Posts by glenster

212

WTS hasn't corrected mistakes in NWT on John 20:28.....

by A-Team in

nwt scriptures: john 20:28-29 .

28 in answer thomas said to him: my lord and my god!

29 jesus said to him: because you have seen me have you believed?

glenster

^I think the mainstream view is that Jesus was incorporated into a Christian version of the "one God and one Lord" Shema, probably not how you'd say "archangel Michael." Thomas gave Jesus the full treatment at John 20:28. In 1st cent. Jewish monotheism, worship, prayer, and the Shema were among the main ways they showed belief in one God.

One of the ones I usually think of and don't see brought up as much isn't by John or Paul but Luke, at Acts 6,7. What's with Stephen if he thought Jesus was archangel Michael? He goes through a trial of the Sanhedrin, is harassed across town, makes a big speech about his beliefs, and is stoned to death for blasphemy (disbelief in the mainstream view--they didn't execute you for claiming to see an angel). All he had to do to call it off is say he just meant "achangel Michael." He's supposed to be a martyr, not a suicide. Then he ends his speech with a prayer to Jesus.

7

SUPRISE!!! The Orgin of Fathers Day- Not at ALL what you would expect!!

by Lady Liberty in

to all you fathers out there..... happy fathers day!!!!.

some time ago i had heard on a tv documentary the orgins of fathers day!

i googled it and sure enough it is what i had seen on tv and thought i would share it with you.

glenster

1931 "On the face of it the arrangement of 'Mother's Day' seems harmless and
calculated to do good. But the people are in ignorance of Satan's subtle hand
in the matter, and that he is back of the movement, to turn the people away from
God." ("Vindication," 1931, book 1, pp.158,159)

Rutherford got a little hard up for a way to distinguish the cult, didn't
he? If some of you kids out there don't know how to love your mother without
making it idolatry, you're going to have to stop doing it till you know how to
do it right.

Assuming Rutherford used the reasons the recent JWs leaders have used for such
things, he didn't want JWs to give special honor to anyone but God...and him...all year long.
Is this who you really want making special rules about not honoring someone too
much--someone too lenient about the false prophet rules?

13

God does not want people with "talent"

by hamsterbait in

anybody remember that stinking comment in a 1950s witchtower, .

"it is difficult for the holy spirit to influence those with a colorful personality".

i guess they really mean it is harder for the babble and trick society to control them.. hb.

glenster

You're going to hell if you have more personality than Nathan Knorr? Damn, I thought they were strict before....

(Sam Kinison impression): open up the pearly gate--ROAR--(slam)--"Oh!" People pounding on the pearly gates: "Let me outta here! I thought it was the gate to heaven--it was the gate to hell! Oh! Oh! OHHhhhh!"

Far be it from me to make sport, but the guy's saying you're going to hell if
you have more personality than him. This could explain how the 144,000 disap-
peared from early Christian history without a trace, though.

Frankly, if you can knock the Jews after the Holocaust, you're not the first person I want to
learn self-control from.

21

Racism within the borg

by icyestrm in

acts 10:34 speaks of god as not being partial.

in the majority of pictures, the married couples are only of the same race and none of them are mixed.

i noticed that in other pictures of the so-called paradise, its segerated amongst races too.

glenster

Currently, no. In the leaders perpetrating what is, by a basic ethical sense of what's wrong with racism--an unfounded "hooray for us--bash them" centric outlook, yes.

42

What kind of changes would you make if you were the President of the WTS.

by Brain Dead in

i'm just curious, if you could imagine taking control over the jws.

as an acting president, what specific changes would you make to .

the organization to make it more approachable, livable and attainable for the general population ?.

glenster

- no literal "144,000"
- no archangel Michael Jesus/impersonal holy spirit requirement
- no invisible Jesus returns/predictions about the time of his return or Arma-
geddon
- no overdone shunning rules to minimize how many get wise and spread the word
to the rest of the flock about the methods of those listed below
- sincere apologies to everyone non-JW damned for over a century by silly
little bastards who lied to create a pretension of exclusiveness not caring
fornication-all about the next two listings
-no ban on the medical use of blood and blood products
- no expanded ideas of worldliness leading to followers put in harm's way and
even killed in Germany and Malawi
- sincere apologies and financial compensation for victims and the bereaved
due to the above two listings
- no ban of crosses, holidays, music, or anything else cooked up as having a
pagan connotation so taboo

19

How about birthdays?

by molybdenum in

hi... i'm a newbie here.

i have been associated with jw's for quite some time however there is one aspect of being a witness that i can't quite come to terms with that is the prohibition on celebrating a person's birthday i have of course read the arguments for this but find them somewhat unconvincing.

is it really the case that everyone follows this direction?

glenster

Finally, we're starting to distinguish the 144,000 with the really important
stuff. The Devil wants to lure you from the light with the creamy frosting.
And if that shouldn't work, he invented festive balloons. He may have had a
hand in children frolicking in merriment--I'm not sure.

