I don't think it's so much a case of things they absolutely know that they are 'cunninginly concealing' as things they just aren't certain about, things that they hope are right but suspect could just as easily be wrong.
'Crisis of Conscience'
(4th edition)
p.260 "Nathan Knorr, then the president, spoke up and said: "There are some things I know - I know that Jehovah is God, that Christ Jesus is his Son, that he gave his life as a ransom for us, that there is a resurrection. Other things I'm not so certain about. 1914 - I don't know. We have talked about 1914 for a long time. We may be right and I hope we are." "
Also, Franz on p.259 notes that Lyman Swingle said after a discussion by the GB on 1914 and the 'this generation': "All right, if that is what you want to do. But at least you know that as far as 1914 is concerned, Jehovah's Witnesses got the whole thing - lock, stock and barrel - from the Second Adventists."
So Swingle evidentally also harboured doubts on the 1914 creed.
If these comments in COC are true, then we can be almost certain that there has always some GB members who have had doubts about some things.
As each year goes by and 1914 recedes further into history, it is hard to imagine that more doubts and questioning on this doctrine wouldn't naturally emerge.
(Mind you, the 7th Day Adventists have never abandoned 1844)
yaddayadda
JoinedPosts by yaddayadda
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18
Things the FDS knows well but cunningly conceals
by greendawn inwhat things do you believe the fds is well aware of but refuses to disclose to its followers because it is not in its interests to do so, and why?
i give one example: abraham, isaac and jacob did not look forward to an earthly but a heavenly life, according to paul at hebrews 11: 13-16 .
"13 all these people were still living by faith when they died.
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What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed
by yaddayadda inas part of my journey into scrutinising the evidence for and against the reliability of the gospels, i've just finished reading "a new perspective on jesus - what the quest for the historical jesus missed" by james d.g.
dunn (phd, university of cambridge).
(have so far also read n t wright's "who was jesus" - and now making my way through "the incredible shrinking son of man" by r m price - so far it's disappointing.
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Dunn doesn't deny there is a literary connection between the gospels, that there is redaction, and that there is a Q source, etc. But despite this, Dunn demonstrates that there are clear themes, motifs, that come through each gospel that can only really be explained as the striking impact, impression, that Jesus made on those who heard him and saw him right from the oft. These motifs are best explained in terms of a clear oral tradition, albeit with some variation on the theme as we would expect in oral performances (hence why many of the variations between gospel accounts), but that there is a core that is essentially there and that are not a product of redaction and imagination. Read the book and make up your own mind.
Honestly, the notion that there was no historical man behind it all and that the gospels are 100% fabrication is, frankly, absurd. It amazes me that persons can say this with any kind of intellectual sincerity and honesty, no matter how faithless they are and how much they reject the inspiration of the bible. One can still reject Christianity and the inspiration of the bible and at least admit that there was a man in Galilee known as Jesus 2,000 years ago. But of course, we see the atheists and sceptics are just as guilty of failing to separate the two and of going to the kind of unreasonable extremes and assertions that the blind fundamentalists do.
The accusation is made that only persons who want to believe in a historical Jesus believe in one, but that argument won't do. The claim is just as valid in the other direction, in fact, even more so. It is apparent that those who reject the historical Jesus out of hand are as thoroughly disposed to do so by their own personal motivations, biases, and desires, as the Christian is for accepting the historicity of Christ. What should satisfy the reasonable man in such biased contexts is what an independent, objective source would say, at least as far as that is possible.
But of course the likes of PeacefulPete and Narkissos know much better than pretty much every reputable historian and academic, Christian or not. -
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Did anyone just get tired?
by woodmonkey induring my days as a witness, which was only about 10 years ending circa 1981, most of my memories revolve around how totally exhausted i always felt.
toward the last, i was dragging my family out to the five meetings a week and working fulltime and getting my quota of publisher hours on the little sheet every month, even doing the temporary pioneering bit now and again.
when i had the ministry school, i even worked a four day week to be able to give every talk on the program in case someone did not show up, which frequently happened in our little congregation west of fort worth, tx.
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I actually quite enjoyed field service...hell I even miss it in a sick kind of way...idling walking around the streets or driving around in a car doing a few lame RV's....enjoying the joking around.
