BLACKRACER_NYC

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Posts by BLACKRACER_NYC

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  101

  I've been studying with JW's for a few months..

  by MichaelM in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i've been studying with the jw's for a few months and i've attended a few meetings but things are feeling somewhat strange...i don't quite get the jist of things but i feel that i'm learning more of what the watchtower teachers and less of what the bible actually says.. i never open my bible.. i'm always reading the watchtower pamphlets.

  i really like the people i've met in the congregation and the guy thats been doing the studies with me has been an awesome friend.. .

  but i'm just having some issues.. i mean.. they translated their own bible to suit their own doctrines it seems.

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  BLACKRACER_NYC

  Greetings MichaelM

  Before getting baptized as a Witness in 1971 me and my friends read all of the anti-Watchtower/anti-Witness books that we could find. Then there wasn't much, now there is way too much and most of it, in I opinion, is motivated by personal hurt and rage / or atheist/anti-religious or Evangelical opportunism.

  Although I no longer worship with the Witnesses nor believe the Watchtower Society's claim of being God's only channel of truth, I have no animosity against the Witnesses nor against the Society. I don't believe that God has nor need an only channel of truth, other than the Holy Scriptures and those with a heart felt desire to understand it. However many false teachers have arisen and most of them are not Jehovah's Witnesses.

  The Witnesses teach that you should test your beliefs, so test theirs as well. There are only a few beliefs that are actually unique to Jehovah's Witnesses, the primary one being that Jehovah God and Jesus Christ appointed the Bible Students affiliated with Joseph F. Rutherford and the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society as the Faith Servant / Only channel of truth. This is dependent on the teaching that { the Kingdom of God/the PAROUSIA - Presence of Christ/the Time of the End } began in 1914.

  Re: the above the following sources are not motivated by hatred nor hurt:

  www.commentarypress.com, for Raymond Franz's books Crisis of Conscious and In Search of Christian Freedom.

  www.captivesofaconcept.com, Don Cameron's book.

  All professed Christian Associations / Churches / Fellowships / Organizations, or whatever they call themselves teach both truth and errors and in my view salvation is not dependent on membership in any organization, although fellowship with fellow believers is commanded. The Watchtower Society's greatest flaw is it's absolute authoritarianism, and it practise of punishing anyone who dares to question its policies and teachings. Christianity requires the freeness of speech, free of thought and free will.

  I also agree with Raymond Franz that individual Jehovah's Witnesses call be true Christians just as individual members of other churches can.

  The Watchtower Society's Faith and Discreet Slave Doctrine on examination you will realize is historically and Biblically unsound.

  The no blood transfusion teaching is Biblically unsound, though I suspect that the Governing Body believes that it is correct, this one could cost you your life. (I PERSONALLY WOULD PREFER BLOODLESS SURGERY for HEALTH not RELIGOUS REASONS.)

  Although disfellowshiping is a Biblically sound teaching, the Watchtower Society's humiliating policies toward those wishing to be reinstated and the practive of shuning is merciless and pharisaic.

  The judicial committe practise of secret trial/tribunal is un-SCRIPTURAL, the only Bible example being the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedren.

  I believe that child abusers are in all fellowships, institutions, etc. the only test of an institution is whether injustices are dealt with honestly and openly.

  www.religioustolerance.org/witness.htm is a reliable source of information without an anti-witness agenda.

  The Basic Teaching of the Witnesses that I believe are true / that is Biblically and Historically Sound are:

  God is one being/person, God the Father, Jehovah/Yahweh

  Jesus is literally the only begotten / created Son of God; Jesus can only be consider to be God in a representative sense.

  The Vindication of the Rightful Sovereignty of Jehovah, God the Father, is the primary issue facing the creation, and the reason why God permits wickedness.

  Fall of Man/Need for Ransom.

  Man and Woman were created perfect, as mortal, organic,physical souls with the prospect of living forever, and by disobeying God brought imperfection/death/disease on themselves and their offspring.

  Humans have no conscious existence between death and resurrection, the judgement of torment is metaphorical not literal.

  Gehenna, Hades, Tartarus, and the Lake of Fire do not refer to the same thing is the Bible.

  Jesus died as a ransom sacrifice to repurchase the offspring of Adam from the imperfect/sinfulness inherited from Adam.

  As the last Adam, the perfect human Jesus was equal to the perfect human Adam at his creation, since Adam was not God, God-Man, of the Substance of the Father before he sinned, neither was Jesus.

  The Good News / Gospel of Jesus Christ, and of the Kingdom is one and the same consisting of: the VIRGIN CONCEPTION/BIRTH of Jesus, his human life and ministry, his death, resurrection, and ascencion to the right hand of God the Father/Jehovah/Yahweh in heaven, where he serves as HIGH PRIEST and INTERCESSOR, and MEDIATOR of the NEW COVENANT, until he is given actual Sovereignty over the earth to rule for 1000 years.

