sf / sKally wrote:
"All hail the return of Strider uncrowned king of free men."I will try to live up to your expectations. In my best Strider voice, then:
Since I beheld that trilogy, Strider has been my most adored "character". I even received the burger king glass as a gift this year (laugh if you WILL).
Something about Strider mesmerized me. I felt such security just reading the book; like he was with me outside the Story.
Indeed, hail Strider!
And thank you for your reply
My faithful hobbits and elves - thar' be dragons to slay. Onward - to Bethel!
After all, this is what "Insight on the Scriptures", 1988, Vol I has to say about Bethel on pages 296-7:
"Bethel .. As a major city of the northern kingdom under Jeroboam, Bethel .. now became renowned as a center of false worship. At Bethel, in the extreme south of the newly formed kingdom of Israel .. Jeroboam set up the golden calves in his effort to dissuade the people of his realm from going to the temple at Jerusalem. (1Ki 12:27-29) With its own religious house and altar, a specially invented festival time, and priests selected from among the non-Levitical tribes, Bethel became a symbol of rank apostasy from true worship. (1Ki 12:31-33) Jehovah God did not delay in expressing his disapproval through a 'man of the true God' sent to Bethel to pronounce judgment against the altar used in connection with calf worship. The ripping apart of this altar served as a portent, confirming the sure fulfillment of the prophet's words. After leaving Bethel, however, this 'man of the true God' allowed himself to be induced by an old prophet of Bethel to accept and act on a supposed message from an angel in violation of the direct orders from God, with disastrous consequences to himself. Slain by a lion, he was buried at Bethel in the personal burial place of the old prophet who saw in all these events the certainty of the fulfillment of Jehovah's word and thus requested that his own body be buried at death in the same burial site. -1Ki 13:1-32.. Despite the prevalence of false worship there, the record shows Bethel as the location of a group of prophets .. Bethel was also the home of the group of jeering boys who mocked Elisha, this costing many of them their lives as a result of divine execution. -2Ki 2:1-3,23,24.. The prophets Amos and Hosea, in the late ninth and mid-eighth centuries B.C.E., proclaimed God's condemnation of the religious corruption centered at Bethel. Although Hosea makes direct mention of Bethel (meaning 'House of God') only when recalling God's revelation of himself to faithful Jacob there (Ho 12:4), he evidently employs the name 'Beth-aven,' meaning 'House of Hurtfulness (Something Hurtful),' as applying to that city and the effect of its false religious practices. (Ho 4:15; 5:8) He warns that its calf idol served by foreign-god priests will come to be a cause for mourning to idolatrous Israel, its high places will be annihilated, and thorns and thistles will cover its altars; while the people, faced with exile in Assyria, cry out to the mountains, 'Cover us!' and to the hills, 'Fall over us!' (Ho 10:5-8; compare Lu 23:30; Re 6:16.) The prophet Amos spoke in similar vein, showing that, no matter how frequent the sacrifices offered by the people at Bethel's altars, their pious pilgrimages to that place only constituted the commission of transgression, and warning that Jehovah's burning anger would blaze against them inextinguishably. (Am 3:14; 4:4; 5:5,6) Angered at this prophesying done by Amos right in Bethel, the apostate priest Amaziah accused Amos of seditious talk and ordered him to 'go back to Judah where he came from' and there do his prophesying: 'But at Bethel you must no longer do any further prophesying, for it is the sanctuary of a king and it is the house of a kingdom.' -Am 7:10-13."The Bible makes it clearer still at Amos 4:4, 5:5-6:
"Come, you people, to Bethel and commit transgression.. And do not search for Bethel.. Search for Jehovah, and keep living, that he may not become operative just like fire, O house of Joseph, and it may not actually devour, and Bethel may not be with no one to extinguish it"
How appropriate a name is "Bethel", then, for each of the national headquarters of the Watchtower Cult, as well as of the international office of the Jehovah's Witnesses!
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Focus
(Matthew 12:37 "For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." Class)