Paul Blizard is a wonderful apostate, oops I mean the Rev. Paul Blizard!
Rex
Shining One
JoinedPosts by Shining One
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106
Lots of Bethelites Not Happy With Downsizing
by Seeker4 ini had a long conversation last night with an old jw friend whose sister and brother-in-law are bethelites since the 1970s.
she is an artist, and he runs a small but important department there.. we were talking about the bethel downsizing (my friend was well aware of it), and i told him i figured his sister and b-i-l would be safe due to the fact that they are now in their 60s and have something close to 4 decades seniority.
but he said no, that they were worried that they would be asked to leave as well, sent into the circuit work or as special pioneers sent where the "need is great.".
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Shining One
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37
JWD forum is another battleground for your souls.
by Spectrum inif you think about it, it's true.
what's the difference?
constant shifting sands, one minute the grains are over here then we seek to blow them over there.
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Shining One
>I am fairly positive my cosy relationship with the Athiest/Agnostic crowd drives "Shining One" mad.
Not at all. You often (not always) compromise Biblical principles to side with the popular opinion. That is what most of mainline religion has done and it has cost them dearly. The result is they are marginalized and sliding down a slippery slope to oblivion. What drives the carnal Christians mad is to be in close proximity with someone who stands up for a righteous, consistent standard. I know where you come from and that is your choice. You will have answer for it just as I will for mine. How much of your 'house' is on shifting sand? How much straw and wood have you built on the foundation of the apostles? I am glad that we have a merciful savior.
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74
True Christians neutral in War?
by Van Gogh intoday i re-established contact with an older true - friend who is still a jw.
in the fifty years that he has been baptized he invested a lot of time and effort in helping the needy and elderly, loyally taking up responsibilities in the org as an elder, organizer, speaker and shepherd.
he is still out there as a lowly publisher, tirelessly going from door to door with only his bible.
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Shining One
Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Think about it. Also, what extent do you take 'love thy neighbor'? Would you defend a neighbor from a criminal? How about a neighborhood? How about a country? How about rescuing a people from a deranged dictator (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, Saddam Hussein)?
Rex -
37
JWD forum is another battleground for your souls.
by Spectrum inif you think about it, it's true.
what's the difference?
constant shifting sands, one minute the grains are over here then we seek to blow them over there.
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Shining One
If the subject matter of the board could be kept to the JW situation and not become a place to attack all faith in Christianity it would not be a 'battleground for souls'. What we have is:
1) Embittered people who think they can 'get even' with God for 'letting them be so hurt and deceived'.
2) Those who have lost all faith seeking converts to their new world view and confirmation that morality is foolish.
3) Those who have emerged as Christians and seek to defend the faith in any way possible. A deeper purpose here is often the conversion of those who have left a cult into real Christianity.
Rex -
24
Scriptures You Will Not Hear at the 21-05-06 Church Sermon.
by scout575 in"but when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily i say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of israel till the son of man be come.
" ( matthew 10:23 ).
"for the son of man shall come in the glory of his father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
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Shining One
>Jesus is saying that only SOME of his audience would still be alive when he "comes in his kingdom". The implication of this is that MANY of them would have died out before that time arrives. Does this not indicate to you that Jesus was anticipating that much more than one year would elapse before he would 'come in his kingdom'?
What makes you an expert? You are obviously not trained nor schooled in 'Biblical Studies' of any type. Oops, I forgot, "The education Witnesses get from reading all of our literature is equal to a college degree."
Rex -
24
Scriptures You Will Not Hear at the 21-05-06 Church Sermon.
by scout575 in"but when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily i say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of israel till the son of man be come.
" ( matthew 10:23 ).
"for the son of man shall come in the glory of his father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
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Shining One
Scout likes to stick foot firmly in mouth before investigating any scripture....
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24
Scriptures You Will Not Hear at the 21-05-06 Church Sermon.
by scout575 in"but when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily i say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of israel till the son of man be come.
" ( matthew 10:23 ).
"for the son of man shall come in the glory of his father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
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Shining One
>"But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the SON OF MAN BE COME." ( Matthew 10:23 )
"For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which SHALL NOT TASTE OF DEATH, till they see the Son of man COMING IN HIS KINGDOM." ( Matthew 16:27,28 )
"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.....Verily I say unto you, THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS TILL ALL THESE THINGS BE FULFILLED. ( Matthew 24: 30,34 )
LOL, Scout you little, ignorant bugger. This is APOCALYPTIC language being used by Jesus. Much of the Bible is in this language as prophecy that is not recognized as fulfilled until after the events took place. His followers then and today know it's purpose and it predicted the end of the temple and Jewish worship at it. Jerusalem was vanquished in 70 A.D. and two million Jews perished int he war that lasted four years. Christians got out of Jerusalem in heeding the warning.
>Apocalyptic cult leader prophesies falsely.
Literalistic ex-JW is more confused than ever.
Rex -
7
"An Outcast"
by scout575 in"i was astonished that i had blindly let these people put the ideas in my head that god and the bible were, "absolute truth".
i began doing some thinking on my own and my closest family and friends began telling me that i was "backslidden".
i have become an outcast amongst people who said that they would always love me and who preach never ending forgiveness.
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Shining One
Again you arm making a sweeping generalization in order to make your objective easier to critisize. That is a 'straw man' argument. I am going to keep on your case, Scout and constantly provide a counter-point to your vindictive assault on the faith of others.
