A Kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (stealing Christianity)

by TerryWalstrom 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  TerryWalstrom

  Jehovah's Witnesses took mainstream Christianity and replaced each part of it, one item, one term, one definition at a time, into its contrary.

  Holy Spirit (capital letters) became a tholy spirit (lower case letters) = from a person into a mere forceful gesture.

  Cross became torture stake. (Eradication of the essential symbol of historical Christianity)

  Soul went from ethereal spirit to a mere hunk of flesh and bone.

  Salvation by Grace became earning your salvation one door-knock at a time.

  Jesus went from Divine equality with God to a kind of volunteer fireman caught in a burning building on Earth. He's a Hero but he's not God. (He is a....god.)

  Communion went from a daily celebration of Jesus allowing humanity back into divine favor, replaced with a way too boring audience non-participation.

  Pontius Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" and Jesus was silent, but you can't shut JW's. These folks manufacture THE Truth as their brand logo. Sole ownership!

  It is as though two thousand years of Christian worship was a farting contest until the Pyramid charts and invisible Jesus rants were published by Charles Taze Russell.
  
  Conscientious Objectors were transformed into people acting on orders from the GB (bypassing the internal conscience) and ending up with only the Objector portion.
  Instead of availing the JW draft age member to Alternate Service to the Community during wartime---the GB pushed young men into wasting their time completely languishing in a local prison as token billboard martyrs for recruitment purposes.
  
  Christians aren't what JW's are--they pretend to become more important than that: as Jehovah's Witnesses. They renounced the cross in 1930 and removed Jesus from their worship entirely by 1953.
  
  Once upon a time, the Watchtower Society was NOT a RELIGION--because "RELIGION IS A SNARE AND A RACKET." But, when they were refused tax-free status unless they could prove themselves to be a religion, guess what happened?
  Suddenly, the were the TRUE religion.
  
  The Watchtower Society supports no CHURCH only (at first) ecclesia and (later) Kingdom Halls.
  
  The work of C.T.Russell, J.F.Rutherford, Knorr, Franz, and all the rest has been a steady REPLACEMENT of Christianity with a simulacrum...a stand-in...an alternate decoy...a kind of Trojan Horse.
  
  Rather than a shining light of truth it is a shadow government with insidious policies devoted to holding families hostage to passing whims, adjustments, fear-mongering and a rat wheel of endless repetitious motions which produces nothing tangible but exhaustion and depression.
• 

  snowbird

  You ain't never lied!

  Also, under Fred Franz's stewardship, a simple I AM became I HAVE BEEN.

  Even The Message Bible got that one right.
• 

  fulltimestudent

  Grin!!!

  OK Terry, sounds convincing, until you start to think a little deeper. I think you'll appreciate that "ALL" religious thought can be based on previous thinking and myths. In that sense, All religion can be based on "stolen ideas.'

  But first:

  1. Christianity (as distinct from Judaism) is rooted in the Greek language, all the terms you discussed are English terms translating the original Greek terms. To do what you do in your original post, is biased away from possible understandings of the original Greek.

  But the original Greek had to translate the Hebrew concepts. In translation, too often there are no words that convey the precise meaning of the word you wish to translate.

  But moving on to my main point:

  2. It would be quite easy to construct an argument that the gentile converts stole the original Jewish Christianity and replaced it with a new construct based on Plato's thinking. All educated people that converted to the new Christian concept, were educated in Graeco-Roman thought. They attempted to discuss their religious ideas with words and concepts that made sense to them,

  3. But we can go back further than that. What was the original Jewish (Israelite) religion like? Again, it would be easy to construct an argument that the original (native) Hebrew concepts were based first on Egyptian thought. Why? Because for some hundreds of years, Egyptian armies occupied the land of Israel. The creation story in Genesis 1 is quite similar to Egyptian creation stories. After the Egyptians, came Semitic influence, also affecting Hebrew thought as evident in the concept of a global flood. To save writing time, I'll post part of a Wikipedia entry on 'Global Flood:'

