Posts by Island Man

32

Jehovahs Witnesses and Babylon The Great.Why the Emphasis on the R.C.Church and not on Islam.

by smiddy in

i was thinking back to when the book babylon the great has fallen gods kingdom rules.was published many years ago when it was believed religion was declining in the world.. the book took exception to the r.c.church as the worst of christendom substituting themselves for the kingdom of god on earth , the counterfeit kingdom i think they called them.vicar of christ on earth.. and while its true to some degree in western lands today that religion is declining as regards christendom it is not happening in non christian religions around the world.. which brings me to the unprcedented rise and spread of islam in the world today .. with the war in iraq ,syria ,etc,and the people fleeing these war torn countries to europe and elsewhere around the globe with refugees and asylum seekers the spread of islam in the short space of time now beats any missionary projects conducted by christendom.. judaism ,christendom and islam all have their roots in the bible.the jews first then christians then muslims.. the bible only relates to the first two jews and christians and is completely silent about muslims.even in prophecy.. the book mentioned earlier btggkr nowhere mentions islam or muslims.as if they didnt even exist ,yet today they equal in numbers to all of christendoms religions.. islam today is by far a greater threat to christianity and especially to jehovahs witnesses than anything the roman catholic church ever posed before.. obviously the holy bible and the holy spirit or jehovahs chosen people the jehovahs witnesses never did forsee the rise and influence of the religion of islam in todays world.. the bible is completely silent about islam or the rise of muslims on the world stage.. could it be that they could no more predict the future than i could ?.

the wtb&ts the publishing house of jehovahs witnesses have for the past 100 years have continually attacked the roman catholic religion and portrayed them in an unfavourable light.time after time in mags and books,.

how many times have the wtb&ts attacked and challenged the religion of islam and muslims and condemned them as a principle member of babylon the great the empire of false religion.. to this day jehovahs witnesses cannot freely go door to door preaching their message in muslim dominated countries where proselytism is forbidden.

Island Man

Why the emphasis on the RC church and not on Islam? The emphasis on the RC church is basically the tactic known as negative advertising. The RC church is Watchtower's greatest competitor and former/disaffected Catholics is Watchtower's greatest market. So it makes a lot of sense to them to bash the RC church.

Muslims, on the other hand, are not very amenable to Watchtower conversion. Unlike the Catholics, they use a different holy book altogether and their religion teaches them that the Bible has been changed by men and cannot be fully trusted so all the JW religious propaganda that is based on exploiting people's respect for, and deference to, the Bible - it's useless on Muslims. Watchtower has to work twice as hard to convert a Muslim than to convert a Catholic. They first have to convert the Muslim to trust the Bible before they can convert them to join the JW religion. It's just too much work. As a result, Watchtower is not too eager to bash Islam because they don't stand to benefit from doing so. Additionally, Islam-bashing could potentially stir up radical Muslims clerics to issue Fatwas against Watchtower resulting in JWs in Muslim lands being attacked and the religion being banned in even more Muslim lands than it is already.

Bottom line: RC bashing has never been rooted in genuine indignation for the wrongs of the RC church. It has always been a form of negative advertising geared toward stealing easy sheep from the RC market. Because it's so difficult to get sheep from the Muslim market they have zero interest in bashing Islam.

2

The BORG is like NORTH KOREA!

by HiddlesWife in

please watch this youtube video and see what i mean:.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ossdewxvfu0 .

.

Island Man

No, no, no! You have it all wrong! The Borg is not like North Korea. North Korea is like the Borg!

332

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

by slimboyfat in

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.

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.

332

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

by slimboyfat in

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.

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!

51

What are your beliefs now, religious/non religious?

by Jules Saturn in

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?

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.

64

My jaw dropping OMG moment at the end of the convention

by UnshackleTheChains in

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.

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...

14

What do scriptural contradictions convey?

by venus in

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.

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.

14

What do scriptural contradictions convey?

by venus in

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.

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.

4

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

by Island Man in

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!

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?

53

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

by Muddy Waters in

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.

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.