by HiddenPimo 10 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Imagine you have a spoon and you dig out one scoop of soil from the ground in central New York. Then you put that soil in a bag and carry it with you as you travel from there to the Grand Canyon. You repeat these steps until you have created another Grand Canyon in New York and Filled the original one in Arizona. Now reverse the steps and then repeat over and over again, say a thousand times. After that, you still have forever left.
Eternity does not exist for us mere mortals.
Jehovah's Witnesses talk about living "forever" and even place God in our own experience of time. This is not the same for other religious people, especially for those who are members of non-Witness Christianity.
For them, God transcends time on a plane known as "eternity." On this plane, God is, was, and will be forever from our point of view, but in reality, it was from this plane that, according to religionists God "created the timeline."
Imagine drawing a line in the sand. You can see its beginning, its middle, and its end all at once. In this same way, it is taught, God sees the beginning, present, and future. God doesn't predict the future. God sees what those with freewill do with it. God can therefore tell the future to humans, reporting it from God's vantage point.
Forever isn't an eternity. You got the two mixed up. Let me explain.
Forever is the constant flow of time. Time is the constant change of things and the measurement of that change.
Eternity is not time. Eternity is where God is, says theology. Time is that "line in the sand." Forever would be a line that "went on forever," something that would only be if God drew such a thing, so to speak. Eternity would always, from this standpoint, transcend time. There is no change or time in eternity, there is just "is."
The Jehovah's Witness concept of forever is flawed in that the Witnesses never look close enough at what is eternal and what is the change of time. The Witnesses teach that God is a timekeeper when in reality God is not under the same constraints of time. They often speak of God living forever and God is eternal in the same breath when, in reality, God is eternal, not "living forever."
You are right that "eternity does not exist for mortals," but it does exist for immortals. That is why the apostle Paul said that mortality had to be swallowed up by immortality for death to be done away with.--1 Corinthians 15:53.
That seems inefficient.
Although turning New York into a crater is probably an improvement from what the current mayor is doing to it.
Living forever flies in the face of the natural order of things. Imagine the universe as a single, organic entity that is constantly creating new life while life simultaneously is ending. A cycle if you will.
Living forever devalues life because it negates purpose. Anything you can do today you can put off until next millennium as you will be alive then as well. The whole anxiety of dying is experienced only when one has not found a purposeful life. This is why Witnesses are obsessed with living forever. They have no purpose now because they believe that this life is not "the real life". For them all purpose begins only when they are on the other side of Armageddon.
With that being said, I have also recently become acquainted with the theory of the Big Bounce. That is the theory that universe has no beginning and has no end. It only resets itself every so often with a Big Bang. Then there's the First Law of Thermodynamics. If energy cannot be created or destroyed in a closed environment (e.g. the universe), it can only change forms, then what happens to consciousness when the body dies?
Living for eternity healthy never getting old and dying seems appealing as a ideological concept, the possibility of that to happen through supernatural beings not yet discovered makes it an improbable dream........... for now.
We are better off focusing what is physically evident of are selves and the planet we live in an attempt to make the living experience better for are selves and the future generations.
Well until a supernatural being does appear before us and says hey guys I've come to help you out.
Psychologists talk about what they call the "I'll be happy when..." syndrome. It's a common problem, "I'll be happy when I get a better job" "I'll be happy when a buy a new car." "I'll be happy when I get married."
One time when we were leaving my wife said the JW view of the new system was the ultimate "I'll be happy when..."
Imagine paining the Universe with a two inch paintbrush...
DD
Eternity is future and past and starts in the present.
So it's twice as long as you think it is :)
Soo.... was there a point to this thread or are we just defining words?
Does anyone really want to live forever with 8 million self righteous judgemental people lead by 8 dumbasses?
