Posts by Cold Steel

6

A Simple explanation of the Faithful Slave!

by wannabe in

a simple explanation of the faithful slave!.

the holy writings should show us just who that was, without too much difficulty.. 1"in the past god spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

3the son is the radiance of god's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Cold Steel

I've never understood the meaning of the word "slave" in this context. A slave, to me, is far removed from a servant, who is often employed. A slave, on the other hand, is born into bondage and has no choice as to what his future may entail. Some of these terms, like "discreet slave" are laughable. In fact, the scriptures used by the Witnesses not only is a joke among scholars, but its bland text lacks beauty and elegance.

Why does the WBTS even use the term "slave" in the first place? And what is a "discreet slave"? Someone who doesn't talk out of turn?

In the book of John, we learn that people can progress beyond servants to friends. "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." This group isn't a class, but is inclusive of all people who come unto the Lord in righteousness and truth.

The Lord states: "Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods." But these are not self-appointed people who give meat unto the people, but authorized and anointed servants. "For ye hath not chosen me," the Lord said, "but I have chosen you and ordained you."

Who has anointed the leadership of the WBTS? Anointing is a specific ordinance that includes consecrated oil; it is not metaphor. And ordaining is the laying on of hands to confer power and authority. The JW leadership has neither been anointed or ordained, but have taken this honor unto themselves. The scripture from Matthew 24 doesn't say that the faithful on Earth who recognize that their Lord is gone and who seize the moment and feed meat to the rest of the Lord's "slaves" are blessed, but only those whom the Lord hath made ruler over His Household. According to the Witness leadership, none has received either revelation or visitation from God or His Holy Angels, so how would they know they are the ruling class? And how would they escape judgment when they appear before Him in judgment and say, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?" Certainly the JW leadership has repeatedly prophesied of Armegeddon, have worked to cast out demons and done many wonderful works. But they're still self appointed, and they've been wrong repeatedly and they certainly have not (as far as I know) been appointed by God to do anything.

27

Resurrection: A Cruel Joke?

by cameo-d in

a few months ago i read an article about this in discover magazine.

as i realized the implications it gave me a sick, eerie feeling.. in short, suppose memories of the deceased are collected and downloaded into a program?.

what you are about to see is a prototype program for what i suspect may be robotic construction for the near future of resurrecting loved ones who have passed on.

Cold Steel

I can think of a few horror movie ideas. Like the guy coming in one morning to find that the wood housing for Deena had been ripped apart and nothing was left, but severed wires. Oh, and the next door neighbor and his dog are dead, with his pickup missing. Only the neighbor's head and chest are found, and the remainder of the body missing. The next thing you know, the New York Times reporter is getting numerous calls from someone who listens for a few seconds and then hangs up. She spends the rest of the movie trying to escape from "Deena," who leaves a trail of dead bodies behind her.

Of course if she kills off the entire staff of the New York Times, we can make it a romantic comedy.

Maybe Dave Hewlett and his sister can do a movie, like A Dog's Breakfast , which is a must-see. It's available from Amazon.

5

Anything thelpful at this year's DA to help free my wife from the cult?

by lifelong humanist in

i haven't posted here for about 5 or 6 months.

i've looked through previous threads in an attempt to find out about the sort of stuff issued at the das this year, but without success.. my wife still attends some jw meetings.

at present she's in attendance at the big da in perth, scotland.. can anyone on this board comment on any talks, demonstrations, experiences, etc.

Cold Steel

What's a DA?

Just curious...I'm not a JW.

But it's not likely that you're going to be able to talk your wife into leaving her religion, and unless you have something better to replace it with you may find that doing so will hurt your relationship with her. If she's happy where she is, and if she finds fulfillment with the JWs, pulling the rug out from under her may have a number of unexpected consequences you may wish to discuss with a therapist.

When I was in high school back in the early 70s, I had a philosophy teacher who loved destroying the faith of his evangelical students. He was an older fellow and had all sorts of experience that my class mates didn't. He succeeded in destroying the faith of several, one who committed suicide and one who married him (I kid you not). She was 18 when she married him, as her parents were opposed to her marrying this 56-year old guy who looked like Jabba-the-Hutt with a beard. He quoted Albert Camus all the time without knowing that Camus had renounced his atheism at the time of his death and was considering joining the Catholic church when he was killed in an automobile accident. The bottom line was that he was a predator. I'm not saying you're like that, but you need to find out the repurcussions of destroying someone's faith before you actually do it.

