Plus they are probably shooting themselves in the foot. There are a number of people who started attending on Zoom who would never have attended meetings at the KH. This means that generally Zoom attendances were higher than typical KH meetings. By forcing people back to the KH they will not succeed in getting these people into the KH, but they will just drift away as it becomes apparent that Zoom participants are viewed as second class, and somewhat unwelcome fellow travellers. Talk about own goal.
slimboyfat
JoinedPosts by slimboyfat
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35
2022-07-29-Announcement!
by Atlantis in2022-07-29-announcements--english.
2022-07-29-announcements-spanishpage 2, par.
3. on the other hand, some brothers and sisters—younger and in good health—have more favorable circumstances that may allow them to attend christian meetings regularly at the kingdom hall.
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35
2022-07-29-Announcement!
by Atlantis in2022-07-29-announcements--english.
2022-07-29-announcements-spanishpage 2, par.
3. on the other hand, some brothers and sisters—younger and in good health—have more favorable circumstances that may allow them to attend christian meetings regularly at the kingdom hall.
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slimboyfat
What I find annoying is that the GB were obviously very scared personally at the beginning of the pandemic, that’s why they imposed the strictest lockdown possible at Warwick which affected “young, healthy” Bethelites, as well as old, overweight GB members, as well as suspending all congregation gatherings worldwide. Now they’ve had the vaccines, they see the numbers are more in their favour and they are not personally scared of catching the virus. So, once again, a worldwide and heterogenous group of 8 million people plus are being told to copy their example in going back to meetings. There is no account taken of the fact that other people might feel differently about the situation than they do for various reasons and are still scared of catching the virus. Everyone should just copy them because they say so, and if they don’t, it’s because they are not following the Bible, and they should think about it harder. It is so arrogant, self-centred and self righteous because they believe everyone should respect their fear but show non consideration for others who may still feel scared even if they don’t.
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What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.
who is the way, the truth and the life?
(john 14:6).
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slimboyfat
Well it seems to me that some on this forum think that Jesus name is getting sufficient coverage and consideration at kingdom halls across the globe.
And when I say "name" I mean person, not merely a bunch of syllables.
My take is that Jesus is all but marginalized by so called Jehovah's Witnesses and relationship with Jesus aka Michael the super angel is not only not promoted but also not possible .That is a totally different question! If you say JWs downplay Jesus then I’d definitely agree with that. It’s pretty unarguably the case. In terms of mentions, Jesus is probably competing with the Governing Body for second place after Jehovah. (I’ve not done any quantitative analysis on that it’s just an impression)
I don’t see how that affects what the New Testament says about Jesus being the firstborn of creation, Son of God, messiah and so on. And I do think there is a good case that Jesus is Michael and/or an angel. Even Ehrman concludes that Paul calls Jesus an angel at Gal 4:14.
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It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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slimboyfat
People need his videos? Need them like a bang on the head. Definitely preferable, at least it’s over quicker, and less risk of lasting brain damage.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.
who is the way, the truth and the life?
(john 14:6).
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slimboyfat
Yes it’s a very odd approach to simply count the number of times a name is used to claim that someone is more important than God and totally ignore what the text actually says about Jehovah being the source of salvation and Jesus being his obedient servant.
An excellent book on Jesus’ role in the New Testament is James McGrath’s book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context (2006). It really cuts away later dogma to show what the New Testament authors said
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-True-God-Christian-Monotheism/dp/0252078799
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.
who is the way, the truth and the life?
(john 14:6).
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slimboyfat
Hi Disillusioned, my post on Psalm 110 was intended for Gman.
I agree with you that the NT authors took a meaning from Psalm 110 that was different from what the author originally intended. But I don’t know that means the interpretation is not valid. The Bible itself contains the idea that authors sometimes do not fully understand what they are writing. And it’s not so much that Christians tend to deny the original meaning of a text, but that they add another meaning on top. For example, I’m pretty sure the original Christians realised that when God ‘called his son out of Egypt’ in Hosea 11:1, it meant the nation of Israel. When Matthew applied this verse to Jesus I tend to think that he was not denying the original meaning of the verse but that he was adding a prophetic significance and applying it to Jesus. The NT makes such typologies explicit when Hebrews says Jesus is the greater Melchizedek, when Jesus talks about the ‘sign of Jonah’, and when Paul says that Jesus is the rock that the Israelites followed in the desert. It is true that Acts 2 apparently argues against applying Psalm 110 to David, but even here, I suspect, what the author means is ‘not only to David’ and picks out a clue that a more appropriate application of the text can be made to Jesus.
As for the matter of ruling among enemies, I don’t know. There are lots of possible ways of understanding this if the current JW interpretation is wrong. For example, during the millennium there will continue to be unbelievers, culminating in the rebellion at the end of the thousand years. Jesus could be said to be ruling among his enemies at this time and they are only finally put under his feat at the end, as indicated in 1 Corinthians 15.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.
who is the way, the truth and the life?
(john 14:6).
