Seems like I was the exception, as the majority of you did read it end to end as Witnesses, and quite a few read it more than once. I wonder of it is the same for Witnesses today. I could never keep up with the schedule, probably because I was too lazy and so much of it didn’t really appeal to me. Now I’ve read it all, for as waton said, it ‘gives you amo’.
Ultimate Axiom
JoinedPosts by Ultimate Axiom
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47
Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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47
Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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Ultimate Axiom
Some time ago a couple of Witnesses called on my door with a leaflet that asked (among other things), is the bible the word of God or just a good book? I replied it’s neither, and cited the ethnic cleansing of the ‘holy land’. One of them replied, “but those people were wicked, they sacrificed their children to Moloch”. To which I replied, “So your answer is to kill all the children so they can’t be sacrificed”. Needless to say, they didn’t stay long to argue their case.
But then I got to thinking, it wasn’t the Canaanite’s fault they sacrificed their children, it was their God’s fault. After all, if Jehovah asked one of his faithful to sacrifice their child, they would do it wouldn’t they? Well Abraham would have anyway. Which means he had the same mindset at those worshippers of Moloch, so if the Canaanites were wicked so, was Abraham. And if you think about it, the bedrock of Christianity is based on child sacrifice.
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Political Correctness and Censorship / Banning Books
by TerryWalstrom inbanned books?censorship?.
let’s say you live in a land where the rule is: you can’t offend anyone.okay, fair enough.
let’s take a look at what follows (implicit in this rule).. if you are speaking to 10 people, is it okay to offend 1 in 10?
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Ultimate Axiom
It is why three-minute trips to Pluto or Sedna can't happen. It is why we cannot visit stars within a reasonable time (say, visit the Belt of Orion in around 90 minutes)
Funny, I thought we couldn’t do these things because we can’t travel faster than light, I didn’t realise it was down to PC.
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Political Correctness and Censorship / Banning Books
by TerryWalstrom inbanned books?censorship?.
let’s say you live in a land where the rule is: you can’t offend anyone.okay, fair enough.
let’s take a look at what follows (implicit in this rule).. if you are speaking to 10 people, is it okay to offend 1 in 10?
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Ultimate Axiom
Let’s say you live in a land where the Rule is: You can’t offend anyone.
Yes you’re right, this is an impossibility. It reminds me of that old joke where a kid disagrees that God can do anything. “OK, name something He can’t do”, asks his teacher, “He can’t please everyone”.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS means well--but the unintended consequences are TOO DIRE.
Only if PC is taken too far – we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Banning those books by the PC brigade is absurd, it seems to me that some people want to go to ridiculous extremes to boast the liberal values. On the other hand, there are those who seem to think that because they have the right to offend people, that means that they have a duty to do so. And I see no merit it offending people for the sake of it.
When I was at school we read Ballantyne’s Coral Island, and I thought it was so exciting. A few years ago I found a copy in a B&B I was staying at and thought I would read it again. I was struck by the fact that the author seemed to think that all natives of Pacific Islands were savage black people with curly hair whose greatest pleasure was eating people, he even had some ‘savages’ debating which races produced the tastiest meat. And even when he gets help from some of these natives, he still refers to them as ‘friendly savages’. While I would not ban that book, I’m sure it has value as a product of its time, but I certainly would not recommend it to children today.
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47
Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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Ultimate Axiom
“... a very boring process,”
Yes it was, and I didn’t find the Psalms particularly edifying either. Too much of ‘praise the Lord for he is wonderful, holy and righteous’, which I find particularly galling when David wrote this stuff while he was indiscriminately slaughtering thousands in his ethnic cleansing program.
When you read with a JW mindset, and a JW schedule, you typically have no time left to question what you read.
Couldn’t agree more.
To be fair it's not all bad.
True, and the bits that aren’t are the bits that get cherry picked.
I might ask, which Bible are you referring too?
Well, I started with the 66 books of the common bible, which are accepted by all Christians traditions. As I was using the RSV, which is a Catholic edition, I also read the OT Apocryphal books, which are also accepted by all Christian traditions except the protestants. But as I was interested in this ‘holy’ book that JWs, and so many others regard as the inspired and infallible word of God, I didn’t venture into the other OT Apocryphal books, or any of the NT Apocryphal books either. Interestingly enough, there are several passages in the Apocryphal OT that appear to quoted by Jesus, which raises the question, did Jesus regard them as 'holy scripture'?
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47
Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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Ultimate Axiom
“Why would a perfect woman who had been clued in about the animals that her perfect husband had named observing their characteristics, talk to a snake?”
