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.
Take the Falklands war (1982). Pacifists believe British troops defending the islands from the Argentine imperialists was wrong.
The Argentine army was made up mostly (entirely?) of baptised Christians, if they had followed the teachings of their God there would have been no Falklands war.
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.
Since this has gone off topic... Jesus' teachings are obviously incompatible with war 'love your enemies' 'turn the other cheek' 'take up your cross and follow me' 'blessed are the peacemakers' and so on... Like with many things, the secular argument is different to the theological one, of course if you don't believe in Jesus you will probably find 'love your enemies' to be silly, but you'd expect people who profess to be his followers to take it seriously.
and JW's would not exist if it were not for Christians that have used violence to protect their freedom.
Well, usually from other Christians...
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.
I find it amusing that your strong argument in favour of the JW religion is one you admit they don't seem to have ever used, perhaps the GB should hire you?
More seriously I appreciate the response and the work you have put into researching this, I am bothered that some posters want to snipe about 'postmodernism' rather than engage on the actual arguments.
I am not opposed to the idea that there may be evidence that early Christians used some form of the divine name, though I find the idea that they could find evidence to support all 237 translations in their NT quite unbelievable, Romans 10:13 being the most obviously incorrect usage. (I can expand on this if you like, but suspect you are already aware of it) This is another reason why I don't think I could ever find JW doctrine 'strong' on this point. If evidence does emerge to support all 237 renderings I will be running back to the meetings!
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.
I am confident that Ruby is right here.
JWs in Bradford, Rotherham, Blackburn, Bolton, Manchester, Luton, Tower Hamlets and Cardiff meet Muslims, work alongside them, even knock on their doors, surely?
JWs in Bradford, Rotherham, Blackburn, Bolton, Manchester, Luton, Tower Hamlets and Cardiff don't write the publications.
You do raise an interesting point Luhe, but one that is hardly confined to Islam. When I was in Japan as a devout JW I attended a few meetings and remember commenting to a friend how odd it was that members of the Japanese Bethel were not allowed to create publications on Shintoism and Buddhism and teach them more at their meetings, but such is the JW hierarchy. I suspect JWs in Salt Lake City might also like more publications about the Mormons, and so on...
I also think a problem is that the Watchtower writers know nothing about Islam, or any other major religion, a consequence of JWs being told not to read other religious writing I suspect. They know something about Catholicism/Christendom, though admittedly not as much as they think they do.
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?
Didn't Portuguese police speak to psychics about Madeleine Mccann?
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.
Hi Slim, interesting (and provocative!) thread.
I am going to somewhat disagree, I have long thought that the Watchtower insistence on the use of the divine name is one of their weakest arguments, and I am surprised that it doesn't cause them bigger problems. This is because it creates a contradiction with another important Watchtower doctrine, one that they share with most evangelicals, that the bible is inerrant and the NT manuscripts are a reliable copy of the original writings of the apostles and other NT writers. Take as an example appendix A3 of the revised new world translation:
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/appendix-a/how-the-bible-came-to-us/
The Author and Originator of the Bible is also its Preserver. He is the One who caused this statement to be recorded:
“The word of our God endures forever.”—Isaiah 40:8.
That statement is true, even though no original Bible manuscript of the Hebrew and Aramaic Scriptures * or of the Christian Greek Scriptures has survived to our day.
...
How confident can we be that the thoughts contained in the original Bible texts have been accurately transmitted to us?...
Regarding the Christian Greek Scriptures, or so-called New Testament, Bible scholar F. F. Bruce wrote: “The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning.” He also said: “If the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.”
However in appendix A5 they are forced to take the argument that the manuscripts are not as reliable as they have just claimed they are in order to defend their insertion of Jehovah into the NT of the NWT:
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/appendix-a/divine-name-christian-greek-scriptures/
Bible scholars acknowledge that God’s personal name, as represented by the Tetragrammaton (יהוה), appears almost 7,000 times in the original text of the Hebrew Scriptures. However, many feel that it did not appear in the original text of the Christian Greek Scriptures. For this reason, most modern English Bibles do not use the name Jehovah when translating the so-called New Testament. Even when translating quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures in which the Tetragrammaton appears, most translators use “Lord” rather than God’s personal name.
The New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures does not follow this common practice. It uses the name Jehovah a total of 237 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. In deciding to do this, the translators took into consideration two important factors: (1) The Greek manuscripts we possess today are not the originals. Of the thousands of copies in existence today, most were made at least two centuries after the originals were composed. (2) By that time, those copying the manuscripts either replaced the Tetragrammaton with Kyʹri·os, the Greek word for “Lord,” or they copied from manuscripts where this had already been done.
I am struggling to think how one can reconcile these two competing positions, and I wonder if you are aware that the Watchtower Society has ever made an attempt to do so? You ask:
However, for those who maintain the holy scriptures, it poses a number of deeper questions.
If evidence that the divine name was used in the original NT writings grows to become impossible to deny, this should raise deeper questions for both the JW and evangelical view of 'inerrancy' I.e what else in the manuscripts are incorrect, and on what basis can we claim nothing else has been copied incorrectly/changed from the originals. Though, given that the inconsistent JW position should already raise questions for them I don't suppose this will become much of an issue.
Edit: or, I suppose, what JeffT (more succinctly) said
so in england they report a "white clean-shaven man" mowed down worshippers at a mosque.
why do they never make such detailed descriptions when muslims do the same?.
i hope this event isn't a bad turning point.
The implication is that if Simon (or anyone else, for that matter) were among your community, lost his mind and said something that your community finds offensive, then there would be no guarantee that his head would remain on his shoulders.
Goodness! That wasn't the implication at all!!
it looks like these attacks in europe are going from weekly, to daily, it literally gives me chills to think about traveling to europe with my family.
that is very unfortunate.
.
If the ww2 generation had the same attitude of this modern day SJW idiot-fest, we'd all be speaking German, and some of us wouldn't be here.
Says the guy who is too scared to visit Europe...
so i've been thinking a lot about why i stayed a jw for so long even though i had always had doubts about the doctrines.
i was born into the religion, left and came back as an adult for another decade.
some of the things that come to mind (besides the threat of shunning-and this isn't to minimize that very real threat) was:.
Hi Luhe, thanks for sharing, your story sounds similar to mine, my Dad has faded too but never fully got to grips with it all, I don't want him to feel too much guilt about bringing his family in so I tend to let things be. It's annoying though, I get it.
I knew Michael Porter, we were in the same congregation in Wimbledon (this was after his prison time) His wife and in laws stood by him too, all very disturbing. Jookbeard also knows him. Some JWs thought he stumbled me and was why I left but the truth is that I was on the way out anyway.
so i've been thinking a lot about why i stayed a jw for so long even though i had always had doubts about the doctrines.
i was born into the religion, left and came back as an adult for another decade.
some of the things that come to mind (besides the threat of shunning-and this isn't to minimize that very real threat) was:.
Fear that I would lose all my friends.
Fear that I would disappoint my dad.
Same Luhe, I grow very attached to people. How was your dad? Mine was definitely disappointed but I don't think he's too bothered now.
