Posts by yaddayadda

14

Input from Christians requested on JWs not partaking

by Brigid in

this is a new concept for me that i keep running into with all of the discussion regarding the memorial: the fact that the jehovah's witnesses make a yearly ritual (their only ritual) of not partaking of the symbolic flesh of christ.

can any christians comment on the importance in the christian faith of partaking in this?

and why, would jw's feel the need to build up this rite to have people "pass" it up.

yaddayadda

I believe very strongly in the subconscious training and manifesting power of ritual. This feels like a very strange thing to do in a religion (Christianity) whose whole doctrine and very existence centers around this one rite that commences and relives a covenant with their god to place people in an observer/denial stance. Very, very strange indeed that the witnesses would have people pass it up.

I doubt Jesus intended it to ever be regarded as a mere ritual or subconscious training, which can work just as much for the bad as good.

JW's do not view Jesus as 'God' the same as the Father is God (they consider the Father alone is almighty as 'the only true God' John 17:3 and 'the only God' John 5:44 NIV), so the 'ritual' is not a 'covenant with their God' . It is a covenant with God's son.

The reasons, as you said you are aware, why the majority of them bypass the emblems is because they don't feel any 'desire' to go to heaven, or at least that is what they imagine they feel. The teaching that conditions that feeling (imagined or real) is that only Christians who are going to be co-rulers in the kingdom of heaven are to be in the covenant that Jesus concluded. As the kingdom is in heaven they feel, or have been conditioned to believe, that there should be some accompanying magical calling, pull, or realisation that they are going to heaven. The converse could be said of all the 100's of millions of Christians who perfunctorily partake of the emblems. They all say they have a desire to go to heaven, but do they really? Or is it based on dogma and religious sentimentality? If the Society came out tomorrow with 'new light' that in fact all of the 'great crowd' are going to heaven after all and Charles Russell was right all along about the great crowd being a secondary 'heavenly class', you can bet your bottom dollar that the number who partake of the emblems next year will hugely increase, thus proving that whatever 'calling' one feels is probably largely attributeable to whatever dogma you have swallowed coming down from the religious leadership.

What strikes me as an especially bizarre twist of weirdness is that JW's answer the question 'how do you know if you have a heavenly calling or an earthly calling' by pointing to Romans 8:15,16, "...by which spirit we cry out: "Abba,' Father!" Yet both the 'great crowd' and the 'anointed class' both cry out 'Father' to Jehovah, do they not? In fact, arguably JW's have a greater awareness of the Father and worship/cry out to Him much more than any other religious group. Nearly all other Christian religions believe that evidence of adoption by the holy spirit revolves almost entirely by having a supernatural experience in relation to Jesus, 'accepting Jesus into your life' or asking him to come into your life to be the Lord of your life, similar. In effect, other Christians cry out "Abba, Jesus!" not "Abba, Father" (the Father is quite clearly not Jesus.)

24

What's so special about the "Special Assembly Day"?

by Nosferatu in

jw
friends

i never could figure this one out.

i get to sit on my ass and have my balls securely fastened to my underwear from sitting too long for only one day instead of two.

was that supposed to be special?.

yaddayadda

Make it an extra special day by not wearing any underwear so your balls don't have to stick to them

36

Share the Wealth on April 12th! Watchtower Takes Notice!!

by Severus in

if you don't know what watchtower money is click here: wt money <<complete instructions on this link.. .

the overwhelming and ongoing support for the memorial campaign is awesome.

click here for more information: news about 2006 memorial (4200 views and counting!).

yaddayadda

Randytv.com ?????? Yikes, couldn't they come up with a better name than that? JW's are gonna be wary of a website that sounds like it's porno.

32

Comments You Will Not Hear at the 4-9-06 WT Study (Recreation)

by blondie in

(a) why is it difficult to find acceptable recreation?

q 6, 7. what can help you decide what is acceptable or unacceptable.

9 at times, christians ask: "what is acceptable recreation?

yaddayadda

damn, no more tittie jiggling at parties allowed by the young buxom sisters...damn

32

Going to Memorial Service for the first time.....what should we expect?

by whyizit in

jw
friends

we spent 6 months "studying" with a jw couple.

they claimed the wts had all the answers, but they actually couldn't answer any of our questions.

(we are devoted born-again bible-believing christians.).

yaddayadda

You can expect to hear a very dry, rushed, impersonal talk that will twist and turn on various abstruse points about sheep and classes and anointed and great crowd etc etc, and not much at all about Jesus as a person and what happened on the day he died.

The whole thing is simply a glorified Sunday public talk, punctuated by strange silent pauses as the wine and bread are passed around.

