proplog2,125 years of details are against you. . You need to explain how unrightous means justify so grand an end. Hitler and Mao also had grand schemes that mesmerized idealist followers. Its not too hard to do if your methods are honed to control information and behavior. The Watchtower Society has done this alone, they never needed God's help. Before the internet, an innocent , conscientuous believer would suffer alone. Now he has a way to compare his experience with others all over the world and the wave of consensus is that the Watchtower Society is in love with itself and operates as a self perpetuating corporation . It is no different than any other high control group. Devoid of detail the grand scheme looks good but up close it falls flat from the blood and tears of broken homes and broken hearts. If there is some kind of end to all this , the Watchtower and Jehovah's Witnesses will drink from that "Cup" along with the others and you should choose fear over denial. Remember, "....with him there is not a variation of the turning of the shadow." That means he is a God of details and the details are against you.
The necessity of failed prophetic dates
by proplog2 22 Replies latest jw friends
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proplog2
Mum: Prophet like most words contain a lot of different meanings. 1Samuel 9:8-10 equates prophets to seers. One who sees things clearly and also can see how things will turn out in the future.
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VoidEater
Prop: Then the GB is getting dangerously close to witchcraft and fortunetelling in their predictions - and we all know what Scripture has to say about that. Something else caught my eye: "If you have nothing to do - you become aimless. No big project on a week-end? You're going to lay around, eat, and sleep." Help! I'm bored and I can't get up! Seriously, other disciplines have a much more worthy way to take up the time while waiting for Armageddon - contemplate God. I am rarely if ever aimless. I am almost always very present to what I am engaged in, or "praying". I don't often find the need to distract myself with failed prophecies to while away the hours. I hope you may also find more constructive, spiritually constructive, ways of feeding your own spiritual garden on the off times...
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besty
You raise a very interesting point about a level of trust within the org.
In fact I think to demonstrate how this trust works in practice you should print off this topic and discuss it with your local elders in the context of you being the originator of the topic and how they think you should develop the discussion from this point.
Please let us know how you get on. -
proplog2
Lovelylil: You are asking me for scriptural support that a huge billion dollar publishing empire will survive armageddon? I never said that. So hack away. By the way this is called the straw man fallacy. You are misrepresenting my view so that you have something you can attack. But, now that you brought it up why don't YOU prove that a huge billion dollar publishing empire is necessarily a bad thing. Are printing presses automatically evil? Is it evil for associations of people to do business as a non-profit corporation? You hate the Watchtower. Plain and simple. Leave it at that.
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proplog2
Maddie: There is a time for everything. If this is really the time of the end and the days are really short then such extraordinary times call for extraordinary behavior. If you join the army you are expected to be obedient to your commanding officers - especially in battle. Jehovah's Witnesses did not write this: Matthew 10:34-37 (NIV) 34"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn " 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law - 36a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'[a] 37"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Some have become disillusioned because they thought JW's is a nice social club. It isn't the Lions or the Rotary Club. Patrick Henry was an idiot. Give me life and I'll worry about liberty later.
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R.Crusoe
Many of us can see clearly very many patterns in human behavior by studying history. It is not reserved for only Bible students. Presenting it as so to impressionable individuals is what has them hooked, as with fortune tellers. It is about gambling with orders of likelihood. It is more likely that rainforests will decline than increase. It is more likely the human population will increase than decrease. It is more likely that wars will occur again than not. It is more likely the Earth will be more polluted by humans than preserved and enhanced. And I could go on for pages. Then I could predict consequences to these likelihoods with a good chance most of them will pay up. Bookmakers use similar tactics. Prophets are scientists of historical form to estimate future chance!
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metatron
This is silly. If you want to promulgate a close-knit religion for its inherent benefits ( and that's debatable), you need to start with something
superior like Mormons or others - not the cold, institutionally selfish cult that is the Watchtower. Good God, even the Catholic Church offers
huge charitable benefits to non-Catholics. The Watchtower is repellent, and rightly so.
metatron
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zack
What KW13 said!
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lovelylil
proplog,
The old ways were done away with including having to belong to a certain group, "nation of Isreal" or organization to worship God. The Bible clearly pointed to a time when "where" we worship is not important as long as we worship in spirit and truth.
The WT assumption that they are God's mouthpiece because they are a huge organization dispersing millions of pieces of literature (most of which no one even reads), is just plain false. And relying on size and numbers is fleshly thinking, not spiritual and does not originate with God.
IF I were you, I would read over KW13's comments again and really take it to heart. Because the young man laid it out excellently. Lilly