The old covenant wasn't for all God's people. It was for Israel. That there were others who were God's people is evident in the "stranger" concept found in the law. The alien residents had to keep the law if they lived in Israel, but they were not parties to the covenant and the law made exceptions for them.
Old Goat
JoinedPosts by Old Goat
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42
Great Crowd is NOT under the New Covenant...Where does it say this?
by Christ Alone ini was wondering if there was anywhere someone could point to in the bible for the watchtower belief that the great crowd is not included in the new covenant.
i know that this is their line of thinking when it comes to jesus being mediator.
they say that jesus is only mediator of the new covenant and since the gc is not under the new covenant, jesus is not specifically a mediator to them.
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42
Great Crowd is NOT under the New Covenant...Where does it say this?
by Christ Alone ini was wondering if there was anywhere someone could point to in the bible for the watchtower belief that the great crowd is not included in the new covenant.
i know that this is their line of thinking when it comes to jesus being mediator.
they say that jesus is only mediator of the new covenant and since the gc is not under the new covenant, jesus is not specifically a mediator to them.
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Old Goat
I'm not going to look for it, mostly because this topic bores me silly, but when Ray Franz was disfellowshipped there were several articles restating Watchtower belief in detail. You'd want to look for those.
For me, this is a non-topic, because I don't care what the Tower teaches on this subject. God knows his own. Christ is the savior or all. How he does that is less of an issue for me than that he does it.
My personal feelings don't mean the issue should be unimportant to you. I'm just tired of it.
Goat
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Your Experience with Resigning as an Elder
by committeechairman ini'm considering resigning as an elder.
i'm not planning to fade or stop as one of jehovah's witnesses, just stop serving as an elder.. i have responsibility in the congregation and in circuit, district, rbc, etc.
and i'm completely exhausted.
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Old Goat
Eventually some elders wake up and see that they are slaves to an organization, but not necessarily of God. God does not treat his sons as the Watchtower treats elders. Just quit.
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Why Jehovah's Witnesses Think They're Better Than Us
by God_Delusion inhello guys and gals!.
have you ever wondered why jehovah's witnesses think they're better than everyone else?.
well, here's pov (point of view) of a jehovah's witness.
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Old Goat
You know, I never felt that way. As I saw it, Christians tend to be more obedient to the divine will, but they're aren't "better" in anyway. Christian's aren't perfectly obedient. Non-christians aren't fully disobedient. I always thought God would sort it all out. I still believe that. Best to learn the lesson taught by the book of jonah. God accepts people on grounds we might see as slim.
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TOP TEN ex-Jehovah's Witness MISTAKES and ERRORS of judgment
by Terry in1. asking the wrong people the wrong questions in search of the wrong answers based on the wrong presuppositions.. 2. failure to realize you can't drive without a steering wheel by facing the loss of autonomy, individualism and self-respect.. 3. self-righteousness in failing to acknowledge poor choices you made coupled with a lack of curiosity as to why and how you made them.. 4. unwillingness to learn what a category fallacy** is in searching for the "true" religion or "correct" interpretation of scripture, etc.. 5. blindness to the autonomic response mechanisms drilled into you by the watch tower society making non-bias impossible for you.
replacing the jw's with some other nitwit scheme of absolute certainty.).
6. failure to let go of black and white thinking by learning how to see the gray areas between extremes.
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Old Goat
Terry,
EXCELLENT.
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46
How long did you know TTATT while attending the meetings?
by Iamallcool ini did not know anything about ttatt while attending the meetings.. .
ttatt=the truth about the truth..
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Old Goat
I have a copy, read it already. Bad grammar. Not much of a fix.
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46
How long did you know TTATT while attending the meetings?
by Iamallcool ini did not know anything about ttatt while attending the meetings.. .
ttatt=the truth about the truth..
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Old Goat
It makes me sick when they try to compare themselves to the disciples of ancient times. They are not even close.
If we read Paul's letters with an eye for it, we find all the problems that crop up in Witness congregations: Personal difficulties, vanity, a feeling of "specialness," lax behavior. The problem isn't that Witnesses are not like the early, fractured, disagreeable congregations. They are a bit too much like them. We should expect Christian brethren to be a lot like us. No? The real issue is that Watchtower heirarchy replaces scripture with personal opinion, or they express as firm doctrine ideas that have been debated within the Witness comunity for over a century. An Example is the fate of Sodom.
By now we should know that solid arguments can be made for their salvation and for their everlasting destruction. Why not say - a humble man would - we do not know with certainty. It rests in Jesus' hands, and he will do the right thing. That they express personal opinion as divinely inspired doctrine marks them as haughty, self-appointed arbiters of all scriptural matters.
Because the Watchtower has since Rutherford's day formulated a prophetic scheme with themselves at the center, they cannot approach the Faithful and Wise Servant doctrine with clear eyes. Jesus was not describing a prophetic appointment. He was describing the qualities of a faithful servant. Does that mean that the Christian Church doesn't have a governance structure? No. Other verses tell us it does. But Matthew twenty-four does not describe a last-days appointment of a few men to lead the body of Christ into paradise. It only describes two courses of life.
