https://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
The problem for Russia is that the invasion has dragged on for far too long and cost them significantly.
The power of propaganda right there.
The reality:
https://www.ft.com/content/21a5be9c-afaa-495f-b7af-cf937093144d
The US is struggling to fund a war its people don’t want. It is the US and the west that has lost friends and influence as a result of this unnecessary war.
I don't think it will lead to WW3.
We can but hope, but the idea it is a risk worth taking is just insane.
https://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
Of course the US and its allies are guilty of unspeakable crimes. Do you know anything about what they did in Iraq, in Fallujah, Abu Graib, and elsewhere, over a million dead on the basis of lies? Do you know anything about the history of US interference in Haiti? Russia has a long way to go to come anywhere close to the scale and depravity of US foreign “interventions” as they euphemistically term their illegal wars. The rest of the world knows this all too well which is why the US and its allies talking about “human rights” is increasingly met with the derision it deserves. Power is slipping away and the mask is coming off.
https://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
Has Russia treated Ukraine worse than the US has treated Haiti, or Iraq, for example? Or is it only other countries that should be held up to basic standards such as not invading other countries or interfering in their affairs? The hypocrisy is so blatant it takes a lifetime of indoctrination by western media not to see it, and even then the propaganda is beginning to fail.
For me a real wake up call was when the US blew up the Russian pipeline and all the western media colluded in pretending the Russians did it to themselves, a proposition so audacious in its propaganda that it was hard to believe anyone could say it with a straight face. Nobody outside of the western propaganda bubble believed it. I don’t know if it was Seymour Hersh or someone else who said that even a goat herder in Mongolia is aware who blew up the pipeline, but the average citizen in the west doesn’t know. That’s how powerful the propaganda is. You had to be a reader of the New York Times or a viewer of BBC to be convinced not to see reality. Never has Mark Twain’s comment be more true: if you don’t read the paper you are uninformed, and if you do read the paper you are misinformed.
I don’t think anyone would argue that Russia has treated Ukraine well, the point is that it didn’t need to come to this if the US wasn’t as hellbent on projecting its power across the planet.
which name does the evil faithful slave's literature demand that you focus on - jehovah or jesus?.
do jesus & the bible agree with the org's obsession with the name 'jehovah', or was jesus just being presumptuous?
(matthew 10:22) and you will be objects of hatred by all people on account and whoever receives one such young child on the basis of my name receives me.... (matthew 18:20) for where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there i am in their midst.”.
I intended to say that God cannot die and therefore Jesus is first and last in a different sense than God is alpha and omega, because the title “first and last” is tied with Jesus’ resurrection in Rev 1. Both Rev 21.6 and Rev 22.13 seem to be God speaking.
which name does the evil faithful slave's literature demand that you focus on - jehovah or jesus?.
do jesus & the bible agree with the org's obsession with the name 'jehovah', or was jesus just being presumptuous?
(matthew 10:22) and you will be objects of hatred by all people on account and whoever receives one such young child on the basis of my name receives me.... (matthew 18:20) for where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there i am in their midst.”.
Jesus is the first and the last in the sense that he is the first creation, and the first to be resurrected from the dead, and the last Adam. None of these apply to God who cannot die and was not created.
Senior biblical scholar Adela Yarbro Collins explained it this way:
It is not necessarily the case that the same attributes have exactly the same significance for Christ as they have for God. For example, in light of 3:14, the affirmation that Christ is the beginning and the end in 22:13 may be understood as signifying that he is both the beginning and the fulfilment of the creation of God. Thus his being "the first and the last" (an affirmation not made about God in Revelation) could also mean the first creature of God and the agent of God at the end. All of the affirmations are more like poetry than like philosophy, so it is difficult to determine whether the author considered Jesus to be an aspect or emanation of God or the first creature of God, or whether he thought about this issue at all. The notion that Christ was the first creature of God is compatible with his being the principal angel.
Collins, A. Y., & Collins, J. J. (2008). King and messiah as son of God: Divine, human, and angelic messianic figures in Biblical and related literature, page 194.
which name does the evil faithful slave's literature demand that you focus on - jehovah or jesus?.
do jesus & the bible agree with the org's obsession with the name 'jehovah', or was jesus just being presumptuous?
(matthew 10:22) and you will be objects of hatred by all people on account and whoever receives one such young child on the basis of my name receives me.... (matthew 18:20) for where there are two or three gathered together in my name, there i am in their midst.”.
