Posts by TerryWalstrom

51

EXPERTS ONLY! A Pop Quiz on (current) Watchtower teaching

by TerryWalstrom in

pop quiz on jw (current) teaching.

1. was jesus 2nd coming in 1914?.

2. is jesus 2nd (parousia) presence the same thing as his coming?.

TerryWalstrom

The GB is like the lazy relative who borrowed money from you years ago and every time you bump into them they have yet a bigger excuse and elaborate story as to why they don't pay.

It becomes a kind of spectator sport watching them spin new webs.

7

"Scum, roosters, jackasses, harlots, s.o.b.s" hate speech by JW's the reason for their "persecution"???

by TerryWalstrom in

from the online journal yad l'achim .

http://yadlachim.org/?categoryid=203&articleid=577.

in the above article jehovah's witnesses and the jews, a great many controversial issues are placed squarely in the spotlight of history.

TerryWalstrom

The article gave the JW Org a real bitch slap.

I'm posting it on Facebook.

7

"Scum, roosters, jackasses, harlots, s.o.b.s" hate speech by JW's the reason for their "persecution"???

by TerryWalstrom in

from the online journal yad l'achim .

http://yadlachim.org/?categoryid=203&articleid=577.

in the above article jehovah's witnesses and the jews, a great many controversial issues are placed squarely in the spotlight of history.

Note that Yad L'Achim was formed in 1950 with the stated goal of to "help new immigrants to the newly born country, and to help them find a suitable religious framework. Over time the founders were disturbed by emerging missionary efforts in the new State, and then later by assimilation. It then turned a major part of its activities to combating these two issues."

This group (responsible for the above article) is disturbed by the efforts of outside Christian missionaries to 'intrude' upon Jewish society in an effort to proselytize them. It is little wonder Jehovah's Witnesses have come under scrutiny with a view to undermining their claims of self-righteousness.

So, this is the inborn 'prejudice' behind the writing of this article.

7

"Scum, roosters, jackasses, harlots, s.o.b.s" hate speech by JW's the reason for their "persecution"???

by TerryWalstrom in

from the online journal yad l'achim .

http://yadlachim.org/?categoryid=203&articleid=577.

in the above article jehovah's witnesses and the jews, a great many controversial issues are placed squarely in the spotlight of history.

TerryWalstrom

From the online journal YAD L'ACHIM

http://yadlachim.org/?CategoryID=203&ArticleID=577

In the above article JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES and the JEWS, a great many controversial issues are placed squarely in the spotlight of history.

This article is arguably the first time the curtain has been pulled back from the standpoint of Jewish opinion squarely confronting Jehovah's Witnesses claims of 'persecution.'

I strongly urge everybody to read the contents in great detail.

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Example:

"In 1938, in yet another of their official publications in Germany, the true attitude of the sect to the Jews came loud and clear. Under the headline 'The Jews in Palestine' they write that Jews’ “eyes are blind and their ears are deaf to God’s truth.”(49) They explain that the Jews will never succeed in returning to Palestine because it is against the will of 'Jehovah'. And anyway the Jews belong to “organization of the Devil”. (49)

And the declaration ends:
“The Jews are the epitome of the fact how terrible it is not to be under Jehovah’s blessings. Separated from God’s grace, they are restless here, too. Sowing the wind they are reaping the whirlwind! Just how long?”(49)

A clearer example of deep theological anti-Semitism is hard to imagine."

Another example:

'The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust' describes the behavior of members of the sect in the camps:
“… they refused to cooperate with other illegal political groups, to try to escape or to rebel against SS… in the end the SS exploited this unusualbehavior of the 'Bible Students'” for their own benefit. For example, by the orders of Heinrich Himmler, they were allowed to gather mushrooms and fruits outside the camps, because there was no danger of them trying to run away or to attack members of the SS. As a result of this policy change by SS, the conditions of“Bible Students” in the camps improved."(32)

The truth is that the moral conduct of 'Jehovah’s Witnesses' in the camps did not differ from conduct of other non-Jewish prisoners – some of them behaved like human beings and others not at all. This is how they are described in a book 'Face to Face with Nazis – fighters tell their story' (published by the 'Association of Invalids of War on Nazism' in cooperation with 'Yad Vashem') by a Jew who was together with them in the concentration camps:
“In the camps in Poland they did not always behave according to their teachings. They served the cruel Nazi enemy very well with everything connected to murdering the Jews.”(53)
The writer of these lines could not have known what were the teachings of the sect. If he had known, he would’ve understood that they behave totally “according to the teachings.”