Strange as it may seem, some of these people are happy. When you change their most deep-seated beliefs, you change their attitudes and life styles. She may change more than you want her to and you may find that she may slip into depression and have other problems, including a resentment and hatred of you.

Just something to consider. Perhaps someone can add to this and give you suggestions.

32

Does God Have A Visible Organization Today?

by wannabe in

does god have a visible organization today?.

well, whether we agree with them or not, the governing body of jehovah's witnesses certainly believes he does have, and they tell us, that the watchtower bible and tract society is that visible organization.

as we see, they also tell us that their watchtower society is the channel or instrument through which the spiritual food is delivered to other members of the household.. 1939 "we acknowledge as the visible organization of jehovah on earth the watchtower bible & tract society, and recognize the society as the channel or instrument through which jehovah and christ jesus give instruction and meat in due season to the household of faith.

Cold Steel

I think Christ's physical church died with the apostles. If Jesus did want a church today, He would organize one and He would make it just like it was anciently. The Jehovah's Witnesses is just another manmade church. It was started by men who were self starters, and they just self started a religion based on their own views and dogmas. Even the Catholic church is simply a shadow of the original church, and its earliest fathers were just trying to remember what the apostles taught before the apostles disappeared, apparently taking much of what was known about the gospel with them. Alexander Campbell was the first of the scriptural restorationists that appeared, and he felt the gospel could be restored by simply going back to the Bible. Then the Seventh Day Adventists came along and Ellen White told people they were worshiping on the wrong day of the week. Then the WBTS appeared and complained that people weren't on a first-name basis with God, and that was what everyone was missing!

Now I'm sure Wannabe is making a point...somewhere...I couldn't get past the first paragraph. But let's be real. If God wanted to have a church, He'd come down and start one. I'm sure He wouldn't depend on a publishing company. I remember buying those blue books of theirs for a quarter and their Bibles for a buck. (You may be able to find them on eBay.) None of the forwards were by God, so maybe He's speaking through Wannabe in these last days!

6

Everyone here should see this video

by Juan Viejo2 in

i'm sure that many of you here are familiar with ted.org.

if you're not, you should check it out.

there is a wealth of information on every kind of subject located there.. i stumbled across this short (6 minute) talk by a former moonie turned deprogrammer.

Cold Steel

The video is senseless. You can't go around kidnapping people because you believe their behavior is devient. In the case of Moonies, where you're deprived of seeing your loved ones and exposed to relentless propaganda and so forth, where are you going to draw the line? Once someone is forcibly removed from a religion or course of thought, what is the end result on their psyche? Are you going to go after Jehovah's Witnesses next? And then Mormons? Some atheists believe all religion is cognitive dysfunction. It's like guns. Some people (some cops) grossly misuse and abuse them. But when society goes too far, everyone suffers.

Life has its dangers, but one has to be careful in drawing the line on free agency. In one well known case, an elderly man was kidnapped by his wacko daughter, who wanted him to admit to her that he'd sexually abused her. The only problems were: 1) that he didn't; 2) his other daughters didn't report any problems; 3) the woman didn't believe her father was guilty until a disreputable therapist had gotten ahold of her and hypnotized her. In the end, she and her female lover were caught and it was quite the scandal.

Deprogramming people is something I have mixed emotions about. It takes at least a week before results are discernible, but I'm not comfortable with the legal, moral or ethical ramifications. It sets a horrible precedent in a free country. If I were a judge, I wouldn't stand for it.

15

Who Sits In The Temple Of God Professing To Be God?

by wannabe in

who sits in the temple of god professing to god?.

2he was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as moses was faithful in all god's house.

jesus was appointed over the house.

Cold Steel

Although I'm not a JW, I would not be so quick as to dismiss scripture as being written by drug-induced fanatics. If one reads Isaiah 53 and considers what critics would say if the earliest manuscript we had of it was dated after 33 A.D., they would have a field day saying it was an "obvious" Christian contrivance. But it predated Jesus by generations. One of the reasons that the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs was never accepted into the canon of scripture was because it had so many obvious Christian fabrications. But now some scholars aren't so sure. How could the apostles, who were so obviously influenced by the book, have added such information in an overwhelmingly Jewish society? Certainly they would have been caught.

Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zachariah and Jesus all prophesied that Judah would be gathered in the end times. And the Christian apostles, via revelation, directed the saints to go to such cities as Pella just before the Roman invasion. The Romans murdered innumerable Jews, but zero Christians, because the Christians had been forewarned. If one reads Zachariah 12 and 14, for example, it's like reading the newspapers. Zachariah speaks of Jerusalem as being a "burdensome stone" for all people having anything to do with it. Bingo. It spoke of her enemies as being "round about" her. Bingo. It speaks of the Messiah being "pierced." Bingo, again. And it goes on and on.

So one should at least study the scriptures before casting aspersions on the writers. Jesus indicated that the scriptures were written intentionally in such a way as only those with a desire to understand them would. I think suce is indeniably true.

11

Jehovah's Organization: Is It the KINGDOM of Daniel 2?

by Cold Steel in

daniel interprets a dream in which he explains there will be four world empires -- the babylonians, the persians, the greeks (under alexander) and the romans, the last of which are symbolized by the belly and legs (eastern and western).

after that, he saw that the roman empire would fragment and ultimately become ten kingdoms, being partly iron and partly clay.

it was during these "kings" that "the god of heaven [shall] set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

Cold Steel

Rutherford’s Revelations?

Thank you for your references on Rutherford’s “lightnings”. He appears to be associating flashes of insight with revelation, but it’s still a far cry from an investiture of authority from On High. Insight is one thing, but the Lord grants insight to people of all religions and backgrounds. To your knowledge, did he go so far as to see it as an investiture of authority? He seems to have been struggling to that end when he referred to the class of those “permitted to see other things that are shortly to follow,” and then he quotes Jehovah as saying “Before they spring forth I tell you of them.” This clearly has reference to Amos 3:7, which states, “For surely the Lord God will do nothing, save he reveal it to his servants the prophets.” If so, he is certainly placing that “class” into the prophetic status. He never says he received this message directly, but is correlating his insights with divine revelation.

Daniel's Four World Empires

As divided as the scholars may be, prophetic exegesis, to me, makes it difficult to argue. First, how did the fourth kingdom break into pieces and subdue all things? And when did God set up his “kingdom” which would “never be destroyed”? This kingdom of God's would be “the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold.”

As I understand it, your view (and that of those you cited) is that the Macedonian kingdom was torn asunder into the Seleucid kingdom to the north and the Lagid kingdom to the south. But in light of Daniel’s prophecy, these two later kingdoms (symbolized as the legs of the figure) simply don’t live up to the prophecy. As I said, these kingdoms did not break into pieces and subdue all things. Before Rome, I suspect the Greek divisions were the easiest and most convenient candidates for fulfillment. But they certainly did not live up to what Rome became. Part of the reason the Maccabees were so successful in defeating Antiochus’ armies was that the encroaching Romans were dividing his resources.

The Jewish scholars found the Greek divisions to be more palatable because they were more entrenched and rabbinical exegesis is even worse than JW exegesis, though neither is apt to changing. But I shall cling to the more recent Christian view which is not just held mainly by “Adventist and confessional circles.” Evangelical churches also hold to the later “Roman” view.

To me it’s more than apparent that Rome and Constantinople are the prime candidates for the division of the kingdom of iron. For one thing, the Seleucids and Ptolemaics were part of the Macedonian kingdom and they were the results of political entropy, no more or less significant than the other kingdoms that Alexander left behind. The Seleucid kingdom was admittedly the largest, but there also was Cassander’s kingdom in Greece and Lysimachus’ kingdom in Turkey, and Epirus’ kingdom. The reason the Seleucids were made to fit the Daniel 2 prophecy, in my own opinion, is because, until Rome, they were the only round pegs that could possibly be jammed into the square holes! The Romans, in fact, were associated with iron throughout the world, and it broke down all of Alexander’s kingdoms and dominated them all.

Just as Charles T. Russell and Joseph F. Rutherford were never able to grasp the Old and New Testament prophecies of the gathering of Judah back to its ancestral homelands — because it didn’t happen until May 1948, and Russell died in 1916 and Rutherford died in 1942 — the Jews and many of the scholars who based their work on rabbinical exegesis, were unable to see Rome and Constantinople as the two parts of the Roman Empire, a kingdom without equal.

