Posts by My Struggle

23

How's the economy where you live?

by Quirky1 in

jw
friends

My Struggle

I have several friends in housing industry, six to be exact, and only one of them is still doing it. Three large groceries stores have closed near me and one more is about to. There have been too many speciality shops to close than I can count. The state cannot hire anyone or give its employees raises. The county I work in, Jefferson, could easily go into bankruptcy because of a sewer debt that has amassed. But times are great....thanks for asking!

20

First century governing body?

by lostsheep82 in

my anointed step dad always mentions about how the first century christians had a governing body also.

where in the bible does it actually say that?

to me governing body is just a dictatorship of men who think they are right and can control, no different than the governments....governing body set rules, and ultimately decide your future as far as i'm concerned.

My Struggle

There was no such thing in the first century of Christianity. There were many Christian churches/congregations that acted autonomously, though still part of the Christian movement. Bishops and deacons were set as the head of each local church, though they probably did not have as much 'power' as a modern day church leaders. They were more of an overseer of the church, being educated they could read for the church and make general decisions.

A good example of how this played out was the forming of the New Testament canon. Each congregation had various books that they saw as fitting into the new testament, some accepted only certain new testament books (synoptic gospels and a few of Paul's epistles) or books that are not longer in our canon like Apocalypse of Peter, Didache, or Shepard of Hermas just to name a few.

The first Bishop of the Roman church, Clement of Rome was appointed by the apostle Peter. Clement, spoke much about Christ and quoted a few well know saying of Christ, which are found in the synoptic Gospels. When writing a letter to Corinth he encouraged the people there to read from Paul's letter to them. However he made no mention of any of these New Testament writings as being scripture, as he did with the books of the Old Testament. For Clement, though he was a Christian, scripture was only the Old Testament. Though, other church leaders like Papias, who was a successor of one of Apostle Paul's workers Epaphras, did see the written word of the New Testament to be of great importance and often quoted from it. There were several others that held this same opinion such as Polycarp of Smyrna. So, you can see a variance of opinion in the first century church leaders, though they were both part of the Christian movement.

The 'Christian' books that are not in our canon today were largely written after the first century, but still some of these came to be respected and held as scripture and canonical. Clement of Rome wrote his own epistle and it came to be respected and even included as scripture in some churches around the third century. Shepard of Hermas enjoyed canonical status in many churches and was even listed as scripture by Eusebius along with the Epistle of Barnabas. One book that lingered in the New Testament longer than any other was the Epistle to the Laodiceans which was still viewed as scripture in 1165 by John of Salisbury, though most of the church rejected it. In exception to Laodiceans, the canon was closed by Augustine between the years 397-419, when he made an official list (to be held by all Christian churches) of the 27 books of the New Testament and did not hold any other books to be scripture.

That was a bit long to make a point, but it shows the type of Christian organization there was in the first few centuries. If there was a central governing body, like that of the JW's, they would have come out with a list of official New Testament writing and sent a letter to all the churches. Nothing like that ever took place. Instead, there were individual churches that had various opinions as to what was to be regarded as scripture. If there was a governing body like the JW's, it would have not taken until the early fourth century to have an official list of New Testament books. Imagine there was something like a JW governing body in the first century, but they could not even muster a letter to all congregations of which books were to be considered scripture.....not very likely.

A governing body did not come about until Christianity was legalized by the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century. It would have been impossible for there to have been a centralized body before that point. The Christian church was persecuted and by necessity had to act autonomously. It would have been far too difficult to have a central location from which all instruction was sent. Any central location would have been easily known and attacked. There was simply nothing like a JW governing body in the first, second or third centuries of Christianity.

36

eh?

by John Doe in

jw
friends

writing without wasting words would weary wistful women wishing wonderingly while wanting wine with warbling whores..

My Struggle

Unusually uninformed upon ulcers?

Unmasking ulcers...

Usually ulcers ungulate underneath untiring ultraviolence....ultimatium?.... unfortunately unequivocal ultimatums ultimately upset ulcers…unquestionably.

12

Kirt Cameron witnesses to JWs....on TV!

by A-Team in

it re-airs again monday at 7pm et/4pm pt on tbn.. .

My Struggle

Kirk does not represent very intelligent argument for the existence for God. His ideas show a gross lack for the understanding of science and especially the evolutionary theory. He would have it an impossibility that a Christian or a believer in a God could not logically hold evolution to be true. I guess that makes me an oxymoron.

There are much better arguments for the existence of God that don't involve the evolution theory at all. For me, I like the philosophical argument of the reformed epistemological approach to Christian apologetics.

16

Some questions for the board from a lurker

by purplesofa in

welll, he is waiting to sign up.

hi leslie!

just wondering if you could do a post for me?

My Struggle

How does the writing process of articles and books happen?One guy in a room writing?At a desk ?With how much input from the other members of the gb?Do people outside of the gb have any influence?

There is a writing dept, consisting mainly of members of the other sheep. (So much for the anointed remnant feeding the other sheepies... that is such a load of bull crap, because it's the experienced other sheepies writing the stuff and one old member of the GB rubberstamping it. That's not part of the FDS parable, is it?) Of course, the GB must decide what will be written, and then the actual writing is done by other lemmings (read other sheep).

I believe you...but is there any 'proof' of this?

11

Do JWs reject the Second Coming of Jesus?

by cameo-d in

well, do they?.

if so, why?.

what do you think about it?.

My Struggle

umm...kinda one of thier main doctrines that he came in 1914.....so no they don't reject it, they just think that it has already happened

3

Tell me what you think about these links? It has to do with the Anti-Christ

by Trying2understand in

and how the world is going.. my brother told me about these tonight.

i brought of jws(we are going through a nightmare at the moment with my daughters x-boyfriend) and started talking about the links below.

he said to watch the ant-christ video which i did, and found it pretty interesting.

My Struggle

yawn...

6

Theological books online

by cabasilas in

someone once said: "to the making of online books there is no end, and much devotion to them is wearisome to the flesh" (or something like that).

but, seriously, this site has a plethora of online books that may be of interest to folks here:.

http://revelation-online.blogspot.com/.

My Struggle

This is truly incredible.... I have paid hundreds of dollars for books that are totally free on here, wish I would have known about this site. Im off to Office Depot to buy paper and ink...I going to be printing all day long.

18

ADVERTISE, ADVERTISE, ADVERTISE! ...watchtowercomments.com

by V in

please don your sandwich board and join me.

any help promoting the november 5th release of www.watchtowercomments.com is appreciated.. gratuitous placement on discussion boards and blogs recommended.. picture link: http://www.watchtowercomments.com/teaser.jpg.

video teaser link: double-click on the video screen below .