at times, i have shared my feelings, questions and doubts with my father.
i am always careful.
i never try to force anything on them.
Treat friends and relatives with the civility and respect you accord to a stranger and treat all people like this is the last time you will see them alive, and you will be fine.
I would only add, treat people as more valuable then the ideas they hold which are temporary, incompletely, adopted in ignorance, and more than likely wrong.
as most of you know by now i have told you that my mom has been a "devout" jw for over 40 years and i can't get her to budge.
well the last time we debated she left me totally confused and in a daze.
i did some fast research and this past sunday we had a free-for-all debate that lasted 5 hours.
acting like a prophet.....
translation: we are letting you know we ARE lying... and because we are being honest with you about lying, you should trust what we say
(^_^)
do you believe in the bible just because you were raised to believe?
are you sure it's "believable"?
.....have you convinced yourself the bible is just another book?
the real name of the bible is TO SERVE MAN
and its a cook book (^_^)
just a quote i recently stumbled on and wanted to share.... "...how few understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart.love.
love springs from awareness.
love them.
Yet, what better word to use in pointing to the pure joy of enlightened awareness of Oneness?
perhap no word will do, but the word love has been given so many meanings and shades that I rarely if ever understand what
another is pointing to when they us it.
a total of 141 countries have signed up to the treaty, promising to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
however, even if we can get america to sign up, it may be impossible to stop co2 emissions increasing as the world population increases.
what are the ultimate possible eventualities?
an encyclopedia brittanica addendum volume from 1967 stated that with certainty we were headed towards the next
ice age.... did I miss it?
just a quote i recently stumbled on and wanted to share.... "...how few understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart.love.
love springs from awareness.
love them.
from my point of view, love only exist in the minds of those who are still ignorant about how everything is really interconnected as ONE thing.
love does not exist once you realize that there is no inside nor outside, no others and no self by comparisons...there is only the ONE and Thou art that.
Love as a feeling seems to be a carrot and stick routine evolved to keep perfectly contented people feeling dis-satisfaction and seeking out appaernt others to find a sense of completion. if you feel you are only 50% of a person you will never find satisfaction or contentment within yourself.... when you realize that you are 100% of reality and there is no one out of place, no others needed to complete yourself...then love vanishes.
the feeling of love is always based on a comparison and that comparison is from a hidden ideal which is part of us by evolution, not reality, nor necessity... as individuals we do not need to keep the species going, so love serves a goal which transcends invidual needs wants and desires and is often contrary to the individuals best interests.
hello all, i'm new here and i see there are lots of encouraging threads here.
i am trying to understand why jehovah's witnesses believe that michael the archangel is christ.
to me this would lower christ to the level of the angels and if the annointed would be above the angels, then christ would be below the annointed of mankind.
One early response was that Jesus may have been an angel from heaven. After all, the Son of Man is a celestial figure who comes on the clouds of heaven surrounded by angels. The Greek text of Isaiah 9:6 describes the Messiah as "the angel of great counsel." Perhaps Jesus was himself a powerful angel, or even an archangel. Traces of this christology can be found in a first- or second-century Christian book named The Shepherd of Hermas. One passage, Sim. 8.3., virtually identifies Jesus with Michael the archangel.
http://www.auburn.edu/~allenkc/openhse/trinity1.html#Angelthe idea that Jesus and Micha-el were the same is not new nor exclusive to JWs.... 7th day Adventists, where likely, JWs got the idea from, hold that Jesus is both God and Michael
The bible is full of odd sayings indicating that Jesus had some form of existance prior to being made a human, that he emptied himself of that form which was in the form of God [spirit like the angels].
even if you believe in the three headed monster called the trinity, it is not unlikely that each head had its own name as they are all call persons....
many Identify the Angel of YHWH --who was the head of the army of God, with Jesus' pre-human existance as well...showing that the term Angel is not out of the question
in Daniel it says Michael will stand up [often used of kings taking power]... and In matthew 24 Jesus essentially quotes this very passage
and applies it to his taking kingdom powers.
hello all, i'm new here and i see there are lots of encouraging threads here.
i am trying to understand why jehovah's witnesses believe that michael the archangel is christ.
to me this would lower christ to the level of the angels and if the annointed would be above the angels, then christ would be below the annointed of mankind.
that Michael the Archangel is Christ. To me this would lower Christ to the level of the Angels and if the annointed would be above the angels, then Christ would be below the annointed of mankind.
it depends on how you look at angels, many seem to think of an angel as a species, but the word really means messenger, and Jesus did say he was the Cheif messenger of God, which is what Arch Angel means too.... Jesus was the great Apostle, another similar term meaning one sent forth... etc...
As the Cheif of all angels, or the highest ranking messenger, it would not make Jesus one of the rest of them...but the highest of them and according to JW theology, that is the only place the first born of God should be prior to his coming to Earth.
JWs, See Jesus as the first of his angelic brethren and the only one directly made by God... so logically the cheif or arch angel should be him... and the name Micha-el means who is like god? or god like one.
hey all,.
i am currently studying the topic of intelligent design (id).
basically the id theory is the revival of the teleological argument for the existance of a deity.
WE ARE BORG....
if all intelligent life in the cosmos evolves and grows and learns and connects, in a million years, perhaps less, we could all become a borg like connected single entity with the power of god as many conceive a god to be.... and perhaps this is what pre-ceded this current version of the universe.... and every prior version all the way back to infinity... it would explain how both god and evolution are both true.
once we evolve to the status of God, we make an intelligently designed universe which begins to evolve all over again.... at this current stage we are the fragments of God which is like the pheonix who is rising from his own ashes.
G.O.D. Of Borg
would any of you allow someone to give you a read of your astrology charts?.
i saw a very intuitive reflexologist tonight, and he picked up information from me that he could not have known.
i have the old standard belief that you should not get into this, and yet i am curious.
Astro-logy, study of the stars?
I wonder about any system which is 2000 years out of date....
I was born 12.12.1960, and according to western astrology that makes me a Saggittarius...
yet a star chart showing the sun position for each day of the year made in this last century shows I was born in
the 20th degree of scorpio.... one full sign off.
A bit of reading revealed that the procession of the equinoxes...the drift of the spring rising sign every 2000+ years give or take is due to the north pole of the earth wobbling..... without getting too technical, the house of the rising sun changes every 2000 some odd years and that is what is meant by the dawning of the age of aquarius.... the sun currently rises in pisces on the first day of spring and soon it will be in aquarius--- but that means for the rest of us, we are all nearly one complete sign off from the time when our current zodiac signs were fixed by the greeks in the first century AD.
I dont know about you, but I dont trust something 2000 years off.... even if 2000 years is only a tiny fraction of the age of the cosmos. (^_^)
