Mad Dawg

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Posts by Mad Dawg

• 
  421

  70 years = 607?

  by allelsefails in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  70 years of captivity?.

  i myself have always believed that when archaeology disagreed with the bible the bible must be right.

  that is how i dismissed the idea that jerusalem was destroyed in 586/587 bce.

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  Mad Dawg

  I'd like to know how someone can be "celebrated" and "anonymous" at the same time.
• 
  421

  70 years = 607?

  by allelsefails in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  70 years of captivity?.

  i myself have always believed that when archaeology disagreed with the bible the bible must be right.

  that is how i dismissed the idea that jerusalem was destroyed in 586/587 bce.

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  Mad Dawg

  Scholar, can you show from the Bible only that the destruction of Jerusalem was 2520 years before 1914?
• 
  32

  Did people DONATE for the literature when you went out in service?

  by BonaFide in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  i think i got a donation maybe once or twice here in the states.

  most of the friends don't ask for a donation.

  in south america, more people donated, but i think it's because it was phrased differently, we used to say, "you can give whatever you want for this magazine.

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  Mad Dawg

  Does anyone have a list of what the Dubs pay donate for the litter? I am interested in two items: What the Bible really teaches and the Kingdom Interlinear Testament.
• 
  31

  Who Do They Think They Are?

  by snowbird in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  this passage from revelation-its grand climax!

  is what caused me to take a second look at the wt doctrine that the 144,000 are a heavenly class, and the remnant of said class is associated with wbts.. the 24 elders and the anointed group of 144,000 are described as being "round about the throne" of jehovah and "upon the [heavenly] mount zion.

  " (revelation 4:4; 14:1) the great crowd is not a priestly class and does not attain to that exalted position.

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• 

  Mad Dawg

  What would the average Dub think if I were to ask if Jah loves the annointed more than the rest? Or that Jah doesn't want them around, that is why they are going to be stuck on earth forever? If He loves them so much, why doesn't He take them to Heaven so He can be with them?
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  12

  How does the Annointed that survive Har-maggedon get to Heaven?

  by Mad Dawg in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  just wondering, the wts teaches:.

  that the annointed (the 144k) will rule from heaven.bodies of flesh can't enter heaven (therefore the annointed must die at some time to get to heaven).that there will be annointed that survive the big a.that those who are faithful after the big a will never die.if one becomes unfaithful after the big a, they will be destroyed.if all of the above are true, then any annointed caught on earth at the time of the big a will be stuck here forever and have no way to get to heaven.

  do i have this right, or have i missed something?.

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• 

  Mad Dawg

  Blondie, thank you. I deeply appreciate the work that goes into your posts.

  So, if I understand your post correctly, the surviving annointed must either:

  • Go to Heaven in the flesh, or
  • Die faithful in the new system.

  Does the WTS ever specifically adress this? Isn't either case a direct contradiction of what they have taught?

  I have never been a Dub, but have close relatives who are. Doesn't the WTS stridently teach that flesh bodies can't go to Heaven? It seems that I remember reading a WT article stating that Enoch and Elijah must have both died because flesh can't go to Heaven. Or is my memory faulty?

  Again, Thank you,

  MD
• 
  12

  How does the Annointed that survive Har-maggedon get to Heaven?

  by Mad Dawg in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  just wondering, the wts teaches:.

  that the annointed (the 144k) will rule from heaven.bodies of flesh can't enter heaven (therefore the annointed must die at some time to get to heaven).that there will be annointed that survive the big a.that those who are faithful after the big a will never die.if one becomes unfaithful after the big a, they will be destroyed.if all of the above are true, then any annointed caught on earth at the time of the big a will be stuck here forever and have no way to get to heaven.

  do i have this right, or have i missed something?.

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  Mad Dawg

  Just wondering, the WTS teaches:

  • That the annointed (the 144k) will rule from Heaven.
  • Bodies of flesh can't enter Heaven (therefore the annointed must die at some time to get to Heaven).
  • That there will be annointed that survive the Big A.
  • That those who are faithful after the Big A will never die.
  • If one becomes unfaithful after the Big A, they will be destroyed.

  If all of the above are true, then any annointed caught on earth at the time of the Big A will be stuck here forever and have no way to get to Heaven. Do I have this right, or have I missed something?
• 
  24

  How long will the WTBTS survive?

  by Megachusen in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  give it your best educated guess.

  how long do you guys think it has left?.

  personally, i think it has about 10 years before the org's leadership disolves and the religion splinters into hundreds of adorable little jw-like cults..

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  Mad Dawg

  I think they will still be around in some form or another 100 years from now. The Oneida Community still has a remnant around and the last Shaker died about 1990. Both of these lasted for well over 100 years despite never having millions of followers, a publishing company, or zealous evangelism. The True Believers will always believe, no matter what.
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  10

  How has the Amish lasted this long?

  by Gayle in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  they are a cult.

  a closed society.

  limit their children's education to 8th grade.

