Update to my meeting with an elder

by Goldminer 30 Replies latest jw experiences

• 

  FreeWilly

  Goldminer,
  
  For your wifes sake maybe an even simpler approach would work. I have found that as soon as you get into chronology most people just tune out and assume the Society knows what it is talking about.
  
  For what it's worth. you could approach the whole 607 thing like this:
  

  
  
  Goldminer to Elder: What does Nebuchadnezzars dream in Daniel Ch 4 have to do with 1914?
  

  Elder: The dream means blah blah blah, and when you add this scripture, plus this scripture, that's how we come up with 1914.

  Goldminer: It sounds like a secret code to me. Why do you suppose that Jesus or his Apostles never taught about this, did they overlook something?

  Elder: (who knows what he will come up with)

  Goldminer: Well if you keep reading on in the book of Daniel, only a couple of paragraphs later, Daniel himself explains exactly what the dream means, how long the time period lasts, and what the significance of it was. (Read on in Daniel 4) Was Daniel wrong?

  Elder: No, .... it has a dual fulfillment.

  Goldminer: Say what? Dual fulfillment.....what does that mean? What in the Bible leads you to believe this has a hidden meaning - could you show me? (insist on him showing you)

  Elder: (Who knows what)

  Goldminer: That's not talking about a dual fulfillment. Daniel says exactly what Nebuchadnezzar's dream means. Jesus and the Apostles never alluded to a dual fulfullemnt either. Maybe that's why all of the Society's predictions about the end of the world have turned out wrong.

  Elder: (Lot's of BS)

  Goldminer: I don't read anything in the Bible that leads me to believe in a hidden meaning. But Daniel 4:24 says right here “This is the interpretation, O king" The interpretation is right there in the Bible. Why are you going beyond what is written?

  Goldminer: Haven't these kind of "dual fulfillment interpretations" gotten the Society in trouble before, by predicting the end of the world?

  Elder: No

  Goldminer: How come the first time the Society tried to use this formula they came up with different dates for Armageddon? And wasn't the 1925 end of the world prediction based on the dual fulfilment of the Jubilee cycle?

  Elder: I'll have to do more research
  

  Goldminer: Everything you need to know about Nebuchadnezzars dream is explained by Daniel himself. If it had an alternate hidden meaning surely Jesus or his Inspired Apostles would have at least touched on it, but they didn't. This type of speculation is precisely what caused the Society to make all of those false predictions.
• 

  avishai

  Thanks for finding that, folks, and sorry alleymom for miscrediting it!!
• 

  Nathan Natas

  Jeeprube, here ya go, see ¶ 20: (I included the preceeding and following paragraphs for the sake of context.)

  19 Neither is a wife’s barrenness a true ground for divorce. Because of her barrenness for many years, even up to more than twenty-five years, Abraham did not divorce Sarah, nor Isaac Rebekah, nor Jacob Rachel, nor the priest Zechariah Elizabeth. The sons of Noah did not divorce their wives for barrenness during all the years that the ark was under construction and until two years after the flood. (Gen. 6:18; 11:10) Nor did Jehovah divorce his “woman,” his universal organization, because of her barrenness or failure to bring forth the Messiah for more than four thousand years.—Isa. 54:1-13.

  20 Sodomy (or the unnatural intercourse of one male with another male as with a female), Lesbianism (or the homosexual relations between women), and bestiality (or the unnatural sexual relations by man or woman with an animal) are not Scriptural grounds for divorce. They are filthy, they are unclean, and God’s law to Israel condemned to death those committing such misdeeds, thus drastically putting these out of God’s congregation. But such acts are not adultery with the opposite sex, making the unclean person one flesh with another of the opposite sex. (Rom. 1:26-32) Yet there is a penalty of disfellowshiping attached to them. They will keep a Christian out of the heavenly kingdom and out of God’s new world, and that means being destroyed like beasts from all future life. “The minding of the flesh means death,” it “means enmity with God, for it is not under subjection to the law of God, nor, in fact, can it be. So those who are in harmony with the flesh cannot please God.” They cannot gain the prize of everlasting life from him. (Rom. 8:6-8; 1 Cor. 6:9, 10; Gal. 5:19-21) Such filthy things by a mate may make life unbearable for the clean married person and are grounds for separation only, though some courts grant a divorce on such grounds. Such separation does not free one to remarry and enter thus into adultery. Writes Paul: “To the married people I give instructions, yet not I but the Lord, that a wife should not depart from her husband; but if she should actually depart, let her remain single or else make up again with her husband; and a husband should not leave his wife.” (1 Cor. 7:10, 11, NW) Only if one of the separated couple committed adultery under the stress of the separation would there be Scriptural basis for the innocent to procure a divorce and be free to remarry.

  21 Should one’s marriage mate in the course of time go insane or contract an incurable disease or a loathsome one, this is no true basis for getting a divorce. In this case the unfortunate mate must be treated just as an injured member of one’s body or as one’s child by one’s mate. The mate should be treated with proper care, not be cut off from relationship by legal divorce. Despite the ailment the sick mate remains one flesh with the healthy one and deserves full attention and faithfulness as his own flesh. This displays love for one’s flesh and helps to lighten the terrible situation, rather than worsen it. “In this way husbands ought to be loving their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh, but he feeds and cherishes it, as the Christ also does the congregation, because we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.’” (Eph. 5:28-31, NW) The faithful mate will not forsake the other during illness either mental or physical. By God’s law the healthy one is not freed to do so. Naaman’s wife was not freed from him because he was a leper whose terrible disease only a miracle of Almighty God could cure. (2 Ki. 5:1-4, 8-14) At a wedding the mates usually vow to take each other for better or for worse.

