That is a good point Vanderhoven7 about the reference in
Matthew chapter 24:20 to a Sabbath day, as the JWs and most other
Christians (but not the SDA and some others) don't abstain form all work
on a Sabbath day (whether the Jewish Sabbath day on the 7th day of the
week, or the Christian Sabbath day on the 1st day of the week). It shows
that text in Matthew about the tribulation (at least most of it) only
pertains to the time of the 1st century in Judea. But perhaps it also
indicates that the vast majority of Christians today by not keeping the
7th day Sabbath, are breaking a major law of Yahweh and are not
following Christ in regards to observance of that Sabbath..
Disillusioned JW
JoinedPosts by Disillusioned JW
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540
Simple Question Re 1914
by Slidin Fast inwt claims that satan was thrown out of heaven in october 1914 precipitating ww!
and the end times.
a small problem with that is ww1 started on july 28th 1914 whilst satan was still in heaven picking his nose.. how did we not see this and waste years of precious life?
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Disillusioned JW
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70
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
The following is a reply to the very first post of this topic thread.
Back in the early to mid 1980s when Ronald Reagan was president of the U.S.A., I was thinking the great tribulation or Armageddon might start very soon, such as around 1984 or possibly sooner. That was largely because of the kinds of articles the WTS was putting in number of issues of the Watchtower and in the Awake! at the time, regarding Armageddon. It was also because of the idea of a generation being of 70 or 80 years (combined with the idea of the generation of 1914 CE), and because President Reagan was promoting the building of a "Star Wars" missile defense system, and he was drastically building up the U.S.A. military, and his administration was drastically spending much more money in the U.S..A.. military budget than was the case under President Carter. I was also worried because I read (and heard on the TV news) reports that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists had moved the minute hand on their Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, indicating how very very close they thought the world was to a human caused doomsday. I thought a nuclear war might take place between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. and as a result I wanted a drastic reduction in the number of nuclear weapons of both world powers. During the cold war with the U.S.S.R., in my anti-war mind President Reagan wanted to start a real ('hot") war with the U.S.S.R. and he thus scared me when I thought about it. I was also thinking that a false future cry claiming that "peace and security" has been achieved might happen very soon, to be immediately followed by the great tribulation. I got baptized in the very early 1980s while I was a young teenager.
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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
Hypothetically speaking, if Jesus Christ does exist and does return in 2034 (or some other year), or if a great tribulation begins then, will it frighten the governing body? Will they be thinking and possibly even say the following. "We didn't actually expect Jesus Christ to return or for the great tribulation to happen. But, now that one of these events is happening what will happen to us? Oh dear, what will happen to us? We know we made false predictions and that on a number of times we mislead our readers, and that we lied to the governments. We know we caused psychological harm to many JW. We know that some JW died as a result of adhering to our prohibitions on blood transfusions; even some children died as a result. We know that our "two witness rule" has kept many sexually abused children, ones raised by JW parents, from getting the help they so desperately need. Will Christ judge us adversely? Will he execute us? Jehovah have mercy on us. Lord Jesus, please have mercy on us. Please spare us from your wrath."
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32
Date of Adam's "Creation?
by Slidin Fast inhow do jws resolve these conflicting facts.. 1. no matter how you spin it, bible chronology calculates to circa 4000 bc for adam's creation.
i followed the trail many years ago and that's what it adds up to.. 2. the most cursory investigation of any branch of relevant science puts man's habitation on the earth as hugely earlier than that.
it's now so well-proved that anyone disputing it is guilty of wilful ignorance.
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Disillusioned JW
https://reasons.org/explore/publications/articles/lost-civilization-beneath-the-persian-gulf-confirms-genesis-history-of-humanity (a web page of old Earth day age creationism) cites archeologist Jeffrey Rose in support of the idea that the Garden of Eden is now under the Persian Gulf. The article is by Hugh Ross and the articles says the following.
"University of Birmingham archeologist Jeffrey Rose .... In his paper, ... points out that during the late Pleistocene epoch (150,000 to 12,000 years ago) reduced sea levels periodically exposed the “Gulf Oasis.” The Persian Gulf receded to such a degree as to bring above the surface a landmass as large as, or larger than, Great Britain. Rose explains that this landmass was well watered by four large rivers flowing at the time: the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Batin. Additionally, the region was watered by fresh water springs supplied by subterranean aquifers flowing beneath the Arabian subcontinent.
... Rose argues that during the latter part of the last ice age a thriving civilization existed in what is now the Persian Gulf. As sea levels rose and as water rushed in through the Strait of Hormuz to fill up the Persian Gulf (see figure 1), people would have exited the Gulf Oasis and formed settlements along the rising shoreline. ... Rose also points out that the water’s rushing in to fill up the Persian Gulf and other neighboring regions could explain the many flood accounts and myths that emanate from that part of the globe.
