by BashfulAshG 41 Replies latest watchtower bible
Out of all of those books, I liked "Mankind's Search for God." However, it appears to me that this book is incredibly obscure and no one recalls studying it during the old Book Study format. Perhaps the Watchtower Society didn't want us to survey other religions and question theirs.
I have to admit, I enjoyed "What Does the Bible Really Teach" and "Young People Ask" books despite waking up to TTATT.
My favourite JW organization book of all time was "Babylon The Great Has Fallen. God's Kingdom Rules!"
It came out in 1963/64 (I think). I was a handsome young child still years away from puberty and a full-on born--in JW. I was also incredibly bright, reading well above my age by the time I started school.
Unfortunately, my JW parents encouraged me to use my brain by thinking critically and reason - their main failure in raising me. Too late Mom and Dad!
They should have fed me a smilingly simple diet of Sophie and Caleb - but those two little darlings weren't invented then.
The "Babylon the Great..." book was several hundred pages in length and contained a very detailed overview of Biblical history (through Watchtower lens, of course).
It was heavily packed with information, tightly argued and reasoned.
It blasted the churches of Christendom, Catholicism in particular in no uncertain terms. PC did not prevail back then.
It provided a compelling argument that the generation old enough to comprehend the start of World War One would still be alive when Armageddon strikes. It was not the book that drew explicit reference to 1975 (that book came later - about 1965/66 and was titled (I think) "Everlasting Freedom in the Sons of God" or something or other.
Looking back, it is full of holes like the proverbial sieve. But man, back then Watchtower publications did not insult readers' intelligence. Those books were meaty dishes.
Hmm... What I liked about "Mankind's Search for God" was that it was very similar to the college Comparative Religion course I had taken just a couple years before -- before I quit college because Armageddon was coming and a worldly education would, of course, be of no value in God's new system of thiings (blah blah blah). It was almost scholarly, if you ignore the lead-me-to-the-jws bias.
The one I'm glad I kept, though, is the Kingdom Interlinear. It's handy to have the original Greek with the word for word translation, so you can draw your own conclusions compared to the NWT nonsense in the margins.
My favorite wt book experience was probably the extra NWT that I cut from its spine and shredded page by page.
I'm pretty sure we studied Mankind's Search for God in the bookstudy. I specifically remember filling in for the reader during the part on the Aztecs.
I have always kind of liked the "All Scripture" book. It was a nice compact narrative of the Bible with little of the wacky theology sprinkled throughout. I wonder why we don't study it anymore...
When I fully believed... I always enjoyed the Isaiah's Prophecy and Daniel's Prophecy books. I thought that stuff was REALLY going to happen and it was exciting to read about.
I liked (and still like, I guess) the Greatest Man book.
If you ignore WT doctrine - such as the meaning of the faithful slave parable - it's a pretty good book, IMO. I still like Jesus' answer to the Pharisees' question "is it lawful to pay head tax to Caesar or not?"
Certainly one of their better ones.
humblepotato: Try looking up some of the subjects in the All Scripture book online. Remember, they always selected what supported their own narrative.
I liked the Aid to Bible Understanding book. In depth and easy to understand. Also, no question and answer format.
Ironic that it is rumored to have been coauthored by Raymond Franz.