But all those meetings...endless meetings, 3 times a week....driving for miles to sit in a chilly hall at night through the winter months....so bored out of my brain.......can't stop checking the clock.....so tired....can't be frigged looking up all the scriptures.....let me sleep....but must not forsake the gathering......ngnnngarraagghhHHHH!!!!
zzzzzz.......... -
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What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed
by yaddayadda inas part of my journey into scrutinising the evidence for and against the reliability of the gospels, i've just finished reading "a new perspective on jesus - what the quest for the historical jesus missed" by james d.g.
dunn (phd, university of cambridge).
(have so far also read n t wright's "who was jesus" - and now making my way through "the incredible shrinking son of man" by r m price - so far it's disappointing.
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yaddayadda
As part of my journey into scrutinising the evidence for and against the reliability of the gospels, I've just finished reading "A New Perspective on Jesus - What the Quest for the Historical Jesus Missed" by James D.G. Dunn (PhD, University of Cambridge).
(Have so far also read N T Wright's "Who was Jesus" - and now making my way through "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man" by R M Price - so far it's disappointing.)
The book presents a new paradigm for understanding the origins of the gospels, and is a summary of the author's 'Jesus remembered'. It's extensively referenced and biliographed, the author being Emeritus Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham and well known amongst academics in this field.
The basic premise presented by Dunn is that for the last 200 years the search for the 'historical Jesus' has failed to adequately take into account the oral tradition in the creation of the gospels and that this should be the default setting for understanding the historical Jesus. He states that too much emphasis has been given to treating the gospels from a literary perspective, as if they are just the product of layers upon layers of redaction that must be peeled away to get to the truth. This literary default setting adopted by the Quest in the last 200 years is borne from our modern literary mindset and has failed us.
Some salient snippets from the book are:
p.22 - "An inescapable starting point for any quest for Jesus should be the historical fact that Jesus made a lasting impact on his disciples. It can be regarded as one of the most secure of historical a prioris that Jesus made a deep impression during his mission. No one with any sense of history can dispute that Jesus existed and that he was active in some sort of mission in Galilee, probably in the late 20s or early 30s of the first century, prior to his execution in Jerusalem "under Pontius Pilate". We know this because he left his mark on history. The historical fact of Christianity is impossible to explain without the historical fact of Jesus of Nazareth and of the impression he left. What he said and did evidently "got home" to many people, and the impact that he made on them has resonated down through history."
p.23 - "This is the first point to be noted, then: faith among the disciples of Jesus did not first arise with Easer....The second point follows. This initial faith shaped the Jesus tradition from the first. It would be impossible to argue that the impact made by Jesus was on individual disciples who treasured the memory of what they had heard Jesus say and seen Jesus do; that they treasured that memory in their hearts and only after Easer began to talk about what they remembered....Such sharing of impressions, such reflecting on the striking things Jesus had said, such retelling stories of Jesus' doings are the obvious beginnings of the Jesus tradition. In this way, we may say, the initial forms of the Jesus tradition first took shape. The alternative, of disciples staying silent all during Jesus' mission, with no talk of what had most impressed them, with no sayings of Jesus or memories of his healings to be shared when there was nothing else to do of an evening - the alternative of such hidden memories being suddenly jerked into verbal utterance by the event of Easter is simply too incredible even to be considered. Rather, it is a priori compelling to deduce that the Jesus tradition began as a matter of verbal communication as the disciples talked together about the impact Jesus had made severally upon them."
Dunn then takes a critical look at a number of theories about Q that have developed and largely been taken for granted in the last century. He accepts the Q hypothesis, but highlights some fallacies and assumptions about it.
p39 under the heading 'The Inadequacy of the Literary Paradigm':
"The character of this oral tradition had alrady been identified by Julius Wellhausen in his analysis of the Synoptic Gospels: "The ultimate source of the Gospels is oral tradition, but this contains only scattered material"; the Jesus tradition as oral traidition was known only in small units....Unfortunately, however, Bultmann could not escape from the literary mind-set, his own literary default setting; he could not conceive of the process of transmission except in literary terms. This becomes most evident in his conceptualization of the whole tradition about Jesus as "composed of a series of layers." The imagined process is one where each layer is laid or builds upon another. Bultmann made such play with it because, apart from anything else, he was confident that he could strip off later (Hellenistic) layers to expose the earlier (Palestinian) layers. The image itself, however, is drawn from the literary process of editing, where each successive edition (layer) is an edited version (for Bultmann, an elaborated and expanded version) of the previous edition (layer). But is such a conceptualization really appropriate to a process of oral retellings of traditional material? Bultmann never really address the question, despite its obvious relevance."