... Rose’s theory fits not only the biblical account of Noah’s flood, it comports especially well with the earlier chapters of Genesis. Skeptics have long charged that the Bible’s description of the Garden of Eden brings biblical inspiration and inerrancy into question. Genesis 2 claims that the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates Rivers all meet together in Eden.3 However, the Pishon and Gihon flow out from the mountains of central Arabia (Havilah) and southwest Arabia (Cush), respectively, while the Tigris and Euphrates flow out from the mountains of Ararat in Armenia and Turkey (see figure 1).
As skeptics point out, nowhere on the planet do the four rivers come together. Their charge holds true—but only for today’s geography. All four rivers flow into different parts of the Persian Gulf and all four rivers meet together in what Rose identifies as the Gulf Oasis. As Rose points out, the Gulf Oasis was also watered by springs upwelling from subterranean aquifers. Genesis 2:6 also states that “streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.” Genesis 7:11 identifies “springs of the great deep” as part of the source of the flood waters that wreaked havoc upon the ungodly of Noah’s generation. The Gulf Oasis vindicates the unique claims Genesis makes about the Garden of Eden and its surroundings."
I encourage people to read the rest of Ross' short article. The "About" page of Ross' website says "We believe questions and dialogue are good because truth invites and withstands testing." I wish the WT and its JW religion had that attitude!
https://www.dfmanagement.tv/jeff-rose/ says the following about Dr. Jeff Rose. "He holds a BA in Classics, a MA in Archaeology, a second MA in Anthropology, and a PhD in Anthropology. Jeff’s interests cover a broad range of subjects: from human origins to early civilisations, ancient technologies to modern genetics, earth sciences to underwater archaeology, mythology to linguistics." The web page about Rose says he was the Presenter in a National Geographic Channel program in 2012 called "Diving into Noah’s Flood". It also says he was Presenter in two "Smithsonian Channel / BBC 2" programs in 2014, one called "Bible Hunters: the Search for Bible Truth" and the other called "Bible Hunters: the Search for Lost Gospels". The web page about Rose also says "Ancient Mysteries: Eden Revealed (Contributor) Smithsonian / UK Channel 5". -
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Date of Adam's "Creation?
by Slidin Fast inhow do jws resolve these conflicting facts.. 1. no matter how you spin it, bible chronology calculates to circa 4000 bc for adam's creation.
i followed the trail many years ago and that's what it adds up to.. 2. the most cursory investigation of any branch of relevant science puts man's habitation on the earth as hugely earlier than that.
it's now so well-proved that anyone disputing it is guilty of wilful ignorance.
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Disillusioned JW
Correction/Update: https://network.asa3.org/page/ASA_History says the American Scientific Affiliation now includes those who accept biological evolution. It says "In many ways it is this commitment to engage that ultimately transformed the ASA from its anti-evolutionary roots to its present openness to evolution as a biological theory." Instead of being a scientific organization of Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Scientific_Affiliation says "The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a Christian religious organization of scientists and people in science-related disciplines." That article also says "The influence of an inner circle affiliated with Wheaton College led it to reject "strict" creationism in favor first of progressive creationism and then of theistic evolution, encouraging acceptance of evolution among evangelicals."
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Date of Adam's "Creation?
by Slidin Fast inhow do jws resolve these conflicting facts.. 1. no matter how you spin it, bible chronology calculates to circa 4000 bc for adam's creation.
i followed the trail many years ago and that's what it adds up to.. 2. the most cursory investigation of any branch of relevant science puts man's habitation on the earth as hugely earlier than that.
it's now so well-proved that anyone disputing it is guilty of wilful ignorance.
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Disillusioned JW
The scientist in the History Channel program about the Garden of Eden and about the flood, is the archaeologist named Juris Zarins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juris_Zarins says the following regarding his idea. "Zarins argued that the Garden of Eden was situated at the head of the Persian Gulf (present-day Kuwait), where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the sea, from his research on this area using information from many different sources, including LANDSAT images from space. In this theory, the Bible's Gihon River would correspond with the Karun River in Iran, and the Pishon River would correspond to the Wadi Batin river system that once drained the now dry, but once quite fertile central part of the Arabian Peninsula. His suggestion about the Pishon River is supported by James A. Sauer (1945–1999) formerly of the American Center of Oriental Research[10] although strongly criticized by the archaeological community."
https://mormonheretic.org/2015/07/13/atheist-find-garden-of-eden/ says that Zarins is an atheist! That web page mentions many of the things I saw in the History Channel program. That includes the following (as quoted from the above website).
