Posts by moggy lover

15

Is the WTS About to Massage the Numbers in a huge Way?

by dismayed in

obviously with no end-time date being out there right now, the wt to motivate members.

stagnation is the word that comes up frequently on the board here, and a currently active member, i see it permeating the dub attitude.

so this week's study article was interesting in that it potentially expands the area where dubs can count their time.

moggy lover

Can someone please clarify something for me? Has the official policy of the Watchtower changed since I left some thirty years ago?

Can an elder now count his hours if he is making a shepherding call on a Watchtower follower who needs some guidance? This was a no-no in my time and even COs refused to do this because no time was counted. "Wasted theocratic time" we called it. If someone was depressed, well, tough. Let him go out on the FS. That'll larn him. Depressed, indeed. What we would do is get these ones out on the service, and counsel them at that time. Kill two birds with one stone, heh? We count the time, and they get counselled, and Bob's your uncle.

Can an elder count his hour that he gives at a public talk? I know the GB members count the time that they posture about the world's stage making elliptical utterances. But local elders? Again that was a no-no in my time. I can see elders grasping for giving talks all over the place. Sure beats trudging from door-to-door in an otherwise meaningless exercise.

The pages from the Jan 15 09 Wt only mentions that these things are part of the Watchtower follower's ministry, but I see no authorization to count the hours. My understanding is that the "brothers" volunteer their services in this way, as a commendable institutionalized way to "minister"

14

GB Member says....

by Kosonen in

samuel herd, a governing body member says in his speach "the miracle of prayer":.

"god does not answer all prayers.

prayers for world peace, he does not answer them.".

moggy lover

What concerns me is Herd's point no 2. He mentioned that all prayers must be made "in Jesus' name"....Right?

Then I would like to know how an average rank and file Watchtower follower can pray "in Jesus name" when at the same Jesus is not the mediator for that person. Jesus, remember, as far as Watchtower theology is concerned, is the mediator only for the "anointed".

The marvel of praying "in Jesus name" only arises when it is acknowledged that He IS the Mediator. Indeed that text which proclaims Jesus as the Mediator between God and men, is referring to prayer. [1 Tim 2:5, but see verses 1-5]

10

Christ presence started in 1914: Acknowledge since 1925?

by Nick! in

christ presence started in 1914: acknowledged since 1925?.

according to the second wt article in the march 15th edition of this year, paragraph 4 states that (translation) jehovahs witnesses recognize since 1925 that the first world war and the events which followed, constitute a clear evidence that christ presence in his heavenly kingdom started in 1914.. could someone kindly scan the english version of the above article and post-it online?.

it is the first time, at least personally, that i read such a statement in a wt literature.. according to the book captive of a concept by don cameron, chapter 3 page 22-23, the first time the wt recognized that christs presence happened in 1914, was only in 1943.. how is it possible that this article of 2009 points to the year 1925 as the time when the jw first recognized the true event associated with 1914?.

moggy lover

Since the Watchtower leadership and its anonymous writers regularly and pointedly speak with forked tongues in all their major doctrinal pronouncements there is always a measure of truth mixed with falsehood in those pronouncements. Take all their statements with a pinch of salt, and seek confirmation from more objective sources.

The truth is far more prosaic, and ironically more complex that that found in Watchtower literature.

1 Originally the Watchtower deity told his lackey, CT Russell, that:

a. Jesus came invisibly to earth in 1874.

b. There would then follow one generation of forty years when the "harvest" would be garnered, and the footstep followers of Christ would be selected. At the end of that generation, which would be in 1914, Christ would begin his reign, the Gentile nations would topple and the world would end.

2 By 1925 this teaching had obviously become too absurd to maintain so Rutherford discovered that either this same deity who spoke to Russell, or another one, approached him and revealed a new "truth" This was that: a Jesus came invisibly in 1874, and

b Jesus had only just begun to rule in 1914. Hitherto Jesus' taking up His rule signaled the end of Gentile rule and the end of the world, now it was discovered that it signalled the beginning of the end of Gentile rule. Now there was evidently a hiatus discovered, and rather than destroy the Gentile nations immediately, a generation would again be allowed to pass, before this destruction would occur.

c. Rather than predicting the 1914 War beforehand, the significance of this conflict was only recognized in hindsight. Up to 1925, the Watchtower "explained" Matt 24:7 by pointing to the various conflicts that occurred in the 19th C, such as the Napoleonic wars, that began the century, the US Civil War, The Franco-Prussian War, etc. Now they conveniently had one central conflict to focus attention on. Their deity must be a slow learner. Took him eleven years to see this significance.

