by chuckyy 44 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Here's the kick in the keester as I see it! The wages of sin is death right? So no matter what kind of POS you were in life as soon as you die your set, you get the same reward as the same person who spent their life selling watchtowers right!?
THATS why the WBTS keeps saying it's right around the corner! If people realized that "hey wait just a @$%$ second, I AM going to die in this system" then they fall right then and there!
mkr.. I could never get this one!! How unfair, that anyone, regardless of their life course, if they die before the end will get automatic entry into the 'paradise', yet billions of good people will die and not ever get the chance..
Poppy
faithul men and women through those 1900 years
PMJ, if they were faithful, they weren't false Christians.
just because there was faithul men and women through those 1900 years doesnt mean all of them were chosen to be part of the 144000
If they weren't false Christians, what kind were they?
5 Their being called to heavenly life was not because they were somehow better than all the servants of God who had died before Pentecost of 33 C.E. (Matt. 11:11) Rather, Jehovah now had begun to select those who would be associate rulers with Jesus Christ. For some 19 centuries after this there was only one calling, the heavenly one. It was an undeserved kindness that God bestowed on a limited number in furtherance of his own wise and loving purposes.—Eph. 2:8-10.
You were wrong. According to your organization's dogma any true Christians for 19 centuries were called as part of the 144,000. We aren't talking about "professed," you didn't say anything about that in your first post to this thread. You said "faithful."
Your organization teaches that fewer than 90,000 were faithful Christians over a period of 1900 years. Does that seem likely to you?
AuldSoul
Hey AuldSoul nice slam dunk on You asked for it her it is!!!!!! If I may add to the People who died before Jesus senario. How bout Mt 8:11 and Heb 11:13-16. These scriptures show Abraham and men of old in Heaven no??
I checked some other translations for Acts 21:20. Most render it as "thousands", like the NWT. Some say more.
The Message - "thousands upon thousands of God-fearing Jews have become believers in Jesus!"
Contemporary English Version - "you can see how many tens of thousands of the Jewish people have become followers! "
New King James Version - "You see, brother, how many myriads of Jews there are who have believed"
Young's Literal - "Thou seest, brother, how many myriads there are of Jews who have believed"
Darby - "Thou seest, brother, how many myriads there are of the Jews who have believed"
Worldwide English - "Brother, there are many thousands of Jews who believe. "
It would certainly suggest that 144,000 would be a ridiculously small number of Christians to assume existed in the first century.
Dave
Also in the book of Acts it says that in Israel there were myriads of believers, that Greek word myriads means tens of thousands. The NWT translates it as thousands, no doubt an intentional distortion with a view to protecting their 144000 doctrine.
Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words gives the meaning of murias as :
"a myriad, a vast number," "many thousands," Luke 12:1, RV; Acts 21:20; it also denotes 10,000, Acts 19:19, lit., "five ten-thousands;"
This is how it is translated in NWT - not as "thousands", but as "many thousands". It is translated in the same way at Luke 12:1 so I do not agree it is an intentional distortion. However, the thrust of your argument that the early Christians exceeded 144,000 in number is almost certainly true. In Pliny's letter to Trajan, which was written about the year 100, he says (Ep. 10.96) :
For numerous persons of every age and every class, both genders, are being brought to trial, and this is likely to continue. It is not only the town, but villages and countryside as well which are infected through contact with this perverse superstition.
This is borne out by reference to numerous Christian communities in the first century :
The large number of professed Christians is acknowledged in the article "Hated for His Name" ( w51 9/1 p.518) :
Diocletian assumed the crown A.D. 284. At first he seemed friendly to the Christians, but in the year 303 he gave in to persuasion and opened the tenth persecution, probably the most ferocious of all. Suffocation by smoke, forcible drinking of melted lead, mass drownings and burnings, breaking on the rack of men and women alike ran the empire with blood. In a single month 17,000 were slain. In the province of Egypt alone, 144,000 such professed Christians died by violence in the course of this persecution, in addition to another 700,000 who died as a result of fatigues encountered in banishment or under enforced public works.
The assertion that more than 80% of the hundreds of thousands who died for their faith at this time were only Christian by name is difficult to justify.
Earnest
This is how it is translated in NWT - not as "thousands", but as "many thousands". It is translated in the same way at Luke 12:1 so I do not agree it is an intentional distortion.
Good point. I even read it in the NWT, but I was wearing my "watchtower is wrong" glasses, so I didn't catch it. Thanks for pointing this out. And thanks for the extensive list of references! The 144,000 claim looks beyond ludicrous in view of that list.
Dave
PMJ I thought you said GOODBYE testerday
PMJ I thought you said GOODBYE testerday
They always say goodbye a few times, but they just can't stay away. Free thinking and freely expressing yourself is addictive! (Maybe Simon should put a warning label on the site, ya think?)
Dave
Earnest:
That 51 WT you cite (nice work, by the way) was followed a few months later by a QFR wanting an explanation. Referring to that article, the question was how could this be an accurate report if only 144,000 Christians were to be annointed over time? The WT replied that many of those "professed" Christians had apostasized and fallen away from true worship by then.
So why did they willingly surrender their lives out of loyalty to Jesus? The WT didn't go there.
