Posts by aqwsed12345

posted

39
Only baptised JWs will make it?
by ExBethelitenowPIMA in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
i think it was a john cedars video or someone else’s where the point was brought up that only baptised jws will be saved?

then one talk about kids of baptised jws hope they will make it but even them don’t know.

most jws probably think that some good people who are not baptised may make it through, but this is not official teaching?.
aqwsed12345

https://jwfacts.com/watchtower/salvation-only-for-jehovahs-witnesses.php
11
John 5:27 and Harners thesis
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
conclusion to harners thesis: https://digilander.libero.it/domingo7/h7.jpg.

in 1973 a scholar by the name of philip b harner published an article in the journal of biblical literature that would be "revolutionary" he concluded that anarthorous predicate nouns preceeding the verb were primarily qualitative in nature.. in my view harner was correct, though he didn't agree with the "a god" rendering he also disliked the "god" rendering in john 1:1c providing an alternative which bibles like the net have paraphrased (to my knowledge).

one he didn't cover in his thesis was john 5:27 i would say this "authoratative" why?
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
Before the advent of Christianity, Jews referred to the word of creation, the manifesting, revealing God who communicates with humankind, or the divine operation as the "Word" (in Aramaic translations of the Bible, this is called "memra" hundreds of times). Similar concepts are found in many ancient pagan religions and also in Greek and Hellenistic (Jewish-Greek) philosophy; but there, the Word carries a very different meaning than it does for John. In Plato's philosophy, it refers to divine intellect as the repository of divine ideas (ideals), the abstract essence of things, and their archetype, and sometimes even the soul of the world.
In the Jewish-Greek philosophy of Philo (who may have drawn from the Old Testament's sacred books), "logos" is a vague and confusing concept, a sort of divine emanation or characteristic, the instrument of creation (demiurge), a mediator between God and the world, but not a separate entity, not incarnate, not a redeemer, not the Messiah. So, you can hardly put the Logos doctrine of Philo of Alexandria next to you, since there is nothing in common apart from the identity of the name, his Logos is not the Son, not Jesus. John assumes that his readers were somewhat familiar with the concept of "logos"; however, the idea of the Christian Logos could not have been taken from Jewish theology or Greek philosophy, but instead, was obtained from divine revelation.
Justin Martyr taught that the prehuman Jesus was God, not an angel. Justin did say that Christ was called an angel, but explained that this was because Christ, who was actually God, took on the appearance of an angel. Thus, Justin writes that "the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old he appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets..." Elsewhere. Justin calls Christ "both God and Lord of hosts” (that is, Jehovah). “God the Son of God.”
Justin not only believed that Christ was God; he believed in a rudimentary form of the Trinity. Thus, he stated that Christians worshiped God the Father, "the Son (who came forth from Him...), and the prophetic Spirit.” That this meant that Christ and the Spirit were both God is implied by his repeated statement that “we ought to worship God alone... to God alone we render worship."
In short, although Justin Martyr did not use such terms as “Trinity", and his philosophical explanations of the rela tion of Christ to God were somewhat confused, he worshiped Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he regarded Christ as Jehovah God.
Origen was eventually to be regarded as a heretic. Although the cause for this judgment was not his teaching on the Trinity, the church has always regarded Origen’s way of explaining the Trinity to be very helpful in some respects and flat wrong in others. Origen clearly believed in some form of the Trinity. Edmund J. Fortman demonstrates this fact with several brief quotations from Origen:
“We, however, are persuaded that there are really three persons [treis hypostaselsj, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Jo. 2.6). For him "statements made regarding Father. Son and Holy Spirit are to be understood as transcending all time, all ages, and all eternity" (Princ. 4.28), and there is "nothing which was not made, save the nature of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit" (Princ. 4.35). "Moreover, nothing in the Trinity can be called greater or less" (Princ. 1.3.7).
Unlike the Witnesses, Origen believed that the Son was eternal and uncreated, and he definitely regarded the Spirit as a person.
Check the quotes
11
John 5:27 and Harners thesis
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
conclusion to harners thesis: https://digilander.libero.it/domingo7/h7.jpg.

in 1973 a scholar by the name of philip b harner published an article in the journal of biblical literature that would be "revolutionary" he concluded that anarthorous predicate nouns preceeding the verb were primarily qualitative in nature.. in my view harner was correct, though he didn't agree with the "a god" rendering he also disliked the "god" rendering in john 1:1c providing an alternative which bibles like the net have paraphrased (to my knowledge).

one he didn't cover in his thesis was john 5:27 i would say this "authoratative" why?
aqwsed12345

Quote from HERE:
John 10:30: There is no doubt that at the very least in this passage Jesus' unity with the Father in terms of thought and purpose is underscored. This is easily discerned from the context. But note that the unity which is suggested is unity of thought and purpose concerning the saving activity of God. In v. 28 it is Jesus, not the Father, who gives eternal life. The Father's hand and Jesus' hand function the same. What the Father has given Jesus is greater than all other things. All of these ideas lead up to the statement that "the Father and I are one." While this statement, as Calvin rightly observes, does not directly state that the two share one essence, it does, from the context leading up to it, suggest strongly an equality between the Father and Son concerning their respective roles in the salvation and preservation of God's people, which in turn implies the deity of both.
The writer of the pamphlet completely misinterprets the following verses. He claims that in 31-38 Jesus denies the Jews interpretation. But does he? A careful reading will reveal that Jesus' response is much subtler than this. He first of all points out that his works are good, which of course implies that the doer is good and worthy of no punishment such as the Jews want to inflict. In response to their charge that Jesus is blaspheming by making himself out to be equal with God (they may have been thinking that Jesus was setting himself up as a rival God) Jesus does not give a straightforward "no, your wrong, I wasn't saying anything of the kind, I just meant that God was my Father because he created me a few thousand years ago". Instead he gives an answer that is designed to make them think about what his equality with (yet distinction from) the Father might mean. He argues from the lesser to the greater. If the scripture can call mere humans "gods" [Theoi in Greek and elohim in Hebrew (Ps 82:9)] then what about the one who has an absolutely unique relationship with the Father, a relationship best designated by the term son? There has been a great deal of discussion in the history of interpretation on exactly what elohim meant in Ps 82:6. It is obviously a highly metaphorical application, but its precise nuance does not affect the point Jesus is making. The Father has set him apart and sent him into the world to perform has saving office. In fact, the Father dwells in the Son and the Son in the Father. Again, Jesus gets back to the fundamental equality that was suggested by the context above. And once again the Jews get the point and seek to kill him, for any mere man claiming equality with God is blaspheming, and must receive the death penalty. While sonship in itself does not necessarily imply equality, the language used of Jesus' sonship here and elsewhere strongly suggests a uniqueness and an equality that exists only between these two.
John 17 has been dealt briefly with above. Here I will remind the reader that the unity of the Father and the Son is pictured as both the model for the believers' unity and also that which actually brings it about. Another way of saying this is to say that our unity is analogical of the unity found within the Trinity, but like all analogies, is not identical with it. When believers are dwelling together in harmony and love, that unity should reflect who God is in his own unity (Jn 17:20-23; cf. Jn 13:34-35).
Check THIS to, pages 47-54, according to the PDF, 51-58 according to the book.
11
John 5:27 and Harners thesis
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
conclusion to harners thesis: https://digilander.libero.it/domingo7/h7.jpg.

in 1973 a scholar by the name of philip b harner published an article in the journal of biblical literature that would be "revolutionary" he concluded that anarthorous predicate nouns preceeding the verb were primarily qualitative in nature.. in my view harner was correct, though he didn't agree with the "a god" rendering he also disliked the "god" rendering in john 1:1c providing an alternative which bibles like the net have paraphrased (to my knowledge).

one he didn't cover in his thesis was john 5:27 i would say this "authoratative" why?
aqwsed12345
"Jewish and Hellenistic culture referred to subordinate divine beings as “gods”"
In the Hellenistic culture, they called their gods "gods", the Greeks had a bunch of separates words for the category of lesser divinity, for example hemitheoi, i.e. demigods. There were many other terms in Greek for mythical beings with divine features, but the name "theos" was used only for their major/proper gods. So John, who wrote in Greek, would have had many other words available than "theos" to describe a lesser category of divinity, which is ontologically inferior to that of the Father, which is attributed to the Son in WTS theology.
In the Jewish culture, the command was "thou shalt have no other gods before me", and there were no minor gods, or lesser divine beings in the Judaism either. So no, the use of this terminology of Psalm 82 was not at all common.
"the same as Philo, and later Justin Martyr, Origen"
The Jewish Philo of Alexandria did not believe in such a secondary god, and Justin and Origen did not believe either, contrary what your secular-skeptic sources claims:
"Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts." (Justin Martyr: Dialogue with Trypho, ch, 36)
"And that you may understand that the omnipotence of Father and Son is one and the same, as God and the Lord are one and the same with the Father, listen to the manner in which John speaks in the Apocalypse: "Thus saith the Lord God, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.") For who else was "He which is to come" than Christ? And as no one ought to be offended, seeing God is the Father, that the Saviour is also God; so also, since the Father is called omnipotent, no one ought to be offended that the Son of God is also called omnipotent." (Origen: De Principis, On Christ, Book 1, Ch 2)
"Nothing in the Trinity can be called greater or less, since the fountain of divinity alone contains all things by His word and reason, and by the Spirit of His mouth sanctifies all things which are worthy of sanctification." (Origen: De Principis, Book I, ch. 3, section 7)
"John as a whole results in the conclusion that Jesus is distinct and subordinate to God."
Or at least distinct in person from the person understood by the term "the God" in the typical terminology of the NT (and as the Trinity also professes), but at the same time it also professes him to be the fully true God. He does indeed speak of a kind of subordination, which he does not attribute to an ontological inferiority, and which is amply explained by his human nature assumed by his Incarnation.
"Jesus said plainly in John 17.3 that the Father is "the only true God"."
The Father is indeed the only true God, which is not the same as the JWs read it, ie. that "only the Father is true God alone". The apostle Paul also uses this wording in 1 Cor 8:6. This is therefore not opposed to the deity of Jesus, but to the false deities. In the same way, the fact that Jesus is the only Lord does not mean that only Jesus is truly Lord alone, opposed to the Father. This is the answer of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q.31, a.4) too, that it's to be understood in syncategorematical, and not in categorematical sense:
- Whether an exclusive diction can be joined to the personal term? He considers several Scriptural and liturgical passages – “That they may know thee [i.e. the Father], the only true God.” (Jn 17:3); “No one knows the Son but the Father.” (Mt 11:27); “You alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ” (from the Gloria).
  
