Posts by Pole

56

How does the society explain 5 more partakers at the Memorial?

by lv4fer in

jw
friends

i think it's kind of funny.

how do they explain more people this year than lasts?

i thought the number was suppose to get lower as they died off?

Pole

But it seems that in the mid-1930?s, the full number of the 144,000 was basically completed.

But what if some individuals who lack this call have been partaking of the Memorial emblems? Now aware that they never had the heavenly hope, surely their conscience will compel them to stop partaking. God would not look with favor upon anyone representing himself as a person called to be a heavenly king and priest when he knew that he really did not have such a calling.

Let's confront these hypocritical statements with some facts:

first_name	surname	born	age
Carey W.	Barber	1905	99
Albert D.	Schroeder	1911	93
John E.	Barr	1913	91
Daniel	Sydlik	1919	85
Theodore	Jaracz	1925	79
Guy H.	Pierce	1934	70
Samuel F.	Herd	1935	69
Gerrit	Lösch	1941	63
David H.	Splane	1944	60
M. Stephen	Lett	1949	55

It seems like half of the Governing Body were born in the mid-thirties or later when the collecting of 144k had already been completed.

Why don't they ever take heed of their own advice? Is it because all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others?

Pole

290

The Global Flood

by coldfish in

i've just read an intersting article on the flood to do with dates and whether is was truly global or a regional flood.. http://www.commentarypress.com/essay-flood.html.

my father used to be an elder for many years and the flood was one of the things that made him walk away not just from the jw but also belief in the bible.

he was hung up on issues like the flood taking place about 3500 bc and how that fit in with the pyramids.. i don't know much about egyptian history or the ages of the big pyramids, but his reasoning was if the flood wiped out every human on earth except noah etc then at 3500 bc there were only 8 people on earth.

Pole

I did point out to him pages ago that if he eanted to find a point where the ratios were 400's, he'd have wait hundreds of millions of years for the sign to be there, or would have missed it by hundreds of millions of years (assuming there was an epoch where there was this ratio in the 'diameter:distance:brightness' compund claim he is making. So don't hold your breath for him admitting he's talking out of a non-optimal oriface for verbal communication.

And that in turn would mean that if God really wanted these figures to have any hidden meaning then he'd have to plan quite a few things ahead, such as Adam's sin + all the consequences as well as the development of modern astronomy, etc. This secret "sign in heavens" wouldn't have been necessary if everybody was living in Paradise today.

It's utterly ridiculous to try to imagine God pushing the planets around so that the arc size of the moon would match that of the sun at a certain point in time and then finally screwing the job up because these figures are not exactly what they were meant to be.

I mean, speaking of sun eclipses, did you know there are at least four types of them, depending on the current distance between the moon and the earth? Apart from total eclipses there are also annular ones, where the arc size of the moon is smaller than that of the Sun. Sometimes the Moon is 11 percent too small to cover the Sun. And even when there is a total eclipse, the Moon's arc size may be actually bigger than Sun's, so where's the exact matching again? Not to mention the fact that many eclipses fall under the "hybrid" category - they are total in some parts of the earth and partial in other.

Pole

3

I wonder what they sent the UN

by heretic in

consequently, it is important that you should keep us informed about your orginizations information programme as it relates to the united nations, including sending us issues of of relevant publications..

quote from the uns dpi ngo letter.. i can just imagine a brother standing on the front door of the un saying "and you can see this scarlet coloured wild beast?

thats you, and over the page, you again geting showered by fireballs.

Pole

Welcome lifesagarden!

I once started a similar thread and some folks listed there a number of WT and Awake articles that might have got sent to the UN.

http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/77192/1.ashx

Pole

81

Covenant with Noah, VOID!!! So much for the rainbow..........

by deceit in

jw
friends

was it not jehovah?s promise to never kill humans again by means of massive floods?

i guess knocking on 100,000 deaths is just a minor slip-up.

knowing the response of jw's to the horrible situation in asia and their reasoning of it, makes me feel indescribably sick in the stomach!

Pole

Schizm,

And that's about how serious you really are about this.

Believe me or not but I am. I was even thinking of starting a thread about accidental deaths which result from the way the universe and humans are "designed" and how they cannot be explained in terms of "imperfection".

You must really think of me as being a stupid person, if you expect me to go there.

Again I was a bit ironic, but my questions was just as valid as questions about God allowing natural disasters. Different scale, but the tragedy of individuals may be the same. So I assume we agree there is no theological explanation for such deaths?

Pole

81

Covenant with Noah, VOID!!! So much for the rainbow..........

by deceit in

jw
friends

was it not jehovah?s promise to never kill humans again by means of massive floods?

i guess knocking on 100,000 deaths is just a minor slip-up.

knowing the response of jw's to the horrible situation in asia and their reasoning of it, makes me feel indescribably sick in the stomach!

Pole

Schizm,
Do you really want me to answer that?

I thought it was a rhetorical question, but if you can tell me how choking results from the original sin, I'd be interested. I'll be back at the computer later.

