Posts by Cold Steel

13

Did you ever hear yourself as a JW say something and think, did that just come out of my mouth?

by Wasanelder Once in

i was driving with a long time non-witness friend when a song by supertramp came on the radio and i changed it.

she asked "why did you do that?

i like that song.

Cold Steel

You got a spanking? Even though you were never informed (previously) that it was inappropriate??

At what point do they stone you? By the way, did that "brother" ever get baptized?

14

My dub aunt thinks Obama is mentioned in the bible.

by Jehovah lol in

she's not even american and doesn't live in the usa so it's not even her area of political awareness really.

she seems convinced that obama is the prophesied wolf in sheep's clothing mentioned in revelation.. it's unusual for non-us dubs to hold the weirder beliefs, so this is a new one for me.

she also said that the end is very close now and that things are a foot with north korea; it's clearly the king of the north.. she said exactly the same thing 5 years ago about china, and exactly the same thing 10 years ago about iraq.. derp derp..

Cold Steel

It's unusual for non-US dubs to hold the weirder beliefs, so this is a new one for me. She also said that the end is very close now and that things are a foot with North Korea; it's clearly the king of the north.

Of all the sects on Earth, the last one I'd go to for insight into biblical prophecy is the WTBTS. What it has managed to pull over the heads of its members in regard to Armageddon is a shame, but it's not all the leadership's fault. The Jehovah's Witnesses no longer read their Bibles except to look up citations as encouraged. I haven't met any of them that is aware of what the Bible says about Armageddon.

The Bible is very Jerusalem-centric in its prophetic outlooks. It doesn't really cover China, Korea, India, the United Kingdom, most of Africa, the Polynesian islands and...well, you get the picture.

If your aunt wants to know about the King of the North, Gog, Magog, the Beast, the False Prophet and the other prophetic players of the Bible, she should not look first to YouTube, the Internet or the Governing Body. She should go find out what the Bible says, then look for information that supports it or refutes it.

The best books I've seen are Joel Richardson's The Islamic Antichrist and The Mideast Beast. Both are outstanding primers on end-time prophecy and portray Armageddon biblically. Joel Richardson's website also is worth checking out but, again, only after first reading what the Bible says. If it's especially daunting, go to carefully selected sources first, then see if it's what the Bible teaches. In the case of the Watchtower Society, Armageddon is painted as a worldwide conflagration. It is not. Rather, it takes place in a specific part of the Middle East. Watchtower points out that Daniel and others say it would involve "all nations." But Daniel also used that term to apply to the kingdoms of some of the earlier empires that were prophesied. Alexander the Great came the closest to conquering all nations of the earth, but he hadn't conquered Italy, what is now Britain, Norway, China or any of the nations in the Western Hemisphere. It's not that he didn't know nations existed outside the bounds of his knowledge; it's just that they didn't pertain to his writings. He tended towards hyperbole and who his audience was.

6

How Do I Change Avatars?

by Cold Steel in

i've been looking for ways to change mine, but i haven't found the way.

can anyone help??.

thanks.. .

Cold Steel

Hmmm...so it doesn't change all the avatars on one's old messages, eh? I see the new avatar here on the left, but the ones above are my old avatar. Also, with this new system, changing avatars was easy. I don't know how you guys did it on the old software.

Also, the old one didn't seem to like Firefox very much, or Internet Explorer. It kept telling me my browser didn't support this or that. I'm glad the new one is here, but it will take some time to learn how to keep up on one's topics.

I'm also glad there's a place for a bio. I hope all will avail themselves of it.

6

How Do I Change Avatars?

by Cold Steel in

i've been looking for ways to change mine, but i haven't found the way.

can anyone help??.

thanks.. .

Cold Steel

Thanks. I'd always missed that.

6

How Do I Change Avatars?

by Cold Steel in

i've been looking for ways to change mine, but i haven't found the way.

can anyone help??.

thanks.. .

