For clarity, I reword the last sentence of my prior post to say the following. "I thus think that JWs think that they receive some of the same benefits (namely a prospect for eternal life and for forgiveness of sins) that they believe will be received by the anointed ones who are thought to be in the new covenant."
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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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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Disillusioned JW
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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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Disillusioned JW
Sea Breeze, I think it can accurately be said that the WT teaches (even if only indirectly) that the 'anointed' governing body members of the JW religion act as mediators between the "other sheep" (prospective "great crowd members) and Jesus Christ. As a result non-anointed JWs believe that as long as they remain in good standing as JWs (and stay within what the WT teaches is Jehovah God's modern day Ark, namely the WT's JW religion) till the end of their life (if they die before the great tribulation) or until through the great tribulation and Armageddon, then they will very likely get salvation as eternal life on Earth. Furthermore the JWs believe essential teachings of the WT which must held to obtain eternal include those found in the NWT which the Bible at John 3:16 and John 17:3 attributes to sayings of Jesus Christ.
One time, the WT in an organization chart showed the governing body of 'anointed' ones as in between Jesus Christ and the non-anointed JWs (or the congregations). I thus think that JWs think that they receive some of the same benefits (namely a prospect for eternal life and for forgiveness of sins) as the anointed ones who are thought to be the new covenant.
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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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Disillusioned JW
Sea Breeze (and like minded ones), why do think the Jews who became followers of Jesus primarily were Orthodox Jews, instead of Hellenized Jews like Stephen and Saul/Paul, and others (Acts 6:1-6; 8:4-5)? All of Paul's letters in our NT were written in Greek, and they were addressed to congregations which included Jews, and they were also addressed to individuals. Even the anonymous letter called "To the Hebrews" is in Greek. Furthermore, in one of Paul's letters Paul said it is OK if a honor one day as a special day (such as the Sabbath), and he said it is OK treat all days as alike. Note that Romans 14:5-6 (NKJV) says the following. "One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; [a]and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks." ["a. Romans 14:6 NU omits the rest of this sentence."] Furthermore, the NT says that Jesus said he is Lord of the Sabbath.
Some of the church 'fathers' wrote that there were Torah keeping Jewish believers in Jesus as the Messiah, such as the Nazarenes, Ebionites, and others, and there is evidence that some of those groups were still in existence in the 2nd century CE. Even our modern western Christianized Roman weekly calendar has both Saturday (the Sabbath day and 7th day of the week) and Sunday (the first day of the week) as the two days the 'weekend'. By the way, in Spanish the word ("sábado") for the seventh day of the week literally means "Sabbath" (and Spanish and Latin cultures are predominately Christian, not Jewish ones). To me this indicates that many early gentile Christians also observed the 7th day as a Sabbath (but perhaps I am wrong about that). See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_in_Christianity . It says in part the following.
"Early Christians, at first mainly Jewish, observed the seventh-day Sabbath with prayer and rest, but gathered on the seventh day, Saturday, reckoned in Jewish tradition as beginning, like the other days, at sunset on what would now be considered the Friday evening. At the beginning of the second century Ignatius of Antioch approved non-observance of the Sabbath.[2] ...
Beginning about the 17th century, a few groups of Restorationist Christians, mostly Seventh-day Sabbatarians, formed communities that adopted the original interpretation of law, either Christian or Mosaic, reminiscent of the early Christian church. ...
The Sabbath continued to be observed on the seventh day in the early Christian church.[note 1] To this day, the liturgical day continues to be observed in line with the Hebrew reckoning in the church calendars in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy.[10] "
The article also says the following. 'Jewish Christians continued to observe Shabbat but met together at the end of the day, on a Saturday evening. In the gospels, the women are described as coming to the empty tomb Greek: εις μια των σαββατων, lit. 'toward the first [day] of the Sabbath',[13] although it is often translated "on the first day of the week". ...
