omission: Theodosius was the last to hold the Eastern and Western empires together.
Half banana
JoinedPosts by Half banana
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Child sacrifice and Jesus' sacrifice
by Whynot injeremiah 7:31 says, "they have built the high places of toʹpheth, which is in the valley of the son of hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that i had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’".
according to this scripture it's unthinkable for jehovah to be pleased with child sacrifices.
but yet he sent his son to be killed as a sacrifice for all?.
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33
Child sacrifice and Jesus' sacrifice
by Whynot injeremiah 7:31 says, "they have built the high places of toʹpheth, which is in the valley of the son of hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that i had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’".
according to this scripture it's unthinkable for jehovah to be pleased with child sacrifices.
but yet he sent his son to be killed as a sacrifice for all?.
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Half banana
Perry you are imagining that the words of the Bible are actually true and meaningful!
They are most certainly words from leaders of religious cults over time. At least Venus sees them as metaphor-- but we can go deeper. To understand the texts selected by the religious authorities it is necessary to be sceptical and not gullible religious consumers, fearful of displeasing an unknowable deity.
What the Bible says about sacrifice is drawn entirely from secular pagan folk belief.
God has never spoken or given dictation hence when the BIble says "God says" with reference to child sacrifice it was "a thing which never came into my mind", they were the words cult leaders used to inform their devotees of the new turn in contemporary dogma.
To be more specific, the Phoenicians were cheek by jowl neighbours of Israel sharing their religious superstitions. Israel were enormously influenced by them. It was the Phoenicians who probably introduced them the Canaanite pantheon including Yahweh, which Israel took on as their totemic god. Unlike the economically hamstrung Israelites they were successful seafarers and traders in the Mediterranean-- but like Israel, also practitioners of child sacrifice. Having seen a Phoenician topheth (a place of burning) on a small island off the coast of Sicily, I could not feel other than overwhelming pity for the ignorance of our forebears. Imagine that deliberately sacrificing your child could have benefits? Clearly pagan ritual also included adult human sacrifice as the most potent ritual to balance the spirits of the tribe. Only by this revolting precedent could any later parallel for the benefits of Jesus' sacrifice have any symbolic meaning.
Christian belief is built fairly and squarely on pagan and astrological motifs. It was only after the unscrupulous Roman Imperial rule sanctified the Bible and Christianity in the fourth century to bolster its influence, that the pagan source documents of Christian texts were proscribed and destroyed. This programme began in the late fourth century under the 'Christian' soldier Emperor Theodosius l, who was the first emperor to accede to the demands of church authority and the last to the Eastern and Western empire together.
However by proscription and destruction of the pagan sources of the new Catholic Bible and Christ doctrine, it does not mean the folk myths had not been the foundations of modern Christianity. The notion that one man Jesus died sacrificially for all men is only part of the mumbo-jumbo capitalised on by religion and state to garner political power. Fairy tales have a resonance with our behaviour because they come from a collective human imagination born of common experience-- but that does not make them either sacrosanct or true.
Sin has no meaning for most people today and that is a good and liberating advance. There is no need for a magical, sacrificial "saviour".
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2018 Convention :The Cry for "Peace & Security"
by jwdoctrine inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzsk2k9y7qs&t=835s.
the talk of the cry for "peace & security" from the sunday morning program.
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Half banana
Firstly remember that the Bible is the world's most unreliable forecaster of events and sharing the prize equally in first place is the JW Organisation.
Secondly that what it says is always ambiguous, exactly like all popular prophetic utterances such as those by Nostradamus and Mother Shipton etc, its holy baloney.
Thirdly humans are so perverse by nature that conspicuous "peace and security" as a sign for "the end" is not likely to happen for many generations yet--not before mankind grows up and dispenses with religious holy texts as a guide for organising themselves. Religious dogma is at present the greatest threat to peace!
For JW cult members, they will now be focussing on "peace and security" utterances in the press and on TV and looking for signs instead of getting a proper and fulfilling life...........spare us!
(Sorry I couldn't bring myself to watch the convention video, it might make me ill.)
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Is There Life After Death
by Brokeback Watchtower ini think this is a well developed discussion, of ian stevenson's work in investigating people's past lives claims.
it's a little long.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0attm9hgcdw.
