'Most accurate' is pretty much meaningless as a description of a translation really - what measures that? For the bible, it tends to be how well the translation fits a church's own doctrinal preferences...
It reads well as an 'Englished' modern translation of ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts. It has some serious issues with (deliberately) obscuring major contradictions in the text (eg who caused David to make a census?) which are acknowledged by almost every serious translation. It also plays fast and loose with choosing how it translates certain passages - their version of John 1:1 being one which most bible scholars and translators would reject for a number of reasons as implausible.
The difference in this case was that the application for charitable status was initially rejected. It wasn't removing charitable status from them. In the end, the brethren congregation concerned got their status in return for a few minor amendments to making information on their meetings available to the public and in promises to make sure teens leaving the group would not be left destitute by their shunning practices.
There's a very, very long way before the WBTS has its charitable status revoked here in Britain. At any point the WBTS can new light some understanding that having an effective child safeguarding policy isn't a breach of their religious freedoms. They already rationalise reporting laws in that way, while fighting tooth and nail against reporting where the laws are not specific enough or do not exist.
The locations of pokestops etc. are based on information registered by players of an older game called Ingress as well as some from Pokemon before they stopped applications for new stops and gyms. Religious buildings and generally places of interest or cultural purpose are frequently chosen.
All Christians have to do is read some and they will be ready to tackle these barriers with ease and, hopefully, with grace. But, this only goes for those who indeed have this situation not for those who reject God because they came to a their own conclusion. You know who you are.
So Christians have an answer to every question, which works apart from all those times when it doesn't because atheists have used evidence to form a conclusion? Kind of like how the Reasoning Book was meant to work. Heck, kind of like how the Come Back to Jehovah brochure is meant to work.
As others have said, follow the evidence. I'm agnostic about a God in the deistic sense, but I'm pretty positive that old blood and thunderguts Jehovah is a human invention.
the archaeologist digs and then sifts through remnants from the past, assembling the discoveries into patterns so that stories of the past may be brought back to life.. with almost 850 direct quotations from 50 books, my study sifts remnants from the first 200 years of christianity and sorts them into patterns that may help others to assemble a vessel that can hold ideas, or to form a skeleton where muscle and flesh, heart and mind, may be applied.
a comprehensive contents listing is provided at the rear of this study.. my study, “the jesus-followers’ first 200 years” is available at:.
the uk wts companies' documents for 2015 are currently free to download from the uk government's companies house website.
the person who sent me this information said that it appears they are testing a new form of the website, so access to documents may in the future revert to a pay per file system.
therefore, he advises getting copies of documents as soon as possible, as he doesn’t know when the testing phase will finish.
Provision of serviced facilities is an internal book keeping charge for the use of the bethel in London and costs of having bethelites etc. The accounts are (independently) audited. It would be fraudulent to 'hide' court costs. Having a pet QC and legal staff may well be covered under serviced facilities but the costs of those will be pretty similar every year regardless of litigation. Actual legal fees will almost inevitably end up under 'exceptional items' in the accounting year they go out - which will be the year ending August 2016, or possibly even August 2017 depending on when they are forced to pay up.
On general financial state, they've doubled their reserves to £40m which they estimate will allow them to run for a year without any further donations coming in. So they're not broke in Britain. But they do seem to be shifting money around Europe again (see 'grants' increase to £15m) which easily explains at least half of the increase of money going in to British branch.
the uk wts companies' documents for 2015 are currently free to download from the uk government's companies house website.
the person who sent me this information said that it appears they are testing a new form of the website, so access to documents may in the future revert to a pay per file system.
therefore, he advises getting copies of documents as soon as possible, as he doesn’t know when the testing phase will finish.
The system in the UK would mean that only Companies House (ie the government) would know who has requested something. It's asking for a pdf file to be sent to an e-mail address in return for an online payment - should they go that route.
the uk wts companies' documents for 2015 are currently free to download from the uk government's companies house website.
the person who sent me this information said that it appears they are testing a new form of the website, so access to documents may in the future revert to a pay per file system.
therefore, he advises getting copies of documents as soon as possible, as he doesn’t know when the testing phase will finish.
It would typically be under exceptional items, but their own costs will be fairly minimal for litigation (Bethel QC and legal team) so the recent British court cases, where costs and/or restitution to others were involved, won't appear in accounts which only cover until August 2015.
I enjoyed the fiction that their inhouse legal staff told them to fight the Charity Commission's inquiry. Tails don't wag dogs.
being a recognized religion here in australia i heard they get government funding.....if this is true, i don;t see why as they seem to do okay funding themselves .
There are also tax exemptions and rebates, which is a form of government subsidy for religions dating back to the assumption that religions do something of benefit for the societies they operate within. You'd have to check the specifics in Australia for those, but in the UK even something as simple as property taxes not needing to be paid every year will save them a lot of money.
it doesn't look significant, but it is - the jerusalem post reports:.
the finding – coupled with a sphinx fragment of the egyptian king mycerinus (who ruled egypt in the 25th century bce), discovered at the site by the research team three years ago – are the only monumental egyptian statues found so far in second millennium contexts in the entire levant.the discovery of these two statues in the same building currently being excavated by the research team indicates the special importance of the building, which was likely the administrative palace of the ruler of the city, as well as that of the entire city of hazor.shlomit bechar, a doctoral student at the institute of archaeology, who has been excavating at hazor for a decade, is the dig’s co-director, and oversees the main excavation area.during the course of nearly 30 years of excavations, fragments of 18 different egyptian statues – both royal and private – dedicated to egyptian kings and officials, including two sphinxes, were discovered at hazor.“most of these statues were found in layers dated to the late bronze age (15th-13th centuries bce), corresponding to the new kingdom in egypt,” said ben-tor.“this is the largest number of egyptian statues found so far in any site in the land of israel, although there is no indication that hazor was one of the egyptian strongholds in southern canaan, nor of the presence of an egyptian official at hazor during the late bronze age.”ben-tor added that most egyptian statues found at hazor date to egypt’s “middle kingdom” (19th-18th centuries bce), a time when hazor did not yet exist.“it thus seems that the statues were sent by an egyptian king in the ‘new kingdom’ as official gifts to the king of hazor, or as dedications to a local temple, regardless of their already being ‘antiques,’” he said.“this is not surprising, considering the special status of the king of hazor, who was the most important king in southern canaan at the time.
the extraordinary importance of hazor in the 15th-13th centuries bce is indicated also by the biblical reference to hazor as ‘the head of all those kingdoms’ (joshua 11:10).”all the statues at the site were found broken into pieces and scattered over a large area, he noted.“clear signs of mutilation indicate that most of them were deliberately and violently smashed, most probably in the course of the city’s final conquest and destruction sometime in the 13th century b.c.e,” said ben-tor.“the deliberate mutilation of statues of kings and dignitaries accompanying the conquest of towns is a well-known practice in ancient times (i samuel 5:1-4; isaiah 11:9), as well as in our time.”the hazor excavations, which began in the mid-1950s under the direction of the late professor yigael yadin, are carried out on behalf of hu.
Not in the slightest. I think the first step is to treat the OId Testament on its own merits, as a product of writers writing within a particular culture which has been influenced by other cultures. The influence of Egypt upon Canaan and then later the Israelites could well account for the Exodus story. Less a literal history and more a mythologised origin from within the Egyptian hegemony over Canaanite city states. The Amorites as the Hyksos works so far as one starts from the point that the Israelites are a much, much later development from peoples already resident in Canaan. (I think that's Finkelstein's position still?)
