Island Man

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Posts by Island Man

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  56

  Things you will never hear a good Jehovah’s Witness say (to another Jehovah’s Witness)

  by hoser in

  1. social
  2. humour

  i’ll start it off.

  boy did we get drunk last night.

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  Island Man

  Elder to publisher: "Bro. Pioneer we're concerned that you're not devoting any time to assisting the poor and needy in shelters or soup kitchens."
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  27

  2018 Annual Meeting

  by EyesOpenHeartBroken in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  does anybody have any word on the 2018 annual meeting?

  i assume something new will be rolled out, since they are having all the congregations do special weekend streaming.. my guess is that there will be some major "new light" concerning the memorial, partaking, anointed, etc.

  i would guess that they will say all baptized believers should partake.

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  Island Man

  Bumping this thread because I think it's timely.
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  25

  Thought Provoking Question to a JW?

  by Solzhenitsyn in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  did jesus ever utter the name jehovah?.

  and if he didn't what are the implications?

  nwt answers don't count but feel free to use the kingdom interlinear.

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  Island Man

  There's no record of Jesus uttering the divine name in any Greek manuscript. Jesus always referred to God as "Father" and "God". When he quoted OT passages that use the divine name in Hebrew, he - and the NT writers - quoted from the Greek Septuagint and the Greek Septuagint of the day used "Kyrios" ("Lord") in place of the divine name. This is why the divine name is totally absent from the NT. It was never in there to begin with because common use of the divine name had ceased by the first century and the people were using the Greek Septuagint which substitutes "Lord" in place of the divine name.

  John 17:26 isn't a reference to declaring the appellation "Jehovah"/"Yahweh"/The tetragrammaton. Rather, it is a reference to declaring God's character or reputation. Jesus made God's character or reputation known to the people through his word and deed. This is what it meant by him making God's name known. There are many references to "name" in the NT that refer, not to God's appellation, but to his character or reputation. Such as the phrase - "a people for his name" which means a people whose way of life is befitting of the character of God; a people who uphold God's reputation instead of bringing reproach on him; a people who are holy just as God is holy; etc.
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  81

  How Long Before They Introduce Tithing?

  by pale.emperor in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  when i was a full-on believing jw i had an obsessive fascination with mormonism.

  i read, studied and watched their propaganda with strange interest as well as their apostate mormon books.

  i have to say, they have a good scam going claiming that "the lord reintroduced tithing" in the modern age.

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  Island Man

  How long before they introduce tithing?

  Watchtower annual meeting is only 11 days away...
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  89

  Is Jesus Christ, Jehovah God? (Not the Father, but Equal to the Father)

  by JW Answers in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  jehovah's witnesses,is jesus christ, jehovah god?

  (not the father, but equal to the father)what if the watchtower told you about god in a false way, and yet the bible taught you about god in his true character, how would you respond?could it be true, that the watchtower have been leading you up the garden path, describing god in a way that the bible does not describe?

  please watch my latest video to help you to see how the bible describes the lord jesus christ, and also within my video, i explain from the new world translation how the bible which the jws use, also describes jesus as jehovah god.

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  Island Man

  I think it's pretty clear from the NT that Jesus was an object of worship for 1st century Christians. At the same time it's also clear that Jesus was considered as being inferior/subordinate to the Father. There is no trinity described in the NT.

  I think a major problem is discerning different usages of the word god. Sometimes god is used to mean God the Father. Other times it's used to simply mean having the quality of great power or authority without intending to mean equal with the Father.

  JWs are on one extreme, minimizing Jesus' status while Trinitarians are on the opposite extreme overstating his status. The "truth" (what the NT reveals) is somewhere in the middle and, as Cofty pointed out, may not be all that consistent.
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  37

  Why are they announcing 2019 conventions so early?

  by Richard_I in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i was just told there will be international conventions in canada in 2019. .

  so i looked at jw.org and i see that there's a whole bunch of conventions now listed on the site for 2019.. isn't this odd?

  normally we were told the location of conventions during the first week of january.. did they realize there was less in attendance in the 2018 conventions, and want to give ppl more time to make travel arrangements??

