Posts by kepler

45

Why did Jesus tell the convict on the cross next to his, that he would be joining him in Heaven TODAY??

by Faithful Witness in

maybe a silly question, but i'm curious about this part of the story of christ's crucifixion, when the 1 thief challenges jesus to save himself and "us too" from their deaths, but the 2nd thief rebukes him and pleads with jesus... .

luke 23:42-43: and he said unto jesus, lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

and jesus said unto him, verily i say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.. .

kepler

Well, it's Holy Week and Friday - and this verse has come up again as a topic of discussion.

I have to say that it was a very meaningful verse in my life, since it ended my relationship with my former fiancee about five years ago.

That anyone could believe that the text was intended to mean that Christ was promising presence in paradise with him on that day, was just too much to abide. That poseurs could come into my house under the guise of bringing "glad tidings" and argue anything else struck me the same way.

As a result much of what I have had to say on this forum has rested on that moment and the issue raised. Below is an example in which we had the good fortune to have good contributions pro and con. In this particular instance, I was examining Christ's statement in the context of other times he prefaced his remarks with "Amen, amen I say unto you..."

http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/235015/1/e2809cTruly-I-say-to-you-e280a6e2809d-e2809cAmen-I-say-to-you-e2809de280a6-Inferences-from-a-Gospel-manner-of-speech

If that doesn't work, try search Luke, Luke 23, Kepler and Luke...

Since we sit near 2000 years after the events of Christ's life and the various accounts of it, we have reason to wonder about all manner of things. Whether he lived as described or which account is closest to the heart of matters. And since there are four Gospel accounts, we have to wonder why that number. Clearly as testimony they have different perspectives. Matthew seems to finish the story started by Mark - and which we wonder whether Mark had ever finished. And Luke seems like the synoptic straggler, not as far afield in his account as John, but distinctly different, nonetheles - especially since he includes a sequel known as Acts (Now how come we don't have four versions of that?).

But the point I am getting to is that it is Luke that makes the claim that Jesus conversed with the two thiefs at all. The other two Gospel writers simply said that they mocked him (Mark 15:32 "Event those who were crucified with him, taunted him" - ditto, Matthew 27:44 with elaboration). There was no mention of an apology from either one of the thiefs.

The point is that Luke clearly meant to make this additon. If Mark's account says Christ's last words were "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:33), Matthew adds that Jesus crying out in a loud voice gave up his spirit (27:50). If Mark did not recall any further utterances or Matthew neglected to say exactly what it was, then Luke supplies: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Luke 23: 46.

Since we are taking testimony from ancient writers and we all have different points of view, nothing definitive can be said by any of us except on the basis of faith or lack of it. But it is clear to me that Luke INCLUDED in his testimony the specific details that he did with clear intent. The intent being that these details were not included in the other two accounts. Whether he just happened to notice that from memory or it made more sense to say these things on account of what transpired in the sequel - I leave that open to conjecture. Either way though, it was an important point to the third Gospel writer, perhaps important enough to compel him to write it the account in the first place.

So, was it that Christ was making an important announcement like the typical Memorial service, that he was making an announcement like a politician at a press conference?

Or was he saying that the thief had been saved and he would be with him in paradise that same day?

That Christ's message remained to this day is because most people took notice of the second explanation. The first explanation is of benefit only to certain religious hierarchies.

30

Studied with JW grandma for 3 years and went to meetings, I have now seen the light!

by yogosans14 in

im new here and im 17, going to turn 18 in 1 week.

i studied with my gradma the bible teach book and went to meeting with her and other relatives (considering most my relatives are jw except my parents) and i believe in all of it because i never read the bible for myself.

after reading the gospels i started noticing contradictions in the jw doctrine like when jesus said many would dine with the patriachs in the kingdom of heaven (yet only 144,000 jws can) which would seem odd considering the fact he adressed this to more then the apostles.

kepler

Yogosan14,

Welcome to the forum and congratulations. I admire your courage, analytical thinking and decency in your approach to difficult problems. And it is especially encouraging that you are taking an assimilative approach vs. the one which condemns all other paths of faith and disregards any other good will.

I cannot give you advice on these matters in an absolute sense. I think I've got a lot to learn still myself. But I do believe that God places us on this earth so that we will learn and help others. So with that in mind, I would just like to say a few words about the Bible.

One of the chasms between Protestants and Catholics, it would seem to me, is the notion of the Bible itself. And when we speak of the Bible we often use the words "Testament" and "canon". Subsequent to Martin Luther's protest, the expression "sola scriptura" has been added to the list of those terms in Protestant though - and subsequent to that the notion of "inerrancy". Once something has become "inerrant", then it becomes an important struggle either to interpret that inerrancy with authority or to provide the translation on which it is based. The Catholic view of the Bible was for a long time affected by the notion of a City of God on earth - and that the establishment of that city immediately followed Christ's sojourn on earth and resurrection signaling redemption. In the latter case, this has resulted in long periods of relative neglect, but also a fresh start when the Bible is looked at with new eyes.

