The Osteen church is all about making money and helping no one. In his defense, such that it is, he really stops short in making any claims. He never says he hears from God or that he heals anyone. He never makes prophecies or really even preaches Christ. He'll toss Jesus' name in once in awhile, but he's very careful not to include himself in the "body of Christ" or make any claims that might get him in trouble should he have to answer for it later. I'm not sure he even has to ask for money; people seem to just give it to him. He has his own jet and then there are the books. I'm sure if public pressure persists, they'll open the sanctuary.
Cold Steel
JoinedPosts by Cold Steel
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Joel Osteen's Church is a Cult too ??
by ShirleyW init's being said all over social media that joel osteen hasn't opened his mega church for refuge during the storm, pictures are showing this area is not flooded.
i made a few comments myself saying that the jws only help their own in time of need but this god fearing man isn't helping anyone.. just what religion is he and his followers, i guess it's one of those non-denomination churches that collect a shitload of bucks to him and wife so he can afford the glamorous life, nothing new of course, i thought he was just a bit different than the others, fooled me..
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1 John 5:13-20 Jesus is the true God?
by NikL inone of the main things i am trying to wrap my head around after waking up to the nonsense of jw.org is the deity of christ.. jws go out of their way to ignore him, it seems to me.
they make him out to be an angel or something.
yet, if one simply reads the scriptures, you get an entirely different picture.. doing some bible reading this morning i accidentally (long story) read the latter part of 1 john 5 and it's good stuff.. after reading it in the niv i read it in nwt and it is still pretty amazing even in that abomination of a translation.. it says.... 13 i write you these things so that you may know that you have life everlasting, you who put your faith in the name of the son of god.
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Cold Steel
Can one still get a cheap copy of the NWT from the Pioneers that canvas the neighborhood? What's the price? Do they all have copies? I know it's online; but if like to pick one up. And why did they do away with the green ones they were using back in the 70s?
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New book on early Christianity
by careful ini'm not quite sure that this post fits under jws/wts since they do not keep up with real biblical scholarship, but i don't know where else to post it.. thomas a. robinson (university of lethbridge) has just published a book through oxford university press on the earliest christians, entitled who were the first christians?
: dismantling the urban thesis.
for some years the idea has dominated scholarship that christianity grew strongly at first in ancient cities like rome, alexandria, and corinth; the notion has been largely influenced by wayne meeks' (of yale) thinking in his book the first urban christians (1986).. i once saw a member here cite meeks' idea of how many christians existed in the roman empire.
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Cold Steel
Ouch! Seventy bucks!
I'll have to wait for the Reader's Digest version. Looks interesting.
Does he get into early Christian doctrines at all. Eschatology? Canon? I'd like to see a work that separates Gnostic Christians from conventional ones. Did his figure of 6 million include Gnostic/Coptic members? How about Constantine? Does he go into the reforms?
I'd expect the urban areas would include the more orthodox Christians, especially since the earlier persecutions would have driven them away from the cities. Do you have a copy of the book?
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Cold Steel
I've read Brock Talon's books about working there. They're very entertaining though I wondered why he stayed so long.
When you go on the tours, where do they take you? To where they publish the books and magazines?
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What Is the JW Belief Regarding the Millennium?
by Cold Steel inmost christian religions believe it will be a thousand-year period of peace.
jws, however, seem to believe in the resurrection and then life on paradise earth.
but do they believe in the millennium the way other christians do -- where the lion will lay down with the lamb [bzzzt...mandela effect correction] wolf will lay down with the lamb?
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Cold Steel
So why are you here? On an ex-JW site. Are you trying to recruit vulnerable people who have just esaped the JW cult?
Oh, yeah, that would work! I first came here years ago for more information because of family members who joined the JWs and then cut off all contact. They went from being very friendly to being aloof. Then they began sending magazines to my mother on what happens when one dies. She thought being food for the worms was terrifying, so that's why I came here. I found the topics here were interesting, so I stayed. If you do a search for the topics I've started, I've never dragged my religion into it. I only reply to people who bring it up. So far, Cofty's my best recruit.
He'd probably make a good Mormon once we taught him some manners and how to read.
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Finland Knife attack: 2 dead, one of them a Jehovah's Witness
by ILoveTTATT2 intwo people dead and 7 injured in what is apparently a terrorist attack in finland.
one of the deceased was a jehovah´s witness woman who was preaching in the square.. where was jehovah protecting her?
especially considering she was preaching?https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/finnish-police-stabbing-investigated-as-possible-terrorism/2017/08/19/187a034e-84b8-11e7-9e7a-20fa8d7a0db6_story.html?utm_term=.f596f9250d70.
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Cold Steel
Actually I was speaking a bit tongue-in-cheek. My wife told me about the report and though the media reported on the shooting, the part about the guy pointing his gun at the shooter and the gunman then taking his own life was reported by a National Rifle Association spokesman.
But here's a site with similar stories.
The existence of guns in our society isn't what causes gun deaths -- it's recidivism and the inability of the justice system to deal with criminal violence. The U.S. is also still largely wilderness. You go into national parks where you can go for miles without passing another person, plus we have large, nasty predators.
With so much land and so little law enforcement, we need guns. And many of our violent offenders are already living in metropolitan areas with heavy gun control. And in the vast majority of cases, when by gun control is loosened, crime goes down and where it is tightened it tends to go up!
I'm glad we have our guns here, though in countries where there are plenty of cops and a better criminal justice system, you probably don't need them as much.
