Posts by kepler

31

WT: World War I started in October 1914 (not July 1914)

by Calebs Airplane in

according to the wt, these are the actual sequence of events that led to the start of world war i:.

1) the gentile times ended on october 1/2, 1914.

2) jesus took the throne immediately thereafter.. 3) one of jesus' first tasks as the newly enthroned king was to engage in a heavenly war against satan and his demons.. 4) having won the war against satan and his demons, jesus expelled satan and his demons from the heavenly realm giving them only terrestial access.. 5) since satan is a sore loser, he became extremely bitter and decided to wreak havoc upon all the earth.. 6) filled with anger, satan then provoked the nations of the earth into a 4 year bloody battle known today as world war i. so there you have it... wwi started sometime in october of 1914 (not july 1914 as history books would have you believe).

kepler

Had I encountered someone peddling this idea back in the 1960s, I would have waved around a copy of Barbara Tuchman's book The Guns of August. It spends several hundred pages discussing the dimensions of warfare in the above named month.

Later on, I might have referred them to another so-named book, August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This discusses the Russo-German conflict in East Prussia. Russia lost a whole army corps, incidentally; that is, before the devil decided to intervene and start the battle! A video variation on that presentation was the Russian TV mini-series "Gibel' Imperii" - "Death of Empire"in which those events are depicted.

The Germans were very anxious about the East Prussian outcome because they already had a campaign going on in northern France... The advance on Paris was deflected by the end of the Battle of the Marne in September of 1914.

Then, of course, there is the collective memory of any family in France, Germany, Italy, the Balkans, Central Europe, the Ottoman Empire or the British Commonwealth who had veterans of that war affected by events in the first few months.

Considering that this "revisionist" history is promoted by an organization claiming those with cognitive memory of 1914 would live forever on paradise Earth, the proponents don't seem to have a very good recollection of events themselves.

If you use an Occam's razor approach to the idea of an October start for the War, or the notion thereof, the simplest solution would be that Russell, after wavering for several months about whether this was truly a big one ( "The Great War"), finally decided he had hit the jackpot and published a proclamation accordingly, figuring like Publications Clearing House "You may already have won!" In the US (still neutral), people and churches already concerned about the dimensions of the war were already organizing national days of prayer. Russell denounced this because God's verdict was irrevocable, as proclaimed in the WatchTower. From his experience with forecasting, he should know.

But with precedence of using invisible or undocumented events both to trump visible and documented ones and to infer the occurence of further invisible milestones, one's mind gets numbed after a while to the absurdities encompassed.

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The Battle of Tannenberg was an engagement between the Russian Empire and the German Empire in the first days of World War I. It was fought by the Russian First and Second Armies against the German Eighth Army between 26 August and 30 August 1914. The battle resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army. A series of follow-up battles destroyed the majority of the First Army as well, and kept the Russians off-balance until the spring of 1915. The battle is notable particularly for a number of rapid movements of complete German corps by train, allowing a single German army to concentrate forces against each Russian army in turn.

Post-war legacy The battle is at the center of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel August 1914.

The Guns of August (1962), also published as August 1914, is a volume of history by Barbara Tuchman. It is centered around the first month of World War I. After introductory chapters, Tuchman describes in great detail the opening events of the conflict. Its focus then becomes a military history of the contestants, chiefly the great powers.

The Guns of August thus provides a narrative of the earliest stages of World War I, from the decisions to go to war, up until the start of the Franco-British offensive that stopped the German advance into France. The result was four years of trench warfare. In the course of her narrative Tuchman includes discussion of the plans, strategies, world events, and international sentiments before and during the war.

The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction for publication year 1963.[1] It also proved very popular. Tuchman would later return to a subject she had touched upon in The Guns of August, i.e., the social attitudes and issues that existed prior to World War I, in a collection of eight essays published in 1966 under the title The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914.[2]

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50

Einstein and Religion - with considerations of "Human Free Will"

by james_woods in

ok, here is a small first step toward putting together a thread on this subject.

the problem i had in getting started was how complicated the topic is - how to get it into an understandable form suitable for a discussion thread.

first - einstein was, of course, jewish.

kepler

JW:

Was thinking about what you were driving at…

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“I really meant this thread to be about Einstein's religion and philosophy rather than science issues.

One thing I wanted to make clear was that when Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe" - he was absolutely NOT talking about an anthropomorphic creator like the JW "Jehovah".

He meant the cosmic order of the universe itself - the orderly progression of everything.