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12
Point for Point response to Trinity Brochure?
by BlackSwan of Memphis ini am looking for a resource to a point for point response to the trinity brochure.
also, i can't believe i'm going to ask this, but how can i get an acutal copy of the thing without contacting the wts is some manner?
thx again for your help.
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Shining One
I picked this gem out of the text of the link. I have also speculated on this very idea...
The Watchtower very astutely points out that there have been numerous religions in antiquity that have worshipped a divine triad or trinity. Sumer, Egypt, India, and others, which can be fairly easily verified. Again, however, the Watchtower attempts to make another indictment that is groundless. They quote historians such as Will Durant and H.G. Wells to try to demonstrate that Trinitarians merely borrowed the theology from such pagan sources. This is a very presumptuous leap. Since I am familiar with the historians and the sources quoted, I must warn that the intent of these worldly historians is to prove that virtually all of Christianity is borrowed from paganism, not the Trinity. They assume that if a pagan religion that predates Christianity has a certain belief or practice in common with Christianity, then Christianity must have borrowed it. If that is true, than we have a huge amount of "house cleaning" to do. We can start by obliterating the first eight chapters of Genesis. Adam and Eve, Noah and the rest. Any good student of mythology can tell you all about the Gilgamesh epic, which contains the Babylonian version of the Creation and the Great Flood. The ten commandments can obviously go, since they were hijacked from Hammurabi. We would have to dispense with the idea of being "washed by the blood" and being forgiven, since, as H.G. Wells claims, that was pulled directly from Mithraism. Forget the virgin birth of the Messiah, since it was also reportedly done with the virgin birth of Buddha, Zarathushtra, and How-tsieh. The crucifixion and resurrection of the savior-god Attis should therefore banish those similar concepts in Christianity. Baptism has been practiced all over the world in the times before Christ. I guess no one ever told Jesus that he was participating in paganism by being baptized in the Jordan.
The point is, we need not be terrified of the fact that there are early pagan religions that had a resemblance of the true gospel. That in itself does not show that Christianity was dependent upon them. As a matter of fact, I have discovered that the existence of such pagan mythos frequently can serve as evidence for the validity of certain doctrine. Taking the Epic of Gilgamesh, as just one example, we have a Babylonian legend which includes a discourse about a universal flood and the sole family that survived it by building a great boat. Wouldn't it make sense that, if there was indeed a world-wide flood, that the event would be repeated in the lore of the survivors and passed on in it's diversified forms? Why of course! Consequently, the existence of such stories only strengthens the validity of the Bible stories. How about the pagan trinities? Could they not also represent a corrupt form of an older spiritual truth? Although it is speculative, it is a possibility that ought to be considered. The fact is that in comparative mythology, as we move back in time past the pantheons of gods in Greece and Rome, the storm gods and fertility goddesses of the middle east, we would come upon a remarkable thing. We would see that in many cultures of the world, the most ancient religion is a monotheistic religion worshipping a single Supreme God. Of the Indo-European nations, and China, wherever we have written records, the first known religion was the worship of the one God. The Chinese called Him "Shang-ti". From Europe to India, He was "Dyaus" (note the similarity to the Greek and Latin words for god, theos and deus).
If we were to seek biblical vindacation on this we could note that the Bible says in Genesis 4:26 that at that time, men began to call on Jehovah ( Heb. YHWH). There was, likewise, one religion based on the worship of Jehovah after the flood. At Babel, however, God confused all of mankind's languages. and the nations went their own way, yet retained a belief of One God, albeit, under a different number of names and titles. The ancient monotheism in these different nations we could then consider just a corrupted version of the once universal worship of Jehovah. What does that have to do with the Trinity? It should fascinate all of us that it is in these same ancient cultures an unexplained mythology of triune Godheads. In Sumer, Akkad, India and other cultures, the idea of a trinity is implanted in the ancient mythology much like the mythology of the single Supreme God. The twomythologies seem to exist without contradiction. Mircea Eliade, who is considered the greatest expert in the world on ancient religion, says the oldest form of Egyptian religion bears "striking resemblance to John's theology of the Logos". (Eliade, History of Religious Belief) The existence of Trinitarian thought in pagan mythos is therefore not a liability to those who profess belief in the Trinity. On the contrary, such mythology may prove to be the vestiges of the ancient worship revealed by God to the antediluvian patriarchs. Such is the argument made by early apologists like Justin Martyr, who contended that many items in philosophy and paganism that resembled the Gospel were "seeds of truth" that God had planted throughout the world.
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19
Flood Legends
by Inquisitor inthe account of noah's flood has had its credibility beaten black and blue by current understanding of ancient history, geology and biology.
yet staunch christians, including jws, continue to assert that the existence of the many flood legends from all over the world proves that a global catastrophe must have occurred.
how would you respond to this line of reasoning specifically?
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Shining One
>The account of Noah's Flood has had its credibility beaten black and blue by current understanding of ancient history, geology and biology.
Uh, NO it hasn't. You are just reasoning from the evolutionary presupposition. The 'proofs' of the scientific data at present can be successfully defended from either viewpoint!
>Yet staunch Christians, including JWs, continue to assert that the existence of the many flood legends from all over the world proves that a global catastrophe must have occurred.
That is only one observable fact and is not the 'whole enchilada'.
>How would you respond to this line of reasoning specifically?
You've just seen the answer to that!
Rex