when jehovah's witnesses began distributing door to door the new world translation beginning in the early 1950's a firestorm of protest broke out in mainstream churches.
the alarm cry was "they've changed the bible to fit their own crooked teachings!".
you can imagine the discord as church members tried to figure out how jehovah's witnesses could prove by reading from the nwt the king james version was full of omissions and errors and outright fraud concerning, for instance, the trinity doctrine or the name of god!!.
I would not think of the NWT as causing such a religious ruckus.
I still have my doubts.
Wasn't it, like most things jw, simply ignored for the most part by the mainstream churches?
Maybe there was more to it than I was aware of at the time. Then again, I was a youngin' back in the 1960s and 70s, and was unaware of any defensive reaction to the NWT.
i want to begin with a quotation by stephen colbert: "we're not talking about truth, we're talking about something that seems like truth the truth we want to exist" - stephen colbert on the origin of the word "truthiness.".
moses brought 10 plagues upon egypt to change pharoah's mind about letting jehovah's people go.. the 5th plague is to destroy only the egyptian livestock:.
6 and the next day the lord did it: all the livestock of the egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the israelites died.. a few days later the 7th plague is described:.
Putting my robe on now...
i have a suggestion for jwfacts, and to help make the article easier to write for paul, the collective jwn community can help.. in his article of "religions similar to jehovah's witnesses",.
http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/similar-religions-to-jehovahs-witnesses.php.
paul uses mormons, cristadelphians, etc.... i suggest he also use iglesia ni cristo.
There are some notable differences - the INC gets involved in politics and members donate blood, for example.
But the similarities are much more numerous.
In some cases (explusion for marrying outside the faith) they are more extreme (but not by much) than the Witnesses. But again, the similarities are striking.
Manalo's personal history also seems to closely parallel CT Russell's - disillusion with mainstrem religion, influence of the SDA, writing and distributing literature, for example. They can also claim persecution and opposition (a card which they no doubt play to affirm their 'blessing' by God).
Parallel Evolution indeed.
last month a british teacher was tragically stabbed to death in the classroom.
today a member of my extended jw family posts this; check out his 'liked' comment.. .
where do you even begin .
I saw some lack of compassion in the comment. It's a "sign of the times". In fact, he says "Yeah the sign of the times", almost nonchalantly.
I will add though that people often post on Facebook and other forums without really taking stock of what they write.
so i just heard this today at the meeting.
honestly i've never really paid much attention too it, but i know it's out of place.
can anyone shed some factual and historical light on this subject?
Actually, what Uriah is saying would discourage joining a cult such as Jehovah's Witnesses, since, as he said, they constantly want adherents to look to the future, to the near-exclusion of the now.
I would say though that there certainly is a need to understand our past and how we got here.
HIs post kind of reminds me of Spaceballs: "This is now, now"
this is about an article in may 2014 awake that was published about witch hunting.
it is a 2 page article on how evil the catholic and protestant inquision was, how wickedly they killed the witches and so on.. .
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/102014166.
Some of the torture inflicted on those suspected of witchcraft was truly horrible.
For instance, water torture was not like the modern water-boarding. Back then, water was funneled down the throat until the victim's stomach was distended to the extreme. One can only imagine how painful that would be.
The strappado was a hanging by the arms, with the arms extended behind the back, designed to disclocate the shoulders. The torture rack, probably the best-known form of torture, was also designed to stretch the victim to the point of disclocation.
Others were placed on The Wheel, lying prone while tied to a large spinning wheel while their limbs were beaten with clubs, again resulting in dislocation and disfigurement.
The list goes on and on. All in the name of religion.
1.the organization itself denies access to reality and substitutes its own version, interpretations and meanings.. a.only watchtower approved publications are allowed.. b.no higher education is to be pursued.. c.no non-jw friends or associations are encouraged with their "outside" points of view.. d.no free-style questioning of doctrine or criticism permitted.
curiousity is verboten.. e.threat of being "marked" or disassociated looms over them.
2.between every real-world event and the rank and file jw's mind is a roadblock.. a.the moment of identifying is short-circuited by an interpretive moment of re-labeling in watchtower-speak.. b.all things happening are forced into a narrow storyline and propagandized as end times happenings leading to armageddon.. 3.social and personal identity is expunged and replaced by a collective persona: "jehovah's witness".. a.private thinking is red-flagged as selfish and sinful.. b.personal improvement, welfare and ambition is crushed and door-to-door ministry substituted as "worthy" endeavors.. c.self-conscious obsession permeates witness awareness as each person is transformed into a public spectacle of performance for judgement.. d.since you aren't an individual you don't really have a right to fall in love and marry or educate or earn.
"They never said they were perfect". Very true. And yet, as we know, the loyal jw is expected to treat the "spiritual food" as though it comes from God, which implies that it is perfect.
Until that jw notices that a mistake was made - a missed date for Armageddon perhaps. Or, he is informed that there is a change in "understanding" of a teaching.
Then, it's "they never said they were perfect".
In the meantime, it is implied, or even directly stated, that the fault lies with the average jw, who harbored "expectations" that turned out to be unrealistic, even though the expectations were created by Watchtower teachings.
what a man does with the fossil record tells a lot about his worldview.
is it the result of a world-covering deluge?
or did this sorry chronicle of pain, suffering, and death precede humans (and the reign of death) by millions of years?
Shanagirl made the point - this is not intended as a thread about Evolution vs Creation.
what a man does with the fossil record tells a lot about his worldview.
is it the result of a world-covering deluge?
or did this sorry chronicle of pain, suffering, and death precede humans (and the reign of death) by millions of years?
If I had a dime for every misunderstanding of the word Theory as it applies to evolution and science in general...
look...i am not an atheist.
even so, i have never had one prayer answered my entire life.
the only thing that would even come close was learning ttatt.
I've never experienced an answered prayer. But I've never truly prayed in faith either. Even as a jw elder, I was never really sure that God answered prayers.
Part of the problem is that either way, God has an out, as it were, because we are told (and not just by the Watchtower) that God doesn't necessrily answer all prayers, even those directed to him in faith. He may wait, or deem it better for us that the prayer isn't answered.
Well, if the answer is no, why aren't we told that? Instead, we are asked to somehow presume that when nothing happens, that means God has either said No or that he wants us to wait. But we have no way of knowing.
A parent doesn't do that to his children. In Matthew, Jesus compared God's response to our requests to that of a parent "who knows how to give good gifts to his children". But if, as a parent, the answer is no, the parent will say No. The child is at least getting an answer.
Imagine asking a parent for something and not getting any answer back. Silence. Not even a "we'll wait and see".
That's part of my problem with the whole thing. We don't know where we really stand.
