Anony Mous

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Posts by Anony Mous

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  20

  Defend Your Borders or Listen to the Watchtower?

  by raymond frantz in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  https://youtu.be/dnoww-4jfao?si=ehzmc5-gxqukgn7q.

  with ww3 on the horizon the watchtower is bringing out their best hits on the issue of neutrality and the latest instalment on jw.org with stephen lett has the theme " why ancient israelites were allowed to go to war but as a christian you can't " or to paraphrase for a 2024 audience " why the modern state of israel is allowed all the nuclear weapons to defend their borders but you as a western european or north american you aren't supposed to compliant against open border policies and uncontrolled illegal migration" isn't that the exact same rhetoric or is it my imagination?

  so one of stephen lett's go to arguments is that christians do not take up arms because we don't live in ancient times where israelites had a mandate to occupy the holy land where as we gentile christians we don't.

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  Anony Mous

  What is interesting is that they have historically only promoted opposition to drafts in Western countries while making allowances for service to the state in others.
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  408

  Is Jesus the Creator?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  that's what the word says.

  .

  colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..

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  Anony Mous

  @aqswed: I live up north, we go winter camping with scouts unless it is under 0F, a lot colder than what those shepherds did, in basic tents and outside all day regardless of weather. Sure, we have blankets and cots, but people back then were pretty inventive too, the Roman Empire reached all the way up to Finland with soldiers being stationed in the Netherlands.

  @Duran: it is in the Bible, Roman Catholic Bibles at least:

  1 Maccabees 4:36–39

  Describes the rededication of the temple and the decree to celebrate annually on the 25th of Kislev which in 2024 also falls on December 25th.

  
  

  It is traditionally celebrated with a tree/bush in the home and lights and feasting. Does the symbolism re-appear elsewhere in other religions, off course, because some things always evolve to the same conclusion.
  

  
  

  Christians were known to celebrate the day of the nativity as there is contemporary evidence as early as 200AD in North Africa. Origen also wrote about the celebration of the manger of Jesus in 215AD, as did Justin Martyr (100-165AD). So already in the first and second century Christianity do we see the nativity of Jesus being mentioned and venerated/celebrated, so the theory of pagan alignment much later in the Catholic Church is an outdated anti-historic idea which was much more recently introduced as a ‘fact’, however the Coptic and various other churches that were founded by other apostles as early as 42AD, ALSO celebrate Christmas (although in different forms liturgically).
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  408

  Is Jesus the Creator?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  that's what the word says.

  .

  colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..

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  Anony Mous

  Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.

  As the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor.
  
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  408

  Is Jesus the Creator?

  by Sea Breeze in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  that's what the word says.

  .

  colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..

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  Anony Mous

  Interesting to see the same people use the same tires WTBTS arguments which are easily disproven by Christian apologia that are themselves 2000 years old.

  Christmas can be deduced from scripture, the Jews celebrate similar symbols at the same time. Whether it is factual is irrelevant unless you deny the scripture altogether.

  Shepherds in the field, not a problem in temperate climate where it is 50-60F at night, you know people had fire and the huts they lived in didn’t really have central heating either.
  
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  9

  EMERGENCY ALERT!! UKRAINE LAUNCHES MORE NATO MISSILES INTO RUSSIA . . . WORLD WAR III IS HERE!!!

  by Littleleslie in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  emergency alert!!

  ukraine launches more nato missiles into russia .

  world war iii is here!!!

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  Anony Mous

  @TonusOH: they have been fighting back, they’re halfway back to Kyiv. The media is being pretty quiet about this, but Biden is (or rather the Obama admin acolytes are) fanning the flames.

  As I said before years ago, the goal for Russia was Donbas and Crimea, which they effectively got 10 years ago. After the election of the current president who tried to recapture the “rebels”, they secured it, and then 3 years ago with the invasion of Kyiv demonstrated they had the power, then retreated.

  The war sat at a stalemate for 2 years since because that is what Russia wanted with the hopes Ukraine would run out of steam and come to the table with the independent regions (Russia used the same tactic for nearly 3 centuries in these regions because the geography makes it difficult to assail).

  But if you give Ukraine modern weapons, then geography becomes less of a problem, they can just skip the region and hit Moscow to poke the bear. The dumb part about that is only possible if the West declares open war on Russia directly. The biggest question is whether Europe is willing to go to war or will they roll over like they did in WW1 and WW2. The US will not come to help this time.
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  37

  Prepare to get Pelted by Symbolic Hailstones

  by raymond frantz in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  https://youtu.be/idhmflud3p4?si=9xc4svrhxslduwvz.

  so david schafer a member of the teaching commitee and a helper to the governing body has come out yesterday with a new video that goes through the king of the north, the hailstones message and other things in the wake of the possibility of a ww3 and especially now that tensions are escalating with russia so he is making quite a few end time arguments and i will be expanding on those one by one but today let's see what he has about the hailstones message of the end(video) so this is the paragraph in question, paragraph 14 from article 20 of the watchtower 2020 study edition: "sometime after the start of the great tribulation, “the kings of the entire inhabited earth” will form a coalition of nations.

  (rev.

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  Anony Mous

  Revelation is an adaptation of Daniel - basically Daniel for Christians.

  By the time of Daniel’s writing, the events had already happened, as was Revelation. They were just a religious warning and history lesson for future generations.

  The reason these texts were coded is because in both cases, they couldn’t outright point to the government, so they used beasts.

  This would be similar to writing a religious text for distribution amongst Christians or Buddhist in China or North Korea today, you may want to use creatures like dragons, rabbits and tigers so a censor may not immediately catch on. Who will know 2000 years from now why Winnie the Pooh characters are used in surviving Chinese letters and digital chat/forum posts.
  
