notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
A Believer,
Always put what you believe to the test. Approach your convictions as questionable unless you can verify your convictions, each of them, with disinterested parties. If others demonstrate that your conclusions don't work, then abandon them for those that do.
notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
BoC,
And your statement helps, how? A Believer can't be helped to learn how to check what he's taught if people are making fun of things as he does. Checking conclusions with disinterested parties is the basis of critical thinking. A Believer needs to be taught how to do this. Making fun of things right now can be a distraction.
notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
It would help, Believer, if you state where your references come from. It also helps to do like I am, to use references that don't come from your own religion to support your argument. This shows you are being objective.
Check Strong and Thayer for the actual basis of the word NAOS. They show that my statement is correct, that NAOS comes from the verb which means "dwell." This shows that NAOS means "divine dwelling," and can mean any shrine, temple, or building in which a deity is believed to be supernaturally present. They also support this.
First-century Greek is known to many Jews because the Septuagint is written in this language. You can use outside sources from authorities to back up my claims about the words and see from language authorities that I am not making things up.
notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
See? NAOS doesn't refer to the courtyards. It refers to the actual sanctuary, the "inner chamber," the Temple itself.
It comes from the Greek NAIO which means "dwell." That is why even the NWT refers to it as "temple" in John 2 but "shrine" in Acts 19 in reference to Artemis.
NAOS is only the Temple proper. The courtyard still exist today and parts of the Western Wall, but the NAOS is gone. The Temple is the building that no longer stands on the foundation mound in Jerusalem.
Thus the great crowd cannot be in the courtyard.
notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
A Believer,
Length of time of your studying can't prevent you from having answers. In the book of Job it is the youngest man with the least experience who proves all the older false friends of Job wrong.
Therefore if you are following Scripture your amount of time studying these things is not an answer in line with Scripture. If you can't reply to the arguments presented that means you have not studied all sides. And if you haven't studied all sides to a belief then you can't say one is true and another false.
You can't believe and preach that you have the truth when you can't prove it. Even Moses was given proof of miracles to show he had God's favor. You must show some evidence you are right by disproving every argument, step by step, or by not being able to do so you prove you don't really have sufficient evidence to prove your views.
notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
Prove my arguments are false, A Believer, one by one, or bring reproach on Jehovah. For if you are truly of God, you will have the spirit of God and be able to show up that which is false.
But if you cannot prove that what I am saying is false, then you do not have God's spirit. And if you don't have God's spirit, you cannot be telling the truth.
In fact you should have the answers immediately. As a Jew who is not a member of your religion and doesn't hold a view of Jesus that you do, surely I cannot have more knowledge than a servant of the true God!
But if you cannot do so right here and now, you are no servant of God as you claim.
notice the 144000 can be counted and they all come from israel.. 9 after this i saw, and look!
a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues,*+ standing before the throne and before the lamb, dressed in white robes;+ and there were palm branches in their hands.+ .
this great crowd, no man was able to number, and they come from every nation!
A Believer is very wrong about the word NAOS. As a Jew who not only speaks Hebrew, I also speak and read the Greek of the Second Temple period.
The Koine Greek word NAOS means "divine habitation," or "god-house," and not Temple. It is the same word used at Acts 19:24 where the text speaks of the "shrines of Artemis." Depending on the religion the NAOS is speaking of, the word is speaking of the literal sanctuary or room in which a divinty or their presence was said to inhabit. That is why when it is used of YHVH the word means "Temple," but when used of Artemis the word is "shrine."
Luke 23:45 is a prime example of the meaning underlying NAOS when it speaks of the "veil of the NAOS" or Temple being torn. Herod's Temple structures and courtyards actually had many curtains or veils that were used as doors or dividers. Here the expression refers to the veil or curtain "of the NAOS." The inner most chambers of the Temple proper is being discussed here.
The word NAOS comes from the Greek verb, NAIO which means "to dwell." Due to this both Strong's and Thayers agree that the word NAOS means only the proper which houses the Holy and Holy of Holies.
While the individuals speaking with Jesus at John 2:20 state that the Temple had been under construction for 46 years, and it is clear that they are including the construction of the courtyards under the word NAOS, the same Jews are not calling the courtyards NAOS.
