Island Man

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Posts by Island Man

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  332

  The most successful teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses and an amazing new book on the divine name

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jehovah's witnesses have had to revise their chronology and various doctrinal interpretations due to events and scholarly corrections.

  but the one teaching where they have been consistently ahead of the curve is the importance of jehovah's name.. .

  i'm going to run through a (necessarily selective) timeline of jw events and scholarly publications that demonstrate the phenomenal success of this teaching in the last days.

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  Island Man

  There is no evidence that the name was ever used in the NT. The NT writers quoted from the Septuagint. The wording of NT's quotations from the OT makes this clear. The common Septuagint of the day did not use the divine name. It used "Adonai" (Lord). This is why the name does not exist in NT passages that quote from the OT. They were not quoting from the Hebrew scriptures. They were quoting from the Greek translation of the OT.

  The evidence of the Tetragrammaton being used in the Septuagint is unconvincing. What I mean by that is that it does not appear that this was the norm in the first century. It seems likely that a few wealthy individuals who had a fixation for the divine name may have paid to have specialty copies containing the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew letters. But those are special cases - not the typical common septuagint that most persons used, and evidently not the Septuagint used by the writers of the NT. It is also possible that much older Septuagints customarily contained the divine name in Hebrew but this practice long ceased by the time the NT was written.

  The total absence of NT manuscripts containing the divine name does not speak well for the idea that the name was originally in the NT. Were "apostate Christians" so thorough in their work that not a single manuscript with the divine name survived? That seems very unlikely considering that we have both OT manuscripts with the Tetragrammaton and ones with it replaced with Lord. Why aren't we seeing the same pattern with the much newer NT manuscripts?

  The idea of the divine name originally being in the NT is nothing but wishful thinking born of a self-righteous, superstitious fixation with the word "Jehovah". The NT shows the Christians were not fixated with the divine name. They were fixated with the name of Jesus. They repeatedly referred to Christians as being witnesses of Jesus - not Jehovah's Witnesses.
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  332

  The most successful teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses and an amazing new book on the divine name

  by slimboyfat in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jehovah's witnesses have had to revise their chronology and various doctrinal interpretations due to events and scholarly corrections.

  but the one teaching where they have been consistently ahead of the curve is the importance of jehovah's name.. .

  i'm going to run through a (necessarily selective) timeline of jw events and scholarly publications that demonstrate the phenomenal success of this teaching in the last days.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  Island Man

  JWs make a bid deal about the origins of customs determining whether or not they're acceptable for Christians. Hypocritically, they conveniently turn a blind eye to the negative implications of the origins of the name "Jehovah". In later centuries, scribes started inserting the vowel points for "adonai" (Lord) into the Tetragrammaton as a reminder to the reader that he should enunciate the word "adonai" and not the sacred name itself. So the infusion of the vowel points into the Tetragrammaton was essentially part and parcel of the Watchtower-condemned effort to keep the name unspoken. The form "Jehovah" is the anglicised version of this vowel-pointed Tetragrammaton. Thus the name "Jehovah" has its ultimate origins in the effort to keep God's name hidden. This should make the name "spiritually unclean" and loathed by JWs for it is essentially a name that has been inspired by the satanic effort to hide God's name behind the title "LORD". The JW religion is incredibly hypocritical!
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  51

  What are your beliefs now, religious/non religious?

  by Jules Saturn in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  what are your convictions now that you are no longer one of jehovah's witnesses?

  are you a born again christian?

  have you joined another denomination of christianity?

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  Island Man

  I'm an apistevist, antitheist, atheist. Apistevist meaning I lack religious faith and regard it, not as a virtue, but as grave folly. Antitheist meaning that I regard religion as typically a dysfunctional and often harmful system that the world would be better off without.
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  64

  My jaw dropping OMG moment at the end of the convention

  by UnshackleTheChains in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  yes folks.

  over the past few days i can honestly say the convention was relatively quite good.

  most of the talks, videos, symposiums were in line with scripture if you have faith in the bible.

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  Island Man

  I don't know ... that seems like a heck of a lot of people partaking by mistake. There must be some kind of brain-virus epidemic among JWs for there to be so many of them making that particular mistake. I think if we check the records it will be seen that the number of partakers stopped decreasing soon after Watchtower had new light reversing the teaching that the heavenly calling ended in 1935.