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slimboyfat
Psalm 110:1 is a clear example where Jesus is called Lord (Adonai) in distinction from Jehovah (YHWH) and is a text that Christians found so useful in identifying Jesus that they referred to it more than any other Old Testament text. (Matthew 22:24; Mark 12:36; Luke 20:41–44; Acts 2:34, 35; Hebrews 1:13; and alluded to in other places)
Acts 2:34–36 For David did not ascend to the heavens, but he himself says, ‘Jehovah said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.”’ Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for a certainty that God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you executed on a stake.”
If the attempt by the first Christians was to confuse the identities then why did they so often quote a text that distinguishes Jesus from Jehovah? Really the first Christians made a clear distinction and it was Christians of later centuries who confused the identities of Jesus and Jehovah.
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GET READY to have your mind melted
by Terry inthe following dramatization of the full-length transcript between google ai researchers and lamda 'herself'.
a google engineer named lemoine recently made the headlines for claiming a.i.
below is the most mind-blowing interview i've ever seen in my entire life!.
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slimboyfat
Materialism taken to its absurd extreme limits.
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263
What Name Does the New Testament Emphasize - Jehovah or Jesus?
by Vanderhoven7 init seems to me scripturally speaking, that jehovah's witnesses are emphasizing the wrong name.. it should be jesus, not jehovah.
who is the way, the truth and the life?
(john 14:6).
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slimboyfat
That’s reasonable. There is no certainty either way.
I would point out a couple of things though. Scholars have offered other explanations than Christology and nascent Trinitarianism for the disappearance of the divine name. Kahle pointed to the wish to differentiate Christianity from Judaism. Trobisch points out the desire for an agreed upon edition of both the OT and the NT in the second century. Shaw pointed out that the cosmopolitan appeal of Christianity coincided with moving away from the distinctive Jewish name of God. Howard, Gaston and Trobisch do indicate that the higher Christology in the second century, compared with the first, was a motivation for no longer using the divine name.
It is not a matter of Christians removing the divine name more completely from the LXX than from the NT. The point is that there are fragments of the LXX from the first and second centuries so we know that it used the divine name in that period. There are no fragments of the NT that are certain to date from earlier than 200 CE. So there is no direct evidence for how the divine name was presented in that period as there is with the LXX. It’s not a matter of anyone “removing” the name from the text as such, in the sense of going around with a sponge and wiping it out. What it involved is new copies of the LXX and NT being made that replaced the divine name with “Lord” and older copies of the LXX and NT that used the divine name falling into disuse. A few fragments of the LXX survive from before the second century when the change occurred and no copies of the NT survive from that period.
We do know that the early Christians made many doctrinal alterations to the NT because some of these have been identified and corrected. Famous ones include 1 Tim 3:16, 1 John 5:7-8 and many other arguable cases. There can be no certainty that all the alterations were caught because some could have been made at too early a stage to be represented in the extant manuscripts. In fact given how early many of these alterations occurred it seems likely that there are cases where the true reading has not survived. See The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart Ehrman and No Longer Written by Ryan Wettlaufer.
Plus there are perhaps traces of the divine name in the early NT text that survive in the manuscript tradition. For example the Diatessaron was possibly compiled at such an early stage that the NT still contained the divine name. This could explain why manuscripts of the NT Syriac appear to treat loci of the divine name differently than ordinary occurrences of Lord and God. Shedinger has suggested that if the divine name was not present in the texts used for the Diatessaron then we would need to find some other explanation for the way the divine name is treated in the Syriac. Plus some argue that Hebrew versions of Matthew reflect the text at an early period when the divine name was still used and that is why they use the designation “the name” in places where the divine name was used.
One of the reasons the presence of the divine name matters for Christology is the fact that the most frequently quoted OT text in the NT makes such a clear distinction between Jesus and Jehovah, when it quotes the Psalms: “Jehovah said to my Lord, sit at my right hand”. This distinction is obscured when the divine name is replaced and it appears as if Lord is speaking to Lord instead. Another great example is 1 Cor 2:16 where the earliest NT text said that we don’t know the mind of Jehovah but, because he was a human, we can understand the mind of Christ. The later text obscured and confused this distinction by appearing to apply both statements to Jesus. There are many such examples of NT texts that make much better sense when the distinction between Jesus and Jehovah is preserved by restoration of the divine name. But frankly the status of Jesus as God’s first creation and designation ruler of God’s kingdom is clear in the NT text with or without the restoration of the divine name. There is no room for a fourth century Christology in the NT.
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11530
It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars
by Newly Enlightened inoriginal reddit post (removed).
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slimboyfat
Yes that’s true, he is continuing to get money despite his obnoxious behaviour and despite his reduced output. The thing that might still be his undoing is that, although the is still receiving significant amounts of money, he knows better than anyone else how much lower his income is now because of the truth coming out. He feels strongly that he is entitled to the money he got last year and bitterly resents the fact that he has to adjust. He feels cheated and wronged. (The irony) He just can’t help expressing his arrogance and sense of entitlement which will drive yet more people away and probably worsen his mood and behaviour in a downward spiral.