TheOldHippie: Two of them are "fake" flip-flops, I am sorry to say. The Alpha and Omega 1978 Watchtower was a typo, they printed Jesus in stead of Jehovah …
First, I must ask you as I read your explanations, are you talking from firsthand experience or speculation? Were you personally privy to the writing, editing, and printing process during these articles in question or did someone tell you this? Assuming the latter, can you source what you’re saying?
To say something is a typo does not rest well with me. I suspect that many of the readers to your posting feel the same. It’s an alibi that’s so easy to say -- impossible to prove.
Let me illustrate: Your handle, TheOldHippie, is quite unique. [There are probably many ways it can be subject to a typographical error, a mistake during the typing process -- transposing a letter or two, omitting a letter or two, even substituting a few letters. By most definitions, however, a typo excludes errors of ignorance.] I could mistype your handle with TheOldHippy, TheOleHipy, YeHippieOld, etc., etc., you get the idea.
To replace TheOldHippie with ThatNewBeatnik does not fall into the typo bucket, it’s plain ignorant. To replace Jesus with Jehovah, Satan with Jesus, Yes with No, or vice versa would also be ignorant. Remember, it’s not as if a person types it and we then read it. I don’t have to tell you that there are many steps to the editorial and printing process.
I wouldn’t suggest the alibi thing if they didn’t have a history of resorting to it.
Their process of their publishing allows a window of time opportunity for revising the historical integrity of their writings. With the magazines there are the bound volumes and the other language editions. With books there are the other language editions.
Remember one of their more recent prophetic statements, one which didn’t fail till only a few years ago?
In this instance, rather than a specific year, they had predicted a century. “…Shortly, within our twentieth century, the "battle in the day of Jehovah" will begin against the modern antitype of Jerusalem, Christendom.” The Nations Shall Know That I Am Jehovah - How? 1971, Chap. 12 pp. 216-217
We all know that prediction failed. Nowadays they would have loved to resort to the typo alibi but some 29 years before the turn of the century, they remained convinced of the validity of that statement. Remember 1975?
Move ahead some 18 years where they make that same blunder. Here, The Watchtower, 1988, January 1, page 12, said in its original printing, “… a work that would be completed in our 20th century.” Aha! After reading this, many inside critics probability stepped in and yelled, “Hey, it’s getting too close. We may have to eat these words. Perhaps we should soften them.”
Recall how they replaced the phrase “our 20th century” with “our day” inside the Bound Volume? To check this out, honest-hearted persons need only find originals or scans of originals.
You may wish to call that a typo correction as well. Well, that’s your priviledge.
I won’t because I have a real issue with their their credibility. I cannot accept some weak alibi from some group that must goes so far as to redefine the very meaning of a Lie -- where
If people aren't entitled to truth we need not divulge it.
A lie is condemned only if it’s done with malice.
Check it out from your own WT Library CD: Insight on the Scriptures, p. 245, Lie: “While malicious lying is definitely condemned in the Bible, this does not mean that a person is under obligation to divulge truthful information to people who are not entitled to it.”
TheOldHippie: Also the first example is not a correct one, as the Insight article sort of lived its own life and the Watchtower articles were consistent; the Insight article is hard to date, but it has been translated differently to other languages and therefore most probably also has to be classified as a typo.
Is that more speculation on your part? Who told you this?
If you had read the essay you would not say article, singular. Plural, as in the word is the word articles, as there are five distinct articles within those encyclopedic volumes: Destruction, Repentance, Sodom, Gomorrah, and Judgment Day. Each of them consistently presented the same interpretation. Oh, that hard to date claim of yours? It was Friday, June 17 following the district convention discourse.
Finally, the Insight sort of lived its own life ? What can you possibly mean by that statement? The writers were different? If so, I can buy that but neither you or I know anything except what we’re told. What I’ve written is what they’ve told us in their own writings. What have they told you?
Or are you telling me that they’re human-directed instead of spirit-directed? I can buy that too but that’s not they’re telling us. The current baptismal vow distinctly embeds the term spirit-directed within one of its two questions. "Do you understand that your dedication and baptism identify you as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses in association with God’s spirit-directed organization?"Watchtower, 1985, 6/1 p. 30.
Len Miller
