James,
I was born in 1963. No worries, were still young!
Hard to compete with your # 3 !
Seriously, birth of children are at the top for me ...with 1 or 2 others.
Posts by Perry
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Your best memories, in or out of the BORG...
by James Mixon ini know many will be the day you left the wt organization.
i'm sure we have a lot.
of good memories, but the ones that sticks out in your mind.. 1) the birth of my children.. 2) the day i stepped foot on the plane that flew me home from viet nam.. 3)and the day in high school i made the winning point against our cross town rival.
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Who Really is ..... The Blood Washed Multitude (Great Crowd) ?
by Perry infor jw's the issue has never been who the faithful and wise servant (f&ds) was.
that is just misdirection and sleight of hand.
it is plain from the context that this was obviously a rhetorical question meant for self introspection.
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Perry
Sorry Perry but that movie is far more memorable than the 4 Gospels combined.
Oh, I don't really think so. The New Testament is the world's best selling book by far. And this rebuttal to the copy cat accusation is pretty well dispelled here.
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That's it! The Jesus stories are most reasonably explained as myth. History makes this obvious.
by Island Man ina careful examination of the historical pagan religious context existing at the time of the genesis of christianity leads any reasonable person to conclude that jesus is just another one of several similar myths.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7teoa9ark.
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Perry
The very fact that you and millions of Christians need to make the choice over which version to accept should really demonstrate the silliness of trying to argue for the infallibility of the bible. Which bible?
Mephis,
In the very beginning Satan told a lie. He misquoted God. To think that he would not continue to launch attacks on the word of God is ridiculous. That is his gig, lying and deception. Sinaiticus & Vaticanus look like chicken scratch. Everyone agrees that they were altered over and over for centuries. When you throw them out (and the 10% that are based upon them) you are left with the remaining 90% which are in virtual total agreement.
That settled the issue for me. If you want to believe that we can't know the truth, go ahead. That is certainly your choice to make. I have no problem with that.
However, just by studying the early church fathers and their writings (and they wrote A LOT) in just the first 3 centuries, it is easy to determine exactly what sound doctrine is, where and when heretical doctrine came in; and who was the culprit.
The early church fathers usually wrote a letter and quoted much scripture to warn congregations about the error. To illustrate just how much the early church fathers wrote, ALL of the New Testament can be reconstructed from their writings.
Here's an excellent book on this topic.
Ancient Church Fathers: What the Disciples of the Apostles Taught Paperback – July 17, 2010
If you took all their quotes, WHICH PREDATE SINAITICUS AND VATICANUS, what you would end up with is the Majority Text - Basically the readings in the King James Bible.
Regarding the contradictions you claim in the New Testament, I have researched most claims and found them to be baseless. You got one you would like to discus? Open a thread, I'm game.
BTW, the TRUTH is a person
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Child care and abortion - two examples of the complexity of the issue
by fulltimestudent inin a perfect world, one would hope that no woman would need to consider an abortion.
there is unfortunately, no perfect world and there does not seem there will ever be a perfect world.
so consider .... 1. a child rape case in paraguay.. ... but the plot unfolding in paraguay is so dark and twisted that it is currently tearing the south american country apart.it began on april 21 when a mother brought her 10-year-old daughter to a public hospital.
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Perry
SSC,
The United States is one of the only countries in the world that allows partial birth abortion. It is an abomination.
It seems to me that allowing abortion in cases of 1.) rape, 2.) incest, 3.) danger to mother and 4.) banning it altogether after the 1st Trimester, would be the bare minimum that everyone of all stripes could agree upon.
The abortion laws in the united states are utterly detestable.
On another note, I was invited to a fund raiser for a community pregnancy center that offers free services. Seems like every business owner in town was there to eat and write a check. $1000.00 a plate was asked.
Gianna was the guest speaker at the event. Let me just tell you that she needed help up to the podium. But, once she got there, she delivered one of the most amazing speeches I'd ever heard. During that speech she said something that made me stop all my whining and sniffling about the loss of my JW family when I accepted Christ.
She said that as an adult she tried to establish a relationship with her biological mother. It went okay for a while until the mother tried to to stop her career as a public speaker. When she refused, her mother, the one that unsuccessfully tried to abort her, told her that she was a disgrace to her entire family.
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My thoughts re Pope Francis
by ctrwtf inso today i'm watching cbs news coverage of the popes visit to america.
first, let me say i'm not religious at all at this point in my life.
still a few things stood out to me about the news coverage of his visit.. first thing i wondered was if a gb member happened to garnish this much press (unlikely) what would his message be?
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Perry
It really stands out in contrast with the "you are all gonna die" dogma of the wits.
Looking back, the phobia over dying seems so weird. I mean we are all going to die right? It is astonishing to me that the Watchtower could hold something as normal and commonplace as death over its members like they did. Jesus warned about judgment after we die. But death is everywhere, always has been.
Who knows? Maybe I'll convert. At least if I ever disagree with the Pope, I won't lose every relationship that I ever had.
The Catholic Church wasn't always like this. For nearly a thousand years, the RCC would confiscate your wealth or worse burn you at the stake if you denied the "real presence" , salvation at infant baptism, Grace PLUS works, and a number of other things.