Einstein's god was neither a "creator" nor an "interventionist" in human affairs….

Classicly speaking (judeo-christian speak) - not every decision IS free will, but COULD BE free will.

For example - the New Testament hint that Eve's decision to eat the forbidden fruit was the result of trickery (thus NOT free will), but the suggestion that it COULD have been free will (like Adam's choice) if she had not been fooled.

On the other hand, it brings up the thorny question: Did Eve use FREE WILL in allowing herself to BE fooled? Or

was she genuinely fooled without reflective thought - was she even capable of reflective thought on the subject? Or was she just too dumb to figure out the temptation?...

Thinking along these lines is causing me to seriously question the entire religious concept of "free will". I am starting to think (like Einstein did) that it is really just a logical excuse made by religious tradition for God's decision to punish the humans for something they were pretty much destined (and tempted) to do anyway.

Time for another weird essay.

My take on this is that we are quickly losing Einstein’s Judaeo/secular perspective on these things. As soon as we start talking Adam and Eve, everyone has lost Jewish or Hebrew religious perspectives altogether. It is assumed that every Jew of his day was looking at Hebrew scripture and Deuteronomy like Paul.

I am not Jewish, nor have I studied Judaism at any great length, but my immediate impression is this is not true. The book of Genesis introduces a talking snake and an angry God and then drops the whole subject within a chapter and does not bring it up again. Judaism is about a covenant between God and a people and a promised messiah could just as well be a political leader to reverse 600 years of rule by a succession of Neo-Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans.

In the Old Testament, I don’t see evidence of anyone deliberating about how someone is going to reconcile a breech between God and man the result of Adam or Eve. That’s a Christian concept which in the NT is first brought up by Paul, or Saul of Tarsus. Imposing it on Einstein’s thinking is simply a cultural bias, much like E. M. Forster’s science fiction story about people living in abeyance of “The Machine” and deciding to teach the French Revolution like it occurred in its era. I would not rule out that Genesis has some bearing on Einstein’s thinking, but since it does not seem to have as much consequence to Judaism as interviews given to Abraham and Moses, I would not rule out Einstein’s notions about free will based as much on his views about classical mechanics and reservations implications of statistical and quantum mechanics. Natural philosophy: if you can’t predict which atom is going to do a beta decay, but the isotope decays at a fixed rate, how do you explain that?

When speaking of “God playing dice with the universe”, I believe that there is a certain amount of truth to you assertion above. If Einstein is corresponding with physicists that is the idea he wishes to convey, the underlying principles of nature, anthropomorphic or more likely otherwise, which make things run. Since a steady state and a big-bang universe were arguable issues in his life, it is hard to say whether he was hung up on first causes, since the issue seemed to be more a question of whether he introduced a constant into equations of cosmology. Had he left things with no constant indicative of expansion, as he sometimes thought he should have, his physical view would have argued for a universe that had been around forever. Lemaitre and Hubble seemed to have had some influence on him. Because I don’t think there were too many people who speculated on that scenario much save for Fred Hoyle and a couple of his colleagues.

But considering the fact that he might have been regarded as another Spinoza, a pantheist or an agnostic, Einstein was active in what could be loosely described as Zionist causes. Having an ethnic promised land but no one specifically to consult about the promise - That is a conundrum in and of itself.

Maybe the god of Spinoza stepped out of character now and then?

But if he did, it was not necessarily perceived in Christian terms. If we really are on topic, then perhaps we should back up or take a reading of what Judaism said to Einstein rather than re-interpret his sacred texts for him.

50

Einstein and Religion - with considerations of "Human Free Will"

by james_woods in

ok, here is a small first step toward putting together a thread on this subject.

the problem i had in getting started was how complicated the topic is - how to get it into an understandable form suitable for a discussion thread.

first - einstein was, of course, jewish.

kepler

James Woods,

Interesting topic. Makes me wonder what causes me to jump in and say anything at all - or just sit it out.

As was noted above, Einstein clearly has reservations about quantum mechanics, a subject that seems to introduce even more levels of indeterminancy (?) since he passed on in 1955. But suffice to say that the notion of an electron not having a trajectory in space, but a probability cloud surrounding a nucleus - that bothered him. And it bothers a lot of people who are used to their senses showing a falling leaf on an autumn day dropping to the ground in a perceived spiral. The idea of not being able to tie down both momentum and position - that just doesn't make much common sense.

