Posts by wizzstick

43

How Will Armageddon Begin?

by Cold Steel in

and how long will it last?

and who will come after that, yahweh, as the old testament says or jesus, as the new testament says?

the scriptures say he'll come to the mount of olives, but surely that's a spiritual mount of olives.

wizzstick

3. Nations of the world turn on religion. ( Again; not happening tomorrow.)

What's interesting about this idea is what happens when you take 'Christendom' off the table and try to imagine this happening with what's left.

Take the next biggest faith - Islam.

Even with the thought that 'God' has put it into the minds of the Nations that make up the UN to attack religions, how exactly do you attack Islam? It isn't structured in the way the churches are. There isn't a Vatican to attack or a General Synod. Structurally it's much flatter. You have the mosques or masjid (which are very simple buildings, not laden with gold for the nations to 'eat up the fleshy parts') and muslims will quickly tell you they don't have to worship in a building called a mosque. Every clean, proper place is masjid for muslims.

So with those thoughts in mind, how do you attack 1.6 billion people?

It's an insane idea when you think about it.

Then you realise that actually what the WT means by attacking religions is attacking 'Christendom'.

This is just their own revenge fantasy for all the ridicule they've suffered from the churches.

Oh dear.

21

So my husband got a letter

by Lost his mind in

so, he received a letter that i am wondering if it is one of those open letters that are out there to denote time given.

it starts out with the name of the person sending it, then goes into the spiel...do you know our god's name?

when i was shown what it is, i kind of got upset.

wizzstick

First, many claim that the name should not be used because the original way to pronounce it is unknown today. Ancient Hebrew was written without vowels. Therefore, no one today can say for sure exactly how people of Bible times pronounced YHWH. However, should this prevent us from using God’s name? In Bible times, the name Jesus may have been pronounced Yeshua or possibly Yehoshua—no one can say for certain. Yet, people the world over today use different forms of the name Jesus, pronouncing it in the way that is common in their language. They do not hesitate to use the name just because they do not know its first-century pronunciation. Similarly, if you were to travel to a foreign land, you might well find that your own name sounds quite different in another tongue. Hence, uncertainty about the ancient pronunciation of God’s name is no reason for not using it.

The problem here is twofold. The correct name to call God and its use in the Christian Greek Scriptures (or NT).

With regards the first point, the correct name to call God, if it doesn't matter what name to call God then surely God isn't fussed about the name that he is called?

Which means LORD is perfectly acceptable.

The WT argument seems to be that LORD doesn't sound very personal. But no one knows how to pronounce YWHW because God hasn't told anyone. So surely that means God isn't fussed about the name that he is called? This argument gets very circular!

The real problem is the Christian Greek Scriptures (or NT). YHWH never occurs in it. There is an excellent book by Professor Jason BeDuhn called 'Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New Testament'. In it he's clearly a big fan of the Watchtower's translation of the Bible. But...he devotes the entire appendix to destroying the WT's addition of Jehovah to the Christian Greek Scriptures. Which is what the vast majority of Bible scholars state. It's a fiction. They have changed the Bible to add this.

So YHWH only occurs in the Hebrew scriptures and no one actually knows how to pronounce it - so there is no reason not to use LORD.

YHWH never occurs in the the Christian Greek Scriptures - it's an addition by the WT in their translation.

21

So my husband got a letter

by Lost his mind in

so, he received a letter that i am wondering if it is one of those open letters that are out there to denote time given.

it starts out with the name of the person sending it, then goes into the spiel...do you know our god's name?

when i was shown what it is, i kind of got upset.

wizzstick

Point out that Jehovah is not God's name.

No one knows how to pronounce YHWH. For some reason God forgot to tell everyone how to say it. Jehovah is name made up by a Catholic monk. Read more here: Is God's Name Jehovah?

It's important to remember this. No one knows how to say God's name. No one.

22

Being nice to LGBTQ people is an affront to god?

by Viviane in

this should be titled "jerks for jesus afraid of their own shadow, sexuality".

seriously, someone thinks that a video on how to be nice to people different from him is an affront to his god.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/federal-worker-would-rather-be-fired-than-watch-lgbt-diversity-video-god-doesnt-want-me-to-see-it/.

wizzstick

This will come up more and more.

