do you want this sound coming from your kid's bedrooms on sunday morning?
if not act now, play it tonite during dinner.. mongolia is getting to be a cool place, just watch out for their tendency to revere chinggis khan.. mongolian throat singer zorigoo (altain orgil).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el93mixaf-c. and follow up with:.
Do you want this sound coming from your kid's bedrooms on sunday morning? If not act now, play it tonite during dinner.
Mongolia is getting to be a cool place, just watch out for their tendency to revere Chinggis Khan.
Mongolian throat singer Zorigoo (altain orgil)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el93MIxAf-c
and follow up with:
Khoomii Mongolian Throat Song "Mountain Kharkhiraa" (Techno)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW7uvYz9yjA
and
as witnesses we were truly convinced that we knew the truth about the dead.
they were truly dead, and we often quoted ecclesiastes 9:4-6, our favourite proof text on that topic, to prove the point.
that text reads (just in case you've already forgotten it - smile), (from the niv):.
paradisebeauty: The jw's are wrong on many doctrine, but I do not think they are wrong on the "life after death" separated from the body doctrine.
"The biggest problem in using early writings, etc is that there was likely no unified 'Christian' belief system. So with that in mind, we should take care not to suggest that the evidence for a particular personal belief, demonstrates that ALL early Christians believed it."
Restoration Fellowship was founded by Sir Anthony Buzzard, Bt., MA (Oxon.) MA Th. in 1981. The subject matter of our literature is not new and has been held by small groups of believers throughout the centuries, notably by some Anabaptists and the Church of God General Conference whose headquarters and college, Atlanta Bible College, are located in McDonough, GA, USA.
http://focusonthekingdom.org/index.html
as witnesses we were truly convinced that we knew the truth about the dead.
they were truly dead, and we often quoted ecclesiastes 9:4-6, our favourite proof text on that topic, to prove the point.
that text reads (just in case you've already forgotten it - smile), (from the niv):.
The biggest problem in using early writings, etc is that there was likely no unified 'Christian' belief system. So with that in mind, we should take care not to suggest that the evidence for a particular personal belief, demonstrates that ALL early Christians believed it.
So with that thought in mind, lets look at another source of information about the post-death beliefs.
A well-known scholar, (Peter Brown, Professor Emeritus, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, Emeritus. Senior Historian. Princeton University), who has specialised in the period known as 'late antiquity' (usually considered as between the third and ninth centuries, CE.) and the rise of Christianity published a book this year, entitled, "The Ransom of the Soul." ( Harvard University Press, 2015) in which he explores the connection between ' afterlife and wealth in early western Christianity). I mention this because I'm using Brown's work to look at what early Christian's thought on the topic of life after death.
For example, on p.5 of the book, in the introduction, he quotes Cyprian (bishop of Carthage in 250 CE), death provided an instantaneous entry to heaven. He imagined,
"... to close in a moment the eyes by which human beings and the world are seen, and to open these same eyes instantly to see God and Christ."
In pages 36 to 40 he discusses messages left by the living requesting the dead to intercede for them. But that's for the next post.
according to the newest watchtower:.
jehovah communicated with adam in the garden of eden, using human language.
god likely did so in an ancient form of hebrew.
They've been making this absurd claim for a while
Yup! I have a vague memory of a WT study article, maybe in the late 1950's or early 1960s in which the author (likely that glorious scholar, F Franz) made the same point.
then (as likely now) it'll get all the bros speculating on having to learning Hebrew in the paradise, (if not Akkadian which some see as the oldest, known semitic language) and take their minds off Yahweh's delay in introducing the paradise.
as witnesses we were truly convinced that we knew the truth about the dead.
they were truly dead, and we often quoted ecclesiastes 9:4-6, our favourite proof text on that topic, to prove the point.
that text reads (just in case you've already forgotten it - smile), (from the niv):.
If we could converse with some early Christians, what would they say on this subject?
We can't, but we do have some written evidence of what they believed. Here's some quotations;
From, 'The Letter of Ignatius to the Romans.'
"It is a grand thing for my life to set on the world, and for me to be on my way to God, so that I may rise in his presence." (2:2)
Ignatius was arrested around 110 C.E. and sent to Rome for to be tried and executed.
---------------------
From, 'The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas.'
While being held in prison Perpetua has a number of visions, one of them concerned her 7 y.o brother who had previously died from cancer. In this vision she 'sees' him already in heaven, and healed of the cancer that killed him. (Ch 8). In another vision related by a fellow Christian prisoner, he 'sees' their group after their death, carried off to 'heaven' by angels. Heaven is described as a beautiful garden. There other angels invite them to, ".. come and enter and greet the Lord." (Ch. 11-14).
Their martyrdom occurred around 202-203 C.E.
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the song is 'days of elijah,' and the bit i'm referring to is about half way through, as they sing, "there is no god like jehovah":.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjz_ilp9c5a.