3 1929 was the last time we hear about the dreaded date of 1874. In the book "Prophecy" [an oxymoron if ever there was one] on page 65 we have this sage remark: "The Scriptural proof is that the second presence of the Lord Jesus Christ began in 1874"

4 In 1932, in a brief, almost innocuous remark, the date 1914 is linked, not only with the rule of Christ which like his "presence" began "invisibly that year, but also with his second presence. If you blink you'd miss this remark. It is tucked away in a largely forgettable little booklet called "What is Truth"

5 In 1943, Freddy Franz tidied up much of the tardy Watchtower theology that Rutherford bequeathed to the leaders as his unwanted legacy. Now, officially, Christ came invisibly in 1914, His rule invisibly began in that year, and the last generation, the "1914 generation" was given its genesis.

24

When was the last NWT revision released?

by VM44 in

does anyone know when the last revision to the new world translation was released?.

i seriously wonder if there are any qualified bible translators left at brooklyn or patterson.

that is assuming that there ever were any there in the first place.. there might not be anyone qualified in the watchtower organization to make any revisions at all.. the watchtower today wants lawyers, accountants and construction engineers, not people trained in biblical languages!.

moggy lover

I can't explain this anomaly. It appears that different printings of the latest edition have different formats, for some unexplained reason. If I am not mistaken, the edition that I was shown was a black soft cover book and it was printed in Japan, of all places. This did not have brackets.

The editions that appear to have been printed in Germany still retain the brackets.

Is it is possible that, in order to save money, the Japan editions are printed privately, with the resources of outside contractors? ?

Curious.

22

David H. Splane

by VM44 in

david splane is a member of the governing body of jehovah's witnesses.. he became a full time minister in september 1963. a graduate of the 42nd class of gilead, the jehovah's witness missionary school, he served as a missionary in senegal, africa, then for 19 years as a travelling overseer in canada.

he and his wife, linda, have been at bethel (jehovah's witness headquarters) in the united states since 1990, where he has worked in the service and writing departments.

since 1998, he had been a helper to the writing committee.

moggy lover

Whaaat? 'E 'as a fondness for the plumbin' profession?

'E fixes up leaks in the WT HQ maybe? Iss tha' why we doan git no more info from within?

Often wondered tha' meself I did.

24

When was the last NWT revision released?

by VM44 in

does anyone know when the last revision to the new world translation was released?.

i seriously wonder if there are any qualified bible translators left at brooklyn or patterson.

that is assuming that there ever were any there in the first place.. there might not be anyone qualified in the watchtower organization to make any revisions at all.. the watchtower today wants lawyers, accountants and construction engineers, not people trained in biblical languages!.

moggy lover

In 2007 the latest edition of the NW "T"was released as a paperback.

Some minor changes were made as mentioned by posters above. For instance the regular edition says of Col 1:16 "By means of him all [other] things were created" While the latest edition says: "By means of him all other things have been created" with the brackets removed. The same holds for 1:17 twice.

In this the Watchtower leadership has gone back to "old light" because the original 1950 edition of the NW "T" did not place brackets in these verses.

6

Judicial Committees....

by AllTimeJeff in

this isn't especially thought out on my part, but i wanted to put this out there.

it's more about elders, and how some who had to handle judicial committees could at least be as reasonable as possible, or total idiots.. many have been mistreated by a jc.

in fact, i bet that just by agreeing to disfellowship someone, i have contributed greatly to a few peoples emotional and spiritual misery.

moggy lover

It was my unpleasant duty to serve on several such JCs, and I never felt completely at ease at any of them. Conceived by the Watchtower leadership as a means to keep the local congregations "clean" they nevertheless more often descend to the coarser level of outright intimidation with the sole purpose of obligating the individual into a forced conformity to the established norms of Watchtower policy.

It is in this aspect that the JC betrayed a far more sinister reason for its existence: Not just to root out any perceived heresy, or any infraction of Watchtower Law, but more purposefully, to root out any trace of an emergent individualism.

Sexual immorality is a perpetual threat to any association of Watchtower followers, and these problems can be solved by counseling, by pastoral ministration, or even by mutual family integrative co-operation. But the Watchtower leadership chooses to portray its claimed fidelity to biblical verities by creating a Pharisaical framework whose similarity to Christian patterns is absolutely nil.

But these instances were only a small fraction of the cases that are brought before JCs, at least in my personal experience. Theological dissent, or doctrinal aberration are by far the more threatening cause for alarm to the comfortable sterility of any local congregation of Watchtower followers, and my own was no exception. The very structure of the JC, its sinister secrecy concealing a malevolent intention, its star chamber tactics, its implied authoritarian infrastructure, are all carefully artificed to intimidate and compel.