But neither do notions that Einstein's special and general relativity propose and demonstrate experimentally, things like the passage of time varies with localization in space or relative velocities within it, reshaping geometry. Both relativity and quantum mechanics definitely modify Newtonian classical mechanics or dynamics, but it is also more than that. If energy e = mass x speed of light squared, then that also means that energy causes the same distortions as mass does in space. ...But let's stick to mass. Newton explains orbital paths in terms of attracting masses and balancing forces; relativity explains orbital paths by warping of space by mass or energy. That's a big difference. And it also means mass or energy warp space with respect to passage of time. As you approach large masses, time slows down. As you approach a black hole, it is as much as stops.

A lot of religions ( we won't mention any here by name) are obsessed with timelines, so much so that one would expect that God would be wearing a pocket watch and watching the calendar. But Einstein's theory seems to indicate that time is PART of creation. If one's life is examined by God, then it would seem that all parts of it would be examined at once from a perspective outside of its orb, its circular passage from start to finish on this plane in which we exist.

So, if God is watching from without, that leads us back to the problem of free will, choice, determinism. If God can watch our process from a perspective other than our momentary conscientiousness in a realm with the retarded communication potential associated with light, then does that not indicate God knows our outcomes already? I think Tolstoy used to wonder about this sort of thing with books like War and Peace. He spoke of individuals and historical trends or events: Did individual Napoleon or the the event Austerlitz loom larger - or can relationships be sorted out at all.

Chaos theory I haven't read enough on to be sure (sic), but I believe it would get by in a Newtonian world simply on the basis of identifying effects like the sneeze of a butterfly causing a hurricane to form: extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. A knife edge difference can be made in an initial condition such as dropping a spacecraft from the moon to the edge of the earth's atmosphere. A tiny difference in angle or velocity and the result varies enormously: it skips out of the atmosphere, or it enters and lands in the Pacific Ocean to a reception by recovery helicopters. That one is easy enough to understand, but there are dynamic situations like that lurking or hidden everywhere, usually much more complicated.

Does the Creator monitor things like that all over creation? Does the Creator do so at the level of electrons and atoms with the effects that Einstein protests? Did the Creator set the ball rolling with a big bang billions of years back with a Rube Goldberg device and windage that led to our being here to discuss this matter? I would say that the Creator did so to some degree, but we are left to argue or discover many of the details. On the other hand, having certainty about all this and left to dwell on it for another eternity does not seem like a situation I am any better equipped for.

123

New here

by Change Name in

i had been studying with the jehovah's witnesses for the last couple years.

they have been interesting study sessions and have learned quite a bit about them and their beliefs.

much of what they teach is what i had learned through personal bible study.. growing up was normal.

kepler

Change Name,

Greetings. Have been following this discussion off and on. I had just reviewed the UN-NGO issue last night myself (again). Regarding:

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"sd-7":

From my understanding, the prerequisits for being an NGO changed after they were accepted and when they found out you have to run through some hoops they did not feel comfortable running so they did not renew the library card. Simple....

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I come to a different conclusion. As the correspondence with the Manchester Guardian reporter indicates, the NGO status had to be renewed annually. Also, it was dropped after it became public knowledge.

Now why would it be sought in the first place? I don't think it had to do with library research requirements, but rather the cachet it brought to the search for funds. To illustrate, Ms. Carolyn Wah of the legal staff put together several briefs/ petitions to obtain funds held by Swiss banks related to Holocaust victims, of which there are several hundred European Jehovah Witnesses. Would such an estate guardian turn over such funds to a third party in lieu of a surviving family member?

NOT UNLESS THEY WERE REPRESENTATIVES OF AN ORGANIZATION LIKE A UNITED NATIONS NGO.

I also read over some of the publications of the WatchTower and teaching pamphlets on the topic of the UN, the notion that they (the "disgusting thing"of prophethic texts) would even dare intervene in what the WT has a vested interest in describing as a disintegrating world.

The text of the plan is avail as a PDF at

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In re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation : - Swiss ...

www.swissbankclaims.com/pdfs_eng/WatchTowerBible.pdf

This Document Relates to All Actions. Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation (Swiss Bank Litigation). Proposed Plan of Allocation for. Jehovah's Witness Victims and ...

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In contrast to the proposals I had seen from Jewish groups, there was NO plan to distribute any of the funds to SURVIVORS or RELATIVES. The funds were simply to be dispersed in WTS related educational projects, more pats on the organization's own back. The plan had chutzpah, I'll grant that...

