I don't understand this. I've given bible studies to people because I had too many or they were with women and every time, they don't follow through. Who are these Witnesses, that they are pulling out all the stops to hold a Bible study, when I've never been able to even give one away?
WontLeave
JoinedPosts by WontLeave
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38
Is this normal witness behavior?
by confusedstudent ini quit my bible study a couple days ago after taking a month or two to work up the guts.
have been getting harassing emails/phone calls blah blah blah.
but i got an email today telling me that an unbelieving spouse can be "sanctified" by his believing mate.
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The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.
by whereami ingotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.
it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.
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WontLeave
@saltyoldlady
godrulz can't grasp the idea of a non-Trinitarian God, because (and he really seems to believe this) he found the idea in the Bible, free of outside influence. He can't fathom a unitarian God and a created son coming anywhere but from JWs, because his religious experience is only with other Trinitarians. Just like Hollywood liberals believe everybody is a liberal, except for stupid, evil, ignorant people, all of his "Christian" friends are Trinitarians, so he believes only a stupid, evil, ignorant false-Christian would believe in a unitarian God. He's completely oblivious to the fact that God's people saw him that way for thousands of years and the Trinity is a man-made (or "revealed") doctrine. Interestingly, none of the prophets who would have seen God as a strictly singular entity and personage don't seem to be damned to Hell.
Trinitarians see belief in the Trinity some kind of rite of passage into "true Christianity". Just like JWs have to force ridiculous and fantastical beliefs on themselves that blatantly violate Scripture (Governing Body, for instance) to be a "true Christian", Trinitarians' hackles come up when you talk about their Trinity doctrine, because they worked hard to "achieve enlightenment" and they equate the self-induced brainwashing with revelation from the Holy Spirit. When you try to reason with them about the Trinity, they see you as trying to take the Holy Spirit away from them and that makes you an evil apostate, trying to lead them away from God. Similarly, if you try to talk to a JW about how man-made institutions and rules have no place in Christianity, you're attacking their 'faithful slave' and they've been brainwashed into believing that means you hate God. Once they convince themselves of a triune God, they see it everywhere in the Bible.
Once a man forms a theory, he sees evidence for it everywhere he looks. - Abraham Lincoln
A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. - Simon and Garfunkel
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Does your personal NEED or WEAKNESS give you the right to demand?
by Terry inlet's start at the old desert island, shall we?.
a group of survivors (just like the tv show!
) are marooned on an island with no way off.they are all sorts of people with various strengths and weaknesses.. the strongest among them do the hardest work.
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WontLeave
the world would shut down without the retail workers, blue collar guys, factory workers, just as much as it would shut down without the engineers, scientists and entrepreneur
Someone already tried your theory. Under Chairman Mao, millions starved. Whether you're a "joe six-pack" and jealous or feel you were born with a silver ATM card in your mouth and ashamed, your uber-leftist theory doesn't wash. There are many more unskilled laborers than the world needs. This was demonstrated at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and during/after the World Wars, when there wasn't enough unskilled manual labor in industrialized countries. Wages skyrocketed and for the first (and last) time in human history, a man only qualified to sweep floors and his family could live quite nicely.
This is why people in China are willing to work for cents a day and even people in wealthier countries will break a picket line for a portion of what the strikers were making. Manual labor is plentiful, whereas educated, skilled, talented people are much more rare. There is a reason a surgeon makes more than a shoe salesman. People don't want to expend the effort or the time to learn a skill or get proficient at it, so when someone is willing to do what it takes to achieve more, he should be rewarded for it.
when capitalism fell and the bailouts began
You don't notice a problem with that statement? "Capitalism" and "bailout" are diametrically opposed. Companies skirted and broke the law to steal money and distribute it among the good-old-boys at the top and the government gave them money for doing it. If that sounds like capitalism to you, you need to check a dictionary. The companies that got bailed out had lobbyists greasing palms in Washington and used their government ties to get away with outright theft. Stop using Michael Moore's definition of "capitalism". He's a liar, just trying to make a point, by using straw men. Believe me, nobody's more upset at the way the US is allowing corporations to get away with murder by refusing to prosecute and giving legal loopholes to the ones making huge campaign donations. That's not capitalism; that's corruption. Remove corruption and just about any system will work to some extent. But don't point to something that is blatantly not capitalism and present it as an example of why capitalism can't work. You want to make the point that corruption doesn't work? Amen!
