ScenicViewer, notice in the Cost List that Bibles listed as "Other Bibles" are grouped separately from those published by the WT.
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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Why did Jehovah's Witnesses release the Byington and New Jerusalem Bibles in the early 70s , and forget about them in the 80s?
by Balaamsass inandover townsman, andover, ma.
july 26, 2012. dalton column: lawsuit concerns one of town's most interesting yet forgotten.
bill dalton.
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Why did Jehovah's Witnesses release the Byington and New Jerusalem Bibles in the early 70s , and forget about them in the 80s?
by Balaamsass inandover townsman, andover, ma.
july 26, 2012. dalton column: lawsuit concerns one of town's most interesting yet forgotten.
bill dalton.
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Disillusioned JW
ScenicViewer I don't think the WT ever published/printed the Jerusalem Bible, instead I think they sold/distributed it. The Cost List you show only indicates they offered it for sales, not that they also printed/published it. I agree with dropoffyourkeylee in that matter.
Folks, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Watch_Tower_Society_publications says that the Byington Bible was revised in 1989. Has anyone seen that edition? What changes were made in the 1989 edition?
dropoffyourkeylee, regarding the WT selling Catholic Bibles keep in mind that many times the WT quoted from Catholic Bibles (probably mostly to convert Catholics). They also quoted from The Complete Bible: An American Translation and though it is a Protestant (and possibly Anglican-Episcopalian) Bible that edition of the Bible translated primarily by Smith and Goodspeed includes the Apocrypha (translated by Goodspeed).
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Pandemic as part of Bible prophecy?
by truthseeker ini was thinking that since russell started the movement in 1879 which became jehovah's witnesses in 1931 never has there been a period in time when all their activities just - stopped.
especially the preaching work.. do you think they will find some obscure verse in daniel that talks about this period of time and try to make a greater fulfillment?
like the 70 weeks of years or the 42 months?
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Disillusioned JW
Correction: Where I said "... since most of non-Christianity does require its members to preach to others" I meant to say "... since most of non-JW Christianity does not require its members to preach to others".
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Pandemic as part of Bible prophecy?
by truthseeker ini was thinking that since russell started the movement in 1879 which became jehovah's witnesses in 1931 never has there been a period in time when all their activities just - stopped.
especially the preaching work.. do you think they will find some obscure verse in daniel that talks about this period of time and try to make a greater fulfillment?
like the 70 weeks of years or the 42 months?
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Disillusioned JW
BluesBrother I notice you said the following regarding the JWs. "They have dropped the prophetic patterns of the Fred Frank era and take the Bible more as it says ...". If the WT/JW's are doing that (and it appears to me that the WT literature is now doing that), I think that is a good thing. It means they have stopped promoting much of their wild ideas, ideas which go far past what the scriptures say and mean, and it thus means their teachings are more in harmony with the Bible. It also means they becoming more mainstream as a result.
If they are more mainstream, then their religion may last longer (good from perhaps the WT's perspective, but not from the perspective of those of us who want the religion to soon cease to exist). If they ditch the erroneous date of 607 BCE for the destruction of Jerusalem, and if they ditch the what they teach regarding 1914, 1918, and 1919 in regards to purported supernatural events, then they will be even more mainstream and much less sectarian, more in harmony with the Bible and reality, and thus receive much less criticism. Perhaps they will end up doing such.
M. James Penton (a professor History and Religious Studies, who is also an ex-elder and an ex-JW) in his book called APOCALYPSE DELAYED: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses" says something which I think is relevant to the above. On page 7 of the hardcover edition which was reprinted in 1986 he says the following.
"In an important way, though, Jehovah's Witnesses are unique; they have preached millenarianism longer and more consistently than any major sectarian movement in the modern world. Millenarianism has been a phenomenon common to many movements over the centuries, but in its purely religious form at least, it generally had to be played down, spiritualized, or abandoned within a relatively short time. ... Thus, the ordinary pattern has been for millenarian movements to surrender, ignore, or modify significantly their millenarian teachings - as has happened with the Seventh-Day Adventists, Latter-Day Saints, and many fundamentalists - or to become rather isolated within society - something which has taken place with the Christadelphians.. Surprisingly, this has not happened to Jehovah's Witnesses who, in spite of many prophetic failures and vicissitudes for more than a century, have gone on preaching the nearness of the millennium and have grown to become a movement with nearly 2.7 million active members and several millions more adherents throughout the world."
In pages 8 - 9 of the book Penton says the following. "In many ways the Witnesses have become ossified. ... More and more they have become hostile to new intellectual developments, the intellectual world, and to independent-minded intellectuals in their own ranks. And more significantly, their leadership has become a self-perpetuating caste which refuses to open itself to new and constructive criticism of almost any sort. ... Furthermore, an aging leadership seemed incapable of developing anything like a satisfactory response to what had not happened in 1975. ...while their essentially Adventist millenarianism has long been the basis of their growth and success, it is also their greatest weakness. Since, for over a hundred years, the end of this world has been delayed for them - something which they never expected would happen - they have not been able to adjust satisfactorily to world events or to a world which, in their view, goes 'groaning on.' "
There are number of ways the WT is solving some of the weaknesses mentioned by Penton and thus becoming more mainstream and thus more sustainable ideologically. In evidence of that consider the following.
