebionites?
Eden
Doug (who can jump in with his own thoughts) may be referring to the fact that the Revelation to John is an apocalypse of the Jewish genre, and the individuals addressed by Christ are called "Jews" in contrast with their enemies who also go by the same term. (Revelation 3.9) While there is a bit of evidence that some Gentile Christians also wanted to go by the term "Jew," the metaphors, symbolism, and terminology are very Jewish. Many scholars see this as an argument in favor of a Jewish apocalypse composed by Jewish Christians.
If that is the case, "Babylon the Great" is unfaithful Jerusalem that rejected Jesus of Nazareth instead of "Rome," the other favored interpretation by those who see this as a Gentile Christian composition. The author, in this case, is making a "prophecy" of its assured rejection. This hermeneutic view makes Revelation highly anti-Semitic which could explain its late introduction into the canon. The Apocalypse of Peter instead was widely read in Christian Liturgy until the 4th century, and John's apocalypse remained challenged until the Council of Trent.
There is a third view that it is a mixture of Jewish and Gentile authorship, heavily influenced by Jewish Christian thought and written as a Jewish apocalypse, with both Jerusalem and Rome being spoken of in its judgments.
Jewish authorship, however, would not have necessarily meant the authors were from St. James' congregation. It appears that most of not all the Jewish Christians who engaged in writing were of the Diaspora or not in Jerusalem during composition, except for maybe the epistle of James.
God, I hope so. Haven't had any good fantasy fiction to read for a while!
just saying!
eyeuse2badub
I've read the red book that the WTBTS published and it so reminds me of a book I was given by a Hari Krishna guy in Chicago. It showed blue-skinned people wearing exotic clothing and curved swords. I tried getting into it, but even though I knew each word individually, put them together and I had no clue. It was so esoteric that it was meaningless. The red book was far easier to grasp, but no more believable, and the "fulfillments" the writers imagined were so mindnumbingly bizarre that I could scarcely follow them across the tapestry of the early 1900s where the early history of the Society was interwoven with John's Apocalypse. The two prophets of Revelation 11 became a group of Bible students persecuted by the clergy in Canada from 1914-1918! Like the two prophets of Revelation 11, mentored by John, Isaiah and Zechariah, these Bible students were figuratively brought back to life in 1918 with favorable rulings by courts. "What a shock for those persecutors!" the book says.
Yes, well, it was certainly a shock for me, too! How prescient of the prophets to have foreseen these Bible students in 1918 (in Canada!). And how perceptive of the Governing Body to have correlated the two events! I've got to admit, I never would have seen it in a hundred years. I'm just breathless when I see these things being fulfilled before my eyes!
Seriously, how can people buy into this type of stuff?
