People never get resurrected-- unless you believe in the supernatural.
As a rule gods don't die but absolutely anything, even the impossible, can and does happen in supernatural tales.
the national geographic web-site publishes this story:.
these 12 men shaped christianity—but were they real?.
link: : https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160306-bible-apostle-jesus-christian-religion-ngbooktalk/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=facebook::cmp=editorial::add=fb20181222culture-resurfapostlesbooktalk::rid=&sf204668865=1.
People never get resurrected-- unless you believe in the supernatural.
As a rule gods don't die but absolutely anything, even the impossible, can and does happen in supernatural tales.
i shared one of these before in which my approach left something to be desired, and i got some flack for that, and rightly so.
so if this story doesn't go over well i won't share another... but given how it ended, i just had to share.... a few days ago i took a trip to a nearby city by bus.
in the about 20-30 minute window between my connecting buses i walked over to a mcdonald's and got a cup of coffee, and when i came back to the little bus station i saw a literature cart sitting unmanned near the doors.
I was in a busy rural town on Friday and saw JW posters with a man and a woman standing nearby talking to two other visiting JWs in casual dress. I went past slowly and heard animated but banal conversation. I had some shopping to do and forty minutes later went back to see if they were free to talk to me (I was of course going to drop some metaphorical bombshells) but hell, they were still chin-wagging with the same JWs!
Forget the preaching, they just don't give us apostate's a moment's look in!
bill ,a non witness is killed driving home after work, providing for his family.
he left behind his wife and 3 kids all under 8 years of age.
armageddon comes the very next month.
Nowwhat, surely the point is that JWs are taught that everything will be fine in the Pollyanna-panda-petting- paradise. Even if you have lost your whole family, the delusion is that you don't need to worry because God will make you immune to grief, stress, anxiety, depression etc, this is part of the fantasy JW package. But you must not think too deeply about it in case you find it flawed and leave the religion.
one of my uncles who has never been a jw is visiting for christmas.
my dad who has stopped being an elder and has stopped going to meetings started explaining to my uncle why he finally left the watchtower religion.
my dad had tried for years to convert my uncle but never succeeded.
Yes the Vatican is very rich, it is an independent state after all and has been accumulating wealth and power for sixteen hundred years. The JW org is not in the same league but will have to deal with massive payouts all the same. The Boy Scout movement I read somewhere is facing bankruptcy as a consequence of their child abuse claims.
Even without these court cases the JW org has had a significant drop in income. Two possible reasons; firstly the public in the Western World are no longer joining, just the born-ins are bullied into it, and secondly more and more JWs are withholding contributions because they are part of the growing band of PIMOs or reckon they are not getting their money's worth from the org. And quite right too!
bill ,a non witness is killed driving home after work, providing for his family.
he left behind his wife and 3 kids all under 8 years of age.
armageddon comes the very next month.
This idea gets to the heart of the matter. Jehovah's Witnesses lure new members (or used to -- it doesn't work very well any more) by telling them this very thing: Don't worry Jehovah will satisfy all your desires in the new system.
How comforting to imagine that one day everything will be PERFECT. What a dream this is? It's like imagining you will win the national lottery along with all your JW friends and you keep in with them massaging their faith with JW thoughts which in turn supports your belief, your religion , your culture.
But it's just a dream isn't it? Where oh where is there a scrap of evidence that this will happen? The Bible? well frankly it doesn't say God will satisfy everyone or anyone. The Bible is the product of the same racket that religion is. It is cult literature brought together to get people to conform to authority--it, Bible religion, is a political straight jacket.
Religious faith is only a sticking plaster. It is secular society and it is education which has made all the progress in this life, not religious belief.
By contrast to religious thought, humanity has come a long way. We are working hard on our many social problems, malnutrition is now rare when compared to the past, even wars are actually rare events for most of the worlds population. We are making fantastic inroads against disease and have conquered much of infectious disease which plagued mankind in the past. Outstandingly we now have technology based on scientific principles which allow us to enjoy a much longer and happier and pain free life than even our great grand grandparents had. Nevertheless we will not create paradise only make a lot of progress.
If you are not a JW you probably will have enough food, a roof over your head and nowadays it is likely but by no means guaranteed that you will also live to a ripe old age if you eat and drink in moderation and have friends. (And our hearts go out to those who have not had this experience for various reasons). All of that is if you live in the Western World.
Sadly the progress has not been evenly spread over the planet and many of the poorest in Asia and Africa still invoke a deity to direct their lives and put religious imperatives above the value of the life they know.
