Posts by kepler

76

Anthony Morris III... Did he really serve in Vietnam? Something doesn't quite add up...

by Calebs Airplane in

born in 1950, he apparently became a regular pioneer in 1971.. but wait.... let's just say that he enlisted (or was drafted) in 1968 at age 18.... depending on the branch of service, he would have to complete anywhere from 2 to 4 years of service.

yes, duty in hot combat zones was usually limited to 6-months at a time but you still had to serve a total of 2 to 4 years depending on the branch of service.

assuming he only served 2 years, he would have been 20 years old and discharged by 1970.... how did he get witnessed to, complete a book study, become an unbaptized publisher, get baptized and then become a regular pioneer in less than year???.

kepler

I should some remarks where the stories of Parisi and Morris seem to diverge. This account was presumed to relate to Tony Morris:

In the interim, he and his wife became special pioneers, and he was granted recognition as a minister. But the law still required that he serve his ten-month sentence. Finally he received a letter offering a suspended sentence if he would plead guilty. "I told them I could not do that, since I was innocent," explained Tony. He braced himself to go to jail. To his surprise came a letter stating that the justices of the High Court had analyzed the case and had thrown it out of court on a technicality! Tony felt blessed for declining to ‘live by the sword.’

The above account does not supply Tony with a surname.

And on page of this thead, my search for records of Parisi ended with his appeal process actually failing. He was sentenced to serve at Fort Leavenworth at hard labor for about two years beginning in April 1970, a consequence of failing to board a flight bound for Vietnam as required by orders. My reading of the account was that he did serve time and that it began with stockade time in California.

Possibly his sentence was shortened, but sounds to me like he started serving.

Yes, confusing. Especially if we are discussing the same individual.

76

Anthony Morris III... Did he really serve in Vietnam? Something doesn't quite add up...

by Calebs Airplane in

born in 1950, he apparently became a regular pioneer in 1971.. but wait.... let's just say that he enlisted (or was drafted) in 1968 at age 18.... depending on the branch of service, he would have to complete anywhere from 2 to 4 years of service.

yes, duty in hot combat zones was usually limited to 6-months at a time but you still had to serve a total of 2 to 4 years depending on the branch of service.

assuming he only served 2 years, he would have been 20 years old and discharged by 1970.... how did he get witnessed to, complete a book study, become an unbaptized publisher, get baptized and then become a regular pioneer in less than year???.

kepler

Happened to notice how this topic was picked up a few days ago, based on photos with an uncanny resemblance.

But before I ventured to say anything, I thought I would re-read all the posts, including mine.

A couple years ago I tried very hard to see if there was any public record of what Mr. Morris was talking about when he spoke of his militar, Vietnam and military judicial experiences. That turned up a null. But there were other conscientious objector cases - and the one that was most similar was that of Anthony Parisi.

Mr. Parisi's public record I related in the preceding pages and I compared it with what Mr. Morris was reported to have said - or else his ruminations on warfare and the pains of tribulations yet to come...

I still am not sure if Parisi and Morris are the same person.

But what if they were? What are we to carry away if Morris's military and judicial records are actually those of Mr. Parisi?

To start. Mr. Parisi began his career with an intent to serve as a medic, but declined when he received his orders to report to Vietnam. I do not mean to pass judgment on his decision about whether to go to Vietnam or not, but I want to point out that Mr. Parisi did NOT go to Vietnam. His subsequent claims in judicial reviews were based on his new-found religious reservations. Subsequently, Parisi was dealing with incarceration and not military campaigns or aiding the injured in the field. After reviews the military relented and Parisi disappeared from public view.

Now years later, we have someone who MIGHT be Parisi head of a religious body or a member of its governing board. He frequently relates stories about his service in the military and how he recalls the furies of hostile fire and the smell of death and destruction. He exhorts his audience to think about the far greater magnitude of such death and destruction awaiting in the time of trial and tribulation, emphasizing the near universality of this retribution and death.

Possibly this is the same man, but it is not any type of conscientious objector with which I would want to be associated with.

In either case, as an unknown Mr. Morris or as a Mr. Parisi in hiding, that this man is a screened and vetted member of a governing board turns the concept of vetted leadership on its head. If Morris is an alias, then his board identity is a deceit. And if Morris is simply Morris, it looks much the same as well: a selection that is so indefensible that no evidence is submitted to the community "overseen" that he has any real credentials related to leadership, administrative skills, philosophy, sober reflection ... Anything that you would want your children to imitate or aspire to.

