Millions now living will never die (page 2)

James Mixon

I hope this happen to JW's, "if the Mayans were good at predicting the future, there would still be Mayans"..

How can a room full of people, as happened last night at the kingdumbhall, sit there and look at that highlighted box in the study of the Kingdom Book, and read Rutherford's false prophecy, and be okay with it?

Lights on but nobody's home.

David_Jay

@tepidpoultry

It may not be a fair or even logical comparison to place the Christian expectation of the Parousia, which Christendom describes as occurring at history's end, with the Jehovah's Witnesses eschatology that claims that Jesus' return is now, an event within history.

Even the most ancient traditions in Orthodoxy cite an understanding of both Pauline and Christ's eschatology as dismissive of a Parousia that occurs before the world's end. With this Roman Catholicism also agrees. Jesus has not been expected to return to the earth to establish a kingdom while human history is still unfolding. On the contrary, the view is the opposite of the Jehovah's Witness theology.

The teaching of Rutherford and Russell before him, and the Watchtower teaching in place today, is that human history will witness the Parousia before the end comes. Christendom teaches that the Parousia marks the conclusion of time, outside of history, with the event of the physical resurrection of the dead (known as Judgment Day).

While it is quite likely that Paul expected the Parousia in his time, he did not teach like the Witnesses that it was part of history, part of the mundane temporal march that could be set in time. Jehovah's Witnesses teach otherwise, that it comes within the lifetime of humans.

This is what causes the Witnesses to set dates for the end and why the historical churches of Christianity do not. This also explains why the 2000 years of time that has since passed since Jesus and Paul has not discouraged people from embracing Christianity as opposed to the far-removed teaching of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Finkelstein

Maybe Christ was right when he said no one even he does not know of time ( 1874, 1914)

The charlatans who ran the Watchtower Publishing House should have maybe paid attention to what Jesus said.

flipper

" Millions once living- are now all dead " . Take a look on any Ancestry.com account family tree and a person can see that's true

P.S. As well as anybody walking through a graveyard .

tepidpoultry

@David_Jay

David,

Thank you for your comments,

My interests are mainly as a non religious secular these days but as I was

raised a JW the subject of world religion still interests me,

The contrast that you made between the JW view of end times

(parousia) and mainstream Christianity is interesting,

A question occurred to me as to the difference between Old World

Churches and American religions,

When you hear of predictions concerning the end they seem to be

almost exclusively in the domain of American Religions whether the JWs

The Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Evangelicals etc

The first two groups, as well as others, came from what came to be

known as the "Burned Over District" Lake Erie area of the early 1800s

(see Wikipedia)

An important development for the JW religion was the gathering one

day in 1844, of William Miller and his followers to be taken up with Christ

to Heaven, known as the "The Rapture"

The failure came to be known as "The Great Disappointment"

So we have a significant event of Adventistism in American

Christianity

An early associate of CT Russell was Nelson Barbour,

Barbour was a Millerite and an Adventist

The "Advent" is what got Russell excited about religion in the first place

after flirting with Atheism,

Soon after this Russell/Barbour were publishing/predicting dates,

The first date predicted for Christ's invisible parousia was 1874,

So I'm seeing a tremendous amount of American Adventist activity dating

back almost 200 years!

Now, what I understand from you David, is that the established (old world)

churches have been teaching that the parousia takes place in the end of

times,

Tepid

smiddy

Jehovahs Witnesses ,The Assembly of God ,The seventh Day Adventists ,The Christadelphians ,The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints, are just a few of the more well known religions that believe we are living in the last days when Armageddon is going to come.

I am sure with over 40,000 other Christian religions their are quite a few more that would come under that umberella and would have similar beliefs .

Which would also mean they have similar beleifs that millions now living will never die but billions will at Gods Judgement on mankind.

anointed1

May be a coincidence: Armageddon-consciousness reawakens and money-drained JW org can feel some sense of relief. Many super rich are joining the survivalism movement. The list includes Steve Huffman, cofounder and CEO of Reddit; Marvin Liao, a former Yahoo executive and a partner at 500 Startups; and Robert A Johnson, a managing director of hedge fund Soros Fund Management. Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn and a notable venture capitalist estimates more than 50% of Silicon Valley billionaires have bought some level of “apocalypse insurance“, like an underground bunker. Fortified shelters, built to withstand catastrophic events from viral epidemic to nuclear war, seem to be experiencing a wave of interest in general as hints of a new Cold War ramp up. They fear that Trump is the real trumpet that invites cataclysmic changes! (from a new essay in The New Yorker)

Heaven

ALL of my family born on or before 1914 are dead. Most of my family born in the 1920s are dead too. The only one left that I know of is my Dad -- he turns 90 this year and isn't doing well at all. He, too, will die one day as will all of us. No one gets out of this life alive.

Ask yourself the following question... "What is more likely - that the laws of nature have been suspended OR that an unmarried Jewish girl told a fib?"

Every generation of Christian thinks Christ is going to return during their lifetime. And every generation lives their entire lives and dies without this happening... year after year, generation after generation.

If I told you I was coming to your house 'soon' and in 50+ years NEVER arrived, would you still think I was coming 'soon'? I doubt it.

TTWSYF

Ask yourself the following question... "What is more likely - that the laws of nature have been suspended OR that an unmarried Jewish girl told a fib?"

So, is the question asked that Jesus's mother started Christianity or she started the false teachings of 'Millions living will never die.'?

Millions now living will never die