  Thomas Aquinas explains that all these verses must be understood as exclusive not of the other Persons of the Trinity but only of other natures. Thus, “no one” does not mean no other person, but rather no other nature. Thus, when the term only is applied to one of the divine Persons, the other Persons are not excluded – for all are united through the unity of the single divine Essence. However, this only holds true for those things which are predicated of the Persons by reason of the shared Essence. Thus, each and every Person of the Trinity is said to know the others, to be all powerful, to be most holy, etc.
  
  Some terms, on the other hand, are not predicated of the Persons by reason of the Essence, but rather by reason of the relation. Examples of this would be: The Father alone is un-begotten; the Son alone is begotten; the Spirit alone proceeds from the Father and the Son.
  
  Finally, in the case of the second Person, some terms are predicated not by reason of his divinity (either his divine Nature or his divine relations) but on account of his human nature. Thus, only the Son became incarnate; only the Son has died; only the Son will come again.
  
  Thomas Aquinas advises us, regarding the use of terms like “alone” or “only” or “no one”: “Such a way of speaking is not to be taken too literally, but should be piously expounded, whenever we find it in an authentic work [whether of the Fathers or of Scripture].” Hence, it is clear that modern theologians and preachers should avoid speaking in this way, on account of the confusion that can be easily caused. Yet, it is important for theologians to discuss the question, for the pastoral benefit of the faithful who can be led into false opinions by the words even of the Bible and of the holy Fathers, who wrote before the modern heresies had yet plagued the Church.
"Nobody reading the gospel of John without any knowledge of Trinitarian dogma..."
But why should such person read John's Gospel, if the Bible is a church book? JWs also believe this:
11
John 5:27 and Harners thesis
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
conclusion to harners thesis: https://digilander.libero.it/domingo7/h7.jpg.

in 1973 a scholar by the name of philip b harner published an article in the journal of biblical literature that would be "revolutionary" he concluded that anarthorous predicate nouns preceeding the verb were primarily qualitative in nature.. in my view harner was correct, though he didn't agree with the "a god" rendering he also disliked the "god" rendering in john 1:1c providing an alternative which bibles like the net have paraphrased (to my knowledge).

one he didn't cover in his thesis was john 5:27 i would say this "authoratative" why?
aqwsed12345

slimboyfat
I have read the article, and as far as the theological part is concerned, it is not at all convincing. The WTS (and its apologists) repeatedly refer to Psalm 82, where the judges are called "elohim", which literally means "gods". However, they do not address at all how typical this terminology, this designation was during the Old Testament, let alone the New Testament. Just because someone is called "a god" does not necessarily make them God (i.e., equal to God, possessing the fullness of deity, like Christ). This is a logically incomplete conclusion.
After all, if representatives of God can be called "gods", why aren't the apostles or angels called "gods" in the New Testament? Were they not representatives of God? Did Paul accept this (Acts 28:6)?
I believe that this wording found in Psalm 82 should be evaluated based on the logic of poetic hermeneutics in view of the literary characteristics of the book of Psalms, which does not establish such a general category of divinity. Otherwise, why don't the JWs call the members of the Governing Body "gods", saying: but then the judges were called that too?
The fact that it was possible for men so to represent God as to be called "gods" or "divine" in the Old Testament was actually a foreshadowing of the Incarnation. “There lay already in the Law the germ of the truth which Christ announced, the union of God and man.” (Westcott)
In the New Testament, designating the God's angels as THEOS does not occur, so this only appears in one of the Psalms of the Old Testament, and moreover, "Elohim" in Hebrew is a much more general term, which in this case might be better translated as Strength, Mighty One, etc., rather than "God" in proper sense. The word "GOD" in Greek, English, etc., always refers to the omnipotent, creator, infinite single God, and no one else. In the case of Jesus, we do not only rely on the application of the word "THEOS" not just once and without any diminutive additions, but also on such attributes (omniscience, timelessness, hearing of prayers, adorableness, etc.) which cannot apply to the created angels.
JWs also refer to John 10:34-35. In that dialogue, Jesus was only highlighting the inconsistency of his accusers: if they could be called such in a certain sense, then so could he how much more? He did not say that his divinity would be just this much. However, JWs are also inconsistent, since the judges are clearly only "elohim" in the sense of "exalted position and power", while in WTS theology, the Son's divinity is not just this, but actually a kind of 'homoiousian' sense divine nature, even if they do not use this terminology.
If you think this passage proves that every reference to Jesus as "GOD" would mean just as much, and just as much, as in the case of angels, then this idea should appear in the pericope. However, there is no mention of this. There is no reference to this detail in the apostolic letters, even though there would have been a great need for such in a polytheistic environment to clarify in what sense Jesus can be called "GOD".
John 10:34-35 lacks the thought that Jesus could only call himself "GOD" in the sense that Psalm 82 called the judges "elohim". The essence of the pericope is that it points out the inconsistency of his accusers, that there was such a use of language in the Old Testament that called human judges "elohim", based on which if they could, then he (who is truly [the only-begotten] Son of God) how much more can be called so. He begins by saying: "If even they...". So his reference was a kind of apologetic bridge, somewhat like Paul spoke to the Greeks about their "unknown god".
On the one hand, the apostle sees equality with God in being in the form of God, on the other hand, we know about the angels that they are in a lower form of life than God. Christ has a higher dignity than the angels, according to the beginning of the letter to the Hebrews. So his divine form of life cannot be included in the use of language that occasionally calls angels (and human judges) gods.
In John 10, Jesus gave a parable to his accusers which means: if even they could be called gods (in a certain sense), then how much more the only-begotten Son then? So it's clearly in the text He is God in a superior sense than the judges were called "gods" in the Psalm. In what sense namely then? He does not explain here exactly, but he makes it clear that it is not just in the same sense, but in a higher, superior sense. "Argumentum a fortiori" arguments are regularly used in Jewish law under the name kal va-chomer, literally "mild and severe", the mild case being the one we know about, while trying to infer about the more severe case. The Jews understood this and that's why they wanted to stone him "again" (v39). However, the evangelist understands this exchange of words coming from Christ's mouth: according to him, the two do not differ. Behold, he himself also approves of that interpretation, according to which Jesus, by calling himself the Son of God, made himself equal to God.
The study refers to John 20:17 where Jesus calls the Father "my God" and points out that Jesus said this after his resurrection. A logical step is omitted here, since according to Orthodox Christology, Christ possessed human nature not only until his death, or during his earthly existence, but he did not lay down the human nature he assumed with the Incarnation. Only Watchtower theology asserts that Christ ceased to be human through his death. So the resurrected Jesus, as a man, could continue to call the Father "his God", without this detracting from his real Godhead.
Hence, the study's argument that Thomas's statement in John 20:28 that he said to Jesus "my Lord and my God" was actually addressed to the Father, also collapses. The next verse reveals that Jesus did apply and understand Thomas's words to himself and evaluated the statement as a confession of faith. If one insists on finding parallels, then the words of John 20:28 remind us of the words of Psalm 35:23.
Regarding the apostles, who were convinced of Jesus' deity, they never used the Hebrew words Yahweh or Adonai when politely addressing or mentioning Jesus. The likely explanation for this is that these words reminded them very much of the "invisible name," the one who "dwells in unapproachable light," who no man has seen or can see directly while living on this earth (see Exodus 33:20; 1 Timothy 6:16; John 1:18; 1 John 4:12). However, the most stubborn member of the apostolic body, Apostle Thomas, when overwhelmed by the powerful impression of the resurrected Jesus and enlightened by divine grace, fell at the Master's feet and went so far as to declare Jesus as God in his confession of faith. His words, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:28), are not mere exclamations of wonder, but the perfect confession of faith, acknowledging that Jesus is the God-man. It's as if he is saying, "You are my Lord, my Messiah, and I believe not only in your resurrection but also in your deity." Cornelius a Lapide correctly summarizes the content of Thomas' confession with the words, "With the words 'my Lord,' he confesses the human nature of Christ, with the words 'myGod,' the divine one." For reference, see J. Knabenbauer S.J. Commentarius in Evangelium secundum Joannem (Paris, 1898) p. 574 and other related works.
Some have tried to downplay the true meaning and significance of Thomas' words, arguing that they were not directed at the Savior, but were surprised apostle's exclamations directed at God the Father. As if he were saying, "Oh, my Lord and God, what do I see, what a miracle your power has performed! You have resurrected our Jesus!" This is how Theodorus of Mopsuestia (died 428) and subsequently the Socinians and some other exegetes interpreted Thomas' words. However, setting aside the fact that Theodorus' interpretation was condemned by the 5th Ecumenical Council (553), this understanding is refuted by: 1. Jesus, because he clearly refers to Thomas's words as a confession of faith (John 20:29 "Because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed"); 2. The words of Thomas, "He said to him" (John 20:28) and "My Lord" which can only refer to Christ; 3. Therefore, since the expression "My Lord" can only refer to Christ, to whom the apostles referred with this address, the associated "and my God" must necessarily also refer to Christ.
The fact that the word "God" is to be taken in its literal sense here follows also from the fact that John the Evangelist, through the content of his entire book and the communication of Thomas' confession, wanted to show that Jesus indeed led his disciples to the recognition of the truth he expressed at the beginning of his gospel (John 1:6-15), i.e., that Jesus is the God-man who has appeared.
And only with such an understanding of the word "God" used by Thomas can the closing words of the Gospel be in natural harmony with the evangelist's goal, which was nothing else but to prove that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah) and the Son of God, that is, the God-man, and therefore one must believe in him, because this is the condition of eternal life, which John expresses as follows: "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:31).
20
Awakening thoughts
by aqwsed12345 in
1. jw
2. friends
a "waking up", but still a member, jehovah's witness acquaintance of mine from eastern europe wrote the following lines:.