The 2nd and 3rd centuries solidified the early church's emphasis upon Sunday worship and its rejection of a Jewish (Mosaic Law-based) observation of the Sabbath and manner of rest. '
There is thus evidence that for a period of time a number of Jewish Christians honored both the 1st and 7th days of the week. Furthermore, consider the following.
Jesus (if he ever existed as a real person, instead of a myth) lived on Earth during the time of the second temple period of Judaism. During that time there were multiple sects of Judaism, including Essenes, those who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pharisees, Saducees, Zealots, and those who followed Jesus. Some of those lived in the time before the birth of Jesus, and some of those had some teachings which were long thought (such as after the year 1000 CE) to be uniquely Christian teachings, but which in the past 100 years have been discovered to predate the first century CE.
Regarding whether all (or even most) of the Christians of the first and second centuries CE believe that Jesus Christ had a bodily fleshly resurrection, instead of solely a spiritual resurrection, consider the following.
Some of the first century Christians believed that Jesus was resurrected as a spirit without a fleshly human body. A number of scholars say that the latter gospels (Luke and John) have passages saying that Jesus had a fleshly resurrected body (and/or that the resurrection body ate food) in order to refute those Christians were believed otherwise. The highly influential New Testament scholar Bart Erhman says the following at https://www.bartehrman.com/physical-vs-spiritual-resurrection/ says the following.
"Paul never mentions an empty tomb. ...
His letters do not address any conspiracy regarding a grave robbery. ...
According to Paul, it was Peter who saw the risen Jesus first–but again, no mention of how, when, or where. ...
A careful reading of Paul’s emphatic usage of Jesus’ “bodily” resurrection reveals that Paul was repeatedly referring to Jesus rising from the dead in a “spiritual” body (Romans 6:5, 2nd Corinthians 5:16-17, Philippians 3:10-11.)
That Jesus rose bodily from the dead was a foregone conclusion–what Paul sought to communicate with the church at Corinth was the way in which Jesus lives on. What Paul means by “spiritual body” is perplexing. ...Docetics believed that Jesus only appeared as a human being but was primarily spirit in substance. ... Docetism was an extreme byproduct of Gnosticism, which was arguably the biggest opponent to the orthodoxy of the ancient Christian Church.
... It was the existence of these belief systems about Jesus that likely motivated the orthodox Christian Church to canonize which writings belonged and which ones needed to go away, a process which is described and confronted here.
As belief in Jesus’ physical and/or spiritual bodily resurrection became the modus operandi for religious leaders, the other forms of Christian thought (especially Gnosticism, Docetism, and Arianism) were discredited or destroyed.
Fast forward to the cultural embrace of science and reason during a period known as The Enlightenment in the 1800’s. During this period Bible-loving Christians felt very threatened by those on the outside looking in on the Christian institution, so the institutional authorities doubled down on Biblical literalism."
See also https://jamestabor.com/why-a-spiritual-resurrection-is-the-only-sensible-option/ . it says in part the following.
'That is why finding the decayed bones of Jesus in an ossuary, as might well be the case Talpiot tomb in Jerusalem, as I have argued here on this blog and extensively in our book, The Jesus Discovery, does not contradict the earliest faith in Jesus’ resurrection by his first followers. What has happened is that people have conflated the later accounts in the Gospels, especially in Luke and John, where Jesus clearly appears as a “revived corpse” and even asks for food to eat–declaring himself to be “flesh and blood,” with the much earlier views the gospel of Mark (with no appearances of Jesus), the fragment ending of the Gospel of Peter, and Matthew–that are much more compatible with Paul’s earlier view (50s CE) of “seeing” Jesus’ spiritual body. The idea those who “sleep in the dust” awakening, or the sea “giving up” the dead that are in it, makes it crystal clear that resurrection of the dead has to do with a transformed “heavenly” existence, not a revival of the scant remains of those long ago turned to “dust and ashes” as the phrase goes (Daniel 12:2-3; Revelation 20:13). One might also recall that, according to Jesus, those who experience the “age to come” and the resurrection of the dead, are transformed into an “angelic” state, no longer male or female with physical bodies (Luke 20:34-38).'