Most elders within the Watchtower imperium function as nothing more than theological eunuchs, incapable of any genuine opinions of their own, satraps whose only purpose is to serve as the instrumentality through which the will of the Watchtower leadership is enforced on the perceived recalcitrant. As AKJ has already noted, and which I can confirm, many of these self same elders approached their task of presiding in these committees as if imbibing from a heady elixir, the exercising of power which created an illusive exhilaration.

I have so often, in my inner most thoughts, conjured up visions of all those half forgotten memories of people I so casually wronged, and I have wished to beg their forgiveness. Where are they now, after some thirty years? The theological flotsam arising from the cultic experience, they have all, like me, blended, into a twilight existence where mercifully, such experiences are regarded as cathartic rather than brutalizing.

7

Jehovah's Witnesses and their American roots

by drew sagan in

i've thought of this for quite some time but have never posted anything about it.. .

for many of us who bought into the watchtowers ideals of a "restored christianity" the thought would never have crossed our mind that the movement was anything but nothing but just that.

even after a person leaves it still may be hard to get beyond these clouded ideas and see that many of the origins of the movement and essentially american in nature.. .

moggy lover

The Watchtower's American roots are clearly stamped on their bearing, vocabulary, and theological conceptualizing. The expanding American frontier brought with it an unprecedented innovative spirit that revolutionized not just technology but social orientation as well. This led to a paradox. Where technological development expanded the human experience in America, it conversely brought about an increasing conservatism in sociological thinking. Thus we may say that America was more conservative in its thinking that Europe was at the same time.

Had the Watchtower been born in contemporaneous non-English speaking Europe, it would have been more sacerdotal, more introspective and certainly more concerned with the minutiae of theology, especially in Protestant Europe. As it was, the rapidly changing landscape both in the availability of material wealth and the can-do spirit that epitomized America of the mid 19th C led American theologians along different paths.

Here there was a growing concern, especially among the less structured groups, with apocalyptic-ism and its attendant idea, chronology. Ideas originally gestated in Britain by thinkers such as EB Elliot, Henry Drummond and John Aquila Brown, found a ready incubation in America, which then led directly to the Millerite movement which itself spawned, via the Second Advent movement, Watchtower ism.

Russell borrowed most of his ideas, and certainly all his more important ones, directly from the Second Adventists, as a glance at his magnum opus, the "Millennial Dawn" series of books can show. Devoted almost entirely to prophetic speculation with scant references to doctrinal questions such as the Trinity, or the soul, the books are predominantly of the American Apocalyptic tradition of the time. It is this American-leaning concept of Watchtower theology that first ventured overseas.

If Russell was mildly American Second Adventist in his orientation and teaching, his successor, JF Rutherford was even more so. His legalistic patois, which at times scarcely resembled intelligible English, was pure American pop culture of the 1930s. My sympathies lie with those translators of his books whose schooling was ultimately alien to Rutherford ism, who had the unenviable job of conferring his lingo into their own native tongues.

20

Generation change in study article

by LadyCCC in

i just finished reading the "journal" and it mentioned that they have said in the past that the generation meant the unbelieving jews, and then in modern day times generation meant world of unbelievers, now am i wrong to assume that what is mentioned in paragraph 15 of the last study article in the feb. 15th watchtower is that the annointed are the "generation"?

is this now new light?

are we to assume that this is still the truth despite the changes, i mean what if they are and our faith is being tested?

moggy lover

The GB changes its "generation" of Matt 24:36 teaching as often as they change their underpants.

This latest change actually goes back to the time of second President JF Rutherford, who had reinvented the meaning of "generation" to refer, not to a people living in a specific arc of time, to make it refer to a "race" or aggregation of people in common cause, in his case, the "anointed"

I am sure someone on this forum will get you the citation for this.

In the mid 60s the fourth President, Freddy [the wunderkind] Franz again reverted to WT type by making the "generation" of Matt 24:36 refer to a specific time period, and people living in that arc of time. This facilitated the proclamation of the 1975 doctrine, and which became incumbent on Watchtower followers to believe without dissent. The expression "the generation of 1914" was the committed dogma of the time.

When this teaching was becoming absurd, and untenable, another change was announced in 1995. Now this "generation" did not refer to a specific people living in a precise arc of time, but it referred to anyone born since 1914, who saw any of the signs of the end. So a person born in 1914, who saw some of this "sign" was considered to be part of the same "generation" as someone born in 2007 who will also see some part of this "sign" This saw the discreet dropping of the "generation of 1914" expression. Since 1995, the anonymous writers and editors of the Watchtower literature, have never placed the terms "generation of" and "1914" in congruity.

Probably because this "explanation" strained credulity, and refused clarity, the GB has naturally been skirting around for a more plausible rationalization.

Not very deep thinkers, and with limited intellectual ability, they have had to resort to a previous "light" that had previously been regarded as "darkness". They have resurrected the hoary old Rutherford humbug.