"i count among the main sins of the watchtower society:.

1. concealment.
aqwsed12345

"I'm giving the Jehovah's Witnesses a task. Explain on what Biblical evidence can Nebuchadnezzar's vision - which related to 7 times, and which the Bible states was fulfilled in the 7 years when Nebuchadnezzar was insane - be interpreted to also have a larger fulfillment. What rule states that Nebuchadnezzar's 7-year madness foreshadows a 2,520-year (the so-called "seven times") period. Prove from the Bible that Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the "seven times" (Daniel 4:7-14) not only had a one-time fulfillment but also has a larger fulfillment (which ended in 1914).
Read Daniel Chapter 4. The whole thing is about how this vision has already been fulfilled once: "All this befell Nebuchadnezzar the king." Daniel 4:28. So, this vision has already been fulfilled once. That's why I'm asking what the evidence is that it needs to be fulfilled again. I'm not interested in the calculation because I'm familiar with it. I'm interested in what biblical evidence exists that this particular vision has a larger fulfillment. Besides, there is another problem related to this. You know, when Nebuchadnezzar had this vision, Daniel was already in Babylon. So Nebuchadnezzar had this vision after 607 BC. So how is it possible that the larger fulfillment of this vision began in 607 BC, meaning the vision began to be fulfilled earlier than when Nebuchadnezzar received it?
Let's assume that this tree really represents God's earthly kingdom, which ended in 607 BC. However, in 1914, the kingdom was not restored on earth, only in heaven. The story would be complete if God's earthly rule had returned in 1914, just as God's earthly rule ended in 607 BC."
Ezekiel 21:26. "This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘Remove the turban, and lift off the crown. This will not be the same. Put on high even what is low, and bring low even the high one.'
This part simply asserts that Zedekiah will lose his throne, so, generously assuming that it also means that God's earthly rule ends in 607 BC. But I still can't derive from this biblical part that this "end" will last 7 times. Because the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy in Nebuchadnezzar's madness has already happened. I still don't see the biblical evidence that the "Remove the turban, lift off the crown!" condition will last 7 times, so I don't see evidence that the duration of the "Remove the turban, lift off the crown!" condition is determined by a vision that the Bible says has already been fulfilled. So I still don't see evidence that there is a larger fulfillment of the 7 times. Does the Bible mention this specific "seven times" anywhere else?"
The first sentence you wrote:
"If you read the Bible, Daniel 4:10, 34 describes the prophecy related to King Nebuchadnezzar of 7 times which was fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar, this period would be short to appoint a new king by Jehovah God at the head of Israel."
Alright, let's stick with that. This is true. However, this above part doesn't talk about God wanting to place a king at the head of Israel, but about God taking away the government from Nebuchadnezzar for 7 years.
Then you write:
"Jehovah God showed Nebuchadnezzar that he is not the only king as a world power, he had to recognize that Jehovah is mightier"
This is true too. Nebuchadnezzar recognized this.
But I still don't see any evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's 7-year animal fate symbolizes something bigger. There's not a word about this in Daniel's text, the story is closed. The king was in an animal-like condition for 7 years, then by the grace of Jehovah, he could return to the throne, but there is no evidence that this 7-year period symbolizes 7 times, that is, 2,520 years. There is no concrete evidence for this. No biblical part that says this 7-year period has a larger fulfillment."
"You write:
"Nebuchadnezzar's power was not so great that it "reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth", but the power of Jesus is such, it suits him..."
Is this the proof? This is simply interpreted into the text. In the Bible, it says: "You are that one, oh king, who has grown and become strong, whose greatness has increased and reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth." Daniel 4:20 - God himself says, "whose greatness has increased and reaches to heaven, and your dominion to the ends of the earth" - and you say this is not true? This is true, but it is what we call a poetic exaggeration. There are many such exaggerations in the Bible, or for example, personifications of inanimate things can also be found. E.g. strong as a buffalo. Is he really as strong as a buffalo? :-) This does not prove at all that this vision can also be applied to something else. By the way, the Bible also states that "All this happened to King Nebuchadnezzar." It happened, meaning it was fulfilled. You understand? Show me where it says that there is also some kind of later fulfillment."
Luke 21:24 - "and they will fall by the edge of the sword and be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the nations, until the appointed times of the nations are fulfilled.”
What information does this verse convey? - It says that the time of Jerusalem's destruction (AD 70) falls within a so-called "times of the Gentiles". When this interval ends, this verse does not mention. Nor does it mention when it began.
Ezekiel 21:25-27: “And as for you, O deadly wounded, wicked chieftain of Israel, whose day has come in the time of the error of [the] end, this is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘Remove the turban, and lift off the crown. This will not be the same. Put on high even what is low, and bring low even the high one. A ruin, a ruin, a ruin I shall make it. As for this* also, it will certainly become no [one’s] until he comes who has the legal right, and I must give [it] to him.’"
This part is about the divine right of rule being taken away from Zedekiah. If we connect it with the previous verse, we can say that the times of the Gentiles began then.
So far it's logical.
So, we know that the times of the Gentiles began in 607 BC and it was still ongoing in 70 AD.
However, what is the proof that Daniel's vision will determine the end of the times of the Gentiles? There is no biblical evidence that there is a greater fulfillment of Daniel's vision. I admit that it's convenient to say that the greater fulfillment determines the end of the times of the Gentiles. You can come up with this, but there is no evidence for it. There is no evidence that Nebuchadnezzar's dream determines the end of the times of the Gentiles, by linking it to the prophecies of Luke and Ezekiel. Understand, I'm not claiming that this is definitely not possible, but that there is no clear biblical evidence for it. If only there was some faint hint in the book of Daniel that this vision should be interpreted differently. But Daniel explained exactly to Nebuchadnezzar the dream, and did not even hint at a kind of greater fulfillment.
Then if it was true, would Nebuchadnezzar represent God? Would Nebuchadnezzar's earthly empire represent God's earthly kingdom? And if this is the case, then why did Jesus begin to reign in heaven in 1914? Why not on earth? After all, after his 7 years of madness, Nebuchadnezzar did not move his capital to heaven, but began to reign where he had left off 7 years before!! Or perhaps since 1914, the right to rule on earth also belongs to Jesus? However, if this is the case, then the "higher authorities" (letter to the Romans) are not the same as the worldly higher authorities, but Jesus Christ. So there are many contradictions in the whole story."
"You write:
"this period would be too short for Jehovah God to set up a new king over Israel"
Indeed, this would be too short for that, but what does this fact have to do with this prophecy? If I read Daniel 4, why should I speculate while reading it what this 7 years might be enough for? Why should I care about it? After all, Daniel interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream!!
You also didn't answer why, if it's as you say, Jesus began to reign in heaven? After all, Nebuchadnezzar also began to rule exactly where he had stopped ruling before he went mad, after the 7 years were over. So if Zedekiah ruled on earth until 607 BC, then in 1914 Jesus should have also started ruling on earth. This would only fit.
The calculations, please do not explain any more, because I have long understood that. I don't understand the basics, that once in the Bible with my own eyes I read that this prophecy of 7 times was fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar's 7 years of madness (""All this befell Nebuchadnezzar the king", Daniel 4:28), then someone on what basis can say that it has not been completely fulfilled. On what basis can you claim that Nebuchadnezzar represents God, and the Babylonian Empire represents God's earthly rule? Isn't this a bit morbid?
I just don't understand from this whole story, were these people completely idiots? How did they dare to announce the year 1915 after the failure of 1914, and then 1916? Then 1925?? What were they hoping for?
"Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all tribes of the earth will mourn over him." (Revelation 1:7)
What nonsense is it that Jesus came invisibly in 1914? According to the Bible, Jesus comes in such a way that "every eye will see him, even those who pierced him." This is written in the Bible. How can this be turned into invisibility? How can this Bible verse be interpreted exactly the opposite way, as any sane person would interpret it, as every Christian in the world has interpreted it for 1900 years???
The claim that "every eye will see him" means just the opposite. It means that no one will see Him, only a very few, in fact, those who pierced Him will not see Him (since they are dead), but only those who have similar characteristics to those who actually crucified Jesus.
It seems that words do not mean what they should mean. It's not the text that matters, but the explanation. More precisely: sometimes the text is taken very seriously, sometimes it's some kind of explanation.
Do you know what theoretical problem would arise if this verse could really be interpreted as you think? This would mean that any clear words or sentences of the Bible could be claimed not to mean what we read, but - like some secret code - something completely different. This would essentially make the whole Scripture uncertain, and we would end up with the conclusion that the entire Bible could not have been understood for 1900 years.
From this statement: "Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him" - nothing is as it seems!!!
1./ He doesn't come with clouds, but invisibly.
2./ It's not the eye that sees Jesus, but the mind that comprehends it.
3./ He doesn't even come, his presence just becomes apparent.
4./ His presence only means that he turns his attention to earthly things, so in reality, he is not present.
5./ Those who pierced him can't see him because they have long been dead. So if vision means mental comprehension, this can only refer to the evildoers who are similar to those who crucified Jesus, and for these evildoers, the presence of Jesus should be apparent - but even this is not true because for these evildoers, the presence of Jesus is not at all apparent, because they think the whole thing is nonsense. So even symbolically it's not true that "even those who pierced Him will see him."
Have you finally understood what I'm talking about? If there is a passage in the Bible like this one, which requires a Ph.D. to explain, then the whole thing is worthless and it was not written for ordinary people. It's as if I were reading the following:
"My grandmother said to love your siblings."
Then someone would explain that my grandmother is not my grandmother, but the 12-year-old son of my neighbor (not even a woman), and she didn't say anything, but she was throwing stones, and it was not about siblings but about my windows, and not about love but about breaking my head. So this is how it should be interpreted: The son of my neighbor was angry with me, so he threw stones at my windows with the intention of breaking them and accidentally hitting me on the head with a stone.
If he comes with the clouds, and if the clouds hide Him, then at least the clouds should have been seen, more precisely should have been seen in 1914. Anyway, this explanation is not good either. Because according to the Bible, Jesus has to come in a similar way as he left. Read the Bible. It says there that Jesus ascended in the sight of his disciples, and while he was ascending, a cloud obscured him. But when he started ascending, there was no cloud yet because if it had been there, they wouldn't even have seen that he started ascending, so they wouldn't have known who started ascending. Now play this event backwards - like a video recording. So first Jesus is still obscured by the cloud (i.e., invisible), then gradually becomes visible. Then in 1914, either the cloud or something should have been visible. But essentially nothing happened in 1914. World War I was not all over the world, but in most parts of the globe there was no war in 1914. However, the Bible says that "every eye" will see him. Well, indeed, "every eye" essentially means very few eyes. Is this another secret code?? Moreover, in 1914, the Bible students did not see his coming, not even symbolically, because even in the 1920s the belief was that Jesus came invisibly in 1874. I read this with my own eyes in Rutherford's book, "The Harp of God", which was published after 1920. So then the explanation is 100 percent wrong, in other words, nobody saw anything in 1914, not even symbolically, not even in the sense that they would have understood it spiritually. They did not understand anything, but later they invented an explanation to prevent the misguided masses from lynching them for their deception."