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Military Service Confusion
by Sea Breeze incan someone please call these three guys and tell them that the first gentile christian was an active duty roman military officer named cornelius.
these guys have been locked up for 25 years!.
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Disillusioned JW
Hi Sea Breeze. Thanks for your question. I read your earlier post very shortly before I had to start getting ready to go to work. I thus read it very quickly. I was focused on your words of the following. "Can you explain why JW's are so reluctant to provide an reason for their faith when questioned? Is it embarrassing to you personally that you cannot or will not defend your faith in Jehovah?" Those are the questions I was referring to in my prior post. I had skipped over the following two sentences of your post, and then I read the final sentence of the post, namely "It is an honest and simple question directed at God Believer." Regarding the question of "... By what circumstance or device would you ever hope to be found righteous as a JW?" I don't think I was ever asked that when I was JW. However, I had been asked something similar, and so I would reply that the Bible says that our faith must be backed up with works, otherwise the faith is not real. I also would mention that even Paul said he would not be saved until the end, that he had to remain faithful to the end to become saved. I also would admit that that JWs believe their salvation (prior to entering the New Order or heaven) is not completely certain. But your question of "By what circumstance or device would you ever hope to be found righteous as a JW?" was never asked me. Since I no longer believe in Jehovah I won't bother formulating an answer to it, other than to say that when I was a JW if I had been asked that question I might would have said I would have past the final test that Revelation mentions would happen when the 1,000 years of the abyss of Satan will end, after I will have been raised (by Christ) to perfection as a human.
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Military Service Confusion
by Sea Breeze incan someone please call these three guys and tell them that the first gentile christian was an active duty roman military officer named cornelius.
these guys have been locked up for 25 years!.
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Disillusioned JW
Sea Breeze, I am surprised to read that "JW's are so reluctant to provide an reason for their faith when questioned'. When I was active believing JW I had reasons for my belief in the religion and I defended a number of the teachings when I went door to door. But I don't think anyone ever asked me to provide me a reason for believing the JW religion. It would have been very easy for me to have done so though, and part of the defense would have been stating reasons for why I believed in the Bible and why I believed in the existence of Jehovah God and Jesus Christ. But now I know that the vast majority of the religious teachings of the WT and the Bible are false.
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The Evidence of Human Evolution keeps getting stronger and stronger
by Disillusioned JW indespite the wt's and young earth creationists' teachings against human evolution (namely macroevolution from non-humans) being a reality, the evidence of human evolution keeps getting stronger and stronger.. consider for example two science news articles and one other science article, each pertaining to the fossil that is nicknamed "little foot".
below are links to three science articles, listed in order of the articles from oldest to newest (except i don't see a date for one of the articles).
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2187639-exclusive-controversial-skeleton-may-be-a-new-species-of-early-human/.
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Disillusioned JW
When I first learned of Australopithecus africanus I was very impressed with the shape of its cranium (at least of the skull specimen called "Mrs. Ples" and the skull specimen called "Taung Child"), since it strongly suggested to me that the species might have been a ancestor to our species.The skulls of that species looked much more human to me than those of Australopithecus afarensis.
Years later I learned that as a result of the discovery of Australopithecus afarensis that most anthropologists came to believe that Australopithecus africanus can not be an ancestor of ours. That greatly disappointed me and made me very sad, because it took away the joy I had in believing that Australopithecus africanus was an ancestral species of me. Two of the reasons why anthropologists abandoned Australopithecus africanus as an ancestor of our species are because: (1) Australopithecus afarensis had been dated as about one million years older than Australopithecus africanus and (2) because the molar teeth of Australopithecus afarensis were of about the same size of those of our species, whereas those Australopithecus africanus were bigger than those of ours. Because of those two factors it was thought that Australopithecus africanus evolved from Australopithecus afarensis and that our species descended from Australopithecus afarensis and some descendant species of it, but not from Australopithecus africanus.