Stay tuned for further "flashes of darkness" as the ingenuity of the GB is stretched to its limit.

Cheers

39

Is there a list of changes made in the New World Translation?

by Grammy in

i would love to be able to show them to my husband so he can check them for himself since he thinks the only changes made were that the nwt is in a "modern language" he gets quite upset with me when he tells me he has read the bible front to back several times and i say "yes you have, but the bible you are reading has been changed from what the scriptures in other versions of the bible say" thanks in advance for any help with this.grammy

moggy lover

As Carla has pointed out above, there are several relevant cites that have examined the NW so-called "translation", and the one I would particularly commend to your attention is the one written by Dr Robert Bowman, [part of the "For and Answer ministry"] where he has addressed the issue of scholarship that the Watchtower uses to justify its otherwise idiosyncratic translation of certain portions of Scripture.

To get you started on your examination of the NWT, however, here are a few points that may be of interest to you:

1 In the first edition of the NW "T" published in 1950 and which featured the WT version of the NT, Jo 1:1 began with the expression "Originally the Word was..." When, to their chagrin, they discovered that by doing this they were thus endorsing the True Christian view that the word "Arche" used in Jo 1:1 could mean origin, they had no defense against the Christian view that Christ was "The Origin of the creation of God" as stated at Rev 2:14. Hence the original edition of Jo 1:1 was discreetly edited to read, as "In the beginning was the word...." as it continues today.

2 The editors of the NW"T" have had considerable difficulty defining the meaning of "Ego Eimi" as found in Jo 8:58, providing, over the years, at least four different footnotes explaining what they want that text to mean.

3 Early editions of the NW'T" did not enclose the word "other" in brackets in the rendering of the passage at Col 1:16,17, thus suggesting that the word itself was an integral part of the original Greek. It was only when the charge of scholastic dishonesty was beginning to arise, that later editions did indeed enclose the offending word in brackets thus: [other] forcing the NW"T" to admit that this was an editorial inclusion on the part of the committee, and not in the original.

4 There are several instances of grammatical inconsistency on the part of the editors of this version, which lays them open to the charge that they have deliberately tampered with the original Greek tenses so as to provide a version that says, like a pliant whore, what they want it to say. Here are a few examples:

a The Prest Act Subjunctive of the verb "ginosko" is made to say "taking in knowledge" at Jo 17:3, yet this same form of the same verb is rendered as "come to know" at Jo 10:38, and as "have the knowledge" at Jo 17:23.

b The Present participle of the verb "Paralambano" is "translated" as a future suggesting, as WT theology teaches, that the Kingdom is reserved for the "anointed" only at some future time.

c The Aorist subjunctive of the verb "as pad zomai" is translated as "greet" at Matt 5:47, but as "in greeting" at Lu 10:4

5 There are other objectionable renderings from a True Christian perspective: For instance Jesus is made to refer Himself merely as "a representative" from God at Jo 7:29, where no such paraphrase is warranted. Feel free to consult any translation made by scholars who actually had the temerity to study the original Greek for themselves.

6 The translation of "conscious of nothing at all" found at Eccles 9:5 is an outrageously biased rendering of the Hebrew "Yad'ah" especially when you consider that the word occurs 947 times in the Hebrew text of the OT, yet this is the only verse where they render it as being "conscious" It has obviously been done this way so as to justify the WT theological position of annhilationism. In fact in the very same contextual grid, at Eccles 8:17, and at Eccles 9:12 they have translated this same word correctly as "know" Go figure.

7 I have yet to find a translation that renders Jo 11:25 as "come to life" when the original simply says "shall live" Because the original suggests a conscious existence in death, the WT "translators have made Jesus refer to some future bodily resurrection.

8 The use of the word "re-creation" at Matt 19:28 [the hyphen is in the NW"T"] is unfortunate. It obviously helps to justify the WT view that the future resurrection is in fact a recreation, rather than an organic continuity of the human person. I have yet to see an objective translation that uses this word. The original which says "palin genesia" is best translated as "Regeneration" with no implication of "creation"

9 There are many more, but just one more must suffice: At Rom 13:1 the verb "tetag menai" [ I am putting the gaps in the words to help in pronunciation, especially for those whose English tongues have difficulty in getting around Greek words] which is one word, yet is rendered with no less than eight English words: "Existing authorities stand placed in their relative positions." This facilitates the anti-social view that the WT encourages its zealots to have, in that the governments of the word are not in fact "placed" in their place of authority by God Himself, but that they assumed this "relative position" for themselves. Thus WT acolytes argue, we must not vote, participate in any government sponsored activity and so on. Such a justification can only come from reading the NW "T." Yet this verse tells us that God is the One who has given them their power to rule.

Hope this helps.