  The KINGDOM is a real sovereign government with Jesus Christ as King, not a conceptual kingdom in the hearts of imperfect sinful humans.

  The Millenium when the Kingdom is established on earth to restore humanity to perfect and make the earth a paradise.

  WITNESSES ARE TAUGHT THEIR PRIMARY GOAL IS TO HAVE A PERSONAL WITH JEHOVAH, GOD the FATHER, as DISCIPLES of JESUS CHRIST and on the BASIS of JESUS' RANSOM SACRIFICE. WITNESSES ACKNOWLEDGE JESUS as LORD and SAVIOR to the GLORY of GOD the FATHER, as the SCRIPTURES TEACH.

  WITNESSES ARE TAUGHT TO MAKE A VOW OF PERSONAL DEDICATION TO JEHOVAH, GOD the FATHER, to SERVE HIM AS A DISCIPLE of HIS SON JESUS CHRIST......THIS IS TO BE DONE IN A PERSONAL PRIVATE PRAYER TO JEHOVAH GOD.

  WITNESSES ACKNOWLEDGE JESUS AS CHRIST/MESSIAH, HIGH PRIEST/INTERCESSOR, KING/LORD/SAVIOR & ADDRESS THEIR PRAYERS TO GOD the FATHER, JEHOVAH IN THE NAME OF JESUS CHRIST.

  1ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS / THE APOSTLES and their associates/disciples were not TRINITARIANS. The so called CHURCH FATHERS starting from the 2nd CENTURY were Hellenic Philosophers, and the so called apostolic, catholic, orthodox, Christianity that the created was acheived by interpreting the Bible to conform to pagan Hellenic Phisolosy, primarily Platonic/neo-Platonic.....Jesus the God-Man/God Incarnation Doctrine was derived from the pagan Mystery Religion belief that a God had to die for mankind, Jesus is also turned into the pagan Hellenic Logos; and in the 4th CENTURY under the authority of the pagan Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, at the Council of Nicea in AD 325, Jesus is made made equal to / of the substance of the FATHER; and before the end of the 4 CENTURY God is finally made into a MYSTRY of the TRINITY.

  The followers of the TRINITARIAN / pagan MYSTERY RELIGION ( including CATHOLICS, both OTHRODOX & ROMAN and PROTESTANTS ) imposed their religion by means of oppression, torture and murder from the time of Constantine the Great in the 4th Century to the modern era when religions on the western world cannot get away with it anymore, for now. Their primary targets have been JEWS ( who refuse to accept the pan JESUS IS GOD/GOD IS A TRINITY MYSTERY RELIGION ) and UNITARIAN CHRISTIANS ( believers in the ONE GOD the FATHER, of Biblical Christianity. Now that the Trinitarians cannot get away with overt oppression and murder, they have declared all who refuse to practise the pagan Hellenic Jesus is God Incarnation / Trinitarian Mystery Religion to be cultist.

  www.socianian.org / Center for Socinian Studies for information on Michael Servetus and non - trinitarian / unitarian christians.

  www.focusonthekingdom.org / Anthony Buzzard / Restoration Fellowship / Church of God General Conference / Benjamin Wilson the translator of the EMPHATIC DIAGLOTT New Testament later purchased and published by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society in 1942.

  www.harvestherald.com see books by Henry Grew and George Storrs; George Storrs was one of Charles T. Russells mentors.

  Purpose of the above is to show that the teachings of the Watchtower/Witnesses are not unique to the Watchtower/Witnesses; nor were they received as a result of divine inspiration by any FAITHFUL & DISCREET SLAVE.

  In parting MichaelM, I hope have been of some assistance. I will not encourage anyone to become one of Jehovah's Witnesses nor will I attempt to discourage you in this regard. I believe that a Witness can be a true Christian as an individual, just as members of other fellowships can be true Christians as individuals. The pitfall for me as a Witness was the authoritarianism of the Governing Body / and the ELDERS in the Congregation.

  I WISH YOU WELL

  BlackRacer in NEW YORK CITY
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  Give us your explanation of what personally drew you to the JWS.

  by Brain Dead in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  thats right give us your explanation of what personally drew you to the jws.

  and what is your opinion of it today ?.

  for myself i was born into it so there wasn't really any choice for myself, but now that i've been out of it for some 30 yrs.

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  BLACKRACER_NYC

  I was born on the family farm down on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi river. We lived in the Baptist Church, daddy was a man of faith in God and the Bible not in the church per se. At about 5 or 6 I learned how to read, by the @ 9,10, 11, I was reading Bible commentaries and different Bible translations, and listening to religious radio programs that I found interesting. I was baptized @ 12, in Mount Calvery Missionary Baptist Church. I joined the Jr Choir and the Boy Scouts of American,Troop 209, Marianna Arkansas.

