08-04-2007, 11:21 PM
08-05-2007, 12:33 AM
**guardian001 answers the knock at the door**
08-05-2007, 05:01 AM
Most of my family in Michigan are Jehovah's Witnesses. Aunt Lillie sent boxloads of the printed material. My parents, committed to religious freedom, passed it along. That, and an Assembly of God and a Baptist church, was my religious experience to 18, and with the exception of the Assembly of God (which was a matter of maternal convenience), totally voluntary.
I last saw the Witnesses all together either New Years Day 2002 or New Years Eve 2001. Mom and I, our first air travel since 9/11. I have flown three times since Mom died as well.
I last saw the Witnesses all together either New Years Day 2002 or New Years Eve 2001. Mom and I, our first air travel since 9/11. I have flown three times since Mom died as well.
08-06-2007, 09:30 PM
There are those who say going to church on Sunday is a mortal sin, too.
Mortal sin? Red alert for mainline Protestants, advised to read the Bible in good conscience, and assured that Jesus does not lose His own.
Mortal sin? Red alert for mainline Protestants, advised to read the Bible in good conscience, and assured that Jesus does not lose His own.
08-07-2007, 02:28 AM
Who are these people and what do they believe in?
Charles Taze Russell was born on February 16th 1852 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA and was reasonably happy with life until at the age of twenty he realised he had a real problem with Hell.
Pushing back the frontiers of America was hard work for everyone and by 1870 the God fearing folk of Pittsburgh were satisfied that the various local churches and denominations offered enough acceptable answers and that Heaven and Hell were pretty much in the right place and attracting all the right sort of people. They were happy to accept that God had a special (and very nice) place for them and a special (and very nasty) place for the few re-offending sinners.
Everyone, that is, except Charles T. Russell.
First, Charlie already had a problem will Hell, particularly eternal Hell. He also had a problem with eternal life. He also had a more down to earth problem with buttons and bows and zips and fasteners.
Charlie certainly did have his problems.
The problem of the buttons and bows was easily solved in 1872 by giving up his successful and financially rewarding haberdashery business but to resolve the problem of Hell, Charlie had to turn back to the book that was giving him the most trouble, The Bible. He started The International Bible Students Association and this, said all his friends, was a bad move. When Charlie decided to go back to real basics and learn enough Hebrew and Greek to make his own personal judgments on the Great Book, his friends and especially his wife, thought Charlie was crazy.
By 1877 and after five years of amateur preaching, bible study and exhaustive mathematical calculations Charlie convinced himself that Christ’s ‘Invisible Coming’ had occurred three years previously, in 1874. Which to progressive Charlie, must have been a real disappointment.
Even more calculations predicted that the year of 1914 would see the end of Gentile domination, a war between capitalism and Socialism (or Communism), and Christ’s Second Coming. Christ, said Charlie, would reign for one thousand years.
Now his friends knew Charlie was crazy.
In 1879 Charlie got into publishing with a Bible journal called The Watchtower but it was to be another five years until the business really took off with 'The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society'. His friends watched and waited.
Elevating himself to the rank of Pastor, Charles T. published his own preaching, Studies in the Scriptures, and achieved the amazing circulation of sixteen million copies in over thirty languages. And when over two thousand newspapers round the world started printing his ‘sermons’ it was not surprising that his old friends were now keeping rather quiet.
Charlie died at the age of 64 leaving behind several unresolved law suits, a broken marriage and an embarrassing silence over the fact that no one had noticed Christ’s invisible coming back in 1874 and that 1914 had come and gone without the predicted apocalypse. With the successful publishing business without a leader Charlie’s friends, naturally enough, came back and took over.
One of them, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, knew a good thing when he saw it and took up the challenge of printing vast amounts of both his own and C.T.’s sermons, predictions, homely advice and ramblings about the impending apocalypse (always a good seller) to the spiritually needy.
