Good point, the FDS has virtually done away with Jesus and produced a jehovah centred organisation, they obviously do not think they are the church of Christ as they never dwell on this.
Conclusion: they are at heart a judaic religion that pretends to be christian. Let's also remember they cut off most dubs from the new covenant thus removing them from the body of Christ.
greendawn
JoinedPosts by greendawn
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"Accept Jehovah's Authority" - Study Article 24th Aug
by passwordprotected inwhat space does that leave for jehovah?
the theme text is 1 john 5:3 which refers to the un-burdensome commandments of god.
quite what that scripture has to do with authority is puzzling, as it talks about the love of god not jehovah's authority.
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greendawn
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Is there any one thing you DID like about the witnesses?
by dobbie inok so obviously there's more bad than good(slight understatement i know!
) but is there anything you did enjoy about the religion?
just wondering cos i asked myself that question and the only thing i can think of (and it seems a bit materialistic to me lol) is that i could dress up in nice clothes and see men in suits!
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greendawn
That they had or at least seemed to have a more orderly state when it came to sexual matters, I mean most JW girls didn't sleep around and JW marriages were more stable at least in the area I was at the time. You knew that if you married a JW brought up girl she was unlikely to have been with other men and that the marriage was more likely to succeed as long as you didn't leave the org.
Needless to say the bad points far outweighed such good points. -
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What happened to the simplicity of the early church?
by Pahpa inearly christians were drawn together by their love of christ and each other.
most were just hard working average people who had little education and no understanding of the philosophies of the world.
the gospel message of the kingdom and the future hope of life everlasting were the basis of their simple faith.
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greendawn
Pahpa, I still think the idea that the church went corrupt at the end of the first century is over simplistic. I see corruption in many high ranking officials of the church who became overwhelmed with pride over their rank but I believe the church was quite strong spiritually as a whole until the pagan masses inundated it after Constantine.
To be sure there were problems but it did quite well in upholding the truth. Don't forget at the time there were many books circulating as gospels or apostolic writings and no one quite knew what was what. The Bible as we know it wasn't put together until the 4th century and there were no high tech information technology to quickly research things out at the time.
As for Greek philosophy being bad that shouldn't be generalised, though formulated by pagans some of it was in agreement with christianity some other was not. In fact it was not indsicriminately taken on board by the then christian thinkers, much of it was rejected.
Recall also that the gentile church had to deal with the jewish christians who never abandoned the Mosaic law and never really liked gentile christians and with heretical groups like the agnostics who totally butchered the gospel truth. And it dealt with them correctly that's why we don't have now a judaic or gnostic christianity in fact they vanished long ago.
You need to read more into the subject of the early church, you seem to be over influenced by the JW ideas on the matter. Early christians valued highly virtue and purity and often engaged in charitable work to help their own needy and even at times pagans. -
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Preaching to Mask Problems
by WTWizard ini have noticed that the witlesses seem to have more success in scamming people that are having ongoing problems in their lives.
usually they have stagnant jobs, poverty, are having zero success with the opposite sex, or are having major issues with their health (especially mental health).
those people usually fall for the promises that said problems will be removed in the new dark ages, that the witlesses will take care of them, or both.. often, what will happen is that the person will become zealous in studying.
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greendawn
No doubt the WTS and most likely other similar cults attract converts for this reason, they provide a sense of belonging and purpose in life to those that feel rootless, directionless and adrift in life.
Grievious illusion though, the WTS is not there for the good of its members and all the anxious love for its fold is pretentious. Eventually many JWs end up with more problems than they can imagine at first due to the policies of the org. -
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How many of you would still be "Blinded" by the JW's had it not been forJWD
by superman injust conducting a little survey for all of you active members and lurkers of jwd.
just simply proving the importance and support of this website.
for me personally, while i was still in jw land i had always ahd doubts but still generally believed it.
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greendawn
I disassociated in 1987 and my worst suspicions and more were confirmed after the internet came out and took off in the mid 1990's, unfortunately earlier I did not know where to find any good books that explained things so well. One issue that is covered very well on at least the english speaking internet is the cultic, deceitful and exploitative nature of the WTS.
So JWD came too late for me but it still provided a wealth of interesting details on many JW issues. -
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What happened to the simplicity of the early church?
by Pahpa inearly christians were drawn together by their love of christ and each other.
most were just hard working average people who had little education and no understanding of the philosophies of the world.
the gospel message of the kingdom and the future hope of life everlasting were the basis of their simple faith.
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greendawn
I was never convinced that the early church went astray soon after the apostles died, it was a gradual process that culminated in the union of the church with the Roman empire at which stage it was overwhelmed by masses of pagans entering the church without any real intention to follow a christian way of life. That's where the early church with its originally high moral standards became heavily secularised lowered its standards to accomodate them and lost its direction. Eg many bishops were drawn from the aristocracy even from the imperial family due to their social and not spiritual status and were often hopelessly corrupt.