"This is what you write, now I think correctly:
"They only started to think about whether they interpreted it correctly when it was over."
This is fine. So they only started to think about whether they interpreted things correctly after 1914. But then - you essentially admit it yourself - they interpreted things wrongly in 1914. So with this, you are exactly refuting the thesis that Jesus came invisibly in 1914, because even if we take it symbolically (even if we take the statement "every eye will see him" in the sense that "a few chosen ones recognized his invisible coming from the signs"), things do not fit, because even in 1914 they did not see his coming, not even symbolically, because only after 1920 did they start to "correctly" interpret what they saw. So if in 1914 they had seen His coming symbolically, they should at least have recognized the invisible coming, they should have recognized it when Jesus came, not 10 years later!!!
In the JWs' teachings, it's not the teachings themselves that are repugnant, because indeed: there's a lot of truth in them, and there are plenty of errors and mistakes in other denominations as well - it's not the teaching that's repugnant, but this sycophantic, insincere, leadership-excusing nature of the simple Witnesses. Your answer is an example of this. The problem is buried in this foolish sentence of yours. Because you said:
"They didn't prophesy, but rather, there was an overheated hope in them."
What is this? Wordplay? And who are "they"? In whom? Maybe in Mrs. Johnson and Mr. Smith? Certainly not in them!!! These were just victims who were brainwashed. Because in the 1970s among JWs, such terror reigned that the slightest disagreement resulted in Mr. Smith being ostracized. So Mr. Smith believed what he believed because this ornate group of con artists, long ago having surpassed the boundaries of normality in their pride and arrogance, proclaimed that you should not study, not marry, not court, not do anything (except recruit more members, replicate like some mad virus), because the End is so near. And when it turned out that all of this was not true, then they say that there was an "overheated hope in Jehovah's people". But the overheatedness was not in the people, but in its ruling class, which, when there's trouble, blurs the outlines to distribute the responsibility between themselves and the powerless membership. Disgusting. Not a single leader had enough backbone to stand before the people and say, "Gentlemen, I was mistaken, but I also lied when I claimed that I received this information from the Creator."
This is nothing more than blending the Witnesses with the Governing Body.
1./ "The Witnesses" have no teachings of their own, the teachings are not theirs, since they can only say what the Governing Body deems good. There is no such thing as a Witness giving a talk. This is only an appearance. In reality, everything is written down for them, and they cannot deviate from the predetermined points, let alone biblical quotes. There is no such thing as someone voluntarily speaking up in a group and giving a talk that does not go according to the program.
2./ "They", the Witnesses, cannot interpret anything. But they can only repeat what the Governing Body publishes. So it is very misleading to say things like "they looked forward with great anticipation" and "they realized that they had misinterpreted certain things". This wording is essentially cheating, as these two "they" refer to two completely different groups. One "they" is the passive "they", who cannot have their own opinion about the faith, the other "they" is the active "they", who tell what the Creator's current daily message is. If you use the word "they" for both groups, you blur the difference and at the same time take the responsibility off the Governing Body's shoulders.
You write:
"[1975] It was emphasized, but nothing concrete was stated, only probable."
An educated person can distinguish between:
"it was not explicitly stated, only probable" and "it was explicitly stated".
But 99% of JWs absolutely do not have a sense of this!! The vast majority take the elder's talk as identical to the Scriptures and want to do it to the point of nosebleeds. So the Society can always cunningly hide behind words, because they make a statement (knowing that 99% will interpret it this way and take it as cash), and when this fails, they show that the statement should have been interpreted differently, and the common man will be the fool again because he was the one who misinterpreted it and had "unwarranted, overheated expectations" :-))
It's well done, just like the big money people and politicians manipulate the masses. The bottom line is: the smarter one always messes with the less smart one.
My parents were Witnesses and from morning till night at that time the record played that it's not even worth having children because the end is so near. And I believed it - why wouldn't I believe it, if everyone said for sure and even included it in prayers? At that time, an elder had much more power within the congregation than now. If I had gone to college, maybe my mom would have been kicked out, for much smaller things people were kicked out at that time. But why would I have gone if everyone really said the end was just a few years away?
Lastly, they burned themselves by spreading in millions of copies for decades that the Creator has a promise that the generation that experienced 1914 will not pass away until Armageddon. That's a big fall, isn't it? I know an old JW who in the 1970s preached that a specific large building wouldn't be built because Armageddon would come. And indeed, the building was built and still stands today. Then I know another person who was told in his youth not to play football because he could play enough football in the New World after Armageddon. And today he is so sick that he couldn't even play button football."
"A lot of arguments are made against JWs here, but essentially most of the arguments are too complicated and beyond the scope of an average Witness.
In my opinion, there is one argument that cannot be twisted and is a serious charge:
Until 1995, on the third page of every Awake! magazine, at the bottom, it was written that the Creator has a promise that the generation of 1914 will not pass away until God's new world comes. It was written exactly like this: "Most important, this magazine builds confidence in the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away."
This statement essentially even overturns the theory of gradual understanding, so it overturns that "the path of the righteous ... is like the light of dawn, which becomes brighter and brighter, until full daylight" (Proverbs 4:18).
Why does it overturn it?
Because they call this interpretation directly the promise of the Creator. So they don't write that according to the current state of bible study the Governing Body believes, etc. etc., but they lie that this invention is the promise of the Creator "FOR POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS" (thus to manipulate the Jehovah's Witnesses and instill an "urgency consciousness" in them). This is not mere ignorance, but deliberate lying, because the person (or persons) who first wrote this, and gave permission for it to be disseminated in millions of copies, knew best that the Creator did not promise such a thing.
They should not have written that this was the "the Creator's promise" because this statement was a lie even at the moment of its writing. Those who wrote this knew best that it was not the promise of the Creator, but they only concluded that the Creator probably wanted to convey this. But they couldn't be sure either, because they received no revelation from God. But if they themselves were not sure about this, then how dare they expect ordinary Witnesses to believe this?? And if anyone had voiced that it might not be certain, would they have been disfellowshipped? Well, what kind of work is this?? Is organizational unity more important than truth?? And after all this, how can we believe the words of the "faithful and discreet slave"? Or do we not have to believe, but just pretend as if we would believe, not to cause disturbance, and not to shake the faith of those with lower IQ???
How can one believe that "faithful and discreet slave" who wrote this until 1995 (on page 4 of the Awake! magazine distributed in millions of copies). Then this completely changed. Today this is not true. The February 2008 Watchtower states that this generation is not the same as the 1914 generation, but the 144,000.
Even this would not be such a big problem, after all, the light increases to full daylight. But why did they have to say that this was the promise of the Creator?? Why did they have to put a lie in the Creator's mouth?? Why couldn't this "realization" be proclaimed in a more humble style, for example, "we think our biblical interpretation is correct, which suggests a peaceful and secure new world will come into existence before the generation that witnessed the events of 1914 passes away." If this had been formulated so humbly, there would be no problem today. But why is there always this pride, this arrogance??
You write: "we just nod our heads..."
But this is really true!! Just try to say something differently, especially publicly. For example, in February 2008, they changed the definition of the "generation", the definition they gave in 1995. By the way, in 1995 they changed the previous definition. But someone should have questioned the current truth! At a minimum, he should not have been able to contribute to the studies anymore, and if he became too stubborn, they would have disfellowshipped him, on the grounds of causing others to stumble. The same situation was in the past as well. In 1990 it was still valid that young people could not choose civil service instead of military service. They argued with such nonsense that civil service is under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Defense, just like military service. Then suddenly an Watchtower article appeared, which stated that deciding this is a matter of conscience. So if he wants to, he refuses civil service, if he doesn't want to, he doesn't refuse, but takes it. Everyone can decide according to their conscience. The most shocking thing was that suddenly no one was willing to choose jail. So this proves that before, when this article had not yet appeared, those who chose to go to jail were not guided by their conscience, but by fear of being disfellowshipped, or marginalized. Because I don't believe that everyone's conscience would have changed 180 degrees within a few months, and after the article appeared suddenly there would be no one whose conscience would still dictate that they should go to jail. Because the article did not call for civil service, it just said that everyone can choose according to their conscience.
With simple peasant logic, it can be seen that the part of the JW teaching that speaks about the constant closeness of Armageddon is also a mind manipulation. The story of the JWs essentially speaks of nothing else than "don't do anything, just preach, because the end is coming, and if you don't preach, you will die". This is how the "good news" could be briefly summed up. I just wonder why lawyers worldwide have not yet taken action against this, as it is nothing but spreading panic. Especially because they have been doing this for 100 years. JW generations are born and die with the consciousness of "urgency". Then when they get old, they can go to a Catholic nursing home, since they are not even able to maintain a miserable nursing home in a country. Their assembly is characterized by total lovelessness. It is no wonder they use the words "showing love" instead of the simple word "love". Yes, always the demonstration of things is important, the surface, the smiling, the raving about the "truth", that someone sits through the whole thing elegantly, in a tie, answers the questions posed, and gives such well-groomed answers that best reflect the words of the Watchtower. That's why many people don't even bother, they simply read the answers that have been underlined at home. And this home underlining is called "preparation", and "study". Even the questions are designed in such a way that thoughts don't accidentally veer off in an inappropriate direction. And this directed thinking is called "contemplation." Here is Orwell's 1984 realized, where words mean something other than what they should, right in front of our eyes, the language of "newspeak." The leader of the Watchtower study has to ask these prescribed questions, and the audience, in turn, has to recite the answers they underlined at home, albeit slightly rephrased. Like some kind of acting circle. Perhaps the most important thing is to prevent any manifestation of spontaneity."
11
John 5:27 and Harners thesis
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
conclusion to harners thesis: https://digilander.libero.it/domingo7/h7.jpg.