11

Why I became agnostic after leaving the Watchtower

by donny in

one of many things that led me to agnosticism after leaving the jw's was the cognitive dissonance i encountered with those in the mainstream churches, especially the really conservative ones.

these types would scream out in protest (rightly so) on all of the current atrocities going on in the world regarding islam and its radical extremists, but then justify the savage murders and slaughter perpetuated by israel in the old testament.. often i would take these passages and replace the names and places of these scriptures with current ones.

for example 1 samuel 15:3 reads "now go, attack the amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them.

TerryWalstrom

As a sidebar. . . my grandparents reared me and told their story of the Great Depression, and how it was Hoover that ruined the country. I never questioned any of it because, after all, they had lived through it. It was many years later I started reading about Herbert Hoover.

The man donated every paycheck he earned in government to charity. He had only been in office eight months when the Stock Market crashed. Within the space of 4 years he was able to balance the budget, enact the WPA to employ thousands, built the Hoover Dam, and taxed the rich by increasing their burden from 25% to 63%.

So, why was Hoover so hated? It turns out he was completely on the side of PROHIBITION of LIQUOR!

As the economy crashed, more and more unemployed Americans sought solace in alcohol--but--they were truly angered when it was snatched from their grasp--and who to blame?

I only mention the above because it took me a long time to realize my view of the world and how it worked was shaped by the people who reared me. Like most honest, hard-working people, they were filled with misconceptions about damned near everything---including God.

By the time I met the fellow who introduced me to Jehovah and his surly band of half-Wit-nesses, my proper knowledge of God and the Bible had been crippled to the point of misunderstanding the difference between reality and nincompoopery.

My grandfather's number one goal in life was said to be, "To find the only true religion."

That false premise was passed on to me, alas!

Like Donny, I think most of us travel the path until the path leads to nowhere. Possessing a modicum of intelligence we stop and scratch our head in wonderment. "Does this road lead nowhere at all but circles?"

Sanity only commences when we are able to lend a strong dose of skepticism to EVERYTHING we hear--and especially from those whom we trust!

62

NAILING DOWN the fraud of John 1:1 by demonstration

by TerryWalstrom in

call me crazy, but i love to watch seminary classes when sharp teachers are in charge of the instruction.. in the following video, the teacher really nails jehovah's witnesses on john 1:1 with utter simplicity.. begin at 1 hour and 20 minutes in.. i've never seen or heard of this before.. .

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_5qkj7tmbg.

TerryWalstrom

James White (adjunct professor of Greek, Hebrew, systematic theology) discourages his students from using Interlinears by saying, "If you can't read Greek, an Interlinear won't do anything to help you, but if you do read Greek, you'll never need one."

With arguably sound insight, teachers who teach NT Greek view Interlinears as a do-it-yourself-kit for crackpots eager to invent their own theology. I must say, the history of the Watchtower Organization seems to prove the rule on that one!

3

FUN with (Bible) numbers! Or, how an obsession with gematria steered the writing of the Bible

by TerryWalstrom in

first: what is gematria?.

answer: interpreting the scriptures by computing the numerical value of words, based on those of their constituent letters.. greek and hebrew did not use a different system for their alphabets and their numerals, but the letters of the alphabet played double duty, so that each letter had a numerical value.

one pay-off of that system was that every word had a numerical value, discovered simply by adding up the letters.

TerryWalstrom

The vast majority of Bible scholars do not agree with the Mythicists in saying Jesus did not exist. The so-called New Atheists are pushing a bit too hard (over-reaching) in insisting on this conclusion.

By getting out ahead of the historical and scholarly community they are marginalizing themselves as reverse Fundamentalists, don't you think?

I don't think Ehrman has ever said he thought Jesus was not a real person. Has he? If so, where?

3

FUN with (Bible) numbers! Or, how an obsession with gematria steered the writing of the Bible

by TerryWalstrom in

first: what is gematria?.

answer: interpreting the scriptures by computing the numerical value of words, based on those of their constituent letters.. greek and hebrew did not use a different system for their alphabets and their numerals, but the letters of the alphabet played double duty, so that each letter had a numerical value.

one pay-off of that system was that every word had a numerical value, discovered simply by adding up the letters.

TerryWalstrom

First: WHAT IS GEMATRIA?

Answer: interpreting the scriptures by computing the numerical value of words, based on those of their constituent letters.

Greek and Hebrew did not use a different system for their alphabets and their numerals, but the letters of the alphabet played double duty, so that each letter had a numerical value. One pay-off of that system was that every word had a numerical value, discovered simply by adding up the letters. In Greek, for example, the six letters in the name Jesus, Ιησους , add up to 888.