Their books (the ones ones used for conducting Bible studies with non-JWS) made in the past 10 years or so, have greatly reduced the emphasis on 1914, 1918, and 1919. They also have stopped sharply directly criticizing the United Nations organization, and they urge JWs to adhere to the Covid-19 safety rules of the secular governments of the world. This shows they are reducing their conflict with government, at least in those countries which allow freedom of religion and which allow people to not join a military.
The WT has given more freedom for JWs to more types of blood fractions, and it allows JWs to have their blood salvaged and circulated through a machine during surgery. That makes a prohibition on blood transfusions much less problematic.
They now rarely disfellowship or label as disassociated JWs who have become 'faders' from the religion. That policy makes it much easier for those who stopped believing in the JW religion to essentially cease being JWs and at the same time still associate with their JW family members and to still get along with them.
They have sharply reduced the amount of field service time which JWs are required to do to remain considered as active JWs.That makes it easier for people to be JWs and is much more like mainstream Christianity, since most of non-Christianity does require its members to preach to others.
They have stopped saying the creative days of Genesis were 7,000 years long, and now say they could have been considerably longer. They have shifted their arguments from the old style type of creationism (involving a young biospehere of less than 49,000 years) to Intelligent Design type of arguments of biblical creationism (the form of biblical creationism which is the most in harmony with modern science), thereby being somewhat less in conflict with paleontology and evolution.
Their 2013 revision of the NWT is much more like the Bibles of mainstream Christianity (such as the NIV and the NRSV) and thus will likely appeal more to non-JWs.
If they switch their name from "Jehovah's Witnesses" to "Witnesses of Jehovah and Jesus" they will become even more mainstream (and have a more Bible based name) and thus be even more successful in attracting non-JW Christians to the religion. But they would have to go even further. They have to teach that all faithful Christians around the time of Armageddon will go to heaven and be there at least during the battle of Armageddon, if not also during the 1,000 years. They can teach that the faithful Christians will be back on Earth after the 1,000 years, in harmony Revelation chapter 21.
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2034 - A Future History of Jehovah's Witnesses
by slimboyfat ini don't know what i am talking about... read this post at your peril.
back in the 1960s there was, seemingly, a brief period of relaxation in authoritarianism among jehovah's witnesses.
those who have read raymond franz's 'crisis of conscience' will have heard the story about dan sydlik's remark about the need to 'open some windows to let some air in here'.
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Disillusioned JW
Correction: 4024 BCE was an error, I should have said 4026 BCE instead. I keep thinking that the WT says Adam was created in 4024 BCE (and the WT probably used to teach that) but starting in the 1980s (or maybe earlier) the WT began teaching 4026 BCE instead.
Correction: I said Usher came up with the date of 4000 BC, but instead I should have said Ussher came up with the date 4004 BC.
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Pandemic as part of Bible prophecy?
by truthseeker ini was thinking that since russell started the movement in 1879 which became jehovah's witnesses in 1931 never has there been a period in time when all their activities just - stopped.
especially the preaching work.. do you think they will find some obscure verse in daniel that talks about this period of time and try to make a greater fulfillment?
like the 70 weeks of years or the 42 months?
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Disillusioned JW
When I think of the Bible from a Bible believer perspective instead of an atheistic nonreligious perspective, I think of deadly plague (including Covid-19) as having to do with plagues (and bowls of God's wrath) mentioned in the book of Revelation and in Luke 21:10-11 (and Luke 21 is a tie in to Matthew 24). Vanderhoven7, note that although Matthew chapter 24 doesn't mention pestilences, Luke chapter 21 does and Revelation does. Furthermore, I think of wildfires and the scientific predictions of the eventual effects of Global Warming (unless humans prevent the worst of Global Warming) as having to do with the bowls of God's wrath (poured out from heaven) mentioned in the book of Revelation, and Luke 21:11's mention of "fearful sights and from heaven great signs".
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2034 - A Future History of Jehovah's Witnesses
by slimboyfat ini don't know what i am talking about... read this post at your peril.
back in the 1960s there was, seemingly, a brief period of relaxation in authoritarianism among jehovah's witnesses.
those who have read raymond franz's 'crisis of conscience' will have heard the story about dan sydlik's remark about the need to 'open some windows to let some air in here'.