in 1973 a scholar by the name of philip b harner published an article in the journal of biblical literature that would be "revolutionary" he concluded that anarthorous predicate nouns preceeding the verb were primarily qualitative in nature.. in my view harner was correct, though he didn't agree with the "a god" rendering he also disliked the "god" rendering in john 1:1c providing an alternative which bibles like the net have paraphrased (to my knowledge).

one he didn't cover in his thesis was john 5:27 i would say this "authoratative" why?
aqwsed12345

The verses elaborate in more detail what Jesus's life-giving and judgement activities mean. Jesus will not only resurrect the dead and judge people at the end of the world, at the time of his second coming. The decision about man's eternal fate is already taking place, according to whether he accepts or rejects his teaching. Whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life and has passed from death to life. The time to attain eternal life is already here when the spiritually dead hear the word of the Son of God.
The Son can do this (v. 25); for just as the Father, as God, possesses eternal life without end, and is therefore the source of all finite life, so too the Son, who received this from the Father. The Father has life in himself and not from the Son; the Son has life in himself, but from the Father. This parallels verse 21, and repeats its assertion that this power has been given by the Father to the Son.
"For the Son of Man", that is, the Messiah. The Jews believed even before Christ that the Messiah is the judge of the world. (This is also testified by the apocryphal Ethiopian Book of Enoch, 45. etc. chapters.) Verse 22b echoes this. In the gospel, this is the only non-contextual Son of Man expression that unexpectedly appears alongside the call to the dead (v. 25). This Son of Man image goes back to the primitive Christian usage, which describes the coming Jesus as a judge in the form of the figure appearing in Daniel 7:13, but in John, no other Son of Man saying refers to Jesus as a future eschatological judge.
Just as the Son took the life and the giving of life to others from the Father, so he gained the power to judge from the Father, which follows the resurrection of the dead, and he possesses this power not only by virtue of his divine nature but especially because he became a man and undertook the work of redemption. The conclusion of his becoming human is judgment; for it is by judgment that the holy and saved humanity is separated from the unholy and condemned, united with Christ, as the body with its head, so that Christ only then fully forms the new man with it, and man again fully submits to God, which is the aim and end of his work of redemption. If, therefore, judgment is the final act of the work of redemption and the incarnation of the Son of God, it is understandable why the Savior, the man of God, will hold it. Others interpret it as follows: because he as a man can judge in a manner suitable to humans. Or: because he as a man humbled himself, and therefore deserves to be glorified in judgment. Or: because as a man he will be merciful and gracious. All these touch only certain external circumstances; the real, inner, all-encompassing basic reason is that which was given above.
In this verse, the Son of Man saying is a prophecy of the resurrection to judgment, which originated from Judaism after the exile (Dan 12:2; 1Enoch 51:4; 2Esdras 7:32, 2Baruch 42:7; ApocMoses 10:41), and which in early Christianity was generally associated with Jesus, as the "Lord" or the "Son of Man" (e.g., 2Cor 5:10). While some writings regard the resurrection as the reward of the righteous (e.g., Phil 3:20), others imagine a double resurrection, which allows for judgment (e.g., Dan 12:2). Verse 29 adopts the latter view, while verse 21 links the resurrection of the dead with "revitalization," thus referring to the former view. The tension between the "future eschatology" of the physical resurrection to judgment and the "realized eschatology" of the judgment - which is realized by responding to the present call revealed in the words of Jesus - suggests that these verses are independent pieces of tradition.
28
Did God know Adam and Eve will Sin? - JW perspective
by bioflex in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
i read about this topic sometime ago in one awake mag (cant rememer which one).

and from the jw perspective, he didnt know which means it took him by suprise or which makes it seem god is not as almighty as we would believe.

this is their reasoning.. http://www.watchtower.org/e/20110101a/article_01.htm.
aqwsed12345

https://www.forananswer.org/Top_JW/JehovahWatchtower.htm
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/jehovahs-witnesses-and-the-watchtower-1180
https://orthodoxchristiantheology.com/2014/12/07/refuting-the-jehovahs-witness-doctrine-of-selective-foreknowledge/
http://daenglund.com/the-watchtower-rejects-biblical-authority-regarding-gods-foreknowledge/
The critics of the Watchtower Society, or Jehovah's Witnesses, who are familiar with their theology, are aware of their stranger than strange doctrines (end-time calculations, the resurrected Jesus is actually a recreated Michael, and similar), and we are familiar with the heresies that have occurred in their history (Arianism, millenarianism). However, there are only two doctrines that they likely have invented themselves. The second of these has been addressed by quite a few critics, but the first – although largely derived from the first – has been addressed by relatively few.
1. Anthropomorphic image of God
Although the Scriptures nowhere call the Son either a creature or Michael, they nevertheless profess this, thus belittling Jesus Christ. However, they also degrade the Father, because what they claim about "Jehovah" is a very anthropomorphized, paganic image of God, in which God essentially exists in space and time, shows change, changes his mind, and is taken by surprise.
w92 2/1 p. 9. They write that Jehovah has a huge, dynamic energy reserve (Isaiah 40:26). "At creation, when he created the matter of the universe, he had to use some of this energy." So he did not create from nothing (creatio ex nihilo), as Christians teach, but from his "energy reserve", which are apparently not infinite, but only "huge".
They exist so much in space that they even said that he lives in the Pleiades, and it took "time" for him and his angels to "get here" to Earth if he wanted something. I read somewhere that a child's letter was read at one of their conventions – it was read positively – the child wrote to NASA not to beam radio signals into space because they "disturb" Jehovah. The Pleiades teaching was dropped in 1953, but they still claim that there is literally a certain place in heaven somewhere in space.
They also claim that he exists in time, not in the traditional Christian teaching of unchanging eternity, but in the flow of time. This is absurd because time and space are created realities, and God cannot exist within the limits of created realities. This is related to their teaching that God is not inherently omniscient, but only has a "foresight ABILITY", which he exercises at his discretion.
This is such a mythical pagan image of God, as the Greeks imagined the gods living on Olympus, or as a 5-year-old child imagines God, sitting literally above the clouds in a literal chair, with a big beard, and gets angry if he finds out you ate the chocolate that Mommy forbade. Allegedly, Ottoman soldiers had similar conceptions about Allah, that since he is "up there", he does not see them if they drink alcohol or commit adultery in a covered place.
2.The two-class doctrine of redemption, and the restoration of the Garden of Eden
From the absurd theory of "selective foresight ability" comes the view that the fall of man into sin somehow caught God by surprise, and therefore he came up with redemption as a kind of backup plan, which for them is nothing more than the restoration of the Garden of Eden, because that is what must happen no matter what. Therefore, they inserted into the New World Translation that Jesus was a "corresponding" ransom, so he had to restore only the Adamic sin. In contrast, according to the Scriptures, the plan of redemption was ready before the creation of the world, see Romans 3:25, Ephesians 1:4. The New Testament says nothing about the Watchtower's class distinctions.
28
Did God know Adam and Eve will Sin? - JW perspective
by bioflex in
1. watchtower
2. beliefs
i read about this topic sometime ago in one awake mag (cant rememer which one).