Joe managed to combine his work as a judge and his duties as a publisher reasonably successfully for the next fifteen years but by 1931 he felt the need for change of direction. He wanted to get things moving, increase the readership, recruit more members, come up with a new angle and, of course, make more money. He thought the International Bible Students Association needed a new image and glancing back through Charlie’s notes (in Hebrew) Joe spotted the word YHWH. And this, as all scholars of Hebrew know, is the name of God. And this, as clever Joe realised, could run and run. The bad news was that the word was totally unpronounceable. The even worse news was that since the time of the Babylonian exile, the Hebrew language had adopted the name Adonai which means Lord and voluntarily denied itself the use of the true name of God. Clever old Joe was about to fix that.
Throwing in a couple of vowels to the Hebrew made the name Yahweh, which was still pretty bad even if the word actually sounded more like Jahveh.
Now combine that with Adonai and Jehovah was, although a linguistic mistake, Joe’s idea of the name of the One True God.
Joe was almost happy but had one more trick to perform. Drawing on his years of courtroom expertise Joe demanded that those who believed in Jehovah had to officially witness their affiliation. So they all had to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. At last Joe was happy.
Ensured of his place in history, Judge Joe died in 1942 and it was left to the next incumbent, Nathan Homer Knorr to put his name to the Watch Tower Bible School, set up training programmes, make sure that all publications were anonymous and produce a new translation of the Bible to satisfy the Witnesses.
After Nathan’s death in 1977 Frederick Franz carried on the good work and from a circulation of over ten million copies in the 1980’s the Watchtower and Awake! magazines have, so they say, reached sixteen million and twelve million copies respectively in over sixty different languages.
Although distributed free, contributions are gratefully accepted.
The Witnesses' particularly like the idea of Armageddon and predicted The Second Coming no less than four more times. The no-show in 1914 was actually an invisible show down between Christ and Satan. The winner (Christ, naturally) gets to rule the Heavenly Kingdom and Satan the looser is banished to earth where he is credited with starting World War 1.
The no-shows continued; the next one was in 1918, another in 1920, then 1925 and finally 1941, but as 1941 came and went, even with the horrors of the Second World War, it was generally accepted that suggesting the exact moment for heavenly judgement should be left to the god doing the judging rather than those hoping for a happy result.
The happy result, when it comes, will involve no less than 144,000 souls that make it to Heaven to live with Jesus Christ and the other true Christians.
That is exactly 144,000. No more and no less.
The Witnesses’ do like their like numbers and dates. Starting with the first Pentecost in AD33 and continuing with almost every succeeding Pentecostal anniversary, certain people have been selected to become part of the Anointed Class. The current estimate stands at approximately 135,402 people. That’s 135,402 dead people. The additional 8,598 (who make up the total of 144,000) are alive and well and living the Witness Way here in the material world.
The book however closed in 1935 and now the only way ‘in’ is when one of the Anointed Class does something so terrible that he or she is ejected and has to be replaced.
Which at the start of the latest millennium leaves about 8,567,435,791 (live) people wondering where exactly is That List and who exactly has got the Big Red Pen.
Armageddon, when it comes, should solve the problem of exactly which religion will become the overall winner. Armageddon is the moment when Jehovah decides that he has had enough of all the different religions, cults, faiths and followings and sends Jesus down to sort things out once and for all. Well at least for the next thousand years.
Most of the earth’s population, naturally, will not survive the Divine Purification and those souls who die before Armageddon or are judged not to have any redeeming features at all simply disappear. Not to Hell because that does not exist, they just disappear. Completely.
Those that do survive will be known as The Other Sheep and will have a nice new utopia to play in for the next 999 years and 364 days which is when Satan and all his demons get their short but *** day of vengeance.
But if all goes well, another fierce battle will see Satan and his boys totally destroyed and allow Jehovah to complete his master plan.
Which will leave Jehovah and his 144,00 chosen few trying to find something to talk about for all of eternity.
Charles Taze Russell was born on February 16th 1852 in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania USA and was reasonably happy with life until at the age of twenty he realised he had a real problem with Hell.
Pushing back the frontiers of America was hard work for everyone and by 1870 the God fearing folk of Pittsburgh were satisfied that the various local churches and denominations offered enough acceptable answers and that Heaven and Hell were pretty much in the right place and attracting all the right sort of people. They were happy to accept that God had a special (and very nice) place for them and a special (and very nasty) place for the few re-offending sinners.