He will talk at your convention though.

43

From A Bublical Point Of View Did You Ever Think The Trinity Doctrine Made Sense?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i see no logic in it.

i see what appears to be some scriptural contradictions but i see no merit in a trinitarian view of god.. .

.

kepler

Designs: Kepler,Have you ever set down with a Rabbi and discussed the "we" in Genesis and how a Jew understands the passage?

Designs,

No I have not, but I have in my library several Jewish commentaries, which I presume are by rabbis. At least one was a lead translator on a TaNaKh translation and the other was commenting on the Torah. Breitler and Friedman respectively. The latter commented on both chapter 1 and 18 of Genesis. He did not say what an individual Jew understands about the"we" but gave several interpretation. These included the editorial we, the notion that God was addressing his angels and, he also entertained the possibility that it was an example of polytheism or something that gave credence to the existence of pagan gods ( disputed in other books of the OT).

On chapter 18, he admitted that Abraham addressed three men as God. But he could not let that stand. He claimed that this was an example of "hypostasis" because a human could not countenance the face of God. He cites the later authority of Exodus.

So, for one reason or another hermeneutics leads not to "Trinity" because of a priori assumptions or pre-conditions for "reasoning from scripture".

When we get to Joshua, events described there will be used to support a Ptolemaic cosmos...

43

From A Bublical Point Of View Did You Ever Think The Trinity Doctrine Made Sense?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i see no logic in it.

i see what appears to be some scriptural contradictions but i see no merit in a trinitarian view of god.. .

.

kepler

Ever hear this one? Three guys walk into a bar: a conservative, a liberal and a middle of the roader.

The bar tender looks up and says, "What are you having, Mitt?"

"You have offered hints of Jesus' deity but nothing at all regarding a trinity."

It's amazing! Nobody reads or read Genesis Chapter 18. Nobody even acknowledges it exists.

43

From A Bublical Point Of View Did You Ever Think The Trinity Doctrine Made Sense?

by minimus in

jw
friends

i see no logic in it.

i see what appears to be some scriptural contradictions but i see no merit in a trinitarian view of god.. .

.

kepler

I'll reserve judgment about the nature of God, but "from the Biblical point of view", I do see some shortcomings to this basis of reasoning , that the notion of a Trinity is "un-biblical". It would appear that there is not so much a Biblical point of view as there is a point of view imposed on the Bible.

In the book of Genesis, chapter one, the Lord relates the events of the creation in the form of an editorial "we". "Let us make man in our own image and likeness..."

And then in chapter 18 of the same book starting from the first verse:

"Yahweh appeared to (Abraham) at the Oak of Mamre while he was sitting by the entrance of the tent during the hottest part of the day. He looked up and there he saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and bowed to the ground. "My Lord, if I find favor with you, please do not pass your servant by. Let me have a little water brought...

"They replied, 'Do as you say.'

----------------

That would appear to me as quite clear from a Biblical point of view - and I have sat through hours of arguments that were of much more tenuous nature or connection to text.

Then, of course, there is nearly all the Gospel of John. A man who speaks of God as his Father, in the 8th chapter, 58th verse says that "before Abraham ever was, I am". His audience reportedly sensed the drift of what he was saying because they picked up stones from the Temple courtyard to express their rebuttal.

It is also in the Gospel of John that the Samaritan woman says to Jesus in chapter 4 that "I know that the Messiah is coming and when he comes he will explain everything." Jesus answers that "That is who I am, I who speak to you."

So, it is the contention of many who have replied to this query:

On the matter of a Trinity or even a Duality, how could Christians have ever been confused if they had studied their Bible?

In chapter 5 of John, it's almost as though Jesus laments in the text about the dilemma: "You pore over the scriptures, believing that in them you can find eternal life; it is these scriptures that testify to me, and yet you refuse to come to me to receive life!"

As sceptical as I am about many things I read, I do find it remarkable that this text predicts a Bible as it will someday be construed. For whenever a certain John put the text to scroll, there was a time before that that there was no Gospel of John and a message of a Messiah coming was all that much less clear.

But coming back to the subject, in combination with the citations John gives from Isaiah and other OT texts, as do other apostolic writers, and then the additional passages that they do not connect directly such as the ones I cited above, then you have the basis for a Trinitarian view of God.