If the intention of the NT authors wasn’t to convey the message that Jesus is distinct and subordinate to Jehovah/Yahweh, then it’s odd that the OT text they applied most often to Jesus did exactly that - in Psalm 110.1 YHWH speaks to the Messianic “Lord” and instructs him to sit at his right hand. This verse is quoted and alluded to dozens of times in the NT, more often than any other OT text, and it shows that Jesus is a different “Lord” and subordinate to God.
NT scholar James Dunn says of the verse, quoted in the NT:
Its importance here lies in the double use of kyrios. The one is clearly Yahweh, but who is the other? Clearly not Yahweh, but an exalted being whom the psalmist calls kyrios. (2) Paul calls Jesus kyrios, but he seems to have marked reservations about actually calling Jesus 'God' (Rom. 9.5 is the only real candidate within the main Pauline corpus, and even there the text is unclear). Similarly he refrains from praying to Jesus. More typical of his attitude is that he prays to God through Christ (Rom. 1.8; 7.25; II Cor. 1.20; Col. 3.17), (3) 'Jesus is Lord' is only part of a fuller confession for Paul. For at the same time that he affirms 'Jesus is Lord' he also affirms 'God is one' (I Cor. 8.5-6; Eph. 4.5-6). Here Christianity shows itself as a developed form of Judaism, with its monotheistic confession as one of the most important parts of its Jewish inheritance; for in Judaism the most fundamental confession is 'God is one', 'There is only one God' (Deut. 6.4). Hence also Rom. 3.30, Gal. 3.20, I Tim. 2.5 (cf. James 2.19). Within Palestine and the Jewish mission such an affirmation would have been unnecessary - Jew and Christian shared a belief in God's oneness. But in the Gentile mission this Jewish presupposition within Christianity would have emerged to prominence, in face of the wider belief in 'gods many'. The point for us to note is that Paul can hail Jesus as Lord not in order to identify him with God, but rather, if anything, to distinguish him from the one God (cf. particularly I Cor. 15.24-28; see also below pp.225f.). So too Jesus' Lordship could be expressed in cosmic dimensions without posing too many problems to monotheism, since Wisdom speculation provided a ready and appropriate terminology (particularly I Cor. 8.6; Col. 1.15-20; Heb.1.36.; see below pp.220f.).
James DG Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity (1981), page 53.
a lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of the cross.
the wt felt it had uncovered some deep conspiracy when they found a number of words were used to describe how jesus was understood to have been killed.
there was an extensive thread many years ago that in short strongly supports the conclusion that at least some nt writers envisioned a cross, while others had a tree in mind.
It was this church to be exact
https://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
They aren't exactly fighting for their country more like Blackrock and the big corporates that want Ukraine in a perpetual war with Russia. At this point I history the last thing I'd do is send my child to fight a dirty war that started from the West
100% agree. You would not catch me putting my life on the line, or encouraging anyone else to put their life on the line to support US hegemony in a part of the world that should be none of their business. I think a substantial proportion of Ukrainians feel the same about this tragic war that didn’t need to be fought, but this will never be reported in the West. Check out interviews with Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer for the real deal on this awful, unnecessary war.
https://youtu.be/ulan2hhagz8?si=jpedzunzb5o_6axd.
here’s a cautionary tale for anyone counting on past ties with jehovah’s witnesses to dodge conscription: they’ll throw you under the bus faster than you can say “conscientious objector.” a man in ukraine learned this the hard way after refusing military service and hoping his old religious connections would save him.
spoiler alert—they didn’t.
There’s another aspect worth considering too: that, in past wars, states that have allowed exemptions on religious grounds have insisted on high standards for being included in that exempt category. Any suggestion that non-JWs were attempting to gain exemption from combat on the basis of weak links to the community might undermine ability of the whole community to claim exemption. In past situations, “minister” status has been required as proof of exemption on religious grounds, which JWs have sometimes successfully argued should apply to all JWs because they all preach. If this person was not currently participating in the ministry, for whatever reason, that may have been a significant barrier to him claiming exemption under the banner of JWs. If this is a factor, then the local elders might not wish to get involved in the case, not out of malice, but because of a real danger of putting others at risk if the authorities perceive the category of JWs is being interpreted too liberally for purposes of avoiding combat.
There as so many things we don’t know about the case, or the reasons for the actions, I don’t think there are good grounds for rushing to judgment.
on february 22, 2023, anthony morris iii was officially removed from the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.
a few months later it was revealed that the watchtower bought him a house in lumberton, north carolina.. however, and correct me if i am wrong, since leaving the gb nobody has reported seeing tony attending jw meetings or participating in field service.
in fact nobody has reported seeing him anywhere, not even at a local liquor store.
I hope he’s okay. The more time passes, the more I think, despite his obvious flaws, he was a more likeable member of the GB.