Your own observations about the Bible are an illustration of looking at its words with fresh eyes.

So let's go back to the word "testament". This is what writers at a given time, either in collaboration or on their own recorded as their notion of man's relation to God. These are in turn the accounts our ancestors collected and stood by ( and elsewhere they gave their reasons or provided supplements) convinced of their authenticity, divine inspiration or else both. And these are the testaments that we turn to to begin our own examinations of concern to us: our relations to God and our obligations to our neighbors and family here on earth...

You are off to an excellent start in studying these matters. Keep up the good work. And don't be afraid to check your course now and then.

Best regards,

K.

49

My personal movie review: Darren Aronofsky's NOAH

by Terry in

jw
friends

noah, my movie review.

you may have already judged this film and you've never seen it!

like many of its critics, you think you know what you're going to see and .

kepler

Terry,

An interesting review which raises some interesting matters. Some of them though, I am not sure that I follow you on.

For one, when you refer to two Biblical accounts of the flood, what is the second one? Is it in Genesis, another book of the Bible or something like Enoch?

Watchers are not very well spelled out in the Bible. And they bring us to Enoch again.

Are we to assume that things not explicitly said in the Bible are in other books such as Enoch? How you deal with that is one matter, but there is also the larger matter of how people reading the Bible should deal with this generally. If there is a Biblical canon, then what are we to make of books that did not make the cut, yet are called upon to make sense of the ones that did?

When someone said, let's go see "Noah", I did go along, but it was not because it was atop of my "do list". It did strike me as a strange film, and I did not find much kinship with it. But I suppose, like a long list of plays, novels and movies inspired by brief classical outlines, there was much room for an author or playwright to allow examination of new ideas derived from the set piece.

Still, I am reminded of a local anecdote, related to the people who step into that breech created by speculation about UFOs. If I recall, the guy was a MUFON member and had spoke a lot about what a UFO if it should land might contain. When the film "Close Encounters" came out, he was asked his view of that film. What did he make of it?

"Well, actually, I don't think it was realistic..." Under the circumstances of conjecture, satisfaction could not be guaranteed.

37

Peter in Babylon? - 1 Peter 5:13

by Bobcat in

for any looking over the wt study article for 3-30-2014, paragraph 9 refers to peter spending time in babylon.

the paragraph speaks of peter living in babylon as if it were a well established fact.

in fact, the only evidence for this idea is 1 peter 5:13.. see here for a writeup that analyzes 1 peter 5:13 and whether "babylon" really means the city of babylon.

kepler

Here's another background note on the notion that Peter was writing from Babylon in the seventh decade of the first century:

Rome and Parthia were at war over Armenia from 58 to 63 AD. Babylon was Parthian territory Not a good administrative center for Asia Minor. Nor a good perspective from which to evaluate reactions of readers of Paul's Greek epistles.

37

Peter in Babylon? - 1 Peter 5:13

by Bobcat in

for any looking over the wt study article for 3-30-2014, paragraph 9 refers to peter spending time in babylon.

the paragraph speaks of peter living in babylon as if it were a well established fact.

in fact, the only evidence for this idea is 1 peter 5:13.. see here for a writeup that analyzes 1 peter 5:13 and whether "babylon" really means the city of babylon.

kepler

By the way,

The tradition of a crypt for St. Peter in Rome goes back a ways...

St. Peter's tomb is near the west end of a complex of mausoleums that date between about AD 130 and AD 300. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The complex was partially torn down and filled with earth to provide a foundation for the building of the first St. Peter's Basilica during the reign of Constantine I in about AD 330. [ 3 ] Though many bones have been found at the site of the 2nd-century shrine, as the result of two campaigns of archaeological excavation, Pope Pius XII stated in December 1950 that none could be confirmed to be Saint Peter's with absolute certainty. [ 4 ] However, following the discovery of further bones and an inscription, on June 26, 1968 Pope Paul VI announced that the relics of St. Peter had been identified.

You suppose Constantine et al. might have read Peter's epistles as well?