Yep, and if the snake was crafty/subtle, then he was created that way, but what had that to do with anything, wasn’t Satan just using it as a puppet? And why was the snake punished, he’s just a dumb animal? In any case, sakes don’t eat dust, so that part of the punishment was never executed.
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47
Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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Ultimate Axiom
It’s not just the abysmal moral compass of the bible that strikes me, it’s also the vacuous nature of so much of it. For example the Proverbs, supposedly the distilled wisdom of Solomon is so full of trite. “A truthful witness gives honest testimony, but a false witness tells lies.” That is just not worth saying, but Proverbs says it twice (Prov 12:17 & 14:5). And as for, “No harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble” (Prov 12:21), well if only that were true.
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47
Did you actually read the bible end to end?
by Ultimate Axiom inin my ten years as a witness i never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time.
i knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various jw doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it.
well after nearly forty years out, i decided i would do it.
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Ultimate Axiom
I didn’t. In my ten years as a witness I never read the whole bible end to end, what with four magazines a month, the book study, meetings and talk preparations, there just wasn’t the time. I knew all the important references to ‘prove’ the various JW doctrines, and the cherry picked chapters that help foster the idea that it’s a good book, but that’s not reading it. Well after nearly forty years out, I decided I would do it. And having done it, I now conclude that it’s the most disgusting book I have ever read. You can see where Islamic State get their inspiration. Those ancient Israelites make IS looked positively moderate by comparison. And as for God, well words fail me to describe his disgusting behaviour. It makes me wonder how anyone who’s read it completely can still believe it to be the word of a loving God.
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The downfall of the Governing Body
by john.prestor inin a book i read a while back by the sociologist randall collins he says truly powerful people don't get angry because they get what they want in other ways, and he shows a picture of two runners where the one who's losing looks at the girl that passes her rather than ahead at the finish line, guess she doesn't wanna win the race after all.
i want to apply these to the governing body and their actions, the pattern of their actions, in printing all the hateful rhetoric against people like us and why l'm pretty sure, pretty damn confident in fact, it's all downhill from here... thanks to them and them alone.. the moment you let somebody get in your head and let them stay there they beat you, they win, they establish power, we got in their heads, they know we present a threat to them, we won't shut up, we're more brazen than we used to be, we're in the news, we're on tv, we're online we're at conventions we're in the kingdom halls, hell we're just about everywhere.
yeah, we don't have this completely down yet, sometimes we come on too strong or do something stupid, and i'm pointing the finger at myself here too, but for the most part we know how to fight this battle: we drag them into the light when they wanna hide in the dark like jackals lurking in the woods sneaking up on weak and wounded deer.
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Ultimate Axiom
johnamos – I was saying that two witnesses aren't needed if there's a confession, but I did add the proviso. 'unless of course he denies it later'. But you’re right I should have read the article first because that’s the situation they’re referring to. However, I would disagree with you on one point; I think they are downplaying the two witness rule in this situation.
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The downfall of the Governing Body
by john.prestor inin a book i read a while back by the sociologist randall collins he says truly powerful people don't get angry because they get what they want in other ways, and he shows a picture of two runners where the one who's losing looks at the girl that passes her rather than ahead at the finish line, guess she doesn't wanna win the race after all.
i want to apply these to the governing body and their actions, the pattern of their actions, in printing all the hateful rhetoric against people like us and why l'm pretty sure, pretty damn confident in fact, it's all downhill from here... thanks to them and them alone.. the moment you let somebody get in your head and let them stay there they beat you, they win, they establish power, we got in their heads, they know we present a threat to them, we won't shut up, we're more brazen than we used to be, we're in the news, we're on tv, we're online we're at conventions we're in the kingdom halls, hell we're just about everywhere.
yeah, we don't have this completely down yet, sometimes we come on too strong or do something stupid, and i'm pointing the finger at myself here too, but for the most part we know how to fight this battle: we drag them into the light when they wanna hide in the dark like jackals lurking in the woods sneaking up on weak and wounded deer.
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Ultimate Axiom
johnamos - the two witness rule only applies if there is no confession, so in your first example it doesn't apply, unless of course he denies it later. I was somewhat amused by Gary Breaux's statement that they 'will never change their scriptural position' on the two witness rule. Oh no? They are capable of changing anything with 'new light', so if legislation forces their hand, they'll change it. And I can't understand why they don't allow evidence such as DNA to substitute as a second witness. But if governments do clamp down on them, they will welcome it as fulfilling the start of the Great Tribulation. Of course, what they'll do when that 'start' has been going on for a decade or more is anybody's guess. Probably just carry on with the heads up the arses.