veradico

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Posts by veradico

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  41

  What's your favortie drink?

  by IronClaw in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so here i sit on a saturday night nursing my favorite bottle of wine.

  a pinot grigio.

  so what drink does it for you?.

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  veradico

  Frannie, thanks for the suggestion. I think you are the second person in my life to suggest I try that, so now I have to.
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  41

  What's your favortie drink?

  by IronClaw in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so here i sit on a saturday night nursing my favorite bottle of wine.

  a pinot grigio.

  so what drink does it for you?.

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  veradico

  I'm going to have to look into this Bushmill's 10 stuff. Sounds good. I adore the fact that if anything can be fermented humans probably have fermented it. I just discovered fruit lambics. I prefer cherry. Speaking of cherries, has anyone ever had Kijafa cherry wine? It's a wonderful dessert wine. Or, going back to the world of beer, a Blue Moon with an orange. Or, following the fruit idea, a bottle of Hornsby's hard apple cider. I can appriciate the virtues of a virgin hot chocolate, but the only reason why it has been saving itself is because it knows that somewhere out there is a bottle of ButterShots that wants to mingle with it in a wonderfully wet and, to use the word again, orgasmic way. In the warmer months, I agree about mojitos, but they'll have to fight it out with Gin and Tonics. But it's cold right now. The other week I made some hot spiced buttered rum batter. A friend of mine was in Mexico and brought back some real vanilla. To the vanilla one adds brown sugar, butter, cloves, cardamon (sometimes called cardamom), cinnamon, and nutmeg. Once one has made this flavorful batter, simply add a table spoon or so of the batter to a mug of hot water and rum.
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  86

  Talk on Apostates

  by IslandBrother in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  have you ever walked on the beach and tried following another persons footprints; matching your own steps with them as exactly as possible?

  by calling ourselves christians, we have indicated our desire to do just that, to follow closely in the footsteps of christ.

  have you ever noticed though that on a crowded beach, , there were several sets of footprints, many of them may look alike.

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  veradico

  I don't really like the image at all. I don't think of "following" the teachings or examples of spiritual people as a matter of forcing myself to fit into a precise pattern. A robot could mimic the precise behavior of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tse, Mencius, Confuscius, Zarathustra, Apollonius or anyone else, but what would it matter? "Following" is a metaphor. If one tries to force one's self to fit a pattern that is contrary to human nature, as I would argue the Watchtower model is, he has apostatized from everything that is worthy of the word "divine." As soon as we turn ourselves over to others, abdicating our freedom and consequent responsibility to make our own decisions, we deprive our very lives and actions of meaning. Our feet fill the footprints of those who have gone before, and that is all. Our eyes cannot attend to the sight of the dunes and the surf and the sky; our ears cannot hear the crashing of the waves and the calls of the seabirds; we cannot smell the salty moisture in the air. For we are following the footsteps of the Faithful and Discreet Slave.
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  28

  What is Gnosticism and why do Christians dislike it ?

  by 5go in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  aside from the fact that gnosis is greek for knowledge.

  two things christians seem to dislike greeks(think animal house) and knowledge (other than knowledge of the christ of course).

  seeing as they practice a form of it anyway.. gnostics believe that they have secret knowledge about god, humanity and the rest of the universe of which the general population was unaware.

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  veradico

  I forgot to mention Harold Bloom's fun book on American religions (which contains, by the way, a delightfully amusing chapter on Jehovah's Witnesses) in which he argues that the American faith is characterized by a Gnostic spirit.
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  28

  What is Gnosticism and why do Christians dislike it ?

  by 5go in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  aside from the fact that gnosis is greek for knowledge.

  two things christians seem to dislike greeks(think animal house) and knowledge (other than knowledge of the christ of course).

  seeing as they practice a form of it anyway.. gnostics believe that they have secret knowledge about god, humanity and the rest of the universe of which the general population was unaware.