It's time to drop the self-entitlement and really read the Bible.
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46
How long did you know TTATT while attending the meetings?
by Iamallcool ini did not know anything about ttatt while attending the meetings.. .
ttatt=the truth about the truth..
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Old Goat
Is it a root beer dispencer? Absolutely. My uncle had one very similar to it. Back in the day you could buy Heirs' Root Beer Extract and make your own. It was very yeasty, very good.
Note the hand pump on top. That's root beer. Beer would have a tap at the bottom. While there was one style of beer keg that stood upright, it had a glass liquid level on the side. You'd see it in this photo if it were there. Most kegs rest on their side. It's a matter of physics.
Yup, root beer.
Also, there is no evidence of drunkeness in this photo anyway. Drinking beer isn't a sin.
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46
How long did you know TTATT while attending the meetings?
by Iamallcool ini did not know anything about ttatt while attending the meetings.. .
ttatt=the truth about the truth..
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Old Goat
I’m approaching 90. Many of the things that shocked people here I saw develop and change. This includes doctrinal shifts, editorial changes, apostate movements lost in the mists of time. I read everything I could get my hands on back when I was a new Witness. (In the mid to late 1940s.) I remember reading Millions Now Living will Never Die with some shock. We had a few old timers who lived through the 1925 nonsense, and they filled me in on it. What made it easier to take was a short apology from Rutherford’s pen in one of the Vindication volumes.
I believed then and still do believe that individual Christians mature in conduct and doctrinal understanding. I’m willing to give credit to someone who corrects a mistake, no matter how silly the previous belief was.
The number of Witnesses was small when I was new. Those in authority were consequently more approachable. I was more tolerant of human foible then. I’ve become a cranky, sometimes intolerant old man since. One of the most enduring problems for me was the behavior of those who thought themselves specially God-appointed. If one assumes a prophet’s mantle, others have reason to expect more from you than of themselves. Naming names is fruitless, mostly. Most of those I have in mind are dead. But a few stand out as self-anointed and on the creepy side. F. W. Franz would top the list. The long time head of the Service Department, an ex-Marine who never got over being one, is another. His name was Miller. The word Obtuse always crosses my mind when I recall him. Harry C. Good, a long time circuit and district overseer, was abusive to everyone. He was intolerant of age and infirmity marking reduced activity as lack of zeal.
There was an approach to fellow believers back when that always disturbed me. When Knorr sent out the first traveling brothers as “Servants to the Brethren,” he told them to look for trouble. If you look for trouble, you will find it. Because of the difficulties that caused, that approach was pulled back, but never went away.
Personal opinion in place of scripture was and is another issue for me. You find this in the Watchtower. But it’s most pronounced among elders. The Watchtower does not train its elders. Anti-intellectualism taints the authority structure among Watchtowerites. Kingdom Ministry School is a failure as an educational tool. It does not teach the Bible’s content. It teaches organizational structure. Watchtower elders are not taught at the feet of the apostles, but at the feet of men detached from reality and from the Bible.
There are things that many who post here find disturbing that don’t bother me and never have bothered me. The great pyramid? Never an issue for me, for all the reasons cited in Schulz and deVienne’s A Separate Identity. (Buy it and read it!). Rutherford a drunk? Best I could ever tell is that’s a false trail. You’ll find a photo somewhere on here purporting to show him drunk. In the background is an old-fashioned root beer dispenser. Fake evidence such as that is troubling. Mantley’s letter to the Watchtower never upset me. He raved over the Society misrepresenting him. In fact, Mantley’s name didn’t belong on the book. Mantley did not write the passage in question Dana did. Dana was dead when Mantley added some revisions, but he had nothing to do with the quotation. Mantley made it up. But people here are willing to parrot that. I’d never let my students get away with that. You shouldn’t tolerate it either.
The greatest issues for me have always been the conduct of those in authority. It’s often self-serving and abusive. Or they make decisions without having heard the evidence, or they express personal opinions that have no place in Christian discourse.
Revising publications to hide stupid statements is unethical. The Watchtower does that. They fake footnotes or they did way back in the when, citing many references when they all came from one source. I was teaching history back in the 1960s (still crawl out of retirement to lecture on occasion.), and had that discussion with a Watchtower writer. It made no impression on him.
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Have you heard Judge Rutherford give a sermon?
by Terry inthe phonograph records recorded by judge rutherford have been uploaded to the internet archives.. you can stream them and listen.. https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3a%28j.%20f.%20rutherford%29.
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Old Goat
I should add that while I enjoy this site, I don't know how much longer I will post here. I'm going blind slowly. Not really unexpected at my age. So with a very large screen and enlargment for sight challenged, I don't see the computer screen very clearly. If I stop showing up, know that while some of you irritate the devil out of me, I care deeply for everyone hurt by the Watchtower.
read this book: