the archaeologist digs and then sifts through remnants from the past, assembling the discoveries into patterns so that stories of the past may be brought back to life.. with almost 850 direct quotations from 50 books, my study sifts remnants from the first 200 years of christianity and sorts them into patterns that may help others to assemble a vessel that can hold ideas, or to form a skeleton where muscle and flesh, heart and mind, may be applied.
a comprehensive contents listing is provided at the rear of this study.. my study, “the jesus-followers’ first 200 years” is available at:.
http://www.jwstudies.com/the_jesus-followers__first_200_years.pdf .
Doug, I'm reading your work; started today and already well beyond page 60. Amazing work and I'm thrilled to be reading it. Congratulations! I have a few questions, but I'm holding them until i finish reading it because they may be answered further into the reading. But, let me share this with you: I'm amazed. Great stuff.
Eden
gorby is as you know a long time fader.. visited the convention this weekend.. and concluded that samuel herds talk about hope was not so bad at all, it was well balanced.
made some good points.. knowing both sides of the medallion, have to admit he was humble with a focus on hope.. the saturday drama impressed me.
of course, there is a lot to say about the organization, this professional produced movie in a "true story" scenario, gave me the insight that hope is important for suffering people.
Let's say one is sick with a potentially deadly illness.
What "hope" is more heart-warming, or, let's just say, more "effective" (considering that "effectiveness" of hope in this case is enabling you to better cope with your ailment) ?
a) The false hope that a divine being is going to miraculously cure you.
b) The unprovable hope that after you die, your life will carry on on the spiritual domain / you will be resurrected to an earthly paradise.
c) The plausible hope that science may develop some therapy / medicine that will make possible to extend your life with reasonable quality.
d) The real hope that, in the case of your death, your life and example was inspiring to others and your loving memory will live on after you were gone.
What of these "hopes" offers a better ratio between plausibility and "effectiveness"?
they have made so many strategical mistakes it's hard to keep track.
some changes within the last decade or so that are contributing to declining numbers of jws:.
1. elimination of book study groups, the most informal, enjoyable and sociable of the jw meetings, contributed to loss of sense of community among jws.. 2. policy of consolidating kingdom halls.
Entrenched Christian fundamentalism is hardly a trait of Jehovah's Witnesses. As I was reading an article at Bible Archaeology Review about the Nag Hamadi texts, you should see the kind of fericious comments that were made, from calling those historical documents 'apostate literature' to accusing the author of not believing Christ's divinity and the Virgin Mary and threatening with hellfire those who doubt the Holy Bible. I think that backward-thinking fundamentalist Christianity is becoming more and more fascist out of sheer dispair for the onslaught of reason.
eden
i thought i'd spend some time cleaning up the forum code and wanted to let you know about some of the recent changes and fixes:.
the avatars and in-post images used to use a separate imaging service which was convenient but didn't provide much control over caching which meant that each day you visited the site you were probably re-downloading those images again.
as they are immutable they can be cached for a long time which saves bandwidth and speeds things up.
Outstanding, Simon. Thank you!
Eden
anyone see that there is a long letter on how to handle child abuse?.
If the JWs claim that they actively engage the community with their witnessing because they care for their eternal well-being, this letter shows the immense hipocrisy of such claim, because the elders aren't instructed to do anything to protect the community at large when they know there's a child abuser amongst them. That alone shows how hypocrite this cult really is.
Eden
video is entitled "beware of deceit" he uses the letter of jude to show that current day apostates are deceitful and that they use "trickery" to and "twist facts" to try to "grab our mind".
warning: your head might explode.
especially past the 5:30 mark.
maninthemiddle
From the same source you quoted:
"If the six volumes of SCRIPTURE STUDIES are practically the Bible topically arranged, with Bible proof-texts
given, we might not improperly name the volumes--
the Bible in an arranged form. That is to say, they are not merely comments on the Bible, but they are practically the Bible itself "
Now, it's absolutely true that on the same article the author says that "Studies in the Scriptures" are not a substitute to the Bible or as the author wrote, they are not meant to "supplant the Bible". But the point isn't about Russell ever saying that. The point is that the Bible Students elevated Russell's books to a similar status than of the Bible. Because the Studies were interpretative works based upon the Bible (albeit not the Bible itself), raising its status to that of the Bible also raised those interpretations to the level of inspired work. Actually, the same author said:
Furthermore, not only do we find that people cannot
see the Divine Plan in studying the Bible by itself, but
we see, also, that if anyone lays the SCRIPTURE STUDIES aside, even after he has used them, after he has become familiar with them, after he has read them for ten years
--if he then lays them aside and ignores them and goes
to the Bible alone, though he has understood his Bible for
ten years, our experience shows that within two years he
goes into darkness. On the other hand, if he had
merely read the SCRIPTURE STUDIES with their references, and had not read a page of the Bible, as such, he would
be in the light at the end of the two years, because he
would have the light of the Scriptures.
and this too:
We repeat, then, that STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES are either of the Lord's providence or else they
are one of the greatest miracles.
Kenneth Floodin's video is an exercise in strawman argument and red herring. He is the one that's exercising deceit upon his audience. He is the liar in this story.
Eden
so i finally am on windows 10. my computer kept asking me and i kept refusing, but then it went to a countdown and before i had a chance to stop it, it was updating, and i couldn't use my laptop for the full 1000 year reign of jesus christ.. when i finally could use it, i had a problem opening chrome with all my favourite apps or pages stored.
sometimes i have to open edge for for chrome to open.
but i have had a little go a edge.. edge has a different search engine to google, anyone know what it is?
My 2011 MacBook Pro was recently overhauled with a Solid State Drive to replace the internal CD ROM drive and run alongside my 7200 RPM conventional hard drive, and continues do deliver great service. Nothing I had before comes even closer to its quality. Then, OS X is a breeze compared with windows... Only Safari browser is less powerful than Firefox, but ... just use Firefox as browser.
Eden
this is the article that woke me up.
i felt sick after reading it.
then sad.
Marked
the following examples are true.
witnessed by myself and many many other jw's of my age generation.. they're examples of a successful fade, and a failed fade and what we can learn from them.. the successful fade.
sister c - she gets baptized at 19yo.
LOL I was so Brother M .....
Eden
your qualifications are way above mine so i'd love to hear more about the specifics of what you have researched and how that supports the existence of a deity.
k99, i am not really convinced that you're interested in my conclusions.
in nature amino acids formed to then form dna.
KateWild - Can someone start a thread please. Perhaps you Eden if you are available. Discussing the best ways to check the credibility of we have read or heard. I would really like a thread like that.
I'm not qualified enough to start such a thread, KateW. Someone else with better scientific background than me would do a much better job.
Eden
