the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.
george.
Okay, apparently it happened November last year! And was announced at the annual meeting. I guess I’ve not been paying attention!
So yeah, all these figures are massively impacted by that change. We need to wait to next year to see what the real ongoing rate of growth is.
Having said that, baptisms, Memorial attendance, and congregation numbers are all up. None of those figures are due to the change in reporting time.
the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.
george.
No I think I came before that in a letter, because it struck me as odd that it seemed to be rushed out, as if they couldn’t even wait a few weeks until the end of the service year for some reason. 🤔
the latest report is now available for download on our favourite website!.
george.
Very interesting! It looks like their best growth for years. When practically all other churches are declining in western countries. JWs somehow manage to keep growing. At first I thought the change in reporting time was the explanation, but that only came in August, is that right? So it would have caught the last month perhaps. Not sure.
The number of congregations worldwide is up. Numbers continue to go up in Zambia and Memorial attendance is now over 1 million. I think that’s only the 5th country in the world to have over a million at the Memorial: United States, Brazil, Mexico, Congo, and now Zambia.
so i went to a christmas evening candlelight service tonight and it hit me.
i was primarily doing christmas since leaving the jw for the children.
lots of people do it for family without really thinking of the relevance.
Amazing how most people who are born in christian countries have christian beliefs. Its mind blowing. Clearly, it must all be true just because of this.
This is one of the cant old New Atheist talking points, along with other greatest hits of yesteryear such as, “I just believe in one less God that you do”, “why doesn’t God cure amputees?” and so on. A lot of people did find these kind of arguments persuasive at the time but they seem to have lost their magic. Although you still see a few holdouts here and there, like aging rockers past their prime.
that's what the word says.
.
colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..
Jesus was an angelic being in heaven before he came to earth as a human. He is God’s firstborn, knows God better than anyone else, and is totally obedient to God. After he gave his life as a human to save sinful humans, he resumed his heavenly life in an even more exalted position, but always in subjection and to the glory of God. Jesus, as the image of the invisible God, so perfectly reflects God’s character that he could say that anyone who saw him had seen his Father also. God’s thoughts are unsearchable, but we can have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2.16)
so i went to a christmas evening candlelight service tonight and it hit me.
i was primarily doing christmas since leaving the jw for the children.
lots of people do it for family without really thinking of the relevance.
Isn’t it sad to celebrate the birth of baby Jesus every year only for him to die three or four months later? 😜
that's what the word says.
.
colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..
… and to mention, interesting aside, that according to scholar Robert Shedinger the Diatessaron provides some support for Howard’s thesis of the divine name in the original NT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_and_titles_of_God_in_the_New_Testament#Diatessaron
luke 23:43 - and jesus said to him, "positively i say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
nwt places comma here , giving a totally different meaning to the verse.
now the average jw uses this to back their doctrine and it seems in itself virtually impossible to reason with them on it.
Claims that the Coptic supports the Watchtower interpretation are unsubstantiated when compared to broader manuscript evidence.
Another examples of meaningless nonsense. What does the sentence even mean? It sounds like it should be saying that the Coptic doesn’t support the WT interpretation. But that isn’t true. Or it could be saying that it doesn’t matter that the Coptic supports the WT interpretation. But really it doesn’t mean anything. It sounds vaguely like a refutation but without actually saying anything.
after stuydying jw's for over half a century, i haved concluded the following: .
old light / new light is a primary doctrine of jehovah’s witneses.
when they abandon on old prophecy or change a doctrine, they characterize this as “old light”.
JWs don’t have grace, they don’t know grace, some of them don’t even say grace. 😁
the concept of strategic deception exists in several religious and ideological contexts.
in this article, we will explore and compare the theocratic warfare doctrine of the watchtower society and taqiyya in islam.
both concepts have parallels in their mechanisms of permitting deception for religious purposes but differ significantly in their application and historical roots.. 1. theocratic warfare: the "rahab method".
Hurtado does not argue that Kyrios was introduced into the LXX in the second century CE by Christians or otherwise.
Yes he does. Anyone can read it here.
https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2019/05/07/yhwh-texts-and-jesus-a-follow-up/
Why are you lying? What is the point of this?
Hurtado elaborates his view of the implication of copies of the LXX that Paul used containing the divine name. The who argument relies on the point that the first century LXX used the divine name not kyrios:
Our manuscripts of the Septuagint (LXX) routinely have kyrios where the Hebrew has YHWH, but that is a scribal practice that seems to have developed sometime in the second century or so.
So if, for example, the Greek OT manuscripts that Paul consulted had YHWH retained in Hebrew characters, this would have meant that the original referent was “God” YHWH. So, for Paul then to apply to Jesus a number of texts that originally referred explicitly to YHWH did not result from some confusion on his part, or some ambiguity in the text. Instead, this was a fully conscious and deliberate exegetical move. One could argue that the rendering of YHWH as kyrios in LXX manuscripts could have allowed for a certain ambiguity, for from earliest moments the risen Jesus was referred to as “the Lord” (the kyrios). But, given what appears to have been the dominant treatment of the tetragrammaton in earlier manuscripts of the Greek OT writings, this suggestion doesn’t work.
