The moral of that story Djeggnog is you shouldn't drink Manhattans and type at the same time. ( I missed the 30 minutes and lost half of what i was saying) Oh well!
The imperfections of the elder
by outsmartthesystem 43 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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The Finger
The book “God’s Eternal Purpose Now Triumphing for Man’s Good” Published by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania 1974.
on page 9 mentions
Eph3:11. Where it says “This was his eternal plan, which he carried out through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (NLT)
The book states. The Emphatic Diaglott, published by the newspaper editor Benjamin Wilson, contained the reading: “according to a plan of the ages, which he formed.” A number of other recent Bible translations could be cited that choose to render the Greek text in this way.
This plan of the ages or God's eternal purpose of which the book spoke related to the 7th creative day and the passing of 6000 years in the 7000 year long day starting in 4026 BCE.
The Watchtower of August 15 th 1974 Page 507 in the footnote
"In 1943 the Watch Tower Society's book "The Truth Shall Make You Free" did away with the nonexistent extra 100 years in the period of the Judges and place the end of 6,000 years of man's existence in the 1970's.
Djeggnog, my grandfather was a young man in the first world war when Russell was telling people
The Divine Plan of the Ages Page 41
“The Scriptural time-proofs which we have considered show that this trouble was due to date from the time of Christ’s second advent (October, 1874), when the judging of the nations would commence, under the enlightening influences of the Day of the Lord.”
My father was a young man when Rutherford was telling people
Light, Book One, by Judge J.F. Rutherford. Published in 1930 by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Commentary on the book of Revelation.”
"and, showing that the antitypical jubilee must begin in 1925, the message announced the doom of Satan’s organization and that the time had come when the people should go free. The year 1925 marked the due time for the great jubilee, and the announcement was made in due course. But the world rulers failed to heed God’s message and to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land”.”
I was a young man when,
The “God’s Eternal Purpose Now Triumphing for Man’s Good” (1974) Page 51 says,
“Evening of the Seventh Creative Day begins, 4026 B.C.E”
I knew my Grandfather, we overlapped. One generation right?
Jehovahs Witnesses do not believe these things am I right? but we were preaching them as part of God's plan. Remember this is what you said to me.
“I'm going to tell you sternly that just as necessity if laid upon me to preach the good news of the kingdom of God, it is also laid upon every dedicated brother and sister in Christ to be declaring the good news fully, not just the parts of it that may be convenient for you, all of the counsel of God." Even if you should do so against your will, a stewardship has been entrusted to you just the same, for woe to you, @The Finger, if you should not now be declaring the good news”
Do you think Djeggnog that I need to join you in preaching these things or should I let my conscience decide?
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The Finger
Just one last thing (i also apologize for being on this thread)
The apostle Paul said this in corinthians.
14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.” (NIV)
If our preaching is false in anyway surely this would apply to us?
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djeggnog
@The Finger:
Do you see a connection Djeggnog? Do you see what I mean?
No, I don't see any connection between Jehovah's Witnesses calling themselves "Jehovah's Witnesses" and something you indicate having read in the "God's 'Eternal Purpose' Triumphing for Man's Good: Is This Life All There Is" (1974) and "The Truth Shall Make You Free" (1943) books. I also don't see any connection with your asking me these questions in a thread started by @outsmartthesystem which seeks clarification as to how Jehovah's Witnesses view the faithful and discreet slave that Jesus indicated he would appoint over his belongings during his invisible presence and the work undertaken by the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses. Very specific questions were asked me in this thread started by @outsmartthesystem regarding the direction provided by God's holy spirit in connection with the preaching and teaching activity of Jehovah's Witnesses, but you seem to want to discuss what objections you have to something you read in two books that were published back in 1943 and 1974 in which I have no interest.
I tend to make what things we are teaching today my focus since Jehovah's Witnesses have abandoned what beliefs we may have had that have been determined to have been based on erroneous conclusions, which is why those who have become Jehovah's Witnesses during the past 10 years live in the present, and have no need to divest themselves of such abandoned conclusions found in older publications that we no longer use that had been abandoned before they became associated with Jehovah's Witnesses as those that may have been associated with Jehovah's Witnesses for longer than 10 years must do since they've been around longer, especially those that haven't been studious in keeping up with the adjustments that have been made in our understanding since they first became Jehovah's Witnesses more than 10 years old.
If what Jehovah's Witnesses may have believed or even speculated some 10 years ago, or 50 years ago or 100 years ago should disturb you, nothing I say is going to change your viewpoint, but I have the advantage of hindsight that Jehovah's Witnesses did not have in 1943 or in 1974 or whenever it was that these older publications were published, so that today I do believe any of those former things that we may have believed 10 years, 50 years or 100 years ago to be true, and now view such things as being nonsense or as being just false. No, Jehovah's Witnesses do not have all of the answers now and we might even speculate on what these answers might be, such as when the end of this system of things will occur, and when we do speculate about something, we will use words like "probably" and might," but we have faith that we will have these answers in God's new world ("GNW").
Frankly, as I see it, not everyone is cut out to be one of Jehovah's Witnesses, because not everyone that reads the Bible has faith. Faith comes by hearing the word of God, which doesn't mean hearing the words, but doing what the holy spirit directs by means of God's word. It means listening to divine instruction, it seems paying heed to the things that have been written in the Bible for our instruction and not deciding for yourself which things you are going to obey and which things you are not going to obey. If one doesn't put faith in the good news of salvation, and that "good news" is that by God's undeserved kindness, he had made a provision by means of which we can be saved based on exercising faith in this life-saving provision, namely, the ransom by which the penalty of sin has been lifted from all mankind by the blood of Jesus, who God sent to provide a release to mankind for forgiveness of sins.
The good news is much bigger than this, but essentially the work in which Jehovah's Witnesses are actively engaged in based on our sharing with as many people as we find in the world for whom Christ died this provision of the ransom that God has made for all mankind, so that they might gain eternal life in GNW. Jehovah knew, even as Jesus knew, that there would be those whose interest would be piqued for a time, and those that would just not be disposed to listening to anyone that should tell them about this provision that Jehovah had arranged for the everlasting benefit of believing mankind, but it is through the word about the good news that the lives of many people have been, and are being, transformed for the better as they have learned and are still coming to learn in the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide how to forgive and put up with the shortcomings of others since we all have them, as we prepare ourselves for life in GNW.
In the meantime, God has caused to be recorded the accounts of God's dealings with human beings over the past 6,000 years that serve to help us to understand God's view on matters on a variety of issues that had arisen, and whether what we read in the Bible is about God's past judgments on wicked individuals or wicked nations, or his past administration of discipline to his people during the 40-year sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai and during the 70-year period in Palestine, what Jehovah's Witnesses have concluded is that these Bible accounts, along with the things that Jesus taught, help us to better comprehend God's will.
Now you may not personally believe in God or in angelic creatures, or in Adam and Eve and talking snakes, that eight people survived a global deluge aboard an ark or even that a man named Jesus performed miracles; you might not subscribe to the interpretations of Jehovah's Witnesses with respect to the book of Revelation; and you might not yet discern Christianity as being a "sword" that divides those that do not wish to 'accept their torture stake and follow Jesus' from those that do, even though Jesus came to divide "a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a young wife against her mother-in-law" over the kingdom issue (Matthew 10:34, 35); but if everlasting life depends upon our exercising faith in Jesus' ransom -- and it does! -- then this might mean for some their withholding judgment on all of these things that the Bible teaches (and that you may have found too incredible to believe!) until after Armageddon when faith in these things ought to be a lot easier for you.
Like I said already, your remarks here have been off-topic, but even so if you don't agree with the teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses, there are some people that do agree with them, including the significance of baptism, for one doctrinal belief that Jehovah's Witnesses have that we all of us take very seriously is that baptism signifies one's unreserved dedication of themselves to do God's will, and we would not expect to receive God's blessing upon us if we were to disregard what the Bible teaches as to disciplining unrepentant wrongdoing if such occurs in the local congregations.
If anyone chooses not to take their baptism seriously or should he or she over time no longer view baptism as being a serious vow, and should desire to live by their own standard of morality instead of by God's standard, then that would be their choice to make, but Jehovah's Witnesses cannot treat such individuals as if they were like the people in the world that had not been spiritually enlightened as they were, as if they were like the people in the world that had not once escaped the defilements of the world and come to know accurately the path of righteousness as outlined in God's word. (Hebrews 6:4-6; 2 Peter 2:20, 21)
There are many religions in the world besides that practiced by Jehovah's Witnesses, and hundreds of them are even said to be Christian religions, but the problem that those who have formerly been or formerly associated with Jehovah's Witnesses have is the fact that they have been "brainwashed," so to speak, in that their minds have been transformed so that their thinking is not aligned with the thinking that governs this system of things, but their minds have been made over such that they leave us knowing what the will of God is, making it harder for them to assimilate with any of the world's religions that their Bible-trained conscience informs are not doing God's will.
I don't say that one cannot learn new behaviors after having been one of Jehovah's Witnesses or after one has been associated for a time with Jehovah's Witnesses, but what I am saying here is that anyone having a Bible-trained conscience can be expected to have not a bit of difficulty embracing religion that is not in accord with true worship garnered through the study they made of the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses. When one becomes a Christian, one does become a "victim" of mind control, but he becomes a willing victim of mind control, since one is free to either accept Bible morality as one's way of life or reject Bible morality as one's way of life.
Mind control, however, isn't the same as thought control, where one might be persuaded to believe that blacks and gays are by nature bad people, or that the US and Great Britain ("the West") is anti-Islam and anti-God, and its citizens godless infidels that must be annihilated if the world is to ever become a better place. I have a book here about brainwashing in China, which tells how some people that were incarcerated for several months' time had actually been persuaded by means of thought control (brainwashing) to believe that they were not in confinement at all, but that they were home, so that those brainwashed had no desire to leave prison.
But Jehovah's Witnesses desire to follow Bible teachings, to follow the leading of God's holy spirit by doing what things we learn through our study of God's word that we ought to be doing as Christians desirous of doing God's will. (James 1:22) Christians have in no way received the spirit of the world from God, but what we received is the spirit of God, so that we no longer wish to be led by this world's divisive and ungodly spirit as it is our wish to be led by holy spirit, knowing that if we continue walking by means of it, we will not carry out any fleshly desire at all. (1 Corinthians 2:12) It is our endeavor as baptized Christians to live in peace with our fellow man and to not engage in conduct that we know to be in conflict with God's law. (Galatians 5:16-25)
Just one last thing (i also apologize for being on this thread)
The apostle Paul said this in corinthians.
14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised." (NIV)
If our preaching is false in anyway surely this would apply to us?
You do not need to apologize for being on this thread, @The Finger, but like I said above, you are off-topic. I would presume to speak here on behalf of Jehovah's Witnesses and for myself in telling you that I believe the preaching of Jehovah's Witnesses as to God's having raised Jesus from the dead is not false, so IMO Paul's words at 1 Corinthians 15:14, 15, would not apply to Jehovah's Witnesses, who are the only group on earth today that is "declaring the good news of Jesus and the resurrection." (Acts 17:18) There is no Christian group out there is preaching the good news "concerning the resurrection of the Lord Jesus" with respect to the ransom he gave "in exchange for many," except for Jehovah's Witnesses. (Acts 4:33; Matthew 20:28)
Concerning Jesus, Christendom preaches that "whosoever believeth in him ... have everlasting life" (John 3:16, KJV) and those that "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved" (Acts 16:31, KJV), but it doesn't teach what either of these scriptures mean consequently many of these sincere people are condemned because they have "not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." (John 3:18, KJV) Why even non-Christians are uttering the personal name of "Jesus," but believing on Jesus' personal name is not what it means to "believe on the Lord Jesus."
Anyone can assign honor to someone else's personal name, even an atheist can assign honor to Jesus' personal name when he enters a church service, like a funeral, but this isn't at all what it means to "believe on the Lord Jesus." People will rise in respect when a judge enters the courtroom or when a head of state like the president of the US enters the House chamber to give the "State of the Union" speech, but when they rise it is just to assign honor to the office, not because they believe in and agree with the decisions made by that judge or by that POTUS. A devout Muslim might enter a Christian church and even sing a Christian song along with everyone else, but this does not for this reason make him a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ by his just being respectful in his not trying to get a discussion going during the church service about Allah, which he knows would be appropriate for a mosque, but inappropriate for a church.
To believe on Jesus' name means to believe on what his name stands for, namely, the ransom, for no one that doesn't put faith in Jesus' blood can be saved, and because Christendom doesn't teach anyone the need to exercise faith in the ransom, they have lots of sincere people out there believing that Jesus is God as they marginalize Jehovah, when it was 'God that raised Jesus up from the dead' (Acts 13:30), and having them assign honor to Jesus' personal name, telling folks that this is what it means to "believe on the Lord Jesus," rather than explaining who God is and that it was He that set forth his only-begotten son, Jesus, as a ransom "offering for propitiation through faith in his blood." (Romans 3:25) Thus, these folks are in darkness and they will not be saved, unless they start exercising faith in the ransom. It is Bible truths like this concerning Jesus' ransom that are only being taught by Jehovah's Witnesses today, so, @The Finger, I am confident that we will not be "found to be false witnesses about God" in what we are definitely the only ones that "preach Christ impaled" as a ransom. (1 Corinthians 1:23, NWT; 1 Corinthians 15:15, NIV)
@djeggnog
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mrquik
Interesting discussion DJ. For the record, I was a witness for 50 yrs. My father-in-law, born in the 1890's was of the anointed & personally was recommended by Rutherford. I was an elder for 15 yrs, gave district assembly parts & was on countless building projects. So I am quite familiar with the doctrine. You spin an interesting yarn, but in the end the the arguement of the GB being guided by Holy Spirit & still making serious doctrinal errors is a fatal flaw in their thinking. If guided by Holy Spirit, who do you hold responsible for the errors? If contrived my man, why follow them blindly? What happened to the law of love in regard to destroying countless number of lives while crying wolf for a century. How about the "Millions now Living Will Never Die"? Would Holy Spirit direct the GB to pen such a lie? Where's the public heartfelt apologies for the mistakes if they're human. Sorry DJ, they actually mirror the scribes & pharisees that Jesus so roundly condemned. You & the rest of the GC are the flock "skinned & thrown about". I too was as you are today. I know this will not affect your thinking in the least. It would not have me change my belief either. So for you, the rest of the GC & everyone reading I say: Live Well...Enjoy Life. ( Oh, by the way, the generation you think you're living in has not arrived yet.)