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Half banana
There is no reason to believe there is life after death.
There is no evidence for us to believe that humans have been singled out for this extraordinary experience.
There is not one securely recorded instance of any of the one hundred and five billion people who have ever lived who are known to have lived after they have died.
To believe in a resurrection you have to believe in magic events and explanations which defy common sense and everyone's collective experience. Books which have characters coming back from the dead are called fairy tales.
To live after you die is wishful thinking sustained by the human terror of death and the snake oil teachings of religion.
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Youth and Spiritual Goals in this week's WT study (Are you F-ing kidding me?)
by TerryWalstrom ini regret following the wrong goals when i was a young person.
such as?such as spending a hundred hours a month of my precious youth rapping my unwrinkled knuckles on doors and waving soon-to-be-obsolete religious messages in front of aghast householders.such as spending my 20th, 21st, and part of my 22nd years in prison imagining anything useful was happening or that i was pleasing the big guy in the sky.such as taking a crappy job as a janitor and trying to support my family on beans and rice while i peddled cult materials, arguing with people who were better educated about fantasy scenarios i was brainwashed into parroting.such as making excuses for my depressing existence for my empty feeling of constant depression by consoling myself that soon billions of people would be annihilated--except for me and those i was able to convince to waste their time too.thanks, watchtower for twenty years of dry rot for my brain, a jehovah sized hole in my heart, and a great big "thank you" in the form of shunning from all my wonderful spiritual brothers and sisters for all my efforts.sure am i glad i didn't "waste" my youth on education, career, lifelong friends, and (gasp) fun!i was 12 years old when i was introduced to the watchtower and the kingdom hall.23 years later, i walked out a free man.the emotional damage took decades to reconcile.i'm 71 and i'd be thrilled to have those 23 years back!the watchtower is one of the most insidious time-devouring organizations on our planet.thanks for nothing!____________________the above is in answer to:.
this week's wt-study:.
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Half banana
I'm with you Terry, all those years wasting one's youth telling people the Watchtower message of doom. The unbelievable waste of time, youth, energy, with the loss of worldly experience and education, it was actually an impoverishment of life not a "blessing".
" youths who today keep focused on theocratic goals will well into adulthood be deeply satisfied with the choices they made"
This same lie is trotted out at assemblies until the poor suckers believe it is true. In fact I know of no one who believes it --but notice the qualifier; it only lasts until "well into adulthood" they claim. I suggest it there is little deep satisfaction at all for however long. It is a tired JW slogan and from personal experience I would say that it is profoundly untrue. Fortunately I think even JWs are realizing it!
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Child sacrifice and Jesus' sacrifice
by Whynot injeremiah 7:31 says, "they have built the high places of toʹpheth, which is in the valley of the son of hinʹnom, in order to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, something that i had not commanded and that had never even come into my heart.’".
according to this scripture it's unthinkable for jehovah to be pleased with child sacrifices.
but yet he sent his son to be killed as a sacrifice for all?.
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Half banana
There never can be a harmonious agreement of all teachings within the Bible. It was drawn from eclectic sources, out of different cultures and over a long period of time. It has been refined continuously to achieve a correspondence but fails.
The only glue is the false belief that since it is held to be sacred, it must agree-- but it plainly doesn't. Logic is suppressed when the religious mind comes into play.
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"One drop of poison in a glass of water"
by stuckinarut2 intime to revive this well known, and often used jw illustration!.
"if you are in desperate need of a drink of water, and the glass in front of you is 99% clean, but contains just 1% poison, would you drink it??".
how often we heard this trotted out from the platform.. recently though, i have heard many examples of still-in jws sharing their observations about things that don't seem quite right with the current activities, direction and culture of the organization.
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Half banana
The idea of avoiding things with a drop of poison is interesting.
It can supply awakened JWs with the reason to leave as they come to realize that many Watchtower doctrines contain more than just a drop of poison.
However on the matter of what constitutes a poison, salt, pepper, apricot kernels and juniper berries are all poisons but It was the Swiss physician Paracelsus who explained in the sixteenth century that the key is in the dosage.
