Posts by fahrvegnugen

66

Today at the KH, Hopefully opens my wifes' eyes

by DaCheech in

the kids were sleeping, and one brother came up to me "is there a microphone on thats picking up some loud noise"?..

i said "all mikes are off except for the stage".

he said "there's gotta be something because the noise is annoying!".

fahrvegnugen

Holy Cow!!! I opened this thread just now and was nearly drowned in a rampaging flood of estrogen!

Whether you believe in keeping things quiet or letting the babies snore away at full volume--the point is that to single out issues like this as "evidence" that JWs are unloving or hate kids is just plain silly. Any church, organization or social gathering is going to have some methods for keeping order that are bound to piss off a certain percentage of the attendees. If you can manage to piss off less than 50% of them--I call it a success!

That being said, I can think of at least one congregation that was so uptight and anal about these sorts of things that it was no fun being there.

Disclosure: I have no kids. (I'm also half-Dalek).

11

Was Jesus the Christ even at birth? - not according to the Watchtower

by hooberus in

the watchtower claims that jesus was not the christ at his birth but instead that he did not become the christ until the time of his baptism:.

"not at birth, but at thirty years of age jesus became christ .

" things in which it is impossible for god to lie p. 211. what does the bible say: .

fahrvegnugen

The scriptures tell us who He is and was at birth.

Have any of you ever heard of the Monophysite Controversy? Christians fought and killed each other for centuries because they couldn't agree on the details of what exactly Jesus' "nature" was at birth.

2

scholarship/use of definite article

by truth finder in

by no means is my scholarship affected by misspellings, and my research may appear at first sight to not mean much.

but with further investigation, one should find the point i have made.

it is a very common thing among proffesors to have misspellings, especially in lecture outlines.

fahrvegnugen

Merry Christmas truth finder—

The texts you cite can be interpreted in the manner you have, but they can just as easily be interpreted differently. Let me address the larger issue here.

The NT (like the rest of the Bible) is a collection of writings from different authors. Each of these authors had their own understanding of religious "truth," and there own purposes for writing what they did. The more you dig into the world of textual criticism, the more obvious it is that these works did not come straight from god--they were penned, altered, added-to, subtracted-from, mistranslated, etc. As a result, they contain many beliefs, statements of doctrine, historical accounts, and so on that are contradictory.

Today we have two camps of scholars who comb through these texts looking to decipher what can be learned from them. The first camp is *the believers* who accept these texts as the inspired word of God, and on this assumption they compare various verses to decipher what the "true teachings" of the faith are. The second camp is *the secular scholars* who take the texts individually at face value. Many of these will say that there is confusion or contradiction between statements of belief made by different authors including over the nature of Christ and the relationship between the Father and the Son.

There are verses which seem to put the Son on an equal footing with the Father (God, Lord, etc) and there are other verses which seem to clearly make him subordinate to the Father. This ambiguity is of course what led to the Arian contrversy and even entire wars and much bloodshed in order to determine what the *correct* understanding was. Today *the believers* assuming the Bible to be the harmonious word of God, comb over the various texts and try to construct a belief system that can account for each text including the seemingly contradictory ones. Those who believe that Jesus and Almighty God are one and the same will interpret the texts which you've cited--the same way you have interpreted them. Those on the other hand, such as JWs who believe the Son is subordinate to the Father will interpret them in accordance with their overall understanding. Both groups start with the preconceived notion that there is *one true interpretation* which is there to found if you will only dig it out.

*The secular scholars* on the other hand do not make this assumption and are more likely to tell you that the NT books contain a lot of confusion and ambiguity on this subject. In this I believe they are correct. The fact that many sincere religious scholars/theologians who spend years studying the biblical source texts eventually come to this same conclusion is good evidence in support of it.

50

Over 160,000 Simply Left The "Truth" Last Year

by minimus in

jw
friends

that was the comment that a former elder made at the local meeting today in his comment.

evidently, he and his wife heard a bethel speaker's comment during his talk say that (i believe the figure was) 167,000 people did not get disfellowshipped but simply left.

the ex-elder made it a point to say that the elders should be watching to help out the flock before they up and leave.

fahrvegnugen

well if they would show some love and spend a bit more time shepherding and preventing them leaving the back door rather than spending all the time on the ministry, it maybe just maybe, would help

To tell the truth, I hope they don't. The more out of touch Brooklyn and the travelling overseers become, the quicker people will become disillusioned and head for the exits.

