Ron Rhoades on Blood
For about 15 months I held an on-again off-again discussion with an apologist for the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society named Ron Rhoades. In this discussion Rhoades goes to great lengths in his attempt to authenticate the WTS’ doctrinal position on blood. This discussion is very long and sometimes tedious at well over 50,000 words; a tough read.
A poster known as HalPal1914 at Touchstoneforum.org took it upon himself to publish select parts of this discussion without as much as consulting me for purposes of 1) permission to publish private emails and 2) authenticating the material. Making things worse from an ethical perspective was his choice to publish an [b]incomplete[/b] version of the discussion and then insinuating that this was because I objected to having private email made public when the real issue about [b]what[/b] was published had to do with my insistence that he should either publish the [b]whole[/b] thing or else [b]none[/b] of it. This bit of history is provided for the sole purpose of making known there is an incomplete version of this discussion already in circulation and who is responsible for it.
A complete version of this discussion can be downloaded from the Contributed Articles section at:
http://pathways-online.com/yabbse/index.php?op=downloads
This is a PDF document about 600 KB in size. A modest dialup connection will download it in about 1-3 minutes.
Another complete version can be viewed in HTML format at:
http://pathways-online.com/yabbse/dls/blood_rhoades-shilmer_discussion.html
If anyone wants to address details of this discussion I am happy to oblige as time permits. Though a difficult read, near the end of the discussion Rhoades offers an illustration to undermine views I expressed and thereby simplify and bolster his verbose attempted apologia. His illustration was of a contract between a tenant and a renter, a contract that prohibited the tenant from using any trees. Readers should consider the whole discussion to determine whatever merit is there, however Rhoades illustration not only accurately portrays the WTS’ doctrinal position on blood; it shows it for what it is in full color. I’ll let readers find for themselves this illustration of Rhoades’ and the question asked later that reveals how this illustration shows Rhoades’ attempted defense for what it is -- an attempt at defending the indefensible. I’ll give him credit for words though; he sure threw a lot of them around!
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Marvin Shilmer