  I had discovered thru private study of Bibles and Commentarys that God the Father / Jehovah, alone is God; that Jesus is the Son of God / not God the Son; that the human soul dies, that there will be a resurrection, a Kingdom of God and a Paradise Earth.

  I learned these teaching on my own between the ages of 6 to 12, without having heard of Jehovah's Witnesses.

  When I was 14 we moved to another town were I met Jehovah's Witnesses and studied for about 4 months out the book Life Everlasting in the Freedom of the Son God's. Chapter 1 of this book is where the Society began pushing the 1975 doctrine, I didn't believe it, I did believe that most of the other teaching were Bible based. We moved to another state and I continued studing the Bible and Bible commentaries, Catholic, Protestant, Adventist, and Watchtower Publications from the age of 14 to 17, then I got baptized as a Witnesses.

  (Before I was baptized I read all of the anti-witness literature that I could find, Thirty Years a Watch-tower Slave, Armaggeddon Around the Corner, etc.)

  The reason I got baptized was that the Witnesses taught the basic Unitarian Christian / Second Advent beliefs that I had discovered in before I met the Witnesses ( I still hold to those beliefs). They also provided the best Biblically sound explanation of the Atonement/the Ransom/Redemption Doctrine; that a perfect fully human - Jesus - had to willing to lay down his life to atone for the perfect Adam, who willing sinned and rebeled against Jehovah in Eden.

  From my studies in prophetic interpretations of Daniel and Revelation from the various churches I did not believe that any person, persons, church, etc was nor is capable of interpreting end time prophecy correctly. I believe that since the writing of Revelation to the present that ALL prophetic interpretions / specualtions are probably incorrect/false.

  I do not view Jehovah's Witnesses as a cult, I have never in 40 years of knowning Witnesses met 1 that was brainwashed.

  I believe that Watchtower Organization is aggressively authoritarian, excessively coersive, I believe that most of the disfellowships are unjust and unscriptural, erroring persons should be help not punished and discarded, intentionally humiliating people wickedness. Just as they eliminated the practise of shunning in the late '70 they need to eliminate it again.

  I also believe that the teaching on blood transfusion is not Scripturally sound and if they cannot find their way to discard it, at least make it a matter of conscious. Personally if I need surgery I would prefer bloodless, all of the many Witnesses that I have personally known in NY/NJ who have had bloodless surgery from the 1970's to the present survived and recovered.

  I believe that the field ministry, meeting particapation, etc., should be a matter of person choice. However the Governing Body has no compelling need to reform, so they probably wont.

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  46

  Would you EVENTUALLY be happy in a JW dominated new system?

  by JH in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  many here say that they wouldn't want to live in a world dominated by jw's.

  i understand.. i know that i wasn't always happy under their rules and way of living.

  i don't like going to meetings, especially 5 a week.

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  BLACKRACER_NYC

  If there is a paradise earth it will not be dominated by Jehovah's Witnesses, nor by Watchtower Society appointed elders, nor by any imperfect humans. Jesus Christ himself will be the ruler of the Kingdom of God, and those appointed by him to positions of authority and oversight will be persons who meet his standards & qualifications, just as those who are saved at the end of this system, the great crowd that comes out of the great tribulation, will have been judged by Christ Jesus himself, not by any imperfect humans or imperfect human agency, organization, society, etc.

  There will be no Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, no American Bible Society, no English Bible Society, etc. There will be no Kingdom Halls, no Churches, no Mosque, no Synagoges, no Temples.

  The knowledge and technologies that humans have learned from the scientific study of the creation (nature), will be preserved and improved upon throughout eternity and nothing will be used to empower men or women over men or women, and nothing will be used to subjugate men and women to men and women.

  If you believe in a paradise earth you should base that belief on scripture and reason, you should also assess your own expections and speculations, as well as the expections and speculations of fellow believers ( including teachers, elders, governing body, etc.), in the light of scripture and reason.

  God created man and woman in the image of God, see Gen. 1:27; God gave us free will and the faculty of reason, you can surrender them to others if you so chose, but no one can take them away from you.

  "FEAR JEHOVAH ( GOD ) AND THE KING ( JESUS CHRIST ), not the self appointed Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses and their representatives. If you are a worshippers of God/as one of Jehovah's Witnesses and can endure, strive to do so. There is certainly much that is wrong here and there is much corruption here is will be until until the Lord Jesus returns, Christendom is as corrupt is not worse.

  Love to all, believers and not believers, friends and enemies, (Matthew 6:44, 45).

  The BLACKRACER hopes to live in the paradise earth and will willingly summit to he KING of KINGS and the LORD of LORDS and to those whom He chosed to appoint to administer the affairs of his kingdom.