We will have to just agree to disagree. I just realized my source link didn't work.
Here it is again:
Posts by Perry
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74That'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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63
EXACTLY Why JW's Are NOT Christian
by Perry ina lot of people, ex-jws, believers and unbelievers alike, think that jw's are just a somewhat kooky brand of christianity.
is it possible to "try and follow jesus" and not be christian?
what exactly makes someone a christian?
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Perry
Garyneal,
I would be comfortable in any number of bible believing churches. When we moved, we found a similar church, though not officially Baptist. Doctrine is identical. They have elders, which is a Presbyterian influence. Doesn't really matter, nice solid folks there.
I can’t say I am really much of a biblical scholar but man you would think if that was god’s plan for humanity, you would think the bible would be pretty consistent in this teaching.
Clambake,
The New Testament is perfectly consistent in its teaching that a person has to be a member of the new covenant in order to have forgiveness of sins. NOT ONE scripture shows how a person can get their sins forgiven while outside of the New Covenant.
BTW, as a side note, the English words: testament and covenant are from the same Greek word. They both just mean "contract". The bible has been divided by the old contract and the new contract.
The entire new testament describes how things should be when / after entering into the "new contract" with God.
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74
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
Half-Bananna,
I think the evidence is overwhelming in favor of genuine history, for many, many reasons. This connection you propose is popular in some dark corners of the internet, but not among reputable scholars.
Despite having popular appeal on the Internet, the idea that the resurrection story of Jesus was borrowed from pagan mythology has been abandoned by the vast majority of critical scholars today.1 In fact, one noted resurrection expert named Gary Habermas said that he could count on one hand of the 2,000 or so publications that he surveyed from French, German, and English written during 1975 to the present of how many scholars attribute the story of the resurrection of Jesus as being borrowed from pagan mythology.2
Article
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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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Perry
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.
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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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74
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:
