I passed on this e-mail to a dear JW friend. Joe would keep in contact with me after I DA myself, knowing I was not a “bad” person. Somehow, the elders got wind of our now and then contact and he had to stop under the pain of JW death. I know he will read it.................
Searching the Scriptures Daily - John 16:2
Using Nazarene Commentary 2000-2002©©
[See daily message at bottom of post.]
"The [Jews] will expel you [apostles] from the synagogue.¹¹ The hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think they are offering holy worship to The God.²²" [John 16:2 21st Century Version of the Christian Scriptures]
--
¹¹ The [Jews] will expel you [apostles] from the synagogue: Or, put you out, excommunicate. Jesus had foretold such difficulties earlier in his Olivet Discourse to four of his apostles. [# Mark 13:9] This has already started. [# John 9:22]
²² Everyone who kills you will think they are offering holy worship to The God: Or, does God's service, offering sacrifices, doing God's pleasure. Sincerity is not enough! When Jesus says "everyone" he refers to religious Jews who were the first to persecute Christians. [# Acts 4$, 5$, 9$] Compare # Acts 8:1; 12:2; 26:11]
Dear Friends of the Nazarene -
No one enjoys being cast out as unfit company - particularly by "friends" - for such shunning indicates a rejection and unworthiness to the former fellowship. If one deserves this, then it is fair and must be viewed as godly discipline. However, if it is unjust, politically motivated, or an object lesson in control, then the judgment falls upon those doing the shunning. Many of the prophets of old were so unjustly shunned. Christ experienced the same from the Jewish hierarchy of his time. He told his disciples that some of them would be expelled [unchurched] from the synagogue.
A person can react in one of two ways: stop dead in their tracks toward God; or, move on and through such rejection to a new service to the Nazarene Master. We have suffered no more than our Exemplar, for the prophecies spoke of him, "He was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom, as it were, we averted our gaze, despised, for whom we had no regard." [Isaiah 53:3 New Jerusalem Bible]
Abba bless those wrongly shunned.
Mark Heber Miller [2-7-2]
www.nazarene-friends.org
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once - Buckaroo Bonsai