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Does your personal NEED or WEAKNESS give you the right to demand?
by Terry inlet's start at the old desert island, shall we?.
a group of survivors (just like the tv show!
) are marooned on an island with no way off.they are all sorts of people with various strengths and weaknesses.. the strongest among them do the hardest work.
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WontLeave
There's always something to do that doesn't require great skill or natural ability. Something always needs washed, cooked, etc. I believe the movie Swept Away is a fair assessment of how things would go down. The best hunters would be the local rock stars and the least productive would pretty much become their servants. The larger the community became, the more diverse the needed and desired skills would become. If there's only 5 people and they're wondering where their next meal is coming from, artists are probably not in high demand, for example.
If someone lives in a thriving city and can't find some skill to hone into a productive living, they are probably not going to rise much above servant. These people, in our society, work in retail, service-oriented industries, blue-collar labor, etc. There are only 2 ways to be perceived as valuable: Do something someone else can't or do something someone else doesn't want to; or some combination of the two. The less of those you offer, the less valuable you become.
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The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.
by whereami ingotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.
it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.
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WontLeave
@godrulz
assumption that Jesus is an angel
Once again, you resort to an argument that's never made. Jesus is not identified as "an" anything. He is identified as "the", as in singular, meaning there is no other like him. If you don't understand the difference between "an angel" and "the archangel", we're never going to be able to communicate.
Jude 9 refutes the view since Jesus has all authority/power (Mt. 28)
Jude 9 speaks in past tense without indicating whether it was before Jesus' ascension. Also, you'll notice Mat 28:17 indicates Jesus' authority was given to him, requiring a time when he didn't have it. Also, if Jesus is/was Almighty God, who is giving him authority here?
The whole invisible return in 1914 is also a joke
I doubt many in this forum believe the 1914 thing. That is a scam to grant authority to the Governing Body, because people need to belive Jesus returned and decided who the "faithful and discreet slave" is or their power grab will completely fail. For the Watchtower to grant themselves exclusivity to that title, they need Jesus to have already come.
The Deity of Christ is not negotiable, but essential, salvific truth.
Your definition of "deity of Christ" and mine might differ. I don't disagree with Christ's deity, but you're insisting he is the Deity, as if there is only one deity, which is an idea the Bible in no way supports. You'd think if understanding Jesus and the Father are the same (or whatever weasely way various Trinitarians want to describe it), then the Bible would have made it more clear. The mandatory Trinity doctrine is about as solid as the JW's mandatory "faithful and discreet slave" doctrine. For something to be so completely required of God in order for salvation, you'd think he would have come right out and said it, not made it a secret code that nobody can figure out without a priest class (Catholic Magisterium or Governing Body) to "reveal" it. If you believe the Trinity was a common belief before the 5th Century, you are sadly mistaken and totally ignorant of Church history. It wasn't even officially adopted until the 4th Century and hotly disputed. But you try to make out that it's obvious to all "real" Christians. That's called the "no true Scotsman fallacy".
1800 were invited to Nicea, but only about 300 showed up and - conveniently - nearly all were in agreement. Perhaps Unitarians refused to even dignify the heresy with their presence, not realizing it would begin a chain reaction of the erosion of Christianity, ultimately giving us the Catholic Church we have today. The integration of Church and politics is a blatant violation of Scripture and is what brought us the Inquisitions. It's pretty clear the ones in attendance had impure motives to centralize doctrine and power under a small group with the government to back them through violence toward all dissenters. They probably understood this was going to be the only way to promote the heresies they held.
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Richard Debate
by d inman richard dawkins is a breath of fresh air to me.relgion is a plaque onto the world and needs to be seriously destroyed.we need more like minded people like richard dawkins.religion is primative and man made.
i hope that in the future religion dies off completely because in a sense religion is literally killing us.it is a cancer on the world.. http://youtu.be/_-s1lansswa.
http://youtu.be/wfe4iub9ntk.
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WontLeave
Religion defies logic and reason.
So do relative speed and simultaneity, superstring theory, Schroedinger's cat, and most of quantum physics. He doesn't have the same problem with those godless religions. While those beliefs haven't been invoked while slaughtering people, religion is - and always has been - an irrelevent excuse for the naturally-violent nature of humanity. People hate first, then look for a "noble" reason. Religion is no more responsible for man's ills than guns are responsible for violence. Even a violent, hateful religion like Islam doesn't cause violence, but give Muslims an excuse for preexisting personality traits. I'm convinced the Qur'an became popular because of it's xenophobic nature and the perception of an OT blood-thirsty God is embraced and promoted by fundamentalists.