Have a good day.

20

How does the WT feel about dating methods?

by Christ Alone in

i'm talking about dating methods that scientists use such as carbon 14, potassium-argon, rehydoxylation dating, etc.... .

i know that many christian fundamentalist groups speak of how false early dates can be reached by many of these dating systems.

but i was wondering how much the wt rejects them.

kepler

CA,

RE:

Actually because of researching how accurate C14 dating really IS, I went to see why it was denied. It was Answers in Genesis that put forth the assumption that the rate of decay is NOT constant. They give several theories as to why this rate of decay would have changed over time and would now give an inaccurate reading as to the age of fossils and the earth in general.

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In the scientific community, the isotope decay rates themselves are not called into question. The remarkable thing about the process is that the beta decay rate will not tell you when an individual nucleus will decay, but statistically how many are decaying... With Carbon 14 it is a question of the source of the isotopes, engendered by radiative flux in the atmosphere, nitrogen breakdown by cosmic ray bombardment.

But since sequence of events in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not consistent, I would not waste much time worrying about instrumentation issues for measuring occurrence of an event that is described by two differing accounts.

In the first account ( Gen:1) man and woman were created simultaneously after the animals, free to roam the world and were told to be fruitful and multiply. In the second account they are confined to a garden, FORMED from the earth and woman was derived as an after thought when the first man could not find appropriate company among the animals. Even the JW authorities post 1975 admit that they are not sure when Eve was "formed" and hence the uncertainty about the end of 6000 years. Carbon 14 dating will not resolve any of those problems. Uranium half-life dating for the age of the earth might be of some assist though.

15

5 Common Misconceptions About the Bible

by undercover in

jw
friends

a blog on huffington post.... interesting thoughts...that mostly would go flying over the average jw's head, those that think they know the bible oh so well.... i've highlighted certain points that pertain (technically they all do, but some really stand out) to how jws view things.. my main reason for posting this is so i can find it easily later, as it'll disappear from huffpo eventually.. .

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine-hayes/5-misconceptions-about-the-bible_b_2173965.html.

when it comes to the bible, modern americans are at a distinct disadvantage.

kepler

About item number 5 - which was addressed as well in another topic recently - I am often drawn to think about episodes in chapters 13-15 of I Samuel. Things come to a head at chapter 15, verse 10 with this (NJB):

The word of Yahweh came to Sameuel, "I regret having made Saul king, since he has broken his allegiance to me and not carried out my orders." Samuel was appalled and cried to Yahweh all night llong.

In the morning, Samuel set off to find Saul....

17: "Yahweh has appointed you as the king of Israel. "When Yahweh sent you on a mission he said to you, 'Go and put those inners, the Amalekites, under the curse of destruction and make war on them until they are exterminated.' Why did you not obey Yahweh's voice? Why did you you fall on booty and do what is wrong in Yahweh's eyes?"

The situation has leaves much room for question on both sides? Are we to suppose that God had second thoughts about Saul? Or did Samuel who had misgivings about the appointment of a king in the first place? Would Saul have taken the higher road if he spared not a single Amalekite, but did as instructed via Samuel: "Now, go and crush Amale; put him under the curse of destruction with all that he possesses. Do not spare him, but kill man, and woman, babe and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey."( 15:3).

(15:4) Saul summoned the people and reviewe dthem at Telaim: two hundred thousand foot soldiers ( and ten thousand men of Judah). Saul advanced on the town of Amalek and lay in ambush in the river bed.

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There are a lot of problems with this story. Whether camels were domesticated in this presumed period is one matter that comes to mind. Whether a force of 200,000 would have existed anywhere circa 1000 BC is another matter; but if it did, it did not simply lie in ambush in a riverbed to take a tribal stronghold. The intent of this expedition was to punish Amalek for laying a trap for Israel as it had come up from Egypt.

So, who is talking? Yahweh or Samuel? Then, once Saul is discredited and disposed of, why is David such a terrific improvement?

74

HELP! I've stepped in it now... mast head change - JW response!

by NeverKnew in

he's asking if i've read the first page of the new watchtower.. says page 8 admits and exposes the society's mistaken expectations.. says that both mags have been adjusted to reflect the understanding of generation.

asking if it is my position that witnesses have made claims to be inspired prophets.... and saying if it is, maybe *we* can consider together some examples in the bible of others who have had wrong expectations and have gone ahead of god's timetable and see how god handled that..

kepler

In that quote from Habakkuk 2:3, there are a lot of square brackets to make a round peg fit into a square hole. That has not been an exceptional.