37

Peter in Babylon? - 1 Peter 5:13

by Bobcat in

for any looking over the wt study article for 3-30-2014, paragraph 9 refers to peter spending time in babylon.

the paragraph speaks of peter living in babylon as if it were a well established fact.

in fact, the only evidence for this idea is 1 peter 5:13.. see here for a writeup that analyzes 1 peter 5:13 and whether "babylon" really means the city of babylon.

kepler

Bobcat, Phizzy,

Probably some people are tired of hearing me relate my take on this. It started with the days about 4 years ago when my instructors armed with "What the Bible Really Teaches" kept insisting that Babylon was destroyed because Isaiah said so. And that it was destroyed forever as a consequence of messing around with things in Jerusalem, whether as an instrument of the Lord's ( Jehovah's) punishment of Israel or not.

This was a position of the WTBRT as well.

Well, at that point, I hadn't given the matter much thought, but my intuition or casual reading indicated to me that Babylon had remained as a municipality for centuries and my immediate inquiries seemed to confirm. Moreover, it seemed like the time that Babylon really got clobbered just so happened to be in Isaiah's time - by Sennacherib.

But then I happened to notice the verse in question.

And that NWT text which I came across subsequently had a "Table of the Books of the Bible", pp. 1546-1547. Beside many other questionable dates and authorships for the OT, it stated that Peter I and II were written by Peter between 62-64 AD in Babylon.

Babylon the city that was destroyed forever centuries earlier in another "document" I was supposed to take on faith.

Well, I suppose if I were really credulous, I could believe that Peter consigned himself to a non-existent city to take advantage of it as a communications center with other Christian congregations in Asia minor. Or I could presume that he was referring to another place which was likened to Babylon...

But then there had to be a reason to make any comparisons to Babylon for a place like Rome, would there not?

The most obvious would be destructions of Temple I and Temple II.

But that does not match up very well with writing in the early 60s of the first century AD. Nor does the text of the II Peter. For it concludes speaking of Pau's writing as a body of work, a body which was largely written at the same time or even later than when we are to presume that Peter is living in isolation in Babylon. "In all his letters there are some passages which are hard to understand... and these are the passages which[some] people distort in the same way as they distort the rest of scripture". What's more, its advice given to elders is that of running a very institutionalized organization. As many have asked, are these concerns of 64 AD or decades later?

Reading the two books or epistles, it seems like another window on beliefs or perspectives of those times -but how they are all related seems so mysterious and complicated. Still, I suspect that some arguments for what has become canonical are not so much based on genuine Greek letter authorship of a supposedly aramaic speaking fisherman, but the nature of the beliefs and understandings that are passed on. In part I am reminded of Hebrews when Peter speaks of angels...

But in the second epistle, in contrast to JW theology, I am struck by this passage:

(II Peter 2:4) " When angels sinned, God did not spare them, he sent them down into the underworld and consigned them to the dark abyss to be held there until the Judgment. "

That's one translation anyway. But consider the NWT version. Look how it's finessed in that one so that they have a day pass - like fall to Earth '14 if that is the new requirement.

17

A Saturday Knock on the Door & the JWN Forum

by kepler in

this is, of course, a recurrent topic that's made possible whenever a kingdom hall decides to march out on your neighborhood and street.. today it happened again in my neighborhood as a drum up for the memorial observance scheduled for monday the 14th of april.. why christ's passion and death should be observed on a monday of holy week i failed to ask this morning.

perhaps someone else might like to volunteer, but it seemed just another reason to be sceptical about the whole thing, though hardly ranking with changing ancient chronologies to get jerusalem's temple destruction 2520 years before 1914.. anyway two gentlemen in white shirts and ties greeted me politely enough at my door and presented me with a flyer about an event which they described as momentous.

they asked me if i had ever intended one and i assented.

kepler

This is, of course, a recurrent topic that's made possible whenever a Kingdom Hall decides to march out on your neighborhood and street.

Today it happened again in my neighborhood as a drum up for the Memorial observance scheduled for Monday the 14th of April.

Why Christ's passion and death should be observed on a Monday of Holy Week I failed to ask this morning. Perhaps someone else might like to volunteer, but it seemed just another reason to be sceptical about the whole thing, though hardly ranking with changing ancient chronologies to get Jerusalem's Temple destruction 2520 years before 1914.

Anyway two gentlemen in white shirts and ties greeted me politely enough at my door and presented me with a flyer about an event which they described as momentous. They asked me if I had ever intended one and I assented. They asked me if I had ever taken instructions and said, "Oh yes I had indeed." Did I plan to attend this year's and I said, "No", because I thought that the last one I attended several years ago was not "momentous" recalling that the talk was blather about how the world situation was getting progressively worse and that the head of the governing board or whatever had something important to say or that the 144,000 were on the verge of setting forth on their mission to govern and somehow in passing coming up with dates in ancient history about Egypt and the Exodus that didn't seem to pass historical muster. I was underwhelmed.