Remove religion from the equation and people will just invoke another reason for their hair-trigger hate. Religion wasn't the catalyst for the US Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or many other major wars.
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The trouble with Christianity. TRINITY.
by whereami ingotta love pat.. "ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity.
it is the mere abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of jesus.
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WontLeave
@godrulz
wrong to reduce Jesus to Michael or mere man
Here's something I have never been able to understand: How is saying Jesus is Michael an insult to Jesus? The theory the Society has about Jesus being Michael is actually one of their more sound theories. It's no slam dunk and I believe it to be wrong to preach it as a fact, but at least there are some scriptures that appear to indicate this. The Word, before becoming Jesus, was a unique being. Michael the Archangel (which means he's above the angels) is a unique being. Jesus is the "only-begotten" in relation to the Father. Michael is the "archangel" in relation to the angels. Why can't they be the same? Just as someone can be an employee, a father, a brother, etc. to different people, Jesus is different things to different personages. To us, he's a savior, but not to God or angels.
As far as reducing Jesus to "mere man", you'll have to talk to the apostle Paul about that, since "man" is a word he uses repeatedly to describe the Christ on earth. In Heaven, Jesus had (and has) a very different existence than he did 2000 years ago. As the "last Adam", he would need to be human unless Adam was something other than a man.
It sounds like you need to read the Athanasian Creed, because you repeatedly deny the definition of the Trinity. It may be that you recognize the Trinity to be a ridiculous belief, so you've tweaked it a bit to sound less preposterous, but that's dishonest and it's not the Trinity when you start changing things. You can't invoke the name for a belief then deny you believe what that name describes. I might as well say I believe in the Trinity, then go on to say that means the Father has always existed, at one time created the Son, using his power called Holy Spirit. Boom, my personal definition of Trinity, so now I'm a Trinitarian.
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LMFAO oh what emotionally manipulative BULL!!!
by Reality79 inhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5hi98nsy6u.
*how do i display youtube vids?*.
the mother in the vid, while she's quite good looking, is a typical soft spoken sister who is actually skillful at emotional manipulation.
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WontLeave
She's right, you know. This is why we can't slave for the Governing Body and for God. Of course, when JWs say "Jehovah", they really mean "the Society", so they don't see a conflict. When they read Pro 3:5, they see "Trust the Watchtower magazine." I cringe when a JW says "Wait on Jehovah" when something is addressed in the Bible, but the Watchtower has a different idea. It would seem Jehovah has already weighed in, but what a JW really means when they say this is "Wait for the Governing Body to pull their heads from their rectums." Because of this blatant misapplication of Psa 37:7, no JW is permitted to acknowledge (or even notice) any mistakes made by the Governing Body, and by extension (I just had to put that in there), the Writing Department. One can acknowledge the "old light" and be happified by the Society's light getting brighter, but seeing any current mistakes is completely verboten. This idolatry is what makes the entire organization distasteful and will be the downfall of a very large portion of 7M active and faithful Witnesses.
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Where do the JW's pull their statistics from?
by stillstuckcruz ini noticed how, of course, the public talk outlines contain the same information for all the brothers to use.
but their statistics on matter aren't very up-to-date i imagine.. example: i remember the talk about parents or young people or something.
many of you may remember the statistic it provides.
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WontLeave
Never believe any JW statistics, experts, or experiences. They blatantly twist statistics and shop around for the ones they want. They'll use any crackpot who agrees with their ridiculous ideas. When they can't find anyone at all, they'll say things like "experts agree" or "many in the field", which means they believe it and see themselves as experts. Of course, many of the "experiences" are completely fabricated, which is why - in my opinion - the names are changed and the area where they live is vague. This way, nobody can verify the outlandish claims. Most of the interviews are with people right at Bethel, who are nearly all hard-line cult nutters or they wouldn't be there in the first place.
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I called the KH- "the Memorial is tomorrow night, right?
by moshe ini called just before noon today- an elder promptly answered the phone.
i told him, " uh, memorial is tomorrow night, right?".
passover starts tomorrow night, after sundown!
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WontLeave
Here's a quick mock-up of my take on the first Passover/Exodus with a few supporting scriptures. I tried to be as specific as the text allowed. From everything in the Bible, things transpired very quickly, which doesn't seem to allow for an early Nisan 14 Passover meal. I tried to make hotlinks to biblegateway.com, but they didn't work.