  The increase in partakers is evidence that JW anointings are not coming from Jehovah's spirit but are basically based on individual bravery and the permission implicit in Watchtower doctrine. When the org. dropped the 1935 cut-off for new anointeds, they implicitly gave permission for more JWs to claim to be anointed and thus we see an increasing number of anointed. This also begs the question - for those who believe in god and anointing - how many truly anointed JWs have rejected their anointing because they were dissuaded from accepting that calling by Watchtower teachings? I seem to remember Jesus saying something about the wicked religious leaders shutting up the kingdom of heaven, preventing others from going in...
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  14

  What do scriptural contradictions convey?

  by venus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  any book that claims to be god’s word should have the minimum qualification of clarity.

  if any of its verses are open to many interpretations, it cannot be god’s word.

  god can easily be crystal clear as traffic police who puts traffic signals (red means stop, green means start …etc.

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  Island Man

  The Bible definitely has all the hallmarks of a work that was authored by ancient men. A wise God would not do such a poor job.

  There's no way to make sense of the morally questionable commands and discrepancies in the Bible, in such a way that does not either expose the Bible as a purely human work; or paint its divine author as a grossly irresponsible communicator responsible for much suffering due to his ambiguous communication.
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  14

  What do scriptural contradictions convey?

  by venus in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  any book that claims to be god’s word should have the minimum qualification of clarity.

  if any of its verses are open to many interpretations, it cannot be god’s word.

  god can easily be crystal clear as traffic police who puts traffic signals (red means stop, green means start …etc.

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  Island Man

  For a belly full of laughs check out the stupendously ironic, cluelessly authored, 1 Timothy 6:1:

  Let those who are under the yoke of slavery keep on considering their owners worthy of full honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may never be spoken of injuriously.
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  4

  1 Timothy 6:1: One of the funniest verses in the Bible that reveals its very shortsighted human authorship.

  by Island Man in

  1. social
  2. humour

  let those who are under the yoke of slavery keep on considering their owners worthy of full honor, so that the name of god and the teaching may never be spoken of injuriously - 1 timothy 6:1. .

  yes, you've read correctly.

  it's not the fact that the author condones slavery and never tells his readers that it's bad to own slaves - it's not that that will bring reproach on the religion, no!

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  Island Man

  Let those who are under the yoke of slavery keep on considering their owners worthy of full honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may never be spoken of injuriously - 1 Timothy 6:1

  
  

  Yes, you've read correctly. It's not the fact that the author condones slavery and never tells his readers that it's bad to own slaves - it's not that that will bring reproach on the religion, no! ... It's the fact that slaves aren't sucking up to their masters enough!

  How can anyone believe that this stupendously ironic and self-defeating verse was inspired by a wise God?
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  53

  JW renaming things: "It's Not this, it's ....."

  by Muddy Waters in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  this was brought up in another thread, but i thought it should have its own thread.

  feel free to add your own observations and experience.

  the jws are so duplicit, and they rename things to somehow justify their own irrationalities.

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  Island Man

  It's not false prophecy, it's wrong expectations.

  It's not a forced blood transfusion, it's rape.

  They're not creationists, they true Christians that believe Jehovah created everything during a period lasting more than 6 literal days.

  It's not a false teaching, it's old light.

  They're not the leaders of the religion, they're just the Governing Body.
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  46

  Believers: How do you know your view of your chosen holy book is the correct one?

  by punkofnice in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  don't start fighting, darlings.

  i am genuinely curious.

  after all i was a jobo 50 years and thought the wbt$ was 100% correct.. i ask this because i see that, for example, christian denominations (or whatever), likely have differing interpretations of the same writing.

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  Island Man

  It has always struck me as supremely paradoxical that a God would use his holy spirit to inspire the writing of an inerrant text, only to leave its correct understanding at the mercy of imperfect humans, none of whom seem able to understand it perfectly. Why go through the trouble of producing an inerrant text if you're not going to ensure that people have an inerrant understanding of it? So the Bible's supposed inerrancy actually counts for nought! Makes no sense. I think this paradox reveals that the text is not the inspired inerrant word of God - at least not a smart God.
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  33

  Hi from England

  by victimofdeceit in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  recently quit being a jw because i realised that beyond armageddon i was going to be ruled by people who cover up child abuse, not telling the congregations by their letter where the money they donated in the box is going towards paying compensation for legal battles which they caused, and also i was bullied by elders and discriminated against for being homosexual, even though i am not practicing it.

  it wasn't until i threatened legal action for a breach of confidence that the elders were deleted.

  so through the media and my own personal experience, i realised that they were no different to corrupt businesses in the world.

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  Island Man

  But they're just imperfect men. Why would you let the actions of imperfect men cause you to stop serving Jehovah?