Doug Mason

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Posts by Doug Mason

• 
  135

  Latest Leaked BOE letter to Elders Oct. 4th

  by Watchtower-Free in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  october 4, 2015. to all congregations.

  re: new provisions announced atannual meeting.

  dear brothers:.

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• 

  Doug Mason

  I am interested in the reports that the WTS is introducing massive reductions across the board – including publishing, meetings, and building. While I welcome these reports, I would like make several observations.

  The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society experienced its death 100 years ago, when one of its founders and second President, Charles Taze Russell died in 1916. In the aftermath, using physical and legal force, Joseph Rutherford laid claim as the new owner of the Society. The Society split into innumerable parts, while Rutherford introduced sweeping changes to his organisation, dropping virtually everything that the organisation had stood for under Russell.

  Following Rutherford’s death, Fred Franz held the doctrinal reins, again introducing sweeping changes and reinterpretations of Rutherford’s teachings. The Society has not found a replacement for these minds, and its publications slowly slipped into mediocracy, and it is more concerned with organisational structure and absolute loyalty. Along the way, it too continually introduced changes.

  In more recent times, the Society is slugged by the www and by massive financial payments to victims of sexual abuse by its servants. Such factors are draining it financially and morally.

  Possible scenarios lie ahead, but one possibility is that the WTS could, given its penchant for fanciful pesher interpretations of Scripture, use an amended eschatology to argue that the downturn shows that the preaching work has been done and this is the very last phase before the very last moment.

  I am concerned at the personal level. Many here can testify to the long, slow mental struggle they experienced as they moved away from the WTS’s mental grip. Imagine the widespread trauma should the WTS cease suddenly. Imagine the impact on loved ones. Imagine the impact on those who lost loved ones because of the sacrificial no-blood policy. Maybe the impacts lie beyond the imagination to grasp.

  Perhaps history of 100 years ago would be repeated, and many JWs would move to one or other of Russell’s splinter descendants.

  Perhaps the WTS’s reinvention of itself will satisfy those who are so brainwashed that they will follow it no matter what the Society tells them.

  Doug
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  4

  If there are 4 Gospels, then why only 1 book of Revelations

  by kepler in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  one can picture authors with agents submitting canonical manuscripts to a publishing house.

  but who is the house?.

  how about "athanasius press"?.

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  Doug Mason

  Reasons for having four gospels included the fact that there are four points to the compass. The Gospels are of course written by unknown authors, people who had neither seen nor heard Jesus (Yeshua/Joshua).
  

  Each of the synoptic Gospels contains an apocalypse (Matt 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) and Paul anticipated the end-times would take place during his lifetime (1 Thess 4) - as did Jesus ("those standing here will see the son of man coming").

  As sir82 points out, several other apocalypses were written, and have survived. Indeed the current book of Revelation had a difficult time being accepted. Luther wanted the canon to be revisited and have that book (and some others) removed.

  The time of Jesus was a hotbed of apocalypticism. In addition to Jesus and his followers, the Essenes of the Dead Sea are another prime example.

  Jeremiah had promised that following the Babylonian Exile, Judah would be restored, but centuries later, this had not come to pass. They were still subjected to the powers of Persia, Greece and Rome. Their only hope lay in direct and immediate divine intervention.

  This anticipation is repeated and repeated throughout history. Today's apocalyptic movements continue the tradition.

  The lesson that history teaches is that people do not learn the lesson that history teaches.

  Doug
  
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  5

  "Aid to Bible Understanding" pdf download link

  by Fernando in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  does anyone have a current link to download the "aid to bible understanding"?.

  thanks plenty.. fernando.

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  Doug Mason

  Fernando,

  I have uploaded it to my Dropbox account.

  Feel absolutely confident emailing me. I give my guarantee that I do not share information with others. I have been doing this work for almost 50 years, so I cannot afford to lose my credibility.

  Doug
• 
  4

  Every appearance of “This Generation” in Matthew, Mark and Luke.

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  1. did jesus use the term this generation as a compliment?

  2. was jesus speaking to people living at that time?

  3. was jesus speaking about people living at that time?