To illustrate, when the NAOS fell in 70 CE, much of Herod's other structures like the gates and walls and courtyards remained. But once the main structure fell, the NAOS, the courtyards and remaining walls were no longer called NAOS. Today we still have some of Herod's work, notably the Western Wall, and yet nobody says that since this and other parts of Herod's courtyards still remain that the NAOS is still there. Everyone agrees that the NAOS is gone. Take away the NAOS and the courtyards lose their meaning. The remaining Western Wall is even called the "Wailing Wall" now to demonstrate how we Jews mourn the passing of our NAOS. The space and foundations and much of the stones of Herod's work are still there, meaning the courtyards aren't gone, but the NAOS is.
Revelation 7:15 states that the those of the great crowd "render sacred service day and night in his NAOS." The only place "sacred service" was carried out was by priests serving at the sacrificial altar before the NAOS. The same priests had entry into the Holy and served before the Holy of Holies.
Those in the outer courtyards did not render sacred service. Men who were not priests could go as far as the courtyard where the sacrificial altar was but had no entry into the NAOS as the priests did.
Jewish women had a courtyard further out, and outside of this was a court for the Gentiles. No sacred service could be carried out by those in the outer courtyards, and only priests with entry into the NAOS could render sacred service of any type.
The theology of the Watchtower is that only the anointed can be said to have access to the Holy. It was decorated with cherubim and overlayed with gold, signifying a participation in heavenly life. Thus if the "great crowd" is said to be rendering "sacred service" in the NAOS, it means they have a heavenly calling.
As for the literal sanctuary, the Temple proper, the NAOS, it was originally built quite hastily over the period of a year and a half because the Jews were not quite comfortable with Herod tearing down the one they already had. Once it was done, the rest of the work went at a normal pace, and it would take about 80 years to finish the courtyard structures. Why? Because these structures were not the actual NAOS, and there was no need for haste. People often referred to the entire complex as NAOS, as in the conversation in John 2, but they stopped once the actual NAOS fell in 70.
The fact that "sacred service" is limited to the priestly class who could enter the actual Temple proper or NAOS further demonstrates that this cannot refer to courtyards where others stood. No sacred service could be carried out in them and people restricted to the courtyards could never enter the NAOS.
A Believer, you are mistaken.
okay, so i have a friend that still interacts with my family.
she is going through some difficult times, so i suggested she just read some of psalms.
she became a little agitated and said she would just listen to the mags.
Things like this were common when I was a JW back in the 1980s. The problem was twofold:
First, COs were notorious in my day for advancing personal views, but were limited to doing this through what ever nook and cranny was left open to them due to the tight grip of material they were made to spread our way. Apparently COs had ego problems because squeeze in their personal views they would. Friends would compare "insights" offered by COs, usually made to look like Bethel was disseminating secret info on how close we were to the end--as if they knew the date already--and the COs were the only ones privy to this information...and anyone they shared this with from the platform. What one circuit heard often never got "announced" in another and vice versa. (And we got the silliest statements, some declaring that God has given "the brothers at Bethel" insight that we are about 7 years away from the end or that "the Governing Body discovered and removed spies from the Catholic Churcn" who were sent in by the Vatican to research the reason for our incredible growth--which was the holy spirit of course! Silly stuff that never turned out to be true.)
But the more common problem was that some JWs heard what they wanted to from the CO. Some that were so anxious for the end or perhaps some "new insight" (some people wanted nothing more than "new light" all the time, otherwise they got bored), the same projected their expectations onto some obscure statement made during a talk and BANG, New Stupid JW Gossip Fodder would be born, all ready for the gossip dissemination train.
They second problem was horrible. These types imagined all sorts of things that never happened. The biggest (and oddest) was that a series of Watchtower issues carried cover articles on the demonic dangers hidden in a popular 1980s kids' cartoon show, "The Smurfs." I met several people who swore "as Jehovah is my witness" that they saw and read these Watchtower mags that featured the Smurfs on their covers. Sometimes as many as a quarter to a half of congregation members had this problem of projecting expectations and personal conscience matters onto official venues from "the Society," as we called it then. This gave their personal views some validity. They often would spread their stories by feigning disbelief in what they saw to test others out to see how welcoming they were to such invented information.
I can't say for sure if either of these things are the problem here, but it would not surprise me if little has changed.
according to the last paragraph of the article entitled "escape from slavery—then and now" (wt#2, 2017).
jehovah god felt grieved by the harsh treatment of israelite slaves in egypt; he must feel the same way about similar injustice today.. .
if you call modern slavery "injustice", wasn't the slavery during moses time also "injustice"?
