hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
To Mrsjones5, Freudianslip, snowbird and other folks of color
by donny 51 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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BabaYaga
Holy good gods.
Yeah, that Zion's Watchtower is illuminating, all right. -
Fadeout
snowbird: Yeah, McD, I recall their lambasting the Catholic Church for teaching that the Hamitic people were cursed with blackness.
I lost my post, so here's the short version. Here you go:
But, as we have seen, the Bible says absolutely nothing about the black descendants of these men being cursed! Yet it was incorrectly assumed that they were.... Even up to a hundred years ago the Catholic Church held the view that blacks were cursed by God. Maxwell explains that this view “apparently survived until 1873 when Pope Pius IX attached an indulgence to a prayer for the ‘wretched Ethiopians in Central Africa that almighty God may at length remove the curse of Cham [Ham] from their hearts.’” ...
But such teachings have no foundation whatsoever in the Bible. And there were persons in past centuries who showed that the curse uttered by Noah was wrongly being applied to blacks. For example, back in June 1700 Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston explained: “For Canaan is the person cursed three times over, without the mentioning of Cham [Ham]. . . . Whereas the Blackmores [Black race] are not descended of Canaan, but of Cush.”
... What great harm has resulted from the misapplication by churchmen of this Biblical curse! -Awake! Oct 8, 1977
Contrast that with the following gem:
It is generally believed that the curse which Noah pronounced upon Canaan was the origin of the black race. Certain it is that when Noah said, 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren,' he pictured the future of the Colored race. They have been and are a race of servants, but now in the dawn of the twentieth century, we are all coming to see this matter of service in its true light and to find that the only real joy in life is in serving others; not bossing them. There is no servant in the world as good as a good Colored servant, and the joy that he gets from rendering faithful service is one of the purest joys there is in the world. -The Golden Age, July 24, 1929, p. 702
Not only did the WT criticize the Catholic church for holding the belief until 1873, they said they shoudl have known better because the error was pointed out as early as 1700. Yet the WT held the belief for at least 56 years after the Catholics had abandoned it!
Hypocrisy is too soft a term.
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donny
Yeah, McD, I recall their lambasting the Catholic Church for teaching that the Hamitic people were cursed with blackness
That reminds me of an old George Carlin routine.
"On Sunday the Reverend James Nelson emphatically declared that all black people are black as a result of a curse from the Almighty. However he could not be reached for comment today as his secretary informed us that he is undergoing major melanoma surgery,"
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beksbks
Donny?? Are we related? You just described MY family! Is there room in that handbag for me too?
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donny
Donny?? Are we related? You just described MY family! Is there room in that handbag for me too?
Yeah there is some extra space in here. We can grab a few beers and watch Nicky on IMAX.
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FreudianSlip
I just saw this.. funny stuff. I have nothing to add that hasn't already been said. All I'll say is I might be imperfect.. but I'm still hot.
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Mary
Donny asked: But no one has answered my question.What is puzzling though, is why did Michael Jackson dissassociate himself just before reaching perfection?
Simple. He cut off his nose to spite his face. Literally.
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MsMcDucket
I sympathize with the sentiment, but I honestly do not think any of the GB members are racists, and have not been for a long time. They are mostly true believers, and they believe Jehovah loves all people equally. Just my 2 cents.
They are the ones saying you must worship God "in spirit and truth". Many will come to me and say but didn't I do this and didn't I do that....
Matthew 24:4-6-"And Jesus answered and said to them: 'Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, "I am the Christ," and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."
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They're not right! They're wrong!
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MsMcDucket
Matthew 7:21-23 "“Not everyone saying to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but the one doing the will of my Father who is in the heavens will.
22 Many will say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and expel demons in your name, and perform many powerful works in your name?’
23 And yet then I will confess to them: I never knew YOU! Get away from me, YOU workers of lawlessness.
________________________________The Watchtower has historically viewed blacks in general as having less interest and intelligence concerning the Bible then other races. A Zion's Watch Tower of April 15, 1900 stated that "There are probably as many as a hundred colored brethren on the Watch Tower lists, some of them very clear in the truth, and very earnest in its service, financially and other-wise", but they were not allowed to participate in the "pioneer work" then because,
although we have received letters from several of these, who had intended engaging in the volunteer work, expressing surprise that in the call for volunteers in the March 1, 1900 issue we restricted the inquiry to white Protestant churches. They rightly realized that we have not the slightest of race prejudice, and that we love the colored brethren with just the same warmth of heart that we love the white, and they queried therefore why such a distinction should be made in the call. The reason is colored people have less education than whites--many of them quite insufficient to permit them to profit by such reading as we have to give forth. Our conclusion therefore is based upon the supposition that reading matter distributed to a colored congregation would more than half of it be utterly wasted, and a very small percentage indeed likely to yield good results (122).
If the problem was "less education" it would seem that the solution was the opposite to what the Watchtower recommend here. Education programs should have been established, as was often done later so as to provide this "humble race" with the skills needed to make use of the reading matter in question (Cole, 1953). They also argued that although "the negro is not a beast" whites were clearly superior to them, and based this conclusion on the following logic:
The secret of the greater intelligence and aptitude of the Caucasian undoubtedly in great measure is to be attributed to the commingling of blood amongst its various branches; and this was evidently forced in large measure by circumstances under divine control. It remains to be proven that the similar commingling of the various tribes of Chinese for several centuries would not equally brighten their intellects; and the same with the peoples of India and Africa (Zion's Watch Tower, July 15, 1902:216).
Jehovah's Witnesses today are not taught about this history of the Watchtower organization. The few Jehovah's Witnesses who are aware of the above often excuse their organization's historical position with the words "the light was dim in our early history, but the governing body is now more enlightened". The Watchtower, though, has not fully shed their old mentality. Bethel headquarter's worker, Watters, while in charge of the printing of the Watchtower's Bible encyclopedia called Aid to Bible Understanding was told that it was not going to be translated into Spanish partly due to the "lack of interest" of Spanish Jehovah's Witnesses in the "deeper things of God's Word"! The conclusion of the Watchtower administration was that this scholarly work would be wasted among the Hispanics (Watters, 1988:2).