  - The WATCHTOWER, October 1, 1956, pages 591, 592 "Marriage Obligations and Divorce"
• 

  findingmyway

  If I mail-order it I run the risk my wife could pick it up,then I'm up the creek.

  Why don't you have it delivered to your job or a discreet friend's house?
• 

  JT
• 

  JT

  
  *** w72 1/1 31-2 Questions from Readers ***
  Questions from Readers
  ? Do homosexual acts on the part of a married person constitute a
  Scriptural ground for divorce, freeing the innocent mate to
  remarry?—U.S.A.

  Homosexuality is definitely condemned in the Bible as something
  that will prevent individuals from gaining God’s approval. (1 Cor. 6:9, 10) However, whether an innocent mate would Scripturally be able to remarry after procuring a legal divorce from a mate guilty of homosexual acts must be determined on the basis of what the Bible says respecting divorce and remarriage.

  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ said: “Everyone
  divorcing his wife, except on account of fornication,
  makes her a subject for adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matt. 5:32) On a later occasion he told the Pharisees: “Whoever divorces his wife, except on the ground of fornication, and marries another commits adultery.”—Matt. 19:9.
  Thus “fornication” is seen to be the only ground for
  divorce that frees the innocent mate to remarry.

  The Greek word for fornication is porneía. It can refer
  to illicit sexual relations between either married or
  unmarried persons. The ancient Greeks, in rare instances,
  may have understood this term to denote acts other than illicit
  sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. But the sense in which
  Jesus used the word porneía at Matthew 5:32 and ?Mt ?19:9 must be
  ascertained from the context.

  It should be noted that in Matthew chapters 5 and 19 “fornication”
  is used in the restricted sense of marital unfaithfulness, or
  illicit relations with another person not one’s marriage mate.
  Just before bringing up the matter of divorce in the Sermon on
  the Mount, Jesus Christ pointed out that “everyone [married] that
  keeps on looking at a woman so as to have a passion for her has
  already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt. 5:28)
  Consequently, when he afterward alluded to a woman’s committing
  fornication, his listeners would have understood this in its
  relative sense, namely, as signifying a married woman’s prostitution
  or adultery.

  The context of Matthew chapter 19 confirms this conclusion.
  On the basis of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jesus pointed out that a man

  and his wife became “one flesh,” and then added: “What God has yoked
  together let no man put apart.” (Matt. 19:5, 6) Now, in homosexual
  acts the sex organs are used in an unnatural way, in a way for which
  they were never purposed. Two persons of the same sex are not
  complements of each other, as Adam and Eve were. They could
  never become “one flesh” in order to procreate. It might be added,
  in the case of human copulation with a beast, two different kinds of
  flesh are involved. Wrote the apostle Paul: “Not all flesh is the same
  flesh, but there is one of mankind, and there is another flesh of
  cattle, and another flesh of birds, and another of
  fish.”—1 Cor. 15:39.

  While both homosexuality and bestiality are disgusting
  perversions, in the case of neither one is the marriage tie broken.
  It is broken only by acts that make an individual “one flesh” with
  a person of the opposite sex other than his or her legal marriage

  mate.
• 

  ESTEE

  my wife got a spiritual boost from his visit which was very disheartening to me.

  Goldminer, when you think about how a dub's mindset works, I'm guessing your wife has been praying that the elders visit would "straighten you out" you know, holy spirit and all that. She still sees the elders as appointed by gawd, rather than mere brainwashed men. Keep the questioning up and it may help her to see that the elders are as brainwashed as the rest of the borg. She doesn't know it yet, but she is in a prime position of having her eyes open to knowing the real truth about the TruthTM ... hehehehe!!!

  Love and light,

  ESTEE
• 

  Goldminer

  thanks again everyone for your advice,encouragement and WT material that I can use,I feel overwhelmed by your help and genuine love even though none of you really know me personally.I will go over everything you've given me to work with and I will do my best to keep it simple for my wife's benefit.

  I've already asked if she finds it odd that the WTS once taught certain things as truth then many years later changed their mind,after misleading many people,all while claiming to be the sole channel of communication between man and God.She agrees that many things were wrong,even 1975,that's about the closest I've gotten.The UN thing didn't bother her or the elder so I said to him the WTS can sign up to use the UN's facilities but if someone signs up with the YMCA to use the pool they can be disfelloshipped??? He didn't know what to say then so I'm gonna print the Y article for him and ask him again if there might be a compromise of integrity in the WTS/UN association.

  Goldminer
• 

  ESTEE

  the WTS can sign up to use the UN's facilities but if someone signs up with the YMCA to use the pool they can be disfelloshipped???

  Love your logic, Goldminer! Great reasoning for a thinking person.

  ESTEE
• 

  Double Edge

  Goldminer (and others)....

  This is a way to get mail, without having it delivered to your home or office. It's been around since the post office started, in fact, it was the original way of getting mail in rural areas a hundred years ago... it's called "General Delivery" ... (from the post office)

  http://www.usps.com/receive/choicesfordelivery/receivemailinotherplaces.htm

  all you need to pick up your mail is i.d. ... have it sent to the post office you want it picked up from. They'll hold it 30 days.

  D.E.