Everyone, that is, except Charles T. Russell.
First, Charlie already had a problem will Hell, particularly eternal Hell. He also had a problem with eternal life. He also had a more down to earth problem with buttons and bows and zips and fasteners.
Charlie certainly did have his problems.
The problem of the buttons and bows was easily solved in 1872 by giving up his successful and financially rewarding haberdashery business but to resolve the problem of Hell, Charlie had to turn back to the book that was giving him the most trouble, The Bible. He started The International Bible Students Association and this, said all his friends, was a bad move. When Charlie decided to go back to real basics and learn enough Hebrew and Greek to make his own personal judgments on the Great Book, his friends and especially his wife, thought Charlie was crazy.
By 1877 and after five years of amateur preaching, bible study and exhaustive mathematical calculations Charlie convinced himself that Christ’s ‘Invisible Coming’ had occurred three years previously, in 1874. Which to progressive Charlie, must have been a real disappointment.
Even more calculations predicted that the year of 1914 would see the end of Gentile domination, a war between capitalism and Socialism (or Communism), and Christ’s Second Coming. Christ, said Charlie, would reign for one thousand years.
Now his friends knew Charlie was crazy.
In 1879 Charlie got into publishing with a Bible journal called The Watchtower but it was to be another five years until the business really took off with 'The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society'. His friends watched and waited.
Elevating himself to the rank of Pastor, Charles T. published his own preaching, Studies in the Scriptures, and achieved the amazing circulation of sixteen million copies in over thirty languages. And when over two thousand newspapers round the world started printing his ‘sermons’ it was not surprising that his old friends were now keeping rather quiet.
Charlie died at the age of 64 leaving behind several unresolved law suits, a broken marriage and an embarrassing silence over the fact that no one had noticed Christ’s invisible coming back in 1874 and that 1914 had come and gone without the predicted apocalypse. With the successful publishing business without a leader Charlie’s friends, naturally enough, came back and took over.
One of them, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, knew a good thing when he saw it and took up the challenge of printing vast amounts of both his own and C.T.’s sermons, predictions, homely advice and ramblings about the impending apocalypse (always a good seller) to the spiritually needy.
Joe managed to combine his work as a judge and his duties as a publisher reasonably successfully for the next fifteen years but by 1931 he felt the need for change of direction. He wanted to get things moving, increase the readership, recruit more members, come up with a new angle and, of course, make more money. He thought the International Bible Students Association needed a new image and glancing back through Charlie’s notes (in Hebrew) Joe spotted the word YHWH. And this, as all scholars of Hebrew know, is the name of God. And this, as clever Joe realised, could run and run. The bad news was that the word was totally unpronounceable. The even worse news was that since the time of the Babylonian exile, the Hebrew language had adopted the name Adonai which means Lord and voluntarily denied itself the use of the true name of God. Clever old Joe was about to fix that.
Throwing in a couple of vowels to the Hebrew made the name Yahweh, which was still pretty bad even if the word actually sounded more like Jahveh.
Now combine that with Adonai and Jehovah was, although a linguistic mistake, Joe’s idea of the name of the One True God.
Joe was almost happy but had one more trick to perform. Drawing on his years of courtroom expertise Joe demanded that those who believed in Jehovah had to officially witness their affiliation. So they all had to become Jehovah’s Witnesses. At last Joe was happy.
Ensured of his place in history, Judge Joe died in 1942 and it was left to the next incumbent, Nathan Homer Knorr to put his name to the Watch Tower Bible School, set up training programmes, make sure that all publications were anonymous and produce a new translation of the Bible to satisfy the Witnesses.
After Nathan’s death in 1977 Frederick Franz carried on the good work and from a circulation of over ten million copies in the 1980’s the Watchtower and Awake! magazines have, so they say, reached sixteen million and twelve million copies respectively in over sixty different languages.
Although distributed free, contributions are gratefully accepted.
