I don't see Romans chapter 13 as indicating that God wants the world to be divided into regional governments rather than having a global human government (though the Bible is against an anti-Christ type of world government), but maybe the story of the tower of Babel might lend some support to that idea. The books of Daniel (see Daniel 2:34 - 35, 44 - 45, and 7:21, 27) and Revelation (see Revelation 5:8 - 10, 11:15 - 18 , and 19:6, 19 through 20:10) do however say that God wants the world to eventually have one global theocratic government under the rule of the Messiah/Christ as king.
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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156
Remembering Rutherford
by Sea Breeze inhe seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
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Disillusioned JW
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156
Remembering Rutherford
by Sea Breeze inhe seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
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Disillusioned JW
I am glad my parents, and the JW religion, never lied to me about Santa Claus. As far as I can tell, my parents never lied to me. By that, I mean that as far as I can tell, they never told me anything was true which they believed (or thought, or knew) to be false. I am grateful for that. Maybe their religion instilled that value in them and maybe that is partly why I have the same value.
Sea Breeze, I agree with you in saying that JWs "are not allowed to voice their disagreements" about their religion and to fully "exercise their conscience", and those policies of theirs are bad. Those bad policies of the JW religion are partly why I stopped attending their meetings, and stopped doing JW field service, and why I now consider myself an ex-JW. Those bad policies of theirs irritated me for much of my years as a JW (at least during those times that I thought about them), and those policies have continued to irritate me even as an ex-JW when I think about them.
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156
Remembering Rutherford
by Sea Breeze inhe seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
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Disillusioned JW
Sea Breeze, one can recognize the benefits of human government (Romans chapter 13) without pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth (such as a flag of a nation) and without pledging allegiance to a government. Pledging allegiance to a human government, any human government, is going too far because it means one is committing to obeying the government in ALL matters (including dropping bombs on noncombatant civilian populations), but as we know governments (including the USA federal government in its past) sometimes demand people to do things that many people consider to be wrong, even outright evil things.
I didn't say it was "idolatry to salute the flag" of one's country, I said it was idolatry to "pledge allegiance" to any flag, including of one's country. Perhaps it is also idolatry to salute a flag, but I am not sure about that (though I know that JWs are forbidden by their religion to salute the flag).
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156
Remembering Rutherford
by Sea Breeze inhe seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
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Disillusioned JW
Regarding your mother suffering every school day by being expelled from school, the fault did not lie with Rutherford or the WT teachings and commands (except that since there is no personal god, including YHWH/Jehovah, the biblical arguments they gave were irrelevant) regarding the saluting of the flag (and of pledging allegiance to it), but rather with the school (and likely other government agencies) for breaking the USA constitution (as amended by the Bill of Rights).
Many elements of Christmas are pagan in origin, something which many encyclopedias (including Britannica) mention. Since I was raised by JW parents I never ever believed in Santa Claus, and I am glad I never believed in Santa Claus. I never had any regrets from never celebrating Christmas. I likewise have no misgivings about never having celebrated any other pagan holiday either, or even my birthday. I even abhor the Halloween holiday (with its common spiritistic elements), though in general the idea of dressing up in some costume for fun has some appeal to me.
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Remembering Rutherford
by Sea Breeze inhe seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
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Disillusioned JW
Rutherford wrote some WT literature saying it was wrong for the government to have a prohibition on the drinking of alcoholic drinks; but since the Bible doesn't command the drinking of such (not even during the Lord's evening meal since the Greek text says "fruit of the vine" instead of "wine"), he had no scriptural basis for breaking the prohibition laws (but I don't know if he broke them, only that people online say he did).
Rutherford though had an incorrect teaching regarding the identity of the superior authorities mentioned in Romans chapter 13, and that probably contributed to him defying the prohibition laws (if he did violate them).
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Remembering Rutherford
by Sea Breeze inhe seems to me to be the angriest and most ill-tempered of all the wt presidents, especially after his stint in prison and failed prophecies.. “regarding his misguided statements as to what we could expect in 1925, he [rutherford] once confessed to us at bethel, “i made an ass of myself.”” watchtower 1984 oct 1 p.24.
rutherford died at beth sarim on january 8, 1942, at the age of 72.
[220] cause of death was...carcinoma of the rectum..."[21] .
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Disillusioned JW
Regarding what one person momentarily said about his/her mother (who was raised as a JW), at least your mother had the pride of knowing that she refused to engage in an act of idolatry (pledging allegiance to a flag of any kind is idolatry in my opinion). As a former JW who is now an atheist I am glad I never pledged allegiance to any flag or to any human government. The WT literature said we should stand in respect of the flag during the pledge of allegiance, but personally I didn't even want to stand up for it while I was in school (at least during some of the years I was in school), but I stood up anyway because the WT literature said I should.
