Posts by Phizzy

31

WT says 'Church Fathers were leading teachers'

by youdontknowhim in

was it jehovahs witnesses who acknowledge the church father as leading teachers?

this is a very interesting statement by justin.

do you accept origen as an authority when he said jesus is our god?

Phizzy

" The WTS cherrypicks their quotes. " YES ! but the average J.W does not realise this, and hence is fooled, cherry-picking, or "quote mining" is blatant lying.

I first became sort of semi-conscious that this was going on when I was an active believing J.W but one thing that was something that worried me and started my "waking up" process was a quote in the old Trinity Brochure, gawd, how many years ago was that ? The quote interested me, so I looked up the full quote, and amazing ! to innocent gullible me at the time, the quote in full said the OPPOSITE of what the edited short quote in the Brochure appeared to say ! A Red Flag for me, there were many more subsequently.

The cherry-picking of what the Church fathers said is another case , of course much of what they said is the opposite of what J.W org. teaches, but also the fact that the "Fathers" disagree heavily among themselves makes them useless as a group, as Authorities of Christian Doctrine and Thought.

31

WT says 'Church Fathers were leading teachers'

by youdontknowhim in

was it jehovahs witnesses who acknowledge the church father as leading teachers?

this is a very interesting statement by justin.

do you accept origen as an authority when he said jesus is our god?

Phizzy

Thanks Earnest, that Video was fascinating, and with high Production values, but being only 14 minutes or so long, was not as detailed or precise in some ways as I would have liked, but that's just me I guess.

As usual it was made for the ordinary J.W, and perhaps one who has an above average interest (for a J.W) in this kind of thing.

It is of note to me that they left the quote from a Scholar that said Priestley's group had gone back to "the original manuscripts" without comment.

Not surprising, they want J.W's to take from this affirmation that perhaps the NWT is justified in its renderings by the work of Priestley & Co.

No actual original MSS for any of the Bible exist of course, and I am guessing Priestley's Group only had access to, for the N.T, the ones available at the start of the 18th Century, I doubt they had access to Codex Alexandrinus, so would have been reliant on the MSS mentioned above.

Sadly I doubt Robert Garnham's writings will be published any time soon, it would be fascinating to read, maybe a PDF or similar may appear at some time.

The very well made and informative Video has traces of J.W Mind Control in it that will be taken by the average J.W as confirmation, whereas the Theology of Priestley and Garnham et al was what Russell and Rutherford espoused, most of whose writings the J.W org. now rejects.

Thanks again for your Post.

31

WT says 'Church Fathers were leading teachers'

by youdontknowhim in

was it jehovahs witnesses who acknowledge the church father as leading teachers?

this is a very interesting statement by justin.

do you accept origen as an authority when he said jesus is our god?

Phizzy

TTWSYF asked about doubt on how much contact between the church fathers and the Apostles there could have been : I can't locate at present the Quote I was thinking of, but will return if I do and Post it, but meanwhile.

This one bit I found, and copied, I can't remember from where or who wrote it ! :

" The length and detail of this passage make it virtually irresistible for critics to bypass the layers of embedded discourse and treat this comment about the Gospels of Mark and Mathew as if they were a self-contained block of a tradition. It is not. The elder’s comment about Mark was presumably uttered not out of the blue but within some larger discourse context. This context is lost to us. Indeed, what the elder said is not by any means intact, but extracted, edited, and embedded by Papias into a different context of his own creation. Furthermore, Papias’s presentation of these remarks also does not come down to us intact, but only as preserved by Eusebius—and Eusebius’s agenda is different from Papias’s. Eusebius too extracted, edited, and embedded this statement into a context of his own making. We have to be cautious in interpreting it. As one scholar put it, “Papias says only what Eusebius wants him to say.” As a result, the most famous statement in antiquity about the origins of Mark and Matthew is a joint production of three different people, living at three different times, with three different purposes: the elder, Papias, and Eusebius. All of them have contributed to this passage in their different ways, and all of them had different purposes for discussing their writings. If we are to make sense of this, we will have do what scholars of fragmentary works have long known. We must deal with the fundamental issue of context."