It is also worth noting that the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and later Constantinople demanded a superior status relative to other bishops due to the secular prominence of these cities at the time. The Roman bishop even demanded superiority over the other three because Rome was secularly more important. Of course their willingness to be bought by the Roman emperor made them something akin to a whore. Such of course are also all the leaders of the WTS.
So what began corrupting the early church even before the apostles died was the self serving, self seeking, egotistical nature of some high ranking officials and not as such the attempt to use Greek philosophy to understand scriptural issues.
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WT Historians: You can own Charter paperwork for WT Corporations1884-2003
by AndersonsInfo intoday, i have made available through my website, www.watchtowerdocuments.com, an e-document containing the handwritten watch tower corporation charter, plus the following material as explained on my website.
"on december 13, 1884, charles taze russell and his wife, maria f. russell, founded a corporation in pennsylvania which they named, zions watch tower tract society.
the charter for that corporation was amended in 1896 changing the name to watch tower bible and tract society.
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greendawn
Very interesting, it gives ideas on how much this is a human established, owned and run organisation though presented as God's own organisation in order to deceive the naive.
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"Apostates " are sex degenerates.!!!!
by hamsterbait ini noted with anger the post about the dc where one of the speakers claimed that people who become apostate are involved in immoral conduct of some kind.. this goes down in the same list of stupidity as the statement that "apostates claim to have greater wisdom than the faithful and discreet slave" - as v pointed out they do not claim greater wisdumb, they simply disagree.. i began doubting and questioning not only after finding out about how the witchtower had lied about carbon dating, but their lies about the creative days, finding out how chinas written history goes back to before the flood, yet never mentions how the chinese were all drowned - and how the wt lies and misrepresents "evidence" for their assertions.. excuse me witchtower - but my genitals had nothing to do with seeing through the lies and deceit, and yes hypocrisy.. of course once started on that road i read more and became less convinced than ever of their claims to be gods only channel.. maybe soon i shall get the chance to become a moral degenerate, than it will prove everthing the borg claims about people like us to be true.. in the meantime stop slinging mud and insulting my integrity.. hb.
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greendawn
No wonder why they can't look at you with a straight face they were mind conditioned to believe that those abandoning the fold for whatever reason (remember for the JWs there can't possibly be any valid reasons for doing so) have betrayed jehovah, the FDS and the entire brotherhood. That's quite a lot of mud on the ex dubs that makes them look hopelessly bad.
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What does The Watchtower really give to its followers?
by VM44 ini think this question deserves a thread of its own;.
what really does the watchtower provide to its followers?.
they take (and really demand) people's time, energy, and resources.
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greendawn
True for most JWs being in the cult represents giving a lot and getting little in return in real terms but they are deceived into thinking they are receiving a lot of things that are in fact imaginary. So they believe they are getting a good deal when they are not.
The key to understanding the deception is the blatantly false statement: "you are gathering treasures with jehovah and he will richly reward you in due time." Note the WTS has no responsibility to reward anything instead it tranfers it all on jehovah and an unspecified future time. That is the stuff of lying charlatans and scoundrels and why religion has a reputation of being a form of deception and expoilation. Thanks to ruthless exploiters like the FDS.
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Going to Hell in a Handbag.......rant!!
by Gill inso why do we always give in to 'the lowest common denominator?'.
the board is closing because simon has (fair enough) had enough of abuse.. we see this every where.
we always allow the not necessaily bad but those who can't act and behave in a civil manner win!.
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greendawn
Who knows why, perhaps it's the reaction to having been over strict in the past when people went to harsh prisons were whipped or exiled to Australia for "stealing" a piece of bread to avoid starvation. Yes some people even died of starvation in England during the Victorian era when the wealthy British empire was at its height.
All I can tell you is my experience with junkies while a supermarket manager in London. They saw London with its tens of thousands of shops large and small as a kind of paradise for shop lifting, Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Tesco, bookshops, electrical goods shops, fashion shops you name it. They went around putting things in their sacks knowing that if they get caught they will just get a slap on the wrist, at most they would pretend they were high on drugs and didn't really know what they were doing. They were having it good.
They would then sell the stolen goods at half price to get money for their next dose of heroine. I can tell you small and somewhat expensive things costing £5 - £10 each like Gilette Mach 3 razors, condoms, rechargeable batteries, upmarket toothpastes, they would scoop them in and eventually we had to put them all behind the counter.
For all I know eventually several of them died of heroine overdose and through using strange concoctions of drugs but not one ever went to prison except a guy and that was for assaulting someone with a snooker cue in a pub after a dispute over the game they were playing.
I suppose the police don't have the time to pursue thousands of heroine addicted shop lifters who desperately need to feed their habits. After all if the don't get their dose they can go beserk and become far more dangerous to society.