'The Characteristic Features of Oral Tradition'
'The Characteristic Jesus':
p69 - "If the theses being argued in these chapters are correct, then what we are looking at in the Jesus tradition, and what we are looking for through the Jesus tradition, is one whose mission was remembered for a number of features, each illustrated by stories and teaching, peformed in the disciple cifcles and church gatherings, though not yet (properly speaking) "documented" (the "literary paradigm"). H.Strasburger has put the claim more boldly than I would: ' The very abundance of historical inconsistencies speaks in favour of an...untidy, but certainly developed oral tradition whose honest basic effort at the beginnings of the formation of tradition was apparently to preserve as precise as possible a memory of Jesus, his teaching and proclamation, that is, to give a true and historical witness. And precisely this unique, unfasifiable overall impression has undoubtedly been preserved in the canonical gospels...no matter how many details in the accounts may still, and perhaps forever, remain disputable.' "
p.76 - "To sum up, it is not difficult to build up a picture of the characteristic Jesus - a Jesus who began his mission from his encounter with John the Baptist; a Jew who operated with Galilee, within the framework of the Judaism of the period and in debate with others influential in shaping the Judaism of the period; a Jesus who characteristically proclaimed the royal rule of God both as coming to full effect soon and as already active through his ministry; a Jesus who regularly used the phrase "the son of man," probably as a way of speaking of his own mission and of his expectations regarding its outcome; a Jesus who was a successful exorcist and knew it; a Jesus whose characteristic mode of teaching was in aphorisms and parables;...."
p. 77 - "From these three chapters I therefore conclude : Remembering Jesus really means what it says, that the Jesus tradition was a way of remembering Jesus, showing how Jesus was remembered, and enabling us today still to share in these rememberings. My threefold thesis can be summed up simply. First, Jesus made an impact on those who became his first disciples, well before his death and resurrection. That impact was expressed in the first formulations of the Jesus tradition, formulations already stable before the influence of his death and resurrection was experienced. Second, the mode of oral performance and oral transmission of these formulations means that the force of that original impact continued to be expressed through them, notwithstanding or rather precisely because the performances were varied to suit different audiences and situations. As lasting form still attests, the Jesus tradition was neither fixed nor static, but living in quality and effect. And third, the characteristic features running through and across the Jesus tradition give us a clear indication of the impression Jesus made on his disciples during his mission. As that doyen of British NT scholarship, C.H.Dodd, put it in his last significant book: "The first three gospels offer a body of sayings on the whole so consistent, so coherent, and withal so distinctive in manner, style and content, that no reasonable critic should doubt, whatever reservations he may have about individual sayings, that we find here reflected the thought of a single, unique teacher." The resulting picture of Jesus is not an objective description. There is no credible "historical Jesus" behind the Gospel portrayal different from the characteristic Jesus of the Synoptic tradition. There is no Galilean Jesus available to us other than the one who left such a strong impression in and through the Jesus tradition. But that assuredly is the historical Jesus that the Christian wants to encounter. And should the scholar and historian be content with anything else"
There is then a lengthy appendix which is titled "Altering the Default Setting - Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition". It discusses in depth the faults with the long-held literary paradigm , what we mean by an 'oral culture', and so on. A number of tabled comparison between a few passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke are presented to highlight certain common motifs in each version. Dunn says that we should envisage the gospel writers retelling the story known to them from Mark, that is, retelling it in oral mode - as story tellers, rather than editors - with Matthew and Luke as evidence not so much of redaction as of second orality. In other words, it is likely that such variation in what is obviously the same material is the result of the flexibility of oral tradition, not as indicating contradiction or editoral manipulation. The variation is simply the hallmark of oral tradition, how the Jesus tradition functioned. The variations within the Synoptic tradition reflect more closely the kind of variations that were common in the oral performance traditions of the early churches, not the result of editorial ingenuity of tremendous complexity and sophistication.
Anyone wanting a fresh approach to the quagmire that is the Jesus Quest should read this great little book, which presents a strong case for the essential reliability of the Gospel materials.