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outsmartthesystem
I still have not had the time to spend the hours that will be necessary to respond to your last rambling. But I did notice this golden nugget just above:
"I tend to make what things we are teaching today my focus since Jehovah's Witnesses have abandoned what beliefs we may have had that have been determined to have been based on erroneous conclusions, which is why those who have become Jehovah's Witnesses during the past 10 years live in the present, and have no need to divest themselves of such abandoned conclusions found in older publications that we no longer use that had been abandoned before they became associated with Jehovah's Witnesses as those that may have been associated with Jehovah's Witnesses for longer than 10 years must do since they've been around longer, especially those that haven't been studious in keeping up with the adjustments that have been made in our understanding since they first became Jehovah's Witnesses more than 10 years old."
You are well aware of the FDS' interpretation of Matthew 24:45-47 I assume? Let's make sure we agree on your beliefs. Christ returned invisibly in 1914? In 1918 he began to make an examination of all the world's religions that claim to represent him to see if any of them had been faithfully and discreetly providing true teachings (Spiritual food) at the proper time during his absenc? In the spring of 1919, Jesus determined that only one religion was doing just so and that was the Bible Students (Watchtower Society), therefore Jesus appointed them over all his earthly belongings?
What you and every other witness fail to realize is the fact that the examination Jesus gave in 1919 was to be based on the teachings that existed AT THAT TIME....not what those teachings morphed into some day in the future. It does NOT matter what you or any other witness believes today. What matters is the following question: When Jesus inspected was the RIGHT food at the RIGHT time being dispensed? In 1919, the belief was that Jesus had already returned in 1874. It wasn't until 1943 that the Witnesses said he actually had returned in 1914. Do you know what that means? That when Christ supposedly truly returned in 1914, the Bible Students (Jehovah's Witnesses) were the only Christian Group that WASN'T watching for his return....since they thought it had already happened! Tell me, then.....Luke's parallel account (12:37) says that they would be happy if "on arriving" Christ found them watching for his return...... Since they weren't watching for his return.....was Jesus happy? They didn't get the date of Christ's return correct until 1943....yet he still felt compelled to appoint them over his belongings in 1919?
What was being taught back in 1919 proves they failed Jesus' examination. All of the teachings that were wrong back then (including having no frickin clue that Christ had even returned until 1943) show that improper food at the improper time was being dispersed when Jesus supposedly made his examination. Therefore it does not even matter what you believe now because Jesus never selected your organization to begin with
So yes...you SHOULD be interested in the historical teachings of your cult. Because it is these teachings that determine whether Jesus truly appointed them over his belongings......or whether they appointed themselves.
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cantleave
Outsmart the system, the logic you use (which is the same as Don Cameron's in "Captives of a Concept") has been thrown at idiotnog on numerous occasions. He doesn't have the brain capacity to understand that they were not watching for Jesus in 1914 but were waiting to be raptured. He is either new in the troof, just stupid or a WT plant. Whichever, he is not worth wasting your life on.
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djeggnog
@outsmartthesystem:
I still have not had the time to spend the hours that will be necessary to respond to your last rambling. But I did notice this....
This last message from you ignores my last message. As you know, I took the time to respond to your message, which was a rather lengthy one, but I do not consider this last message of yours to be a response to my message, but something in addition. In my previous message, I'd spent much time responding to many of your concerns, and because you had indicated that it would take you "some time to respond" to the responses that I provided you in my previous response, I understood that I would have to wait until you had returned from your "long weekend." Take whatever time you need, but I don't intend to respond to any more of your questions until you have responded definitively to my last message.
The fact that you repeated the same question several times in your previous message makes it necessary for me to wait until I know which points, if any, you have conceded, so that I might know, going forward, how I should proceed in this thread. Alternatively, if you should decide that you would rather withdraw from this thread without responding to my last message, no worries. I'm ok with you doing so.
@djeggnog
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Witness My Fury
So your being here is ALL about YOU and YOUR WINNING arguments then. ....OK glad we cleared that up.
Egg is not your correct name, it is EGO.
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outsmartthesystem
For the record....I am about 2/3 of the way through with my response to your jibberish.