It's important their bigotry is challenged, all the way to court.

44

The 1914 doctrine: How long it will last?

by opusdei1972 in

one hundred years have passed and the society still supports this lie, which of course, is the basis of their other lies, like that of the unfaithful and not discreet slave appointed in 1919. however, i wonder, what will happen after 50 years, when the overlapped generation will pass?.

and if you want, what will happen with this religion in 2100?, could it survive with the same lie??

?.

wizzstick

I think that the whole point of the One Generation = Two Overlapping Groups was to buy time.

They didn't seem to need that doctrine but they still invented it.

So what's the expiry date?

I would suggest the 2030s. By that point Mark Sanderson will be in his 70s. He's been used as an example of the second group that overlaps with the first.

It wouldn't be a surprise to me if they're not already re-examining scriptures with the view to create a whole new end times dating system.

The WT needs the end to be 'close' to 'create' urgency. As 1914 fades into the distance it will be harder and harder to maintain that urgency.

405

Origin of Life

by cofty in

in recent years significant progress has been made in solving the question of how life originated on our planet.. how do you think theists will respond when it finally happens?

as a former christian i know my reaction would have been something like "well that just goes to show that it takes intelligent life to make life", but for two reasons that defense doesn't work.. firstly it would prove that life is not an ethereal force that originates with god.

there is no 'ghost in the machine', no elan vital.

wizzstick

Good thread.

Mars may have life on it. Bacterial life. Images from a satellite above Mars excited people when they showed dark moving patches. If there is liquid on Mars, and it contains bacterial life, how will the Theists explain it away?

I've realised that there's a hard core group of Theists that will always reject evidence. If intelligent space aliens appeared tomorrow and humanity said 'So was it God or evolution?' and the space aliens said 'evolution' then a huge section of humanity would reject them. They're wrong - they don't know for sure. They're demons (which I'm sure would be the JW.org response).

Sad really.

9

Looking For WTS Quotes

by Vanderhoven7 in

for practical reasons (a study next week).

i'm looking for wts quotes that claim.

the religion of jehovah's witnesses is the only true religion.

wizzstick

Straight for the mouth of God:

https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/true-religion/

18

Joseph and his generation

by maninthemiddle in

so the wt used ex 1:6 to define a generation from the very beginning.

then in the this september broadcast the same person (splain) who spent 20 min with charts to explain a generation, makes a point that joseph and his brothers were very close in age?

(min 4:29).

wizzstick

Am I missing something here that they could contradict themselves so easily?

It's worse than that - they contradict the Bible!

Genesis 50: 22-26
22 And Joseph continued to dwell in Egypt, he and the household of his father, and Joseph lived for 110 years. 23 Joseph saw the third generation of E′phra·im’s sons, also the sons of Ma′chir, Ma·nas′seh’s son. They were born upon Joseph’s knees. 24 At length Joseph said to his brothers: “I am dying, but God will without fail turn his attention to you, and he will certainly bring you up out of this land to the land about which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” 25 So Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying: “God will without fail turn his attention to you. You must take my bones up out of here.”26 And Joseph died at the age of 110, and they had him embalmed, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

Problems to flag to JWs:

1 – Joseph lived for 110 years, much longer than people live today so not a great example.

2 – Joseph lived to see the third generation of Ephraim’s sons (Ephraim was Joseph’s son so that’s 4 generations in total!)

So their use of Joseph collapses by using the Bible.

Not great huh?

5

Pioneer School - Columbian Style

by darkspilver in

jw
friends

at the la vega kingdom hall, which is around 35 miles north west of bogota, columbia.. with a population of just under 50 million, there are some 165,000 active jws in the country - a ratio of around 1-in-300.. they conduct around 220,000 studies each month, and with just under 24,000 regular pioneers, the country saw a 2% increase last year.. last year's memorial attendance was over half-a-million, which means 1-in-100, or 1%, of the country attended.. street view of the outside of the kingdom hall: .

https://goo.gl/maps/4wxafcxgfrb2.

remember, the video below is in spanish, if that's a problem -, don't click the link .