jesus taught a surviving generation, a group inhering everlasting life, an escape route to avoid a global disaster worse than the flood, a generation that "will not pass away--" an infinite generation.
wt teaches a generation that dies, ends, passes away, at the first sign of real trouble, the great tribulation.. what do you believe about this wt assertion?
(apart from that there is no talking snake, it is all irrelevant).
Who was Jesus speaking to?
A small group of disciples in 33AD.
When did the great tribulation occur back then? 70AD when the Romans sacked Jerusalem.
37 years later!
End of story!
Ps - Mark was written after 70AD, which the other two synoptic gospels embellish upon.
you dont have be alive to 2075 to prove that the wt's anointed generation is and will prove to be wrong, it is!
and you can do it now, by asking just one question:.
does the "generation" prophecy of math.
you dont have be alive to 2075 to prove that the wt's anointed generation is and will prove to be wrong, it is!
and you can do it now, by asking just one question:.
does the "generation" prophecy of math.
some facts that make the difference between you and me:.
1 - as a person raised by non jw family, my parents have never loved me based on conditions set out by a group of old men who they don't even know.
how does it feel to know that you are in the unique situation where your parents brought you into the world and said 'i'll show love to you.
Thank you for your very insightful opening post and for starting this thread.
I am a born-in and can relate personally and deeply to everything you say. It was like reading about my own childhood.
i wish i had read this back when i was 18. it's an amazing take down of religious beliefs, the bible, and religion in general.
) a "reason"-able manner.take this quote, from near the beginning:.
when also i am told that a woman, called the virgin mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, joseph, said that an angel told him so, i have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither joseph nor mary wrote any such matter themselves.
Reading the writings of the great sceptics like Voltaire, Paine, and Ingersoll is the greatest cure to rid oneself of lifelong religious indoctrination. They are even more powerful in cleansing the mind of religious dogma and superstition than acceptance of evolution.
why didn't god also reveal himself to the canaanites just as he did to moses in the burning bush so that the massacre/genocide of the canaanites could have been avoided?.
why didn't god also invite the native palestinians into his covenant, giving them the same laws he gave the israelites, and establish an egalitarian society where people of all races could live together in harmony?.
instead, he ordered his people to invade and slaughter the natives, killing them to the last man, woman and child, specifically instructing them to show no mercy to anyone under any circumstances.
These are mostly true ancient accounts of ancient Jewish genocide and war crimes overlaid with pure myth invented by the Jewish priest class who said it was all done at Yahwehs order. How else to morally justify what is morally indefensible and proclaim divine right to stolen land. It's called divine command theory.
if god has a relationship with every christian and every christian is praying to him then wouldn't he tell every christian the same thing so that christians would agree on matters of doctrine and practice?.
it is certainly puzzling why sincere and devout people equally seek god's will and pray to him yet they all come up with different answers so that there are approximately 40,000 different christian denominations (center for the study of global christianity (csgc) at gordon-conwell theological seminary).. before his death, jesus called for agreement among his followers rather than division (john 17:20-21).
he declared that he would send the holy spirit to guide persons into all the truth (john 14:16 - 17, 26, john 15:26, john 16:7,13 - 15).. so shouldn't anyone who has a relationship with jesus, reads the bible, and listens to the holy spirit come to the same conclusions as others who are doing the same thing?.
http://infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/confusion.htmlhttp://http://infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/confusion.html
so... i live in mexico and i am helping with an esl class (english as a second language).
actually, i am helping with two classes.
i get two days a week in which i just stand there and have a debate with the class, encouraging as many as possible to just talk... in english.. anyways, i like talking about subjects that generate debate.
You've got to keep in mind that Cofty used to be a JW preacher, used to be a preachy born again Christian, and now he's a preachy atheist. He just has to preach, period.
all parents want their children to grow up, mature, and become happily independent.
no normal father or parent would ever want to govern and rule over their children forever.. so if jehovah exists and he is a heavenly 'father' to his human progeny, and if we truly are in his image as his children, then humankind was always destined to govern itself.
if you believe in the biblical narrative, jehovah always intended to let go of his human children and let us rule ourselves when we were ready.
So you are defending the JWS stance then, Cold Steel, but from an orthodox Christian perspective?
If you don't believe humans are capable of ever ruling ourselves, then in what way are we in God's image? Humans are imbued with the same inherent faculties and qualities of God and Jesus to achieve more or less anything, as was admitted at the Tower of Babel, but it stops short of self determination? Why?
And how is it that all known offspring eventually matures and leaves it's parents and becomes independent of its parents authority, but not humans? How unnatural.
Contradiction upon contradiction.
Anyway, you missed the obvious orthodox Christian rebuttal of my thought experiment: sin and death.
God's intervention and the ransom sacrifice was needed to free the human race from Adamic sin and death...right?