This is another : Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses):

Many scholars have been unable to believe that Aristion and John the Elder had been personal disciples of Jesus, usually either because these scholars have understood Papias to be speaking of a time after the death of “the elders” and so presumably beyond the lifetime of Jesus’ contemporaries, or because they have not sufficiently distinguished the time about which Papias is writing from the time at which he is writing. Once we recognize that, at the time to which he refers, most of the disciples of Jesus had died but two were still alive and were among the prominent Christian teachers in Asia, we can see that the time about which he writes must be late in the first century. There is nothing in the least improbable about this."

30

Moving on in a new chapter

by redsetter2 in

moving on is the hardest thing anyone has to cope with.. i have officially left the org.

and now it feels my family have been waiting to do this for a long time, officially shunning me, even though they were practically doing this whilst i was still in.. it feels like i've accomplished a victory and at the same time i feel guilty i was tangled up in communication with someone who "hid who they were" claiming to leak information from bethel.

i got the call from the man who i thought i worked with.

Phizzy

Those who carry Cognitive Dissonance for all of the years that those Charlatans have are masters at ignoring its prodding, I know, I ignored my Cog. Diss, for nearly six decades !

But true, theirs must be worse than mine was. But it was my Cog, Diss, that led me to question, find out the truth about "Da truf", and leave.

The Org. is now "Moving on In A New Chapter" of their chequered History.

For anyone personally moving on in to their very own Chapter of Life, by getting free of all of the baleful influence of the Org. I wish you all the best ! Enjoy your freedom of mind and action, and use that freedom well !

31

WT says 'Church Fathers were leading teachers'

by youdontknowhim in

was it jehovahs witnesses who acknowledge the church father as leading teachers?

this is a very interesting statement by justin.

do you accept origen as an authority when he said jesus is our god?

Phizzy

Has the Org. said anything in recent years about the Church Fathers ? Of course they selectively chose quotes that suited their own Interpretation of Scripture and ignored all that did not agree with "Present Truth" as they call it.

Quote Mining like that , while seemingly approving all that the the Church Fathers said, is dangerous once a person reads the Church Fathers for themselves.

Those guys supposedly heard what they taught and believed from someone who supposedly knew the Apostles, but modern Scholarship has put those claims in doubt, and the fact that one Church Father will diametrically oppose what another teaches would mean the Apostles themselves were divided as to what was true.

153

When JW.org drops 607BCE...

by Nathan Natas in

probably everyone else thought of this long ago, but i, being an "independent thunker" thunk of it just a coupla weeks ago.. we all know that since the year zero (on the fredfranzian calendar) the wtb&ts has defied archaeology and insisted that jerusalem was destroyed in 607 bce, even though the physical evidence shows that 587 bce is a more likely date.

in fact, the book "the gentile times reconsidered: have jehovah's witnesses been wrong all along about 607 bce?

" by carl olof jonsson and rud persson made this conversation public.. it is a difference of 20 years.

Phizzy

D.o.C, they have been leaning that way for a while, the only problem with that, which they will have to ignore and still do as you say, is that the whole "End Times" thing then hangs on a thread, they have got away for years though with their Eisegetical interpretation of the words of Jesus about the generation that was standing listening to him, that generation died, and nothing had happened, the prophecy failed.

Every other prophecy of the End Time is similarly time constrained, EVERY Bible Writer makes it plain he believed his predictions would come true shortly after the time he wrote them, all those predictions FAILED !

But J.W's, in common with other "End Time" loving Christians, will ignore the proper interpretation and understanding of Scripture, so the tenuous claims of the Org. will still convince the gullible.

4

SHOWSOWN IN NORWAY: MORE NEWS on the coming appeal

by raymond frantz in

https://youtu.be/4lhk30a1fxc?si=h9baqeu8gmm7vbm0.

the cne.news has come out with an article on the developments in norway and the aftermath of the deregistration of the watchtower there only last month.

cne stands for christian news in europe and it is a christian news site for continental europe that.

Phizzy

Thanks raymond ! and thanks for the link to "Updates" and the full Article. I noted two things,

One, the J.W spokesman made a silly error in saying the state could not give one example of a "child" * who suffered from the D. F'ing practice. The Lawyers will now line up a few ! * I presume a "child" in Norway is anyone under the age of 18 ?

The other thing I note is that all the objections to the Ruling ignore the salient fact that Human Rights always have precedence over religious belief and practice, or should do.

The Court is not interfering with the J.W (mis) interpretation of Scripture, they are simply upholding the Human Rights the child should have under law. J.W's are still free to interpret Scripture as they like, but not to pick one or two verses so as to ignore the Human Rights such as the Right to Family Life, the Right to Freedom of Conscience etc.

