The False Prophet Nathan?

brotherdan

My mom is addicted to the WTS. I've recently brought up the many false prophecies and she calls almost every week to show me new things that the society has said about false prophets and how they are not one.

The latest was the account where King David wanted to build God a temple. He told Nathan the prophet about his idea and Nathan basically said, Well God is with you, you should do it. Then God appeared to Nathan and told him that it would be Davids son that would build the temple. So does that mean, my mom said, that Nathan was a false prophet for giving David the go ahead. I know that just about all of you would have an answer to that.

Another example the WT likes to use when accusing other prophets of false prophecy is the account of Jonah. They say that he preached that Ninevah would be destroyed by God because of their practices, but Ninevah was not destroyed at that time. They say that this is the same as what they have done in the past with their dates.

How lame are these examples! What is interesting is that they are establishing their identity as "prophets". They are the same as these other prophets, right? They have so much to answer to when standing before Gods great white throne.

debator

Witnesses have never claimed to do inspired prophecy. This is a requirement if you want to qualify them as a false prophets who cliam divine inspiration/direct words from God falsely.

superpunk

I don't understand what is lame about their examples.

There are many examples in scripture where God's "prophet" said something that didn't come true. Ezekiel prophesied a 40 year desolation for Egypt that never happened. The extent of the WTS's apologetics for this is that "While secular history shows no record of such a desolation happening, since Jehovah is the fulfiller of prophecies we can be sure that it did". Barf, whatever.

I don't think "prophet" in the bible means what we think it means.

bohm

Debator, so you write again and again. Quick questions: What did Rutherford belive would happend in 1925 and did he believe that year was more or less marked in scripture than eg. 1914?

sir82

Witnesses have never claimed to do inspired prophecy.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of references to a "spirit directed" organization in the literature, in reference to the WT organization.

Please provide, based on the Bible, including scriptural citations, an explanation of the difference between "spirit inspired" and "spirit directed".

brotherdan

Debator needs to start reading his devinely provided spiritual food. The September WT study issue says that the Governing Body does not speak for men, but they speak for God and that when we listen to them, we are in fact listening to Jesus Christ.

Debator, if you are a real Witness, you wouldn't be on this site. The WT says NOT to look at these sites even in defense of "the truth". So if you continue to post on the site, you are disobeying the very men you are trying to uphold.

brotherdan

Also, to the other guys, I know that you don't put any merit into God's Word. But time and again it has been proven true. Look at Ninevah. It was said that it never existed for YEARS. But it was discovered, and now it is a historical fact.

This post was meant for those that agree with the Bible as opposed to the WT.

Olin Moyles Ghost

@brotherdan: you've witnessed an example of "grasping at straws" and attempting to "have your cake and eat it too."

I've heard other JWs use the Nathan/David/temple example you mentioned. But if you take the time to actually read the account, you quickly realize how weak an argument it is. It's at 2 Samuel 7:1-17. The key verse is verse 3 where, after David tells Nathan that he wants to build a temple, Nathan says "Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you." Later, beginning in verse 4, God appears to Nathan and tells him why David isn't allowed to build the temple.

Does Nathan ever say that God is going to allow David to build the temple? No. He simply says go ahead and do what you wish and that "the Lord is with you." Compare this to Russell and Rutherford's bombastic proclamations regarding 1914 and 1925 (Russell declaring that 1914 is "God's date and not ours" and that 1914 is "the end of the time of trouble, not the beginning"; and Rutherford's "indisputable conclusion that millions now living will never die"). There's simply no comparison, and when Watchtower followers attempt to draw one, it's just another attempt to grasp at straws.

Also, the Watchtower attempts to "have its cake and eat it too" by seeking all of thebenefits of divine inspiration but none of the accountability. For years, the Society has demanded that its followers hang on its every word, foregoing educational, career, and family opportunities because "The End Is Near." However, when "The End" fails to show up on time, the Society absolves itself of any responsibility by claiming that it's not really an inspired prophet and blaming its followers for reading too much into what was said/written.

This sort of conduct shouldn't surprise us. Just like many other large man-made religious/political/business organizations, the Watchtower plays by its own rules and avoids accountability at all costs.

brotherdan

So how would you respond to my mom? She is trying to "save' me right now from leaving the org. I have to word it in a way that could cause her to see the fallicy in this argument.

superpunk

Also, to the other guys, I know that you don't put any merit into God's Word. But time and again it has been proven true. Look at Ninevah. It was said that it never existed for YEARS. But it was discovered, and now it is a historical fact.
This post was meant for those that agree with the Bible as opposed to the WT.

Time and again it has also been proved false.

You can agree with the bible and still admit that sometimes God's "prophets" were simply talking out their ass. Jesus himself could be said to be guilty of such things, since his promises to his disciples as they sat on the Mount never came true, and has resulted in subsequent "generations" believing he was talking about THEIR generation, not THIS generation.

I thought this way when I was leaving, too. Surely their failed "predictions" were evidence of God's disfavor with them, evidence of them being false "prophets". But in this case it seems their argument is sound, biblically speaking.

We simply accept Jonah and Ezekiel and Jesus as "prophets" because they have the good fortune of appearing in the good book, and thus their inadequacies can be glossed over as the WTS does with Ezekiel's failed prophecy, saying "we can simply be confident that this happened, even though there is no evidence of it". Well, if we accept that line of reasoning then we must also accept their line of reasoning on 587 v. 607. Whether we do or not will depend on our biases.

The bible is full of failed prophecies. I don't think the WTS is out of line in pointing to those as excuses as to why they should not be condemned for their failed predictions.

Carl Sagan;

One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and -- while the events of that year were certainly of some importance -- the world does not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say '1914'? So sorry, we meant '2014.' A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the world would have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, they did something much more ingenious. They announced that the world had in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout.

The False Prophet Nathan?

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