"Researcher Juris Zarins from Missouri State University noted that every civilization has had a creation story, and some of the stories pre-date the story told in Genesis. He wondered why so many cultures tell this story, and wondered if the Garden of Eden may have actually existed. He noted that the Bible story bears remarkable resemblances to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Some of the details are quite similar to the story of Adam and Eve. He felt the Bible stories were plagiarized by the Hebrews who heard these stories from the Sumerians who have an older creation story that is 8000 years old.
... There are other Sumerian tales found in the Bible, such as The Tower of Babel. Sumer is called Shinar in the Bible. Many of these early Bible stories bear remarkable resemblances to more ancient Sumerian tales. Zarins believes that the Bible is just a Hebrew version of the story of Gilgamesh, and believes that Eden is the same place as Dilmun. He also knows that the eastern shores of Arabia, near Bahrain was once a lush area, even though today it is a desert.
... Everyone knows where the Euphrates River is, and Hiddekel is translated Tigris in most other translations. Ethiopia may be a mistranslation. The word is actually Cush, and some other Bibles translate it as Sudan, but Zarins noted that Iran was also known as Cush. Geographically, Iran makes much more sense than either Sudan or Ethiopia. ... If one can find these two other rivers (Pison and Gihon), they’ll find Eden. Interestingly, only the Bible mentions these other two rivers. ...
Zarins turned to Satellite photos to try to find these other two rivers. In the 1980s, satellite photos were hard to come by, but Zarins lucked out. He noted a dry channel in Saudi Arabia. On the ground, it looks just like a bunch of sand dunes and hardly looks like a river. Zarins learned that this river had water as the Ice Age was ending. Around 5-6000 BC, the area would have been lush with vegetation.
The Persian Gulf didn’t exist in the Ice Age and was once dry land. During the Ice Age, the sea level was 200 feet deeper. Due to the runoff, the Gulf filled with water, and is just 120 feet deep at it’s deepest point. Zarins believes this river is the Pison, which flowed much further east near Basra.
Zarins believes the fourth major river comes out of Zagros Mountains in Iran, called Karun. It originally connected to the Tigrus and Euphrates rivers until it was dammed in the 1970s. The Garden of Eden is now under water in the Persian Gulf. 8000 years ago, the climate was different, monsoon rains covered whole peninsula with rain, lush, green, so Sumerians thought Dilmun was the birth of humanity. Zarins thinks that the Tree of Knowledge was actually a story of how farming started. The narrator says,
According to Zarins, the Garden of Eden was the home to pre-historic humans, hunter-gatherers who were able to survive purely from what they found growing naturally. But as the last Ice Age ended, the waters in the world’s oceans began to rise. Eventually this garden of paradise drowned in the flood. In its place today, we find the Persian Gulf."
Not all of the stories of the Bible are 100% fiction. Some the biblical stories contain remnants of truth and those remnants of truth can help scientists find further knowledge of what happened in very ancient times!
https://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Book%20Reviews2005-/3-13.html (a web page of a scientific organization of Christian old Earth creationist scientists, or at least of Christians that are creationist scientists which includes old Earth creationists, even day age creationists) says the following. "Juris Zarins, now retired from Southwest Missouri State University, conducted years of field research in Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula. He contends that Semitic languages arose in an Arabian nomadic setting during a period of changing climate. In an aside to his scholarly work, Zarins proposes that the garden story is based on the migrations around 5000 BC of these foraging nomads to Mesopotamia where agriculture already flourished. The resulting cultural upheaval led to an oral tradition taking the nomadic standpoint, which portrayed agriculturists as taking God’s knowledge into their own hands to exploit the power of creation. As the Gulf continued to rise, the agriculturists were forced out of Eden. Using LANDSAT photos, archaeology, linguistics, and geology, he situates Eden underneath the present Persian Gulf. Wilensky-Lanford considers this the most credible garden theory, although it has not been embraced in academia as contemporary scholars show little interest in the geography of literal creation."
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Date of Adam's "Creation?
by Slidin Fast inhow do jws resolve these conflicting facts.. 1. no matter how you spin it, bible chronology calculates to circa 4000 bc for adam's creation.
i followed the trail many years ago and that's what it adds up to.. 2. the most cursory investigation of any branch of relevant science puts man's habitation on the earth as hugely earlier than that.
it's now so well-proved that anyone disputing it is guilty of wilful ignorance.