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  Doug Mason

  1. Did Jesus use the term “this generation” as a compliment?
  2. Was Jesus speaking to people living at that time?
  3. Was Jesus speaking about people living at that time?
  4. Was Jesus making a promise, a judgment or a warning to “this generation”?

  http://www.jwstudies.com/This_Generation.pdf

  Doug
  
• 
  5

  "Aid to Bible Understanding" pdf download link

  by Fernando in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  does anyone have a current link to download the "aid to bible understanding"?.

  thanks plenty.. fernando.

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• 

  Doug Mason

  I have a PDF but it is 122 Meg. I could possibly provide it to you via DropBox but to do so you will need to email me so that I know your email address. I do not have any filesharing account.
  

  I emphasis "possibly", given the file size. Alternatively I could snail mail it on a disc.

  My email address is at: http://www.jwstudies.com/contact_me.html

  Doug
  
• 
  27

  More of What the Watchtower Didn't Teach You

  by CalebInFloroda in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  what kind of bible education did the governing body really give us?

  how much important information about it did the watchtower really teach us?

  how much are we missing out on if we are one of jehovahs witnesses?.

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  Doug Mason

  Caleb,

  Re Question #8: Are you asking about the apocryphal texts of the Hebrew Scriptures or the apocryphal texts of the Christian Scriptures (Didache, Barnabas, Shepherd, etc.)?

  Why did you not ask why there are so many different canons?

  Why did you not ask why the NT writers quoted so frequently from the Hebrew apocryphal writings (Enoch, Sirach, etc., etc.)?

  Ask which writings are acknowledged as being written by Paul and which were written by people who claimed they were Paul - but were not.
  

  Doug
  
• 
  27

  More of What the Watchtower Didn't Teach You

  by CalebInFloroda in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  what kind of bible education did the governing body really give us?

  how much important information about it did the watchtower really teach us?

  how much are we missing out on if we are one of jehovahs witnesses?.

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  Doug Mason

  From Daniel 2:4b to 7:28, the Hebrew Bible records in Aramaic … From 8:1 to the end the book returns to Hebrew. This use of languages cuts across the ready division of the book into stories and visions. This Aramaic bridge must be considered in discussions of the date, composition, and unity of the book. ...

  Questions arise. … Why would God give a revelation concerning “what will happen at the end of days” (2:28) to these gentile (thus pagan) rulers rather than to the covenant people? Is it not more reasonable to assume that such revelations were directed to the Jews (Israelites) through this literary means? If the effect of the various events was so great on the kings, why have we found no evidence outside the Bible? In the case of “Darius the Mede,” whose laws could not be altered, why was not his decree (6:26f. [MT 27f.]) carried out by succeeding kings? What kind of history are these stories and the visions they record?
  

  (Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament, Lasor, Hubbard, and Bush, pages 570, 572)
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  27

  More of What the Watchtower Didn't Teach You

  by CalebInFloroda in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  what kind of bible education did the governing body really give us?

  how much important information about it did the watchtower really teach us?

  how much are we missing out on if we are one of jehovahs witnesses?.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Doug Mason

  MYTH OF THE COUNCIL AT JAMNIA

  Following the loss of the Jewish temple and its cultus, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai requested permission from the Romans to establish a religious academy at Jamnia. … For more than a century, many scholars have taught that the Jews officially closed the third part of their biblical canon at the Council of Jamnia. … It is unlikely, however, that the Jewish religious leaders who gathered together (there was no council as such) at Jamnia around 90 c.e. made a final or binding decision about their biblical canon. … The Jewish religious teachers met at Jamnia after the destruction of Jerusalem to clarify how a religious faith that was once based on a temple and sacrificial cult could survive without these institutions. …

  A Jamnia council decision is attractive, since no other prior time can be identified when a significant decision was made about the scope of the Hebrew biblical canon by the rabbinic teachers. No evidence, however, supports any formal action taken at Jamnia, and this view is largely abandoned today. The scope of the Hebrew biblical canon within Judaism was more likely settled in the second century c.e., and possibly even later than that. …

