by mP 37 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
mP;agree, "invention by the Jewish priests and kings to support
their lifestyle". First of all when you tell people you are special,
God chose you out of all the people in the world you are his favored.
That will create some problem among other nation.
Maybe all the wars taking place in the OT was because other
nations was tired of hearing how great jewish people and they God were.
We are superior and you folks are crap.
jam:
Im sure most peoples in the ancient world all thought they were special, the jews were not unique. Mohammad invented his religion and said that the arabs were special. The problem is while their stories made extraoradinary claims, in the real world, jehovah was a no show. Every time someone bigger than judea turned up they got smashed. Perhaps in their minds the world was theres but in practical terms jehovah was a poor bet, because hes very good at taking but always fail to deliver.
Never quote? Moi?? I know only what the Watchtower has painted for me?
Sir, I’ve never been a Jehovah's Witness nor have I played on TV. What I’ve read in their publications always gives me a good laugh, but let’s discuss what you just said.
First, you make the outrageous comment that “we all know 3 million Jews did not just leave Egypt, nor did they travel thru the desert and so on.” Then you add, “Perhaps a few did leave here or there, but that is completely against what the story says.”
We all know that, eh? And how do we know it? How do you know Moses was fictional, or that a few million Israelites (Jews were of the tribe of Judah) didn’t just leave Egypt? Upon what do you base your scholarly assessments?
As to my knowledge of Judaism, how do you know I know nothing about it? Have I somehow exposed my ignorance? If so, how? You’re the one who judges ancient cultures by the same standards you judge modern ones by, and you bemoan their destruction having no knowledge of their decadence and profligate lifestyles, nor of their profane religious practices that included the ritual sacrifice of infants. And you’re the one who places himself in a better position to judge them than the God of Israel, who knows all things. You don’t even know their histories, much less than was what was in the peoples' hearts.
My suggestion is that you take some ancient scripture and theology courses before pontificating on things you don’t know anything about. And stop believing everything you read on atheistic websites.
Jam: Just last night reading Numbers 31:7-18. Is this a just, merciful God? God commanded Moses to kill all the males (Midianites). I guess to reduce the Midianites to slaves and put an end to them. Moses become angry with his army officers, why?
Numbers 31:15, have you kept all the women alive? Kill every male among the little ones and only keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.
Again, you’re trying to judge these people through the prism of what you know, not from that which God knew. Because the people God led wanted to do their own will and not God’s, the writer of Psalms 106 declared, “[The Israelites] did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them: but were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.”
We see here that God was willing to slay the wicked to preserve the righteous, and to remove wicked cultures so that he might lead an obedient one.
Now if his intention was to commit genocide it did not work, because in Judges 6:1-2 they are back again, now the Midianites oppress Israel. You tell me, is this the act of a loving God??
I don’t know whether the Lord intentionally sought to commit genocide or not, but you read the passage from Psalms, you get the idea that because Israel did not hearken to the Lord, they paid a stiff price for it down the road, because the Israelite disobeyed a divine edict. As one author put it:
The Heathen Fertility Cults in Canaan
The greatest single factor of corruption among the Canaanites was their wild, sensuous fertility cults. Dr. Geikie furnishes a glimpse into the heathen religions of this age: “The chief god of the Canaanites was Baal—the sun—who was worshiped under different names. In one part he was Moloch, in another, Chemosh, but his worship was everywhere alike, fierce and cruel. His consort, Ashtoreth, the Babylonian goddess Istar, the goddess of love, worshiped as the morning star Venus, and, perhaps, also, as the moon—the Greeks translating her name Astarte—fostered abominations in her worship, almost inconceivable in our times. Erech was her chief city, and there she had, attached to her temple, choirs of festival-girls, and troops of consecrated maidens, all recognized as harlots, whose pay went to the temple treasury; and crowds of priests—the festival makers who had devoted their manhood’ — that is, emasculated themselves—that men ‘might adore the goddess,’ and these, in their rites, ‘carried swords, and razors, and flint knives,’ who in the wild frenzy of the sacred rites desired to dedicate themselves to the goddess, by self-mutilation, or to hack themselves as done by the priests, in Elijah’s time, at Carmel.”
Even worse than their sensuous debaucheries were their sacrificial rites which often used children as the sacrificial victims. For centuries these people had indulged themselves in these practices and were therefore considered ripe for extinction by the Lord. But Israel failed in her calling and allowed herself to be conquered by the very elements she was supposed to cleanse from the land. The tragedy of these days is caught in the blistering lines from the 106th Psalm: “They did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them: but were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.”