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Disillusioned JW
Regarding 1975 I was shocked to learn (from reading ex-JW books by Franz and Penton) that the 1975 date first began to be taught in 1966 (in the Life Everlasting - in Freedom of the Sons of God book). I had long assumed it began being taught much earlier, since it was based up when the 6th creative day supposedly started. But I remember that in the Proclaimer's book the WT said they added about 100 years to when the 6th creative day would end (teaching in Russell's time that it ended in 1874), to discovering a problem (they claim) with the KJV translation of a verse. Long before then Rutherford had moved the teaching pertaining to 1874 to 1914 (or he had dropped the 1874 date and after Rutherford died the WT began substituting the 1914 date for the 1874 date) - but my memory is fuzzy on the details about this.
Rather than the year 2034, the years 2030 and 2033 make more sense to me. That is because it is commonly taught that Jesus began his preaching in the year 30 AD (CE) and was crucified in 33 AD (CE), and if we converse the WT date of when Adam was created as a result of thinking of biblical years of a 360 day prophetic calendar (instead of an approximately 365.2524 day solar calendar), then we get the date of about 3968 BCE as the date of Adam's creation and that is about 4000 years before 33 CE! That means Christ would return about 6000 years after that year, namely in about 2033. [4026 x 360/365.2524 = 3968.105, hence 3968 BCE for Adam's creation date instead of 4024 BCE; 3968 BCE + 6000 solar years +1 solar year [due to no year 0] = 2033 CE).
It is interesting to me that the 2033 CE date is very close to the date which some calculated as 1914 CE plus 120 years (= 2034 CE).
Usher had calculated the creation of the world and of Adam as being 4000 years before the birth of Christ (which I think he believed was on December 25, 1 BC) and he thus got the year of 4000 BC as the creation date. Some people then added 2000 years to that and got 2000 AD/CE (or 2001 AD/CE0, but I (and ideas I read of someone on the internet) think it makes more sense to add 2000 years from the year Christ began his ministry or to the year Christ died - instead of to his year of birth.
The dates of 2030 and 2033 are ones I came up while I was an independent Christian (somewhere around the year 2007). Though I am now an atheist I sometimes hypothetically wonder that if I am wrong in thinking there is no heavenly Jesus Christ, will Christ appear in judgement in the year 2030 or 2033. Along those lines I wonder if the tribulation will begin in 2030 and if Christ will come in judgement 3.5 years later and if something supernatural might take place in 2036 (or 2037).
Keep on the watch for the years 2030 CE - 2036 CE.
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Resistace to going back to meetings
by truthseeker inlot going on.
i had a covid divorce last year over zoom.
not pretty but i got a good deal.. anyway,.
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Disillusioned JW
I hope most JWs in the USA and Europe stop going to the kingdom halls,stop donating to the WT and the congregation, and do no more than a token amount of field service.
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Levels of dependency both inside and outside of the JWs
by joe134cd injust been looking at posts over on reddit, with people bragging of attending the memorial under the influence.
ok fair enough i guess.
but it got me thinking.
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Disillusioned JW
joe134cd in this topic thread you seem to be excluding joining (whether physically, mentally, or both) a non-JW religion as being a type of POMO. Is that the case? Many people when they become physically out of the JW religion and mentally out of the JW religion join another religion. Thus such people are PIMI in regards to a non-JW relgion (such as Baptist, SDA, Mormon, Catholic, or nondenominational Christian or religious Buddhist) and thus not secular, even though they are POMO of the JW religion (and thus outside of the JWs). Likewise a person can be PIMO of the JW and POMI a non-JW religion. Do you wish to include those categories of people in your analysis?
For a two or more years when I was POMO of the JW religion and at the same time not yet secular I considered myself an independent Christian. While an independent Christian I believed in most of the teachings of the Church of God (Abrahamic Faith) and most the teachings of the Church of God (Seventh Day) as well as some other religious ideas, including the belief that according to the Bible women should be allowed to be deacons and elders, and that Mary Magdalene was an "apostle to the apostles".
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Levels of dependency both inside and outside of the JWs
by joe134cd injust been looking at posts over on reddit, with people bragging of attending the memorial under the influence.
ok fair enough i guess.
but it got me thinking.
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Disillusioned JW
"Is a pot-smoking JW really a JW ... "? Provided the person still considers herself/himself/itself a JW and is considered by the congregation to be a JW, then the answer is yes, in the same sense that a JW elder who sexually abuses his child is still a JW elder - until the religion designates him as no longer a JW elder.
Likewise a JW who habitually fornicates (unknown to the congregation) and who habitually smokes tobacco (unknown to the congregation) and who steals (unknown to the congregation) and secretly has some doctrinal beliefs which the WT considers apostate, but who thinks of herself/himself/itself as a JW, is active in field service, and attends JW meetings, is still a JW - until the religion designates the person as no longer a JW.
Yes in these examples the person is breaking major rules of the WT/JW religion, but by the definition of the religion (and also in the mind the person claiming to be a JW) the person is still a JW.
If someone answers "No" to the question of "Is a pot-smoking JW really a JW ...?", then that person is committing what is called the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman for more information.