And so for all of the spectacular progress, the world is still suffering. Here is the point; what other life could there be? For those in dire straights and little knowledge of how the world works, the hope of paradise-- a trouble free life with little effort involved-- looks like what they have always been seeking, indeed what anyone might want.
However, this dream is the opiate which the Watchtower has been peddling for nearly 140 years and like all drugs the existential pain of mental illness, alcoholism, poverty, ill health and depression is merely postponed -- but never actually dealt with.
The JW believer relies purely on the adrenaline of hope, the delusion buttressed by like minds in its own community, and not one of them will ever see any paradise other than the hope and pleasure of dreaming it.
in the last few weeks, i have noticed in (jw.org) the nwt has had new releases in some local languages.. today, i read this: "the new world translation of the christian greek scriptures was released in the kabiye language on december 16, 2018, in kara, togo.
on the same day, in madrid, spain, the books of matthew and john from the new world translation were released in spanish sign language.
the new world translation has been translated in whole or in part into 178 languages.".
Ah! it is Kabiye after all, so obscure is this tongue that it was hard to find mention of it on the internet (or my Google was not playing ball).This is a secondary language after French and is spoken by nearly 1 million impoverished and youthful souls in Togo in tropical West Africa. (You did say Togo wonderment) So it's not Algerian Kabyle nor the Ghanaian ghost Kabiwe.
But JW org: like everything you have ever done-- it is a waste of time and effort.
in the last few weeks, i have noticed in (jw.org) the nwt has had new releases in some local languages.. today, i read this: "the new world translation of the christian greek scriptures was released in the kabiye language on december 16, 2018, in kara, togo.
on the same day, in madrid, spain, the books of matthew and john from the new world translation were released in spanish sign language.
the new world translation has been translated in whole or in part into 178 languages.".
This is just what five million North Eastern Algerians have been gagging for. But the thing we are all in need of now is the sign language version in the Kabyle language!
Of course no body needs or desires to have the JW Bible in these Muslim lands in the first place and the preaching there is done underground. So what a fat lot of wasted time effort and money by the JW org!
This would not be the case if the message they preach were true--but it aint!
I guess that the projects were started when the org still some hope of new recruits in obscure places.I also cynically guess that money was to be had from all sorts of organisations to translate any organisation's texts into particular languages.
do today's elders ever meet with inactive members and pressure them to write a letter disassociating themselves from the congregation stating that, ''you no longer wish to a jehovah witness"?.
i was baptized at the young age of 16. after turning 18, i stopped attending meetings, field service, and all jehovah's witness activities.
i wanted to be with my high school friends, go to rock concerts, have a girlfriend, and live like a normal teen.
Morph, sadly it is a JW trait to believe you are always right. In the real world there is nearly always a case for different perspectives.
did anyone else fall for this one?
i did pre-assembly work in my home town, this was obviously voluntary unpaid work.
i continued to do part-time work helping to support my mom who has been recently abandoned by my elder dad,.
It's a case of the overstuffed, oleaginous, oligarchs at HQ versus the poverty stricken, pioneers with a punishing preaching programme.
https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/2018/12/13/child-sexual-abuse-suspect-arrested-t-o/2305199002/ .
a 69-year-old thousand oaks man facing multiple sexual abuse charges by the ventura county district attorney’s office was arrested last week, authorities said.. steven skyler abbott was arrested dec. 6 after months of investigation into the reported sexual abuse of two thousand oaks girls, according to the ventura county sheriff’s office.
in november, the ventura county district attorney’s office filed multiple felony sexual abuse charges against abbott, including two counts of continuous sexual abuse, one count of lewd acts upon a child and one count of forcible lewd acts upon a child.. he is also facing multiple felony enhancements and special allegations related to his charges.. the investigation began in september, when the sheriff’s agency received a report of suspected child crimes.. a 16-year-old victim alleged that she was sexually abused by abbott when she was between the ages of 5 and 11, sheriff’s officials said.. sexual assault unit detectives subsequently identified a second, 24-year-old victim who reported that abbott had abused her when she was between the ages of 3 and 7, authorities said.. the sheriff’s agency said the victims and their families had come into contact with abbott through the kingdom hall of jehovah’s witnesses in newbury park.. investigators submitted their findings to prosecutors, who filed felony sexual abuse charges against abbot on nov. 16, officials said.. on nov. 28, an arrest warrant was issued for abbott.. the suspect was eventually arrested at his home on dec. 6 and booked into ventura county jail.
Good point Birdie regarding JWs recruiting paedophile prisoners. The JWs will applaud the miraculous "conversion" of the criminal and praise Jerhoover, ignoring the fact that with child abusers, a repetition of the offence is likely --this time inside the congregation.