wow this is interesting!
i think how much emphasis this puts on "loyalty" shows their is an issue.
they're trying to plug the wholes as much and quickly as possible.
This is intense bombardment of loyalty indoctrination. It is overkill ...and the JW will think the message means loyalty to the organisation first and foremost. After all Jehovah is now the same as the G.O.D.
Why on earth should anyone want be loyal to the JW org? They have never said or done anything useful to anybody ever... Just a self interested bunch of money grabbing businessmen in a religion scam.
Fortunately, some will attend and wake up to TTATT.
by its own mandate in the founding of the watchtower magazine in 1879, it was set up to proclaim the arrival of jc in the heavens according to the then currently failed adventist claim for jesus' return the year 1874.. russell's catalyst for all that came afterwards was his pet claim (in so many words) "aha but jc did in fact come... but came invisibly!
" he added without sound evidence that it took four years for jc to come to rule from the heavens after his arrival there and that then was said to be in 1878. .
within forty biblical years from the arrival date, russell promised, with hopes even higher than his bank account, that god’s kingdom with christ at the helm would rule the earth in the absence of all worldly opposition.
By its own mandate in the founding of the Watchtower magazine in 1879, it was set up to proclaim the arrival of JC in the heavens according to the then currently failed Adventist claim for Jesus' return the year 1874.
Russell's catalyst for all that came afterwards was his pet claim (in so many words) "aha but JC did in fact come... but came invisibly!" He added without sound evidence that it took four years for JC to come to rule from the heavens after his arrival there and that then was said to be in 1878.
Within forty Biblical years from the arrival date, Russell promised, with hopes even higher than his bank account, that God’s kingdom with Christ at the helm would rule the Earth in the absence of all worldly opposition. Opposers would all be dead and destroyed by 1914, which would be the grand visible effect of the heavenly kingdom. Religious words and hope are proved to be cheap and cheerful... but worthless.
The abject failure of this wild speculation did not stop the rot. The entrepreneur and showman Russell was personally distressed at first by his error but the WTBTS as we are all too well aware, kept postponing the crazy beliefs and pressing them before the hopeful readers. "It’s coming very soon!” was the doomdsay merchants street cry. But the business department noted that this baby was making a mint of Dollars so why stop while there are suckers who want it?
I suggest that there is no evidence whatsoever that God’s spirit (a bizarre and unprovable concept in itself) could be upon the Watchtower organisation.
If the Watchtower is God’s mouthpiece and the "end time" its key doctrine; how could Holy Spirit repeatedly get the dates and the events always wrong, resulting in total failure during the whole 136 years of its 'divine' prophesying?
What conclusions can we draw?
what a fine privelege to support jehovah with our valuable things.
what a fine privelege to support jehovah with our valuable things.
Russell at least saw the possibility of ending the religion he started.
Why don't the GB take the hint that the time is now to close its doors and re-distribute its assets?
It is after all like early Christianity, a completely failed doomsday cult.
under the exterior of being an ex- witness site, is this site simply converting atheism?.
i pose the question, because many come here in distress and insecurity with the realization that the w.t is wrong but still retain a belief in god.
my personal opinion is the threads on god are not challenged by an atheists personal animosity to believers, they are challenged and become confrontational because the atheist wants an elaboration and factual proof to a believers faith.. is this unreasonable?
The normal route an ex-JW takes is to wake up to TTATT; that the org is deficient and wrong and just another religion.
The idea that “Jehovah is God” nevertheless remains a while for probably the majority of us. Those needy of supernatural help remain believers and about one third of ex-JWs, so I understand, keep a faith in the regular Christian doctrines outside of Witnessdom.
After a while of having left the JW community and indoctrination and having seen the cultic nature and mental slavery to naive ideas, many of us also have come to realize that the focus of Jehovah and Jesus are also lacking a solid basis outside of the mind.
I imagine this is the norm (corrections and refinements welcome) and personally I warmly welcome all ex-JWs irrespective of my own present thinking. We were all damaged by this cult and many need a refuge like this site with helpful words from our fellow escapees.
when jerusalem was captured and its temple was burned by pagan king in 586 bce (or 607?
), it was a theological crisis for the jews.
then a concept of messiah (king-priest) who will restore everything was evolved.
I agree strongly with the idea that religious belief evolves according to events. It might be true to say that all things change over time.
Some things in real life do not change or change at a rate too slow to observe such as the sequence and structure of geological formations. Gemstones must be an exception to the rule of all things changing. Contrast this with the ever changing nature of ideas and beliefs.
Most certainly Jewish defeats galvanized the desire for a heroic redeemer especially in the book Isaiah, where driven by loss and impotence, the writer imagines the arrival of a glorious all conquering saviour.