and from the jw perspective, he didnt know which means it took him by suprise or which makes it seem god is not as almighty as we would believe.

this is their reasoning.. http://www.watchtower.org/e/20110101a/article_01.htm.
aqwsed12345

This is an interesting topic too, as the theology of the Watchtower captures the divinity of the Father in a rather interesting way, read this article:
https://www.forananswer.org/Top_JW/JehovahWatchtower.htm
A distorted, anthropomorphic image of God: can be offended, changes his mind, the creation required energy from him, one needs to "gain" his "approval", etc. God is not omnipresent, but literally dwells in a place (Pleiades); has a (spiritual) body (rather than being simply spirit), is not absolutely omniscient in the first place, but only has the possibility/ability fore foreknowledge, which he either uses or not, these are based on a literal interpretation of certain (mainly Old Testament) anthropomorphic descriptions. This god does not suggest pure theism, but is just a magnified human, a kind of pagan image of God.
A classic example of this is their belief that God did not know "in advance" that Adam and Eve would sin. According to them, even God is not omniscient in an absolute sense, and they refer to verses such as Genesis 18:20-21. However, this view is not pure theism, and it is a figurative anthropomorphic expression, with which they want to prove this absurd statement. On the other hand, God alone is omniscient (1Kings 8:31-32, Psalm 44:21-22, 94:9-10, 139:2, Job 21:22, Daniel 2:20, Romans 11:33-34). The Father is omniscient (Mt 6:4,32, 10:29-30), the Son (Lk 2:46-47, Jn 2:25, 4:19,29, 16:30, 21:17, Colossians 2:3, Mt 25:31-45, Hebrews 4:12-13) and the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2, 40:13, Daniel 4:6, Jn 14:26, 16:13, 1 Corinthians 2:10-11), yet there are not three omniscient Gods, only one.
From Biblical statements like that God "regrets" things, one cannot draw the conclusion that there are multiple plans in God, or that he occasionally closed his eyes and did not see the future. The biblical description that God "regretted" creating man at the time of the flood is an anthropomorphic description because otherwise we know (1Samuel 15:29): "Also the Eternal One of Israel will not lie or have regret; for He is not a man that He should have regret." The authors of the Bible indeed use such human images for the sake of a more dynamic description, but we should know that in the final analysis these do not answer the questions of the relationship between divine and human will.
The point is that the human language, adapted to the terrestrial and material world, cannot fully express the infinity and complete spirituality of God, and therefore - in the past and today alike - can only speak of God with expressions taken from the human world. The Old Testament scripture, especially in its first parts, is full of such so-called anthropomorphic (= attributing human shape, hand, foot, eye, etc. to God) and anthropopathic (= attributing human emotion, anger, regret, etc. to God) expressions, which however should not be taken in their literal sense. This is how we should understand, for example, at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, that "God said," although God did not say anything but created by pure will.
Therefore, the strong anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of Scripture, especially of the Old Testament (God shows anger, regret, etc. - Genesis 6:6; Psalm 106:40, Hosea 1:6) etc.) should be measured and adjusted to the basic faith truth of God's immutability. These are said because of the observable outward effect, not because of the similarity of emotions. So "God regretted that he made man" means: what God did because of people's depravity achieved effects similar to when people regret their actions. So, of course, God did not decide the flood when the Bible indicates it, but decided it from eternity. And of course, God was not "grieving" in the strict sense of the word "in his heart", these (and similar) expressions are only used by Scripture because humans can only speak of God in a human way, and because it wants to teach man through them: to see how great the sin is, and to know that if the measure is full, God's punitive "hand" will reach him. So this is a human expression for God punishing the sinful man, and that because of his infinite holiness, he detests sin.
The Bible therefore uses the method of speaking about God in anthropomorphisms. It can only make God's personhood, his active behavior perceptible if it compares him to man. It talks about God's face, eye, ear, hand, ways, feet. These do not want to depict God's shape, but the way God affects man. The anthropomorphisms do not depict God himself. The prophetic visions do not show his shape either, but rather make his effect on humans perceptible. The Semitic spirituality is not interested in the external shape and the limbs, but rather their function. This is why, for example, we read in the book of Isaiah that the mountains rejoice and the trees clap their hands (55:12). When prophetic literature speaks of God in human terms, it does not provide a visual image of Him, but rather attempts to express His entire essence and personality, much like how individual parts are representative of activity and characteristics. God's personality is best illuminated by His being the sovereign actor, the creator of the world, the director of history, and humans being His image by subduing the earth (Genesis 1:26-28). God's personality is further elucidated by images that detail His activities: He sees, hears, speaks, laughs, gets angry, and reconciles. But human behavior can only be a tool of comparison because it is backed by spiritual consciousness, personality. Jehovah cannot be portrayed using animal depictions. The Old Testament does not forget that the distance between God and man is infinite (Genesis 18:17; Exodus 3:5; Isaiah 28:29). The prophets also adopted anthropomorphism because they saw no danger to the concept of God. Only theological reflection and the guidance of the people's thinking led later Greek and Aramaic translators to occasionally soften expressions that could endanger pure transcendence. Looking back from the New Testament, we can see the preparation for incarnation in anthropomorphism.
So, in explaining anthropomorphism, we always have to think of God's absolute spirituality, infinity, immutability, omnipresence, and sovereignty. For example, when it is said that He gets angry and reconciles, it is not He who changes, but we project the change in our relationship with Him.
The Watchtower merely speaks of God's "possibility" (!) of foreknowledge. Well, this proposition is simply false even logically. It would present God as if He were not omniscient by nature, but just has a kind of crystal ball, and if He feels the need to know what the future holds, then He peeks into it. But if He is "not curious" about the future, then He can plug his ears, like the clerk in the commercial, saying "pa-pa-pa-pa."
No, from omniscience, it directly follows that God cannot not know anything. This is wrong for the simple reason that God does not exist in time but above time, so from His point of view, everything that happens in the created world essentially happens "all at once." And if He knows what happens in the created world (and He does), then He knows everything that will ever happen in the created world. Therefore, if you rigorously consider the JW's argument in this regard, it significantly discounts God, portraying Him as figuratively biting His nails, worried about whether the first human couple will fall into sin, realistically hoping that it won't happen. This is complete nonsense.
Divine omniscience means He knows the past, understands the present, sees the future, and nothing is unknown to Him. God fully understands Himself and everything outside of Him. From God's infinity, it directly follows that nothing is unknown to Him. Infinity is only infinite if it is limitless in all respects, including in terms of knowledge. So God knows even the smallest, most insignificant, most hidden things, and even the world of possibilities, desires, and plans is not hidden from Him, whether they are realized or not. He knows about events even before they occur, and He never forgets a single moment.
In the face of divine eternity, there is no past or future, everything is constantly present before Him; eternity equals every moment of time, and is simultaneous with every point in time, just as every point on the circumference of a circle is in the same relation to the center. Consequently, God perceives future things in the constant present of His eternity, and this perception does not influence our future events any more than the observer on the tower influences the possible direction of a troop passing below him. Just as our remembrance does not change and does not influence the past, His foreknowledge does not influence the future. So we can formulate it like this: Something doesn't happen because God knows it in advance, but because it happens, He knows it.
God does not merely foresee the future like a seer, but is present at every point in time, therefore also in the future. God sees the future because what is an uncertain future for us is present for Him, therefore the future is as certain to God as the past. This means that God knows the future, and nevertheless man has free determination.
The Watchtower relativizes God's real omniscience to a possibility, like deciding whether to take my beer out of the fridge at all, to drink it, and if so, when. However, God's omniscience does not stem from some optional fortune-telling talent, but from the absolute and infinite reality, which means that He is conceptually beyond all created beings, so it is perfectly natural that all those dimensions (space, time), which organize our existence into limits, do not exist for Him.
The key thing is that in God, the knowledge of the creaturely world is not a skill or ability that he must want to use, but rather he has real, essential omniscience. This thesis automatically follows from the fact that time itself is a created reality, and the creator cannot be limited by a created reality. Furthermore, temporality implies limitation, but God has no limits, he is always present at the same time, which we perceive as a timeline. But regardless of this, the Holy Scriptures also claim God's real omniscience, so even if you deny this basic tenet (which you can't refute anyway), you should still accept it because the Bible declares this. Of course, it can be justified most easily metaphysically: just as every point on the circumference of a circle is equidistant from the center of the circle, every point on the timeline that denotes the change in the creaturely world is equally present to God. The infinity of God is in the Bible, I quoted a few such things in some letters. And countless times it is also in there that God's reality is infinitely more perfect than what can be described with human words, and this should be taken into account when "theologizing" about God himself. Time is the measure of change, so only a changing thing can be described by temporality, but God is unchangeable, this is even explicitly in the Bible! The infinity of God does not mean infinity in a mathematical sense, that you can add as much as you want, etc., but rather that the quantifiability and quantity are in fact creaturely categories, the creator God cannot be characterized by them.
The JWs relativize God's transcendence, essentially claiming covertly that God is somehow bounded by a structure He created, specifically time. Think about it: before He created the world, time did not exist, but God did not create the grid of time for Himself so that the clock starts ticking over Him from now on, this only applies to the created world. When talking about time in theology, it's important to logically define the concept of time. The concept of time is nothing more than that time is the measure of change. So the passage of time measures the degree of change, just as a video recording consists of frames. And the Bible says this about God in this regard: "He never changes or casts a shifting shadow." (James 1:17) Now if time is the measure of change, it follows that where/who does not change, time does not apply. For God, every moment of the entire created world condenses into a single moment, a cosmic "now": From God's perspective, the fall of man into sin occurred at the same "time" as the present moment. For God, there is no past, present, and future. For Him, it is always "today", there is no passage of time for Him, He doesn't have time, so from His perspective, it makes no sense to talk about "seeing into the future", because for Him, what is future for us is present for Him.
66
"outside of time" argument
by Blotty in
1. watchtower
2. bible
this is going to be very brief but a user recently tried to argue an argument that has already been refuted many times - the logic is somewhat sound but falls apart when the definition to the word used it looked and its usages in the bible.the word in question is "aionas" found in the scripture in question hebrews 1:2 .