  " Mythologies: The Mesopotamian flood stories concern the epics of Ziusudra, Gilgamesh, and Atrahasis. In the Sumerian King List, it relies on the flood motif to divide its history into preflood (antediluvian) and postflood periods. The preflood kings had enormous lifespans, whereas postflood lifespans were much reduced. The Sumerian flood myth found in the Deluge tablet was the epic of Ziusudra, who heard the Divine Counsel plan to destroy humanity, in response to which he constructed a vessel that delivered him from great waters.[2] In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood.[3]
  In the Genesis mythology of the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh (God) decides to flood the earth because of the depth of the sinful state of mankind. Righteous Noah is given instructions to build an ark. When the ark is completed, Noah, his family, and representatives of all the animals of the earth are called upon to enter the ark. When the destructive flood begins, all life outside of the ark perishes. After the waters recede, all those aboard the ark disembark and have God's promise that he will never judge the earth with a flood again. He gives the rainbow as the sign of this promise.[4]
  In the 19th century, Assyriologist George Smith translated the Babylonian account of a great flood. Further discoveries produced several versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, with the account closest to that in Genesis found in a 700 BCE Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh.[5]:20 In this work, the hero Gilgamesh meets the immortal man Utnapishtim, and the latter describes how the god Ea instructed him to build a huge vessel in anticipation of a deity-created flood that would destroy the world. The vessel would save Utnapishtim, his family, his friends, and the animals.[6]
  In Hindu mythology, texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana and the Puranas contain the story of a great flood,[7] wherein the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu warns the first man, Manu, of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat.[8][9][10]
  In Plato's Timaeus, Timaeus says that because the Bronze race of Humans had been making wars constantly Zeus was angered and decided to punish humanity by a flood. Prometheus the Titan knew of this and told the secret to Deucalion, advising him to build an ark in order to be saved. After 9 nights and days, the water started receding and the ark was landed at Mount Parnassus.[11]"

  Its easy to see how the flood story spread into other cultures as organised groups of humans developed their own myths based on the original myth.

  When (eventually) the Jewish people were exposed to new religious thinking (during the Babylonian captivity) the most influential religion was Zoroastrianism. The result was the infiltration of 'dualism" into Jewish thought.

  Sometimes, (it can be speculated) original Jewish writings were redacted to fit their new understandings. And, that is how we got to the point where what you call 'mainstream Christianity" could call orthodoxy. Even so, we can still find differences, between the main streams of Christian thought.

  Actually, in my JW experience, most of the distinctions that the witnesses have made, already had some prior group who also differentiated themselves from the mainstream,

  Footnote:

  Maybe I should post some thoughts on Platonism, from key Christian thinkers after the first century.

  1. Augustine:

  “The utterance of Plato, the most pure and bright in all philosophy, scattering the clouds of error . . .”
  “I found that whatever truth I had read [in the Platonists] was [in the writings of Paul] combined with the exaltation of thy grace.”

  2. Eusebius of Caesarea:

  “[Plato is] the only Greek who has attained the porch of (Christian) truth.”

  3. Clement of Alexandria, (not the Clement who was the first Pope of late first century):

  “. . . before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety; being a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith . . . . For God is the cause of all good things, but of some primarily, as of the Old and New Testaments; and of others by consequence, as philosophy. Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily . . . . For [philosophy] was a schoolmaster to bring ‘the Hellenic mind . . . to Christ.’ Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.”

  ------------------------------

  Sorry for being so serious in what was likely a 'tongue in cheek' post
• 

  TerryWalstrom

  A wheel is round. It pretty much has to be. There is no Chinese wheel, Russian wheel, American wheel when it comes to roundness and utility.

  There is no Arabian Physics or Iranian Physics, or North Korean Physics because atoms and molecules and quarks and such perfectly accord with the reality of how things operate in our Universe.

  F always = M A (Force is equal to mass times acceleration) and E is always = to MC2 (energy in ergs is always equal to mass times the speed of light squared.)

  There are no national variations or versions of Math, Science, Astronomy, Engineering, etc. for very good reasons.

  All of the basic principles in the branches of knowledge correspond perfectly and demonstrably with provable useful and operational instances.
  "Opinions" don't count. Peer review is a necessity.

  What about RELIGION?

  This is my whole point!

  In Christianity alone, there are about 40 thousand denominational versions, interpretations, variations asserted to be TRUTH itself, at odds with the other opinions.

  SEE THE DIFFERENCE? In Religion it is ALL OPINION!

  Euclid's book on Geometry (THE ELEMENTS) was compiled in 300 B.C. It is still valid anyplace on Earth, any school, in any country. Yet, the New Testament, which came about 400 years later--is the most contested text in history as to versions and contentions and interpretations!

  Science, Math, Geometry, Engineering, etc are based on Axioms, Principles, Operations which conform to reality in a way which DOESN't COMPORT with national or sectarian "opinions" in a contradictory way that Religion invites.

  Shouldn't this be a CLUE?
  Christians, Jews, Muslims have their own way of counting time--did you know that?

  Do you know what year it is, for example, for a Jew right now? It is 5775.
  For a Muslim? It is 1438.
  
  Anything which invites OPINION and INTERPRETATION with equal standing does not match reality.
  

  "Three plus three equals six."
  "Not in my church! It equals seven."
  
  That's religion.
  For a couple of thousand years, Christian "math" tells us God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost = a TRI-(3-)NITY consisting of 1 God.
  
  That's not a reality where you'd want your paycheck to come from :)
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  TheWonderofYou

  "tholy" what is that? I like the urban wording of this thread
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  TerryWalstrom

  Only in Motown do Thoul Thingers know the anther to that queth shun.