Posts by slimboyfat

26

How frequent is this among Jehovah's Witnesses

by vienne in

my grandmother, an immigrant from austria, was.

two of my aunts, their husbands, both elders, various cousins and two of my sisters are witnesses.

so is my grand uncle.

slimboyfat

My wife’s gran has been in an old people’s home since 2018 and she gets a visit from an elder every Sunday afternoon, which I think is quite good. There are two JWs in the home and the elder visits them both at the same time. And it’s not a particularly easy visit because she is very forgetful and not particularly interested in JW things now. I think she does watch the videos the elder shows her but I’ve no idea what she makes of them.

On the negative side, it’s always the same elder who visits and always alone. Can’t they mix it up a bit? And it’s not anyone she knew when she was younger because the home is in a different territory some miles away. To my knowledge, none of the JWs she knew has come to visit her, although she had dozens of JWs in her home over the years. To be fair, a majority of the JWs she knew are no longer around now because she is 94 and most of them are dead, but there are a few younger JWs around who should remember her.

31

Loss of a Jehovah’s Witness who I considered a friend

by Fallen_Winter in

jw
friends

i have known a jehovah’s witness for approximately 15 years and i have considered her a friend although i know that jehovah’s witnesses cannot have friends who are not jehovah’s witnesses.

approximately two years ago, i was going through a very difficult time and i asked my friend if we could have bible study.

she said yes and we have been studying the bible since.

slimboyfat

I don’t think we want to over characterise and contrast a lack of true friendship inside JWs with a utopia of unconditional friendship outside JWs. Non-JWs are just as capable of having ulterior and self-interested motives for friendship, they just take different forms. Plus conditionality is surely a spectrum, not an all or nothing, because genuine friendships may be stronger than commonly promoted by Watchtower, but neither are they completely unconditional, nor likely would we want them to be. After all there are surely red lines we would all set beyond which friendship would not survive, and these can include the beliefs of the other person as well as actions, just not usually the narrowly defined set of beliefs Watchtower sets out. I find that I can be friends with someone who supports different political opinions and religious beliefs quite easily, but I honestly find it more difficult, or in fact I simply don’t find it appealing to try to maintain a friendship with someone who regularly makes racist comments or who thinks it’s okay to cheat on their spouse, for example. In one instance even though I’ve known the person for a long time. So I would not say true friendship is unconditional nor is it particularly easy to find or maintain inside or outside JWs.

31

Loss of a Jehovah’s Witness who I considered a friend

by Fallen_Winter in

jw
friends

i have known a jehovah’s witness for approximately 15 years and i have considered her a friend although i know that jehovah’s witnesses cannot have friends who are not jehovah’s witnesses.

approximately two years ago, i was going through a very difficult time and i asked my friend if we could have bible study.

she said yes and we have been studying the bible since.

slimboyfat

She might be under pressure from a group overseer or something to stop counting the study or even to stop conducting it if it’s “unproductive”. If you flat out said to her let’s stop the study at the moment, but still meet from time to time and discuss spiritual and other things, my guess is she would probably go for that. I think that’s even the instruction, if I remember right.

But generally, I think the JW attitude to “unproductive” studies is pretty counterproductive. Because there isn’t exactly a long list of people waiting for a Bible study, so why not just continue as long as the person wants? In the long run, it often pays off, though sometimes it is in the very long run. I know JWs who only got baptised after decades of Bible studies on and off. For one local couple it took over 40 years to get baptised, and some of their children and grandchildren have got baptised too now. For others, 10 or 20 years before making a decision is not unheard of.

8

Was Hell Consistently Taught from Genesis to Revelation?

by Sea Breeze in

some sources cite that the word or concept of hell appears 167 times in the old and new testament.

jesus spoke about hell more than anyone else.

how can such consistent warnings by many different writers over 1600 years all be parables?

slimboyfat

To interpret Sheol as referring to hell would be a grave mistake

21

Is the JW version of The Lord's Supper really a Parody?

by Sea Breeze in

a black mass is a ceremony celebrated by various satanic groups.

it ... is intentionally a sacrilegious and blasphemous parody of a catholic mass.

- wikipedia.

slimboyfat

nicolaou, I don’t know what the answer is why the God of the Bible is depicted killing children, it doesn’t seem there can be a justification for that. Perhaps those passages misrepresent God? Because there are certainly parts of the Bible that say God wants everyone to live. One of my favourite verses is 2 Peter 3.9

Jehovah is not slow concerning his promise, as some people consider slowness, but he is patient with you because he does not desire anyone to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance.

If that’s true, then perhaps everyone will be saved in the end because why can’t God do what he wishes to do?

21

Is the JW version of The Lord's Supper really a Parody?

by Sea Breeze in

a black mass is a ceremony celebrated by various satanic groups.

it ... is intentionally a sacrilegious and blasphemous parody of a catholic mass.

- wikipedia.

slimboyfat

I’m saying it’s the blood of the covenant that saves from sins, isn’t that what the verse says?

21

Is the JW version of The Lord's Supper really a Parody?

by Sea Breeze in

a black mass is a ceremony celebrated by various satanic groups.

it ... is intentionally a sacrilegious and blasphemous parody of a catholic mass.

- wikipedia.

slimboyfat

The verse says it’s the blood of the new covenant that’s for the forgiveness of sins.

13

Does maths prove the bible is wrong?

by joey jojo in

there might be a few that find this post boring, because, you know - its maths.. i like maths but im not a mathematician or condsider myself any type of expert on the subject.. there is a branch of maths called propositional logic that is used widely in computers and computer programming that allows computers to make decisions based on certain conditions.

for example: if a condition exists, then do something.

like: if the a button is pressed, then the letter a will appear on the screen.

slimboyfat

I don’t know, but again isn’t it safe to assume that ancient people also realised that light comes from the sun and stars? Even if they didn’t know as much about the sun and stars as we do, they surely knew that’s where light comes from. The only other sources they may have been familiar with were perhaps fire and some living things that glow in the dark. Are there any other natural sources of light? I can’t think. So on the hypothesis that Genesis is the work of ancient people without inspiration from God, what did they think they were saying by putting the creation of light before the creation of the sun and stars?

13

Does maths prove the bible is wrong?

by joey jojo in

there might be a few that find this post boring, because, you know - its maths.. i like maths but im not a mathematician or condsider myself any type of expert on the subject.. there is a branch of maths called propositional logic that is used widely in computers and computer programming that allows computers to make decisions based on certain conditions.

for example: if a condition exists, then do something.

like: if the a button is pressed, then the letter a will appear on the screen.

slimboyfat

Depends how long a day was, or how near the end of the third day God created plants, because plants could presumably have survived a few initial hours without sunlight. Maybe it’s even in some sense better for the plants to install them first then turn on the sunlight rather than the other way round, again, providing there isn’t a long period in between.

It’s also worth considering that ancient people in general knew that plants need sunlight too, as did presumably the people who wrote, selected, and preserved the words of Genesis as scripture. It’s unlikely that they did so in ignorance of the fact that plants need sunlight. So whatever the reason is for the text being ordered the way it is, an explanation that presumes ancient people made some kind of stupid scientific mistake here is pretty unlikely.

7

Why I dislike eschatology

by Riley in

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ouye3e0fypc&t=183s&pp=yguzd2h5igkgzglzbglrzsblc2noyxrvbg9neq%3d%3d.

please take the time to watch.

i am not good with words but i have heard someone so eloquently explain how i feel about something.

slimboyfat

You stole my point, kind of.

And at least you believe Jesus existed, ha!

According to reports, some of Jesus’s statements related to the end-times might have been misinterpreted. (John 21.23)