  That the so-called Council of Jamnia did not stabilize the canon of the hb/ot is also seen in the widespread debate throughout the rabbinic period (i.e., second to sixth centuries C.E.) whether certain writings "deified the hands," a rabbinic designation for a canonical text.[1]

  Neither Josephus nor ancient Christian literature knows anything of a Council of Jamnia or of a closing of the canon of scripture at its sessions.[2]

  Books were discussed at Jamnia, but they were also discussed at least once a generation before and several times long after the Jamnia period. [Newman] saw the Jamnia rabbis testing a status quo which had existed beyond memory. "But no text of any specific decision has come down to us (nor, apparently, even to Akiba and his students)." [3]

  Frank M. Cross designates the Council of Jamnia "a common and somewhat misleading designation of a particular session of the rabbinic academy (or court) at Yabneh. … Recent sifting of the rabbinic evidence makes clear that in the proceedings at the academy of Yabneh the Rabbis did not fix the canon, but at most discussed marginal books, notably Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) and the Song of Songs. . . . Moreover, it must be insisted that the proceedings at Yabneh were not a 'council,' certainly not in the late ecclesiastical sense.[4]

  
  

  ---

  [1] The Biblical Canon, pages 173, 174, 175. McDonald
  

  [2] The Canon Debate, page 153. McDonald and Sanders
  

  [3] Canon Debate, page 153

  [4] Canon Debate, pages 161-162
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  28

  Where did they understood the anointed ones would be before the "great crowd" "revelation"?

  by paradisebeauty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is a question on old doctrine of jw's.

  before they came up with the "great crowd" "revelation", where did they preached that the anointed ones will be?

  because if they preached it will be in heaven, how did they understood that the prophecies about the earth will be fulfilled?

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  Doug Mason

  The WTS's history of the "Great Crowd", "Anointed", and so on is complex. I cover this in my Studies at:

  http://www.jwstudies.com/The_Great_Crowd_before_1935_and_since.pdf

  http://www.jwstudies.com/The_Watch_Tower_Society_Reveals_Itself.pdf

  The Studies are searchable, so look for terms such as Jonadabs, Great Crowd, etc.

  In 1931, Rutherford applied the term "Jehovah's Witnesses" exclusively to the 144,000 Anointed. It took some 15 years before the term was gradually extended to the Great Crowd.

  Up to say the 1930s, the term "Great Crowd" was said to refer to the lost. For example:

  The “great multitude” will not survive Armageddon, because they are not of the “church of the firstborn”. … God’s promise is to preserve a remnant, and not a vast multitude. The “great multitude” are appointed to die. The Scriptures also show that the Jonadab class will survive Armageddon.(The Watchtower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, March 15, 1934, page 92)

  Such changes should not come as a surprise, as most will remember the recent change in which the "Faithful and Discreet Slave Class" was amended from the 144,000 to the Governing Body.

  Doug
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  28

  Where did they understood the anointed ones would be before the "great crowd" "revelation"?

  by paradisebeauty in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is a question on old doctrine of jw's.

  before they came up with the "great crowd" "revelation", where did they preached that the anointed ones will be?

  because if they preached it will be in heaven, how did they understood that the prophecies about the earth will be fulfilled?

  1. 
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• 

  Doug Mason

  The Watchtower's history is complex, as I show in my Study:

  http://www.jwstudies.com/The_Watch_Tower_Society_Reveals_Itself.pdf

  The Study is searchable, so look for terms such as "Jonadabs", "Great Crowd", and so on.
  

  Terms experience several transitions, at times experiencing 180 degree change. For example, in 1931, Rutherford applied the term "Jehovah's Witnesses" exclusively to the Anointed. It took a further 15 years or so until the name was gradually extended to the "Great Crowd" (previously known as the "Jonadabs"). Also, in the WTS's earlier manifestations, the term Great Crowd was used to describe the "great unwashed".

  People here are very familiar with this phenomenon, when the Governing Body stood its "Faithful and Discreet Slave Class" on its head by changing its meaning from the "Anointed 144,000 on earth" to mean the "Governing Body".
  

  Doug