Old Goat

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Posts by Old Goat

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  26

  I was told...

  by molybdenum in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

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  Old Goat

  That's me. I was baptized in 1948. First met the Witnesses in 1944. It is now 2014. I'm still waiting. Not much longer I fear, unless i reach the proverbial 120.
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  27

  Did You Ever Stumble Anyone?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i don't think i ever did but i would have been honored to do so..

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  Old Goat

  Yes. I suggested to the mother of a young ministry school student that a Nehru jacket was not appropriate attire. She took her kid out of the school. I confess it didn’t' bother me a bit.
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  2

  WT Letters 1950s

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i need scans of any you may have for a personal research project.

  can anyone help?.

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  Old Goat

  Thanks, DoT
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  2

  WT Letters 1950s

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i need scans of any you may have for a personal research project.

  can anyone help?.

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  Old Goat

  I need scans of any you may have for a personal research project. Can anyone help?
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  28

  My Open Letter to the WTS

  by braincleaned in

  1. watchtower
  2. scandals

  today, i was pissed.

  so i wrote an official open letter to the borg.

  i'm posting it everywhere i can.. .

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  Old Goat

  They ignore letters like this one. But writing it may make you feel better.
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  10

  Any Change In Your Donations Since Tithing Arrangement?

  by jw07 in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  has anyone who handles accounts noticed a change in the amount of donations coming in since the new tithing arrangement?

  at my hall the number of usual donations are currently at around 1/4 of what they usually are for the past 2 weeks!

  time for another local needs part on donations.

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  Old Goat

  My wife who is still active donates about 20 to 50 dollars a week. It comes from her own income. I donate nothing.
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  14

  1881

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rachael de vienne is one of the authors of a separate identity, an exhaustive history of the watch tower's early years.

  this is from her personal blog:.

  http://wardancingpixie.blogspot.com/.

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  Old Goat

  DT, last I heard they were discussing formats. You might contact one of the authors through their history blog and ask. I think they're working through a contract with an Italian publisher for translation and publication right now. But I dont' know for certain.
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  91

  one reason for the dumbing down of the org

  by Magnum in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  a lot of us have said that theres been a dumbing down in jw land.

  its just not like it used to be especially a few decades ago.

  it seems to me that if jw are right and the end of the world is near, the spiritual food should get tastier and more nourishing as time goes on, but it's getting more and more bland and less nourishing.

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  Old Goat

  Oh, I think there are Witnesses with "brain power." They live in fear of using it. They compartmentalize. It's okay for them to use it when they teach or as a lawyer or engineer. It's not okay to develop a thological interest or to question the Watchtower's conclusions.

  Witnesses used to appeal to the middle class. Now they appeal to the under eduated, nearlly illiterate. It is easier to write for those with a fourth grade education than for intellectual adults.
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  14

  1881

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rachael de vienne is one of the authors of a separate identity, an exhaustive history of the watch tower's early years.

  this is from her personal blog:.

  http://wardancingpixie.blogspot.com/.

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  Old Goat

  Steve,

  None of those doctrines are unique to Adventism and were borrowed from British Literalist belief. Literalism in America was most often called Age to Come belief. Identification of the Pope as antichrist goes back to the middle ages when even some Catholic clergy said that. You may want to read Froom's Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers. He was an SDA historian, and his view is colored by their theology. However he does reasonably document his work.

  Similarly, denial of a literal hell has an ages long history. The doctrine was resisted by Miller and Hale and other Millerite leaders and came to them primarily from Storrs who adopted Conditional Immortality doctrine while a Methodist. It is not and was not an exclusively Adventist doctrine.

  European Literalists were prophetic students. They believed that the Bible should be taken at face value unless it clearly said a symbol was in play. German, Dutch and English scholars adopted that approach in the early 1600s. Literalism was at odds with Adventism. Adventists eventually expelled anyone who taught Age to Come theology. Age to Come theology was Russell’s base belief.

  Schulz and de Vienne take you back to Storrs' original words to show what he believed, what Adventism was, and how he and others differed from it. Russell believed the Jews would return to favor. That's not adventism, but it is age to come belief. He believed in a sort of second probation. That's not adventism, but it is a belief found among age to come systems. Russell believed the earth would endure and be restored. That's not Adventism. That is One Faith/Literalist. The list could be prolonged.

  Storrs' view of Adventists was this:

  Whatever the “church” or ‘the world’ may understand by Millerism, I understand it to have three peculiarities, and nothing more: viz. “Definite time for the advent,” …. That view I gave up in the winter of ’44 and ’45; and time has since demonstrated that I was right in so doing. The two other peculiarities of Millerism I gave up, one in the month of Feb. ’44, and the other in June ’45. The three may be summed up thus, 1. “Definite time for the advent, not to go beyond ’47.” 2, “No return of the literal posterity of Jacob to the land wherein their fathers have dwelt.” 3, “The earth all to be melted at the time of the advent, and none of its inhabitants left upon it.”

  These three points constitute the whole of what I call Millerism. … The second personal advent of Christ – that advent premillennial – nigh, even at the door – the kingdom of God on earth, or the earth the inheritance of the saints – the earth renewed, Paradise restored, and all those kindred doctrines relating to the kingdom of God, are no part nor parcel of Millerism: They had a distinct existence from his theory, and before his views were published to the world. The fact that some who embraced his theory had no knowledge that these other points had been published, by English Literalists, years before they heard from Mr. Miller, does not make them really any part of his peculiarities: they are not, and never were, any of his peculiar views. … The three points I have named are all that constitutes the peculiarities of Millerism.

  Storrs was correct. Anything beyond these points was borrowed from the theology of mainstream Christianity.
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  14

  1881

  by Old Goat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  rachael de vienne is one of the authors of a separate identity, an exhaustive history of the watch tower's early years.

  this is from her personal blog:.

  http://wardancingpixie.blogspot.com/.

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  Old Goat

  A parting thought: Which of Russell's doctrines were exclusively Adventist? Can you name them?