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Disillusioned JW
OK, I was wrong about the idea of the Noah flood story having roots in a flooding caused the rise of the Black Sea. I had confused the idea of the Black Sea being associated with the biblical story with the idea of flooding caused by expansion of the Persian Gulf. That flooding was into what was then called Sumeria. What was once the Garden of Eden is now under a portion of the Persian Gulf. It is as I stated in a different topic thread where I said the following. '... there is some evidence for a massive local flood that wiped out lush vegetation and a human population about 9,000 to 11,000 years ago, in (or very near) what later became know as Sumeria. What do you think of the History Channel program ... called "Decoding The Past: Mysteries of the Garden of Eden"? I think it makes very convincing claims.' In the program a scientist using satellite imaging found the channels of all four of the rivers mentioned in Genesis 2:10-14 which Genesis says pinpoints the location of the Garden of Eden! But (if I remember correctly) instead of the rivers issuing out of Eden to become heads, it is where they converged into Eden. Jeffro, you are thus correct in saying the flood story based on a local flood in Mesopotamia, but it was an emense flood.
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First rule of book club: don't talk about book club
by Judgerussellford ini've never heard anyone else but ne say this but i've been saying it for years.
if you agree and have also been saying this for years, that is hilariously greater.
watchtower is just a cooperation that hides behind a religious title, that owns real-estate around the world, these buildings wich only have 1 purpose.
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Disillusioned JW
I remember that while I was a believing JW I wondered at times why the WTS produced so many different doctrinal books. I wondered why doesn't the WTS simply use the same doctrinal book (with occasional revisions) for many decades instead of replacing it with new book after new book. I wondered why the WTS expects JW to read so much literature? Now I know the real reason. It was about making money - not about helping JW to learn more about the Bible and not about attracting more people to the JW religion. Studying so many WTS books was very tiresome to me. Likewise studying so many issues of the WT magazine was so very tiresome to me.
When the WTS largely stopped making hardcover books and started making paperback books instead, including paperback editions of books formerly published as hardcover books, I was displeased with the change. [I prefer hardcover books to paperback books, not just in regards to WTS books, since hardcover books are much more durable, including in regards to their binding (if their binding is stitched).] I also recognized it meant the WTS was loosing money (or at least getting far less money than they previously were).
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Jesus is Michael the Archangel
by Fisherman inonly jesus has the power and authority to defeat satan and kick him out of heaven:.
“now have come to pass the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our god and the authority of his christ, because the accuser of our brothers has been hurled down, who accuses them day and night before our god.”.
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Disillusioned JW
On second thought I think it is best that I do not obtain an online "diploma mill" degree in theology and that I do not obtain an online "diploma mill" degree as a minister of atheism (and/or of humanism). Furthermore, I think it is best that I do not write a biblical theology book. Writing an atheistic book which in large part criticizes the Bible is enough in regards to writing a book which comments on the Bible.
I am disappointed that so much of what I was taught by the WT Society of Bible doctrines is incorrect.
In contrast to what I wrote earlier in this topic thread, perhaps the passage about Michael the Archangel in the book of Revelation is from a Jewish non-Christian text. Some scholars say that Revelation started out as a Jewish non-Christian apocalyptic book, but that Christian portions were later added to the book making it what is today. Perhaps the book of Revelation shouldn't be considered part of the Christian NT canon.
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540
Simple Question Re 1914
by Slidin Fast inwt claims that satan was thrown out of heaven in october 1914 precipitating ww!
and the end times.
a small problem with that is ww1 started on july 28th 1914 whilst satan was still in heaven picking his nose.. how did we not see this and waste years of precious life?
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Disillusioned JW
Jeffro, you are right about what you saying of the Gospel of Matthew saying the presence is after the tribulation (if you also mean that the presence starts when Christ comes in judgement and as King) and that the presence analogous to the unexpected arrival of the 'flood' itself. I discovered that teaching myself (at least that the start of the parousia is when the sign of the son Man begins) in 1995 (or shortly later) when I started reading and very carefully studying Matthew chapters 24-25 independent of WT interpretation of those chapters (except that I was reading the verses in the NWT Bible). That discovery was during the beginning of me realizing I need to think independently of the WT in scriptural matters, though I was still a ministerial servant at the time (though my field service activity had dropped to a very low level around 1995). In 2000 or 2001 I stopped almost all attendance of JW meetings at the Kingdom Hall.
You made a good point in saying that the word parousia (presence) in not used in the gospels attributed to Mark, Luke, and John.
I noticed that the tribulation mentioned in Matthew chapter 24 (which is described as happening in Judea) is very different from the tribulation of Revelation and of the bowl's of wrath mentioned in Revelation. It is very difficult to correlate Revelation with Matthew chapter 24. Maybe that is part of the evidence that the oldest parts of the book of Revelation were written by a non-Christian Jew. Maybe it is also evidence that the book of Revelation should be rejected as part of the Christian NT Bible.
There is also little in Matthew 25:31-46 which correlates with anything in the book of Revelation.