Over this weekend, I happened to catch the new film "Lincoln". It's worth a topic of its own and I think it already exists. But at the beginning of the film there was a brief incident in which husband and wife petitioners from the state of Missouri interrupt cabinet deliberations about passage of the thirteenth amendment.

You're from Jefferson City, Lincoln pauses to note. I knew a judge there who had a parrot who was taught to say each morning "Today the world will end as the scripture has foretold." Eventually, the owner, to have some peace shot the parrot. And thus the scripture was confirmed for the parrot.

From there Lincoln went on to take care of other things, but I thought for a moment of a bird of another feather.

529

Analysis of anti-607 BCE Rebuttals

by Ethos in

i agreed yesterday to engage in the '607' topic.

i've read numerous threads and am well aware that this topic has been addressed and dissected quite thoroughly.

therefore, if you are uninterested in participating, that's fine.

kepler

Greetings.

I have to say that 11 pages thus far is an extremely strong dose of eschatology, some of which has been administered many times.

I have poked my head in every once in a while to see where things were going, but I probably missed some pertinent points. Still, perhaps on reflection, I am puzzled by a couple of things. And then reading over the debate a couple of questions arose in my mind. So here goes:

1. Since the topic is presented as "Analysis of anti-607 BCE Rebuttals", how is it that it immediately presents an argument for starting a clock at the year 609? The title is not exactly double negatives, but it is as confusing as the wording on an election proposition vote. I couldn't tell if the topic is a "vote" for or against a 607 fall of Jerusalem. And having the introduction conclude "quid erat citatandum" that things started in 609... What gives?

2. Some time ago, after noting this particular chronological discrepancy along with others vs. secular sources, I did get around to reading Gentile Times Reconsidered and noted as well that Ray Franz had a hard time collecting any evidence for the 607 argument (CoC). So after mulling this around a bit, I used some some astronomical software to re-calculate some lunar eclipses cited in Babylonian records before and after the presumed siege date and attributed to Nebuchadnezzar's reign. What do you know: it worked and it was consistent.

3. I also noticed that the Assyrians had a habit of destroying cities for 70 years. So habitual that they had a due process about it, invoking Marduk and then rescinding the sentence when they decided to rebuild. In this case, Sennacherib destroys Babylon - I mean really destroys it - and then Esarhaddon decides to rebuild it by re-reading the proclamation upside down so that it reads 11 years instead of 70. The point being is that Jeremiah was a bit imitative in invoking 70-year sentences.

4. But Jerusalem and the Temple get re-built. And it is rebuilt with gusto. And another funny thing. Nobody in the OLD TESTAMENT ever mentions anything about the possibility that it will get smashed again. Maccabees certainly give an account of its desecration. And Daniel does the same thing in a veiled sense. But I am not aware of OT prophets warning against it getting pulled down again. And this is a really big deal, right? I mean, ask the writers of the Gospels in the NT.

5. Now speaking of the New Testament. Let's consider what they have to say about the destruction of the OLD TEMPLE and Babylon. I don't think they have much of anything to say about it. Whenever they were writing or getting edited, they were concerned about the NEW TEMPLE getting leveled by Romans. They do speak of Babylon a few times. Mostly in Revelations. And in context it is hard to connect Revelations with the Babylon of the OT, other than as an epithet to hang on Rome or someone else. Babylon is mentioned by Matthew in terms of geneaology. Stephen the martyr in Acts gives a long speech in chapter 7 where he mentions how the people of the covenant were removed to Babylon. 1 Peter claims to be written in Babylon by Peter. ... Now how do you like that? What was he doing over there? Was it Jeremiah that said that it was destroyed forever? Or was that Isaiah? Or was it both of them? Well, maybe he was calling Rome "Babylon" because... Rome was acting like Babylon, because Rome knocked down the Temple just like the NeoBabylonians did. ... But the trouble is, if this was all obvious to Peter's audience, then he must have wrote it after he had passed on himself. Or he had assumed the readers had read Revelations, perhaps. ...Odd.

But on that last point, I'm digressing a little. What this should show is that the New Testament is rather silent about cycles of 2520 years. Instead we have a very massaged Old Testament talking to apocalyptic people in the 19th, 20th and now the 21st century largely bypassing the NT and making Christ's life and passion a brief visit before he really gets down to invisible business after 1914.

