by mjl 35 Replies latest watchtower bible
JW Ben:
For your own good, when you write that essay find all the publications where they clearly don't want you to double check, like Blondie has pointed out, so that you may see the tricks they are using.
Many before you (me included) have gone out to defend the WT only to find out how wrong they are.......
I can't wait....
It is characteristic of cults to verbally encourage research while simulataneously discouraging study materials from outside the group's control and depicting the outside as dangerous and evil, bent of deceiving the faithful. This has the effect of allaying internal fears of being controlled. It preempts the desire to be cautious by saying "We want you to check the facts, but just be careful about what you read, it may be poison!" Therefore instead of teaching critical thinking skills to recognize solid reasoning and research they simply create and reinforce a dichotomy of inside/safe---outside/dangerous. This is called 'information control'.
As an aside, the passage in discussion is about a specific topic of docetism (the early christian belief that Christ was not physical). The work was written by somone attempting to refute this teaching claiming the natural born Jesus was the Christ and this was the teaching "from the begining". Interestingly 1 John was probably written by the redactor of the Gospel John who altered the gospel from docetic to antiDocetic by the introduction and deletion of a few words and shuffling of the stories. At any rate the passage itself is not encouraging secular research to confirm the truthfulness of the 'Jesus is Christ' theology as much as it is simply asserting that if any doctrine disagrees with this, it is not to be believed. So the author was a lot like the Society in encouraging testing but in reality the testing was limited to whether a teaching conformed or not to what the author was now asserting to be truth.
mjl,
Maybe the speaker is having doubts about the organization himself. Before David Reed was df'd, he gave hints of his doubts in his talks at the KH. He encouraged the congregation to read the Bible and reminded them that the Watchtower often taught errors that had to be corrected later.
Hello JWBen
Without a doubt publicly the society has had to openly allow research into their belief system. Many times JW?s are told to examine the scriptures etc. yet, using what research material and to what end.
If in 1990 you ran around your own congregation and said, ?this generation" apparently refers to the peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ's presence but fail to mend their ways. Not a literal generation of people.? Not the normal ?this generation means those living in 1914? What do you think would have happen? What if you sat down with the elders and went through all your research that allowed you to come to this conclusion. Wouldn?t your elders say your getting ahead of the organization? Wouldn?t you be on the edge of apostasy?
While it?s ok to research, it?s not ok to challenge standard norms in the societies belief system. No matter how right you are today, with the generation example in 1990 you were DEAD WRONG! Even if you used the same material the society used to add a new light to the generation dogma, you would have still been wrong until it became approved dogma from the society. You would have to wait 5 long years before what you were so wrong about, to become right. By then you may well have been disfellowshipped for your independent thinking, if you strongly believed your view, not the Watchtower's.
Think about it.
Jahna
Ozziepost,
Sorry Ozzie, but a spellchecker would do him no good. Patients is a real word, so a spellchecker would not detect it. Copy-paste it, and you'll see that the red underline is not there. If you have MS Word installed, and you have doubts, you should right-click the word you are not sure about and click synonyms on the opening little extension. Faraonjust wait for my essay if you have the patients to do soI hope you use a Spellchecker when writing your "essay".
"So Friends, hypothetically, and I repeat hypothetically, even if an angel were to come down here and land on this platform, today, at this moment, and to present something to us that didn't fit into the pattern of truth, what should we be ready to do? We should be ready to say, "Hold on there, that doesn't fit into the pattern, and I am not going to listen to it!", Yes even if it were one of Jehovah's angels."Minute 23, Beware Of The Voice Of Strangers, District Convention Of Jehovah's Witnesses, Selkirk, Manitoba, July 12, 2003
The above certainly resembles the following scripture: Galatians 1:6-8.
Could certainly be applied to the use of the WT/Awake! in addition to the Bible. Something beyond what was originally declared as good news. Could also be applied to the use of the Book of Mormon. Basically, this scripture to me means if you try to go beyond what is said in the Bible/what was originally taught by Jesus and you teach it as new light you are in big trouble!
How incredible that the talk was so hypocritical! Just amazing.
Sounds like a major hairball to me.
Garybuss is on target that this is being taught.
In an exceedingly recent rare talk with my father that he initiated, he exclaimed that he needed to protect himself from such thinking. (ME) The topic was of course on why the early christians partook of the emblems and hence enjoyed a oneness of spirit with Christ and why JW's do not.
As crazy as it seems he invoked the "even if an angel came down from heaven and preached a different gospel" scripture. It never even entered his mind that JW's were the ones that preached a different gospel than the NT writers and then seek protection under the "even if an angel" clause.
Evidently for WT leadership, it's OK to change the gospel message one time and then seek shelter under the "even if an angel" clause after the fact.
Obviously the warning was directed squarely at people like the WT leaders.
Evidently for WT leadership, it's OK to change the gospel message one time and then seek shelter under the "even if an angel" clause after the fact.
Perry: These are the same guys who once said, "This is no time to be toying with Jesus' words that we don't know the day or the hour...." Audacity is their middle name.