Cheers,

Pole

81

Covenant with Noah, VOID!!! So much for the rainbow..........

by deceit in

jw
friends

was it not jehovah?s promise to never kill humans again by means of massive floods?

i guess knocking on 100,000 deaths is just a minor slip-up.

knowing the response of jw's to the horrible situation in asia and their reasoning of it, makes me feel indescribably sick in the stomach!

Pole

Schizmus,

All he's doing is allowing Adam's offspring to have things their way for a while.

There are millions of stupid ways in which people die every day and which have nothing to do with Satan or man's "imperfection" but rather with Jehovah's poor creational skills. I mean can you explain choking to death on a chicken bone in terms of Adam's sin? Did Jehovah allow our throats to mutate after Adam sinned? Or would he be now sending angels to save people from choking if it hadn't been for Adam's sin? Or perhaps perfection would also mean that we'd never fail to chew the food properly before trying to swallow it? That'd explain Adam's broad, muscular jaw line in WT pics. See how absurd it gets?

Not yet?

Cheers,

Pole

61

Should the Christian faith be rationally defended?

by Narkissos in

jw
friends

in the pretty miscellaneous "global flood" thread there were a couple of exchanges on the value of "apologetics" per se.

i think this subject is worth a thread of its own.

i will here recall some statements in the aforementioned thread:.

Pole

I wrote:

And don't modern christians have to take some of the crucial Christian texts with a pinch of salt to avoid being apologetic?

Rochelle replied:

Is Paul Jesus? Is Paul God? Does Paul respond to my prayers? Did Paul send the Holy Spirit? Please talk to me again when you can prove that all of the above are answered in the affirmative.

There's no need for me to do this homework. And thank you for proving my point so swiftly. You do take some early Christian texts with a pinch of salt. I have never said I have any problem with that. All I said was that different forms of apologetics have been present in Christianity from day two (day one being the life of Jesus). So I won't comment on the following if you don't mind:

Trying to play lacrosse under the rules of synchronized swimming will never, ever work. Neither will trying to process faith and spirituality using only the rules of the physical world.

Never brought up this issue.

Cheers,

Pole

61

Should the Christian faith be rationally defended?

by Narkissos in

jw
friends

in the pretty miscellaneous "global flood" thread there were a couple of exchanges on the value of "apologetics" per se.

i think this subject is worth a thread of its own.

i will here recall some statements in the aforementioned thread:.

Pole

Narkissos,

I think Rochelle's post is an excellent example of how the inner logic of faith can lead a Christian to avoid apologetics, regardless of any anti-Christian criticism.

Kierkegaard's stance is another. He was aware of early Bible criticism but dismissed it. He just held that both Christianity and existential truth belong to the realm of subjectivity (cf. for instance

All I am saying is that modern Christians are in a position where they have to question some of the fundamental currents of early christianity. Of course it's possible to be a non-apologetic christian, but that is tantamount to taking a rather liberal approach to some beliefs of some prominent varieties of the early christian faith.

Rochelle,

the examples you've posted are somewhat different from what I think of when I think of Christian apologetics. Miracles, prophecies, etc.... Even those had to be accepted on faith by people who weren't eyewitnesses to them, and I never saw anyone (especially not Jesus) arguing ad nauseum with unbelievers. The believers just presented the facts as they knew them and left the rest up to their audience.

When I think of apologetics, I think of how I've seen people INSIST on the scientific merits of the Bible or some other non-issue, and subsequently argue said issue right into the ground well after it becomes obvious that neither side is listening to the other.

What I meant was apologetics by ancient standards. There was no science then as we know it. I think miracles and revelations were a form of apologetics because they were presented as objective facts which confirmed the validity of christian faith.

I mean look at passages such as this one:

1 Corinthians 15

12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

I think the writer clearly imlpies that faith is dependent on some facts such as the resurrection of Christ and that it is futile to believe in Christ if resurrection was not a fact. Isn't that apologetics? Isn't Paul (?) discrediting those varieties of Christian faith which didn't recognize Christ's resurrection? And don't modern christians have to take some of the crucial Christian texts with a pinch of salt to avoid being apologetic?

Pole

61

Should the Christian faith be rationally defended?

by Narkissos in

jw
friends

in the pretty miscellaneous "global flood" thread there were a couple of exchanges on the value of "apologetics" per se.

i think this subject is worth a thread of its own.

i will here recall some statements in the aforementioned thread:.

Pole

The Christian faith is nearly 2000 years old. If you consider the NT books then you'll find that most (if not all) early varieties of the Christian faith were fundamentally based on apologetics. Either implicitly or explicitly.

Revelations

Prophecies

27

The Nativity Traditions of Jesus

by Leolaia in

the nativity traditions in the synoptic gospels are interesting for their reliance on ot exegetical traditions.

most of the narratives of jesus in the gospels are based on such interpretive traditions, modeling events of jesus' life on various texts of the greek ot.

jesus' multiplication of the loaves (cf.

Pole

Leolaia,

I was thinking a little more about similar literary re-uses of traditions, and one very good example of this is how the story of Jonah is dependent on the Elijah-Elisha cycle -- practically plagiarizes from it in its verbatim wording in places.

This should be interesting. The internal intertextuality of Bible books demonstrated in liguistic terms usually makes a lot of sense to me.

Narkissos,

Thanks for the clarification.