from my experience within the jw organization, i understood that salvation meant a person accepted the teachings of the wbts without question as the "faithful and discrete slave," thereby placing their trust in them, not jesus christ.
salvation consisted of being found "righteous" by jehovah and resurrected to everlasting life in an earthly paradise.
to obtain this salvation, one needed to obey the organization's teachings, remain a faithful jw, and lead a moral life.
"We just don't know" does not mesh well with "Jehovah guides his people through us."
"We just don't know" does not mesh well with "you must obey us without question."
"We just don't know" does not mesh well with "disagree with us and you are an apostate."
hope everyone near to the region affected in california is ok. it's shocking to hear of the destruction.
these affected areas are some of the places i visited when i came on a tour of the us.
malibu, santa barbera, la, santa monica, hollywood and so on..
If you get a lot of rain for one or two years, then a drought, you know that the conditions are there for a highly destructive fire. Under those circumstances, isn't it even more imperative to make sure to take action to reduce or eliminate the risk? "Oh well... nature" is not an attitude that someone responsible for the safety of thousands (or millions) has the luxury of adopting.
I think it's too early to know for sure what the causes are, but if it turns out that there was too much growth that created conditions for a catastrophe like this one, then steps should have been taken. No excuses. It would have cost a lot less than the (potentially) hundreds of billions that will be required to fix it now, as well as the loss of life and the loss of property and the long-term effects that victims and their families will be dealing with.
i know back in the day, that was taught, that if the parents were going to be destroyed, so would the children.
i just can't easily find reference to anything.
this thinking has been used to justify some egregious behavior towards children and their parents such as exclusion of children from jw family - why worry, the end is near, all will work itself out then - the end didn't come though.
I wonder where the line is drawn between being a bad person and being a really bad person...
awhile ago i said on here i would like to show how wrong the jehovahs witness organisation is , in that they will not accept the testimony of a victim of sexual crime where the victim has no other witnesses to the crime.
i faced this with helping my ex wife for about 15 years in exposing her father , an elder, to the jw org.
his raping of her over years and they believed him.. so therefore the perpetrator knowing of the organisations stance can easily deny and therefore be free to pretend to serve as an innocent jw still mixing with the congregation ,and also i have witnessed an accused perpetrator of child molestation witnessing at my next door neighbors house in field service with a child of another family even though the elders knew of the accusations against him.
It is a reminder of how women were viewed in that time and place-- as property. If you 'damage' a man's property by having sex with her (and thus making her verifiably a non-virgin), you had to pay the man the fee he would have otherwise gotten for selling her to her future husband. Men weren't going to pay top dollar for a woman who wasn't 'pure.'
awhile ago i said on here i would like to show how wrong the jehovahs witness organisation is , in that they will not accept the testimony of a victim of sexual crime where the victim has no other witnesses to the crime.
i faced this with helping my ex wife for about 15 years in exposing her father , an elder, to the jw org.
his raping of her over years and they believed him.. so therefore the perpetrator knowing of the organisations stance can easily deny and therefore be free to pretend to serve as an innocent jw still mixing with the congregation ,and also i have witnessed an accused perpetrator of child molestation witnessing at my next door neighbors house in field service with a child of another family even though the elders knew of the accusations against him.
Elders also have no business performing what amounts to a criminal inquiry, either. They should alert the police and let them investigate, then base their actions on what that investigation reveals. If they need to interview the involved parties, they can do so afterwards. If they truly are concerned with protecting victims (and potential victims), they should allow the legal process to do its work, and then follow up with their 'spiritual' investigation.
from my experience within the jw organization, i understood that salvation meant a person accepted the teachings of the wbts without question as the "faithful and discrete slave," thereby placing their trust in them, not jesus christ.
salvation consisted of being found "righteous" by jehovah and resurrected to everlasting life in an earthly paradise.
to obtain this salvation, one needed to obey the organization's teachings, remain a faithful jw, and lead a moral life.
Hi LauraLynn, as far as I can tell that is exactly what they believe today. I started my fade in the late 90s and was out by the mid-2000s. Nothing I've seen since then has made me think that they changed anything. Obeying the governing body remains the most important facet of JW worship.
"the dangers of independent thinking".
reading mary's thread regarding the july 15th wt, i began to really consider what the wbts' problem is with "independent thinking".. what exactly is "independent thinking" and what about its opposite, "dependent thinking"?
i think the following excerpt from an article here does a good job of defining them.
Franz once testified that 'unity' had to be maintained, even at the cost of accuracy. If the GB was wrong, it was better for the rank and file to be wrong with them, than to think for themselves even if that led them to the truth. Better to follow the organization over a cliff, than to mind the path yourself and arrive safe.
a few on here (and of course many on the ex-jw reddit forum) have mentioned that wt hq just recently (like in the past couple months) put out a video warning against the praising of jw actors, taking photos with them, etc.
to not do it anymore.
it was narrated by geoffrey jackson.
The people who wanted to take photos with the drama actors were more interested in the Biblical character. It's not like they were getting Tom Cruise to act in the drama. I think they considered it cute to be able to take a snapshot with Moses or David. The six-year-old taking a picture with Mickey Mouse and Disneyland is not interested in worshipping the actor under that costume.
The WTS worries about the dumbest stuff, sometimes.
i noticed in the latest memorial invitation, the dates for the observance are odd--well far more odd than usual.. what i mean is that forever as i can remember, jehovah's witnesses use to advertise really big that this was nisan 14. they don't tend to do this anymore.. and being jewish, their dates now tend to align with passover, or at least with the second seder night of passover.. 2025: saturday, april 12 (nisan 15).
2026: thursday, april 2 (nisan 15/16).
2027: monday, march 22 (nisan 15/16).
I don't think the WTS should have tried to be so picky about the date. They don't observe the memorial as part of a larger observance or celebration, so they could have picked a more consistent day and time. For example, make it the second Saturday in April, or something like that. Based on the handful of times that they missed the exact date, and the changes in the next few years, it is clear that Jehovah wasn't picky about it.
that's what the word says.
.
colossians 1:16. for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through him and for him..
Halcon: But to answer your question, that person would very likely tell you which God they feel in their heart and why. Or maybe they couldn't.
That last part speaks to the point I am making. The person who tells me that he experiences god in his heart can claim that it is one god or another, and there is no way to challenge his claim that everyone can agree upon. Indeed, his description of "god in his heart" may not match anyone else's. But I bet his description of heartbreak, or of what he felt when he touched a hot surface, would be easily and accurately understood by everyone else.
Keep in mind that I am accepting your approach at face value, and even that only gets us as far as "maybe it could be." Gods exist in a muddy world of conjecture, in a place that we define however we wish. And that is the extent of our evidence for them. For a concept of such tremendous potential importance, that is a shockingly thin thread to depend upon.