Rom.14 gives holidays as matters of personal conscience. Paul could have
worried that some who celebrated Mosaic feast days or such would create a conno-
tation of a need to be under Mosaic law, and he didn't care.

As far as being worried about the pagan connotations of things goes (allegedly
crosses, holiday-related things), some people have worshipped nature--that's
everything. The JWs leaders play prophet and pick some things then cook up
cases for them. It's just an exclusiveness pretension.

1 Cor.8-11 parallels an idol temple with the Lord's Supper to show that the
things aren't important--whether or not you have strong faith and worship the
one true God is at either one (1 Cor.8:7;11:29). If you're not sure, did you
ever hear of an atheist who worried he might have to go to church every Sunday
because he ate something near a church? It doesn't work that way by common
sense or apostle Paul.

Just try not to behead people as entertainment.

The Pharoah/Herod birthday parties aren't given by the Bible as showing birth-
day parties per se are bad.

The JWs leaders took the idea that they're bad from Origen, 200-250 AD, when
Christians were a minority, and he didn't like birthday parties celebrated "as
though honoring Pharoah," and noted that only sinners (Pharoah and Herod), not
saints, celebrate birthdays in the Bible. It's probably best to take it as just
a comment on the mostly non-Christian social trends of the time.

The general idea of a birthday party per se isn't ruled against in the Bible,
and some even see a precedent for scriptural approval for the celebration of a
birth as possibly meant as held for Job at Job 1:1-5, in how many would rejoice
at the birth of John the baptist at Luke 1:13-15, and shown by the praise of the
heavenly host at the birth of Jesus at Luke 2:10-14. If celebrating the birth
of someone good is good in the Bible, what's supposed to be bad--doing something
annually? Job's family may have done that. What's the "annually" rule?

Rom.4:15 "But where there is no law, neither is there violation."

As it says in "Why December 25?" by Elesha Coffman at the next link, "Not all
of Origen's contemporaries agreed that Christ's birthday shouldn't be cele-
brated, and some began to speculate on the date (actual records were apparently
long lost). Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215) favored May 20 but noted that
others had argued for April 18, April 19, and May 28. Hippolytus (c.170-c.236)
championed January 2. November 17, November 20, and March 25 all had backers as
well."
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2000/dec08.html

45

DO THE MEMBERS OF THE GB BELIEVE THEIR OWN PROPAGANDA?

by nvrgnbk in

glenster

- They claim to be picked from a literal 144,000 of the most righteous Chris-
tians out of billions from nearly 2 millenium.

They lost me already. Anyway...

- They use a dozen or whatever distinctive rules which can't be based on
the best evidence and reason about them or they wouldn't be distinctive enough
(the ban of the medical use of blood, 1914, Jesus must be archangel Michael and
the Ante-Nicene fathers thought so, too, Satanic Civil Service dentists, Satanic
Mother's Day, Satanic Christmas, etc., banned for being too worldly and pagan
connotations, etc.).

- Catch 22: you have to lie to make those rules look like guarantees. (invisi-
ble Paul's writings on food, invisible Jesus, invisible reason for Stephen to
not say "I meant Michael" and make the others drop their rocks, invisible early
Christian history books, invisible scriptures on worldliness beyond it meaning
to not believe in God and that you shouldn't lie, steal, etc., invisible way to
make sense out of it being weak in faith to worry about pagan connotations
for things, 1 Cor.8:7, and claim to be of an especially strong of faith 144,000
at the same time, etc.). Fortunately for pulling off the scam, these things are
obscure to most people.

Lying about their own past isn't a recent thing.

The first one I think of for Russell is that he taught Jesus meant you
shouldn't take wars, etc., as a sign of impending Armageddon. A little after
WWI broke out earlier than his two Oct. prediction dates, he about-faced and
pretended he predicted something.

