The very inception of Israel is shrouded in mystery. The multiple destruction of their temple with all the scrolls, and even The destruction of secular Library of Alexandria which also resulted in the loss of many scrolls and books .... all gave opportunities to create histories later. They used God for their own purpose--but it backfired. They put it in the scriptures that the very name Israel was given by God. Israel means one who struggles with God till He blesses in return which in the long run did not happen in the case of Israel as a nation. Its capital Jerusalem was described by Jesus as "Killer of prophets" (Mat 23:37). Even now Israel is not in a position to enjoy peace being surrounded by Arab nations inimical to them.
Posts by venus
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6And the capital of Israel was ...
by Doug Mason inthe capital of biblical israel was samaria.. jerusalem was the capital of judah/benjamin.. the modern state of israel is not named after the biblical nation of israel.
it is named after a man.
it is named after jacob, the lion of judah, who was later given the name of israel.
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What's destroying Watchtower!
by UnshackleTheChains infor me, beyond any shadow of a doubt, it's the extreme shunning policy.. at a recent sunday meeting, i listened to a complete brainwashed sister saying how important it was that we stick to the shunning policy even if it is a close relative.. i just thought.
wtf.
there is a big difference between the brainwashed and the awoken class!.
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venus
It is too obvious that shunning policy cannot be of divine origin as it undercuts the most important statement of Jesus in Mathew 5:44-48. Hence it is better that JWs stick to their shunning policy. They do not know how much damage it does to themselves. Hitler used to shoot down messenger that brings a bad news of any mission failed. Hence his own people refrained from giving him such news which gave him a false feeling that he is on the path to the third Reich and believed that he was creating a third German empire. Let WT too behave like Hitler.
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Does the Watchtower favor interpretation over translation, especially in the case of Exodus 15:3?
by Poppy520 inexodus 15:3, "the lord is a man of war: the lord is his name.
" kjv, esv, asv.. exodus 15:3, "jehovah is a powerful warrior.
jehovah is his name.
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venus
I agree with Earnest fully. In some language sweet liver is used in place of sweet heart/darling. Hence a wise translator would try to convey the thought rather than its literal word. You seem to favor the doctrine of trinity hence want Ex 15:3 to be “man of warrior”. But even this would only add to the problem. If Jesus was part of Trinity, it would mean wherever he goes, the other two inseparable parts too were with him. Thus God came down and got crucified himself on the cross instead of manly arranging the crucifixion of Satan the Devil the first sinner. Moreover, story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it (for that is the plain language of the story) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse- as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.
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A little critique/commentary on the first of the new Public Watchtowers (No.1 2018) - Corrections and additions welcomed
by doubtfull1799 in“all scripture is inspired of god and beneficial.”—2 timothy 3:16.”.
what/which scripture was paul referring to?
how is it possible to know with any certainty without being speculative or dogmatic?
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venus
Hi nowwhat?I liked your observation that “there are hundreds of millions of people that live by this code that have not read one verse of the bible. Or are not Christians”
Nietzsche is one of the spectacular examples. He had his share of what we call suffering—chronic diseases, his marriage proposals being rejected more than once …etc. Still, He advised that there is nothing wrong with the way the world is. If one lives along with the way this world is, leaves oneself to it, and does not count on the superficial items such as religion, science etc., then there is a new life in affirming a new way of seeing things as they are--though full of suffering and pain, but with joy, in which there is no longer pessimism. Just by changing or converting one’s conventional or unconsciously suppressed view and being able to accept the new way, one is totally free from falsity. “This world is the will to power” and one oneself is “also this will to power,” which is the only truth and reality for him. This affirmation of reality of the eternal recurrence with joy is called amor fati. (a love of what happens). In effect he was living example of what Jesus said in Luke 17:21
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venus
JW notion of sin and perfection is no different from Christendon's view. A person may sometimes get swelling on his leg and may have limped a few times—but he is never called lame. Similarly, a person may at times slip into selfishness and use his free-will to his own harm or to the harm of others—but this does not make him a sinner because the ability to perform virtuous acts also exists in him. If one’s occasional sinning does not make him a sinner, sin of another person such as his parents (immediate or distant) can also never make him a sinner.
But an insightful one would not agree because he finds an avalanche of proofs against this. We find variety of people acting/reacting differently in same situation: Some do more righteous acts, some do more sinful acts, and others mix them in varying degrees, one-time sinners changing into saints, one-time saints changing into sinners, some very poor people who refuse to steal, and some very wealthy people who steal in various ways… etc. This shows people choose to act the way they like which means they are not sinners from birth—resulting in all sorts of people from sinless to the sinful ones. Interestingly, even Bible makes many references to some sinless persons who lived in the ancient times (Genesis 5:24; Job 1:8; Psalm 18:23; Ezekiel 14:14; Luke 1:6 …etc.) and human capacity to perform righteousness. (Habakkuk 2:4; Hebrews 10:38).
If we are not sinners from birth, when does sin arise?
Our experience shows that beliefs and attitudes are linked. For example, if one truly believes in the principle “one reaps what he sows”, he would not display a casual attitude towards life, but he would think before acting and be alert to do good to others and to avoid doing harm to others as far as possible. That means from beliefs, attitudes are formed; and from attitudes, thoughts are formed; from thoughts, action is produced; from repeated action, tendency and habit are produced which in turn determine one’s destiny. For example, a person steals for first time and he was not caught; then he goes on repeating it and a tendency to steal comes into existence. Similarly, a person chooses to give joy to others and stop giving sorrow to others, and he reaps accordingly which in turn makes him repeat the same and a tendency to do good comes into existence.