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What Is the JW Belief Regarding the Millennium?
by Cold Steel inmost christian religions believe it will be a thousand-year period of peace.
jws, however, seem to believe in the resurrection and then life on paradise earth.
but do they believe in the millennium the way other christians do -- where the lion will lay down with the lamb [bzzzt...mandela effect correction] wolf will lay down with the lamb?
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Cold Steel
Yes, Coftey, and how would you know it's been thoroughly debunked? I've been LDS for 45 years and have friends who are highly active in the ex-Mormon community. Unlike you, I've studied both sides extensively and have yet to see the proverbial nail in the coffin. To the contrary I've seen considerable evidence supporting it.
When you have a book like the Qur'an, you can judge it only by the standard of one man (610 A.D.) telling one story with no witnesses other than himself. We can't even judge it that way because the Qur'an was not compiled until substantial time after the fact. If it was changed, we don't know. If it was added to we don't know. We can't even compare it to other writings of its time and determine anything because it would tell us nothing.
But we do have numerous writings from 600 B.C. we can use as comparative texts. And we have a far better understanding of historical context than we had even a hundred years ago.
The Jehovah's Witnesses, on the other hand, have a clear history. No one wonders what they were thinking and teaching because we know.
As historical documents go, it should be child's play to take a purported document from 600 B.C. and prove without doubt that it's a hoax or forgery, especially with books from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other discoveries.
You can, of course, make whatever conclusions you wish, and if you wish to make those conclusions based on gross ignorance, then you should really give the critics of evolution a break rather than criticize them. (At least until it's been conclusively proven.)
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What Is the JW Belief Regarding the Millennium?
by Cold Steel inmost christian religions believe it will be a thousand-year period of peace.
jws, however, seem to believe in the resurrection and then life on paradise earth.
but do they believe in the millennium the way other christians do -- where the lion will lay down with the lamb [bzzzt...mandela effect correction] wolf will lay down with the lamb?
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Cold Steel
Simon, who said I'm promoting cults?
I don't mind people attacking cults like Mormonism and first century Christianity, but should people be allowed to mindlessly attack other people's religions and the person not be permitted to respond? If someone wanted to defend being a Jehovah's Witness, are you saying he would be deleted? If so, this would be a new policy because I've been here many years and read the terms of service. I've never seen a JW called out for defending one's beliefs. Or does the policy apply only to those who can intellectually defend their beliefs?
We live in a new era where it's now okay to tear down statues of those we paint with a broad brush and muzzle those who challenge our ways of thinking. People like Cofty respond with puerile retorts of name calling, form never substance. You do a diservice to honest dialog by encouraging a policy that permits personal attacks but stifles intellectual responses.
Perhaps your terms of service should reflect this new policy.
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Finland Knife attack: 2 dead, one of them a Jehovah's Witness
by ILoveTTATT2 intwo people dead and 7 injured in what is apparently a terrorist attack in finland.
one of the deceased was a jehovah´s witness woman who was preaching in the square.. where was jehovah protecting her?
especially considering she was preaching?https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/finnish-police-stabbing-investigated-as-possible-terrorism/2017/08/19/187a034e-84b8-11e7-9e7a-20fa8d7a0db6_story.html?utm_term=.f596f9250d70.
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Cold Steel
Any chance the woman passing out religious material in any way spurred this?
What Finland needs is a gun culture like the U.S. Recently there was a shooting here of two people, one the gunman himself. He was apparently getting started when a college student with a concealed weapons permit drew his own gun. When the gunman saw the other guy was armed, he turned the gun on himself...a fact that the media didn't include.
As for the JW woman, you can't really use the fact that Jehovah didn't protect her. All but two of the original apostles were put to death.
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What Is the JW Belief Regarding the Millennium?
by Cold Steel inmost christian religions believe it will be a thousand-year period of peace.
jws, however, seem to believe in the resurrection and then life on paradise earth.
but do they believe in the millennium the way other christians do -- where the lion will lay down with the lamb [bzzzt...mandela effect correction] wolf will lay down with the lamb?
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Cold Steel
Everyone believes bullshit, Cofty. Some believe a little more or a little less than everyone else. Your most prized textbooks now won't be worth spit a decade from now. History books remain in vogue longer, but science books go out of date faster than most. Scientific journals are actually the best investment.
The Book of Mormon has weathered time and science better than you have any idea. But you don't know enough to debate the issue because you've never taken the time to research it. Going to an anti-Mormon site to learn about Mormonism is like going to a young-Earth evangelical sites to learn about Darwinian evolution.
In truth, you despise all religion because you were suckered by the JWs. But you refuse to use the scientific method on anything not shaped like a monkey jaw.
Unlike the JWs, we've got anthropologists, Egyptologists, world renowned professors of ancient scripture, historians, archaeologists and geologists -- all investigating the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, as well as works like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi and other apocryphal works. We've maintained a comprehensive list of the "problems" of our books and, as we learn more about Mesoamera and ancient Egypt, the more those problems turn into evidences. If they were the concoctions of Joseph Smith's fervent imagination, one would expect just the opposite -- that the problems would increase. But there are things we know now that no one in Joseph Smith's day could have known. And in all the ex-Mormon sites I've run across, I've seen no responses to them.
But as to the Millennium and the JWs, wrong again. I began by going to the JW.org website and searching for the Millennium, but nothing popped up. There's no segue from that topic to Mormonism. Your intent in this discussion is only to use a legitimate interrogatory to take a cheap shot at Mormonism. Which really only means you're a bit of a jerk.
But many of us know that already.