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  Island Man

  I didn't find that odd. What I did find odd was them giving memorial dates all the way up to 2021. It's like they're worried the leadership might not be around to issue memorial dates in a few years, so they have to give the dates early so JWs will know when to celebrate it even without them around to tell them?
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  62

  Is There Life After Death

  by Brokeback Watchtower in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  i think this is a well developed discussion, of ian stevenson's work in investigating people's past lives claims.

  it's a little long.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0attm9hgcdw.

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  Island Man

  There is no evidence of life after death. The notion of life after death is nothing but wishful thinking born of an inability to accept or comprehend our own mortality. No normal person in a normal state of mind, wants to die; and it's impossible to imagine what it's like to be dead. We can only imagine what it's like to be alive. So it's very tempting to entertain the notion that life must go on in some way after death.
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  12

  How about having a special undercover mode so PIMOs can browse the site with greater security?

  by Island Man in

  1. forum
  2. suggestions

  when you visit the site it says jehovahs-witness big and bold.

  a pimo might be browsing the site and a jw might come up behind him unexpectedly and notice he's visiting a site about jws other than jw.org, which can lead to the pimo reported for viewing apostate information.. to help remedy this risk, i was thinking about the possibility of having a button that activates an undercover mode where the title of the site is not prominently displayed so it's not easily apparent to an accidental eavesdropper that it's an apostate website.

  also, the color-scheme and graphics can be different so that it doesn't look like the regular site.

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  Island Man

  When you visit the site it says Jehovahs-Witness big and bold. A PIMO might be browsing the site and a JW might come up behind him unexpectedly and notice he's visiting a site about JWs other than jw.org, which can lead to the PIMO reported for viewing apostate information.

  To help remedy this risk, i was thinking about the possibility of having a button that activates an undercover mode where the title of the site is not prominently displayed so it's not easily apparent to an accidental eavesdropper that it's an apostate website. Also, the color-scheme and graphics can be different so that it doesn't look like the regular site.

  This might be implemented relatively easily by using a little javascript to swap the regular stylesheet(s) for another stylesheet(s).
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  14

  what will be the next thing

  by pepperheart in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  hi what will be the next thing that watchtower will cut,if you say the leaked video that fay put up the finance guy from the watchtower was saying that they had spent $26 million in about 6 months.

  so if they are getting through money that fast then they are going to have problems.

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  Island Man

  More printing cuts. They'll stop printing song books. The kingdom halls already have kingdom song karaoke at their meetings and the song book and music are available electronically. Physical song books are practically obsolete.
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  17

  The "Whole World" was flooded??

  by stuckinarut2 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  so, jehovah's witnesses and many other biblical literalists think that the "whole world" was flooded during noahs day.. they take the "accounts" in genesis literally.

  so that means that areas as far away as australia, russia, argentina, greenland, antarctica were all visited by noah and his family to gather animals and preach before it happened right??

  they then took everything back to the middle east to board the ark...uh huh.... yet, the same expression in the bible for the "whole world" is also used in the account about the "worldwide famine" in josephs day!

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  Island Man

  According to the Bible it was the whole world. If it were just a regional flood, why the need to spend so much decades building an ark? Why the need to bring animal species on the ark to preserve them? If it was a regional flood God could have simply directed Noah to move to a safe location. It is very clear that the author of the Biblical account was depicting an earth-wide flood.

  Of course, it's all just a myth, and the author didn't know about the existence of Australia and the Americas. Why? Because the author wasn't God. The author or authors were mortal men ignorant of the true size of the earth, the shear number of animal species, and all the science and logistics that make their story logically untenable.

  But if we assume the Bible truly is the Word of God then we have to engage in gymnastic reasoning to make sense out of a narrative that is nonsensical, like saying the author meant a regional flood even though it's very clear from the text that he doesn't. Or saying that the "whole earth" doesn't really mean the whole earth. It's very clear what the author meant. And it's very clear that he/they were spouting nonsense due to their ignorance.

  The same is true of the NT reference that says the good news was preached in all the earth. The author really believed that because he was ignorant of the existence of the Americas. Back then the entire known world (known to the author) probably spanned from the British isles to the southwest coast of Africa to India to northeast China. NT authors even believed in a flat earth as evidenced by the gospels referring to Jesus being shown "all the kingdoms of the world" from the top of an extraordinarily high mountain - a feat only possible on a flat earth with no atmosphere. The Bible is clearly not scientifically accurate and clearly not the inspired word of God.