The Bible from start to finish is a reflection of
the thinking and beliefs of people at all the evolving stages of their cultures and ideas
over time. Starting with offering the gods blood sacrifice and developing from polytheism through henolatry (worshipping one particular god) finishing in Revelation in a riot of visionary
monotheism jam packed with Greek and not so philosophical mumbo-jumbo.
So we need to be mindful of language too and note that it also evolves, such as seen in the contempt put into the word pagan by the Roman church to distance itself from the true folk origins of Christianity. (Pagan simply meaning "of the village people" in Latin and by inference "the uneducated").
A significant mistake would be to imagine that the career of the Jews has any special meaning to it. The Bible is just their dreams writ large.
by no means is this a heartwarming "experience" illustrating how an ex-jw skillfully "reached the heart" of a current jw, moving them to re-examine their belief system.
that won't be my take on my half hour visit with an elder's wife last sunday.
no one scored points here as is almost always the case in these interactions.. we live at the extreme southern tip of texas, on the u.s.-mexico border in a city of about 200,000. twenty years ago there were 20 spanish language congregations, 2 english.
TMS, as Freddo has just said, I think your neutrally delivered account of the gross injustice with God's favouritism of David in the Bathsheba affair, could well have pierced her JW "force field".
These Bible stories create the mind set for the GB... it seems that God does not care about children all that much, they are like non-believers: expendable.
l guess we all have our own reasons and thought it would give insight to others considering going to reconsider and not go.
Although this information had been systematically hidden by the Roman Church for obvious reasons, Jesus was simply the name applied to long succession of half-human half-god saviour figures or "christs" who would save people from death by their own sacrificial death.
These primitive god-man cults should have been consigned to history where they belong.
In the second century these words were attributed to the "christ" called Jesus:
"There are some of those standing here who will not taste death before they have seen the kingdom of God already come in power." Mark 9;1 NEB
Jesus got it wrong. No subsequent events could ever make the statement true. Christianity and all religion is a misdirection and a colossal waste of time.
The memorial supper at the spring equinox with symbols of blood and flesh of the saviour was copied by Jesus christianity from the cult of Mithra (the "good shepherd") where it had been a principal ritual since about 390BCE.
And anyway, human sacrifice is not my cup of tea.
i never thought i would admit it, but i don't.
i might superstitiously have some kind of doubt but digging a bit deeper in my heart i really don't believe in god.
as a human i could never just sit and watch people be tortured, live years of abuse, suffer from illness and disabilities and all the other awful things people have to endure day after day without doing something about it.
among puzzlements of sitting down with jw reps with "what the bible really teaches", was the assertion that babylon was destroyed - forever - just like it says in these here chapters and verses.
then the nwt claims that peter i & ii were written from babylon.
but beside that, ancient greek, hebrew and roman writings are full of reference to babylon as an important center.
Kepler thanks for bringing the Babylon history to the surface. JWs are so gullible they cannot even imagine that a factual, coherent understanding of history exists... just their own narrow viewpoint.
The painting of Alexander’s entry to Babylon by Charles Le Brun (from which a copy was made for a grand tapestry) is a stonking example of Baroque art, it focuses on the unbridled and worshipful homage to a classical leader hero and by deliberate implication; to the “Sun King” Louis. No wonder Le Brun became Louis XIV’s favourite painter. Baroque art in this painting is serving the interests of total political power. (If you like paintings; look her up and enjoy being charmed by Le Brun’s great-great nephew’s wife Louise Vigee Le Brun).
Getting back to your main point; the JW trolley men ask, ”What does the Bible really mean?” This question is loaded! It implies that the Bible has a meaning but is a puzzle which requires explaining.
Put this in context: with what; thirty or forty thousand sects each claiming that their particular interpretation is the only one which presses God’s button. What a mess, what a disaster!
The Bible HAS NO MEANING! It was second hand to start with... Its eclectic nature precludes it having a meaning since it is drawn from the established literature of most of the significant powers of the Middle East where Israel was and ever remained a pip-squeak tribal non-entity. It is full of nationalistic romance and dreams and is far from factual... it contradicts itself...it is not divine.
The Bible has every semblance of pathetic human weaknesses such as misogyny, hate, retribution, homophobia, xenophobia and an insistent streak of masochism and it majors in genocide. Even psychopaths tend not to be so comprehensive in their hate for their fellowmen compared to the leading characters in the Bible and especially Jehovah!
But JWs don’t think for themselves. They don’t generally realise that the most compelling Biblical commentary on the downfall of Babylon was written not long before the Christian era in the book called Daniel.By using historical precedents it made portentous prophecies written four centuries after the events had already occurred! Some prophecy! Like the destruction of Babylon, prophecy is a delusion and the Bible is a fraudulent.
This is the meaning of the Bible: A book written for the gullible who do not think for themselves and who cannot live without a fantasy hope to maintain their grip on life.
