Posts by Cold Steel

16

Jewish Exegesis of the OT Scriptures in the days of Jesus

by fulltimestudent in

the sub-structure of the nt, as understood by new testament scholar, charles harold dodd, is based on,.

... passages of ot scripture with their application to the gospel facts ... it provided the starting point of the theological constructions of paul, (and) the author of to the hebrews, and the fourth evangelist.

it is the substructure of all christian theology and contains already its chief regulative ideas.

Cold Steel

This is not the perspective adopted by many contemporary Christians who, in practise, often seem ready to discard the OT.

Quite right. Mostly because of a misunderstanding of what the Jews thought and how they thought.

Keep in mind that when Gabriel appeared to Zachariah in the temple, the Jews had not had a heavenly manifestation, or rather, revelation, for some 400 years. Also, one of the reasons for the targumim was the fact that the Jews were undergoing an incredible transformation in both language and culture. The Romans were winning many of their hearts and minds; building roads, aqueducts, new sea roots to India and the Far East -- a move that all but killed the caravan frankincense trade. And just a few decades later, in fulfillment of prophecy, things suddenly became far worse as Jerusalem was sacked.

The Essenes hid up their Jewish records in the Dead Sea and only was discovered just a few years before the source you cite. Then, no one knew much about the Jews or early Christians. About the same time the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, the Coptic Christian library was found in Nag Hammadi and now it was time for the Christian scholars to panic. Now that we know so much more about Jewish views and expectations, and about Christian views, we realize we are still lost in the paperwork. The WTBTS teaches many things we now know are just plain wrong. Teachings like man having a spirit was an old Hebrew doctrine, not a Greek intervention. Anyway, I look forward to hearing your views.

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If you're bothered by god murdering innocent children, you must have a "critical heart"

by OneEyedJoe in

this week's book study contains this gem:.

the way in which the bible is written serves to test what is in our heart.

hebrews 4:12 says: the word [or, message] of god is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit .

Cold Steel

No, it does mean you're wrong. Either way. You just have to think it through.

The Bible's infallibility is a false doctrine created by man.

The cultures that inhabited Canaan, and which were destroyed by the Israelites, were rife for destruction. They were profligate, murderous people who actively tried to subvert the religion God was attempting to establish. They passed infants through the fire, meaning they were burning them alive. To drown out the screams such cultures would beat loud drums, which also enhanced the cult's hold on the people. Also, one reason they had many children to sacrifice was because of their fertility rites, which were drunken orgies. That aspect of the religion was attractive to certain elements of the male Israelites. And when seduced by the surrounding peoples, the Lord knew he had to remove the cesspool to keep these elements out of it.

The infants who were taken were innocents, but murder is not something God can commit. His acts are judgments; we are subject to Him, and He certainly doesn't have to answer to Buddhists, atheists, theists or anyone else. In Enoch's case, He showed him the secret acts of the people to perish in the great flood, and Enoch went from misunderstanding to understanding in just that amount of time for him to see it. In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about and yet you feel educated enough...knowledgeable enough...to judge someone who knows everything, and who sees the hearts and acts of all men. Do you really feel qualified to do that?

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If you're bothered by god murdering innocent children, you must have a "critical heart"

by OneEyedJoe in

this week's book study contains this gem:.

the way in which the bible is written serves to test what is in our heart.

hebrews 4:12 says: the word [or, message] of god is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit .

Cold Steel

"So if you're bothered by genocide, or the murder of innocent infants, it's simply because you have a critical heart and aren't deserving of salvation."

Hmmm...I'm bothered by genocide, the murder of infants and other atrocities, but I'm not bothered by the acts of God. Militant atheists view death as a finality. If there is a God, death is not final but a change of environment, or surrounding. It is a change from mortality to immortality. If there is no God, then it was the act of men who claimed innocent lives. But of course, if there is no God, there is no innocence or guilt, good or bad, right or wrong. These things are the light of Christ in all of us.

This doesn't mean that the Watchtower crowd is right. It just means you're wrong.

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