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  veradico

  It certainly would be easy to argue that the Johannine epistles (in which term I include the "essay" or whatever you want to call it of 1st John) are arguing against a kind of Gnostic Christianity which some Christians--perhaps after coming into contact with the Gnostic trend of thought that emerged in the Hellenistic world around and probably slightly before the development of the various Christian sects--viewed as the proper understanding of the faith confessed in the 4th Gospel. (Even though such features of the Gospel as the (in general) realized escatology, the mixture of high and low Christologies, the sense of alienation from the world, and the belief in the power of knowledge or truth to set one free can be explained by the historical development of the community in relation to Judaism, they are consistent with the "Gnostic" trend of thought that might have been coming into existence around that time.) However, I think the Johannine community (or, to be more P.C., the community of the Beloved Disciple) and its offshoot that is addressed in the epistles had as much to do with the development of Christian Gnosticism as did Jewish apocalypticism, Platonism, the mystery cults or Zoroastrianism. The "orthodox" anti-Gnostic rhetoric about the group's immorality has to be suspect. Furthermore, the myths generated by the Gnostics should be treated as poetic attempts to express non-physical concepts; the "orthodox" far to often attempt to force upon Gnostic texts absurdly literal interpretations. The genuine Gnostic texts that have been discovered indicate that Gnostics were characterized, as someone on the forum already mentioned, by asceticism, not by wild sexuality and canabalism. Unfortunately, due to their secrecy, the Gnostics were viewed by their fellow Christians with the same suspicion as were Christians by Greco-Roman society as a whole. Certainly, their views were not what we would call orthodox, but, at the time that they articulated their views, "orthodoxy" did not exactly exist. There are points of doctrinal comparison between Gnosticism and Jehovah's Witnesses (some of these have been mentioned: the need for "accurate knowledge" for salvation, the three classes of humanity (those who have the divine spark, Christians in general, and the rest of the doomed world), the dualistic perspective on the world (i.e., the world is evil and is ruled by the Evil One, but we are separate and chosen), etc.); however, it's hard to be as offended by these doctrines in Gnosticism since they do not seem to have been linked to the spirit of exclusivity, pride, and organizational devotion that characterizes Jehovah's Witnesses. Gnostics were notoriously hard to distinguish from their fellow Christians. I think the comparison someone made to groups like the Free Masons was apt. I suppose those who are committed to the doctrines that became relatively catholic among Christians particularly from the 4th cent. on would look upon the Gnostics with more disapproval than I do. Gnostic beliefs such as that the creator God is not the true God and had nothing to do with the Son (who, by the way, did not really live and die as a man) would be offensive. I personally find the links to Eastern thought in Gnosticism most provocative and interesting. Michael Williams' _Rethinking "Gnosticism"_, of course, cannot be ignored. He argues that the whole catagory or term "Gnosticsim" is artifical.
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  20

  NWT Revisions

  by Jeffro in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  there is mention on a wikipedia article that there was a 2006 revision of the nwt.

  is this true?

  what differences are there?

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  veradico

  The German reference NWT of 1986, as has been noted before, has a more recent footnote apparatus than the English one of 1984, but, as far as I know, the main text remains that of the 1984 revision. In 2006, they produced the paperback _editions_.
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  58

  Do you have to get baptized to be saved?

  by JH in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  1 peter 3:21.

  21that which corresponds to this is also now saving you, namely, baptism, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the request made to god for a good conscience,) through the resurrection of jesus christ.. the witnesses say that you have to get baptized to be saved, but what will happen to jw children that aren't baptized or jw teens that didn't get baptized yet?.

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  veradico

  Auld Soul: "since those who are dead have no sin any longer—their accounts sheet is perfectly balanced, their life has paid their sins." While this is the JW teaching, isn't the usual interpretation that the wage sin pays is _spiritual_ death, death to God? This is how Christians explain the mysterious fact that even though people have been saved they die physically. I do not think our life per se is enough, according to traditional Chrisitianity, to pay for our sins. That's why we need the value of Jesus' life. (I still can't seem to format. Sorry.)
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  2

  could someone explain how to work this forum?

  by veradico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  how do you make a link to another webpage active on a post so that people can just click it and go?

  every time i post something the formating gets lost when i submit.

  all my paragraph divisions get lost, etc.

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  veradico

  Thanks I just loaded the add on you recommended.
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  2

  could someone explain how to work this forum?

  by veradico in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  how do you make a link to another webpage active on a post so that people can just click it and go?

  every time i post something the formating gets lost when i submit.

  all my paragraph divisions get lost, etc.

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  veradico

  How do you make a link to another webpage active on a post so that people can just click it and go? Every time I post something the formating gets lost when I submit. All my paragraph divisions get lost, etc. How do I avoid this happening? How do I quote part of what someone else posts in order to respond to it?
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  13

  New Harry Potter Book Release Date!

  by cathyk in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  harry potter and the deathly hallows, the seventh and final installment in the series, will be released at 12:01 am on july 21, 2007. woo hoo!.

  cathy koenig.

  www.oldlighthousebooks.com.

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  veradico

  Harry Potter got me in so much trouble as a Witness. I could not believe how worked up some people got over that story. I was a MS, but, when some people heard I liked Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, they marked me as someone who could be a spiritual danger. I was constantly having to defend the innocence of the human imagination. But that's rather hard to do when the people you're talking to think it's dangerous to go to yard sales because the demons like to attach themselves to old furniture.