I did observe a number of credulous people in attendance back then and the two men somewhat younger than I was reminded me of them. They didn't seem to be as intrusive as a previous salesmen, but certainly looked pained to fulfill their pre-memorial quotas. But I just couldn't leave it at that. When I asked me about my studies, I had to tell them that I just plain concluded that their doctrines just plain wrong and repeated three times.

Then they asked me if I had any questions.

I said that when I was taking instructions several years back I did indeed have some questions. I did not mention that I was desparately trying to come to terms with my ex fiancee's spring back to Jehovah Witness belief after her grown son had died, and how I had no reservations about asking questions directly or even walking into a Kingdom Hall and demanding answers. But I told them this much:

I asked and I didn't get answers. I was told to submit my questions in written form to the WatchTower question box, mailing address at the headquarters in NY and await a reply ( an activity for which my ex-fiance had asked me not to mention her name). I told them I decided not to do that. Rather, I sought and found a forum on line and posed my questions there.

I told these two individuals that I found a forum where a whole lot of people had the same questions I had and had to wade through the same fog that I had. But what's more, an awful lot of them were WITHIN their organization, elders COs, rank and file or officers of the WT&BTS. And, "You know what? I observe that you have an awful lot of people WITHIN your organization that are very unhappy with it. Now here's a question for you. Why should I be interested in joining an organization that causes so many people so much grief?"

Looking across the street I could see the other two person patrols knocking at neighbors' doors. My wife, a hospital chaplain whom I had met and married since the incidents described, peeked around the corner of our door to see what the ruckus was about. By coincidence we had been discussing a Bible related issue of our own, rather than Saturday chores and the knock at the door had caught me replacing a reference on the bookshelf. In a way she had managed to bail me out of any further elevated response to those who were doing their duty.

I am of two minds about this matter. One is that I was antagonistic toward people who are used as pawns in a struggle. But the other was the satisfaction of remembering some of the words I wanted to say at the moment. I wanted to emphasize an important part of what I had learned, the result of very much grief of my own.

14

How many elders does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

by mynameislame in

just one but he has to be constantly ready to replace it at a moments notice..

kepler

What does the Watch Tower say?...

Wait, I think I can find that in the KH Library. I'll tell you next meeting.

5

Sherlock Holmes predicted WWII - I saw it in a film

by kepler in

it was either "hound of the baskervilles" or "adventures of sherlock holmes" where sherlock himself, played by basil rathbone, after wrapping up the case with dr. watson and friends turned to the audience in the theater and urged them to fight on against the threat that menaced europe, the empire and the blessed isles alluding to hitler and mussolini.. since sherlock holmes lived in victorian times this must have been a revelation from god.. no doubt about it.

there is no other way that this could have happened.

and sherlock holmes wrote the story himself.. we studied sherlock holmes short stories attributed to arthur conan doyle in english class.

kepler

Well, now that others have had their say and business is as usual on other topics, I would like to give my rebuttal to several claims or efforts to debunk Sherlock Holmes' writing and prophetic work.

The fact that Sherlock Holmes made his prophetic statements on film is merely a difference in medium ( vs. printed word on paper). Sherlock Holmes foresaw the great conflict of the 1940s and warned against it, urging the Anglo-American alliance to soldier on to the end. It's quite clear.

What other possible explanation could there be for such a document but a direct message from God via his prophet to the faithful of this age?

101

The Most Insane Thing Ever Printed by the Watchtower?

by Leolaia in

i found this while perusing through old golden ages at the new york public library.

it is so patently ridiculous and offensive, i thought i'd just post the thing without comment.

*** g27 11/30 pp.

kepler

One of the things I often wondered about Rutherford was his connection to the 19th century underbelly of the American politics, the No-Nothings and Nativists (sic). Here was why:

There was reading his rants in the early Yearbooks (excerpts of the WT as "thoughts for the day" 365 or 366 of them) and reading accounts of harassments of immigrant attending churches, especially Roman Catholics. And then there was the famous letter to Adolph Hitler. All of this struck me as the sort of thing associated with the Klu Klux Klan or the Nativist movement.

Other than that he was an intolerant midwestern tied to the campaigns of William Jennings Bryan, I never did find anything conclusive. It seemed like most of his ties in that regard were probably over drinks at his private bar or over cigars and cards. For sure he was part of the the attitudes that seemed to permeate the world 8 or 9 decades back and still seemed to leak out of crevices in my 1950s childhood.

More than anything else he seems to emerge like one of those characters that were sitting int he same parlor car on the train with Sinclari Lewis on a cross country ride. Fact stranger than the fiction Lewis wove in "Elmer Gantry" and "It Can't Happen Here" combined. He actually was a combination of the two.

I hope to God we don't have to look back the same way on this era someday...