If a writer named Ezekiel or Jeremiah says something about cities disappearing for decades or forever and there is alternative evidence, then we are confronted with a dog wagged by its tail. If Ezekiel said Tyre or Egypt fell, then it must be true. And if Babylon was destroyed in similar pronouncement by agency, I presume, of Cyrus, then it must be gone. This is the foundation on which one can base the transpiring of other invisible events. Evidently, all one needs to do is climb to a seat of authority based on invisible event consequences or invisible step two and dare anyone to even think otherwise.

83

Is the WT the only true religion?

by Christ Alone in

jehovah's witnesses do not do that!

again: jehovah's witnesses do!

jehovah's witnesses!.

kepler

All apostacies great and small...

Just for the record - I bought a bridge to Brooklyn.

I won't get mad. I'll just get even.

"Don't you think you need someone to explain to you the contents of Holy Scripture? An expert? I can get you in touch with someone.

And an organization...."

83

Is the WT the only true religion?

by Christ Alone in

jehovah's witnesses do not do that!

again: jehovah's witnesses do!

jehovah's witnesses!.

kepler

Christ Alone,

You said:

"The Apostles served as the Governing Body in the 1st century. Then the great apostacy set in and true Christianity was largely missing through the ages. There were glimmers of light as individuals attempted to shine truth."

Don't know what has been going on with you since you were counseling Kate82 a few weeks ago - and then our discussion about Daniel. But either you are pulling people's legs or acting very bi-polar. Are you in or out? Or are you trying to get a rise out of people?

As to the "great apostacy", I admit that that is an interesting intellectual concept on which to build a Protestant foundation. But it is nebulous at best, only describing concepts that dissenters of the 18th century English world disagreed with vs. previous generations. Something to trump linkage of ordination and priesthood until they could concoct some of their own such as anointed numbers and governing boards.

In all the idolatry of the Biblical text as it came to that generation, the very notion of a great apostacy also saws away on the limb on which Biblical inerrancy stands - the development of a canon. I suppose there is a year where everything that was in the non-JW bloodline diverged into a futility? Calendar year 99? After Constantine consolidated things? When it comes to events related to Temple wrecking balls, timing is refined to and predicted to the last hair. So this part is comparatively vague and "under-prophesied'. But if is so, then is this really a successful correction, since it is just in time to load a remnant of humanity on a barge to paradise earth after a lightless two millenia no fault of anyone therein born? Or does God really despise all of human kind as much as the guiding lights of the supposed 1919 beauty contest do?

It was one of the greatest early achievements of the era of the great apostacy. The apostates had to sort through the numerous documents with claims of "Yes, I knew your name sake very well, and also the apostle Paul, or I ghost wrote the memoirs of Mary..." And those that would like to condemn every one in the councils who deliberated over these and vetted the documents - the people viewed as agents of Satan... they bought into it. For if there was no continuity and the scripture was in someone else's hands, then what more can be said.

As for missionary work, it was centuries before the Protestant reformation gave it any thought, trailing Dominicans, the Society of Jesus and others. If someone in the non-English speaking world cares a wit about JW views on the Bible and salvation, such missionaries are the ones to thank for ready receptions in South America, Asia or the Pacific - even in parts of the mideast where year books don't even care to admit that the populations any longer exist. As to early Protestant efforts, their successes were smaller and their mistakes were just as calamitous. Ever hear of Prince Phillip's War? Just a native American gathering inferences from your Puritan and Congregational predecessors in the 17th century, having them read the exploits of Joshua in the Promised Land and duly noting that the guys with big belt buckles thought they were in the same. That's the war that my instructors who came to my house gave full endorsement to - whatever Joshua needed to get done. How did they know that was holy? The same way they know Christ invisibly returned in '14. They were told. What will they be told next?

Subsequently when Rutherford publishes his yearbooks of voyages over seas, he is harassing with pamphlets communities that already have Bibles, literacy and institutions. He needed another ten years to figure out doctrines and translations to distinguish his movement from others aside from his notion of importance. And now, thanks to his vision, practically everything I encounter in the present day JW system, I see as almost a perfect analog for the Soviet one of the mid twentieth century. Read the Truth/Pravda, attend the party meetings, march in the rallies, act in the theocratic theatre, inform on and conform to everybody - and take away the party billet and you're dead.

For a while I could laugh, but it isn't funny any more. Just a pathetic cultural bias.