Posts by Cold Steel

56

2014 increase in Memorial Partakers to 14,121

by jwfacts in

i have updated the article at memorial partakers with the figures released for 2014. no surprises here, it has risen yet again, this time by 6% over last year, and is now 14,121.. .

.

Cold Steel

What would happen if the Governing Body decided to eliminate the emblems over the next few years?

One reason I think the number are increasing is that most people don't want to spend an eternity on Earth. Why not want to be heaven bound? Don't people now have just as much of a chance in this lottery as those who lived two thousand years ago? Perhaps most people see it as a competition. Many have the heavenly hope, but few will actually be called to be a part of it. If so, that means that everyone has an equal shot at it. And just because millions of Christians have lived over the years, the 144,000 could be drawn out from every age of man.

The leadership is not being rational. Why should earlier-day saints be chosen over the latter-day saints®? Doesn't everyone deserve the same chance?

21

DEMONS: the torment I suffered

by Terry in

jw
friends

when i was in my teens i wanted a room of my own, but i lived with my grandparents whose house was very small.. my uncle had been living in a little one room bed-sitter way out in the backyard.

he married and moved away and i moved in.. it was quite isolated and the ceiling was six feet from the floor.

unfortunately, the top of my head was four inches higher than that!

Cold Steel

I have 'restless limb syndrome' which is describable as wagging your foot at the ankle the same way a dog wags its tail! I WAS CAUSING THE BEDSHAKE--not LUCIFER, SATAN, DEMONS....

Uh-huh. That's what they want you to believe. One night you'll go out and, well, no one will hear from you again.

A guy who used to summon demons who, after he started studying, had the demons clawing at his window trying to get at him.

Any demon who can't get through a window ought to lose their union membership.

As for me, I've never been troubled by demons at night. The aliens chase them away!

In all seriousness, though, I've been plagued by something at night over the past several months. I feel like something (and my wife has had the same experience) is moving around in my bedroom. I sometimes wake up and feel something is looking at me...staring at me. It's an unsettling experience. If I ignore it, I'll jolt awake several moments later and very distinctly feel as though something is touching my face. It's not an ethereal experience like some people get when they think someone is touching them. This definitely feels like flesh touching flesh. And all the time there's this feeling of being watched that I can't shake. Sometimes it will happen again and I'll cover my hand with my arms, but no matter how I hold them, there's the real experience of being touched. Sometimes shoved. I keep a flashlight handy, and when this happens I always turn it on. The disconcerting thing is that the first time this happened, the flashlight wouldn't turn on, even though it had fresh batteries. I fiddled with it a bit and tried it again and a red light shot out of it onto a face not more than two feet away. That's when I grab the cat and put him on my chest. As he begins to purr, I reach down and get his plate of food (he can get it himself, but what fun would eating alone be?) and put it in front of him. If I don't wake up from the jabs, a loud "meow" follows. If completely ignored, he tries to wake the wife and, failing that, he jumps down, finds the food and eats alone. Then he vanishes as quickly as he came.

Which is amazing because my cat died five years ago!!!!

Okay...just kidding. He's fine. Just thought I'd BS you.

But I'm not kidding about the aliens.

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.

.

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."

.