Keeping the focus on the leaders, it's like asking if Peter Popoff really
thought he was getting messages from Jesus through the radio transmitter in his
ear his wife talked to him through. It's especially cynical when someone like
that keeps up the pretension knowing some threw away their nitro glycerin and
insulin pills when he told them to, or some died over the ban on the medical use
of blood or unnecessary rules about worldliness in Germany (the 1st JWs went to
prison camps after Rutherford threatened Hitler to leave his JWs alone or he'd
put criticisms of Hitler in the tracts) or Malawi, or it even just breaks up
friends and family.

93

How the Religious View Homosexuality

by serotonin_wraith in

for people who are still religious, what are your views on gays?.

for me (an atheist) it goes against my own morality to think of them as sinners or somehow doing wrong, and yet in the bible it teaches that it is wrong.

it's one of the main reasons i could never go along with the jws.. i'm curious how religious people address this issue.

glenster

Here are a few things I found about it:

1995 "True, some individuals may very well be prone to homosexuality...a
Christian cannot excuse immoral behavior by saying he was 'born that way.'
Child molesters invoke the same pathetic excuse when they say their craving for
children is 'innate.' But can anyone deny that their sexual appetite is per-
verted? So is the desire for someone of the same sex." ("Awake!" Feb.8, 1995)

The Watchtower stance is that homosexuality is a sin like child molestation.
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20020601a/article_01.htm
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20050408a/article_01.htm

Some defenses of interpretations of scriptures to not ban homosexuality:
http://escapefromwatchtower.com/homo.html
http://www.gayxjw.org/bible.html

A Wikipedia article about homosexuality:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality

Does anyone familiar with the Greek or related history have an opinion on the defenses given above?

40

Glaring contradiction between 1995 new light and Society's authority as FDS

by yaddayadda in

in the 15 october 1995 watchtower the society brought out 'new light' that although christ sat down as king in 1914, but he did not sit down on his 'glorious throne' mentioned at matt 25: 31 in that year.

i cant understand why the society bothered to make this change in 1995?

this change was in some ways more damaging to them than the generation change, because the society essentially sawed off the branch they were sitting on by announcing this 1995 new light.

glenster

If I read this right, I'm getting a deja vu here:

1925 The JWs leaders' book "Jehovah's Witnesses-—Proclaimers of God's King-
dom," 1993, pp.138,139, gives "The Watchtower" of March 1, 1925 as teaching that
Jesus was enthroned as king in heaven in 1914.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology_of_Jehovah%27s_Witnesses#_note-16

1929 1874 was still taught as when Jesus invisibly returned: "The Scriptural
proof is that the second presence of the Lord Jesus Christ began in 1874 AD."
("Prophecy," 1929, pp.65-66) Combined with the idea given at the listing for
1925, Rutherford taught that Jesus invisibly returned in 1874 but didn't become
enthroned in heaven till 1914.

Christ's Second Advent was explained as a "turning of attention" to the earth
from heaven. ("Presence-—Literal or Symbolic?" in "A People For His Name: A His-
tory of Jehovah's Witnesses and an Evaluation," by Timothy White, pp. 223-224)

(I don't know. That must have been slippery to inspire confidence in: in
1874, Jesus began invisibly browsing from heaven?)

1930 Rutherford bumped the invisible Jesus up from 1874 to 1914 (minus pyra-
mid connotations) in 1930. "Jesus has been present since 1914." ("The Golden
Age," 1930)
http://www.watchtowerinformationservice.org/index.php/dates/boastful-lies/

The JWs leaders teach that Matthew 24:45-47 indicates that Jesus picked the
Watchtower leaders as his religious leaders on Earth in 1919. Yet he hasn't
fulfilled Matt.25:31 and taken the throne yet (?). His "presence" is so invis-
ible it isn't here at all--he'll arrive later. As with Rutherford in 1929, it's
taught that Jesus began invisibly browsing from heaven, except this time start-
ing in 1914 and picking the JWs leaders as God's channel on Earth before he got
to the throne, which will happen later (?).

My guess is that they call it "turning attention toward the Earth" in 1914, but I'm not sure what they call choosing the JWs leaders in 1919 if you're supposed to associate sitting on the throne with making a rule and he hasn't sat in it yet.

Satanic Chubby

by glenster in

i just thought this was kind of funny.

i was wondering if the jws leaders had any cornball rules about dancing like you read that some people had a long time ago.

so i looked on google, and i found this:.

glenster

I just thought this was kind of funny. I was wondering if the JWs leaders had any cornball rules about dancing like you read that some people had a long time ago. So I looked on Google, and I found this:

http://www.escapefromwatchtower.com/chubby.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhWmc43Z4FM

Do they still teach anything like this?