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Strange conundrum
by doubtfull1799 ini just had a thought inspired by @newboy's recent post:.
why is it that despite the watchtower corporation being arguably the biggest publishing house in history, having produced billions of tracts, brochures, magazines, books for o very 100 years, and having the largest army of volunteer publicity agents on the planet, that 99% of the population is still clueless as to what their message is all about?.
if you ask random people what jw's beleive you will rarely get the so-called "good news": gods kingdom is going to soon usher in a paradise earth and fix all the worlds problems under the 1000 year reign of christ.. you will instead get: "they're the people who... 1. don't celebrate christmas or birthdays, 2. don't take blood, 3. go around with the watchtower, 4. have big assemblies... etc etc".
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Half banana
The wind has gone out of the Watchtower sails. The org started on a spiritual high with the 'certainty' of God and Jesus conquering and ruling the earth by 1914. It was a load of rubbish-- but who has benefitted? I will remind you; the business organisation which resulted from peddling this utopia now known as JW org.
I even read this WT hype in the local library from a provincial UK newspaper of around 1880. It declared cheerfully that sickness and death was soon coming to an end obviously based on Russell's sermons emanating from USA at the time. So Doubtful1799, Russell seemed to have be influential in getting his message across but his successors have left more of an ill defined one.
People who are struggling to cope with the common hardships of life are more likely to respond to this hope beyond hope. They are the shallow thinkers who put hope above reality and dreams above fact. Most of JWs are in this cocoon and the thought of letting go of their precious vision of paradise is emotionally devastating. Therefore the denial of anything which would destabilise their precarious niche in the world. Their faith is in the bringers of this dream: the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses. The humble JW has been instilled with the notion that faithfulness to God equals obedience to the GB.
Times have changed, no longer do JWs need to research, it is just a matter of remaining obedient to their leaders and this alone gives the Witness the sense of emotional security they crave.
There are in the Western World few new JW converts so what seems to have happened is the shift towards the quest to retain born-ins, no longer is deep Bible knowledge important or stressed (the leaders after all are forever changing their minds on what bits of the Bible mean) no need to make a defence of belief or arguing your case especially as your case for being there is not clear even to the JW!
The evangelical fire has gone from the organisation, which is not surprising since the JW promises never have any semblance of truth in them. Now it's more a matter of the self satisfaction of letting others see you at the cart and hope some of them might join you.
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A different viewpoint of "many will come in my name saying I am the Christ"
by truthseeker inmost jws are familiar with the scripture at matthew 24:5: "for many will come in my name, saying, ‘i am the christ,’ and they will lead many astray.".
it is implied that people would come in jesus' name declaring that they were christ - but could there be another view on this scripture?
could this also mean that jesus said many would come in his name saying he is christ?.
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Half banana
Truthseeker, I suggest firstly that the christ figure referred to here never said these words even if he existed. There was no reason to believe that the writings called Matthew were anything other than embellishments of the Christ tale some forty or fifty years after Jesus was supposed to have lived.
Secondly to look for "meaning" is not an objective analysis of the text. The more pertinent questions are; Why was this comment included, by whom and for whom?
To imagine that this story has importance is to fall under the unreasonable influence of the 'sacred' interpretation of ancient texts, they are not-- they are expressions of political manipulation by religious cult leaders of the day who understood full well that others would get on the 'christ' bandwagon and the writers would lose converts and therefore influence and revenue if or when this happened.
The Bible acknowledges that "there are many christs" and the significance of this, along with a discussion of the early christ cults and the growth of Christianity, is explored in a remarkable book by JM Robertson called A Short History of Christianity. Well worth a read to get a new perspective on what was going on in the early centuries of the Common Era in the Roman world. The Levant and Palestine at this time were nothing like you imagine them to be if you use the Bible as a source of information. Two examples; Nazareth did not exist as a village or even a hamlet in the first century but Tiberius on the side of Galilee on the other hand was a modern (Roman) hip town with public baths, fortress, garrison and all the things Monty Python showed by asking, "What did the Romans ever do for us?"
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Archbisop jailed in Australia
by zeb inhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-03/archbishop-wilson-sentenced/9883610.
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Half banana
HQ response: See! the courts are persecuting us, it means Armageddon is near.
No it doesn't, it means that the JW organisation are a deluded cult which cares not a fig for human welfare even of its own members. The only thing which matters in JW land is the superficial appearance of Biblical correctness and money.
I recall some fitting words from somewhere about whitewashed graves...............