Or another example: in Hebrew, the three letters in the name “David” (ancient Hebrew did not have vowels, only consonants), D-V-D were worth 4-6-4, so that the name added up to 14. That may have been significant for the genealogy of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 1:1-17), since, as Matthew presents it, Jesus, the “son of David” had a genealogical tree that can be organized around the number 14: between the father of the Jews, Abraham, and the greatest king of the Jews, David, was 14 generations (Matthew tells us); between the greatest king of the Jews and the most significant disaster of the Jews – the Babylonian exile – was 14 generations; and between the most significant disaster of the Jews and the messiah of the Jews, Jesus, was 14 generations. 14-14-14. This may seem like a miracle. And for Matthew it probably was. *Possibly* (this is one theory) he latched on to 14 because it is twice the perfect number, 7 (so doubly perfect). Or possibly it is because this is the genealogy of the son of David, whose number is 14. (In either case, the reality is that to get to 14-14-14 Matthew had to drop several names out between Abraham and David; moreover, unfortunately, in the last set of 14 there are in fact only 13 generations named!)

An even more clever use of numerology is in the ….

An even more clever use of numerology is in the non-canonical letter of Barnabas, one of the Apostolic Fathers. I think we may all be glad that Barnabas did not finally make it into the canon of Scripture as one of the books of the New Testament, even though there were church writers who thought it *should* be included (it can be found, for example, in the famous Codex Sinaiticus from the fourth century, as one of the books of Scripture). It is a virulently anti-Jewish book. Written around 130 CE, the entire point of the letter is that the Jews have rejected God going all the way back to when Moses was given the Law on Mount Sinai, which is why he smashed the two tablets of the law into smithereens: that showed that the Jewish people had broken/smashed the covenant just as soon as they got it. And since they rejected God and his covenant, God rejected them. They are not the people of God and never have been. It is the Christians who are the people of God.

Because the Jews rejected God, they never understood the laws that Moses gave them. The Jews wrongfully imagined that God meant these laws – for example about keeping the Sabbath and eating kosher foods – to be kept literally. For Barnabas that’s ridiculous. What the Jews never understood was that God meant the laws to be taken figuratively.

That is true, for example, of the law of circumcision. The Jews are foolish to think that God wants his people to cut off the foreskin from the penises of their newborn boys. Circumcision is not about the literal cutting of the flesh. Then what is it about? It’s about the cross of Jesus as the way of salvation. And always was.

How does Barnabas get to that somewhat unusual interpretation? He points out that in the Hebrew Bible Abraham, the father of the Jews, is the first who is ordered to perform circumcision (Genesis 17). And it is Abraham who brought salvation to his nephew Lot, who had been taken captive by an army of hostile forces. How did Abraham do that? He took 318 servants with him, whom he had circumcised (says Barnabas), and with that small (circumcised) army, set Lot free.

But why were there 318 of them? Barnabas indicates that it was because of the symbolic value of that number. In Greek, the language in which Barnabas was reading the Scriptures, 318 is made by the letters tau-iota-eta, like this: Τ-Ι-Η. That is significant for Barnabas. Highly significant. What is the tau in the shape of? A cross. And what do iota-eta signify? As it turns out, they are the first two letters in the name Jesus, ΙΗΣΟΥΣ. And so 318 refers to the “cross” of “Jesus.” That is how the father of circumcision brought salvation to his nephew Lot. The people of God are not those who have their penises mutilated. They are those who believe in the cross of Jesus. Jews never understood that, and so are lost. Only the followers of Jesus understand it.

And it was all written in the Jewish Bible. Which means Jews never understood their own Scriptures. For Barnabas, the Old Testament is not a Jewish book and was never meant to be. It is a Christian book, and only those who are followers of Jesus can understand its real, symbolic, and true meaning.

Aren’t numbers wonderful?

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Note: the above is culled from Bart Ehrman's Blog. http://ehrmanblog.org/creative-uses-of-numbers-in-scripture/

51

EXPERTS ONLY! A Pop Quiz on (current) Watchtower teaching

by TerryWalstrom in

pop quiz on jw (current) teaching.

1. was jesus 2nd coming in 1914?.

2. is jesus 2nd (parousia) presence the same thing as his coming?.

TerryWalstrom

TDa day ago

Old Light: The Great Tribulation had three phases beginning in 1914 as the pivotal marker which identified the start of the “Great Tribulation”. This tribulation was interrupted in 1918. They had taught that (phase three) the Great Tribulation would end at Armageddon.

Terry,

This view was dismantled in the article Peace with God amid the "Great Tribulation" in the January 15, 1970 issue of The Watchtower. where they admitted that a 51 year gap in the tribulation was unreasonable and wouldn't actually benefit the "Elect" at all.

_____________________

Ever heard the song, "Everything old is new again" ?

51

EXPERTS ONLY! A Pop Quiz on (current) Watchtower teaching

by TerryWalstrom in

pop quiz on jw (current) teaching.

1. was jesus 2nd coming in 1914?.

2. is jesus 2nd (parousia) presence the same thing as his coming?.

TerryWalstrom

millie: is there any way to fix the right margin?

I don't understand. Try CTL while hitting the minus button a few times CTL- - -