The J.W's will cherry-pick and ignore other Scriptures they could use if they chose to, and then justify all sorts of things.

They can easily say they have had some New Light, and only Adults can be DF'd , as in N.T times, those who were disciplined that way were all Adults.

Despite what some think, if this goes to the ECHR, the issue of Human Rights will beat them without further modification to their policy of Shunning.

21

New ministry, you don’t give a witness

by Mikejw in

there are assignments on the life and ministry school now where they are suggested to just talk to people without giving a witness.. they are supposed to practice starting conversations with strangers and listening to them to talk about whatever they want to talk about .

there is an assignment this week where the conversation ends without giving a witness.

jws don’t look like jws anymore and now they don’t actually preach.. you could get bearded men with sweaters or other such tops and women in pants or slacks coming upto you in the park or on the street and starting a conversation with you.. then you hear them listening to you and talking about whatever they think that you wanted to talk about .

Phizzy

THIS !! :

"...if you joined a community knitting, chess or some kind of sporting club you might find people with less of an agenda, than those at the Kingdom Hall. Plus you might actually learn, that most worldly people aren't the violent, immoral individuals we were lead to believe."

21

New ministry, you don’t give a witness

by Mikejw in

there are assignments on the life and ministry school now where they are suggested to just talk to people without giving a witness.. they are supposed to practice starting conversations with strangers and listening to them to talk about whatever they want to talk about .

there is an assignment this week where the conversation ends without giving a witness.

jws don’t look like jws anymore and now they don’t actually preach.. you could get bearded men with sweaters or other such tops and women in pants or slacks coming upto you in the park or on the street and starting a conversation with you.. then you hear them listening to you and talking about whatever they think that you wanted to talk about .

Phizzy

SO ! the Org. has finally caught up with me ! I used to do this kind of "ministry" 30 years or so ago. I would be conscientious and move the conversation in to talking about the Bible, which I doubt many J.W's today will bother to do, but I used to prefer to work alone, as I knew other J.W's would frown upon my method. And now it is Official Policy !

I remember one lady I called on, I had called there before, and when the conversation came to a close, she said to me "I don't mind you coming around and talking to me about the Bible, but I can't stand those Jehovah's Witnesses !".

This is great news, as although the Org's intention of keeping J.W's busy, and thinking they are doing something productive will be accomplished, hardly any Converts will be made.

Above you said " you wouldn’t even know they were JWs." I bet I would ! having been "in" for all of those bloody wasted decades, I can spot 'em no trouble.

This is good news though, as again we can clearly see in this the desperation of the Org. to make new converts, and yet everything they are trying will not get any dramatic , or possibly even measurable, results.

J.W Org. is moribund, really "The End" cannot be that many years away, but it will not be the End of the World, but the End of the Org.

I hope I live long enough to see it !

Broken Marriages in your Congregation,

by Phizzy in

my questions on this is prompted by pondering on the number of broken marriages that happened in my old congregation over a 30 year period, from 1980 to 2010 approx.. over the whole ww "brotherhood" divorce and broken marriages is about average i would think, but in my old congo.

the number of such events was phenomenally high for such a small group.

very high in comparison to other churches or social groups in this area.. in 1980 we were a slightly larger than average congo, and being somewhat unique, because of our very liberal attitudes, we attracted a lot to join from areas outside of our "territory" many of these may have had marriage problems when they joined us, many of the home grown ones married very young etc.

Phizzy

My questions on this is prompted by pondering on the number of broken marriages that happened in my old Congregation over a 30 year period, from 1980 to 2010 approx.

Over the whole WW "Brotherhood" Divorce and broken Marriages is about average I would think, but in my old Congo. the number of such events was phenomenally high for such a small group. Very high in comparison to other Churches or Social Groups in this area.

In 1980 we were a slightly larger than average Congo, and being somewhat unique, because of our very liberal attitudes, we attracted a lot to join from areas outside of our "Territory" many of these may have had marriage problems when they joined us, many of the home grown ones married very young etc. which may account for some of the marriage problems.

Over that period we grew to such an extent the Congo. was divided in two.

But about close to 50% of the marriages had problems, some stayed together after an Affair had occurred, others divorced.

Was this unusual in the U.K ? was our Congo. somewhat unique in this too ?

What was your experience in your Congo, or nearby ones ?