54

Tower of Babel built by Babies!

by Billy the Ex-Bethelite in

the weekly tms bible reading assignment is not read, or not carefully read, by most of the sheeples.

it doesn't really matter, because the consideration of the bible reading material is one of the shortest parts on the meeting with a limited number of comments, and those comments are restricted to less than 30 seconds or you will get counselled.

over and over, the dubs are told to read the bible, yet the organization gives no real encouragement to read the bible by keeping everyone busy in the recruiting work and using relatively few scriptures in their "talks".. why?

kepler

Another proposition. A couple of time I have been tempted to ask people who take the Tower story literally whether they use it to account for the existence of Spanish, French, Italian and so forth. Do they believe they come from the Tower episode or that they are in effect dialects originating from Rome's Latin.

Would be interested to know how that turns out.

54

Tower of Babel built by Babies!

by Billy the Ex-Bethelite in

the weekly tms bible reading assignment is not read, or not carefully read, by most of the sheeples.

it doesn't really matter, because the consideration of the bible reading material is one of the shortest parts on the meeting with a limited number of comments, and those comments are restricted to less than 30 seconds or you will get counselled.

over and over, the dubs are told to read the bible, yet the organization gives no real encouragement to read the bible by keeping everyone busy in the recruiting work and using relatively few scriptures in their "talks".. why?

kepler

Wow, sure a lot of serious deliberation about events in Chapter 11 of Genesis. I wonder if the original writer(s) of this book even realized they had all this in one chapter. First we get an account of the whole world speaking the same language, brick making procedures in the land of Shinar or Mesopotamia, then the Lord scattering everyone because they built the structure too high - and gave them new languages to boot. And then we get a lesson in post deluge geneaology. ... Coming to Abram.

All this supposed to happen about mid 3rd millenium BC. Trouble is, WRITINGS of Egypt and Mesopotamia are dissimilar already - and so are the languages. Egyptian hieroglyphics go back to the 4th. Akkadian cuneiform goes back a ways too.

Another problem with this formula for reaching the heavens. Mud bricks and bitumen???? Substituted for stone. No rebar. No iron. Wasn't even iron age back then.

Why not this: Maybe it was an early prophecy about the ascendancy of the WatchTower. Russell, Rutherford et al. ( another language injection) wanted to climb to heaven, but they needed to do it on a stack of books or publications - and they had to be DISSEMINATED in many languages. Consequently the publishers were dispersed.

Something else though. The story of brick making in the region of Babel or Bab-el, gate of god, sounds a lot like the description of making bricks in Egypt given in Exodus chapter one. Neither story tells of stone masonry. Neither knows of any pharoahs by name. The second story speaks of the cities of Ramesses without stopping to think that this was actually the name of the most likely Pharoah for the second episode. Have to wonder about the antiquity of the "final draft".

18

THE TRUTH is an estimate

by Terry in

jw
friends

as i was growing up in a household with my grandparents, i heard a certain phrase hundreds of times, "well, you know what they say .

and i wondered: "who are "they"?.

it was my first encounter with shapeless, formless, invisible, abstract, non-descript, and anonymous authority.. the premise seemed to say:.

kepler

Terry,

Your account of truth, estimates and the indefinite 3rd person plural - laugh out loud amusing. Reminds me of some property I owned for a number of years and finally got rid of. I could just see the trench in the front yard and the incoming new repair estimates lobbed in like hostile mortar shells.

Regarding things like, "You know what they always say..." It was other activities of decades back that used to stick to the back of my mind:

"You know what they are doing now?..." "Do you know what they are working on now?..."

This was the stuff of monorails and trips to Mars. Devices that I should have noticed in Popular Science or Popular Mechanics. As one social commentator remarked, it was akin to invoking a great conspiracy to make life better for "us". Even after two world wars that sort of optimism still remained in many areas of the country.

It might be that the estimates on things like spaceships and fusion power seemed to extend out like that plumbing job. Or maybe increased deficit spending made it harder and harder to follow up on all those research initiatives assumed by the Great Society, etc. In any case a whole lot of "advancements" did sneak in the back door. I say "advancement", because I am not that keen on app loaded pocket telephones that you can stare at all day, but I do appreciate what can be done in a day's work based on data.

Then sometimes one gets involved in a new project and you begin to wonder that maybe you might be working along with some of the group that people might be talking about - "You know what they are doing now..." Well, actually...

... The notion of "what they were doing" did invoke a notion that life was getting better, just like Victorians or Edwardians might have thought - until that frame of mind came to a screeching halt 100 years ago. But this was not the first time that had happened - or that society recovered from it.