It is a common mistake made by some Christians and those who live in the Western world to read references to slaves in ancient Israel by projecting images of the suffering caused by the Atlantic slave trade onto Bible passages. This won't provide an accurate view of what the Torah is talking about.
For instance:
The Atlantic slave trade kidnapped people from their homes and treated the people like property. Slavery in ancient Israel was regulated by the Torah, and kidnapping was forbidden. In Israel, slaves were indentured servants, bound by a contract that had limits and in some cases would expire. Thus unlike slave owners during the Atlantic slave trade, people did not always own the slaves they paid for. The Jubilee cycle made it impossible to keep a Hebrew servant permanently, and those that weren’t Hebrew were protected by Torah that imposes strict penalties on the mishandling of slaves. Slaves in ancient Israel could not be abused physically or sexually. And whereas slave owners of the West during the Atlantic slave trade greatly abused their slaves, Torah demanded that slaves were given rest on every Sabbath and Jewish holy day.
The record of how the British and the Americans treated slaves was far worse than how Jews did it. British and American slave owners were ferocious, brutal, consumed slaves like merchandise, often treated them worse than animals, and did so for generations whether they were religious or not. Their societies flourished and were often built upon the backs of these suffering people, and British involvement in slavery lasted for well over 1500 years (some say practically 2000)!
Slavery was a part of the world that crossed all barriers, infected all societies, was a sin all humankind is guilty of. Remember that Torah merely regulated slavery, it did not invent it. Slavery is not an inspired facet of God’s plan for humanity. If it were then the Exodus would have never happened.
Keep in mind that it is the Jehovah’s Witness view and interpretation of Torah that is causing the problem here. Jews gradually began doing away with slavery among themselves before the abolition movement, and we did so without abandoning Torah or interpreting it as if it is saying God approves of slavery. The underlying lesson the Jews learned from Torah was that slavery was wrong and against the will of God long before the Gentile world did, so one cannot blame the Torah.
Besides, the Law was not given to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Neither they nor their ancestors stood at the foot of Mount Sinai after being liberated from slavery from Egypt. Why come to your conclusions on Torah due to people who can’t even read the Scriptures in their original Hebrew tongue? The Witnesses have only been around since the late 1800s. We Jews have had the Torah for millennia, and should we judge Torah by the views of this group that has predicted the end of world how many times in the past century to fail miserably each time? You think it wise to get your view of the God of Torah from them? Again by means of Torah we Jews eventually learned that slavery was wrong, so obviously there is something wrong with the JWs if we found that lesson written within its verses when they did not.
Don’t blame the God of Torah for the way Torah is interpreted by a ship of fools centered in upstate New York.
maybe there will be a mass exodus from jws when thinking people read feb 2017 watchtower telling them the governing body stuff up, shouldnt expect correct/ perfect information and basically make up guff as they see fit.....ya reckon?.
While a mass exodus may not happen, it will not be easy to spot if it does either.
Going back to the WCG, the exodus of two-thirds of their group happened in stages over a period of a decade. It started first with the drop in funds. No one in the WCG knew that the exodus from their religion had happened until it did.
@_Morpheus...Believing something is impossible is how Titanics sink and Hinderburgs blow up. How many times have people said something was impossible and yet the impossible still happened? How many Americans are still shocked that Trump won the presidency over Hillary? Fairy tales may not happen, but nightmares do come true, especially the ones people deny will ever occur.
A case in point: leadership in the LDS church (the Mormons) recently adopted critical analysis of their religion's history. Over the past year or so they have published official statements backing up Mormon-apostate claims such as Smith having had a large number of wives, 40, including one as young as 14. They also affirmed that Smith never used the spectacles he claimed were hidden with the gold plates to translated the BoM but instead used a "seer stone" that he dropped into a hat as he sat hidden behind hanging bedsheets while dictating the contents of the plates to a scribe. They also officially admitted that the Book of Abraham cannot be imediately translated from the Egyptian papyri Smith claimed was the source, as well as formally acknowledged that the events detailed in the Book of Mormon may not be historical. All these points, once the fodder of Mormon heretics is now official LDS teaching. The result? Mormon growth has declined lower than it may have ever been in its history, with a significant drop in current membership especially among Mormon men. LDS officials originally stated that the downward trend couldn't last much longer, but it keeps on going down with no end in sight.
The JW religion may not disappear, there may never be a mass exodus, but never say never. The Governing Body just has to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and CLICK, it's over. We will all have to wait and see, but it's definitely not impossible.