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A little critique/commentary on the first of the new Public Watchtowers (No.1 2018) - Corrections and additions welcomed
by doubtfull1799 in“all scripture is inspired of god and beneficial.”—2 timothy 3:16.”.
what/which scripture was paul referring to?
how is it possible to know with any certainty without being speculative or dogmatic?
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venus
Interestingly, Nietzsche has elaborated the above subject in his Eternal Recurrence. More and consolidated details are available in Nietzsche, The Will to Power (New York: Vintage Books, 1968)
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venus
Xanthippe,
What is shocking--saying Jesus is a myth, or what he is portrayed to have said and done?
Sending a human being to an altar to be killed--is not a human act, but really an inhuman act which is the central theme of the Bible, hence Jesus becomes the center of this impossible theme who presented a totally different God: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you."
Such a God, sending Jesus to be murdered on an altar of incomprehensibility ...
Such a Jesus can figure only in a myth
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venus
There could have been a character called Jesus who taught some truths like other teachers elsewhere. However, details do not match with the claim that he was sent by God. For example, no mother who had experienced a miraculous pregnancy would leave the temple without ascertaining 12 year old Jesus was with her; no contemporaries who witnessed numerous miracles would prefer Barrabbas to Jesus.
What I liked the most about Jesus is that He was against convention and rejected much of the scriptures of his time.
What Robert M Price said in the video makes sense.
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Toasted daughter: Why Jephthah almost certainly sacrificed his daughter to a complicit Jehovah
by Diogenesister injehovah's witnesses insist that jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter to jehovah.
this is important to them because, rarther than jephthah just being a random bad person, jehovah was very much in on the deal.
after all, he made the promise to jehovah that he would "offer up as a burnt offering" on his return the first thing to come out of his house if jehovah would give the ammonites into his hands in battle, and since they were this makes jehovah complicit.. the isrealites had been getting a good thrashing of late, and the gilead elders (oh boy) had come out to ask jephthah, the rejected son of a prostitute (wouldn't you know it) and renown soldier, if he would lead the isrealites into battle for them.. this is when jephthah makes the deal with jehobo, and it all centres on the word for "burnt offering", which is given as "olah".
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venus
to1500, your comments show you are a great philosopher. I agree with you fully.
Jeptah's account lacks logic and reason with God in the center. If we take out God, then story carries some message--think before you make promises!
Bringing God into stories is the problem. For example, the nation of Israel used God for their own purpose--but it backfired. They put it in the scriptures that the very name Israel was given by God. Israel means one who struggles with God till He blesses in return which in the long run did not happen in the case of Israel as a nation. Its capital Jerusalem was described by Jesus as "Killer of prophets" (Mat 23:37). Even now Israel is not in a position to enjoy peace being surrounded by Arab nations inimical to them.
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A little critique/commentary on the first of the new Public Watchtowers (No.1 2018) - Corrections and additions welcomed
by doubtfull1799 in“all scripture is inspired of god and beneficial.”—2 timothy 3:16.”.
what/which scripture was paul referring to?
how is it possible to know with any certainty without being speculative or dogmatic?
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venus
This scripture is right if rephrased: “ALL SCRIPTURES THAT ARE INSPIRED ARE BENEFICIAL FOR TEACHING.”
For example,
Genesis portion that says there was a paradise on earth, then it was lost when people began to act with selfishness—it makes sense.
Revelation 21:1, 5 says perfect condition would be restored at some time in future—it makes sense.
We are now in between where we find God’s established practice [“Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile”] (Revelation 22:11) which would mean that there is no intervention in the case of individuals and in each individual use of free-will. God, being the master of the universe, would need to act only on whole sale basis, hence would and must restore the original perfect condition. Law of increasing entropy would again set things into a downhill trend, which would mean God would renew system of things again.
This is in harmony with two opposing isms—Theism and Atheism: Theism says “From the more comes the less,” and atheism says “from the less comes the more” [as implied by Natural Selection which is “the process ultimately capable of generating complexity out of simplicity,” God Delusion, Richard Dwakins] Thus both agree that something comes from something. If something comes from something, it has always been true, and it has always been there—infinite into the past and infinite into the future.
It is in harmony with what we see in the nature. Nature has a rhythm and things happen in cycles such as cycle of night and day, cycle of season, carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle… etc. We also see the principles of such cycles reflected around us: plants grow and die leaving seeds that ensure new lives are reborn continuously. There are cycles happening within us too—cells in our bodies become old and are being replaced with new ones at regular intervals! Even when we sleep at night, we typically go through several sleep cycles. And each one of these cycles consists of 4 different stages of sleep—awake, light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep. Those cycles show A MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE and purpose. For example, each season emerges from the previous and gently turns into the next. Winter snows feed the ground for Spring’s blossoms. Summer’s heat ripens the plants for Fall’s harvest. While in day, we desire for night and vice versa. While in hot Summer we wish it was Fall. While in cold Winter we wish it was Spring. This is true of the greater cycle of New World and old world alternating on earth.