It just might be that life on this plane, whether it gets better or not, will keep on going. It will change to a form that fits the aspirations of our children and grandchildren more than ours, descendants that like apps more than I do. And just because we do not like the prospects, does not mean that iall has to end.

Another "estimator" of a different persuasion, I think it was Malcolm Gladwell, suggested that we live in a most likely state. And when it comes to the age of mankind, tautological argument, so to speak, leads us to think we are near the middle of its life - since that would be the most likely result of such inquiry. We seem to be located in space and time at a rather arbitrary point after 13.7 billion years of goings in a spiral arm of a typical galaxy... The same might be true about the age of human kind. So if we see skeletal traces of ourselves back 40,000 years, odds are...

But wait, where's my slide rule? 607 BC Jerusalem's Temple was knocked down to crank up a 2520 year cycle mechanism... so that oh so consequently we are privileged to live at exactly 100 years after the clock ran out on that epoch, drawing to the tottering of another massive, momentous, cryptic domino...

"In the world of prophecy do you know what is going on now?..."

What a trade in mindset!

100

Can anyone disprove 607 BCE date using only the NWT and WT literature?

by Bart Belteshassur in

i haven't come across any arguement that does not involve secular history and external references.

in fact the wt can not get to 607 bce without using external sources as in knowing that they need to get back from 1914 ce to 607 bce, and botching an argument using an external date as reference to create their start point at 537 bce.. i realize that to get the final date we must provide a fixed figure from somewhere which can only be a historical source, but the objective would be to disprove the wt flim flam.

once that is achieve we can use which ever fixed historical point they wish to chose.

kepler

Jeffro,

Reflecting on your reply, I think I will keep Ezra 6:16-18 in mind if this topic should come up again, especially if anyone should knock on my door.

So if we are to assume that 607 BCE is the date of the Temple's destruction, then the temple was literally out of commission until the ceremony the verses in Ezra describe.

That's more like 90 YEARS than 70 YEARS.

Rationales for so-called "70 years of desolation" based on an end date in the 530s are all over the calendar with presumed points of initiation: Accession of Nebuchadnezzar? Treaties of alliance or hegemony with this or that Middle Eastern power?

You have to be in a cult to take any of them seriously.

The whole Northern Kingdom was obliterated and removed by Assyrians a century earlier and the chroniclers of these mishaps or their latter day interpreters hardly give a rat's ass about what happened to the tribes there or whether they appear on the historical stage ever again.

What bothers the chroniclers who compiled this story was the fate of the Temple. And it was out of commission for 70 years if presume it was demolished by Nebuchadnezzar according to the conventional historical chronology.

As to our aside about 70 AD being another 70 year milestone, I am aware of chronological uncertainties for Christ's birth. But then again, there is that obvious interval in the calendar. That you should dismiss that one as "what we call a coincidence" , then what should be done with the fabricated interval of 2520 years which is the topic of all this discussion?

100

Can anyone disprove 607 BCE date using only the NWT and WT literature?

by Bart Belteshassur in

i haven't come across any arguement that does not involve secular history and external references.

in fact the wt can not get to 607 bce without using external sources as in knowing that they need to get back from 1914 ce to 607 bce, and botching an argument using an external date as reference to create their start point at 537 bce.. i realize that to get the final date we must provide a fixed figure from somewhere which can only be a historical source, but the objective would be to disprove the wt flim flam.

once that is achieve we can use which ever fixed historical point they wish to chose.

kepler

Despite a number of references to Ezra, I don't think there was any mention of this Ez 6:15-18:

The Temple was completed on the 23rd day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of the reigh of King Darius. The Israelites - the priests, the Levites and the remainder of the exiles - joyfully celebrated the dedication of the Temple of God - for the dedication of this Temple of God they offered one hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs... They installed the priests in their orders and the Livites in their positions for the ministry of the Temple of God in Jerusalem, as prescribed in the Book of Moses.

In other words, the Temple was not complete until it was dedicated on a specific date.

What was the date? That was about 1 April 515 BC according to a footnote in my Bible. Elsewhere I have seen it described as 516. E.g., Wikipedia.

Now what was going on 70 years earlier?

Elsewhere Jews have interpreted this 70 year desolation accordingly.

Strangely enough, if we take the present era dating and the second temple's destruction, we get another 70 year interval.

Of course, we also have Herod the Great remodeling the daylights out of it and Antiochus IV desecrating it in manners that are recorded by history rather than what is inferred about Nebuchadnezzar's destruction, but when one deals with numerological predictions and prophecies, all is fair.