by nicolaou 96 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
If we were living in one of the first centuries, the Watchtower sect would be like those of that time.
Read the Church Fathers and all of them were biblicist and fanatic.
However, currently, most of the orthodox churches have evolved. The majority of the scholars of the Catholic Church admit that the Genesis account is a myth.
Hi Alive, I don't agree with the Witnesses regarding blood. I understand that blood is viewed as sacred because it symbolizes life, however, I don't agree that the symbol is more important than life itself.
Also, don't agree with the Witnesses regarding shunning. To me the 'Good Samaritan' parable is even more illustrative than the Prodigal Son.
Of course the Nazi view of race was flawed. Who said otherwise? What the hell is this now? You are so busy scratching around for some way to disagree with me. Most of what Carlos Campos says is pretty straightforward I don't know why you think I should disagree. But the comment:
"To insist that the Jews in the concentration camps were not a people of a faith is view of equal hatred, in my opinion."
I don't know what that comment means. The point is the Nazis didn't select them on the basis of religion but on their own notion of race, and those categorised as Jews viewed themselves in different ways as Jewish adherents, non-believers, Christians and whatever else. To lump them together as belonging to one faith when they didn't see themselves as such is the obnoxious position. Otherwise you are actually siding with the Nazis who in effect said: "we don't care if you call yourself secular, or Christian and go to church, to us a Jew is a Jew".
Is the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses really an inferior form of Christianity?
Call yourself a Christian? Then the Jehovah's Witnesses are still your brothers and the rest of your journey is still in front of you.
I think i am right in saying that JW seem to be more Arian in their theology and view of salvation. Arianism being deemed a heresy at one time and therefore I believe would be opposed to mainstream Christianity. In that light I think I could conclude that it would be inferior.
Also due to this and particularly the salvation part of my last statement I don't think JW would consider someone a brother who was not part of their faith and regularly preaching the Good News that they share.
I call myself a Christian but feel your opinion of who my brothers are or not, maybe true in a loose definition of brothers.
The rest of my journey is probably still in front of me as I still hopefully have a few years left.
One could say the JWS is an inferior version of Christianity by virtue of its adherence to many Hebrew (OT) doctrinal teachings such as shunning, the blood issue, the diminishing of Jesus's instructions and teachings (NT), which other Christian based faiths focus more upon..
This was done intentionally by the founders of this faith such as C T Russell and so on, hence the name JWS.
Slimboy,
The point Mr. Campos made was that Jews have the right to define themselves and tell others, "no, I will not be defined by you" if they so choose.
Mr. Campos stated that it is an injustice for people to decide how to label people, the way JWs label others, for example, as good or evil. Jews see themselves as a people tied not by race but by a common "ethnoreligious" foundation, to borrow his word. To tell Jews, "no you can't say you are a faith," or " no, I decide if you are a race or not," is what Mr. Campos meant by an act of hatred.
You say they are not a faith group, but you are not a Jew. Mr. Campos, a Jew, says, "yes, we are," but you still disagree. Whose definition of a Jew is correct? Yours? Or the view of the Jews themselves?
Would you like it if others stated that everything you claimed to be was wrong, and that you had to accept their definition about you? Don't you and others have the right to self-identification? Why is your definition better than that of Mr. Campos? What places you in a better position than a Jew to tell a Jew who and what they are or what they may or may not be?
Let me put it another way...
This all started when you said that the only people of faith who were in the concentration camps of the Holocaust were the Jehovah's Witnesses and a handful of other groups. I mentioned that the majority of people, the Jews, also were a faith group. You said no.
What if I said that the only reason this debate between us is going on was due to the fact that you were not intelligent enough to understand the issues being discussed, that your ethnic background or race made you somehow incapable of seeing facts.
I am sure you would strongly agree. I have no idea of your ethnic background or race. I don't even know your age or gender.
But what if I said that did not matter? What if I insisted that my definition of you is the only right one and that you have to accept the label I give you and nothing else?
My saying you were not worthy or capable or had not the right to declare for yourself what you are and choose to be is hateful. It would stem from my not seeing you as a complete person or somehow sub-human when compared to myself. "I have the right to decide what you can be called but you, yourself don't." Why do I get to decide for you? What makes me say you don't have that right? Hate for others is often the reason.
That is what Mr. Campos meant. Non-Jews have a sad history of telling Jews what they are and what the can or should be. This has often resulted in religions like Christianity persecuting the Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, and eventually the Holocaust.
Regardless of what JWs say, the Holocaust was about the Jews mainly. It was not Satan's attack against the JWs, as they like to view it. It was all due to the Nazi hatred for the Jews who declared to them "you are a race that must be exterminated."
Jews are more than a race, Mr. Campos was saying. They are a people made up and bound together by so much more.