(https://biblehub.com/hebrews/1-2.htm#lexicon)for starters look at the biblehub translations - do any of them state "outside of time" or that time was "created" in this moment - no because this seems to be heavily inspired by greek philosophy rather than the bible itself.note: i am not saying this word does not mean eternity or anything of the sort, i am saying this scripture some of the claims i dispute and can easily disprove, hence the argument is laughable.. bill mounce defines the word as:pr.

a period of time of significant character; life; an era; an age: hence, a state of things marking an age or era; the present order of nature; the natural condition of man, the world; ὁ αἰών, illimitable duration, eternity; as also, οἱ αἰῶνες, ὁ αἰῶν τῶν αἰώνων, οἱ αἰῶνες τῶν αἰώνων; by an aramaism οἱ αἰῶνες, the material universe, heb.
aqwsed12345

This is an interesting topic too, as the theology of the Watchtower captures the divinity of the Father in a rather interesting way, read this article:
https://www.forananswer.org/Top_JW/JehovahWatchtower.htm
A distorted, anthropomorphic image of God: can be offended, changes his mind, the creation required energy from him, one needs to "gain" his "approval", etc. God is not omnipresent, but literally dwells in a place (Pleiades); has a (spiritual) body (rather than being simply spirit), is not absolutely omniscient in the first place, but only has the possibility/ability fore foreknowledge, which he either uses or not, these are based on a literal interpretation of certain (mainly Old Testament) anthropomorphic descriptions. This god does not suggest pure theism, but is just a magnified human, a kind of pagan image of God.
A classic example of this is their belief that God did not know "in advance" that Adam and Eve would sin. According to them, even God is not omniscient in an absolute sense, and they refer to verses such as Genesis 18:20-21. However, this view is not pure theism, and it is a figurative anthropomorphic expression, with which they want to prove this absurd statement. On the other hand, God alone is omniscient (1Kings 8:31-32, Psalm 44:21-22, 94:9-10, 139:2, Job 21:22, Daniel 2:20, Romans 11:33-34). The Father is omniscient (Mt 6:4,32, 10:29-30), the Son (Lk 2:46-47, Jn 2:25, 4:19,29, 16:30, 21:17, Colossians 2:3, Mt 25:31-45, Hebrews 4:12-13) and the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2, 40:13, Daniel 4:6, Jn 14:26, 16:13, 1 Corinthians 2:10-11), yet there are not three omniscient Gods, only one.
From Biblical statements like that God "regrets" things, one cannot draw the conclusion that there are multiple plans in God, or that he occasionally closed his eyes and did not see the future. The biblical description that God "regretted" creating man at the time of the flood is an anthropomorphic description because otherwise we know (1Samuel 15:29): "Also the Eternal One of Israel will not lie or have regret; for He is not a man that He should have regret." The authors of the Bible indeed use such human images for the sake of a more dynamic description, but we should know that in the final analysis these do not answer the questions of the relationship between divine and human will.
The point is that the human language, adapted to the terrestrial and material world, cannot fully express the infinity and complete spirituality of God, and therefore - in the past and today alike - can only speak of God with expressions taken from the human world. The Old Testament scripture, especially in its first parts, is full of such so-called anthropomorphic (= attributing human shape, hand, foot, eye, etc. to God) and anthropopathic (= attributing human emotion, anger, regret, etc. to God) expressions, which however should not be taken in their literal sense. This is how we should understand, for example, at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, that "God said," although God did not say anything but created by pure will.
Therefore, the strong anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of Scripture, especially of the Old Testament (God shows anger, regret, etc. - Genesis 6:6; Psalm 106:40, Hosea 1:6) etc.) should be measured and adjusted to the basic faith truth of God's immutability. These are said because of the observable outward effect, not because of the similarity of emotions. So "God regretted that he made man" means: what God did because of people's depravity achieved effects similar to when people regret their actions. So, of course, God did not decide the flood when the Bible indicates it, but decided it from eternity. And of course, God was not "grieving" in the strict sense of the word "in his heart", these (and similar) expressions are only used by Scripture because humans can only speak of God in a human way, and because it wants to teach man through them: to see how great the sin is, and to know that if the measure is full, God's punitive "hand" will reach him. So this is a human expression for God punishing the sinful man, and that because of his infinite holiness, he detests sin.
The Bible therefore uses the method of speaking about God in anthropomorphisms. It can only make God's personhood, his active behavior perceptible if it compares him to man. It talks about God's face, eye, ear, hand, ways, feet. These do not want to depict God's shape, but the way God affects man. The anthropomorphisms do not depict God himself. The prophetic visions do not show his shape either, but rather make his effect on humans perceptible. The Semitic spirituality is not interested in the external shape and the limbs, but rather their function. This is why, for example, we read in the book of Isaiah that the mountains rejoice and the trees clap their hands (55:12). When prophetic literature speaks of God in human terms, it does not provide a visual image of Him, but rather attempts to express His entire essence and personality, much like how individual parts are representative of activity and characteristics. God's personality is best illuminated by His being the sovereign actor, the creator of the world, the director of history, and humans being His image by subduing the earth (Genesis 1:26-28). God's personality is further elucidated by images that detail His activities: He sees, hears, speaks, laughs, gets angry, and reconciles. But human behavior can only be a tool of comparison because it is backed by spiritual consciousness, personality. Jehovah cannot be portrayed using animal depictions. The Old Testament does not forget that the distance between God and man is infinite (Genesis 18:17; Exodus 3:5; Isaiah 28:29). The prophets also adopted anthropomorphism because they saw no danger to the concept of God. Only theological reflection and the guidance of the people's thinking led later Greek and Aramaic translators to occasionally soften expressions that could endanger pure transcendence. Looking back from the New Testament, we can see the preparation for incarnation in anthropomorphism.
So, in explaining anthropomorphism, we always have to think of God's absolute spirituality, infinity, immutability, omnipresence, and sovereignty. For example, when it is said that He gets angry and reconciles, it is not He who changes, but we project the change in our relationship with Him.
The Watchtower merely speaks of God's "possibility" (!) of foreknowledge. Well, this proposition is simply false even logically. It would present God as if He were not omniscient by nature, but just has a kind of crystal ball, and if He feels the need to know what the future holds, then He peeks into it. But if He is "not curious" about the future, then He can plug his ears, like the clerk in the commercial, saying "pa-pa-pa-pa." :-)
No, from omniscience, it directly follows that God cannot not know anything. This is wrong for the simple reason that God does not exist in time but above time, so from His point of view, everything that happens in the created world essentially happens "all at once." And if He knows what happens in the created world (and He does), then He knows everything that will ever happen in the created world. Therefore, if you rigorously consider the JW's argument in this regard, it significantly discounts God, portraying Him as figuratively biting His nails, worried about whether the first human couple will fall into sin, realistically hoping that it won't happen. This is complete nonsense.
Divine omniscience means He knows the past, understands the present, sees the future, and nothing is unknown to Him. God fully understands Himself and everything outside of Him. From God's infinity, it directly follows that nothing is unknown to Him. Infinity is only infinite if it is limitless in all respects, including in terms of knowledge. So God knows even the smallest, most insignificant, most hidden things, and even the world of possibilities, desires, and plans is not hidden from Him, whether they are realized or not. He knows about events even before they occur, and He never forgets a single moment.
In the face of divine eternity, there is no past or future, everything is constantly present before Him; eternity equals every moment of time, and is simultaneous with every point in time, just as every point on the circumference of a circle is in the same relation to the center. Consequently, God perceives future things in the constant present of His eternity, and this perception does not influence our future events any more than the observer on the tower influences the possible direction of a troop passing below him. Just as our remembrance does not change and does not influence the past, His foreknowledge does not influence the future. So we can formulate it like this: Something doesn't happen because God knows it in advance, but because it happens, He knows it.
God does not merely foresee the future like a seer, but is present at every point in time, therefore also in the future. God sees the future because what is an uncertain future for us is present for Him, therefore the future is as certain to God as the past. This means that God knows the future, and nevertheless man has free determination.
The Watchtower relativizes God's real omniscience to a possibility, like deciding whether to take my beer out of the fridge at all, to drink it, and if so, when. However, God's omniscience does not stem from some optional fortune-telling talent, but from the absolute and infinite reality, which means that He is conceptually beyond all created beings, so it is perfectly natural that all those dimensions (space, time), which organize our existence into limits, do not exist for Him.
The key thing is that in God, the knowledge of the creaturely world is not a skill or ability that he must want to use, but rather he has real, essential omniscience. This thesis automatically follows from the fact that time itself is a created reality, and the creator cannot be limited by a created reality. Furthermore, temporality implies limitation, but God has no limits, he is always present at the same time, which we perceive as a timeline. But regardless of this, the Holy Scriptures also claim God's real omniscience, so even if you deny this basic tenet (which you can't refute anyway), you should still accept it because the Bible declares this. Of course, it can be justified most easily metaphysically: just as every point on the circumference of a circle is equidistant from the center of the circle, every point on the timeline that denotes the change in the creaturely world is equally present to God. The infinity of God is in the Bible, I quoted a few such things in some letters. And countless times it is also in there that God's reality is infinitely more perfect than what can be described with human words, and this should be taken into account when "theologizing" about God himself. Time is the measure of change, so only a changing thing can be described by temporality, but God is unchangeable, this is even explicitly in the Bible! The infinity of God does not mean infinity in a mathematical sense, that you can add as much as you want, etc., but rather that the quantifiability and quantity are in fact creaturely categories, the creator God cannot be characterized by them.