Cold Steel

I've been looking for ways to change mine, but I haven't found the way. Can anyone help??

Thanks.

26

Campaign to Israel

by humanperson in

i have been wanting to introduce myself but i don't know where to begin.

my husband and i are enjoying our third guilt-free weekend of our lives (both born-in, almost 30).

he has been out mentally for the last year and a half but patiently waited for me to come around.

Cold Steel

They are going.... to be persecuted....they haven't been persecuted in a long time because most folks don't care if you are a witness....but think of this...while they are there...they may find out about 607 BC...ah, maybe God is intervening & sending them there to show that...no..not 607 BC....Or...God did say, when the Jews come back & believe in Jesus, that's when he'll move....so maybe the witnesses don't know that they will be doing God's will. Because the society feels that the Jews have been cut off, but not....

Well, I, for one, will be very impressed when they go to a Muslim country and offer their heads for the cause! And if they go to Israel and try to convert them, they'll find themselves not welcome in a hurry. Their country, after all, depends on military conscriiption and service, and teaching young men that they can't become military or police isn't going to go over very well. Also, if they even mention that 607 B.C. stuff, they'll be laughed out of Dodge. People are a lot more educated over there than here, and while they might get a lot of clueless Americans to buy off on that, there are many historians, archeologists and scripture students over there. And if they begin explaining Hebrew to these educated Israelis, they're going to be branded as nut cases. But who knows? It may help them in the end.

I reckon these missionaries are going to have to find out for themselves. If they so much as smile at someone, they'll be turned in for preaching Christianity. It's not tolerated.

2

Is there an ancient Christian creed that says credo in scripture?

by kepler in

consider the nicene creed.

does it mention bible?

it does say what a christian in a universal church of the roman empire should believe though.. one day i visited a service at a fundamental church and i noticed that a video display interjected the belief in holy scriptures into what otherwise looked to me like the credo i had learned in my own church.. the notion of a credo does not necessarily stay unaltered, i admit.

Cold Steel

You're quite right about the canon. And the fact is, the early Christian church didn't have a closed canon. Further, there's evidence that several of the apostles were intimately familiar with the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, a book rejected by the early ecumenical councils. In fact, the book of Revelation came this close to being rejected. Can you imagine how that would have affected the future, particularly of the Adventist sects?

The LDS church has always taken it on the chin by the evangelicals because they say it “adds” to the Bible. Well, yes, it’s true we add scripture to the Bible, like the Book of Mormon, but the shock value lies in the fact that it’s so opposed to what people have been taught by the various professors of religion. And the very verse most of them use is that niggling little verse at the end of Revelation. The one about not adding to the prophecies of that book being “accursed.” Of course now, most people are sophisticated enough to realize that it means the “book” of Revelation, the Bible not having yet been compiled.

Ah, says the evangelical, but didn’t God know there would be a Bible? And didn’t He know that it would be in the last book? Well, they’ve got me there. I just can’t argue with that kind of logic. Like the Catholics, the Orthodox Christians say their doctrines are taken from scripture and tradition, both being equal. But tradition is an awfully slippery slope in that there can be wrong traditions. Both reject baptism for the dead, even though it was a tradition amongst at least some early Christians (see I Cor. 15:29). And there’s significant evidence that people were baptized by immersion rather than sprinkling, yet they choose to ignore that as well. At the same time, there’s not even a tradition for transubstantiation, praying to saints, wearing pompous vestments and so forth, so forget consistency.

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25

Re Hostage victims killed in Sydney: "dont worry, at least they will NOW get a ressurection"

by stuckinarut2 in

so most would now know of the vile act in sydney last week where a man held hostage over 17 people in the lindt cafe in the middle of sydney.. two people were murdered...a beautiful, educated lawyer,loving mother of three, and a brave, loving young man working as the cafe manager.. this senseless and cruel act has touched everyone deeply, especially in the communities of sydney.

the outpouring of grief and support for the victims and their families has been immense.. i was therefore outraged to have the following comment made by a witness in conversation at the kingdom hall:.