The Witnesses' particularly like the idea of Armageddon and predicted The Second Coming no less than four more times. The no-show in 1914 was actually an invisible show down between Christ and Satan. The winner (Christ, naturally) gets to rule the Heavenly Kingdom and Satan the looser is banished to earth where he is credited with starting World War 1.
The no-shows continued; the next one was in 1918, another in 1920, then 1925 and finally 1941, but as 1941 came and went, even with the horrors of the Second World War, it was generally accepted that suggesting the exact moment for heavenly judgement should be left to the god doing the judging rather than those hoping for a happy result.
The happy result, when it comes, will involve no less than 144,000 souls that make it to Heaven to live with Jesus Christ and the other true Christians.
That is exactly 144,000. No more and no less.
The Witnesses’ do like their like numbers and dates. Starting with the first Pentecost in AD33 and continuing with almost every succeeding Pentecostal anniversary, certain people have been selected to become part of the Anointed Class. The current estimate stands at approximately 135,402 people. That’s 135,402 dead people. The additional 8,598 (who make up the total of 144,000) are alive and well and living the Witness Way here in the material world.
The book however closed in 1935 and now the only way ‘in’ is when one of the Anointed Class does something so terrible that he or she is ejected and has to be replaced.
Which at the start of the latest millennium leaves about 8,567,435,791 (live) people wondering where exactly is That List and who exactly has got the Big Red Pen.
Armageddon, when it comes, should solve the problem of exactly which religion will become the overall winner. Armageddon is the moment when Jehovah decides that he has had enough of all the different religions, cults, faiths and followings and sends Jesus down to sort things out once and for all. Well at least for the next thousand years.
Most of the earth’s population, naturally, will not survive the Divine Purification and those souls who die before Armageddon or are judged not to have any redeeming features at all simply disappear. Not to Hell because that does not exist, they just disappear. Completely.
Those that do survive will be known as The Other Sheep and will have a nice new utopia to play in for the next 999 years and 364 days which is when Satan and all his demons get their short but *** day of vengeance.
But if all goes well, another fierce battle will see Satan and his boys totally destroyed and allow Jehovah to complete his master plan.
Which will leave Jehovah and his 144,00 chosen few trying to find something to talk about for all of eternity.
08-08-2007, 02:44 PM
They are my family, Max, regardless of what they believe.
If you insist, though, on a religious critique, I am less fond of a stern daddy God than Jesus as one in God who went to the Cross. If God wasn't on the Cross, it is a different faith entirely. Jesus actually bothered to live on earth, breathe oxygen, eat food, feel crucifixion and so on. And the mortal sin of having a blood transfusion? Seems kind of harsh, I don't know why people are so fond of unforgiveable sins but most of us Protestants believe Jesus practically forgives everything, except not getting saved.
Then again I have difficulty with the loving dad concept. Dad preferred the Federal workplace to Mom's boozing any evening. Hands off Dad, hands on Mom- when available.
That is what the four of us believed as a mixed-faith family (I was the one who found God best).
If you insist, though, on a religious critique, I am less fond of a stern daddy God than Jesus as one in God who went to the Cross. If God wasn't on the Cross, it is a different faith entirely. Jesus actually bothered to live on earth, breathe oxygen, eat food, feel crucifixion and so on. And the mortal sin of having a blood transfusion? Seems kind of harsh, I don't know why people are so fond of unforgiveable sins but most of us Protestants believe Jesus practically forgives everything, except not getting saved.
Then again I have difficulty with the loving dad concept. Dad preferred the Federal workplace to Mom's boozing any evening. Hands off Dad, hands on Mom- when available.
That is what the four of us believed as a mixed-faith family (I was the one who found God best).
08-08-2007, 03:00 PM
GuessWho Wrote:
They are my family, Max, regardless of what they believe.
That would also be true if they were narcoterrorists. What's your point?
08-08-2007, 03:25 PM
Blood ties have always been thicker than baptism water in my immediate family Max. I'm sure it goes for the extended family too, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousin's in laws and progeny in Michigan, with only a few exceptions in Michigan, Jehovah's Witnesses.