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40
Has a “brother” ever screwed you?
by noontide ini was always very cautious with worldly people but of course i trusted everyone in the congregation 100%.
i trusted someone from the congregation with a business deal and got raked over the coals.
its a long and frustrating story, suffice it to say it cost me a lot of anguish, time and money.
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I know a few horror stories of brothers, and an unbaptized relative of a JW, who got screwed over by brothers who didn't pay them properly for work they'd done.
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Jehovah's Witnesses are not False Prophets- Proof
by Gilberto ina couple of years ago after talking about 1975 and the generation change with 2 elders i asked them what we would call another religion if they were wrong with dates and had to change prophecies.
no answer was forthcoming so i offered "false prophets?".
one elder agreed we probably would, the other was deadly silent.. anyway i thought i would look up false prophets and found this... *** g93 3/22 pp.
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Does the Watchtower claim to be a true 'prophet'? - YES
Can a true prophet NOT be inspired? - NO
Has the Watchtower prophet class made predictions in the name of Jehovah - YES
Is there any other religion on earth that has 'prophesied' in the name of 'Jehovah' the way the Watchtower has? - NO
Conclusion: the Watchtower is uniquely guilty of false prophesying according to the defintion of what a false prophet is at Deuteronomy 18:22 of the NWT. (Their own bible translation condemns them on this.) -
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YORRW congregation - 'The Report'
by yaddayadda inanyone read the report book on this website: .
http://www.livingwatersforum.com/bcommentary/index.php .
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Wow, talk about ad hominem. So I guess the conclusion is 'it's crap'.
Was hoping to hear more about what The Report actually says though, aside from all the character assassinating.
Did it really say back in 1994 that there was something funny going on between the Society and the UN? Seems bizarre. -
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Organization
by JWdaughter inhow many religions have a central, organized body?
i can think of 3 offhand-the wt society/jehovah's witnesses, the roman catholic church and latter-day saints/mormons.
any others that have a main hq that sends out doctrine?
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The better question is how many DON'T have a central, organised body, because nearly all of them do.
There is nothing wrong with having some kind of organising body. The problem is the extent to which the body has power and authority over the members. -
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Can the JWs really be called Christians?
by greendawn ingiven the jehovah centred approach of the jws and the marginalisation of christ at least as compared to mainstream christian religions, the extreme reliance on the old testament and particularly the refusal of nearly all jws to participate in the new covenent, should they be thought of as christians at all?
even though they like to call themselves at times: christian (?!
) jehovah's witnesses.
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JW's havn't 'rejected Christ and his work on the cross'. They profess full faith in Jesus and what he did. They only have a different version of it to most Christians.
"Using the name jehovah to begin with is strange since neither the apostles nor the Jews for a long time use it. Now talking about the Father and the old testament is natural and correct but it's the emphasis they got wrong."
It's ridiculous to say that using the name Jehovah (which is not what they would have used) is 'strange' considering that YHWH (Yahweh being the most probably pronunciation) is recorded 7,000 times in the OT. There is no proof that Jesus and the apostles didn't use God's OT name, at least occasionally, and possibly whenever they were quoting from the Hebrew Scriptures, despite the absence of the tetragrammaton in nearly all extant versions of the Septuagint. Over the past several decades many fragments of ancient Greek versions of the Hebrew Scriptures have been discovered wherein the divine name was found written, usually in Hebrew letters. This indicates that the divine name was used in some Greek versions until well into the ninth century C.E. Keep in mind also that the Septuagint is a translation into Greek of the Hebrew scriptures but it is widely believed that Jesus and the apostles spoke Aramaic, not Greek.
What do you mean 'the emphasis they got wrong'. Read the gospels again and ask yourself who Jesus put the emphasis on...himself or the Father?
JW's appear to have elevated the 'organisation' above Jesus Christ, but that doesn't mean they are not Christians. The argument can just as easily be made that the essence of being a Christian is to imitate Jesus, and certainly most Christians today are failing to imitate Jesus by the way they more or less ignore the Father. -
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Circuit Assembly 2006
by Zico ini've got my circuit assembly coming next week... which i'll have to attend.
i know that these are generally held around march/april, so i'm sure some posters must have been to the 2006 one?
i remember reading a lot of reviews about the district convention, and it was great to know what would be discussed before i went!
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Why do u have to go? If you don't wanna, don't.