I'd never heard that particular song previously, for anyone else as dumb as I am, here's the lyrics, or should I say, what someone has posted on the web, as the lyrics:
"Days Of Elijah"
few realize just how wicked some of the most revered people in history were.
helen keeler (1880 to 1968) was a wolf in sheep's clothing, no hero.
keller was a communist.
'as an avowed communist she had such left-leaning opinions that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover kept a file on her.'
Haha! Hoover kept dirt files on everyone, Including John Kennedy. He knew pretty well how many women this American hero was rooting. So what?
'Helen Keller wrote glowingly of the emergence of communism during the Russian Revolution of 1917.'
Lots of intellectuals and thinkers in the western world wrote glowingly of the Russian Bolshevik revolution, or more precisely the initial accomplishments.
Because I study (and write things) about life in China today, I'm sometimes accused of being a 'commie' (grin). I'm not - I don't think that 'communism' works, it founders on individual selfsishness, an unfortunate human trait.
ps: China moved from being 'communist' after the death of Mao Zedong.
as witnesses we were truly convinced that we knew the truth about the dead.
they were truly dead, and we often quoted ecclesiastes 9:4-6, our favourite proof text on that topic, to prove the point.
that text reads (just in case you've already forgotten it - smile), (from the niv):.
As witnesses we were truly convinced that we knew the truth about the dead. They were truly dead, and we often quoted Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, our favourite proof text on that topic, to prove the point. That text reads (just in case you've already forgotten it - smile), (from the NIV):
"Anyone who is among the living has hope[b]—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!
For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten."
We probably never thought much about the next bit, which in many versions can be used to argue against the concept of a resurrection, because the NWT uses Freddie's escape clause, as he translates the NIV's rendering of vs 6, which reads:
"Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun."
with an expression that uses an alternative meaning for the pertinent Hebrew word, so that it reads (at least in older versions of the NWT) -
"Also the love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun."
The Hebrew expression is 'owlam.' which can have these meanings (according to Strong's Concordance):
long duration, antiquity, futurity, for ever, ever, everlasting, evermore, perpetual, old, ancient, world
ancient time, long time (of past)
(of future)
for ever, always
continuous existence, perpetual
everlasting, indefinite or unending future, eternity
So it become rather clear that its difficult to use the bible to solve ideological views of what the author of that document was implying when he wrote the words.
In an attempt to solve that dilemma, we could try to interrogate the author in some way. Who was he, when did he live, etc? That may give us some idea of what he meant.
We immediately run into a road block. The author is not named, the first verse simply stating, according to the NIV:
"The words of the Teacher,[a] son of David, king in Jerusalem":
the NWT chooses to use the word congregator,
The hebrew word is qoheleth, to which Strong's provides these meanings:
collector (of sentences), preacher, public speaker, speaker in an assembly, Qoheleth
The JWs ideological way of solving these problems, becomes clear when we go to the Aid book for information. In the entry for Eccleiastes, the first two paragraphs provides a barrage of information attempting to say the author must be Solomon, and therefore we are reading a traditional Hebrew view of death, so that it all fits neatly into the witness ideological box.
However, a consensus of modern scholarship has a different view, I suggest that the Wikipedia entry probably portrays that contemporary consensus when it describes it this way:
"The book takes its name from the Greek ekklesiastes, a translation of the title by which the central figure refers to himself: Koheleth, meaning something like "one who convenes or addresses an assembly".[10] According to rabbinic tradition, Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon in his old age.[11] (An alternative tradition that "Hezekiah and his colleagues wrote Isaiah, Proverbs, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes" probably means simply that the book was edited under Hezekiah.)[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastes
Nevertheless, critical scholars have long rejected the idea of a pre-exilic origin.[13][14] The presence of Persian loan-words and Aramaisms points to a date no earlier than about 450 BCE,[1] while the latest possible date for its composition is 180 BCE, when another Jewish writer, Ben Sira, quotes from it.[15] The dispute as to whether Ecclesiastes belongs to the Persian or the Hellenistic periods (i.e., the earlier or later part of this period) revolves around the degree of Hellenization (influence of Greek culture and thought) present in the book. Scholars arguing for a Persian date (c. 450–330 BCE) hold that there is a complete lack of Greek influence;[1] those who argue for a Hellenistic date (c. 330–180 BCE) argue that it shows internal evidence of Greek thought and social setting.[16]"
We can appreciate that we need some other way to identify what early Christians expected when they died? So that's for the next post:
.
the song is 'days of elijah,' and the bit i'm referring to is about half way through, as they sing, "there is no god like jehovah":.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjz_ilp9c5a.
The song is 'Days of Elijah,' and the bit I'm referring to is about half way through, as they sing, "there is no God like Jehovah":
since i left the organization, i have learned so many new and deep things.
i know some in the watchtower are intelligent, however it has been my experience, that most i've dealt with are.
.. well quite inept.
vinman: Even when it comes to the Bible, very simple. I couldn't go back if I wanted to. My mind is so thirsty for up to date and scholarly research. The writers of the Watchtower, use the Watchtower for research. Very empty indeed.
Right on, mate! The more I learn, the more I realise that I was conned. No consolation, to realise that it was my own bloody fault.