I was listening to a lecture by Alan Watts, and in one of them he was speaking about Jesus. Imagine Jesus having a cosmic consciousness experience, how is he now going to relate this higher concept, to a group of people who believe in what is written in scrolls, based on hearsay? What was the predominant narrative of his surroundings? He had to adapt his teaching to what his listeners understood, which was in the social narrative of his predominant cultural heritage, based on the Old Testament. Had Jesus been born amongst the Maya, the teachings would have been tailored to make sense to that culture. On that note, would it matter if Jesus was Black? Would it matter if Jesus looked Chinese? Questions for the Christians to ponder.
I agree with that to a certain extent S3RAPH1M. As a Christian my own view is that Jesus went to the Jews because they needed more moral help than many cultures, along with the timing of it being in the middle of first truly international empire to spread the message far and wide as much as possible.
MP:
Never quote? Moi?? I know only what the Watchtower has painted for me?
COLD:
Sir, I’ve never been a Jehovah's Witness nor have I played on TV. What I’ve read in their publications always gives me a good laugh, but let’s discuss what you just said.
First, you make the outrageous comment that “we all know 3 million Jews did not just leave Egypt, nor did they travel thru the desert and so on.” Then you add, “Perhaps a few did leave here or there, but that is completely against what the story says.”
We all know that, eh? And how do we know it? How do you know Moses was fictional, or that a few million Israelites (Jews were of the tribe of Judah) didn’t just leave Egypt? Upon what do you base your scholarly assessments?
Ex
And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls : for Joseph was in Egypt already.
mP:
So originally Jacob went down with 70.
And the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot that were men, beside children.
GEN
A bekah for every man, that is, half a shekel, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for every one that went to be numbered, from twenty years old and upward, for six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty men.
NUM
1:45 So were all those that were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel; 1:46 Even all they that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty.
mP:
600, 000 men left, lets be conservative and give them 1 wife and 2.5 kids. That gives us 3 million. Now how long were they in Egypt, lets let the BIble tell us.
GEN
Amplified Bible (AMP)
16 And in the [a] fourth generation they [your descendants] shall come back here [to Canaan] again, for the iniquity of the [b] Amorites is not yet full and complete. (A)
So how did they explode from 70 to 3 million in such a few generations. to get tehre each women would have to have 15 or so kids, ad none were allowed to die until they too also had their 15. In those days child mortality was a real killer. Do the maths and show me to be wrong.
Cold:
Dont forget to show the maths and show us how this is humanly possible.
I was listening to a lecture by Alan Watts, and in one of them he was speaking about Jesus. Imagine Jesus having a cosmic consciousness experience, how is he now going to relate this higher concept, to a group of people who believe in what is written in scrolls, based on hearsay? What was the predominant narrative of his surroundings? He had to adapt his teaching to what his listeners understood, which was in the social narrative of his predominant cultural heritage, based on the Old Testament. Had Jesus been born amongst the Maya, the teachings would have been tailored to make sense to that culture. On that note, would it matter if Jesus was Black? Would it matter if Jesus looked Chinese? Questions for the Christians to ponder.
mP:
Jesus didnt teach anything new he only told the jews to be peaceful and good tax payers.
Everything he said was a copy or quotation from the OT. His love thy neihgbour is from Lev 19:18
19:18 Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself : I am the LORD.
The reason jesus said this was because the different rebellious or freedom fighting groups in Judea were literally killing each other on a massive scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicarri
The Sicarii are mentioned by Josephus in Jewish Antiquities: "When Albinus reached the city of Jerusalem, he bent every effort and made every provision to ensure peace in the land by exterminating most of the Sicarii (xx.208).
The Sicarii carried sicae, or small daggers, concealed in their cloaks, hence their name. At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Romans or Roman sympathizers, Herodians and wealthy Jews comfortable with Roman rule, lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to blend into the crowd to escape detection. Literally, Sicarii meant "dagger-men". [3]
seraphim
As a Christian my own view is that Jesus went to the Jews because they needed more moral help than many cultures, along with the timing of it being in the middle of first truly international empire to spread the message far and wide as much as possible.
mP:
Jesus was not moral. If he was he would have spoken against slavery, but instead he tells stories telling the unfortunate to shutup and accept their fate. The same is true of women and his racist attitudes and tendancies.
Jesus is nothing special, hes just another name that has been reinvented and repurposed.