When I started school, people my country had already won (due to court cases by the WT/JWs) the right to not say the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, even in school. As a result no one in school ever gave me any trouble or even any criticism for not participating in those activities.
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Newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls with the tetragrammaton within the Greek text
by dropoffyourkeylee inbig news from israel, some previously undiscovered dead sea scrolls have been found with portions of the ot in greek.
it says the name of god is included in hebrew letters within the greek text.. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/world/middleeast/dead-sea-scrolls.html.
"the new fragments contain verses from zechariah 8:16-17, including part of the name of god written in ancient hebrew, and verses from nahum 1:5-6, both from the biblical book of the twelve minor prophets.".
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Disillusioned JW
Interestingly a few years before the New Testament volume of the NWT was first published, the WT society published the following in a doctrinal book from 1946 (I added boldface for the last two sentences of the quote). [See http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/letgodbetrue/godbetrue2.html ; the quote is from page 23 of the 1946 edition of the Let God Be True book.]
"The Scriptures written before our common era were written practically all in Hebrew, a portion in Syriac; and in those Scriptures the alphabetic letters for God's name occur, namely, Jod He Vau He (
,
or YHWH), from the first book to the last. This name, symbolized by
these four Hebrew consonants, occurs, all together, 6,823 times* in the
Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures were first translated into
Greek about 285-247 B.C.; but some time before that the Hebrews began to
leave off pronouncing the name, out of a superstitious fear of taking
it in vain. Hence whenever they read and came to the name, they
pronounced instead the word Adonai (Lord) or Elohim (God). Hence in making that first translation into Greek known as the Septuagint Version (LXX) the translators followed the Hebrew custom and translated the above substitutes for God's name into their Greek version.
4 The writers of the Greek Christian Scriptures used that Septuagint Version and they quoted its Greek text which omitted the literal name of Almighty God; which partly explains why the name does not occur by itself in the Christian Greek Scriptures.
... *Page 39 ¶ 2 of The Biblical Text in the Making, by Robt. Gordis."
On a different topic, for those who believe in Bible's creation account, was Adam a brunette (but without a beard), was Eve a blond, and did the serpent in the garden have legs (before the fall), considering the illustration shown in a WT book called "The Truth Shall Make You Free" (the 1943 edition). See http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/truthfree/truthfree6.html for the illustration; for another illustration see also http://www.strictlygenteel.co.uk/truthfree/truthfree7.html . Maybe it was that book which started JWs saying that they are "in the truth".
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UFO's or Unidentified Aerial Fenomena....
by mikeflood inwhat do you guys think....the topic seems to being on fashion lately.
some in the borg told me one time "of course, they are for real, they could be angels, demons".. .
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Disillusioned JW
There is an interesting news article about this subject at https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/06/04/ufo-report-explained-government/ .
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Time Indefinite
by StephaneLaliberte infrom a very young age, i was always annoyed by this translation time indefinite simply means: time that has not been defined.
where the new world translation uses "time indefinite", other translations use "everlasting" and "eternal".
honestly, it makes much more sense to me "everlasting" and "eternal" as "time indefinite" would leave room for god to define that time later on.
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Disillusioned JW
In a number of respects, the changes in the wording in the new NWT make the 2013 NWT more like leading Bibles of "Christendom", such as the NIV and NRSV. Even adding the book summaries, the pictures as part of study helps, and the front page where a person can write his/her name makes it more like the Bibles of the "churches". One example of a change is the removal of brackets there were around words that were there to supposedly "complete the sense in the English text".
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It looks like the WATCHTOWER—STUDY EDITION (SIMPLIFIED)'s last issue was December 2018
by Disillusioned JW ini looks like the last issue of the "watchtower—study edition (simplified)" (at least in english) was the december 2018 issue - see https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/?contentlanguagefilter=en&pubfilter=ws&yearfilter= .
did anyone else notice that?.
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Disillusioned JW
I looks like the last issue of the "WATCHTOWER—STUDY EDITION (SIMPLIFIED)" (at least in English) was the December 2018 issue - see https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/?contentLanguageFilter=en&pubFilter=ws&yearFilter= . Did anyone else notice that?
,
or YHWH), from the first book to the last. This name, symbolized by
these four Hebrew consonants, occurs, all together, 6,823 times* in the
Hebrew Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures were first translated into
Greek about 285-247 B.C.; but some time before that the Hebrews began to
leave off pronouncing the name, out of a superstitious fear of taking
it in vain. Hence whenever they read and came to the name, they
pronounced instead the word Adonai (Lord) or Elohim (God). Hence in making that first translation into Greek known as the Septuagint Version (LXX) the translators followed the Hebrew custom and translated the above substitutes for God's name into their Greek version.