My immediate family was characterized by religious freedom. I even wonder if they thought circumcising a boy baby was out of line. My dad thought it was like joining the Nazi party when I became a Christian, but dad and mom, despite their faults, put up with me and supported me when I couldn't get a job offer with a ten foot pole.
In my experience, the Christians only but wish they had the commitment of blood kin.
My immediate family was characterized by religious freedom. I even wonder if they thought circumcising a boy baby was out of line. My dad thought it was like joining the Nazi party when I became a Christian, but dad and mom, despite their faults, put up with me and supported me when I couldn't get a job offer with a ten foot pole.
In my experience, the Christians only but wish they had the commitment of blood kin.
08-10-2007, 12:26 AM
I completely forgot, weeks after I visited (or at least first remembered) my aunt Bernice, Mom got word she died. From what little Mom volunteered, it seemed suspicious to her, and she said her doctor said that whatever it was was not usually fatal, her doctor possibly implicated (by opinion) the lack of a blood transfusion as a contributing factor.
It sure sucked losing a friendly aunt, she and her husband treated us well in Detroit.
I probably had blood transfusions as a premature baby. Maybe during my cancer surgery in 1997. I elected for general anesthesia and I didn't remember a thing until hours later. I was kind of a wimp, I could have had local anesthesia and maybe caught a glimpse of what was going on.
It sure sucked losing a friendly aunt, she and her husband treated us well in Detroit.
I probably had blood transfusions as a premature baby. Maybe during my cancer surgery in 1997. I elected for general anesthesia and I didn't remember a thing until hours later. I was kind of a wimp, I could have had local anesthesia and maybe caught a glimpse of what was going on.
08-14-2007, 02:31 AM
SheWhoCan'tThinkOfAUsername Wrote:
Quote:
Just as religions -- JW's being a prime example -- often have hateful views of people, people often reject those religions' irrational and destructive teachings.
This kind of thinking is only making things worse. DigiModify didn't personally say anything hateful about other people, so there is no reason to say hateful things about his people.
Rejecting irrational and destructive teachings makes things worse? I would say that failure to see -- and reject -- such teachings make things worse.
Guardian wanted to know more about JW's. I provided information. Was it untrue? Inaccurate?
08-14-2007, 03:57 AM
SheWhoCan'tThinkOfAUsername Wrote:
No, rejecting those beliefs does not make it worse. Rejecting the beliefs and then attacking people who mention they are part of a group of people that often holds those beliefs does.
If you can show me where in this thread I attacked someone personally, you won't sound paranoid. Otherwise, I am just providing factual information about a particular religion/cult.
Why do so many religions hate the truth?
08-14-2007, 01:55 PM
Be sure to give equal time Max to Christians who don't engage in hostile tactics such as oppressing people, dominating them, telling them what do without realizing they are free to refuse, attacking their dignity.
08-15-2007, 06:01 PM
bosh Wrote:
This sounds like a case for vegetarianism not blood transfusions - "eat"... "fowl"... "beast" - none of which have to do with transfusion from fellow humans and which would not even have been knowledge at the time this passage was written.
Or a case against vampirism. What does blood-eating have to do with transfusions?
I've never heard of a doctor in an emergency room saying "Nurse! This patient needs to eat three units of blood, stat!" (Or would it be Lestat?)
08-15-2007, 06:25 PM
Ziyaret Wrote:
Quote:
Why do so many religions hate the truth?
For the same reason you hate the truth.
Don't be catty, Z. Or nonsensical.
You've had so much trouble with stalking in your "real life". Do you need to do it here, too?
08-15-2007, 07:00 PM
ichtms Wrote:
Because truth is an enemy of every power that is based on inflexible foundations. Religions claim the hetero-normative family formation as the only right constellation. The patriarch has all the power. No one wants to give away their power. I think it's that easy...
Bingo! It's all about power and control. Historically, religions fought ideological, political and military wars to be the official "state religion" -- which gave them incredible power and wealth.
Example: The "pilgrims" who came to America did so not to escape religious oppression but to establish their own religious domination. But America broke with European tradition by separating church from state. Now, the Religious Right is working hard to re-establish religious domination -- to extend their power from the "spiritual" realm to the civil, secular and economic ($$$) world.