"well, we dont need to be sad, because at least now they (the two victims) will get a ressurection.

Cold Steel

How about suicide? If I'm an unbeliever and commit suicide, do I have a chance in the resurrection?

And BTW, why resurrect those people you're just going to blow away, anyway? Why not just leave them dead?

As I understand it, and as it's been explained to me, anyone resurrected is going to have a chance to go with either Satan or God in Armageddon. At that point, any Christian can say, "Uh, sure...I thought the Methodists were right, but now that I can choose sides, yeah, I'll go with God."

Besides, even if someone believes in life after death, that doesn't mean that those who are left behind don't suffer. They do...sometimes much worse than those who died. I mean, you're sitting around one afternoon watching SANFORD AND SON, then suddenly you get this sharp pain in your chest. You get up, feel a numbness your left arm and say, "Oh, sh--!" then you fall down. Now if most of Christianity is right, the person slips into the next world and rejoins loved ones. Or, if the JWs or Adventists are right, they black out and come to just as everything is coming to pieces. Dogs chasing cats, fire falling from the sky, blood running down the streets, the ground opening up and swallowing folks and buidings. Then when a building falls on them, they'll just rise right through it and keep on going. Or someone might wake up and find out that yes, cows rule the universe after all.

The real tragedy is, most times, the effect it has on others. Even if you're an atheist and your lights go eternally out, your families are still left to suffer. That's why I have compassion for the families of people who are executed, even tho I support capital punishment. It's always toughest on those who are left behind. Numerous studies have shown that when people greive for their pets, it oftentimes can be just as tough (or tougher) than losing a near and dear human. But it would be callous to say, "At least, it was only a cat," or "It was only a dog."

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54

How do you overcome this JW excuse?

by EdenOne in

during one of those meetings that took place before my jc, one of the elders, who was a good friend of mine back then and used to come up with a few outlandish personal views about some teachings, attempted to counter one of my arguments like this:.

eden - "well, if the truth doesn't change, why is it that what we teach as 'truth' has changed over the years (several examples given)?

how can we dogmatically claim at any given moment that we have 'the truth' if our teachings keep changing?".

Cold Steel

So, the truth is never wrong—it’s our perception of it that can be wrong? And wrong as it applies to the Governing Body is only wrong in retrospect; if it was taught in the past, then that’s because it was the Lord’s will at the time?

But what if something’s wrong in the future, or in the present?

The elder said, “The Organization is NEVER wrong.” Never applies to the past, present and future. Our perception of truth may vary.

Perhaps he means that, like the Universe, when we first see it, it appears as though we’re the center of it. But later we learn that, no, we’re just part of it. Our sun is among the many other suns that exist. Only it turns out later that some of those suns aren’t suns at all, but other galaxies. So overnight we see that the Universe was billions of times greater than we thought. Then maybe ten years from now we find out (or discover) that our universe isn’t THE UNIVERSE, but a universe; and that there could be billions of other universes out beyond ours, or coexisting with it in other dimensions. What if there are worlds or kingdoms that are so small we can’t detect them, or that our universe is only the inside of an atom in a giant’s heel (or worse)? All the other perceptions would then be not truth, but conjecture. Then, instead of never being wrong, we would then always be wrong. What does that say about us? That we were trying to deceive or that we, ourselves, were deceived?

When Jesus gave the parable about the blind leading the blind, he was saying that when our leaders are as blind as we are, everyone falls into the pit. The problem comes when the blind tell the rest of us they can see and we, ourselves, are blind and please, oh so very much, let us lead you because you’re either so blind or stupid that you can’t see. Well, they can’t see any better than we can. Everyone would be better off with people who believed the “new light” before it was the new light, right? Not the people who believed that the old light was the new light earlier in time.