The only good points are it is a short meeting, the anticipation of the wine and bread coming your way and the enticing smell of the wine, and the opportunity to perhaps spot some old faces from the past that make the token effort to go along once a year and to check out the new faces of visiting bible students or others that have been persuaded to attend that normally don't.

18

Puke-making article on WTS homepage

by yaddayadda in

"discipline that yields peaceable fruit".

http://www.watchtower.org/library/w/1988/4/15/article_01.htm.

notice the blatant abuse of context in saying that the 'no greeting' treatment to be given at 2 john 9-11 (persons bringing an anti-christ teaching to your home) should be the same as 1 cor 5 (persons who wilfully practice sins of the flesh).

yaddayadda

"Discipline that Yields peaceable fruit"

http://www.watchtower.org/library/w/1988/4/15/article_01.htm

Notice the blatant abuse of context in saying that the 'no greeting' treatment to be given at 2 John 9-11 (persons bringing an anti-Christ teaching to your home) should be the same as 1 Cor 5 (persons who wilfully practice sins of the flesh). They are two totally different situations.

Notice the failure also to bring in other relevant scriptures that can shed light on the matter. This reveals the lack of intellectual rigour and consistency in their interprative approach. For instance, they fail to address the fact that the Greek word used by the apostle Paul for 'stop associating with' at 1 Cor 5 [sunanamignumi - 'to keep company with, to be intimate with'] is the same word used at 2 Thess 3:14,15, which the Society uses to support their 'marking' policy. Clearly, simply greeting someone and speaking to them cordially is not 'intimate association [sunanamignumi], therefore according to the apostle paul it is just as permissible to speak to a disfellowshipped person as it is to a 'marked' person. It is only 'eating' with them, ie, a more intimate association, that is prohibited.

And notice the gloating that they are somehow vindicated because the Supreme Court wasn't interested in even considering the claim brought by the aggrieved ex-JW, as if that makes it right in God's eyes.

5

gods name?

by aoxo in

i never understood what the big deal was with saying gods name jehovah.

the jw's say that that's his name and not titles like the lord or the creater because those titles describe what he is or does not his name.

but don't they also say that the name jehovah means "he who causes to become"?

yaddayadda

You're absolutely right. It doesn't really matter to God whether you use the name or not, otherwise God would have ensured it was contained in the oldest versions of the NT and he would have ensured that at least once Jesus would have been recorded in scripture as using that name, but he never did. Is Jewish superstitious custom more powerful than God?

If the title 'Father' was good enough for Jesus it is good enough for any Christian.

21

Disfellowshipped anointed

by New Worldly Translation in

it's not very often my mother brings up jw stuff with me cos she knows my opinion on it.

tonight however she mentioned that she had answered up incorrectly at the book study this week and she wanted to know what my take on it was.. the question was can disfellowshipped anointed ones come back into the org and still claim they are of the anointed?.

my mum said no and i thought no too, but apparently they can or so the group leader said.

yaddayadda

You could turn this around on them by saying that if all Christians back in the first century were anointed, then the disfellowshipping policy that they use 1 Cor 5 to justify should only apply to the anointed, right????

If the 'other sheep' are not supposed to partake of the emblems at the memorial and therefore have not entered into any official legal covenant with Christ through that, then surely they are not under the same binding legal obligations towards Christ that the anointed are under, thus there must a lesser duty of care on the great crowd to behave themselves, right???

Poor great crowd get all the same expectations and punishment as the anointed. 's not fair.

16

Special WT Issue in 2014 - What articles will it contain?

by VM44 in

the year 2014 will be 100 years after the "end of the gentile times" year 1914.

.

in october of that anniversary year, the watchtower will published a special commenorative issue.. any ideas as to what articles that issue will contain?.

yaddayadda

Easy, there will 2 articles.

The first will be more general and will dwell on the theme of how Jehovah doesn't want anyone to be destroyed but all to desire to repentance and how merciful Jehovah is to allow the system to go on so long so more people can become dubs and thus be saved.

The second article will get more to the point and be based on the scripture that says 'even if it should delay, keep in expectation of it'. There will be 'new light' that this scripture is being literally fulfilled and we are in a 'delay' period but that it is really great news because JW's have all the more reason to 'lift their heads up because [their] deliverance is getting near'.

28

Where are the Great Crowd in Rev. 7:15? Every JWs should read this.

by Desino in

every jehovah's witness should know this.

i believe it is the current understanding of wts that the great crowd is rendering sacred service on earth after the great tribulation.

rev.

yaddayadda

There's a portion in the appendix of Ray Franz's book 'In Search of Christian Freedom' that has a comparison of verses relating to the 144,000 and the Great Crowd that I found quite startling and disturbing when I first read it, as I think any JW would.