But a very recent article (dated June 27, 2022) in a science journal states that numerous fossils of Australopithecus (including ones of Australopithecus africanus) are now re-dated as being one million years older that they previously were thought to be. The scientist who re-dated them is the same scientist who dated the fossil of Little Foot. If the new dating is correct then it means that the species Australopithecus africanus is about as old as the species Australopithecus afarensis (and older than the fossil called "Lucy") - and that Australopithecus africanus did not descend from Australopithecus afarensis (except possibly from a small early population of A. Afarensis). It also means (at least to me) that Australopithecus africanus might be an ancestral species of ours after all (and that Australopithecus afarensis might not be an ancestral species of ours). The science journal article is at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2123516119 and is called "Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Australopithecus at Sterkfontein, South Africa".
The science journal article says the following. "Australopithecus fossils from the richest hominin-bearing deposit (Member 4) at Sterkfontein in South Africa are considerably older than previously argued by some and are contemporary with Australopithecus afarensis in East Africa. Our dates demonstrate the limitations of the widely accepted concept that Australopithecus africanus, which is well represented at Sterkfontein, descended from A. afarensis. The contemporaneity of the two species now suggests that a more complex family tree prevailed early in the human evolutionary process."
The science journal article has a lot of technical terminology in it, but a number of news articles describe the significance of the findings in a much easier to understand manner. One of those articles is at https://www.sciencealert.com/cradle-of-humankind-fossils-may-be-a-million-years-older-than-we-previously-thought . It says the following.
'Multiple ancient hominin remains from caves in South Africa may be much, much older than previous estimates suggested.
The Sterkfontein limestone cave system, not far from Johannesburg, has yielded so many ancient bones from the hominin genus Australopithecus over the last century that its location has been dubbed the Cradle of Humankind – deeply important to the study of human evolution.
Now, new dating techniques suggest that the remains date back nearly 4 million years – making them even older than the famous Australopithecus afarensis individual Dinkinesh, nicknamed Lucy.
... Most of the Sterkfontein Australopithecus remains have been recovered from a cave infill called Member 4. That's exactly what it sounds like: material that filled what was previously a cavity, resulting in a sedimentary deposit; in this case, concealing but preserving ancient hominin remains. Member 4 previously yielded the famous Mrs. Ples skull, the most complete example of its kind ever discovered.... the team discerned that the Australopithecus-bearing sediments all date from between 3.4 and 3.7 million years ago. That means the remains recovered from the deposit are all from around the beginning of the Australopithecus era, and not its end as previously thought.
... "Younger hominins, including Paranthropus and our genus Homo, appear between about 2.8 and 2 million years ago," said archaeologist Dominic Stratford of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, Sterkfontein research coordinator.
"Based on previously suggested dates, the South African Australopithecus species were too young to be their ancestors, so it has been considered more likely that Homo and Paranthropus evolved in East Africa."
The new result, consistent with the dating of Little Foot, suggests that Homo and Paranthropus – also found in the Cradle of Humankind – emerged nearly a million years after the Member 4 individuals lived, which means the order of events, and where they occurred, can be revised.'
For related news articles about the findings see the following.
- https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/28/world/sterkfontein-cave-australopithecus-fossils-age-scn/index.html . This article says that based upon the dating from decades ago that "... researchers up until now have accepted that South African Australopiths were descended from East African species, like Lucy and other members of Australopithecus afarensis." But the article continues by saying the following. ' “What our age shows is that this cannot be true, because they are virtually the same age,” Granger said. “There must be an older common ancestor. It also gives much more time for the South African species to evolve, and reopens discussion about the role of the South African species into later hominins such as Paranthropus.” '
- http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/sterkfontein-australopithecus-fossils-10944.html . This article says the following.
'The team’s results show that the entire Australopithecus assemblage at Sterkfontein dates to 3.4-3.7 million years ago.
