Regarding Correct Understanding of Bible Prophecies Have JWs EVER Been Right?

by minimus 34 Replies latest jw friends

  • minimus
    minimus

    I seriously doubt that any JW understanding of prophecy has ever withstood the test of time. How can anyone trust them when they are always wrong??

  • David_Jay
    David_Jay

    People have an innate need to feel valued. We all do. You have it. I have it. It comes with the territory of being human.

    Life, however, can cause us to feel devalued. People can reject us. Some ignore us. We often don't get what we may be entitled to due to actual injustice. Even the confusion an unruly world produces can make us feel insignificant.

    There are several ways people respond to this. One of them is to substitute feeling certain about oneself and about life with feeling powerful by claiming complete certainty. Kept unchecked, this substitution becomes a drug-like addiction.

    Certainty is an emotional state, not something that can be measured or proven empirically. Feeling you are "absolutely right" takes away the vulnerability that comes with uncertainty. Like all other illegal drugs, it is available only for a high fee: you must expend tons of energy and effort to filter out more reality than you allow in. This often requires creating a physical world around you to protect your delusional one from falling apart.

    And like other drugs, this type of certainty produces a "high." Neuroscientists have uncovered an amphetamine effect that accompanies this type of "must-be-right" denial that protects your "I'm right" feeling. Thus cutting the subject off from this "drug" comes with physical side effects similar to other forms of withdrawl. Therefore those who have substituted finding their self-worth for feeling powerful won't soon abandon their "drug." It literally hurts to do it.

    Claiming insight into Biblical prophecies can be this drug. Instead of learning to accept that our value doesn't mean feeling important above others, they choose the powerful feeling that "knowing what the future brings" and "having a clear explanation" for life's various uncertainties brings as their own brand of drug. Note that for the Jehovah's Witnesses this "knowing" includes declaring themselves to be God's singularly unique chosen. It's the same type of delusion that comes with any high, where one feels central to the universe and reality.

    Therefore when one interpretation fails, they merely provide another. Note how they claim that "prophecy never fails." This is a self-deluding mantra as we are not really talking about the precision or failure of "Biblical prophecy," per se, but of the failure of their interpretation of it.

    And since they produce their drug "in-house," when they run out they merely make up some more .

  • minimus
    minimus

    Interesting, David,you are.

  • minimus
    minimus

    A bit too wordy though

  • OnTheWayOut
    OnTheWayOut

    The Bible can be made to say or prophesy many different things, so to be always wrong wiuld be really amazing.

    Watchtower is really amazing.

  • notsurewheretogo
    notsurewheretogo

    Is any bible prophecy right though?

  • blondie
    blondie

    Once I thought they were right in 1942 when the predicted the emergence of the UN that summer only to discover in my research that the first participating countries announced the formation of the UN in January 1942. Was that a deliberate lie by the WTS or just poor reporting?

  • minimus
    minimus

    Blondie please expound

  • stuckinarut2
    stuckinarut2

    They have fulfilled one verse that Jesus said:

    "this people honours me with their lips, yet their heart is far removed from me"

    And also this classic from Revelation:

    "get out from the midst of her my people - quit touching the unclean thing....if you do not want to share in her plagues, for her sins have massed together clear up to heaven and God has called her acts of injustice to mind"

  • biblexaminer
    biblexaminer

    Well, they've got Mt. 24 all bass ackwards. Completely upside down.

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