A few days back I was talking to the one friend I have that is still a Jehovah's Witnesses. Actually, I think he is in denial that he left, since he has not been regular to meetings for four years. Well we got in this discussion about prophesy. As you might expect this comes up a lot with almost all Witnesses. So what was it about?
Well he was trying to explain to me that he felt he needed to go to meetings more, because the way the economy is looking is like the prophesy of "money being worthless, and thrown into the streets." What I have noticed on here, and in my real life is that some of us do this. We see one thing coming true, in a sense, and it raises some concerns as to whether or not the Witness are correct. Not that it is wrong, as we were in that religion for years and it is only natural that something will surface from time to time that bothers us. There is a problem in this fear and logic though.
That problem is that you can not look at the small things a religion gets right, and ignore all the major things they got wrong. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and it only stands to reason that if you throw 100's of prophesies out there over a hundred years or more, a couple are going to match something. What few people realize about the organization, is that many of the publications on prophesy were written after the fact. What does that mean?
After the fact, meaning they took prophesies from the Bible and years later said that events in the past fit these. So they did not predict nothing, they just worked things that happened into events we all know. How much would you respect a scientist if he told you that he developed a machine that can tell you where a earthquake was, as long as you did not mind knowing until two days after it happened? I don't know about you, but I would think he is a quack!
Now I know, whether we admit it or not, a few out there get scared at times when they watch the news. They worry that this might be the end and some of that teaching put in their head, resurfaces as fear. Just remember when this happens, that you have to have a true north of logic. That logic being, "how can you trust people, who are wrong about so much, even if they get something right now and then." Basically, even a broken clock is right twice a day! ... but would that make it a reliable time piece? I don't think so, do you?
My thought
Well he was trying to explain to me that he felt he needed to go to meetings more, because the way the economy is looking is like the prophesy of "money being worthless, and thrown into the streets." What I have noticed on here, and in my real life is that some of us do this. We see one thing coming true, in a sense, and it raises some concerns as to whether or not the Witness are correct. Not that it is wrong, as we were in that religion for years and it is only natural that something will surface from time to time that bothers us. There is a problem in this fear and logic though.
That problem is that you can not look at the small things a religion gets right, and ignore all the major things they got wrong. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and it only stands to reason that if you throw 100's of prophesies out there over a hundred years or more, a couple are going to match something. What few people realize about the organization, is that many of the publications on prophesy were written after the fact. What does that mean?
After the fact, meaning they took prophesies from the Bible and years later said that events in the past fit these. So they did not predict nothing, they just worked things that happened into events we all know. How much would you respect a scientist if he told you that he developed a machine that can tell you where a earthquake was, as long as you did not mind knowing until two days after it happened? I don't know about you, but I would think he is a quack!
Now I know, whether we admit it or not, a few out there get scared at times when they watch the news. They worry that this might be the end and some of that teaching put in their head, resurfaces as fear. Just remember when this happens, that you have to have a true north of logic. That logic being, "how can you trust people, who are wrong about so much, even if they get something right now and then." Basically, even a broken clock is right twice a day! ... but would that make it a reliable time piece? I don't think so, do you?
My thought