These australopiths were thus early representatives of the genus, overlapping in age with a morphologically diverse range of mid-Pliocene hominins, including Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus deyiremeda at Burtele, Australopithecus bahrelgazali in Chad, Kenyanthropus platyops at Lake Turkana, and Australopithecus anamensis at Woranso-Mille.
“The Sterkfontein hominins predate Paranthropus, Homo, and Australopithecus sediba at nearby sites in the Cradle of Humankind by over a million years,” the authors said.
In addition to the new dates at Sterkfontein based on cosmogenic nuclides, the they made careful maps of the cave deposits and showed how animal fossils of different ages would have been mixed together during excavations in the 1930s and 1940s, leading to decades of confusion with the previous ages.
“What I hope is that this convinces people that this dating method gives reliable results,” Dr. Granger said.
“Using this method, we can more accurately place ancient humans and their relatives in the correct time periods, in Africa, and elsewhere across the world.” '
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What is your PSI / ESP potential?
by manon inexperts estimate that one person out of twenty possesses an unusual degree of extrasensory perception-esp or psi energy.
the following questions may determine your own psi potential:
1- is it unusual for you to be reduced to tears?
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Disillusioned JW
scooby_future, in your dreams (or visions) which later come true are any of the events something people also see (such on TV. If so It would be great if you post online a summary of some of your future dreams (after you dream them), if they are the kind in which you think the depicted events will appear on TV. That way I can see if they come true.
Today while siting on my bed (while feeling sleepy) while trying to see clearly in my mind (with my eyes closed) a book which I had looked at a few seconds earlier (before closing my eyes), I saw the following. I saw a brief video (not a still frame) of a modern style boat (probably motorized) on the water moving slowly to the right towards a wall. The portion of the wall which was above water was much taller than the portion of the hull of boat was above water. I did not see the very top of the wall (the top of the way was not inside my mental field of vision). The boat ran into the wall. The vision/dream then ended and I opened my eyes. I don't know what the mental vision/dream signifies, if anything. I was not consciously thinking about a boat or a wall prior to having the visual (at least not in the immediate time frame, but obviously in multiple times in the past I thought about boats, sea water, and walls). I don't recall ever seeing a boat run into a wall.
The wall I saw was solid (with no holes in it) and looked like a stone or concrete wall. The boat was white. The wall was also white, or at least the wall was very light in color.
What do you think of that mental visual?
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Military Service Confusion
by Sea Breeze incan someone please call these three guys and tell them that the first gentile christian was an active duty roman military officer named cornelius.
these guys have been locked up for 25 years!.
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Disillusioned JW
What https://ancientromelive.org/christians-the-roman-army/ says is very relevant to this discussion.
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Disillusioned JW
In addition, it might be helpful to read Mark 13:33-36 in between reading Matthew 24:42 and Matthew 24:43, since that makes a more logical sequence in the narrative. It makes a better conceptual link between verses 42 and 43 of Matthew chapter 24. Shortly after I got that idea I noticed that an arrangement very close to that is in the book called A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life Christ: Based on the Broadus Harmony in the Revised Version, by A. T. Robertson.
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Disillusioned JW
Holy spirit! Notice that the last sentence of Matthew 24:51 (at least in the 1984 NWT) has the exact same wording as the last sentence of Matthew 25:30 (at least in the 1984 NWT, and in the latter part of both verses in both the 1901 ASV and the 1995 Updated NASB)! Also notice that Matthew 24:44 speaks about an hour that you don't know and so does Matthew 25:13. These factors suggest to me that very possibly Matthew 25:13-30 (or Matthew 25:14-30) should be right in between Matthew 24:44 and Matthew 24:45, or right after Matthew 24:51! If that was the case in extant ancient Greek manuscripts of the book of Matthew then it would be much easier for readers to discern the identity of the "faithful and discreet slave"! Talk about a revelation, or at least an insight!
Furthermore, perhaps Matthew 25:31-46 should immediately following Matthew 25:13!