Hi Insearchoftruth,
You said:
Today's topic was Do All People Go to Heaven, and my wife says it was very interesting and she learned some new things.....Now I would like to be able to plant some seeds for further research here and I think this is a good topic, but I am pretty unlearned in these matters, so any help is appreciated. Do any of you have ideas of what the sister would most likely have focused on as well as some good areas where I could have my wife read full sections of the bible, rather than proof texts, to fine out what the Bible is really saying.
Have you seen this article refuting the Watch Tower's 144,000 claim? Where Is The Great Crowd Serving God?
http://www.xjw.com/where.html
Here some text from the Watchtower showing in their own article that the so called "literal" 144,000 of Revelation 7:4; 14:1, would have been completely filled in the first few centuries had it been a literal number, long before the Watchtower's 'full up' date of 1935 came. Christian martyrs numbered over 901,000 just in this article, and there were hundreds of thousands—if not millions—more who were converted to Christianity, and served their lives faithfully in addition to the 901,000 brutally killed and listed in this article.
Here is the article condensed, with the most relevant bits quoted:
(Watchtower 1951, 1 September, p. 516)"Nero saw to it that the first of these terrible persecutions set the pace for the rest. At once he caused Christians to be rounded up, summarily condemned and put to death in the most barbaric manner conceivable. Some were thrown to the fierce beasts in the public arena, others were sewed in animal skins and left to the fury of wild dogs, many were crucified, and still others were garbed in combustible materials and ignited to become human torches lighting the gardens of Nero by night. It was in this persecution that the apostle Paul was martyred.
"Brief respite followed the death of Nero, but by the latter years of the first century the second great persecution, under Emperor Domitian, flared up. It is said that in the year 95 alone some 40,000 suffered martyrdom . . . Diocletian assumed the crown A.D. 284. At first he seemed friendly to the Christians, but in the year 303 he gave in to persuasion and opened the tenth persecution, probably the most ferocious of all. Suffocation by smoke, forcible drinking of melted lead, mass drownings and burnings, breaking on the rack of men and women alike ran the empire with blood. In a single month 17,000 were slain. In the province of Egypt alone, 144,000 such professed Christians died by violence in the course of this persecution, in addition to another 700,000 who died as a result of fatigues encountered in banishment or under enforced public works . . . The Devil's vicious assaults by violence against Christianity continued through the Dark Ages, the Reformation and right into the present days. Only the hand of the persecutor, not the basic reasons for persecuting, has changed . . . But for all of this, it is noteworthy that many pagans, even officers in the army, were converted to Christianity by the unwavering faith of the Christians while enduring the cruellest torture . . . The Christian stand of complete separateness from the world and its systems stood out in refusal of military service as in the case of the young Christian Maximilian, who protested that he had taken the badge of Christ and could not as well accept that of the world."
As you can see the Watchtower's argument and doctrine falls once you see how many died, and died horribly for Jesus, and then you have all the others who lived out the entire life as true Christians.
Poster Bennyk makes some great observations about the number of heavenly saved being greater than the number of natural Israelites, which numbered millions.—Galatians 4:26-27
The book of Acts mentions many thousands who were saved during the initial thirty years:
• 3,000 (Acts 2:41)
• daily saved (Acts 2:47)
• 5,000 (Acts 4:4)
• many (Acts 9:42; 17:12; 19:18)
• As many as were ordained to eternal life believed (Acts 13:48)
• Many ten thousands [lit. myriads] (Acts 21:20. This is a very important verse. In the NWT it is translated "thousands" in the text, but in the large reference edition of the NWT a footnote reads: "Lit., ' myriads: tens of thousands."' By adding "many" to "tens of thousands" you get a very large number of believers.)
Adding together all these mentioned in the Book of Acts alone could easily come to one hundred thousand.
Another point: If 20,000 JWs in 1919 could grow to 5 million in 1990, a period of 70 years, is the WTS taking credit for being able to evangelize so much more in 70 years than Jesus Christ and his apostles? The book of Revelation was written about 70 years after the founding of the church. Are we to believe that the pure church, without elements of apostasy to receive "new light" on and get rid of, could not realize even 144,000 conversions in 70 years?
Are we to believe, also, that this "pure church" was built upon such a weak foundation that it immediately collapsed upon the death of the original apostles? Are we to think that their evangelizing efforts were a complete, monumental failure?
Regards,
Nemesis