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  19

  Reddit thread: ‘This Cult is Dying and it Brings Me Joy’

  by LongHairGal in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is an excellent thread to read that i saw yesterday and the poster hits the nail on the head and tells it so well.

  he is really knocking pimi witnesses and has a lot of well deserved criticisms about them.. he says he hopes at this point that they never wake up….

  i am inclined to feel the same.

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  Anony Mous

  People have been saying that for literally a century, yet they keep adapting. They have found themselves a niche between a death cult (few people are actually drinking kool-aid) and a new age religion. They are a parasite living off the fear provided by mainstream media.
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  11

  Revising History

  by no-zombie in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  while i'm aware of wt books being revised without noting the differences on newer editions (the truth book is a classic example of this) ... is there evidence of the writing committee revising the online versions of wt articles, as compared to the printed editions?.

  if there is a previous thread on this topic, just link it ... as these is no need to reinvent the wheel.. thanks.

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  Anony Mous

  This topic has come up several times. Yes, there are instances where the WTBTS directed destroying unbundled Watchtowers in JW libraries in favor of the bundled versions. This controversy has been the case since the Watchtower Library came out on CDROM, despite having the capacity to hold all articles going back a century, they intentionally did not put in anything referencing 1975 and the various books, Truth, Everlasting Life, Knowledge have been revised multiple times both in print, on CD and online. Many of the older books have since been completely removed online and were directed destroyed from JW personal libraries.

  There was at some point someone who decoded the proprietary format the WTBTS made the CDs in, so you should be able to get the CDROM from year to year and compare them with some code to see all the changes that are made to the historical documents.

  I know they did it for the “Evolution” book, because they were getting sued for misquoting a pre-eminent scholar (I think they did the same to atheist Richard Dawkins later on, making it seem like he is arguing for a god)

  The 1989 Watchtower used the term "in our 20th century" in the magazine, but this was changed to "in our day" for the bound volume and subsequent CD library.

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/105270/question-blondie
  

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/101291/itemized-list-revisions-daniel-book

  https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/196792/blatant-misquote-origin-life-booklet
  
  
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  171

  Alteration of Revelation 3:14 in the 4th century to support the emerging Trinity doctrine

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  in an earlier thread another poster asserted that there is no evidence that revelation 3:14 played a part in the 4th controversy that led to the trinity doctrine.

  this was claimed as evidence that the description of jesus as “the beginning of the creation of god” in the verse was not understood to mean that jesus was god’s first creation.

  the scholarly greek–english lexicon of the new testament & other early christian literature 3e (2001) by bauer, arndt, gingrich, and danker, in its latest edition states that “first creation” is indeed the probable meaning of the greek phrase.

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  Anony Mous

  @duran: the last post you linked to the MEV version of the Bible (a retranslation of the KJV that attempts to be inclusive for modern Christian thoughts) and stated that you could not be rebutted because you only made claims from scripture as if what you had quoted up to that point could not be rebutted (claim to authority)

  But it is exactly the WTBTS interpretation and translation of scripture that is being rebutted. Nobody is saying that the scripture doesn’t state certain things, but that in and of itself does not provide any meaning to the text. The WTBTS uses the same format to “stump” lay people that aren’t educated on Biblical/Christian history, translation but then in that interpretation you are yourself jumping back and forth between literal and figurative speech. You can’t have it both ways, either the entire thing is figurative and the meaning of the numbers have a meaning that has probably been lost to time, or meant something specific related to the customs and culture of that day (eg 1000 years from now, people will find reference to Swifties, which without cultural context could mean lots of things). Or it is read literal and then you can’t turn days into years and beasts into specific organizations that did not exist yet and you likewise can’t just jump from sentence to sentence across books and string together a coherent story.

  Pick one of the books you want to make an argument about and then from the same book, string together the context about the idea that was being conveyed. If the King of the North is not the widely believed to be physically the King of the North at the time of writing, then prove that from the book of Daniel. The context of Daniel then would make clear that this is not written for the Jews as a warning and message of hope, John of Patmos largely rewrote the story for early Christians with similar messaging, which clearly does not indicate the same message because the numbers are different, but the story itself is important. Were it a prophecy, the numbers would be the same, except there is pretty strong evidence the numbers 666 was a transliteration of Nero Caesar, likely Daniel had similar coding which was lost to time. So the story stayed the same, the characters changed, it is possible history repeats itself but those numbers would have to change for every large empire.
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  28

  Pre-Nicene christians and the trinity

  by joey jojo in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this is just a quick summary that might be useful regarding the threads about the trinity currently on the board.. in 325 ce, the nicene council was called by constantine to settle schisms within the christian church.

  the argument about the nature of jesus in relation to god was one of the big problems that needed resolution.

  at first, constantine told the 2 main players, alexander and arius to sort it out between themselves, as he, constantine didnt see it as overly important.

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  Anony Mous

  @SeaBreeze, my point you did not understand: People are missing the point entirely.

  The question was about the trinity at the Nicene Council, the one Arian participated in, he lost the argument, but did not argue there was no trinity, he believed there was one supreme god in the beginning that then created and made himself into the triune god as his first creation. This isn’t too crazy in the eyes of a people that largely came from polytheism.

  As far as the arguments of a trinity being pagan: yes, that is an argument I have made prior to the fact many religions have come to the same conclusion about deities and their connection to humanity, both influenced and independent, you can find references to various trinity even in cultures that did not have influence from Christians or Greeks and Romans. Therefore my claim is that scientifically speaking there is a basic symbolic “truth” to it, for stable societies to exist people should understand that a God is not disconnected but has progressive human (youth, vigor, sons) properties and a logos (spirit, word, teachings) and a father (wisdom, knowledge) property that needs to be balanced and influence each other for humans to thrive.