21

Bible verses or theological questions which "breaks" JW

by Shazard in

i am newbie here and i am not ex-jw.

christ managed to protect me, but my brother fell into this cult.

now coz of this i am confessional lutheran.

fahrvegnugen

Well Gary, here is a subject which we can completely agree on.

I remember the thoughts that went through my mind when a brother who had begun to have serious doubts started speaking to me about them. At the time I was a book study conductor and he was assigned to my group. As soon as I realized where he was leading the conversation, it was as if alarm bells were going off in my head ***APOSTASY ALERT--APOSTASY ALERT***. He brought it up again a couple of times while we were out in field service together and all I could think of was, 'Gee, poor brother so-and-so needs some help, he's really going off the deep end.'

Having this experience in mind, when I left I didn't bother trying to convince my family or acquaintances that their faith was misguided. I knew it would be a complete waste of time and only alienate them. When they're ready--they'll see it. In the meantime, I think the best thing that ex-JWs can do is to get on with their lives and not obsess over the past. Seeing members who left the group leading happy productive lives is the best "witness" you can give to your JW friends and relatives.

2

Hannukah

by aniron in

just listening to the radio and they said that the jewish festival "hannukah" starts today.

would jw's call it pagan because its celebrated on on 25th dec. is this not a reason for celebrating birth of christ today.

after all jesus celebrated a festival around that time, called the " feast of dedication" (john 10:22) .

fahrvegnugen

It's been a while, but I think the official JW position is that Hannukah is not a pagan holiday since Jews were celebrating it as part of their approved worship before they were "rejected" as the chosen people. It would however be seen as part of the Jewish customs which were replaced by Christianity, the New Covenant, etc. and hence not observed by JWs. So the end result is the same--faithful dubs would not celebrate/observe it.

69

Gaps in Fossil Record Disprove Evolution? What about Gaps in Creationism?

by Reluctant Buddha in

missing links disprove a theory???.

what about this one, creationists!!!.

real t-rex .

fahrvegnugen

I recall one of those "Watching the World" columns claiming that scientists had found an alligator-like fossil that apparently ate vegetation.

So of course, the Society latched onto that, but conveniently neglect to mention the mountains of other fossil finds which clearly demonstrate evolution.

3

Research into Jehovahs Witnesses

by truth finder in

i would encourage anyone to look into the ante-nicene fathers, or better yet you can ask the watchtower to send you some photocopies.

the watchtower employs bad scholarship, e.g.

plagiarism, misquotating, and insufficient information.

fahrvegnugen

That the WT Society has at times used questionable scholarship to advance its teachings, I would agree.

But your claim regarding the use of the definite article is a stretch that really doesn't prove anything at all. Greek uses the definite article for all sorts of common nouns that English and other languages don't. Therefore, in most uses of the word "lord" in Greek, one would expect for it to be accompanied by the article. Whether, you were referring to the lord of the universe, or the lord of a kingdom, etc--they will all be referred to as THE LORD in Greek. So the use of the definite article alone doesn't prove anything one way or another.

19

A Brief History

by Sentient in

i posted this in another forum and i was advised to repost it here as well, so here you go.

the is the first time i've posted in a jw related forum since some years ago when i was an ms, or really made any comments to any former or current members outside of the immediate family.

although this may not be the appropriate subforum for it, i'll explain just a bit of my own history because it relates to my own conclusions as to the topic here at hand.

fahrvegnugen

You've been through a great deal, that's obvious, but, in reality, the more you come here and read you'll find your journey isn't much different from thousands of others. At the time we think we're alone; that we're the only ones going through this and no one understands us. Wrong! There are many, many, many people here who can identify 100% with everything you have written - and more - and you will undoubtedly identify with them.

Very well put. After making the break, the sense of isolation can be overwhelming. You thought you knew what was right, what the future held, what your place in this universe was--now suddenly you had reason to doubt the very foundations of your worldview and everything else came tumbling down like a house of cards. I remember literally feeling sick to my stomach, as if the ground had been pulled out from under my feet. It took a couple of years to sort of get my bearings and figure out where I fit into the wider world. In the meantime, sites like this where you can hear from others who have gone through the same experiences are invaluable.

64

Pray for death of Apostates

by tsarina in

i'm new here, so please forgive me if i'm getting this all wrong.. i read on one of the web pages that the society has written "we should pray for the death of apostates".

i think this was a 2000 watchtower, but to be honest i was so shocked at reading it that i forgot to make a note.. .

can anybody enlighten me please??