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  Mad Dawg

  They have survived because they breed like rabbits.

  There are about 30 or 40 sects of Amish/Mennonites. Each has their own set of rules. Some allow only black buggies, others only gray buggies, others cars, others only black cars, and still others that only allow black cars with all chrome painted black.
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  23

  What is the value of suffering?

  by jabberwock in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in a recent talk the speaker asked the question, "how will god destroy the wicked at armageddon?

  " the first and most efficient means will be to confuse them into killing one another.

  second there are the forces of nature at his disposal.

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• 

  Mad Dawg

  Hell as we "know" it didn't come into being until the 14th century when Dante wrote of it. Prior to that, it was simply understood that Hell was a place of shame and separation from God. The fire and brimstone of the Bible is figurative speech that is taken too literally. The Bible says that the sky melted and the stars fell from their place when Edom was destroyed. This is obviously figurative.

  God does not force Himself on anyone, yet He does hold us accountable for our decisions. Many people rail against God and then expect that if He is just, good, or whatever, He should force them into Heaven anyways to spend eternity with a God they don't want to be with in the first place.

  Hell just might be a merciful solution that allows God to respect a person as an individual being. They can continue as they wish while continuing to exist. http://justthinkingpages.tripod.com/hell.html

  Two more short articles:

  http://www.tektonics.org/af/doctoolate.html

  http://www.tektonics.org/uz/2muchshame.html
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  1

  Is Jah a " just " God ?

  by smiddy in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  the bible says that satan is a liar and the father of the lie.

  eve was deceived by satan.

  adam should have known better and rebuked eve.

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• 

  Mad Dawg

  Some thoughts from: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/gr5part2.html

  1. There must be more ‘good’ than ‘bad’ (for the creatures, that is, us)

  This is a most interesting issue, because it is often assumed by ‘objectors’ that the world is full of evil and suffering, that life is more-torture-than-not, and that the evil present world order is not “good enough” to have warranted being created itself (before we even get to the issue of heaven and hell).

  Now, I have argued elsewhere in the Tank that this is simply not the case. Without falling into the folly of Candide, I would argue that although it might be difficult to defend the position that this world is the ‘best of all possible worlds’, I consider it very defensible to maintain that this world is much , much better than the ‘worst of all possible worlds’, and indeed, that it would fall into the “top half” of possible worlds, based upon simple world and life statistics.

  Let's look at the two most often mentioned specific areas of alleged "vast" suffering: people and the biotic food-chain (e.g., predation, parasitism, etc).

  First, evil in human experience.

  Even at a cursory (non-rigorous) level, it should obvious that:

  1. If life really were more evil than good, then violent crimes should be orders of magnitude higher than they are in the world. Violent crime is measured in single and double digits, within population bases of 100,000 people. Of the approximately 50 million people who died worldwide in 1990 (approximately eight-tenths of one percent of the world population), only 1.4% of those were from intentional, violent crime. [In the USA in 1997, violent personal crime affected only 4% of the over-12yr population.] These numbers should be vastly higher in a vastly-evil world.

  2. Even a quick fly-by glance at basic vital statistics would suggest that "evil suffering" is not the major part of our lives. Life expectancy: of all the major countries of the world, only three have life expectancies of less than 60 years (i.e., Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa). Refugee counts: even with the widest definitions, only two-hundredths of one percent (.02%) of the world population is classified as refugees. Unemployment: the vast majority of the countries of the world have unemployment under 15%, with the 60+ largest countries having 10% or less. Nutritional mortality: in spite of the fact that perhaps as many as one-third of the world does not eat an 'adequate diet,' deaths from nutrition-related causes only accounts for less than 1 percent of all deaths. These figures should be much, much higher in a world of "more evil than good".

  3. If life really were more evil than good, then humanity might have killed itself off long ago, by a combination of homicide, genocide, suicide, xenocide. But somehow, life “outruns” self-destruction in our history…

  4. If life really were more evil than good, then the headlines of the nightly news would not captivate us very well…Plane crashes of hundreds of fatalities, earthquakes with similar body counts, serial killers of dozens of people would all be virtually trivialized by the daily experience in each life on earth(!) of "majority evil". If evil were the majority (i.e., more “bad” than “good”), news of it would not be "news" in the least, and the horrors of concentrated points of evil in history (e.g. the Holocaust, the western Slave Trade) would not provoke such moral outrage or pessimism over human nature as they do…

  5. There is a basic philosophical argument, that evil, as parasitic on ‘good’, simply cannot exist in the ‘majority’ or it would starve itself, so to speak. You simply cannot have significantly more vampires than you have live humans…