The JWs relativize God's transcendence, essentially claiming covertly that God is somehow bounded by a structure He created, specifically time. Think about it: before He created the world, time did not exist, but God did not create the grid of time for Himself so that the clock starts ticking over Him from now on, this only applies to the created world. When talking about time in theology, it's important to logically define the concept of time. The concept of time is nothing more than that time is the measure of change. So the passage of time measures the degree of change, just as a video recording consists of frames. And the Bible says this about God in this regard: "He never changes or casts a shifting shadow." (James 1:17) Now if time is the measure of change, it follows that where/who does not change, time does not apply. For God, every moment of the entire created world condenses into a single moment, a cosmic "now": From God's perspective, the fall of man into sin occurred at the same "time" as the present moment. For God, there is no past, present, and future. For Him, it is always "today", there is no passage of time for Him, He doesn't have time, so from His perspective, it makes no sense to talk about "seeing into the future", because for Him, what is future for us is present for Him.
Returning to our original debate, Christians do not merely confess and proclaim the true divinity of the Son because the New Testament Scriptures use the word "GOD" (theos) for him, but because the attributes attributed to the Son in the Scriptures have no other meaning in this regard. JWs defend themselves by saying that, yes, but the Scriptures do not call the Son "almighty". Well, the 'sine qua non' of true deity is not that the word pantocrator appears literally, if otherwise EVERY attribute necessary for deity, and the emphatic assertion of the "God" statement is present. Especially since the Scriptures implicitly teach the omnipotence of the Son (Mt 28:18, Jn 3:35, 5:19, Heb 1:3), if you do not accept Rev 1:8.
By the way, in Rev 1:8 it is most likely not God the Father speaking (not only he is "Jehovah"), but the Son/Word, as far as I know, in the book of Revelation either John or the Son speaks in the third person singular. Rev 1:11.17 nicely identifies who the Alpha and Omega, First and Last are. Moreover, according to 1:8, He is also the Coming One (ho erhkomenos), of whom 1:7 already spoke ("He comes with the clouds"). So, according to these, Jesus is the Almighty. According to the text variant inserted into the NA text, he is also "the God" (ho theos). And in Rev 1:11a, according to the NA text, the Alpha and Omega are not present for Jesus. But the other place is still authentic, and here it is specifically Jesus who, speaking, calls himself Alpha and Omega:
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are those who keep His commandments [...] I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star." (Rev 22:13.16)
And here from verse 16, it is clear that these are the words of Jesus Christ, and there is no change of speaker between them. Plus, the First and Last (1:17), which essentially means the same as the Alpha and Omega, is also Jesus' title according to the Watchtower (although they explain that he is not "the First and Last" in the same way as the Father). Plus, this, unlike the word "apostle", cannot be applied to two person of different ranks, only to co-equals. Therefore, by acknowledging that this title is applied to the Father in Rev 22:13, the Watchtower admits that the Son is at least as much "first and last" as the Father.
Moreover, as I said, Christian Christology not only asserts the Son's divinity but also his true humanity, and thus, as a man, he is naturally the servant of the Father, and God for him is the Father, this does not exclude that he is otherwise one (in reality) with him in terms of his divinity. Here is a well-developed aid diagram: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Christology_Flowchart.PNG
The main Christological directions can be debated, but I think this would be interesting only from a historical-theological perspective, unless the Watchtower would always want to confuse the Trinity with modalism or tritheism, to then get a more easily "refutable" straw man. The type of Christology that eventually explicitly crystallized at the Councils of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon, was also palpable in the first 3 centuries, as a solid point that was always implicitly confessed in the mainstream tradition of the Church. These cannot be compared to the selectively picked up completely insignificant, regional sectarian movements.
If the Son is the true, metaphysical Son of God the Father, and not just an adopted Son, then he is also God. The high priest and the Jews, for example, understood exactly what it means to say that Jesus is truly the Son of God, because in Jewish tradition, the son inherited his father's name, title, and social position: "Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God" (Jn 5:18).
If Jesus inherited the Father's power, rights, and especially His name, then this means that Jesus is the almighty God. Jesus confirmed this. He showed divine power through miracles: "Behold, I cast out demons and perform healings today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish" (Lk 13:32). He claimed divine right by forgiving sins and modifying divine laws: "So that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mk 2:10). "You have heard that it was said to the people long ago (...) But I tell you: (...)" (Mt 5:33). He claimed the divine name by often referring to himself by the name by which God introduced Himself to Moses at Mount Horeb (I Am): "Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I Am, you will die in your sins" (Jn 8:24). "Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am" (Jn 8:58). With this, Christ also teaches His eternity, because He says that Abraham was created, and time-bound, but He, as God, is independent of time: "I am."
The introduction of the Gospel of John, which calls the second person, the Son of God, the "Word". Of course, only the spiritual word can be understood here. Because before we, as humans, would utter a word, we must first form a clear concept in our minds. If I don't understand something, I can't talk about it. Before I say "human", I need to have understood what this word means, in other words, I need to form a concept of what a human is. This concept can be called a spiritual word and it precedes the spoken word. In the same way, God understands Himself, knows Himself, and forms a perfect concept of Himself from eternity, expressing His own essence in a spiritual "Word", "which was in the beginning, was with God, and was God" (Jn 1:1). Our concepts are poor, imperfect, lifeless, even our highest spiritual "creations". God's Word is the summary of His own most perfect essence, it is God, the Son of God; alive, like God the Father; the personal divine Wisdom.
It's entirely unnecessary for you to argue that "the Son received everything from the Father", because this is also confessed in the doctrine of the Trinity, and it is included in the Nicene Creed, that the Son "was born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father; by Him all things were made." Therefore, there is a logical (but not temporal) sequence between the Father and the Son: the Father begets the Son, the Son is born of the Father: He received His existence from the Father (but not in time, but outside time), and shared His entire essence with Him ("My Father has handed everything over to me"), therefore He also received His (full and essential) divinity from Him according to us – this however does not empty His divinity. We even confess that the Son receives all His knowledge from the Father from eternity. Due to the Trinitarian origin, the Son is conceptually dependent on the Father, and this provides sufficient logical basis for the way of speaking that the Son follows the Father, and is subordinate to Him, and the Father is the source of the Trinity, therefore it is especially Him who can be attributed (but not monopolized against the Son and the Holy Spirit) the name of God. In the words of St. Hilary: "The Father is greater due to the primacy of the gift of love, yet not lesser is He who is given existence". Because of this Trinitarian origin, Jesus's deity does not become an incidental, peelable "plus", since this did not happen in time: Jesus's existence cannot be separated from His divinity – thus the act of receiving does not take on the meaning with which you want to justify your Arianism.
The Word, as God, is of course timeless and unchangeable. Thus, everything related to Jesus that implies change and temporality must be attributed to His humanity. He was conceived as a human, was born, was crucified, died, resurrected, "ascended" to heaven, was exalted, was inaugurated as the Messiah-King, etc. These all apply to Jesus as a human.
Jesus Christ as God never changes. But because He took human body and soul onto Himself and united personally with them (hypostatic union), after His Ascension, somehow the human nature was also glorified in Him. Not in a way that it became part of the Trinity*, but in a way that it got closer to it; approached and forever the divine light and blessing of the Trinity flows onto it. Since the human nature of Jesus was also glorified, it includes us in the trinitarian life of God.
* Because we do not claim divinity for Jesus's humanity, what is created, can never become God.
The Son is due all divine and royal titles and honors, while the angels are merely called "ministering spirits" (v. 14), who worship the Son. For the Son is fully God - not an angel. Angels should not be worshipped, as that would be an act against God. Only God deserves worship. Rev 22:8-9 emphasizes this: "I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I had heard and seen them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had been showing them to me. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll. Worship God!”" In both Rev 22:8 and Heb 1,6, the same Greek word: proskuneo ("worship, adulate") is used. The worship that, according to Rev 22:8k, is due only to God, and which angels should not accept, is the same worship and adulation with which, according to Heb 1:6, the angels worship the first-born Son. The fact that it is possible to pray to Jesus, and that he is thus God, is confirmed by many other verses, such as Jn 14:13k; Acts 7:59k; Rom 10:9.13; 1Cor 1:2 and Col 3:17 (see above). Therefore, Jesus is not an angel, but God.
Bruce M. Metzger: The Jehovah's Witnesses and Jesus Christ