67

Bible says God confused peoples languages at Babel....is this childish nonsense?

by Witness 007 in

yeah so in genesis we read how people began building a tower which would reach up to jehovah in heaven....must have been damn tall....rather then just stop them, god changes everyones language.....one guys speakin french.....another speakin russian and so on!

can't finish the tower now can they!!

this is not very scientific......does anyone believe this is how languages got started???

Cold Steel

No, it simply says God "confused" the languages, which means he simply erased the language tracks in the brain.

Also, it's not so much that the tower offended God, but that they were gathering in one location instead of spreading out upon the face of the land. By confusing their languages, He encouraged them to spread out as they were supposed to. Even to this day, mankind tends to come together in large cities. Since God is completely incapable of creating evil, He could never be accused of creating French. In fact, kdaffes ceestaccke maslts fkakfje kadffewer kafagaee....

15

Who Sits In The Temple Of God Professing To Be God?

by wannabe in

who sits in the temple of god professing to god?.

2he was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as moses was faithful in all god's house.

jesus was appointed over the house.

Cold Steel

I'm also having problems following you, pard! You seem to be saying that you think that the Jehovah's Witnesses are the direct fulfillment of Paul's warning of the Antichrist. And though I'm not a JW, I hardly see them as the "man of sin" or the great Antichrist who is to appear in the last days.

First, the Antichrist is a political power with the ability to command a huge military force. Second, he will use that force against Jerusalem (see Zachariah 12, 14; Ezekiel 38; and Revelation 13). The Antichrist (also called Gog by Ezekiel) also is indisputably linked to the destruction of the Jews, who are supposed to rebuild their temple to receive the returning Jesus/Jehovah. "The day of Jehovah" is the same as saying the "day of the Lord," which Lord is Christ. So unless the WBTS suddenly becomes a world power, they most likely are not the bad guys Paul was referring to.

As for religions claiming to be raised up by God, the Witnesses are just one of many! The Seventh Day Adventists, Worldwide Church of God, churches of Christ (Campbellites) and many others claim to be the one and only Christian church. Oh, and the Catholics. In Revelation 17, it says: "And the angel said unto me, 'Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains [or "hills" according to the New International Version], on which the woman sitteth.'" Rome is built on seven hills, or mountains, and the Catholic church is seen by many as the whore who sits on those seven mountains. But that whore, while evil, is not the Antichrist. Babylon and the Antichrist are two different entities.

So you may be aiming a bit high when you connect the JWs with anything so formidible.

55

THE "OTHER SHEEP" ARE NOT GENTILE CHRISTIANS, because...............

by Titus in

i don't want biblical answer, but from any watchtower publication.

has that question ever been answered in any watchtower publications?.

please, give me some references.. i expect answer from debator, alice, bane, scholar or any other active jehovah's witness.

Cold Steel

Jesus may have been speaking of the gentiles, but he said, "They shall hear my voice," and the gentiles never heard Jesus' voice. There are also other cultures throughout China, Japan and North and South America that speak of a bearded white god, or holy teacher, who appeared anciently and delivered teachings that sound remarkably like those spoken of by Jesus. Whether this was actually Jesus, who, as we've seen, opened the gospel to other people and cultures, or Christian missionaries who found their way to such peoples, we don't know. But that may be one way of Jesus' voice to be heard in other cultures somewhat removed from the Hebrew tribes.

I used to read about these things back in my college days, when I also read about the hollow earth and other now-absurd things. But the idea that Jesus may have visited other parts of the world certainly is intriging. In fact, I have an old book called Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, by Lloyd M. Graham, that argues that in Mexico, there's a long-held tradition that the Aztec bearded white god and healer Quetzalcoatl (Kuklakan to the Mayans) was born of a virgin, taught many Christian teachings, wore a flowing robe and was crucified at a spot called the "place of the skull," and promised to return (and then didn't) all of which, to the author, suggested that Jesus was not original in his teachings, but that it was all part of the same "mythoplasm" (whatever that means). My teacher who recommended the book was a hardcore atheist, and his point was that if other cultures had the same teachings dating to around the same time, then Jesus could not have been original -- but these teachings were pretty much universal among philosophers at the time. Could Jesus have appeared to other cultures in Asia and America? Who knows? Nearly all of these cultures believe that the spirit survives death and leaves the body rather than sleeping.

So I suppose we'll have to wait to ask Jesus what he meant, and if he ever visited China and Mexico following his resurrection.