Frazzled, honestly I never would have known that UBM would have stood for Unbelieving Mate. I guess I need to take a crash course on ex-JW vernacular. When I think Unbelieving Mate, I simply think Unbelieving Mate, not UBM. UBM conjures to mind a television network some reason when outside of the theocratic context. My apologies. Hopefully you won't hold it against me like, Oubliette. Oh well, perhaps your Christian wife may win you over without a word.- 1 Pet 3"1
Now as far as answering some of the questions in this thread, I'm going to work backwards and some questions I'm simply not going to respond to because the answers are beyond your level of understanding.-Heb 5:12-14
Tenyearsafter(great band by the way), your question about the Slave illustration being literal, I'll address first and I'll include some thoughts about so called false predictions. When I thought of your question, two things came to mind. Pink Floyd's song, Time, and 1 Cor 14:33 which you may recall is the letter in which Paul states that "God is not a God of disorder." You see, throughout the Scriptures, you find that everything God does, is done according to a schedule. It's never irrational or spontaneous. When our human parents rebelled in Eden, God set into motion a course of events that would both answer the questions raised during that moment, and result in fulfilling His will. Again, the events set in motion would take time to run their course. You'll also notice that the events were spoken of in an illustrative or figurative nature, but the characters involved depicted real players.
That said, Jesus being the perfect student of his heavenly Father, would relay matters the same to his disciples. If you recall, when his disciples asked him, "when will these things be?", Jesus reply wasn't exactly what they were anticipating. Being that Jesus' words were two-fold, as we now understand today which the disciples back then did not, we have a better understanding that the fulfillment of the words in Matthew 24 would have a greater fulfillment with our generation which is when the lives of the annointed would overlap with key events that Christ spoke of. Let it be known that I'm not one of the annointed despite referring to this generation as being our's. Jesus made mention of multiple events that would take place leading up to the time of the end. He mentioned warfare, famine, earthquakes, but these things would simply be a beginning. It goes without saying that the level of earthquakes, famine, pestilence, and warfare have been unprecedented within the last 100 years. But again, these events serve only as a prelude.
The key thing to be concerned about, and again this goes back to my mentioning of time in the beginning of this post, Jesus stated nobody knows the day or hour when this will come. Just like nobody knew when their hair would start thinning. It happened as if almost overnight. What lets us know this parable was to be taken in the literal sense was that it was included within Jesus' words involving the last days. Despite being in an illustrative form, it was a response to a question about the times of the end. Again, his use of illustrations was not uncommon as he typically teached with illustrations, and remember that Jehovah's prophecy right after the Edenic rebellion was spoken in an illustrative manner. Going back to JEsus, he asked the rhetorical question about who would be feeding his sheep during the time leading up to these tumultuous events? Evidently it has to be the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses. They provide us with Bible based literature(spiritual food) that not only encourages us, but assists us in making decisions that glorify Jehovah. When Jesus asked Peter whether or not he loved him, Jesus emphasized that to truly demonstrate his love, he would need to feed Jesus sheep. The hedonistic Catholics like to think that they're the heir apparent of Peter, which we all know is hogwash. However, what is not ridiculous, is that the Governing Body is the only group when in unison are taking Jesus' questions towards PEter to heart. They're truly concerned with the spiritual welfare of his sheep and as a result have answered with a definitive, yes they love Jesus.
Now as far as faulty predictions, it's true that the WT has been a bit overzealous in their verbiage related to anticipation of the end times. For the record, they've never made any actual and by actual I mean specific predictions about when the end would come. No, but they have emphasized possibilities of when it might come, and I admit were at times a bit heavy on their emphasis. I know this gives ammunition to the self-victims of 1975, but really the only thing the WT has been guilty of was following JEsus words at Matt 24:42. You can't fault them for that.