No one can “see” unless they not only can see, but comprehend. I would ask the elder if those who were chosen and ordained were supposed to be better at seeing or worse? That doesn’t mean they have to be right about the Universe, but about the things pertaining to their callings. If there is no vision, the people perish, we’re told. Thus, our leaders must perceive truth as God gives them the light to see it. But even science has not only been spectacularly wrong about things, but when they find out, they’re not the quickest to change, either. Everyone knew smoking was harmful to one’s health when science was still being controlled by political winds that blew in the other direction. It also took science over a century to finally admit vitamin C prevented Scurvy, even after Amerindians showed sailors it could be prevented by certain fruits and bark that were rich vitamin C. They even thought tomatoes were poisonous, even when people were eating it in public gatherings. The doctors at the time called such demonstrations “dangerous” and “ill-advised.”

It’s good to learn more, but resistance to truth can come from anywhere. That’s why it’s incumbent on us to judge whether our political, scientific and religious leaders are leading us in areas we ought to be led. But among them all, religious and political leaders have the worst record of all. Look at how many religions there are, or even Christian denominations. In America, we judge our political leaders on whether they have charisma and good hair. Never mind that Ross Perot was absolutely correct in everything he predicted that’s now coming to pass! He was short and talked funny. And he was paranoid — or at least the government said so.

So the elder’s argument doesn’t wash. If someone is supposed to lead us, it would be a good idea if they actually were connected to God in some way. Not to someone who had never heard His voice or seen Him. Anyone can say God chose them. Joel Osteen got rich and he never once said he was called by or represented God in any way. He makes no pretenses about being an apostle or prophet, or being called to the ministry the night after he’d eaten an entire meatlover’s pizza. He hardly ever talks about God, except in the abstract. And what about the Reverend Al? When was the last time you heard him even mention Jesus Christ. He’s okay with the multimedia profaning the name of Christ in movies and stage presentations, but let someone mention the “N-word” and he’s on the next plane out, then angrily stabs his finger into air in front of news cameras and does his best to sound like a cotton-picker from Georgia. But privately, he disdains actual work and is fond of visiting the White House, mixing it up with politicians and eating in fancy restaurants, paying $60 for a steak. But the Governing Body takes money, tells you they’re God’s anointed FDS — yet they’ve never seen an angel, heard a voice, stood in the presence of a burning bush or seen God. They can’t even tell you that what they teach comes from revelation, even though all of God’s previous servants throughout history could. So, like blind men, sure, they can all feel different parts of the elephant. That’s perception and it varies. It may even be truth in some convoluted way; but anyone can perceive things, then change their views later. But why do you suppose they think they are the only ones who should get away with it? And do the members of the GB really think they are God’s chosen, or do you think they have doubts?

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24

Emblem Takers Mentally Unstable?

by Cold Steel in

onthewayout wrote: of course, for quite awhile (and probably still), congregations have been viewing any relatively young (maybe under 50 or even 60) partakers as mentally unstable and watchtower ignores such people anyway and says they must listen to the elders.

is this correct?

ever since the emblem-takers were given emeritus status as members of the faithful and discreet slave, have they been relegated to standard membership?

Cold Steel

OnTheWayOut wrote: Of course, for quite awhile (and probably still), congregations have been viewing any relatively young (maybe under 50 or even 60) partakers as mentally unstable and Watchtower ignores such people anyway and says they must listen to the elders.

Is this correct? Ever since the emblem-takers were given emeritus status as members of the Faithful and Discreet Slave, have they been relegated to standard membership? What is the purpose of the “Heavenly Class” of people on the earth? Do you know any of the “elect” who have left “the Truth”?

Or do you know any Heavenly Class members at your KH? How are they generally regarded — as crackpots, holy, rabbinic? If you’re of the Earthly Class and your best friend believes he or she is part of the Heavenly Class, if you were a faithful member, would you tend to believe or disbelieve them?

Finally, why is the Governing Body so convinced that the numbers of the Heavenly Class should be diminishing? Doesn’t anyone have the right to be in that body, regardless of what time they lived? Are they still considered part of the FDS?

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