So this week's WT study was all about Jesus and the miracles he performed. According to the study this proves that God wants to heal mankind in the same way. Because as we all know Jesus is a perfect reflection of his heavenly father. Now I know that Jesus himself said this but if you actually look at the old testament it is very hard to find a correlation between the two personalities.
Jesus The Perfect Reflection Of The Father?
by JW_Rogue 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Hisclarkness
Jesus is the perfect reflection of the Father. The Father is NOT the god of the Old Testament. This is why you can't put new wine (Jesus' teachings) into old wine skins (the teachings of the Old Testament). And this is one of the fatal flaws of the witnesses. They continue referring to the old wine for their teachings. The Father is NOT Yahweh, the vengeful,desert god of Sinai. -
JW_Rogue
Then who is the father? -
opusdei1972
We don't know how Jesus exactly was. His closer disciples did not write the Gospels, and Paul did not know him. Most probably he did not think he was the pre-existent Logos who was with God in the beginning of the creative works (John 1:1). May be it was Paul who invented this doctrine. May be Jesus thought he was a special prophet or teacher of Yahweh, and after his death, some educated disciples created a theology about him, based on Old Testament passages. I doubt that Jesus believed in a preaching work for the gentiles. It is clear that the last verses of the Gospel of Matthew saying "make disciples of all nations" were invented at the end of the first century, so Jesus said nothing about it. -
JW_Rogue
Opusdei, that was the exact point that I was getting to. It seems to me that whoever wrote the gospels and perhaps Jesus himself were in fact trying to reinvent God's personality. A way to say that God was not really the way he was portrayed earlier and to come up with a more appealing version. -
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Hisclarkness
Hi jw rogue,
The Father is God. Jesus is the perfect reflection of God so when we read about Jesus and his love,mercy, forgiveness, etc we are seeing the Father in reflection. The angry vengeful god of the Old Testament is only who the Isrealites perceived to be God at the time. Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, was a conglomeration of tribal gods that the Moses gave to the people to represent the "true god". Jesus came to truly reveal the Father's personality which has nothing to do with the Old Testament. To borrow a common JW phrase, it's like Jesus brought "new light" about God. He was NEVER this jealous vengeful God; he was always a loving merciful Father. Not all events in the OT were truly Gods doings. For example, it was never God who commanded the Israelites to exterminate men women and children of entire nations.
i have a lot more info on this. Hopefully I didn't confuse you more.
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CalebInFloroda
Colossians 1.15 states that Christians believed Jesus to be "the image of the invisible God." The Greek word for "image" is EIKON and is the same word to describe the inscription of Ceasar's bust on coins and the idolatrous "image" of the wild beast in Revelation.
The expression in reference to Jesus MIGHT imply or suggest that he was viewed as the physical icon or graven image of God, suggesting that Pauline theology saw worship of Jesus as something akin to worshipping the invisible YHWH.
This text is used as support from Orthodox and Roman Catholics in incorporating their use of images of Jesus (and others) in their worship. Such language and usage, however, is considered idolatrous by Jews and is considered one of the blocks to accepting Jesus, an "image" of the Father, as the promised Messiah of Jewish hopes.
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opusdei1972
JW_Rogue
It seems that Jesus was indeed an apocalyptic prophet. Not merely a man of peace and love like the hippies. May be he was the source of the idea that the kingdom of God would come to Israel during his generation to destroy the Roman Empire. We can't know if he believed that he would be proclaimed king by God, or something like that. But, it is possible that he did something crazy in the temple, and the jews were offended by something politically wrong that he did. So they or the roman authorities decided to kill him. After his death, the plans of the sect had to be modified. I strongly doubt that Jesus believed that he would die for the sins of the humanity. His death was not predicted, but his educated disciples developed a theology to justify his death and invented initially an spiritual resurrection. They indeed found some interesting texts in the OT, like "the suffering servant" in Isaiah 53 to justify this unexpected death. So they proclaimed that Jesus would be back in power to establish the kingdom in Jerusalem. Then, Jerusalen was destroyed in 70 AD, and they invented that Jesus predicted it. But now, this destruction of the city was convenient to invent that his body disappeared when his disciples visited the tomb. Because all tombs were destroyed by the romans, no one could verify if that story was true or false. When this jewish sect was shunned by reorganized pharisees in the 80s and 90s, they invented that Jesus predicted that they would be expelled from the synagoges. Indeed, I believe that at every emerged problem, the Christian scribes decided to invent a prediction for this situation. ....In the beginning of the second century, some guys believed that the matter is evil, then some Christian scribes decided to invent the bodily resurrection, so as to ensure that he resurrected in flesh. Of course, the virginity of Mary and other stories were the product of gentile christians to make Jesus like the pagan gods.
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opusdei1972
I want to say that I don't think that all was negative in the early christians. Despite its crazy theology and deluded apocalyptic message, early Christianity cared for the poor. It seems that this teaching came originally from Jesus. I think this was his best social contribution. This Christian community invented a social security for the poor, and this is why this religion had success in that time. So, although I no longer believe in Jesus as the Christ, I think that those who claim to be christians must follow this thinking in favor to the poor, if they want to follow the best positive thing of the early christians. So, in my view, the Watchtower religion is against this christian principle. The Watchtower theology only takes the worst of the early Christian theology.