Dozens of Popes in a row organized and murdered over 50 Million people throughout Europe. Many non-Catholic bible-believing groups were the primary focus of their murderous rampage.
In only one crusade, two million Albigenses were killed. How many must there have been altogether, and how many millions more must have been killed during the entire Middle Ages! Another source writes The Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229), under Popes Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX., was one of the bloodiest tragedies in human history. … The number of Albigenses that perished in the twenty years’ war is estimated at from one to two million. -- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XIV.
The Albigenses were peaceful Christians trying to love God and their neighbor as themselves. They were a REMARKABLE PEOPLE. - Wiped out by the Popes. Gone yes, but not forgotten.
The world should never forget.
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Did anyone learn the truth from having their prayers answered by a knock at the door and then eventually leave the JWs?
by truthseeker ini know of one person who had a difficult life, prayed for help, got the knock at the door, got baptized and eventually left the jws believing they were a cult.. has this happened to any of you?
and if so, did you still feel your prayers were answered at that time?.
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Perry
Left the JW's at age 12 or 13 mentally. By age 23 I was done with living without God in my life and prayed and prayed. I joined the JW's for 8 years then quit cold turkey. It never occurred to me to seek Jesus on my own.
I don't blame God for the years I wasted as a JW.
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Child care and abortion - two examples of the complexity of the issue
by fulltimestudent inin a perfect world, one would hope that no woman would need to consider an abortion.
there is unfortunately, no perfect world and there does not seem there will ever be a perfect world.
so consider .... 1. a child rape case in paraguay.. ... but the plot unfolding in paraguay is so dark and twisted that it is currently tearing the south american country apart.it began on april 21 when a mother brought her 10-year-old daughter to a public hospital.
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Perry
Here's another complication:
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This sounds suspiciously like the actions of another religion we know of...
by Captain Schmideo2 inhttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/15/church-blacklists-103-year-old-granny-then-calls-the-cops-on-her.htmlchurch blacklists 103-year-old granny, then calls the cops on her.
genora hamm biggs had been a member of the union grove baptist church for 92 yearsuntil a new pastor banished her and tried to have her arrested over a clash about the style of a sermon.. a 103-year-old georgia woman was banished from her church for a sin the pastor cant forgiveshe disagreed with how he preached.. genora hamm biggs has attended union grove baptist church in elberton since she was 11 years old.
but last month, rev.
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Perry
When they cannot conduct their services in peace. -
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That's it! The Jesus stories are most reasonably explained as myth. History makes this obvious.
by Island Man ina careful examination of the historical pagan religious context existing at the time of the genesis of christianity leads any reasonable person to conclude that jesus is just another one of several similar myths.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7teoa9ark.
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Perry
Ehrman's point is that there are thousands of differences between manuscripts for the NT. The vast bulk of those are minor, many just scribal errors. But some are quite significant.
Mephis,
The minority greek texts based on Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are indeed a mess. They disagree between each other 7000 times.
However, the majority text body of manuscripts enjoys near total agreement in over 5000 manuscripts. Many millions of Christians, including myself, do not accept the minority text as authoritative when it conflicts with the majority text.
Once I understood the differences, I realized that people like Ehrman have simply created a job for themselves. It is all much ado about nothing once you place the authority on the Majority Texts.
You can read more about this viewpoint here, on my website if you'd like.
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Who Really is ..... The Blood Washed Multitude (Great Crowd) ?
by Perry infor jw's the issue has never been who the faithful and wise servant (f&ds) was.
that is just misdirection and sleight of hand.
it is plain from the context that this was obviously a rhetorical question meant for self introspection.
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Perry
Try and step out of the religious indoctrination for a moment and see that this is an illogical statement,
Xanhippe,
The idea of one person dying in exchange for many is perhaps the greatest story template written in every language and culture on this planet. It is the ultimate hero story, retold over and over in books, movies and campfire stories.
Blood can be a metaphor for a death payment. I think you are getting hung up on the substance and not considering the rule that God made - "the wages of sin is death". That is God's rule. One could restate God's rule to say the wages of sin is spilled blood. Means the same thing.
God defeated his enemy by providing a death payment with his own blood, for his own rule. It is accessible to "whosoever" as their personal payment.
Yes, God bleeds. Acts 20: 28 "feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood" - KJV
The price of free will, choice, and morality, which unlike all the animals we alone have, being made in God's image, is the possibility and reality of spilled blood, conflict and death. This is the reality of our world.
It is not a world only of hot chocolate, expensive cars, and beach vacations. Lots of blood is spilled in our world, because of sin.
Watch this movie clip to see how wrong you are in criticizing God for doing what he did.
Here we have a judge and two men. Various Indian languages, French and English are spoken by the characters. Because Hawkeye can't speak French, but the English officer and the Chief can, he can't know that the offer of himself was translated wrong so that the English officer could sacrifice himself instead. Here two men are actually vying for the opportunity to pay the death price.
Sacrificing yourself for others freedom is the greatest act of love, the pinnacle of human goodness, and we got that capability from God.
I don't think the devil counted on this when he captured this species called humans through lies. Noble men and God himself know how to sacrifice one battle, in order to win the war.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
- Jesus of Nazareth
